Jillian Northrup's blog

Well, as you probably heard, Maker Faire was a smash hit and bigger than ever this year!
We had a blast participating and seeing what everyone brought to the Faire... though we had little time to wander while manning our booth and making sure ArtGolf wasn't completely destroyed by the thousands of 4-year olds that trampled through it.

Our booth was nice and small. ^_^
We showed off our new LED table, Deke,that is still in prototype phase, as well as a handful of other products that will soon go up on the store

Photo credit Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

We even made a giant robot to hold our sign.

Photo credit Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

And he won us a blue ribbon from the Make editors!

Make used our MAKE chairs on stage again. We made these for last years Faire... and they have stood up well, being now at their 3rd Faire (they went to Austin last year too)
Photo credit Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

All in all it was a great Faire that attracts wonderfully talented people.
We hope it becomes a yearly tradition for years and years to come.

Photo credit Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

We have just finished setting up the new Art Golf site for this year's San Mateo Maker Faire.
And it looks surprisingly like the one from Austin (!) But with some new additions....

We'll be running the Art Golf site Saturday and Sunday and into the evenings.
Come by and play!
And dont forget to stop by the SHOWBARN where we will have our Because We Can booth and we'll be presenting our new LED table.... among other things.

See you this weekend!

Hey everybody!
Start getting ready for Maker Faire. It's steadily approaching, coming in on May 3rd & 4th (the first weekend in May).

We will be presenting there with some fancy new stuff to show off... as well as our Austin Maker Faire ART GOLF!
Art Golf will be on display on the main green and playable the entire weekend... and into the night!

It's a fun adventure packed miniature golf course - composed of only three holes as to not bore the attention deficit personalities of all Maker Faire attendees.

Come play!
And if you are really into it, but have no money, contact us and we'll get you a ticket if you help run the golf course. No kiddin!

So IDEO does these things called "Quickies" where they invite artists, designers and generally interesting fun people to exhibit their stuff. The thought is that it brings new and creative thoughts and ideas into the IDEO office, and will inspire everyone.
We were invited to exhibit our furniture and LED tables. There were probably about 400 people that came through, 5 other exhibitors and 10 or so performers.

We wanted to show off a bunch of cool things, so we pushed out a few product lines that we had been brewing for a bit.

The largest thing we did was create a final working prototype of our new fully digital LED table, "Deke". (which is not yet on our site)
Here Rob from CoActLab (who we collaborated with on the table) is sending different programs to Deke.

We are moving into a new office / shop space.

HOW AWESOME!! that we are moving into a new office / shop space.
We found this great space that is very raw in some ways, and totally set up in other ways. The best of both worlds for us.
It's a big open box with tons of ready power, pluming and natural light.
Perfect.

We spent last weekend building out our mezanine from an existing structure in the space. The top of this will be our office.
And here we are sitting on top, taking a break.

Hey there!

We were recently interviewed by a great guy named Matthew Borgatti, for his new series called Brainchild.

He is focusing on creative people and how they take their creative ideas into a profit making business. In other words... how to make it work.

The interview was held in our current office space in West Oakland.
Check it out....

Because We Can from Matthew Borgatti on Vimeo.

We have been working with Clif Bar to come up with some great ideas for their direct marketing project for "Clif Kids". (Their new snack bars for kids)
Instead of trade show, Clif Bar does direct marketing. So this "trade show booth" is actually design to go to kids sports games and give out free samples.

The first element we created is the Product Tree:

We recently created a few pieces for a friends apartment that we felt came out really nice.

First off we made a huge shelving unit that spread across the entire wall of the main room in their deco apartment. It was themed "Swiss!" to match the paintings that she was creating on the walls in the adjacent hallway.

We completed our delivery to SunPower's ( http://www.sunpowercorp.com ) new digs in Richmond, the tables, stools and benches we designed and made for them.
All the furniture has custom colored pieces that match their company colors.
And everything is made with FSC certified maple, and color dyed with water based pigments.

We are about wrapping up a large custom furniture and design project for SunPower (http://www.sunpowercorp.com) who is moving into a new building in Richmond CA.

Actually it's an old building. They are re-inhabiting the old Ford building, right on the water near the docks of Richmond. It is a beautiful location, and a beautiful building!
Here's a photo of the second floor, when the construction was just beginning....