Billykirk make things with stories.
We live in a world full of things that can be thrown away without regret. Things that don’t have any deep meaning. Perhaps this is ok, but I think we lose something when our things don’t have meaning. Our houses become dumping grounds for meaningless things without stories. That’s why when I hear about people who are bucking the trend of meaningless stuff. People who are creating pieces with stories. I listen and I support them. Because I think if we fill our life with things with stories it will be much richer than if we fill it with empty things.
Chris and Kirk Bray are doing this. They founded Billykirk in 1999 to make handcrafted leather goods that have a story to tell. This video, shot by The Scout gives great insight into them and their philosophy. It’s a bit long (~8 minutes) but it’s beautifully shot and worth every second you spend watching it.
Rethink Scholarship at Langara 2010 Call for Entries from Rory O'Sullivan and Simon Bruyn on Vimeo.
This is a great visualization of the creative process. love it.
i love love love these sweet illustrations that natalie did of her kitties, inspired by the super awesome pet illustrations of andrew bannecker. i may have to follow suit; my kitties, millie and june, deserve their likenesses in such an adorable manner.
speaking of my kitties, because i have a (slightly crazy) tendency to sing variations of “hey jude” to june (i’m sure you can guess how i got there) and love the beatles, bill sent me a link to this awesome beatles flowchart from love all this. fantastic.
help zeus jones & puny do some holiday good
help zeus jones, puny and box tops for education take all the students at minneapolis’s richard r green central park community school on a field trip next year.
to a lot of us, the idea of a field trip seems so basic, but please watch the seriously cute animation and you’ll understand how important it is. letting kids see what the world (or even the other side of the city or the river!) has to offer makes more of a difference than you can know. and i know. i used to teach at a school that was a lot like green.
and, as always, nice work, zj and puny!
The bright red envelope in my mailbox yesterday signaled the much anticipated arrival of Gary Hustwit’s new film Objectified and an evening spent on the couch, in rapt attention with hot cocoa in hand. Directed in a style very similar to his last film Helvetica this movie is a collection of interviews with a series of fascinating characters from the industrial design world. Some of them are practically caricatures of themselves which like cow hide on an Eames chair makes for a secondary dimension of entertainment layered over the primary theme – a dive into a tremendously interesting, important, impactful and often overlooked design field. As the movie points out the sexy stuff from Apple or BMW gets noticed as design but in actuality everything is designed at some level even if that level is a pretty disheartening, single-minded drive to get one more piece of trash into our overflowing landfills via your living room. But take heart, design has exploded onto the radar of the mba set and become the primary business advantage for many products. Designers and manufactures are also coming to recognize that sustainability will be the next advantage. Together with consumers everyone involved is becoming more demanding and if the trend is toward more elegantly designed and more sustainably manufactured products that is a good thing.
Check out the trailer and then reserve a spot on your sofa and make extra hot cocoa so you’ve got enough to get you through the extra features – you’re going to want to soak up every minute of this film.
Rent Objectified from NetFlix before it gets all scratched up.
Or buy it from Amazon or directly from the Objectified store. Speaking of sustainable you can also save some money as well as the impact of shipping the plastic if you download the film from iTunes.
If you come away wanting to be even more objectified iTunes recently interviewed Gary Hustwit and posted the podcast.
(note this and the iTunes link will open in iTunes)
Milton Glaser draws and talks about why the process of drawing is important. Love his insights.
MILTON GLASER DRAWS & LECTURES from C. Coy on Vimeo.
(via doodlers anonymous)
love love love love.