Thursday, December 17, 2009

Collecting Luxury


































There is an old desire of mine to collect luxury items of contemplation. The idea just came back to me today as I was looking through some websites to get inspiration for art.

I just stumble upon this Veuve Clicquot champage and packaging that I've had my sights on, but which gradually faded into the back of my mind over the years. The packaging is a collaboration between the wine maker and Italian luxury boat manufacturer Riva. There are three versions of packaging ranging from the $80,000 custom set to the $130 single bottle, all exquisitely hand-crafted by the artisans at Riva.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Interesting website

This is a site I came across the other day. Just thought I'd share...

http://dreams.honda.com

Monday, October 19, 2009

Certainly...

I have been at work for some time trying to put a design consultancy together. But as I am realizing lately, it is something that is putting itself together instead of the other way around. As time goes by it's becoming clear that all the things I am doing, from my ideas and actions to the things happening around me in me personally and professionally, have been leading me (in however chaotic a manner it might appear in the moment) to the realization of my own deep seeded aspirations.

One example of that is what just dawned on me this morning. Allow me to elaborate.

As I was working on the design consultancy's web site. The big idea of the website is to define service design and its benefits, and hopefully in the process attract patrons. The main purpose of service design is to take a deep look at business service offerings, end-users, and business models then improve the entire process through asking the hard honest questions, and devising truer user experiences to fit the offerings into. So this is about TRUTH, once we strip away all the complexity. Truth in people's interactions with products and services, thus with the organizations (business or otherwise) that offer those products and services.

My entire life I have been the kind that has always needed to get to the bottom of things, cut through the fluff, and strip things down to their essence. I have always been on the quest for "truth", and this quest have obviously led me to service design or more specifically design thinking—the framework within which service design functions.

The point is, my journey up to now has been tailor-made to what my true aspiration of finding truth in everything has been all along. And the world is now inevitably moving in that direction, which couldn't be a better timing. Service design is gaining tremendous popularity because the world is moving into an era of truth. This is shown in everything that is gaining in popularity these days. Social networking is about direct interaction (even if it is in reality an illusion of direct interaction), ad agencies are increasingly embracing the use of "real" faces, instead of perfect looking models, consumers are demanding more transparency in everything, a reality that Obama has responded to with the transparent government initiative, and many other examples I don't have enough room on this blog to site.

Friday, September 25, 2009

Hello World!

This my first attempt at putting a blog together. I have been meaning to do this for a few years and now I am finally jumping in.
This blog serves as a gathering place for my personal thoughts, discoveries, and aspirations. Thus the name of the blog, AMALGAMOI. This name is composed of "amalgam" and "moi". I'll leave it to you to deduce the meaning of it.
In this blog I will talk about things that are influencing my life, such as books, art, design, fashion, cars, philosophy, and all other things that I cannot think of at this time.
I hope you enjoy sharing these things with me, and by all means feel free to post comments, opinions, critiques, and whatever else you deem necessary (as long as it is all kept polite and PG-rated).