Sufjan Stevens

WE'RE SUPPORTING

Entrepreneurial 26-year-olds, Diana Hardeman, Pavla Mikula, and Michelle Truong have created a side business (they all have fulltime jobs!) of subscription service icecream delivery. For ten dollars, you can select from five seasonal homemade flavors hand delivered directly to your door. Sign me up!

WE'RE TRAVELLING TO

I’d never before seen a museum where the building itself is the attraction more so than what is exhibited inside. Built by Daniel Libeskind in 1999, the Jewish Museum in Berlin is worth a visit even if you are not an architecture fan. Read more

WE'RE WEARING

The mining and refining that provides the world with precious metals is also extremely damaging to the environment – each ounce of gold mined generates 30 tons of waste, much of which is toxic. Philadelphia-based Rust Belt make unique, finely crafted earrings, necklaces, and bracelets entirely from re-purposed and recycled materials. The processes they use to make their pieces are also environmentally sound, and they are shipped in beautiful, re-purposed glass bottles.

WE'RE THINKING

The Obama campaign was one of the most visually effective in recent history, brilliantly tapping modern marketing concepts and design to get its message across. The deceptively simple logo they chose stemmed from an amalgamation of a lot of different concepts the Obama designers came up with. Logo Design Love just posted all the different looks that weren’t used.

WE'RE READING

In the lead-up to one of the most anticipated and controversial Olympic Games in Beijing, Boston.com cobbled together a bunch of surreal photos from the wires that depicts the hyper-sanitized, white-washed, and quasi-futuristic city Beijing has become. Read more

Oh, ok, so now I’ve seen it all. Or perhaps, in this case, I’m not seeing enough. Japanese game shows are so much fun. Seriously.

WE'RE LISTENING TO

After getting lost in the quagmire that is the internet, M83’s Digital Shades, first released digitally in 2007, has just been given a space on the shelf in your nearest music shop. Before shooting to acclaim with Saturday=Youth, Anthony Gonzalez looked closer to Krautrock and Eno and produced this ambient sometimes beautiful record. There’s much less of a disco feel than both Saturdays and his first album, Before the Dawn Heals Us. Some might say it’s a bit self-indulgent, not easily accessible, and more of a soundscape than a pop attempt. Yet, like Eno, Gonzalez is slowly becoming a master of the perfect chord sequence, and the result is an interesting, often heart-wrenching, set of compositions. Read about M83’s favourite songs right now.