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It’s been a while but here is the latest roundup of typography objects.
Category Archives: Industrial Design
Designboom Mart 2012 Designs
After two days at the designboom mart 2012 at ICFF, things are going really well at our table with lots of nice feedback, but we’ve also had the pleasure of being surrounded by so many interesting, clever, and beautifully designed products. Here are some of our immediate neighbors whose designs we’ve been admiring.
Above top, Seoul-based design studio TEEV has designed these very clever picture frames in the style of an airplane window. No, the window shade does not come down, despite many a person’s attempt at pulling, but even without that possibly-in-the-future fun feature, these frames put a smile on most everyone’s face.
Right below the photo frames, Nancy Froehlich’s Bold & Lovely chunky porcelain bowls with bright and colorful glazed interiors, are simply beautiful. Contemporary and fresh in their design, we’re still trying to decide which one of these bowls from Oregon we’re going to purchase for ourselves. Nancy also has a line of plates with quote marks on them that have been quite popular at the show.
A couple of tables over, Colombian design studio Proyecto Tres y Medio have brought along their Tápate messenger bags made of recycled plastic bottle caps that have been sewn together and lined to make a series of very unique bags.
UK-based Alex Garnett has an interesting collection of work that includes ceramic fruit bowls in the shape of squashed basketballs and, Daniela’s favorite (though she got there two minutes after the last one at the mart was sold): Conceptual Crap –“R. Mutt” stickers to transform your toilet into a Duchampian/DADA work of art. Brilliant!
Moissue from Taiwan has some spectacular woodwork. Their Dandelion stool — which doubles as a magazine rack — is beautifully crafted and would make a great sculpture on its own let alone a dual-purpose piece of furniture. Their wood and metal rings are lovely, but what really blew us away is their incredibly innovative packaging; a wooden cylinder that screws shut with the ring inside. Without a doubt the best jewelry packaging I’ve ever seen.
There are plenty more creative products at the designboom mart and we’ll also be sharing some designs from ICFF 2012 as well in the coming days.
CollabCubed at the Designboom Mart 2012
If you’re planning on heading to this year’s ICFF here in NYC, we hope you’ll stop by and say hi to us at the designboom mart! We’ll be selling our EARonics at a discount as well as Daniela’s fun silver two-finger bicycle rings. We will also have prototypes of other designs on display that we will be producing for our shop, in the near future.
Should be a fun 4 days!
NY Design Week 2012
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Well, it looks like the ever-growing NY Design Week 2012 is off to a great start with exceptionally beautiful weather in store for the next three days. Aside from ICFF at the Jacob Javits Center, the event at the core of Design Week (and we – CollabCubed – will be there as part of the designboom mart, but more on that later) there are special design-related events going on all over the city. Too many to list here, but here are a few I ran across today in my travels through NoHo on my way to the East Village.
Tom Dixon along with Fab, Surface Magazine and Stumptown Coffee have teamed up and transformed the basement of the Bleecker Street Theater into a Pop-up shop and café: London Underground. Filled with lamps designed by Dixon, the space has a cool feel with interesting shadows cast upon the walls. My favorites? His new line of industrial looking ceramic lamps due out in September.
Two blocks north on Great Jones Street, Japanese Premium Beef (a unique butcher shop worth visiting anytime for its singular boutique-like quality) has a display of beef and sausage balloons created by Balloon Factory.
On the same block, The Future Perfect looked like they were setting up a special exhibit and across the street at Partners & Spade, Mondocane has an exhibit of historically relevant children’s chairs. Around the corner, Core77 was setting up their First Annual Core77 Open, a Pop-up exhibit featuring 5 designers from the 5 boroughs. The stacks and stacks of wooden flats(!) that they were loading into the shop look like they’ll make for an interesting installation.
More events include: Roll & Hill’s temporary showroom at 2 Cooper Square; Areaware at 22 Bond St.; and Hotel California at The Standard East Village.
You can see more events on the Noho Design District site, as well as Metropolis Magazine’s list, Core77, and WantedDesign for other events outside of Noho.
Enjoy!
All photos collabcubed except for bottom row of chairs courtesy of Mondocane and Partners & Spade.
Impression Wall: FarmGroup
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The Impression Wall is an interactive installation designed by the Bangkok–based design studio FarmGroup. Inspired by an old toy, the Impression Pin, the installation is designed to encourage passers-by to engage with the wall by pressing against the acrylic pins to create a 3-dimensional impression on the other side. Fun!
JIA: Contemporary Chinese Tableware
I’d have to say that I pretty much love everything on the JIA kitchen and tableware site. JIA, based in Hong Kong, means ‘home’ in Chinese. The company has invited international designers with different cultural backgrounds to re-interpret Chinese object culture and its traditional craftsmanship for a new and modern housewares market relevant to both the Asian and Western dining tables.
From the seafood set up top, (how beautiful are those tools, eh?) to the chunky Ding casserole and salt & pepper shakers, it’s all just lovely.
Lomography: La Sardina Beach Edition
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I probably walk by the Lomography store a few blocks from my apartment about once a week, but this past weekend I stopped in my tracks when I spotted these fun cameras in the window and stepped inside to see them up close. La Sardina Beach Edition cameras, as they are called, take their inspiration from the sardine tin—in their shape and size—and come in all sorts of fun colors and patterns which, in this edition, are printed on canvas. These 35mm film cameras (yes, film!) are super cute and cost between $75 and $110 and according to reviews, take a pretty decent photo in the Lomography style.
You can see more designs and purchase them here.
Snarkitecture: Odin Fragrance Pop-Up Shop
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Earlier today, I stopped by the new Odin Fragrances Pop-up Shop in the East Village designed by the ever-talented Snarkitecture (previously here and here). The 350-square foot, elongated shop, right next to Odin’s main store, is filled by an installation created with hundreds of white plaster cast pieces in the shape of Odin’s Fragrance bottles. These ‘bottles’, in extreme contrasting white – highlighting the occasional black fragrance bottle within the piece – are both inverted and suspended from the ceiling in a beautiful, flowing pattern, as well as elevated on poles from the floor twisting their way around the space. It’s really quite lovely and unexpected on the East 11th Street block.
The Odin Fragrance x Snarkitecture Pop-Up Shop will be open for five more weeks, from 12pm to 7 pm daily at 330 East 11th Street in NYC.
Top photo courtesy of Snarkitecture; all others collabcubed
via T Magazine via notcot
cartonLAB: Cardboard Furniture and more
Just when you think they couldn’t possibly come up with more cardboard objects and designs, the fine folks at the Spanish studio cartonLAB (previously here), come out with a whole bunch of clever and innovative designs. All made from cardboard and flatpacked for easy shipping and transport. From their lovely lamps to their recent collaboration with Ecological Drive – a green company that recycles tires – where cartonLAB incorporated recycled tires as cushions for the company’s benches and displays.
But it doesn’t stop there. They’ve got uniquely designed chairs, bookcases, headboards and much more; all fun, sustainable, and stylish.
Check out the entire collection at their website, or download a pdf of their new catalogue on the upper left corner of their home page, to see the very reasonable prices. Can you tell I’m a fan?
One Chair a Week
This is the kind of course my daughter Daniela would really enjoy. Associate Professor and architect Nicolai de Gier, along with Deane Simpson and Jesper Pagh taught a chair design course at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts Architecture School. Noting that usually students spend much of course time on sketching and making small-scale models of their chairs, not allowing time to confront the limitations and challenges of the actual building at a 1 to 1 scale, de Gier decided to have his students design and build one chair – one to one – once a week. Each week a new material was assigned so that students would have new experiences and challenges. The emphasis was on quality of concept more than final finish of the chair. The result? You be the judge. The students made 78 chairs in 6 different workshops. I’d say impressive, with some very unique designs, for sure.
You can see the rest of the chairs here, and you can see an unrelated but also interesting project, 100 Chairs in 100 Days, using discarded chairs in London, (via@mrfidalgo) here.
via DDC
Vitamins Design: Out of the Box for Samsung
This is so clever. London based design and invention studio, Vitamins, works “in the spaces between science, technology, business and wonder.” They came up with this Out of the Box manual for Samsung after working with users of all ages across Europe and analyzing the difficulties that some people have in learning to use their new cell phone, especially older people. Instead of creating a special phone, they came up with a different approach: a user-friendly way to learn how to use the handset. Instead of the usual complicated manuals they offer a set of books that can live on a bookshelf and actually contain the phone. Each page reveals the elements in their correct order, from sim card, to battery, to the case, and the second volume allows the phone to slide into a slot with arrows pointing to exact locations that the user should press.
The video above demonstrates the Out of the Box experience which has won an Interaction Award 2012 for Best Concept and was exhibited in the MoMA’s Talk to Me exhibit last fall.
Highlights from the RISD Senior ID Show
A couple of weeks ago we stopped in at the RISD Senior Industrial Design Show. All the work was impressive, but due to limited space, here are just a few of the projects that caught our attention. Above, Natalie Murrow created a Modular Bench and Shelving system that’s very clever with multiple uses.
Below, Brett Newman’s Magazine Bench works as both a seat and a magazine rack, convenient for easy access to periodicals and stylish to boot.
Oliver Henderson’s Personal Nano Speakers in maple are compact and nicely designed (above) and Owen Read’s Annex iPhone Tripod Mount (below) with suction cups that attach to your iPhone is elegant and smart.
All of these designers have other interesting work, so be sure to click on their names to visit their websites and see much more.
Product photos: courtesy of each designer. Show photos: collabcubed
Adriano Zumbo Pâtissier
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This is a fun design for a bakery! Adriano Zumbo, who has four locations in Australia, creates desserts that are unique in concept and execution, and so it would seem that designers Luchetti Krelle (Stuart Krelle and Rachel Luchetti) set out to design a space unique in concept and execution as well for Zumbo’s latest location at the Star Casino in Pyrmont. Full of humor from the windmill boots in the window to the dessert conveyer belt and the “In Case of Emergency Break Glass” cases of French Macarons, the space is sure to lure in any passersby.
Photos by Murray Fredericks and Adriano Zumbo’s website.
Cartoon-like Handbags: Jump from Paper
These bags are ridiculously fun. Designers Chay Su and Rika Lin from Taipei asked themselves “How amazing it would be if a two-dimensional hand-drawn illustration could come to life as a real bag?!” And from there Jump from Paper came to be. Pretty amazing. Though the bags look flat, apparently they are quite roomy. These bags will definitely turn a head or two on the street.
via swissmiss
Occupy Chairs by Sebastian Errazuriz
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Chilean-born, New York-based artist and designer Sebastian Errazuriz definitely has a provocative sense of humor with his heart and brain in the right place. Smack in the middle of one of the aisles at Pier 92 of the Armory Show this past weekend, in a prime rest/lounge area, were his Occupy Chairs. Targeting the art-collecting 1%, Errazuriz invited them to purchase these white folding chairs painted with the Occupy Wall Street movement’s slogans, to raise money in support of the 99% as well as integrating the messages of the larger group into the homes of the smaller one. In essence, transporting the movement’s placards into private lives of those they are protesting. Political statement, general awareness, and a fundraiser all rolled into one. Genius if they actually sold at $2,500 a piece!
There are eight Occupy Chair designs with 10 of each slogan all available through the Cristina Grajales Gallery.
Second and bottom photos courtesy of the artist and Cristina Grajales Gallery; all the rest by collabcubed
CollabCubed at 1
Last week marked our one year anniversary as a blog and, though not an especially remarkable feat in this sea of blogs, it seems like a good time to say of few words and acknowledge some people. It’s been a fun year for us and surprising how this blog, as well as a few related side projects, have been major topics of conversation between the three of us even at a semi-long distance. We’ve had fun trying to come up with somewhat unique content and it’s been really satisfying, and sometimes a little thrilling, to have many of the blogs and sites that we admire pick up some of our posts. Notcot and Rugenius (aka Jean and Justine) over at notcot.org have picked up many of our submissions and have been instrumental in giving us exposure. You can see our collabcubed posts on their pages here. Christopher Jobson at the amazing Colossal has had many kind words for us and been very supportive, as well as picking up several of our posts during the year and kindly linking back to us…this is where the little thrills came in. Same goes for the wonderful thisisnthappiness. And a big thanks to holycool and the always generous swissmiss for being the first ones to post our EARonic phone cases causing them to go viral with buyers cropping up all over the globe and eventually leading to a deal with Fred and Friends who will be distributing a variation on Daniela’s initial concept starting next month but, have no fear, we continue to sell our own EARonic models at our shop.
We’ve got other exciting projects in the works for this year, starting with being selected to exhibit our EARonics and some other designs at the Designboom Mart at the ICFF 2012 in New York this May, which has us super excited, but we’ll talk more about that later.
In the meantime we’ve added a bunch of photos and links to our facebook page – we’ll be adding more in the next few days – making it easier to look at some older posts, so maybe you’d like to ‘like us’ there if you haven’t already, and of course there’s also twitter, or subscribe to our RSS feed or emails.
Below are a few of our most popular posts this past year (in case you missed them the first time around); click on the photo to go to the post. Most importantly, thanks to all of you for following our blog and making it fun for us to keep posting.
Sang Sik Hong Plastic Straw Sculptures
Nicole Dextras Ice Typography
The Portrait Building by ARM Architects
Matchheads by David Mach
Blackfield by Zadok Ben David
The Transfinite: Ryoji Ikeda
The Twist Bridge
Ana Soler: Causa-Efecto
EARonic iPhone Cases by Daniela Gilsanz
Sprinkles 24-Hour Cupcake ATM
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Not being much of a dessert person myself, I can’t really imagine a 4am craving for a cupcake, but I guess it’s reassuring for some of you to know that now there is a 24-hour cupcake ATM to assuage such a desire. The Beverly Hills bakery Sprinkles has recently installed the cupcake vending machine as part of their storefront and judging from a photo posted to their facebook page, the late-night lines are insane. We’ll have to ask our LA correspondent, Moni, to check this out for us.
UPDATE: Apparently there will be three of these ‘cupcake automats’ opening in NYC within the next year, the first one opening this summer on the Upper West Side. (Thanks, Breger!)
You can watch the video below to see it in action:
You might also like these other unique vending machines here.
Photos: Sprinkles facebook, we heart, and Sprinkles
via @mrfidalgo
Pprofessors: Red People Art-Constructor
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Yes, there’s been a bit of a Russian theme this week after perusing many a Russian gallery site into the wee hours the other night, but this is the last of it for now, and it’s a fun one, at least I think so.
The Red People project, created by Andrey Lublinskiy and Maria Zaborovskaya of the Pprofessors art group, is a modular system used to assemble an anthropomorphous character, sometimes large, other times small, out of 13 wooden blocks. Working in practically any context and integrated therein, these Red Men have become a sort of viral phenomenon around Moscow and its environs. So much so, that they have become stars of comics and political debates, and are slowly making their way across the world.
With inspiration from, and a nod to, cult artists such as Malevich, Rodchenko, Bruskin, Giacometti, Haring and Gormley, the Pprofessors have made these red contemporary icons pop up in the most unexpected of places, including sitting by a park fountain, scootering around the streets of Moscow, or sitting in the middle of a shopping center. After their exhibit in 2010 at the Gridchinhall Gallery, a few of the men have become permanent fixtures on the grounds, with one sitting atop the gallery’s building entrance.
The Pprofessors also created a toy-like kit of the Red People, where each child (or adult) can manipulate the elements of the composition using the basic red blocks included in the kit.
All in all, a very fun project that I could see taking off in NYC.
via artguide
CollabCubed 