A personal guide with a modern take on geek chic shopping
Sponsored content: What began as a digital dog-ear for products of interest has quickly evolved into one of the leading lifestyle guides for men. Aptly named Gear Patrol, the online magazine is a go-to guide for gear aficionados and design-minded urban adventurers. Recalling the sleek presentation of catalogs interspersed…
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Local NYC storytelling in a new web outlet for long-form journalism
Dedicated to long-form, local human-interest journalism based around NYC, the web-based publication, Narrative.ly marks a sign of changing times for the medium, where the rift between breaking content and meditated stories is causing outlets to choose sides. As Narratively founder Noah Rosenberg explains, the site is essentially about storytelling….
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The source for Communist-era Czech vintage design treasures
Adam Štěch Providing arguably the most comprehensive collection of salvaged modernist design from the former Czechoslovakia or Eastern and Central Europe is Prague-based Nanovo. Founded by Adam Karásek and Jiří Mrázek two years ago, the online shop is a platform for collecting and selling vintage, mostly anonymous pieces from furniture…
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Our conversation with the man behind Hypebeast
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Starting out as an early chronicle of sneaker culture, Hypebeast has distinctly evolved into an online magazine that lives up to the tongue-in-cheek origins of its name as a go-to influence guide. Since 2005, founder and editor-in-chief, Kevin Ma has been a sartorial force in covering streetwear. Reflecting Ma’s own growing interests, Hypebeast soon expanded into coverage of art and entertainment. Collaborating with such style giants as Adidas, Hypebeast soon gave rise to HBTV, an in-depth look at the talent behind the brands.
Operating from its headquarters in Hong Kong, Hypebeast is driven by a sense of good taste uniquely its own; a distinction that has earned it the honor of being one of Time’s ’50 Best Websites’ in 2008 and a digital street cred that has led to the recent launch of its on-line store.
I didn’t actually come up with the term “Hypebeast” myself. “Hypebeast” is an existing term used to describe people who are obsessed about following a trend or wearing something only because the product was hyped up. I thought it would be interesting to use the word “hypebeast” for my blog to make fun of the sneaker culture at the time. I liked the irony of it.
I registered the domain “Hypebeast” in 2005 and since then it has evolved into something more than just sneakers. It’s fashion. It’s culture. It’s design. It’s art. It’s everything we are interested in.
See the rest of our interview with Ma after the jump.
I have always loved computers and all things digital. I had my first computer when I was 13 and also got into the World Wide Web at a young age. At the time, I was also into basketball. I was never good at it but I guess you can see Hypebeast’s roots there.
Prior to Hypebeast.com, I worked in the financial sector but soon left to pursue Hypebeast as a full time job.
We don’t look for any specific key design elements. No rules. It’ really about what we (Hypebeast Editors) like at that moment. It may be bright colors. It may be prints. We never know. When we come across something we really like and are excited about it, we’ll want to write about it and share it with our readers.
Streetwear has always been popular because of the lifestyle it perceives as well as the price points. Students can easily afford a t-shirt from a street brand they like, whereas many designer labels are a bit more of an investment. Streetwear is getting more and more popular nowadays because of the accessibility of the Internet. It allows brands to communicate their message and lifestyle at a faster pace to a larger crowd and e-commerce lets people buy it whenever and wherever they are in the world.
A successful brand always represents a certain lifestyle. Some street brands represent the skateboarding lifestyle and some are closely knitted with the basketball lifestyle. People like a brand not only because they like a particular product but because they are interested in the image that the brand embodies.
I grew up in Vancouver. It’s nice and beautiful but it can get a bit slow some times. I thought of coming to Hong Kong for a change since my family is from Hong Kong and I wanted to experience the difference of living in the Asian region.
People in Hong Kong are heavily influenced by a mix of European and Japanese trends.
Our audience is made up of people who follow the Hypebeast culture and share the same sort of taste and curiosity in fashion. We don’t try to be different from others or distinguish ourselves from other cultural sites. We only focus on doing what we like and share what we feel is interesting.
HBTV started as an extension of the Hypebeast editorial. Sometimes, we feel that text and pictures cannot fully express a topic, so we add in videos to make it more engaging for our audience.
We are interested in covering individuals who are different from the norm and are passionate about what they do. They can be fashion designers. They can be chefs. They can be anybody as long as they are different from the norm.
The launch of our print magazine will be one of the biggest highlights of Hypebeast. We are very excited because it is completely different from what we have ever done before. We have always been digital and now for the first time, we are having a physical editorial.
In addition, we just launched our Hypebeast Store selling unique items hand picked by myself and our Editors. This is also a new direction for Hypebeast because many of our readers always ask where to buy items posted on our site. We hope this will help bridge that gap.
In the past, we have also done collaborations with brands such as Adidas, and Dr. Martens. Being a fan of these brands, I never thought I would have the opportunity to do such collaborations with them. It’s definitely a huge highlight in Hypebeast’s history.
As for the future-we’ll keep you posted!
All of them play an important part in my life. Living on the edge is like running Hypebeast. I invest everything, my life, my time and my money to run the Hypebeast business each day hoping we don’t fall off. To do this requires strength and rigor, as I have to customize my lifestyle to run the business. Staying up later than everyone else, working harder than everyone else. Hypebeast is now inseparable from my life. We also have to constantly adapt to new innovations and make use of the new innovations that are out there fueling Hypebeast.
Streamline digital content with the click of a button
Whether you’re an information junkie or just someone with little time for filtering through the surplus of online content, Reading is designed to help. Founded by Max Fenton—online editor of McSweeney’s “Believer” magazine—and Greg Leppert of Svpply fame, Reading combines the literary and tech worlds for one seamless feed that allows you to see what other people are perusing, or share stories that you find interesting like a personally edited newsreel.
It’s as simple as downloading the bookmarklet and tagging what you’re reading, but you can then also click on one of three buttons that appear in the top right corner—”yep,” “nope” or “share.” Back in your feed, any stories you said yep to will have a green checkmark next to them, and any nopes will be crossed out in red. You can also delete any stories you read and no longer want listed in your feed, like the one on Neopets or about which Silicon Valley women party the hardest.
You can also auto-program your selections to have a “hook,” so that every time you mark something with a yep, for example, it posts to platforms like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook and more, or conveniently to Instapaper for reading offline.
Reading is a super easy way to share information online and build a community of friends whose reading interests pertain to yours. Even if you don’t make it all the way through your feed, once you’ve amassed a network you can use the search field to enter a topic and see all of the stories related to that that haven been bookmarked by the people you’ve chosen to follow.
To sign up, visit the Reading website.
Alternative accommodations for the discerning traveler
Created by London-based graphic designer Hannah Woodcock, The Common Pursuit is a new travel site designed to inspire your next holiday. The simple format currently features 72 accommodations varying in location and style, but all are centered around the comfortable aesthetics of “understated or alternative luxury,” says Woodcock.
The Common Pursuit is the upshot of Woodcock’s obsession with finding the perfect hideaway that “has a mix of character and unique style.” Her fixation began after staying at the Love Shack, a sustainably-designed cabin in England’s Lake District. The mix of rugged charm and high-end mid-century furniture was “everything I wanted a holiday rental to be and complimented the location perfectly,” she comments. Inspired by her long weekend retreat, Woodcock began bookmarking other places she wanted to stay, gleaning intriguing accommodations from a variety of news sources like Monocle or the Sunday Times, design websites like Architizer and Remodelista or travel-focused sites like Design Tripper and Further Afield.
When her list of bookmarks grew as long as the requests from friends for advice on where to stay, Woodcock decided to put it all together and put her recommendations online. “I am hoping the idea is a common pursuit for a lot of people, and they help it grow,” she explains. “I have no intentions for the website other than to inspire and share, so if people would like to suggest places, or send feedback, they can email me or comment on the Facebook page.”
Spanning a Brooklyn duplex to a seven-person cottage in Croatia, Woodcock’s growing list has you covered. See these digs and more at The Common Pursuit, where you can also find independent booking information.
Custom curated booklets aim to personalize online gift-giving
Options for online gift-giving are by no means scarce. Going beyond the basics of easy browsing and affordable shipping, CEO John Poisson founded Wantful with the intention of making the process even more intuitive, creating a rare blend of curated storefront, gift card and material goods. At the most basic level, the service provides users a way to send a thoughtful selection of gifts to choose from in a lovely, customized catalog.
The process starts by visiting the Wantful website and sharing general background information about the intended recipient. Basic questions like gender and relationship are followed with more in-depth inquiries such as sense of style, preferred living quarters, cooking habits and whether they sing along to their music. From there, Wantful does the work: “We put together a list of recommendations and other ways to look through our products,” says Poisson. “You choose 16 things that you think are perfectly suited to that person and put them together in this printed booklet.” The sender puts down a certain amount of money when they check out to pay for the gift that ultimately gets chosen.
Wantful’s selection is expansive but smartly edited, with thousands of solid options that are updated constantly. “It’s the equivalent of an entire department store, except that our products are the kinds of products you don’t find in a department store,” explains Poisson. “Our real focus is our team of buyers that find things you don’t find anywhere else.”
While the recipient gets to choose the gift they want, much of the treat lies in getting a dedicated book filled with specially picked goods. As Poisson explains, “This isn’t a transaction. There’s meant to be something emotional attached—even if it’s a casual gift.” The self-proclaimed professional buyer shared some of his favorite makers as well, listing the husband and wife perfumer D.S. & Durga alongside White Sycamore and Cavalier Essentials.
The service syncs with Facebook to remind users of upcoming birthdays, and a calendar of upcoming events can also be made. Wantful then sends reminders as the dates approach. Poisson recommends having a mix of safe and quirky gifts, throwing in unexpected items like a $500 box of chocolate as a teaser item. When the recipient gets their booklet, they simply select their gift and await its arrival—easy as pie—or a jar of artisanal kimchi.
Flight search results are prioritized by mileage booking options
Even the savviest of frequent travelers can fall into the miles trap, letting their rewards go unclaimed or worse, losing entire days strategizing how to cash in for a free ticket.
Superfly is a relatively new engine that simplifies the process of shopping for reward travel by storing membership information for airlines, hotel chains, ground transportation and credit cards. Flight searches cross reference this data to present the most relevant results.
The search engine allows users to set up frequent flyer accounts from 67 airline options, integrating each seamlessly into an easily digestible interface. Miles are given a dollar amount to simplify the appearance and enable users to compare their accounts. The interface is light and clean, and stacks up flight options in comparison through price, rewards and net value rankings.
In the search funciton, adjustments can be made through the sidebar to adjust time, number of stops, cabin and preferred airlines. The site essentially plays the role of a good travel agent: rather than assuming that each individual will be interested in the same results, Superfly is in the game of personalized travel planning. While certain sections of the start-up remain in beta, Superfly is ready for booking.
An artist and a technologist pair up to find the cultural meaning of words through pictures
Recently presented at Rhizome’s annual Seven on Seven conference, Aaron Swartz and Taryn Simon‘s “Cultural Differences” application culls the top six photos from a Google image search for a specific word in 15 countries, displaying a visual comparison of its meaning among an array of different nations.
The concept was born to follow the conference’s purpose of pairing a technologist with an artist to see what they can make in a mere 24-hour time frame. “Cultural Differences” highlights the incredibly talented and informed pair’s individual interests while showing where they connect. Swartz, a brilliant programmer and activist played to Simon’s background as a photographer concerned with exposing truths.
While they’d like to expand the app to cover every country, the duo began with the randomly organized selection of 15 currently shown on the site. The user simply types a word into the search field and hits enter to get a pictorial portrayal of how each culture sees the word. Swartz and Simon pointed out in the presentation that Obama yields a variety of results—while most are classic presidential images, in Syria Obama is linked to Beyonce and North Korea obviously prohibits any images of the American president. For the word “Jew” a variety of images pops up in various countries, but in Germany, the word for “Jew” is “Jude”, bringing up nothing but images of Jude Law with that search.
All politics aside, the app is a valuable tool for designers, who can immediately see that, for example, in Saudi Arabia, a search for an Eames chair generates few relevant results. By gleaning results from each nation’s local search engine, Swartz and Simon’s app refines results, thus usurping the limited scope of a Google image search.
Conceived and developed in less than a day, “Cultural Differences” marks an impressive concept sure to entertain, enlighten and inspire new ways of visually contrasting cultural conversations through simple technology.
Our favorite video sharing platform reveals a complete redesign
We have always been big supporters of Vimeo and their mission to provide a high quality, creatively focused platform for video sharing. We are super excited to announce that today Vimeo is launching it’s latest iteration with New Vimeo. The new platform entails a complete redesign from top to bottom. The new user interface was built with all new code, has brand-new features and a fantastic new look. The first redesign since 2007, this major overhaul marks Vimeo’s push to grow and reach a larger audience by making it more accessible and adding some great new features.
The basis for New Vimeo revolves are putting the video first. In lieu of the Inbox, when you log in you are now presented with your Feed, a streaming list of videos from all your contact and subscriptions. The feed allows you to watch and interact with those videos in place, including the ability to like, share or comment without having to visit the actual clip page. The feed is super clean and open, it has a very pleasing effect on the eye and incorporates the various buttons and tools in a subtle, intuitive manner.
The language of the site has also changed. Adopting terminology more in line with social networks the site loses subscriptions and instead let’s users “Follow” each other. Anyone you follow will appear in your feed and act in the same manner as subscriptions and contacts did in the previous version. This simplification makes it much easier to manage your network on site and is more digestible for new users coming from other social platforms. The video still remains the focus of the experience, by keeping user interaction simple you can do more without straying from the content.
Content really is king in this new layout. Gone are the tabs upon tabs and long scrolling video lists with options layered one on top of the other. Videos are now presented front and center on clip pages, a drop down bar on the top of the site lets you browse other videos from your feed, more videos from that user or a wide variety of other filtering options. We spoke with Blake Whitman, Vimeo’s VP of Creative Development, who gave a walk through of the new site. The word “granular” came up often and it rings true, Vimeo managed to simplify their layout but the attention to detail and level of consideration that went into the new UI is outstanding.
Over a year in the making New Vimeo has some new add-ons that are sure to gratify their faithful base. One of the most exciting new features is the ability to upload multiple videos simultaneously. To make sure you don’t choke your internet with your line up you can set throttles on your data usage when uploading which, while not earth shattering, is a very useful detail. It’s hard to pinpoint new features considering the metamorphosis everything seems pretty fresh but there is a new search criteria and filter that lets you sort by the license associated with the video. In line with this there is an entire category dedicated to the Creative Commons license in a push to educate users about this form of
copyright and make it easier to track down royalty free content.
Overall the Vimeo team did an excellent job moving the site into it’s next phase. A lot of user feedback was incorporated into the redesign making sure it will satisfy the faithful but it has a fresh enough look to draw in a new crowd. The focus on accessibility and keeping content center stage show a great deal of insight from the team and we are excited to see more new features are they role out. Head to the site to pre-register for New Vimeo, where you can migrate an existing account or sign up as a new user.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
