So proud of the team at Quirky.  This manifesto video says it all.

Do you hate having to write artist statements (or find reading them to be funny sometimes)? This is awesome.

Each month Etsy features a new designer who they let takeover their Twitter background with an original design. They then do a Q&A with the artist and make the design available as a free desktop and mobile download. This month they are featuring beach ball typography by Aubrey Stalnaker.

With 1.3 Million Twitter followers, this could really move the needle for an up and coming artist!

Ckie (pronouced seeky) is an interntational funding and pre-ordering platform for product design. Yes, like a Kickstarter clone, but this time just for product design. There aren’t a ton of projects for you to explore quite yet, but they’re getting there. It’s not clear if this is a solution in search of a problem– because Kickstarter has plenty of traffic and works just fine, but we’ll see where this ones goes.

Update: I didn’t realize Takashi Yamada, the force behind Yanko Design was behind this one. That makes things more interesting.

My friend Ji Lee just launched a fun project! FOFCM (Famous Objects from Classic Movies) is a great online game for movie lovers to guess which classic movie a particular object is from. There are over 70 movies to guess from and the site is open for people’s suggestions. Check it out.

One of my favorite stores in the world (and certainly the best place to shop for men’s clothing in Vancouver) Roden Gray has a pretty solid online store I didn’t know about! Check it out for some of my favorite brands like Comme des Garcons PLAY, Common Projects, S.N.S. Herning, and many, many more! They’re also the only place I’ve seen that carries Sophnet in their store, the best brand from Tokyo.

Oh hi, I didn’t see you there. I was just visiting the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Afterwards I’ll be visiting the Palace of Versailles in Paris, the Tate in London, MoMA in NYC and The State Tertyakov Gallery in Moscow, all from the comfort of my living room and without the jet lag. Thanks Google Art Project!

My friends at Quirky (a company I’ve been advising for several years) are seriously on a roll. Products are now available in Bed Bath and Beyond. This is huge. Congrats guys!

Visualizing Friendships: This is a reaffirmation of the impact Facebook has on connecting people, even across oceans and borders. Beautiful! Important to note China (and a few other places) are mostly absent from this map.

Colour Lovers has a great post on The Most Powerful Colors in the World. They looked at the colors in brands from the top 100 sites and analyzed them– results here.