ghostly swim, nooka and the sounds of nooismo

our friends at ghostly records have launched a mini-site in conjunction with the cartoon network's adult swim! there's a free downloadable album of their artists with tracks from matthew dear, deastro, michna, tycho, school of seven bells AND more! their line-up is the sound of nooismo™.

also, they are selling some nooka zubs on their site for the launch of their new animated series: BoyCatBird.



ghostly swim is here

the ghostly store here.

Wallpaper quotes me [am i famous yet?]

i've been a bit disappointed that nooka had not been in wallpaper magazine as they are perfectly matched aesthetically, so i was excited when my press peeps arranged an interview with them a few months back. it was phone interview, which is always difficult for me [and i was dog sitting, the doorbell rang, the dog was barking – not at my best]. i was looking forward to finally being in the mag and waited for the article to come out – and it did this month in their may issue! no images of my watches but they did use a quote from me in the text. i'm told it's very cool and hope others think so too.

special thanks to matt and joe at rawinformation and josh sims of wallpaper!

graduate show season

it is that time of year when the design schools all host the senior thesis shows of their respective departments. the first one i attended was for the IDC program of Parsons [where i taught one semester a few years back]. IDC= intergrated design curriculum and the students may attend classes from any of the disciplines Parsons offers – basically build-your-own-major. the group is small, but i was very impressed with the overall quality of both the work and execution.

highlights from the foto, right to left from the top:
henshin fashion project by masaaki sato. the male model in his look-book is wearing a nooka!
supra functional by caroline pham, impractical objects for a gluttonous society.
jeremy goodwin's furniture to create more social spaces,
polina ulendeeva's wonderful educational toy that teaches children about the major organs in the body [no web site yet]!
ariel mai newlands's immigration game for the NYC tenement museum. her site here.

check out the show while it's up at 66 fifth avenue in new york city!

nooka nooka spotted!

this was caught on the surveillance camera in our stockroom!

this is pretty amazing

it's in japanese, but it's an underground bike park [chika-churinjo].

poptank and real music

i have recently taken a non-paid position as creative director for a game startup called poptank which will produce game software where the user actually gains musical skill while playing! i can't get too deep into it, but i'm now looking for C++ interns and illustrator/animator interns. we can pay people with experience, but this is a self-funded startup and we need to be creative with compensation until we get financing.

(i should add that this in addition to nooka and berrymatch)

green concerns

i've been green when it was a hot topic the first time around as a child in the early 70s. this has filled me with varying levels of anxiety at different points in my life, from being macrobiotic in my teens/early 20s to having a career crisis of conscience in my late 20s thinking that design is the devil's work producing disposable culture!

i now have a more optimistic view on design as a discipline and understand the importance of contributing to the evolution of visual culture. who knows – it may be the designers that figure out how to communicate with the first extraterrestrials that land on earth for formal contact!

this wider view has not freed me from ecological concerns, and i have always produced minimal packaging for my nookas – sometimes more successful for one line and not another. for example, the leather strap models all come in a slim padded fabric wallet that can be reused for pencils, make-up, jewelery and also for keeping your nooka. our zubs are made out of a minimal amount of acrylic plastic and double-duty as display cases.

are these ideal solution? no. but here's the problem i'm putting out in the blogosphere in hopes that someone can help us improve:
design websites, newspapers and news media often feature the NEXT green solution. for example, corn or soy based plastics, cool recycled materials etc. AND i'm sure dupont or monsanto and the chemical concerns of the world also have new materials touted in press releases.
can a small start-up like nooka have access to these materials?
do any of the affordable alternatives have partners in china where most manufacturing is done? i ask this because we have had ZERO LUCK finding answers to these questions and we are very pro-active in research [try to get a person in dupont to direct you to a marketing person who knows of a new material reported in the press!]

i am sending our production designer to dusseldorf this week to go to interpack, the international packaging fair in order to find the answers to the above questions, but if anyone reading this has any insights or contacts to share – please do.

also: i contacted the american plastics council which spends millions on television and print advertising to see if they had field staff to send to schools and companies to educate about environmental issues and new developments [the paper companies all have these kinds of programs], and i was shocked that they do not.