After my last post about crowd sourced design, I rather enjoyed Rob Walker’s Consumed article “Banana Democracy” here in today’s New York Times Magazine. The piece explores Chiquita’s public competition for designs for stickers on its bananas. Arising out of the popularity of a web-based design-your-own sticker tool (some 25,000 people took part, apparently), the company decided to extend it into a competition. Public voting on the 1,355 entries starts tomorrow.

Walker goes on to refer to the “pop” nature of this design framework. DJ Neff, the Chiquita art director for this campaign, is quoted as describing this as the creation of “a familiar association with an unfamiliar dynamic.” Walker, in turn, suggests that “A big part of being ‘pop’ anything these days is prodding the masses to participate directly.” It is this element of the crowd sourced design competition that makes me wonder about the authenticity of connections between the brand and its audience. My last post queried the ethical nature of these public design frameworks, but Walker identifies another aspect, which is the brand stewards’ desired enhancement of attachment and meaning between a brand and its audience through this sort of interactive contributory evolution. (more…)

The excellent WNYC radio station program, On the Media, recently aired the conversation here between host Bob Garfield and Michael Samson, the co-founder of crowdSPRING.com. The website is a crowd sourcing resource for designers and those seeking design services. The question, which Garfield explores, is whether this is putting established design businesses out of work and exploiting cheap labor or is it advancing the democratization of design, and many other fields of collaborative creativity? (more…)

I’ve been captivated by a blog from an old friend, Lawrence, who with his wife, Anna, works as an artist collaboration. They have been selected to take part in one of four Golden Threads Research Fellowship schemes organized by Delta Arts in England. The Research Fellowship is hosted in Denmark between June 17 – July 10 and, given the nature of Lawrence and Anna’s artistic collaboration, they have taken their two young children with them. They are recording their experiences on their blog: Golden Threads Denmark.

The fundamental nature of their artistic exploration is best explained by them:

Traveling and working as a family is going to be a major part of our experience of Golden Threads. In Copenhagen we have arranged to meet a number of artists who are parents. We have asked them to bring their children along to the meeting and to show us a space, a playground or park or square, which they use as a family. Alongside this playful use of space, we hope to be able to discuss with the artists how they balance parenting with making art, and how this experience effects their approach to their work.

This fascinating opportunity to examine the dynamics between family, the environment in which we live and our how we perceive art and beauty got me thinking: How do I embrace beauty and aesthetic appreciation in my day-to-day life and in my interactions with others? So often we drift through a quotidian existence, focused on tasks, duties, responsibilities and obligations. It can be hard to allow beauty in, or to pause and reflect upon it.

A few years ago in the Colorado mountains, Stan, a friend of mine, pulled his car up to the side of the road with a whoop of excitement. He jumped out, grabbed some gloves and proceeded to drag a deer skeleton, picked clean by scavengers, out of the roadside brush. He strapped it on to the roof and I spent the rest of the trip with the empty sockets of a deer looking at me through the sun roof. Odd? Yes. Oddly beautiful? Absolutely. It is not so much what Stan found to be beautiful, but that he is completely open to embracing unique, personal aesthetic experiences in his daily life.

What I am not talking about are those saccharine clichés exhorting us literally and metaphorically to take time to smell the roses. What I am wondering about is how to open my eyes to a daily life that recognizes the sublime, when all I usually perceive is the mundane.

How many times have days passed you by without any recognition of something beautiful? Worse yet, have you even recognized a lack of aesthetic wonder in your life or your interaction with your environment?

Nike ran its first commercial with shamed golfer, Tiger Woods, and perhaps not surprisingly opted to continue commercially with the rehabilitation track Woods started on for his own personal sake. If you didn’t click on the TV spot link above, do so now and watch the 30 second ad. It’s the only way to appreciate this pivotal moment in the resurrection of Tiger Woods celebrity star. And just so you know, the voice is Tiger Woods’ deceased father.

I think the Tiger Woods/Earl Woods ad has the potential to be genuinely moving. Sure, Woods was probably instructed by the director to look sorrowful, but it was well done and appears honest. It is a valid and valiant attempt at contrite introspection … if you were a normal chap. Unfortunately, … (more…)

I’m not given to hyperbole, but this is one occasion when I can enthuse about a truly stunning artistic fashion collaboration between two powerhouse brands, Liberty of London and Target. I am especially excited because the collection includes that sartorial standby every man can set himself apart with: The necktie.

Liberty is an iconic British institution, famed for its extensive collection of ebullient, playful and colorful prints for fabric and housewares. Liberty has been creating unique, inspired prints since 1875, working with artists, designers, and other whimsical collaborators. Each season’s collection has transitioned from an intensely contemporary aesthetic into collectible classics over time.

Continuing their Designers Collaboration series, Target has brought its own brand strengths of good quality, contemporary items at great value into partnership with those of Liberty of London. Target consistently demonstrates the consumer value potency inherent in leveraging core brand traits across different brands, as well as the business success this strategy creates.

So, succumb to sartorial superiority. Despite the hurry to casual wear every day of the week and the denunciation of the necktie as a metaphor for a vacuous, banal corporate persona, any man of genuine style will appreciate the delight in a finely crafted suit set off by one of these gorgeous Liberty of London for Target prints (there are three in the image above). Be a tailored triumph, get to Target now.