Observed | May 21
Wanna play with some Brutalist buildings? Skyline chess has a new offering of London’s most-notable architecture from the Brutalist movement including the Trellick Tower, Petty France, Centrepoint and Cromwell Tower. [BV]
Design Observer co-founder @jessicahelfand is heading to Malta this week as an external critic working with Professor Vince Briffa,
recipient of the Tribute to Art and Innovation award at this year’s Venice Biennale. [BV]
Observed | May 20
Book lovers will want to pay close attention to a new collaboration between Designers & Books and Peter Kraus’s Ursus Books & Gallery in New York. This installment:
A Flowering of Creativity: Ladislav Sutnar and F. T. Marinetti. [BV]
Observed | May 15
We can‘t wait to explore Boston this fall when we host The Design of Business | The Business of Design conference at MIT.
Bike-commuting, T-riding, and monorail-tweeting around Boston with transit-oriented 20-something NUMTOT founder Juliet Eldred. [BV]
Observed | May 14
What year is it? Why does it matter? While chronology and dating might not be exciting, they are the stuff that history is made on, for
dates do two things: they allow things to happen only once, and they insist on the ordering and interrelation of all happenings. [BV]
“We should not be excessively interested in books”, wrote
Roy Gold, biblio-graffiti outsider artist, and a bookish man. [BV]
Observed | May 13
You may not love sports, but it’s hard not to enjoy sports photography, especially for it’s innovativeness. Case in point:
Sports Illustrated photographer Neil Leifer hit a grand slam when he
set out to capture a double play on film. [BV]
Observed | May 10
In the 1950s and 1960s artists from the Soviet Union looked to the skies and
foresaw a Utopia in space. [BV]
Observed | May 09
Early cinema is often remembered as an exclusively black-and-white affair—the bold and often fantastical colors that flickered across the earliest film reels are frequently left out of our greater cinematic history.
More neglected still are the women responsible for those dazzling hues. [BV]
Observed | May 08
We’re addicted to likes, retweets, and reshares, and our addiction makes us distracted and depressed.
Tristan Harris believes that tech is ‘downgrading humans’ and that the words we use to describe the problem are tepid and insufficient. It’s time to fight back. [BV]
Created for animators aiming to perfect their rendering of animal gaits,
this video combines illustration, biology, and physics, and is a joy to watch! [BV]
The compelling history and impressive prints of
the earliest printing press in the Uruguayan territory. [BV]
Observed | May 07
Our very talented friend Rob Walker has a new book out today! Get yourself a copy of
The Art of Noticing: 131 Ways to Spark Creativity, Find Inspiration, and Discover Joy In the Everyday and be inspired. [BV]
Observed | May 02
Gail Bichler and Jake Silverstein look back at a year
designing The New York Times Magazine. [BV]
Observed | May 01
A thoughtful critique (and a few commonsense changes) of Hudson Yards and it‘s walkability: who uses the space, when the space is used, how the space forms community, and how it integrates the the community that surrounds it. [JH]
Observed | April 30
The brain apparently makes no distinction between a broken bone and an aching heart.
Rejection actually hurts. [BV]
Influence was worrisome long before it was digital. The word “influence” appears in a quarter of William Shakespeare’s plays, in which the condition of being influenced is rarely happy or dignified.
A history of the influencer, from Shakespeare to Instagram. [BV]
Observed | April 29
Lego has come up with perhaps its most ingenious product yet:
bricks designed to help children learn Braille. [BV]
Back in the 1960’s,
when Penn Station became a subterranean rat’s maze, New York City seemed to be heading very definitely south. [BV]
Observed | April 26
In its original concept,
the Appalachian Trail was more than a hiking path. It was a wildly ambitious plan to reorganize the economic geography of the eastern United States. [BV]
Observed | April 24
American food is increasingly channeled through a handful of companies: Amazon, Walmart, FreshDirect, Blue Apron. What do we lose if traditional neighborhood supermarkets go under?
Meet the man who’s going to save your neighborhood grocery store. [BV]
Timed to coincide with Easter, Earth Day and, for New Englanders, Patriot’s Day:
two billboards outside of Boston. [BV]
Observed | April 23
Public Sans is a new typeface from the US Government. According to the General Services Administration, “sometimes you need [a typeface] that’s simple, neutral, and isn’t Helvetica.” Not sure we agree. [BV]
Observed | April 22
A brief memoir of
growing up in the library. [BV]
Where can a teen get a poster in 2019? How does a teenager turn their bedroom into a shrine?
A wonderful history of the poster and it’s meaning past, current, and future. [BV]
In honor of Earth Day, three galleries that remind us of the beauty and power of nature:
the power of storms from Mitch Dobrowner,
amazing landscapes from Leah Kennedy, and
Earth from space by Astronaut Scott Kelly. [BV]
Observed | April 19
Spam musubi (a Hawaiian snack of canned meat served on rice and wrapped in nori) and other
unintended consequences of cultural exchange. [BV]
Despite their seeming environmental unfriendliness,
logos with factories and smokestacks have made a comeback in the US. [BV]
Observed | April 18
Post Typography created an
unconventional participatory campaign to support the Baltimore Museum of Art‘s conversation series on art, race, social justice, and imagining the future(s) we want. [BV]
Where do you stand on the “Pedestrian Aggressiveness Syndrome Scale”?
Why your brain hates slowpokes. [BV]
