Office Snowball Fight

This year, the team at Barker Gray decided to offer some of the fun of a traditional northern hemisphere winter to their clients in the South who are baking in the heat of summer.

The ‘snowballs’ were made up of from studio waste paper. When unwrapped they revealed some of the unsuccessful ideas that didn’t quite make the cut – amongst other delicious treats.

The packaging was inspired by the English Victorian period and the charming imagery and language from that time.  In keeping with the era, the tub was gift-wrapped in simple brown paper and string before being delivered in bundles to our happy clients

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15th Avenue E Coffee & Tea by Starbucks

Repurposed and reimagined, Starbucks has gone back to basics with the launch of their 15th Avenue E Coffee and Tea store. The first of three experimental stores in Seattle, this Capitol Hill location loses the ubiquitous Starbucks branding and adopts the ambience of a traditional neighborhood coffeehouse. Completely gutted and redesigned using a plethora of recycled, reclaimed and refurbished eco-friendly materials, this old store is now primed and ready to play neighborhood host to live music and poetry readings.

Is anyone loving this as much as I am? Gorgeous....

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Black And White Whimsical Illustrations by Johanna Basford

Johanna Basford creates intricate drawings of imagined botanicals intertwined with a flutter of butterflies giving a traditional ‘Damask’ a contemporary edge.

She graduated from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee in 2005 and DKNY installed her ‘Crazy Botanic’ wallpaper in their Bond Street store in the DKNY &Wallpaper* New Designers showcase during London Fashion Week in the same year.

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Meta-Housing: Super-Sized Hotel Made of Stacked-Up Homes

This new hotel in the Netherlands has sparked a great deal of conversation by using the traditional form of regional homes and cottages in a surrealistic stack (some even seeming to sit sideways or upside-down) as part of a relatively huge city-central structure.

The Inntel Hotel, designed by Molenaar & Van Winden Architecten + WAM Architecten features 160 rooms and sits 11 stories high, towering over much of its surroundings and sticking out for miles around – for better or worse – from its urban landscape. From their overall forms down to the white and green facades, wood-carved decor and window treatments, the component ‘houses’ in the design were patterned after actual conventional structures in the area.

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Official 2014 Olympics Games Logo Revealed

We’ve waited—and we’ve even seen some early concepts—but today the official Sochi 2014 logo was unveiled in Russia.

"Developed by Interbrand in conjunction with Sochi’s own brand council, the new logo is simpler than anything we’ve seen in recent history. Stepping away from the traditional practice of incorporating an abstract cultural image (London 2012 excluded), Russia opted for an all typrographic treatment for the Winter Olympic Games in 2014.

Spelling out sochi2014.ru in lowercase rounded lettering, the logo is an Olympic first to incorporate a web address. Perhaps symbolizing the city’s location on the Black Sea, the letterforms in ‘2014’ typographically mirror those of ‘Sochi,’ somewhat resembling a reflection on water."

Read the rest of the article here.

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