From Guinness Consumption to Irish Ancestry. Eight Awesome St. Patrick's Day Infographics.

Below are Saint Patrick's Day related infographics from eight different sources summing up everything from Guinness Beer consumption to the luck of the Irish. Enjoy!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Barf Bags to Boarding Passes, EVA Air and Sanrio Brand the Heck Out of Hello Kitty Air.

If United Airlines turned the skies "friendly", then EVA Air has now made them "cute." Taiwan's second-largest carrier, EVA Air, and Japan's Sanrio, have collaborated for the second time to bring us Hello Kitty branded air travel. The two companies launched the first generation of Hello Kitty jets in 2005, but that fleet was disbanded in 2009, after its licensing agreement expired.



Then last year, they launched the first of the new fleet, the Hello Kitty 'Magic Stars' Airbus. Soon after, two more brand-new A330-300 aircrafts, The Hello Kitty 'Loves Apples' and the Hello Kitty 'Around The World' jets joined the Magic Stars Jet. Each has 30 Premium Laurel seats and 279 economy seats, an increase of 57 seats over the airline’s A330-200 jets. Magic Stars Jet flies to Sapporo and Guam, Apple Jet flies to Seoul and Fukuoka with the Global Jet serving Hong Kong and Tokyo.



White with the exception of green tails and the EVA logo, the aircraft are giant airborne canvases for Hello Kitty and her friends.

Hello Kitty Magic Stars Jet:


Hello Kitty Around The World Jet:


Hello Kitty Loves Apples Jet:



The cute exterior graphics on the jets are only a small part of the enormous branding project. From the actual boarding gate in Taiwan's airport to the ticket kiosks, everything related to the experience is branded with the cute mouthless cartoon kitty.


above: Even the gate at the airport is entirely Hello Kitty-ed out.


above: new Hello Kitty Kiosks for Eva Air tickets and boarding passes

Flight attendants, headrests, in flight programming and pillows all have the popular Sanrio character upon them in some manner:








All the meals, regardless of class or jet, are branded with Hello Kitty:





On board the plane over 100 in-flight items are specially designed with the Hello Kitty motif - including headrest covers, tissues, paper cups, utensils, milk bottles, snacks, soap dispensers, hand lotion, meals, ice cream, flight attendant aprons... even the barf bags.


above: Attendant aprons, ice cream, snacks and branded barf bags


above: The soaps and lotions on the flights are branded Hello Kitty


above: Hello Kitty branded menus, food trays, chopstix and utensils


above: Hello Kitty branded luggage tags, tickets and boarding passes

Passengers can also purchase limited edition duty-free products, such as Hello Kitty-shaped pasta, miniature plane models, and the flight attendant Hello Kitty aprons.


above: Sanrio duty free store in Madrid airport.


above: Models of EVA Air's Hello Kitty Fleet are available for purchase in their online store

Fans can check Hello Kitty Jet flight schedules, details of the latest travel packages and more on the dedicated website (in Chinese, Korean and Japanese only).



They can also download Hello Kitty Jet wallpaper and keep up-to-date on availability of Hello Kitty duty-free items. As a special bonus, the website features The Story of Logojets video about the origin of EVA’s popular Hello Kitty Jets.

EVA Air Hello Kitty

images and info courtesy of EVA air, limcorp and CNNgo

Remembering Eva Zeisel 1906-2012. Her Life and Her Work.

The world lost a legend on December 30th when Eva Zeisel died at the age of 105. In honor of her passing, I am reprinting a post I wrote on her amazing life and work in April of 2010.


above: Eva Zeisel, 2009, photos courtesy of Talisman Photo

103 year old Eva Zeisel continues to amaze. The Hungarian born designer just doesn't stop. In addition to being an enormous talent, she has a life story as interesting as her work.

She was born Eva Amalia Stricker on November 13th to Alexander and Laura Polanyi Stricker. At the age of 17 she enrolled in the Royal Academy Of Fine Arts, intent on becoming a painter, but was convinced by her mother to try a trade at which she could earn money. She then began apprenticing as a potter. In 1925, she started her own pottery on her family estate. In 1927 she moved to Hamburg Germany, where she worked at Hansa Kunstkeramic for 6 months.

In 1932, she visited Russia for the first time. She worked at the Lomonosov Manufactory designing dinnerware and at the Artistic Laboratory of the Lomonosov State Porcelain Factory (the former Imperial Porcelain Factory) in Leningrad.



By 1935 she was the artistic director of the Glass and China Industries in Moscow, Russia. It was soon after, in 1936, that the talented Stricker was falsely accused of being part of a conspiracy to kill Josef Stalin and imprisoned in Russia for 16 months, 12 of which were spent in solitary confinement.

Upon her 1937 release from prison (without explanation), she was put on a train to Vienna where she was met by relatives. In 1938 she married her second husband, Hans Zeisel in England (her first marriage was to physicist Alexander Weissberg and was dissolved). Soon after marrying Zeisel, they both moved to new York.

In 1939, she created the first department of ceramic arts industrial design at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where she taught until 1952.


above: Eva Zeisel in 1940 with student work at Pratt. Image courtesy of Pratt.
above image courtesy of Eva Zeisel Archives

She then went on to design iconic pieces for Chantal, Sears, Red Wing Pottery, Hall China Company, Watt Pottery, H. Heisey and more. You can still find many of her vintage pieces at the Orange Chicken Gallery.

At the impressive age of 103, she is still actively designing. She has current collections of ceramics and silk-screened prints for Klein Reid, Classic Century ceramics and One O One earthenware for Royal Stafford, the re-issued Granit collection for Design Within Reach, pens, pen holder and card holder designs for Acme, hand blown glassware collections for Gumps , glassware, aluminum and more for Nambé, exclusive China pieces for various galleries, and a furniture line, and most recently a collection of three Tibetan wool rugs for The Rug Company.



above photos courtesy of Talisman photo and the Brooklyn Museum

Eve Zeisel Glassware for Gumps:


Exclusives for the Neue gallerie:
Fine bone china Baby feeder:

Porcelain painted Icebox pitchers:


Eva Zeisel for Royal Stafford


A coffee set she designed in 1940:

One O One:


Eva Zeisel for Klein Reid:



Eva Zeisel for Nambé:




Eva Zeisel Glassware for Bombay Sapphire:


Designed in early 2001, the Centennial Set consists of six impressively scaled celebratory goblets inspired by Eva's martini glass designed exclusively for the Bombay Sapphire's promotional campaign. Individually hand-blown by master craftsmen, these elegant works of art are made of the highest quality glass.

Eva Zeisel Originals (furniture and more):





Eva Zeisel for Design Within Reach:

Granit tableware:


Eve Zeisel For The Rug Company:

Fish and Lacy X:



Her work is included in the permanent collections of museums worldwide, including MoMA, the Met and the V&A. In 2005, she was awarded the National Design Award for Lifetime Achievement by the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York.

The Wall Street Journal has a nice little interview with Eva Zeisel here.

Special thanks to the Eva Zeisel forum for additional information and links.

Eva Zeisel Books, Dinnerware and More