Travel brings out the worst in people; flared tempers as you sit elbow-to-elbow on a cramped airplane, angst that you may lose your all important passport, and general dissatisfaction with your appearance – those toilet lights are too bright! Amidst all these “getting there” negatives emerges a positive, complete travel style and organisation in the form of a carry on. Found via SwissMiss, Amsterdam-based TravelTeq’s bags are just gorgeous and a welcome break from the everyday plain-Jane black suitcases wheeled around. Their wheelie bag is strong, sturdy and features those perfect little compartments. The best thing? You can kick out the legs and sit on top of it in those awfully long airport waits! The perfect accompaniment to the bag is the gorgeous leather laptop case/handbag (pictured above), which hooks onto the handle of the wheelie.

There is great joy to be found in receiving a hand-written letter or message that someone has lovingly made just for you. There are many occasions, such as birthdays, that require the giving of greeting cards, but, sadly, many people neglect the opportunity to write a heartfelt message, opting instead to simply scrawl their name at the bottom of the card. Enter, the Fill in the Blanks Card Set. Each card can be customised for every person and every situation. To further encourage the flow of using your own words, instead of someone else’s, the inside of the card has been left blank so you have plenty of space to tell someone just how wonderful they are. What’s more, each card comes with a red envelope, so you can surprise someone with a message in the mail.

The sukkah is an ephemeral shelter, erected for one week as part of the Jewish week-long festival of Sukkot.  It is a place customary to share meals, entertain, sleep, and rejoice.  ‘Sukkah City’ is an international design competition to re-imagine these temporary structures  and propose radical possibilities for the traditional design constraints in a contemporary urban site. Twelve finalists were selected by a panel of celebrated architects, designers, and critics to be constructed in a visionary village in Union Square Park, New York,  from September 19-20, 2010.

A healthy life is one filled with optimism. Brisbane will be buzzing from October 11–17 as the international design community descends upon Brisbane. OPTIMISM: Icograda Design Week Brisbane 2010, proudly sponsored by map magazine, aims to inspire, challenge and engage, to provoke thinking and to create change. Whatever colour, form or function ‘optimism’ means to you, join designers and colleagues from around the world in celebration of creativity, communication and collaboration. The week’s events include a two-day international conference, business and design symposium, workshops, design trade fair, exhibitions, social events and will culminate with the 10th AGDA National Biennial Awards on Saturday October 16 at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre, showcasing the best of Australian communication design. The opening reception for VIP guests and delegates will be hosted at GoMA, providing an unforgettable backdrop and spectacular surroundings to lead into the conference. LAVA, the creative strategic design agency recently awarded European Design Agency of the Year 2010 will be just one of the highlights at OPTIMISM: Icograda Design Week Brisbane. You can register here.

Hosted by the International Council of Graphic Design Associations (Icograda) in partnership with the Australian Graphic Design Association (AGDA).

OPTIMISM poster design:  Lloyd Grey Design

Etsy is a wonderful creative shopping online shopping space; home to great collections of vintage homewares, clothing, shoes to inventive stationary. A fabulous spot to while away internet hours. An Etsy creation doing the blogging-rounds this week is this gorgeous print by Mike Oncley. It’s a lovely, funny tribute to the cultiest of cult Woody Allen films, Annie Hall. There are five other Annie Hall themed prints in his store.

A master of tragicomic-slapstick existentialism, Melbourne artist Ronnie van Hout takes his audience on a journey through a parallel universe – at times challenging, curious and grotesque. For his creepy sculpture The Sick Child, he attached his own grimacing adult head to a child’s body. Meanwhile, his iconic gun-grey Failed Robot exposes its human eyeballs and gums and teeth. Ronnie’s cryptic works challenge us to join the dots. Institute of Modern Art until September 18.

A cheeky promotion for first-aid training.

Brisbane is Australia’s new “premiering ground” for all things wonderful in art. It started in 2007 with Australia’s largest showing of Andy Warhol pieces at GoMA. The exhibit was expansive showcasing over 300 works by the ground-breaking pop artist, and it burst open this sleepy town’s art scene – to the envy of our big sister cities. Then came the more recent, eye-popping and alarmingly real Ron Mueck human body sculpture exhibit. Now it’s the Valentino Retrospective. GoMA will fling open its doors on 7 August, giving Brisbanites unprecedented access to the world of haute couture until 14 November. The exhibition will present designer Valentino Garavani’s first collection from 1959, up to the  latest Autumn/Winter 2009-10 collection. The celebrity factor is the cherry on top of this creative cake: dresses worn by Cate Blanchett, Nicole Kidman, Julia Roberts, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Elizabeth Taylor and others will be on display. Adult tickets are $20, concession $16 and children free.

When Princess Leia was mid-space flight, she may have craved a comfortable nook to curl up and rest while her spacecraft travelled at light speed throughout the galaxy. Industrial designer Igor Chak has designed The Space Invader Couch, a tribute to the solar system and a unique design feat. At first glance, the couch alludes to its videogame namesake or an advanced level of Pac Man. Geometric edges jut out at all angles of the all-leather couch, and two glass surfaces add to its space-age aesthetic. Whilst he hasn’t quite traversed the galaxy yet, Igor’s talents have been cultivated over a lifetime of globe trotting, growing up in Russia, Japan and Seattle, before his career took flight in Utah and Los Angeles.

There are eight days left to get your entries in for map magazine’s Smallest Short Film Festival, 2010. The festival aims to have some fun and inspire filmmakers and audiences alike, while strengthening the artistic fabric of Brisbane and its creative community. It’s time to grab your iPhone and start shooting! Robert Altman said filmmaking is a chance to live many lifetimes. So, here is your chance to step into some of those lives! No matter how bad the film is or how brilliant the film is, map magazine’s Smallest Short Film Festival 2010 is for every budding filmmaker out there to have some fun and unleash their creative genius. And if your film is voted ‘The best small film’ you will win an Apple iPad along with a selection of other special prizes (depending on our sponsors!).

Categories include: The best small film, The best actor in a small film, The best special effects in a small film, The best foreign language in a small film, The best original soundtrack in a small film, The best horror small film.

In October this year Brisbane will play host to an exciting new design event – Unlimited: Designing for the Asia Pacific. Unlimited: Designing for the Asia Pacific is a new international initiative supported by the Queensland Government to promote the value of design thinking in shaping a positive future for the Asia Pacific region. The event invites you to join them as they reveal the valuable role that design is playing in resolving complex challenges and addressing our most pressing concerns, from urbanisation, transport and food production, to health and education. Unlimited aims to create opportunities for businesses, governments, students, community groups and individuals to collaborate on common ground – as we search together for sustainable and commercially viable solutions that can positively contribute to our everyday lives. The first Unlimited event, to be held from 4–10 October 2010, is destined to excite, inspire and confront!

Peeking out above the treetops, standing majestically over over the River Mur in Austria (forming the border with Slovenia) is a curious looking structure that could well play a starring role in an epic sci-fi film. In reality, it’s an observation tower designed by German architects terrain:loenhart&mayr. The double spiral of the structure is formed by a twisting spiral staircase, which allows those ascending and descending to weave through each other’s paths. The observation tower itself is intended to resemble a tree, with its trunk-like base and branch-like tubes closer to the top.

For a Mumbai-based design team, three weeks proved just the right amount of time to let imaginations run wild and for creative juices to flow freely. Environmental design studio The BUSRIDE threw the rulebook out the window when designing the fit-out for The Smoke House Deli, a thriving delicatessen in one of the world’s most bustling cosmopolitan cities, Delhi. For the Hindustan deli, The BUSRIDE envisaged a space where good food and simple design could spark good conversation, and where a sense of community would be encouraged to cultivate.  In just 25 days almost every square inch of the deli was brought to life with hand-drawn illustrations creeping over surfaces, walls, shelves and crevices, resulting in an artistic juxtaposition of 2D images with 3D facades. A casual deli by day and an alluring dining space by night, The Smoke House Deli not only invites customers to salivate over creamy camembert and gorgonzola pesto packages, but also encourages hungry passersby to pull up a pew and tuck into mouth-watering meals.

A virtual gathering of creative ideas, Where We Design provides an online platform where designers can learn from photographers, where software developers can observe architects and where web designers can discover the creative lairs of fashion designers. Creative individuals and design firms are invited to post up photos of their workspaces, and to share with an online audience the places where creative ideas are born, cultivated and brought to life. Posted images hint how new panes of glass, polished concrete floors and a new slick of paint transformed a 1950s petrol station into an architectural studio. A log cabin in The Netherlands provides artistic inspiration for a Dutch musician, while the major drawcard to one Chicagoan graphic designer’s condo is her four-legged friend, wagging its tail beneath a tidy workstation.

CitID is a project that is inviting designers to create logos for their cities.  Ambitiously they are trying to create logos representing every city in the world.   There is an especially poor representation from Australian cities, so I invite local designers and illustrators to get one that.

Brisbane Park(ing) Day is happening again this year on September 17th.  This global movement of rethinking car spaces and public spaces continues to inspire both temporary actions on the day as well as exciting new permanent action (example Parklets in San Fransisco).  The day mostly looks at on-street parking, but I also would consider that most shopping centres are over designed for capacity and typically over 65% of their land is car parking, that is often empty for periods of time.  How might these be used better? (more…)

Sporting powerhouse PUMA and product design consultancy aruliden have joined forces to create a temple where the after-hours athlete can worship the art of combining fitness with pure fun. Combining the joyful simplicity of play with sleek design aesthetics, the CHALK ping-pong table throws the spotlight off competitive sport and instead invites players to get back to basics. Handmade from ash wood and ceramic chalk, the table reworks any preconceptions players may have about ping pong. Any memories of dust-covered ping-pong tables shedding chipboard splinters on a rumpus room floor will be forgotten the minute your hand picks up a designer ping-pong bat, or when you begin to tally the score on the tabletop in chalk. Game on.

Photography by Matthew Carbone. From the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, to the Dancing House in Prague, Frank Gehry’s architectural genius has devised some of the most ingenious, intriguing and state-of-the art buildings in the world. Frank’s signature designs feature twisted metal, sloping glass panels and sculptural structures that appear to leap out of the ground in a dynamic display of architectural impossibility. Supported by the Keep Memory Alive foundation, The Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health was brought to life by Frank’s imaginative design style. Inside the Las Vegas architectural masterpiece lies a hub of researchers conducting some of the medical world’s most current scientific research in brain-related conditions including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s Diseases. The medical hub features three main spaces – an outdoor breezeway and shaded seated area, events space the Life Activity Center and the main medical building for research and patient care.

Whilst a stovetop is a vital staple in modern kitchen design, it is rarely considered to be intuitive, sensitive or intelligent. Annual global design competition Electrolux Design Lab has introduced the notion of a stovetop with heart and soul. Electrolux ‘Heart of the Home’ is a perceptive cooking surface, which projects forward to home cooking in the year 2050. With amorphous sunken wells to replace the need for pots and pans, the cooking process is simplified and mess-free. The ‘Heart of the Home’ concept aims to combine technological advances and environmental consciousness with intuitive design. Perhaps more suited to a space ship rather than a family kitchen, the futuristic design features an in-built sink, a lighting system tailored to the user’s mood, and the ability to produce recipes on a flat screen, simply by resting ingredients on the surface.