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31 plays

Beat Connection / Sunburn

Staying focused, I need good music. Here is some more of that surf rock slash chillwave that all the kiddies are talkin about. This song just does it for me. And you can get their full EP over here

West Bottoms

I haven’t had much to share this week: it has been surprisingly busy, and I’m trying to unplug (at least a lot, but maybe not completely) from the internet and focus on getting some important things done over the next two weeks. 

I figure I need to at least show up with some form of contribution to the blog this week, so here are a couple of photos from 2008, taken in the West Bottoms of KC.

I think I should send this one to Beck. Maybe he’ll use it as his next album cover. Riiiight. Both of these were shot with a Canonet, my favorite little Rangefinder. I can’t remember the film off the top of my head, but seeing as I’m a big Ilford fan I’m going to take a guess that it was HP5. 

Have a good week/weekend!

I’m now on @dribbble if anyone else has an account. Get a sneak peak of things I’m working on, that you won’t see here.

http://www.dribbble.com/players/evrtstudio

Oh, and a big thanks to Able Parris for the invite.

Every summer when tomatos are in season, I have an obsession with some form of food resulting in the combination of tomatos, mozzarella and basil. Last summer it was Bruschetta on garlic Naan bread. This summer’s obsession (thanks to my mother-in-law) is Panzanella, which is an Italian bread salad. I think we have made about 4 big batches in the last 3 weeks, and it disappears within an hour.  Grape tomatos work great for this salad, but it is better if you mix in at least one or two large tomatos for the juice, since the bread soaks it up. The best batch we have made also included a fresh baguette from Bloom bakery. The rest of ingredients are: half a ball of mozzarella, diced 5 or 6 fresh basil leaves, diced half a green bell pepper, diced half a candy white onion, thinly sliced half of a baguette (maybe 1 day old), cut into 1 inch cubes tbsp olive oil tbsp italian dressing 2 tsp balsamic vinegar salt & pepper to taste optional: chives

Every summer when tomatos are in season, I have an obsession with some form of food resulting in the combination of tomatos, mozzarella and basil. Last summer it was Bruschetta on garlic Naan bread. This summer’s obsession (thanks to my mother-in-law) is Panzanella, which is an Italian bread salad. I think we have made about 4 big batches in the last 3 weeks, and it disappears within an hour. 

Grape tomatos work great for this salad, but it is better if you mix in at least one or two large tomatos for the juice, since the bread soaks it up. The best batch we have made also included a fresh baguette from Bloom bakery. The rest of ingredients are:

half a ball of mozzarella, diced

5 or 6 fresh basil leaves, diced

half a green bell pepper, diced

half a candy white onion, thinly sliced

half of a baguette (maybe 1 day old), cut into 1 inch cubes

tbsp olive oil

tbsp italian dressing

2 tsp balsamic vinegar

salt & pepper to taste

optional: chives

aodine: Where were these wooden cars when i was a kid? I saw these at a small boutique toy store and while they are slightly expensive for a toy car, i think they are awesome and nearly bought myself one…i still might. There is a crazy story about Patrick Calello (the designer behind Automoblox) that was told to me a couple of years ago. I can’t confirm if it is true or not, since the story has most likely been filtered through lots of people before reaching me. One of the scariest moments for any product designer is actually following through to the manufacturing and production phase of their product. Especially if the product has a very limited budget, and end price point. And even more especially if producing that product in a foreign country. Months of mental sweating ensue. When Patrick took his car designs to China to have them manufactured, he worked for an extended amount of time with one factory in particular. Every time they prototyped his designs, they came out wrong. How could that happen when detailed drawings are being supplied to the factory? This cycle continued on for months. Nothing but problems. Somehow Calello met up with an Engineer, who just so happened to speak Mandarin. The Engineer traveled to China with Calello, and sat in on one of the meetings with the factory. However, the fact that he knew Mandarin was kept a secret.  After leaving the meeting, the Engineer turned to Calello and told him to sever the relationship with the factory entirely, and he would help him find a new factory.  It turns out the factory was intentionally making the prototypes wrong, in order to stall the designer while they produced and sold the designs and working product to other people. Talk about a nightmare. Lesson learned. Again, this was a story told to me a couple of years ago, so I’m not sure how accurate it is. But my point of sharing this story is to show what can go wrong. I wouldn’t recommend that any designer first run off to China (or any other country for that matter) to produce his/her product idea. You might be surprised to learn there are lots of possibilities for producing here in the US. Folks, we INVENTED mass production and lots of other amazing things. Let’s continue…

aodine:

Where were these wooden cars when i was a kid? I saw these at a small boutique toy store and while they are slightly expensive for a toy car, i think they are awesome and nearly bought myself one…i still might.

There is a crazy story about Patrick Calello (the designer behind Automoblox) that was told to me a couple of years ago. I can’t confirm if it is true or not, since the story has most likely been filtered through lots of people before reaching me.

One of the scariest moments for any product designer is actually following through to the manufacturing and production phase of their product. Especially if the product has a very limited budget, and end price point. And even more especially if producing that product in a foreign country. Months of mental sweating ensue.

When Patrick took his car designs to China to have them manufactured, he worked for an extended amount of time with one factory in particular. Every time they prototyped his designs, they came out wrong. How could that happen when detailed drawings are being supplied to the factory? This cycle continued on for months. Nothing but problems.

Somehow Calello met up with an Engineer, who just so happened to speak Mandarin. The Engineer traveled to China with Calello, and sat in on one of the meetings with the factory. However, the fact that he knew Mandarin was kept a secret. 

After leaving the meeting, the Engineer turned to Calello and told him to sever the relationship with the factory entirely, and he would help him find a new factory. 

It turns out the factory was intentionally making the prototypes wrong, in order to stall the designer while they produced and sold the designs and working product to other people. Talk about a nightmare.

Lesson learned.

Again, this was a story told to me a couple of years ago, so I’m not sure how accurate it is. But my point of sharing this story is to show what can go wrong. I wouldn’t recommend that any designer first run off to China (or any other country for that matter) to produce his/her product idea. You might be surprised to learn there are lots of possibilities for producing here in the US.

Folks, we INVENTED mass production and lots of other amazing things. Let’s continue…

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40 plays

Ivan & Alyosha / Easy To Love

I’ve been really hooked on Bandcamp for the past few weeks, where I keep running into these amazing artists. Ran into these guys last night, and I am addicted to this song. So catchy. And it involves hand clapping, so how can you not like it?

I’m telling you musicians now: add hand clapping to your songs! And whistling! It’s like drugs…

Freelance Projects You Shouldn’t Take

When the pitch goes something like this:

“This project should be pretty simple, we just don’t have time to take care of it ourselves right now.”


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22 plays

Camera Obscura / Razzle Dazzle Rose

Just a nice relaxing song…

Lewis Nerman Museum

A contemporary Art museum on the Johnson County Community College campus (what a mouthful) that is often over shadowed by the Nelson Atkins. It is really a fantastic addition. Well designed, clean and modern. 

Last week I finally got around to taking some exterior shots of the building. Something I’ve been meaning to do since it opened. On the underside of the overhang (which you can see clearly in this shot) is a large array of LEDs, which continuously range in brightness creating a dramatic light show. It is really an interesting idea. 

Next, I will be photographing the interior, so look forward to that soon!

(Some of the LED panels need to be replaced already. I started to edit them, but it became too tedious for me)