Friday Finds 12.3.2010

Miyoko: Most Spectacular Christmas Trees

This week Christmas trees have been popping up everywhere (much to our assistant editor and Christmas-lover Jordan Kushins' delight). But what city has the biggest, heaviest, and most LED-clad of them all? Our pal Rachel Swaby (a San Francisco-based freelance writer and frequent Wired contributor) got to the root of it all this week for Gizmodo, forcing a face-off up trees in nine metros across the U.S.

Sam: Fake Criterions

I'm as big a fan as any of the lush dvd and bluray reissues of the Criterion Collection which is what makes this parody such a hoot. My personal favorites are this take on Hoop Dreams and the Charles Harper background on this classy take on Biodome.

Jaime: Confetti System Necklaces

I recently posted an interview with the founders of Confetti System on dwell.com. In the post I focused on their creative "party systems" (handmade confetti, geometric pinatas) but I just uncovered a whole other realm of their designs: cool, ropy necklaces. Previous versions were chunky and metallic, but the latest designs are more muted, made of twisted silk charmeuse and leather. I want!

Jordan: Reverting to Type

Wish, wish, wish I could go to this "typographic extravaganza" in London, where the folks behind New North Press will be showcasing work from 20 international letterpressers. Fantastico.
via @ilovetypography

Dakota: Tokyo Camera Style

Tokyo Camera Style is one of my favorite blogs that I follow. Photographer John Sypal takes daily snaps of cameras he sees on the streets in Tokyo and shares them here. I'm super interested in collecting and using old analog cameras, so I enjoy seeing the eclectic mix of cameras and lenses.

Amanda: Anonymous Works

I'm loving this beautifully curated blog that covers art, photography, and other bits of forgotton ephemera. I'm all about a destination online that covers anything from nineteenth-century nutcrackers to artfully distressed empty dollhouses.

Kyle: Viktor – 5000 Years of Chairs by Jürg Lehni and Alex Rich

Earlier in the week I spotted this video featuring Viktor, a custom printing / image-making tool, on the graphic design blog Manystuff. Viktor was superseded by Hector, a similar device that used a spray can to create beautifully crude images and shapes. Hector made the rounds and received a ton of design-related press, even appearing on the cover of the design magazine I.D. (RIP). In this instance Viktor illustrates Michael Marriott's "5000 Years of Chairs", a lecture that covers the development of the world through advances in the way chairs have been produced throughout the past 5,000 years. The video is from a 2008 installation at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. You can find more of Viktor's handy working in the recently produced booklet from Nieves (2010).