Design Crush: Raili Clasen

I love reading about creative people who see the world on a different plane than everyone else. As soon as I spotted this banana yellow piano in Domino, I wanted to see every thing Raili Clasen’s ever designed. Bright color and wild wallpaper are the tools of her trade, and she makes it all look so sophisticated — yet still super fun. It’s very much the definition of “California cool,” and good grief, I wish my house could have a Dutch door like the beach houses she dreams up in Newport.

You know what I noticed? She’s a master at working graphic signs into rooms. Yet it never looks like you just slapped up a “Live, Laugh, Love” sign from HomeGoods on the wall, either. As someone who loves words, this is promising:

OK, I can’t have the Dutch door but maybe I could get inspired by Clasen’s Helvetica “Hello” door signs.

Here’s Clasen’s website for more design stalking!

Tunes Tuesday: "Devotion," Airpark

The lead single 'Devotion' is featured on the forthcoming Airpark EP entitled 'Songs of Airpark' - produced by Alaina Moore & Patrick Riley of Tennis. The si...

This Nashville duo has a pretty fine cover of “Babies,” one of my all-time favorite Pulp songs. But Airpark gets it done on their own single too: “Devotion” has a nice little guitar groove that make me feel like it should be lilting out of speakers in some mod ‘60s living room. Maybe the track’s producers Tennis helped with that.

I was pondering over this lyric: “Picture your name/As a palindrome/Said it so many times/My mind got thrown.” So I looked up an interview with the band that explained the inspiration of the song: “ In my mind I kept picturing myself at a party where I become infatuated with someone who didn’t notice my presence (all the while trying to break through to them).

"The Genius of Supermarkets"

I did not expect to laugh out loud multiple times while reading a story on the history of the American supermarket. Bianca Bosker in The Atlantic is a delight: she makes you realize how incredibly spoiled for choice we are even the most ordinary of grocery stores. Apparently a trip to a Texas supermarket turned Boris Yeltsin off communism!

“At the very least, you have to marvel: How did we take something built to satisfy the simplest human need and make it so utterly baroque? The supermarket does not “curate.” It is a defiantly encyclopedic catalog of our needs and desires, each and every one of which it attempts to satisfy. With nothing but a can opener, you can get a “turkey dinner in gravy,” “chicken shrimp and crab stew,” “saucy seafood bake,” “chicken and turkey casserole,” “prime filets with salmon and beef,” “bisque with tuna and chicken,” “ocean whitefish dinner with garden greens in sauce,” or a “natural flaked skipjack tuna entrée in a delicate broth.” And that’s just in the cat-food aisle.”