I’ve just discovered a rather dizzying unbelievable tumbling routine called “Power Tumbling”. Watch the video above and wonder how do you not get dizzy, as the gymnast or even as a watcher! I’ve always been amused with break dancing but this form in tumbling really has me saying, our bodies can do what! If your eye want more, simple do a Youtube search for “power tumbling”.

So besides the overwhelming food adventures surrounding Hong Kong during my holiday break, I also had some time to shop around, observe, and absorb the ever changing cultural landscape. Above is an image my sister took of me waiting for, well, my sister and mother shopping for shoes. I’m the younger sibling, so I’m use to waiting around in woman’s clothing stores which generally have more styles to look at, so it helps a bit being a designer and materials addict.

Check out the pictures after the jump with some notes:

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Okay, it’s late, I’m a bit tired, but this grabbed my attention. GetPeek, the thin simple mobile device that let’s you email and text message (through email) that usually cost $100 with a $20 monthly service fee is going all out and offering a 1 day lifetime service purchase for $300! Yes, I said Lifetime!

I’m not sure what to think, besides this is tempting… but then again, do I need it, do they need it, why are they doing this. Anyhow, it’s a 1 day deal, so I’ll let your mind make up a decision. As far as I know, if it’s a lifetime purchase and I can change the email several times, then I might just get it and pop it in the car, or hand down many generations, or, just use for some bizarre project.

Kudos to GetPeek for doing something first… or at least this is a first I think…is it? Buy it here.

Air Bear by Joshua Allen Harris. Another cool making of video here. via core77

Over the holiday break I spent over a week in Hong Kong visiting family and the unavoidable addictive food! Yes, Hong Kong is a city of culture, shopping, people, and high quality Asian food! I thought I’d share a bit of my break with ya’ll and figured out I’d start off with one of the best things, Food in Hong Kong! Other topics will follow of course.

I’ve always spoken about how Food is very much like designing. You have to pick out your ingredients (materials), what’s in season (material cost), cook it (assemble+manufacture), use everything (be sustainable), plate it (package), eat it (consume), brand it, get a reputation, rinse and repeat. “A week eating in Hong Kong makes ya go on a 1 year diet when you return home!”
Enjoy the collection of pictures!
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Gary Hustwit, creator of the incredible documentary Helvetica, brings to us his journey in discovering the world of Industrial Designer in Objectified, premiering in March 2009.

“Objectified is a feature-length independent documentary about industrial design. It’s a look at the creativity at work behind everything from toothbrushes to tech gadgets. It’s about the people who re-examine, re-evaluate and re-invent our manufactured environment on a daily basis. It’s about personal expression, identity, consumerism, and sustainability. It’s about our relationship to mass-produced objects and, by extension, the people who design them.

Through vérité footage and in-depth conversations, the film documents the creative processes of some of the world’s most influential designers, and looks at how the things they make impact our lives. What can we learn about who we are, and who we want to be, from the objects with which we surround ourselves?”

Some appearing in the film are Paola Antonelli (MoMa), Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec, Naoto Fukasawa, IDEO, Jonathan Ive (apple), Marc Newson, Karim Rashid, Smart Design, and more…

This line up already tells a tale of what to expect from the film (more of a euro flavor about objects, furniture, materials, service, space, and the simple obsession with emotional design.), but I’m sure it’ll be just as good as Helvetica, and if so, bravo! I cant wait to watch it! Watch the trailer above or here.

As I return from this years holiday break I’m reminded of the everlasting question “What do you do in design?” Fields such as transportation, furniture, shoes, toys, and electronics are a bit easier to describe in a few sentences, but for those like myself that do a bit of everything both tangible, emotional, interaction, print, marketing, biz, branding, spacial, manufacturing, packaging, art, the future, the past, research, etc it’s an adventure to describe the simple question “What do you do.”

Core77 has an interesting article describing the everyday hurdle industrial designers have had defining the evolving Industrial Design discipline. Simply put, “Design is a mess”. This isn’t bad, it’s just that the term Industrial Design is still fairly new constantly defining itself, hence, we as designers today, are defining what industrial design means.

Check out the full Core77 article here, or after the jump. The Book project is by Stephanie M. Tharp and Dr. Bruce M. Tharp at DiscursiveDesign.com.

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Western Spaghetti by PES

Fun Fun with teabags…
via thedieline.com

I’m off to Monterey CA for TED conference founder Richard Saul Wurman’s newer “Entertainment Gathering” Conference!
The speaker list is quite impressive with a seemingly circus like theme this year based on this cool pdf program floating around.

Some highlight speakers I’m craving to meet:
- Violin guru Joshua Bell
- X Prize founder Peter Diamandis
- Applied Minds inventor Bran Ferren
- Viral Global Dancing Matt Harding
- Egypt’s Indiana Jones Zahi Hawass
- HEROES writer Tim Kring
- Illustrator David Macaulay
- MIT MediaLab founder Nicolas Negroponte
- Technologists David Pogue
- Dirty Job’s dirty man Mike Rowe
- Mythbuster’s Adam Savage
- PIXAR co-founder Alvy Ray Smith
- Magician Jamy Ian Swiss
- Penn&Tellers Teller
- A floating Zepplin, idea makers, shakers, and creators everywhere! Plenty of surprises…

Wow! This is an awesome, AWESOME, freaking AWESOME opportunity!

Guru Seth Godin has a plan, to get a few amazing people in his office to work together for 6 months. Forget paying to get an MBA, go get an MBA-like experience for FREE!

“Here’s the program I’m interested in creating:
One hour a day of class/dialogue
Four hours a day of working on my projects
Three hours a day of working on your personal project
Five hours a day of living, noticing, doing and connecting”

Read about it here then apply!!!!! (I’d do the same, but not sure who would come work with me for free and learn, well, everything I blog which is free )

Uploading photos online is very common (everyone should do this!). Creative Commons is a free way to protect yet share your photos online for creative uses while receiving credit. Sometime you receive a few emails that you ignore, and sometimes you realize Woa!!.

Meet Jeremy Keith. He took a picture and posted it on Flickr. He receives a few emails, and just says use what you want and credit me. Next thing he knows, 3 minutes into the Box office hit Iron Man movie is the picture he took being used as the background! Pretty awesome!

Read the whole story here.