Hasta La Ideas

Injecting personality and random order into their latest collection, Montreal-based designers Thien and My Ta Trung‘s Pâté Chinois series is a concept centered around the beloved Quebec dish Shepherd’s Pie.

Presented at the brother-and-sister team’s Domison boutique during the Montreal International Interior Design Show, Pâté Chinois is a creative modular system that uses layering and a mash-up of materials for a well-executed and exciting assortment of furniture.

“We were in the mood for happy furniture, less rigor and more flexibility. A shelving unit that evolves according to our frame of mind, a chair that transforms itself each season, a sofa that can take endless configurations and looks. In short, furniture that grows and change with time!” says My.

The five-piece collection strays from the tandem’s usual monochromatic designs, articulating a fresh perspective while maintaining their familiar buoyant outlook on furniture design. Domison, the diffusion line from their more conceptual line and boutique Periphere, usually adheres to a palette of sober colors and traditional materials for their playfully modern furniture.

Thien nicely sums up their motivation, explaining that “The way we approached materials has recently produced mostly mono-material designs. This year, we decided to put everything together and make a big stew of our favorite materials, a bouillabaisse, a goulash, a ratatouille, a lasagna, a big Pâté Chinois.”

Fast Company magazine recently conducted an interview on their website with Dan Heath, author of the book Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard. In the video (which is also transcribed), Dan explains why changes in behavior are so difficult:

Psychologists have discovered that self-control is an exhaustible resource. And I don’t mean self-control only in the sense of turning down cookies or alcohol, I mean a broader sense of self-supervision—any time you’re paying close attention to your actions, like when you’re having a tough conversation or trying to stay focused on a paper you’re writing. This helps to explain why, after a long hard day at the office, we’re more likely to snap at our spouses or have one drink too many—we’ve depleted our self-control.

I also believe that self control is a behavior that needs to be practiced to be improved. In the book Mind in the Making, author Ellen Galinsky suggests many strategies for helping children develop and boost their self control and these strategies can be just as beneficial for adults. From my review of Galinsky’s book:

Try playing games that require concentration and paying attention (guessing games, “I Spy,” and puzzles), and games that involve rules that change (many strategy games do this). Listening to audio books and following along with the plot, setting up reward systems for finishing difficult tasks (delayed satisfaction), and getting plenty of rest are additional ways to improve focus.

For more tips on building up your energy to make a change and work on your self control, check out the following articles from the Unclutterer archives:

• Six tips to help you make a change
• Brainwash your way to a clutter-free life?
• Motivation tips for slackers
• Eight strategies to stop procrastinating

“Rabdicanti” is a product born inside the second editon of the Resign Academy.Resign is a methodology of job founded in 2007 by Andrea Magnani and Gio..

Living in Washington, D.C., I have seen a decade-full of protests. They’re such regular occurrences here that I don’t really notice what people are protesting any longer. I’ll walk or drive-by the gathering crowd, oblivious to their message, and continue on my way. Except this weekend, a very small crowd of people protesting in front of a hotel, instead of on the National Mall or in front of the White House, caught my attention.

Late last week and into the weekend was the Scripps National Spelling Bee. It was held at The Grand Hyatt in downtown D.C., and the competition drew hundreds of spellers, their families, media crews, and (much to my surprise) protesters. The demonstrators gathered in front of the hotel were adamant supporters of phonetic spelling, what they call Simplified Spelling. From a Washington Post article covering the protests:

The protesters believe English is mired by too many spellings for identical sounds and too many sounds for identical spellings. If they got their way, “you” would become “yoo,” “believe” would become “beleev” and “said” would become “sed.”

The cost of clinging to traditional spellings, they say, is millions of illiterate English speakers who struggle to read signs or get good jobs, and billions of dollars in lost productivity.

The campaign for simple spelling, which activists say started more than 100 years ago, is experiencing a revival with kids who have taken wholeheartedly to phonetic spelling in electronic messages.

I’ve never thought about non-phonetically spelled words in English as a distraction, so I don’t personally consider them clutter. However, I find it delightful that there is a group of people on a mission to rid the English language of what they believe is spelling clutter. Check out the video of the protests on the Washington Post website to learn more about the mission of supporters of Simplified Spelling. (And please, don’t worry, I have no intentions of adopting Simplified Spelling practices on Unclutterer. I can’t imagine how much my productivity would tank trying to phonetically spell an entire vocabulary of words.)

Weimar rocks – Oldschool goes Newschool. This message comes directly from the street to the dishes. That’s Street-Art. Word! 12 pieces ( g..