GOOD is at once magazine, website, blog, video series, community, and events devoted to exploring what good is and what it can be. A collaboration of individuals, business and non-profits, they invite everyone to become of a member of the GOOD community: “Please join us in defining what comes next.” (The subscription price for their magazine…
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D.A. Blyler wrote the Seven Vices of Highly Creative People in reaction to the grumbling he was hearing about people working in offices where Stephen Covey’s bestseller The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People had been implemented. Personally, I’ve found Covey’s book to be strangely unreadable, and relate much more to Blyler’s recommendation for sex, cocktails, and gastronomy – specifically…
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Ruth Fankushen Kunkel wrote An Alien Robot’s Cookbook for her boys who were picky eaters; she needed to find a way to engage them in eating and making wonderful food. It begins: “Due to a random mechanical error, I traveled to Earth without warning…I finally crash-landed…
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Dish racks and kitchen storage systems are among the most disappointing offerings in stores; it’s hard to find one that really functions well and looks great. The design group Studio Matière has designed a kitchen storage system built of pine splints in an irregular, ladder-like grid that can hang from a tree branch, or be…
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“I guess you win some and you lose some”, my friend Keith Stewart wrote in an email. “Last year was a winner. This year, I think, will not be.” Like many farmers in the Northeast, Keith’s tomatoes have been hit hard by late blight, the same spore-born disease that caused the Irish Potato famine in the…
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When I opened the little tin of Pimenton de la Vera, the aroma of sun-dried peppers, smoked-over-smoldering-oak-fires hit me full in the face. The pungent, vividly-colored spice from Andalucia that is the essential flavor in chorizo, triggered all sorts of associations and “what if’s”: “What if I sprinkled some on warm smashed hard-boiled eggs, or…
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Years ago, when I was putting together my very make-shift kitchen, I searched and searched for a pot rack that was the opposite of the ones that seemed to be everywhere – clunky or “country”-ish, overly ornate or verging on Medieval. Nothing I found accommodated my personal pot rack idiosyncrasies that includes not liking pots…
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Right after I posted “Are you a secret lighting designer?” about down-loadable lamp shade plans and cool, flame-proof materials to improvise with, I came across this really inspired, inexpensive, endlessly useful clip-on lamp shade for sale at tweek. It’s just about perfect for hanging bulbs or wall fixtures. Still, I couldn’t help falling into an…
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The brilliant Maira Kalman has done another wonderfully illustrated op-ed for her periodic blog “And the Pursuit of Happiness” at the New York Times. This time, it’s about the nature in invention, starting with Benjamin Franklin … He believed in doing good. He made charts and had daily goals… ….He saw a dirty street and created…
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I recently stumbled on a useful “how-to” of a necklace designed in the 1940’s by Anni Albers, the great textile designer and weaver who was a member of the Bauhaus, and a founder of Black Mountain College. The necklace, made from metal washers, laced together with grosgrain ribbon, is an example of ordinary elements combined…
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When her spirits were flagging, or she just needed a little vacation from everyday life, my mother would take me to a Greek restaurant near the theatre district in New York City. We would always order a rustic dish that is a classic in Greek cuisine: cold sliced beets with a garlic sauce known as…
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I was passing by the Kate Spade store on Fifth Avenue on my way to the farmer’s market the other day, and found myself walking on beautiful colored stripes painted on the sidewalk; they seemed to stream out of the store’s stripey interior – a great, simple idea. Why not paint a sidewalk, or any…
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I’ve come across a number of posts about furniture made of pallets, those flat rectangles of rough hammered-together wood platforms commonly used to move bundled goods around by a fork lift. This lounge chair by Studiomama is a particularly good one; it has clean lines and looks like it would be comfortable – perfect at…
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This morning in my Inbox I found a post called “Making it up as you go along” from Seth Godin’s blog. It was one line long: “Just wondering: Is there any other way to make it up?” I had to read it twice to get Godin’s teeny Zen post. Making it up – improvising – is about…
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Over the past few months, I’ve found myself clipping pictures of walls decorated with groupings of simple, often primitive round or oval objects that make for a clean, unexpectedly modern design. Repetitions of baskets, plates, wooden bowls become a great deal more than the sum of their parts: abstract patterns made of “storied” elements.
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Designer Abby Clawson, creator of interesting Hi & Low blog, devised a series of playful, big-relief-from-the-usual- fax cover sheets. She made them in response to an exhibit called “FAX” that she saw at the Drawing Center in New York City; artists, designers, thinkers, film makers were asked to conceive of the fax machine as a…
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