Fida: My Trick Pony

These San Francisco locals have been pulling tricks for years now. Formerly a store front, they have taken their production behind the scenes, but are still creating the loveliest custom graphics and designs. My pick this week is the "Happy Holiday" card with their signature pony outfitted in antlers. Better order them now!

Aaron: The Fox is Black

There are only a handful of blogs I make a point of checking each week—ah to be free of you, RSS feed!—and one of them has gotten a compelling redesign. Bobby Solomon has been keeping deft tabs on visual culture at Kitsune Noir for a while now, but as of Monday old KN has been rechristened The Fox is Black. The site's skin is a modification of the Wordpress theme Hiperminimalist and manages to give the site a dreamier feel than the cleaner approach Bobby took as Kitsune Noir. In any case, it's all well-curated content well worth your time, and as a solid update of something already very good, it's a win.

Jaime: How Globes Are Made

I love behind-the-scenes glimpses of how things are made, so I was pleased to stumble, via Design Sponge, onto this video, produced by the Chicago History Museum, about the globe manufacturing process. The music is a bit goofy, as is the narrative ("one false move and they could lose part of Japan!") but if you're curious how maps go from 2-D to 3-D (and what's inside those spheres), the nearly five-minute video is worth a watch.

Miyoko: Western Imports by Cayetano Ferrer

I can't get enough of these mind-boggling photographs and pieces of art by the young American photographer and artist Cayetano Ferrer. In this series, titled Western Imports, he created boxes that simultaneously appear solid and reflective yet completely transparent at the same time. Though the work is a few years old, the skill with which it was done is amazing.

Sam: Jambox // Jawbone

Yesterday creative director Kyle Blue and I untangled the mess of cords that had been spilling over our work table, and unplugged the subwoofer and satellite speakers that had been clogging up our desktop so that we could give Fuseproject's new Jambox for Aliph a try. Our first impression was that the bluetooth enabled speaker was much smaller than we expected, but the combination of rubber and metal parts felt durable and good. A few clicks and button-pushes later, we had it synced up to the laptop's bluetooth and were streaming our tunes. Sonically this isn't going to replace your klipsch la scalas anytime soon, but for listening to music at the office, or playing a movie on your ipad without headphones, it's pretty damn impressive.

Jordan: Egglings

I had seen these little guys in a few shops around town and finally bought one at Park Life this weekend, and I am hoping I can make it grow. It's pretty simple—just crack open the top of the ceramic egg and add water—but I have been known to mess up even the simplest plant-related tasks. If all goes well, I'll have my own little teensy lavender garden on my windowsill soon.

Amanda: Images from Large Scale, published by Princeton Architectural Press

This week I've enjoyed perusing some images from the recently published book Large Scale. It looks at the process behind fabricating huge pieces of art, particularly those created from steel. Apparently, prior to 1966, if an artist wanted to create a Serra-size work, they'd have to turn to industrial manufacturers like boat builders or steel fabricators in order to realize their vision. That all changed with the opening of Lippincott, Inc., a sculpture production center founded by Donald Lippincott and Roxanne Everett. This book takes photographs from their archive to give a behind-the-scenes glimpse of this very important chapter in the history of American art. via A Journey Round My Skull