A snap of 42 Brompton bikes ‘parked’ in a space for a car.

PSFK had noticed that earlier this year that the number of the Monocle magazine video podcasts had declined and the lifestyle-meets-business-meets-travel publication had even experimented with video podcasts which had slideshows of images with accompanying narrator rather than moving image. Meanwhile the weekly and summer special podcasts had become popular and we wondered if the change had been made just because it’s easier and cheaper to produce audio than video content . In an interview in the Independent, Moncole magazine editor Tyler Brûlé shines some light on this topic as he discusses how they have taken the Monocle approach to [...]

Image credit: Getty Images, Michael Bodge/Flickr
Writing in the Guardian, journalist Simon Jenkins argues that publishers should learn from the lessons made by the music business rather than return to paywall media. He says that he viewed the evolution of the newspaper when he went to the Glastonbury music festival recently, and witnessed how people will still pay for the live experience:
The key must be to learn the lesson of the most tightly competitive medium of all: popular music. It has cast off its enslavement to recording studios and recast itself, almost in Victorian mode, as a mass movement for live [...]

Scottish whisky makers Johnnie Walker have launched in Singapore a $3,000 blend available in the mall of the airport there. The John Walker is blended from casks from nine distilleries, including some from the company’s hoarded stocks from long-closed distilleries including malt whisky from Glen Albyn and grain whisky from Cambus (both closed in 1983). The whiskies have been blended and given a final final maturation in a 100 year-old wood cask. The product is sold in individually numbered hand-blown Baccarat decanters. Martin Moodie, who has been lucky enough to taste the product, comments on his blog:
That’s not difficult given [...]

American artist Agnes Denes has installed a field of wheat on unused land in the London neighborhood of Dalston. Building off iconic work she produced in New York in 1982, The artist hope it will create a conversation about the use of land, our food and each other. The piece is part of a larger exhibit held called Radical Nature at the Barbican.

In the Guardian, Madeleine Bunting makes these observations in reaction to the piece:
At a time of growing anxiety about how we feed a crowded earth – food security was discussed at the G8 last week – her image [...]

While traditional publishers are struggling with creating revenue with print, digital publishers and other outsiders are testing the offline waters with well crafted publications that talk about subjects that audiences really want to know about. In this review, here are five examples where creative teams have decided to give it a go in a space others are failing:
The New Order

The New Order is published by the team behind street culture blog Slam X Hype. For their first issue entitled ‘Global Influence’ they spoke to artists, photographers, designers and other creative minds to try to understand why they stand above the [...]

Newbury Film Series, a nonprofit in Boston, has launched a webisode series of films that take a second look at waste. They spotlight companies like Patagonia and individuals like Donald Knaack who are innovating with the wastestreams of others. About the series, the web site says:
We live in a culture in which products are designed to be consumed and disposed of in volume. Rarely are consumers or manufacturers held responsible for the environmental repercussions of this model. As a result, individuals have lost touch with product origins and the impact of their consumption.
However, Waste? is not a doomsday story. This [...]

Fosters in Australia teamed up with the Taboo Group to create a beer based on the tastes of thousands of creative minds (and their tongues). Nelson beer has been brewed in Melbourne and is the product of user feedback. They held gatherings and parties and then gathered feedback from almost a thousand “creative types” regarding the look, taste, and possible names for the beer.

An article by one of the project team on Lost At E Minor describes the process more:
For the past few months, our Newcastle office has been getting stuck into the goodness that was the aptly [...]

Dieline points us to a photo shoot by Lance Wilson and Dan Becker of over 160 beer cans. They say that they actually have a collection of 2,000 cans but there’s no news about when they’ll release the other shots.

AppleInsider reports that reported stats on mobile web use show the iPhone operating system being used over nine times the usage of its next smartphone competitor, Windows Mobile. Relatively mobile web usage still remains low – browsing the web with an iPhone only accounts for 0.48 percent of the web (so far).
Apple Insider

The New York Times recently ran two stories that provide hints at the potential impact of the recession on the consumer mindset and their purchasing behavior. In Japan, the paper reports that the “economic malaise” of the 1990s changed Japanese relationship with brands when they changed their habits to make everything stretch that little bit further:
To better compete, companies slashed jobs and wages, replacing much of their work force with temporary workers who had no job security and fewer benefits. Nontraditional workers now make up more than a third of Japan’s labor force.
Younger people are feeling the brunt of that [...]

For a while, it has seemed like there wasn’t much in the New York art scene to really go and experience. Now a few shows have come along at the same time and our blog friends have been making recommendations. Here are four New York shows that have been highlighted.
Make Believe Maple Leaves by Chris Rubino at Heist Gallery

The blurb: For his solo exhibition at Heist titled Make Believe Maple Leaves Rubino incorporates the written word into a complex world of iconic lexicon, drawing from process-oriented sketchbook drawings created over the course of one year. Rubino infuses his creations with [...]

Fresh & Easy, the US arm of international grocer Tesco, has launched a Twitter feed in order to “stay closer in contact” with its customers. Through tweets, they not only hope to let customers know the latest news, deals, new products, and meal ideas – they also hope to chat with customers too. In fact a recent tweet responds to a customer query about product availability. Here’s a recent exchange with a customer:

songrytr: @Fresh_and_Easy I go out of my way to shop at your store but the stock has seemed a little sparse the last couple of visits.
fresh_and_easy: @songrytr thanks [...]

Ged Carroll has a post with some interesting thinking about the concept of local at the intersection of digital. While more and more news and information we receive via social and other digital media is becoming locally relevant, Carroll argues that we may need to take a moment to check what local really means. For example, how many of us know more about the neighborhood we work or play in than the one we live in? More:
One of the big things about social media is that it provides useful content at an ever more granular ‘local’ basis than would have [...]

The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, recently ran a design competition to help bring London’s famous old double-decker Routemaster buses back onto the streets. The original buses got replaced by long bendy single decker ones that fit the UK’s overt health, safety and access guidelines better.

The competition was won with this design from a collaboration between Foster + Partners and Aston Martin. The companies worked together to create a vehicle that was environmentally sensitive and accessible, reinventing a “much-loved symbol of London for the modern era.”
The press release gives some great insight into how the companies approached the design:
After an [...]