I’ve been using Evernote for over 2 years (I checked. I thought it was longer, actually, since it’s such a regular part of my work process). I only recently started using it for moodboards. A tweet from @Evernote asking if anyone used it this way caught my eye, I responded, we emailed, and voila! My thoughts are right there on the Evernote blog as part of their Creative Series. Nice!

If you’re a designer and are unfamiliar with moodboards, definitely give this a read. They’re a powerful tool to add to your presentation/process arsenal.

If you haven’t tried Evernote, you really owe it to yourself to check it out. It’s web-based, but there are also desktop, iPhone, and iPad apps that sync to it, and of course bookmarklets that make it easy to clip and save stuff to your notebooks. I’ve used it not only for moodboards, but for market research, read-it-later types of things, recipe collections, shopping research, wishlists, idea lists… the possibilities are endless.

My new business cards. As you can probably guess, I had a lot of fun designing these. Notice how I managed to avoid using “consulting”?

These aluminum structures are actually for sale in Canada. Think the architects have been spending too much time with their iPod chargers?

You gotta admit, I ended up with one ugly shirt.

Don’t get me wrong. I love this idea. I love new ideas that use technology in some interesting way, even if starts out as something silly or useless. Reactee is one of those cool ideas. There’s a lot of potential here, but in this incarnation it needs some more work.

I’m pretty sure I first read about these shirts on Gizmodo. I immediately wondered if I should reserve the namespace for any of my various ventures (I like to make sure my potential businesses have properly named accounts on google, twitter, typepad, yahoo, etc.) After all, you just never know which of these new applications will stick.

Rather than impulsively buying a bunch of shirts, it seemed wise to test one first. I decided to go with my version of the LOLCats meme (my second choice shirt was “I can has 2 many cheezeburgers”).

When you buy a shirt, your chosen word goes live. Tori got one too, and of course we immediately started texting each other’s shirts. Sadly, once you get the reply from someone’s shirt, there’s nowhere to go. You can’t reply again – you haven’t opened a thread. All those folks who got shirts saying things like “Want to date me?” will be awfully disappointed.

On the other hand, I suppose a coffee shop, for example, could have all their employees wear “need a buzz?” shirts and respond with something different each day. Parents could have their little kids wear a shirt with “text my mom if I’m lost” on their shirts.

What else should be textable? Pet collars, physical mailboxes, your car (“the left lane is for passing, dude”)?

OK, I admit it. I’m a huge Bill Nye fan. He’s so passionate about what he does, and has so damn much fun with science, he’s just infectious. His web site is written in the same engaging manner as his show, and though it’s pretty and the content is good, it’s rather text-heavy, unfortunately. The loading screen, however, is brilliant! I love it when people do clever things with the status bar.

Have you seen a great status bar? Let me know – I’d love to put together a collection!

That’s supposed to say 2012. And the Olympic Committee paid £400,000 for this. Even the folks behind the logo aren’t committed to it. According to the brand launch site:

Available in four colours – pink, blue, green and orange – the new emblem is modern and will be dynamic, evolving in the years between now and 2012.

I never thought I’d utter these words, but in this case, I’d opt for creation over evolution. They need to start over.

Those clever folks at the MIT Media Lab have done it again. This I/O brush looks like what I think of as the kind of brush men used to use for shaving, but it picks up color, texture, and movement of any brushed surface. Sound amazing? It is. According to the Media Lab I/O brush web site, they’re looking into a consumer version.

What do you think a system like this would cost? I’m thinking it wouldn’t actually be that expensive. Existing monitors could be adapted for touch screen. There’s a camera, a couple of LEDs, and two touch sensors. None of that’s particularly expensive, I don’t think.

I’ll be in line for this, that’s for sure :)

typoGenerator! typoGenerator? OK, it’s a student project from Austria, so we’ll forgive Katherina Nussbaumer the unfortunate and vaguely menacing-sounding name for her nifty toy. (But please, Ladyk, please lose the gated entry to your site…). typoGenerator takes your text, does a Google image search, uses one of the results as a background, then adds some not-quite random text effects and colors to the image. You can re-render it changing any or all of those elements. The results are delightful – sometimes they’re very abstract (although that may be because “Jules Says” probably doesn’t return much in the way of image results.) Often they’re much better than I did in my recent collage class. I want to redesign this blog, so this was an interesting way to look for inspiration. I may just transform one of these into a banner. (Click each image to enlarge to 640 x 480)

Don’t let the similarity of some of the images put you off. I did a ton of these, and chose to display the ones that appealed to me. Clearly I have more of an inclination toward pastel/earthy colors than I realized.

I’m rather fond of the image at lower right, although I wouldn’t use something with a real person’s name on it. FYI, Gary Troup is apparently the author of Bad Twin (Hyperion), the novel on which the TV series Lost was based. Wonder why he’d come up on an image search for Jules Says?

I so want these lights! (From A design school project @ NY Design Week.)

I’m up in Waukesha, Wisconsin visiting my family. Both parents have been in the hospital while I’m here, so I’ve spent a fair amount of time at Waukesha Memorial Hospital. A couple of blocks from the hospital, there’s the most surprising home. There was a 675,000 gallon water reservoir that had become quite an eyesore. Judy Fuller bought it for $1,000 and transformed it into a beautiful home in a “South Flordia” style. Indeed, it looks like it should be shaded with Palm trees and and have a path leading to white sand and crystal blue waters. It’s 4 stories high, has 24″ thick walls (which would keep out the sound of sirens), underground parking, and a “plaza” on the roof. It’s already at a pretty high point in the town, so I’m guessing it has pretty great views. It has an estimated value of about $1.3 million. And it’s for sale. If I were considering moving back to the frozen north, I’d be very tempted.

Apparently she’s known for turning architectural atrocities into gems. What a great idea! Here’s the Before picture.