sang hoon lee: “sip of light”.

Not that most people need an excuse to get a soda, but now once you’re finished you can turn the cup into a lamp. Koren product designer Sang Hoon Lee’s “Sip of Light” is an ingenious little straw lamp – bend it down and the single LED inside turns on, bend it back up and it shuts off. Created with help from co-desginers Soo Jung Kim and Sung Kyu Nam, the (somehow very narrow) battery is housed down at the base of the straw, and it’s weighted so that you can stick it inside any cup.

I’d like to try and make some sort of case for the practicality of this, saving your eyesight and all that, but really it just looks fucking cool. And it provides a good argument to get a Big Mac meal…

Via the kick ass Cool Hunting

twitchen: lampshade.

Daddy likey. I realize that to some this might tread a little too close to a 1989 Blanche Deveraux nouveau Miami vibe, but to me the quality of the print gives just the right organic feel. If anybody would care to donate $325 to me so that I can buy it, feel free to email me.

Check out the lamp’s specs (or buy one) here.

Via BLTD

bluelounge sanctuary charging station.

This thing is going to be all over the net in about ten minutes, but here’s my two cents anyway. I’m not sure why stuff like this is so awesome, it just is. I think it’s the kind of ridiculous currency of the situation – that we’ve got too many wires… so many wires we can’t take it anymore. There’s famine and disease and economic decline… but I really freak out when I can’t find my iPod cord.

Imagine going back in time, say, to 1969 – there’s colour TV, girls mostly wear skirts on a regular basis, people just got their asses on the moon. You say to someone “In about 40 years, I’m going to have a little flat electronic telephone with no wires that I carry in my pocket, and a little flat electronic record player that holds about 30,000 songs and has little headphones that fit in my ear – oh, and sometimes, the little telephone and the little record player are combined into one little record-playing telephone – and there are so many cords that plug into these little suckers that I need a special, felt-lined box to keep it all straight. God I’m stressed!”

Say hello to the Bluelounge Sanctuary Charging Station. Hmmmm… sanctuary. Sounds like a spa. Or political refuge. Is keeping a couple cords untangled really so traumatic that it involves seeking sanctuary? The Hunchback of Notre Dame needed some sanctuary. My iPod just needs a shelf. Granted, this little puppy looks totally hot and it’s got its own power source and 11 different types of chargers and a USB port built in. I dig the airplane food-esque compartmentalization of the thing – everything has it’s own parallel-aligned spot. At US $129.99 it a little over-priced, but so are the iPod and the mobile phone you’ll be charging in it.

Via BLTD

christian zuzunaga: pixel couch.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again right now, pixels are the shit. Whether it’s the colour-filled pixellated print art from the too-awesome -for-words collective EbOY or this little baby right here. Say hello to the Pixel Couch from UK Royal College of Art graduate Christian Zuzunaga.

From an artistic perspective, I love it. The concept behind this is big, but actually looking at it for too long kinda makes my face hurt. I’m not sure I could handle sitting on it each and every day, but I’d want to own it anyway. Maybe I could design and entirely pixellated room in my house, with this couch and EbOY prints all over the walls. It might make your eyeballs explode, but what a way to go…

Via the must-read SwissMiss

craig oldham: nudist typeface.

It’s not everyday that you can say that a font made you laugh. Not the words the font describes, but the actual existence of the font itself. Today, however, is one of those days: check out the Nudist Typeface from UK designer Craig Oldham.

Letters with their dirty bits pixellated! How awesome is that? But it doesn’t end there, we’ve also got the biblical Adam and Eve version:

And the old-skool CENSORED version:

But it gets better. To announce the project Oldham sent out a package with plasticized porno-style protective wrapping and a warning sticker, with this awesome poster tucked inside. Rather than use the traditional “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” panagram (containing all the letters in the alphabet, so frequently used to demonstrate fonts) he brilliantly created a nudist-based panagram to market the new font. Smart.

Big thanks to Five Husbands for sending me this, via Boing Boing.

jose antonio contreras: business card.

Now here’s an amazing first impression. Check out Jose Antonio Contreras’ business card. How could you not want to work with a designer with an imagination like that?

Via the ridiculously awesome Swiss Miss

heli heitala: colours.

Finnish designer Heli Heitala created “Colours” – usable crayons shaped like people:

For me, it’s the inherent temporariness that makes these so special. Like your favourite candle, you know each time you use it you have less and less of it less. Ostensibly inspired by classic sculpture, the cast of naked characters come in a wide variety including Old Woman, Old Man, Woman, Man, Hermaphrodite, and Androgynous.

Via Notcot

seves glassblock + alessando mendini.

This April, Seves Glassblock will display 16 exclusive new colours by Italian designer Alessandro Mendini at the 2008 Milan design week.

There’s nothing mind-blowingly innovative going on here. Just exquisitely crafted Italian glassblocks in new colours hand-crafted by a famous Italian designer. Just that.

I love the way they look all stacked together. I want to build something out of them, perhaps a hot tub, and then sit in it and drink very dirty vodka martinis…

christopher brosius: i hate perfume.

I’ve discovered my new favourite artist. He’s not a painter or designer or photographer – he’s a Perfumer. There’s almost too much to love on Christopher Brosius‘ website – I Hate Perfume.

These uni-sex scents are for people with an imagination. Instead of making a bottle look like an obelisk or a flower or a penis and hoping that pictures of prostrate models will make you want to buy it, his packaging is stylish. His site is minimal, but passionate. His small bottles have labels that look like they’ve been individually typed by hand on an old typewriter. Each scent has a complete story – not that sort of “I am elegant because I say I am” ubiquitous nothingness of mainstream perfumes – but an actual emotion-inducing tale.

He’s also got a range of “accords”, single-note scents that can be individually blended to create any scent you want. Elementary in both name and nature, I’m having a hard time not buying them all and going to town on my wrists and neck…

Like he says himself on the site, Brosius’ is an artist. These are scents that are actually discovered; their nascent point is emotional. To explore the site, it’s almost like he’s channeling – just as any good artist he’s creating something simply because it demands to be created.

And not necessarily from the stuff you’d imagine. His goal is to create true scents, ones that evoke real memories, and so ingredients are honest and direct. Notes like “wet sand”, “green tomato vine”, “old leather suitcases”, “dirt”, and “fresh cut hay” help create the true, organic, and almost visceral nature of his scents. At his perfume gallery in Brooklyn, open to the public, you can visit his studio and see exactly how he works, how the scents are created, and find out why “the point of the perfumes I create is to offer you an experience you never thought possible…”. I love this guy.

As with any full-realized art, the names of his scents are just as intuitive and emotional as what they represent: “Just Breathe”, “Cradle of Light”, “Memory of Kindness”, “In the Summer Kitchen”, “Eternal Return”… how can you not want this stuff?

My fave is “At The Beach 1966″. I dare you to resist a description like this…”The prime note in this scent is Coppertone 1967 blended with a new accord I created especially for this perfume – North Atlantic. Imagine it’s about 4 o’clock on a golden summer afternoon and you’ve been at the beach all day rubbing yourself with Coppertone suntan lotion – but Coppertone as it existed in the 60’s, not quite as it is now… You walk into the surf as the waves break on the shore and, bending down to touch the surf, you notice the smell of your warm skin and of the salt water that seems so cold by comparison. It has just the faintest hint of watermelon rind…”

C’mon! How good is that? When I die, please douse my corpse in “At The Beach 1966” and send me to the Crematorium.

martin zampach: tetrice.

It’s simply impossible for Tetris to be un-cool. I don’t think it can be done, and so this doesn’t need much explanation. All that really needs to be done is relax and marvel in it’s pure orgasm-inducing awesomness. Czech designer Martin Zampach has give the world “Tetrice”. Silicon ice-cube trays that give you Tetris-shaped ice. You drink, you play, you drink… you play.