Haft2Know

The film Traffic, directed by Steven Soderbergh was on TV Sunday evening. Originally nominated for Best Picture that year, it lost to pseudo-historical bloodfest Gladiator. What's beautiful about Traffic though is its use of colour to invoke viewer emotion and amplify the perceived reality of each of the film's settings.

If you haven't seen it, the story takes place in three main locales: Washington DC, San Diego and northern Mexico. For the governmental scenes that take place in Washington, Soderbergh chose to film them through a blue filter. The effect is formal and a bit cold.

Scenes of moneyed San Diego were shot with a rose-tinted filter, lending them a late-afternoon, vacation photograph appeal - feels very California.

Finally, the parts of the story that take place in drug cartel-controlled Mexico are yellow - mid-afternoon desert yellow. You can feel the heat, and it's far from vacation sun you're feeling - it's a sweltering unease.

Colour does this on a daily basis - not just in movies.

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The next time you're lacing up for a run and Sir Woofsalot is giving you that sad "but I could come with you" look, you might consider looking into Fetching, Toronto's first fitness bootcamp that you do with your dog. Founder Sal Sloan says she used to feel a bit guilty, heading out for a workout while her dog Chewy had to lay low at home, so she developed a series of fitness classes for owners and dogs to do together. With a number of class options, and an expanding selection of locations throughout Toronto, Fetching might just be at the helm of a human/dog fitness trend.

Here's the link.

Extra kudos go to Fetching's very cool identity, developed by our friends at Archerfish Studio.

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For sure if James Bond's nemesis, Goldfinger owned an underwater escape vessel, this would be it. Innespace Marine Inc. has developed a series of submersible vehicles to resemble sharks (and a few dolphins) - the perfect underwater disguise. And between the mouth-shaped view ports and the fin-mounted camera, the only thing this sexy supervillain sub is missing is an underwater squid-ink smokescreen feature - well, that and a martini bar.

The link is here. On the site is the first instance I've ever seen of the word 'porpoising'. It fits.

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Poor pink; if it weren't for young girls, it would continually get a bad rap. Pink gets assigned to children's medicine, Pepto Bismol and even prison uniforms because it demoralizes those who wear them and dampens their escape-thirsty spirit.

Now a Dutch study has claimed that if your car is pink, there's a much lower chance (almost non-existent) that it will be stolen. This is because nobody wants your pink car - not even for free.

Dutch professor Ben Vollaard discovered that pink cars just get stolen less. He says that with car theft becoming a realm almost solely for professionals, the end destinations of most stolen cars are now Asia, the Middle East or Africa. And few people in those places are buying pink cars - or yellow or purple ones for that matter. So those are the ones that sit, right where you left them.

So while a silver car may be appealing - globally it's still the first choice for car colour, followed in order by black, white, grey and blue - you might ask your 10-year-old neighbour Chloe what her preference would be.

If you live in the UK, you can begin shopping for your pink car here.

Another way to get a pink car is to begin your career with Mary Kay Cosmetics who, since the 1960s has awarded 100,000 pink cars to its top salespeople.

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On display at NYC's New Museum until September is a series of three installations by Brazilian artist Rivane Neuenschwander. The most colourful part of the work is the installation, 'I Wish Your Wish'. From now until the end of the exhibit, you can submit a wish here. It can be a wish for love, or health, or the freshest watermelon you've ever tasted. Submitted wishes are then printed on coloured ribbons and hung at the gallery, (which is free of charge, btw). Based on a tradition from the church of Nosso Senhor do Bonfim in Brazil, visitors to the exhibit select any coloured ribbon they like. It's said that when the ribbon wears away and falls off, the wish will be granted.

Gallery link here.

Thanks to our friends at The Color Association of the United States who wrote about this beauty we couldn't possibly ignore.

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Curosity asks, "why?"
Playfulness asks, "what if?"

These are the first two lines of the brand values of Lego, who since 1932 has become the world's fifth largest toy manufacturer. Lego lives their values and earlier this year promoted a new level of playfulness in their retail stores by introducing a new kind of brand experience. With the technology of 'augmented reality', potential buyers of Lego products can now see an animated 3D model of what any Lego toy will look like when it's built, merely by holding the product box in front of a monitor. It's really quite amazing.

More videos of Lego customers can be found here.

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Perhaps you think a commissioned portrait of yourself or a loved one is a little out of financial reach, but sketch artist Benjamin Hammond wishes to prove you wrong. Hammond presents One-Minute Portraits, an online invitation to submit a photograph of anyone, so he may turn it into an original piece of drawn portraiture. He'll take one minute to finish the piece and then post it on his site; if you like the results, you can purchase the original work for $20 USD. While the artist is currently overloaded with requests it would seem, check back now and again for your chance to be immortalized in Hammond's uh, distinct style.

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You've heard of white noise. Often broadcast to mask the common day-to-day sounds heard in offices, or public spaces, white noise lends an aural privacy to an environment because it distracts the ears with a din that's steady, yet unimposing.

Have you heard of pink noise however, or brown noise? The site SimplyNoise.com offers a free generator for these colours of noise, so on the nights when rain on your roof isn't lulling you to sleep, this application will. No word yet on when chartreuse noise will be developed.

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Here's a viral ad for Levi's in which a guy named Mike 'walks' across America. Shot over two weeks, the vid is so good, that we're happy to do what Levi's wants us to do and pass it along.

A Google map of Mike's journey can be found here.

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In the 1940s, the United States Navy commissioned from the Electric Machine and Equipment Company (Emeco) a chair that would be able to withstand the impact of torpedo blasts to the side of the battleship that carried it. The Emeco 1006 was born - the result of a 2-week, 77-step manufacturing process that gives the aluminum beauty a life expectancy of 150 years. After a few appearances on Sex and the City, as well as being featured inspiration for a line of Philippe Starck furniture, the 1006 has reestablished its footing as an ageless classic, which has led to its marriage to another American icon.

Emeco has teamed with Coca-Cola to create the 111 Navy Chair - a plastic reproduction of the original 1006, made from the plastic of 111 Coca-Cola bottles. Available for order online, Emeco and Coke expect the 111 Navy Chair project to keep an estimated 3 million plastic bottles out of landfills, which is the beginning of an ageless classic of its own.

And with colour names like Grass and Persimmon - and of course Coca-Cola Red - we couldn't ignore this beauty.

Click here before this link turns into a good looking chair.

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