In case you have not seen it…our friends at Blu Dot are quite possibly the most creative folks around. I can’t get enough of the video! This just shows: if a squirrel can assemble the chair, anyone can.

Upon the event that Mr. Squirrel inspires some Blu Dot love, check out all of their products on DP.

As you can see, each sheet has 16 different Eames images on it with the logo enlarged and in the middle. The composition is genius; I love the way they played with the rectangles and squares and how they relate to one another the way Charles and Ray would have done it (IMHO). I’m going to have to keep a sheet just to put in a frame.

It’s funny how I wind up trying to track down images online. I first caught wind of this in Metropolis, so I then tried to find the image at usps.com, but it’s too small and it sucked, so I Googled “Eames Stamp” and found that several other bloggers were hip to this news way before I was. I wound up checking out Happy Mundane and seeing their image, and from there linking over to flickr member eamesd’s image. By the way, eamesd’s flickr account is definitely worth spending some time perusing. So thanks to all of the above, and thanks to Metropolis, where I first heard the good news.

I’m so excited that Jonathan Adler’s “Monthly Musings” now includes a comments section. I left one that really rambled because the paragraph separations did not work out, so I sound even more A.D.D. than usual. This month he is musing about finding inspiration in places from Morgan Fairchild’s face to Timbaland’s mad mixology. I love knowing what makes people tick. My favorite example of this is in Douglas Keeve’s documentary Unzipped, where Isaac Mizrahi creates a collection inspired by Nanook of the North and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”

So what inspires you? Do tell!

image of Kiki’s Derriere from Jonathanadler.com. You can buy one here.

Unzipped and Nanook images from amazon.com. You can buy your copy of Unzipped here.

MTM image from youtube. You can catch the theme song here.

Yes, the house was actually ugly, but had the potential to be renovated as the base of it had at one point been a cute 1920’s Arts and Crafts bungalow.  Now they are building a new house that is “inches from the limit” in terms of height. Why the height limit in my neighborhood is 35 feet I will never understand.  That is three and a half stories.  Like these monstrosities up the street that ruin the scale of the neighborhood.  Ugh.  I’ve got to get the hell out of here this summer!  Sorry to be distracted!

If you are in the SF area over the next week, check out the “Untitled” exhibition by Joe Gebbia for CITIZEN:Citizen.

The when and where:

Launch Party: May 2nd; 6-8pm Chronicle Books 680 Second St, San Francisco. (Design Public staff will be there to check it out!)

Exhibition: May 3rd-May 10; 10am-5pm Chronicle Books 680 Second St, San Francisco

Name:
Kim Gombes.

Where do you live?
San Diego, CA

What do you do?
Former T.V. News Producer now Stay-at-Home Mom to my 4-year-old son.

DP Purchase/s:
Hybrid-Home Visible Robot Print by Brian Flynn. I bought it as a birthday gift for my husband (because it reminds me of him). It’s cool. It glows in the dark, which I was not aware of when I purchased it and we had quite the surprise the night after I hung it.

What’s your favorite DP product and why?
I love DP’s selection of Sustainable Modern Kids and Baby Products. I feel good aboutpurchasing items that are both design-minded and eco-conscious for my son to not only help him develop his own design sense but also to create his awareness of how everything we buy, every product he uses whether he’s wearing it or sitting on it, affects our earth.

How would you describe your design style?
It’s an eclectic mix of mid-century, modern and contemporary with splashes of Pop and Victorian here and there. I like juxtaposing unlikely pieces like placing a mod chair with a rustic sidetable or putting a piece of graffiti art in a big, fat, ornate, gilded frame. I think it all balances out to appeal to a variety of tastes.

Four sites/blogs you visit daily:
DP’s “Best-Of Newsletter” arrives in my inbox so that gets devoured first; Flickr (I’m a total Flickr addict.); DWR’s Design Notes; and designboom.

What was the best advice anyone ever gave you?
“Fake it ’til you make it,” from my mother-in-law. (No, I’m not trying to score any brownie points here.) I interpret it as, “Act the way you want yourself to be and you will become it.”

What’s your favorite color or material?
Stone. Whether it’s a wall or a coffee table, rough hewn or smooth, stone has such a strong presence and always makes me stop to regard it.

If you were a crayon, what color would you be?
Gray. I’m originally from New England, where it’s gray most of the year. I love the cold gray starkness of the Maine coast in winter and the dark gray gothicness of places like Salem, Massachusetts. Gray- it’s moody and so am I.

Any design pet peeves?
Cookie-cutter uniformity.

Please share five things/people/places that inspire you.
The 10cent Designer and doorsixteen, my two absolute Flickr faves and my daily sources of inspiration; the works of Tord Boontje and Takashi Murakami also get my creativity going; and my husband, Chad, who is himself an amazing designer with an incredible eye for design, function, style, fashion, art, etc… and he always sees where it’s headed. I’ve learned a lot from Chad.

Thanks, Kim!

Show us yours! Become a member of our “Design Public Peeps” Flickr group and upload a photo of your Design Public purchases in action. Yeehaw.

This photo was taken by Kevin Garrett, who scouted out the best places to stay in South Africa for the magazine. It is the lobby of The Saxon Boutique Hotel in South Africa. I love the way the baskets are composed, and the color and texture they give to the wall; texture tells the whole story in this room.  It seems very Vicente Wolf, whether it be something that would inspire him or something he would design. 17-hour flight in coach or not, I have been dreaming of going to this place ever since I read his article.

In fact, I couldn’t help but thing of  the Kelly Wearstler Santa Monica Viceroy Hollywood Regency version of adding texture to a wall with “native” round objects.  She keeps her color palette neutral (albeit what I call “Wearstler-crisp”) as well:

photo one by Kevin Garrett for Neiman Marcus INCIRCLE entree

photo two from KWID.com

*I can’t for the life of me figure out how to put the little thingee over the second “e” in entree. I can’t for the life of me remember what the thingee is called. Is it a tilde? I took Latin and Spanish, not French!  And “Intro to BASIC” instead of “Intro to HTML” or “Typing for Dummies”.

Thanks to Rhea for leaving the following information in the comments section of the post about Samuel Mockbee:

There is an exhibition called Southern Exposure: Contemporary Regional Architecture which features the work of the Rural Studio at the Virginia Center for Architecture through June 8. It features the Yancey Chapel as well as several other projects. The exhibition also highlights the work of other contemporary architects practicing in the Regional style, including Marlon Blackwell, Frank Harmon, W.G. Clark, and the firms of Lake|Flato and Mack Scogin Merril Elam Architects

On Thursday, May 1, 2008, Jason Coomes, a faculty member of the Rural Studio, discusses the ongoing work of the studio.

The Virginia Center for Architecture is located in Richmond, Virginia. If you’d like more information, please visit www.virginiaarchitecture.org.

Also, I found that Rural Studio has fantastic blogs that feature current projects.  Check them out here.

photos are from the Rural Studio blogs 

This retrospective features rarely seen drawings, sample books, vintage photographs, furnishings, and products from some of her most famous projects, including the Carlyle, Drake and Greenbrier. Items are displayed in galleries that evoke “The Draper Touch,” a theatrical amalgam of baroque ornamentation, over-scaled stripes, cabbage rose prints, black-and-white checked floors and high-voltage color. 

So if you are in the area, go ahead and get Draperized! Perhaps you need to be reminded to banish the beige! Also, I hear that the renovations at The Greenbrier are complete. It looks like  Draper’s former associate Carleton Varney did an amazing job. It’s also the perfect time of year to be in West Virginia.More information and pictures about Dorothy Draper are here. You can buy Mr. Varney’s book about her here.• Photo one from MoAFL• Photo two from greenbrier.com• Photo three from Southern Accents online 

Martha Schwartz’s Westfalia Germany exhibition, 51 Garden Ornaments, highlighted the meaning of these yard trinkets, and her words on the subject are much more eloquent than mine:

Our gardens have become increasingly important in our everyday lives. The reason for this may be our increasing need for an escape from our information society. This is true for the United States as well as Germany, two places where I have been working and spending time. The importance of our gardening activities is made evident through the fact that in the USA gardening is a billion-dollar industry and gardening our #1 hobby.In addition to being a beloved past-time spent nurturing our immediate home environments, our gardens are, in fact, a vehicle of expression through which we broadcast our individual message or image to the world. It is the picture window through which the world sees us. To this end, our gardens are a highly manipulated piece of nature in which the choice of ornaments placed in the garden reflects the home-owners character, and in turn, collectively, a national character.51 Garden Ornaments displays the ornaments which Americans and Germans often choose to place in their gardens. The ornaments have been purchased at garden-store chains which sell high volumes of these artifacts. I have chosen ornaments which also seem most popular and typical. Because of the sheer numbers and ubiquity, these ornaments therefore reflect who we are and how we would like to be seen. They come to characterize a larger collective landscape as we see them often in people’s yards. They represent areas of cultural similarity as well as difference.

• Images from marthaschwartz.com