ion » Design

Return to the Lost City.

obsession

Lost City Products, purveyors of “the most beautiful hand embroidered products in the world” has expanded their collections to include pillows, scarves and one-of-a-kind chairs. They turned to us once again to design the latest iteration of their website featuring a media page for sharing their inspirations, a blog with the stories behind the products, as well as a new slide show and video player that streams content created exclusively for the site by video artists and musicians.

Posted on January 5th, 2010 by Todd and filed under Chemistry, Client, Design, Web | No Comments »

Happy Birthday Tibor.

Tibor Kalman

Today is the birthday of one of my design heroes, Tibor Kalman.

Tibor Kalman was an influential American graphic designer of Hungarian origin, well-known for his work as editor-in-chief of Colors magazine.

He founded the legendary, multidisciplinary design firm M&Co in 1979, which did corporate work for such diverse clients as the Limited Corporation, the New Wave music group Talking Heads, and Restaurant Florent in New York City’s Meatpacking District. Kalman also worked as creative director of Interview magazine in the early 1990s.

M&Co is one of the few studios with whom I’ve wished I’d worked, though I hear it was a real tough place. I’ve always been jealous of the fact that a good friend of mine was fortunate enough to have done some freelance for them.

I was introduced to M&Co through their quirky line of watches, clocks, and paperweights, which combine wit and whimsy with good graphic design.

I received the Askew watch for Christmas in 1987. It is the only watch I’ve worn since. I still enjoy the puzzled look I get when someone notices the watch face with its beautiful, randomly placed numbers and is prompted to ask “How do you tell the time?”

My design work has been influenced by the thoughtfulness of the M&Co ethic. I strive to create smart, concept-driven work. It been ten years since the Perverse Optimist, passed away, I admired his design work, the way he ran his business and how he shook things up. Happy Birthday Tibor!

Posted on July 6th, 2009 by Todd and filed under Chemistry, Design, Influences | No Comments »

Deck Desk.

djdesk

The designers over at Metrofarm create these very cool custom DJ Desks.

Posted on June 12th, 2009 by Todd and filed under Design, Furniture, Music | No Comments »

Think Inside The Box.

box_water

Part sustainable water company, part art project, part philanthropic project, and completely curious. Boxed Water Is Better was started with the simple idea of creating a new bottled water brand that is kinder to the environment and gives back a bit – they decided to keep things simple, sustainable, and beautiful and found that it shouldn’t be bottled at all, but instead, boxed.

Posted on March 19th, 2009 by Todd and filed under Design | 1 Comment »

Insert Assortment.

jubru_cassettes

Found this collection of cassette inserts on Flckr.

Posted on February 25th, 2009 by Todd and filed under Collections, Design, Music | 1 Comment »

Mac’s 25th.

macplus

Happy Birthday Macintosh! Apple introduced the original Mac back on January 24th, 1984. We all remember that famous “1984″ Super Bowl commercial.

My first, which I still have, was a Macintosh Plus loaded with MacDraw and Filemaker Pro. It’s been love ever since.

Posted on January 29th, 2009 by Todd and filed under Design, Influences | No Comments »

Presidential Tees.

LW44T

We’ve designed a series of T-Shirts inspired by our new President. Check’em out.

Posted on January 19th, 2009 by admin and filed under Chemistry, Design | Comments Off

Worth Rooting For.

Root Hill Cafe, one of our favorite coffee spots, is a finalist in Interior Design Magazine’s Best of the Year Awards for the Hospitality/Restaurant/Casual category. Designed by our next door neighbors, RSVP Architecture, the exposed brick space features mounted tin ceiling panels with recessed fluorescent lights and cleverly incorporates an upholstered sloping ramp that creates both seating and spatial dividers.

Located at 4th and Carroll Street, Root Hill serves a damn good cup, and with its smart architecture, it gets our vote.

Good Luck Guys!

Photo by Seong Kwon.

Posted on November 21st, 2008 by admin and filed under Brooklyn, Design | Comments Off

Analogged.

While we wait to see if Muxtape will ever reboot, I’d like share a few other cassette tape-related sites with you.

With their collection of audio tape cassettes, Tapedeck.org will take you back to the time when deciding on which blank tape to use was the first step in creating your mixtape. My favorite was the TDK SA-X 90.

To create your own version of the classic cassette tape cover use Says-it.com’s cassette tape generator.

If you want an Old School feel with 64 megs check out SuckUK’s cassette package USB Stick.

To convert your old mixtapes as well as all those Ready for the World, Rippingtons and Take 6 cassettes you’ve holding on to for all these years, Ion Audio (nice name) offers a series of products to help convert your analog collections to digital. With their Tape 2 PC deck you can import from cassette to mp3s and with their LP to CDR turntable you can burn direct to CD from vinyl.

Posted on August 22nd, 2008 by admin and filed under Collections, Design, Music, Web | 1 Comment »

Candy is good for business.

Our client Lost City and their new silk collection is featured on Daily Candy today.

Posted on July 23rd, 2008 by admin and filed under Chemistry, Client, Design | Comments Off