In an effort to combat the increasing number of hours British citizens spend on the couch each week, the National Trust has arranged the creation of large grass sofas. The Trust has installed and grown ten couches, distributing them across British towns.
The installations, which are useable, encourage citizens to venture outdoors, while providing them with the familiarity and comfort of a couch. With obesity on the rise in the western world, encouraging people to get outdoors is one of the first steps in healthier living.
The Canadian company iQ has come up with a line of smarter cleaning products. iQ is unique because it is composed of a line of reusable bottles and sprayers. Their patented REFill (Reduced Environmental Footprint) concentrate cartridges allow customers to simply fill the bottle with their own tap water, insert a cartridge and then clean. This product’s reusability reduces customers’ carbon footprints by decreasing the need for the transportation of heavier, newly bottled cleaning materials. iQ says that using their product, compared to other cleaning materials, results in a 95% reduction in plastic use a carbon footprint reduction...
Earlier this summer I blogged about Novella Carpenter coming to speak at the Free Library of Philadelphia. Of course I went. She was smart and witty! I immediately bought Farm City: The Education of An Urban Farmer and added it to my summer reading list. After some late nights, long afternoons and morning commutes on the train, I finished all thirty-six chapters.
Carpenter charms and educates in Farm City. She humorously narrates her personal experience as a farmer in the raw Oakland neighborhood of Ghost Town.
At first her journey begins with a handful of egg-laying chickens,...
Pilot has launched a new site devoted to transferring your handwriting into a font. At pilothandwriting.com you simply print out a sheet, fill it with samples of your own handwriting, and then using your webcam or scanner input it back to the site. The application takes these samples, measures letter space and creates connectors. Once you have created your font you can type documents and send emails. The Pilot Handwriting site is simple and easy to use .
The Transport for London organization asked artists to design a new representation of the skyline for their promotional materials. The winning design, by Richard Coward, is breathtaking. He rejects the idea of a 2d skyline, making his version range above, below, behind, around and through the frame. Obvious, if you think about it. He fills all of the space with stark black buildings, but the landmarks pop out effortlessly.
I'd like to see one for Philly.
Design*Sponge – a daily website devoted to design – featured a neat article about using books as coffee and side tables. Stacked on top of each other, these books provide a clever and stylish way to put books you’re not reading to use. If you don’t have that many books, summer yard sales across the city can provide you with the tools for a great home project.
This Wednesday the Philadelphia Union – the city’s new major league soccer team – will host the English Premier League Champions, Manchester United. The teams will face off at the Lincoln Financial Center. In February 2008 the Union became the 16th Major League Soccer team. In April, in front of 34,870 fans the Union played its Home Opener, beating D.C. United 3-2.
In 2009, the team received a name, crest and color. The Union’s colors are navy blue and gold to represent the Continental Army’s uniforms during the Revolutionary War. The Union’s main crest is circular to symbolize unity, and the...
Kevin Scott – a twenty one year-old British design student from De Montfort University – earned a Business Design Centre New Designer of the Year Award for his bendable bike, which through a twistable frame forms into its own lock.
Scott has created a real prototype. With the £500 in prize money, Scott plans “to outsource production of some of the key components to allow for full testing.”
Approximately 52 bicycles are stolen each day in London, according to the Daily Mail newspaper. Instead of installing objects that will more safely secure bicycles, Scott saw the potential for...
Until early September the Philadelphia Museum of Art will host Late Renoir – an exhibition of the works of the French artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir. The exhibit captures the later, abundant and most innovative years of his career. His works display frolicking bathers, classical mythology and luminous images of the Mediterranean landscape. About eighty Renoir painting are currently on display, side by side twenty works by later artists who were inspired, including Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso.
Renoir’s fluid brushstrokes and dynamic use of color have earned him the title of the of the greatest artists. Late Renoir is organized...
The world’s largest organization for young women worldwide – Girl Scouts of America – has recently launched a logo redesign. The traditional logo will take on a more modern form, adapting to better reflect young women and connect them to the activities of Girl Scouts.
The logo face-lift came from designers Jennifer Kinon and Bobby Martin. The changes to the logo are subtle, but the faces have been elongated and the hairstyles updated to appear more stylish and youthful. In addition, the noses are perkier to imitate younger girls. The existing logo dates back to 1978 and was designed...
