I recently received an email from this company: Paradoxy Products.  I believe they were writing to make me aware of their chess set, but to be honest I only wanted to write about their DecisionPaper. What is it? It’s a note pad with a cut directly in the middle of the paper. What does it do? It helps you make decisions. It’s similar to flipping a coin. What you do is think of a question that may lead you to a yes or no answer. Simply write “yes” on one side of the paper and “no” on the other side. Now rip the paper and the side with the most amount of paper is the decision you make. It’s a game of chance, but a fun game. If the decision is, ” should I get married to my fiance or should I cheat on her with he sister?” you may consider another more rational method of decision making. Otherwise, DecisionPaper is as good of a way as any to make decisions.

Matt Gagnon, a Brooklyn based designer and manufacturer, has created his side table out of Homasote. This material is made of 100% post-consumer recycled paper. The board is only about as thick as plywood, so the pieces are cut out, shaped, then bolted together. The piece is finished off with linseed oil and accented with red latex paint. Each piece is made to order, by hand, in Matt’s shop. I must say, when I saw this piece and told that it was using so many good practices of green design, I was really impressed. The side table is absolutely a sculptural masterpiece. It appears to be carved from stone. The Homasote creates these strata that kept me guessing as to what the material was and how it was produced. It’s an absolutely fresh concept, and I’m excited to see what else comes from Mr. Gagnon’s studio. The price, however, is a bit steep for a side table. You’ll be paying near three Grand when you’re done. But, really, this is functional art and not Ikea level craft. The piece is available through the awesome online store: Branch.

I noticed this post on the Inhabitat blog recently, and I just wanted to point out how lovely the concept for a laptop case is. Giles Miller of The Farm has always pushed the boundaries with his experimentations on recycled cardboard, but he’s made one crucial move on this product design that will win him a great number of sales: he has put an Apple logo on the the case. This logo, of course, will win you immediate accolades with the Linux / Apple uber-geek mavens who have no doubt got this case in front of the eyeballs of 50 million people. What I like most about this case, though, has less to do with the form and more to do with the manner that Giles choses to create a recycled product. One of the big beefs I have with modern recycled products is the enormous energy expended to recycle a product in the first place. Giles Miller’s product uses very low energy because almost no processing has to be performed to create the product. So, the item may not look incredibly refined, but it works efficiently and at very low expenditure of energy, and I applaud the effort.