Moleskin Featured Artist

Fashion Designer, Antonio Marras

New Nalgene Kits

Nalgene - its not just a container... now they are using it as packaging! Brilliant and noteworthy move by nalgene which has already spread into so many markets - for being basically a container manufacturer... so its for scientific purposes, then outdoors, then travel/airport security checks, then kids, then various caps and kits and flasks... and now you can get Auto, First Aid, Preparedness, Heat Stress, Dog, and Kid kits! All in your usual 32oz classic nalgenes... each with a signature color for branding naturally.

Google Sky

Goggle Sky,the latest version of Google Earth lets you flip to Sky Mode and see the sky from the place you were centered on the earth. It’s an incredible way to explore and travel from your desktop… absolutely beautiful. This is in collaboration with NASA/Space Telescope Institute, Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and Digital Sky Survey Consortium.

Brown Bag Her

To promote the show Ugly Betty in New Zealand, over sized brown bags were placed over Ugly Betty signs with only the time of the show still revealed.

Nike Guerrilla Marketing

Nike passed these cards out to runners so they can alert their friends and family that they have "gone running". I thought this was a really cute marketing campaign from Nike.

Braille Graffiti

Scott Wayne Indiana's public art project for the blind, Braille Graffiti, "is an attempt to create a unique moment for a blind person who might happen across one of these bits of braille graffiti." The project was inspired by an interview with a blind person who chose to remain anonymous. 5 phrases were printed and scattered about the streets of Portland, Oregon.

I think it could have been executed better but a cool idea none the less.

Jelly Belly BellyFlops

Very ingenious marketing.

Did you ever wonder what happens to the Jelly Belly jelly beans that are a little less perfect? Or the ones that somehow escaped the Jelly Belly logo stamper? Well, those are our beloved Belly Flops! Belly Flops are no less flavorful, or lovable, than regular Jelly Belly jelly beans; they just come in wild shapes and sizes. You may find one that's round, one that's square, or you may even find a bunch stuck together. On very rare occasions, a flavor may not match a color. A red Belly Flop might taste like Blueberry, or a white one might taste like Chocolate Pudding. Crazy! Belly Flop bags contain different assortments, and each bag is randomly packed.

Greenpeace Enlists Spencer Tunick

Yesterday Spencer Tunick gathered over 300 volunteers for his latest "living sculpture".

The setting:

The top of Switzerland’s shrinking Aletsch glacier.

The photo was sponsored by Greenpeace to raise awareness about climate change.

Greenpeace predicts that most of the Swiss glaciers will totally disappear by they year 2080 if global warming continues at its current rate

Japan's Sewer System

These photos are amazing. To see all of them, click here

Roger Arquer Fish Bowls

London based designer, [Roger Arquer], came out with a new collection of fish bowls. They are quite amazing. Take a look.

Moleskin Feature: Ruben Toledo

Ruben Toledo is one of my favorite illustrators. Take a look inside his sketchbook.

Schweppes Guerrilla Marketing

Someecards

My friend turned me on to these new e-cards from [someecards.com]. They are absolutely hilarious and a nice change to the bland e-cards from other internet sites. Check them out.

Journalism at its Best

"Journalist Suzanne Boyd combined Caribbean warmth and Canadian cool with European chic and Afican boldness to make her apartment a home like no other."

- Oprah AT HOME, Summer 2007 Issue

....ah, what?!? thats a melting pot if I've ever heard of one

Type in the Sky

By Lisa Rienermann.

Clever Marketing

This billbaord was placed in a very clever place implying that the new Smart Brabus's enguine must have some extra power to it.

Edding Markers Guerilla Marketing

A very creative marketing campaign for Edding markers promoting its slogan, "works on any surface". Projected out of a moving van onto the surface of all kinds of buildings in a very popular area of Hamburg, Germany. Take a look.

GREAT promotional website!

Miranda July has a new book coming out and this online guerrilla marketing campaign featuring a "dry-erase" board is a different approach to get the word out. Very clever.

To visit, click here.

Harry Potter Impersonators

With the highly anticipated 7th Harry Potter being released, there has been a lot of press surrounding the book. One article I ran across in the New York Times gave me a few chuckles. If you are a Harry Potter Fan, you'll love the names Chinese Publishing Houses have come up with to knock of the genuine J.K. Rowling novels.

.....................

As in some other countries, there are the unauthorized translations of real Harry Potter books, as well as books published under the imprint of major Chinese publishing houses, about which the publishers themselves say they have no knowledge. And there are the novels by budding Chinese writers hoping to piggyback on the success of the series — sometimes only to have their fake Potters copied by underground publishers who, naturally, pay them no royalties.

No one can say with any certainty what the full tally is, but there are easily a dozen unauthorized Harry Potter titles on the market here already, and that is counting only bound versions that are sold on street corners and can even be found in school libraries. Still more versions exist online.

These include “Harry Potter and the Half-Blooded Relative Prince,” a creation whose name in Chinese closely resembles the title of the genuine sixth book by Ms. Rowling, as well as pure inventions that include “Harry Potter and the Hiking Dragon,” “Harry Potter and the Chinese Empire,” “Harry Potter and the Young Heroes,” “Harry Potter and Leopard-Walk-Up-to-Dragon,” and “Harry Potter and the Big Funnel.”

Some borrow little more than the names of Ms. Rowling’s characters, lifting plots from other well-known authors, like J. R. R. Tolkien, or placing the famously British protagonist in plots lifted from well-known kung-fu epics and introducing new characters from Chinese literary classics like “Journey to the West.”

Here, the global Harry Potter publishing phenomenon has mutated into something altogether Chinese: a combination of remarkable imagination and startling industriousness, all placed in the service of counterfeiting, literary fraud and copyright violation.

Wang Lili, editor of the China Braille Publishing House, which published “Harry Potter and the Chinese Porcelain Doll” in 2002, one of the Chinese knockoffs, said: “We published the book out of a very common incentive. Harry Potter was so popular that we wanted to enjoy the fruits of its widely accepted publicity in China.”

Bono: A Brief History

GOOD Magazine came out with a great video on the rocker turned global advocate. Enjoy!

Bryant Park Summer Movies

This is what New York is all about.

The Blacker the Google...

...the more energy-efficient the screen.


Eco-tech blogger Mark Ontkush estimated a black version of Google would save 750 Megawatt-hours a year because black requires less energy to display than white.

So Toby Heap made Blackle.

Try it out!

FKBK

aka "For Kids, By Kids".

A funny parody by The Onion bringing awareness to the issue of Foreign Child Labor by such companies as Gap.

Breathe In, Breathe Out

The rhythms of the tides, sped up to match the rhythm of slow breathing. This beautiful work from Greenpeace's video campaign has a meditative quality and a quality message.

Kudos to my 'Ol Alma Mater

This article will be running in Business Week next week. Congratulations to Robert Sedlack, Paul Down, and the rest of the amazing professors within the Design Program at the University of Notre Dame.

Best Award-Winning Design Schools Around The World.

Next week we publish the annual International Design Excellence Awards winners (it used to be Industrial Design Excellence Awards) and they are an incredible collection of fascinating products, services, research, student work and concepts. The whole package goes up online on Thursday night, including those great charts showing which design firms and which companies won the most gold, silver and bronze awards in 2007 and from 2003 through 2007. Print goes on sale on Friday.

One new category of design winners this year is schools. The IDSA broke out the design schools attended by the students who won IDEA awards. In addition, three schools were actual clients--Carnegie Mellon, Delft University of Technology and Technische Univeriteit Eindhoven. The IDSA broke out the schools for 2007 and for 2003-2007. We won't have space for all of them in the magazine so I thought I'd put the list up now. They will also go online on Thursday.

Schools Given Recognition:

Carnegie Mellon
Cleveland Institute of Art
Daejin University (South Korea)
Delft Univ. of Technology (Netherlands)
Hfg Offenbach am Main (Germany)
Hong-ik University (South Korea)
Inst. Of Design-IIT
Kookmin University (South Korea)
Milwaukee Inst. Of Art & Design
Muthesius Academy of Fine Arts & Design (Germany)
Seoul National University (South Korea)
Shih Chien University (Taiwan)
Technische Universiteit Eindhoven - /d.search-labs (Netherlands)
Univ. of Cincinnati
Univ. of Notre Dame

...And Over 5 Years, Schools recieiving most awards

Art Center College of Design 9
San Francisco State Univ. 4
Univ. of Notre Dame 3
California College of the Arts 3

Now ponder these lists. Clearly Korean schools are beginning to produce first rate design students. Great talent is coming out of Europe as well. And talented design students are coming out of a whole range of schools in the US, including the University of Cincinnati (go Craig Vogel!, the Institute of Design in Chicago, the University of Notre Dame, the Cleveland Institute of Art and Carnegie Mellon, of course.

Now we've got to get the Royal College of Art to start entering it's terrific student projects into the IDEA contest.

Top 5 Killers at Monument

This is hilarious. Definitely a very creative way to promote products from San Francisco store Monument. Cool products, cooler promotional technique.

Top 5 things that could kill someone
Uploaded by sallyTVdotcom

HighTide Heels

Always be prepared.

Everything in Perspective

If you think you are having a bad day...
click here.

Rumor: Touch Screen iPods

The touch screen iPod is more of a "When" than an "If". There's no doubt that we'll see it eventually, but it could be as soon as next month if the information from Digitimes is correct. It claims that the Taiwanese manufacturer Wintek is churning out touch screens ready for an August release. Given the usual scarcity of Apple products at launch (yes, except the iPhone), a late summer release would give them time to ramp up production (and frenzied demand) in time for the holiday season. Digitimes fails to quote sources, but with all the speculation spinning around, there's got to be something from Apple next month, right?

via wired magazine

The Wind

Such a cute commercial.