Cupcakes and Cashmere – This delightful blog- a winning Weekly Blog here on All My Faves- combines sophisticated style with inspiring home decor tips and savory recipes. Yes, the top fashion-home-kitchen content is well represented in Cupcakes and Cashmere and Emily, the gorgeous woman behind it, does an excellent job at creating top quality content (that includes photography).
The style theme in Cupcakes and Cashmere consists of Emily’s regularly updated photos of herself, cleverly dressed in a different outfit each time. She also points to makeup and cosmetic must-haves, which is always a nice thing to have to keep up with the latest trends. Start exploring the wonders of Cupcakes and Cashmere, and be sure to check out the How-To page which I found extremely useful (thanks Emily!). Click on the images below to go to these favorite posts:
siteInspire – At first glance you won’t necessarily understand what this site is about, yet you will find yourself compelled to explore it nonetheless, and you’ll thank yourself for doing so. siteIsnpire is a “showcase and CSS gallery featuring the best web design today, designed, developed and curated by kulör.”
siteInspire brings you a visual survey of the latest advances, styles and talent in contemporary Web design. Even if you’re not a professional working in this industry you will appreciate the beauty and diversity of the siteIsnpire gallery. If you are a business owner, this site will be of particular use to you – find inspirations to create or upgrade your company’s website. Think your website is already a star? Submit it and perhaps siteIsnpire will feature it in their next update.
I suggest going straight to Browse (you can choose between style, theme, hype, view in random, or see the very best). Here a few of my top favorites:
Carbonmade – Those of us working in the creative industries such as design, graphic design, styling, photography and other visual mediums will appreciate this free online portfolio service. As a visual professional, you need to provide solid work examples to lure more potential customers and to make a name for yourself. And what a better way to do so than by creating an online portfolio of your own, one that looks amazing and presents your chosen works in an easy, nice-to-look-at place. Carbonmade offers just that.
To get started, I suggest exploring some samples – my favorites are Bódis Árvai Tünde Photography and Bunny Pirates by the illustrator Meghan Stratman, respectively shown here below.
The free Carbonmade bundle allows a maximum upload of 35 images (which is more than enough for the average professional), and a paid track of $12 a month for those interested in showcasing photos, videos, flash projects and more, all ad-free. What are you waiting for? Sign up now!
They Draw & Cook – Brother and sister Nate and Salli are a wonderful talented team of design and illustration. What started out as an effort to recreate a tasty dish they had during a vacation soon sprung into Nate and Salli’s amazingly creative illustrated recipe blog, They Draw & Cook. Text based recipes are fine if you are already familiar with the dish. If you’re a first timer however, the text-only list of ingredients and how-to is downright boring and lacks that pizazz I’m often relying on to get me into the cooking groove.
They Draw & Cook is all about putting lots of color and good vibes into cooking, as the blog’s recipe collection offers illustrated recipes that take the cooking experience to a whole new level. Here are a few examples (click the image to see the full recipe in larger size):
Can’t get enough? Find another recipe. Is one of your kids an avid kitchen helper? Try out the Kids Draw & Cook. To submit your own recipe and artowrk, click here.
KNSTRCT – This fabulous digital magazine is a beautifully created ‘design central’ both industry professionals and casual observers will appreciate. KNSTRCT aims to be “a global hub of design and innovation, an online destination for art, interiors, architecture, fashion, travel and all other limitless definitions of ‘design’.” Does it live up to its mission statement? You bet. Their very homepage screams aesthetics in every possible way:
The homepage is made up of a collage of photos, each representing a separate article with a different artist or project in focus. Simply hover your mouse over one of them and it will become highlighted. If you prefer the more straight-forward way, simply use the menu on the top right and browse the KNSTRCT magazine by picking design type, industry, or use their open search.
The two photos below represent a couple of amazing articles I found here on KNSTRCT and wanted to share. The first is Lang Baumann Paints the Streets of Vercorin, and the second is The Gardens of Marqueyssac. Click the images below to see the full posts and hi-res photos.
Craftaholics Anonymous – Linda, a sweet creative woman and a mother of two, created this blog as her means of channeling her obsession with crafts. This is her Web space for sharing her ideas, inviting others to do the same, and providing readers with an abundance of inspiring craftology activities. This is one of the Weekly Blog winners of course. Click the images below to see what posts I enjoyed the most on Craftaholics Anonymous.
DECOmyplace – By showcasing real living places tastefully designed by ‘regular people,’ DECOmyplace is an interior design hub dedicated to presenting and sharing design ideas.
While this exquisite site is very popular in Taiwan, the interior design ideas you will find here are universally appreciated. Browse by room type (kitchen, bedroom, office and more), by furnishing (lighting, painting, plants, tableware, etc.) or styles (before/after, retro, vintage and so on). In short, DECOmyplace is a wonderful celebration of interior design, and everyone’s invited to contribute. Want to share your living space? Sign in and upload. Here are a couple of my favorites.
The following is a guest post I wrote on behalf of All My Faves for Synapses, an insightful blog by the lovely Dan Fonseca.
In recent years, as the World Wide Web became mankind’s main communication channel, there has been an interesting shift in the predominance of textual content. More specifically, textual content in mainstream media has been increasingly gravitating towards a more visualized direction. This is not to say textual content or words are a dying breed. Rather, the visual evolution of content -in the form of animated videos, interactive maps and infographics- is emerging primarily in circumstances where complicated knowledge or data need to be understood in a fast and clear manner.
Below I will present several examples of recent visual content forms on the Web, showing how graphic based information achieves immediate understanding and internalization of ideas and processes. These exclude common practical iconizations used for daily routine efficiencies (signs, conventional maps, etc).
1. Visualizing Bloodtests
This example is a knock-out in terms of both aesthetics and functionality. Created by the talented team over at Information is Beautiful, Visualizing Bloodtests is the ultimate data-into-info example, and there’s no wonder why this visualization scored the 1st place in Wired Mag’s re-envisioning medical data design competition.
The original piece of content is a standard bloodtest data document. Doctors can make out what it means, but what about the patient whose blood was tested? It’s virtually impossible to comprehend what’s going on there, and this concerns someones’ life!
Now see the magic of infographics (thanks to Information is Beautiful), turning the incomprehensible document above into an easy to digest content:
2. GapMinder World’s Health & Wealth of Nations Interactive Graph
This interactive graph was created by GapMinder so as to “unveil the beauty of statistical time series by converting boring numbers into enjoyable, animated and interactive graphics.” The Health & Wealth of Nations shows the changes in humanity’s lifespan and lifetime earnings over time, starting in 1800. It’s an amazing visualization that takes dry numbers of data and turns them into an engaging presentation that laypersons like you and me can understand easily. By the way, GapMinder’s software Trendalyzer is so amazing that Google acquired it in 2007.
Click the screen shot below to go to the interactive graph’s page and hit Play.
3. Web Search – AllMyFaves.com
What does the phrase ‘Web search’ make you think of? Probably Google, right? There’s no doubt the search giant is excellent at what it does, and its efficient search algorithms had enabled the company to enter an already inundated Web search market back in 2000 and take it by storm. However, at the end of the day Google’s search service, however sophisticated it may be, is based on word indexes. You must type in key words to find what you are looking for, and then you must read each result entry to identify its relevancy to your search. The byproduct of this process is what has come to be known as “search fatigue.” Another byproduct is spam and malware hot spots, disguised as credible search results.
AllMyFaves.com has identified the shortcomings of standard Web search and offers an innovative alternative: icon-based gateway to Web navigation and site discovery. The AllMyFaves.com homepage lists all the most popular and practical categories relevant to most users, and each category displays the top 10 websites of that field in the form of the site or company’s logo. Based on the same premise of the infogrpahic, allmyfaves.com delivers quick access to information and services provided by familiar sources and brands, immediately recognizable by their logos.
In addition to the homepage you will also find AllMyFaves’ designated pages for Blogs, Business, Education, Entertainment, Games, Kids, Shopping and Travel. AllMyFaves’ recent tool, the Mini Faves, is a personalization tool inviting users to create their very own visual homepage that includes all of their bookmarks and favorites. Here’s my personal Mini Faves page as an example.
If you would like to create your own Mini Faves page and have all your bookmarks and favorites in one easy page, join AllMyFaves now.
To wrap things up, I think you will agree; visual information is taking a strong hold over the Web and for a good reason. In an era when information flows to and fro at incredible speed, we are bombarded with RSS feeds, news articles, emails and many other content forms on a daily basis. Thanks to visual aids such as infographics, interactive graphs and many other forms of content with a visual approach, making sense of the world just got a whole lot easier.
*Recommended links and sources: Cool Infographics, AllMyFaves.com, Infographics Mini page,
“Conventional Data is Boring. Make Way for the Infographic,” AllMyFaves Blog. Jan 20, 2011.
Loviu – This innovative T-Shirts store offers users – designers and simple T-shirt wearers alike- the chance to actively influence what people are wearing: “now you have a chance to decide what people will wear tomorrow and make some nice cash along the way.”
Aside from voting for tee designs you love (highest scoring designs result in some serious Euro cash for winning designers!) and submitting your own design, you can earn sweet cash by allowing Loviu to advertise the daily tee on your Facebook profile page.
Here are a couple of designs I immediately craved for myself, but sadly shopping is no longer possible; you can only vote for these:
Design Milk – This cool design website is one of our favorites, and is part of our Design MiniFaves page for ages now. Last week it was included in our Weekly Blogs lineup and it scored lots of user attention, therefore it made it to this week’s Weekly Faves.
Design Milk is a comprehensive resource of design in practically every possible industry: Architecture, art, furniture, interior design, style & fashion, even technology. In addition, Design Milk is committed to present the latest news on design which, combined with its beautiful look and feel, constitutes a top choice design website filled with ideas and inspirations. Here are a couple of posts I enjoyed reading -click the images to read them.
If you’re still craving for more, check out the world of design in the canine kingdom – Dog Milk.
Hitlantis – Seems like music discovery sites are popping everywhere on the Web, and for a good reason. On the one hand, the Web is supposed to be a bottomless well of information that is just a click away, but on the other hand, it’s almost impossible to reach those new upcoming artists taking a shot at stardom. Hitlantis belongs to the same overall niche, only it showcases artists in a totally different way.
You start off with the home screen above. No, this isn’t the color pallet at Home Depot, it’s Hitlantis’ amazing approach to showing you what music discoveries are out there. Zoom in using the magnifying glass icon on the left and search for the colors (using the legend) representing your preferred music styles (mine are turquoise and yellow – Electro and Blues, respectively).
To give a more specific example, see the screen shot below showing the artist KSU, a blues band. As you can see, the interface is beautifully designed to allow easy listening to your chosen songs, and you can vote for your favorite tracks as well. Each bubble represents a different artist and displays that artist’s ‘hotness’ rank with a numerical value.
Hitlantis is amazing in every possible way; the music variety is huge, the unique interface is super cool and the sound quality is top notch. I’m adding this one to my personal favorites!
99 Rooms – This amazing interactive art project is brought to us by Kim Köster, Richard Schumann, Stephan Schulz and Johannes Bünemann. Combining wall painting, photography, animation and sound to create a unique comprehensive experience, 99 Rooms is inspired by the works of Berlin artist Kim Köster “within the countless vacated premises of East Berlin‘s industrial sector.” Although the project first came out in 2004, it continues to surprise and inspire millions of viewers worldwide.
Enter the site and embark on an artistic voyage unlike anything else you have encountered. I have included below two screen shots, two out of the 99 rooms you will enter while exploring this fine project.
