Here’s the article that I was in in the BBJ.

Dani Nordin decided to launch her Watertown-based strategic communications business the zen kitchen, after Staples Inc. terminated the contract she was doing with the Framingham-based company right before the holidays in 2005. For Nordin, a fighting spirit might be her biggest asset in dealing with the recession.
“I’m refusing to believe that the economy is going to kill my business,” Nordin said.

In the paper edition, they actually bold my business name instead of Staples’. But still.

Just in time for the holidays, it’s the zen kitchen’s first annual Holiday Survival Kit! This handy-dandy PDF is full of worksheets and tools - some practical and some downright silly - that’ll help you get through some of the most common family holiday dilemmas, including:

• Planning and cooking the usual many-course meal;
• Navigating the many (many) stops you’ll need to make to family during the holiday;
• Trying to remember who that random uncle is who remembers you when you were “this high;”
• Dealing with those *ahem* uncomfortable questions that are bound to pop up.

You can download the full PDF here, and print out only the pages you really need to make your holidays work. Happy holidays!

Dani Nordin, Designer & Zen Warrior Princess, The Zen Kitchen joins hosts Scott Sheppard and Gene Gable for some insights, tips, and inspiration about her eco-friendly design business. Dani’s passion for design began with her background in theater. Leveraging what she learned about understanding and developing a backstory to get into character actually helped her develop her process and approach to communicating her design ideas with her clients. Figuring out what her clients would like to accomplish through design, Dani uses theater inspired techniques to get her clients to define the character of their target market to help her hone in her creative pitch. She attributes her success to her consultative approach with her clients.

Check out the full interview at Inside Digital Design.

Dani Nordin of the zen kitchen has just been brought on as a guest blogger for the WomensDish with Diane & Friends. The Dish, founded by Diane Danielson, CEO of the Downtown Women’s Club, offers professional women advice and support at every stage of their career on a variety of topics. Nordin will be focusing her posts on branding (both business and personal), networking and social media, with the occasional book review thrown in for fun.

Read her first post, Generosity as a Marketing Tool, on the WomensDish here. 

Dani Nordin of the zen kitchen was just featured on Back to Blogging, where she talks about blog design, content, and the various reasons why she chooses to maintain this here blog. Enjoy!

Recently, I was quoted in an article by my friend Jess Sand of RoughStock Studios over at Business of Design Online. The article, Substantial Profits, Sustainably, shows how relatively simple changes can make a big difference in your studio’s carbon footprint, as well as your bottom line. A quick excerpt:

Recycle and reuse.
Designers love paper but nobody likes paperwork. Switch to a PDF workflow and save both money and time. Designer Dani Nordin of The Zen Kitchen says she “instituted a PDF workflow in the studio that makes proofing jobs significantly easier and saves printing costs.” She also bought a printer that easily turns out double-sided prints, which she insists has “saved money, time, headaches and trees.” I haven’t bought a single note pad since I started using all those not-quite-perfect printouts as scratch paper instead of simply tossing them. Electronics, old furniture and other items that you would typically throw out can often be either donated or recycled. If you’re unsure where to send them, do a quick search by zip code on Earth911.

The full text is here.

Interesting what a little ego-Googling will dig up. Just found this article in which I’m quoted from a CNN Living query I answered a while back. The article deals with so-called “well-meaning meddlers” - those folks who just have to give you unsolicited advice. The full article is here, but here’s my bit:

Well-meaning meddlers are one thing, but sometimes advice-givers can come across as just plain rude. Dani Nordin, 32, a Web and graphic designer in Watertown, Massachusetts, is still fuming about the “advice” she received from a former boyfriend.

“A few years ago, I had lost a considerable amount of weight - over 40 pounds - and had recently started dating a guy who lived in my building,” explains Nordin. “I stopped by his apartment one night wearing my then-favorite outfit. Just as I was thinking I was all cute, he says, ‘Can I tell you something? Don’t take this the wrong way, but you would have the most amazing body if you just lost 10 or 15 pounds.’ As he’s hugging me, he says this. I was devastated, and ended up telling him off.”

She broke up with him soon after.

The full article is here. Interesting what you find if you chat with people often enough.

SkyObs, a green advisory services firm, works with companies to incorporate sustainability into their operations in ways that lower long-term costs and increase profitability. To coordinate with founder Joseph DellaTorre’s speaking engagement at the Green IT and Telecom Summit in San Francisco, the company needed a website that was professional, engaging, and focused on the type of customers he and his team worked best with. 

On an intense three-week deadline, the zen kitchen worked with SkyObs to fine-tune and carefully target content, create imagery, and build a slick, Wordpress-based website that the SkyObs team can update as often as they need to. 

Earth Monkey is an online eco-boutique concepted by Teresa Reister of Columbus, OH. The boutique will feature eco-friendly home and wellness products handpicked by Reister, and the zen kitchen will create the site, complete with full e-commerce functionality. Look for it in August or September.

Olive and Bean needed an identity and site for their upcoming boutique, in Las Vegas’s Centennial Springs neighborhood. The eco-friendly boutique offers a variety of beautiful, well-designed home goods, baby toys and body care products. They needed a look that was simple, elegant, and clearly aimed at the high-end audience they were looking to attract.

Working with the boutique’s founder, Alina Anderson, the zen kitchen created a complete identity package, and a website that perfectly balanced form and function, using a robust content management system so that Alina can update her own copy and post to the store’s blog.

See the site here.