Saturday, April 6, 2013

Finding Design in Brooklyn...

Like that's hard, pshaw! It seems like every other store in Brooklyn sells fantastically designed (if not slightly overpriced) knick-knacks, stationary, and kitchen products. But here's a round up of some of the cool things I purchased on trip to New York last weekend.

First, every time I am in New York, I always end up in used book stores. Do I need more books? No. Do we lack used book stores in Boston? No. Do I always end up buying more while I'm there? YES. One of our first stops on our walking trip of what felt like all of Brooklyn was P.S. Bookshop in Dumbo. I ended buying a cheap copy of The Road which should be my next read, and I also picked up a few of these:
Decomposition Notebooks - Pocket Sized by Michael Roger Press, made of 100% recycled post-consumer waste, printed with soy ink, etc. etc. And even without the green appeal, they have the best designs ever on their covers. I picked up the ones above, a honeycomb and typographic map. More of their products can be seen here: www.michaelroger.com

Second stop ended in a complete impulse buy of these great postcards I saw in the window of a baby store:
 I had seen these terrarium postcards by Quill & Fox online before and I thought they would be perfect to send to my mom, who loves postcards & terrariums (two birds-one stone). They had always lived on my online wish list till I picked them up in store. You can see more of their adorable stationary at: quillandfox.com

Then we went to Williamsburg,  where all of the quirky things live. We visited yet another used book store, Book Thug Nation, a tiny space with an excellent stack of old mysteries and noirs. I picked up an old copy of Agatha Christie's An Overdose of Murder for $4. I loved the skulls on the cover.

One of our final stops was the Brooklyn Art House, home of the Sketchbook Project, which if you have never heard of is the contribution of sketchbooks by artists all over the world, compiled into an incredible traveling show. I wanted to live in this room, surrounded by all these incredible books:
You can pick a theme and the library will randomly pull two or three sketchbooks meeting the criteria of your search which you can then sit and go through at your leisure. Learn more about the project and their Brooklyn Library here: www.sketchbookproject.com