Last night I came home and found a ‘sled’ outside our apartment door. Apparently stores were completely sold out, but our little Ella *really* wanted to go sledding. My husband (being the king of hacks) went to a hardware store bought a tub and some rope and simply made one. My daughter was in heaven. While it did the trick and my daughter couldn’t care less about the aesthetics of the sled, I would prefer this Slalom Steerable Sled. Or the good old classic Davos Sled. (I grew up with these!)
By now the entire world knows that New York was hit by a huge blizzard last night. Being Swiss, I couldn’t be happier. Just so that you understand how much snow we got, watch this blizzard timelapse. It totally made me smile and go “more, more more!”
It was done by Michael Black and shot with a Canon DLSR on a tripod with a remote timer taking a photo every five minutes. Watch approximately 20 hours in 40 seconds.
(via @danblank)
I gave G a Vinyl Player for Christmas. How fun was it to see my daughter’s (4) eyes when she said: “What is that?” And “Oh, that’s a big CD” upon seeing her first record ever.
So, in the spirit of analog: Enjoy the below cinematographic ode to vinyl with the legendary Technics 1200 and Ortophon & Stanton needle in it.
Yay Analog!
(via Veerle’s Tweet)
Here’s to a jolly holiday season! Join us in having a real cheese fondue for the holidays! If you want my dad’s family fondue recipe, head over to Print magazine.
Kelli Anderson is a NYC based designer. An incredibly talented designer, I must add. But it doesn’t stop there. She also makes a killer Fudge. (Or Fuuuuuuudge, as she says.) We here at studiomates have been lucky to receive many of her Fudge deliveries in the past few months. Chewing on one of these pieces of heaven a few weeks ago, I asked Kelli if she’d be up for sharing her grandmother’s recipe. Of course, she said. So she went ahead, photographed her process and just put up this blogpost.
Make sure to check out the boxes she uses to deliver her Fuuuuuuudge in. They are handmade and oh-so-georgeous. Total killer!
During a lovely conversation with a young German designer, we both agreed that well established designers here in NYC are down to earth, humble and approachable. Something that is entirely not the case in Germany, she said. And I agree. I am regularly amazed at how lovely and humble so many of these super-established designers in our industry are. I never forget when I met Steff Geissbuehler for the first time. He sat down with me and we had a 20minute chat and bonded over our common Swiss roots.
Or take Michael Bierut who so generously agreed on giving a CreativeMornings talk in January of this year. Not only did he give a talk but a brand new talk on clients. (Anyone who knows how much time it takes to put a talk together must be equally humbled by this as I was!)
The list goes on, add Steven Heller, Debbie Millman, Paola Antonelli etc.
One of my readers pointed me to this wonderful article called The Kindness of Strangers by Jessica Helfand. I love the part where Jessica talks about Milton Glaser:
I have heard that Milton Glaser will never accept a social invitation if it means canceling a class, because his students come first. This makes him a rock star in my book, and makes me wonder if we should start teaching ethics in design school. If charity begins at home, how can we proclaim new and progressive agendas of social change without examining ourselves, our students, our profession?
Here’s to the rockstars in our industries that stay humble and approachable!
The Kindness of Strangers, by Jessica Helfand
I just backed the JELLOWARE project over on Kickstarter. I am truly hoping that these ladies will raise their $10,000 to develop this fantastic idea further. I can only imagine how much fun these would be at a kid’s birthday party. Heck, even in our studio!
Jelloware are biodegradable, edible (and vegan!) cups that are flavored to compliment the drink inside. You can eat your cup as you sip your drink, and any leftover remnants can be composted.
Join me in backing the Jelloware ladies?
GOOD Magazine featured this coat designed to help the homeless, and employ them. Design student Veronika Scott envisioned a way she could help, by designing a coat which could allow homeless people to stay warm, but also preserve their dignity.
Read the full story.
(via ideasareawesome)
Leave it up to House Industries to come up with this supercool building block set for Herman Miller Japan. Each set includes eight basswood children’s blocks dressed in House Industries numbers, shapes and patterns. The puzzle sides are based on the original Herman Miller furniture box that was used to deliver American modernism. House Industries then packaged the “box” in a miniature corrugated shipping carton. Apparently it took them a while to sniff out the tiny brown kraft packing tape. It was all made in the USA (Grand Rapids, Michigan) by Uncle Goose and Advance Packaging.
Given the 3 mio views on this video, yes, I am late to the game. But nevertheless, it made me smile. (My favorite: Joseph, we need to talk. I am going to be pregnant.)
(thank you sorella)
Yes, my robot obsession is in full force: Check out this Robot Wallpaper by Aimée Wilder. (gasp-for-air!)
(Thank you Caroline)
David Airey blogged about an interesting packaging project. Antrepo took a few examples of product packaging and stripped them back to the bare bones. It’s titled a minimalist effect in a maximalist market. Seeing more packaging like this would make me *so* happy! I caught myself buying energy bars or drinks just because their packaging was simple, unusual, not screaming in my face.
More examples on the Antrepo blog.
Whenever MUJI and LEGO team up, I listen. Check out this new Playing with LEGO® bricks and paper video below:
This set contains LEGO bricks and paper. A leaflet featuring example productions is included. Enjoy coloring, cutting paper and using the LEGO brick hole puncher. (sold separately)
Naughty or Nice? Which list are you on? Which button would you end up wearing?
The 1140 grid fits perfectly into a 1280 monitor. On smaller monitors it becomes fluid and adapts to the width of the browser. Beyond a certain point it uses media queries to serve up a mobile version, which essentially stacks all the columns on top of each other so the flow of information still makes sense. Scrap 1024! Design once at 1140 for 1280, and with very little extra work, it will adapt itself to work on just about any monitor, even mobile.
Download a Photoshop template of the grid at 1140px here. It’s based on how it’s displayed in WebKit, so it’s actually 1133px, as all browsers round sub-pixels slightly differently.
Read more about the 1140px grid.
(via unmatchedstyle)
In case your looking for an adorable ‘Christmasy Book’ for your little ones, have a look at The Christmas Giant by Steve Light. I’ts about Humphrey, a giant, and Leetree, his best friend, an elf. Together they love making wrapping paper for all of Santa’s presents. But this year Santa has asked them to grow a Christmas tree, and the pair couldn’t be more excited! They take great care with their project, planting and watering, snipping and pruning. Finally, the tree is wrapped and ready, and Humphrey and Leetree set off to deliver it. But when disaster strikes, the giant and the elf must come up with a way to make things right. From a small idea comes a big plan—and a surprise no one in Christmastown will soon forget!
Word Lens is a real-time translation app that turns your iPhone into “the dictionary of the future,” optical character recognition and augmented reality to translate text. he app is free in the iTunes Store, with various language pairs available for in-app purchase. The first pair released is Spanish-English, with more coming soon.
My head just exploded.
(via bigthink)
My lovely studiomate Maria Popova just surprised me with an early birthday gift: the Kids Growstick. Not only does it come in rainbow colors, it also will serve as the perfect mobile growth chart. As we are about to move in the new year, I didn’t want to start a growth chart on one of our door frames. This is excellent as it can be kept and handed over to our little ones once their older.
What an amazing gift for the rainbow-color-loving parent. Thank you Maria!
Ok, somebody has to stop me here, but thanks to TasteEtsy I have been digging out the *best* stuff on Etsy for the past hour or so (hence my back to back Etsy posts). Check out this Tree Swing made of reclaimed wood. How awesome? (spreading arms really wide and saying:) Soooo awesome!
A typographic wall decor with a clear message: Shut the front door.
This Giant Fortune Cookie Scarf made me chuckle. I found it via the brand new TasteEtsy.
Rob Kalin emailed me today telling me about a new Etsy adventure called Tastetest.etsy.com. It works by finding people who share your taste. You answer a few visual questions by clicking what you like and like magic, Etsy spits out products matching your taste.
On ‘my taste’ page are SEVERAL items I want to buy asap. The crazy thing is they give you a permanent url so you can go back and see what’s new.
Etsy, this is going to ruin me! (financially) But wheee, this makes me happy! Expect way more Etsy related blogposts. This makes finding gems a breeze. I am impressed.