Over the past few months I have been back on Art Center College of Design’s campus in a role that was different from student, alumni or even adjunct professor. This time I was on the client’s side as I have connected Geyrhalter & Company’s client Goodwill of Orange County with Art Center’s amazing Design Matters Department handing the recently developed retail enhancement campaign over to five groups of talented students to take their lifestyle upcycle spin on it. You can now learn more about this creative collaboration on Art Center’s web site.

When I designed a calendar for the year 2000 for several european companies, who ‘private labeled’ it to use as a corporate gift, I focused on the symbolic meaning of the numbers that represent each month to coincide with the switch of the millenium. Yes, back then we were all freaked out about ‘numbers’.

I illustrated or photographed each piece and was in desperate need of a great looking old wheel for the calendar’s cover. Down the street from where I lived in Santa Monica there it was, in a shop window. A strange shop it was as it was never open to the public and no one really knew what exactly was being sold. I caught an old man opening a side door and that’s how I met Parke Meek. A remarkable man who worked with Frank Lloyd Wright and Charles and Ray Eames, and who let a young Mr. Geyrhalter shoot his props for that calendar and shared his stories with me that fine day.

Yesterday’s Los Angeles Times announced that the little shop, Jadis, will be open today at 11:00 AM to the public to sell its vast inventory of curiosities, which were mainly rented by studios as props. In true fashion it was not yet open by 11:45 AM when I swang by to see if I could purchase that wheel as a memory of Parke Meek, who passed away in January at age 86. Thanks to the LAT write up, people lined up around the block. So instead of being in line, I opted to share this article about a great man, and some shots of my 2000 calendar with you:

Link to the Los Angeles Times Article

Pictures of the shop

Of course we are delayed, but we are still having fun and hope that you will join in the fun. Just a little sample below…

Less is more. Now even for McDonald’s. At least at the ‘Quarter Pounder’, a concept restaurant in Japan, where the menu’s simplicity, seen below, is reminiscent of In’n'Out, and the graphic design a near-direct copy of Mini, but a fantastic store design and great marketing idea.

Thanks to past GD-Intern Marco for the heads-up. More images and thoughts can be found here.

Always inspired by seeing designers come up with new and unique solutions to age-old tasks, which are often labeled as being boring or mundane, like designing a lamp. Some might say ‘It’s all been done before’ and some opt out to just try a bit harder. This blog post my designer Julia found today shall serve as inspiration to all young designers to try harder and invent, or at least to re-invent.

(11.17 Addition: Just had to add this series of ‘dog lamps’ I found today to the mix.)

Watching the first 70 seconds of the Dior Homme Summer/Spring 2008 Runway show is a treat. An amazing reveal of a great location paired with a custom soundtrack (titled ‘Planisphere’), appropriately composed (or maybe better put ‘altered’) by french electro hipsters Justice, make this an amazing brand enhancer. You can view it on their web site, even though you will have to navigate to find it (deep linking would be a nice feature), or download the entire show as a whooping 87 MB file courtesy of the nice folks of Ohh Crapp here.

As of this season’s style, I have a feeling that I will be more impressed by the new John Varvatos collection, which we have the pleasure of rolling out via their (Geyrhalter Designed) web site within a week.

A simple and smart way to wake up, and stay up. The alarm stops ringing, only once the user puts the three shapes into their right places. In case you have an early call, or a plane to catch, you might want to hide them all over the room. Found via Austrian lifestyle magazine ‘Rondo’, one can start waking up in color via this site.

A quite intriguing invention by an artist from Berlin: ‘The Image Fulgurator is a device for physically manipulating photographs. It intervenes when a photo is being taken, without the photographer being able to detect anything. The manipulation is only visible on the photo afterwards.’

Lots of great guerilla campaigns could be created on a very low budget, lots of political events could be scrutinized and press conferences could have devastating results. Thank you Hans for the inspiration.

I will get to Part II of the Serious Play conference review shortly, but as my life so very often plays out, I am crazy busy. In the interim I share two pieces of inspirations that Geyrhalter Design team members Julia Hou and Marco Vides have brought to my attention in the past week. First off is the stunning fence work by dutch design house Demakersvan:

I am taken by the creativity that went into the juxtaposition. It’s the beauty of life that you can get surprised by beautiful new ideas being born every day. ‘Everything has already been done before,’ I often hear people say in the design world. Well, I think the glass is rather half full then half empty, but that’s just my personal belief and I keep being stunned by new ideas every day.

Marco shared this ‘wall painted animation’ by MUTO with me. A day later I have received the link from an old friend, so before everybody has already seen it, I wanted to share this insane graffiti 2.0 piece with you (OK, not sure if Graffiti 2.0 has been a term sofar…).

Domino Magazine, ‘the guide to living with style’, did something quite interesting in their current issue. An ad insert features sticker flags (think post it-flags) with different categories on it. It engages the readers to utilize their content as a shopping inspiration while leveraging their advertisers’ buys. On top of that it promotes their online registry and web site in general once the flag is removed. Quite a lot of marketing tasks fullfilled on one single page. And above all, it transforms a passive experience into an extremely engaging active experience. Bravo.