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Here come the tech-savvy brides! The wave of Gen Ys getting married in the last few years have made the traditional (and stressful) party planning process take a huge step into the digital age. Inspiration boards on Pinterest and Stylemepretty have become go-tos for young brides, and wedding invitation designs now come with corresponding wedding website templates. Enter Appy Couple, the next step in the modernization of wedding planning. The service creates customized apps for couples who want all their wedding info at their guests’ fingertips. Timelines, maps, weather reports, photo galleries and more are all integrated into a simple app the couple design themselves. And, of course, it comes with a free coordinating wedding website. Though still in beta, invitation-only Appy Couple has a wait list of over 7,000 couples.
To showcase tradition and classic style, K-Swiss has teamed up with director Jake Davis for a short film series concentrating on classic individuals who are passionate about what they do. The series started in Japan and profiled a renowned barista, DJ/record shop owner, the public relations director of Bedwin, and the owner of Globe Specs boutique. Each of the subjects discusses style, their business, and their own fashion inspirations. Davis and K-Swiss have started a series on American style influencers as well, starting with a short on Southern prep designer Billy Reid. The global approach to covering style inspiration and incredibly minimal K-Swiss branding are making the series a hit with Gen Ys obsessed with the stories and heritage behind products.
Culinary pioneer David Chang, owner of taste-making restaurant group Momofuku, is expanding his fusion empire to include a unique (to say the least) offering—bacteria and mold. Yum!
Chang has teamed up with Harvard microbiologist Rachel Dutton to create a tasting menu incorporating rare strains of bacteria and mold into his sometimes bizarre, always delicious dishes. Momofuku’s R&D may resemble more of a laboratory as they test out the fermentation process of many foods in their kitchen, such as beans, peas, and popcorn. But don’t be too weirded out, fermentation is a common cooking process. Especially in Asian cuisine where fermentation is essential to traditional foods like miso soup, kimchi, koji, and rice vinegar. So, this whole mold thing may grow on you…or maybe you’ll just stick to cult-favorite Momofuku offering Crack Pie.
The next time a friend asks for advice on whether to continue dating a terrible person, we have the perfect link for you to send her in response. From the people who brought the internet the ever-popular “Yo, Is This Racist?” comes the latest single-serving Tumblr craze, this time full of brutally honest relationship advice. Yo, Should I Dump This Asshole? accepts anonymous questions to help lovelorn people figure out what to do with their horrible partners. The answers are hilarious, and though the conclusion is nearly always “yes, you should dump that asshole” the site is still a wickedly addictive read.
Etsy shop AutumnWorkshop has done the impossible- convinced us that the terrarium design trend is NOT on its last legs. Their terrarium floor lamp is cool, innovative, and we want it in our living room AND our office.
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We remember our school lunches as terrifying culinary adventures, and it seems the problem of public school meals is a timeless and global problem. 9-year-old Martha Payne lives in Scotland, and the sorry state of her school lunches inspired her to take action. At the end of April, she began photographing and reviewing her daily school meals on NeverSeconds, a blog she created with her dad to share her project. Within just two weeks, Martha’s blog gained international attention and her story was covered by the BBC and The Sun. Other children from around the world are sending Martha pictures of their own school lunches to post, and her hero Jamie Oliver sent her an autographed book to congratulate her for her efforts on the front lines of the healthy school lunch debate.
Syfy’s new tagline “Let’s imagine greater” has morphed itself into a collaboration with Paul Miller aka DJ Spooky. For the campaign, the DJ creates “acoustic portraits” inspired by the geometry of nature in Antartica, to compare this “data record” with later records as climate change continues to reshape the arctic shelf. Spooky feels that this will offer inspiration, instead of the failed attempts at inspiring environmentalism through guilt and fear, to stop climate change. One of the final products is Miller’s Book of Ice, film stills and photographs from his trip to Antartica “as the entry point to contemplate humanity’s relationship with the natural world”.
Though we all know that product placement is a part of marketing and entertainment, sometimes we wish that it wasn’t just those big soda, fast food and booze brands starring in our favorite films and TV shows. Green Product Placement is looking to use their product placement background to get more green alternatives on the big and small screen. The firm works with film and television studios (like The CW and Netflix) to place greener alternatives on sets. Not only does the small firm already cater to sustainable big wigs like Pirates Booty and Applegate Organic & Natural Meats, but they’re taking their sustainable ethos and applying it to the way they do business; no printing, coordinating with their brands warehouses to ship directly to sets to keep their carbon footprint in the green.
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Louis Vuitton’s new 100 Legendary Trunks app is a perfect example of a luxury brand doing it right; incorporating their history and heritage into a modern interface, while giving Ys a taste of the Louis Vuitton archive. Well it’s, almost perfect—the iPad app costs a whopping $19 (making it the single cheapest item sold by Louis Vuitton)! We would love to see more brands incorporate brand lifestyle and tradition this way… for free.