The Donut Project

Merlin Mann of 43 Folders, a site about finding the time and attention to do your best creative work, gave a great talk at Webstock 2011 about being scared shitless.

This is really a must-see for anyone who is scared to push their creativity. Or anyone who is scared everything they do is shit. Or anyone who is scared people are gonna find out they’re secretly a fraud and aren’t actually any good.

Like me.

Everybody is scared, what can make you different is whether you keep going in spite of it. Great talk, find 25 minutes and check it out.

drawings of famous youtube videos. awesome.

via todayandtomorrow

A fantastic video about the first 100 years of IBM. This really gave me a new appreciation for the work they have done, are doing, and will do. I can’t wait to see what they accomplish in the next 100 years.

Isabelle Arsenault seems like a long-lost sister to me. How am I just learning of her work? I love her technique—so much layering and depth. She also has an amazing sketchbook. Check it all out here.

Ever wonder if you could craft a completely new story by removing words from a book that already exists? Did you think about doing it by die-cutting every single page?

Our early conversations with Jonathan Safran Foer about Tree of Codes started when Jonathan said he was curious to explore and experiment with the die-cut technique. With that as our mutual starting point, we spent many months of emails and phone calls, exploring the idea of the pages’ physical relationship to one another and how this could somehow be developed to work with a meaningful narrative. This led to Jonathan deciding to use an existing piece of text and cut a new story out of it. Having considered working with various texts, Jonathan decided to cut into and out of what he calls his “favourite book”: The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz.

Check out people’s first reactions to the book here.
Buy the book here.

Starting at 12:01 a.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday, April 13, AIGA, the largest design advocacy organization in the world, will host a one-day online dialogue on the future of design, the design community and the professional organizations that support them. Moderated by design thought leaders and fueled by their Twitter followers, these conversations will provide input, trends, themes and opportunities that will guide the evolution of AIGA.

Be sure to hop on Twitter and join this worldwide design conversation with some of the great minds in design. Moderators include Alex Bogusky, Doug Bowman, Liz Danzico, Debbie Millman, Erik Spiekermann, Armin Vit, Alissa Walker and Katherine Walker.

Visit onedayfordesign.org to join in or just participate directly on twitter. Look for / use hashtag #1D4D.

Design by VSA Partners.

If you love funny names, giving back, and city pride, this is your project. Designers Alexander Sprungle and Adam Meyer recently started a side project called Love Harry Baals. The logo is pretty genius, and the project is for a great cause. Love Harry Baals is supporting the Downtown Improvement District of Fort Wayne, Indiana. Harry Baals, a former mayor of Fort Wayne, was a big advocate of downtown improvement amongst other things.

At our company, we have a sense of humor about Hoosiers, our city, and government officials with hilarious names. Beyond our sense of humor, we are interested in giving back. So we decided to donate a significant portion of our profit to downtown Fort Wayne. Harry Baals’ true legacy is his investment in this community and we want to continue that in his name. His vision for the city allowed Fort Wayne to modernize and expand, now it’s time for our vision to help maintain this city.

Make sure to keep up with all the baal blasts you can handle on Twitter and check out the site for more information and to purchase some goods – after all, it’s for a good cause!

Sprungle is a designer and transplant to Fort Wayne from the Akron, Ohio area, you can follow him @acsprungle. Meyer is a designer/web developer and can be followed @admeyerus.

This is a wonderful video profile of Steven Sasson, inventor of the digital camera, by David Friedman. It’s amazing to see how far we have come in terms of technology. The first digital camera could hold 30 images, a decision of Sasson, not a technical limitation. In the video he talks about why he chose the arbitrary number. It is also important to note that on November 17, 2010, President Barack Obama awarded Sasson the National Medal of Technology and Innovation.

Friedman has an entire video series of inventors. Its fascinating to see the the birth of different products. Check his blog out for the entire series.