On 36Pages.com Craig Frazier looks at his favorite designers and illustrators books, talks to them and shares the inspiration. Plus, he keeps you posted on his books and projects. 36Pages, the story in picture books.
Base
I dream of a loooong (!) table in my home. I never want to run out of space for dinner guests to join the table, conversation. This beauty of a table caught my eye. Designed by Switzerland based This Reber.
Life’s missing white space
“White space can be used in the design of our lives as well, not just the design of magazines and websites and ads. By using white space in our lives, we create space, balance, emphasis on what’s important, and a feeling of peace that we cannot achieve with a more cramped life.”
Life’s missing white space by Leo Babauta.
Amen.
GAME OVER
PAC-MAN was played by real human-beings sitting in a cinema: it’s the 5th video performance of the GAME OVER Project from the French-Swiss artist Guillaume Reymond. This stop-motion video was shot and played for the new ProHelvetia’s programme GameCulture at the Trafo cinema (Baden, Switzerland) on August 28th 2010. Imagine 111 human pixels that moved from seat to seat during more than 4 hours…
(via gameculture, thank you Gabriela)
ApfelBrett (Apple Cutting Board)
This Apfelbrett made me smile. It’s a cutting board in the shape of an Apple Powerbook MacBook Pro, made out of apple tree wood.
(thank you @robblatt)
Display
Display documents mid-20th century, modern graphic design history through a curated collection, feature articles and bookstore.
The team of KindCompany is behind this beauty of a site.
(Thank you Randy!)
Ribbon Art
Ribbonesia art project by an illustrator named “Baku” (full name Baku Maeda). Pretty darn amazing, no? Let’s take ribbons on gifts to the next level.
(thank you Myio)
Season Six of Design Matters
Lovely Debbie Millman just announced Season Six of Design Matters. It will premiere on Design Observer this Friday at 3pm with my legendary guest Massimo Vignelli.
After an entire year off air to launch the Masters in Branding Program at the School of Visual Arts, Debbie is returning to regular broadcasts and a full season of interviews with designers, artists, writers, thought leaders and general all-around provocateurs.
Design Matters began in February of 2005 with an idea and a telephone line. Mostly, she started out doing it for herself–she thought it would be a great way to ask her guests everything she wanted to know about their lives and their thoughts and their careers without seeming stalker-y. In the process, she realized the opportunity to share the insights of her guests with a listenership.
Friday marks the beginning of a new season on a new station as well. She will be recording her shows live in the brand spanking new recording studio at 132 West 21st Street in NYC—home of the Masters in Branding Program at the School of Visual Arts —and the shows will be aired at the regular time online: 3PM on Fridays. Design Observer will be broadcasting Design Matters, and you can listen to both the new episodes, as well as the entire archive of past shows here: www.designobserver.com.
Guests for for Season Six include Massimo Vignelli, Stephen Doyle, Eric Baker, Ralph Caplan, Marjan Bantjes, Kate Bingaman-Burt, Dominique Browning, Steven Heller, Alexandra Lange & Jane Thompson, James Victore, Tina Roth Eisenberg (gulp) and more…
REDU
A video on the current state of education and REDU. It stands for rethinking, reforming and rebuilding US education. Powered by people and technology, REDU is a movement designed to expand and encourage the national conversation around education reform by providing information and resources to learn, a community platform to connect, and tools and initiatives to act.
Following the belief that education will not be solved through a single bill passing or by policy makers alone, their goal is to create a destination where educators, parents, students, and everybody who cares about the issue have the means to engage in the ongoing conversations, be inspired by reform stories, and make a difference in their own way. It’s a platform for everyone.
(via bobulate)
Typography for Lawyers
A site devoted to teach laywers the ins and outs of Typography? Yes! Why? Because good typography makes your written documents more professional and more persuasive. Typographyforlawyers.com
(thank you Josh)
The NEW Twitter
A new Twitter Site is starting to roll out to users today. Halllelujah! They finally addressed the lacking usability, interactivity on their site. So far, to get a true idea of what Twitter can do for you, you had to use one of the many iPhone or Desktop Apps out there. Curious to see how the new design will pan out. Looks promising in the video. (Can’t help but notice that the design very much reminds me of the iA’s Facebook redesign I saw the other day.)
The Daily Reference
For the month of September, FREITAG is printing a daily newspaper, called THE DAILY REFERENCE. Above is the latest issue. (printed on a 200 year old letterpress machine) Find out more here.
Kitchen Sink Drama
You can’t escape drying the dishes, but hey, you can make it more fun with The Kitchen Sink Drama Tea Towel Collection. The above towel features The Escape by Katherine Mansfield.
(They need better product shots. Such a great product idea, but the images are not helping.)
The Sunday BBQ Cut Out Set
This Sunday BBQ Cut Out Set by Buenos Aires based Illustrator Maxim Dalton made me smile. You can purchase it here.
Minimal Folio
Minimal Folio is an App that let’s you present images and video on your iPad. Minimal Folio lets you add images and video from Photo Albums on your iPad or transfer via iTunes on your desktop, rearrange however you like, group related images and video into columns, swipe up or down to move between items, swipe left or right to move between columns. Interesting!
Minimal Folio from Simon Heys on Vimeo.
(via @martinthiemann)
What to focus on
One of my favorite Marc Johns prints is up for sale in his store, as a signed print. $20. What to Focus on: Happy.
Here’s to the crazy ones.
“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them, disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward. Maybe they have to be crazy. How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels? While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
— Apple Commercial, 1997
(via Debbie Stier)
Your brain on Google
Via a post by Debbie Stier: I May Be Repeating Myself Now, But I Really Do Think We’ve Mutated
The Scoop
The Scoop is an iPhone App and according Website by the NewYorkTimes giving you an inside scoop to New York City. Well done. Hat tip!
Rainbow Office
Designed by Dutch architecture firm Hofman Dujardin, the DLA Piper office is a playful space intended to accentuate the variations in sunlight throughout a typical working day. What does that mean? The side of the building that receives the most sunlight is balanced with cooler tones, while the side that receives the least is compensated with warm tones. Meanwhile, the giant gradient of carpet connects the four main meeting rooms, while also creating a simple and clear sense of orientation within the building.
I am pretty sure this will make my studiomate Jessi’s head explode. (She’s the rainbow birthday lady)
(Thank you Rion!)
Authentic Jobs = 5
This September marks the five-year anniversary of Authentic Jobs, a network I am a proud member of. (If you’re reading this post on my actual site, look at the “Come in we’re hiring” sign on the left column). What was once a sidebar on cameronmoll.com has grown into a valuable, standalone resource for web and creative professionals. We’re kicking off the celebration in three parts, the first of which went live yesterday at authenticjobs.com/five.
This five year Authentic Jobs anniversary also marks the four-year anniversary of charity: water, a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing clean water to millions of people in developing countries. Almost a billion people on the planet don’t have access to clean, safe drinking water. That’s one in eight of us.
Together, we can make our birthday celebration be about giving gifts to others—$20 gives the gift of clean water to one person. Donate just $20 (or any amount) and help us raise $20,000 for the Bayaka people.
charity: water 2010 September Campaign: Clean Water for the Bayaka from charity: water on Vimeo.
The Bayaka are an African Pygmy tribe. They were one of the last hunter-gatherer societies in the world until the logging industry pushed them out of the forest. Now, they’re learning to live on the outskirts of villages, where they face rejection and abuse by locals who see them as animals who belong in the jungle. Many Bayaka live without clean water in southern Central African Republic.
charity: water’s goal this September is to raise $1.7 million to give clean water to the 16,000 people of Bayaka, along with 74,000 Central Africans. That means 90,000 Central Africans will have clean water—all because of one giant birthday celebration that spans the globe.
Help us raise $20,000 to make September’s goal a success and to wish Authentic Jobs, charity: water, and 90,000 Central Africans a very happy birthday.
Guest Post by Rachel Botsman
I asked Social Innovator Rachel Botsman whose thinking I admire, to write a guest post for swissmiss. I was thrilled that she immediately agreed. Check out collaborativeconsumption.com for information about her upcoming book What’s Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption and the growing movement.
Collaborative Consumption: Reinventing not just what we consume but how we consume.
Guest Post by Rachel Botsman
A couple of years ago I started to notice instead of friends bragging about their new Prius, they boasted how they had given up their cars altogether by becoming “Zipsters” (members of the car-sharing service Zipcar). More and more people were selling stuff on craigslist and eBay, swapping books, DVDs, and games on sites such as Swaptree, and giving unwanted items away on Freecycle. Local sharing platforms such as NeighborGoods and Share Some Sugar started popping up alongside a whole range of peer-to-peer rental services such as RelayRides and Zilok. On a trip to Denver, I saw cyclists pedaling around on bright red bikes with the word B-Cycle on their crossbars. A friend in London told me about her new favorite Channel 4 TV program called Landshare (a garden ‘dating agency’ connecting growers to people with land to share). I kept hearing about people joining some kind of collective or co-op, from Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs to Etsy Labs. Magazines, blogs and journals brimmed with popular articles from the self-organizing behavior of ants to “Coworking: Solo But Not Alone”. Whether it was ‘peer-to-peer,’ to the ‘wisdom of crowds’ to ‘smart mobs’ to ‘flashmobs’ to ‘prosumption’ to ‘crowdsourcing’, numerous sticky ideas were emerging on how easy it is to form groups, pods, packs, hubs or whatever you want to call them, and the might of communities. From the election of President Obama to Elinor Ostrom winning the Nobel Prize for Economics to the infamous Wikipedia; all highlighted what the old adage “power in numbers” can achieve. And of course everyday I was bombarded with stats and stories about the growth of the online social revolution. Co-everything was everywhere.
