My life was connected to both Canada and trees long before I knew either existed. My parents named me Tuija in Finland, a country known for trees, forestry, and wooden furniture, where Canadian Tuija is the name of a hedge-like version of the Western Red Cedar (Thuja plicata in Latin). I remember it mostly as a dense, bright-green bush, flanking the thick natural-stone walls of old Finnish cemeteries, an evergreen and the Tree of Life to boot. Many years later, I chose to move to Canada, and eventually to the West Coast, the home of the Western Red Cedar.

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Three designers who are breaking away from the “normal” approach to design are Tom Gyr, Lil Yates, and Philip John Luscombe. Not content with following the crowd and just creating nice pieces, these three are proving that you can be crazier than Britney Spears with hair clippers and still create beautiful and intriguing products with a story behind them.

Product Designer Lil Yates looked towards OCD suffers when designing her latest collection made up of Checking Dice, Checking Stamp, and Symmetry Card. I’m not entirely sure her Checking Dice, designed to aid and reduce any stress suffered by OCD patients, met the needs of her brief. Inspired by cult book The Dice Man, Lil’s dice have been created to show tasks the OCD sufferer must perform, such as check the oven, while the second and third dice determine how many times the task must be completed. Does this help or hinder an OCD sufferer though? Does it add yet more things to be performed every day or control what has to be done? If the dice do fail the brief and in fact don’t help reduce stress, then they are, in effect, about as useful as an inflatable dartboard. I actually love these products as nice things, however, and believe that they show Lil has earned her place as one to watch in the design product world.

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Likely it is fair that we suspect most photographers carry on long love affairs with their cameras. Bruce Mozert, though, cared only to trick his. And by devious theatricality, great art was served.

With his coal-hauling business in Scranton spoiled by floods, Bruce joined his sis in the big city, where she introduced him to photographer Victor DePalma of LIFE Magazine. Suddenly Bruce’s course was redirected with a pledge to the image, and he took up an apprenticeship with DePalma. When it was discovered that the novice had real talent, he was sent out on assignment, covering beauty pageants, sporting events, even the Hindenburg disaster.

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Before I came to Buenos Aires, the good looks and canny fashion sense of the locals were repeatedly impressed upon me. When I stepped off the plane, however, it wasn’t the dapper dressing or the beautiful faces that most struck me, but the hair. Hardcore eighties fans will be happy to hear that the mullet did not die; it’s alive and omnipresent in Argentina. In fact, it’s so common here that they don’t even have a proper word for it-just your regular cut.

It’s only foreigners who view the mullet as a fashion disaster; for Argentines it’s a perfectly acceptable style. The mullet transcends class and age; you see trendy young things sporting highlighted takes on it, creatively shaped around the face and gently brushing the shoulders at the back, as well as the classic bus driver look, achieving maximum contrast between the short, conservative trim up front and the long, greasy rocker coiffure behind. Many girls also proudly model a female version, which makes going to the hairdresser’s a terrifying experience.

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Wonderful invention, the iPod. Thousands of songs, in your pocket. Music wherever you go. The soundtrack of your life. And then there are subscription services like Napster, offering downloads from every genre and sub-genre since time began. Not to mention music in cars, elevators, shops and restaurants, TV shows and advertisements, even while you wait for your phone call to be answered. Where melody, harmony, and beat were once an art, then a product, today they are almost a utility. Like electricity or water, they are ubiquitous.

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