If you pinch your nose with your fingers, usually it means you smell something awful. If you’re a trader on the floor though, that’d mean ‘Gasoline’ (not too far an association, I might say). An interesting set of hand signs over at New York Times.
There are quite a few bag designs in the series, though I particularly liked how this Square Bag designs by the Dutch design group XS-M-L takes the familiar bag-toting posture on the shoulder, and highlighting it through the kidney-bean shaped opening. A bag to wear and not to carry – interesting! Check out other interesting works too – the site is in Dutch though.
I wonder if this elephant takes freelance work, or if it has a gig on fiverr.
“Real people going on game shows. When we were kids, we’d watch ‘The Price is Right,’ and the contestant would have curlers in her hair — she’d look like your neighbor next door. Real people got a chance to shine. Now, everyone comes out of some stupid mold from a moronic casting director’s idea of what is exciting to watch. All the reality is removed.”
“Dictionaries and encyclopedias. They’ve been replaced with Google, Wikipedia and online dictionaries. It’s been years since I looked at the dictionary or encyclopedia on my family’s bookshelf.”
True blind dates. “In the beginning, courtship on the Internet extended this trend. It was the place where, literally and figuratively, no one knew you were a dog. No longer. Now, if a friend sets you up with someone, and you don’t automatically Google that person, check his or her “relationship” status on Facebook and do a quick vetting via Cheaternews.com (the modern answer to stocks and pillories), one might question if you are really fit to date at all. “
Interesting perspectives on what is lost in each generation – Washington Post Magazine asked experts, celebrities and average Joes to cast their minds back to objects, habits and paradigms that have been left behind just in the past couple of decades. What habits/products/items have you shed?
I’m sure you can recognize the context of these photos, even though they’ve been recreated in LEGO sets – some very interesting photography art by Balakov in his Classics in Lego Flickr set!
(Pic: Ryan Block leads Engadget (left), Brian Lam leads Gizmodo)
If you’re a gadget/design person (like many industrial designers are, I’m sure), you’d certainly have come across Engadget and Gizmodo, the twin titans in the consumer gadgets arena. And if you’re a frequent visitor, you’d certainly also notice a less-than-friendly relationship between the two blogs, as in any good ol’ fashion rivalry, with each blog racing to bring the latest and juiciest in gadget-o-dom. But just how bad (good?) is it?
Wired has a rather comprehensive and interesting look behind the scenes, outlining how much the bloggers do to get an edge over the other. In a battle for online eyeballs lusting for gears, speed and exclusivity is indeed critical – many times it can really boil them to a matter of minutes for one blog to earn the bragging rights for being the first to cover major product releases. Much like high-school fraternity rivalry, perhaps.
Describing the ‘war strategy’ for Gizmodo during the Consumer Electronics Show (the SuperBowl equivalent in Gadget-dom) coverage, for instance:
No wonder Lam has been devising his CES strategy for the past 12 months. As soon as the 2007 show ended, he made a 2008 reservation at the Hilton, the hotel closest to the convention center, to serve as Gizmodo’s war room and “infirmary” for bloggers needing a midday break. He also reserved a block of rooms at the Imperial Palace because it was close to the Las Vegas monorail. That meant his writers could avoid the hour-long taxi lines that have come to define CES. And, of course, Lam expects his staff to sacrifice for their art. “In Thai boxing, the trainers don’t allow their fighters to have sex for two weeks before a match,” whispers Lam, a onetime kickboxer, “and the trainers can tell if they have, because it makes them lazy.” He shakes his head and pokes an accusing finger at one of his bloggers.
Head on for the full article.
Someone toyed with Google Suggest (Google Suggest guesses what you’re typing and offers suggestions in real time) with some rather interesting (and sometimes funny) results. If you’re feeling like it, have a go yourself! You never know what profound insights you might get from an innocent question.
If you’ve enrolled in an average Economics 101 classes, you’d probably be spending time on (deceptively) simple-looking graphs and chanting mantras like ‘quantity demanded falls as price increases’ and such. But questions like those below are what (I think) makes the subject much more interesting:
Robert H Frank, an Economics professor at Cornell University hands off this assignment to his students :
Use a principle, or principles, discussed in the course to pose and answer an interesting question about some pattern of events or behaviour that you personally have observed.”
In addition, they were not to use academic buzzwords (which I personally think Economics have too much of). “Imagine yourself talking to a relative who has never had a course in economics. The best papers are ones that would be clearly intelligible to such a person, and typically these papers do not use any algebra or graphs”.
There are some rather interesting results from the assignment, as students attempt to explain the apparent paradoxes of life using economic lenses. Not sure how much of them are really true – but interesting perspectives nonetheless, I think. Here’s the link to about 15 examples.
This simply amazing book by book and graphic designer Marion Bataille floored me – it’s really delightful to watch how those 3D alphabets pop up, morph into the next, etc. – it’s like watching a live magic show:
From the lenticular cover that changes with the angle of your hands, all the way to the Z, ABC3D is as much a work of art as it is a pop-up book. Each of the 26 dimensional letters move and change before your eyes. C turns into D with a snap. M stands at attention. X becomes Y with a flick of the wrist. And then there’s U… Boldly conceived and brilliantly executed with a striking black, red, and white palette, this is a book that readers and art lovers of all ages will treasure for years to come.
You can order it on Amazon here – it’s only $19.95! On my wish list it goes!
I’ve always loved Method – I think they set the standards in household cleaning products – their tub scrub bottle is no different, with a well-resolved slot for the inevitable cleaning pad that goes with scrubbing. It just show the thought and sensitivity that the designer had (my scrubbing pad is always tugged in between the wall and some pipes in the bathroom – who knows what grows on it?).
