Hotel Inntel

Design Milk posted, "If you aren’t moved with love or hate by The Hotel Inntel in Zaandam The Netherlands by Wilfried van Winden of WAM Architecten I suggest you check your pulse."

Fillerama

For all of you that are tired of boring old Lorem Ipsum, you can now fill your text boxes with Futurama quotes. When I first got to the site I was a little confused by the interface so allow me to explain. Just select how many paragraphs at the bottom then click generate. You can select and paste it from te field on the left or for you code nuts out there you can copy and paste from the left field.
Have fun!

Comic sans is bad ass...

Read the entire note here.

Pizza and Double Vikings.

I'd seen this once before but today I saw it posted on a site with a caption complaining about how advertising has become too slick or too cute. Time to kick it old school and take it back to the street.

A Joke iPhone Sticker Turns Into a Business

Sometimes, a simple idea can turn into a phenomenon. 2 designers from Brooklyn have turned their joke into a business.

Jeff Nishinaka paper sculptures

One of the great second year projects in the Visual Communications classes at ACAD is the derivative animal paper sculpture project. I always enjoyed seeing what the end results would be like. So neat to see what the kids came up with. I stumbled across Jeff Nishinaka on Cool Hunter and it immediately reminded me of those projects. Jeff does some really neat work. Definitely worth a look.

Ebru

This is incredible. I've never seen this before but it is apparently a traditional Turkish technique called Ebru. Fantastic.

Old Spice Voicemail generator

Just hours after Old Spice Guy uploads a template voicemail message on YouTube, the inspired Reddit community come together to build a a tool that will (in seconds) let you take snippets of theoriginal audio to create your own voicemail message.

Simply insert your mobile number, select from a few different endings and a you’re done. Pure win. Try this now.

I've already made mine. How about you?

Electric Motorcycles

Stumbled upon this today. A company called Brammo makes electric motorcycles and has introduced a new model likely to start hitting the streets in 2011 called the Empulse. Compared to it's younger sibling, the Enertia, it looks a little leaner and meaner. These bikes also have really decent power and pretty good range. Don't know if I'd go out on the highway withit but for urban commuting I'd look into one.

Samsung 3D Projection Mapping in Amsterdam

So far I haven't been able to figure out what the big deal is about this whole 3D craze. Even when I go to the movies to watch 3D films I haven't exactly been blown away by it. It's novel but nothing I'd go out of my way to get in terms of current technology. This 3D projection mapping demo changed my mind, however. If 3D television could be much like this, I'd definitely be giving it a second look. Live sports could be crazy fun.
(via the Coolhunter)

For the Vespa lover

Bel & Bel are a creative industrial design studio out of Barcelona Spain that opened it's doors in 2006. I stumbled across their site this afternoon. The Vespa seat is pretty cool. Looking forward to seeing what else they come up with.

Jeremy Scott and Adidas

One of my kids, Jenn posted this on her Facebook today. At first I didn't know exactly what I was looking at. The shoes come with a Teddy bear? Meh, whatever. Then I saw a picture of a model wearing them and I went, "They're PART OF THE SHOE?!?!?!?"

It doesn't suit my personal sense of fashion but I can definitely see a market for it. I do, however, kinda like the hot rod hightops...

See a preview of the rest of the Jeremy Scott collection here.

Beautiful Artwork

I may have posted a link to Gary LeMaster's site before but I am continually floored by this fellow and his art. I'm not so fond of the coloured pieces but this recent Celtic one is stunning. Check out his other eggs here.

Shweeeeeeet bottle opener

My first experience with the Sentol Bottle opener was at my friend Christelle's house. I was absolutely floored at how cool this thing was. I've asked around and no one else had ever heard of it. By chance i was bored and surfing the net tonight and stumbled upon this video. I was quickly able to learn what it was called and now I know, the next time I buy a bottle opener I know to look for a Sentol bottle opener.

Jeff de Boer

If you've never heard of him, you'll get a kick out of this. I was introduced to his work waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back when in ancient times when I was going to school. He had a show of some of his work and I was instantly enthralled by his armour for mice. It was fantastic. One of my kids, Tristan, recently posted a link to Beautiful Life showcasing his work but I thought I would post a link directly to his site. Love his stuff.

I really enjoy the Swedes. They have some really interesting and well designed stuff and it was one of the reasons I tried to move there earlier this year.

Here's something else that's recently popped up on my radar. Neat concept that takes treehouses to the next level.

Raunchy Ad stirs controversy

Now, Mike at Manta is a buddy of mine so I'd be curious to hear his thoughts on this. I guess for me I was more surprised by the ad since the Montana has ties to the Famous Five. Ultimately, my question is, in this case, does sex sell anything at all related to the condo (lifestyle, social perception, etc.) or is it merely a tool to generate exposure under the platform of any publicity is good publicity. I'd like to see what the numbers are for the Montana in terms of visits to the website and showroom pre and post advertisement.

Here is the article by Valerie Fortney from the Calgary Herald.

Credit to Ted Rhodes of the Calgary Herald for the photo

Water Power

For puttering around the city this is a fantastic solution. I'm surprised no one has come up with this sooner. Brilliant. Thanks to Adam for the original link.

Lost in Translation

Language can be a very funny thing. Having parents who are immigrants I've heard many-a-story about moments when they were utterly confused by some slang term or vernacular language that was misconstrued or completely lost on them. Advertising is no different and hilarity can result from someone not doing their research. Here's a baker's dozen worth of examples:

1. Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called Cue, the name of a notorious porno magazine.
2. When Gerber started selling baby food in Africa, they used the same packaging as in the US, with the smiling baby on the label. Later they learned that in Africa, companies routinely put pictures on the labels of what's inside, since many people can't read.
3. Pepsi's "Come Alive With the Pepsi Generation" translated into "Pepsi Brings Your Ancestors Back From the Grave" in Chinese.
4. Coors put its slogan, "Turn It Loose," into Spanish, where it was read as "Suffer From Diarrhea."
5. Clairol introduced the "Mist Stick," a curling iron, into Germany only to find out that "mist" is slang for manure. Not too many people had use for the "Manure Stick."
6. Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux used the following in an American campaign: "Nothing Sucks like an Electrolux."
7. When Parker Pen marketed a ball-point pen in Mexico, its ads were supposed to have read, "It won't leak in your pocket and embarrass you." The company thought that the word "embarazar" (to impregnate) meant to embarrass, so the ad read: "It won't leak in your pocket and make you pregnant."
8. Frank Perdue's chicken slogan, "It takes a strong man to make a tender chicken," was translated into Spanish as "it takes an aroused man to make a chicken affectionate."
9. The Dairy Association's huge success with the campaign "Got Milk?" prompted them to expand advertising to Mexico. It was soon brought to their attention the Spanish translation read "Are You Lactating?"
10. The Coca-Cola name in China was first read as "Kekoukela", meaning "Bite the Wax Tadpole" or "Female Horse Stuffed with Wax", depending on the dialect. Coke then researched 40,000 characters to find a phonetic equivalent "kokoukole", translating into "Happiness in the Mouth."
11. General Motors had a very famous fiasco in trying to market the Nova car in Central and South America. "No va" in Spanish means, "It Doesn't Go".
12. When American Airlines wanted to advertise its new leather first class seats in the Mexican market, it translated its "Fly In Leather" campaign literally, which meant "Fly Naked" (vuela en cuero) in Spanish.
13. An American T-shirt maker in Miami printed shirts for the Spanish market which promoted the Pope's visit. Instead of "I saw the Pope" (el Papa), the shirts read "I Saw the Potato" (la papa).

Fun with Toilet Paper Rolls

Air ball...

I love sports. I really do. I love to watch the competition and the drama of two forces going head to head to try and outdo the other. Sports logos on the other hand...

It absolutely drives me crazy how bad most of the identities in professional sports is. For some reason, the vast majority of bosses in the sporting world either have no sense of taste or have no clue what makes a good team logo. Does it not occur to them that if they have GOOD design that you could market it to people beyond your own rabid fan base? A few have done admirable jobs. The Milwaukee Admirals examined their fan base and where their gaps were and unveiled, in my opinion, a fantastic identity that a number of die-hards panned. It appealed to a wider market segment and in turn their merchandise sales went through the roof and into the stratosphere. Then you get logos like the Portland Trailblazers, New Orleans Hornets, Baltimore Ravens, Kansas City Royals and Buffalo Sabres. These are teams with multi-milliondollar payrolls and they can't shell out some half decent coin to get a good logo? Mind, you in the case of the Sabres, they reportedly forked out $200,000 to get their "Buffa-slug."

The minor leagues are even worse. Now, I understand that they don't have boatloads of money but it seems to me that if they spent just a little extra money on the brand they could do wonders in terms of team, community, and fan pride, support as well as the money in merchandising a causal fan might be willing to spend.

Which brings me to this. The Golden State Warriors announced their new look. Don't get me wrong, their old look was bad, but this... is not necessarily an improvement.

Brand New writes a column about why this is not so golden...

*sigh* Someone pay me obscene amounts of money to do this and I promise it'll be better than this

The Fast Lane

I really enjoy seeing spots like this because it inspires me to do something that will make people want to interact differently with their every day mundane lives. Something as simple as taking the stairs down to the subway can suddenly become a memorable experience.

Love it.

Web Freebies

Many of you will probably already know these tricks and some of you may think the following links will only fill the internets with more fromage but I see an opportunity to take the ideas here and create some really interesting possibilities. Take them for what you will.
• JavaScript stuff
• CSS stuff

Flexible

Every now and then I'll see an ad which catches me off guard and makes me laugh really hard. Quite often, these executions are quite simple and that is the beauty of them. I read a quote today that said something to the effect of how the best designs are the ones that cause other designers to hate you because they wish they'd thought of it first.

Rethinking your space

I posted these up on my Facebook profile last week but I thought it would be worth posting them here as well. Lionel sent me a link to this YouTube video about Resource Furniture, a company out of New York who specializes in functional furniture that will allow one to make more efficient use of compact spaces. As I am currently looking for a new place to live I found it fascinating that you could take a very small space and turn it into a much more functional and efficient living space without having to give up style. This first video in turn reminded me of a video I saw long ago about an expanding circular table as well as another friend, Chirlene, sending me a link to a video about an architect in Hong Kong who has transformed his small apartment into an amazing transforming suite of rooms.