Grrrr.

I love the New York Times, but sometimes their tendency to report "trends" months after the blogosphere just reinforces why most mainstream media is having trouble. Slate even has an ongoing series chronicling NYTimes' slow (and anecdotal) identification of "trends." In addition, the trends they take note of are really just trends amongst an elite set of urban, educated, young(ish) consumers.



For example, uhhh yeah, thanks Style section. The people who are into design stuff/house stuff were talking about terrariums about three months ago.

PS. No disrespect to the old gray lady. I love her, and newspapers in general. No one else does investigative or long form reporting better, but these fleeting, lifestyle type stories are just better suited to blogs and online only publications (such as Slate). To each his (or her) own, you know?


Photo source

Beautiful L!brary Book

Look at this! I want to read and/or devour this!





Check out The L!brary Initiative. It is a book detailing how The Library Initiative paired New York City public schools, philanthropists (The Robin Hood Foundation), and designers, architects, etc to create beautiful, engaging, intellectually stimulating environments for children to read and explore. It basically is everything I believe should be a part of ALL library design. I want to read this so badly.



I mean, who doesn't want to go to the school library when it looks like that?

Thanks to librarian.net for pointing me towards this.

Photo source: Pentagram

monday monday

So many changes are afoot!

Lots of big things are happening in my life right now. I have a feeling this blog is going to subtly change with them. I know it is designed as a blog to document my relationship with technology...but it is also about handmade lovelies and how I feel. And right now I'm feeling a lot. A lot of things, different emotions, but mostly just a lot of everything all the time.

One of these big changes is that I will be starting my first professional jobs in 15 days. This not only is a big lifestyle change, it means moving, buying a car, etc. The apartment has just been confirmed and is my first solo (no roommates!) apartment. I've had a few amazing roommates (flatmates too) in the past, but I'm ready and excited to live alone. This also will give me more opportunity to create new crafts, decorations, etc for this new home. I am planning on really working out my personal aesthetic and design inspirations. There are many limitations to this space, but I hope to find a way to make it mine.

So, no real post today, just a warning that this space might be little more cluttered and distracted than I would have hoped. For now, here is some inspiration from around the web:

Tiny bunny love

toilet paper tubes of awesomeness

serious dress crush

planter table

Pooh

An enduring favorite thing of mine is when authors include hand drawn maps in books. It makes the world they have created so real. As a child my favorite projects were always the ones where we invented a country and got to draw a map.

Perhaps the sweetest, kindest story ever written had a map too:



Photo source

Design + Information = Love

I recently stumbled upon Information is Beautiful, a lovely website that creates visual representations of data in eye-catching, pleasing, beautiful ways. Some of the designs also force you to dig a little deeper, work a little harder, to understand the information. Engaging people with data is a good thing and allows us some time to think, to ponder, to understand what the data means in our "real" life. It can be hard to do this in the usual ways that data is presented to us--in simple bar graphs or lists of statistics. Information should be engaging. David McCandless makes it beautiful too. I would argue it should also be fun. I feel like he might agree.

Libraries are often pretty generic. Some libraries have the benefit of beautiful architectural spaces, but otherwise we seem to be pretty "neutral" in every sense of the word. As far as intellectual freedom and freedom to read goes, I'm all for it. When it comes to the surroundings we find ourselves in, there could be a bit more soul. Libraries present a lot of information to their patrons, whether it is operating hours, loan periods, fine information, directional, or news about local events. Pretty often the person making those posters is a library employee with a working knowledge of MS Publisher or InDesign. While I'm not against these programs, it would be nice to see a library create an organized, thoughtful aesthetic for all their publications. (And just throwing the letterhead and little book logo on the top doesn't count.) Good design, as shown by McCandless, can not only make information pretty to look at, but engaging. It also can, in my opinion, lead to a better quality of life. I'd love to see a library hire a design team--and not a corporate, let's make this look like every other library in a three county area team-- to make the library more colorful, fun, and aesthetically pleasing.

What do you think?

Photo source: Information is Beautiful: Colours in Culture