If you really want to put video game controllers on your tree, please hang these up. They're a much better option than dangling your filthy old Saturn controller by its cord. [Ponoko via Technabob]
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Idealist > a platform for sharing ideas, concepts and designs
Show your stuff!!
The best thing about these Mons Lavabo concept sinks isn't their charming, monster design. It's that they're eco-friendly, promising to prevent children from wasting water. So just how does that work?
When a child begins washing their hands, the sink calmly advises them to, "HURRY UP YOU LITTLE FUCKER OR I WILL BITE YOUR FUCKING HANDS OFF AND CHEW YOUR BONES RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU! YOUR LITTLE ARMS WILL BLEED ALL OVER THE PLACE, SPILLING OUT MY MOUTH AND ONTO THE FLOOR. YOUR DEATH WILL COME SLOWLY AS YOUR PERCEPTION PAINFULLY FADES TO GREY AND THEN BLACK—BY THE WAY, YOU WON'T BE GOING TO HEAVEN BECAUSE THERE'S NO GOD, SO YOUR BODY WILL JUST ROT IN THE GROUND AS EXISTENCE AS YOU KNOW IT CEASES FOR AN ETERNITY YOU'LL NEVER SEE. AND DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON WHAT DAD WILL SAY WHEN HE SEES THE MESS YOU MADE! WHAT A FUCK UP! NO WONDER YOUR PARENTS ARE GETTING A DIVORCE! WHAT? THEY DIDN'T TELL YOU? WELL STOP YOUR GODDAMN CRYING ABOUT IT, TEARS ARE A WASTE OF PRECIOUS WATER!"
(Or the sink uses an IR sensor, like you find in public rest rooms.) [Design Boom via inhabitots via inhabitat]
Diamond rings, Lego rings, or Polaroid ring? As long as it's not the horrible teeth rings, you will be ok. [Etsy via Obsolete]
This is exactly what I need: A bed with integrated alarm clock, so I can check the time by passing my fingers over it. OK, not true: What I need is a hammock on a beach and no clocks whatsoever.
But if I'm forced to use it, I won't complain. Designed by Florian Schärfer, the Melted Clock bed has integrated speakers, touch-sensitive buttons to snooze and control playback, and a haptic, touch sensitive alarm clock. Not a bad concept.
Still, the hammock and cocktails sound a lot better. [Yanko Design via Unplggd]
It doesn't only look beautiful, and it would make Jon Ive and Steve Jobs wet, but this naked Coca-Cola can would help save energy while reducing air and water pollution. Would it really make a difference? Let's do some math:
I assume the consumption only increases through time, but let's take the daily 2007 numbers from Global INForM Cases Sales database: The total number of Coca-Cola cans sold per worldwide is 67,873,309. Diet Coke and Coke Zero sold 35,387,241, while My Coke sold 103,260,550. Yes, that's all per day.
So using only classic Coca-Cola's daily sales figures, that means 24,773,757,785 are sold every year. Twenty-four billion cans. That is indeed a lot of paint and paint removal products. Because this doesn't only affect the production. It also affects the recycling process, eliminating one step:
The naked can help to reduce air and water pollution occurred in its coloring process. It also reduces energy and effort to separate toxic color paint from aluminum in recycling process. Huge amount of energy and paint required to manufacture colored cans will be saved. Instead of toxic paint, manufacturers process aluminum with a pressing machine that indicates brand identity on surface.
Sounds good to me, and it even looks better if you take into account all kinds of Coke. That brings up the number to 75,380,201,500 cans. I don't know how much paint that represents, but I'm guessing quite a few thousand tons. [7760 via Likecool, Sales info from Let's Get Together]
Confession time. I have terribly dirty mind. I'm flustered to admit that, but it's gotta be the case since I'm confusing this innocent salt-and-pepper shaker for the very naughty (and very NSFW) Form 2 sextoy. It's really kitchenware though. Promise.
Designed by Ross McBride and named "Dolly," this concept is a combination salt-and-pepper shaker with separate chambers for each of the two flavorings. It's actually pretty clever, since you'd never have to worry about misplacing half the set. But is that comfort worth awkward glances at the dinner table? [Dezeen]
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When was the last time a song made you want to pee? Well, there is a first time for everything, and your first bladder-rocking beat may come courtesy of the Spica water speaker.
gawkerGallery(5407575,3,'Spica Speaker');
As Unplgged noted, it's kind of like "an audio version of a lava lamp," which seems like a good way to describe a speaker that utilizes light and water. It's only a concept at the moment, but I like the visual approach to music. [Yuki Yamamoto via Designboom via MocoLoco via Unplgged]
This morning, Ron van der Ende left me speechless with this. They are not pasted in Photoshop. They are not giant tapes. They are not even painted. They are bas-relief mosaics made with old wood cuts. There are more:
gawkerGallery(5407510,17,'Gadget Bas Reliefs');
According to Ron van der Ende:
I collect old doors and stuff. Old painted wood that I find in the street. I take it apart and skin it to obtain a 3mm thick veneer with the old paint layers still intact. I construct bas-reliefs that I cover with these veneers much like a constructed mosaic. I do not paint them!
I want some of these so badly. [Ron van der Ende via Motherboard via Obsolete]
Shortlisted in Designboom's Green Life competition, the conceptual Dancepants Kinetic Music player would "motivate you to move your feet in order to hear your music." Better shuffle about while taking that breather, or no pump-up tunes for you.
"And as long as you keep running or dancing you can be sure you won't run out of battery." We may yet reach the point where we need to self-power all our gadgets, but until that day arrives, bring on the batteries or socket chargers. [DesignBoom via Ecoterra via Engadget]
I wish that Julian Voss-Andreae had made some of these sculptures when I was in school. While we can't really claim that they represent quantum physics concepts accurately, they still would've made reading about Bosons and Fermions more pleasant.
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Julian left his quantum physics research path, but he certainly carried knowledge and inspiration from it over into his art career. These sculptures are intended to portray some incredible quantum physics ideas for which there are "no consistent mental images." That craziness aside, the sculptures are lovely eye-candy based on artistic merit alone. [Julian Voss-Andreae via Boing Boing]
Every single day we oooh and aahhh over the latest design concepts, but right now, let's focus on one of the minds behind such designs and smile in awe of her motivations and inspirations. Meet MIT designer, Neri Oxman.
Oxman went through medical school, but abandoned that career path for a "mishmash of design, architecture, art, and computer programming."
She works out of MIT's media lab and strives to bring about her vision of the future which consists of all objects living, breathing, and adapting as we interact with them. She imagines organic architecture designs, nanotube walls which change size, chairs that change shape as you sit, DNA-encoded clothing that grows with you. She explains that studying how human bones adjust, getting thicker when a woman is pregnant or thinner when individuals are in outer space, inspired that vision of hers.
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As with many other designs that we see, Oxman's are stunning in their intricate plays with textures and materials, but to me the dreamy vision that pushes her to create them adds so much more to the way I view her works. I expect them to draw breath. Maybe we should start taking closer looks at the minds behind the eye-candy we so enjoy. Are there any objects, maybe even gadgets, that truly made you want to know how they were inspired? [Materialecology Blog via Materialecology via Esquire]
Top photo by Tom Allen
Like many of the design competitions in recent memory, the theme of Samsung's Young Design Award for 2009 centered around energy conservation and sustainability in the home. These gadgets were voted best of the bunch.
gawkerGallery(5406682,9,'Samsung Young Design Award');
They aren't carton-lit like real matches, but these match candles ($6 for 4 packs) are one way to up the ante on that Zippo-lighter guy we all know who thinks he's so cool. (The other is lung cancer.) [Yanko]
So pretty, it almost looks like you could wear it. Actually, I can really see the Milky Way clock working as a watch—especially since everyone hates alarm clocks. Alas, it is only a concept.
gawkerGallery(5406109,3,'Milky Way Clock');
[Henrik Amberla via The Design Blog via Unplggd]
Sure, the Pebro Bench raises up to become a "sculpture" when no one is sitting on it, but I think the designers could have earned more fun points if they had gone full teeter-totter.
gawkerGallery(5405835,3,'Pebro Bench');
[DesignYearbook via TDB]
I know a pot that reveals new colors as it heats is about as gimmicky as products get, but somebody needs to knock Le Creuset off their aesthetically pleasing high horse. (Love your pots, btw, Le Creuset.)
Called "Coral," this concept pot is coated in thermochromic spots, highlighting sectors in the pale blue design with fiery orange and red as the pot heats. The thing is, I don't even need the Coral to change color. I'd buy the color bubble design as is (or at least, I'd consider the idea before questioning whether it would match my kitchen, future kitchen, various other pots I own, various other appliances I own, etc etc etc, along with whether or not I needed yet another thing taking up space in my kitchen cabinets—the answer of which would inevitably be "no" as I walked out of Macy's or Sur La Table or whatever, unfulfilled as a consumer but maturer as a person).
Sorry, maybe that was TMI on my kitchen-related buying habits. Just being honest. [Yanko via Unplggd]
Only college kids smoke out of hand-blown bowls with swirly colors. Adults spend their hard-earned money on well-designed products made of stainless steel, acrylic and leather. This thing is the perfect compliment to the Volcano. [Yanko via Fast Company]
A few months ago, 5 master modders were tasked with building one crazy Nvidia ION ITX-based PC using the best user-submitted designs posted at Modders-Inc. A final winner has now been selected, and it looks pretty amazing, no? Pics!
gawkerGallery(5405596,8,'Nvidia Ion Cube Gallery');
The system was built by Bill "Overkill Bill" Owen from mnpctech, based on a winning render by "Cheapskate". The worklogs of all the finalist mods are fun to flick through, and the hundreds of hours of work that went into the Cube's CNC milled sheets of aluminum and laser cut pieces of acrylic look worth it to me. [Modders-Inc">[www.modders-inc.com] and Mnpctech]
Full specs:
ION ITX-A-U Specifications
Processor 1.6 GHz Intel Atom 330
533 MHz FSB
Chipset NVIDIA MCP7A-ION
System Memory, Dual channel DDR2 667 DIMM slots
Up to 4 GB of memory
VGA Integrated NVIDIA GeForce 9400M Graphics
Supported Resolution 1920 x 1440 (VGA)
Expansion Slots PCI Express Mini Card (wireless card pre-installed)
Onboard IDE None
Onboard Serial ATA 3 SATA (3 Gb/sec.) connectors (RAID 0, 1, 0+1)
Onboard USB 10 USB 2.0
Onboard LAN Realtek RTL8211C GbE 10/100/1000
Onboard Audio Realtek ALC662 5.1 channel HD codec
Back Panel I/O 6 USB 2.0 ports
1 VGA port
1 DVI-I port
1 HDMI port
1 eSATA port
1 LAN port
1 PS2 keyboard port
2 S/PDIF-out ports (coaxial/optical)
3 Audio jacks: line-out, line-in, mic-in
1 DC jack
Onboard I/O Connectors 3 SATA connectors
4 USB 2.0 via 2 pin headers
1 RS-232 COM pin header
1 Front panel audio pin header
1 Front panel pin header
2 Fan pin headers
4-pin Molex connector (for peripheral power)
BIOS AMI BIOS 8 Mb flash memory
System Monitoring & Management: System power management, RTC timer
Operating Temperature 0ºC ~ 50ºC
Power DC 19 V @ 4.74 A
Form Factor: Mini-ITX (17 x 17 cm)
Includes Driver CD
Backplate
CPU fan
90 W AC adapter & cord
Wireless antenna
3 SATA cables
1 SATA power cable
There's no reason for barcodes to be so drab and utilitarian when the sky's the limit.
(Click image for big-i-fied version.)
For a few thousand dollars, Japanese design firm D-Barcode will make your business a custom barcode, incorporating these simple vertical lines into pretty much any type of scene you can imagine (the code serves as everything from noodles to trees to rain to strands of melty cheese in the work we've seen)...which makes us ask, why is our packaging so lame?
If you'd like to see more D-Barcode work, hit these links: [Bar Code Revolution and TheDieline via FastCompany via NewLaunches]
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231 intricate parts go into the design of this 2.2-pound ball of crystal excess. The spiral is fashioned from white gold and 25 jewels. It can be yours from Hermés Paris for just $560,000. Ahh, crap. [