Jennifer Crakow is an interaction designer and creative director. She has been a consistent innovator in the field of application design for web, mobile devices, and television for clients including BBC, Bravo TV, Microsoft, and Samsung.
Following sixteen years in San Francisco, Jennifer now divides her time between the United Kingdom, Italy and Germany, where she serves as the Creative Director of Stuttgart studio amplify. A graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Jennifer is the proud owner of two schnauzers, and an oil painting of Lancelot Link and Mata Hari.
Enter the name “Anne Frank” in Google News. The results will surprise you. Over 5,000 entries are listed; 5662, to be precise, if you look at the stories under ‘Anne Frank’ of Pakistan still critical, in CanIndia, the Canadian-Indian community paper. For a fifteen-year-old Jewish girl, who died in Bergen-Belsen in 1945, that’s a lot of press. How do we explain it? These aren’t just archival listings. This is hard news. (More…)
I’ve long since unsubscribed from following Mashable on Twitter, simply because so many people retweet Pete Cashmore and his crew, I needn’t bother. I also don’t really visit the site regularly anymore because I find the ‘journalism’ these days around technology to be a lot of fluff, insider-gossip and an echo chamber of circle jerks. Mashable, included. (More…)
The reaction was intense. Within an hour, a post I’d written, about Latinos in Italy, was being torn apart. Why was I interested in Peruvian restaurants? What was wrong with local Mexican cuisine? Why move from San Francisco, and think about anything other than Milan? And yet, the article was immensely popular. It went to number one on Reddit Italy, and generated thousands of readers. I even received some very nice private emails thanking me for raising the subject. (More…)
Car bomb after car bomb. Suicide bombing after suicide bombing. It seems like it was only yesterday that Baghdad was the news. Every day. Twenty-four hours a day. Top of the hour. Every hour. Growing up during the 1980s, watching CNN, I was reared on images of Beirut as the most violent city on earth. In the ’90s, that changed to Sarajevo. In 2003, Baghdad took over. (More…)
Versace. Benetton. Dolce and Gabbana. Whenever foreigners utter the word ‘Milan’, it usually conjures up luxury brands. Not Ecuadorean migrants. During the year that I lived there, Italy’s fashion capitol became synonymous with an entirely different set of signifiers: Colorful Spanish-language flyers for charismatic Christian festivals, and Peruvian big band gigs. (More…)
“Break what breaks you.” “Against the pressure to be normal.” “For the right to be disabled or sick.” So reads this ingeniously-designed sticker, affixed to a wall, in Oranienplatz, in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district. (More…)
I started out as a designer in technology nearly twenty years ago. To say that I have perspective would be an understatement. This said, I’d be remiss to not rebuke John Naughton for his thoughtless article, Graphic designers are ruining the web. It’s a highly misinformed screed, full of baseless conclusions. (More…)
“Kinder, Kirche, Kuche.” Designating the social role of women, the old slogan continues to haunt Germany, today. Suffering the lowest wages in the EU (23.2% less than men) and amongst the poorest representation in corporate leadership (only 3.7 percent sit on the boards of listed firms, according to Germany’s Labor Minister) to foreign women with executive experience, such statistics can be shocking. (More…)
Contrary to popular belief, the Swiss right is not a single-issue constituency. In addition to its hostility towards immigrants, it is also profoundly misogynistic. Following the first annual international antifeminism meeting, I found myself in Zurich, where I encountered this sticker. I assume the two are related. The second anti-feminism conference was held this year. I wonder what other kind of protest art it generated.
Steve Jobs should have been a rock star. So tremendous was the outpouring of public grief, you’d be forgiven for not knowing that he was a marketing czar. Though the fanboys and cult of Mac kids did their expected thing, it was the grief repeatedly expressed by laypeople that was so astounding, with mourners going so far as to stage homages at Apple stores. (More…)
My heart was pounding. Watching footage of Saturday’s rioting in Rome, my worst fears had come true. The left had become so outraged, it was taking the easy way out. The way of violence. Not only was there the expected fighting between the Black Bloc and the cops. La Repubblica documented instances of hooded militants fighting with red flag-waving protestors as well. (More…)
Milan is the last place you’d imagine being able to live under a left-wing city government. Even with Berlusconi’s people out of office, for the first time in eighteen years. However, that shouldn’t dissuade you from consuming revolutionary-themed food products. Or your kitty, for that matter. Let’s face it: when it comes to eating, we all redistribute calories. Esselunga, October 7.