My lovely friend Claudia Pearson, who lives in Brooklyn NYC, is an artist and illustrator. We were chatting during that cross over time, when one country awakes and the other is preparing for sleep, and got to talk about her new work. Pictured above are some of my favourite ‘alphabet’ illustrations.

We also got to talking about the credit crunch and how the homemade / craft movement is seemingly picking up, as people focus on their individual skills. I’d hazard a guess that Etsy.com is doing rather well at the moment. Has anyone seen evidence of this, more markets, more craft websites, Etsy accounts, other than mine and Claudia’s hunch?

To see more of Claudia’s ‘alphabet’ work (S is for Scooter, C is for Chopper) visit her Etsy shop.
…and continuing the theme check out her illustrated book, Tribal Alphabet, on Amazon.

Can’t figure out what to have for dinner? Hugo Liu, a graduate student at M.I.T.’s Media Lab, has developed a “smart” cookbook that can recommend a dish on the basis of some of the tastes and emotions commonly associated with it.

Synesthetic Recipes, a searchable computer database of 60,000 recipes, can’t actually read your mind, but it comes close. In the manner of a conventional cookbook, it is indexed according to 5,000 ingredients and 400 cooking procedures. But it can also be searched according to terms that range from the descriptive (“silky”) and the playful (“aha”) to the referential (“Popeye”) and the temperamental (“brooding”). Looking for something that’s “exotic” and “melodic” and “citrusy”? The cookbook suggests barbecued pork ribs with a currant glaze or jackfruit pudding.

Read the whole article on the Synesthetic Cookbook, at The New York Times

Over the years, Tom has observed a number of roles that people can play in an organization to foster innovation and new ideas while offering an effective counter to naysayers. Among these approaches are the Anthropologist, the person who goes into the field to see how customers use and respond to products, to come up with new innovations; the Cross-Pollinator, who mixes and matches ideas, widely disparate people, and technologies to create new ideas that can drive growth; and the Hurdler, who instantly looks for ways to overcome the limits and challenges to any situation.

But go follow the link and tell me what you think, cause my reading list means I’m way away from this…