Elbow Designs: Light List Two

Today I'm excited about the part of everyone's body that will never look youthful: elbows. And lights!

Here are some original designs:

And one more inspired by a lighting fixture that can be seen through the windows (gasp) of a new house built on the street where I grew up - but more on that next time.

Battle of the Bandz

Today I'm excited about: elastic bands.

I am so baffled to learn that the newest craze trickling west from New York doesn't rely on touch sensitivity and all day batteries. It doesn't allow for removable covers that express the way I feel or dress, nor does its longevity rely on how many times a day I've logged online to feed it cyber-food. What is it? An elastic band. That's right! And I've already bought a box of 12. "Bands" (or Bandz, or Silly Bandz, or Zanybandz, or, the list of knock offs go on...) remind of old-school pogs and slap bracelets, and are definitely a reaction of the late 80's / early 90's splash of neon colour that has found its way into todays skinny jeans and jansport backpacks. They are colourful, collectable and wearable, and so they successfully work as a fad: colourful so that everyone can clearly see the ones you have, collectable so everyone wants the exact ones you have, and wearable so that everyone who doesn't know what they are, will enquire, and ... during my mere two days of wearing, they have.

But what do these coloured silicone bracelets do? Not all that much really. Lets be honest. They don't smack on my wrist and make me look tough for however many slaps I can do in a minute. No, but when not worn (which just kills me by the way), these bandz do magically re-shape into the sillouette of an object in a huge variety of different categories: dinosaurs, animals, rock band, fairytale or my personal favourite - mystery - which is just a loose mixture of random shapes that I feel makes the game a little more interesting. The categories are really quite numerous, and although they haven't gone risque (just yet), they have become controversial. This blog lists some bandz-y's top ten list of silliest looking shapes which include a bikini top, a bone, and a cat - all of which (the blog claims) fail to look realistic. Some of the people on this blog are quite angry about it too. Yup.

You can get alphabet bandz to spell out your name illegibly on your arm, you can get religious iconography bandz in order to show the world how you feel about god, or you can get the peace, love and harmony bandz just so you can wear your "heart" on your sleeve. (puke.) BUT!!! Where can you get a set of these bent up bandz that, when worn, look like someone's chewed up hair elastics? Walgreens of course. For the $2.99 experience, I'd say it's worth telling your future kids the story of bandz. If you have kids, I'm not so sure it's important.

Recycled Design

Today I'm excited about: wallets, pin-boards, stacks of purple tables.

Lets face it. There are plenty of design companies out there working tirelessly to come up with green and sustainable ways to build their products. It's the big thing right now, and so it should be. Here is a little tiny survey on brand new recycled design that I'm excited about today.

In a month it will be my one year wedding anniversary to my amazing wife, who (thank G-D) either; puts up with, or agrees with my anal design aesthetic at home. That date will also mark one year since I received one of my most beloved gifts from my wife - my Narwhal. The Narwhal Company had a very simple idea: re-use beautiful vintage fabrics of ties found at thrift stores and turn them into mens wallets. From your token fathers day tie to its one-year-later fathers day wallet, no one thought to put two and two together before these guys. It makes sense, it's green, and every single wallet is different. Not only can you peruse their well designed online store to pick your favourite, and then one refresh later notice it immediately erased from the site and mailed to your door... but it also fulfills my yearning for the thinnest wallet ever. Sure, I'm a thin guy with only a thin tie - but even though it doesn't rhyme, Narwhal's thin wallets are made from beautifully patterned silk (!) and so they allow room for all the cards you never need, paper money and more, without making it uncomfortable to sit down on that favourite perspex chair of yours. There's nothing like knowing you own great design, but there's absolutely nothing like knowing you're the only one on the planet that owns it.

Umbra is a fantastic design company well known in dorm rooms across america for their conveniently priced rubbish bins. A few steps into their huge pink Toronto flagship store will convince you that there is way more going on for Umbra than two-way swinging trash lids in any colour imaginable. Umbra has also come up with some simple, recycled design that challenges its superior and doesn't leave multiple holes after I realize that I didn't pin my to-do list up straight enough - I love my recycled paper "Pulp Bulletin Board"!

Although too loud for my two bedroom apartment, Isabel Quiroga's "Superused: Table and a Cabinet" might work in your home if you love you some recycled table on table action. This aesthetic of throwing together old furniture in the hopes that its new configuration might lead to an aesthetically pleasing and somewhat Rococo rendition of IKEA's attractively priced TV storage units is popping up in design studios all over. I think it's brilliant, and I want one, when I have a bigger place.

Some recycled design is fantastic, and some miss the mark. Some prove better than their ridiculously priced infamous originals (see below left - brought to you by Design Without Reach) and some just make me laugh (see below right - brought to you by Rodrigo Piwonka).