Intelligentsia

During my 24h visit to Los Angeles last week I had the pleasure to enjoy a cup of Intelligentsia coffee. It was the best cup of coffee I have ever had, and I never thought I would say that outside of Italy. My friend Jon took me to the Intelligentsia coffee shop in Venice. The space itself is stunning and well worth a visit, even if you don’t drink coffee. Watching the barrista making our coffee pushed me over the edge. Can we please have a Intelligentsia in DUMBO?

Their New York Training Lab offers various classes. Espresso 101 anyone? Oh, I am tempted.

Clouds 365

Did I mention clouds make me happy? So, can you tell what a big smile Cloud 365 put on my face? It’s a year-long photographic experiment shooting clouds everyday, by Kelly DeLay.

(thank you Carolina)

Mykea

mykea lets you customize your IKEA furniture. While I am not crazy about most of the designs, I do like the idea. I’d love to see more typographic designs, but that’s just my personal preference.

(thank you Leonoor)

Memo Cloud Pad

Quirky memo pad in the shape of a cloud. Comes with 168 easy tear sheets, in a variety of coloured and patterned papers. And yes, clouds make me happy.

(thank you Gemma)

LEGO storage

LEGO Storage brick boxes? But of course! YES! Take toy storage in your living room to a new level. Made me smile.

(thank you Darren)

♥ / Damn Fine Tea

Nothing beats a Damn Fine Tea! Andrews & Dunham know this, so they’re always on the lookout for that perfect cup. Only a few teas meet their mysterious, rigorous standards and they’re proud to offer them to you in limited quantities, one edition at a time. You won’t find a huge assortment on their site — just a few of their favorites which they hope you’ll love as much as they do!

The coolest thing about it all? Each tin of Damn Fine Tea was created by the talented folks of Aesthetic Apparatus.

Damn Fine Tea gets the swissmiss thumbs up!

Hypothetical Development

Hypothetical Development Organization (Kickstarter Trailer) from R Walker on Vimeo.

I had the pleasure to enjoy a cup of coffee with Rob Walker a few days ago here at swissmiss studio. I am a fan of Rob’s creative endeavours, thinking and writing. You might have read about his book Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are or his wonderfully poetic project called The Significant Object. During his visit Rob told me about his latest project called Hypothetical Development.

Rob explained that he kept walking by a construction site that sported one of those fancy 3D renderings of what’s soon to come. After months of walking by the site, and nothing happening, it was clear that obviously this was just a bunch of hot air.

The idea for The Hypothetical Development was born. Why not pick interesting sites and come up with Hypothetical Development renderings? Consider it a new form of urban storytelling.

Or as they explain it on their site:
Members of this Hypothetical Deveolpment begin the narrative process by examining city neighborhoods and commercial districts for compelling structures that appear to have fallen into disuse —“hidden gems” of the built environment. In varying states of repair, these buildings suggest only stories about the past, not the future. What this means is that they will put huge signs with illustrations/graphics of what soon is to come on this site outside various locations in New Orleans.

Take the Museum of the Self as the first example. (Rendering above) I can’t help but think about how much these futuristic hypothetical developments would make me chuckle.

I just backed the project with $50. It’s only $1,200 shy of meeting it’s goal. Let’s help Rob and his team make this happen.

Kickstarter page for Hypothetical Development
Official site: Hypothetical Development

Etsy Headquarters NYC

Photos by Ty Cole

I had the pleasure to meet two Etsy folks, Randy J Hunt and Dave Brown, for lunch today. Even though Etsy’s headquarter is only two blocks away from swissmiss studio, I never had a chance to stop by. That changed today! Dave gave me a big tour and needless to say, I was quite impressed. Not only do they have a fulltime chef (!), they also bought all their furniture and decoration off Etsy. What struck me is that their office is a 100% true to their brand. The office maintains the handmade feel of the products they carry. Impressive.

Did you see those big giant orange lamps? And the curtains?

(images via ApartmentTherapy, by photographer Ty Cole.)

Interhoods

Weightshift just launched Interhoods, a real-world directory for designers and developers. The sign up process is incredibly simple: Log in with your Dribbble or Github accounts and identify your location in New York, San Francsico or Chicago (more cities coming soon). I agree with Khoi, it’s cool to be able to see who is physically near you, neighborhood by neighborhood, and will be even more useful if it achieves critical mass. Well done, Naz and Scott!

Check it out and register your location at Interhoods.org.

(via subtraction)

KhanAcademy

The Khan Academy is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) with the mission of providing a world-class education to anyone, anywhere. The Khan Academy is being developed as an open source project, consider it a free classroom for the World. *This*, TED and Kickstarter are perfect examples why the internet had to been invented.

(thank you rachel)

Search for the Obvious

My thesis was a 200 page book about “The beauty in the Ordinary”. It comes to no surprise that I love this project called The Search for the Obvious. The project is asking for your contribution: Think of a physical object or service that makes life better and has truly bettered the world. Then, upload a photo of your finding here.

The Search for the Obvious is run by the Acumen Fund, which is a pioneering not-for-profit venture fund that is changing how the world addresses poverty. Acumen Fund invests patient capital in business models that deliver critical, affordable goods and services to the world’s poor, improving the lives of millions.

(thank you Maria)

CreativeEveryone



CreativeEveryone wants you to never miss a creative event again. It strives the be the go-to guide to all the interesting creative-oriented events happening in the UK and USA. If you would like to help them edit and curate the events listed on CreativeEveryone, you can become an editor. (The site is in beta, so be gentle on them if you discover bugs!)

Bitchin’ Camero

My friend Jennifer spent the weekend with us and decided put her cooking hat on. She made a soup. No, not just a soup, the *best* soup I’ve ever had. Where did she find the recipe? On a blog called Bitchin’ Camero.

My hat tip off to both to Jen (the chef) and Melissa Camero, the force behind this impressive food blog. And now, here it is, the recipe to the best soup I’ve ever had: White Bean Soup with Mini Lamb Meatballs.

Ari Marcopoulos Camera Bag

Remember I asked about the perfect camera bag a while back? The answers were overwhelming and I haven’t finished the blog post in which I am trying to summarize all your anwsers. (Check the comments here)

I just came across this beautiful looking camera bag that Incase created in collaboration with Ari Marcopoulos. Nice, no?

BMW + iPad

Being a complete iPad afficionado, I am thrilled to see concepts like this. According to this blogpost, BMWs will soon feature iPad docking bays on back seats, which swivel and rotate. Using ConnectedDrive, the car will act as a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot, allowing iPads and other devices to connect online.

And by the way, I drive a BMW in my dreams, not in real life.

(via stilsucht)

Image Search Tools


This Image Search Tools post over at one of my favorite blogs called Brainpickings.org made me look. (If you’re not already subscribed to Maria Popova’s avalanche of awesomeness, please do so.)

CompFight is a Flickr search tool that also also doubles as a visual inspiration engine. It lets you search based on tag or text, spitting out a pleasant wall of thumbnails. Particularly useful: The CreativeCommons search option, which filters results by image rights license type.

7 Image Search Tools That Will Change Your Life

Absolute Sellout

I just received a mysterious hand-drawn poster by Absolute Sellout. I don’t really understand what the site is really about, but I must say, some of these objects are of a striking mundane beauty. Oh, the power of well-light product shots and LOTS of white space.

(Thank you Josh & Ben)

♥ / LEARN TO RIDE Snowboard iPhone App

A winter-welcoming swissmiss thank you to “get addicted to …” for sponsoring this week’s RSS Feed.

Learning new snowboard tricks has never been that easy. Even if you’re right in your local park and want to improve your riding straight away, you just have to grab your iPhone and “LEARN TO RIDE Snowboard” offers everything you need from a revealing trick-tutorial. After downloading the app, there’s no internet connection required to check tricks!

To really help you out, your “LEARN TO RIDE Snowboard” teachers will equip you with currently 25 video clips including voiceover, which show you moves from different angles. Tricks will be added regularly for free! Check and perfect your stance and style, using the videos as your guide.

You can find the “LEARN TO RIDE Snowboard” in the App Store.

“FREITAG am Donnerstag”: Peter Hossli

Peter Hossli is a curious reporter that always finds a good story. He was third speaker in the “FREITAG am Donnerstag” series that I curated for FREITAG. Peters talk (in German) is a wonderful insight into Peter’s personal approach to journalism. Peter believes that not newspaper/magazines are in a crisis, it’s the Journalist. He thinks journalists Google too much and don’t go out anymore and do their research. Insightful talk, watch it if you speak German:

Eric Baker: Today

After the DesignMatters taping with lovely Debbie Millman today, I had the pleasure to meet Eric Baker. While talking he mentioned TODAY, a daily visual email he used to send out. A daily curated set of images, delivered right to your inbox. Unfortunately he no longer runs TODAY but you can see quite a few of these fantastic emails over at the DesignObserver.

(A shame he ended it and Eric did this before tumblr existed. I want to add every other image to my ffffffound account.)

Write or Die Online

My friend Martina told me about the nifty webapp called Write Or Die. You need to get that article or blog post done but you are doing everything else in the world but write? Go to Write Or Die, put in length of the article (amount of words), set the ‘reminder’ and then the ‘grace period’ mode. And then: GO! Start writing. Whenever you stop for too long, (aka procrastinate) the site start flashing/blinking/yelling in your face so that you continue. Good way to make yourself hear that Clackity Noise.

While I think the idea is brilliant, I wish the interface was a little bit more ‘designy’.

“FREITAG am Donnerstag”: David Rowan

David Rowan, Editor of Wired UK was the second speaker in the “FREITAG am Donnerstag” series that I curated for FREITAG.

We invited David to speak about his insights on the topic of Journalism. David spoke about how social media can save journalists’ lives. The talk was focusing on a rather dark side of the world of journalism and David was very well aware that the audience wasn’t necessarily expecting that, knowing that he is the editor of Wired UK. It is important that people like him, with such an audience and power, point out the dark and dangerous side of the life of a journalist.

Watch his touching talk below and read the entire transcript here.

A big thank you to Maria Popova of Brainpickings for making the introduction to David Rowan and therefore making this talk possible.

thirty conversations on design

Thirty Conversations on Design 2010 just went up. Little & Company reached out to 30 creative thinkers in the creative industry and asked them two questions:

“What single example of design inspires you most?” and “What problem should design solve next?”

My favorite? Stefan Bucher’s passion for Humming Birds.