Hasta La Ideas

Go dive into more pictures of this bike here, the attention to detail is amazing

Here is another bike from Naked cycles, it won the Best in Show at the 2008 North American Handmade Bicycle Show, the Baba Ganoush {Lance Armstrong was there and bought on the spot}

-> Learn more about Naked

Like most years, 2009 saw a plethora of design and culture books. But in this case, the abundance persisted in spite of a crippling recession and a publishing industry fighting to adapt to an increasingly digital society. Whether the trend has to do with the ongoing tendency to conceive and market books as collectible objects or the tenacity of book lovers, below we highlight a handful of the dozens on design, graphics and fashion we covered this year.

Design Revolution: 100 Products That Empower People
Emily Piloton’s “Design Revolution” comes at a crucial moment for the design world. Recent exhibitions such as “Design for the Other 90%” and projects like Saatchi & Saatchi’s Award for World Changing Ideas have impressed upon designers the need for a return to human-centric design—that is, design that solves problems for people, rather than design that simply offers stylistic flourishes. “Design Revolution” champions this designer as activist approach, focusing on 100 projects that will make our world, and the experience of it, better.

Made for Skate
An archive of unrivaled proportions, “Made for Skate” covers the entire fifty year history of skate shoe design. Not only does it meticulously chronicle the evolution of a sport-specific footwear, it provides a micro perspective on street fashion trends from the last half-century.

We Make Magazines
“We Make Magazines,” created by two curators from the Colophon International Independent Magazine Biennale, proves there’s life yet in print media and it lies with the independents. The book showcases more than 100 independent magazines and provides a directory to over 700 indies worldwide.

Maison Martin Margiela
Designed by Martin Margiela himself, this hefty clothbound monograph offers a rare glimpse into the world’s most secretive fashion house and makes a fitting farewell to the house that bears his name. Featuring hundreds of images from the designer’s personal archives, along with contributing essays by fellow colleagues, the book is a must for the sartorially inclined.

Stuffz: Design on Material
A treasure to hold, this clothbound, embroidered book explores the myriad ways in which graphic, industrial, interior and product designers manipulate material to shape our physical world. It’s unabashedly optimistic in its celebration of material expression, proving itself a necessary rejoinder to those who decry the making of more stuff.

Proof that I do not know best: If someone described this to me at a design pitch meeting–“Yeah, to hold the syrup we’re gonna make a glass bottle that looks like a maple leaf”–I’d have nixed it before they finished their sentence, assuming the result could only be cheesy. Instead, syrup producer Back Creek Farms’ 8.4-ounce bottle, with a fill line that ends where the leaf does, is actually rather beautiful.

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Moving on to our top five Dezeen stories from September 2009, this shoe with no foot plate by London architect Julian Hakes, called the Mojito Shoe, was at number one. (more…)

Wireless power

In the photo you see above, the light bulb held in inventor Marin Soljacic’s hand is powered–via the air–by the black object sitting on the desk. S’right, no wires to the bulb.

With two large magnetic coils, he found a way to throw 60 watts across a room, powering a lightbulb. MIT, his employer, quickly patented the technology and encouraged Soljacicto start a company.

Soljacic was inspired by his wife’s Nokia cell phone, which would wake him up by beeping when it needed juice. He realized it was silly for something to be sitting so close to an outlet but with no way to access the electricity.

The latest iteration of Soljacic’s invention, displayed in Tokyo earlier this year, “was able to power a 1,000-watt klieg light from across the room.”

Dog Armor

Military dogs can cost up to $50,000, and protective dog gear is both humane and financially prudent. Next year a company called K9 Storm is introducing “the K9 Storm Intruder, a bulletproof dog vest with a wireless camera, speakers and a microphone built in. The handler can see what the dog sees and issue commands through the audio system,” which increases the handler’s range to about 300 yards.

Though you may never have heard of them, K9 Storm runs a business worth $5 million annually and has been around since the ’90s; years ago a story made the news whereby a police dog took two .45 rounds in its K9 Storm bulletproof vest, but kept fighting and subdued the shooter with no harm to itself. Pretty bad-ass!

Beer-Fed Fish

Okay, so the title’s slightly misleading. Here’s the deal: Free raw materials sounds good to manufacturers, and recycling waste products sounds good to environmentalists. Biologist Andrew Logan figured out a way to turn beer sludge (waste-water from beer factories) into high-protein fish food, using microbes. Brewers are only too happy to give Logan their sludge for free–it costs up to $3 million per year to get rid of the stuff otherwise–and the fish farm industry needs something to feed its 65 million tons of fish. It’s win-win, and Logan will probably become rich as a result.

via CNN’s Next Little Thing

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