Art or Walmart?

Do you think you are an art connoisseur? Do you think you can tell the difference between expensive designer furniture and Walmart furnture? Well, take the quiz and find out...

Donald Judd vz. Walmart quiz

I got a 92%, You?

Bblessing Home Absinthe Set

One of my favorite men's stores, Bblessing, just launched their brand-spanking new home line. These graphic absinthe spoons—the first pieces in the line—were designed by Surface to Air's Daniel Jackson in keeping with the store's interior, which was "very much inspired by my own abstraction of a fin de siècle Absinthe bar."

For those unfamiliar with the absinthiana, the ritual of drinking the famed, mind-bending spirit, the spoons are used to dissolve a sugar cube in the drink to lessen its bitterness.

If you're in the market

Jorg&Olif Scout Bike
If you'd rather get some exercise and pedal your way through town, it's best done on the Jorg&Olif Scout Bike. A perfect complement (and pretty much the opposite of) a fixie, this old-world, dutch-styled cycle is now a bit more affordable at $495.

New Nalgene Kits

Nalgene - its not just a container... now they are using it as packaging! Brilliant and noteworthy move by nalgene which has already spread into so many markets - for being basically a container manufacturer... so its for scientific purposes, then outdoors, then travel/airport security checks, then kids, then various caps and kits and flasks... and now you can get Auto, First Aid, Preparedness, Heat Stress, Dog, and Kid kits! All in your usual 32oz classic nalgenes... each with a signature color for branding naturally.

Roger Arquer Fish Bowls

London based designer, [Roger Arquer], came out with a new collection of fish bowls. They are quite amazing. Take a look.

Kudos to my 'Ol Alma Mater

This article will be running in Business Week next week. Congratulations to Robert Sedlack, Paul Down, and the rest of the amazing professors within the Design Program at the University of Notre Dame.

Best Award-Winning Design Schools Around The World.

Next week we publish the annual International Design Excellence Awards winners (it used to be Industrial Design Excellence Awards) and they are an incredible collection of fascinating products, services, research, student work and concepts. The whole package goes up online on Thursday night, including those great charts showing which design firms and which companies won the most gold, silver and bronze awards in 2007 and from 2003 through 2007. Print goes on sale on Friday.

One new category of design winners this year is schools. The IDSA broke out the design schools attended by the students who won IDEA awards. In addition, three schools were actual clients--Carnegie Mellon, Delft University of Technology and Technische Univeriteit Eindhoven. The IDSA broke out the schools for 2007 and for 2003-2007. We won't have space for all of them in the magazine so I thought I'd put the list up now. They will also go online on Thursday.

Schools Given Recognition:

Carnegie Mellon
Cleveland Institute of Art
Daejin University (South Korea)
Delft Univ. of Technology (Netherlands)
Hfg Offenbach am Main (Germany)
Hong-ik University (South Korea)
Inst. Of Design-IIT
Kookmin University (South Korea)
Milwaukee Inst. Of Art & Design
Muthesius Academy of Fine Arts & Design (Germany)
Seoul National University (South Korea)
Shih Chien University (Taiwan)
Technische Universiteit Eindhoven - /d.search-labs (Netherlands)
Univ. of Cincinnati
Univ. of Notre Dame

...And Over 5 Years, Schools recieiving most awards

Art Center College of Design 9
San Francisco State Univ. 4
Univ. of Notre Dame 3
California College of the Arts 3

Now ponder these lists. Clearly Korean schools are beginning to produce first rate design students. Great talent is coming out of Europe as well. And talented design students are coming out of a whole range of schools in the US, including the University of Cincinnati (go Craig Vogel!, the Institute of Design in Chicago, the University of Notre Dame, the Cleveland Institute of Art and Carnegie Mellon, of course.

Now we've got to get the Royal College of Art to start entering it's terrific student projects into the IDEA contest.

Rumor: Touch Screen iPods

The touch screen iPod is more of a "When" than an "If". There's no doubt that we'll see it eventually, but it could be as soon as next month if the information from Digitimes is correct. It claims that the Taiwanese manufacturer Wintek is churning out touch screens ready for an August release. Given the usual scarcity of Apple products at launch (yes, except the iPhone), a late summer release would give them time to ramp up production (and frenzied demand) in time for the holiday season. Digitimes fails to quote sources, but with all the speculation spinning around, there's got to be something from Apple next month, right?

via wired magazine

Kinetic Sculpture

If you have a second, this is definitely worth watching. This man apparetly uses the laws of kinetics to build movable objects powered by the wind. Not only are they amazing to see move without man-power, but they are absolutely gorgeous.

To watch, click here

New York Celebrates Moleskin

From June 1st to June 29th [Detour:The Moleskine City Notebook Experience] is on display at the Art Directors Club in NYC. The 70 notebooks given by Moleskine to some of the most creative artists, architects, film directors, graphic designers, illustrators, and writers around the world, fill the endless corridor of the ADC in a project designed by Zetalab to support Lettera 27 , a non-profit organization whose mission is to defend the right to literacy and education in the world's most deprived areas.

And one of my personal favorites from Ruben Toledo's sketchbook.



To view other pictures from the exhibition, go to molskinerie.com

Are people really getting this lazy?

Dynomight Design

Check this bracelet out.

Dynomighty design
Uploaded by sallyTVdotcom

Karim Rashid Tells All

For those Karim Rashid lovers out there, this is a pretty funny interview he did for SallyTV. She asks him three off-key questions that I'm assuming he would not normally get asked. Check it out.

sallyTV interviews Karim Rashid
Uploaded by sallyTVdotcom