Hasta La Ideas

The IKEA hack is a veritable touchstone of the young and resourceful (read: broke) contingent of DIYers, but this Flotspotted project is exceptional for its scope: not only does Swiss designer Andreas Bhend hack the furniture but also the instructions themselves. “Frosta” is a collection of three articles of furniture that are made from reconstituted stools of the same name (which, in a ‘meta’ twist, are themselves Alvar Aalto knockoffs).

The fact that his modified instructions call for power tools and handsaws provides only the subtlest of hints that something is amiss.

Thus, Bhend has subverted the universalist pictograms of IKEA instruction manuals—a sort of language in itself—for his own ends. Even the promo video is vaguely IKEA-like:

See each of the individual projects after the jump…

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As we noted last year, bicycle illumination seems to be one of the more popular areas of innovation for cycle-savvy designers: where a complete bicycle might be more suited to a group project—especially if there’s something at stake—bicycle lighting presents a manageable challenge for a single student’s semester-long project.

Like Ethan Frier and Jonathan Ota and Emily Brooke, Mitchell Silva, was inspired by both his own personal experience riding at night and the statistics about cyclist-related traffic incidents. As an Industrial Design student at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, he took the brief to “create an everyday task light incorporating LED technology” as an opportunity to develop his own bicycle illumination system: GLO-BARS.

While Silva still has a bit of work to go to achieve the concept he has in mind, he’s done a great job documenting his work thus far:

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It is perhaps only natural that we’re inclined to see emoticon-like faces in otherwise inanimate objects—cars are a canonical example, as is this AmEx spot from a couple years back, and the emoticon itself is simply an Internet-Age variation of the same.

Wall-mounted coathooks must have struck Brooklyn-based designer David Barry (originally hailing from Ireland and of no relation to the Pulitzer Prize-winning humorist of the same name) as vaguely visage-like, at least enough to inspire a fun personal project: “Frank,” a powdercoated steel wall hook that bears more than a passing resemblance to a woodland critter.

His story goes something like this:

Frank is a quiet sort of fellow, who simply likes to hang out. He’s incredibly patient and diligent. If you ask him to hold something, he’ll never let go. He is quite literally as strong as steel, though he’s just three inches tall.

Growing up, Frank knew he wasn’t like the other rabbits. Their ears were floppy and covered in fur; his were rigid and strong. As a young rabbit, Frank’s life changed when he went to the circus. There, he saw a seal balancing a ball on his nose. Frank was inspired. He tried to balance things on his nose, without much success, until one day he decided to try balancing them on his ears. He was a natural, and was soon holding up all kinds of objects with his ears for hours, even days, at a time.

Find out what happens to Frank after the jump…

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Spanish designer José Hurtado started out as an architect before shifting his focus to industrial design. Among the projects in his newly-launched portfolio, one project in particular jumped out: the “Twist” bicycle concept.

Twist [is] not just a bike, [it] is a union between people. Sometimes a change of direction in your life helps you to find yourself. With Twist, the change of direction will lead you to meet and enjoy the people, like you, who love cycling, mobility and [a healthy lifestyle].

The bike is designed to be reversible; hence, the unusual shape of the frame and positioning of the handlebars and saddle.

The bike frame has a single arm that holds the wheel on two points, thus preventing movement and anchoring it securely. The frame is crossed by the pedal system rotating inside for the bearings. The turning circle of cycling is the same as conventional bicycles.

Thus, the hubless wheels aren’t just for show: they serve as a point of attachment for a second frame, such that the tandem bike becomes a mirror image of itself when viewed in profile:

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The first Flotspotting of the New Year picks up where the last one left off: Vil Tsimenzin‘s shiny vehicle renderings are as sweet as eye candy gets. Whereas Jon Pope‘s renderings were somewhat cartoon-y (in a good way) to belie the clever mechanisms behind them, Vil’s are perhaps cartoonishly slick, each and everyone like, say, a concept Batmobile.

The crisp, unnaturally pure hues amplify the visual effect—a superficial similarity between Tsimenzin and Pope, perhaps—but the level of detail is remarkable in itself. If the renderings lack a bit of real-world grime or a hard-earned patina, the vehicles’ pristine appearance is precisely the intention of a digital drawing.

As for “Super Duty“:

And to answer Bruce Wayne’s inquiry: yes, it does come in black.

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