Business cards can be so unimaginatively designed, that we are happy to post about innovative ones when we find them, as a reminder of the possibilities. We love this utterly succinct business card by Boris, although he got a good amount of flack about it on his site: some commenters complained that it doesn’t let people know what he does. It says enough for us; we get the gist (he is a”creative technologist” and general smarty pants).
It segues with an idea we’ve been meaning to write about: of buying blank business cards and then writing what you want on them ‘in the moment’, tailoring the info to the person you’re giving it to.. These days, many of us have multiple business and personal identities anyway—why not personalize a business card depending on the opportunity at hand? read more…
After the Japanese Earthquake in March, the nonprofit Bezos Family Foundation invited children to mail origami cranes to the Seattle headquarters of its Students Rebuild program. Each would trigger a $2 donation, up to $200,000. The group received more than 2 million and doubled the donation.
Last July, a truck full of the origami cranes was delivered to the Brooklyn studio of Brazilian artist Vic Muniz. The trove contained cranes from 38 countries, made out of all manner of foldable materials: hall passes, math homework, love letters, saran wrap, candy wrappers, restaurant menus, aluminum foil, vocabulary lessons, Kleenex. The smallest was the size of a thumbnail.
Muniz created a giant 36 x 40 foot mosaic out of them for a fund-raising poster. Said Muniz:
It’s alchemic. The idea worked because everyone wanted to help.
…bits of folded paper became symbols, that raised money, that help people in need, and became an artwork that raised money that….
(Video link here.) Hans Namuth‘s Jackson Pollock 51 is ten illuminating minutes of the abstract expressionist painter at work at his studio on Long Island. Pollock’s sparse words annotates his process in real time: simple declarative statements that give wonderful insight into an original, creative mind, like the idea that reacting against someone or something can be a way of discovering one’s own voice: “At the Art Student’s League…I studied with Tom Benton. He was a strong personality to react against.”
About halfway through, Namuth filmed Pollock making a painting on glass, filming from below to view Pollock through his glass canvas. An extraordinarily intimate view.
Read more about Namuth’s experience filming Pollock at Open Culture.
We totally love this collection by of elements and connectors for making whatever you want, designed by Louise Cohen. It is like a perfect fusion of built-it-yourself Lego/Tinkertoy/K’nex/ErectorSet-esque material for adults.
The CREATE YOUR OWN Collection is a building system consisting of 18 galvanized elements and 5 kind of connectors. According to individual desires unique living accessories can be composed.
Constructions for all kind of purposes can stand, lay or ride, hang from wall or ceiling. read more…
For a fat, liberating dose of inspiration, check out the long riff on Mondoblogo of chairs Italian Designer Gaetano Pesce painted in the nineties for his kids.
His “Open Sky” chairs are out-there, fun, wild, loose, and awesomely beautiful… read more…
We are slightly obsessed with the idea of using Lego’s to make functional objects that we can really use; it’s kind of a mindgame we play with ourselves that we hope to put into action one day, since you can now buy as much of any color Lego as you want at Lego stores across the country. We are inspired by two recent finds: London-based designer Sebastian Bergne‘s Lego greenhouse, that has live plants and vegetables growing within.. read more…
Those of you who have been following ‘the improvised life’ are familiar with our love of colored tapes, both for pure decoration and for dressing up a practical application. So you can imagine how excited we were to stumble upon the above zebra duct tape at Target last week. We went in search of more patterns and found them at DuckBrand—17 colors and 11 patterned tapes to be exact, including faux leopard, neon and a Chanel-ish black-and-white check. We imagine that a number of them would be really fun in a kid’s room, to decorate a package, to tape down an electrical cord, repair sneakersor even to fashion a chic, make-shift bandaid. You can check out the DuckBrand site for more duct tape “solutions,” which run the gamut from a duct tape “ax sheath” to duct tape wallets, satchels, bow ties and luggage tags. We even found a zebra’d tv on Google images. read more…
Speaking of tinkering, while we were culling photos from Artists’ Handmade Houses for our recent giveaway, we came across a photo of Constantino Nivola’s living room in his house on Long Island (see photo below). In the back corner, partially blocked by a chair, is an intriguing light made of Tinkertoys and shiny rolled paper. OMG, Tinkertoys! Unbelievably brilliant…so we went searching the internet for more pictures of his wonderful idea. We found only this photo, in which you can barely make out a fab ceiling light made of Tinkertoys: read more…
Somewhere along the way we came across artist Ernst Caramelle‘s wonderful painted walls. They were actually installations in various art galleries: walls as artworks. We want to take them home, or the idea at least…paint some of our space in his fabulous fashion. We notice, that his color blocks can dramatically change the proportions of a room, as you’ll see from this riff of pictures we found on the Mary Mary Gallery website. read more…
We’ve had Mary Delany lingering in the back of our minds since reading about her in the New York Times Book Review two months ago, in a review of The Paper Garden by Molly Peacock. Delany is the artist behind over 1000 beautiful botanical collages, like the one seen above, which use nothing but paper and a few found bits to recreate flowers and other plant-life in astonishing detail.
What speaks to us about Delany, however, is not just the richness of her work but the sadness and triumph in the story behind her art. read more…
A couple of months ago, we received an interesting comment thanking us for a quote we posted from John Cage’s A Year from Monday: “Even though I have 2 copies of this book, knew JC and spent 30 years performing his music, it was still great to see”. It was signed ‘Fast Forward’. Well of course we followed the trail.
We found ourselves on the website of a prolific New York city-based experimental composer who favors non-traditional percussion instruments made of…ANYTHING, from industrial paint cans to metal staircases (“basically one big piece of sonorous metal”). We instantly fell in love with Musique a la Mode in which all instruments were made from common kitchen items: pots, pans, bowls, cutlery, tools, food…(favorite moments: 1:40 mins where the spatulas seem to have a life of their own…2:45 a whisk in a metal sauce container….5:45 music made from pasta). We find ourselves running the video while we work just to listen to Fast’s music in the background.
Fast performs all over the world, created music for many of Merce Cunningham‘s event works, is the mastermind behind a participatory performance experience Feeding Frenzy (involving 5 cooks and 5 musicians, 5 waiters and an audience), teaches, photographs, makes art, and always, music. But what knocked us out, in addition to all this, was read more…
When the wooden knob came off our 50′s Danish tea kettle, we TRIED EVERYTHING we could think of make it stick tightly to its metal lid that would regularly got really hot. No longterm success. We finally put the kettle in the street hoping someone would find a use for it. We wish we’d known about Sugru, a silicone “modeling clay” that sticks to many materials including aluminum, steel, ceramics, glass and some plastics like perspex. You’ve got 30 minutes to mold it or use it as you want; after that, it’ll cure at room temperature, into a tough, flexible materials that is waterproof, and can withstand temperatures from -76′ to 356′F.
According to Sugru’s site, it is the brainchild of Jane, who was studying product design when she had an idea: “I don’t want to buy new stuff all the time. I want to hack the stuff I already have so it works better for me.” So she enlisted some materials scientists to help her develop a material that would allow her to do that.
We especially love their philosophy: “Hack things better. That’s our motto…It’s not about ‘making-do’, it’s about taking control of our stuff; modifying and improving the products we own so that they work better for us.”
YES!!!
We already have a ton of ideas for using Sugru, and ordered some in chic black and white.
You can buy it here, in packs of colors, or black-and-white, or small packs of single colors.
Lately, we’ve been finding LOTS of inspiration over at Design Milk an haute design blog that features cutting-edge products. But it’s usually not the products that call us; our eye pops right away to the background. Last week, we discovered a wonderfully geometric, d-i-y-able pegboard headboard in a feature about a lacy throw made of dye-cut felt. Yesterday we were instantly smitten by the concrete walls in a post about high-design furniture by Murmur. The walls appear to be concrete – one of our favorite materials – one color overlaying another in a sort of mottled way to make a pattern of cool, asymmetrical clouds. Or perhaps it’s concrete layered over old plaster. read more…
at Target last week. We went in search of more patterns and found them at 
for our recent giveaway, we came across a photo of 
by Molly Peacock. Delany is the artist behind over 1000 beautiful botanical collages, like the one seen above, which use nothing but paper and a few found bits to recreate flowers and other plant-life in astonishing detail.
