Design

“RISD is MIT for the right brain.”— John Maeda, incoming president of the Rhode Island School of DesignThe quote is from a great WSJ profile of the super-innovative Maeda. Check out the WSJ writer’s description of what Maeda is doing for his presidential inauguration:“On the day I visit, an assistant in his office is folding hundreds of 15-inch squares […]

Here’s an interesting Charlie Rose interview with Bob Lutz — General Motors’ head of product development and Detroit’s preeminent right-brain thinker.Watch this and learn why Lutz (who’s weirdly skeptical about global warming) is pumped about the Chevy Volt; why design belongs at “the head of the queue, not at the back end”; and why the new Corvette is […]

Yes, it sounds too good to be true. But Get Your War On is now available in a surprisingly compelling animation that somehow remains true to its clip art origins. Maybe I should try this for Johnny Bunko.

Four of my favorite things in life are: charts, T-shirts, new business models, and experimental art.So I nearly plotzed when I heard about the T-Shirt Project, in which a couple of young designers put newspaper infographics on T-shirts and sell them via subscription.Pinch me. I might be dreaming.(Major HT: Flowing Data)   

The Let’s Talk Health Care blog pointed me to this NY Times story about Xtreme Aging, a program “designed to simulate the diminished abilities associated with old age.”As the Times‘s John Leland explains, participants don distorting glasses to cloud their vision. They stuff cotton balls in their ears to dampen their hearing and in their nose to limit their […]

If statisticians could fashion an on-base percentage for business gurus, Seth Godin would be Ted Williams. Nobody has a better rate of success in getting smart ideas in play.One of my favorite bits of Godin guidance is to “remarkablize” even the most mundane aspects of your business — a great example of which arrived in the mail yesterday.I subscribe […]

Idea: Dance-powered eco night clubName: Club4Climate — whose dance floor supplies enough energy to power 60 percent of the facility and whose door policy offers discounts to patrons who walked, biked, or subwayed to the club, according to Springwise.Founder: Dr. Earth(Via Springwise) 

Recharge Pod‘s wind-powered mobile phone charging station for outdoor events, which premiered this weekend’s Glastonbury Festival. (HT: Springwise)  

Officials in North Carolina recently discovered that some Tar Heel license plates are inadvertently asking Johnny Bunko’s central question. That’s prompted the state DMV to offer new plates to anyone uncomfortable with a certain ubiquitous three-letter query. (HT: Beth Holmes)

Mark Frauenfelder at BoingBoing points us to a perversely interesting advertising innovation posted on The Fire Wire (which is very good blog, btw.)Realizing that littering porches with coupons isn’t all that effective, Papa John’s Pizza “has taken an innovative approach to direct marketing with its deceiving faux delivery boy & pizza appearing at your doorstep. The optical illusion […]