"BoonEx is not a company. BoonEx is a community."

SOURCE: Boonex via SpringNet

Milton Glaser's 10 things…

1
YOU CAN ONLY WORK FOR PEOPLE THAT YOU LIKE.

This is a curious rule and it took me a long time to learn because in fact at the beginning of my practice I felt the opposite. Professionalism required that you didn’t particularly like the people that you worked for or at least maintained an arms length relationship to them, which meant that I never had lunch with a client or saw them socially. Then some years ago I realised that the opposite was true. I discovered that all the work I had done that was meaningful and significant came out of an affectionate relationship with a client. And I am not talking about professionalism; I am talking about affection. I am talking about a client and you sharing some common ground. That in fact your view of life is someway congruent with the client, otherwise it is a bitter and hopeless struggle.

— Milton Glaser,
Ten Things I Have Learned
Part of AIGA Talk in London
November 22, 2001

"Buying handmade helps us reconnect"

The ascendancy of chain store culture and global manufacturing has left us dressing, furnishing, and decorating alike. We are encouraged to be consumers, not producers, of our own culture. Our ties to the local and human sources of our goods have been lost. Buying handmade helps us reconnect.

SOURCE: BuyHandmade

Documentally speaking…

SOURCE: Documentally

Future Buzz needs a makeover…

…but has some interesting content:

Lists:

• Are scan-able
• Provide easy to read and consume content
• Have the novelty factor
• Are many times “must-share” content
• Engage people
• Are at times humorous, entertaining or incredible
• Are a strong social web meme
• Get strong traffic

There are 58+ pages of top 10 lists that have made page one of Digg. And that’s just for “top 10” lists!

SOURCE: TheFutureBuzz

Buy a t-shirt, save the world

Africa Aid provides the foundation for innovative partnerships and intimate community-based relationships between developing African communities and their more established American counterparts. To create a sustainable and mutually beneficial community partnership, Africa Aid characterizes the problems of an African community and then integrates foreign aid projects into American university curriculum, allowing university students and faculty experts to design solutions to extreme poverty. Africa Aid implements the resulting university designed solutions in Africa, working alongside African communities to establish basic levels of Education, Health, Water, and Economic Empowerment.

SOURCE: AfricaAid

You remind me of something…

In times of need, brothers and sisters, it becomes the right time to sit down and ponder the true meaning of it all. Navigating a nadir, there's nothing that stirs the soul more than a good dose of the brother Bonnie "Prince" Billy. His latest release, 'Lie Down In The Light' (Drag City/2008) is the quintessential elixir that brightens the blessed day. Give a listen.

SOURCES: Drag City, Daytrotter

Playing the Building

Creative Time presents Playing the building, a sound installation in which the infrastructure, the physical plant of the building, is converted into a giant musical instrument. Devices are attached to the building structure — to the metal beams and pillars, the heating pipes, the water pipes — and are used to make these things produce sound. The activations are of three types: wind, vibration, striking. The devices do not produce sound themselves, but they cause the building elements to vibrate, resonate and oscillate so that the building itself becomes a very large musical instrument.

Playing the Building, Battery Maritime Building, New York, NY, 2008
SOURCE: CreativeTime

Twyla Tharp and creativity

“…it doesn’t necessarily fit neatly into the “self-help” box, which is already overstuffed with cookie-cutter books on making yourself a happy, healthy, sexually-satisfied, skilled overachiever. Tharp speaks to her reader in a language that any person, whether they are already creative or only desire to be, can understand and use for their own lives.”

SOURCE: Bookslut

A Brief History of JKrishnamurti

Jiddu Krishnamurti lived from 1895 to 1986, and is regarded as one of the greatest philosophical and spiritual figures of the twentieth century. Krishnamurti claimed no allegiance to any caste, nationality or religion and was bound by no tradition. His purpose was to set humankind unconditionally free from the destructive limitations of conditioned mind. For nearly sixty years he traveled the world and spoke spontaneously to large audiences until the end of his life in 1986 at the age of ninety. He had no permanent home, but when not traveling, he often stayed in Ojai, California, Brockwood Park, England, and in Cennai, India. In his talks, he pointed out to people the need to transform themselves through self knowledge, by being aware of the subtleties of their thoughts and feelings in daily life, and how this movement can be observed through the mirror of relationship.

SOURCE: Krishnamurti Foundation

Ghost Rock

Ghost Rock is the new album from the Michigan-based collective NOMO. The album, produced by Warn Defever, sheds light on the way forward for a band that has been forging its own vital sound. This is not the Afrobeat of Fela, nor the revivalist funk of a forgotten decade. This record owes as much to Can, Eno, and MIA as it does Kuti, Francis Bebey, and Funkadelic. On Ghost Rock, NOMO arrives in a new place. There’s no loss of steam as they incorporate new influences, instead NOMO breaks through with a matured and developed sound that is fully its own.

SOURCE: Ubiquity Records

Ice Cream Spiritual, indeed

Listening to Ponytail's second effort, Ice Cream Spiritual (We*Are*Free; 2008), John Cage's quote about poetry taken to its logical extreme comes to mind. Molly Siegel, Ken Seeno, Dustin Wong and Jeremy Hyman have nothing to say and they're saying it, loudly and with a sense of joy that's nothing short of infectious.

SOURCE: Pitchforkmedia

My Bloody Valentine: Live in London

My Bloody Valentine's show finale, at The Roundhouse in London on June 20, the white noise coda to "You Made Me Realise", has become as central to their legend as the bankrupt record label and the endlessly scrapped new material. Everyone in the Roundhouse was waiting for it, many had probably wondered how they might react, how extreme things could possibly get.

Photo of Kevin Shields by Shannon McClean

SOURCE: Pitchforkmedia

Etsy Watch

Three words: Eco Dog Toy

This dog toy will be hours of fun for your pet. It is made of upcycled items. The fabric was disgarded upholstery samples that were going to be thrown away. Inside is a plastic water bottle that makes a crunchy sound. There is a little poli-fil used for stuffing. It is machine sewn for extra durability.

SOURCE: LumpyStrawberry

David Lewis is Bang & Olufsen

The 69-year-old Mr. Lewis, a U.K. native, graduated from London's Central School of Art and Design in 1960. He had aspired to be a furniture designer, but when the class was full he turned to industrial design instead. Three of his B&O creations are part of the Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection in New York.

SOURCE: WallStreetJournal, Beoworld.org

Introducing: Monotonix

Monotonix are a punk trio from Tel Aviv, featuring guitar (Yonatan), drums (Ran) and vocals (Ami). They formed in November 2005, set up on the floor of the club with the audience, and the party began. But the party usually got too wild, the power got cut, the cops were called and Monotonix were banned from playing again almost everywhere. Before long, they were looking for good places to play outside of Israel — and they were delighted to find that there are more rock and roll party places outside of Israel than inside!

SOURCES: DragCity, Myspace.com/monotonix

Damon Albarn's Monkey Opera premieres in London

Damon Albarn's operatic adaptation of Journey To The West, which had its premier at the Manchester International Festival last summer, will make its London debut at the Royal Opera House. Monkey: Journey to the West will open in Covent Garden in July as part of a celebration of the Beijing Olympics. Chen Shi-Zheng directed and adapted......
[READ MORE]

SOURCE: Londonist

Composites

Patrick Winfield shoots with many different cameras, but likes his Polaroid best. “It’s that creaminess,” he says, “that seductive, almost nostalgic look that you get from it.” He also enjoys the instant gratification of the film, being able to hold it in his hand and work with it as soon as it’s shot. “It’s more like drawing in a sense. You can see the line or the finished piece instantly, it’s very nice to work that way,” Winfield says. [READ MORE]

SOURCE: PatrickWinfield.com

What is crowdsourcing?

Crowdsourcing is when people gather via the Internet to create something and share in the profit — often without ever meeting each other in person. The products of these collaborations are referred to as crowdsourced. [READ MORE]

SOURCE: CambrianHouse

Twitter: A community in 140 characters

This morning Jeff Pulver woke up with the melody of “Happiness Is... from “You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown” in his head. So he decided to ask his friends on Twitter to finish the sentence that started with “Happiness Is...”
Enjoy!

SOURCE: Twitter