World Building in a Crazy World

Many of you are probably familiar with Jonathan Harris.   He is, in my mind, a genius.  While he has created a number of fantastic projects, he seems to have gotten the most press for We Feel Fine, an interactive exploration of human emotion, which also just recently became the We Feel Fine book.  If you haven’t checked it out, do.

More recently, he created a series of vignettes titled World Building in a Crazy World, which are based on a talk he gave at UCLA as part of the Mobile Media Lecture Series.  When I first came across them, I was in a cozy hotel in the Trastevere neighborhood of Rome wrapping up a two week vacation and mildly dreading heading back to NYC.  After reading them, my mind shifted; I wanted to dive back into the projects I was working on and see how I could make them better.  I became “less concerned with how the world is, and more with how the world could and should be.”  As Jonathan sees it, the series is about the current state of the digital world.  As I see it, the vignettes are about life and how to be more conscious of how we live it.

Think about his points.  Soak them in.   Apply them to your life where it feels right.  I did and I’m a better person because of it.

Yes Please: The GOOD 100

Good, a magazine “for people who give a damn,” recently released their first ever GOOD 100.  They invited people to nominate people, businesses and institutions who are making the world a better place.  After a complex process of nomination, ranking, and voting, they compiled a list of those who are driving change in the world.  Their list ranges from the city that is manufacturing the first American-built streetcars in almost 60 years (Go Portland!) to a program that aims to save water and money by paying residents $1 to $2 for every square foot of grass they replace with drought-resistant plants.

As promised on the cover, some I have heard of and some I have not. Either way, it is presented in an interactive grid that is both aesthetically pleasing and inspiring.  Every day until October 22nd, they will release five new entries so make sure to check out the site often.

*How amazing is the cover of the issue?  The cover was shot by Will Etling and styled by Brian Rea and features an amazing collection of hand-cut (and glued and taped) construction-paper models.  They gave us all a behind the scenes look at the shoot here.

Quotable: Charles Eames

“The details are not the details. They make the product.” -Charles Eames

The Eames.  They were innovative, modern, practical and classic.  Their house was built 60 years ago in the 1949 as part of the Case Study House Program.   It took just one-and-a-half days for eight workers to build the frame from 11 tons of steel and cost just $1 per square foot.

NYC loves their banh mi

Photo Illustration by Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

NYC can’t seem to stop writing, blogging, eating and blogging and writing about the beloved banh mi.