thoughts

VitroLife XVIVO: Organ Transplant Preserver

Posted by _tango! on November 2, 2010
Posted in: conference, entertainment, experience, information, inspiration, materials, me, tech, TED, thoughts, wacky. 1 comment


While attending TEDmed2010 I had the amazing opportunity to touch and feel a living breathing lung! Watch the video above and wait for it to breath in! The machine (Vitrolife) keeping this lung alive has been used to save 30+ human lives in keeping organs alive while patients prepare allowing a much longer timespan from donation to transplantation. It’s quite amazing to touch and a life changing experience to realize how precious our bodies are. These lungs are incredibly soft, almost like a soft, warm, living gel… actually very much like a piece of fat.

This lung in particular is a pigs lung, but I’ll include a video of a human lung after the jump. Also I’ll share a picture of Martha Stewart taking a picture of this very lung I touched and the picture she tweeted out in her experience.

Human lung video after the jump, and matha stewart images:

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Service Entertainment

Posted by _tango! on October 3, 2010
Posted in: art, brand, conference, design, entertainment, experience, fun, ideas, information, inspiration, music, thoughts. 1 comment

First came dancing down the wedding aisle, and now comes dancing down the airline aisle giving instructions. Along with some rapping on the intercom on an airline, our service world is becoming a musical. Imagine an airline ride being as entertaining as a Broadway show.  I love it!

All those video after the jump!

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Waiting For Superman Film

Posted by _tango! on September 28, 2010
Posted in: art, design, entertainment, experience, ideas, information, inspiration, me, tech, thoughts. Leave a Comment


I just returned from a screening of the documentary film “Waiting for Superman” and had to post it to let everyone know to watch this film! It’ll leave you cringing, a bit bitter, and a craving for our education system to change! The documentary is directed and filmed by Academy Award Winner Davis Guggenheim (Inconvenient Truth). Even Obama recently watched it and reacted to it.

Watch the trailer above or here, then visit their website to help out. They have a few extra video interviews on their site as well. Please share!

Ikea Cookbook

Posted by _tango! on September 24, 2010
Posted in: art, brand, design, entertainment, experience, food, fun, ideas, information, inspiration, materials, style, thoughts. 1 comment


Ikea just launched a pretty awesome 30 page cookbook with photographer Carl Kleiner composing some beautiful shots of the ingredients…. and if I read right, I hear these books are free in the kitchen department in limited quantities!!!!! ya!!! Amazing work!
via craftzine

Pictures by Carl Kleiner after the jump!

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Spray-On Clothing

Posted by _tango! on September 21, 2010
Posted in: art, design, experience, fun, green, ideas, information, inspiration, materials, style, tech, thoughts, wacky. Leave a Comment

I’ve always thought about spray on clothing, but I guess it’s only now that I’ve seen a pretty viable solution above, where ya spray it on, and it dries to fit to perfection. You can even recycle it for another spray on. Anyhow, how about some spray on socks… I get those sock holes all the time, but you just next to spray on a patch now!

“Particle engineer Paul Luckham and fashion designer Manel Torres from Imperial College London combined cotton fibres, polymers and a solvent to form a liquid that becomes a fabric when sprayed. The material can be built up in layers to create a garment of your desired thickness and can also be washed and worn again like conventional fabrics.

In addition to creating instant fashion, the technology could have a range of other uses – spray-on bandages, for instance. “It’s a sterilised material coming from an aerosol can, and you can add drugs to it to help a wound heal faster,” says Torres.”

via newscientist

Piggy

Posted by _tango! on August 20, 2010
Posted in: art, design, experience, fun, ideas, inspiration, style, thoughts. Leave a Comment

Interesting project to start kids early in the thinking process in saving for charity! Very cool and needed.

“The power of piggy:

We believe that this simple product, Piggy, can truly make the world a better and more compassionate place.

Piggy helps teach kids about charitable giving, with the hopes of inspiring new generations of caring, sharing, philanthropic citizens.

With 12,000 children born each day in the US, imagine the social impact if just a fraction of them learned powerful lessons
of gratefulness and kindness to others.”

See the full project at goodlittlepiggy

A few pics after the jump. Continue Reading

Designverb post 1001

Posted by _tango! on August 1, 2010
Posted in: art, brand, conference, design, entertainment, experience, food, green, ideas, information, inspiration, materials, me, misc, style, tech, thoughts. 1 comment

I started Designverb on January 18th, 2006 as a quick experiment to jot down the many things I found to share with my friends and anyone else curious. Today, August 1st, 2010,  marks my 1000th post, and this one being the 1001’st.

I’ll admit the the opportunities, friendship, community, and insights I’ve received throughout the years has been amazing and it has surely kept me busy after a long day of work and on weekends.  There are times where I’m flooded with work and have very little time to post, but I started a Facebook Fan page where I post quick  fun links and have recently found some extra contributors to help find more great things to post about.

The Above picture is of sushi at O Ya here in Boston. I tend to eat sushi to celebrate  so maybe I’ll go there this week again.

Anyhow, I had no plans to really celebrate, but I thought I’d share some of the most popular posts since starting Designverb.
1. Tunnel House
2. Stuck At Heathrow Airport
3. Paint Chip Card Holder
4. Red Bull Headquarters
5. Mark Khaisman Brown Tape Art
6. Stefans Stormtroopers a Day
7. Heineken World Bottle: Beer to Bricks
8. Creepy Snow Globes
9. Color Changing Mini-Cooper
10. Burj Al Arab: Tennis Court in the Sky!
11. Non-Metric Countries
12. Shoes That Make Everyone the Same Height
13. How 315 Billion Dollars Looks
14. GadgetOff 2007 and 2009 Recaps.
15. TerraCycle Inc

And one of my fun little trips came from GM here.

Converse JoinRed Project

Posted by _tango! on August 1, 2010
Posted in: art, brand, design, inspiration, materials, me, style, thoughts. 5 comments

Back in March 2007, soon after starting Designverb, I was selected as 1 in 100 artist worldwide to create a design for the Converse JoinRed initiative to bring AIDS awareness and to raise money for the cause. Above is the one of the final designs I submitted which was stitched by hand and went through quite a design process even though I later submitted a re-worked design because of trademarks issues in my first design.  Though I am not a shoe designer, I approached this project as any of my other projects diving into research, discovery, meaning, definition, creation, and refinement.

If your interested, read after the jump to see the design process, thinking, and some other design concepts I thought up but did not continue with in this short 2 week project.

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Chad Hagen: Infographics

Posted by _tango! on July 20, 2010
Posted in: art, design, information, inspiration, style, thoughts. Leave a Comment

I’ve seen my share in infographics and just stumbled upon some awesome work by Chad Hagen. His posters take infographics back to their pure elements of  print and a flare of dimensionality without any need for gradients or eccentrics extras. The aged paper definitely helps a bit to give it a rustic throw back vibe. I’m actually not sure what info I’m getting from these posters but these would make great wall pieces!

via craftzine

One Minute Portraits

Posted by _tango! on July 20, 2010
Posted in: art, design, entertainment, fun, ideas, information, inspiration, style, thoughts. Leave a Comment

Melbourne based graphic artist Benjamin Hammond offers some fun, original, fast 1 minute portraits on his new website OneMinutePortraits ! Yup, 1 quick minute! You submit a picture, he post a picture of what he did in 1 minute, and you decided if you want to buy it for $20 which includes shipping!
I have to admit that sometimes the quick drawings have more personality  and jazz than the longer ones… It’s somewhat like an elevator pitch.. where you just get to the point and do the obvious., or the twitter of portrait making…your self-portrait in less than 60 seconds!

This does take me back to the RISD days a bit when one of the lasses was to draw 200 self-portraits in a few days… what a rush!

Check out OneMinutPortraits.. and of course see more of Benjamin’s work here…and let me know if you try this out!
via coolhunting

Tourbillon: a tornado like vase

Posted by _tango! on July 14, 2010
Posted in: art, design, style, thoughts. Leave a Comment

I love it when nature inspires objects such as this mezmerizingly beautiful glass vase by French/Japanese design pair A + A Cooren. (lots of other great project on there site as well) The static glimpse of a tornado coupling a fragile flower stem draws a contrast between  destruction and life. Too bad there are only 21 made which means the price is not made for all. Anyhow, if I could get my hands on this… please let me know! =)

via coolhunting