Hasta La Ideas

Because Parents.com is the landing page for more than one family- and child-related Meredith brand, from Parents to Parents Latina, there is a large breadth of topics to pitch.

If you want to go for the site’s bread and butter topics, pitch pieces that speak to moms-to-be or new parents. Even when targeting that specific demo, there’s still a lot to cover.

Though Parents.com covers the gamut of parenting news and advice — from conception to “big kid” years — [Parents Digital general manager Tracy] Odell notes that pregnancy, baby and kid’s health are the most freelancer-friendly sections of the site. Here, writers can snag a byline delving into topics as varied as creating the perfect birth plan, to a roundup of educational activities for infants and a current look at both sides of the vaccine debate. Typical word counts for those articles are 750 to 1,000 words.

For more, read: How To Pitch: Parents.com

The full version of this article is exclusively available to Mediabistro AvantGuild subscribers. If you’re not a member yet, register now for as little as $55 a year for access to hundreds of articles like this one, discounts on Mediabistro seminars and workshops, and all sorts of other bonuses.

During the month of May, some 60 million unique visitors clicked over to nydailynews.com. Per Google Analytics stats provided to us by the paper, 88 percent of these visitors were U.S.-based and 48 percent used mobile devices.

Starting today on iOS and soon on Android devices, those mobile users can surf the paper’s content via a new version of the paper’s mobile App, designed in partnership with four32C. Located on West 26th Street, four32C has worked with a  variety of other media clients including Rolling Stone, USA Today and Teen Vogue. From today’s announcement:

The App also presents new opportunities for advertisers, via custom sponsorship and high impact large-scale ad units. “This cutting-edge application is designed not only to bring a better experience to our users but an enhanced value to advertisers,” said Daily News CEO Bill Holiber. “We are proud to offer this optimized mobile experience.”

Those advertisers include Dunkin’ Donuts, which has a splash ad running. Another intriguing stat from the Google Analytics end is that less than 10 percent of Daily News digital readers come from New York’s Designated Market Area (DMA). That’s not a bad thing; just a reminder that the newspaper business has long since left the Elm Street front porch.

Some of our favorite nose-burning condiments—including wasabi and horseradish—are apparently the product of an eons-long battle between caterpillars and plants. In the latest publication of “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,” scientists……

Continue Reading…

Dezeen promotion: a life-size plane crash constructed from wood and a field of giant dandelions are among the 10 sculptures installed across the mountainous Sancy region in France as part of this year’s Horizons arts and nature festival (+ slideshow).

Now in its ninth year, the Horizons arts and nature festival in central France takes place each summer when a variety of large-scale artworks are created across the landscape.

Hundreds of designers from a variety of backgrounds submitted proposals for the event, with a selection committee then narrowing it down to 10 winners – also including a floating cabin on the Gayme lake and a blue castle at the top of a volcanic outcrop.

Aiming to showcase the “ties between nature and art”, the works are intended to integrate with the terrain and last for a period of three and a half months.

Fine artists Alice and David Bertizzolo have created a field of 30 giant dandelions from wooden poles and plastic milk bottles.

“From far away, these shapes recall those of an urban landscape,” explained the organisers. “On approach you can see that the spheres are made of recycled milk bottles that form the dandelion clocks.”

At night, the solar-powered structures illuminate when they detect any form of movement.

A full-scale replica of a crashed plane designed by Paris-based artist Roland Cros is located at the top of the Puy de Chambourguet mountain.

Crafted from reclaimed wooden planks sourced from local mills, the structure features an integrated solar-powered lighting system.

“When night falls, the sunlight stored during the day gradually illuminates the remains piece-by-piece, slowly at first, and then gradually getting faster when a presence is detected nearby,” explained the organisers.

The piece aims to “question the limits that bound people within an environment”, and encourages them to create their own narrative whilst visiting the site.

Each of the structures will be on display until 27 September 2015. For more information about the event, visit the Horizons website.

Installations from last year’s edition of the festival include a 40-metre curtain of water running through the middle of the forest and a slatted wooden pavilion at the top of a mountain. In 2012, steel triangles protruded from a waterfall to intervene with the cascade of water.

Read on for further details from the organisers:

A pioneering event at the outset, Horizons now stands out due to its longevity. Created for the first time in the summer of 2007 in the centre of France, the event is now celebrating its ninth birthday and preparing to see in its first decade in 2016.

The recipe for this growing success is down to various factors. The incomparable natural environment of the Massif du Sancy already provides a dazzling showcase for the concept.
To this can be added a strong identity marked by a clearly defined artistic vision that is demanding and yet ready to welcome innovations and daring proposals. The event, often cited as a reference, can be justly proud of its growing reputation.

Every year hundreds of artists from all over the world try their luck, with just a handful of winners. Their wide range of backgrounds – designers, visual artists, landscape designers, architects – contribute to the event’s eclectic nature. They live through an extraordinary experience here, meeting the challenge of creating a unique artwork in the heart of majestic natural surroundings.

That is a real luck to have so many artists working in the region for over a month during the installation.

The local population is also involved in the project. Talks are held with the local children. Anyone wishing to see the artists at work is welcome. This is a way of building relationships naturally.

The public occupies a special place in the heart of the event. They are invited to interact by taking part in a wide variety of activities carried out jointly on the website and the social networks: photo competitions, the public’s vote for their favourite artwork.

www.horizons-sancy.com

The post Horizons 2015 installations include wooden plane crash and dandelion field appeared first on Dezeen.

Designing a building is “exactly the same” as designing a Christmas card according to designer Thomas Heatherwick, amid signs that designers are encroaching on architects’ territory.

“Whether something is a Christmas card or a masterplan for a site that’s eight miles long, we’ve found it’s exactly the same process that you’re going through,” said Heatherwick, whose first major building, the Learning Hub at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore (main image), opened earlier this year.

“The passion is solving problems,” added the designer, who studied 3D design at Manchester Polytechnic and then Design Products at the Royal College of Art.

“We just see everything as problems, whether it’s [the Olympic] cauldron or a 4 million-square-foot development in Shanghai. It’s just a problem to solve.”

Heatherwick, who for years was best known for the elaborate Christmas cards he sent each year but whose work is becoming increasingly architectural in scale, made the comments during a question and answer session after delivering the annual New London Architecture lecture on Tuesday evening.

“The rigour is the same,” he added in response to a question by host Peter Murray about whether architecture and design were different. “It’s the same stepping back, trying to analyse and try ideas and refine and reject.”

Other recent architectural work by Heatherwick includes a distillery in England, while projects in the pipeline include the vast Google campus in California, a park over the Hudson river in New York and the controversial Garden Bridge in London.

Prolific Japanese design studio Nendo, which until now has specialised in furniture, industrial design and interiors, is also making a strategic move into architectural projects.

“We are shifting more into architecture at the moment,” Nendo’s Oki Sato told Dezeen in an interview in April. “We are working on a big shopping centre in Bangkok at the moment. We are designing a station with parks and cafes and theatres and stuff like that, very close to Kyoto in Japan.”

Sato said that earlier in his career he wanted to be an architect but decided to focus on smaller projects after visiting the Milan furniture fair and seeing the work of architects exhibited there.

“I was thinking I would become an architect and I was in Milan in 2002,” he said. “I was so excited that architects were designing teacups and everyone was designing things so freely. I felt that I wanted to exhibit in Milan so I said: ‘OK, I can think about architecture later’.”

London designer Ron Arad – who abandoned an architectural career to make furniture out of scavenged materials – has long worked on architectural projects, including the Design Muesum Holon in Israel.

Others are now following in Arad’s footsteps. Dutch designer Piet Hein Eek is working on a range of buildings, while Karim Rashid is developing designs for a building in New York.

Dror Benshetrit is another designer who is starting to pick up architectural commissions, ranging from villas and skyscrapers to a huge artificial inhabited island off the Turkish coast.

Clients find his lack of architectural baggage an advantage, the New York designer suggested.

“Ever since we’ve been practicing architecture, our clients have been so proud to share with other people that I’m not an architect,” Benshetrit told Dezeen.

“For them they were kind of like, ‘well he just thinks differently, does things differently and looks at things differently’. And I think it’s true. I think that sometimes knowledge restricts you.”

Benshetrit suggested that the separation of creative education into separate specialisms was outmoded and could soon be replaced.

“Many, many, many years ago creative people used to do more than just one thing, he said. “Education fragmented the arts into a lot of different specialised profession. And I see that changing back. I think it used to be more common in the past.”

The post Products and buildings are the same says Heatherwick, as designers turn to architecture appeared first on Dezeen.