• Good design

    Enormous Champion for Father’s Day

    May 26, 2011 / No Comments

    These designs for Paperless Post by Enormous Champion are wonderful. They’ve done the best stuff for them!

    We aspire to do very papery announcements for the baby, but Paperless Post makes me want to come up with reasons to send festive emails. You can see lots more here. Father’s Day is June 19th.

  • Good design

    Albert et Henriette oxfords

    May 25, 2011 / No Comments

    What wonderful photographs from Le Dans La for her new shoe line. Her blog is full of scattered flowers, just-finished crafts, planks of wood covered  with soft lambswool, children playing under tables, and moments caught just before they passed. I always breathe a peaceful sigh after paging through it.

  • Good design,  Music

    the Rome album

    May 17, 2011 / No Comments

    We’ve been enjoying npr’s First Listen of Rome. But I just saw the album cover for the first time. Nice.

    In fact, it’s truly remarkable how much work went into the making of this album — we’ve heard tales of bartering bottles of wine for vintage equipment, recording with analog tape in the famed Ortophonic Studios, calling out of retirement the elder statesmen who played on the soundtracks of films like Once Upon a Time in the West. Yet all of that fetishism is quickly and completely eclipsed by the jarring presence of the distinct voices of Norah Jones and Jack White (each of whom appear on three tracks) and the plodding, midtempo modernity of the songs composed by Luppi and Danger Mouse.

    -Paste Magazine’s review of Rome

    I didn’t think “plodding” (a serious word to throw around) but I did think “soundtrack.” And, “Norah Jones is the best when dolloped in small doses.”

  • Good design

    the ribbon effect

    May 16, 2011 / No Comments

    Boston turned gray and chilly over the weekend.

    So when I saw these photos of a friend’s wedding I was immediately pulled in. Color is a great theme but it can be tough to make a space feel full of it. I think Jenny did an absolutely amazing job. I’ve been thinking of the easy yet remarkable effect of ribbon ever since seeing Design Mom‘s elegant and springy Easter decorations.

    Jenny did nearly everything herself, including decoupaging the centerpiece letters and stapling chicken wire to the frames. Even the bridesmaids wore different color dresses, and the gray rain outside somehow manages looks like the perfect backdrop. Read more about it, and see a few more photos over at Love the Day.

    Here’s Jenny and her new husband Jamison. I love her wedding jacket!

    Photos from Love the Day and The Remsnyders.

  • Good design

    How to Pronounce Goethe

    April 28, 2011 / No Comments

    In David Brooks’ new book The Social Animal he makes a passing reference to people over-judging potential life partners, seeking out their flaws, and dismissing them.

    A possible flaw casually suggested just to strike fear in your heart is mispronouncing the writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s name. Let’s be honest, it’s bloody hard to know how to say it right unless you hang out with literary people a lot (or work with them, like I did).

    [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y58HZdyIZfg]

    Other words that I really appreciate this guy’s help with: Givenchy, Lanvin, L’Occitane (I hate mispronouncing fashion brands.)

  • Books,  Good design,  Other Places Online

    The new Paris Review

    April 26, 2011 / No Comments

    Whatever is going on over at the Paris Review, it’s working like my new Macbook air. Super slickly sexy in a way that makes me wonder if I have enough in me to keep up with it, no cords attached, with barely a mutter of effort to show that it is hard at work.

    My favorite feature on the blog is the Cultural Diaries because I like to examine minutia of the cultural lives of strangers. But even the web design is snappy, not to mention how much you want to pick up and page through recent issues when you pass them in the library. And the editor-in-chief Lorin sounds shockingly cool, if not obnoxiously like how you imaged yourself at age forty.

    I don’t follow him, but I do follow Thessaly La Force, their web editor, on Twitter, and would recommend her literary daily doses as well. They will make you feel like you walk to work on the streets of New York.

    Drawing by William Pène du Bois from the Paris Review website footer, and their very first issue.

  • Good design

    Stripy Stationary

    April 24, 2011 / No Comments

    I’ve been writing thank you notes until my hand cramps up and I’ve used all the good adjectives seem tired. (I usually go to Starbucks to write, just to make it an official project. Last time I was there I tried the new iced Cocoa Cappuccino. Genius. Sadly, genius is $$) Thank goodness I have these cheery notes to write on to make it more fun. For each note, I contemplate the perfect color to send them,  imagining what color they will like to see when they open their envelope. Because I had to write so many, I needed a lot, so the price of $8 for 12 was a perfect.