I also love this for it’s potential as a DIY project – a few 1 bys and some precut wood letters from JoAnn’s painted the color of your choosing and bam! you’ve got yourself a custom shelf for much less than the $520 Oral is asking. AND you could always customize the phrases, (“travel”, “romance”, “research”) creating your own little library catalog!

Oh, I’m so inspired! I’m sure you’ll see a tutorial in iMAKE soon enough!

This incredibly simple but powerful painting project in Vercorin, Switzerland encompasses the full width of the village, shooting outwards from the central town square down multiple side streets and alleys. Brightly colored diverging lines thread their way through the town and overlap at several points, creating intertwining forms which contrast with the neat, tidy urban edges. Standing in the middle of the square, the lines seemingly extend out into infinity, while from above–an impossible viewpoint afforded only to birds and passing aircraft–they seemingly form a map for some fictional subway system, albeit one realized on a micro-level where every address, cafe, and town landmark has its own train stop.

How fabulous! This tiny hamlet is no stranger to modern art: Every summer the small Swiss town of Vercorin offers up its public spaces and buildings to artists to make do with them what they will.

R&Art, the association behind the initiative, commissions contemporary works that seek to engage the village as a whole in an effort to reconcile Vercorin’s history and traditions with contemporary culture.

Lang/Baumann‘s “Street Painting #5″ is a stunning testament to the strength of the villagers’ goal to create “spaces for dialogues in synch with our times”. And I say, what better way to demonstrate that the old and the ultra-modern can coincide in peace!? Love it!

While previous nights of gaggles of girls working on separate projects had been mightily successful (until I lost a knitting needle), this time we decided to unify the crafters with a common goal: making Valentine’s Day cards for elderly New Yorkers in conjunction with Etsy and  Citymeals-on-Wheels who will bring nutritious meals, handmade greeting cards, and companionship to those in need of some extra loving this Valentine’s Day. I stumbled across the good-will event last week and needing a bit of good Karma, proffered the idea to our lovely craft night hostess, Nidhi.

So seven of us bonded together and made 26 adorable cards over the course of 2.5 hrs. And you can do the same, even if you don’t have time (talent?) to make cards, you can buy them and deliver them to Etsy. The deadline for Etsy to receive the cards is Tuesday, February 7, 2012. You can also help by donating to Citymeals-on-Wheels or by volunteering or donating to your local organization.

Intrigued by the idea? Learn more here and get crafting/buying/receiving good Karma!

Intrigued by our craft club’s stellar efforts? Check out  Nidhi’s blog for the photographic evidence of our night!

In summary:

Two grads in California are inspired by a fleeting comment in a business class about used coffee grounds’ innate ability to produce the finest mushrooms (edible to-cook-with mushrooms, please note!). They grow a small batch in a bucket in the basement of their fraternity house, march into WholeFoods two weeks later and show their blooming garden to every department head who will see it. Not too long after, a head honcho in the Cali division calls up and says, we’ve got something big, here, fellas. From there, they approach a local coffee shop owner who agrees to pay these dudes the same amount he’s paying a waste removal service to take his used grounds. So the guys swing by the shop, pick up another man’s trash, turn it into mushroom growing gold, and then, sell the ground coffee mushroom mashup to very willing Craigslist takers who believe in the magical composting powers of such a mixture. The mushrooms are sold in WholeFoods next to the coffee beans they are grown from. They even sell do-it-yourself kits at the stores, with coupons for a cuppajoe attached.

The pay-it-forward / one-man’s-trash adages just don’t end here, do they?! Read the full story, here.

What the heck does that mean, you ask? What is improv architecture? Well, for starters the arsenal already includes guerrilla bikes lanes, urban farms, pop-up markets, acts of chairbombing (building chairs out of found materials, then placing them in public spaces in need of seating), and digital projects that reshape the way we navigate cities.

What’s more exciting that the open-submission format is that over the next nine months, the website will grow to include a news feed, a curators’ blog, links to articles and resources, and a list of participants and projects. When the Biennale begins in September, the site will add a participants’ blog and a searchable project database so that you don’t have to spend thousands on airfare (and I mean thousands. Have you seen the emissions tax the EU pushed through?!) to enjoy the best of the Biennale this year.

FYI: U.S. Pavilion commissioner and curator Cathy Lang Ho is a New York–based writer, editor, and a board member of the Institute of Urban Design. Co-curator Ned Cramer is the editor-in-chief of ARCHITECT magazine, an official media partner of the U.S. Pavilion. David van der Leer, also a co-curator, is the assistant curator of architecture and design at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Way cooler than a hobby horse, this detachable outline of a galloping horse would be made better only by changing it’s materiality. Instead of wood (this is a prototype that would likely break after a few weeks of use), the horse outline could be a sinuous line of LEDs or neon. This would up the cool and the safety factor, of course. And the price (if there were one) .

Still, super cute, especially when you read the artist’s words on her project, titled Horsey:

designer’s own words:
‘horsey’ is an attachable bicycle ornament/accessory which makes one’s bicycle look horsey! the ‘horsey’ package includes wooden ornaments (horsey shape body), metal parts, and screws. the manual is very simple so that anyone can easily arrange it according to one’s needs. through this ‘horsey’ project. I wanted to give a special look to bicycles so that people would care about cycling not only as transportation but also as a lovely pet.

Taken off the shores of Utila, Honduras by Brad Ryon, the warmth and happiness that this photo emits perfectly lifts my spirits on this cold, gray Cleveland afternoon.

Ahh what I would trade to be aimlessly floating about the ocean right now. I suppose I’ll settle for a new desktop background

Thanks to a email blast from LinkedIn, the website LostType recently appeared on my radar.

The site is unique in that it showcases the work of many font designers and offers free downloads to the public (with the option to “purchase”, profits head straight into the designer’s pocket). What’s more, with their growing database and resources, the company has blossomed in a full-blown foundry themselves.

And its not just design-on-the-side people like me who are taking note.

Companies like Nike and Sheetz and websites like Behance have adopted the free typefaces into their brand marketing, as you can see below.

As a person who has no bed frame to speak of and a rather large bedroom, this picture framed bed is so tempting. Having a wood shop available makes this extra tantalizing. But the truly amazing part about this bed is not the frame but rather the sheets set within it.

Snurk is a newish company born of the idea that great design should be intrinsically good. Their witty cotton comforter screened with high-res images of cardboard actually benefit homeless children. As do the sales of their cobblestone street sheet set (detail, left).

So if you’re out shopping for a white sale bargain today (as you should be, since January is the famed white sale month), consider doing a little charity work along the way. You’ll end up with a cuddly bed ensemble and a feel-good vibe. And of course a super-crazy-awesome conversation starter!

Here’s an argument for the former: Finally I’ve complied the photographs and text for Cleveland’s Product Runway 2011 winning look and the process behind it. Whether this inspires you to do some blog-tidying of your own or merely aides in your efforts to prolong productivity, I hope you enjoy the show as much as studioTECHNE enjoyed the making!