Inspiration blog - by PaperNotes

Discarded Object Project

Was just visiting one of my favorite webpages, Guerrilla-innovation, where I saw an article on the Discarded Object Project.

"Discarded Object Poster Project is an urban artwork by Beth Arnold devoted to lonely deserted objects that we tend to notice, only to forget about them soon after. The artist invited people in Melbourne to submit photographs (...) will then be made into high-quality posters and posted around the city" Guerrilla-innovation tells us.

Check out the Discarded Object Project website.

Illustrational work by Atsushi Toyama

Came across the interesting work of Atsushi Toyama @ Pingmag, an example:

How kids draw christmas

I love christmas myself, but unfortunately it's over now... To keep up the christmas spirit for a really short while :-)

Waterworld in China

Check what I just came across @ Thecoolhunter.net... Atkin's Architecture Group has won the first prize in an international design competition with it's waterworld design hotel:

"Set in a spectacular water filled quarry in Songjiang, China, the 400 bed resort hotel is uniquely constructed within the natural elements of the quarry. With underwater public areas and guest rooms, the resort also boasts cafes, restaurants and sporting facilities."

Cool huh?

Second Life - not for youngsters actually

What I find very interesting about Second Life is that most 'youngsters' (kids, teenagers) aren't interested in this world at all.

A lot of people think that this world is something for the young, but they don't find Second Life at all interesting and not challenging enough and even boring.

Young people are more busy with themselves, participating in competitions with peers and proving oneself's qualities. A better platform through which they can do such a thing is World of Warcraft for example or the Sims. These are more games than virtual worlds, where you're challenged to learn, to improve your avatar, to make progress.

In Second Life, there's not really such a challenge. If you like, you can sit around and do nothing all day, without being attacked or needing to feed your character.

The name Second Life already says it: having a second life next to your usual, 'first' life. In my opinion youngsters are not interested in this at present, since they're still discovering and defining their first life and what they really want to be.

The average age of people on Second Life is 32.

Hana Zuki - work

I already blogged about the Hana Zuki shop in Amsterdam, but now also discovered they have a creative 'agency' in the US delivering quite cool work:

Hana Zuki created several characters for MTV US

Designs merchandise and other things for Karat Records

These are two examples, but there are more cases of course. Be sure to check out their website for that.

Used to be or still a pop-up book fan?

I guess most children love these kind of books, at least I did when I was smaller! At Pingmag.jp an elaborate article was written specificly about this topic, inspired by the pop-up books available in Japan:

 

The article also covers the 'making of' several pop-ups... Take a look if you don't have a lot to do around Christmas ;-)

Filou & Friends - photo inspiration

Ok, this is just a kids fashion brand.. But I like the always beautiful pictures of kids in their catalogues and on their website so much, and thus wanted to share it with you. Be honest with me here, aren't they cute?

When at school, I used to use these pictures as source of inspiration sometimes. Especially when visualising kids or families as target audience... Better than exploiting Gettyimages again ;-)

Graphic design by Marc Lynch

Came across this graphic design work by Marc Lynch. Discovered his work at Artsconnect.au:

But... you should definitly take a peek at his own website - Digiart on which there's much cooler work to view, for example his characters:

90SQM shop in Amsterdam

Do you know 90SQM? It's a shop in Amsterdam, exactly 90 square meters big and containing premium - most limited edition - items and a lot of creativity!

Nice creative example: fold your own Nike! Take a further peek into their world (big part of the website is under construction):

Screenshot website (left) - Pee & Poo cuddles - limited edition Nike

I was introduced to 90SQM already a few years ago, because of a school project about cool places in Amsterdam. Their philosophy really appealed to me, so I thought I'd just write it down here...

They want to be a point for creative people, bringing limited edition and really 'fresh' new stuff. When something begins to be 'hot' amongst more people, they just kick it out of their shop, since the coolness is off of it then...

Really worthwile to take a look some time - check the shop @ Levantplein / KNSM eiland!