Dyson Airblade

I am a severe skeptic of commercial hand dryers used in bathrooms. Period. I'm a paper towel kinda' gal.

My least favorite is the TOTO Clean Dry (it collects excess water into a a tray which ricochets the air directly from the machine, into the day's collected water, and straight into your face- most unpleasant when the water is green, stinky and from a large sample of people).

Yet, the people from Dyson have yet again created a masterpiece of industrial design and brought me this (which ironically, I encountred at the MoMA, mecca of beautiful things):

::trumpets please::

It worked like a charm. Took no time at all. And seemed so right- almost perfection (men seemed less impressed because larger hands couldn't avoid direct contact thus touching it) but none the less, awesome.

Buy your own for only $1,199.00! and check out their beautiful website: dyson airblade

Adaptive Eyewear... Explained!

I was recently writing a paper on the need for micro-finance in Sub-Saharan Africa for a geography class and I stumbled upon this project which I had heard of before through a talk with Jacqueline Novogratz/Acumen Fund at Parsons. It's called Adaptive Eyewear and was immediately fascinated. Here's a bit from Monocle Magazine:

Adaptive Eyewear is a social enterprise that’s working to correct the vision of some of the millions of people in developing nations that have no access to glasses. They do this using a unique technology that might prove the key to giving widespread vision correction to those who need it in a cost-effective manner. Monocle visits their headquarters in Oxford to see how they’re doing it.

watch the full explanation here on their website. brilliant.

If it isn't broken, don't fix it.

The Indian Government has just announced that the rupee will have a new currency symbol. The new one (the fancy R to the left) will not be used directly on any currency, but will be included in the Unicode Standard, making it easier for everyone to use. But it seems to have lost a little of its charm- especially with its use of the Roman "R". Why fix it? The first one looked fantastic!

Poogla

I'm endlessly looking for fantastic wallpapers for my iPhone. Check out this website Poogla which features hundreds of wallpapers by designers, illustrators and artists.

 

hey! that's my work!

Bruce Nussbaum has just moved to Fast Co. Design! I was one of his students last semester and he mentioned my work in his post "F*** The Boomers, Screw the X-ers, Give Gen Y Power Now":

After observing that most visitors to MOMA and the Met hated their audio headphones--bad information, interrupted socializing and annoying technology--a group of students from Parsons decided to re-design the experience. They created a prototype iPhone app called The Museum: A New Social Experience, combining exhibition images, detailed information about the works, links to expert video conversations and consumer comments. Use it while you’re there, share it with your friends, and return to the exhibition forever after. The 19, 20 and 21-year-olds designed a better learning experience than a generation of museum designers.  My thought? If they could only be empowered to design a new university….

Read the whole thing here and admire those pics at the bottom too (!)

Thanks Professor Nussbaum!

A shout out to Professor Robb and "Social Thought"

Looking back on my first year at Parson- an anecdote sticks out amongst the mumble jumble of "design-idea-diarrhea".... that the lifetime of a drill is about 10 seconds (or something like that) and it was repeated into our impressionable brains that we needed to fix the broken system that encouraged buying products, like a drill, and then using it once to put up that one lonely painting in our living room. Why not rent a drill? Why not trade a drill? Why not.... use NeighborGoods? be excited. someone has a Wii you can borrow in 10003 NYC area.

Powers of Ten

Craving a little Carl Sagan, IBM and furniture design? The Eames created this documentary in the late 1960's and it was later released in the the 1970's. It explores the relative scale of the Universe in different powers of 10. Also, it provides a sense of insignificance if you need help getting down from an ego trip. Watch it below or on the Powers of Ten website.

powers of ten :: charles and ray eames from bacteriasleep on Vimeo.

Endless Possibilities with Wallpaper

Updated to iOS 4 on my iPhone today- and now you can pick a wallpaper on Lock Screen and Home Screen. The new sample ones what came with the update were mediocre and a few classics such as the frog, fish and aspen trees (my beloved) were removed. Thus, my quest for new wallpaper. Here is my jackpot:

typenuts for beautiful design and typographic wallpapers.

My New Choice ::trumpets please:: below:typenuts