Snowpocalypse 2010

December 2010 Blizzard Timelapse from Michael Black on Vimeo.

Flying

Superior, Speed Fly from Marshall Miller on Vimeo.

Color Wheel of time

Entire calendar

Section view of winter; note the frosty blue colors.

Even more zoomed in sectional view of fall; note the fall color scheme.

Lene Mirdal's All Year Round Calendar — a color wheel calendar for 2011 is pretty amazing. Time is visualized as a circle, with the months, weeks and days radiating outwards, color-coded by the time of the year. I am not a big fan of hanging up calendars on my wall for the year — wish I was — otherwise, I would order this lovely one from the MoMA store immediately. Check it out, here.



Via: Fast Company Design

Circles

I saw a Bridget Riley piece earlier this Fall at the DIA Beacon, and was not only mesmerized by it, I totally wished I had the sort of budget that afforded me to buy really nice art...because I would like one of her pieces hanging on my wall one day. I only hope that when I am 80 years old, I am still creating art and making things that I love.

Joy vey!

I heart Brooklyn

Via New York Magazine: As more-established groups go hunting for better real estate and newer groups replace them, the cultural map of Brooklyn we carry around in our heads quickly goes out of date. Sunset Park is becoming less Chinese and more Mexican, Bensonhurst less Italian and more Chinese, Flatbush more Jewish and more Muslim at the same time. The South Asian enclave in Kensington is expanding into Midwood and down to Brighton Beach.

“Anytime there’s a vacancy, it’s a South Asian family that’s moving in,” says Mohammed Razvi, executive director of the Council of Peoples Organization, a nonprofit group that helps new immigrants from its office on Coney Island Avenue. “Brooklyn is the Lower East Side for the South Asian community: As soon as they get out of JFK, they head here.”

The data streams don’t reveal much about the borough’s spiritual life, but this deceptively dull intersection anchors a rich religious ecosystem. The gorgeous eighteenth-century Flatbush Reformed Church hosts a Ghanaian Presbyterian congregation and also offers services in Spanish. Over on Coney Island Avenue, Makki Masjid, Brooklyn’s largest mosque, is undergoing a renovation to merge three buildings and accommodate 3,000 worshippers at once. A few blocks south, a Jewish girls’ school, Bet Yaakov Ateret Torah, has added new quarters.

Nowhere outside of Jerusalem do so many Jews and Muslims live in such intense proximity, observes Rabbi Bob Kaplan of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York—and here they enjoy a more uneventful coexistence. “No group is in control here,” says Kaplan. “They’re all here to participate in the American lifestyle.”

We head south toward Neptune Avenue in Brighton Beach, where the data show a surge of Mexicans and Bangladeshis among the Russians, whose children have been settling in Bensonhurst. Sure enough, several Spanish-speaking women are herding preschoolers into a doorway marked “Young Israel of Brighton Beach,” which houses a Head Start program. Across the street is the neighborhood Islamic Center. Just up the block a store advertises “Asian, Mexican, and Russian groceries.” Salvo chortles. “It’s nice when you can see the data. This is the future.”

It's gonna be a Honeysuckle year

via Pantone:
Courageous. Confident. Vital. A brave new color, for a brave new world. Let the bold spirit of Honeysuckle infuse you, lift you and carry you through the year. It’s a color for every day – with nothing “everyday” about it.

While the 2010 color of the year, PANTONE 15-5519 Turquoise, served as an escape for many, Honeysuckle emboldens us to face everyday troubles with verve and vigor. A dynamic reddish pink, Honeysuckle is encouraging and uplifting. It elevates our psyche beyond escape, instilling the confidence, courage and spirit to meet the exhaustive challenges that have become part of everyday life.

“In times of stress, we need something to lift our spirits. Honeysuckle is a captivating, stimulating color that gets the adrenaline going – perfect to ward off the blues,” explains Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute®. “Honeysuckle derives its positive qualities from a powerful bond to its mother color red, the most physical, viscerally alive hue in the spectrum.”

Eiseman continues, “The intensity of this festive reddish pink allures and engages. In fact, this color, not the sweet fragrance of the flower blossoms for which it was named, is what attracts hummingbirds to nectar. Honeysuckle may also bring a wave of nostalgia for its associated delicious scent reminiscent of the carefree days of spring and summer.”

and the best part?
Whether you’re buying groceries, paying the dry cleaner or shopping for a pair of new pumps, now you can do it in style with a PANTONE Visa® Platinum Rewards Card in Honeysuckle, the 2011 color of the year...Nice.

Lotta sale

Bunny and I are going to check out the Lotta Jansdotter open studio, on Saturday afternoon. And then maybe get some pie at Four and Twenty Blackbirds afterwards, as it is right around the corner. I am thinking about a slice of salty honey pie, or maybe the honeyed pumpkin. Or both.

Cozy tea

A crocheted cup of tea sent to me from Mimi, since I am not feeling 100%. This honestly has perked me up considerably, if only mentally. Perhaps because I am a sucker for crotched nouns with smily faces on them.

A quote sent to me this morning from my career coach. I am trying, Rich...

Sunflower seeds

“Sunflower Seeds invites us to look more closely at the ‘Made in China’ phenomenon and the geo-politics of cultural and economic exchange today.”

In China, sunflower seeds are a staple delicacy especially reserved for Chinese festivities. And Ai Weiwei's most recent piece, “Sunflower Seeds,” consists of roughly 100 million hand-painted and hand sculpted porcelain sunflower seeds covering the vast expanse of Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern, to the depth of about four inches. Each seed was made by one of the 1,600 residents of Jingdezhen, a village that once provided porcelain to the imperial court of China.

For Ai Weiwei, sunflower seeds — a common street snack shared by friends — carry personal associations with Mao Zedong's brutal Cultural Revolution (1966-76). While individuals were stripped of personal freedom, propaganda images depicted Chairman Mao as the sun and the mass of people as sunflowers turning towards him. Yet Ai remembers the sharing of sunflower seeds as a gesture of human compassion, providing a space for pleasure, friendship and kindness during a time of extreme poverty, repression and uncertainty.

And as such, Weiwei's Sunflower Seeds challenges our first impressions: what you see is not what you see, and what you see is not what it means. The sculptural installation is made up of what appear to be millions of sunflower seed husks, apparently identical but actually unique. Although they look realistic, each seed is made out of porcelain. And far from being industrially produced, 'readymade' or found objects, they have been intricately hand-crafted by hundreds of skilled artisans. Poured into the interior of the Turbine Hall's vast industrial space, the seeds form a seemingly infinite landscape. The precious nature of the material, the effort of production and the narrative and personal content make this work a powerful commentary on the human condition.

Lovely Day: rated an A-

The past few weeks have been less than stellar for a myriad of reasons which I will not go into boring detail about here. But it was enough to cause me to actually dream about trying to schedule an appointment with my therapist, however in my dream he had gotten remarried and was too busy and too happy with his own life, to see me at this critical juncture in my life. So, yeah. It's been a few of those kind of weeks.


That being said, after napping around the house yesterday for the majority of the afternoon, I had a very nice and quiet evening with the dog. We even went to bed at the very reasonable hour of 10pm. At some point in the middle of the night, he was causing our feet to be too hot and therefore was asked to move to the couch. Where he promptly started crying softly. Until...I reached out my arm to pet him — he snuggled down next to my hand and immediately started snoring. Every so often he would try to nestle more spoonishly into my hand, until my arm fell asleep and I had to retract it, sadly. Upon which, it was required of me to shove over, so he could climb into bed and lay his hand on the pillow where only moments before mine had rested so comfortably. Now my head was squashed between his and J's and while it may sound like I am complaining, I immediately fell into a blissful sleep..and  probably was smiling.


I woke up feeling rested and full of general aura of pleasantness. Caught a cab on the corner of Boerem Place and State Street, where I was able to not only able to get into the office in under fifteen minutes (thank you, Christopher Columbus!) my conference call with a colleague in Europe was not disconnected even one single time on the way into the city. 


The day was spent checking lots of stuff off of my list, which was highly satisfying. Finished a project I have been working on for at least five months. Finished in the sense, that I received final approval to send it to the printer. I met a childhood friend for lunch at 'Wichcraft. Had the tomato soup — it was that kind of cozy day. And in the late afternoon, went with my team to see the Matisse exhibit at the MoMA on the last day of the exhibition. The exhibit was pretty incredible...I particularly loved the sketch of the little goldfish where his mouth was a little round "o."

And then the evening has been spent leisurely eating dinner and leafing through design magazines, getting inspired. It's been very zen...until it started hailing with crazy sounding winds whipping across my 11th floor balcony, that is.

Happy Clothespins

I was reading the most recent issue of Communication Arts, and came across these cool, clothespiny environmental graphics for the 2009 Aires Libres event (where a section of Sainte-Catherine Street is sectioned off for a few months of summer activities), designed by Paprika — a design firm located in Montreal. Love them...

imma star

1001 books you must read (before you die...)

 http://www.listology.com/list/1001-books-you-must-read-you-die

I am a design pirate

My contact has been bothering me all day, and in trying to compensate for the blurry vision, my left eye now is twitching from severe eyestrain. And I am sitting at my desk unable to do anything. In an effort to help, my colleague who used to work on Accuvue and Medical Devices came up with this nifty work around patch, using an Accuvue rubber band and a paper napkin from lunch.

Feeling all jazzy and shit

Via NPR music: As a student at the Berklee College of Music, Meghan Stabile's peers were jazz musicians who grew up with hip-hop as popular music. So during her last semester of study, she first put together a show that brought together musicians from both jazz and hip-hop communities, exploring the connections within.

Stabile's operation, now based in New York, has become Revive Da Live, a concert production group presenting street-savvy jazz artists like Robert Glasper, Jaleel Shaw and Esperanza Spalding, often on stage with hip-hop performers like Talib Kweli, Pete Rock and Large Professor. Revive Da Live produces frequent performances around New York and the world; the Revive Music Group now also manages and books a roster of artists.

Revive's underlying goal has always been about education through live experience: Of jazz to the hip-hop crowd, and vice versa. In lieu of being able to bring a Revive show to all blog readers, I recently sat down with Stabile and two associates, MC/DJ Brian "Raydar" Ellis and pianist/writer Jared Pauley, to talk about jazz records for the hip-hop crowd.

"There's a way back to jazz through any kind of song that a 13, 14-year-old loves," Raydar Ellis said. "It's just a matter of tracing it back in a way that they find appealing. And that's what we do. That's our thing."

1. Dorothy Ashby, Afro-Harping (1968).

Meghan: A lot of stuff comes from listening to Pete Rock. He sampled a lot of records. We were speaking yesterday about Dorothy Ashby, and Raydar had mentioned this record. Even from that, another record called Dorothy's Harp: you can find samples from Madlib, Rahzel, Jay-Z, Pete Rock for sure — the list goes on.

Patrick: What about that particular record makes it so interesting?

Raydar: It's the way that that record was made. It's the sonic — and maybe this is just the audiophile in me, but — the way it was mixed and recorded. Her harp has this beautiful delay on it, but the bass has most of the low-end along with the drums. ... You can also hear what she did on some of Stevie Wonder's records.

2. Donald Byrd, Stepping Into Tomorrow (1975).

Raydar: I think the stuff that got me into jazz was, oddly enough, it was Incognito and Pieces of a Dream. My dad played a lot of the smooth jazz stuff on the radio — he'd be listening to CD 101.9 — and then he also had a bunch of records at the same time.

Coming at it from a perspective that a hip-hop listener understands, which is where the samples are generated from, I guess Donald Byrd Stepping Into Tomorrow has the "Think Twice" cut — "Looking out the Front Door," by Main Source is a direct link. But it's also been covered by J. Dilla on Welcome 2 Detroit, and by Erykah Badu. And that's just one song, let alone the whole record, let alone his whole catalog. That's a really dope record to start with.

3. Miles Davis, In A Silent Way (1969).

Jared: Miles Davis' In A Silent Way really changed the way I could hear music. I hate to go back to the word "organic," but everything is such an "organic" blend. As he progressed further into his fusion phase with Bitches Brew and On The Corner, it became a little more chaotic with the way he and [producer] Teo Macero edited all the tape together. But In A Silent Way — it's got this meld of electric pianos, and vibrato, and abstract, atmospheric music going on. It's hard to describe it. And it's like every great piano player of all time is on it, and every great musician — anybody who ever did anything great in fusion was on one of [Miles Davis'] records. Fact.

4. Charlie Parker, "A Night In Tunisia" (March 1946) and McCoy Tyner, "Impressions" (from Trident, 1975).

Meghan: With Hip-Hop 1942, we took records from the '50s, '60s, '70s — well, specific songs — and we played the original. For example, [a] Charlie Parker version of "A Night In Tunisia" was later used to create Gang Starr's "Words I Manifest." So we had a line up of stellar musicians — Marc Cary, Ben Williams, Louis Cato, Casey Benjamin and bunch of others — and they performed the original, as the original, and transitioned it into "Words I Manifest." So it went from the jazz record to the popular hip-hop song that derived from that record. And we had a whole audience there, which was mainly a hip-hop audience, that didn't know the original. So we had the album covers on a screen behind the band, showing which song this was, and what it was [sampled] into. They went crazy. It was a ridiculous show.

The other, which is my personal favorite, is McCoy Tyner's version of "Impressions."

Ron Carter's bass solo was later used to create Black Sheep's "The Choice Is Yours." So Ben Williams — this was his idea — when he was soloing ... he just went into this subtle "Dum-dum-dum-dum Dum-doo-dum-dum," and then just went into it real hard, and the audience is screaming, 'cause they just didn't expect it.

Patrick:: Ben has that way of just plucking really hard — making you feel it.

Raydar: Yea, that's my cousin! [laughs] It's all in the family.

5. Robert Glasper, Double-Booked (2009).

Raydar: I really think it's great for a hip-hop head to come into jazz with that record because Rob was born from both sides of it. He has equal footing in both worlds, and he represents that on the record really well, whether it be that breakdown before "Butterfly," where they kind of flip the "F- - - Tha Police" joint, or the "Forever" joint, where [drummer] Chris [Dave] is laying the drums back kinda crazy. It's something that a hip-hopper can instantly recognize, but that they can sit back and listen to multiple times, and find the subtleties in the solos and performances. It's a really good record.

Red Jacket Orchards' Rhubarb-Apple Juice

Dear Red Jacket Orchards people,

This juice is absolutely superlative in flavor. Rhubarb doesn't get enough play, in my own opinion, with people purposefully overlooking its tartness as a negative. Or else people think its poisonous and therefore...bad. Thanks for not player hating on the Rhubarb, because this juice rocks. And I thought that the Strawberry-Apple juice from you that I drank this past Friday was pretty freaking awesome...well, you outdid yourselves, because this flavor is even better. If that is possible.

kind regards,
Aimee

ps. thanks, Dane.

Yellow is underrated

I think that the color yellow is wholly underrated. Not sure what has prompted my interest in this color, of late, but it has crossed my visual radar and lodged itself somewhere deep in my subconscious, sending out these waves of yearning for yellow, every so often. For instance, I am really desiring these sheets from West Elm:

Maybe because here, the color yellow is paired with my favorite color for the home, which is gray. And it is in a cheerful little flower print. Since I have slept on pretty much only white bed sheets for the past seven years (every once in a while I switch it up with a gray set of sheets), this is a huge departure for me. Not only is a color other than white or gray, but it is a floral print in a cute, maybe even girly pattern. Despite the odds, I am still totally lusting after these sheets.

And then there is my lunch today:

which is lemon-pepper pappardelle (from Trader Joes), with lemon zest, fresh corn and tuna. Hellooooo, delicious.
No wonder why I am craving some yellow in my life right now, because interestingly enough, yellow relates to self worth: how we feel about ourselves and how we feel others perceive us. 

Yellow is full of creative and intellectual energy. Yellow means joy and happiness. Yellow daffodils are a symbol of unrequited love (This is probably why this is my favorite flower — ironically). Like the energy of a bright sunny day, yellow brings clarity and awareness. Orange-yellow imparts a sense of establishment. Clean light yellow clears the mind, making it active and alert. 

Supposedly, you should put some yellow in your life when you want clarity for decision-making, relief from 'burnout', panic, nervousness, exhaustion, sharper memory and concentration skills and protection from lethargy and depression during dull weather. Good to know.

Lego man + tatoos = Pilot Pen campaign

Above is a series of "badass" tatoos drawn on Lego characters, showcasing the extra fine lines of the Pilot Hi-Tec-C 0.25 mm pen. Straight out of your mother’s nightmares, these Lego people pay homage to the vernacular of biking subculture — with lots of angry skulls, and in one instance, a rather racy tramp stamp. Developed by Barcelona's Grey Agency, the goal of the campaign was to showcase the superthin lines of the Pilot Extrafine pens (also known as Pilot Hi-Tec-C Gel pens), made by Pilot of Japan and available in the USA from online retailer Jetpens. I love it.


Note: I personally prefer the Uni-ball Signo DX 0.25mm pen, also available from the same retailer.

Email to Sheri from Tianjin, China

From an email that I sent to Sheri on June 13, 2008. Two years later, this still makes me laugh out loud. She just resent it to me today. 感谢反燃i。

Dinner at Roman's on DeKalb

Dana, Rob and I ate dinner last night at Roman's, after coming back from the Rock the Bells festival on Governor's Island...we needed a dose of our beloved and familiar Brooklyn reality after the hot mess that was the festival. (literally, it was a hot mess.) So Dane picked Roman's on DeKalb Avenue in Fort Greene, because her hairdresser apprenticed in the kitchen making pasta, once upon a time.

To start, we all shared a salad of watermelon cubes, kirby cucumbers + ricotta salata dressed with olive oil and sea salt. Unexpected, since the menu had just said "melon" so we all were expecting the expected — some sort of boring honeydew. Watermelon was a nice, and refreshing, surprise. We also shared a potato pancake made with crispy red rice, topped with stewed cherry tomatoes, a fried egg and some spicy baby arugula. It was like Hannukkah had a baby with dolsot bibimbap. So many different tastes all in one bite; again, it was amazing.

My main dish was the semolina fettuccine with sweet corn and padrón peppers. Which sounds a bit ho hum, except that the peppers were the kind of spicy that made my nose stuffy (which is a good thing), and the corn was exceedingly fresh. There was not really a sauce other than the sauteed-y stuff exuded from the three sole ingredients. And maybe there was some behind the scenes magic, like butter, also. I ate almost the entire bowl. And it is pretty unusual for me to almost finish any dish, at any meal.

But dessert, well that was the best part. There were two choices (overall, the menu is incredibly spare, which I appreciated, given that all of our choices were done in a surprising, yet delicious, execution) of which they were a chocolate sorbet (with sea salt) made from some crazy chocolate from Ohio (which had a name that sounded like a Native American Indian tribe), and a dish of peaches macerated in grappa covered in fresh whipped cream. A giant, dreamy cloud of whipped cream, I might add. Rob was like, "We'll take both." Given that I rarely ask for the dessert menu, let alone order dessert, I was startled, but given the day we had just had, decided to go with the flow. 

The chocolate sorbet can only be described as, insane? In a superlative sort of way. One bite, and we all were like, "This is fucking amazing." But then we had to follow each intensely rich spoonful with a bite of peaches and cream as a respite. And then we decided to get crazy and mix a half spoonful of the sorbet with the peaches + cream and it was such a delicious match up, that we told the waiter that he ought to recommend to people that they should order both...that each dessert needed the other in order to feel complete.

Now, I am wondering how lame it is if I go back to Roman's tonight and order the exact same dishes. The only thing stopping me is what if it is not as good the second time, and then I get all sad? And albeit, the company of Dane and Rob were also what made the food taste so delightful, but still... I cannot get the perfect toothiness of the pasta or the richness of that sorbet out of my head.

ps. Our waiter was awesome, too. A nice guy with glasses.

photo by Elizabeth Lippman for The New York Times

A hot mess

photos by Okayplayer87

Dane, Rob and I went to the Rock the Bells festival today, on Governor's Island. It was insanely hot outside, and for whatever reason, I chose to wear my skinniest jeans — i.e. they were like wearing a mini oven on each leg. I think I had sweat stains behind my knees.

I had such high hopes for the festival, despite Rob's statement:

I am sorry that I never want to go to these hip hop events, but I honestly dislike rap shows.  

The sound is almost always bad, the artists consistently go on super late, and it ends up being just a ton of people on stage yelling.

I sound like an old man i think.

and yet, it was sort of exactly as Rob had imagined, but even more so visually overwhelming. 

Like the girls sitting behind us, where one of them was sitting all spread legged, wearing a pair of red underpants with a set of Rolling Stone lips all over the crotch. Totally, and disgustingly, distracting. Cause I could have been spending more time gawking at the couple sitting in front of us who brought their toddler, which unto itself was pretty crazy. And then they proceeded to smoke a spliff right next to their kid, as he was awake and sitting in his stroller. Girls were wearing high heeled shoes with fish net stockings and super tight cocktail dresses, or else their Timberland boots paired with baggy jeans and basketball jerseys that showed their bras underneath and did nothing to conceal the fact that they needed to lose at least 20 pounds. Hipster chicks from Williamsburg were wearing old skool tube socks paired with their Nike Dunks and high waisted shorts. One guy had on his freshest "killa bee" outfit where his wrist bands, head band and whatnot accessories all neatly matched the golden yellow of the Wu Tang logo on his black tee shirt. And there was Dane, Rob and I. Like three normal people floating within a sea of some of the craziest outfits I've ever seen. 

Hence the term hot mess.

We arrived right before Lauryn Hill went on, and while we were on the ferry, we were all like, "oh, we'll stay at least for Wu Tang, maybe leave before Snoop". And then some of the festivalites boarded the ferry, and started sitting on each other laps taking photos and being rambunctious, and we suddenly were like, "huh. maybe we will just stay through Tribe Called Quest." And then after trolling the field of broken down vegetation that could no longer be called grass, and parking ourselves in the midst of chaos and listening to the terrible feedback that kept screetching during Lauryn Hill's performance, we were like, "um, I could go now, if you all want." 

Sweet + Low Campaign

I am loving the new Sweet 'N Low campaign from Mother NY. I am not a big fan of the color pink, nor do I even use artificial sweeteners, but the appeal of the campaign is such that it makes me want to go out and buy a big box of the sweetener, if the little packets all had these super cute illustrations on them. 
The ads, drawn by two illustrators, Nate Duval and Jen Skelley, depict gleeful taste buds, a preening peacock, a sparkly owl, a pair of ladybugs, two birds and some kind of swirling design that might seem familiar to the cast of “Hair” — if not the cast of the recent revival, then certainly the cast of the original.

“In some ways, Sweet ’N Low invented the category” of sugar substitutes, says Michael Ian Kaye, partner and creative director at Mother New York. “A lot of the thinking was to reinforce that and give the brand a sense of bold confidence, to retain or regain its iconic status.”

“These ads are so connected to the experience of the product, which is a zero-calorie sweetener,” he adds, “and the ads are meant to be a zero-calorie sweetener” — that is, providing “a sweet moment that mimics” the use of Sweet ’N Low “with my iced tea, my lemonade, my coffee.”

The cues in the ads that suggest the ’60s and ’70s are intended to “recall that time when happiness and food went together,” Mr. Kaye says, and yet the graphics “felt very contemporary at the same time.”

It turned out, he adds, that the illustrators chosen for the campaign are “a couple, in a relationship, and that was a sweet thing, too.”

The concept going forward will be “to give people more sweet moments sponsored by Sweet ’N Low,” Mr. Kaye says, a mnemonic device “in the truest sense of the words.”

And as “different people’s sweet moments are slightly different,” he adds, each ad has and will have “a slightly different spirit,” but “always keeping pink and the packet.”

The Beauty of Data Visualization

Going Bananas

An excerpt from the NY Times Magazine, today, to continue my obsession with Chiquita's banana stickers (you can see my previous posts on this topic here and here...

This makes it all the more impressive that Chiquita has received so much notice by being creative with the little blue stickers that adorn its flagship fruit. The campaign involved using this inconspicuous and familiar little bit of branding turf for a visual experiment: instead of the familiar logo, the stickers carried bold and whimsical iconish face imagery — a monkey, a happy Cyclops, a vaguely anime-style girl, a luchador and so on. Using the same colors as the familiar Chiquita logo, the designs were genuine eye-catchers. 

And they may have caught even more eyes online than they did in the store: Chiquita set up a Web tool for people to whip up their own sticker drag-and-drop mixes, and an obliging public created more than 25,000 of them in less than five months, according to the company. This enthusiasm has led to a competition — 1,355 entries were submitted over several months, and online voting starts tomorrow at eatachiquita.com to pick 18 designs that will be stuck onto actual bananas. 

I spoke to a couple of Chiquita representatives about the popularity of the sticker-remixing stunt, and in less than 10 minutes they used word “emotional” at least five times — as in “designed to re-engage that emotional connection with consumers” or “really resonate on an emotional level.” Are people really emotional about their banana shopping? I suppose anything is possible. (Although probably the people who are most emotional about the Chiquita brand, really, would link it to a history of controversy over labor practices, the overthrow of the Guatemalan government in the 1950s and the $25 million government fine it paid in 2007 for paying protection money to paramilitary groups in Colombia.) I think the site Design:Related is closer to the truth when it points out that the stickers “just look cool.” 

According to the company’s Web site, the former United Fruit Company was “the first company to brand a banana” by introducing Miss Chiquita in 1944. (Originally she was an animated banana; over time she evolved into the woman in the unlikely fruit-filled hat.) Its use of little blue stickers began in 1963. In retrospect, that was a brilliant way to solve the problem of how to apply some version of branded packaging to an item that literally grows on trees. And emotions aside, I suspect that Andrew Ciafardini, a Chiquita assistant spokesman, hits the right point when he explains that the sticker-redesign campaign was driven in part by the question “How do we leverage the iconic real estate that we already have on all our bananas, throughout the world?” 

A big part of being “pop” anything these days is prodding the masses to participate directly; hence the contest. The hundreds of designs submitted — interestingly, contestants were asked to not riff on Miss Chiquita herself — take the sticker image into a huge variety of new graphic directions. By actually contributing to the defamiliarizing of something familiar, the contestants layer new “intrigue” onto one company’s supply of what is, after all, a pure commodity. 

Ciafardini says Chiquita is particularly interested in communicating to the under-25 crowd that the company offers the “convenient healthy snacking platforms that people are looking for these days.” (I believe that means bananas.) “You know,” he continued, “people want to be able to find a banana in the supermarket so they can eat healthy instead of picking up a candy bar.”
Obviously, anybody can find fruit in the supermarket.

What’s more unusual is the possibility that someone who’s looking for Chiquita’s product might be doing so just to see the stickers on a physical fruit — something that will be true again when the winning designs make their way into the produce section later this year. Now that’s a successful bit of design branding. The little sticker is the most minimal form of packaging imaginable, and yet it’s completely plausible that people will not only seek it out but also buy it. And as a bonus, it even comes with a banana.

Nike Air Max 360 + Goldfish = :)

NIKE78 - W+K Tokyo LAB | 'ABUKU -泡-’ from NIKE78 on Vimeo.
Link from Flytip, via Vimeo: 
"The shoes we received were AIR MAX 360, which emphasizes the air in the soles more than any other NIKE shoe. So we decided to create something based on the concept of air, the main quality of this model. What we did was keep the soles filled with air as is, but take off the upper part of the shoe and use it to mold a clear material into that shape. This became an aquarium for goldfish, a representative aquarium fish in Japan. What you can see from the relationship between a goldfish and air in this microcosm, a shoe, is the human society and the microcosm that contains it. It’s the relationship between the earth/nature and creatures, and the correlation between athletes and NIKE, who contributes to the characteristics of the human body by giving air to shoes. That is the thinking behind the name of this art piece, the ABUKU (Japanese “BUBBLE”). We hope that the people who see this small aquarium built on NIKE Air will stop to think about the artificial/natural environments that surround us and the connection between humans and other living creatures."

I wish: Design Fantasy Camp

Some one in the office is always in the know and posts these great things on the pin up board in the hallway. I have been so lame lately, that I have had to look no further for happy inspiration than the hallway about 20 feet from my desk. I know...things will improve shortly. This latest one, Design Fantasy Camp, is a cartoon from Lunchbreath's website. Check it out, here. I also love the below info graphics on Maslow's hierarchy of human needs and then a hierarchy of a dog needs.

How to choose the right typeface

...designed by Julian Hansen, a 22 year old graphic design student from Copenhagen, Denmark. His work is really lovely, and it makes me wish I had chosen to go to design school in Scandinavia. Not that I am knocking Carnegie Mellon and all, but seriously, I think that I might be such a better designer had I been educated in a more rigorous environment that most likely would have frowned upon using Scala Sans for most of my portfolio.

How he chose the right typeface for the poster...

Hasbeens

While searching for dog beds for Russian, through the six degrees of digital media separation I came across these super hot summer sandals from the Swedish company, Hasbeens. Their story is as follows: 

Her name was Anita and she was the hottest mum in all of southern Sweden in the 1970’s. While smoking Camel she screamed at her kids until her curlers fell out and just looked fabulous in her white high-heeled clogs.

One summer day in 2006 we found the shoes she wore (300 pairs of red, white and black beautiful clogs from the 70’s) in the basement of an old clog factory in the neighboring village and brought them to Stockholm. So for all these people that shared our love for Anita’s wooden shoes and for ourselves we started Swedish Hasbeens.   

That mental picture is so very Mad Men, and I love it. And consequently, I am torn between ordering the silver sandals and the Pisello green sandals. If they were not $200, I would order both. Technically, I think I actually deserve both, because I am a very nice girl and have had a shitty summer overall. But I think I ought to practice some restraint because I am not sure of the fit of this brand, and whether I wear a size 36 or a 37. They apparently run a little long, but a little narrow. Dilemma! The green is awfully cute, and I already own a pair of silver heels. Yet, silver is a more practical color and I could wear them with anything. Although, I could probably rock the green with everything as well. Help...

The Best Cupcakes in the City

1. Baked: If you're even remotely familiar with the baked goods scene, then the fact that Baked produces some excellent cupcakes won't come as a surprise. This Red Hook bakery makes some of the best goodies around, and their cupcakes delivered. The lemon drop was one of the overall favorites of the tasting, with bright flavors that reminded us of summer citrus and not jarred lemon curd. The vanilla was a big pick for best of its category, in that it really "tasted like vanilla" and had a light, fluffy texture. The chocolate got solid marks for "excellent flavor," despite being more cake-y than fudge-y. And the sweet and salty, a truly brilliant creation of a chocolate cupcake generously sprinkled with sea salt, made our tasters scream "wonderful"; "fluffy cake and frosting!"; and "wooooo, salty!" What more can you ask for? Baked: 359 Van Brunt Street, Brooklyn NY 11231 (map); (718) 222-0345; $2.50/cupcake

12. Buttercup Bake Shop : The chocolate from this long-time New York favorite got decent marks, with tasters commenting on a "very chocolatey" flavor. But the vanilla was ill-received, with notes of "crumbly cake" and "overly-sweet frosting." The red velvet had "good cake flavor" but still, the frosting was too sweet. The cupcakes were of a decent size and cake:frosting ratio, but some of the flavors let us down. Buttercup Bake Shop: multiple locations (locations); $2.25/cupcake


via Serious Eats

Backyards gardens

This morning I was reading the NY Times online and read about Alexandra Reau (click here), a teenager in Michigan who has her own CSA (community supported agriculture) farm with 14 subscribers. I was really blown away by her determination and dedication to such a large project that was/is obviously a tremendous amount of work. What a terrific summer job. At the same age, I was indoors in a permanent state of air-conditioned-ness, filing medical documents into alphabetical order, at a job that my mom got for me because she worked for the same company. While I certainly worked everyday, it leaves a lot to be said as to whether I worked hard at alphabetizing those documents, and it certainly was not as gratifying or as good for the environment in the way that this teenager's summer job certainly is. It makes me happy to know that the next generation is chock full of thoughtful, intelligent and resourceful children who genuinely care about their impact on the world. Now, we adults have to change our perspective as well. And it is more than just joining a CSA or recycling our water bottles, but rather we need to change how we see the world and the people in it. 

A sheep for today

Sheri sent this to me to cheer me up, knowing my extreme love for lambs. And it made my day, to be honest.

I heart Honey Bees

I have a particular fondness for honey bees. My great uncle John used to keep his own bees to pollinate his farm of fruit trees in western Pennsylvania, and I have really fond childhood memories of watching him collect their honey. And it helps that I also fell in love with the actual taste of honey about six years ago. So much so that I excitedly bought a jar of honey from Habana Outpost, a few year ago and then refused to eat it, because I cherished the idea of honey made a few blocks from apartment and I didn't want to use it up (um, hoarderistic logic?). The honey being made from bees that lived on the roof of a certain Mr. Howe's Fort Greene brownstone. Read more about that here. 

However, up until this March, it was illegal to keep honeybees in New York, as they were considered dangerous and venomous animals, you know, sort of like keeping a rattle snake in your apartment. However, at one time, honeybee hives were found on the roof of the Museum of Natural History and in Radio City Music Hall.I would have loved seeing bee hives on my way into seeing the Christmas Spectacular. 

And now that I have spent considerable time at Natty Garden, I just am in awe of the job that honey bees do for all of the plants...without them, we would not have any fruits or flowers. (I am also loving the butterflies, but that will be another post, another day.) And so for that, I am extremely grateful for their industrious little fuzzy bodies.  

In fact, "then there’s the health of the city. Take the honeybees of East New York Farms!, an organization of urban farmers and neighborhood farmers’ markets. These Brooklyn bees pollinate crops for the entire neighborhood. They aren’t just making honey: they’re building community, creating income and employment and maintaining vital urban green space." 

Go bees! You rock. 

ps. see my post here about Honey Bees from two years ago. It seems like the inevitable has finally happened. Something that made me happy before has come around again.