If you’re looking for a arch-shaped floor lamp for your home, and you’re thinking “It’s so cliche to get the Arco!” – well here’s your salvation! The Troja light, by hansandfrans, offers a more modern take on the typology of an arched floor lamp. With its simple and yet distinct outline, it may eventually grow to be another icon in itself. A small peeve for me though is the look of the lights (3rd picture) – it makes it feel just a little too much like a lamp for an operating theatre.
So I just realized that the Sony T200 has a feature/mode known as the smile detector. When this mode is activated, the camera goes into a standby mode, capturing your subject once they flash their pearly whites. I don’t know about you – on my camera, there’s a long list of modes – night shots, sports, portrait, landscape, etc. – but I have never ventured past the first few options. This feature seems like one of those – enough to be marketed as a unique selling point, but not quite compelling enough to be useful in real life.
Or maybe that’s just me?
Garbage Bag Art Work trash bags aim to transform Japan’s unsightly neighborhood garbage collection points into instant works of disposable art. Produced by design agency MAQ, the bags come in three patterns — trees, fish and flowers — and they are colored to match Japan’s official color codes for various types of waste, each of which are collected on different days. Green is for recyclable trash, blue is for non-burnable and red is for burnable, so while livening up the appearance of trash heaps, the bags also remind neighbors about what trash day it is. Packs of ten 45-liter bags sell for 380 yen (about $3) at a select few Tokyu Hands and Loft outlets in Tokyo, or they can be purchased online here (Japanese).
To ponder: does making garbage bags prettier encourage people to recycle? Shown above are graphic-coded trash bags – one each for burnable, non-burnable and recyclable trash. Pretty artwork would certainly beautify the pile (we wish you didn’t have that much to dump though) – and this is perhaps much more emotionally engaging than the standard, stark (no doubt clear) coding systems like stark blue, yellow and green color-coded bags. More arty and less town-council-y.
Work done by design agency MAQ. [via Pink Tentacle]
Here’s to yet another niche design blog – this time focusing on the art of packaging. According to the blog owner Torben,
A quick count shows that an average person is in contact with a packaging approximately 52 times per day! If you didn´t notice this fact before it is maybe because you´re surrounded by good and well worked out packaging designs.
But for those who are disabled to some extend, bad packaging design can turn out to be an everyday nightmare. That is what I deal with and want to improve!
It’s a budding blog but it certainly shows promise. Head over to Design Better Packaging to shower some love!
“Poverty wants some things, Luxury many things, Avarice all things” – Benjamin Franklin
While some may see luxury as almost a crime – who are we to deserve such opulence and indulgence – others see it as a benchmark of the ultimate in performance, refinement and design. If you need a dose of how the rich (or, perhaps more commonly nowadays, simply those who are willing to splurge) live their lives, their toys and their fancies, here’s a well-presented blog that focuses solely on designs and developments in the luxury segment – be it high-tech goods, automobile or fashion. It’s in both English and French even!
That’s the Eva Solo Smiley, designed by the Danish duo Claus Jensen and Henrik Holbæk. At first look it reminded me of the humidifier designed by Naoto Fukasawa – another organic, glossy and rounded addition to the home lifestyle product. After taking a closer look at it, however, I got more impressed – it is certainly well-conceived and designed.
Instead of plastic, it is made of several layers of mouth-blown glass layers – that would add a touch of class and elegance in the midst of deeply IKEA-fied lifestyle products. The edge has a cut to on the side that adds much to its functionality: the perfect receptacle for snack wastes like pistachio shells or food wrappings. But it doesn’t stop there – it also leaves a positive feel-good ‘smiley’ on the product – what a way to do all these in literally one stroke!
Great stuff!
This made me chuckle:
Everyone sounds like Pavarotti in the shower – that’s why the Shower Mic is such a natural. Not only is it a useful sponge for washing up, but it also has the uncanny ability to unleash your inner Sinatra. So, don’t hold back… stand and deliver!
If a color-shifting, glowing rim around your television (cue Philips Ambilight) isn’t your cup of tea, Philips is hoping that a color-shifting, glowing rim on your television is. The Aurea is a successor to the Ambilight and it’s certainly glowing more than ever. I haven’t seen it in person yet, so I wouldn’t really know how good it is. My guess is that this would probably fall into the good-to-have-but-doesn’t-quite-justify-the-price camp.
Tell me which is more disturbing: the baby-head porcelain candle holder (check out the faint cheek blushes even!), or the fact that when you plop a fat candle on it and burn it, the wax drip runs down the head and becomes the … “hair”?
Little Joseph is a hand-painted, porcelain candle holder. We can’t decide if he’s sinister or sweet. Part of that will certainly depend on what you decide to do with his hair. Use dripless candles if you’d like to keep him bald, otherwise, give him pure white locks, beeswax locks, or hair in several shades of the rainbow.
Nonetheless, very cool!
[‘Little Joseph‘ by Maxim Velčovský, via Josh Spear]
Bringing the little ones on travel can really be a hair-pulling experience: while dealing with the patience-testing waits, delays, searches and security measures, you might have to soothe and pacify your kids’ (potential) tantrums, boredom and tiredness.
Trunki aims to help alleviate some of those pain: brightly colored, attractive luggage that kids can play around, sit on – basically find their own amusements within the airport. We all know how imaginative they can be – is that your little tot thinking of himself as a chivalrous prince? There’s even a long strap in which you can pull your kids as they ride on their luggage. Furthermore, it’s of a hand-luggage size, so the fun can continue all the way to boarding (hopefully, not so much on the plane itself though).
It’s a great idea really – turning a source of frustration into a source of enjoyment and fun! And there’s a nice story of determination and entrepreneurship behind this too. The inventor, Rob Law, went on the reality VC-funding show in Britain known as Dragon’s Den, hoping to get 100,000 pounds in exchange for 10% of the company as start up funding. In the show though, the judges unanimously condemned this saying that there was no market, that it was worthless, etc.
After the show aired, however, parents and viewers from everywhere went on Rob’s website to say how great the Trunki would be. So Rob’s having the last laugh, the Trunkis are selling very well, while the company he 100% owns grew beyond 1 million pounds in worth.
Well done!
