GIVIT is a new Brisbane online giving portal designed to connect a community of givers to our community of people who need to receive. It is a site that requests quality goods and pro-bono services for members of the community who are marginalised, vulnerable and disadvantaged, and anyone can step up to help meet a request. I’m in the process of moving house and it’s been great to use GIVIT to donate several things to the Pindari Homeless Women’s Service. There is something nice about knowing who your goods go to directly. Continue reading ‘givit, got it, good’
If you haven’t given this innovative site by Brisbane’s Native Digital and Wotnews a spin, give it a whirl and allow the grid to deliver music to your ears you would otherwise never have heard. While an online music chart is nothing new, Hunted’s offering seamlessly blends a unique social media content aggregation functionality, behind one of the most attractive, and easiest to use interfaces. Having recently launched a Hunted Twitter chart, hearing what other people are hearing, is never more than a few clicks away.
If graphic designers geeked out over the movie Helvetica, then industrial designers will surely do the same for Objectified. I can’t wait to see it. The world premiere is next week at the South by SouthWest festival.
via Design Milk: The table is “A New Perspective” by James Tooze of UK based furniture designers, Batch. This table is the start of a larger project illustrating the reality of objects in terms of their materials, manufacture and possible use. This piece means to encourage investigation into how things are made. With a little effort our curiosity is satisfied. When standing in a particular spot, the graphic on the table becomes the very structure of its own construction, like an X-ray of the table. Continue reading ‘a new perspective’
Yesterday I stumbled upon one of the coolest places to be on a sweltering morning in Noosaville. With A-Grade air conditioning bouncing off dark grey slate floors and sliding up walls of books stacked to the ceiling, the new {Embiggen Books} on Weyba Road makes for a soothing refuge from the outside world. It’s only a few weeks shy of its three-month anniversary but looks like it will become one of those stores that locals attach themselves to with sturdy safety pins, especially with the hearty Organika cafe and wholefoods shop next door (try the papaya and banana fruit smoothie - deeeelicious!). Embiggen’s catch cry is: “Where science meets art”, and to that end it stocks an inspiring collection of art and science tomes (it’s already the largest science bookstore in Queensland and the third largest in Australia) and you’ll also find a sexy selection of mainly non-fiction books dedicated to design, religion, philosophy, the environment, economics, atheism, and skepticism. One wall is saved for use as a fine art gallery and I fell instantly and deeply in love with the works by current exhibiting artist, Silvi Glattauer, from Melbourne. Her six nature-based photographic pieces (image inset) are printed on 100 percent cotton ragpaper using museum grade archival methods, which makes for a textured and eerie glow to the unadulterated images. Embiggen will host regular artist talks with local and visiting artists, scientists and philosophers, and is also the new HQ for the newly established Sunshine Coast Skeptics Society to promote critical thinking about life, the universe and everything in between. On January 21, Peter Ellerton, winner of the 2008 Prize for Critical Thinking will speak to the topic Bullsh*t Detection for kids, for life. If you want your thinking to be challenged, head for arguably the coolest new store in Noosa.
via Murketing: The people and companies who try to sell you things routinely draw upon psychological research into human behaviour in order to position their goods more effectively. The 48-Hour T-Shirt Project does the same thing – but makes puts this research in the foreground. Murketing, in collaboration with Savannah College of Art and Design, are presenting a series of T-shirts which are designed around actual academic research on consumer behaviour (relating to mimicry, false consensus, pricing). It’s a lesson in consumer behaviour that you can consume. Ironic? Hypocritical? Or … fiendishly clever?
Each T-shirt is $18 and available for sale for 48 hours only. T-shirts will be revealed and made available for purchase over the next 3 weeks - Monday December 1; Monday December 8; and Monday December 15.
It seems anything can be marketed these days. Even sleep. A range of products from Metro Naps, a New York business, are reportedly drifting around the world, enchanting consumers with promises of hand-held power napping devices, energy pods and zero gravity couches for the corporate office. In their research, Metro Naps reports that ‘Australia is one of the hardest working nations in the OECD. With these long work hours, typically the first thing that gets cut, in an effort to fit everything in to our lives, is night-time sleep. Most people need 8-9 hours sleep per night but the national average barely tips seven.’ Are these innovations a technological extension of society’s need for more down time? Is the humble siesta more valuable than we think? If so, than surely, duplicating machines, allowing us to clone ourselves and thereby maximising our use of time, are just around the corner. Or perhaps it’s just that new toothbrush again.
Whenever I see another toothbrush redesigned, or a men’s razor again claiming it’s the most closest shave ever, now with 4 blades, embedded shaving gel, light titanium handle, magnetized head and revolutionary anti-slice technology, I think why? Simultaneously, I am also continuously amazed at the progression of knowledge and innovation in regards to these and other products, which each year seem to emerge with yet another amazing break through. In this film, via treehugger, this panel of designers, thinkers and business people, debate the question, ‘How do “our own growing individual needs for self-actualization and meaning” affect how we consume? Design is responsible for meeting the needs of consumers in the world. It follows therefore, that designers carry an immense responsibility to identify and design what products and services we need, and the impact they have on the environment in which they are made from, used and disposed of. It’s great viewing for entrepreneurs, designers, brand managers, product designers, environmentalists, businesses and consumers alike. Check it out after hours tonight.
Want to eat off Nicole Kidman’s plate? Or drink out of a Foo Fighters’ mug? You can as part of the “Whatever It Takes” range created by the UK-based 21st Century Leaders in conjunction with Churchill China. They create products based on artworks from cultural leaders including royalty, movie stars, bands, Nobel Prize winners, fashion designers, and sports people. Each ambassador donates a symbol of hope, a self portrait and a message of hope for the future. The products (including tableware, wristbands, shoes, tshirts) are sold to raise money for charitable projects in developing countries to address issues such as poverty alleviation, child abuse and environmental conservation. In Brisbane, you can find these limited edition mugs and plates at the sparkling new David Jones in Queens Plaza. (image artwork is by the awesome band Keane).
In this season of end-of-year sales and buying things you don’t really need, it seems timely that Theme magazine has a profile on the artist Tobias Wong. His provoking and ironic art works, explore the funny nature of consumerism and questions the value of art, design and everyday objects. He is known for using very high-end designer products and has played around with Burberry tartans, Issey Miyake clothes, Philippe Starck furniture, and used the extravagance of real diamonds, cash, crystal, and pearls. In the Christmas of 2002, one of his works even tried to sell original Andy Warhols as holiday gift wrap for up to $25,000. His work both annoys and influences the design world and this has made him one of Forbes Magazine’s Tastemakers of 2007.
I’ve seen a lot of shoes lately. Colourful, crazy, cute. Sexy, strange, simple. Irresistible, irresponsible and insidious. But none which were recycled, reused or returned to life, not to mention visually appealing, like those found on Terra Plana, and its family of shoe brands including Worn Again, Vivobarefoot and Dopie. Winners of The Observers Ethical Fashion Product of the Year Award in 2007, Terra Plana bids to develop ‘the best feeling designer shoe brand in the world’. With processes including souring locally available resources such as bicycle tyres, car seat belts and reclaimed jeans, utilizing a unique stitching design which cuts down on the need for solvent glues and aiming to make the shoe as light as possible, Terra Plana’s range of shoes have a blueprint to create a very light footprint indeed.
Like a winged gadget from Bat Man’s utility belt, the Senz umbrella is designed to protect its owner from the elements. A trio of men from design savvy Netherlands have designed the umbrella, that not only withstands winds up to 70mph, but stabilizes by moving forward into the wind. This breakthrough looks set to sadly end those amusing sights of men and women standing on windswept and rainy corners with eyes closed struggling to prevent their traditional steel-framed umbrellas from buckling in the wind. Its innovation has recently won its creators a Red Dot Design Award for Product Design in 2007. Shaped to offer better visibility, the Senz also extends out over the rear of its carrier, conveniently preventing rain from dripping onto the backs of jeans and into shoes. Why hasn’t someone thought of this before? I guess it’s the reinvention of the toothbrush phenomenon: It’s never to late to innovate. Available in an assortment of appealing colours, this could be one of the coolest Christmas presents available.
A vase made from paper that you can put water into, doesn’t seems to make sense, right? But the fascinating Noming vase is just that. It comes flat and you can fold it like paper. You can write on it like paper. You can even recycle it like paper. The paper-based material is unique with 51% chalk and is 100% waterproof. Essentially it’s disposable but apparently you can use it multiple times and for weeks on end. I found it online months ago, and was pleasantly surprised to see you can now buy this in Brisbane. You can find it at the new store Objx (located near Emporium on Chester St, Newstead)
Get in touch with your inner computer geek, next weekend at the Kelvin Grove QUT Creative Industries Precinct where technology will be celebrated at the Next Level Festival. It’s a free program of events happening from the Friday 26th to Sunday 28th October, with music and multi-media performances, movies, stalls, exhibitions, competitions and arcade games. We use technology and computers so much we hardly even think about how it filters into our lives and urban environments. A keynote session is “Stranger than Fiction - The real time city” which will explore how sensors and hand-held electronics are changing the way we describe, understand and design cities and the impact of technology has on the physical structure and spaces of our cities. This session highlights the very interesting and innovative work of the SENSEable City Laboratory, a new research initiative at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
It would have been rather interesting if Next Level also talked about creative solutions to address the often overlooked issue of e-waste that comes with the advancement of technology. Funnily enough, that very same weekend, Apple are doing their bit to address this by offering free computer recycling around Brisbane. Looks like Apple might have listened to Greenpeace who have been asking them to “Green My Apple”.
Topoware is a tableware collection that questions the “landscape of dining” and is inspired by what is perhaps a key foundation of any good site design and planning – a contour plan! Designed by Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino and Karola Torkos, the collection of cups, plates, bowls, place mats and tablecloth, illustrate the eating experience making it feel like a journey over landscape. Contour plans are used to show natural height increases and decreases in landform and the contours of Topoware also show similar ideas of measuring increases and decreases. One plate reads “father, mother, child.” Another reads “greedy, moderate, modest”. A bowl reads “very hungry, hungry, full.” The collection explore our relationships to food and physical spaces, comments on table manners and etiquette, and intertwines social commentary on eating habits. It recently was shown as part of London Design Festival (15-25 September, 2007).
The room is darken, there’s jamming music and hot young people are crowded around watching the head to head competition going on in front of them. But this is no face off of MCs or dancers, it is graphic designers “battling” in Cut&Paste. Cut& Paste is a cool digital design tournament, that sets challenges and themed elimination rounds in which designs come to life in front of a live audience. Cut&Paste was born in New York City back in November 2005, has traveled across the world and for the first time it is coming to Australia. It’s happening in Sydney on 17 November 2007. This fun event highlights contemporary cultural themes, celebrates creativity, promotes local talent, and reveals the creative design process. (It also highlights some pretty fancy computer gear that I’d like to own). Cut&Paste is a global movement of artists, firms, and media that come together to strengthen creative networks through events and local support. Watch the video courtesy of Cool Hunting.
Last month’s, Melbourne Design Festival ran a number of projects under the theme of “when it rains it pours”. One of the projects was “There’s a hole in my Bucket” which asked visitors to take one of 100 buckets and photograph a part of Melbourne or everyday life that they thought was poorly designed. The project sought to create a dialogue about the design landscape and how design has the ability to transform our lives and our society for better or worse. It’s quite a fascinating collection of images and thoughts, and covers everything from high heels to toilets. For me, it’s the numerous photos about urban landscapes (roads, architecture, public transport, public spaces etc) which I find the most interesting. It’s about much more than just the physical design of things and places, because the photos have thought-provoking layers of environmental and/or social commentary to get you thinking. The photos will be online here.
In the business of creativity, original ideas are highly sought after and highly valuable. The business card pictured, is for a designer whose solution simultaneously sets them apart from other designers while making fun of the increasing number of designers in the field. The result works like a miniature house plant, growing alfalfa or cress when dipped in water - a business card for ‘another bloomin’ designer’. The logo was also cut into a ’seed stencil’ that allowed the logo to be grown on either earth or lawn; on uncut grass, the message would remain hidden until the area was mown. This attempt also represents a refreshing take on often the most important item a business can produce.
Just in time for the launch of the inaugural Brisbane Indesign 2007, what was previously known as Craft Queensland Gallery has emerged with a new name. Artisan, as it is now known, is currently playing host to the Queensland New Design exhibition, which showcases the exceptional talents of the eponymous competition’s twelve finalists. The aesthetically adept finalists, handpicked by a scrupulous judging panel, will also be exhibited alongside Launch Pad finalists in Sydney as part of this year’s Saturday In Design event. Works on show include Alexander Lotersztain’s ‘Plantation Chair’, the ‘Plonk’ stool by Paul Morris, Marc Harrison’s ‘Pinch Vessel’ (made from Australian macadamia nut shell) and the ‘vol_Luminous’ range of glowing ceramics from Peter Biddulph. Continue reading ‘what’s in a name?’
