A Spacesuit Ballet

- The New York Times shares refreshing Wine Spritzers for this upcoming long weekend. (via @onehungrymama)

- How To Customize The WordPress Admin Easily

- Geek Alert: Turn your MacBook eject key into a rimshot button

- A dress made out of IKEA bags.

- I would love to do a LEGO Inside Tour.

- Clay Shirky describes five student projects that he thinks are pushing the creative boundaries – from interface design to how people cluster to build new work.

- Oh my! Pixar is looking to hire a Systems Assistant. PIXAR!!

- Beach Days!

- How Jeff Croft is implementing responsive web design.

- Yoga Breakdance. Wow. (via @erinkissane)

- Herman Miller has a pop up shop in Soho until July 1st

- The No Button – A Parent’s Best Friend

- When I was a kid, I loved to make garlands. Here’s a tutorial for a quite charming one.

“Facing a sea of infinity, it’s easy to despair, sure that you will never reach dry land, never have the sense of accomplishment of saying, “I’m done.” At the same time, to be finished, done, complete–this is a bit like being dead. The silence and the feeling that maybe that’s all.”

From Dancing on the edge of finished, by Seth Godin

In.gredients is a new package-free grocery store that is opening in Austin, Texas in the Summer of 2012. Its mission as the US’s first zero-waste, package-free grocery store will support local businesses and farmers, will sell based on seasonal rhythms of farming, will avoid processed foods, will reduce transportation costs and pollution, and will encourage customers to bring their own reusable containers.

(via thekidsshouldseethis)

This Mason Jar Drink Dispenser gets my two thumbs up. Summer! #wishlisted

These Etsy Chalkboard Tablets are wonderfully charming, in an old-school way.

(via cielbleu)

Reel by Yeongkeun Jeong creates some (unusual) bike storage in the main triangle of your bike. Wow!

Hey Australia, my fab studiomate Frank Chimero is coming to your neck of the woods this June. Make sure to grab a ticket for one of his talks in Brisbane, Melbourne or Sydney. More info over on portable.tv

Lucky Ducks!

Oh, and, buy his book! It’s fantastic!

Let’s admit it, you take most of our photos with your iphones these days, right? So, why don’t we then all put a case around it that will make it look like a camera? That’s exactly what SNAP! does.

I realize, this is slightly silly, but in my book, silly is good.

My friends over at the Heads of State just launched a sweet new project that will appeal to everyone that has ever experienced a serious case of Wanderlust.

Pilot & Captain is about the good old days of planes, trains, and discovery. What started as a series of vintage inspired travel posters has grown into its own company. For the maiden voyage they have ten shirts from ports of call around the world and a new print series!

Absolutely love this!

I am a big fan of Black + Blum. Their dish rack makes me happy every single day.

2. The “I know what features to build” flaw

3. Focusing on the launch date

4. Emphasizing execution instead of testing, learning, and iteration

5. Writing a business plan that doesn’t allow for trial and error

6. Confusing traditional job titles with a startup’s needs

7. Executing on a sales and marketing plan

8. Prematurely scaling your company based on a presumption of success

9. Management by crisis, which leads to a death spiral

9 Deadliest Startup Sins, by Steve Blank

(via collaborative fund)

Wazala is a slick, minimal and beautiful looking ecommerce store and shopping cart that allows you to sell physical or digital goods such as fonts, photos or music. You can create a store in minutes, then add it to your website, blog or even your facebook pages. It is that simple.

I am extremely intruiged by the fact that Wazala works as an overlay, which means your reader/potential customer won’t leave your site. (I like this feature so much I am using Wazala for my swissmiss shop.) If your customers are visiting on mobile devices, Wazala Touch provides a slick shopping experience both on the iPhone and Android devices.

If you are thinking about selling anything online you should consider Wazala!, just signup for a 15 day trial risk free.

(Interested in sponsoring a week of my RSS feed, learn more here.)

Self-respect is a discipline, a habit of mind that can never be faked but can be developed, trained, coaxed forth.
- Joan Didion

(via explore)

My personal highlight of this year’s ICFF was meeting the folks behind Flat Vernacular. They are a Brooklyn-based design company that specializes in original hand-drawn, hand-printed wallpapers. At ICFF they showed me their brand-new glow-in-the-dark wallpaper. It made me squeal! I couldn’t find it on their site but I think to remember they said it will be up soon!

And get this, if your budget allows, they will make you custom, one-of-a-kind wallpaper. Consider this is on my personal wishlist! Also they told me that everything’s designed in Brooklyn and printed upstate. That makes me happy!

Yay for Wallpaper!

A whisper in a quiet room is all you need.
- Seth Godin

(Ranking for signal to noise ratio, by Seth Godin)

One of my favorite places in my Brooklyn neighborhood, The Invisible Dog Art Space now has a song thanks to Jonathan Mann.

Lucien Zayan must have been smiling all day as I was able to spot a rainbow over the Invisible Dog from my house tonight. Somebody please make a documentary about Lucien and his story/love for The Invisible Dog. It’s touching and we need more of this.

A Readlist is a group of web pages—articles, recipes, course materials, anything —bundled into an e-book you can send to your Kindle, iPad, or iPhone. It’s the latest, brand new, Arc90 lab experiment, powered by Readability.

This. Is. Awesome. // Gasp for Air!

I just started a Readlist titled “Advice for Students“. Do you have articles I should add?

Lovely new Aesthetic Apparatus print: Miles Davis

“When launching a new [digital] product, let’s focus more on discussing its PURPOSE and less UI details and features.”
- Fictive Cameron

This might be my new favorite housewarming gift for my friends moving to the suburbs: Key Hiding Rock.

Number Mugs. I am all for #8!

DIY just added the explore stream which makes me want to go home and make something with my kids asap. Kids crafts/art is the best.

Photo by Wim de Leeuw

The Courtesy Table by the Dutch designer Marleen Jansen is low on the practicality scale but wins lots of points for its entertainment and sculptural factor.

(via kidsroomzoom)

Made me smile: 8-bit Zelda Fireplace Art.

This magnetic hammer design by Jung Soo Park is brilliant. Watch a video here.

(via Design Milk)

“If we have goals and dreams and we want to do our best, and if we love people and we don’t want to hurt them or lose them, we should feel pain when things go wrong. The point isn’t to live without any regrets, the point is to not hate ourselves for having them… We need to learn to love the flawed, imperfect things that we create, and to forgive ourselves for creating them. Regret doesn’t remind us that we did badly — it reminds us that we know we can do better.”
- Kathryn Schulz

(via Brain Pickings)

Not sure what to think of this concrete wallpaper by Dutch designer Piet Boon. I’d definitely would love to see it in person.

YouTube Time allows you to link to a specific part of a YouTube video. Neat.

(via shoeboxdwelling)

The fine folks of data visualization.ch put together a selection of data visualization tools that they use the most and that they enjoy working with. It includes libraries for plotting data on maps, frameworks for creating charts, graphs and diagrams and tools to simplify the handling of data. Even if you’re not into programming, you’ll find applications that can be used without writing one single line of code. They will keep this list as a living repository and add / remove things as technology develops. YES!

In this video, 12-year old Victoria Grant explains why her homeland, Canada, and most of the world, is in debt.

(via explore)

(via inspivids)

- Love these Anti Portraits

- Pretzel Pool Float. Yup.

- CardFlick makes Business Cards a thing of the past. Take them digital. YES!

- Tali Sharot: The Optimism Bias

- Wall mounted clips.

- Push to add drama.

- Pictory is showcasing the Phootcamp Application Self Portraits of the 2012 roster.

- Daily tips for modern manners by Bekka Palmer.

- Don’t have a green thumb? There’s hope: Koubachi gives your plants a voice.

- “The way you react to a situation or critique is just as memorable as your work.” Advice to Young Designers by Kim Knoll

- Ladybug Pins. Cute.

- If I was going on long bike rides I would totally get the QuadLock iPhone Mounting System.

- The New York Times is looking to hire a Web Designer.

- Nine-Year-Old’s Blog Takes A Frank Look At School Lunches.

I am quite giddy over the announcement of Ideapaint Clear: With CLEAR, you can turn any surface into an Ideapaint wall. The new transparent top coat delivers dry erase functionality to smooth surfaces of any color. Apply directly over painted walls, or even wood, to create a seamless think-space that matches any décor. With CLEAR, your walls won’t look different, but they’ll act different.

Your walls will become Magic. At least, that’s what my kids call it. We use ours at Studiomates daily.

1. An untended garden quickly becomes a field: plant what you want to grow.

2. Have partners, but don’t do the same things: make sure you both do something you enjoy.

3. Hire people for what they can teach you, not for what you can teach them.

4. Everyone should be able to take criticism: creative trust is built on critical honesty.

5. Design is only one part of the puzzle: savor the discussion, development, debate, and dissemination of your work just as much as the making of it.

6. Goals may be arbitrary, but not having them will be maddening when there’s no one else to tell you if you’re doing a good job: set 3-month, 6-month, and 1-year goals at the outset.

7. When you take your favorite clients out to lunch, it’s a good time to propose what you’d like to do together next.

8. Knowing more designers doesn’t necessarily translate into having good clients: spend your development time wisely.

9. Be known for something: it helps.

10. You will never work harder than when you’re building something: find balance. Sometimes the best way to solve a creative problem is to take a vacation or read a book.

(via One Skinnyj)

These Body of Water illustrations by Tamsyn Mystkowski made me giggle.

(via Hamilton Hughes)

The Muppets pay tribute to their creator, Jim Henson, who passed away 22 years ago this week.

(via explore)

Wonderful talk by Craig Mod on how great design is born from nourishing habits.

The best designer is an aware designer. The best design solutions are found by deconstructing problems as they arise in our own lives. What habits can we as designers form to provide us with a more objective clarity in answering these problems? How can we apply these solutions to existing products? When is it time to build new products? There is an intersection between the cultivation of habit, personal experience and design application – it is nourishing and magic and something we should all strive to evoke.

Organized Wonder is a new way to share and discover the best talks, documentaries, interviews, short films and various other videos scattered across the web. Fantastic!

You can follow my collection here.

Absolutely wonderful TED talk by David Kelley, founder of IDEO, in which he is telling stories from his legendary design career and his own life, offering ways to build the confidence to create.

“When exactly were you brainwashed into believing that the best way to earn a living is to have a job?”
- Seth Godin, Brainwashed