Mini-golf

Design collective La Bolleur have produced this beautiful minigolf course. Mocoloco report it is on its way to Milan next. Great work.

Crutch

It seems a shame that a tabletop has two sides, but only one ever gets used. The ability to use both sides of a tabletop opens up many possibilities: the sides could have differing laminates, one could be wipeable, one could be 'Sunday best', and so on. A clever concept, called 'Crutch' uses a standard 'leg' and staps to create a stable surface. It should also be possible to use non-regular shapes, I guess.

Design by NicolaFromBern.

Update: Another variation on the theme here.

GUI

A breathtaking yet gimmick-free re-imagining of the computer user interface by R Clayton Miller, all lovingly explained in this video. It's long, but worth watching in full for a glimpse of what we can hope is our mouseless future. Fingers at the ready - all of them.

(via)

Chairs

So many chairs, so little money. My favourite of many, the Lola, is featured in the beautiful joint detail shown here.

(via)

Hands

An absolutely stunning clock design by SanderMulder. It reorganises the three hands (seconds, minutes, hours) so that they do not share a common axis. The video is well worth a look, to appreciate its sculptural effect. Only 20 will be made, it seems. (via)

Plates

What a nice idea. (via)

Power

How many times have we gazed admiringly at a great piece of mains-powered industrial design, only to find the ubiquitous and ugly UK plug on the end of it? US and continental consumers take for granted their compact and elegant version, avoiding unsightly bulges in their laptop bags.

Min-Kyu Choi has designed a three-pin plug which can be folded flat for travel. Thank you - about time. (via)

Tools

Some fetishistic shots of the specially made tools for the Shuttle mission to repair the Hubble telescope.

"The EVA mini-workstation mounts to the front chest of an astronaut’s spacesuit and holds equipment needed during spacewalks." So, a toolbelt, then. The square hole on the left holds a carton of 'Um Bongo'.

Magnets

A little old now, but just stumbled upon this again. It is a magnetic curtain, which allows for some striking sculptural possibilities, due to the way the grid of magnets engages when it is scrunched.

(via 3Rings)

Tickets II

So here it is. After complaining about the incredibly poor ticket design which UK train travellers (and staff) have to put up with, here is a re-imagining of it. Taking the original orange-and-white format as a starting point, there are a number of key features which should improve the ticket in use.

Importantly, the destination is the most prominent information, enabling people to see at a glance where the ticket is valid for. Underneath is the permitted route. In this case, the ticket is a return for two adults, one full-price child, and one concession child, and incorporates a seat reservation (coach and seat numbers). Using the inspiration of the timeless British Rail logo, the ticket is reversible depending on whether it is to be used for the outbound or return journey. The orange bands remain the location for the punchhole check by the guard.

The departure time and date are also shown, with an analogue clock to help make the time more memorable. In this way, all of the information on the current ticket design is preserved, reorganised into a user-friendly format, and anything distracting discarded or diminished.

Storage

The origins of Jonathan Ive's great product design for Apple lie in the work of Joe Colombo, Brionvega, and especially Dieter Rams. All were at their creative peak as the sixties turned into the seventies, and there can be little doubt where the iPhone calculator began. Alongside the Braun calculator, one of Rams' most famous innovations was the 606 shelving system he designed for Vitsoe, and now celebrating its 50th anniversary.

In a testament to its timelessness, anyone who bought the product in 1959 can still buy compatible components to extend their storage array in 2009. See how it works on Vitsoe's revamped website (by Airside).

Cards II

The business card is to graphic design what the chair is to the product designer, or the house extension is to the architect: a testbed for new ideas. This site neatly condenses innovations as they arise and publishes them in a simple unfussy manner. Worth a detour if you are considering ways to catch someone's eye within the restriction of an 85x55mm rectangle.

Lane

Lateral thinking in connection with city infrastructure will always be worth considering. Building roads, underpasses, bridges, and barriers is often expensive, awkward and time-consuming. On top of this, there is the aesthetic price we pay for the uninvited eye-level clutter which attaches itself to our highways, as the authorities try to protect us from ourselves. This innovation from a US company called Altitude inc. is a bike lane you take with you on the dark journey home. Cyclists can now carry their version of the white line/logo combo. (via Good)

Depression

Some say design could do with losing some of its frivolous extravagance, born of too much time and money, and indulgent clients out to make a name for themselves. This article in the New York Times makes a good case for our fresh economic woes being A Good Thing, prompting designers to plunder cheap materials and work to innovate. With recollections of Charles and Ray Eames working wonders in wartime and post-war austerity conditions, it is a compelling argument. Let's see what we can do.

Packaging

And then neatly following on from the last post is ideem.it which has vector (ie scalable) PDFs of various kinds of packaging - including the milk carton in the picture. If you need a template for making a box of almost any description, head here.

Bottle

Via The Dieline comes a paper bottle developed by BrandImage called 360. Despite looking as though it takes up more space than a Tetrapak - the now ubiquitous plasticised card box used for milk and fruit juice cartons - it uses less plastic and is totally recyclable.

Cards

Just in time for (next) Christmas, this creative approach to card sending - a universal card for all occasions. The card consists of microdots which can be removed to form a dotmatrix message appropriate to the great day. Nice to see a card design that makes you want to send it in preference to something easier. Like an email.