Let me introduce you: Chris, welcome to Los Angeles

Howdy! I've been living here for a decade or so and I've picked up a lot of new info. I'm a slow learner. I'm feeling kinda friendly, so I'm gonna share: Metro Not "THE Metro," it's just "METRO." It rhymes with "assault" and "dead-fentanyl-addict." And "urine." It is...

the POWER of the MANDALA

Though rooted in Buddhism, mandalas soon became present in Hinduism and other religious practices. Painters of the spiritual craft were often pious laymen, who were commissioned by a patron. They worked seated on the floor with a painting propped in their laps or in front of their crossed legs.

the HAWAIIAN SHIRT COLLECTION: MAHALO!

Hawaiian style is all about ease and comfort. It's also about celebrating the colors and forms of this unique tropical, Pacific location. As with most creative expression, we always seek out the most profane, bastardized version of whatever we are are admiring. A few...

Amazon’s a bitch

It's presumptuous to say that I know how to run a giga-trillion, global company who outpaced Kuwait's GDP this year. I do not know how to do that. I also do not know how to launch things into outer space, deliver anything by a drone or how to even hotwire a van. I do...

the ART of INDIA

The diversity of the world’s largest national population is astounding. 122 languages, including the planet’s oldest language: Hindi. 12 religions. 1.408 billion people (est. 2021). 29 states. This pluralism nurtures an insane wealth of art and cultural expression....

the Elegance and Subtle Formality of Kimonos

The haori (羽織) is a traditional Japanese jacket worn over a kimono. Resembling a shortened kimono with no overlapping front panels (okumi), the haori typically features a thinner collar than that of a kimono, and is sewn with the addition of two thin, triangular...

Slim Aarons: passive luxury

At 18 years old, Aarons enlisted in the United States Army, worked as a photographer at the United States Military Academy, and later served as a combat photographer in World War II and earned a Purple Heart. Aarons said combat had taught him the only beach worth landing on was “decorated with beautiful, seminude girls tanning in a tranquil sun.”

CMYK, RGB, OMG

With the RGB color model, pixels on a digital monitor are – if viewed with a magnifying glass – all one of three colors: red, green, or blue.

print-on-demand: techniques

Print on demand (POD) has emerged as a game-changing solution for businesses and individuals looking to tap into the booming world of e-commerce. By allowing customers to order customized prints that are produced only when demanded, POD companies have revolutionized the way products are manufactured, distributed, and consumed. This article dives into the techniques and technology employed by these companies to make print on demand a viable and efficient business model.

MOLAS: textile design & political identity

“Clothes aren’t going to change the world. The women who wear them are.”

– Anne Klein

The Grammar of Ornament

From the universal testimony of travelers it would appear, that there is scarcely a people, in however early stage of civilisation, with whom the desire to ornament is not a strong instinct. Man's earliest ambition is to create . . . to stamp on this earth the impress...

the ART of INDIA

The origin of Indian art can be traced to prehistoric settlements in the 3rd millennium BCE. On its way to modern times, Indian art has had cultural influences, as well as religious influences such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism and Islam.

Artist & Author: Paul Klee

Klee has been variously associated with Expressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Surrealism, and Abstraction

Artist: Eugène Séguy & the pochoir method

Emile-Allain Séguy, professionally known as E.A. Séguy, was a French designer during the Art Deco and Art Nouveau movements of the 1920s.

L’ornement polychrome & Albert Racinet

Albert-Charles-Auguste Racinet (1825–1893)

next-level gift wrapping

Giftwrap has been around since the invention of paper itself, which has been around since at least 105 A.D. in China. The Japanese (and Chinese and Koreans) take their gift wrapping seriously. Like most East Asian arts and crafts, the level of attention and skills...

sashiko, kimonos & history

Textiles say so much about the culture in which they are worn and used. Clothing can immediately identify who we are and what our history is. One can tell eastern v. western, wealthy v. impoverished, northern v southern. Clothing also tells us about the society that...

color in THEORY

red yellow orange green blue violet indigo

Science might yet prevail

“Instead of dyes you could use the structure of the fiber itself, the same for water repellency, rather than coating it, or to make wrinkle-free fabrics.”

elephants | słonie | فیل ها | ਹਾਥੀ | 象 | փղեր | пилдер

Elephants create a stable environment. They're smarter than most of us. They can differentiate between human voices and they are also the largest land animal on the planet. They are, as a species, among a handful who can recognize themselves in a reflection. They also...

violet

Dynamite with a laser beam. This color is a bastard. Stone cold. https://youtu.be/Ya07OLVsiQM Violet is the color of light at the short wavelength end of the visible spectrum, between blue and...

indigo

indigo This is a tricky color to define. Not quite purple. Definitely neither red nor magenta which, by the way, does not exist outside of The Rocky Horror Picture Show‘s cast members. One of the most fascinating aspects of magenta is the debate...

William Morris

During his lifetime, Morris produced items in a range of crafts, mainly those to do with furnishing,[265] including over 600 designs for wall-paper, textiles, and embroideries, over 150 for stained glass windows, three typefaces, and around 650 borders and ornamentation for the Kelmscott Press.

blue

blue I’m biased. It’s my personal fave. And it’s deep in so many ways. It’s a very well-meaning and attractive color. It complements just about everything without domineering. An attractive lady or man who carefully escorts the more rambunctious colors, guiding them...

green

a lot to be said for green. Stable, smack dab in the middle of the visible spectrum. Normal, total C average.

yellow

yellow reckless optimism Wow. This color is a two-timing son of a bitch. Cheerful and sunny. Bullshit. Yellow is all about treachery, deceit and falsehoods. Yellow is juane in French (see: jaundiced). Bile is an unholy shade of it. Yellow is the kind of...

orange

orange Red’s buddy, Orange is a pretty laid-back color. No major disturbances. Kinda like that affable jock you knew in high school; a little awkward but OK. (Un)fortunately, its only real affiliations are the fruit and Halloween. Besides being a secondary color...

red

Red light is the slowest, biggest light wave in the visible spectrum

the thing we do not TALK about. WITH YOU. RIGHT NOW. EVEN. THE ‘MU.

Everyone I know is very secretive about their addiction to TEMU. None will go on record.

Climate Stripes

Admit it. It's fun to laugh at global warming deniers. Until you realize that they're serious. Design can be many things, but the thing at which it succeeds best is education. Professor Ed Hawkins (University of Reading) has created a graphic entitled "Climate...

OH WOW.

A masterpiece. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoFbHTrZ1O0&t=89s Again, BrandedSkies.com is awesome.

High Design

We're fascinated by airlines. Specifically, the airlines operating in the period of c. 1950-1980. During those three decades, something extraordinary happened: design and technology merged for the first time with audacious, striking results. Looking backward at the...

fashion is ENVIRONMENTALLY EXPENSIVE. Very EXPENSIVE.

LOOKING good can be bad for the planet. Massive amounts of energy, water and other resources are needed to make clothes. From the pesticides poured on cotton fields to the washes in which denim is dunked, making 1kg of fabric generates 23kg of greenhouse gases on average, reckons McKinsey, a consultancy. Because consumers keep almost every type of apparel only half as long as they did 15 years ago, these inputs go to faster than ever before. More than half of the fastest-fashion items made are chucked away within a year of production. But such rampant retail therapy costs the earth.https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2017/04/11/the-environmental-costs-of-creating-clothes?utm_medium=cpc.adword.pd&utm_source=google&ppccampaignID=17210591673&ppcadID=&utm_campaign=a.22brand_pmax&utm_content=conversion.direct-response.anonymous&gclid=Cj0KCQjwxuCnBhDLARIsAB-cq1oYxEVo5hCbcyps9SNVNujmZqgcSOe79OTnwTlN9HilD6gSLaMpR6waApeeEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

the GENRES of INDIAN ART

The diversity of the world's largest national population is astounding. 122 languages, including the planet's oldest language: Hindi. 12 religions. 1.408 billion people (est. 2021). 29 states. This pluralism nurtures an insane wealth of art and cultural expression....

a NEW SITE

Thanks for noticing our snappy new look! We started cgk.ink's online presence way back in 2005. We were interested mostly in the burgeoning field of ecommerce and what technologies were being developed to further that goal. "Developing" an ecommerce web site really is...