Filed under: Design
Found this in the big book shop in town and didn’t know they had published a book of the acme novelty stuff. It is marvellous, one of those books that you see something new every time you pick it up and open it. Great.
—————————————————————————
Great book about the equally great Dutch designer Tord Boontje. Some nice print finishing inside and even more nice work shown. Good insight into his working methods and processes. Well worth a dip.
—————————————————————————
I’ve always been a fan of mutabor and bought a few of their “super magazines” a few years ago. Their style is good fun, with a bit of a sense of humour where needed but a strong visual language of their own to give impact and strength. Defo buy this one!
Just in case anyone missed it, the US launch of the iPhone was yesterday. It might have slipped under your radar as it hasn’t been covered much by the TV/Radio/newspapers and more surprisingly, the internet.
Keeping you informed cos I’m not cynical in any way, whatsoever.
Filed under: stuff
Sometimes things are too strange for words, but when you come across this you just have to look twice.
On first glance, this piece of inflatable plastic is a replica of the legendary defender Ben Wallace is intended to make youngsters shoot baskets better, thus gaining entry to the elite group of jocks at their local school and in turn, increase their chances with Mary-Jane Rottencrotch, cheerleading captain at that self same school.
I can see the benefits of such a device, having played sport at a young age myself, dribbling a ball around a bunch of cut out ply-wood defenders helped my skills no end. In that respect well done to the company who make these, you are helping kids improve their abilities and that is highly commendable.
But, and here is the second glance or “double take” that I then realised. I can’t help seeing a million middle aged, middle america dwelling, prim and proper women, cornerstones of their PTA or church group, keeling over in shock when they received the list of gifts that their beloved little boy wished to get that year, imagine if you will:
Dear Santa. I’ve been good all year, and in return I demand the following items to improve my life in countless ways.
1. Playstation.
2. New Bike.
3 Giant inflatable black fella.
If only the wide world’s interweb thingy could capture faces.
Stuff just keeps on trucking, and we are all a hitchhiker on the highway of life.
Check this out, this is great.
If you have a bunch of keys like mine, you will understand just how good this will be, not only for the fabric in your pockets, but for the unsightly line which it creates in your £1000 Italian suit. (Who the feck am I trying to kid?)
Simply by putting your keys into this one single device, you can slide the one you need out and use it as you need it. Like I said… Genius.
Until you have one key more than slots in the device.
Suddenly it is not so great. But, genius, it remains.
Design is the best thing since sliced bread, and sliced bread was designed by someone great.
Filed under: Design
Years ago, when I passed my driving test I wanted to get my hands on a Renault Twingo. They are not available in the UK so I was looking at getting one imported from the continent.
Basically I fell for the Fisher Price looking interior, with it’s huge dials for the radio and other controls. It was a breath of fresh air to me, I really wanted to get one. Then medical stuff stopped me driving, but I still think that those Twingos are brilliant.
Then I found this one. This is the concept version of the new Twingo, designed last year. Concept cars are basically there to make people drool and the designers rich, but what we usually end up with is a car which has 2 inch smaller wheels, squarer lines and much less flair than it’s designers’ original vision. This happens when the bean counters at the top realise that a good looking car with “features” costs too much to make, so we end up with a car which uses 90% of the parts from the last version but a new wing-mirror and an engine with 2HP more.
I sincerley hope that this car makes it unchanged. PUrely on the grounds that it is a good looking car, but with functional ideas put into place. Car design is a real area in which I fear that designers are beaten into submission by groups of suits who don’t understand what they do. Hang on, sounds like most design really. London 2012 logo anybody?
Embrace design as you would your own child, for it cries when you neglect it too.
Filed under: stuff
This has to be the best thing I have seen this year. Pure class.
I hated the original “Robosapien” when it came out a few years ago, thinking it was a purely cynical effort to get some harn earned out of chavs who wanted their kids to posess the must have toy that christmas.
This however, is a cynical effort to get my hard earned because I hated the original one. It’s worked. I’ve just pre-ordered mine and I can’t wait to get my hands on it.
I don’t know why, Robots are not really my thing. Sure they will be part of our every day routine in our lifetime. They will be all around us on the street, doing things we simply don’t want to do, but still I can’t be arsed with them. So what is it that made me just shell out 70 quid for what, to all intents and purposes, is a few chunks of plastic lumped together with some small servos and batteries.
In a word, marketing. Whilst I deal with that subject in some form most days, it rarely works on me, but this time it has. And I couldn’t be happier about it. Take my favourite cartoon character and allow me to buy him in a form that animates in front of me and allows me to replicate his bufoonery in the comfort of my own home.
Pure Genius. (The bastards)
Stuff is the key to our futures, embrace it, for it shall set you free.
Filed under: stuff
I will have to clear that headline up to make sure there is no confusion. I am saying, What The Fuck?
And I will add an exclamation mark to it. “!”
Anyway, stumbled upon this whilst looking for something else (it’s how the best internet finds happen, I am sure you will agree). What I was looking for is not important. What is, however is the horrific example of case modding that we have here.
This hurts. Someone has taken the time to make this computer look like a V8 motor engine. Well done, here’s your biscuit, now go bollocks. I am sure this is the same person that has one of the letter opening USB hub/alarm clock things from a couple of posts ago.
I am sure I will be accused of being a mac snob here and I have to admit when it comes to this sort of thing I am. I like pretty, functional things, especially when it comes to computers. What is wrong with smooth lines and great award winning industrial design that houses a functional computer?
Please I beg of you, stop it, you will only make something more horrific and hurt my eyes even more.
OK, rant over, and I promise I will post something nice later to restore my blog karma, but as it is, I will go to bed tonight and hope that Jonathan Ives is not reading this, for he would cry himself to sleep on his pillow.
Design is the butter on all our toast, let’s not drop it on the carpet!
Filed under: Uncategorized
It’s June. It is fricking June for crying out loud. I hate hot weather but in June I shouldn’t have to be putting socks on in the house. I’m watching the weather news unfold in my home town of Sheffield and worrying a litle I have to say. But that is another psot.
Being Cold I’ve decided to put the radiators on, (Gerrit? Radiators on…? You put the radiators on when… Jesus if I’ve got to explain it!)
OK, so this is my second favourite radiator in the world (after Joris Laarman’s Heatwave), It’s designed by Marco Dessi, a Vienna based designer and showing in the Cologne furniture show.
It’s about time we looked upward toward the sky and thank the lord for design. It is cooler than Jesus!
Filed under: Design
There are certain people in design today whose work makes every designer stop, say “ooooo” and then think. (The next emotion is pretty much usually jealousy).
Thomas Heatherwick would be the most cited designer/architect/artist/genius by the british design community. His likening, by many, to Leonardo Da Vinci seems to me, at least, to be more nearer the truth with each work I see. I hadn’t spotted this before, but this is actually a café which he designed for the town of Littlehampton in the UK.
Built in his usual style, this really is one of the most striking and possibly the most beautiful structures on the English coast. Looking like a huge piece of drift wood washed up on the shore, the structure is made of metal ribs – but you need to read the rest of the story yourself. Click on the image to be taken to the Heatherwick studios site, to see this, then his other works. Hopefully you will understand the awe at which most designers view his work too.
Design is the new black.
CHECK THIS OUT!
It is quite old news now, for some, but some of you might not have seen this. It’s a keyboard which has a bunch of tiny LCD displays as its keys. So each time you use it you can send data to it, telling it to display exactly what you want on each of the keys. Brilliant. Imagine the possibilities, you can switch the displays to a different language, cyrillic or roman for example, or you can make it display your photoshop shortcuts.
Or you could just learn the shortcuts and save yourself a shed load of money. Your choice.
Stuff is brilliant, lets run up to its summit and revel its glory!
Image © 2005 Studio Artemije Lebedeva
