ideas + images

curated by sierra gonzalez 

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To create is to potentially embarrass oneself in front of others. It is about the courage to be oneself and to be seen as oneself.

John Maeda, Why Being Creative Is Good [Maeda’s SIMPLICITY]

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Illustration for Masterpiece Home Theater, Kevin Van Aeist for the New York Times

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Luxury brand executives who declare that their items can be made only in Western Europe because Western European artisans are the only people who know what true luxury is are being not only hypocritical but also xenophobic. They are not selling “dreams,” as they like to suggest; they are hawking low-cost, high-profit items wrapped in logos.

Dana Thomas, Made in China on the Sly. [NYT]

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In its mix of truth and fantasy, the period room is the museum’s version of a Merchant-Ivory film.

Ken Johnson, Gilding the Ancien Régime. [NYT]

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Lei Xue. Tee trinken, 2007. Hand-painted porcelain. [link]

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Robert Stadler installation in Saint-Paul Saint-Louis for Nuit Blanche, Paris. Photo by Marc Domage [via dezeen]

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There has been a long-standing anthropological assumption that things like clothing and art and built form will be a medium for both the expression and the construction of the ideas in culture. But to make it more interesting, the question today is: How does design capture and reflect and construct a culture that is so dynamic and changeable and unpredictable?

Grant McCracken, Our world is noisy with innovation. [Globe& Mail]

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Making Stuff vs. Making Stuff Up

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/abriefmessage/~3/178032093/

It’s a weird time for designers.

At a time when we’re on the cover of Business Week and Jonny Ive is getting knighted by the Queen, we’re simultaneously being told by the people praising us to stop doing one of the things that defines our profession: namely, making stuff.

Full text at A Brief Message

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The hell of urban life is paved with the best architectural intentions.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy, Paris Gets Architecture Museum. [SFGate]

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