Papercuts

Awesome Doctor Who toy

Isn't this cute?!! It's a USB hub, and when you plug a device into one of the ports, the light flashes and it makes the "Whooop whooop" sound. Available at ThinkGeek.

Fantasy furniture

London's Victoria and Albert Museum has the furniture show Telling Tales: Fear and Fantasy in Contemporary Design. The Guardian has some highlights here. My favourite? The Robber Baron Table by Belgian designers Studio Job.

If you like that, there are some heroic utensils from Studio Job here.

Folded jewellery

Who would have thought that repeat patterns made from folded paper could make such elegant and sophisticated jewellery? Have a look at Hila Rawet's awesome designs here.

Just for becky

If you want to hang out your black clothes to dry but find ordinary clothes-pegs too colourful, you need these! Yes, gothic clothes-pegs. :-)

You *shall* be a mermaid!

If anyone remembers this story, about the double amputee who made a flippant remark at the beach:

"A little boy came up and started asking all the `why' questions about my legs (she was removing her prosthetic legs)," she says.

Rather than having to go through the logistics of amputation with a four-year-old, Vessey said: "Do you know about the Little Mermaid?

"He said he did, so I told him: `Well I'm a mermaid'."

(full story here)

Weta Workshop has actually made it happen. Nadya Vessey *is* a mermaid, look at that! A fully-functioning mermaid tail. Wow!

And the Close-Up video (interview and demonstration) is here.

1970s design strikes back!

I've lived in plenty of flats and houses with 1970s decor, and especially the 1970s curtains with wriggly swirly patterns.
I thought I was safe here with a plain-looking room in neutral grey, cream and off-white, but alas, when the sun shines there is no escape from the wriggly swirliness...

Fontstruct

Anyone who's crazy about fonts will love Fontstruct - a free tool that allows you to create modular fonts quickly and then download them for your own use! You can also share them publically either in the Fontstruct gallery or embed them in your own webpage.

There is an animated tutorial here which shows you what to do.

Morris and Co.

The Christchurch City Art Gallery has Morris and Co: The World of William Morris until June 29th. It's a beautiful show, with printed textiles, wallpaper, embroidery, furniture, carpets, books, ceramics, and the centerpiece of the show, the vast, jewel-like tapestry of The Adoration of the Magi. It's worth seeing the show for that alone - no photograph can adequately convey the shining, rippling surface of millions of tiny stitches. And while the symbolism is rather laboured, the rich colour harmonies and beautifully-observed naturalistic detail in the plants and faces and objects is exciting to look at.

One thing that would have increased my enjoyment of the Morris designs was more technical information about how they were printed and made. I was tantalised by a photograph of the Morris workshop printing chintz fabric, with stacks of wooden printing blocks visible in the photo, but no indication of how such a method was used to produce such fine, continuous, printed pattern. And how were the inks made? I gather they were derived from plants, but I'd love to know the details.

And how did the cost of producing Morris designs by hand compare with the cost of factory production? How different did they look? What are the economics of hand-printing today? Morris's revolt against mass-production and worker exploitation seems highly relevant to the globalised market we have today. But I wonder how many people could afford to surround themselves with beautiful hand-printed, hand-crafted objects.

I was pleased to see more information on Morris's book-printing techniques given on the gallery website, and the links they make to artisan-printing in New Zealand.

The exhibition is accompanied by a huge range of events, from lectures to performances, demonstrations, and even workshops in Morris-style embroidery, wallpaper- printing, and life-drawing!

Art D'Eco - recycled fashion

Katell Gélébart is a Dutch activist and designer who believes in recycling. In partnership with other designers, she produces two haute couture collections each year, all made from reused materials. These materials include old mail sacks, parachutes, sails, offcuts of felt, old curtains, mattress-ticking and inner-tubes!

You can read all about it here.

These are some of my favourite Art D'Eco creations: the army blanket hats, army blanket jacket, inner-tube wallet, postbag dress, record notebook, and inner-tube belt.

I really like how the designs preserve the character of the original materials. Perhaps we will all be dressing like this, before too long....

Anime lunch

Dinosaurs and Robots has an amazing piece about Japanese obento box lunches, here. The lunches are decorated with incredibly detailed pictures of anime characters; the pictures are made up of edible items. Go take a look, you won't believe it!

A toilet-paper gown

Stuff has this nice story about an unusual wedding-dress design competition - the gowns must be made of toilet paper!
I've no idea how the winning gown is held together, but it's very impressive.

New coins for UK

The Royal Mint has chosen a smart contemporary design by a young graphic designer. What do you think?

Ponoko is go

After spending time in beta, Ponoko.com is open for business. It's a great concept: designers upload designs which are offered for sale; when a customer wants to buy an item, Ponoko cuts out the raw materials and sends them to the designer for assembly; the designer assembles the product and sends it to the customer. It's the kind of business that wouldn't work anywhere except the web.

Jared Davidson

Jared Davidson has been hand-printing advertising posters in his parents' garage for a year, and has been so wildly successful he's having a "retrospective" at the High St Project. There's a neat interview with him here, and information on the exhibition here.

Glenn Jones

New Zealand designer Glenn Jones has made a huge hit with his t-shirt designs on Threadless. There's an interview with him here, with examples of his hilarious work.

T-shirts and attitudes

Matthew pointed me to Threadless T-shirts. I'm impressed by the artistry and creativity that can go into a t-shirt! Threadless invites design contributions from anybody, in their ongoing competition. Entries are then ranked by users, the winners get money, and you can order the winning designs. Then, if you want, you can even send them a photo of yourself wearing the shirt. Internet pop culture at its best!