Hasta La Ideas

British designer Tom Dixon has created a range of laboratory-style glassware, which is designed to showcase the alchemic process of making hot drinks.

Dixon unveiled the Bump collection at the Masion&Objet furniture fair in Paris, which has taken place across the past week and ends today.

Designed to showcase the process of boiling, steaming and pouring liquid, the collection is based on the types of glassware used in laboratories.

However Dixon wanted to put his own playful spin on these archetypal forms, creating double-skinned designs in shades of grey and pink.

The pieces are made from borosilicate, a type of glass with a low melting point, meaning they can be used to hold hot liquids.

“Inspired by laboratory apparatus, Bump is an exercise in manipulation of the conical, spherical and tubular building blocks that we love to play with, of double-walled glassmaking and a play in transparency and translucence,” said the designer.

“With these articles for measuring, brewing, steaming, cooling pouring and preserving, we are exploring the transformative alchemy of curious instruments and chemical reactions.”

The collection includes a jug, tall and short glasses, a tea pot and tea cups. The designer hopes they will bring about a sense of “ritualism” to drinking and hosting.

Dixon, who came in fourth on Dezeen’s designers Hot List, is one of the UK’s most popular and prolific designers. Self-taught, he rose to fame in the 1980s with the S-Chair for Cappellini and founded his eponymous studio in 2002, and has gone on to design a vast array of products – ranging from washing-up liquid to motorbikes.

Last year, he launched his first collection of office furniture, and continued his US expansion with store openings in both Los Angeles and New York.

Dixon launched Bump at the autumn edition of furniture fair Maison&Objet, which coincides with the city-wide Paris Design Week taking place until 16 September.

Also at the fair, Studio Job presented a collection of furniture shaped like fast food for Italian brand Seletti.

The post Tom Dixon unveils double-skin glassware inspired by laboratory equipment appeared first on Dezeen.

This is a video produced by National Geographic of hummingbirds drinking, shaking and flying in slow motion…(Read…)

tomato..(Read…)

A lot of people really like craft beer. But, how many people love it enough to do a crazy 40 Day/40 Pennsylvania Craft Brewery Tour? Most of us enjoy a morning cup of coffee, but how about at 4500 feet in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica, off the tourist path? Yes, that would be me.

Writing about both passions, craft beer and specialty coffee, have resulted in my essays being published in national media venues recently. My article about craft beer becomes a treatise on a theology of work. My writing about coffee in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica becomes a piece about a cool place and a kind people and leaving the comfort zone.

Write What You Love

The author Ray Bradbury wrote wisely, “Write only what you love and love what you write.” Because I can afford to pick and choose my subjects, a big part of me finding writing momentum in the last couple of years has been to go deep about what I love and then write about it. Simple advice, but it has made all the difference. I work as a school counselor by day at a high school. Two of my colleagues are also published writers. One writes about fishing and waterways. The other pens science fictions novels. We have all found our niche because we first found our loves.

A niche is an ecological term where a species finds a place in creation to not just survive but thrive. The origin of the word comes from French/Latin word for nest. In our frenetic multi-firework display 21st-century media landscape, it is a challenge to attract and engage readers. We are like hummingbirds with ADD, sound biting our way through the day and night, flitting and fleeting.

Love What You Write

How to get readers to land and settle down in your metaphorical nest? A sustainable strategy is to cultivate a high level of expertise and enthusiasm for subjects that others find intriguing but doing it in a unique and unusual style all your own. Herman Melville wrote, “It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.” If you are only going to copy someone else’s style and subjects, such “success” is shallow and unsatisfying in the end.

What is your Unique Writing Proposition (U.W.P.)? What do you think about, spend your money on, or fill your time with? That is what you love.

Here are the interests that I have put into my nest: a love of people and culture expressed through food, drink and travel; a high degree of research and writing chops honed through earning a Ph.D. about adolescent cognitive and emotional development and the college transition (and wrote a book about it); a smidgen of snarkiness tempered by self-deprecation, with a foundation of sincerity in wanting to make the world a better place; a theological and philosophical framework undergirding it all that differentiates me from others; and a sense of humor. That’s my U.W.P.

What’s yours?

Now that you’ve figure out how to find your niche, learn how to turn that into bylines and checks with our Develop a Successful Freelancing Career course.

The post Pitch Your Niche appeared first on Mediabistro.

Honest College Tour..(Read…)