Dialogues of Professionals: Billykirk

Billykirk from The Scout on Vimeo.

Brothers Chris and Kirk Bray have been producing leather goods for the last ten years. They launched Billykirk from Los Angeles in 1999, learning their craft from a third generation leather maker. A simple leather strap kick started the business, a decade later their collection has flourished into other offerings that consists of bags, belts, shoes, wallets, hats and other accessories. Since expanding and moving their operation to the East, they’ve employed a group of Amish leather makers to produce much of their line, while wrapping up production in their studio. Scout visited the brothers over the summer to observe their operation first hand and to discover the beauty behind the process.

Their shoulder pouch is one of my personal favorites.

(via Tim)

Trent Walton on Blogs

“There’s something sacred about reading a blog post on someone else’s site. It’s like visiting a friend’s house for a quick meal ’round the breakfast table. It’s personal — you’re in their space, and the environment is uniquely suited for idea exchange and uninterrupted conversation. In many ways, we should be treating our blogs like our breakfast tables. Be welcoming & gracious when you host, and kind & respectful when visiting.” – Trent Walton

(via Shiflett)

Ice Cream Bolt

Ice Cream Bolt. Of course!

(How wicked funny is Marc Johns?)

Consider me Hungry

I was browsing The Whole Food Diary and stumbled upon this Blueberry Pancake recipe. The result? Hungry!

(thank you Daniel)

  • 03 / 28 / 2012
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Cacti Clothes Lines

I wouldn’t mind having this Cacti clothing line set up in my backyard. Designed by Davy Grosemans.

(thanks Stijn)

Manifesto for Visual Culture



The manifesto for visual culture from Rencontres d’Arles.

(via explore)

♥ / Wazala!™

A big thank you to Wazala! for sponsoring this week’s RSS Feed.

Wazala is a slick, minimal and beautiful looking ecommerce store and shopping cart that allows you to sell physical or digital goods such as fonts, photos or music. You can create a store in minutes, then add it to your website, blog or even your facebook pages. It is that simple.

I am extremely intruiged by the fact that Wazala works as an overlay, which means your reader/potential customer won’t leave your site. (I like this feature so much I am using Wazala for my swissmiss shop.) If your customers are visiting on mobile devices, Wazala Touch provides a slick shopping experience both on the iPhone and Android devices.

If you are thinking about selling anything online you should consider Wazala!, just signup for a 15 day trial risk free.

(Interested in sponsoring a week of my RSS feed, learn more here.)

Stem / Citrus Spritzer

Stem, released yesterday, is a citrus spritzer designed and developed by Quirky’s online community. It enables you to evenly spray juice directly from a citrus fruit. This just seems too good to be true. Really, this things works?

Stem, $4.99

Ballet dancers in super slow motion

This video of Ballet dancers in super slow motion is stunning. If features Marina Kanno and Giacomo Bevilaqua from Staatsballett Berlin performing several jumps captured in slow motion at 1000 frames per second.

(via kottke)

Brooklyn Beta/Summer Camp

It’s a pretty special day for my studiomates Chris and Cameron, forces behind Brooklyn Beta, the friendliest conference I have every attended. With today’s launch of Summer Camp they are moving beyond just being a conference.

Chris and Cameron were inspired by what Y Combinator has done for developers and hope to show some of the same love for designers. Not at the expense of developers, though. Their ideal team has both a designer and a developer working together.

With Summer Camp they aim to help “designer-developer teams” build the next generation of web products and change the world.

With the Brooklyn Beta conference, Chris and Cameron try to help spread big ideas and connect designers and developers together. With Summer Camp, they want to take it a step further and remove what is quite possibly the biggest barrier of all, money.

It’s a 12-week program in the summer leading up to the conference. They invest $25,000 in your company for a 6% stake, and give you a lot more help along the way.

Summer Camp is part of the Brooklyn Beta nonprofit, so any gains made in this year’s investments will go right back into the community and hopefully fund the next round of Summer Campers.

And lucky me, I have the honor to be one of the Summer Camp advisors. At the ready to offer advice and experience. Check out the impressive advisor list:

Here’s what Chris and Cameron are hoping Summer Camp will fund:

“We are hoping to back big ideas looking to make a real impact. Don’t just make something for your peers. Build something that fixes the insanity of modern education. Or helps people weather the upcoming financial crises and rise in unemployment. Or improves the health of people around the world. Or brings neighbors closer together. Or helps people run small businesses. Or strengthens the bonds of families. Or puts existing abusive, mammoth institutions out of business (pretty please).”

Chris and Cameron deserve an internet hug for pulling this off.

More: Brooklyn Beta / Summer Camp

A Child’s Attention

The quickest way for a parent to get a child’s attention is to sit down and look comfortable. – Lane Olinghouse

(via quotegarden)

How Jumpers Are Made

Pringle of Scotland commissioned artist David Shrigley to create this humorous short animated film about life behind-the-scenes at Pringle to celebrate the brands return to Milan Fashion Week. Made me giggle.

(via der english blog)

Wild Promises

This bedding by David Shrigley made me laugh: Don’t make wild promises that you can’t keep.

(via TheFancy)

Unusual Umbrella Stand

(Photo by Masahiro Minami)

I noticed this interestingly shaped umbrella stand over on this Spoon & Tamago post covering this year’s senior thesis exhibition of the Kyoto City University of Arts in Japan.

Can anyone tell me the name of the student that created this piece? I’d love to add it to the post.

Make them Look Up

“We aren’t doing anything to make them look up!”- Neil deGrasse-Tysson

A quote by Neil deGrasse-Tysson on why kids spend all of their time with their heads down looking at Facebook and playing video games. Captured by my studiomate Rusty at the Natural History Museum in NYC on March 15, 2012.

Drawing Apparatus

This turntable driven Drawing Apparatus is quite fascinating.

(via appartmenttherapy)

Reject Group Grope

“Think about this: decisive, breakthrough creative decision-making is almost always made by one, two, possibly three minds working in unison, take it or leave it. Collective thinking usually leads to stalemate or worse. And the smarter the individuals in the group, the harder it is to nail the idea. Certainly in my experience as a mass communicator and cultural provocateur, I know this to be absolutely true: group thinking and decision-making results in group grope.”

Rule Nr.53 from Damn Good Advice (For People with Talent!), by legendary art director George Lois.

(via explore)

Cigarette Cards

Mrs. Easton has this unbelievable talent to find beauty in the ordinary. Pictured above are Cigarette Cards she dug up in the NYPL digital archives.

The Brain on Love

“A RELATIVELY new field, called interpersonal neurobiology, draws its vigor from one of the great discoveries of our era: that the brain is constantly rewiring itself based on daily life. In the end, what we pay the most attention to defines us. How you choose to spend the irreplaceable hours of your life literally transforms you.”

Article: The Brain on Love, by Diane Ackerman

(thank you Keren)

A Typographic Dating Game

Aura Seltzer pointed me her newly launched typographic dating game called TypeConnection that helps you how to pair typefaces.

Loft Resumes

Loft Resumes turns your vanilla-looking resume into a beautifully custom designed one that stands out from the crowd. Great idea for people that don’t have the design skills themselves.

(via Fab)

Minimal T-Shirts

Super minimal, graphical T-Shirts, spotted over on Vetted. Cross + Circle.

It’s Hard Being Two

My son is two. And let me tell you, it’s rough being two. Documented with this tumblr.

Reasons for Optimism

I thank the editors of Reasons for Optimism for their wonderful little corner they’ve created on the web. And I fully agree, with their statement:

“It’s easy to forget that in today’s not-so-optimistic world real progress continues, beauty appears, brave new worlds are explored, and creativity flows. We keep seeing–and occasionally finding–our best selves. There are, in fact, reason for optimism everywhere we look.”

reasonsforoptimism.com