links for 2009-10-31

  • See your face in 3D Buy gifts with personalized faces
    (tags: 3d)

Happy Halloween

Still need a costume? Here are 400 ideas!

“400 Costumes to Die For is GS Design’s 2009 annual self-promotional piece. Designed to help recipients decide what to be for Halloween, the piece consists of two custom-made, 20-sided dice – one with 20 modifiers, the other with 20 nouns – that together offer 400 possible original costume combinations. (Zombie Elvis, Kung-fu Jesus, M.C. Mollusk, etc.) The dice are packaged inside an illustrated cylindrical tube that rotates to line up heads on different bodies. The tube is an economical one-color hot stamp on black paper. The instructions were printed as one-color paper labels and affixed to inside of the lid.”

Eat Drink Design at Dutch Design Week

Dutch Design Week: design studio Moon/En/Co curated a pop-up restaurant furnished with objects by designers including Maarten Baptist and Joost van Bleiswijk in Eindhoven last week. (more…)

Proof…

…that UPPERCASE readers are the GREATEST, most CREATIVE people in the world.

Made my day! Thanks, Donovan!

Jay-Z feat Alicia Keys – Empire State of Mind

New York City’s official anthem from 2009 is now officially stamped with a music video. Directed by Hype Williams, the video not only highlights the majestic boroughs and surroundings of NYC for folks to visualize, but brings forth somewhat of a revitalization of the Empire state

Porcupine

An adaptable chair in felt and fiber glass presented at experimenta design 09.Credits:Design: Caterina Tiazzoldi and Eduardo Benamor Duarteteam: T.Bra..

Platz!

A cube for seating, made of original gymnastics-mat-fabric. The corners an the handles are made of original leather. Put more of them together, so you..

Break-time!

THE QUICK PACE OF LIFE MAKES DELIGHTING IN THE MOMENT ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE. DISHES WITH ORNAMEN IMITATING THE NET OF FISSURES ON THE GLASS SURFACE REMIND..

Happy Halloween!

I wonder how many Wild Things will be out there trick-or-treating tonight?

Brett McDermott, a friend of mine, will be masquerading in the mountains in his homemade Max-inspired wolf suit. I bumped into him a few days ago and was inspired to hear that, on a whim, he had picked up a fleece blanket and some gold buttons from Value Village and decided to sew himself a suit, never having sewn a stitch before!

The results (via cell phone) are pretty fine:

 

Hope you have a festive Halloween eve in Banff Brett. May you win best costume over all the other men in uniforms. Thanks for sharing!

420 – The Afro-Latinosaurus Rex

trex

Is there a name for the obscure, but strangely alluring hobby of spotting animal shapes in geographic features*? Previously discussed examples on this blog of the as yet unnamed pastime are the Animals on the Underground (#119) and the Ontario Elephant (#340). Here is one that I would like to call the Afro-Latinosaurus Rex.

It is no coincidence that the continents of Africa and South America resemble two interlocking pieces of a puzzle (Brazil’s northeastern hump and Africa’s Gulf of Guinea are a particularly good fit). Some 170 million years ago, before continental drift pushed them apart, South America and Africa were united in an ancient supercontinent called Gondwanaland.

This sequence of maps reverses the drift that continues to widen the Atlantic Ocean, and returns to the age of the dinosaurs in another way. By overlapping South America and Africa, it creates a siamese continent, but also, if turned 90 degrees to the left, a convincing approximation of a dino’s head.

The narrow southern strip of South America shared by Chile and Argentina is the beast’s lower jaw, Africa’s southern part its upper jaw. The big, blunt bulk of West Africa is the animal’s neck. Lake Victoria, the greatest of African lakes, doubles as the menacing eye of the Afro-Latinosaurus…

Many thanks to Daryl K. Putman, Timothy Vowles, James Bisset, Mark and a few others for sending in this map, found here.

*: a somewhat similar activity, a discipline of divination, is called nephomancy: the ability to interpret shapes of clouds.