I feel like I’ve just been relieved of a tremendous burden I never knew that I had. For serious, I am so happy to learn the story of how Trapper Keepers came to be. For those who did not grow up with them as a coveted school supply&#58′;

“Launched in 1978 by the Mead Corporation (which was acquired by ACCO Brands in 2012&#41, Trapper Keeper notebooks are brightly colored three-ring binders that hold folders called Trappers and close with a flap. From the start, they were an enormous success: For several years after their nationwide release, Mead sold over US$100 million of the folders and notebooks a year. To date, some 75 million Trapper Keepers have flown off store shelves.”

Read the whole story ̵ which I admit is somewhat unremarkable, but which I savored word for word nevertheless — at Mental Floss. Via Digg.

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Artist Diem Chau carves miniature sculptures on the tips of writing implements.

See more at her site. Via Potluck.

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Hustwit is the director of three already classic documentaries about design: “Helvetica,” “Objectified,” and “Urbanized.” For each, he scored copious interviews with design luminaries, including:

“Paola Antonelli, Alejandro Aravena, Chris Bangle, Michael Bierut, Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, Neville Brody, Tim Brown, David Carson, Matthew Carter, Candy Chang, Yung Ho Chang, Wim Crouwel, Ellen Dunham-Jones, Tobias Frere-Jones, Experimental Jetset, Dan Formosa, Sir Norman Foster, Naoto Fukasawa, Jan Gehl, Jonathan Hoefler, Jonathan Ive, Hella Jongerius, Bruce Katz, David Kelley, Rem Koolhaas, Rahul Mehrotra, Bill Moggridge, Marc Newson, Oscar Niemeyer, Enrique Peыalosa, Michael C. Place, Rick Poynor, Dieter Rams, Karim Rashid, Alice Rawsthorn, Stefan Sagmeister, Paula Scher, Erik Spiekerman, Davin Stowell, Jane Fulton Suri, Massimo Vignelli, Rob Walker, Hermann Zapf, and many more… over 75 of the world’s most creative and innovative people. ”

Because of the constraints of documentary film length, his movies only include a small fraction of the wisdom conferred in those interviews. Hustwit is now raising money via Kickstarter to turn the interviews in a book.

The final product will be a “high-quality paperback, approximately 400 to 500 pages long,” and is being designed by Michael C. Place. Find out more and back the project at Kickstarter.

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Highly entertaining images captured from The Stasi Museum, which immortalizes the paraphernalia and tradecraft of East Germany’s infamous state security apparatus. These shots highlight the Cold War era’s infatuation with hidden cameras, like the one below, with its lens disguised as a coat button, allowing the camera itself to be concealed under the garment.

Other examples include cameras hidden in tree trunks, watering cans and of course brief cases — straight up Sean Connery style. See the images here.

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“Have you ever felt like being alone in the world, without communications and the comfort of our daily life? Well I have a word for you, the Arctic.”

Photographer Jonathan BjШrklund took these breathtaking photos of the Arctic. They are consistent with the Arctic you see in your imagination, but unexpectedly more colorful, and about a hundred times more majestic. See all the photos here.

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This is a crowdfunding proposal to build a new kind of user-upgradeable phone made of modular parts. The concept lets the user swap out components as necessary, so if you feel like you want a faster processor or a better camera or a bigger battery, you can just pop out the old one and replace it with a new one. Similarly, if a single part breaks — like, say, the screen — just that part can be replaced, saving you the pain of having to toss out the whole unit or buy an entirely new one.

The video is incredibly well done and very compelling, though it does seem like an idea that’s too good to be true. I know very little about industrial design but it strikes me that there’s a certain na№vetж to the idea that a commercially and technologically viable phone can be made from a fully modularized, endlessly reconfigurable system of parts. Then again, maybe we’re at a stage in technology where a little bit of na№vetж or audaciousness is all that’s necessary to build something truly amazing. If the Phonebloks team can do it, it will certainly be that. Watch the full video.

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Ameet Ranadive, product manager at Twitter, dives into the conspicuous gap between consumer time spent on mobile devices and ad spending on mobile devices. In short, ad spending lags consumer attention, and mobile usage and behavior are the reason why. These are hard problems but they’re solvable — and they represent a tremendous opportunity. Full article here.

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