I made a friend at RISD named Susie Ghahremani whose aesthetic and entrepreneurial prowess has always been an inspiration.  There is nothing overtly ambitious about her success, rather, her success is based upon her humbleness, her generosity, and her remaining true and dedicated to her own particular universe.  When I knew Susie, she resided in a charming pink house on Benefit Street in Providence, Rhode Island.  She surrounded herself with vintage bagatelles.  She was fond of crafts and her old record player / vinyl collection.  She played music on a child’s xylophone years before the idea became mainstream.  She lived alone but her doors were always open, even to existential loners such as myself.  Everything Susie touched was with craft, care and meticulous attention to detail, I remember she wrote me a note and sealed it in an envelope that she made out of an old topographical map, that she sewed together with red yarn.  I could never imagine Susie giving someone a Hallmark card… I believe that if she did, Hell would freeze over.

In any case, I remember visiting her family in San Diego… her family was just as generous.  Her mother, in particular, is a character that I will never forget, she is someone completely open to the universe, an open spirit.  I remember her catch phrase when she drove us around in her car and she’d say, “We’re not lost, we’re on a discovery tour!”  I was there a very short amount of time, but it was a moment that left an impression.

Arguably, boygirlparty was born somewhere out of the Japanese “kawaii” movement (I’m not sure if there is an appropriate name or if it’s actually a movement), where iconic characters are born and then breathe and exist in various trickets and merchandise such as note pads, key chains, wallets, etc.  These are not items that we necessarily need but they are full of charm and humor and they make great gifts.  These characters (eg. Hello Kitty, Kiropi, Afro Ken) do not exist in comic books or any other folkloric narrative, rather they are brought to life by some sort of a consumer fetishism (sorry to use a Marx reference).  I would not say that Susie falls into this category, per se.  Her work is defined by reoccuring nature / music oriented motifs that are very whimisical yet very adult at the same time.   She often fills her work with intricate patterns (see detail) that have a very subconscious Persian feel, whether intentional or not.  Her colors verge on “cool” and subdued.

Susie’s attention to pattern (repetition / motif) lends itself very well to web design and her site has a feeling, as does all of Susie’s work, that it was made by hand.  She repeatedly uses a cursive-like typography that is reminiscent of her actual handwriting (and in many cases, she uses her own handwriting) and she pays meticulous attention to the texture and background of each page.  Each page breathes its own life and yet somehow remains a part of the whole.  Her site is comprised almost entirely of images / rollover images / image-ready sliced up layouts which surprisingly has done nothing to hinder her referencing (her sitemap is very well referenced on Google).  This is perhaps due in part to her meticulous “alt” tags (see detail above) where she does not hesitate to infuse her images with search engine friendly detail.  Her site is incredibly functional given its technical simplicity and it says to anyone equipped with Photoshop that nothing prevents you from creating your own universe on the web, not to mention, your own very successful e-commerce.   A mountain is composed of so many grains of sand, or so they say, and in my opinion, a good web site is composed of a hundred, a thousand details.  In boygirlparty, no detail is overlooked, everything meshes with Susie’s style, a style infused with nature, music and love.

Susie is an illustrator and a scavenger of materials and this translates seemlessly to her virtual world.  In France people are often limited and confined to their designated skill, you’re either a “graphiste print” or a “graphiste web.”  You’re either a “graphiste web” or an “integrateur” which often begs to beat the American out of me.  In order to survive in this sometimes fragmented society, I often think of multi-dimensional entrepreneurs like Susie who are beating the odds.

We caught on a few years ago to an underground movement known as “couchsurfing” ignited by the site www.couchsurfing.com which is not 100% as far as design and functionality are concerned but it has none the less made its mark based on the sheer hospitality of its users and the sincerity of its concept, a concept that draws a certain “peace and love” crowd from all over the world.  We have pictures of our apartment on the couchsurfing site, we’ve hosted a few travelers of our own / made some friends / had some nice culturally infused discussions.   Couchsurfing remains somewhat of a secret and it is rarely mentioned in travel guides…I think again, it thrives on a sort of philanthropy or  faith in the human condition and a sort of rejection of all things material.  I wouldn’t expect the couchsurfing site to be streamline and powerful…a shoddy site is just part of the experience.

Then enters this straight-laced kid that was in my Freshman classes at RISD named Joe Gebbia who had unearthly drive and ambition…insofar that I’d like to know what his parents fed him when he was an infant.  He was class president, he had two majors, he did his liberal arts at Brown and at the same time, I am pretty sure that he patented a machine that turns salt water into drinking water.  Regardless, I don’t know how I stumbled upon him during one of my Google nostalgia trips but well, I found out that he has become quite the successful entrepreneur, notably with a site called “airbnb.”  Airbnb follows the current web 2.0 minimalist recipe for success as far as design is concerned (see my previous article) which facilitates the experience: there is large text, empty space and the site content is really narrowed down to the essentials.  But let’s face it, what makes the huge difference is $money$.  An airbnb listing comes with a price.  The target audience of airbnb falls in a higher economic bracket than that of “couchsurfing” and you’ll note that you’ll find some savvy designer hosts with pretty chic and luxurious lofts / apartments in the listings (that are still a little beyond my price range but no matter).  A lot of the press surrounding Joe’s site mention that his business is profitting from the financial crisis yet I’d argue that its users are in a quasi-crisis because those that are really in a crisis are probably drawn to couchsurfing.com (if they know about it).  In any case, the site is practically flawless as far as the ergonomy is concerned and the concept is a commercial hit: it provides a no-effort business solution to a lot of folks who would probably like to make some money on the side.

So, kudos to Joe and to his flawless DNA / neurological matter.
PS.  Their logo is BLUE !

RISD (The Rhode Island School of Design), is composed entirely of creative types and I’d argue that within the student population, there is a division of materialists / non-materialists.  How should I say…people who wanted money and people who were completely irreverent about the prospect of having a J-O-B.  There were hippy artist-types who rarely took showers and then there were straight-cut designer types that only wore Armani and Versace.  There was a clear division of attitude and I know that the two populations scoffed at one another.  I’d say that Joe fell more into the haircut and makeup crowd although his ideas were very quirky where the others were probably too concerned that quirkiness would tarnish their no-nonsense veneer.  In any case, I fell somewhere in between in the two spectrums although I found the hippy crowd more interesting and at that time, I avoided the graphic design department because it, for many, seemingly lacked a social consciousness (I would have liked to see more Barbara Krueger type work) and it seemed very cold.  Even within the film department (where I found myself), there was an everpresent freud between the “Hollywood” types and the “Independent” types.  I think what we all neglected was what brought us there in the first place : lots and lots of money.  I did not end up graduating from RISD not for poor grades but after two years, it felt already like a little pond.  Regardless, in retrospect, it was probably the best two years of education that I ever had.

Here is some Barbara Krueger (a RISD grad) to end this post :