Tag: design
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Hot new laptop features
I’m obsessed with this “laptop” our 7 year old made: I asked him what the different features were. Check out these specs: He just whipped this together on a whim while listening to a Yoto. Kids, man. Time, space, and materials for the win.
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Do Not Pass, Pass With Care
We were driving through southern Michigan awhile back and I noticed how the signs on country roads would change between DO NOT PASS when approaching a hill or turn and then PASS WITH CARE once the road straightened out. But it was rather comical how quickly they went back and forth, because it’s not like…
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Shift Happens
As a certified typewriter person, of course I’d be interested in Marcin Winchary’s magnificent book Shift Happens: A Book About Keyboards. But I didn’t think I’d actually be able to read it since it was a popular Kickstarter project that went for a cool $150 for the two-volume set before selling out. That is until…
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The art of ‘90s photo envelopes
While going through my library’s bevy of old staff and event photos, I encountered lots of what used to be commonplace but are now practically ancient artifacts: photo envelopes. Most of them were from the 1990s and early 2000s, which you can probably guess from the designs. (See also: groovy ’70s library brochures.)
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Tiles, trains, and all the magnetic feels
Two of my favorite activities to do with Mr. Two Years Old is play with his train tracks and Magna-Tiles. We started with a relatively small batch of both, but then he got big upgrades for Christmas and from his cousins as hand-me-downs, so recently we’ve been really going wild. When we first got the…
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Recent Views (in my kitchen)
We’re finally redoing the original kitchen in our 1956 house. Once the old metal Youngstown cabinets were removed, I noticed this collision of patterns on the unfinished wall: I also discovered some old-school miscellanea:
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City roads turned into line drawings
Andrei Kashcha’s City Roads tool beautifully renders every road of any city in the world into a simple line drawing using OpenStreetMap. I did my hometown of Madison (above), knowing its isthmus gives it a distinct look. I then did the city where I work and discovered that for some reason it includes a large…
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This is my backpack
Part of the This Is My series. Thanks to the magic of email, I know that in March 2009 my mom asked if I wanted anything from REI. She had a coupon that was about to expire but didn’t need anything for herself. REI is one of those stores I love in principle but don’t…
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This is my jacket
Part of the This Is My series. If you have met me in the last 15 years, there’s a decent chance you have seen me in this orange jacket: I acquired it in 2004 on a trip from Madison to Kansas City with a few people from my youth group to attend a conference. We…
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Circle of lives
Somewhere on the Internet I stumbled upon this print from the artist Nina Montenegro’s series Against Forgetting: It struck a chord in me not only because I’ve been reading the tree-centric novel The Overstory, but also because six days ago I became a father. And I’ll tell ya, I know I’m barely a week into…
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LEGO my DeLorean
Wait a minute, Doc. Are you telling me you built a time machine… out of LEGO? While rearranging the apartment in advance of Baby, I was sorting our small games collection and stumbled upon the unopened LEGO Back to the Future set my dad got me a few years ago. I gotta say, it was…
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Paper Only! No TVs
This sign is posted in the parking lot outside my work. Why “NO TV’s”? A while ago someone left an old TV next to what they thought was a dumpster for trash but is actually a dumpster for paper recycling. But only people who had seen the TV there before it got picked up will…
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Päntsdrunk, baby box, Moomin, and Finland’s other official emojis
God bless Finland, my ancestral homeland. First, there’s the new book Pantsdrunk (Kalsarikanni): The Finnish Path to Relaxation (Drinking at Home Alone in your Underwear) by Miska Rantanen. From the publisher: Danes have hygge. Swedes have lagom. But the Finnish secret to contentment is faster and easier—”kalsarikänni” or pantsdrunk—drinking at home, alone, in your underwear.…
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Denver Crush Walls
Got to visit Denver for the second time this year for a friend’s wedding. While there another Denver friend brought me on a walking tour of the Crush Walls urban art festival in the RiNo neighborhood, where we saw some really cool graffiti:
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Know Wonder
I’m sad I missed the TEDx event this year at my alma mater, especially because of its great theme and logo:
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OED can you see?
A used books and records store in my town just moved even closer to my place. Today I stopped by and saw a two-volume Oxford English Dictionary Compact Edition. It comes in a case and with its own magnifying glass, because they weren’t kidding when they called it compact: I exercised enough self-control to pass…
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Fly the L flag
On my way to a concert last night, I noticed the flag-like design of the Chicago L train platform and tracks when viewed from above: Track, platform, and the space in between. “The space between” being, in essence, what public transportation is.