We live in the future: Google is now offering a service that takes internet users worldwide into museums, utilizing a format similar to the one used for street view. Especially awesome is the dropdown menu offering a direct view of each piece in the room. This is amazing, and I will definitely use it when deciding which museums to see abroad, but it just can’t compare to seeing a great piece in person.

I also have to wonder about such tools being used to plan heists. That definitely sounds paranoid, but I think it’s a valid question.

Anyway, to experience MoMA and others, visit Google Art Project.

“50 and 50 is a collective, curated project where fifty designers are invited to represent their state by illustrating its motto.”

See the gallery here. Not a lot are yet completed but the ones that are done are stunning. I can’t wait to see who they choose to design for Wisconsin.

Michael Beirut has an amazing essay over at Design Observer about working within the sometimes seemingly oppressive limits of modernism under Vignelli and how that impacted him as a graphic designer, for better or worse. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the positive and negative effects of working under such constraints, so his essay really reverberated with me (though most of them do- he has the uncanny ability to describe in no uncertain terms exactly what everyone else has been unable to illustrate).

“Working with a limited palette of elements leaves a designer nowhere to hide. With so little on the page, what was there had to be perfect. I learned the importance of content. Seeing Massimo design a picture book was a revelation. No tricky layouts, no extraneous elements. Instead, a crisply edited collection of images, perfectly sized, carefully sequenced, and dramatically paced. Nothing there in the final product but the pictures and the story they told.”

The essay, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mentor, Or, Why Modernist Designers Are Superior,” can be read in its entirety here.

I thought I was meticulous. Then I saw this hand-sewn color wheel by Peter Crawley. See more of his work here.

Yesterday was my first day at The Century House, and I still can’t get over how excited I am to be working there. The people are incredible and I get to photograph and design for one of my favorite places in Madison. Among the pieces by Marimekko, Blue Dot, Herman Miller, and Knoll, I have found bliss.

See the store’s website here. And take the 2 or 15 metro bus from campus some Friday or Saturday this semester to say hello to me and bask in the beauty of modern furniture.

When Pantone announced Honeysuckle as their color of the year earlier this January, my reaction was somewhere between “eh” and “ugh.” I like that they’re changing it up a bit, and I think by declaring a shade of pink as the annual hue they might start to challenge our associations of the oft-feminine variety. Still, it’s easy to see how “Honeysuckle” can sometimes translate into “Pepto Bismol.” With that in mind, I was surprised/excited to see a post by Apartment Therapy on fantastic uses of the color in interior design.

I don’t know that I am totally converted (and incidentally, honeysuckle is nowhere near pink in real life)- but I suppose Honeysuckle would be useful for a bit of pop, and it sure looks good with orange.

See the original post here.

Awesome packaging facelift for tights and nylons by Nordstrom; beautiful interaction between the imagery and the typography. I also love how the photos add a little more spunk than one would normally envision paired with those font choices. Maybe I just love tights a little too much.

Via LovelyPackage.

Hey there, loyal readers/subscribers (of whom there are apparently more than I realized). I’ve been working on this mix for the past couple of weeks and it’s finally ready for your grubby little hands. Or your clean little hands, or iTunes libraries.

The inspiration for the compilation was the setting and breaking of New Year’s resolutions and the motivation and wallowing that follow, respectively. Plus, it’s that time of year when the combination of winter blues and semesterly excitement are pulling you in two completely different directions. I hope this makes sense when you hear the mix.

To download + enjoy, click here. Happy listening!

Mad Men set photos by James Minchin III.

See more at BOOOOOOOM!