The Thought Kitchen is our effort at collective inquiry and its power to affect change. Have you ever noticed how the party is always in the kitchen? There are more walls to lean on and people are energized by the proximity to food and drink. Well, welcome to our kitchen, where we hope to tap into everything we love about that feeling—community, vivacious exchange, food for thought.
I was hanging out in front of a local restaurant and noticed a cool bit of graffiti on its bright orange doorway. It was a sticker with Braille on it, tagged with another sticker that read “Braille Graffiti.”
I walked back into the office and immediately Googled the subject, a query that resulted in my finding out that one of Portland’s most infamous “public artists” was responsible for the work. It was the latest project by Scott Wayne Indiana, the guy we blogged about almost a year ago who’s best known for attaching toy horses to the century old horse-rings on PDX’s sidewalks. This latest project, peppered around the city last month, arrived just in time for Portland’s Time Based Art Festival, and raises the question: Why shouldn’t street art be enjoyed by everyone?
Click HERE to watch a video about the project and to find out what the Braille says!
It can be said that a city’s public transportation system is a window into its heart. New York’s subway is gritty and strained, but far-reaching, democratic and utilitarian. London’s Tube is a mix of history (world’s oldest), functionality (longest in terms of length) and design contributions (the font for the signage was developed in 1916 by Edward Johnston). Vienna’s modern U-Banh is only 30 years old, but its roots go back to 1898. And while it lacks the sweep of larger city’s networks, like the Paris Metro, the little touches around the Vienna system stood out to me. Take this steel ramp on the side of a flight of stairs I encountered. Anyone who’s ever had to carry their bike up a long stairway will appreciate this addition, allowing riders to push their bike up the flight with relative ease, and making the combination of bike and train trips that much more realistic as a transit option. While this may seem like a trivial bit of “design” to some, it stopped me in my tracks, and made me appreciate the person (or persons) who took the time to make sure cyclists were considered in the transit planning process.
Designers, for the most part, are wizards behind curtains, creating graphic identities and telling visual stories without getting kudos from the people who they’re communicating with. For some, the desk or the cubicle is a safe haven. But Cut & Paste is trying to shed light on the creative process with a series of iron-chef style digital design tournaments that are taking place across the US as well as in Asia and Europe. To get a feel for the event, check out this Cool Hunting video from New York last year.
I got involved in producing Cut & Paste in Portland based on the video above and because I get prickles on the back of my neck when I watch art being created. The Portland stop for Cut & Paste is Friday, September 21 at the Wonder Ballroom. Check out the website and buy advanced tickets here. Read on »
I recently had the chance to spend a week in Austria on a media trip focused on food, wine and design. Odd combo you say? Not really. Many Austrian chefs and wine makers are looking for, and finding, ways to merge the country’s rich culinary and viticultural history with its equally rich modern design contributions, but more on that later. While in Vienna, there was a lot to appreciate in regards to thoughtful design integrated into daily life. For starters, almost every light I encountered in non-constant use situations was on a motion sensing timer, reducing the amount of time lights were on without someone in the room. Also, literally every bathroom I saw had a low-flow toilet and motion-controlled faucets. Vienna also has a city bike program similar to the one recently introduced in Paris, and an extensive network of bike paths separated from car traffic.
The capper for me came one Saturday, when we passed this woman standing at the start of a major retail street in the city center. In case your German is a little rusty, her sandwich board is advertising the merits of compact fluorescent bulbs, and announcing that later that afternoon, you can bring your old incandescent bulbs back to the same location and swap them out for compact fluorescents, for free, courtesy of IKEA. Now that’s putting your PR where your environmental practices are.
The Sweetpea blog is on our blog roll because Natalie, who makes the bikes, and Austen, her partner and the guy who rides behind her, are our friends. Besides, we love what they do and how they do it. Apparently we’re not the only ones. I’m not sure how, but Hewlett Packard just discovered them and produced this short little video that tells their story. Check it out.
Last weekend I drove through Oregon’s wine country to go to Otis’s wedding outside of McMinnville (congratulations Otis!). For the bulk of the hour-long drive on 99W, which is part suburb, part bucolic country road, I tailed or was tailed by this guy, whose lawnmower-like speed only barely surpassed my nearly dead Subaru’s. With a nod to the Sartorialist, I had to snap his picture. Form + Function + Pursuit of Passion unite. I think he was on his way to the Chehalem Skate Park in Newberg, which is a work of art in and of itself.
I did! And it was really cool. Ecomotion, a new Earth friendly vehicle dealer opened near my house in Northeast Portland last week, and I couldn’t resist swinging by to see what they were selling. The showroom was filled with electric Zap! cars – lipstick pink ones, Kermit green ones, fluffy cloud white ones, and even a surfboard blue teeny truck that got me thinking about the possibility of zapping my way to the beach every weekend. Unfortunately, this version of the electric car — only capable of going 25 miles per charge up to a maximum speed of 40 miles per hour — is not freeway legal… yet. Apparently, within six months Ecomotion will carry souped-up versions of the Zap! car that will be faster and capable of going much farther. I’m sure it’s not this one, but the notion of pimping my electro-ride makes me wonder if I could run an extension cord from the bathroom at Short Sands to a parking space.
The car I test drove was the Zap! Xebra, a three-wheel, four-door sedan that seats four and weighs in at 1,800 pounds. The first thing I noticed about the car was how quiet it was. I had no idea the thing was on until I pushed down the accelerator (not “gas pedal”) and it took off. The car has more spunk than I was expecting, and feels pretty solid on the road. I hesitate to call this a glamorized golf cart, with its fully enclosed seating area, classy interior, and faux wood dashboard, but it did rattle a little over bumps. No problem, I thought, and cranked up the little stereo system. Classic rock inspired me put the pedal to the metal and within seconds I had the green machine maxed out at 40.
A couple months ago, I came across an article in The Christian Science Monitor that went into great detail about Britain’s recent revolt against the plastic bag. It chronicled how concerned citizens across the pond have gone as far as encouraging small towns to ban plastic bags and as a result, large retailers have been experimenting with plastic-bag-free days and reusable totes.
Of particular interest to me was a section of the story describing a limited edition reusable cotton bag emblazoned with “I’m Not a Plastic Bag,” designed by London fashion house Anya Hindmarch. The reason it caught my attention was because my Thai sister-in-law had called me a month before, asking that I beg, borrow, or steal one of those very bags for her when they came to the US on July 20. At $10, I didn’t think it was a big deal, but then I found out how impossible they were to get.
It turns out that this bag is a major status symbol, not only in Asia, but around the globe. Sold in limited runs that didn’t come close to meeting their demand, the bags are virtually impossible to buy, unless you’re willing to shell out much higher prices (somewhere between $600-$1000) for originals that are being resold online.
All evidence points to the fact that people want to be seen as green, which is an interesting trend around the world, and not necessarily a bad thing in cases where positive change is the end result. But a trip to Anya Hindmarch’s website made me scratch my head. On the section of the site devoted to the bags, several disclaimers described why bags are so hard to get:
“Due to the unprecedented demand for I’m Not A Plastic Bag in South East Asia and our concerns for our customers safety we will be cancelling [sic] the launches at the following stores: Anya Hindmarch Beijing, On Pedder in Shanghai and On Pedder in Jakarta.”
“Please note all I’m Not A Plastic Bag bags have now sold out in the United States.”
This made me wonder why Hindmarch doesn’t simply make more of the bags (in more earth-friendly ways), allowing more people to use them, thereby reinforcing her mission to raise awareness of the message written on it. And, more importantly, if more people can actually buy and employ the bags everyday, less plastic bags will be produced that will eventually end up in our oceans… right?
As The Thought Kitchen nears its one-year anniversary (8/24, for those of you interested), we’re pretty thrilled about the ideas, discoveries, people and topics that have found their way into our company. We’ve grown in our awareness of the blog world, and awareness of us has grown as well. To that end, we wanted to acknowledge that we’ve updated our list of Like Minds links (at left) with a bunch more interesting, compelling and often inspiring sites. Check ‘em out. They’re where we go for insight, info and laughs. You should too. Thanks for reading, and keep the comments coming!
My friend Marc emailed me yesterday to tell me about his garbage. Not so much what was in it, exactly, as the fact he was planning to carry it around for the next two weeks. Marc lives in San Francisco, and as part of his work for a design consultancy there, he and some fellow co-workers are running a novel kind of eco-relay. The goal? For each member of the world-wide team to keep and carry all the waste they produce over 14 days; only then can he or she can pass the Glad bag on.
Marc writes: “So far it’s hit Austin, Seattle, China, New York City, and Herrenberg, Germany. It’s been great because the folks participating are not, in general, ‘green’ types, and each location seems to have its own waste disposal challenges. I think it’s been less intimidating to mainstream types than the usual ‘I drive a prius and drink my own pee’ environmentalist stuff.”
You can follow Marc’s progress on the Trash Talk blog by clicking here.
A couple months ago, I came across 
