If only I were so lovely in the morning. Or ever.

Beautiful stop-motion video for Oren Lavie’s Her Morning Elegance.

Leaving more to the imagination.

What newfangled innovation will the Dutch come up with next? This simple little font from Netherlands-based agency Spranq uses 20% less ink which means fewer ink cartridges end up in landfills. Not as nifty as the iPhone level app but still pretty neat.

Table envy.

Paint Or Die But Love Me table by French designer John Nouanesing. From Core77.

Wal-Mart – er, Walmart: so cool it blogs!

STOP WAL-MART

Originally uploaded by Lone Primate

I thought Walmart had a fresh new blog to go with their fresh new logo but it looks like this thing’s been up and running for the better part of the year! Who knew? More importantly – who’s reading it?? And who’s writing it? Bizarro. At least it’s well-designed.

http://checkoutblog.com/

A life less pixelated.

THAT is true love.

Employment! (of the full-time kind!)

Ever wondered how to design a press kit?

Originally uploaded by asthmatic

Why leave the Good Life behind on the west coast? A super cool new job, for one. I just finished my first week at Wolff Olins, a global brand consultancy most recently in the press for their 2012 Olympics logo but also known for tons of other groundbreaking work like the New Museum identity (press kit pictured above), the creation of (PRODUCT) RED, Wamu’s brand idea and identity and the new NYC logo (though NOT responsible for the mis-execution on the sides of taxicabs all over the city):

I am so happy!

Art? Novel? Screenplay? Ransom note?

Neato. From New York magazine:

“British artist-writer Graham Rawle resisted the idea of printing Woman’s World, a new novel about a possibly homicidal cross-dresser that consists entirely of phrases clipped from sixties women’s magazines, in collage form; he was concerned it might be taken for ‘a novelty rather than a novel.’ He needn’t have been: Jean Doumanian decided to produce the movie without even knowing how the book had been constructed.”

Some notes on his process:

1. “I think the word there was originally part of a title for a feature in [the magazine] Woman’s Own. Above it was a picture, the lower part of which showed a drab wallpaper background. When cutting out the word, I decided to include a fragment of it because the scene describes such an interior.”

2. “One of the problems with using only found fragments to assemble my story was finding multiples of people’s names, which were repeated many times throughout the novel. I decided on Mr. Hands for my antagonist because the word hands is easy to come by in adverts for nail polish, soap powders, and the like. The name also describes his licentious, groping nature.”

3. “Much of the material comes from romantic short stories featured in every women’s magazine at the time. Unfortunately for me, most of these are in the third person. Since my story is mainly written in the first, all of the pronouns had to be changed. Once I’d factored in punctuation marks and line breaks, there could be a dozen elements within one sentence.”

4. “Throughout the book, the word woman generally appears in some bold or decorative script or, as in this case, in color. It was probably the most commonly used word, so there were lots to choose from.”

5. “The word forty happened to be sitting on the top of my numbers file as I was pasting down the words, so I stuck it in. It also added a nice graphic element to the page.”

6. “It was fun trying to find a printed number for every page of the book. A bit of tinkering was often required. Here the 209 is intact as part of a telephone number.”

7. “Little dogs can get overexcited and work themselves up into a lather, or, in this case, a ‘rich, creamy lather’—a phrase I found in an advertisement for beauty soap.”

8. “The line I had in mind ended with something like, ‘…;whose resemblance to Sylvia Syms was extremely remote.’ Having previously categorized my found material into specific subjects, I searched my ‘measuring and distance’ category for the word remote but instead found the phrase ‘…could be measured in nautical miles.’ Much better.”

9. “Celebrity-endorsed beauty products were common in 1962. I think this bit came from an ad for a moisturizing cream used by British screen actress Sylvia Syms, which said something to the effect of: ‘Look over there. Isn’t that Sylvia Syms, star of stage and screen who keeps her skin so young-looking?’”

Favorite Things Friday.

1. Tinderbox in Bernal Heights. Dinner consisted of the following: white shrimp and cheese grits with candied maple bacon in a vanilla-scented balsamic jus; crispy tofu noodle soup; char 2 ways (smoked and slow roasted and tartare on a cornbread blini); a bottle of Assyrtico from Santorini (“full-bodied with background notes of jalapeno and smoke”– definitely unique but a lot lighter and sweeter than it sounds) and the above pictured dark chocolate cake with molten blue cheese center. Oh and popcorn sprinkled with nutritional yeast, parsley, chives and butter to start. I fully plan to repent these sins another time.

2. School night poker parties!

3. Long, early-spring walks to nowhere listening to Radiolab podcasts. Also- the canopy of flowering trees on outer Folsom.

5 . The only real mail I get these days are Christmas cards and wedding invitations. This whimisical-chic YSL wallet makes me smile.

6. MGMT, “Oracular Spectacular.” Something’s (finally) astir in Brooklyn again.

7. Coffee Bar on Mariposa and Bryant. A cup of Kenyan blend and an almond croissant in the AM and a glass of their amazing South African white in the PM.

8. Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City and Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt. Modern classics I finally got around to reading.

9. Coincidentally opposing color exhibits at MoMA (“Color Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950 to Today”) and the Met (“Jasper Johns: Gray”).

10. Pandora’s Zero 7, Guster and Rodrigo y Gabriela radio stations.

Helena Horstedt.

Swedish designer who only designs in deliciously detailed black. I like.

Did they have to make him look like Jesus?

See my earlier post about this issue here.

Seriously, though, what’s with the halo of lightening bolts?