design inspiration

i've been del.icio.us-ing a lot this week, after finding some great inspiration throughout the interweb, both for Interwoven Threads and for my ad job.
here's what's inspiring me.


Nike Considered, by Jeff Staple. Nike's beautiful eco-friendly new line...plus a new air jordan!



Information Aesthetics. Data visualization


Scrapture. Japanese style/fashion site with great (non-Harajuku, thankfully) images of street style.



Five to Nine Magazine. not only does this mag feature a lot of us who get our creative on between the hours of 5 to 9 (brilliant name), but is available for free PDF download. a growing trend, which I love.




The Sky Is Falling, by the Ecospot Grand Prize winner, animation artist Dave Schlafman.

how to kick ass

you know, i read a lot of blogs. (what a stupid way to start a post). but it's true. and oftentimes i start new feeds and in the first few posts, i can usually tell if i will find value or not. for a couple years now, i've been searching for whatever happened to the old branding shop kindred keziah. i blogged about it in 2005. well, after a friend in colorado sent me a post from the Egg Strategy blog a couple days ago, i've been reading "the dozen" and it's previous posts with interest.

not only do my brand strategy interests collide with Egg, turns out they are the outcome of a merger with kindred keziah. well, slap me around and call me serendipity.



tonight, after being absolutely engrossed with a back issue of Fast Company and learning more about design powerhouse fuseproject, i sat down at my Macbook to do some follow up on the companies/people i was reading about and found this nice post from Egg...on a company i have an overwhelming amount of respect for (and consumer dollars in), Patagonia, and a leader i'm pretty sure i'd walk on fire to follow, Yvon Chouinard.

it reminded me that a couple weeks ago, Andrew the Planner and i absorbed the google zeitgeist video of Chouinard and friend Tom Browkaw, below:



for some reason, i never posted my thoughts. probably due to business. most of you know that i follow patagonia with a zealot's obsession and built Interwoven Threads' social constitution in many of the same ways patagonia is run.

well, there it is for the absorbing. grab onto the Egg Strategy feed. what i've read has been both insightful and challenging. Egg, fuseproject, Patagonia...all kicking ass. how can you be part of it? how can you learn from it and develop something new? how can you kick ass?