Resourceful.

i have to make

“In April of 2007, John Maeda quietly posted a haiku he had written to his blog. It was entitled ‘think-make-think,’ and to me it fulfilled the potential of Maeda’s simplicity. Over the next few months, that haiku often found its way to the forefront of my mind. When our studio acquired the remnants of a discarded arrow sign, it was clear to me that think-make-think was a perfect fit, both in form and function.”

—Clifton Burt

The second edition of ‘think-make-think’ is available from 20×200 for $50.

next year in brooklyn…

Forget being cast out of Egypt; this year Jews all over Brooklyn can sympathize with the families being evicted from the Atlantic Yards and have a topical Seder with this Atlantic Yards themed haggadah!

The youngest at the table can ask such questions as, “Why is it that in all other projects, the developer dips only into his own budget, but in the Atlantic Yards project the developer dips twice—$100 million from the state’s budget and $100 million from the city’s budget?”

Then once the kids find the afikoman, everyone can sing “Had Bruce Ratner only given us the Atlantic Center Mall— Dayeinu! It would have been enough!”

Download a copy of the four page haggadah here.

Jaya Saxena, Gothamist

via Gothamist

i like you

i like this print by Mike Monteiro.

Available from 20×200 in three different sizes.

this-century modern

Times are tough…so when Chris and Dolores became obsessed with the idea of having a classic George Nelson Platform bench (modern repros going for about $700) they decided to make one themselves…out of lego.

1400 bricks later, this is the result. Check out their blog to see how they did it…or watch the stop motion video below.

via casasugar

sesame cd

Now this is resourceful design!

Rodrigo Piwonka’s CD spindle-bagel-lunchbox is brilliant.

via Inhabit via Superuse

live close or die!

If everyone in the United States lived in an area with the population density of Brooklyn, all 300 million of us could supposedly fit in New Hampshire!

Thanks Evan!

via cartophilia

party blower

When Pifzer wanted to mark Viagra’s 11th birthday, they wanted to do it in typical, tongue-in-cheek Viagra style. A party blower (featuring a Viagra pill pattern) was created to hand out to internal sales teams. The message on the piece encouraged the sales teams to ‘Celebrate Viagra’s 11th birthday’.

The ad agency responsible is Taxi, Canada. Very clever!

via ads of the world

burgervetica

David Schwen is ‘on a roll’ with this tasty typographic cheeseburger. Buy the shirt at Threadless for $18.

fake forest

Most old toys have a direct and unembarrassed manner. In a good old toy, there is apt to be nothing self conscious about the use of materials. What is wood is wood. What is tin is tin. What is cast is beautifully cast. It is possible that somewhere in all of this is a clue to what sets the creative climate of any time…including our own.

Charles Eames
“Toccata for Toy Trains” (1957)

Each time I see a cell phone tower disguised as a tree I think of this Eames quote. I am one of those people who likes seeing windmills, powerlines and infrastructure. What is that lone Grand Sequoia doing in the middle of the Hutchinson Parkway? It is more out of place than the structure it is hiding. That said, I love these things. They say a lot about the “creative climate” of our time.

I also love Robert Voit’s New Trees photo series.

In New Trees, Robert Voit employs delicate irony to demonstrate that the background noise of verbal communication, so to speak, has long since reached the visual domain.  —Christoph Schaden

A forthcoming book entitled: Robert Voit: New Trees will be available in 2010. Published by Steidl International. Pre-order one now from Amazon for $36.54.

Continue reading…

save the date

In Chungking Express by Wong Kar-Wei, Cop 223’s girlfriend May broke up with him on April 1. His birthday is May 1 and he decides to wait for May for a month before moving on. Every day he buys a tin of pineapple with an expiration date of May 1. By the end of this time, he feels that he will either be rejoined with her or that their relationship will have expired forever.

I’m not sure why I like reading expiration dates on things, or the names of the women who inspect the brown paper bags…or my jeans (though I haven’t had an ‘inspected by’ tag in my new jeans’ pockets for quite sometime. Do they do that anymore?)

Melanie Favreau has taken notice of the ubiquitous little expiration date tags found on bags of bread and has turned them into sterling silver pendants. You pick the date. They are $45 each at Supermarket.