Hotel design from a modern art hotel in Austria.

INSPIRATION – Rembrandt was a great & significant artist, primarily of people. The Dutchman’s main quality was a magnificient play with light & dark.
Be inspired by these slides, thanks to DIOGYU on Slideshare.

VIDEOS, USA — Some interesting ideas from nature. From TED 2005. Janine Benyus speaking on “12 sustainable design ideas from nature”.
The Shells Story is very interesting, and there are opportunities.
Da Vinci got his ideas from nature. Many designers do.
Where do you get your ideas from?

COMMENTS — Airlines have been decorating their planes for some time now. Below is a slide-show from Reynolds on SlideShare. Well done!
The Trends. 2thinknow view.
Handmade, hand-painted, decorating mass-objects are key trends of the 21st century.
This is a nascent trend of modifying mass-produced objects.
Decoration & personalisation by hand, not machine, will be a strong dominant theme of the 21st century.
Once we were impressed by the modernist metallic sameness of airplanes. Now we are impressed by their uniqueness.
The mass-produced object is losing it’s 1960s gloss, at the cutting-edge. And has been replaced …

This morning noticed these excellent slides on slideshare, of creative workplaces.
Well done to Serdar Belbag.
The 2thinknow view is that companies seeking to become employers-of-choice, need creative workspaces as an element of their strategy.
What do you think? Would it inspire you to work in these offices?
Or is your work or dream office more creative?
Post the photos in our new flickr group: Creative Companies

About Creative Companies
Creative workplace. Employers of choice. Ethical corporations. Nice seats. Micro-finance projects. Creative Capitalism. Innovation Teams. Inspiring workplaces. Not cubicle farms (unless they are cool). Cool.
The places you …

VIDEOS, Youtube — These are just insane. Actually my last article about the BMW videos led me to find this.
Incredibly offbeat and unusual art & design from this Dutch artist, Theo Jansen.
The machines are almost animal like, yet man-made. Machines that crawl across the land as if they are insects, or prowl as if they are a hybrid between war machines and leopards.
These are original, unusual, and this video is well worth watching.
This is avant-garde.

COMMENT, Global — Sometimes ideas matter. And to people all over the world.
How do I know?

Well simply, the most popular ideas 2thinknow tested online in 2007 were also the most intelligent. Not more Paris or Britney.
Readers, I’m proud of your intelligent choices…

COMMENT, Melbourne — I have to tell myself this one sometimes. “Don’t give up!”
Some days it seems that myopia and conservatism stop real progress. Corporations are by nature conservative. Government doesn’t often like even simple practical ideas.
I know from your comments, you ideas people feel the same often!
As difficult as real change is, nor am I a supporter of revolutionary changes.
I believe in compromise, debate, multi-lateralism, dialogue and the primacy of ideas. I have seen them work well to refine an idea into a positive change.
(Innovation? It’s merely positive change.)
But …

The Big Question: Do you have a blog that is art or design based?
You can be a painter, designer, critic or follower of art… or a student.

This is a list of interesting, different art and design blogs.
I am hoping to get over 1000 here, so I will be adding them to get us started,…

ANALYSIS, Global: Web Media –
The media has the wrong idea on what YOU and I want to read and watch.
Wrong, Wrong, Wrong.
News flash for the Media.
People are not obligated to read /watch your media.
Relevance will determine if they do.

TRAVEL, Austria — Culturally Vienna, like Paris, is one of those cities you must visit for artistic and cultural depth.
Of course, many European cities have great museums and art galleries and hidden treasures.

Vienna has a secret museum though. Well secret in the sense few people visit it as tourists. If you are arts-minded though you will enjoy it. …

TRAVEL, France — When you visit France, there are some paintings you must see to complete your Parisian cultural visit and understand France, and the modern world.
As Ruskin said:
“Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts, the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art.
“Not one of these books can be understood unless we read the two others, but of the three the only trustworthy one is the last.”

Or why the Pen is still mightier than the sword!
COMMENT, USA & Australia — The modern world of business and politics run on words. It has ever been thus.
The importance of words will only increase in a world of information, services, creativity and increasing automation of the means of production.
It has been my experience dealing with governmental and business leaders that the primary separating factor between those who got the ‘good’ jobs, and those who didn’t was self-expression with words. (Remember I have consulted or educated people at all …

SATIRE, Global – I have noticed a new fad in offices I have been visiting lately.

Need to look like you’re into your job?
Want to look like you care?
Want to disguise the fact you’re lazy?
That a chimpanzee could do your job?

TRAVEL COMMENT, Sydney — Having retired at a graceful hour last night, I was hoping for a good night’s sleep.Not possible.

The nice view I had of Darling Harbour, was interrupted (like everything in Sydney) by 24/7 traffic.

TRAVEL COMMENT, Sydney — Tonight I am in the glamorous Sydney, in the Four Points Sheraton at Darling Harbour (actually the old Hotel Nikko).
After having spent my day in the not so glamorous suburban Parramatta.

A vintage article on coffee and inspiration from our 2007 series. How do you tell if you’re getting great espresso? And why is coffee so essential to innovation?

ANALYSIS-IN-BRIEF, Global –Tim Berners-Lee is the father of the internet as a useful tool, in the form of the Web. He was there at the web’s birth, as the picture of the CERN web server following shows.

If you want to understand the future of the internet, as a communication medium then read Berners-Lee’s book, “Weaving the Web”.

[ratings] TRAVEL COMMENT, PARIS — So here are 4 top Paris Hotels if you like luxury travel. There are many others, especially those of the boutique kind.
These are French people’s Paris hotels, as far as I can tell, and if you like a Marriott or other US chain instead stay there.

Just as it seems fast has come todominate our lives, the new trend of Slow … Slow Food, Slow Money, Tree-Changing is become more prominent…