It should be no surprise to anyone that as a design company we’re heavily reliant on all things Apple. You can argue the simplicity and ease of use of Macs vs. PCs all day depending on what side of the fence you’re on, let’s leave that to clever ad campaigns.

One debate that I do think has some weight and is more relevant because it’s closer to home is the great “cell phone debate”. Yes there was a time when everyone didn’t have a cellphone, right down to your crazy aunt with the oversized complimentary Sprint phone hanging off her hip in a bedazzled case. Things usually come down to Blackberry versus iPhone and the Apple hype machine does an incredible job with mentions like this to keep the debate alive and perpetuate it’s “cool” image.

In all honesty Blackberry has a few major things going for it that should speak to a man of logic like myself. You can pretty much drag them across the ground and get a new one no questions asked instead of constantly coddling your frail touch screen, they have better carriers, better battery life and pretty much do everything that iPhones do aside from ….uhmmmm….having cool apps that impress people in bars and at family functions.

That’s enough for me.

One of our favorite blogs Nifty Living recently posted a great entry found here and pictured above about creating an iPhone/iPod charger out of Legos. It’s a clever idea and it doesn’t need to be limited to just Apple products, in fact I’d love to see the Blackberry or other versions just because it’s such a fun idea and the whole scale change of the charger presents a totally different design challenge. Maybe this post is a week late and I need to start thinking about how to turn those iced coffee empties into a charger……

As I stare at the empty plastic iced coffee cups that clutter my trash can I’m hit with a fair amount of Earth Day guilt. My 3 cup a day habit really adds up. I drink Iced Coffee year round which really seems to throw some people for a loop as if it’s the most insane notion ever. I always ask these naysayers if they’d refuse ice in their soda in the winter or would drink warm beer and that usually ends the discussion.

There’s always something more you can do and every bit counts so that glut of plastic was really bothering me. In searching around for a solution for these wasted cups I found plenty of obligatory craft posts showing you how to turn an empty soda bottle into a terrarium (which is never a bad thing) but there weren’t many useful ideas for all these cups. My coffee cup office garden idea was quickly shot down so I was going to have to settle for just standard recycling rather than a coffee cup revolution. I did stumble upon New York City’s Earth Day site which was packed with useful information and a list of events happening over the next few days taking place all over the city. It had completely slipped my mind that there were bands playing right in Grand Central Terminal, a friend of mine works with a young New York group called B.Y.S. who were opening up the event. Take a minute to check out the site, you might find something that interests you and stop by the show if you’re around it should be great.

One challenge that constantly drives French Bull is to find new applications for our patterns, colors and characters. Jackie had mentioned that she wanted to create wall art, it seemed like a perfect fit and working in a new scale. A few days after mentioning this we were swept up in the buzz of our trade show season. It was a total surprise to see some boxes arrive just in time for the show containing French Bull Wall Art.

Oopsy daisy and French Bull teamed up to create a vibrant line of wall art. We proudly present these items to you exclusively in our webstore

Event Horizon

British sculptor Anthony Gormley’s Event Horizon outdoor exhibition is currently on view and will run through August 15th. Gormley’s life-size sculptures are situated in surprising places in and around Manhattan’s Flatiron District and on a 26th floor ledge of the Empire State Building. The project is intended to raise awareness of how humans fit into the unnatural world around them in dense cities.

Check it out for yourself.

photograph by James Ewing ©The Artist

photograph by James Ewing ©The Artist

photograph by James Ewing ©The Artist