The designers of Past.fm wanted to create an object that would let listeners explore their own music history. The problem they identified, however, is that, for a new generation of listeners, that history will mostly exist in a digital form.
The object is simple: it's a wooden speaker enclosure with an LCD screen, a single sliding handle, and a slot to insert an RFID token to switch between listeners' histories. The sliding handle is used to navigate through one's musical timeline (stored in a Last.fm account, naturally), playing a new track at every position using Spotify.
The success of the design is that Razan Sadeq, Hideaki Matsui, and Zubin Pastakia at the Copenhagen Institute of Interactive Design didn't try to mimic an experience younger listeners never actually had. There's no large color screen for album art, no liner notes, and no suggestion that albums should be listened to from start to finish. The experience is closer to finding an organized catalog of every vaguely-titled mixtape or burned CD you once made and excitedly clicking through old favorites.
But not everything about the way we listen to music has changed, and an important quality of the design is that past.fm is geared towards a shared listening experience. The Minority Report-esque token balls pop in and out, and are meant to be swapped with friends, just like mixtapes.
When Evangelia Koutsovoulou moved from rural Greece to Milan, Italy her cooking suffered. She realized city cooks didn't have access to the same herbs founds in the mediterranean country side, so she launched a Kickstarter campaign to start distributing fresher Sage, Bay Leaves, Oregano, and Thyme.
But because she's not the biggest fan of cameras, and Kickstarter campaigns require a video element, she commissioned friends to tell the story of her two-year search for the best herbs in a simple but impressive animated short. Koutsovoulou also designed a strong branding identity for the herbs: each package is shipped in a small foldable bag with a cleanly designed name and information card affixed to the front. A tiny yellow sun at the bottom of the card contrasts the blue sans serif type, and along with the market-style bag, connotes freshness.
Pledge some money and become an official "Oregano Tester"
Put simply, the colors in Nadja Staubli photos are surprising. Whether it's an image of a Martian red sky above an indoor pool, or a three-color pastel mansion shot from the parking lot, Staubli finds colors and shapes that don't seem of this world. Instead her collections read as a kind of happily distorted vacation diary that pays more attention to unexpected patterns in swimming pools, golf courses, and highways than documenting sights and people. [Via It's Nice That]
from Community
from Urtropica
from P.U.R.P.L.E
While it might be mid-May, it still gets a little chilly in Los Angeles at night. In an effort to help those stranded without a sweater and sell a few ponchos, the L.A.-based poncho company Señor Tyrone just launched a "Poncho Express" program that promises local delivery of one of its fine, made-in-the-Andes ponchos in under an hour with only a simple tweet. To get your hands on an emergency poncho, all you have to do is send a tweet to @senortyrone bearing the hashtag #ponchoexpress with your location. Delivery is free, and the messengers accept cash and credit. And the good news for cold folks in New York is that a similar service is planned for a fall launch.
Before you get stuck poncho-less out in the cold, head to Señor Tyrone to see if you're in the delivery zone.
After the end of World War II, a number of writers and creatives left home in Europe and immigrated to the United States and Canada. One group of Latvian writers and artists, who set up new lives in Canada, launched a magazine called Jaunā Gaita, or "The New Course," to create work about their unfamiliar surroundings. While the content was notable on its own, the magazine also developed a cohesive tone with their cover art for each issue, typically featuring a bold design and rarely more than three colors. The magazine is still active in the increasingly rare print format, and although printing technology has made full color images commonplace, Jaunā Gaita often still opts for the simplicity of a two-color design.
Check out the Jaunā Gaita archives to see even more covers and features.
