taking a creative break right now

Sam Flores is a designer that has always been involved in the street cultures of skateboarding and graffiti writing.  I’m really digging his bags are from Upper Playground and you can get them here.

Five years and more than 100,000 copies after it was first published, it’s hard to imagine anyone working in Web design who hasn’t read Steve Krug’s “instant classic” on Web usability, but people are still discovering it every day.  In this second edition, Steve adds three new chapters in the same style as the original: wry and entertaining, yet loaded with insights and practical advice for novice and veteran alike.  Don’t be surprised if it completely changes the way you think about Web design.

Three New Chapters!

• Usability as common courtesy — Why people really leave Web sites
• Web Accessibility, CSS, and you — Making sites usable and accessible
• Help! My boss wants me to ______. — Surviving executive design whims

Definitely worth reading the second time around.

My latest obsession is a lovely web site dedicated to the joy of origami - concepts, products and inspiration.

When you buy organic, where does the money go?

Chocolate-pencils is a collaboration with patissier Tsujiguchi Hironobu, the mastermind behind popular dessert shops like Mont St. Claire and Le Chocolat de H. Tsujiguchi created a new dessert based on his impression of nendo after conversations with us, and we designed new tableware for them. We wanted our plates to show off the beauty of meals and desserts like a painting on a canvas. Based on this idea, our “chocolate pencils” come in a number of cocoa blends that vary in intensity, and chocophiles can use the special “pencil sharpener” that comes with our plate to grate chocolate onto their dessert. Pencil filings are usually the unwanted remains of sharpening a pencil, but in this case, they’re the star!

Do they melt in your hands?

Here, in chronological order, critic Martin Gayford chooses his 50 artistic wonders of the world …

Designed with Apple products.

The Company bought me a brand new MacBook Pro … so that I can work from home during the weekends.

Whatever.

I love my new laptop.