The Lake Travis Retreat was envisioned as a home for a growing family and a home to play host to friends and extended family. It was designed by Dick Clark Architecture in Lake Travis, Texas. This home was not only designed by the architects but also the family, including the children. Everyone took votes on what they wanted out of this home while keeping the same vision of a place where family and friends can spend time together.

The most gestural element of the house is a raised, copper clad pavilion with transparent walls facing south toward the neighborhood and north toward the courtyard and lake. The butterfly shape of the roof dramatically casts off rainwater through an over-sized scupper, an external reference to the series of seven water features found inside the walls of the retreat. Their are numerous other features of this design that makes this home a great place to have a family retreat.







via: Architects List

These hand-made Ultrasone Edition 10 Headphones are money and I'm not kidding. These will run you about $2,750 bucks. Each Ultrasone Edition 10 headphone set, complete with Zebrano wood stand and box, comes from a limited run of just 2,010 units, each individually numbered. So if your looking for an eye-popping look, feel and sound then these headphones were made for your enjoyment. These headphones feature an open-back ear cups with galvanic Ruthenium plating and a Zebrano wood inlay, Ethiopian sheepskin leather ear cup pads, Titanium-plated 40mm drivers, silver-plated OFC 99.99% pure copper wires with Kevlar casing, S-Logic Pus technology, and more features you can check out on their website. So if your wealthy or just like to spend money then please buy me a pair as well.

So sometimes I'm a sucker for packaging designs like this company Skærtoft Mølle which is a small organic mill company located southern Denmark. They grind up their flour in an old stone mill, not because it's trendy but because it preserves more of the nutrients in the grains. Skærtoft Mølle did the same when it came to designing their packaging. They kept it simple and clean just like their products. Each of their product designs are very eye catching and would stand out in any grocery store. The design firm Mega did such a great job on the packaging design that they have been awarded the Danish Design Prize and the Design Matters Prizes 2010/2011.






via: Belowtheclouds.com

I wanted to share with you today an interesting project called Photomobile. Photomobile is a traveling library of photographs built inside an Airstream trailer. The Art House team will take Photomobile on an epic journey during the fall of 2011, bringing A Million Little Pictures to museums, galleries and project spaces across the continent. The cool part is that it can be one of your photographed pictures.

If you want to be a part of this project go to their site and sign up to receive a disposable camera from Art House, choose a theme that inspires you, and share your interpretation with the world. These photographs are then joined together to create a new narrative, journeying together from coast to coast. What begins as thousands of individual expressions ends as a communal experience — A Million Little Pictures, one cross-country adventure. So sign up and become part of this experience. I know I have.

Have you ever wondered how much a musician has to sell in order to make a salary of $1,160 a month. Well David McCandless of Information is Beautiful can help you with that. He put together this data poster to show how much you would need to sell or stream in order to make this minimal income. Now don't take this data to heart. It's basically just showing you that if you only went in one avenue of sales, then this is how much you would need to sell.

In the music world though going through one avenue of promotions and sales is not going to cut it. You need to market yourself and put yourself in many different avenues. When I was finding information about the chart below. I came acrossed an article by Allison Rizk from Radio Potato who gave some great ideas to increase your fan base, get more exposure and start making that money flow. The ideas below came directly from her article.

Fame Games (@FameGames) – This online radio show promotes independent artists. Musicians can submit their music online and fans can vote each day for their favorites. As it grows in popularity, you can increase your exposure worldwide. Really cool group of DJ’s, too. They know their stuff! Eclectic music choices and always top notch music!

The Sixty One (@thesixtyone)
Branded as “helping artists find their audiences.” Indie artists submit their work, but rather than allowing a stuffy suit to decide what’s cool, the listeners do. Listeners have to listen to a song for over a minute before they can “heart” it. It’s very cool exposure! For music lovers, please make sure you find your favorite artists and heart them – and if they aren’t on there, make sure you get them on it!

Kickstarter (@kickstarter)
I want to kick myself for not thinking of this first. If you’re a musician that doesn’t have the jack to promote yourself, this site can help you fund projects. Much like a telethon concept, you can set up graduating levels of “rewards” and goodie packages depending on how much each fan contributes to your project. Kickstarter put one of my favorite emerging artists, Gareth Asher, on tour all throughout the United States and massively expand his fan base.

Pandora (@pandora_radio)
This site gets the Brilliant Award of the Century. This music engine automatically creates a streaming radio station that is based on the artists/songs/genres that you like – and plays similar artists based on the style and tonality of what you chose. You can now upload your music onto the site and become part of their Music Genome Project’s musical library. Click here to submit your music: http://submitmusic.pandora.com/

Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, iTunes, Reverbnation etc.
The name of the game today is being accessible. Back in the day, if you wanted to find music, you’d have to go to the store, buy the whole album, and if it sucked, you’re the fool with the stack of CD’s collecting dust in the back of your car. Nowadays, people automatically go to YouTube to find a video of their favorite song and can share it immediately. If you’re not Internet savvy, check out www.mashable.com as a comprehensive resource on using social media. Oh, and if you’re one of those brooding and introverted musicians who hates people, do your best to still respond to your fans reaching out to you and Follow them back on Twitter. Acknowledging your fans individually endears themselves to you and in turn, they will support you through your sales.



via: Flowing Data, Radio Potato

If you think you need to improve your typeface knowledge while increasing your memory. Then this is the game for you. It was designed and assembled by Brazilian design studio, ps.2 arquitetura + design. The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog typeface memory game will run you about whopping $30 bucks but it will impress your graphic design friends.

It's a very attractive finished typographic memory game that includes 25 variations of the letter "A" each in a different letter type. Players attempt to find the matching A’s in the same letter type. The player who has the highest number of matching letters wins the game.

Typographic information about the letter is included on the card, and a separate folder provides a general history of the typography. This is an enjoyable and instructive game for graphic designers and anyone who is fascinated by letter types.

As you play, you increasingly recognize what are often very subtle differences between the letters and more about the details of the letter types. They become progressively easier to recognize and distinguish from one another (even Univers and Helvetica!) Among the letter types included in the game are Akzidenz Grotesk, Baskerville, Centaur, Garamond, Helvetica Rockwell, Times New Roman, Univers and many more.

via: bispublishers

Matt Pond PA has a new album out called The Dark Leaves. It's his eight studio album and it was release early April of 2010. So I guess I was a little out of loop on his new album. Although when a new album is released a tour date is sure to follow. So I'm in luck, after checking out his website I found that he will be perform a show at the New World Brewery in Tampa, Fl on Oct. 6th with guest Company(Co.) and King of Spain for $10 bucks. So maybe I might see some of you out there if your in the area.

On a side note I got to give props to Matt on his album cover art. The color palette choice and the tone of the image is fantastic. The font that was used on the album is also quite interesting and blends in nicely with the design. It has a very earthy vintage feel to it and works with the album. If you like what you hear then follow Matt Pond PA on Twitter and keep up to date on what he is up to.

Jeff Nishinaka is a master of paper manipulation.He is considered the world's premier paper sculptor and has constructed amazing 3D art with his skill in paper manipulation. On his website he states that he had an "ah-ha" moment on the idea of using paper when he was in college. From then on, he began experimenting with different papers, finding ways to shape, bend, and round the edges on them. He also stated that he wanted to manipulate paper in the least invasive way, to keep the integrity and feel of it. Paper to him is a living, breathing thing that has a life of it's own and from his art work you can tell that he is achieving his idea.

Stephane Massa-Bidal is a French illustrator who combines the past, present and future into his works. On his site Retrofuturs he has numerous series that are worth checking out. Although, there was one series in particular, that caught my attention. That was the "Life is Circle" series. The reason it caught my attention is because life moves in a circle and things always come back around in some form. So his idea matches the concepts in which he portrays. In this series he takes different photographs and places them in circular form to represent life as a circle. I get the idea that each has a meaning like the first one below is the circle of space and land. The layering and textures and feel of this series is fantastic. He also uses Helevtica type for his number sequence if you wanted to know. Now that you know, I'm sure you're wondering what the numbers mean. Well I think I can answer that. From a post on Wanken he stated that there was no significance about the numbers, just esoteric numbers.

So I highly recommend checking out more works by Stephane and if you want follow him on Twitter.