Welcome back to the NYDesigns blog. Our summer hiatus is past and unfortunately, yours is too.

The NYDesigns staff know that summer's truly over when, after two introspective weeks in a silent fructarian monastery in Appalachia, we spy the godzilla-sized, tomato-red IDCNY sign halfway through the 7-minute walk from the trains at Courthouse Square. We share the building with LaGuardia College CUNY and E. Gluck Corporation, a watch manufacturing company.

In 1908, however, the "Thousand Window Bakery," a best practice factory showcase for the Loose-Wiles Biscuit company originally of Kansas City was the building's sole tenant. All 10 stories of the building housed production, sales and management as well as 2500 employees in a Fabian, sun-infused proletarian paradise, complete with a lending library and a clubhouse. Trading under the name Sunshine Biscuits, the cookies were baked in the shape of Popeye, Olive, Swee'pea, Wimpy, etc. and distributed in tin boxes which are now modestly priced collectibles. Animal crackers originated here. Now a subsidiary of Keebler, Sunshine is now best known for producing the Cheez-It brand of snack crackers.

The "Thousand Window Bakery" was one piece within the larger industrial park of Degnon Terminal, the brainchild of Michael Degnon, entrepreneur and railyard contractor  for the Sunnyside Yards, which abut the building's northwestern facade. Degnon Terminal  was attractive to companies including the Packard Auto Company, Ever Ready, and Chicle (of Chiclets gum) because of the ease in shipping just-manufactured goods via rail straight to distributors.The Sunnyside rail lines haven't seen any traffic since 1989 and the industrial occupants have long moved on to more affordable real estate climes. Sunshine left in the mid '60s.

...but the oversized sign doesn't say "Sunshine Biscuits." IDCNY (International Design Center New York) was a mid-80s experiment by Lazard Development Corporation to create a hub for the contract furniture and trade showrooms just as furniture showrooms couldn't afford to pay for space in Manhattan and just before the real estate world crashed (the last time around). The experiment was not succesful. It would cost tens of thousands of dollars to take the sign down, so there it remains - may it always remind you of us.

Google paid homage to the Wizard of Oz's 71st birthday today, Thurs 12th, with a custom banner ad. Take a peek before midnight. That's the anniversary of the movie, not the book; Lyman Frank Baum published his story in 1900 and it wasn't until 1938 that the Technicolor explosion featuring Judy Garland was released. 

The well-loved story of the ragtag band of...interspecies, variously-animate, accidental friends questing towards a way back to Kansas, a heart, a brain and courage in the magical kingdom of Oz is so preposterously imaginative and utterly crazy that it must have some basis...in reality.

That reality would be the divisive monetary policy debates of the late 19th century, set against an economic depression not unlike what we're now experiencing.

A ton of academic literature has been devoted to unpacking the political parable that is the Wizard of Oz. Baum's politics swayed sympathetically towards the ascendant Populist movement whose members identified themselves with the geographical "West," an amalgamation of interests and values representative of a heartland bloc of provincial farmers, workingmen and frontiersmen. They contrasted themselves against the orthodox and monied power structures neglecting the country from places like Washington and New York, the seat of the intelligentsia.

Their differences took shape in the monometallic vs. the bimetallic standard debates. The US was then operating on the gold standard - a monetary system which valued the dollar according to the quantity of gold. The Populists wanted the free coinage of silver to join gold as a source of money. This move, they argued, would increase the US money supply, raise price levels - which had fallen by about 22% in 16 years- and reduce farmers' debt burdens. Farmers, not surprisingly, were among those most adversely affected in this extended period of deflation and depression.

What's this got to do with Dorothy? Well, you'll have to read this seminal study for all the juicy analysis, but I'm sold. Baum modeled the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodsmen and the Cowardly Lion after the Western Farmer, the Proletariat and Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan, respectively. That march to Emerald City? That's a march on Washington, "where many ladies and gentlemen of the court, all dressed in rich costumes...had nothing to do but talk to each other." The Yellow Brick Road and every gold-inflected detail in the story correspond to support for the gold standard way of life; the starkest example might very well lie in the name "Oz" - ounces (of gold). The Wicked Witch of the East is naturally President Grover Cleveland.

You decide if this theory is coincidence or coherence - Baum's grandson is reported to have said that these interpretations were "insane" - but allegories exist to illustrate a coherent doctrine outside the fiction. These are two parallel realities to explore if we are open to perceive - and two can only make us smarter.

The world gold supply increased in the 1890s, reversing the deflation and muting the Populist cry. And all we got was the Wizard of Oz.

2, 4, 6.

If you live in NYC, you probably live in a building running one of these fuel classes for heating.

Nos. 4 and 6 are why are children under fourteen in NYC have double the asthma rate of the national average and why on some days you feel like a smoker even though you quit back in 1999. More pollution comes from burning heating fuel than all cars and trucks combined.

9000 buildings in the city still subscribe to 4 and 6 fuels, described unappetizingly as "unrefined sludge" by the Environmental Defense Fund in its recent and ominously titled report The Bottom of the Barrel: How the Dirtiest Heating Oil Pollutes Our Air and Harms Our Health. This posse of 9000, which counts ritzy communities like the storied Dakota among its membership, creates 87 percent of the soot pollution arising from heating oil. New Yorkers burn more than one billion gallons of the stuff each year, more than any other US city. Last week, the City Council voted to improve the quality of heating oil by reducing the sulfur limits in No. 4 and requiring a minimum of 2% biodiesel in home heating oil. Last month, the State passed a law to reduce the sulfur content  of No. 2 heating oil by 99%, to go into effect in 2012. No. 2 represents around 70% of all the heating oil used in the city and have 15 times less the pollution of No.6 oils. Changing the types of oil we use can improve air quality, save on maintaining our heating systems and boost our energy security by reducing our dependence on foreign oil. Natural gas is a cleaner alternative, as are renewable energy sources.

The City Council's press conference was held at Metro Biofuels in Brooklyn, one of the largest biodiesel manufacturers in the area. Biodiesel, made from a wide variety of vegetable or plant oils including used restaurant grease, is not only renewable, but also a surprisingly easy sell. NYDesigns resident Paul Miller lead his Upper East Side pre-war co-op through a changeover from No.6 to a biofuel/No.6 blend, with the goal of switching over to a No. 4 blend by this winter.

"It cost us nothing," he shared. "We used the same tanks, burners and boilers and the 2% blend acts as a cleaning agent, resulting in an immediate improvement in efficiency and longer intervals between service visits." The available conversion tax rebate stands at $0.01/gallon for each percent of biodiesel, and Paul thinks more incentives are on the horizon. "Everyone at 308 has been happy with the reduction of toxic products in the building, particularly parents. Our conversion to biofuel went off without a hitch without any additional costs."

Designglut invited over some people last week to the NYDesigns fabrication lab - "Fab Lab" if you're in a hurry - to try out our laser cutter. Really try it out.

One of the intriguing experiments was byAMT and Studio Jan Habraken's ham sandwiches, pictured above. I didn't verify it with them, but like all good gourmets, Jan and Alissia  started with quality ingredients - to my eyes a nice cut of black forest ham on some dark rye schwartzbrot. I don't believe they bonded the two layers with mustard.

The nestled signification is also quite neat, delicious and thankfully not overstrained - pork as pork, or rather, pork as "piggy." This is food for aesthetes with an penchant for the ephemeral - or, you know, frat boys with a penchant for vulgarity: everyone really. I call foul on anyone unamused by this charming folly.

But does it taste good? An in-house experiment conducted a couple of weeks ago by the NYDesigns team revealed that a laser cut oreo (rechristened "doreo" for the absence of a center) smells/tastes like "cracked caramel." That explanation was for the camera. Deeper investigation among a larger survey pool yielded descriptors such as "disgusting," "really, really bad," "like burnt food but much, much worse" and "like vaporized medicine." We can conclude that a laser cut oreo has a bad taste which spans the burnt-medicine axis and can elicit some really bad attitudes!

I did not try the ham sandwiches, but I can guess that their flavor profile resembled our "doreos." Surprisingly, the internet has few first-hand accounts of sampling the laser's peculiar anti-umami. I wonder how this nori tastes and if it contributes anything to the overall dish; I'm glad of this breakthrough in cutting intricate food with ultraviolet laser beams, but feel that this process may lose an essential something. In my childhood in an eastern country, the last step in making a particular kind of new year cookie involved sequestering the just-baked cookies in a tightly sealed aluminum drum together with recently blown-out candle. The cookies absorbed the candle smoke, which unfolded as a signature aftertaste following even the smallest bite. This approach would be interesting in trying to mingle food and laser; we'll keep you posted on our future attempts at fantasia.

From 2500 BCE until the arrival of the Spanish to the new world, the Mayan civilization thrived in Mexico's southern states and the Yucatan peninsula. Industrious and advanced, the Mayan devised very modern ways to manage time and space. Their calendars, construction methods and irrigation systems were as accurate and dependable as what we use today - much more slow-moving, of course, but without the excessive reliance on non-degradable plastics and toxic chemicals.

A NYDesigns staffer, who recently returned from a trip to the Riviera Maya (tanned and brimming with tequila), introduced the point that Mayan artists were one of the few artisan groups in prehistory to sign their work, allowing each vase or urn or incense burner to carry a maker's imprimatur. This personalization existed in a social system that encouraged variety and experimentation in the types of things that were being made. Differences in "style" among individual artisans and whole workshops were valued. Finished work was exchanged or sold within the community or with other cities.

Work that's signed by its maker can always be traced back. A vase by Aj Muwan, an actual Mayan ceramic artist of renown back in the day, does not belong to the city or the culture at large. Wherever the piece ends up (and as long as the signature is there, marked on the piece in writing or as a recognizable "style") it carries an essence of personhood. This understanding of product creation allows for the cultural acceptance of individuality and genius, which is eventually tagged with an exchange value . Aj Muwan was enthusiastically collected by the Mayan elite much like a Jeff Koons or a Richard Serra.

A long history separates this original practice from consumer brands and the "branding" that we know and love. Its important to remember, despite our distance from the Mayans, that when we put a name to a piece of work, we must be confident of its worth, at least in our eyes. Whether we like it or not, our products are the only thing that can defend us when we're not around to defend ourselves.

The exodus from Manhattan to the outer boroughs in search of larger spaces, lower rents, room for a bbq and "cred" has been going strong for more than a decade but design businesses still have an issue crossing bridges and tunnels.

Lower rents are tempered by farther distances from clients and supporting services in Manhattan, affecting most those businesses that customarily dedicate lots of face time to client interactions. There's also the suggestion - ephemeral, possibly unjustified - of trading down if you move away from the richer and more competitive central borough.

Would the promise of another kind of "cred" help things along?

New York City Economic Development Corporation's (NYCEDC) Relocation and Employment Assistance Program (REAP) sweetens inter-borough migration. REAP provides tax credits for businesses that relocate from outside of New York City or from Manhattan below 96th Street to either Manhattan above 96th Street or in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx or Staten Island.

The new property must meet a set of guidelines that include a minimum expenditure of $25 a square foot and renovation expenses of either 25% or 50% of the assessed property value. Investment in moving will reap (apologies) you:

- Tax credit of up to $3000 a year for (a) 12 years for each job relocated (b) each job added within 5 years of the relocation

- Application of credit against your general corporation tax, bank tax, utility tax or unincorporated business tax

Applications must be received by June 20, 2013 but as always, be an early bird. NYCEDC's info page gives a great breakdown of how much you'll get in return.

New York state announced this past Weds the creation of a $50 million Small Business Revolving Loan Fund, an actualized recommendation of last year's NY State Small Business Task Force report.

This may be relevant to your business - if it's an independently owned and operated outfit belonging to a NY state resident with fewer than 100 employees. It will also target minority and women-owned enterprises and other entrepreneurs having difficulty accessing regular credit markets, the governor's office said in a news release.

Beneficiaries must be "main street' businesses needing working capital, refinancing of debt or capital to fund property improvements and equipment purchases. The application process, similar to NYDesigns' own incubator residency program, asks for a working business plan that demonstrates long term growth as well as sufficient collateral.

Revolving loan funds (RLFs) step in to diversify the small business loan package when access to credit is restrained - a neutral way of describing one painful aspect of the current recession blues - and supports the development and expansion of new businesses, employment opportunities and the local economy. Public impact must be demonstrated by borrowers in their reporting schedules and may include the number and type of jobs created or retained, increase in tax revenue etc.

NY state's RLF pool will be supported by $25 million of state funds; the remainder will be matched by the investments of select lending institutions. The fund's capitalization is meant to be self-replenishing: the interest and principal payments on old loans issue new ones.

The RFP just came out for private sector investments so expect some activity on the borrowing front towards the last quarter of 2010.

Find out more on RLFs at the Coucil of Development Finance Agencies.

WHAT WE’RE DOING

We’re inviting a group of designers to come hang out and have a night of free laser cutting and etching. We’ll be tweeting and blogging about your pieces as they come hot off the laser. It’s pretty much a party from the FUTURE!

WHAT WE NEED FROM YOU

You’ve been chosen as one of the awesomest designers we know, whose brain we’d most like to let loose on the laser. If you’d like to be a participating designer at Laser Party, think up a laser-etched or laser-cut project. Submit your idea. We’ll choose as many as we can to cut during the 4-hour event.

IMPORTANT DEADLINE

Email your design idea(s) as a vector file to designglut@gmail.com by July 15.

THE FINE PRINT

Make sure to include dimensions, as well as explain the idea and what it will be cut from or etched on. You are responsible for bringing your own materials. Laser-engraved designs can’t go bigger than a 17” Macbook, due to time constraints. Feel free to submit a few ideas of varying complexity. And finally, if you have any questions we haven’t answered, just ask!

WHEN

Thursday, July 22 5-9PM

WHERE

45-50 30th Street Long Island City, NY

WHO

A group of designers and laser-lovers

WHY

Because we have a laser, and we want to see what you can do with it!

The approaching long weekend has dulled our thinking caps here at NYDesigns HQ so we're tackling a flightier topic today: our favorite office "props."

We're floating in a sea of objects every day at work, from the mound of used staples on the desk to the super fancy Aeron chairs that invite a curl and a slouch. We form some attachments, we're indifferent to others. These are ours:

1. Take note of the first object in the series, a genuine "High Tech" breath moistener purchased in Narita airport by Nepal Asatthawasi, NYDesigns' Assistant Director, for Ben Wilkinson-Raemer, Prototype Lab Director. Chosen by Wilkinson-Raemer as his favorite office object, its features include "humidity maintenance seat and Filter element 3micron, good moisture retention and excellent filter, and easy in the skin." Well, then.

It will never be used because it's not reusable.

Following that precedent, we have:

2. Artemide Tolomeo classic LED wall sconce w/ S bracket Aluminum - TOL1320, chosen by Jenny Gomez, Program Associate. Our dependable task lamp, the Tolomeo illuminates our world and our work, since we get no natural light in here. Is it hot and sunny outside? Who knows? Who cares! We have our Artemide lamps!

3. Isadora Dantas, our graphic design intern, scrounged up some green-tinged bubble wrap from a forgotten cardboard box. "It's relaxing and fun," she claims. "For a school project I created a bubble-wrapped hopscotch course - people couldn't stop playing on it."

4. Workshop intern Sabina Goth likes electrical tape. "It shuts people up good." Just kidding, haha. Its practicality and flexibility make it a favorite on everyone's list; that is, if we were the sort of people to sit around making said lists.

5. The leather kangaroo, a product of Argentine studio VacaValiente, is our Director Natalia Arguello's offering. It holds desktop objects such as pens, business cards and pay stubs. Its complete lack of facial features reminds us to use only fake kangaroos to organize stationery.

6. Client services manager Frederick John revealed his inner poet when describing his affinity for the heavy duty tape dispenser: "It reminds me of a wheelbarrow."

7. Rachel Moak, our beloved Project Manager, took a shine to this abstract sculpture which currently sits forgotten on a high shelf in Assistant Director Asatthawasi's room. This Thursday exercise enabled Moak to claim it for herself. The piece is unintentional art at its most ingenious - the goo cleaned out of an injection molding machine and left to dry, hang and harden.

8. Assistant Director Nepal Asatthawasi's pick - the PAID stamp. A mark of formality that makes such a big difference in our lives. Indeed, the actual distance between life and death.

Did President Obama overreact in firing ("accepting the resignation of...") General McChrystal? This being America, there's no public consensus on the decision's utter wisdom or utter stupidity; so let's judge it according to the logic of a small business owner (and assume the political-military-industrial complex is scaled down to the size of a 15-person graphic design firm). Obama took the canniest road he could take. Here's why.

Insubordination in the workplace, classically defined as an employee's willful disregard for a manager's direct orders, is a managerial challenge and a wellspring of suffering - for the the manager, other employees and overall business productivity. In McChrystal's case, his and his team's inappropriate criticism of their bosses constitute insubordination in the extreme - taking into account also the broadcasting of these comments into the public sphere.

A manager's authority can only be eroded for so long; take action before chaos migrates to the rest of the office. Workers will begin to ignore project or scheduling requests, thus throwing the entire workplace into turmoil. Insubordination leads to low morale in the organization and reduces production, quality, and profit.

In defending a disciplinary action for insubordination, employees often argue that they didn't understand that they were being given an order or instruction or that their actions could lead to discipline. To avoid that problem, consider the following procedures:

* Ask yourself if the request is a legitimate, reasonable one falling within the employee's job responsibilities

 * Make sure the employee clearly understands what you want him to do 

* If the employee continues to resist, inform him that while you understand he may disagree with your directive, you'll expect him to follow through

* If the employee continues to resist, inform him that you're giving him a direct order and that if he doesn't comply, you will consider the behavior to be a basis for discipline

* If he is a union employee, tell him that while he may have the right to file a grievance, he doesn't have the right to refuse to comply

* If he still resists after you've followed those steps, discipline him.