Architizer – This exquisite site offers a much anticipated meeting point for professional architects and companies of the industry, with prospect clients and other professionals. As the site explains, “one architectural project has dozens of contributors, from the intern who made the conceptual models to the construction administrator.” Architizer tries to bring all of them together.
Architizer offers different pages for projects, firms and people from all over the world, in addition to news, jobs and competitions. This is a terrific hub for all the various professionals working in the architecture industry, and I’m certain it also acts as a project facilitator in many ways. Great job Architizer! Here’s a project I wish I were the client of: Lefevre Beach House in Chile by Longhi Architects.
Rome – As the browser war rages on (remember the brilliant Pac-Man collaboration with Internet Explorer 9 we reviewed a couple of weeks ago?), Google Chrome is giving a fantastic fight with ROME. This whimsical and fabulous film by Chris Milk -works only on Chrome, of course- is a “hardware-accelerated 3D graphics” built onto the Chrome browser and requires no download or install of any software. Don’t forget to move your mouse sideways while the film is playing.
This Google Chrome Experiment is a whimsical film with a beautiful soundtrack by Danger Mouse, who have a new album out called -you guesses it- Rome.
If you wish, you can add your own dreamy additions to this project by clicking ‘add to the dream’ and see how others have already contributed. ROME is an amazing collaborative adventure of creativity, 3D technology, great music and a powerful browser showing off for a good reason. Enjoy.
Picassohead – Everyone’s an artist with this super cool portrait generating tool. Give a try and explore Pablo Picasso’s most famous painting style, cubism. To create your own Picasso head, pick a face, add facial features from a variety of noses, eyes, hair styles and lots of other options and see what comes out. If you just want to explore what others have created, see the gallery. Mine is below.
Cut Out + Keep – With over 11,000 Likes to date, this site probably does something right. The craft site offers a colossal collection of make-it tutorials, from hats and jewelry to tea strainers, furniture and accessories. Think of Cut Out + Keep as the Etsy how-to hub.
The vast number of categories and sub-categories seemed overwhelming at first, but once I found something interesting, I decided to share. Actually, I think I will be making this Cat Hammock next weekend.
Defringe – This minimalistic-looking site is actually bursting with rich creativity, and it offers a wealth of inspiring posts showing today’s innovation in a variety of fields, including advertising, illustration, music, product design, typography and many other fields. Defringe is an elegant, sophisticated design and talent hub that is packed with cool ideas and products. It wasn’t a Weekly Blog winner for nothing.
Here’s an interesting post I found in Defringe’s Product Design section: Miniot, innovative and organic solution to protecting the iPad.
Nowness – This is a Weekly Blog winner for a good reason: it’s a sophisticated Web storyteller, meaning it offers a regularly updated dose of the coolest and most chic stories currently circulating the Web. Claiming to be “the digital leader in luxury storytelling,” Nowness is the creation of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, which explains its posh appearance while its content is editorially independent.
Each story or post concerns the creative world (fashion, design, film, gastronomy), and is accompanied by large high-quality photos and videos. As the reader you are encouraged to vote for each post, by clicking ‘Love’ or ‘Don’t Love.’ I just adored Il Pellicano: Tuscan Paradise (see screenshot below), and I feel this is but one example of the semi-infinite wonder you will find here on Nowness.
What I Made – When Scott Bedford’s eldest son started to draw, Scott realized he should revisit his childhood’s favorite past time and started creating and drawing again, too. As a creative industry professional, Scott decided to merge his two passions -creating and illustrating- and What I Made is where he shares his artistic projects.
Each project is something anyone could do, and the cool part about Scott’s endeavors is he always includes a step by step how-to illustration. One great example is the Coca-cola Light (see below).
What I Made is the proud winner of the prestigious 2011 Webby Award and
Webby People’s Voice Award for Best Personal Blog/Site. Aside from the unique concept of this blog, its overall design is simply stunning, and a quick visit to this blog will show you just why Scott’s spot won these awards.
SHFT – “Curating the Culture of Today’s Environment” is what SHFT creators, activist/actor Adrian Grenier and film producer Peter Glatzer strive to deliver. Explore SHFT’s huge video archive where each video tells a different unique story about the environment and the good souls trying to make it better. In addition to video, SHFT offers top-notch content on a variety of topics including art, design, energy, fashion, sports, travel and more.
SHFT not only looks great, it also delivers engaging content on important matters, whether cultural or environmental, or both. Another cool feature on SHFT is the shop section, although some products featured there can get quite pricey. Either way, SHFT is a shining eco star! Here’s a cool video I found here, Backyard Sun Boxes by musician Craig Colorusso, showing music created by the sun and the solar panels Craig put in his backyard. Each solar panel was set to play one guitar note on loop, with the all the notes collectively making a B-flat chord. Amazing, isn’t it?
Draw and Fold Over – When the Campaign for Drawing wanted to let people know of the Big Draw project celebrating the role of drawings in our life, they went for a special and innovative approach. The Draw and Fold Over page invites you to draw whatever you wish, and then share it with the community and receive feedback for it. So come in and draw for fun, for helping this organization, or for sharing the love.
TIME LightBox – Great photos in newspapers have long been a prerequisite. The professional teams of photographers working in major newspapers produce compelling pictures that help to tell an important news story. But the TIME’s LightBox tops even that by offering a one-stop place for the absolute best photos the newspaper has to offer. All photos are hand-picked by the TIME’s photo editors to create a regularly updated collection of grade A pictures.
Terribly Beautiful: J Henry Fair’s Aerial Photographs of Industrial Pollution
TwistedSifter – Here’s a sweet website that will satisfy your crave for interesting and creative things online. TwistedSifter finds all the most popular stories, photos and posts currently on the Web, and the site’s use of large photos whenever possible makes it visually appealing as well.
TwistedSifter offers a variety of categories for you to explore. These include Picture of the Day, The Shirk Report (the funny side of the Web), Current Events, Galleries and more. In short, TwistedSifter truly offers a hot spot for interesting and creative content the Web has to offer. Click the image below to go to my favorite post.
Portrait of Muhammad Ali, created by Michael Kalish. Photograph by Jon David
Chirply – Looking for cute and beautiful designs for notebooks, greeting cards and other stationary items? Chirply is here to offer a fresh design spirit, “making better greeting cards, notebooks, and wrapping paper through better design.”
On Chirply.com you can do a number of things, and this sense of multiple options is part of what makes this such a great site. You can browse designs, vote for your favorites, submit your own, and of course buy gorgeously designed greeting cards.
Here are two beautiful designs I just fell in love with at first glance:
Let the Ideas Fly The Ideas Fly By ChaX
