I am happiest when I have creative outlets or ongoing projects in addition to the work I do at Block Club. Planning and designing interior spaces is something I especially love. 

When we started to plan our first real buildout for our new office at the beginning of this year, we were fortunate to find a blank, open canvas to start with. It’s a one-story building that dates back to the 1930s, situated on the recently rehabbed 700 block of Main Street. The space is long and narrow, with a beautiful brick wall extending the length of the space and huge windows at either end. We would have to build some walls to give privacy in the conference area and a few small offices, so we installed windows in most walls to allow natural light to travel from east to west.

I was particularly inspired by all of the interiors I’ve drooled over while traveling in Scandinavia. The space came with some of the prettiest hardwood floors I’ve seen. We chose a very clean, light gray and white color palette for walls, doors and baseboards in order to accent the hardwood floors and our existing wood desks, shelves and work spaces. 

Move-in day came this past weekend and we’re starting to get settled in. There’s still lots of work to do, but we’re here, and most importantly, we’re working.

Check our album on Facebook to see the transformation and progress of our new space!

–Brandon

Mexican design studio Menosunocerouno pokes a little fun at the 2012 doomsday fears with the handsomely designed Just In Case survival kit. The handpicked goods from Mexico include one gulp’s worth of Mayan liqueur, a bite of cinnamon dark chocolate, and the basic essentials of water, matches and a small knife.

A clever exercise in branding, the Just In Case kit will likely not help much if the world is actually ending - that chocolate induced blood sugar crash won’t do you any favors when running from the zombies. But at least you’ll claim bragging rights for the best looking survival kit in those fiery (from the fire and brimstone, not your soggy pack of old matches) final moments of your life. Happy May Day! Happy 2012! 

- Maggie

                           Ask a Block Club Girl: Julie Molloy 

I am an eager consumer of the internet. I subscribe to fifty-something design, writing, fashion, food, music and culture blogs and a good chunk of my evenings, try as I might (not very hard), are spent with an Old Fashioned and my friend Google Reader. I feel encouraged and connected every time I find inspiring projects. I rely on the veteran cultivators of online design culture like Bobby Solomon and Bryony and Armin. Of course I am not unique, creative people of 2012 are able to consume so much, digesting the latest (literally, almost instantaneously so) brand new things in incredibly vast amounts at an incredibly rapid rate.

I think we often forget that we are basically the first generation of creatives working in this environment. And sometimes I can’t help but wonder what this constant churning through every breaking trend is doing to our work, to our collective focus.

So while I love the internet, thrive on the internet!, I have an alter-ego who gets a little overwhelmed by it all, who wants to slow the roll and craves inspiration that is a little less fleeting. And I think this is the part of me that has developed a tremendous love for something that may sound very drab and dry… 18^th and 19^th century British art, and the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites, especially.

In 2010 I took a three-month internship in London and did what lonely, broke students do: visit free museums. As connected to design culture as the internet allows me to feel, I’ve never felt more connected to the world than the days I spent humbled by the collections of classic art at the Tate and the V&A. It’s the drama of the narratives, the history and the mind-boggling skill—some of them enormous, taking years and years to complete—that draws me. It makes you feel big and small all at once. And with the Pre-Raphaelites in particular it’s their romanticism, their attention to light and color, their obsession with detail and facial expressions that really melts me. Their paintings are so inimitable and so alive to see in person that you are forced to actually stand still for a minute. And although they may not inspire you in the immediately useful and obvious ways we’ve become used to, they can inform you and help shape a richer context.

So to break up your internet, a few paintings by the Pre-Raphaelite John Everett Millais and John William Waterhouse, who painted in the style a bit later, are above, but I hope you will get to see them IRL someday… not sure old JWW would appreciate the benefits of “low-res”. And until then, here is a book I highly recommend, it was a great time in art history and their lives read like an improbable soap opera. These guys were young, audacious and interesting, and I swear this stuff is as worthy of your eyes as the hyper-minimalist Mad Men poster I can’t wait to find tomorrow.

- Julie

What is your position at Block Club?

I’m the Office Manager. That should be lower cased though, right? I’m the office manager.

What’s your favorite object and where/how did you find it?

My Jon Spencer Blues Explosion “Acme Plus” record. I bought it from Spiral Scratch after I got my first check from the Buffalo News. 

My silkscreened Locust tour poster is also a favorite. I got it when I saw them in Cleveland with Daughters and Cattle Decapitation back in 2007. It has the four faces of the Locust members in their signature masks imposed on Mount Rushmore with a big volcano behind them erupting toxic green lava. I got drummer Gabe Serbian to scribble something on it after the show too, so that makes it even cooler.

Go-to inspiration blog:

The Billionaire Boys Club blog for assorted awesome stuff.

The Kinfolk Magazine blog for assorted pretty stuff.

Your favorite childhood halloween costume: 

I vividly remember one year, I must have been 4, that I was Batman. The homemade costume came complete with felt details sewn to a black sweatshirt, high tech utility belt (also made of felt) and some sort of mask over my eyes. Only it snowed that year, so my costume was hidden under snow pants and a stonewash denim jacket. That one stands out.

This is probably my favorite costume of all time, though:

I recently stumbled across Loup clothing, a French influenced women’s clothing line, and loved their playful lookbook photography. 

- Maggie

Amsterdam saw the opening of “The Bank,” a Starbucks concept store, this March. 

From a recent Starbucks news release:

Designed to function as laboratory with a ‘Slow’ Coffee Theatre, hyper local design, floating community gathering spaces and in-store baking, Starbucks - The Bank is a glimpse into Starbucks vision to the future. […]

“With this store I was inspired not only by the role 17th century Dutch traders played in bringing coffee to the world, but also by the place The Netherlands holds today as a design and creative capital,” said Liz Muller, Concept Design director.  “My vision was to bring the space to life by celebrating local history and tradition while looking to the future by giving it a sense of theatre and discovery.”

The Bank’s walls are lined with antique Delft tiles, bicycle inner tubes, and wooden gingerbread mold, while repurposed Dutch oak was used for benches, tables, and the layered block ceiling (itself compsed of 1,876 pieces of oak). More than 35 local artists and craftsmen were consulted in its creation.

At 4,500 square feet, the space is indeed beautiful. I’m curious to see how Amsterdam takes to it - the New York Times recently explored Starbucks’s struggle to market itself to European cafe culture, and it’s an interesting read on the strategies behind American versus European consumption. 

French art director Emilie Guelpa recently created these beautiful Pantone-inspired dessert tarts for French food magazine Fricote. Guelpa curates the delightful French blog Griottes, and it’s more than worth a bookmark - if not for the gorgeous food photography, then for the fact that she greets readers with the ever endearing, “Hello, mes petits lapins!”

Pinterest user? Check out Guelpa here.

- Maggie

Jake Harms breathes new (aquatic) life into old iMacs with his kickstarter project, iMac Aquariums. When asked to throw out an old workplace G3 iMac last year, Harms instead took the colorful computer home, hoping to somehow repurpose the broken machine. 

He pulled apart the old iMac, installing lighting, a filter, and a special curved glass tank to fit the monitor’s shape, and his first iMacquarium was born. After a year of positive response, Harms has created a Kickstarter page, offering DIY macquarium kits in an effort to turn his hobby into a business. It’s a clever and beautiful looking effort for re-use, and I can’t help but think of those fish as tenants in a very swanky new apartment building. 

- Maggie