Jul 29
Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies
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Click here to reminisce.
Jul 29
Letter from Finland: a little piece of design thinking heaven
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Yesterday afternoon, instead of sitting down to complete a research paper due for a conference later this year, I suddenly found myself embroiled in an intense conversation about the nexus of design thinking, sustainable innovation and the fuzzy front end. Lotta Hassi of Decode Research group wondered out loud why there weren’t any definitions available of design thinking and I couldn’t resist piping up. An instant best friendship was born. While some might think of bananas, this experience best describes what its really like to be sitting at Aalto University’s Design Factory. You never know when someone will want talk about business or design or technology or simply the challenges of innovating in today’s uncertain times.
Jul 29
Souvenirs
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I found some nice notebooks at Paper-ya on Granville Island in Vancouver and purchased them as “research”—ideas of new papergoods and products to stock in the store.
Jul 29
London Boutique Browns Fashion Launches ‘Labels For Less’ E-Commerce Site!
Posted in: Uncategorized  | If you online shop (or online window shop) as much as we do here at Stylehive, you’ve heard of Browns Fashion, the high-end London boutique that brings us eye candy in the form of all of the YSL and Balenciaga we could ever dream of someday owning. Well here’s one for the bookmarks: Browns has recently launched Labels For Less, a discount site featuring designer goodies at up to 70% off. Once you get over the cheesy name, it’s a great resource to have if you’re in the market for hard-to-find labels like Raf Simons or House Of Holland. Are the goods still expensive? Well, yes, we’re talking about Lanvin and Margiela here. But it’s nice to know that when I finally stumble upon that winning lottery ticket or trust fund I never knew I had, I’ll be able to afford way more designer goods than I had previously thought. I knew there was a silver lining somewhere in there! |
Jul 29
Another Bloody Water
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Aussie-based water bottling operation Another Bloody Water brings some serious sass to the table. Their disregard for overly pretentious competitors shows in everything from their irreverent name to their simplistic design (consisting of a dazzling palette of white, gray and black) and the oft-acerbic commentary on their blog. Down with the flowery language. Down with the Caribbean vistas. It’s just bloody water.
Thankfully their low-brow attitude doesn’t translate to a low-quality product. ABW’s water comes from a single, natural spring water aquifer located deep in the Victorian Alps. The upshot is clean water, unpolluted by the taint of civilization and extremely low in sodium, which magnifies its thirst-quenching power.
Check out Another Bloody Water for more info and to view their blog.
Jul 29
1,000 Product Designs: Call for Entries
Posted in: UncategorizedBeen waiting for an opportunity to publish some of your work? Here it is: Rockport Publishers is collecting submissions for 1,000 Product Designs, curated by Eric Chan of ECCO Design. The book is scheduled to be released in 2010 and will be distributed globally. More information here.
Deadline: September 1st
Jul 29
IDEA Winners Announced; IDEO, Samsung, Apple, NewDeal Win Big
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It’s Christmas in July time, design fans! The results of the 2009 International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) competition are in, which means that you can get a headstart on holiday shopping for things that only yesterday you didn’t know existed (e.g., the Gold award-winning LiftPod, a “personal, portable aerial work platform designed as an alternative to ladders”). Today BusinessWeek, the Industrial Designers Society of America, Target, and Autodesk announced 150 IDEA winners (31 Gold, 47 Silver, and 72 Bronze) chosen from 1,631 entries. The jury—chaired by Andrew Hartman of Philips Designs—also named 349 finalists.
Among the big winners were IDEO and Samsung, each with eight awards, Apple (7), Dell Experience Design Group (6), GE Healthcare (5), and NewDeal Design (4). ASTRO Studios, frog design, and fuseproject each took home three. Topping our wish list are the Gold award-winning ICON A5 amphibious sport plane, which we’ll fly while wearing New Balance’s amphibious shoes (winner of a Bronze). Meanwhile, back at the office, we’ll organize our physical piles in Teneo Storage Furniture (designed by Birsel + Seck for Herman Miller and the lone Gold winner in the Office & Productivity category) and stow the virtual stuff in Iriver design group’s supersleek Domino USB memory stick (taking home a Silver), although the task of choosing from among the nine available colors is bound to spark a debate at UnBeige HQ. Finally, our hopeless Diet Coke addiction finds a sustainable and design-friendly accessory in the Coca-Cola Refresh Recycling Bin (winner of a Bronze), made entirely from post-consumer recycled PET soda and water bottles by fuseproject’s Yves Behar, Josh Morenstein, and Nick Cronan. We’ll drink to that.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Jul 29
The Ironman stool
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That there is the Ironman stool, by designers Ashley Hall & Matthew Kavanagh.
Ironman celebrates our experiments with unconventional making processes and surface finishes. Inspired by traditional West African tribal furniture, it replaces millennia of ad-hoc wood carving with an equally ancient blend of hand carving and metal casting. The result is a uniquely expressive object capturing iron age technology…. The legs are deliberately left with a rough texture while the seating surface and top edge are finished to a high polish.
Never mind that I think it looks kind of gross–that’s subjective, some of you might love the aesthetic–here’s the part from the stool’s press release that bothers me: “The sitter has to adopt a crouching posture that is culturally unusual in the west and therefore demands a more conscious engagement with the product.”
Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t get up in the mornings so I can consciously engage my products. A chair that’s designed to be uncomfortable purely to draw my attention? Pass. I think furniture’s here to serve us, not the other way around.
Jul 29
Video Style Steal: Britney’s Equestrian-Style Looks Are On Our Fashion “Radar”
Posted in: Uncategorized  | I don’t know what it is about Britney Spears that makes me compulsively root for her through thick and thin. I guess a part of me is still in denial, thinking she’s going to bust out onstage with a boa constrictor or silver chair and start magically performing with the energy and enthusiasm of Britney circa 2001. Even without all the flair and fanfare of her high-octane performance past, Britney is still doing pretty well for herself, now out with her new video for “Radar,” the fourth single off her latest album Circus. This time around, Britney leaves the barely-there lingerie get-ups and goes for a sort of equestrian-chic look while swooning over a sexy polo player within the video’s gorgeous Santa Barbara setting. While I’m not sure I fully dig the whole slow-motion horse imagery, her outfits are undoubtedly cute… and the best part? Most of what she’s rockin’ in the vid is made by Candie’s (Brit is the brand’s current spokesperson), so the looks can be found for super-cheap at Kohl’s! Click “See Video” to see the looks in action, then check the slideshow to see how you can pull off your own interpretation with a mix of similar and exact pieces straight from the video! |
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