Prague-based designer Pavel Fuksa, ambitiously designed 178 different matchbox designs for use in a new music video by Navigators – My Place.

Loving the gorgeous architecture and environments from Uglycute. A design and architecture office based in Stockholm, Sweden. Founded in 1999 by Andreas Nobel, interior designer, Fredrik Stenberg, architect, Markus Degerman and Jonas Nobel, artists. Working on expanding the concept of design by crossbreeding it with our different professions and trying to analyze its impact on society by not only practicing but also writing, teaching and organizing workshops.

Designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s Roger Duffy, the training center is focused on improving the performance of the players and team. This extends to the building’s bold and aggressive graphics designed by Michael Gericke and his team at Pentagram. Using the identity which they previously developed for the Jets, the graphics have been integrated into the architecture to create a holistic environment that fosters a sense of pride, focus and competition for the team and carries the spirit of the Jets onto the training field.

Architecturally the Jets Training Center has a transparency that allows it to be an extension of the playing field or game space, making the headquarters unmistakably about the game. The complex includes four outdoor fields (three natural turf, one artificial) and one indoor field with a 95-foot-high ceiling. The building straddles the main field, and all entry points to the building and many of its offices, rooms and interior spaces have a view of the field. The main entrance for the headquarters has been designed to evoke the tunnel that players run through when they go out onto the playing field. (The Jets themselves enter the building through this space, unlike at other camps or playing centers, where the players’ entrance is usually at the back of the building or even the loading dock.) The designers have extended the field into the building in internally illuminated yard lines, and these integers help define the interior spaces, appearing in the lighting, flooring, walls and ceiling. The lines even extend through the front desk in the lobby is just simply beautiful. (more at pentagram)

Teaser trailer for Niwouinwouin and Jean Jullien’s upcoming live experience Adventures in Front of the TV Set produced by L’Armada, l’Antipode and Electroni[k], set to start touring in october 2010. Adventures in Front of the TV Set is an interactive live experience that combines Niwouinwouin’s musical act and Jean Jullien’s animated visuals. The show will see the audience embarked in an epic journey through a fictitious television environment.

Seems like Umbro is becoming the Uniqlo of football shoes. Umbro’s fastest boot and coming in at 238grams, it’s also their lightest ever. Aimed at the younger end of the market it comes in both a white/orange and a black/lime colourway. A shared ambition with Umbro to produce a global execution that shied away from the typical OTT CGI stuff you see knocking around. So we went the other way and said ’speed’ with cardboard, fishing wire, double-sided sticky tape and glue. The pop art inspiration behind this was partly to do with the fast-consumerism, instant everything-ness of modern youth and partly to do with the ‘pop’ colours of the boot itself. Illustration by Chris Gray and Rob Bailey of Toy and photography by Tom Van Schelven. (from Love)

Top Shelf is a newly-established bookbindery that specialises in creating products uniting traditional bookbinding methods with modern flair. The client requested a bespoke identity that communicated the same care and attention to detail demonstrated by  their products. Designed by another aussie Ben Jennings.

Yves Behar is at it again. The collaboration between GE Ecomagination and fuseproject has led to the GE WattStation, an electric vehicle charging station that is designed for public and private spaces. Fuseproject’s vision for the WattStation is an electric-car-charger design that is as durable as street furniture, as visible as a light beacon, and as beautiful as street greenery. The WattStation design needed to break all paradigms of the typical large scale, angular and brash “gas pump”. To achieve our goal, a new soft and distinctive friendly icon is expressed through a cylindrical body that flares toward the top and becomes the circular interface. The UI screen faces the user at a “service angle” for optimized ergonomic comfort, and its surround lens houses a useful and informational graphic interface. The LED light ring indicates to the driver whether the WattStation is available (white), fully charged (green), charging (red), or out of order (yellow).

The WattStation comes imbedded with GE’s Smart Grid technology which enables the station to charge a vehicle in 4-8 hours compared to the typical 12-18. By communicating wirelessly with digital platforms and mobile devices, users will be able to remotely locate, operate and monitor the unit. The WattStation is also the very first charging station with a self-retractable charging cable, keeping streets tidy while protecting the cable from weather elements. All of these innovations are jammed tight into a compact metal shell, which is solidly constructed to withstand any harsh weather and usage conditions. It even has a built-in heater to defrost the snow! The WattStation will be planted all over the US, as well as Europe and Asia. It will promote the deployment of renewable energy for electric vehicles worldwide.

Gorgeous interior, Smart, simple, and sustainable is the design mandate of Atlanta-based Square Feet Studio, which recently designed the interiors for Abattoir restaurant in the city’s westside neighborhood, most notable for its contemporary galleries and warehouses. Housed in an old meat-packing plant, Abattoir is a modern-day chop house based on “whole animal cuisine”. love it (post Remodelista)

First solo museum exhibition of my fav of Brooklyn-based artist and designer Brian Donnelly, a.k.a. KAWS. I’m still dying to get one of his 4ft tall companions.

Gerd Arntz designed around 4000 signs, which symbolized key data from industry, demographics, politics and economy, for the visual language Isotype. The International System Of TYpographic Picture Education was developed by the Viennese social scientist and philosopher Otto Neurath (1882-1945) as a method for visual statistics. Gerd Arntz was the designer tasked with making Isotype’s pictograms and visual signs. Eventually, Arntz designed around 4000 such signs, which symbolized keydata from industry, demographics, politics and economy. Otto Neurath saw that the proletariat, which until then had been virtually illiterate, were emancipating, stimulated by socialism. For their advancement, they needed knowledge of the world around them. This knowledge should not be shrined in opaque scientific language, but directly illustrated in straightforward images and a clear structure, also for people who could not, or hardly, read. Another outspoken goal of this method of visual statistics was to overcome barriers of language and culture, and to be universally understood. The pictograms designed by Arntz were systematically employed, in combination with stylized maps and diagrams. Neurath and Arntz made extensive collections of visual statistics in this manner, and their system became a world-wide emulated example of what we now term: infographics. Beautiful

A hybrid novel can be seen as a hybrid image-text novel where written text & graphic devices such as illustration, photography, information graphics or typographic treatments may interject in order to hold a readers’ interest, adding interactiveness to the book and also giving the printed page a multidimensional visual surface. It is a kind of book that requires the readers’ actions and also to be handled and experienced. This remediation of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde tries, by adding playful graphic devices to the original novel, to engage readers in a more dynamic narrative experience and help them at the same time to understand the story more easily. Just plain beautiful!…

Love the Water & Typography experiments from youworkforthem each final piece is as unique as the fonts used.

Jon Contino, Alphastructaesthetitologist. Born and raised in New York, Jon Contino a designer, illustrator, and typographer. Steadily developing a reputation for his hand-lettering, Jon continues to blur the boundaries between traditional and digital design methods. Beautiful stuff love the modern take on monograms.

Gorgeous book covers. His work is striking and sophisticated, while maintaining a clean minimalist style, beautifully executed.

Cool three-dimensional and paper alphabet created by Tim Fishlock.

Another great aussie studio doing some bloody great work.

The Intertwine is the Portland Metro area’s ever-growing network of parks, trails and natural areas. By connecting people to the nature around them, even in an urban environment, The Intertwine improves the daily lifestyle of Portland citizens. A modular “patchwork” design spans easily from web and print to signage applications. Iconic illustrations speak to the natural diversity The Intertwine offers and accessible, playful language evokes the simple pleasure of being outdoors. Beautifully illustrated by Mette Hornung Rankin.

Johnny Kelly has directed a new film to promote YouTube Play – a collaborative project between YouTube and the Guggenheim Foundation that seeks to showcase the very best creative videos from around the world… “The brief was to create something that would reference the variety of different worlds created by youtube users,” explains Kelly, “and also drum up some excitement. With all these different worlds in the animation, I wanted to get across that idea of clicking on something without knowing exactly what you are going to see – just like on YouTube. It could be the greatest thing you’ve seen in your life, or it could be a sneezing panda – or one and the same! love it!

Love the low-fidelity of the logo animation for FOCAL by Crictor of Switzerland

All you need is a simple idea to change the world. Grey is out. Gloom is gone. It’s time to live our lives in colour The Let’s Colour Project is a worldwide initiative to transform grey spaces with vibrant colour. A mission to spread colour all over the world. Working together with local communities across the globe, rolling up our sleeves to paint streets, houses, schools and squares.It’s the beginning of a colour movement that everyone can join in.

Superb! Love the interplay with the physical book haven’t seen as clever and simple as this for a while. By Mobile Art Lab Japan

Watercolor at it’s best. “Baby I’m Yours” by the French band Breakbot.

Nice concept tying the original launch date of the shoe to the technology that was available at the time. The V-Series range was originally released by Nike in the 1980’s as a ‘technologically advanced running shoe’. Spin, was invited by the sportswear giant to make ‘appropriate promotional materials to support its re-release’. Rather than produce the traditional brochure, Spin produced a dynamic piece of communication that was placed in stores and retail outlets, to be picked up the public. ‘The folding continuos data paper and the ASCII art translations/illustrations of the shoes were used to reflect the technology of the era when the shoes were originally released.’ Nicely done.

Here in Sydney for my brothers wedding saw this and thought it was cute. Landor Sydney doing some fun work for a local hairdresser.

Love the concept but bloody hating the orange tinted windows and his rational for it, everything else is pretty sweet oh except he should get a smaller plasma screen sitting in front of a massive screen that close will def ruin your eye sight as well as that orange tint.

Private jets are basically a middle finger to the environment, but we suppose that if they’re going to be made, they should be well-designed. And to that end, Embraer, the Brazilian small-plane maker, has tapped BMW DesignworksUSA to design the interiors of its Phenom 100 and Phenom 300 luxury executive jets. (Is there any other kind?)

The collaboration represents six years of work, and the designs don’t much resemble a BMW–rather, they’re a bit more like a Bentley seen through the gimlet eye of an efficiency-minded German. For example, principles derived from BMW’s expertise in designing car controls were integrated into the cockpit layout and instrumentation; and BMW DesignworksUSA has applied in-motion know-how in designing under-seat baggage storage and tiny details such as cup holders and in-seat controls. (from fcompany) Gorgeous wonder what the budget was!……

Mark Boyce’s blog 93 has a unique visual illustration style when blogging posts.

Puma has partnered with The Fuse Project to completely redesign the packaging for their shoes. A team spent 21 months studying different boxes and packaging schemes, searching for the most efficient, sustainable way to get shoes to consumers. They finally came to the solution of foregoing a box altogether, and instead used a special bag and a cardboard sheet.

The Fuse Project explains: By providing structure to a cardboard sheet, the bag uses 65% less cardboard than the standard shoe box, has no laminated printing, no tissue paper, takes up less space and weighs less in shipping, and replaces the plastic retail bag. The cardboard structure is die cut from one flat piece of material and has no additional printing or assembly, thus it can be returned to the stream faster and more efficiently. The structure was created with four walls that taper in to allow for secured stacking, another important element left over from the original shoebox.

The bag is non-woven which means less work and waste (it is stitched with heat). It protects the shoes from dust and dirt in the warehouse and during shipping. The “clever little bag” is an iconic brand element upon leaving the store as it replaces the plastic shopping bag, and it is also used for shoe storage in travel suitcases. The bag is made of non-woven polyester consisting of recycled PET, and eventually is also recyclable. Puma claims that this new design will save about 8,500 tons of paper, 20 million Mega joules of electricity, 1 million litres of fuel oil, 1 million litres of water and 500,000 litres of diesel. Nice mother nature thanks you puma! (from:PSFK)

Predator & Prey by Olivia Verdugo

Swype provides a faster and easier way to input text on any screen. With one continuous finger or stylus motion across the screen keyboard, the patented technology enables users to input words faster and easier than other data input methods—at over 50 words per minute. The application is designed to work across a variety of devices such as phones, tablets, game consoles, kiosks, televisions, virtual screens and more. Simply Trace a a path, The word “quick” was generated from tracing the path shown above in a fraction of a second, by roughly aiming to pass through the letters of the word. A key advantage to Swype is that there is no need to be very accurate, enabling very rapid text entry. Awesome…no need to even spell these days!