Bookcase with Moss September 15, 2014 – Posted in: Content, product design

Are you still looking for that perfect bookshelf to house your natural history, botany or nature writing collection? Well, I think we found it. Created by Alcarol, the bookshelf is called Undergrowth and was recently on display at the London Design Festival. The bookshelf retains the vegetation present on the log when it was retrieved from the forest. The mossy edges are then cast in resin and preserved. Mosses and lichens are very primitive organisms that grow in damp…

Little Free Library Love at the Seattle Design Festival September 10, 2014 – Posted in: Content, Libraries, Library Architecture, product design

This year’s Seattle Design Festival included A Little Free Library Design/Build Competition called Libraries on the Loose! The challenge: To design, build and steward a Little Free Library (LFL) prototype that promotes community and literacy in Seattle’s neighborhoods! The budget was $150 and all entrants had to submit documentation of their efforts including assembly instructions. One goal was to establish an inexpensive prototype that could serve as a template for future LFL builders. Twenty teams entered and the winner was “Spinning Stories” by Johnston…

Making a Case For Books August 29, 2014 – Posted in: Content, product design

[youtube]http://youtu.be/JPL3kJPsVdA[/youtube] Here’s a perfect video for Labor Day weekend. A seven minute animation on the making of four bookcases by Frank Howarth. Construction never looked so fun.

Protest Design: Disobedient Objects at the V&A August 25, 2014 – Posted in: Art, Content, Exhibits, product design

The act of protest has blossomed into also being an opportunity for tremendous creativity. In the first exhibit of its kind, the Victoria and Albert Museum has gathered a healthy sampling of items designed and produced by grassroots social movements since the mid-1970’s. “From Suffragette teapots to protest robots” the Disobedient Objects exhibit “will demonstrate how political activism drives a wealth of design ingenuity and collective creativity that defy standard definitions of art and design.”…

BLOOKS = Objects made in the emulation of books August 7, 2014 – Posted in: books in design, Content, product design

Book as cigarette lighter The word “Blook” first surfaced as a word in 2001 when Jeff Jarvis coined it to represent a printed book derived from a blog. In 2006 the word was short-listed for inclusion in the Oxford English Dictionary and was a runner-up for Word of the Year. Now, thanks to Mindell Dubansky, it has a new meaning: objects made in the emulation of books, either by hand or commercial manufacture. Dubansky, who is head of the Sherman…