Sherwin-Williams knocks another one out of the park

Sherwin-Williams just rolled out their third in a series of paint swatch TV spots and so far as I'm concerned, this is the best of the bunch.




The spot is called Daybreak and it joins Bees and Paint Chips in what I say are the best TV and video spots in the home/design space. The agency behind it is Buck. They have offices in New York and LA and I am in awe of their work.

As a reminder, here's Paint Chips, the first in the series.




Here's Bees, the second.




Bravo Sherwin-Williams. And many, many thanks to David Nolan whose e-mailed links never fail to give me pause.

The Triangle Waist Company fire

A mural by Ernest Fiene representing the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, at the High School of Fashion Industries NYC (courtesy Triangle Fire open archive).

4:45pm eastern time today marks the 100th anniversary of the fire at the Triangle Waist Company in a building now called the Brown building at 29 Washington Place in Manhattan. The fire's been passed on and remembered as the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, so named for the shirtwaists they made there. Shirtwaist was the term people used 100 years ago for a blouse.

The fire broke out near the end of the workday on a Saturday. The factory occupied three floors of what was then called the Asche Building in Greenwich Village. It's thought that a careless cigarette or match started a conflagration that swept through the three floors of the factory in minutes.

146 people died in that fire and most of them were immigrant women between the ages of 15 and 24. They died from a lack of a fire code, a lack of regulation regarding working conditions and from the fact that the owners of the factory kept the doors locked to guard against internal theft.

Many of the people who died that day died because they jumped from the 8th, 9th and 10th floors to escape the flames.

The people who died that day died horrifically but they didn't die in vain. The International Ladies' Garment Workers Union and a host of building codes were born of that fire. If you work in an office, the sprinkler system in your building is there because those people died to get it for you.

That 15-year-old kids no longer work in factories in the west is the result of the labor movement and as of last week, a legislator in Missouri introduced legislation to eliminate many child labor laws. I don't need to tell you her party affiliation.

Revisionists seem to believe that "market forces" would have made all of the advances of the Labor Movement and the New Deal on their own but they fail to see that those same "market forces" brought about such things as child labor in the first place.

So as union busting becomes the new fad in state capitols all across the land, take a moment to remember those 146 souls who died behind locked doors in an unsafe building 100 years ago. Take a moment too, to learn about the Triangle Waist Company fire. It's an important part of US history and one that can never get enough attention.

Here's my February webinar

On February 15th I gave a social media webinar on my experiences with social media, Twitter and Blogger in particular. That webinar was a joint venture between BuilderLink.com and Daily5 Remodel. This webinar's formal recording is in Daily5Remodel's archives and now it's here too.

I've been speaking and leading seminars on this topic for about a year and this was the first time I'd ever taken it to the web in this manner.

I view most seminars and webinars on this and just about any other business topic as torture.

They seem to be long on bumper sticker jargon and short on concrete ideas and when I first started speaking I was determined to provide something other than torture and impractical suggestions. The feedback I've received so far tell me that I'm on the right track. If you have about an hour to kill, give it a listen. If not now, then bookmark it and come back to it later.

This webinar is essentially the intro to the two-day seminar I teach. I'm still working out the details for the next one but I know this much, it will take place at some point in the next few months and it will be held in Chicago's Merchandise Mart. I'll keep you posted as I get more details finalized.

How I Mastered Social Media to Build My Business, and How You Can Too



Many thanks to Leah Thayer from Daily5Remodel and to Ray Bangs from BuilderLink, without whom this webinar and recording could never have happened. I don't have a transcript but I will sell you my PowerPoint...

Hey North America, meet Mal Corboy

One of the great perks to writing a design blog is that I get to meet people from all over the world. Over the course of the last few months I've had the pleasure to get to know New Zealand-based designer Mal Corboy. Mal's work is beyond impressive, it's some of the best kitchen design I've ever seen.

Mal's a rising force on the international design scene and has been racking up awards in his native New Zealand and in Australia for the last nine years. He entered his first design competition in 2002 and since then he's received 18 awards.

He appears regularly in the international design press and is a regular on New Zealand TV, most recently for New Zealand TV2's My House My Castle.

Already, he's designing for the North American market. He manufactures everything under license in Australasia and then ships his kitchens to North America. He's the first designer form Australasia to go down this path.

Mal's interested to increase his presence on this side of the Pacific and I'd love to see him succeed. In looking over his work, I determined to make sure he succeeds. We need his design sensibilities desperately.

You can see more of Mal Corboy's work on his website and you can contact him directly there too. I've been obsessing over German kitchen design since I returned home from Europe last month but after looking over Mal's portfolio I'm beginning to think I need to start looking to my west for inspiration. Here are some more highlights:

If you have any questions for Mal, feel free to leave them in the comments below. I'm sure he'll be checking in. Just keep in mind that there's a 17 hour time difference between the East Coast and Aukland. Thanks Mal!

Crossville has a great idea

Another cool innovation I saw at Coverings last week came from Tennessee-based Crossville. That innovation was a partnership with Benjamin Moore paints called Color by numbers.

Crossville developed a palette of 16 colored wall, floor, listello and trim tiles to coordinate with a palette of Benjamin Moore Aura colors. Between they two companies, they produced a full and complimentary palette that's bound to take away a lot of the guesswork out of room design.

Here's the link to a .pdf that gives an overview of the program. You can find out more information from Crossville's website and anywhere Bejnamin Moore paints or Crossville tiles are sold. Bravo Crossville!