minimalist monopoly

"Monopoly, in spite being the classiest of all board games, unfortunately is packaged just as boringly and uncreatively as every other garbage board game on the shelves. So, I decided to repackage it... turning the class up to 11.

All of the boxes are made out of chocolate brown mat board and skinned in cream arches cover. The final package is just over 10" x 10" x 1.5" and includes smaller containers for all of the various pieces and cards and a laser-cut holder for all of the houses and hotels."

Beautifully designed by Andy Mangold.

[via]

yes, girls poop too

I found this today and it made me laugh so hard, because I spent about an hour last night with a group of friends talking about the hassle of having to poop when you're in a relasionshio. For some reason, a lot of women insist on pretending to their boyfriends and husbands that everything they ingest magically disapears in the stomach. "Intestins? Hmm, no, I don't believe I have that organ." Get over yourselves, women. YOU POOP AND YOU KNOW IT.

"Finally! We're acknowledging female poo!

Poo-Pourri is a discreet little bottle of spray that is composed of 'a natural blend of essential oils' that you're meant to spray in the toilet before you go-go. The spray creates a film on the top of the toilet water, which then apparently 'traps' the 'embarrassing odors'.

This nifty little bottle of anti-funk will come in handy in various situations. You know, like pooping at the office, pooping on vacation, pooping in a public toilet, pooping at your inlaws, etc, and it will fit right into your handbag." [via]

writing down the bones

"Our lives are at once ordinary and mythical. We live and die, age beautifully or full of wrinkles. We wake in the morning, buy yellow cheese, and hope we have enough money to pay for it. At the same instance we have these magnificent hearts that pump through all the sorrow and all winters we are alive on the earth. We are important and our lives are important, magnificent really, and their details are worthy to be recorded. This is how writers must think, this is how we must sit down with pen in hand. We were here; we are human beings; this is how we lived..."

- Natalie Goldberg, "Writing Down the Bones"


[via the always inspired Tania Rochelle]

"Life is not orderly...

... No matter how we try to make life so, right in the middle of it we die, lose a leg, fall in love, drop a jar of applesauce.”


- Natalie Goldberg

The Conjugation of the Paramecium

by Muriel Rukeyser


This has nothing
to do with
propagating

The species
is continued
as so many are
(among the smaller creatures)
by fission

(and this species
is very small
next in order to
the amoeba, the beginning one)

The paramecium
achieves, then,
immortality
by dividing

But when
the paramecium
desires renewal
strength another joy
this is what
the paramecium does:

The paramecium
lies down beside
another paramecium

Slowly inexplicably
the exchange
takes place
in which
some bits
of the nucleus of each
are exchanged

for some bits
of the nucleus
of the other

This is called
the conjugation of the paramecium.

on how design thrives during economic crisis

Yesterday's New York Times feauted a wonderful article on how history has proven that design can benefit from economic constraints. Makes me hopeful and excited to be part of the industry right now.

"...however dark the economic picture, it will most likely cause designers to shift their attention from consumer products to the more pressing needs of infrastructure, housing, city planning, transit and energy. Designers are good at coming up with new ways of looking at complex problems, and if President-elect Barack Obama delivers anything like a W.P.A, we could be 'standing on the brink of one of the most productive periods of design ever,' said Reed Kroloff, director of Cranbrook Academy of Art.

On the other hand, the design community talked up its role in safeguarding the world after 9/11, with little result.

Modernism’s great ambition was to democratize design. Ikea and Target have shown that the battle for cheap design can be won. The emphasis will most likely shift to greater quality at affordable prices. This time around it will be the designer’s job to discourage consumers from regarding that $30 Ikea side table as a throwaway item.

(...) 'It will be about finding the sweet spot between affordability and durability,' Ms. Lasky said. This kind of innovation means rethinking the economy of production and distribution so that goods are made cheaply closer to home (or in the home, if the most radical ideas are to be taken seriously).

One way or another, design will focus less on styling consumer objects with laser-cut patterns and colored resin and more on the intelligent reworking of current conditions. Expect to hear a lot more about open-source design, and cradle-to-cradle, a concept developed by William McDonough and Michael Braungart that calls for cars, packaging and other everyday objects to be designed specifically for recycling so that their parts and materials are used and reused without waste."

if you´re gonna do it, do it right

"...pumping an RSS feed into Twitter alone doesn’t really merit a lot of attention. There’s no non-story 'Twitter exclusive' comments from Salon’s editorial staff, no “@ replies” with the Twitter audience, no follows. No real social media engagement, in other words." [link]

In other words, if your blog is also on Twitter, be relevant in both platforms without being redundant. If I want to know when you post something new, I'll subscribe to your feed. Get it right, will ya?


Thanks, Ferds!

pop surreal

Beautiful work by illustrator/art director Rafael Silveira. Some of his fine art and comissioned pieces can also be seen on his Flickr.

killing us softly

"Jean Kilbourne's pioneering work helped develop and popularize the study of gender representation in advertising. Her award-winning Killing us Softly films have influenced millions of college and high school students across two generations and on an international scale. In this important new film, Kilbourne reviews if and how the image of women in advertising has changed over the last 20 years."

stopping isn't required, it's also fun!

A STOP sign, please. from Mauricio Campos - COMMO design on Vimeo.

Thanks, Ricardo!

designers: why whisper when you can yell?!

Cliente designer from Mauricio Campos - COMMO design on Vimeo.


Thanks, Ricardo!

not good at all

2009 didn't start well for me. Today was one of those days I want and need to forget quickly. I don't remember ever being so disappointed at someone as I was today. I don't think I ever felt this kind of pain, the kind that almost hurts you physically.

But things like that usually come with a lesson, and I realized today that time has made me a lot stronger than I had given myself credit for. I realized that no matter if I'm the kind of person you like to have around or not, one thing no one can EVER judge is my character. Because it's not flexible, it's not shaped by whom I might be involved with, or what odd situation I might find myself in. In my universe, some things are clearly right or wrong, they are simply black or white. It's not an easy approach to life - believe me - but it's the only one I know. It's not always what gets you the guy, or the job, or the popularity others with a more flexible concept of decency might enjoy, but it's the only one I believe in. The only one that lets me sleep at night.

It baffles me how some people can be so self-righteous but still have so much character building to do. May maturity come to them at some point in life.

first purchase of 2009

"Uncertainty" (11'' x 14''), by Andrew Bannecker. Some of his prints are available at Charmingwall.

identifying the strategic contributions of design thinking

"Janet Rae-Dupree wrote about design thinking in the business section of the New York Times this weekend. It is good to see the discussion about the broader role for design appearing in the mass media. The article illustrates the very gray line between the traditional role of design and the more strategic contribution that design thinking can make. It is sometimes hard to tell what happened from the physical outcomes alone which adds to the challenge when it comes to explaining what design thinking is. I find it very easy to slip toward describing what is simply good design (based on a relatively conventional brief) or what is good business using normal convergent processes. A test is perhaps whether the business (or organizational, or societal) outcome is significantly different than would have been the case if design thinking had not taken place. In other words, were new choices created not only about the product, service or experience but about the business goal itself? Did a product become a service? Did a service become an experience? Were entirely new users or markets identified? Were new to the world offerings created? These questions seem to reflect the higher bar that I believe we might expect to be the result of a broader application of the design approach."

Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO, on how to identify the strategic contributions of design thinking.

you must accept

You must accept that’s who he really is.
You must accept that you cannot be his
unless he can be yours. No compromise.
He is a canvas on which paint never dries;
a clay that never sets; he’s steel that bends
in a breeze; he’s a melody that when it ends
no one can whistle; he is not who
you thought. He’s not. He is a shoe
that walks away: “I will not go where you
want to go.” “Why, then, are you a shoe?”
“I’m not. I have the sole of a lover
but don’t know what love is.” “Discover
it, then.” “Will I have to go where you go?”
“Sometimes.” “Be patient with you?” “Yes.” “Then, no.”
You have to hear what he is telling you
and see what he is; how it is killing you.

-- Kate Light


Você deve aceitar que ele é realmente isso.
Você deve aceitar que não pode ser dele
a menos que ele seja seu. Sem concessões.
Ele é uma tela onde tinta nunca seca;
argila que não toma forma; ele é ferro que se entorta
com uma brisa; ele é uma melodia que, quando acaba,
ninguém sabe assobiar; ele não é quem
você pensou. Nao é. Ele é um sapato
que anda para longe. "Eu não irei para onde
você quer ir." "Então por que você é um sapato?"
"Não sou. Eu tenho a sola de um amante,
mas não sei o que é amor." "Descubra,
então." "Terei de ir onde você for?"
"Às vezes." "Ser paciente com você?" "Sim." "Então, não."
Você tem de escutar o que ele está lhe falando
e ver o que ele é; como está lhe matando.


++++++++

(had to translate this one; fits like a glove.)

a sign of good things to come

The Presidential Inaugural Committee (PIC), which is, as the name says, organizing Obama's inauguration event, has created a site where you can see big chart detailing each and every contribution they have received.

The committee only accepts individual donations, and you can sort them by name, employer, amount, and location. "Unlike previous inaugural committees, the 2009 PIC does not accept contributions from corporations, political action committees, labor unions, current federally-registered lobbyists, non-U.S. citizens and registered foreign agents and does not accept individual contributions in excess of $50,000." You can see several well-known names there: several people from Google, Dreamworks, The Container Store ($25,000), Yahoo!, and the Soros family - who donated a total of $250K, being $150K under the Soros Fund Management employer name.

That's the thing about transparency: if information is available, people ARE going to make their way to it. It's really a simple and revolutionary idea.

did you know?

the 'broken window' theory + environment management

New Scientist has an excellent article about some research at the University of Groningen that empirically proves the 'broken window' theory.

"People become more disobedient in environments plagued by litter and graffiti, research has shown. They can be tempted to trespass, drop litter, and even steal money if they perceive from their environment that it's OK to break rules (...)

The researchers conclude that one type of antisocial behaviour leads to others, because people's sense of social obligation to others is eroded. 'When people think they can get away with it because other people already have, they do,' says Keizer."

Gareth Kay, head of planning at Boston's Modernista!, adds some great insight to the subject and discusses how the results of the research could uncover the new role of communications and advertising in the public space, as tools for managing the environment.

"So, perhaps we should think about communications as being more about environment management, creating an environment where people are more likely to behave in a favorable way. About seeding the right environment where behavior is more likely to take hold. Which puts us squarely back in the culture business..."