Link About It: This Week’s Picks

Self-serve restaurants, Martin Parr's advice, 2010's best inventions and more in a look back at this week online

1. Reserve Refinery29 puts their own spin on the recent upsurge of online flash-sales with the introduction of Reserve, a weekly newsletter offering an exclusive, limited-time deal on Refinery-approved shopping events, brand sales, and more. 2. Boxee Designers Explain Out-of-the-Box thinking Adding to the hype around the long-awaited launch of the Internet-to-TV Boxee box, FastCo Design spoke to the firm Astro Studios to learn about …

What Wood You Say

Custom wooden messages by Chicago artist Sighn

As if his ambitious ITSOK project—hand-cutting one million wooden ornaments with the slogan “It’s OK”—wasn’t enough, the aptly-named artist Sighn is putting the creativity in your hands with his new project What Wood You Say. For a limited time, Sighn will carve out your favorite saying or wisdom-nugget for a tailormade art object or personalized gift. Sighn put it simply, recently explaining, “I’ve been getting …

Ikea, The Book

Sweden's democratic furniture retailer unveils design secrets in a new book

Opening its first store in 1958, Ikea ranks as not just one of the most successful Swedish companies alongside Volvo but was an early pioneer in making good design accessible. Its hard to imagine modern living without the brand’s inexpensive, self-assembled products (and those mysterious leftover screws!). While some of its pieces have begun to turn up at international design auctions, the lusted-after Verner Panton …