Helmut Smit is our new favorite artist/designer, even if FLAMMA was the only project he’d ever done (it isn’t, by the way, and they are all stellar). This brilliant Ikea Hack “harks back to one of humanity’s basic needs: making fire.” As Ikea does not sell matches or lighters, Smits has taken cues from the wartime necessity of burning furniture to keep warm, and created a fire from an Ikea rope, hanger, wine  Read More →

Oscar Magnus Narud’s Keel collection: tables in rough wood and iron. Make-Me is an upcoming exhibition at Moss , running from September 15th through November 14th, that brings together an set of artists and designers producing what Moss has coined “Butch-Craft.” Maybe there is no better way to describe this than the words they use themselves: “a cerebral yet virile narrative applied to rough work crafted in wood, iron,... 

Alexander Wiethoff of the Department for Informatics at LMU Munich (and a former Experientia intern – disclosure) has developed with the Univeristy of Saarbr  Read More →

Continuum continues their series Open for Branding, where they are sharing, from start to finish, their latest branding project for the new, nomadic Design Museum Boston . Wow. Last week, we posted our Design Museum Boston branding concepts for feedback, and more than 1700 people checked out our survey and 274 completed it. The greatest part: everyone aligned–Continuum, Design Museum Boston, and you—on which directions were the strongest.... 

Fuseproject Industrial Design Intern San Francisco, CA The intern’s role within the product department is primarily to support all areas of design with specific tasks including; document layout and production, research (with image gathering), preparation for presentations as well as conceptual sketching / ideation and model-making.  Read More →

As various print magazines like Gourmet scramble to reinvent themselves as Ipad apps, we are happy to see that some people still believe a physical printed product can be quite nice. A staple in our daily blog roll of creative delights, It’s Nice That , is going against the grain with the fourth issue of their bi-annually printed publication. The publication serves as an archive of the blog’s best editorial content, as well as a... 

Aside from some beautiful shots of the cast off-camera, Rolling Stone’s coverage of Mad Men also caught some delightful moments capturing the contrast between life in 2010 and 1965. Enjoy. Don Draper (Jon Hamm) checks his iPhone 4. Roger Sterling (John Slattery) looking more suited for Brooklyn than Madison Ave. Kenny Cosgrove (Aaron Stanton) and Harry Crane (Rich Sommer) perhaps admiring the new iTunes 10 on a MacBook Pro. Given Mad Men... 

We’re excited by the recent trend toward open-source design approaches, with Continuum’s Open for Branding project, Betacup on the Jovoto platform, and the recent announcement of Open IDEO . So, we’re especially thrilled to be able to announce and track, first-hand, Open Planet Ideas , a promising collaboration between Sony and global conservation group WWF , utilizing the Open IDEO platform. This challenge is a great one for... 

“When I make something, which maybe is a work of art, I want this to be in the world. I want it to be sincerely and honestly and responsibly in the world. I want it to have an impact somehow.” We just found a beautiful trailer for a new documentary about Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, responsible for The Weather Project at the Tate Modern and the New York City Waterfalls. The filmmakers, Henrik Lund  Read More →

If you’re one to fantasize about having control over large-scale robots in a public space (to do good, not evil, of course), Kram/Weisshaar has teamed up with Audi to make your dreams come true during the 2010 London Design Festival. As this year’s Trafalgar Square Installation, Clemens Weisshaar and Reed Kram designed Outrace , an interactive installation in which the public – both  Read More →

I have to recaulk my bathroom sink, an infuriatingly small-bowled object that splashes water everywhere yet is astonishingly heavy. It’s a solid chunk of porcelain that doesn’t deliver good functionality for the amount of matter it consists of, and I dread having to pull it off the wall cleat so I can scrape off the bad original caulking job, which was apparently done while the contractor was having a seizure. If I had my druthers... 

Chicago weekly Newcity reports on an exciting proposal by Chicago to create a new district for the creative industries in what’s called the Spice Barrel District on the Near South Side. Four buildings, old factories and warehouses, have been selected for conversion into not only studios and galleries, but especially office spaces, workshops, and a small-business incubator group to stir up and support creative entrepreneurship, from design... 

The Art Center Summer Show is typically a nice way to get the pulse on what upcoming, West Coast, American designers are doing. One project that struck me in particular, and prompted a healthy respose on the core77 discussion forums , is Daniel Yorba’s Cycletron One electric moped. It immediately reminded me of the very different BEND concept by RISD graduates Erik Askin, Eric Peloquin, and Brian Mitchell. I love how the results of these... 

Voting closes at 12 midnight tonight, EST, so check out the entries below and vote for your favorites! The Grocery’minder by Francene Pisano Dudziec. With a wet-erase front, this bag is perfect for making your grocery list, checking it twice, and heading off to the market. . Judges thought the concept solved a basic problem; sure, everyone tries to be a good person and bring their reusable bag to the grocery store. …  Read More →

The New York International Gift Fair happens twice a year at the Javits Center in New York City. It’s a massive, 4-day long show with all the gifts you could ever think of. In our gallery, we pass up the snow-globes, decals, and candlesticks and focus on the special section Accent on Design, where companies like Areaware, DBA, Artecnica, and Joseph Joseph share the latest they have to offer.; > > view gallery (more…)  Read More →