ICFF 08: Products from the EX49 booth

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The EX49 Booth had tons of cool stuff to offer, here are a few of my favorites:

GAUCHO: Inspired by the argentinean cowboys yet produced in the black forest (by rebman vision) – designer tanja schoeller’s interpretation of a gaucho-style seat features a purist design consisting of two interlocking circular pieces of different woods (nut, cherry, african zebrano, maple, olive ash or beech) providing for a bouncy yet stable seatingPicture_24

The toiletry bag made out of old-school swim caps. I ‘think’ it’s designed by black forest native jutta rothe. It’s designed by pension f. produkte.
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The superstylish iphone and ipod felt cases by katja hettler and jula tullmann made me look. They are definitely head turners for boardrooms and coffeehouses alike.

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Randi Lockemann explained the concept of ex49 (ex=export/ 49=german country code) was created to provide emerging, talented artists from germany with the opportunity to exhibit and sell their products overseas. Products well chosen! Hat tip from swissmiss!

The Extinction Timeline

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The Extinction Timeline from 1950 to around 2050. Blogging will be extinct in 2025?

(via likecool)

‘When Life Gives You Lemons’

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Oh, how appropriate is this poster for my morning: When Life Gives You Lemons, Make Lemonade! A lovely upbeat phrase printed in true Douglas Wilson style!

give me a C

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I’ll have more finds from ICFF but have to put out some other fires first. So, I thought I’ll just give you a C for now.

(via Ilovetypography)

ICFF 2008 First Highlights

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I just got back home after having spent a 6 hours walking around ICFF. I have complete sensory overload and would love to just sit in a room with white walls and stare. But no, here’s s quick overview of my personal ICFF 2008 Highlights;

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I nearly fainted and kissed the booth guy at Pablo upon seeing one of their latest lamps called LIM. Not on their site yet, not for sale yet, but oh boy do I want one. The images unfortunately don’t do it justice but just imagine that you can take off that long slim bar with the lights on it and reattach it via magnets any way you want to the base. Completely minimalistic modular lighting. Lim was definitely my personal lighting highlight of the show.

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Inflate’s mobile/inflatable Office in a Bag concept made my heart jump. Mini conference room anyone?

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One of Offi’s latest inventions is this collapsable table with chairs. Perfect for a small office or apartment. Fold down to a beautiful sculptural table and opens up into a workstation/dining table or whatever you need it to be. A versatile beauty! Yay for furniture that folds down! (it’s apparently not on their site yet)

UPDATE: Srdjan Simic, the designer of this wonderful piece emailed me with some more information: It’s called PAKET and will be available mid august through Offi’s large distributor chain in US, Europe and Japan. It will be available in white, dark grey and orange.

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I just spent the past 20minutes searching for the flyer/business card that goes with these pictures. No luck. Can anyone fill me in what the name of this designer was? Her wallpaper had me gasp for air. How awesome/crazy is this? LOVE! What’s her name? How unbelievably fantastic and different is this wallpaper by Tracy Kendall? (Somebody please design a better site for Tracy)

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A visit at the Ameico booth triggered a lovely short walk down memory lane: These Branex Design / Tam Tam Stools made me chuckle. We had one growing up, in bright orange, and I vividly remember playing with it, rolling around on it, putting stuff in it’s secret compartment. And sure enough, there were yumme chocolate covered raisins hidden in one of the ones in the booth. Apparently their design is celebrating its 40th anniversary. I definitely will have to get my hands on a few of these. Maybe for our new office, ladies? ;)

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The Rodenhook Modular Shelving System gets my swissmiss thumbs up. While I am not crazy about those angled shelve modules, I could definitely see this system in use with only the ‘regular’ ones in someone’s ‘soon to be the moved into’ new office space. Ladies? The gentleman in the picture is Martin O’Flynn, the mastermind behind this beauty of a shelfing system.

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One more highlight, before I have to run off and put on my ‘mommy hat’ for the night: I was so excited to meet the designers behind 25togo at the DesignBoom both. I bought myself one of the Photo Camera bags and am happy to report that the Leica D-Lux 3 fits in it perfectly. (I wasn’t able to find a pouch for it so far, they are always too small for the Leica lens and I was simply not willing to pay $80 for the custom photo bag). Couldn’t find the Photo Bag on the site, but there’s the very cool “My Document” Laptop Bag. It’s such a wonderful experience to buy directly from the designer.

More to come tomorrow. Little Ella Joy wants to play now…

broadcasting from ICFF

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I am sitting in the PRESS office of the ICFF and am having my first ‘elevated heartbeat’ moment because of LINK a new product designed by PearsonLloyd. Link is a completely modular room divider system. As versatile as it gets! Fabulous!

Off I go to see what this years International Contemporary Furniture Fair has to offer. So excited. I shall be posting throughout the day. Hoooray! Happy monday everyone!

Notes from AIGA NY’s Smart/Models Event

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Thank you Michael for covering the Smart/Models Event! Bummed I wasn’t able to make it.

Notes from AIGA NY’s Smart/Models Event

anorak | the happy mag for kids

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Encouraging children’s contributions and input, Anorak bridges the gap between a children’s book and character magazine. Anorak has a unique format consisting of brand new stories written and illustrated by modern artists, fun fashion, style pages and a ‘good stuff’ guide which covers new products as well as exciting places to go.

quote on patience

“If you are consciously patient with people during the day, you will see more beauty.”

taken from Making Their Own Limits in a Spiritual Partnership, by Leslie Kaufman

critter front by craig frazier

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Love this! Critter font by Craig Frazier. The O is so sad. Boooo hoo.

I am still alive

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I had the pleasure to finally meet Dylan from Iamstillalive.net at today’s Likemind. He gave me the above poster, which I can not wait to get framed! Thank you Dylan!

Little 1 | Written by Ann Rand | Illustrated by Paul Rand

Our little Ella has discovered the joys of counting to ten, the ‘toddler freestyle kind’ of counting. She has a tendency to skip 5 and 6 all together, but loves 8 and 9. I am wondering if “Little 1” might get her to embrace 5 and 6? Originally published in 1961, this beauty of a picture book was illustrated and designed by Paul Rand, one of the most influential graphic designers of the twentieth century. Ann Rand’s text tells the engaging story of “Little 1” and his quest for a friend.

Like most ‘designer moms’, I love to expose Ella to wonderfully designed books. My favorite spread in “Little 1” is the one with the umbrellas. I like to believe that our umbrellas are having conversations when we are not around.

Little 1” | Written by Ann Rand | Illustrated by Paul Rand

swissmiss exclusive: Hillman Curtis’ latest movie: Lawrence Weiner

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Hillman just walked over to my desk, pointing me to his latest movie, featuring Lawrence Weiner. How exciting to, yet again, have another exclusive HC sneak premiere! YAY!

Debbie Millman called Hillman to film this one – she originally wanted to have Lawrence on her “Design Matters” podcast, but he wasn’t so interested in a phone interview. Since she had the opportunity to show up at Weiner’s studio she asked Hillman along and it became a joint – Design Matters/Artist Series – production.

Fabulous! I think I’d like to see more collaboration happening between Debbie and Hillman!

NEW ARTIST SERIES: LAWRENCE WEINER : A short documentary on the conceptual Artist, Lawrence Weiner View Lawrence Weiner

you want minimalism? you got it!

Flimbag

Helvetica Film Bag.

raindrops

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I just fell in love with this lamp by benjamin hopf & constantin wortmann. Oh my!

Owl Umbrella Stand

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Owl Umbrella Stand

trays by angela adams

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Tray by Angela Adams

(via cribcandy)

The Rise Of Contextual User Interfaces

The new interfaces are winning people over because they are based on usage patterns instead of choices. The key thing about new UIs is that they are contextual – presenting the user with minimal components and then changing in reaction to user gestures. Thanks to Apple, we have seen a liberating movement towards simplistic, contextual interfaces. But can these UIs become the norm? In this post we take a look at the rise of the contextual UI and ponder if they will cross the chasm.

The Rise Of Contextual User Interfaces, by Alex iskold

AMEN!

things to do with your kids in NYC

100 things to do with your kids in NY before they grow up

Life on Mars

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Life on Mars,” the 55th Carnegie International, is the latest exercise in handsome, measured, frictionless thoughtfulness. It may actually have more than its share of interesting art and poetic juxtapositions. Yet almost nothing happens. (Photo: Courtesy of the artist and Lombard-Freid Projects, New York)

(via jratlee)

The day there was no news

I agree with Chris, I could watch this over and over:

USA political election logos 2008 – 1960

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All the American presidential election logos/bumper stickers since 1960.

(via chrisglass)

You say Tomarto….

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Excerpt of JohnsonBanks latest ‘thought of the week’:

Here we are, 4 decades later, and things are a lot more complicated. In London alone you still have Müller-Brockmann devotees, but more for the ‘look’ of the Swiss style than anything else, a sort of Aesthetic Neo-Modernism rather than its more philosophical original form. Then you have another group of Closet Modernists who fall back on it in times of stress (or deadlines), dabble in ideas and might ‘play away’ from Univers and Helvetica every now and again (but only in an ironic way, you understand). There’s a whole group who wouldn’t know an ism from a schism but know a good grid when they see it – let’s call them the Gridnik Modernistas.

Read full post: You say Tomarto…

Phonesex The Book

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Phil Toledano’s latest project: Phonesex The Book