Hasta La Ideas

by Rebecca Harkins-Cross

For moonlighting in Melbourne’s obsessive cycling scene, The Humble Vintage steps in like a long-lost friend, offering vintage bicycles for short-term hire. Not just a more aesthetically pleasing way to explore the city, the experience allows tourists to roll incognito by skipping logos, mountain bikes and fluorescent helmets.

Born in July 2009, after founder Matthew Hurst rented a bike during a trip to Argentina and decided to check out what was available back home, he based the business on the idea that you can “get into town, pick up a nice pair of wheels and just blend in.” Hurst sourced and reconditioned a variety of vintage cruisers, city bikes, vintage racers and ladies’ bikes—all of which have 10 gears and come with a helmet, lights, lock and map of the city.

Self-described as a “roving bike dealer,” Hurst provides a personalized pick-up and drop-off service anywhere in Melbourne’s central business district, delivering bikes to hotels and offering up pointers on what to see and do. A natural compliment to the business, The Humble Vintage will soon accompany the rental with a custom made, quarterly city guide featuring events, stores, bars and cafes for the city’s newcomers.

The Humble Vintage bike rentals begin at A$25 a day or A$70 per week. Visit the website for booking information.

Tasking leading interface designers including Scott Thomas, Pentagram and NYTimes.com with re-imagining one of the Internet’s oldest stalwarts, Wired’s latest in their Extreme Makeover series is a telling exercise on the state of design online today. On one hand, Thomas’ minimalist take (above right) makes a pro-status quo argument, recognizing that the site functions perfectly well in its current form with only minor, mostly aesthetic tweaks. Designers from the NYTimes.com essentially do the same thing, adding a couple layers of hierarchy to make it more organized and easier to navigate (above left).

Studio8 Design came up with a more dramatically different-looking version, prioritizing the all-important photos to make rapid-fire browsing instantly gratifying.

While the others go to great lengths to keep the practical side at the forefront, Pentagram seems to all but dispense with the concern, playfully transforming the homepage’s text links into an image of the man behind the curtain. The search function, however, moved to the bottom of the page, remains otherwise untouched. Maybe they’re onto something.

via @simplescott

Extreme minimalist radio in cement casing

Created by Swedish creative Maximilian Larsson, the recently launched Helveticons use the same design principles as the go-to eponymous font for a universal set of interface icons.

Helveticons come in a variety of formats—six of which are scalable vector graphics—including Photoshop, Illustrator, OmniGraffle, EPS, PDF and PNG. Royalty-free and comprehensive, the 245-icon collection serves as a valuable asset for its simplicity and range of essential symbols.

Helveticons are available online for $279, along with a free set of 22 folder icons.

During last week’s New York International Gift Fair Alessi debuted roughly 200 new products and expanded families across the company’s three brand divisions. Choosing favorites isn’t easy, but check out a few selects below.

Gabriele Chiave’s “Apostrophe” orange peeler (above) reminds us of what Alessi does best. Designed as part of their LPWK series, the sculptural form lends artistic life to the most prosaic of kitchen utensils. Reflecting the impact of globalization on our dining habits, the “Cum grano salis” set (below left) treats the salt cellar as centerpiece, offering a repository for four different salts along with a mortar and pestle and a spice container.

It is always refreshing to see Alessi return to basics after a period of excess. The “Clotet kitchen boxes” by Lluís Clotet look, at casual glance, scarcely different from storage one might find at The Container Store. A closer look reveals a subtly warped surface on the container lid, as if it were the rippled surface of a lake.

Mario Trimarchi’s “La Stanza dello Scirocco” collection of baskets draws inspiration from the Sicilian sirocco room, a windowless shelter from African windstorms. Trimarchi writes: “It is a room without windows in which you can do nothing but ponder the wind that is undoing all sublunary things outside… For me, the magic lies in the fact that the project was hatched from things that come to pass outside the object itself, as if each basket and fruit dish were defined for the most part by that which it generates, i.e. its shadows, rather than by its function.” Imbued with such consideration, the series masterfully reinterprets one of Alessi’s most iconic products.

“The Columbina Collection” by Doriana and Massimiliano Fuksas continues to expand, this year with the addition of trays, oil and vinegar cruets and parmesan cheese cellars. We particularly liked the subtle curves of the tray and cheese cellar, which give the objects an organic sensibility.