Designverb

Category: design

Ron Finley: A guerilla gardener in South Central LA

March 7, 2013

Perhaps one of my favorites talks this year at TED…Ron says it all. Plant Some Shit!

“Ron Finley plants vegetable gardens in South Central LA — in abandoned lots, traffic medians, along the curbs. Why? For fun, for defiance, for beauty and to offer some alternative to fast food in a community where “the drive-thrus are killing more people than the drive-bys.”

Ron Finley grows a nourishing food culture in South Central L.A.’s food desert by planting the seeds and tools for healthy eating.”

via TED

Allan Savory: How to green the desert and reverse climate change

March 7, 2013

“Desertification is a fancy word for land that is turning to desert,” begins Allan Savory in this quietly powerful talk. And it’s happening to about two-thirds of the world’s grasslands, accelerating climate change and causing traditional grazing societies to descend into social chaos. Savory has devoted his life to stopping it. He now believes — and his work so far shows — that a surprising factor can protect grasslands and even reclaim degraded land that was once desert.”

Allen Savory via TED 

One World Futabol Project

November 28, 2012

Very cool project at OneWorldFutbol.com where they built  “a virtually-indestructible ball that never goes flat and never needs a pump. Our goal is to bring the joy of soccer and play to youth in disadvantaged communities so that children can be children no matter where they live.”

Making Play Power.

I already bought a few! Buy a yellow or blue one here…or just donate!
Watch some great videos of them trying to destroy it. (truck drives over, it, let a Lion play with it, stab it with a knife a few times, or all 3)

Etsuko Ichikawa: Molten Glass Drawings

October 16, 2012

Wow, this is breathtaking and beautiful…drawing with molten lava on paper to burn to draw. My favorite part is when she whisks the molten lava forming slivers of torched thin glass on the paper which comes awfully close to her shoes which happens often.  Seems like something from a martial arts movie for a weapon that you cant block…

 

“Artist Etsuko Ichikawa’s searing creations spring to life in 2100°/451°, a spellbinding film by Alistair Banks Griffin for The Anthropologist.”

More on Etsuko at theanthropologist.net/#/IntoTheFire

Meet A Master Of The Dying Art Of Hand-Drawn Type

September 8, 2012

This is beautiful hand drawn type! This is something that is lacking in the digital type world though hopefully we get this humbleness and humaness in the art and craft of type back into it soon.

“Tracing the rounded lines of cursive on worksheets was a fundamental part of exercise in grade school–one that may soon become obsolete, as pen and paper are replaced by keyboards and screens. Job Wouters (a.k.a. Letman), a graphic designer based in Amsterdam, is on a one-man mission to sustain the dying medium of hand lettering, churning out meticulously executed forms that pay tribute to the versatility and beauty of good penmanship.”

via fastcompany

Boaz Almog “levitates” a superconductor

July 6, 2012

How can a super-thin 3-inch disk levitate something 70,000 times its own weight? In a riveting demonstration, Boaz Almog shows how a phenomenon known as quantum locking allows a superconductor disk to float over a magnetic rail — completely frictionlessly and with zero energy loss. Experiment: Prof. Guy Deutscher, Mishael Azoulay, Boaz Almog, of the High Tc Superconductivity Group, School of Physics and Astronomy, Tel Aviv University.

Boaz Almog uses quantum physics to levitate and trap objects in midair. Call it “quantum levitation.”

via tedtalk (tedglobal)

Elyn Saks: A tale of mental illness — from the inside

July 6, 2012

“Is it okay if I totally trash your office?” It’s a question Elyn Saks once asked her doctor, and it wasn’t a joke. A legal scholar, in 2007 Saks came forward with her own story of schizophrenia, controlled by drugs and therapy but ever-present. In this powerful talk, she asks us to see people with mental illness clearly, honestly and compassionately.

Elyn Saks asks bold questions about how society treats people with mental illness.

via tedtalks