Red Pepper Flakes. A blog by Imelda Suriato

Trek STAGES

So Lance Armstrong finished 3rd at Tour de France (after 3.5 years of retirement!). What caught my attention is the beautiful custom Trek bikes he rode. So I checked out Trek.com and found out about this beautiful effort Nike and Lance’s Live Strong put forward: STAGES.

On Trek side (Lance’s been on Trek for-like-ever), there are 6 custom-designed bikes by artists (KAWS, Kenny Scharf, Shepard Fairey, Marc Newson, Yoshitomo Nara and Damien Hirst) to be auctioned on Oct. 2nd in NYC, with proceeds going directly to The Lance Armstrong Foundation to help fund outreach, awareness, research and advocacy. Very cool!

My favorite is Kenny Scharf’s (with it’s red & blue speed demons). Damien Hirst’s uses real butterflies (!) from the frame down to the rims. Seriously? Butterfly is symbolic and all that, but really, real butterflies because you can’t recreate it with paint, metal, foil, etc.?? It’s also kinda girly for Lance so overall impression on Hirst’s bike: Meh!

This Ad Cost Nothing

Salvation Army “This Ad Cost Nothing” campaign is great and costs nothing, seriously. Fifty local businesses offered whatever space they could (counter space, boxes, cars, windows) to make this campaign successful and, more importantly, meaningful: Do something good with less.

The dirty car window one reminds me of the last chapters of Matt Beaumont’s novel “E.” Hilarious!

Visual Search Engines

Lookie here: Spezify, a cool visual search engine. I like how the results are immediately popping up and displayed in a sort of JQuery-like mix-match boxes. There doesn’t seem to be a clear reason for the layout and I’m a little disappointed by is the thinness of the results. Doesn’t seem to yield as much as I’d like it to.

Yes, I did write “Engines” on the title because I’m still really liking Viewzi‘s Google Timeline (or Cronotron). Continue reading…

Jennifer Daniel Dot Com

Coolest URL I’ve come across in a very long time: http://httpcolonforwardslashforwardslashwwwdotjenniferdanieldotcom.com

Why? Because “Jennifer Daniel Dot Com Was Taken” as the <title> suggests. Hillarious! I’m borrowing her ant.

Digital Confetti

Digital Confetti is an interactive installation at the Metropolitan Home Magazine’s “Design 100″ party. Done by Rockwell Group LAB, which has done many really cool projects. I’m  particularly drawn to their kaleidoscope design for Maboussin.

p.s.: I remember presenting a client with a super cool interactive kaleidoscope concept last year. They went with another concept  so we shelved it. A month later I started seeing all these kaleidoscope designs popping up in banners, promos, etc. (Nip/Tuck season promo, Virgin Mobile). Hmm… I guess it was a mass brainwave moment. Would’ve been really nice to be ahead of the wave.