To kick off the summer, wanted to show you a couple freeze-free friends we’re getting ready for you later this year. Meet SNOWGUY/SNOWGAL! This new title has a double cover and a smaller package of goodies, but chock full of the same Paper Punk goodness. Loving the warm weather, but cannot wait for people to make a bunch of these guys+gals. Coming your way when the first leaf falls off your tree.
Look at the album of pics from PUNK-A-THON-001 held this past Saturday at the Youth Rebuild Rock Concert in Marin, CA! An all-you-can-make buffet of shapes/stickers/fun was made available for all attendees! All profits went to the Windhorse Foundation for an orphanage in Laos. The teen version of Michael Hedges on bass performed…it was cool!
Good thing lots of ink/airtime has been following Jonah Lehrer‘s new book IMAGINE: HOW CREATIVITY WORKS. Because now that the topic of creativity is in the spotlight, we have to draw a heavy dotted line to the importance of PRACTICING it to build your creative potential. It’s interesting enough to learn about how, where and why, but let’s roll up our sleeves and actually activate it. One simple way is to get busy with your hands and make something…anything. (a Paper Punk can help you)
Here’s an interesting interview with Jonah on his book: Jonah Lehrer interview via TechCrunch
Lots of gems, but my personal favorite in this moment: “We have to stop holding ourselves back…” AKA and note-to-self: We gotta get out of our own way!
Thought it would be cool for you to see where the white-ghost KITTY001 prototype landed for our Fall 2012 release. I am in love with our new feline friend! Can’t you already hear the cat calls and whistles for this purr-dy lady? Everyone, get ready to pucker up!
Super cool exhibit, DO NOT DESTROY: Trees, Art, and Jewish Thought, opened at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco today. It explores the subject of the tree through the eyes of an international group of contemporary artists. As part of the exhibit, fifty-seven artists were commissioned to make a piece incorporating reclaimed wood into new works of art, inspired by the themes of the Jewish holiday of Tu B’Shevat (New Year for the Trees). It is a beautifully staged show and runs through late May. Here’s the Paper Punk inspired piece I made for the exhibit.
I want to share an email that we received last week….it absolutely made my day!
Hello Grace and team,
My name is Jenn St.Clair and I am one of your proud initial founders. I’ve already utilized my 6 punks for fun and learning and gifts and I need MORE! I’ve used the pup and the bot to teach geometry lessons on surface area to high-schoolers, and they were a huge hit!…Thanks for the great product. You have done some amazing work and I look forward to continued creativity with paper punks!
This is a glimmer of promise fulfilled for the educational facet of Paper Punk. There are so many benefits to PLAYING with and MAKING shapes into customizable creations….fine motor skills, spatial-dimensional thinking, engineering, geometry, balance/proportion, resourcefulness, self-expression, etc. One of my many dreams for Paper Punk is to donate product to underfunded arts programs in public schools so our newest generations can foster and retain a connection with our physical world with hands-on learning experiences that are ARTFUL and FUN.
Does this get your wheels turning like it does for me?
We’re prepping models and patterns and colors for the new title releases for this Fall. It’s the most enjoyable part of Paper Punk…playing with our system of shapes and patterns to create paper toy models and kits for your creative pleasure. Here is the first look at a naked KITTY001 in the making. Me-YOW!
This week a journalist asked me “Is paper becoming the marble of today’s designers?”
I replied that paper will continue to be the bread of today’s and tomorrow’s designers…essential, accessible, familiar, simple, recyclable, and beautiful in its own right.
As the cornerstone of innovation, creativity is an elusive human characteristic that can make one individual a better design thinker than another. I believe that EVERYONE is creative. Not only is it an untapped, undernourished part of ourselves, it is also our most valuable personal asset. Regardless if you believe that you were born with an endless supply of creativity or not, knowing that you can acquire it through practice would be an enormous game changer. There is a study being conducted by Stanford’s d.school and School of Medicine about this very topic right now. The team had to construct a working definition of “creativity” for the purposes of this study that aligns with a 21st century application/meaning. After rounding the bases several times, this is where we (Yes, I am part of this incredible project+team!) landed:
Creativity is a state of being and adaptation of personal skill sets that enable an individual to synthesize novel connections and express meaningful outcomes.
