I finally watched Food Inc the movie!

“In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation’s food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government’s regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation’s food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, herbicide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won’t go bad, but we also have new strains of E. coli—the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults.”

I found Food Inc to be a disruptive glance into the hidden political powers ruining the food industry where profits overwhelm the integrity of farmers and quality in healthy food.  As the film says, you’ll never look at food the same way. You’ll be left appreciating local farming, an understanding in how an individual can influence large corporations, and cringing to take action which you can here. They also have a book you can buy: Food Inc.: A Participant Guide: How Industrial Food is Making Us Sicker, Fatter, and Poorer-And What You Can Do About It

Go watch the film, get everyone you know to see it,  and don’t bring too much food into the movie while watching. Start buying from farmers markets, eat organic, get local schools to serve healthy meals, and have restaurants display nutritional facts. Food Inc will not scare you away from food, but it’ll influence your food buying decisions while giving you a better idea in how some foods are manufactured, treated, transported, and concealed.

Food Inc website

Last week, I had a brief interview with architect and product designer Michael Graves about his recent collaboration with [yellowtail] wines in creating a limited edition set of glasses which will be auctioned off this month on Ebay with profits going to the American Association of Museums.

I’ve always had an interest between the blurry design intersections in space and objects. Graves is one of few successful architects to bridge the object world most notably known for his Universal designs along with a line up of products sold at Target.

The brief interview with Graves and a video explaining the project more after the jump along with images of the 3 glasses his team created.

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Junior Jacquet creates some oddly familiar and intriguing faces using the the brown chipboard tube from an empty toliet roll! I’m not sure what to make of them, but making art from trash is always cool!

A few more pics after jump.
via zoomdoggle

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Nikon just announced the worlds first Compact Portable Camera with an integrated projector capable in blasting an image on any surface 5-40 inches! The Nikon s1000pj 12.1 MegaPixel Camera is surprisingly thin at .9 inche and will cost roughly $700 $430 when it comes out this fall in Europe! and yes, it still has a 2.7 inch screen.

I’ve  played with integrated portable projectors since 2002 during some projects but only now are they coming out in real products. This will surely disrupt the portable media industry, though I’ve grown keen on sharing small screens with people lately.

What will happen… Will projectors over rule touch screens or will projected touchscreens be next. Or maybe augmented data will be projected on people your taking pictures of (watch the TEDtalk on the “6th Sense” project shown this past February embedded after the jump).  I do wonder if you can project onto something your about to take a picture of… fun times in creativity and augmented reality!

via dpreview (source reghardware)

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Hello world! Thank you for all your messages over the weeks since I have not had time to post anything lately.

I’ve been incredibly busy at the awesome start-up I’m at (We’re hiring creatives/designers..contact me), glued late at night watching the incredible Tour De France or just Lance Armstrong, laughing several times at the video of Buzz Aldrin punching a news reporter claiming the moon landing was fake, seeing very simple fun addictive websites such as this one, comparing the positions of people doing yoga or being drunk, viewing an awesome video of bike pro Danny Macaskill doing some great tricks, attending TEDxBoston, watching the Incredible Youth Symphony of America(YOA) conducted by Ben Zanders, trying to figure out how to help with the inspirational foundation El Sistema USA (a TED2009 wish), and most recently having a great time watching a recent wedding dance ceremony introduction go viral posted above!

Besides the crazy busy month in work and odd distractions, I’ll be catching up to many of the suggestions sent in and posting again soon.  Or as I’d like to think, I leaned back briefly, just like President Obama did in this awesome picture in the White House.

Who ever knew! I’ve been doing it wrong my entire life!

If your the majority of people I know that peel open a banana from the stem, then check out this video and be a bit baffled how simple it really is to open he correct way!

I’m finding monkeys surprisingly smarter than myself after watching this! Also watch this video on how to split a banana into 3 wedges.

Art: Spiral of Michael Jackson
Work: 10 basic productivity tricks
Web: Etherpad, real time sharable writing board
Green: almost waterless washer…or 90% less water
Read: How industries Fail by Michael Nielson
Architecture: really cool large cube space.
Art+Design: Space Jello mold competition
Fun: Airplane toilet trick video
Odd: Fish with human like teeth
Style: Neat floors

The world was shaken to the tragic news of Michael Jacksons passing this weekend. As weeks progress and the world seeks into his incredible mysterious life many new things will be learned.  One element that has surfaced is his contribution not only to music and dance, but in inventing!

In his amazing performance for “Smooth Criminal” Michael gracefully leans 45 degrees forwards then back seemingly defying the laws to physics. How did he do it? With a pretty awesome patent (5255452) on shoes to allow this mesmerizing act. Watch a classic video of this move in the video above here. (see at 3:50)

I hope someone makes these shoes available for all to rock out on! Michael, you are a global legend who made massive changes to our society and an icon in history never to be forgotten … Rest in Peace.

via boingboing.

Some wise words from our favorite marketing guru of all sorts Seth Godin about a rather amusing video:

“Paul just sent over this video of a dance tribe forming spontaneously at a music festival.

My favorite part happens just before the first minute mark. That’s when guy #3 joins the group. Before him, it was just a crazy dancing guy and then maybe one other crazy guy. But it’s guy #3 who made it a movement.

Initiators are rare indeed, but it’s scary to be the leader. Guy #3 is rare too, but it’s a lot less scary and just as important. Guy #49 is irrelevant. No bravery points for being part of the mob.

We need more guy #3s.”

Moq7 introduces the world to some pretty clever projects such as the Brush and Rinse fountain toothbrush before they become real. The idea is to expose great ideas to the world and let them decide if it’ll ever make it out to the real market by reaching an MOQ (Minimum Order Quantity). An MOQ is needed before a manufacture will actually produce that specific product for a given cost. The more (thousands) orders, the lower the cost.

The benefit to Moq7 is that early purchasers act like supporters, where an early order will get you the real product for a great price, but also help reach the MOQ minimum allowing them to hopefully manufacture many more to retailers around the world.

Give Moq7 a look, check out some cool concepts, and submit any ideas you have. It’s very similar to Threadless in the sense that people submit ideas, people place orders, and once a certain order amount is made by the thousands of other people in the world, it becomes real, and people are happy.

We help manufacturers meet their concept product MOQ’s by offering consumers the opportunity to pre-order next generation goods at closeout prices in a concerted effort to boost innovation and create jobs.

MOQ (Minimum Order Quantity) is the number of units that must be manufactured in order for a product to be produced and sold at a reasonable price – high volume / low cost.  We pre-sell items prior to production to help manufacturers raise the start-up capital they need to produce the item.   The sale price is further reduced for our buyers to reward them for placing orders prior to production.

All money is refunded should we fail to meet the manufacturer’s MOQ.  The numbers of units sold and the respective MOQ’s are listed with each concept product on this website.”

Walking the aisles of New York’s International Contemporary Furniture Fair this weekend, it was clear that the Recession was hitting the design world pretty hard. The show seemed to be only 70% of the size of years past, and those who were showing tended to be showing smaller, more affordable products. There was still some good work to be seen, though, including what we thought was the highlight: Kikkerland’s booth.

That’s right, the highlight of the the show was’t furniture at all– it was the booth at Kikkerland, can-structed of 2000 cans of soup, to be donated to New York’s hungry through City Harvest after the show was taken down. Designed by Jan Habraken, the booth was a recession-friendly, environmentally-benign, and captivating show-stealer.

Check out a couple more photos after the jump!

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The New York Times has a great summary about recent buzz about one of Googles main designers, Mr. Bowman, leaving his amazing job for a very simple reason. Design was being trumped by data. This is not to say data is wrong or bad, but sometimes data is not how choices should be made.

I’ve had this exact emotion when decisions are made by some sort of point system rather than by a gut reaction from experience. First off, not every data point has equal value, and even if data points are given different weights, it’s just wrong to do this from a design perspective. Emotions can’t be quantified. And every time I tell this to an engineer they ask why not and the answer is exactly what I said, you can’t quantify an instinct, emotion, hence you cant ask me why.  I’m sure emotions can be broken down to hundreds of dynamic elements, but to do so would just take to long to process, and data does not factor in reaction and adoption to well.

I’m not sure if it’s something that is taught in design school vs a more technical field, but I’ve experienced so many industries that depend on some point system to make huge decisions which frankly makes me confused. This is not to say that the best choice doesn’t come forth using this methodology, but to make it a means is just not right. When it comes to something say more mechanical, I can understand why since robots are robots, machines are machines, but when it come down to something that deals with a human, it’s an incredibly different field since humans are so different, humans change, evolve, and most importantly we don’t even understand ourselves to determine what we do, understand, like, hate, etc… we are not robots, so don’ try to quantify us like a machine.

I love data, and I’m not saying data does not help drive decisions, but take a step back and remember we as humans process quite a bit of data that can not be explained simply. Be instinctive with decsions and don’t alway look at pie charts, graphs, axis comparisions, numbers, or what the past tells you. Be a human if you are making products for a human. Data can predict pathways, but rarely can they see massive adaptive changes.

Full nytimes article after the jump.

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