reactions

I love great editorial design. One of things I am especially drawn to is when publications hire a typographer/designer to enhance their headings and do something definitively different  for an issue. Granted the typography in this week’s New York Magazine is not the most legible face, but I do love it!

This past weekend a few friends and I (including our new intern Kirsty from England) went to check out the Os Gemeos (pronounced “ose zhe’-mee-ose”) show entitled “Too Far Too Close” at Deitch Gallery. Unfortunately Saturday was the last day of the show, but I wanted to post some of the images that my friend Sean took because the small detail and intricate stencil work was really great and made the show. I wasn’t sure that the overall aesthetic of these Brazilian Artists is exactly my taste, but the show was impressive — not only because of the scale and abundance of work, but for the two brothers’ ability to maintain their distinct style without it feeling repetitive or overdone. All and all, it was a fun show with sound effects and camera’s rigged into the larger installations.

We followed up the gallery show by going to to the IFC’s screening of the documentary Beautiful Losers about at DIY art collective from the 1990s (who is still largely working). The movie has been a long time coming, but was well worth the wait. It was amazing, go see it!!

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Last weekend at Terrain I spotted a line of beauty products by Akhassausa that are beautifully designed. Their two small lines, nature and retreat, are differentiated by accent color. The floral graphic on the bottles is part of Akhassausa’s identity and helps to brand the company while adding a nice graphic touch. I was immediately drawn to the “wooden” tops — they looked especially great in Terrain’s spa section amongst the aged wooden displays tables (see image in-store below). I was disappointed when I realized that the tops were actually printed woodgrain on plastic! I suppose real custom wood tops would drive the production cost far above the products’ price point, but still what a bummer! Although environmentally speaking, which is worse, plastic tops or wood?

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Last week we received the final printed elements to assemble our new business cards! The design capitalizes on the ideas of DIY and sustainability. The colorful cards are cut down from makeready press sheets. Makereadies are used by printers to help prepare the press. The sheets are imprinted multiple times creating beautifully random patterns.The contact information for each card is printed on a strip of label stock that wraps around the card. This allows us to continue to assemble new cards from recycled press sheets. The labels were printed on a 100% recycled stock by Rolling Press a local, eco-friendly, wind powered printer. To us, “going green” means looking beyond recycled paper and soy inks and actually considering the entire lifecycle of a piece. This business card is the perfect blend of materials and messaging. We love to work with unique materials and we are excited when we have the opportunity to re-purpose old materials (which is even more eco-friendly than recycling). The end result is a business card that we hope you will hold onto — saving the materials from a trash can or recycling bin. Detail shots of the cards are posted below.
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To Celebrate the opening of an Ikea in Brooklyn (finally) I thought I would share the Swedish Furniture Name Generator. Kinda fun, kinda stupid, but as an Ikea fan, I couldn’t help but love it a little. Enter your name and find out what you would be called if you sat upon the shelves of IKEA. Above is The Swedish MSLK Chair: The MSJLLK!As for the new Ikea in Red Hook, I have not been there yet, but Ellen and Jason brought back positive reviews last weekend. How can you not love an Ikea that you can take a Water Taxi to? Oh what I would have given last summer to not have been stuck in Holland Tunnel traffic on my way to Elizabeth, NJ after moving for two days. I am excited that now furnishing an apartment on a budget in Brooklyn will be a little less painful, well until you have to assemble the furniture…

This past Memorial Day weekend marked the 125th Birthday of the Brooklyn Bridge. The City Reliquary (an odd little museum dedicated to NYC artifacts) located in Williamsburg organized their annul Brooklyn Bridge Birthday Bike Ride. My best bike buddies and I were on hand and at the front of the pack for the ride. With three police escorts and about 40 riders, we were an eclectic bunch transversing the streets of Brooklyn. As soon as the group assembled on the bridge promenade there was a brass band on hand to help us sing happy birthday to the bridge. A museum member did a dramatic retelling of the bridge’s history as birthday cake was passed out to the crowd. It was an awesome Brooklyn tribute.

In addition to the festivities, I was able to check out the new signage and fiber optic LED installation that was revealed last week at the pedestrian walkway entrance in DUMBO. My good friend, Adam Tanski in conjunction with Andrew Simons at Emphas!s Design has spent the past year designing the project. Read more about the project here. Nice work guys, it looks great! I have posted some images of their work below.

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My friend Sean had his birthday shindig this past Sunday in Fort Green at the Habana Outpost — which turns out to be one of the greatest summer hang-outs in Brooklyn. The main outside eating area is a converted parking lot full of picnic tables made from recycled materials. The place was packed with Brooklynites indulging in frozen Mojitos and Margaritas, bottles of Corona by the bucket, and delicious organic food that is served-up from a kitchen within converted postal truck. On Sunday nights they project a movie on the wall of an adjacent building. This past Sunday was a NYC classic, The Warriors.Besides the perfect atmosphere, the Outpost is one of the most eco-friendly places I have been. Most everything in the restaurant has been up-cycled, the eatery is powered by renewable energy and it has many sustainable features including a rain water renewal system, a state-of-the-art solar awning, and my favorite, a human-powered bicycle blender (you get a dollar off your smoothie if you pedal). Not to mention the waste they produce is 100% biodegradable in their compost because they use corn “plastic” cups, potato starch cutlery, and sugarcane plates.
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We ordered snacks from the local pizza shop for the Spark meeting being held here at the studio tonight. Marc noticed this great little double negative on the pizza box. Rule: if you use a symbol then you shouldn’t have to write it out as well. In this case, the designer ended-up communicating the opposite of what they really meant. “Say NO to no drugs” = DO, do drugs. Actually, why is the anti-drug message even on a pizza box?

Say what you will about corporations jumping on the green band wagon. Yes, it’s annoying, but hey, even if the motivations are a bit transparent, I’m all for any positive eco changes. I recently received a flier in my last T-Mobile bill promoting their new campaign to get customers to go paperless. Now granted, I’ve signed up twice online to get paperless but I inevitably keep getting a bill by mail (and yes I know — a flier to go paperless, mehh) BUT I thought the promotion was pretty cool.

T-Mobile has partnered with the Arbor Day foundation on a their Restoration Project to plant trees in weather damaged regions of the US like New Orleans and Southern California. For every customer who goes paperless, they will plant a tree on their behalf. So yes I have signed up again, maybe the third time is the charm and hopefully a tree will be planted too! Sign up if you are a T-Mobile’er too. Happy Earth Day!

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Thanks to Veer’s member handbook we had a little something special to perk-up this week’s Monday Morning Meeting. I tend to love everything that Veer does and this little promo is no different. The super official member handbook is full of clever copy and design related riddles. The best page by far is the spread of secret handshakes. Note above: “The Mouse,” “The Crop,” “The Thumbnail Gallery” and “The Keyboard”. I have posed detail scans below so that you can get each handshake down for the next AIGA event, ha! The MSLK favorite is definitely “The Crop”.

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