Smithsonian: Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum

I recently spent a few morning hours exploring the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum with my daughter-in-law and wife. We took our time wandering through the two current exhibitions “Set in Style: The Jewelry of Van Cleef & Arpels” and “Color Moves: Art and Fashion by Sonia Delaunay” as well as the gift shop. It was interesting to see the many influences of the world on the designers in the exhibitions, and then back again as their designs influenced the world. I was particularly impressed by the Chinese Magician pocket watch, the transforming zipper jewelry, and the Bronx Cocktail bracelet. The old ledgers documenting the design process were a very nice addition as well.


I hope someday to visit the the Museum’s Drue Heinz Study Center for Drawings and Prints which is currently closed. It houses more than 160,000 works of art dating from the Renaissance to the present related to the history of European and American art and design. The collection includes designs for architecture, decorative arts, gardens, interiors, ornament, jewelry, theater, textiles, graphic and industrial design, as well as the fine arts. You can browse through their holdings here.

The gift shop is a visual feast as well, with such wonders as the Hazelnut Box with Miniature Knife and Yoshida The Crow Model Airplane. “The Crow design was the first such model plane to ever be built and flown in Japan. It dates from 1889, when its inventor based his model on the crow’s wing span after studying them in flight.”

The Ampersand, Pt. 1

Graffiti from Pompeii, circa 79 AD.

via Shady Characters The secret life of punctuation
…the ampersand is an orphan: its creator is not known, and the closest it comes to a parent is the anonymous first century graffiti artist who scrawled it hastily across a Pompeiian wall.”
Read the rest here.

How To Disable Facebook’s Automatic Facial Recognition Service

via maclife
“Facebook recently introduced a new facial recognition service that allows for easier photo tagging. However, the problem is that many users may not appreciate this feature, and consider it a privacy concern. Fortunately, Facebook did enable the ability to turn off this feature…”
Find out how, here.

Synesthesia’s role in creativity: Pt. 3

via imprint
“…the premise of synesthesia offers a jumping-off point mainly for those creatives who don’t have it…”
Read the rest here.

Business Card of the Day

Picked up in Corning, NY. The front and back are indeed two different colors, though I am not sure why.

Business Card of the Day

Found posted on a bulletin board at Tractor Supply Company. I’m not entirely sure what a wildlife service person does . . . 

Business Cards: Page XXXIX

First off, a giganormous Thank You to the love of my life for taking the time to scan these pages for me! And so this post wraps up the page scans of business cards. In the future, if I come across any I find interesting—the good, the bad, and the ugly—I'll post them individually. I hope you enjoyed looking through these as much I have.

Section 2 of The Highline Opens

via designboom
“Featuring a number of new design features, section 2 of the one mile long urban park is open to the public. The one mile long urban park is recycled from the former elevated freight railroad spur and runs from Gansevvort Street in the Meatpacking District to west 34th street, between 10th and 11th avenues.”
See more images here.

Business Cards: Page XXXVIII

Pantone desktop wallpapers

via how about orange
Download PANTONE iPhone, iPad, and desktop wallpapers in your choice of six hues, here.

Business Cards: Page XXXVII

Image of the Day: Mathematics League Patch

Found while taking a break along Park Avenue, this patch also has a very tiny ampersand!

Business Cards: Page XXXVI

Business Cards: Page XXXV

Sleep May Restore Color Perception

via colourlovers
“Color perception drifts away from neutrality during wakefulness and is restored during sleep, suggests a research abstract presented in at SLEEP 2010, the 24th annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies LLC. Results indicate that prior wakefulness caused the color gray to be classified as having a slightly but significantly greenish tint. Overnight sleep restored perception to achromatic equilibrium so that gray was perceived as gray...”
Read the rest here.

Cocktail Colors Seen Through the Microscope

Gin & Tonic

via colourlovers
“BevShot images are made by first crystallizing the drink of choice on a lab slide. Using a standard light microscope with a camera attached, the light source is polarized and passed through the crystal. This creates the colors we see…”
Read the rest here.

Earworm of the Day: Nothing Else Matters‬ by‪ Scala & Kolacny Brothers

A Crow Chick Visits

A big thank you to true-indigo for taking these movies.

Savage Chickens: Cat Adventures Episode 8

via savage chickens

Indigo: The Colour that Seduced the World

Indigo by Catherine E McKinley
will be published in August 2011

via delancyplace
“Until the most recent times, color dyes were rare and precious commodities upon which power and fortunes were built. Indigo, the brilliant blue dye made from plants, was one of America's slavery-based cash crops. But long before it was exported by America, indigo dye had been one of the world's great treasures for thousands of years. Referred to by some as blue gold, it caught the imagination of connoisseurs, and merchants and colonialists with its power to bewitch and its transcendent beauty — and the value and demand for indigo became ungovernable. It sparked bitter trade wars, and touched off impassioned European and North American legislation and political debate and became known as The Devil’s Dye.”
Read the rest here.