The Design Crack Guide to Soft
Blow Lounge Chair by Foersom & Hiort-Lorenzen
The first time I saw the Blow Lounge Chair by Foersom & Hiort-Lorenzen for HAY, I thought they called it the Blow Lounge Chair because this chair was so sexy that brothels would be ordering this for certain lude acts implied in the name. Of course, my dirty mind completely overlooked that this chair, in [...]
What Would a Chandelier Look Like if Were Overtaken by Spiders?
Marcel Wanders, uber designer of the past five years, has created this recent addition to the stable of fantastic, high-concept lights for Flos. The concept is to take an old school chandelier and treat it as it were in a haunted house with some overzealous spiders which had made the most lethal web imaginable. The [...]
The Flatpack Rug by Big-Game: Functional Furniture for the Transient Fashionista
Flatpack is a tufted wool rug by Big-Game, a Swiss and Belgian design house. The rug concept was born from the idea of taking a simple cardboard box and flattening it out so that each tab of the box spreads to make a rug. I like this simply because it exploit an already interesting form [...]
The Flamenco Chair
Here is an item that I think breached a curatorial focus in me, and I’ve decided to show it anyway. It does not seem terribly innovative. It’s not particularly clever. It doesn’t use materials in a striking and unexpected way. Really, the only reason I have shown this chair, the Flamenco Chair, is because I [...]
Salvatore Ferragamo White Pump with Mosaic Heal: A Break from Tradition
I have been contemplating giving who I am and everything I do in life a catchy tag line that will help an audience identify with me. Design Crack, as of yet, has no tag line. It pretty much explains itself, I think, with the mental visual of a design object that is irresistibly addictive- thus, [...]
Fall / Winter 2007 Collection by Mina Perhonen
Mina Perhonen is a Finnish Designer working in Japan. Her work is characterized by empire dresses with flowing waists, huge, bold buttons, neutrals mixed with a few earthy cool colors, and softness. I’ve chosen to show a picture of the softest of the soft pieces. It’s sort of a hoodie mixed with a cardigan made [...]
Rocking Sheep by Povl Kjær
I’ve been looking at a lot of Danish design and craft lately, and while on my electronic journey of discovery, I came upon a new interpretation of a child’s rocking horse by Povl Kjær. He has dropped the valiant horse and gone for the plusher more comfortable Rocking Sheep. I really had nothing much to [...]
Bicicleta Rug by Nani Marquina
Nani Marquina, an awesome rug making company, has just developed the Bicicleta Rug. This rug is special because it brings two of my life’s interests together: bicycling and design. If you didn’t know already, I attempt to ride my bicycle to work each day, and I’ve been doing that for nearly ten years. In that [...]
UM Carry by Josh Jakus
This weekend in Hayes Valley, San Francisco, there was this thing called the Capsule street sale. Capsule hosted probably 200 vendors of what I might call “crafty” design. The majority of the work was pretty competent, but honestly, I was hoping for some more innovative products out of the deal. Imagine, if you dare, several [...]
Gola: My New Favorite Sneaker
I have no idea why I love this shoe. I just do. It has a bit of that franken-shoe look which has infected so many top brand design shops. This one takes on the two forms: The back of the shoe is late 90s Italian gigalo / amateur football player. The back of the shoe [...]
Valextra White Leather Backpack
Something moving happened to me when I saw this bag by Valextra for the first time a few weeks ago. I was flipping through the pages of Wallpaper (I think) when I saw the advertisement showing this bag. Of course, the bag was perched on a rock overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. It brought me back [...]
Boom Bag by GRO Design
Boom Bag is a prototype by Gro Design that combines two great accessories into an awesome final concept. It’s one part purse and one part portable iPod stereo. This is one of those, “Why didn’t I think of that?!…Hey, pass me that bong, dude” moments in product design. If you look at most portable iPod [...]
Sweet Home Laptop Power / Foot Warmer by Clement Eloy
OK. I wouldn’t call this product exactly “green” per se, but it does make something that is not so efficient into something useful. What I’m talking about is the laptop power / foot warmer by Clement Eloy. He’s created a design that takes your overly warm transformer that is required for every laptop to function, [...]
Smittens by Wendy Feller
I’ve been combing through the latest ID Magazine and I’ve found a number of pieces that were extremely compelling. One of my favorites is Smittens by Wendy Feller. They couldn’t be more aptly named. These are mittens for couples who are smitten (sorry for the obvious observation). This seems like such unique novelty design at [...]
Bretz Sofas: Possibly the Ugliest Sofas Ever Made
The website for Bretz Sofas is www.mycultsofa.com, and, quite honestly, you would probably need to be in a cult to own one of these pieces of furniture. Because only someone who has been brainwashed would pay thousands of dollars to buy a Bretz Sofa. They are truly the ugliest sofas I have ever seen, and [...]
Laptop Sleeve by Red Maloo
Red Maloo began its existence when the company was originally asked to design a laptop case presented in 2004 at the Tokyo Ambient Lifestyle Fair. The initial design was constructed of the finest Japanese Linens and used similar design and construction as kimonos. Soon after, Maloo introduced the Red Maloo Laptop case made of a [...]
