Hasta La Ideas

At this point in history, every last one of us is knee-deep in the YouTube era, the gold standard of user-generated content, where a new flash in the pan surfaces every day. Although Colin Furze is among the lucky ones who have managed to secure a bit of longevity, his latest stunt is the first time I’d heard of the Stamford, Lincolshire-based persona, a BMX rider turned plumber turned stuntman and video maker—and longtime DIYer / pyromaniac.

Furze combines Jackass‘s seminal let’s-do-stupid-sh*t approach to reality TV and Casey Neistat’s art of crafting subversive viral videos with an ill-advised disdain for safety equipment and an appropriately maniacal cackle, brazenly attempting to pull off projects so outrageous that they don’t require a don’t-try-this-at-home disclaimer. A nice primer on his antics circa 2011 includes his 72-foot-long motorcycle and insane bonfire, both of which were deemed worthy of world records, as well as his bread-&-butter of speed-related thrills. Always looking to outdo himself, he recently posted his first proper filed test of his latest and greatest invention, the JET bicycle—no, it’s not an acronym, you just have to yell when you say it—a.k.a. “the most dangerous unsafe bicycle in the world.” Although the superlative remains unsubstantiated, he’s might just be right:

(more…)

Design Silesia, a blanket organization for promoting design in the Silesia region of Poland, is pleased to present their first 3D-animated short film, illustrating Dieter Rams’ “Ten Principles of Good Design.” (For those of you who don’t know them by heart or have them tattooed down your forearm, we’ve enumerated the secular decalogue below.)

(more…)

Those who spent some time at NYC’s recent International Contemporary Furniture Fair may have come across the duo behind Calico Wallpaper, who were at ICFF displaying their striking…

Continue Reading…

Network Awesome is a website where you can easily lose track of time and yet never feel like time is being wasted. Living up to its name, the Berlin-based site is brimming with utterly curious content…

Continue Reading…

Based on the usual bit of cursory investigation, Alexandre Chappel’s minimal online presence is a felicitous albeit frustrating complement to a video he’s posted: according to his now-defunct WordPress blog, he was an Industrial Design student at Oslo School of Architecture and Design as of 2011, at which point his “main passion is cars and everything that has something to do with them.”

Lately, however, it seems that he’s turned his attention to a more mundane object: the lowly pen. That, and motion graphics, as he ably demonstrates in the beautiful video below, entitled “Precious Lines.”

The HUD- (or Google Glass-) like information mapped onto the world offers a tantalizing taste of the grail of augmented reality largely because the simple vector schematics complement the close-cropped shots of machining to a tee. It’s all about the details: the fact that the text echoes the focal length of the shot at 0:55; the way the shaving at 1:45 looks like a line; and the text aligned with the drawer at 2:42 are all executed flawlessly.

Looks like Ian Schon has some competition.

(more…)