If you haven't gotten your daily dose of knowledge today, try Learn Something Every Day. It is a fun little website hosted by the designers at Young which gives visitors a daily fact, spruced up with some quick sketches and bright colors.
Martijn Boskamp has an interesting idea about what to print on eggs: a cracking guideline, some inspiration, and cooking instructions. Each egg could be printed with a different possible use, such as omelet, a fried egg, a poached egg. Great potential advertisement for the versatility of eggs. (Found through Eat Me Daily).
Geography students from Kansas State University have mapped the Seven Deadly Sins as committed by US residents. The results are pretty interesting, and arguably predictable in many cases. I enjoy that the Greed and Envy maps are so reflective of each other. The sources of the data used to create the spacial distributions is unclear, but an interesting perspective none the less.
Do you know how many people are currently in space? ...6. How lucky.
The thought of taking photos from inside my mouth has absolutely never occurred to me. Maybe it should have, as the results are actually pretty amusing. Justin Quinnell has created a gallery of perspectives from inside the mouth. He calls the series Mouthpiece. The photos were taken using a pinhole camera.
My imagination is filled with the logistics of taking photos from inside a mouth...
Hello Haptic is a set of tactile flash cards. The cards are designed to teach blind children about the diversity of nature. One side of the card has a braille description of the environment, and the other side is a 3D, tactile representation. The cards are arranged by subject; Forest, Beach, and Zoo. Hello Haptic was designed by Hongik University, Industrial Design student Rhea Jeong. The project won her a Silver award in this year's IDEA competition.
This beautiful video by Charlie McCarthy captures the flight patterns of bugs, hovering around a street light. Fight Pattern was shot at long exposures, essentially visualizing the motion of each light bathed bug. The photos were strung together into a video of the ongoing movements.
One of the joys of using a search engine that gives auto suggestions based on popular searches, is that it gives you a small glimpse into the collective mind. If you've never tried this, stop what you're doing, go to your favorite search engine (I recommend Bing.com) and start to type a question. With each letter you type, the search engine provides new suggestions based on what everyone else is searching for. The results are almost always both fascinating and funny. Justin Talbot has put together a website called Question Suggestions which features his daily explorations into the human psyche through half formulated search questions.
Ha! I [heart] organ donation.
I could do with some sweet dreams (especially after listening to the This American Life Fear of Sleep episode... bedbugs... grosssss). These iDreams pillow from Studio Psyho might do the trick. The pillow cases allow for a range of dream choices, from flying, to boobs (yes boobs).
Rivane Neuenschwander's painting series Ze Carioca no. 4 is currently on display at MoMA. Rivane painted over a recently reissued Brazilian comic book series from the 1940s. The comic was a politically charged, but much adored Disney comic called Ze Carioca. In these pieces, the panels of the comic book are kept in order but the text has been blanked out, and the images painted over using the bright background colors of the original comic panels. The intention of the piece is for viewers to make their own stories up out of the emptiness, or to remember the stories from their own viewpoints, based on the titles.
(Found through Swissmiss)
J'adore Baggu. I've featured them a couple times here on One Floor Up, I give Baggu bags as gifts to all my friends, and I use them at the grocery store all the time.
I just ordered the new Baggu Produce Bags. There is a small and large net bag to put your produce in, instead of the disposable bags that you usually use to group your apples together for weighting. I'm looking forward to putting them into action.
Cardon Copy is an ongoing endeavor to show the power of good design and to beautify the streets. Designer Cardon Webb "hijacks" handmade fliers from the streets, redesigns them and replaces the originals with his upgrades.
Brilliant idea, that deserves to become a movement. I'm adding this to my To Do list. (Found through Sub-Studio).
Hunch is an interesting new website to help you find the right answer, make the right choice, or discover something you would enjoy. It was created and programmed by a bunch of MIT nerds (their words, not mine) that specialize in machine learning. The site asks visitors a series of questions to help make a personalized recommendation based on what other people like you enjoy. Each question is progressive, using your previous answer to determine what is the most useful question to ask next, in order to come to a recommendation. Hunch gets smarter the more people that use it, and the more you teach Hunch about your personality, tastes, and preferences. The types of questions Hunch provides answers to include "What book should I read?" "Am I a real Trekkie?" or "Should I grow my hair out?". Answers are sometimes a simple yes/no, but more often a series of 3 solid and 1 wild card recommendation.
Jon Rawlinson shot this beautiful video at Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium in Japan. The video is of the Kuroshio Sea, the aquarium's main tank, the second largest in the world. The tank holds 7,500-cubic meters of water and is home to rays, sharks, and fish.
This video is so relaxing. I could watch if for hours.
As part of his W+K's Platform application, Marcelo Pena Costa started an Analogue Twitter account. He set up a webcam while working on his project and wrote tweets live with a marker on paper, pinned to a bulletin board.
In my opinion, Analogue Tweets is actually a way more interesting idea than the project it was designed to document (I [heart] wires). This idea is so brillant, I'm filing it under Damn-I-wish-I-had-thought-of-that.
Is there such a thing as happily ever after? According to photographer, Dina Goldstein, the Disney notion of happily ever after needs a little reality check. Her series, Fallen Pricesses, shows fairy tale pricesses in real situations that women are faced with. Repunzel is dealing with cancer, an elderly prince is waiting for Sleeping Beauty to awaken, and Belle has self-image issues.
I think this series was intended to put me off of the idea of Disney pricesses, but in a lot of ways it made me see the need for them even more. Thoughts?
I found myself staring dreamily at the artwork of German artist Lineanongrata (a.k.a. Julia Freund). She has a imaginative, quirky take on the world. Her style is super sweet, with just a little bit of edge to it. I particularly enjoy her interpretations of nursery rhymes and fairy tales.
Check out her Etsy store of prints, buttons and greeting cards or her blog.
Street artist Dan Witzis previewing his newest project, Dark Doings. He has created intreging glimpses of narative through the windows of doors. There are two aspects of this work that make it particularly engaging. The implied exhibitionist aspect of subjects, and the voyeuristic aspect of the viewer. I'm wondering what my own reaction would be to passing this on the street. (Found through Wooster Collective).
I've been checking out the website for Trapp Family Lodge, (as in the Sound of Music von Trapp family) created by Tag New Media. It's a nicely designed website, with an emphasis on photos, which I think always reflects positively on a destination.
My favorite part of the website is the My Scrapbook. It allows visitors to the website to create a scrapbook of their visit (yes, their visit to the website) because, as they say, "we wanted our online guests to have the same opportunity to define what the Trapp Family Lodge is for them" as the real visitors. The scrapbook feature allows visitors to collect photos or ideas from the website into one place. User can then save or share the scrapbook with others. If I was trying to convince someone to go here, I would totally make them a customized scrapbook. I think this is such a good idea, and so well integrated into the site. It is also one of those good ideas that always ends up getting cut, so good on the Trapp Family Lodge for seeing the vision through. (Thanks @jstukey).
