Today in The Thought Kitchen, we sit down with our Director of Design Peter Kallen to talk about the new Shroud of Purrin jackets and blazers. For the complete Design Eye series, click here. [http://blog.nau.com/?s=design+eye+peter]

The Thought Kitchen: Nau has a lot of unique fabrics, but the Shroud Of Purrin is particularly special. What were the design goals you had in making it?

Peter Kallen: We created this fabric to up the ante of the softshell world by merging the softshell concept with a beautiful, ‘luxxy’ interior—The Shroud of Purrin has this soft, kitten-like fur feel on the inside. So it’s ideal to take that fabric and apply it to these two new styles, which definitely blur the boundaries between urban and outdoor.

TTK: What makes this fabric appropriate for an urban, fashion forward style?

PK: The intent behind softshell is just that: a soft shell. What was rigid and hard and crunchy about a hardshell wasn’t very approachable; it was always treated as something for protection first. What this does is to soften that; it just becomes this much more refined jacket with a softer hand and a much more refined drape to it, as opposed to the crunch bend that a hardshell would have. The combination of softshell technology and distinct tailoring make these styles the perfect application of beauty and performance.

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Looking for a handsome, sustainable way to display your photographs, illustrations or other images? Check out Plywerk, who’ll print your pics on archival-quality paper and mount them on FSC-certified bamboo or maple plywood for an elegant, simple framing solution.

From murky basement impulse to Saturday Market booth to co-op shop to image mounting mavens, Plywerk’s growth has been as organic as their products. “We are part of the local economy,” they say on their site, “and know that growth means the growth of our partners and community.” And they put their money where their copywriting is with a 20% discount to all students, full-time artists and photographers.

So rather than print your next photoset with another anonymous photoprinting dot-com, check out Plywerk; they also offer bamboo blanks and a collection of art photographs made by co-founder Kim Nguyen and others.

As part of the launch of Collective Snapshot—a regular feature in our monthly newsletter, Off The Grid—on nau.com, we’ve teamed up with Plywerk to award the winner of the monthly photo contest a Plywerk-framed print of their pic. To enter, just email your photo to share@nau.com, or visit Collective Snapshot for more information.

Feed bags, or ‘musettes,’ as they’re known in the francophile jargon of road cycling, are the lunchboxes of the pro cycling set. Handed up by support staff to riders in the middle of a long stage, most are thrown aside to be claimed as trophies by the fans lining the course. But with a feed stop on nearly every one of twenty stages, and nearly 200 racers starting this year’s Tour de France, that’s almost 4,000 (mostly cotton) bags getting tossed into sunflower fields and mountain passes every year. What—other than hang on the wall as a momento—to do with all that fabric?

While we at Nau usually like to take our recycled fabrics down to the fiber (if not monomer) level before creating a garment, it’s always fun to see what people can do with discarded raw materials and a little creativity. That, and maybe a pair of Christian Louboutin pumps. (It is France, after all…). For more recycled fashions, check out local Portland non-profit Junk To Funk, and—of course—all the recycled poly styles on nau.com.

(via Fyxomatosis Hub, with a hat tip to Thatcher’s dad.)

It’s been twelve weeks since the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig blew up and began spewing oil into the gulf. Here, to put some perspective on the spill so far, are two great infographics on the spill, and what it’s costing to clean up.

Just more evidence that a picture can be worth a thousand words. Especially when that picture has numbers on it.

Via: Travel Insurance

Check out CitID, an ongoing graphic design project aiming to foster geographical awareness through the creation of artistic logos and imagery. Their ambitious goal? Create a design for every city in the world.

With 161 countries still to be represented, there are lots of opportunities to contribute to the project. Have a special connection to a city in Belize? Nepal? Sweden? Make a submission! Even Canada is waiting for its first city to be represented.

But whether or not your creative talents lie in graphic design, it’s worth visiting the collection of existing submissions from around the US and abroad, including this one for our hometown of Portland, Oregon, by Matt Williams of uberkraaft. (Poster available at Society6).

(via CitID)

We’ve posted several times about the MCH (micro-compact home), a 2.6-meter cube that offers living, dining, kitchen and bath space for two within its carefully appointed interior. So we were interested to see someone taking about the same amount of space to create a home you live OUT of.

For his thesis project at Cranbrook, Andrew Kline created a pre-fabricated living space that could be assembled within an existing space—say, a warehouse or loft— to create a kind of fold-out home.

“The unit folds (closed) and unfolds (open) to reveal different functions when needed: a wardrobe, bed, kitchen, and bathroom. When the unit is folded (closed) the private program requirements of a home are removed and the surrounding space or workspace can be utilized for public uses. For example: a yoga instructor could live in the same space he or she teaches in. These units, utilized in vacant buildings, can build communities in hollow urban areas.”

Love how this idea turns small space living on it’s head: you don’t have to be IN the small space, but a small space can provide all the trappings of home with efficient, clever design.

(via Treehugger, photos by James Carrillo)

Here in Portland, a string of sunny days is beginning to make it look like last week’s official start to summer might just be the real thing: that time of year when the skies clear, we take off the fenders and try to store up a year’s worth vitamin-D in three months.

For getting around in style this summer, check out this beautifully designed bike basket from Faris Elmasu. I mean, is there anything that doesn’t look good made out of laminated veneer? A clever peg-and-grove nylon strap system secures everything from your laptop to a sixpack to a flowerpot to the front of your bike, leaving your back pack-free and strap-sweat-less. Making it that much easier to leave the car parked and get where you’re going out in the sun.

(via Swissmiss)

With over 120 nominees for the 2010 Grant for Change now in the bucket, and voting in full swing, we asked Nau designer Peter Kallen to share with us what he looks for in good design, and what will influence his vote for one of this year’s nominees

TTK: What is good design to you?
Peter: To me, design is about communicating an idea. It’s a little like making a sentence: you choose words that communicate a thought, a feeling or an idea, whether just for a moment or for the bigger picture. At Nau, our idea was to prove that a company could do well by doing good, and we did that by first designing a business, and then turning to the more literal sense of what our designs were going to look like. But in that too, it was about how they were going to express who we are as a company. So design is about how you communicate with people, and everyone in this world has a sense of design responsibility.

TTK: Do you think design is inherently positive?
Peter: No, definitely not. Design isn’t always positive; that’s why it has enormous responsibilities. It’s what creates change, whether it’s good or bad. Design has a dark side: you think about a gun. It’s designed, and mechanically speaking that design is genius. But the result of that design is to kill or maim.

TTK: In your eyes, what’s the Grant For Change about?
Peter: I think the Grant For Change exists to sift through all those different aspects of design and bring to the surface those projects that are considered and good and transformative, that can become agents of positive change. And that can take many forms. Good design comes in a lot of different shapes; it’s not just engineering or architecture or graphic. It could be a poet: think of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech; he designed that speech to bring hope and bring a brigade of people to life, so to speak. So it doesn’t have to be an object; design can be brought to the surface in a multitude of forms. So I hope the G4C can help bring up the conversation around concept of design and what it means in the world.

TTK: What will you be looking for as you sift through the nominees?
Peter: I’ll be looking at the intent behind each one and what they’re trying to do. So it’s not about the object first, it’s about the intent. It doesn’t have to be something that’s going to change the world we live in, but it has to have the guts to survive; it has to have its own life. I want to see people challenging conventional thought and understand why they’re trying to change something. Once I see that intent, then I can dissect the object, and ask: did they finesse it? Did the passion and consideration of their idea flow through the form of the object? I want to see the depth of their initial thought, and then see all the little ingredients they chose to execute it well.

TTK: What do you hope the end result of the Grant For Change will be?
Peter: I hope that the Grant For Change opens up people’s idea of what design can be. And then I hope the submissions show us how to challenge ourselves to create good design. You know, there are so many things out there, but so few good things. So personally, I’m looking to be inspired by design that’s just enough, not too much, and as a result incredibly powerful. I want to see someone blow my mind; I’m really hoping to see that.

Typography + Images from The Big Picture = Win.

Check out The Big Caption, an amusing mashup of Boston.com’s wonderful photographic feature “The Big Picture” with pithy witticisms overlaid in bold fonts. Fun addition to the daily feed.

Frank Gehry, the architect of the Bilbao Guggenheim, the Seattle Experience Music Project and other iconic buildings that eschew right angles and vertical walls, caught some flack recently for calling ‘B.S.’ on LEED—the U.S. Green Building Council’s certification system for sustainability. “A lot of LEEDs are given for bogus stuff,” he said in an interview with Thomas Pritzker, chairman of the Pritzker Foundation (which awards the eponymous prize). “A lot of the things they do really don’t save energy.” On smaller projects, he said, “the costs of incorporating those kind of things don’t pay back in your lifetime.”

Predictably, Gehry’s comments raised a bit of a firestorm—slamming one of the canonical pillars of 21st century sustainability certification will do that—and he dialed back the intensity of his criticism in a subsequent interview with PBS’s’s Abby Leonard. It’s worth a read, as he goes on to give his thoughts on sustainability in general, and how design can help address the threat of global climate change—which he described as “a crisis…we have to address if we want to survive on this planet.”

(via Treehugger)