The Color Factory NYC

The Color Factory is billed as ‘an interactive exhibit that celebrates the discovery, serendipity and generosity of color’. Pretty standard stuff, then.

Each room is filled with something new, including a flow chart to find your own ‘secret colour’, a disco hall, and a giant ball-pit. On arrival you’re given a wristband to scan at various photo points, meaning you can leave your camera in your bag and focus on being absolutely ridiculous. One tip though: definitely don’t go on an annual holiday. Whilst it’s billed for both adults and children, the amount of sugar they supply throughout the exhibition means that if you’re two solo, slightly hungover adults you want to be as far away as possible from anyone under drinking age.

Below are some pieces I picked up that give an overall sense of what The Color Factory is about, and a couple of other oddities I enjoyed whilst in The Big Ol’ US of A.

Casey’s Rubber Stamps in East Village was also pretty high on my to-do list, despite literally never needing a rubber stamp before in my life. This choc-a-bloc, tiny shop full of scraps of rubber and blaring Irish folk music is so charming that it convinces you that you might actually die unless you own a misspelt ‘appreciat it’ stamp, which you must immediately use aggressively on all of your invoices.

I also popped into the Public Theatre, whose logo came from the brilliant mind of Pentagram’s Paula Scher in the early ‘90s. I say popped in, this is a little inaccurate - I ran into the reception, grabbed all the flyers I could see, and immediately left again, fleeing into an Uber. I was there for the gorgeous free leaflets and I’m not ashamed to admit it.