New York Times Gift Guide

The Cargo Containers are in the New York Times Gift Guide!

They are popping up all over the country with great retailers as well. Including museum stores SFMOMA, and LACMA, and one of the best design shops ever, The Future Perfect.

ArtBox

The ‘very nice bike rack’ was published in the latest issue of ArtBox Magazine. The bike rack is a self initiated project that is making slow progress toward mass production… Check out more photos of the rack on the ballou projects site.

Spatziba

Our dashdot friend and neighbor, Perhampus, helps run and contributes to this amazing website. If you have any interest in anything fun, it’s worth checking out.

Spatziba

Coinage

Our business coins are featured in the book “My Own Business Card”. It’s a collection of cards designed by designers for themselves. Besides our coin there tons of other great ideas. It’s awesome to see the creative explosion that happens when designers work outside of the typical boundaries. Here is a link to the book on Amazon.

Art In The Streets

Finally had a chance to go to the much celebrated Art In The Streets shot at MOCA. It really lives up to the hype and I can see the art history books from 2050 talking about how the exhibit was the peak of the ‘street art’ movement. This is the official cross over from sub-culture to pop-culture.

Barry McGee and friends created the most amazing instillation I’ve ever seen – a mini city block with so much detail that you can walk around 5 times and discover something new with every look.

A+D museum

Last night the whole crew dropped by the A+D museum to see a show centered around Surf, Skate, and Bike Culture. To tell the truth, I was a little let down, most likely because I had ridiculously high expectations. There were a few things worth the visit though. A nice interactive lighting exhibit by Electroland (I think), a concept architecture study that is a skate-able office tower,  a found object skate ramp made by the Art Dump, and a Warhol inspired installation of over sized household wax.

The highlight of the night was going to Seven Grand afterward. A whiskey bar in downtown with bottles of gold from literally hundreds of small batch distilleries all over the world. It was quickly voted the new official dashdot team-building location.

HIVE

This Friday will be the big release of a product we’ve been working on with the good people at HIVE lighting. There is a lot to share about this project in the days to come, but for a sneak peak, check out their website.

Cargo Containers

To stay inspired, I work on self authored projects. I’m happy to announce that one of these projects will be released by AREAWARE this weekend at ICFF in NYC. You can see the ceramic Cargo Containers and a few other personal projects at www.danielballou.com, and even pre-order them on AREAWARE’s website.

Good Sense

Here is a short video from simplehuman promoting the sensor can we designed for them.

Hardware

Here is a preview of some custom hardware that will go in the conference room. I will share more photos when the project is complete….