mappiness

I just found out about the Mappiness project over on Liz’s blog. In her article about Happiness she writes:

Mappiness, part of a research project at the London School of Economics, maps happiness across space. The researchers intend to better understand how people’s feelings are affected by features of their environment — from pollution to noise to green spaces — while they’re doing ordinary things. They hope to publish the research; meanwhile, users who download it can enter data that is charted for them hour by hour over time so that they can visually monitor their own happiness.

Potential for Happiness

Experiences — those that we have the potential to create opportunities for — can amplify happiness. While we can’t predict or control what people will or won’t do, we can create potential.

…

Even if the entire experience isn’t a good one, people may not remember it. Founder of behavioral economics and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman’s research reports on the “peak-end” rule, which shows what we remember about the pleasurable quality of an experience is determined almost entirely by two things: 1. how we feel when experiences are at their peak, and 2. how we feel when experiences have ended. We rely on these two-part summaries to remind us of how we felt about experiences. The summary is the one we remember. We’re taking happiness shortcuts.

…

Excerpts from Liz’s interesting post: What we talk about when we talk about happiness

Robot Quilt

While I am not all that crazy about quilts, this Robot Quilt by Boo Davis made me look and smile. It’s called “Does Not Compute”. Boo Davis shares the pattern and everything you need to know to make it in her book, “Dare to Be Square Quilting: A Block-by-Block Guide to Making Patchwork and Quilts.”

(How appropriate that the cover features an owl, my ‘obsession in the making!”)

The Noun Project

The Noun Project’s mission is to share, celebrate, and enhance the world’s visual language. The goal is to collect and organize all the symbols that form our language into one easy-to-use online library that can be accessed by anyone. All the symbols on their site are completely free to download, and can be used for design projects, architecture presentations, art pieces – just about anything. The folks behind The Noun Project think a visual language that can be understood by all cultures and people is a pretty amazing thing. I fully agree.

Watch a video about their project over on Kickstarter.

www.thenounproject.com.

(thank you Edward)

Gift A Stranger

Spread a little bit of happiness in the world: Send a gift to a complete stranger using Google Maps.

Gift a Stranger from Happiness Brussels on Vimeo.

A project by Happiness Brussels.

(thank you Tom)

Dow Piano

The Dow Piano audiovisualizes the ups and downs of 2010 into musical notes. Using a five-note scale spanning three octaves, pitch is determined by the daily closing numbers of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The variance in volume mirrors the trading volume changes throughout the year. The notes are clustered in series of five, representing Mondays through Fridays. The weeks are punctuated, separated, and started by drum hits. Follow along with the graph to experience the market in a (somewhat) musical way. Created by Bard Edlund.

Dow Piano

(thank you Dominique)

Soap Flakes

Swiss Nathalie Staempfli designed two ingenious soap dispensers that turn a soap bar into beautiful little soap flakes. One version attaches to the wall and allows you to use it with one hand. The other version is a grater that can stand by itself. It can be placed in the same way as a shower gel or shampoo.

Soap bars are more concentrated than liquid soap which has an ecological benefit: You don’t transport water around the globe and they only use paper for packaging. The solid blocks can easily be piled and allow a greater space efficiency during transportation.

This invention already made my week: Soap Flakes.

(Thank you Jason)

ZH/CreativeMornings Video with Michel Bachmann

Our speaker at the third Zurich/CreativeMornings was Michel Bachman, co-founder of The Hub Zürich talking about Social Entrepreneurship.

A big giant thank you to the team of Redsmoke Productions for their amazing work on documenting the event.

The Zurich/CreativeMornings chapter is run by Daniel Frei.

11/10 Michel Bachmann | The Hub Zurich from Zurich/CreativeMornings on Vimeo.

LA/CreativeMornings Video with Alissa Walker

Our speaker at the December 2010 Los Angeles/CreativeMornings was Alissa Walker of Gelato Baby. This event took place on December 17, 2010 and was generously hosted by Ford & Ching.

How incredibly charming is Alissa?

2010/12 Alissa Walker | Gelato Baby from LosAngeles/CreativeMornings on Vimeo.

A big giant thank you to Grant Withington and Stephen Haynes for offering to shoot and edit the video, with assistance from Michael Mahaffey.

The Los Angeles chapter of Creative Mornings is run by Jon Setzen.

Nerd Merit Badges

Mu studiomate Chris just showed me the Inbox 0 Nerd Merit Badge that he received. Mad me laugh. The Being Boinged is supercool!

DIY Outdoor Kitchen

Here’s a project for the crafty backyard owner: Studiomama’s DIY outdoor kitchen! Download pdf to make your own mobile outdoor kitchen here.

Coffee Filters

I had no idea but apparently coffee filters are ideal for cleaning screens/televisions. They’ll catch the dust and cut static on the screen, all without leaving behind any fibers like paper towels would.

Kari Moden



I was sent this wonderful poster by Kari Moden. A beauty. It’s available for sale on the “movement for more birthdays” site by the American Cancer Society. There are quite a few stunning designs available. Check out the “Wish” poster by Andrew Bannecker for example.

See the entire art gallery here.
morebirthdays.com

(Thank you Anya)

Lunch Bots Trio

I really like the minimal approach of these stainless steel lunch containers by LunchBots.

(via coolmompicks)

RSS5000

RSS5000 is a new RSS feed reader for iPad that made me look. I think this could be it, the first RSS reader I will stick with! Why? I don’t like not to see content in its original environment and RSS5000 seems to solve that problem. RSS5000 connects to your Google Reader account and allows you to swipe through your feeds as a stack of whole web pages. It feels sort of like flipping through your favorite websites on magic internet paper.

RSS5000 Demo from daniellestrle on Vimeo.

(via minimalmac)

Apartment Therapy Offline Event

I am honored to be part of next week’s Apartment Therapy Offline Event with Judy Ross & Sandy Chilewich at the New York Design Meetup. We will be discussing how we manage to balance family and business.

What: Apartment Therapy’s New York Design Meetup
Panel: Judy Ross, Sandy Chilewich and moi
Topic: Balancing Family & Business: How 3 Designers Make it Work!
Members: 2,411 (rsvp here)
When: Wednesday, January 12: 6:30pm – 8:30pm
Where: Knoll Showroom | 76 9th Avenue (16th Street Entrance) 11th floor, NYC

Read Full Post over on Apartment Therapy. See you there?

Pentagram (new website)

Congratulations to Pentagram for their new site.

(Yay, they are linking to Michael Bierut’s CreativeMorning talk!)

AIGA/NY Data Visualization Event

Here’s an event you shouldn’t miss if you live in NYC: AIGA/NY Data Visualization: Method and Madness

Filip Dujardin – Fictions


Filip Dujardin takes photographs of nondescript, often post-modern buildings and remixes them using Photoshop to create strange hybrids. Stunning!

relativity

The first official exhibition of the london based gallery ‹between› featured 10 young designers and design studios around the world. They were all invited to think and respond to the meaning of the word ‹between›.

Swiss designer Marcus Kraft contributed a triptych which was an attempt to translate Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity into a piece of concept art: Sometimes, one second can change your whole life. On the other hand, a whole year can feel very boring, unimportant and dull. What if one year is as long as one day or even one second? — Maybe there’s no difference at all.

AirBnB

In case you like to travel but don’t know about AirBnB yet, watch this brand new video:

Architectural Range Hood

Architects Lhoas & Lhoas renovated a typical Brussels’s house and decided to go custom and designy for the kitchen hood. They managed to turn this common functional object into an abstract sculpture. Absolutely beautiful.

(thank you Tom)

Milton Glaser on using design to make ideas new

From the TED archives: The legendary graphic designer Milton Glaser dives deep into a new painting inspired by Piero della Francesca. From here, he muses on what makes a convincing poster, by breaking down an idea and making it new:

Plexiroids

Lucky me, I received one of these Super Awesome Plexiroids in the mail last week. It’s a scan/print of a Polaroid 600 integral photo by Grant Hamilton. Check out his entire series.