Here's a brilliant trompe l'oeil

It's the Fourth of July, a pretty important holiday in the US and I'm taking the opportunity to write something unrelated to the design world. Sort of.

Richard Wiseman is Professor of the Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom. He's also one of my heroes. Wiseman has made a career out of bringing the academic study of Psychology to the people, and he does it with a brilliant sense of humor and wonder. Check out the illusion he illustrates in this video. It's only a minute long and it will blow you away, it did me at any rate.

I talk a lot in my design practice about fooling the eye and making things disappear. I'm usually talking pretty figuratively but Professor Wiseman's being literal here. His video proves the point brilliantly that human brains, fantastic machines though they be, can be fooled. Remember that the next time someone sees Jesus in a Frito. Remember it too when someone like me tells you that he can make a flaw in a room disappear. If you know the rules, anything's possible.

On demand custom fabrics --high tech meets home spun

The girls over at Design Boner clued me into a contest being run by an on-demand custom fabric manufacturer yesterday. The manufacturer is an online-only entity called Fabric on Demand. The contest is pretty cool and I'll get to it in a bit. But what's really cool is the company behind it.

Fabric on Demand will print any fabric you can design in any quantity you want and they will turn it around in a week. It's a neat product and a really great service these folks are up to. They have taken away a number of the barriers to entry that other, similar manufacturers have in place. Typically, on demand fabric printers require that you submit a design drawn in a vector graphic program like Illustrator. There's a pretty steep learning curve associated with vector graphics and I'm sure that's scared off a number of people interested in expressing themselves through fabric.

Rather than relying on vector graphics, Fabric on Demand allows users to upload .jpg, .tiff, .bmp, .jpeg, .tif, .png or .psd files and then specify the repeats of the file. The layout section of their website explains the process clearly and concisely. Once submitted, Fabric on Demand will generate a proof. Upon proof approval, Fabric on demand will produce and ship your order within a week.

In addition to making the layout process simpler and more accessible, Fabric on Demand has increased the number of fabric options available significantly. Need an upholstery fabric? No problem. Need some polar fleece printed up? You're covered. Need a linen/cotton blend for new drapes? Done. The price per yard ranges from $16.75 to $31.50 and swatches of their fabrics are available for $5.

What's not to love? And speaking of love, the folks at Fabric on Demand have a sense of humor and a love of what they do that's infectious. They are running a contest right now to upholster four side chairs that have seen better days.

If between now and 4 July you get a wild hair and want to take a stab at Fabric on Demand's process, you can submit a fabric design for consideration. Can't pull something together by Saturday? Fear not. On the 5th, Fabric on Demand will publish a gallery of the finalists and anybody can then vote for their favorite entry. The winning design will win $500 and have their design reproduced and then upholstered onto what will soon be very happy side chairs.

The chairs belong to a real family and will end up in their home. To provide some direction (and to show off what's possible with Fabric on Demand), the family submitted the following four examples of Fabric on Demand fabrics they like.

Stay tuned!

Oh!

How do we feel about unmoderated comments? I haven't turned comment moderation back on now that I'm back in action and I kind of like it.

Don't fear the reaper

Don't fear him but he sure seems to be putting in a lot of hours lately. Rest in Peace Mrs. Slocombe.

Mollie Sugden 1922-2009

King of somewhere hot

I'm back after my all-too-brief sojourn in the Out Islands of The Bahamas. It was hard to say goodbye, but I know it's not forever. I'm going back to same spot next month, only for a week next time.

This was my sixth visit to Fernandez Bay, Cat Island, my sixth visit in two years. The lone immigration agent who works at the New Bight International Airport knows me by name and that's really cool.

Life there happens at a much slower and irregular pace, and yesterday morning I was up pretty early as I'm wont to do. Call me crazy, but I think it's fun to wake up early when I'm not even required to. Anyhow, the sun rises in that part of the world just a little before six, and I was the only one up. I love having the world to myself for a couple of hours. Having the world to myself in a place like the Out Islands take on a whole new meaning though. Although it's only 350 nautical miles southeast of Miami, it's another world in every sense of the word. All the birds are different, the trees are different, the sights, the sounds, the ocean itself --it's all completely foreign to what I see normally.

So I boiled some water and took my coffee supplies out onto the rocks to watch the sun rise and the tide roll out. I had a three-mile beach to myself, just me with a French Press and the birds and the fish and the millions of hermit crabs who call that rock formation home.

After a couple of hours, the sun was up and so was everybody else. I couldn't have been any more content.

So now it's back to life.

Many, many thanks to Melody, Franki and Kelly for taking over around here in my absence. They did great and it was a real thrill to come home and see what had been posted to this blog. So starting on August ninth, I'm throwing this back open to anybody who want to give it a whirl. I'll make another announcement in early August, but in the meantime, give it a thought.