CALIFORNIA STARS
It was a match made in Palm Springs. Fashion designer Trina Turk’s vintage-meets-modern style is very much at home in the desert oasis—her first boutique opened there in 2001. Designer Jonathan Adler recently transformed the iconic Parker Palm Springs Hotel with his strikingly similar sensibility. So it was only natural for Turk to team up with Adler for her first New York boutique, a breathy whisper of the West Coast tucked into the grit of the Meatpacking district. The space takes cues from 1970s Big Sur, with an earthy palette of teal, lichen green, mustard, coral and brown. And Adler’s outfitted it like a rambling ranch-style house; it’s 2500 square feet of terracotta tiles, custom rugs and a working fireplace. There’s even a skylight—something not typical for a shop on Gansevoort Street, but an absolute necessity for channeling California sunshine.
www.trinaturk.com

A JOB WELL DONE
In this age of socially responsible design, how are we to decide what’s good, what’s bad and what’s just plain evil? The folks at New York firm The Green Team have taken it upon themselves to create some moral standards by which we can judge visual culture. On their site After These Messages, users upload ad and design campaigns, which are judged using the Communications Review Gauge, featuring questions like “If you created it, would you show it to your mother?” and “Does it contribute to society?” The aggregated results plot the campaign on axes that run from Heaven to Hell and Hack to Genius. A launch event at the Art Directors Club featured a real-life demo along with goodie bags that included After These Messages pillowcases … so you can reflect upon the day’s deeds as you drift to sleep at night.
www.afterthesemessages.com

HEAVEN SENT
It may sound like fodder for a madcap Disney movie, but the new book Come Alive! The Spirited Art of Sister Corita (Four Corners) features the legitimate adventures of a designing nun. Sister Corita Kent’s work transformed the Art department at the Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles into a legendary institution —Buckminster Fuller, Herbert Bayer and Saul Bass all made visits; and Ray and Charles Eames even invited the Order over to their house for a field trip. Sister Corita developed somewhat of a religious following herself; she was featured on a 1967 cover of Newsweek, and her work has been tremendously influential for an entire generation of artists and designers. Written by the artist Julie Ault, designed with care by Nick Bell and photographed by Joshua White, Come Alive! reproduces Sister Corita’s exuberant serigraphs in all their fluorescent glory—typographic masterpieces inspired equally by supermarket advertisements, bible verses and “marvelously unfinished Los Angeles.”
www.fourcornersbooks.co.uk

A CUT ABOVE
Hip barbershops are cropping up all over the country —it’s not unusual to nod your head to a DJ or drink a beer while getting a killer buzzcut. In Austin, Birds Barbershop went to extra efforts to make sure their spot gave a nod to the city’s extra-creative citizens: Joel Mozersky, designer of the Real World Austin house, outfitted the space, and they commissioned a 40-foot screen-printed mural by local artist Bryan Keplesky. There’s even wi-fi for when you need to surf the web while stuck under the dryers. With fashion shows, concerts and clever theme nights (a ticket to the nearby Alamo Drafthouse’s screening of the Will Ferrell movie Talledega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, for example, got you a free mullet), Birds has now become both a salon and a social center—giving new meaning to the word “blowout.”
www.birdsbarbershop.com