trial & error

play with, learn about, create (goals)

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 17:23:00 -0600

I’ve condensed Emily’s thoughtful list of goals, but it provides me with the perfect reason to recommend my favorite book ever about department stores (and John Wanamaker’s in Philadelphia, specifically): William Leach’s Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture (1994). It’s all about color, glass, and light and totally mesmerizing.

The history of consumer culture is awesome. I don’t know why I don’t study it. [For instance, I’ve always meant to read this!]

Thanks! I have Sharon Zukin’s history of shopping out from the university library now, and Land of Desire looks like a perfect follow-up.

monicalm: Ladies love fabric in beautiful colors? Fact. [via...

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 17:12:07 -0600

monicalm:

Ladies love fabric in beautiful colors? Fact.

[via Essential Architecture - Department Stores]

"1954. You don’t get years like that anymore. It was my favorite year. Look—look at that..."

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:34:51 -0600

“1954. You don’t get years like that anymore. It was my favorite year. Look—look at that Buick. See, that’s what I’m talking about. In 1954, a Buick was a Buick. It didn’t look like a Chevy, which looks like a Pontiac, which you can’t tell apart from an Olds. Like today.”

- The opening voiceover from My Favorite Year

play with, learn about, create (goals)

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 15:24:00 -0600

The past few months have been a time of intense reflection and exploration. I’ve been meandering, spending time with friends and loved ones, reading whatever catches my fancy, and developing new obsessions. I’m finally starting to pull my thoughts together and think about what I want to do next. Here’s the left-brain list.

Play with/achieve some level of competency in:

Adobe Illustrator
Hand lettering
Embroidery and needlework
Accounting/budgeting/keeping different types of books
The sewing machine
Sauces

Learn about:*

The history of shopping, retail, merchandising, customer service and consumerism
Product packaging and design (history and practice), specifically labels
The mind and how it works (memory, creativity, decisionmaking)
Real sustainability and other topics in business ethics
Reuse
Color and pattern
Textiles
Independent businesses
Buttons
The history of handmade, the history of craft
The neighborhood where I live

Create:

A new blog in which to document my obsessions
A major project (and a kick in the pants) for the old blog.
A miniature business (TBA)
A little product line (TBA)
A party

*Book/article/documentary suggestions welcome

"The removal of faults is only a small part of the improvement process."

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 15:03:05 -0600

“The removal of faults is only a small part of the improvement process.”

- Edward De Bono, Serious Creativity

"I was lying to you when I named this book. Marketers aren’t liars. They are just storytellers...."

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 13:03:51 -0600

“I was lying to you when I named this book. Marketers aren’t liars. They are just storytellers. It’s the consumers who are liars. As consumers, we lie to ourselves every day. We lie to ourselves about what we wear, where we live, how we vote, and what we do at work. Successful marketers are just the providers of stories that consumers choose to believe.”

- Seth Godin, who presumably wrote the above with a straight face, in All Marketers are Liars. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need a stiff drink and possibly a nap.

"Having heroes is wildly important. To be able to say, ‘that work is rad,’ to not be..."

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 19:35:00 -0600

“Having heroes is wildly important. To be able to say, ‘that work is rad,’ to not be like, ‘that work sucks’ all the time—which, at least in art school, you get trained to do—‘everything’s shitty, nothing’s good enough.’ I think it’s so much more empowering to be like, ‘that is rad, I love that, I wish I did that.’”

- Artist/designer/director Mike Mills in Beautiful Losers

"The gallery and my entire being were so inextricably linked … it was such a part of my..."

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 19:28:00 -0600

“The gallery and my entire being were so inextricably linked … it was such a part of my personality at the time at closing for good meant death for me, because it was the death of my identity. There’s something about losing it all and having to start all over again and then realizing that you’re not really starting over again, you’re just editing out all the crap that was holding you back. Now in retrospect I look back on that as maybe one of the greatest gifts of my life.”

- Aaron Rose, founder of Alleged Gallery, in his documentary Beautiful Losers

"Kate had been a cop long enough to know that likable people can be villains, that personality and..."

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 15:05:31 -0600

“Kate had been a cop long enough to know that likable people can be villains, that personality and charisma are. if anything, more likely to be found attached to the prepetrator than the victim.”

- Laurie R. King, To Play the Fool (my current “fun” read)

I heart Kansas by truche on Etsy Thank goodness for our wiggly...

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 18:13:00 -0600

I heart Kansas by truche on Etsy

Thank goodness for our wiggly northeastern corner. (Thanks to monicalm for the link.)

Brian and I make dinner plans

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 17:34:27 -0600

Me: Does chicken pot pie sound good?
Brian: No. If chickens were supposed to come in pies, they'd be round.

Lulu doing her best pinup/Yoda impression.

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 12:11:27 -0600

Lulu doing her best pinup/Yoda impression.

"If you live in the United States you do not really need to leave. It’s all here. Europe is..."

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 15:29:32 -0600

“If you live in the United States you do not really need to leave. It’s all here. Europe is depressing and usually looks much better in pictures. The U.S. looks better when you actually confront it, as anyone who has been to Cleveland, Phoenix, or Tampa will happily tell you. There is major display inspiration in America’s hinterland. I’ll never forget the first time I saw Sledge’s Stylish Stout Shop in Dallas. The windows had portly mannequins staring at each other with all the drama of a Chekhov play. The additional merchandise that dangled from the crooked fingers of the mannequins on wire coat hangers only added to the visual psychodrama of this unforgettable display.”

- “Don’t leave the United States,” one of Simon Doonan’s “tricks of the trade” from his book Confessions of a Window Dresser.

Want. If only for the cover alone.

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 14:49:00 -0600

Want. If only for the cover alone.

"Though he’s famous for food that often resembles high art, [Thomas] Keller appreciates the..."

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 23:19:00 -0600

“Though he’s famous for food that often resembles high art, [Thomas] Keller appreciates the power of the humblest of tastes, like Skippy peanut butter and Heinz ketchup. […] ‘I remember years ago chefs wanting to make their own ketchups in their restaurants,’ he says. ‘[But] nobody really liked it. Everybody wanted to get a bottle of Heinz. It’s because we grew up on those flavors.’”

- A Great Chef Fires Up The Heat, ‘Ad Hoc’ Style : NPR

I heard this story more than three weeks ago, but what Thomas Keller said about ketchup keeps popping into my head. (Initially I thought I’d read it in this lovely piece in the New York Times about Keller’s relationship with his late father.)

The Great Exhibiton (1851)

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 16:40:00 -0600

The exhibition’s displays were designed to highlight the best goods and industrial advances each country had to offer: German porcelain, rubber from India, Egyptian carpets, Russian furs, and Roman mosaics; in fact, there was so much to see that they catalog that accompanied the exhibition spanned four volumes.

That the Great Exhibition of 1851 was a consumer paradise in many ways foreshadowed changes in shopping habits and consumer behavior. Although an exhibition and not a marketplace, the event introduced visitors to the concept of browsing and exposed them to a plethora of merchandise, carefully grouped, displayed, and free to touch—much like the experience everyday shoppers would soon have in local stores

From kitchen appliances and Jacquard looms to tools and textiles, the exhibition offered a sneak pee at the heady days of consumerism that lay ahead. The concept was clever and most successful, selling the notion of shopping to the English middle class who, up to that point, were reluctant to part with their money and rarely spent much on items not deemed necessities.

From Spree: A Cultural History of Shopping by Pamela Klaffke (p. 27). Now I have a hankering to own The Crystal Palace Exhibition Illustrated Catalog.

"Many of us have walked into a Chili’s with some feeling of guilt because as much as we hate..."

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 15:04:18 -0600

“Many of us have walked into a Chili’s with some feeling of guilt because as much as we hate the food, as much as we hate the waitstaff, it is considerably nicer than where we are living at the time and the food is better than anything most of us know how to cook. I am not saying that’s how I feel about myself and my life at the moment, but when you’re 21 in the United States, that’s the way life looks. As you know, some people never grow up.”

- Sam Pocker, from his book Retail Anarchy (he also maintains a blog of the same name). I have (at least) a slightly different take on almost every argument Pocker presents, including the above, but he won me over by at least being thought provoking. If insufferably so.

I named this file luluthecutestdogintheworld dot jpg, because it...

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 16:16:12 -0600

I named this file luluthecutestdogintheworld dot jpg, because it is the truth.

Brian and I get drive-through cheeseburgers

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:38:55 -0600

Brian: You're so pretty.
Me: I love you.
Brian: I loved you too, until you made me wait thirty minutes in the drive through at Sport Burger.

"I wish someone would adopt YOU."

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:17:29 -0600

“I wish someone would adopt YOU.”

- A mother to her tantrum-throwing son at the Kansas Humane Society