‘the improvised life’ was going to be dark today, while we move a tiny bit slower AND work on a post for next Tuesday’s special Manhattan User’s Guide 2009 New York Blogger’s Holiday Guide. But while reading Kottke yesterday morning, I came across this swell little video essay by Matt Zoller Seitz from Moving Image Source. It’s called Feast: A Thanksgiving tribute to images of food on film. It’s a perfect apres-Thanksgiving, lazy-dog, savoring-the-day pleasure.
“Food is a uniter, not a divider. Read a political manifesto on the bus or the train and people tune out. Read a list of ingredients for timpano or green bean casserole or quail in rose petal sauce and they don’t just listen, they nod their appreciation and let out subtle little mutterings of pleasure. Recipes are family-friendly erotica. Who doesn’t love to eat?”
Not yet four months old, ‘the improvised life’ got its first public mention today, in Manhattan User’s Guide, a daily, often surprising, newsletter and website that is THE word on what’s happening in New York and beyond. Here’s what it said:
“NYC journalist, chef, and author Sally Schneider has launched, with several cohorts, a new, zeitgeist-perfect website that we love called The Improvised Life. From its immediately engaging design to its thoroughly appealing idea of ‘improvising as a daily practice’, a way of taking each day with a flexible, open-mind, we can’t get enough of the discoveries, observations, and tips therein, covering food, design, DIY, and more.”
After reading ‘ted muehling and the inspiration journal’, designer Pamela Hovland wrote about the many kinds of visual journals she’s kept over the years: “one for my garden, one for my house, one for my summer cabin in Minnesota (all of which are ongoing projects). I keep a visual journal for art and design inspiration, another for wardrobe inspiration (as sometimes I’ll attempt to make a skirt I’ve seen or ask a tailor to do the same). I even have a journal devoted to all things black and white.”
Pamela mentioned Jessica Helfand’s wonderful book Scrapbooks: An American History. That sent me on a path that expanded my view of what journals and scrapbooks can be. One of Helfand’s own scrapbooks commemorates the ritual cleaning of her graphic design studio; it includes bits of dead insect, chicken meat, angel hair pasta, a Prednisone prescription, and Clementine peel into glassine envelope. read more…
I stumbled on an archived post on Automatism of some pictures of jewelry designer Ted Muehling‘s New York City apartment. Blogger Lori had reprinted an article on Muehling’s apartment that she’d saved for years, from Maison Francaise in the late 1990′s. The place looks as appealing today as it did then (THAT’S style). In response, a woman named Joanna wrote “SO beautiful. i’m downloading these for the inspiration journal… xo”.
The Inspiration Journal. It reminded me of folders I’ve often kept of clippings from magazines: of spaces I liked, or ideas I wanted to pursue. Seeing pictures can help you bring to life your own ideas, as you take the gist, or a kernel, or a detail and run with it. Nowadays, it can be done digitally of course, and kept on a computer or printed out. An Inspiration Journal is a much better way of framing things than a “bookmark”. read more…
TED is a yearly conference (its motto is “ideas worth spreading”) as well as a website where you can watch videos of riveting talks by truly remarkable people. Some TED talks are so compelling that they continue to be blogged and referenced around the internet years after they first appeared, like Jill Bolte Taylor’s “My Stroke of Insight“. You can connect to the talks right at TED’s website, browsing categories like “ingenious, inspiring, funny, most emailed”. Or, you can see the whole amazing listing – YEARS of talks, 500 and counting – on this ingenious spreadsheet.
Hot tip: On each talk’s web page, to the far right of the video screen are the words “open interactive transcript”. Click it, choose the language you want, and you can read the talk, copy it, or click where in the transcript you want the video to start from. It’s a great way to really focus on some of the amazing things that are being said.
If you ever need a big dose of delight and wonder, watch David Attenborough’s 4 minute beauty of a video about the bower bird of New Guinea, who creates astonishingly-decorated homes using careful arrangements of orchids, tree ferns, moss, the shiny wing covers of beetles, orange fruits, glowing red leaves, acorns, black fruits…with a clear sense of aesthetics!
It reminds me of the way kids create fantastical houses out of whatever they find. Only a bird did it….(At least one leading naturalist of the 19 century thought the bower birds little homes were made by a race of pygmies.) read more…
When I clicked on the link to the spare typed list of principles entitled “Publish Local” posted on Reference Library, I came upon some wonderful, processy illustrations of them, along with a PDF of print-and-tape-on-the-wall-worthy signs – sixteen in all, in beautiful black-on-white type. At least the first twelve principles are reminders of a great path to bringing an idea into the world. If you tacked them around the walls of your workspace or office, you’d be sure to bring your idea to fruition, all the while keeping faith in your project. read more…
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 is whatever you choose to pay, which Good will donate to the non-profit of your choice. That is putting your money where your mouth is!))
Their latest project (in league with Babelgum) is asking artists, inventors, and thinkers one simple question: If there werent any pesky practical limitations, what world-changing device would you invent?read more…
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 drawing tool (unfortunately it doesn’t appear to be viewable online). It looks like they could be done by with pretty ordinary tools: read more…
I am blown away by Andre Michelle’s awesome visual music synthesizer, an instant d-i-y way for anybody to make charming syncopated Steve Reich-ish music that repeats endlessly. The more boxes you touch with your cursor, the more complex the tune becomes. If you get tired of a tune, continue to build it, listening as it evolves. (Also try clicking on the pale, tiny words under the synthesizer screen for other of Andre’s intriguing “studies”, or find them on the main menu.)
The synthesizer is the antidote to the workmen hammering outside my office window, providing a gorgeous meditative background sound that, along with ear plugs, blocks out the pounding on walls going on around me, and is perfectly conducive to working.
Bob Staake, creator of the charming children’s book Donut Chef and dozens of New Yorker cartoons, draws with a mouse using an ancient version of Photoshop. This video speaks volumes about the virtues, and humanity, of computer-generated art, and how fluid the process can be, once you loosen your head up (which this video will do). It instantly had me yearning for an accessible, fun drawing program. read more…
Pamela Hovland, the extraordinary designer who has been so essential to the design for The Improvised Life, often uses pages from magazines as her envelopes. Periodically, she culls compelling images from magazines, cuts them out with an Exacto knife and straight edge (or just rips them out, leaving a pleasingly rough edge), and folds each one into thirds to make an “envelope”. She inserts her letter inside and seals the edges with a bit of tape, or an adhesive seal. A self-stick address label provides a white space for the address. read more…
Shouldn’t a business card reflect/echo/transmit a sense of the business or person it’s representing?
If you’re in thinking of (re)designing your card, check out the outside-the-box business card that [Re]Encoded.com compiled. They are FUN and make your expectations shift instantly. read more…
. That sent me on a path that expanded my view of what journals and scrapbooks can be. One of Helfand’s own 
