The Design Crack Guide to $100-250
Muji Wall Mounted CD Player
Muji, as hopefully you already know, is the queen bee of super simple but cool Japanese product design. It’s an Ikea for Japan. I first became aware of their work from a friend of mine who was in Paris and stopped in to the Muji store there. He picked me up a white T-shirt that [...]
Brand Crack: Frank Gehry Fold Ring for Tiffany
Mr. Gehry! Why did you not take up ring design before I got married? I really have no reason to buy one of the Frank Gehry designed rings by Tiffany. I only need one. I’ve always thought that guys wearing more than one ring usually wore polyester suits or needed occasional back waxing. You know [...]
Puma: The Mongolian Shoe BBQ
Have you ever felt like you wanted to be Dr. Frankenstein? That is, have you ever wanted to concoct your own personal version of something you care about only to have to turn into a horrible monster? Well that’s kind of what it feels like when I recently visited Puma’s incredible Mongolian Shoe BBQ website [...]
Last Match Menorah by Kathleen Walsh
Today is the last day I’m in Austin, Texas for the South by Southwest cadre of conferences. I’m sitting in my favorite little cafe just north of the University of Texas campus. It’s called Spiderhouse, and this has to be one of the many things that I desire to be immediately transplanted from Austin to [...]
Bags by Marielle Wichards
The bags by Marielle Wichards are perfect in their simplicity. The essence of the design is a it’s flatness. It is made of two to three strips of leather dyed to an intense color and sewn in a simple pattern which keeps the bag fairly flat. Each bag has two punched holes about three quarters [...]
The Illusion Table by John Brauer
This is another piece from the &David Store that I thought was amazing and fun. This is called, aptly, The Illusion Table. This piece, of course, would be the perfect piece for Wonder Woman seeing as she has a fetish for all things invisible. I happen to like it, too. I keep thinking that I [...]
Six Pack Paper Weight
These are solid aluminum paperweights brought to a high polish. There is really not much more you can say about this except that, heck, shiny things are kinda sexy. I don’t know why, but I think this piece will be worth something some day. Maybe it’s because these objects are somewhat similar to the work [...]
Jawbone by Yves Behar for Aliph
Yves Behar is San Francisco’s rival to someone like London’s Tom Dixon, but arguably more talented and certainly, more versatile. Not to take away from Tom Dixon, but I am from San Francisco, so I may have a bias. Really, the work cannot be compared. Yves Behar and Fuse Project crew derive design from pushing [...]
Knives by MKS Design
MKS Design is a small firm is comprised of Adam Simha. His work is mostly what I would call musings in steel. The knives for, instance don’t necessarily feel like something Adam set out to do. I would guess that they just happened. They are made of extremely high-quality steel and have somewhat unique shapes. [...]
Genius Table by Arash and Kelly
I’m not a genius, but I know more than a couple of them, and if they have a singular trait it would be that they always need a pen and paper handy for sketching ideas. Now, along comes: The Genius Table! OK, Arash and Kelly’s design has been out since 1999. But it’s new to [...]
Prada Linea Rossa Sunglasses
Ah Prada. I remember several years ago when I bought my first fake pair of Prada shoes. They had all the details including (and most importantly) the characteristic red stripe on the back for gawkers to see. They were beautiful in a plastic-smelling, exploited Chinese worker sort of way, but no one suspected they were [...]
ID 40 2006: Pig Bank by Harry Allen of Areaware
Areaware is a New York based design collective whose focus is on the design of everyday objects. Harry Allen, in particular is an extremely talented individual who is probably more well known for his interior design work which include several high profile retail interiors. And although Mr. Allen has had great success in product design, [...]
ID 40 2006: Memento by Tonerico
Over the next week or two, I will include some of my favorite designers from ID Magazine’s “ID 40″ list of top designers of 2006. It’s a pretty amazing list, so I urge you to pick up a copy of this magazine.
Tonerico is a Tokyo based collective of designers with a focus on austere interior [...]
2007 Collection by Samantha Pleet
Samantha Pleet is a young Brooklyn based designer fresh out of school just last year. Despite her young age, or maybe because of it, Ms. Pleet has produced an extremely competent and thoughtful collection. The color palette for her 2007 collection are muted greys and blacks with accents of red. It’s very unfortunate that my [...]
Nike Air Max
Aight. It’s true you can pick up the Nike Airmax shoe from about any outlet that sells shoes in the world, but wouldn’t you want to give props to a store as cool as 90 sq. meters? They have a beautiful little site, both physically and online. The nike airmax happens to be one of [...]
Bottle by Hapo
Hapo is a glassware design firm that lives by a simple mantra: make glassware that is simple, comfortable, and calming as the design firm’s island home of Okinawa. The bottle Hapo has designed obviously captures this. It’s a warm tropical breeze. It’s Jimmy Buffet in glass. It’s not super stodgy.
