The Design Disease

Ben Terrett of Noisy Decent Graphics has this to say about design and designers:

It seems to me that if you're a designer, a proper designer not someone who learnt Photoshop in between phone calls, then design runs through your veins like Pantone 7418. But more than that, it's there in every aspect of life. You can't stop looking at things through your designer eyes. Everything you do is clouded by this thing that lives inside you.

Go on over and read his entire post on The Design Disease, just for the sheer pleasure of it.

via the inimitable [BB-Blog]

tags:
Ben Terrett
Noisy Decent Graphics
The Design Disease

Deb Eiseman's Moonlight Creations

Lately I've been under the grip of a growing fascination with fabric design. It's a wonderful fascination, as it leads me to such discoveries as Deb Eiseman of Moonlight Creations. Above is a wonderful example of her work. The pattern, called "Loving Thoughts," is part of her debut fabric line, "The Art of Healing." I am drawn to both the simple, iconic design and to the name of the fabric line; I'd love to use "Loving Thoughts" to make pillows for my therapy office.

While fabric design is new to Deb, her art is not--though it is, for her, a second career. Art, and watercolor in particular, became a refuge for this former television producer after she suffered devastating injuries in an auto wreck in 1998. Unable to work and, from the pain, unable to sleep, Deb led a tortured existence until a friend recommended that she needed a hobby.

Deb describes the relief of picking up a paintbrush for the first time as "astonishing." In a 2003 interview on NBC's The Today Show, she tells of finding not only a temporary distraction from the pain, but also the joy of looking down and seeing "all these happy figures dancing across the page." (The interview can be downloaded from the Moonlight Creations home page.) From this therapeutic response to painful, sleepless nights, Moonlight Creations was born.




Deb has a wonderful line of greeting cards that feature her simple, colorful icons, which can be found on both the Moonlight Creations website and that of licensee Brush Dance.com

Even more fun is her growing line of "Painting Cards," of which "Hip Hip Hooray!" is an example, shown below.



These cards are wild and wonderful; unconstrained, they seem to dance for joy.

tags:
Moonlight Creations
Deb Eiseman
art therapy

More of Me

Another one of mine, this one doing fairly well on Shutterstock. Impossible to predict what will sell. Last year my pink-and-white sort of valentines-y ones did well, so lately I've been submitting zillions of lovely valentines-y patterns. And instead the current top-selling one is this:

















My ability to predict what people will buy approaches nil. I just throw them up there and see what sticks. Kind of like spaghetti.

Five Reasons I Blog

Curses, tagged again! Actually this is kind of cool because it comes from a different neighborhood of the blogosphere. I've been tagged by the lovely Jean McManus of Orchids and Violets to tell the world five reasons I blog.

1. The amount of attention I need just to get through the day simply boggles the mind.

2. It flexes my writing muscles. One of my life's biggest "shoulds" is "I should write." This allows me to do it in small, non-immobilizing doses.

3. Despite my need for attention, I am quite self-conscious. Blogging is a method I've chosen for taking the risk of putting myself "out there" and publicly owning my thoughts, feelings, and opinions. This is another stepping stone on the writing path.

4. I feel the internet is the most exciting thing to happen in my lifetime, and I want to be a part of it.

5. It's an area of my life where I can do whatever I want. I like not having a boss, not being edited, and not being told what I can and cannot do.

6. It's an important creative outlet for me. I wish like crazy I could paint or craft or be a real drummer etc. etc. etc. This fulfills some need in me to create.

7. It allows me to do something with my internet finds, rather than simply feeling I've wasted my time surfing.

There, that's seven--two bonus reasons! And with that I tag Maryam of My Marakesh, Anna of Absolutely Beautiful Things, Karen of K Style, Gary of Spray Glue, and (ah, sweet revenge) Di of Designers' Block.

Pure Eye Candy

Like spirals? Of course you do. Who doesn't? You can find a bunch of them here in the spiral gallery, one of a number of galleries at sytes.org. Other galleries include circles, flowers, fireworks, zigzags. . . the list goes on and on.

I wish I could give you a "via" link, but to be honest I found this as a random, uncategorized site in my Bookmarks file.

tags:
eye candy
spirals
sytes.org

Mark Douglass Vases

Today I'm in love with these remarkable vases by Australian artist Mark Douglass. As you can see, they've got a great look to them. But in order to really appreciate the workmanship that goes into these pieces, you need a sense of scale. This should help:


The artist described the process in an interview with Melissa Cunningham on the ABC program 'George Negus Tonight':

Hot glass is when you dip into a hot furnace of molten glass with a blowing iron. Pretty much like gathering honey on the end of a spoon. I work with Miles, another assistant, Dave, and with the scale of the work that I've been making you need a team of people to produce this stuff because it's... pretty much physically impossible to control a piece by yourself. So... And it's quite, um, draining physically to roll a piece around. So we do a bit of tag-team work.

As you can see from the photo above, Douglass' work is not all done in black and white, though those pieces are the ones that I like best. Perhaps I've been spending too much time over at Black White Bliss!

(Incidentally, if you like the black and white look, Black White Bliss posted a great find yesterday in the ceramic work of Mel Robson. Check it out!)

tags:
glass art
Mark Douglass
black and white
Black White Bliss
Mel Robson

Like Chairs?

If you like chairs (and, after all, we're talking design here; if you don't like chairs, it's not like you could admit it, right? And risk immediate ostracization--woops. I looked that one up and I guess it's simply ostracism) . . . where was I?

Let's take it from the top.

If you like cool chair designs, a great place to find them is over at the Design Obsession blog. One minor drawback for those of us who are linguistically challenged: the site is in French. Of course, that's half the fun. You can copy a post and use an online translation gizmo to tell you it reads as follows:

John Dodelande: Designer, writer, designer, contractor at the 18 years age! onceptor of a yacht-convertible, a armchair-guard-dress, a restaurant with tables elevators, a deliver-magazine, a mini-car, transitory shops, of a collection of mode, a condensed language, a tray meal of suhis to the Frenchwoman, I forget some, here John Dodelande who, at 17 years (it has 18 today of them!) decided to launch its mark of luxury. And you know what? It did it!

That particular gem was a description of this (I believe it's a) chair by John Dodelande, who is both a designer and a designer.


I promise I will try not to have so much caffeine before blogging in the future.

tags:
chair design
Design Obsession
John Dodelande

Peter Marigold: Make/Shift

Make/Shift, by Peter Marigold, is a modular shelving system designed to be wedged into whatever awkward nook or cranny your abode might hold. From his very read-worthy interview on London's Design Museum website:

The world that I live in is chaotic and densely populated by junk, both collected things and simple rubbish. It’s not a perfect place but it is consistent. Like wise, English homes are usually consistent in their shared irregularities – pokey architectural spaces, weird under-hangs, and unusable corners. I was interested in how a piece of furniture might adapt to and therefore reflect our acceptance of living with these innate problems.

One version of Make/Shift was built in the manner of packing crates; these could be used as boxes when moving house, then put in place as shelving units once there.


Units available soon from movisi are manufactured from expanded polypropylene with corrugated edges. This material is well-suited to the task as it makes the units sturdy, yet lightweight and easily wedged into gaps.




So. Cool, yes? And we all know that, just as my favorite category is "miscellaneous," my favorite item of furniture is the shelf unit. I'm crazy about Make/Shift as shelving, but I've also got to rave about the mind of the designer. Again, from his Design Museum interview:

I am interested in objects, and the vast bulk of objects that we experience have been, at least in part, mass-produced. In this respect, as with my impulse to become a ‘proper designer’, I feel a real impulse to ‘fit’ with the aesthetics surrounding me. However I am also conscious that most of the products that I see today, idealise a world that I doubt I will ever experience, unless through the media. I’m probably doing something wrong, but my house never looks like that, and I think there are probably parallels here with how the fashion industry actively encourages anorexia in women. It might look innocent, but, intentionally or not, a beautiful surface with perfectly rounded corners is a good way to convince a human that he is little more than a contaminant in the product process.

I just identify so much with this! I love looking at the magazines, but my life nor my home will ever be showroom pieces. At best, I'm shooting for functional. At least, at this stage of the game. Perhaps things will be different when I'm an adult, working at a real job and living in a real house.

After all, at forty-five there's plenty of time, right?

tags:
Make/Shift
Peter Marigold
movisi
shelf units
Design Museum

Clash Mickey

I know this isn't new or anything, it's just the mood I'm in. Mickey Mouse does the cover of the classic Clash album, London Calling.


















Designed by Japanese artist Roen. (WARNING: Site badly designed in detestable Flash.) Available at Medicomtoy, where I could order it if I spoke Japanese. And had piles of money.

And what does it mean when one awakens in a "mickey mouse does the clash" sort of mood?

Oh, right. Means I have to work today. *sigh*

via productdose.

tags:
Mickey Mouse
The Clash
London Calling

Favorite Fabric

This is my new favorite silk print fabric. Isn't it great? Doesn't it rock? It's available here.

tags:
fabric

Metacopy

Click on the image to make it bigger--it's even better that way. You can download it for free at dafont.com.

tags:
fonts
metacopy
Yoshiki Kita

Inspire Co. Fairy Gift Tags

This one's the Cheeky Fairy. And a saucy little number she is, too. Go on over to Inspire Co. and check out the others for yourself. Cute as dickens!

tags:
gift tags
Inspire Co.
fairies

Comments: An Invitation

The blogosphere is on fire with the issue that bloggers wish their readers would leave comments. Here I go and throw my hat and two cents into the ring. I think this great t-shirt from ThinkGeek sums it up. "I blog, therefore I am. Comments(0)"

Yup. We blog because we have this need to put it out there. We share our passion for the things we love, and it makes us feel more alive. And far too frequently, Comments(0).

We know we're being visited. We have these traffic tracking gizmos that we check (in my case) upwards of 30 times a day to see how many visitors we've had, where they've come from, what they've looked at and where they went when they left. Sometimes (for me, lately) these stats are a wonderful thing: I've got readers, therefore I am! Again, though: far too frequently, Comments(0). That's the disheartening one. That's the one where when we check our e-mail upwards of 50 times a day and don't have any alerts that someone has left a comment--that's the let-down.

So we're asking--I'll say, inviting--those who read to click on "Comments" and say a few words. You don't have to know me and you don't have to be a blogger and you don't have to say anything profound and you don't have to take a lot of time with it. But if you see something you like, something you're glad I shared, click on "Comments" and say, for example, "Cool!" I invite you to do this both because it fuels my passion, and because I've met some of the most wonderful people from all over the world simply because they left a comment.

Some are suggesting a poll or a contest to get people to participate. I love this idea. My biggest fear is that I'll announce a contest and have a lovely prize for the winner (hint: I sell used books, and some of them are awesome) but no one will participate. And then I'll feel like the kid who's picked last for the ball team. I'll feel like, "I blog, but still somehow I'm not."

So, consider this an open-house and come on in. Your presence will be welcome, and you'll be part of this small community, if only for a moment. And our hearts will both be warm and fuzzy.

Cupid-be-Gone

Valentine's Day is just around the corner, and many of you may be surprised by what a sap I am about hearts and flowers and the whole lovey-dovey thing (you may puke).

HOWEVER.

Before any happy-sappy heartsy-fartsy Valentine posts, I feel I must do one for the more . . . shall we say. . . cynical among us. Allow me please to introduce the Cupid-be-Gone (above).

According to the copy writers at Uncommon Goods, the Cupid-be-Gone will "chase cheesy romance whenever it rears its rose-colored head." The diabolical creature is designed and hand-welded by Fred Conlon (also known for his garden villian, the Gnome-be-Gone, below).


Perhaps these creatures could spawn offspring that would carry away an especially reprehensible ex-lover. Probably not, but doesn't the thought make a lovely picture?

tags:
Cupid-be-Gone
Fred Conlon
metalwork

Passion Works

Above is a painted Passion Flower from the Passion Works Studio website. Passion Flowers are hand painted by artists with developmental disabilities.

The vision of Passion Works Studio:

To create and live out a best practice model for collaborative art making between artists with and without developmental disabilities. This new mindset demonstrates that creativity is innately a part of all people and recognized that art enhances the quality of life and strengthens communities.

All profits from the Studio go toward the continuation of arts programming.

How cool that the product is so original, funky and immediately on my wish list. How cool that the process and proceeds do so much good in the community.

So many of us create art or crafts or design, so I'm sure we can relate: there is nothing like looking at something beautiful and thinking, "I made that!" It feeds the soul.

via art for housewives.

tags:
Passion Works Studio
developmental disabilities
community

The Small Object

I'm pretty sure you've got to get on over to Sarah Neuburger's website, The Small Object, and check out the Peep Photograph Portfolios.

I can say with some degree of confidence I'm almost certain you won't be disappointed.

tags:
The Small Object
Sarah Neuburger

Pattern

One of mine. Just for a change.

Straight Line Designs

Maryam of My Marrakesh liked the Alice in Wonderland look of the third Zoe chair (below), so I knew she'd love these cabinets from Straight Line Designs. Aren't they great? From the imaginative mind of Judson Beaumont, who lists Walt Disney, Dr. Seuss and Pee Wee Herman among his sources of inspiration.

tags:
Straight Line Designs
Judson Beaumont
whimsical
designer furniture

Zoe Chairs

I love these whimsical chairs from Zoe.















No, this isn't an ad. I just think their stuff is kinda cool. Whimsical and cool.
















Whimsicool.

ATTACK! Or, rather, A TAG!

*sigh*

It seems I've been tagged. Twice, actually. Which at least affirms that several people know I exist.

Apparently I am to disclose six weird things about myself, and then to tag six other bloggers so that they must do the same. In this manner, the weirdness of bloggers throughout the design universe will be revealed.

*sigh*

Ok, here goes:

1. I'm a later bloomer. I got chicken pox in my early twenties. In my late twenties I took drum lessons. (As drummers go, I'm a pretty good psychologist.) I married for the first time at age forty-three. And yes, it was worth the wait.

2. My brain is weird. Though verbally bright, I have the worst sense of direction of anyone I've ever known. I can easily get lost within a few blocks of home. I can't do math in my head or balance my checkbook, but got an A in graduate-level statistics. My brain is weird.

3. The thought of John Lennon's death still makes me cry.

4. At my wedding, I walked down the aisle to "You're My Best Friend" by Queen.

5. I used to have a compulsive need to bring home every strange, unique or quirky item that I found at a thrift store. I have gotten past this only by convincing myself to photograph them instead.

6. I am currently in the midst of a highly non-trivial conversation with myself about the spiritual ramifications of blogging about things.

Well, that does it for me. Now I have to go out and recruit six other bloggers into the fray. I'll add them at the end of this post when I've done so.

*************************************************************************************

*later*

OK, here's who I've tagged, may they curse me not:

Book of Joe
Design Milk
JuJu Loves Polka Dots
As Eye See It
Oo's Very Eclectic
Not Quite Perfect

(What's with the sudden *asterisk* fetish, do you suppose?)