I’ve always wanted a rough-hewn wooden table. Simply joined. Oil finished. Heavy, durable, earthy, something that gets better and better with age and hard wear, like bridle leather.

The Velia table, designed in 2006 by Ulrich Koessl, Tishch and Stuhl Willisau of Lucern, turns this physical romance on its head by encasing a prosciutto-thin slice of treetrunk in glass. It looks like a giant microscope slide.

via International Design Awards

Uniqlo doesn’t nap when it comes to innovative digital marketing. Their savory-sweet UNIQLOCK invented a new form of commercial art by combining performance, catalog, and clock into a screensaver. Schoolgirls in cashmere dance, make cat’s-cradles, and execute solo secret handshakes with their bodies, each in a bite-sized four-count before the time flashes and another video loads. You can literally while away the hours watching it.

Their latest, UT LOOP!, is a excellent interactive effort. It is a rhythm composer using video samples of various hip young kids making little noises, sometimes words – “dum”, “ti,” “pi”, “uo”, “okasan”, you get the picture. It clean, lovely and fun. The interface design is a typically understated, white-red-black affair, and keeps the focus on the figures in action. There’s plenty of ajax and flash about, and though I would suggest some changes to the “edit” mode, overall its quite usable. Bonus points for the embeddable player.

This little toy/marketing tool is so great because it is in and of the internet. In, because it is necessarilly a web object: it requires interactivity, viral networks, and participation to succeed. Of, because it is an obvious nod to Lasse Gjertsen, a first-wave webvideo star whose edited-webcam beatboxing will be familiar to most YouTube natives. Another happy feedback loop between creatives, commerce, and the crowd.
Read the rest of this article »

The week before Christmas I was puttering around the apartment and decided I needed to go somewhere in Paris I hadn’t been before. I had heard from numerous sources that there were some precious streets near Parc Montsouris in the 14th that were worth checking out, so I hopped on the RER and rode down to Cité Universitaire armed with little more than my camera, my Paris Pratique, and the names of a few streets rumored to be notable.

I’m sure Parc Montsouris is as charming as I’m told, but it is winter and the trees are bare, so I’ll give it a more thorough appraisal at an appropriate time of year. That said, there are a couple of interesting attractions at the southern terminus of the park: the RER station house, and the Paris Meridian.

Read the rest of this article »