(Video link here.) This compelling 2-minute video for is based on The School of Life‘s Alain de Botton’s writings about the uses of envy, and the information that often-difficult emotion holds. It offers a kind, rather gentle approach to an emotion we often hold against ourselves as being bad.
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We rove through a lot of design sites in the course of each week and find ourselves finding only a single idea among a whole feature of sleek pictures. Like this one unexpectedly charming one: a chair cushion with ties that wrap around the legs. The question is, how to do create the effect with existing…
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We can’t remember we what led us to this wonderful image that makes us instantly… chill. We found it at A Life Alive, 26-year-old Forrest Mankins’ 8-months + road trip “from Oklahoma to the Arctic Circle living in my 1984 Toyota Land Cruiser.” Following his Instagram makes for a kind of vicarious road trip that is mighty refreshing…
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At our Instagram SignLaboratory, we post a lot of graffiti: messages scribbled by valiant, expressive, anonymous souls as they move around the city. It is a fine practice: seizing a moment to scratch a subversive message. They are, more often than not, uplifting. We hadn’t thought of the lineage of graffiti until a friend showed us…
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We have quite a few friends of various ages who have been having a rough time lately. Whether 23 years old or 73, it seems that no one is exempt from the stresses of a society that values individuals for their “profession”, and an economy in which it can be very difficult to find work — and expression —…
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Amid the black Perigord truffles, foie gras and caviar that laced a celebration dinner at New York restaurant Gabriel Kreuther, an utterly simple idea lay hidden. As I carefully deconstructed the “Cardamom Roasted Alaskan King Crab, uni coulis, celeriac, sea cress”, I discovered thin, tender noodles barely swathed in an uni-perfumed cream. When I honed in…
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We must have spent an hour slowing looking at our friend Christopher Baker‘s beautiful online portfolios. We found ourselves culling images with a single theme: natural textiles used in original absolutely doable ways, no uptight styling here. Just a fine trove of ideas.
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(Video link here. Every once in a while, we come across a video that acts like meditation…or perhaps you might say, watching it IS a meditation, where we are brought into a moment of illusive awareness. Thich Nath Hanh’s The Great Bell Chant is one; a healer we know assigns it to her patients as…
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Roaming through photographer Christopher Baker‘s online portfolios, we came across this lovely quirky bathroom. We love the long rough surface for double sinks, and the little set of matching vessels to hold toothbrushes, turning them into little sculptures. But what we love most are the mirrors: a couple of vintage rectangular ones and two shards propped…
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When we wrote friend and contributor Susan Dworski of many decisions we had were making to change how we worked — limiting some aspects and dreams to focus on others — she likened it to pruning a tree: the essential process of culling and removing branches of a shrub or tree in order to encourage growth. Her words and…
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After the first few persimmons of the winter, I realized I had discovered a new material for unexpected still-lives: not only the deep orange fruit itself, lined up to ripen on my counter, but the flower-like stems became a wonder I found myself throwing into a bowl: ad hoc collection that looked like an exotic…
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