As Kevin Kelly, (co-founder of Wired Magazine) once wrote: “the internet is a copy machine.” It has proven its ability to spread information and media of all kinds, from music to movies, animation, graphic designand more … but how do you send furniture out over the wire? One German design group is working that out.

Open Design works with industrial and furniture designers who develop an array of abstract modern and cool contemporary home objects, all with flat-pack, folding and bending properties suitable for CNC machines, laser cutting and/or three-dimensional printing. From model to prototype is a quick and easy step, and from there: global distribution is a cinch.

The resulting plans are then licensed under Creative Commons so people can download the design and print it out locally via a 3D printer or laser cutter (more and more places have these – and you can bet there is one near you or coming soon).

DIY designers can potentially modify these works and ‘share alike’ – and it saves the hassle (not to mention questionable legality/morality) of reverse-engineering high-end pieces of furniture.

Metal is one of the more obvious candidates for its combination of strength and flexibility, though there is no reason why CNC-cut wood and other materials would not work for some pieces as well.

Perhaps it is still ahead of its time, but this project will hopefully push furniture forward on the digital frontier, and have things ready and waiting for the day when we all have our own personal 3D printers at home (or at least a publicly-accessible laser-cutter at the local copy shop).

“A revolution in product development, production and distribution is imminent due to the Internet’s disruptive nature and the easy access to CNC machines. Open Design is a proposal to make this happen. It’s aim is to shift Industrial Design to become relevant in a globally networked information society.”

“In Open Design a design is CAD information published online under a Creative Commons license to be downloaded, copied and modified and is produced directly from file by CNC machines and without special tooling.”

The post Free Flat-Pack Plans for Laser-Cut Furniture first appeared on Dornob.

It’s a coffee table. It’s a pinball machine. It’s a “Star Wars” lover’s dream. It’s the Droid, a piece of furniture so cool, you’ll want it whether you grew up with Darth Vader, Yoda and C-3PO or not. Created by utterly inventive Hungarian ALTAR furniture, this “one and only love child of Star Wars pinball and R2D2” has snagged a 2015 A’Design Award and garnered – deservedly – lots of international attention. The object, a bona fide coffee table on wheels, is basically a vintage “Star Wars” pinball field housed in the body of an R2D2.

This next piece of info (get ready for total geek-out), might be the most exciting aspect of this amazing creation: It has a mini slide projector that displays “R2D2 in the Death Stars’ sewage.” It beeps, it blinks, it whirs, it pings (see video below), it took 321 hours to come alive, and it costs circa $13,000 (if still available), not counting shipping from Budapest. It’s epic. We rest our case.

Its creators, ALTAR furniture, have devoted themselves to rescuing pin ball machines after they die, imbuing them with a second, awesome coffee table life as “wonderfully complicated, meticulously planned and crafted sexy beings,” as they so eloquently write on their website.

If “Star Wars” isn’t your cup of Joe, check out these other commissioned coffee table pieces by the European artisans.

Or best of all, if you have the money to spare, have them custom design your very own love child, such as this nostalgic tape deck below!

For more info, visit altars.co

“The ‘lovechild’ of R2D2 and 3CPO is here in all it’s glory! R2PO, the fully working Star Wars pin ball coffee table of Altar Furniture took almost 300 hours to finish.”

“Currently only one item available, this amazing lovechild of R2D2 and 3CPO is probably the coolest Star Wars collectible in the Galaxy. Beautifully crafted by hand, the outer surface has been meticulously covered with #gold leafing.”

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Making tea has always been a soothing ritual, whether you use tea that comes in bags or loose-leaf teas that you load into an infuser. The Dreaming Whale tea infuser from Gongdreen is a sweet take on plain, boring tea infusers.

Meant to look like a whale in the middle of a pleasant dream, the Dreaming Whale opens its mouth to hold your loose-leaf tea. Close the mouth and dip the whale into a mug of hot water and you’re minutes away from your comforting beverage.

Water enters and exits through small holes in the whale’s body, gently joining tea leaves and hot water in a happy infusion of the restorative drink enjoyed around the world.

The whale’s cute water spout is used to swish around the infuser as the tea is being made. But it can also be detached and used as a stirrer or decoration for your beverage of choice. This would definitely make a cute gift for the tea lover in your life, and it only costs $13. Get it at Gongdreen, where you can find other tea-related items and loose tea as well.

“Do you know the sperm whale? The oil of the sperm whale is known to be one of Earth’s best natural elixirs. The motif of this product is a sperm whale dreaming a peaceful dream somewhere in the deep sea. It’s like drinking Earth’s best natural elixir!”

“Slow down your day with a Dreaming Whale tea break. You can enjoy the tea time when your tea is gently brewed through the Dreaming Whale’s tummy.”

“Open the cap of the whale’s belly under the whale’s body and add the tea. 
If you use the “stream of water” to put the whale in hot water, you can pump it conveniently.  You can see the water coming up. If you want to stir tea, just use the ‘stream of water.'”

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The nine-piece “Little Creatives” collection is designed to promote creativity in a child’s home environment, incorporating sweet pastels and prints in a line that stays true to the brand’s overall aesthetic. You won’t find any plastic chairs, primary colors, or clunky silhouettes here — it’s all just as sleek and elegant as the rest of the Swoon offerings.

Produced in collaboration with Studio Tilt, “Little Creatives” includes the Hunter Craft Trolley, Emmeline Chair, Freddie Desk, Harri Toy Box, Fynne Drawing Tray Table, Ailya Coat Rack, and more, with four of the pieces named after the kids who inspired the ideas. They’re all fun and creative, and unlike most kids furniture, they fit right in with modern interior decor.

“It has been a really fun collaborative process, bringing these ideas and designs to life with the help of the children,” says Sam Baldry, Swoon’s Head of Design. “We believe that the importance of creativity will only grow, so it is essential to nature creative thinking at a young age. We hope these pieces will encourage parents and children to do just that at home.”

“The idea to curate and co-design with children was to focus on the theme of creativity, to both excite and include children but also to engage in the debate about creativity in the education of young people,” says Oliver Marlow, co-founder of Studio Tilt. “We wanted the ideas and experiences of the young people to come alive in the products they created, and to excite and delight other children, too, as part of the range.”

“It’s the first of its kind in children’s furniture, and we’re thrilled to be a part of it. The quality of the pieces is testament to the insight and creativity of children.”

Pieces in the Little Creatives collection range from £49 to £249, and will be available on Swoon’s website from September 16th on.

Swoon began when Debbie Williamson found herself wishing all the high-end furniture she lusted over wasn’t so expensive — and that it was easier to order on the internet. She quickly realized the furniture market was open for a lot of reinvention, starting a company that provided great value, free delivery, and free returns.

Swoon’s business model deviates from the traditional furniture industry in other ways, too. Instead of releasing new collections twice a year, the brand has a design cycle every month so they can refresh their selections almost constantly. They use an experimental testing model, too, producing small batches to see what’s popular and then scaling up production on the most successful items.

Five new products debut on the Swoon website each and every day, and they often go fast, so if you see something you like, better snag it while it’s hot!

The post Swoon Launches First-Ever Line of Kids Furniture first appeared on Dornob.

Owners of classic cars must suffer terribly if their vehicle becomes simply too rusted, dusted and dilapidated to survive any longer. But like treasures from a sinking ship,the Weld House is making an art out of recycling trash: converting old car parts into beautiful new furniture designs.

In some cases the rust and weather patterns on the metal are enough to make for an incredibly unique piece of custom-built furniture, while in other instances there is already some form of art present on the vehicle which becomes memorialized in the resulting work.

When polished and finished, one might never guess the origins of these amazing recycled furniture pieces – primarily tables – and suspect they were the result of some kind of intentional process designed to create more visual interest and variety on the scrap metal surfaces.

Of course, the results come in as many colors and shades as cars do so each reclaimed furniture piece tends to be quite different from the next. While the Weld House primarily specializes in simple tables they have also experimented with storage units, bed frames and other designs.

So who is behind all of this? Here’s more info:

“We are a small company specializing in handmade steel furniture. Our passion is delivering functional works of art that have a rich American history. By combining the colorful, reclaimed sheetmetal of 20+ year old American automobiles with the attention to detail and heavy gauge tubing from The Weld House, you end up with an heirloom quality piece of furniture that is truly one-of-a-kind.”

“Weld House produces modern furniture from both new and recycled metals. With designs ranging from industrial to minimalist, each piece of furniture is meticulously fabricated on very tight-tolerance and calibrated machinery.  Our equipment allows us to deliver a level of accuracy beyond that of most commercial welding shops.  Whether you choose one of our designs or we collaborate on one of yours, you can rest assured your piece of furniture will be made with the best materials and incredible attention to detail, even in areas not ever seen. “

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For those of us who never want to stop reading, this might be the best bookcase ever designed – a loop that folds endlessly back upon itself. Unfortunately, despite the awesome visual effect of the piece it only stores (of course) a finite number of actual volumes.

Award-winning artist Job Koelewijn is known for works that engage his audiences and invite them to touch and otherwise more directly experience his creations. He has worked with everything from photography, film and architecture to performing art.

Given his love of the written word and for senses such as touch and smell it is no surprise that Job chooses to work with books over and over and over again. Sometimes this takes the form of sculpture and other times the book covers become mosaics on walls or surfaces layered upon other sculptural forms.

“Although conceptual in nature, Job Koelewijn’s work is also highly tactile,” reads his artist statement. “Koelewijn attracted attention early on, when he was still a student at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy. For his final project, he had his mother and aunts dress in traditional Spakenburg folk costume and ritually clean the Academy’s glass exhibition pavilion. Since then his work has ranged from photography and film to architectural structures, and from small objects to large installations. He covered the floor of a Medieval hall in Middelburg with spaghetti, which was pulverised under the feet of visitors; he applied perfumed baby powder to the walls of a space at the Biennale in Venice; and he turned urban and rural landscapes into a ‘film screen’ by placing the auditorium of a cinema before them.”

“Koelewijn makes abundant use of text in his work. He favours poetry, for example by Marsman or Beckett, and materials that appeal to the sense of touch, smell and hearing. His work is one of tremendous fragility and purity, qualities that, like cleanliness, he turns into themes; his ‘stories’ are always highly visual and imaginative and have an immediate appeal. Koelewijn’s work is not really commercial; much of it is produced for exhibitions and is temporary in nature.”

The post Infinite-Loop Bookcase Design first appeared on Dornob.

Skip the stylish brands on the shelves and overlook the stylized logos — this brand is speaking right to you in direct (and rather humorous) statements printed in simple font against bare one-color backgrounds. It’s a creative solution that proves graphic design doesn’t have to be flashy to be effective.

This is not exactly debranding in a pure sense, but close to it. The ‘logo’ – if it can be called that – is not in any special typeface and simply tells you the store name and web address. The ‘brand’ is built on sayings that are generic and overused to the point of being funny only when employed with this simple implied sarcasm.

Mucca Design (photos via EatMeDaily) wanted to do something different to make a local store stand out from its surroundings – and let you bring the sense of humor imbued in their packaging designs back home to stock in your own cupboards for future use.

By appealing to the trendy anti-brand movement these designers manage to blend kitsch, cliche and humor in a creative new way. This is a trend that might feel overplayed very soon, but for now, it’s fun and fresh, and might just get thousands of Brooklynites and tourists to stop at this little market instead of the mega store down the street.

“Mucca was asked to develop a brand strategy for a new gourmet market opening in Brooklyn. Our competitive analysis and neighborhood survey revealed that Brooklynites preferred the personal attention and service of local stores. So our branding strategy positioned this new grocery store as the go-to resource for the locals – one that was just as approachable as the bodega down the street.”

“Following a detailed naming process, we established an engaging copywriting tone that become the star of the brand. Its sharp, irreverent New York voice asserts itself across all applications, from digital to environmental.”

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