Pocket Knife?

This latest discovery comes on the eve of an incident that left me trying to pry the front half of my key from inside the door lock. That by all means wasn’t a fun experience, but what I found inside the Garrett Wade Tool Collection certainly is! Simple idea really, making one daily tool look like the other, but it achieves the desired visual effect. A perfect addition to a Father’s Day gift or something for that special handyman in your life.

Frankly, I just want one for myself…

Visit GarrettWade.com for more information.

The Transparent Car.

International petroleum company Shell has recently dismantles a Nissan 370Z, replicated all its 2000+ parts and created a completely transparent prototype of the car for it’s newest campaign marketing the Helix Ultra engine oil. The intricate idea was to clearly demonstrate the way oil travels throughout the engine. To say that we are a little impressed would be the understatement of the century. Sure, anything is possible when you’ve got a budget as large as one that Nissan can afford, but to be able to execute something like this is truly commendable. I think the creative minds in your design & marketing departments deserve a raise!

See the creative genius at work!

What’s in a Card?

Designing a business card can hold in itself a world of possibilities. We cannot even begin to list all the fascinating designs we have come across in the past couple of years! However after finding this latest card wonder we couldn’t help but share it with our readers.

The company: MODHair, A Rock n’ Roll Hair Salon

Fabio Milito has come up with an ingenious business card design. At first glance the card resembles a pocket comb, AH! but there is more! The comb plays a classic rock theme when rubbed by fingernail, using the same principle of a metallic musicbox comb. How neat is that? Love, Love Love it!

The Lesson: When designing a business card, always think outside the box. Unique concepts can be executed even with a standard black & white print template.

Iron Chic.

The Iron Design Company has recently exhibited their new fluid wine rack creation at the Architectural Design Digest Show in NYC. The gorgeous slick structure is made out of steel and holds up to half a case of wine. The smooth design of the rack looks incredible in modern minimalist spaces, and we love how the shape of the rack seems to be made by the wine bottles themselves. It’s as if they were enveloped in thin sheets of paper!

Everything about this design is appealing to our visual senses.

In fact, Iron Design is notorious for making ultra chic household items which show off stunning shapes and lines. The company was founded by a blacksmith connoisseur Marc Maiorana whose work has been featured in high end publications such as Gourmet, Dwell and the New York Times.

Check out IronDesignCompany.com for a full gallery of their work.

Work for Minimum Wage.

We’ve found this interesting piece while looking through Blake Fall-Conroy’s online portfolio. This young sculptor intent on making social and political statements with his artwork has been working on a new project called the Minimum-Wage Machine. Essentially the machine is a large container of pennies equipped with a turn-lever that makes you work for …. yes you guessed it.. minimum wage. The concept is simple, the machine releases one penny every 5.04 seconds the lever is being cranked for $7.15/hr (New York State’s current minimum wage). If the participant stops turning the lever, the machine stops releasing money.

Thought provoking indeed. We appreciate the philosophical parallels between this design and real life. After all, regardless of the speed and effort being put into the cranking of the lever, your minimum wage is set in stone, until the mastermind behind the mechanism changes the rules of the game…

Great metaphorical concept.

Visit BlakeFallConroy.com to find out more about the artist.

Colour Lights.

On the surface it may not look like a unique concept, it is after all a glowing lamp. Yet if you take a closer look at the luminous design by Maarten De Ceulaer you may be quite intrigued. “The Lighting Project” is going to be intriduced at Spazio Rossana Orlandi (Milano, Italy) during the Salone del Mobile, from 14-19 April, but for those of you who will not be attending we have the wrap.

In the words of the designer: the concept is simple but unique; by adding a few drops of edible food colourants to the water inside the bottle, you can change the colour of the lamp, and the atmosphere of the space. Any colour can be created by the right mix of the primary colours Cyan, Magenta and Yellow. The spherical shape in the bottom of the bottles is sandblasted from below, so the power-LED below it, mounted on an aluminium disc, illuminates it completely.

The food colourants will be supplied with the lamp, can be ordered afterwards, but can also be bought in most supermarkets. All lamps will be handmade in collaboration with a laboratory glass-ware atelier in Brussels. What you see on these images is the first series of prototypes, it will soon be expanded with more typologies of bottles, and various sizes will be available in each model.

Simple yet so beautiful.

What’s Your Vice?

A US based jeweler Cast of Vices has come up with an interesting collection of pieces inspired by society’s vices. It’s unabashedly provocative and we kind of love these designs! The collection features vices from all corners of the dark side: from luxury xanax to blunts on a silver chain. Would You dare to wear your secret vice on your neck? The collection is hand crafted in the USA with solid .926 silver sterling silver and 14k gold by using the lost wax process.

We wouldn’t be surprised to see this on a few hard partying rock stars. We aren’t going to name names … And while we are in no way at all going to condone the glamorization of prescription drugs, from a purely artistic perspective we think the collection is worth a mention. Philosophically speaking it also sheds a light on this generation’s pop culture in an interesting way. In a society where nothing is taboo, where do we draw the line?

“Cast of Vices celebrates the inherent design aesthetic of these substances while at the same time casting a critical eye on pop culture and out obsession with self-medication and addiction. When our Rome falls these will be our remains, cigarette butts, pills, bottle caps, and coke bags.” – Cast of Vices

Carbon Copies.

We don’t quite know what to think of this. After getting over the initial shock factor we can attest to the intrigue that has got our attention with this latest piece of design.

Product designer Nadine Jarvis has come up with an idea to produce slick one of a kind pencil sets made out of human cremains. Approximately 240 pencils can be made from an average human body of ash as stated on her website. Each pencil is stamped with the name of the person whose ashes it is made out of. Only one pencil can be removed from the box at a time and you can sharpen the pencils back into the box. As time goes by the sharpened residue from used pencils occupy the leftover space in the box recreating it into a sort of an Urn. We must admit the though process behind this invention is incredible, and after you get over the initial shudder factor it seems like a very philosophically poignant idea.

We can’t help but think that if someone made pencils out of Picasso’s ashes they’d be worth millions.

Visit NadineJarvis.com to see more of her unusual creations.

The Folding Plug.

For those of you who have been to the United Kingdom you’re sure to remember the awkward inconvenience of those bulky three-pin plugs the Brits have been using since around 1946. Well, there soon may be an ingenious new variation on the old plug thanks to the beautiful mind of a young and talented industrial designer.

Royal College of Art Graduate Min-Kyu Choi’s Folding Plug System was named overall Design of the Year at the 2010 Brit Insurance Design of the Year Awards. The idea to redesign the plug came to Min-Kyu after he discovered scratches on his laptop computer after his morning commute to College. His concept was to make a slimmer compact plug that would be as thin as the laptop and could be stored in the briefcase without damaging its contents.

We think it’s Brilliant!

Drink a Cup of Galliano … better yet Versace?

Now this is interesting…

A German novelty company Donkey Products has created a Prêt-à-porTea line consisting of fashion icons like Karl Lagerfeld and Donatella Versace printed on tea bag holders that conveniently latch on to your morning cup of tea. Looks like Uncle Karl is taking a hot bath in Earl Grey! We wonder if drinking this tea might lend some of the Fashion Elite’s creative genius to us…

One can only hope!

Not a must have, but a nice novelty nevertheless.