Vitra Design Museum’s African Exhibition

Vitra goes to Africa, the Indienet, a people's history of coffee and more in our look at the web this week

Design Indaba’s newly redesigned site makes it easier than ever to keep up with all things creative happening in Africa. Interest in the steadily developing continent is widespread, and even Vitra is getting involved. The renowned German furniture-maker is focused on highlighting the new generation of creative talent in their forthcoming two-year exhibition, “Making Africa – A Continent of Contemporary Design.” With curators like Okwui …

GPS as a Digital Paintbrush

Vitra goes to Africa, the Indienet, a people's history of coffee and more in our look at the web this week

GPS, it turns out, can be more useful than just telling you how to get places. Cuban-American artist Jorge Rodríguez-Gerada used the very precise technology from Topcon Positioning Systems (used by cartographers and the US Army and Navy) to create “earth art”: a gigantic landscape portrait on a plot of land in Washington DC’s National Mall. 15,000 stakes were set up as a template, and …

Phone-Free Concerts

Vitra goes to Africa, the Indienet, a people's history of coffee and more in our look at the web this week

Glowing screens at concerts can be annoyingly distracting and disruptive. New SF-based start-up Yondr aims to fix this by removing phones from the equation. They plan to give specially made cases to all show attendees, which will lock the device once it’s entered the designated phone-free area. If the user receives a call or text, they can leave the no-phone zone to regain access to …