Hasta La Ideas

Makers of the Nest Learning Thermostat look at design in a new way

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Nest, maker of the Nest Learning Thermostat, has only just begun implementing their larger vision of creating happy homes. By reinventing a nondescript household necessity to make it a beautiful centerpiece of the home, Nest stands out by looking at the home—and the world in general—with new eyes. To celebrate this outlook, today Nest launched a new campaign video called Happy Homes, which encapsulates the innovative company’s design ethos.

“I design for the iPhone generation, people who expect beautiful, connected, intuitive devices,” explains Nest founder and CEO Tony Fadell. While this design-conscious demographic has grown extensively since the Apple boom some years ago—spawned by the iPod, which was designed by Fadell—products for the home, and appliances in particular, have remained rather untouched. This discrepancy became apparent to Fadell during the building of his “green” home in Lake Tahoe, California. When shopping for a palatable thermostat Fadell was less than impressed with his options, and so, Nest was born.

Coupled with the beauty of its product, Nest’s holistic approach has allowed them to carve their own niche in industry of home product design. Fadell tells CH that combining “new technology and a smarter, more connected customer with design sensibilities allowed Nest to revolutionize the entire experience: product, marketing, packaging, sales, installation, etc.” In short, they’ve taken an unloved product—the thermostat—and made it desirable.

To further encourage creativity in the home, Nest is hosting a competition via Pinterest. Here users can pin images of their own happy home, or really any household object with a bit of personality—i.e. a face. See the progress on Pinterest, or simply keep an eye on the Nest blog for more happy home inspiration.

Grass-fed bison meat for conscious carnivores

As sustainable food practices continue to shift closer to the norm, Wild Idea Buffalo Co. earns bragging rights for being one of the country’s first and only commercial ranches to offer humanely harvested meat from entirely grass-fed, free-roaming buffalo.

Based in the Great Plains of South Dakota, Wild Idea was founded more than a decade ago by Dan O’Brien, a wildlife biologist and one of the country’s preeminent falconers for whom land preservation has always been a priority. To restore the fast-depleting grasslands and strengthen the health of the prairie’s ecosystem, while also maintaining a thriving business, O’Brien focused on buffalo meat as an alternative to beef and its stronghold on the industrialized food system.

Buffalo in general is arguably a healthier meat option than beef, chicken, and even fish, due to its high-protein, low-fat content, but Wild Idea’s free-roaming herds, in particular, are 100-percent grass-fed as well as hormone- and antibiotic-free, delivering 3.5 times more omega-3 fatty acids than most grain-fed bison.

The ranch’s method of humane field harvesting stands out as a unique practice as well. A mobile harvester carrying a sharp shooter drives into the fields, where the buffalo are then killed in their natural habitat. Besides being kinder to the animal, field harvesting also yields a better product, as the stress that animals tend to experience at conventional slaughterhouses has been known to have adverse effects on meat quality.

Adding to its range of steaks and ground meat, sausages, ribs, flavored jerkies, and bones for stocks, the company just rolled out a new lineup of pre-marinated steaks for fast grilling, as well as Polish sausages and hot dogs, with new jerky flavors on the way in mid-July.

Find Wild Idea’s products at specialty retailers around the country including Dean and DeLuca and The Meat House, as well as by mail order through the ranch’s website.

Herd your own laser-cut cardboard mechanical menagerie

Using the same tab-and-slot construction technique as classic balsa wood airplanes, Kinetic Creatures start as flat-packed, laser-cut cardboard and transform into the impressive mechanical Rory the Rhino, Geno the Giraffe or Elly the Elephant. The DIY animals were conceived by Portland, Oregon-based visual arts teacher Alyssa Hamel and industrial designer Lucas Ainsworth, who were interested in encouraging youth to “be builders, thinkers and inventors”. After four years of research and design, the duo are launching a Kickstarter campaign today with the goal of raising enough funds to make the project possible while keeping the production local and sustainable.

As a project with educational roots, Kinetic Creatures require hand assembly and move by either a hand-cranked wire handle or an optional electric gear kit. The intuitively-assembled kit consists of little more than laser-cut wooden gears and a battery-operated on/off switch that fits in the open back of each animal, showing off all the moving parts for a basic lesson in mechanics.

To learn more about the project or to support this clever blend of art and science head to the Kinetic Creatures’ Kickstarter. At this point donations are the only route to getting your own animal, so for $30 you can score your own Elly the Elephant or Rory the Rhino, while $40 buys Geno the Giraffe and $90 or more gets you all three critters for your own moving menagerie.

Repurposed skateboards and recycled cutting boards handmade in Southern California

by Liz Cebron

On a recent visit to the made in America brand collaborative Shelter Half, we discovered Stormy Monday Goods—thoughtfully repurposed and redesigned skate and cutting boards, branded with a simple thundercloud and given a second shot at life. These one-of-a-kind creations are the labor of love of Neil Harrison, a Southern California native who, after nearly two decades in the industry—first at Quiksilver, then helping friends get a “little brand” called Volcom off the ground—decided to slow down and work with his hands.

Stormy Monday was conceived during a trip to Portland in late 2006—Harrison was in the Pacific Northwest visiting friends, one of whom had reshaped a couple of used skateboards and was drawing on them as an art project. Harrison made one for himself and after that, he was hooked. “I was really into the idea of re-shaping a board—not only because it gave me the opportunity to work with my hands, but also from a conceptual standpoint—I liked the idea that a used board could get back on the road again, so to speak.” Upon returning to Southern California, Harrison started collecting used boards from his friends in the skate world, team managers and team riders, who tended to have stacks of used boards laying around and with the underlying ethos of “Recycle, repurpose, reuse,” Stormy Monday was born.

All of your goods (with the exception of the surfboards, which are made in Hawaii) are handcrafted in California. Can you tell us more, specifically, about the process?

First is my least favorite part, stripping off the grip tape. Some tape is friendly and peels off in one to three pieces. Sometimes it breaks into a million bits and pieces. Once the grip is removed, I trace a shape pattern on to the board and cut it out. Then I smooth out the edges and brand the “3 Bolt Storm Cloud” logo on to the boards. Next is staining, painting and completing the rails and wheel wells. The wheel wells are one of the trickiest parts because you’re doing one at a time and you have to match them to each other as close as you can. Sometimes I’ll let boards sit for a little while before I do this part as I try to get myself psyched up to do them—you can ruin the board very easily after all that work. Each board is then number stamped, signed and logged in the book. Every board to date has been logged, including the cutting boards and now our surfboards (dropping this spring).

The process of creating cutting boards or cheese boards is very similar to the skateboards. I work out of my friends’ woodshop in Santa Ana and sometimes they have woods that are deemed “undesirable” for cabinets because of knots, sap or mineral streaks. I’ll also find scrap wood that someone leaves out on their yard for pick up. If I can’t find any wood via those two sources I’ll go to the lumber yard and buy their “damaged” wood. It’s perfect because those characteristics or flaws in the wood make our boards interesting looking and unique.

Speaking of the cutting boards, it’s not the first thing that comes to mind alongside skateboard decks and surfboards, but in your case in seems to work. Why cutting boards in the mix?

It certainly wasn’t on purpose to have them in the mix. It was a happy accident if you will, and they have only come to be part of the mix somewhat recently. It was only after I saw some scrap woods that I thought I could make nice cutters for some friends and after making a few, realized how much fun it was working on them. Then I thought it’d be funny to add to the skateboard order form.

After that, I started getting orders from friends and then eventually stores. There’s the whole thing that’s happening right now where people want to know the story behind the product and/or know the person or persons who are making them and I think that’s what’s great about where we’re going as a country, not as whole, but on this very intimate underground level and it seems to be slowly effecting the grander consuming audience.

Your logo is really interesting, how did that come to you?

The logo and name were inspired on that same visit to Portland. Jake had a simple cloud painting that he had made. It was a puffy cloud with three bolts of lightning floating beneath it and the word Monday at the bottom. So Monday was the original name, then I added Stormy to make it sound heavier. I started working up stylized versions of Jake’s cloud painting—I wanted it to have a Native American look and vibe to it, like a modern version or a petroglyph. Simple, strong and to the point.

Can you tell us a little more about your background—where you grew up, how you got into all of this (skateboards, surfing, etc)?

I was born in Bellflower and grew up in Buena Park—home of Knott’s Berry Farm. My mom loved to go to the beach and she would take us to the OP Pro, which, at the time, was the big surf contest in Huntington Beach. I was just boogie boarding then but after watching the guys surfing in the contest that was all I wanted to do. I was starting to skate around this time and honestly don’t remember how or who turned me on to it but it just found me. Skating was obviously more obtainable for an inland kook such as myself, so I was a skater first, surfer second. We had this ditch behind a drive-in that was close to my house and we skated that thing every day—it’s all I could think about in class! We were surfing the ditch walls before we learned how to surf real waves.

After I graduated high school in 1988, I moved to the beach and my friend got me a job working in the warehouse at Quiksilver. Over the next couple of years, I went from the warehouse to the art department, and then into the design dept. Around ’92 I left Quik and took up with some new friends to get the brand Volcom off the ground. I worked there as design and art director for about 15 years and left in 2006. I laid low for a few years, worked on an avocado grove I owned with some family at the time, and did some freelance design art projects here and there. Then last year my friend Danny called and asked if I’d like to stop fooling around and turn Stormy Monday into a proper brand. And here we are.

Stormy Monday currently sells skate decks for $125 and completes for $225 through Shelter Half, with denim and Hawaiian made surfboards on the horizon. For direct ordering and more information see Stormy Monday directly.

Four sustainable, lightweight and refined tech items

Beloved by progressive designers and earth-conscious consumers, bamboo grows free from pesticides and fertilizers in low water conditions. Add to that construction-grade strength and a naturally gorgeous grain, and bamboo emerges as a top pick for sustainability and good design. Recently, the material has been making waves in the tech world, used to build everything from smartphones to keyboards. Below you’ll find four creative new applications of the fibrous grass.

ADzero

Determined to bring bamboo to smartphones, U.K. student Kieron-Scott Woodhouse designed a concept for a more sustainable Android device. His rendering was picked up by an entrepreneur, and they’re now hoping the ADzero Bamboo Phone will reach the market by the close of 2012. Besides the gorgeous look and grippy texture, the ADzero contains the first-ever rear-facing ring flash camera, a setup favored by portrait photographers for a diffused glow. Check in with ADzero’s Google+ page for updates on production.

iZen

The recently launched iZen Bamboo Keyboard is a wireless device composed of 92% bamboo. While Impecca has been creating bamboo keyboards for some time, iZen’s model has the distinction of being the first bluetooth-enabled wireless bamboo keyboard, which makes it compatible with devices and desktops alike.

The keyboard is built to the same dimensions as an Apple keyboard, with a texture that feels great for typing. iZen also makes bamboo tablet stands, useful when typing out tablet correspondences on the keyboard. Head over to the Kickstarter page to pledge to iZen’s next round of production, where $85 will secure an iZen keyboard.

Silva

While computer soft cases remain the standard, nothing beats the look and feel of an old-fashioned hard case. Lined with wool felt, Silva’s Macbook case is hand-sanded and finished with oil and polyurethane for a glass-like finish, with a thick leather handle practical for the lightweight case. Silva also makes two cases for iPad and are working on new models to accommodate the MacBook Air and 17″ MacBook Pro.

Grove

Fit for the new iPad, this case from Grove is molded to accommodate the tablet’s subtle curves. A range of covers are equipped with magnets to both wake and put the tablet to sleep, and the fabric lies flat against the back of the case when open. Wrapping slightly around the back, the covers lend an an ergonomic element for carrying as well. Overall, the case stands out for crisp, clean lines, especially when paired with the texture of Grove’s recently debuted wool cover.