Hasta La Ideas

A luggage legend designs a custom humidor for an iconic tobacconist

Since 1897 Globe-Trotter has been producing high-end suitcases for the epically discerning traveler, much like how for 80 years Nat Sherman’s cigarettes have stood for style and quality. To celebrate the tobacconist’s decades, Globe-Trotter has designed an exclusive humidor made with their patented Vulcan Fibre—a material that reportedly makes their craft luggage as light as aluminum and strong as leather.

In classic Globe-Trotter style, the Nat Sherman Humidor is wrapped in Colonial Brown Vulcan and lined with paper-backed Spanish cedar and Oatmeal wood to keep your tobacco moist. Only 25 of these cases will be made, all of which will be on display for a limited time at Nat Sherman’s flagship store in NYC, where they will also sell exclusively. Price is available on request.

GPS-enabled experiments visualize daily jog data in 3-D

Potential Prefontaines aside, most who run would be hard-pressed to find any grace or beauty in our daily jogs. And yet that’s exactly what Nike+’s latest collaboration with interactive design firm YesYesNo accomplishes. Over two stunningly beautiful days on Nike’s campus in Beaverton, Oregon, YesYesNo collected data from several runs (mine included), plotting them in a three-dimensional scale. The graphs incorporated speed, distance and acceleration, but also color and texture.

YesYesNo’s projects range in size from the very large (i.e. the size of a building) to the very small. For example, the EyeWriter Initiative—in conjunction with the Graffiti Research Lab—tracks the movements of an eyeball in order to splash huge swathes of color and shape across buildings yards away. In this case, the whole of Nike’s campus was to be our canvas.

“Imagine you were going to go on a run with a giant paintbrush strapped to your back,” YesYesNo co-founder Zachary Lieberman tried to explain as we prepared to start our run. Strapping on GPS-enabled sportwatches, we went on brisk jogs around the campus.

Once back (and showered), Lieberman and cofounder Theo Watson plugged in the data from our watches into computers. Once the data loaded, we were able to manipulate the color, texture and size of the images and rotate them on a 3-D axis. After saving the final result, we could do anything with the graphic created—print it on posterboard, or even laser-etch it on the top of a shoebox.

While the project is a long way away from commercial application (when we asked Nike+ about it, they said that that conversation hadn’t even started yet), “The idea is that you take these tools back to your own cities and start collecting data wherever you are,” said Lieberman, the self-described “nerd artist.” If getting healthier isn’t enough of an incentive to stick to your daily jogs, perhaps creating artwork out of your efforts will be.

Hermès debuts furniture in a stunning architect-designed setting of cardboard tubes and paper

Enzo Mari, Antonio Citterio and the RDAI studio recently joined Pierre-Alexis Dumas, artistic director of Hermès, to design a complete furniture collection for the iconic French maison. Sofas, chairs, tables and other pieces accompany wallpapers and furnishing fabrics. Opulent materials like precious wood, leather and fine fabric are central to the project, come only second to their approach to design around the essential needs of comfort and and basic function.

In the quest for the best quality, the team chose Dedar to head up the manufacturing and distribution of fabrics and wallpaper, while B&B Italia is their preferred partner for the development and construction of the contemporary furniture.

To reveal these new collections, Dumas tapped Shigeru Ban and Jean de Gastines to create a temporary and ethereal home. Cardboard tubes and paper were the only materials used in the poetic Pavillon Hermès, on view in Milan during the recent Design Week. Using the words of Jean Cocteau, this installation represented “the invisibility of true elegance.”

De Gastines began his career with Frank Gehry and since then has created thermal spas, holiday cottages, residences and numerous wine stores in the Médoc and French Basque country, as well as in South Africa. Since 2000, de Gastines has collaborated with Ban on all of his European work.

Born in Tokyo, Ban studied at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) in Los Angeles, and then at NYC’s Cooper Union School of Architecture, where developed an interest in “architectonic poetics.”

Available in Autumn 2011, the collections will be sold exclusively in a selection of Hermès boutiques worldwide.

Lights and music collide for a fantastic display of digital technology at California’s Coachella festival

The concept behind The Creators Project is not new—mix the social, the artistic and the scientific. The resulting experiences the initiative produces though, is astounding. Founded by Vice Magazine and Intel, the altruistic enterprise seeks to support the creative community through a series of collaborations that push the boundaries of digital technology. At this year’s Coachella music festival, the team worked with the British multi-disciplinary collective United Visual Artists and Goldenvoice concerts on a 3D Rubik’s Cube-like installation of light and music, unfolding over three days on Coachella’s main stage.

Using bespoke software and LED light projection, UVA have created an immersive experience that will serve as both a platform for performance and as a standalone light and sound sculpture. To top it off, Vice has chosen key bands—Interpol, Animal Collective and Arcade Fire—to program distinct visual identities to coincide with their live performances. For the Arcade Fire show, 2,000 lightweight balls equipped with LED lights and infrared receivers will be released into the crowd. As the balls drop, they’ll be controlled by a series of IR transmitters, altering the LED effects in each ball, and painting various lighting designs across the crowd for an effect that feels like a New Years Eve Balloon drop meets War of The Worlds.

Through The Studio, a sector of The Creators Project that aims to encourage collaboration between artists, a number of smaller installations will illuminate the festival. Director Jonathan Glazer is working with the band Spiritualized to create a physical manifestation of their best-known song, “Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating in Space,” which will be an arched cathedral of light and sound. Interpol is working with David Lynch, playing with the notion of surveillance, and Black Dice and Animal Collective have collaborated on a video.

The Creators Project is not only making visuals we actually want to watch, but it’s also adding a whole new dimension to watching live music. We wish Pink Floyd was still around to see this.

Last chance to get some of our exclusive product collaborations

Over the holidays we started experimenting with some of our favorite brands to create CH Editions of their products—variations in material and color that offer our unique twist. Today, with Gilt Groupe, we’re selling the last of these items—Rickshaw bags, 3sixteen ties and Outlier hats. The sale just started so hurry over to check it out: CH Editions on Gilt.