Face Off

Face Your Pockets offers a simple challenge to its readers: empty your pockets on your scanner, throw down your face, scan the whole beautiful mess and upload it their website. Sounds kinda silly, right?

The results are anything but...














Click here to see the entire gallery, and submit your own scanned mug.

Sum Sum Summer Jams: Muxtape Mix

Search the hymns
Originally uploaded by hello sunrise

One of my fondest memories growing up was receiving mix tapes. First, they were silly mixes from the boys in grade school, that me and my girlfriends would giggle over listening to on our crummy stereos. The tapes were the first real attempt at flirting I ever encountered, and would contain songs interspersed with goofy banter from the group of boys that put them together. Later in high school, mix tapes became much more serious affairs; careful compilations intensely labored over and scrutinized by their creators, and equally scrutinized by their recipients. Due to the difficulty of creation and replication, a mix tape was the most sincere gift of friendship/love you could receive from another person. Whether pouring through lyrics to decode hidden messages, or just rocking out to a fantastic ska comp, a mix tape said unequivocally: you matter.

Sadly, with the dawn of the recordable CD and later, the downloadable song, mix tapes have become virtually nonexistent. However, I was delighted to discover there is a site trying to rekindle the mixtape in the new age: Muxtape.com.



Muxtape allows users to upload and share mixtapes on the web. It's functionality is remarkably simple, and it's look is beautifully minimal and superbly designed. And while it's not nearly of the same caliber as receiving an actual cassette, it's the closest the internet has ever come to it (and let's be honest: if you did receive a mix tape today, would you even have a cassette player to play it?)

I've put together a little mix together for you, dear reader. I hope you like it as much as I like you ;)



The Tracklist:
Lavender Diamond - You Broke My Heart
Nina Simone - See Line Woman
Okkervil River - A Hand To Take Hold Of The Scene
Laura Veirs - Secret Someones
Laura Marling - Night Terror [Explicit]
Le Tigre - After Dark
LCD Soundsystem - Never As Tired As When I'm Waking Up
Kaki King - Can Anyone Who Has Heard This Music Really Be a Bad Person?
Sonic Youth - Hits of Sunshine (for Allen Ginsberg)
Wolf Parade - An Animal In Your Care
Dr. Dog - 12 Find The River
Greg Laswell - Sing, Theresa Says

Site-Luv: BookByItsCover.com

Fact: I am an utter bibliophile.

Fact: I have an obsession with book design: it remains one of my favorite design formats. I have a long-standing dream of becoming a book cover designer.

Fact: I utterly love the site Bookbyitscover.com



BookByItsCover is a site dedicated to beautiful books. Run by Julia Rothman, an incredibly talented illustrator and pattern designer from Brooklyn, NY, BBIC not only features gorgeous graphic books, but displays photography of their inner pages, allowing the reader to get as close a personal experience as one can with the a book, save for having one in your lap. Not only is the content superb, but the site's design utilizes a divinely simple and unique format that lends itself to the "bookish" style of the subject matter, along with easy-breezy content navigation. The photography Julia takes to present each book resonates her love of the form.

Whether you are a seeking inspiration, or simply looking for something to stick on your coffee table, Bookbyitscover.com satisfies that deep need in many of us for bound beauty.

Häagen-Daz Makes Some Buzz

Yesterday was Free Cone Day at participating Häagen-Daz, and while I was seeking out a place to grab my free-bee I came across the
Häagen-Daz Loves Bees site, and was utterly blown away:


Häagen-Daz Loves Honey Bees Banner Ad

This campaign, created by Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, is meant to spread awareness of Colony Collapse Disorder, the name given to the sudden and mysterious disappearance of millions of honeybees from their hives. Häagen-Daz asserts that without bees, a majority of the food we consume could not be pollinated and produced, ice cream included.


www.helpthehoneybees.com

The site itself is simply stunning, and an wonderful example of what a flash site can be if done well. The container makes wonderful use of the white space that is often problematic in flash sites, by incorporating a floral border that makes the surrounding area part of the perspective. The animation captures this cute, whimsical style, which manages to be endearing but at the same time very modern.

The pages themselves have some wonderful things going on in them. One page allows you to "tour" the pasture and learn more about the honey bee crisis, while another lets you send your friends a customized honey bee. Great care has been put into each particular page and it's corresponding art and animation: even when a page is generally inactive, there is always some wonderful detail occurring: honey bees floating by with picket signs, or simply a butterfly drifting about in the background.

I love the fact that Häagen-Daz has made such a wonderful site, and adopted such a wonderful campaign. And now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go sample their new flavor, Vanilla Honey Bee, and do my part to save the world.

The Future of Search?

A picture is worth a thousand meta-tags: Search Me is a new web browser that allows the user to peruse the web visually rather than textually. Much like the latest Mac operating system, Search Me shows its search results on keywords by displaying real-time images of the web pages, allowing the user to "flip" through results. In a world where "junk-sites" are getting better and better at disguising their textual search results as genuine web space, this platform can be incredibly useful in saving the time and trouble of clicking into sites that are not at all what you are looking for.


Search Me Beta

Another nice feature of Search me is that the browser provides visual subject delineations, so you can narrow your search results to the general area you are looking for.



Now for the bad news: in terms of functionality, Search Me is terribly lacking in its current iteration: it's just doesn't seem to be performing a very comprehensive search. After doing some general search analysis, it seems clear they are not feeding Google results, but using some new search system (a friend of mine who deals in Search Engine Optimization took a gander at this for me and didn't have a clue what they were using). Unfortunately whatever they ARE using as a search basis is currently not very good in its present state - the search results seem somewhat random in popularity, which can become troublesome in a platform where scrolling through each result to get to the next is mandatory. Typing in "CMYKABOOM" not only does not turn up this site, but no results whatsoever (Google displays it #1, with numerous other websites as well). But what really bothers me is that it couldn't even find this site when I went as far as typing the URL into the search form!

That being said, I still find this site a compelling new browser conceptually. In an environment where the web is becoming more fluid and transparent, Search Me's visual display could easily find a warm welcome. If Search Me were to refine their search functionality, and perhaps build an alternative view option to allow the user to view multiple pages at once, I feel it could be a very strong and competitive platform, and possibly a contender against all the search big-boys in their text-based world. I would not be at all surprised if this is the direction of future search engines; a "Browser 2.0," if you will. And I also wouldn't be surprised if Google snatches this puppy up any day now.

99 Things

My amazingly awesome sister, Linda (that's her in the dark blue), has spent the last 2 years teaching English in Japan. She is preparing to return to the States soon, and recently reached the 100 day mark before she is to come home. In honor of her adventures and the countdown, she has begun listing 99 things she loves about Japan on her blog.

Her list is really wonderful, and I encourage you to read it. And then I dare you to resist the urge to pack your bags and head to Kyoto.

Mac Tools: 100 Mac Keyboard Shortcuts for Creating Symbols

As a designer, I am often need to use all sorts of wacky text symbols whilst working on projects. And though I and many others have been in the biz for some time, the honest to god truth is I am yet to meet a designer that actually knows all of them off the top of their head (if you happen to be a designer that does, I tip my hat to you, in all your compulsively-anal craziness). Nary a month goes by in the shop when one of us isn't shouting to another something along the lines of, "WHAT THE HECK IS THE SHORTCUT TO A DOUBLE-DAGGER!?!?!"

Suffice to say, for the designer that doesn't want to memorize about 80+ key-commands, this site is a godsend:

UsingMac.com: 100 Mac Keyboard Shortcuts for Creating Symbols

Not only does this site give the commands to a majority of common shortcuts, but it's also rather easy on the eyes. And as a Mac Nerd, you can imagine my delight when I discovered there was a key command to create the apple logo:



The fact that's it's completely and utterly useless just makes it that much better.

Site Luv: Polyvore

I love...

this site...

so much!


Polyvore allows its users to build outfits, using the ENTIRE INTERNET as your closet. It’s as if someone took my forgotten love of doll-dressing and my present-love of computers and made them get it on, and this divine love child was the result of the pairing. I have not had this much fun playing with a toy since I was six, wearing scrunchies and eating mayonnaise sandwiches while getting the crap beaten out of me by my little sister (too much info, huh?).

After you make these outfits, you can post them for display on the
Polyvore community, where others can “Ooooo” and “Ahhh” over your latest masterpiece. And if you have deep enough pockets, you could even go ahead and BUY all the stuff you made the outfit with, since the images still DIRECTLY LINK to the original websites. How’s that for marketing? Particularly when said marketing is defined as, “Making me strongly consider that maybe I CAN afford a Stella McCartney piece, and that food is a rather overrated commodity.”

I could tell you that this site has not taken over every spare minute of my life. But then I would be a filthy, filthy liar. And I would never lie to you, baby.