Notice: The topics of my writings will start to focus less on travel and more on the passing fancy of my terribly-short-but-often-intense attention span. So if you’re here for the travel and not for the rest, I understand, no hard feelings.
Given that we are in an election year, there may be more than the average amount of political commentary as well. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing… I’m just sayin’.
With those stated disclaimers we can move on to some really cool stuff. I’m a design geek (as well as many another type of geek). I appreciate new and innovative ways of thinking about things, whether they be simple or terribly complex. Yesterday, over lunch, I was telling a friend how I really enjoyed that the man working at the Teriyaki shop down the street from our office had turned tying the handles of the to-go bag into a graceful art.
I really do love that. There are so many boring, mundane, repetitive things in our lives. Why not take the extra moments to think about how we could do those things better as well? It might even make them more interesting and fun. By the way, I’m totally as guilty as anyone else in this department.
Ok, back to the really cool stuff.
There are a couple sites I keep an eye on for fun design stuff and indy trends that have not filtered into the mainstream quite yet.
The first is “The Cool Hunter†– http://www.thecoolhunter.net
This site covers everything from cars, design, architecture, fashion, art, advertising, etc… The coverage is usually brief but informative and the photography is top notch. It’s enough to get you moving in a direction if you want to do further research or just to make you drool as you look at all the pretty…
The next is “WebUrbanist†– http://www.weburbanist.com
This seems to be more culture oriented than product design. I’ve just started reading this blog and so far everything has been very interesting. Articles on Shopdropping (or Droplifting if you prefer), the practice of people bringing things into a store without permission, much to the befuddlement of staff and security.
Or how about Subvertising, the editing/modification/co-opting of existing advertising channels? Be warned, they seem to like to number things over there.