NEWS

New Food Font Booth Signs for Food Font Events

New Food Font Booth Signs for Food Font Events

Posted on by Kbaumlier

Hot off the press!  The new Food Font signs for events are ready to go for the 2013 Summer season.

Last year, There were over 13 public Food Font events, usually at farmer markets or community events where we setup a booth, and invite others to make alphabets out of food and to learn about Food Font.

This year, we added the words “free” and “community project” to the signs, to help clarify that the project is free and collaborative.  They also are fully waterproof, which is an improvement over being water resistant , so we will be ready for the rain if it comes.

Bigger, more waterproofed, and better – Food Font booth signs for 2013!
Links:

www.foodfont.com

 

 

 

Goedzak (“good bag”) – Bag Design for Upcycling

Goedzak (“good bag”) – Bag Design for Upcycling

Posted on by Kbaumlier

Currently in my house, we have a corner of the basement that is dedicated for things that we want to give away, or put out on garbage day, with the hope that someone will take it instead of the items ending up in a landfill.  This works well for the larger things that people can see from the road, but what about smaller things that are being thrown out?

A new garbage bag design had been created, called a Goedzak, which can be used for items that are being thrown away but are usable.  The way the bag works is that you fill up the bag, and anyone can take the items in the bag. This could include an old vase you don’t want, some pants that don’t fit, or other items that might be useful to someone else.

The bags are easy to spot, with their bright yellow color, and also easy to see what is inside, since half of the bag design is clear.  These especially will be useful for individuals living in cities, who do not have driveway or “tree lawn” garbage or dropoff areas like my neighborhood.

The name Goedzak translates in Dutch to “good guy” or “kind soul,” but is a pun on the words “good bag” or “good thing.”  The bags were designed by the design team called Waarmakers, which was the result of doing a design research project that explored designing for altruism, and making something to benefit others.

50,000 of the bags will be used as a test project in the Netherlands, in coordination with a second hand store.  The bags will be used in one city to start, and will be implemented in up to 20 other Dutch cities as the project develops.

Will the bags be useful, and help encourage reusing things instead of throwing things away?  Check out the progress of the project on the project website, or write to the designers at [email protected].

Image Source:
waarmakers.nl/projects/goedzak/

Links:

waarmakers.nl/projects/goedzak/

 

 

Dirt: The Unique Food Ingredient at Ne Quittez Pas

Dirt: The Unique Food Ingredient at Ne Quittez Pas

Posted on by Kbaumlier

Ever quickly wash a fresh vegetable, and then you find that you missed a little bit o dirt?  Due to my quick lettuce washing technique, I have eaten my share of dirt, but on accident.  Today at the French restaurant called Ne Quittez Pas in Tokyo, you can order southern French cuisine made with seafood, vegetables, and soil, which is the newest fresh ingredient.

A six-course dinner, which features dirt as an ingredient is created by owner and chef Toshio Tanabe for the cost of 10,000 yen or US$110.  The dirt is unique, in that it is chemical-free soil that comes from a supplier in Tokyo. In order to prepare the dirt for cooking and eating, the dirt is lightly cooked in order to release the flavor, and is run through a sieve to remove any sand grains.

Some of the dishes of the 6 course dirt experience include an appetizer of soil soup, a  soil-dusted potato ball with a truffle center, and soil sorbet with sweet dirt gratin.

Rocket News 24, a Japanese-language news blog, has an article written by  Jessica Kozuka who tried the dinner and soil experience, which describes in detail the menu and dirt courses.

An excerpt from her account of trying the dirt dishes reads:

“The first course: a potato starch and dirt soup. It arrived in a shot glass looking so dark brown, it was almost black. It definitely looked like it had dirt in it. A slice of black truffle was balanced on top, and the staff instructed us to take a bite of it and then try the soup. So we did… and it was divine! There wasn’t a dirty flavor at all. Instead, this simple soup went down smoothly with just a hint of potato flavor.

The rim of the shot glass was dusted with salt like a margarita, so after the initial saltiness, your mouth filled with the mild flavor of the soup. The dish impressed us more with the chef’s skill than with the potential of the unusual ingredient, though.

Next up: salad with dirt dressing. As simply as I can describe it, this dish featured fresh vegetables like eggplant, tomato and turnips grilled and served with a dressing made from dirt and a fine powder made from ground popcorn. Here too the surprise wasn’t the dirt, but the deliciousness of the vegetables. The tomatoes had the perfect balance of sweetness and acidity, and the eggplant hadn’t taken on any bitterness from the grilling.

I’d come here to try a dirt course, but the food tasted so little of the earthiness I was expecting that I’d kind of forgotten about that ingredient. According to the staff, the dirt used is a special black soil from Kanuma, Tochigi Prefecture. It’s strictly tested for safety and purity to be used in food, but so far I thought I hadn’t been able to notice a “dirt” flavor in the meal.”

Got dirt?

Image Source:
en.rocketnews24.com

 

Links:

nequittezpas.com

en.rocketnews24.com

 

 

Street Furniture – Pop Up Public Seating

Street Furniture – Pop Up Public Seating

Posted on by Kbaumlier

Ever been somewhere and wanted to take a break, but there was no great place to sit?  Designer Oliver Show decided to create a simple way to put seating into public areas, using yellow drainage pipes that are found sound the city of Hamburg.  The pipes are flexible, cheap, and weather resistant.  The design is simple – find a spot and wrap it in the pipe material.

The result is a bright yellow solution to making benches, recliners, and loungers in any urban location.  The pipes can be wrapped around a bridge trussel, bike rack, or safety rail, and quickly create a place for you to sit.  I haven’t read anything about how comfortable the seats are, but in the pictures the seats look pretty good.

Show, who studied architecture, won a HFBK Leinemann Foundation for the Education and the Arts award for his seating idea.The series is called “Street Furniture,” and you can see a video about the construction online, or see more pictures on the Architizer website.

Image source:
Street Furniture – featured on the Architizer website

Links:

Video about the construction online

Street Furniture – featured on the Architizer website.

 

Superbrushes: Better Than Other Brushes

Superbrushes: Better Than Other Brushes

Posted on by Kbaumlier

Last Friday I attended a launch event by Evan Marcell where he introduced Superbrushes, a set of new Photoshop brushes that he has created for use to paint and create digital images.  Marcell created the brushes by taking pictures of textures around Cleveland, editing them, and preparing them as brush files to be loaded into Adobe Photoshop. The abstract brush forms provide a unique shape, texture, and pattern that make it easy to make great images and graphics.

Most of the time we use the standard brushes that come with Photoshop, but Superbrushes introduces a new exciting set of brushes to try.  One interesting thing about Superbrushes is that the process of how the brushes were created was through the phenomon of the “butterfly effect,” where one action affects another action.  One brush created another brush.  This new brush was used to make another brush, and so on. Marcell says that the project and process of reusing a brush to make a new brush was inspired by breakbeat music, where beats are cutup and reused to make new beats.

The goal of the project is to enable artists to make more work, and to appreciate the brush.  Marcell writes on the Superbrushes website, “.. artists are possibly the greatest appreciators/would-be art collectors if we didn’t feel obligated to put all of our funds right back into our art. SUPERBRUSHES brushes are beautiful compositions in themselves, enabling artists to fuel their art in appreciation of each gorgeous brush as an artwork in itself.”

At the launch event we were given direction to a webpage where we could download a set of  25 free Superbrushes.  We watched a demo of how to install and setup the brushes, which was followed by a live contest – a Superbrushdown, where the audience members who brought laptops, had about 8 minutes to make an image.  After the time was up, the group voted by clapping, and I am proud to say that I won(!), and got a prize of the full pack of 125 superbrushes, which usually sells for $20.00 off of the Superbrushes site..

Marcell is working to build a Superbrush community.  The website is currently featuring pieces made with Superbrushes on the website.  You can download a set of free 5 superbrushes to try, and then submit your image to be featured in the gallery.  Why use ordinary brushes when you can use Superbrushes?

Image Source
http://evanmarcell.wix.com/superbrushes
Links:

http://evanmarcell.wix.com/superbrushes