'Coolness is Everywhere': Josh Rubin, Cool Hunting Founder

Back in 2003, Josh Rubin started Cool Hunting as a personal outlet to share inspirational content he found around the web. Today the site gets nearly 4 million page views per month and produces a lot of original style, design, and tech content.

We heard Josh speak at the Portable Curators Conference on the topic of curation and what is “cool.”

Defining and discussing what is “cool” is probably the least cool thing anyone can do. Any attempt to formulate a complete curatorial process to theorize on what cool is will often sound stiff, square—downright uncool. But Rubin’s open-ended analytical approach toward that exploration and discovery is most decidedly, if pragmatically, cool.

Before getting into an effort to explain how they decide what to publish on Cool Hunting, Josh disclaimed that “Cool is just a label,” and continued by sharing how the site’s team labels prospective content as either “superficially cool,” “sustainably cool,” or “surprisingly cool.”

“Superficially cool” has no shelf life. An example provided by Josh was a jewel-covered cell phone, an item he posted on Cool Hunting early on. He joked that when they pitch content around the Cool Hunting office, the kiss of death is when someone says, “That’s kind of a jeweled cell phone.”

“Sustainably cool” is a bit more accessible and stands the test of time.

The meaning of “Surprisingly cool” is implicit, but like everything else, the individual has to “get it” to recognize that it’s cool. As an example, Josh provided the following video of a man named Lou Nasti who runs Mechanical Displays, a company that creates robotic window displays for major department stores.

Enjoy. Stay cool.