Looking for baby clothing at Muji Japan as suggested by Kimiko, I came accross this o! surprising Lego & Muji love affair. I don’t understand Japanese so I did not make lots of sense with the text, but it seems pretty neat:
You combine Lego bricks to craft materials to fluidly assemble creatures, people, or even Christmas cards. A great way to expand the way kids work with traditional Lego blocks, integrating unlimited paper craft creations, meaning unlimited imagination.
As soon as this becomes available here, I’ll get myself a kit!!
This is a strong reason to be nostalgic of the past! According to Wikipedia, Vac-u-former was a toy made by Mattel in the 1960s. Based on the industrial process of vacuum forming, a square piece of plastic was clamped in a holder and heated over a metal plate. When the plastic was soft, the holder was swung to the other side, over a mold of the object to be formed. Then pressing a handle on the side of the unit created a vacuum, sucking the plastic down over the mold and shaping it to it. When the plastic cooled it solidified, making an impression of the item. Various molds came with the kit, but almost any small object could be used as a mold.
Because very hot surfaces were easily accessible to a child (or adult) playing with the toy, it probably could not be sold today …
Dana Gordon (currently with us in Cambridge, MA) hacked an existing answering machine and rewired some of its original functions (such as recording a message, play, pause and delete). The result is super fun and inspiring. Imagine in your living room a reactive table instead of a regular answering machine! She called the machine the “message table” as in an answering machine merged into a wooden table. For each message received, a box appears on the table. To listen, open the box - and to delete, push it back into the desk.
Designed with Shawn Bonkowski, she exhibited the table at the Victoria & Albert Museum, at the Salone del Mobile 2005 in Milano and at the Gallery AB+, Torino.
I am working with my friend Marisa Jahn on a new project. It will be super fun, artistic and hopefully design noir! More soon… but in the meantime I want to share her latest creation with Steve Shada, “Pleasurecraft“.
A kit for any klutz who wishes to woo a potential lover, ‘Pleasurecraft’ is a vehicular kit that choreographs gesture and landscape to produce an outting full of splendor and romance. The potential lover wil find PleasureCraft’s luxurious pullows and easy-to-reach champagne cooler irresistable. Suitors will love PleasureCraft for its easy-to-use instructions that make Romance easy - one, two, three!
The suitor begins when he/she steps in the boat and first begins to read the operator’s manual. Pictures indicate what to do next–comb the moustache, don the bowtie, bust out the TicTacs — then uncork the champagne, what tempo to follow, etc.
Often, a clumsy serenade can be attributed to an overwhelming amount of details and a failure to attend to the right ones in the right order. But PleasureCraft solves this problem through its built-in water wheel, perfectly callibrated to the RPM of the River Seine. By listening to the music and glancing at the operator manual, the suiter knows what cues to follow and when.
(‘Pleasurecraft’ questions the human agency in constructing the pictoral imaginary and an ethnographic examination of our species’ mating rituals.)
DIY is the new black for the gaming industry which has adopted not only the DIY but also the craft culture in its new game for Playstation 3, Little Big Planet. In little big planet, users create their characters (their mascot) with textures, zippers, colors, attitudes and their own levels, events, design their difficulties and can then share their designs with their peers and play online.
The level creation is the most intriguing, because you got to design triggers and events like switches and buttons. It can be pretty simple if it is just to open a door to the next level but pretty rad ;) when designing a multi-phase boss fight against millions of tech spiders! Also the sharing component is pretty elaborate as other users can rate your game and offer descriptive keywords to your creation, from “brilliant” to “repetitive”. So be sure to invite the right friends who can understand your style!!! You can also invite guest mascot stars! Isn’t that amazing?!
You are only allowed to create 3 levels that you share on the server side. If on the server the company deems that you are good at creating levels, you can then create some more. If the company decides that your levels are not good enough, then you are stuck and you need to cancel these levels until you are being granted the right to create some more! So that is interesting because it shows that the company is afraid that users aren’t gonna design levels good enough and that this game relies heavily on people’s ability to create neat levels. If users are not gonna create brilliant designs, then this will be a failure because it only comes with 3 small levels … This is like a creation suite for gamers that welcome creative individuals into playing, creating and sharing! I cannot wait to try it. If only they would send a free copy to designers, they would have great levels designed!!
C’N'C plug generation asked me to spread the word about the C’N'C Plug Generation Contest, a new graphic design competition for talented graphic designers! Interpret in your own way the slogan C’N'C Plug Generation with a photo, a composite, mural, stickers, video clip or sculpture and send it in!
The best creations will be used as graphics for a series of T-shirts and accessories to be showcased during Milan Fashion Week in February. You’ve got till 30 January 2009 to focus your ideas, create them and send them in! The jury will select three original and unpublished concepts (such as pictures, composites, wall-paintings, stickers, graphics, banner, sculpture) representing in a young and creative way the logo “C’N'C PLUG GENERATION”.
Prizes
1st - 1000€
2nd - an iPhone
3rd - an iPhone
+ your winning T-shirts and accessories logo will be presented during Milan Fashion Week this February 2009!
Participant must create a concept with any artistic technique, including free-hand drawing and digital art, photography and sculpture. The concept must be sent online to CND in JPG, TIFF, GIF, PDF or PNG format, file of a maximum of 5 MB. The directions on how to upload your creation can be found ->here<-
Jabberstamp earned an honorable mention as one of the 23 finalists from over 2,500 entries to I.D. magazine’s 2008 Student Design Review! Working on Jabberstamp with Hayes Raffle and Ruibing Wang was exceptionally fun and inspiring, I am glad it won an award!!
