NICOLA GINZLER

Senior Graphic Designer
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Astronaut Chris Hadfield Returns to Earth

Chris Hadfield

By Kate Lunau from Macleans.com: Hadfield saw space and Earth as if they were brand-new and shared his experience aboard the ISS with millions. James Blair/NASA On May 13, as the Toronto Maple Leafs faced off against the Boston Bruins in Game 7 of their Stanley Cup playoff series, the Russian Soyuz spacecraft was undocking […]

The International Space Station will get its own 3D printer next year

Two of my favorite things! Space and 3D printing! By Mike Wall from SPACE.com: A 3D printer is slated to arrive at the International Space Station next year, where it will crank out the first parts ever manufactured off planet Earth. The company Made in Space is partnering with NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center on […]

Brainpainting via computer frees expression for the paralyzed

Brainpainting image

By Nancy Owano from PhysOrg.com: Credit: Pingo Ergo Sum project Heide Pfutzner is getting favorable recognition as an artist who has produced skilled, accomplished abstract paintings with their colorful shapes in electric-like blues, reds, pinks, and yellows, Her admirers not only appreciate her art but her determination as a paralyzed woman who paints by way […]

Super Simple Negative Space Animal Illustrations

Elephant

By EDW Lynch from LaughingSquid.com: Designer George Bokhua cleverly takes advantage of negative space in these delightfully simple animal illustrations. For more of his work, check out his Behance portfolio. via Twisted Sifter

Macro Eye Photos Zoom in on Nature’s Complexity

Long-eared Owl eye

By Jakob Schiller from Wired.com: Long-eared Owl For years Suren Manvelyan has been making extreme macro photos of both human and animal eyes, and he’s just released a new batch of purely animal eyes that are equally stunning. “I don’t think many people suspect there are so many interesting structures in the eye,” Manvelyan says. […]

Ghostly Ship Graveyards from Around the World

Ship graveyard

By Vincze Miklós from io9.com: Where do boats go when they die? Sometimes they end up in vast ship graveyards, sometimes craggy, foggy places where ships have met their doom, and sometimes spots where ships are deliberately left to rust. There’s a quiet beauty to many of these graveyards and their resting inhabitants. The port […]

Triple-nested Klein bottle made out of blown glass

Blown glass representation of a triple-nested Klein bottle

By Cory Doctorow from BoingBoing.net: Here’s glassblower Alan Bennett’s astounding triple-nested Klein bottle, a beautiful thing: A single surface model made by Alan Bennett in Bedford, United Kingdom. It consists of three Klein bottles set inside each other to produce, when cut, three pairs of single-twist Mobius strips. A Klein bottle has no edges, no […]

Game Designer Creates Board Game Meant to Be Played Thousands of Years from Now

Hand with game pieces and board

By Spooky from OddityCentral.com: American Jason Roher has recently won a game design competition after creating a board game that no one is likely to play anytime in the near future, if ever. Called A Game for Someone, Roher’s game was made from titanium, to stand the test of time, and buried somewhere in the Nevada Desert, […]

Meet the ‘Glasshole’

Person wearing Google Glass bending over to take pictures of flowers

http://youtu.be/qGxLkaCdpLc By Dylan Love from BusinessInsider.com: You should watch this video, which comes to us via CNET. There are only so many Google Glass units out there now, but imagine a world where they’re even more plentiful than the smartphone — to not have one is to be less than whole. Then you might very […]

The First Image Ever of a Hydrogen Atom’s Orbital Structure

Hydrogen atom showing orbital structure

By George Dvorsky from io9.com: What you’re looking at is the first direct observation of an atom’s electron orbital — an atom’s actual wave function! To capture the image, researchers utilized a new quantum microscope — an incredible new device that literally allows scientists to gaze into the quantum realm. An orbital structure is the space […]

Laptop with thermite self-destruct mechanism

Laptop vs Thermite (still from video)

By Caleb Kraft from hackaday.com: Years ago we covered using thermite to destroy a hard drive. The idea is that if you melt through the platters, the data is completely unrecoverable.  There are tons of videos of people doing this, but they all have a similar format. There’s a hard drive, with a flower pot […]

Nicely done beginner’s guide to iOS design

iPad and iPhone diagram

By Ben Taylor from taybenlor.com:  As someone who does work on both the development and design side of iOS apps I find that many designers struggle with the transition to UI work, or with the different processes involved in iPhone and iPad app design. In this guide I’ll describe the deliverables you’ll be expected to […]

The Best Decline Letter of All Time: Edmund Wilson

Wdmund Wilson decline letter

Written by Tim Ferriss (Source: Crooked Timber) Edmund Wilson, recipient of both the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Medal for Literature, was one of the most prominent social and literary critics of the 20th century. He realized, like most uber-productive people, that, while there were many behaviors needed to guarantee high output, there […]

Oakland Artist Does Big Things for Bay Area Art World

Karen Cusolito welding

Spoiler alert: Karen Cusolito is an old and dear friend of mine. I had the privilege of working with her in the early and mid-2000’s as part of the Flaming Lotus Girls, a female-focused metal and fire sculpture group. A December 2012 Smithsonian Magazine interview with Ms. Cusolito is here, with many excellent photographs of […]

Why Social Media Is the Front Line of Disaster Response

Social media statistics in disasters

An infographic from Hurricane Sandy, but equally relevant in the aftermath of the Oklahoma tornado yesterday. By Zoe Fox from Mashable.com: Nearly one million people are affected by natural disasters each year. In the U.S. alone, some 400 people die from disasters that cost the economy $17.6 billion. Helping respond to these cataclysmic events, social […]

3D-printable food? NASA wants a taste

3D printer printing chocolate onto crackers

By Casey Johnston from ArsTechnica.com: Grant money goes to see if we can’t print perfect, nutritious food. Printing chocolate onto crackers. Not much, but it’s a start. SMRC. NASA has bestowed a $125,000 grant upon a research corporation to pursue the development of 3D-printable food, according to a report from Quartz. Anjan Contractor, who runs […]

Profound and hilarious poetry written by arranging book spines

Book spines: "Primitive Art" "Just Imagine" "Picasso" "Raised by Wolves"

From io9.com: The series Sorting Shark from the Sorted Books project. Pictured above: A Day at the Beach. C-prints, each 12.5 x 19 inches, 2001 Nina Katchadourian borrows the words she uses for her unusual poetry from the spines of books. She arranges those spines, book upon book, so that they form brief poems that […]

The invisible beauty of flowers – in pictures

Scanning electron microscope photo of flower

From Guardian.co.uk: Graphic designer turned artist Susumu Nishinaga has used an electron microscope to delve deep into the fabric of petal, leaves and pollen. The Japanese artist then colours the scanning electron micrograph (SEM) images using a computer – to reveal the building blocks of life. Part of the stigma (pink) of an Easter cactus […]

Is Lagos Home to an African Tech Movement?

By Monty Munford from Mashable.com: The Lagos taxi driver roars across the biggest bridge in Africa at 110 mph. Buffeted by the night wind, it feels as if we’re riding a motorbike. I am with two South Africans and a guy from Silicon Valley. We’re all swilling from a bottle of so-called whisky, including the […]

Neon Swing and Bird Cage by Su-Mei Tse

Neon swing

From Colossal.com: Swing is a 2007 kinetic sculpture by Luxembourg musician, artist and photographer Su-Mei Tse. If you’re like me you can’t wait to jump on for a ride, however it would all be over before it started as the entire piece is essentially a rigid light made of white neon tubes and controlled by […]

Mythbuster Adam Savage: “Work hard and work smart.”

MAKE Editorial Director Ken Denmead interviews Adam Savage

MythBuster and über-maker Adam Savage entered the San Mateo County Fairgrounds riding a steampunk submarine for Maker Faire Bay Area 2013 this morning, and then from his perch in the conning tower imparted his message to thousands of DIY fans assembled. Savage has been giving something of a keynote speech at Maker Faires since 2008, […]

“ok, glass”

Google glass with "ok, glass.." superimposed

The original Google Glass announcement left me stunned. I had never seen anything like it before. To me, it was one of the only product announcements that has come close to the unveiling of the iPhone in 2007. Just like back then, it was a moment so exciting that I couldn’t resist telling everyone I […]

It Goes to Eleven

Volume knob turned to eleven

Among the many great things about being with my husband for ELEVEN years is that I got to make him an anniversary card with this on it:

Street Artist Uses Graffiti to Converse with the Police

Graffiti on wall; "Is this shade of grey acceptable?"

By Robert Quigley from GeekOSystem.com: Street artist mobstr. had the ensuing conversation with the local authorities using graffiti. Judging by all of their white-washings, they were not fans of any of the several shades of grey he proposed. [Full article]

Eye-Poppingly Gorgeous Underground Stations from Around The World

Underground station in Rådhuset, Stockholm, Sweden

By Vincze Miklós from io9.com: Rådhuset, Stockholm, Sweden Rådhuset (Court House) station was opened in 1975 as a part of the Stockholm rapid transit system, one of the best examples of organic architecture.  The history of rapid-transit began 150 years ago, with the opening of the Metropolitan Railway in London in 1863. In the next […]

Going Digital: The Fourth Triennial Exhibition at the International Center of Photography

Shopkeeper Suparat Taddee, Chumchon Ruamjai Community, Bangkok

By David Rosenberg from Slate.com: Shopkeeper Suparat Taddee, Chumchon Ruamjai Community, Bangkok, November 2011. Courtesy of Gideon Mendel. For their fourth triennial, titled “A Different Kind of Order” the International Center of Photography focused on the sweeping influence of digital photography on established and emerging artists. The exhibition, featuring 28 video artists and photographers from […]

Wooden Pinhole Cameras Make Old-School Techniques Cool Again

Wooden pinhole camera

Digital cameras are great, but like most electronics, they likely won’t withstand the test of time in, say, a century from now. So Slovenian industrial designer and self-taught carpenter Elvis Halilović developed pinhole cameras that he and his brother make out of locally-harvested chestnut and maple wood. The ONDU Pinhole Cameras, as Halilović has branded […]

Smartphone Tracker Gives Doctors Remote Viewing Powers

Why It Matters: Patients with chronic conditions such as diabetes could benefit if doctors had a way to tell when they stopped taking their medication.

By Tom Simonite from MIT Technology Review: View full report: Data science and personal information are converging to shape the Internet’s most powerful and surprising consumer products. Here’s the smartphone technology that alerts a doctor when patients are headed for trouble. Tracking you: The Ginger.io app tries to detect health changes by monitoring a person’s […]

3-D Printed Ear Made From Calf Cells and Nanoparticles ‘Hears’ Radio Frequencies

3D printed ear with embedded metal coil

By Liat Clark from Wired.com: Nanotechnology engineers from Princeton have 3-D printed an ear from calf cells and silver nanoparticles that picks up radio signals at frequencies beyond human capacity. The creation is part of their greater plan to one day build spare parts for human cyborgs. Rather than simply adding electronics to an ear, the team decided […]

Stop Building Websites and Start Building Smart Sites

Smart Site

By Chuck Longanecker on Betterment: A blog for people who care about design: The mission of digital-telepathy is to make great design accessible to anyone by creating new standards that improve how people interact with and create digital design. From websites to mobile apps, TVs and beyond, we’re committed to making experiences that define the […]

Cheese Grater Business Card

Cheese grater business card

By Rusty Blazenhoff from LaughingSquid.com: Brazilian specialty cheese store Bon Vivant wanted a clever way to introduce and reinforce their brand, so agency JWT Brazil came up with the Grater Card, a small cheese grater that doubles as a business card. It’s made of light metal, and has the size of a classic business card…A […]

Sensible jumps in responsive image file sizes

Photograph of fish and chips store

By Jason Grigsby from CloudFour.com: Last year, I wrote about the challenges of picking responsive images breakpoints and how I found it a nearly unsolvable problem. It has vexed me since. But I have a new idea on how we might be able to define responsive image breakpoints that is based on a performance budget. […]

It’s Time to Talk about the Burgeoning Robot Middle Class

"Race Against the Machine" book cover

By Illah Nourbakhsh from MIT Technology Review: How will a mass influx of robots affect human employment? In the book Race Against the Machine, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee of MIT’s Sloan School of Management present a chart showing U.S. productivity, GDP, employment, and income from 1953 to 2011. The chart looks as you would […]

20 Inspiring Typography Based Web Designs

"Lick Me I'm Delicious" web page

From WebDesignFact.com: Typography is surely a very important element of web design. A website must have a good typographic that makes visitor to interpret its content. It’s becoming easier and easier, with better technologies, for designers to utilize great typography in their website designs. Few weeks ago, we have posted an article regarding vintage style […]

David Bowie himself Tweets to Chris Hadfield about his cover of “Space Oddity”

David Bowie

David Bowie Official ‏@DavidBowieReal  12 May CHRIS HADFIELD SINGS SPACE ODDITY IN SPACE! “Hallo Spaceboy…” Commander Chris Hadfield, currently on… http://fb.me/24sZNW5ly  Retweeted by David Bowie Official  View media Chris Hadfield ‏@Cmdr_Hadfield   12 May With deference to the genius of David Bowie, here’s Space Oddity, recorded on Station. A last glimpse of the World. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaOC9danxNo …

The New York Times reports on Chris Hadfield’s “Space Oddity” video

ISS against a backdrop of Earth and space

Astronaut Covers ‘Space Oddity’ From Space By Robert Mackey The Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, who has documented his five months in charge of the International Space Station in great detail in Twitter photographs and YouTube videos, celebrated his last day aboard the craft by releasing an elaborately produced cover version of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.” […]

David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” recorded on the International Space Station

Chris Hadfield floating with his guitar in the ISS

This is so beautiful. I am bawling. By Lauren Davis from io9.com: Chris Hadfield sings “Space Oddity” in the first music video in space Tomorrow, Commander Chris Hadfield bids farewell to the International Space Station, meaning we won’t get our usual dose of his tweets and videos sent from space. But he’s signing off with […]

Barns Are Painted Red Because of the Physics of Dying Stars

Red barn

From SmithsonianMag.com: Image: Loring Loding Have you ever noticed that almost every barn you have ever seen is red? There’s a reason for that, and it has to do with the chemistry of dying stars. Seriously. Yonatan Zunger is a Google employee who decided to explain this phenomenon on Google+ recently. The simple answer to […]

Students create promising products, trying to help solve world problems

Amanda Lu '13

By Valerie Vande Panne from HarvardScience/HarvardGazette.com: Imagine spraying the nape of your neck with a skinlike substance that keeps you cool as you jog in the August heat. Imagine generating electric power with every step you take. Imagine stopping along the way to pick a container of refreshing water from a tree. This is the […]

Remarkable Cave Houses, Including the Homes that Inspired Tolkien

Cave hotel in Turkey

By Vincze Miklós from io9.com: Forget putting up four walls and a roof; these homes use the stony walls of natural and human-made caves to shelter their inhabitants from the storm. Check out these incredible rocky homes, from ancient cave dwelling to modern house, to the buildings that may have inspired J.R.R. Tolkien’s Hobbiton.   […]

Review: Pebble e-paper watch

From boingboing.net: 69k backers. $10m in the can. But now that the Pebble E-paper watch is showing up on our wrists, was it worth it? With 68,929 backers pledging more than $10m, the Pebble E-paper watch is the highest-grossing Kickstarter project to date. The pitch, to fund an Android- and iOS-compatible smartwatch, was so successful […]

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