The Brilliance!

Wow. And wow. Just found this in the latest issue of Wired mag. So Jay Walker, who is the founder of Priceline.com and Walker Digital, has what I would imagine is the most amazing museum-crushing geek collection of amazing artifacts and memorabilia…ever…and its all in his home’s 3,600 square foot library. I don’t even know where to start. The library structure itself is straight out of movie…hardly looks real. It’s got a maze like layout with tons of different levels, super classic wood-paneled design, walls-wall-ceilling-ceiling book shelves, and an MC Escher-esque wood floor pattern throughout. But its the collection of items…my goodness: a real Russian Sputnik (one of the backups that was never sent), books bound in real rubies, props form James Bond movies, the napkin Franklin D. Roosevelt outlined his plan to win WW2 on, a complete Raptor skeleton, the manual to the Saturn V rocket that brought the Apollo 11 team to the moon, 15 pound meteorites, fossilized dinosaur eggs, the ‘Thing’ hand from Addam’s Family, the 1665 Bills of Mortality from London that track The Plague week by week (?!), a zillion (citation needed) books of every variety from 500 years-old to current, and too many other things to list…just an amazing, amazing collection of cool ‘stuff’. And while he has done tours for school kids, business execs, and friends, no press has ever been allowed to document except Wired as of just recently. This is just that classic like what would happen if Peter Pan was rich type thing, ha. Link to the story below.

A true ‘business character’...and I say that in a positive light. As I read through this article I couldn’t help but think like…‘its almost supposed to be like this, aren’t all successful niche brands helmed by a bit of a character like leader??’ Maybe thats just my opinion…and its important for me to disclaim that I do find some of the things he’s done to be offensive. Either way, I really enjoy reading about American Apparel as a company and how Dov has brought it to be what it is today…and Portfolio always has the killer interviews, so well done. They do a good job focusing on his work ethic, which as you might imagine is pretty intense. I like how he’s involved in almost every aspect of his business - the design, the branding, the plant floor, the health-care, the legal stuff, etc. He’s certainly not the aloof CEO…not the fat-cat. For example, he’s out on the streets of LA personally handing out fliers to hipsters and the homeless about job openings at American Apparel…have to admire that. This quote from him probably sums it up: “I do this every day. I do it on Sunday. I don’t even remember when it’s Friday. One day it’s Saturday, and one day it’s Monday. I just keep going and going and going.” I love how he calls himself an industrialist. Check out the article below. Big thanks to JVH for sending this over.

Crazy right. Super cool. Makes me proud. I am fully inspired. I am glad there’s a general consensus the country to believe in HOPE and the idea that a positive campaign reigns above all. America truly is walking the walk. I have always thought of our site, THE BRILLIANCE, as a time capsule…something for us all to look back on years later and remember the important small things of our time. This post is hopefully a marker in THE BRILLIANCE timespan when a campaign, our government and the voting process became as cool as the newest smartphone or cool website. Now back to your regularly scheduled program of random posts about super cool phones and stuff!

So ya’ll know we are all fans of ffffound, the super cool image bookmarking site I am still trying to get an invite too. In my book this image blog JJJJound is even more pertinnent to stuff I am into. It’s crazy…with the absense of words how your mind makes the link between several random images. I swear Iike every third image I am dragging onto my desktop which already has (not kidding…) 400 files on it. I spend this morning organizing..sheesh. But yeah JJJJound is the exact type of blog we would have off to the side as a “blogs we like”. He has an uncanny eye for all things refined and stylish with a nod to all the best hip-hop, architecture, and female references. Just bookmark it right off bat.

I love this site. Funny how many blogs there are on the net, yet I feel like I don’t have good ones to check out that don’t just show the same things every other bog shows…you know? Anyway…I ran across this blog after linking to it from ffffound.com. I love good packaging - The Dieline is almost an overwhelming amount of examples, or at least studies of it. What Engadget is for time wasting looking at electronics, The Dieline is for wasting time looking at packaging…mostly food/beverage. And, bonus, it has a pretty good commenting user base…I usually hate blog comments, you know, the typical super cynical, say stuff you’d never say in real life, super hater comments - none of that here. In fact, it looks like a bunch of industry types with actual experience in what their commenting about. Either way, its a great blog - and well named, check it out. ***Their logo was super hard to cut into our 100x100 image size, sorry, ha. And speaking of packaging, the mountains are no longer blue on this Coors Light I’m drinking…bummer.

You may not like this guy - in fact, I personally wonder what he’d be like to hang out with, like just grab a beer with - but he’s co-founder of one of my absolute favorite companies and really knows how to communicate/manage/expand his own personal brand and the 37signals brand. I’m a big fan of what he does. Check out this video linked below… It’s a quick 15 minute video of him kind of ‘keynoting’ his thoughts on educating your consumer instead of marketing to them. Pretty insightful stuff…kind of common sense after you hear him explain it, but I guess thats what makes 37signals successful - boiling things down. Also really cool to hear him candidly talk about their income. Hmm…thinking about educating your consumer rather than marketing to them…makes your mind wander on what business could benefit from this more than others, especially the large failing ones here in the US right now. ***And am I the only one who thinks kind of looks like Aaron Bondaroff?

Ha. So I was all excited to go check the new Bond flick, got the tickets ahead for the 12:01AM show, opening night, etc. I was a huge fan of Casino Royale - an awesome new direction for Bond. It poked fun at some of the old traditions but almost giving them a nod rather than just omitting them and trying something totally new. Anyway, Quantum of Solace just…maybe went to far in that direction. Chuck asked me (he went too) what my thoughts were this morning. I kept it simple: ‘it was too dusty.’ Ha, thats my honest reaction. Yes, James messes up his suits, gets in fights, gets beat up, get a bloody noes, etc, it happens in all the classics…but he’s not like totally disheveled the entire time, right?? This Bond was just too much action, too much rock-em-sock-em fight scenes, etc. Casino Royale had that, but he still looked sharp, switched his suits, etc…he’s James Bond, the fashion is part of it! Beyond that, there were no gadgets except a fake iPhone with GPS - like a total ‘movie phone’ you know? Only one scene with an Aston Martin. A plot that was super difficult to follow - the bad guys had ‘people everywhere’ it makes it super easy to twist the plot on a whim. Lots of stuff was left unexplained, like how did he just get a Range Rover Sport out of no where? No gambling. No Bond song in the intro?? A slightly anti-climatic ending for a Bond film. Eh, I don’t know. It was a really entertaining movie…but it just didn’t feel very James Bond. Although the Gold Finger reference with the girl covered in oil was nice, well done. I’d still tell people to check it…but I walked away kind of like, ‘meh’.

One of those I’m-going-to-post-something-random posts. And actually, I’m probably signing to the choir with our design-focused readers. These trees are like the Nelson Bench of landscaping. But anyway, I think its fun to find really, really specific inspiration in things and nature seems to be a never ending resource, you know? I think my last post similar to this was about space, specifically galaxies…but this time around its Birch tree forests. I don’t know if any of you have ever searched Flickr for ‘birch tree forests’ before but its pretty amazing man. Something about the super white, often super straight trunks contrasting with their orange leaves in the fall or just the forest floor - really beautiful. What prompted me to do it is Rosa Parks Circle here in downtown Grand Rapids that has a bunch of birch trees that are framed by our amazing new art museum. Quite a sight. Well, thats it…a ‘far out’ post by Benjamin. Hopefully it inspires you too, one of my favorite examples at the link below.

Alright, I’m not going to pretend I know a lot about video editing, cameras, or anything to do with film-making. I do have some friends, Dot&Cross, here in town that are quite educated in it…and a while back they’d mentioned to me this company called ‘RED’ that makes unbelievably high quality digital video cameras for equally unbelievably low prices. Allowing film-making shops to literally own the digital equipment at prices they were paying to rent real-film equipment for a week. The prices were still far beyond what the average consumer could afford - so aspiring, and starving, film-makers weren’t really effected by this…just the smaller/mid-sized shops. That was true until last week when RED, after taunting the public with teasers, finally announced their new Scarlet model which shoots big-screen, cinema quality, footage and will cost just $2,500. Literally, a true game changer. I think it was on TechCrunch where they mentioned the absolute fear this must have stricken in Sony and Cannon, etc. There is just simply nothing that competes with it. And their catch-phrase that they ‘render obsolescence obsolete’ in that every part of the camera is modular and works with any new products they might develop, etc. And similar to the iPhone, all firmware upgrades are free for owners. Pretty amazing. I really don’t have any interest in owning one - I may purchase one to rent out to local hipsters (ha, for real though) - but I love, LOVE companies that just shake their industry and literally create a whole new playing field. Always inspirational. What iPods are to music players I imagine RED will be to digital video. They’re branding and physical product design is well done too…very beautiful looking machines. Also, check this video shot using a RED. Awesome. ***Again, I’m not very educated in this stuff, so if I have anything wrong, shoot me an email!!

I posted about the PRGz (Paper Route Gangstaz) a while back - about their super weird track ‘Woodgrain’. Loved that track. Yeah, that was quite a while back - in fact I think I remember them only having like 5,000 plays on their myspace when that track dropped. Other than that track and few remixes Diplo has done - its been pretty hard to come by music from them or their camp - until today… DJ Benzi and Diplo of Mad Decent have dropped a mixtape/album of all their stuff - new remixes, etc. Tons of stuff. And…it’s pay what you want, I paid for the upgrade to 320kbps - come on, $5, have to do it. I’m actually just listening to it now…the production is super fresh, totally different - I imagine thanks to Diplo and the gang. I’d call it ‘tweaker rap’, weird but a bit refreshing. A nice side-step from current hip-hop, which I hardly listening to anymore anyway. If it’s your cup of tea check it out, there are some throw-away tracks but I know I’ll be playing a few at the next house party I hit. Do I still hit house parties?!