Plazm – design magazine meets design firm
Plazm is one of those beautiful art and design magazines that is filled from cover to cover with eye-catching imagery and letter forms to lust over. It has featured people like David Byrne, Yoko Ono, Iggy Pop, Milton Glaser, and Todd Haynes. The SF MoMA has made the entire catalog part of their permanent collection. [...]
Read More »Interview: Don DeLillo talks about Underworld
If you search YouTube for videos of Don DeLillo, you won’t find much. The author of White Noise and Underworld is not a public man, and he rarely does tours or events. But an enterprising fan known as the Donologist has been uploading DeLillo radio interviews to YouTube. The presentation of these interview clips leaves [...]
Read More »Iron Man versus Bruce Lee
Here’s an entertaining short depicting a thrilling grudge match between two pop culture icons, Iron Man and Bruce Lee. The rub? It’s all done in stop-motion animation using action figures. Of course if Aquaman was involved in this fight, it’d be no contest. Actually, this was created by Patrick Bolvin, a self taught director. His [...]
Read More »Eye-catching: The Monocle Shop in LA
Following the success of its London location, Tyler Brûlé brings his marketing savvy to Santa Monica where the second Monocle Shop opens today. The 115 sq ft store will serve as both a retail space and branding mechanism for the revered magazine, all 22 issues of which are sold alongside international designer collaborations from the [...]
Read More »Who knew Iowa was so cool?
photo by Kables When you think of Iowa, what do you think of? Corn, perhaps. FIELD OF DREAMS. The cornfields in FIELD OF DREAMS. Famous Iowan natives named “Wood,” like American Gothic painter Grant Wood and that adorable little hobbit, Elijah Wood. Admit it: if you were to play a word association game with Iowa, [...]
Read More »Notgeld: gorgeous German currency from the preinflationary years, 1914-1923
From the outbreak of World War I until a few years after it, German and Austrian savings banks, municipalities, and other institutions tried to sidestep rampant inflation by printing local currencies known as notgeld, German for “emergency money” or “necessity money.” Flamboyantly designed and wildly colorful, the bills were soon coveted by collectors, and they [...]
Read More »The island of misfit toys
photo by: hyperscholar When it comes to breaking up with an old, used, or dysfunctional sex toy, dumping it at the dump isn’t the most environmentally friendly thing you can do. A lot of toys are made of plastics and PVC, which never really go away, so tossing it (and its batteries) in your trash-can, [...]
Read More »Tomorrow is World Pillow Fight Day
Grab your heftiest stuffed pillow tomorrow because Saturday, April 4 is World Pillow Fight Day! As well as the usual suspects like New York City (Wall St. and Broad St. at 3:00 PM) and London, participating cities include Guayaquil, Kuala Lumpur, and Miyazaki City, among many others! Selfish (kidding!) San Francisco couldn’t wait and already [...]
Read More »Saatchi & Saatchi transforms people into fleas
I love this great ad from a Jakarta shopping center. It’s the work of the advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi. Give it a closer look if the clever gimmick isn’t immediately apparent: Via: Environmental Graffiti.
Read More »Merriam-Webster accused of pro-gay agenda
photo by greeblie While the rest of us were battling it out over gay marriage in courts, newspaper editorials, elections, marches, and barrooms across the country, a little company called Merriam-Webster was quietly making their own call. So quietly, in fact, that even though their dictionary updated the definition of marriage back in 2003 to [...]
Read More »Abilene Retrofits City Buildings for Energy Efficiency
ABILENE, Texas, April 9, 2009 (ENS) – The city of Abilene is investing $9 million to improve energy efficiency, security, comfort at 34 city buildings. The green initiative is a first step towards sustainability by the city. TAC, the building management and energy services business of Schneider Electric which has won the contract, guarantees that [...]
Read More »Rock solid
Can’t manage a designer overhaul on your wardrobe this season? How about just one piece that will add spark to even the simplest of ensembles? Cue Christine J. Brandt, whose creations are more wearable art than they are jewelry. Brandt’s necklaces, rings, and cuffs have been featured in more than sixty magazines and were chosen [...]
Read More »Explosive skateboarding
Against the background of UNKLE’s emotive song “Heaven,” directors Spike Jonze and Ty Evans film the Lakai skateboarding team navigating an explosive terrain. The video starts a little slow, but “explodes” around the 1:58 mark. If that didn’t sell you then, let me try this: three words, skateboarding, explosions, and slo-mo. ‘Nuff said. [Via]
Read More »Naked News
If only most adults were as smart about sex ed as this 14 year old from Gloucester, Mass (home of the rumored 17 Pregnant Girls “Pact” last year). We’re guessing Bush and Cheney won’t take credit for the recent loosening of sexual mores in the Middle East. After talk of a ban, bikini waxing is [...]
Read More »Monologuist Mike Daisey and the last cargo cult
The talented New York-based monologuist Mike Daisey performs his dark, hilarious work in a format similar to the one perfected by the late Spalding Gray: a spare stage, a simple table, a glass of water, and some notes. Daisey, who is an acquaintance of mine, just got back from a remote South Pacific island called [...]
Read More »Facebooking the one that got away
A recent article in the NY Times magazine addressed the Faulknerian aspect of the “undead past” on Facebook, while asking what the 25 million Facebook users under 25 could possibly be doing on there. “What do they have to look back on?” Because one of the primary reasons to log onto Facebook (go on, admit [...]
Read More »What a long, strange trip: lifecycle assessment
If someone asks you “Where did your t-shirt come from?” you’re likely to respond with the name of a store or online shop. Eco-adventurer David de Rothschild isn’t satisfied with such answers, though, and has traveled the globe looking for information about the sources, and environmental impact, of the things we buy daily. de Rothschild’s [...]
Read More »Music video resurgence – Department of Eagles
Award-winning director Patrick Daughters and artist Marcel Dzama teamed up to create the music video for the Department of Eagles single “No One Does It Like You” from In Ear Park (2008), which premiered on March 24th at MoMA as part of their PopRally series. The night included a Q&A between Dzama and Daughters and [...]
Read More »Will the HPV vaccine for boys make them sluts? Ha!
photo by zmxncbv.com When the relatively new HPV vaccine Gardasil came on the market for girls a few years ago, conservatives got their panties all in a bind over the possibility that it would give sweet, innocent P.Y.T.s permission to do it. Now that the vaccine is being considered for boys, no one seems too [...]
Read More »Babel Tales
I like to think New York City’s unofficial slogan ought to be the capital of diversity. But then again, maybe it’s more homogeneous than we like to believe as artist Peter Funch suggests in the cleverly and subtly edited photos in his “Babel Tales” series. Many of the images implies a landscape of doppelgangers, and [...]
Read More »OBJECTIFIED: exploring our manufactured environment
Gary Hustwit’s first film, the smart 2007 documentary HELVETICA explored the 50-year history of that iconic typeface and the countless ways it’s shaped Western visual culture. To the joy of design nerds everywhere, Hustwit’s second film, OBJECTIFIED, is starting to make the rounds of film festivals, and it will be released later this year. OBJECTIFIED [...]
Read More »Blow-up doll track jacket
“With humour and without being too moralistic about it,” artist Sanders Reijgers repurposes the function of blow up dolls “into an esthetic object that can ellicit a positive response.” It’s the jacket equivalent of a mullet: Business in the front, (solitary) party in the back. [Via]
Read More »Cougars Have Smarter Kids…But Do They Want Them?
photo by: Harlequeen A recent study found that men may have a biological clock after all: The children of older fathers were found to have lower IQ scores than those of younger dads. And this is in addition to earlier studies showing that schizophrenia and autism are more common in the offspring of men who [...]
Read More »Transforming Building
In 2007 British artist Richard Wilson turned “a building in Liverpool’s city center literally inside out” as a portion of the building’s facade rotated around. Via: http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/03/turning-the-pla.html
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