ISSUE #3 – May 2016
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Invest in ego
Do you or do you want to invest in art? If so, here’s a tip – invest in big names. Literally – BIG NAMES. As proven by Yi Zhou, a professor at the Florida State University, big signature on a work of art increases its value, or in other words – narcissist artists fetch higher prices at auctions. To come to this conclusion, professor Zhou and his team measured hundreds of artists’ signatures and compared their sizes to prices their works fetched at auctions. The results? Increase in the size of the signature is connected with significant increase of the item’s price. Similar correlation has been found between the number of the artist’s self-portraits and their works’ market value.
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Wearable architecture
Bringing the world of architecture and jewellery design closer together, the famed architect Zaha Hadid has designed an eight-piece jewellery collection referencing the forms of her most famous buildings. Created from sterling silver with some pieces featuring black rhodium and black diamond elements, they instantly bring Hadid’s extravagant curves to mind. The defining piece of the collection – the Lamellae Twisted Cuff – will retail at £1.975.
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Touch and see
While the sense of touch has gained on importance since the invention of all things touch controlled, the blind had depended on their fingertips for a long time prior to human kinds romance with touch screens. And it’s with the blind in mind that Dot – a braille smart watch – was developed. The Dot can display four braille characters at a time, and when it’s connected to a smartphone via Bluetooth, those can be used to read text, notifications or tweets. A tablet device for the blind is now in the works.
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Laces for the lazy
Bringing the world of architecture and jewellery design closer together, the famed architect Zaha Hadid has designed an eight-piece jewellery collection referencing the forms of her most famous buildings. Created from sterling silver with some pieces featuring black rhodium and black diamond elements, they instantly bring Hadid’s extravagant curves to mind. The defining piece of the collection – the Lamellae Twisted Cuff – will retail at £1.975.
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SW
What makes an icon? Japanese design company Nendo decided to put it to the test by stripping the characters and other elements of the Star Wars universe to the bare minimum. By sticking only with the fundamental, defining details, the designers created 16 3D forms that manage to remain instantly iconic, despite their barebones simplicity. The company would like to see its designs utilized in the form of variety of merchandise such as cups, necklaces or paperweights. So what does SW stand for?
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Smart Cloud
On the specs sheet the Nextbit Robin smartphone is a very up to date, powerful machine. On the design side it certainly stands out with its sharp corners and pastel colours. But what truly sets the Robin apart is its storage management solution, which guarantees that you will never run out of space on your phone. Instead of stuffing the device’s internal memory with data, Robin’s Android based OS uploads less used aps and other files to the cloud and makes them available only when you need them. It comes with 100GB of dedicated storage in the Cloud.
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Power Compact
Sony and Canon have proven that the announced death of a compact camera by the hand of a smartphone was premature. Pushing the limits of what pocket sized photo device can do has become a sport in itself for the big photo brands and now Nikon follows in their footsteps. The recently announced Nikon DL line-up of advanced compacts brings together neat, vintage design and photographic powers suitable for advanced amateurs or pros on a weekend. The DL comes in three versions but all are equipped with the same 1-inch CX sensors and all are priced under 1,000 USD.
ISSUE #2 – January 2016
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Personal lock
If you’re up-to-date with the latest technologies, you probably have a phone with a fingerprint scanner. Convenient? Then why not use it elsewhere, for example with your bicycle lock? At first sight the Grasp bike lock looks like any U-lock. The difference is that it connects with your phone via Bluetooth allowing you to personalize the locking system with your fingerprint. One key less on the keychain.
grasplock.com
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Spotlight on the fabric
Here is something from the crossroads of sculpture, needlework and furniture design. “faBrick” is a project by students of the Bartlett School of Architecture in London, bringing fabric to the center stage. Using computer algorithms to find optimum composition and hand stitching techniques, the designers transformed a single sheet of felt into an impressive 3D composition, serving both as a sculpture and a chair.
bartlett.ucl.ac.uk
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Industrial Gold
With form as simple as a straight piece of wire, Ai Weiweis “Rebar in Gold” bracelets have an interesting story to tell. Fashioned to resemble metal reinforcing rods, those “wearable sculptures” are a memorial to the victims of the Wenchuan earthquake in China, which took over 70,000 lives. The bracelets were developed in collaboration with Elisabetta Cipriani Gallery in London and are available at the starting price of 34,000 USD.
elisabettacipriani.com
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Travel light
A good urban bicycle should not only be foldable, it has to be light. At 6.5 kg, the Hummingbird is 3kg lighter than its closest competitor and weighs roughly as much as a watermelon. Made from carbon fibre and featured with a patented folding system the bicycle will be available in four colors and two versions: with 16’’ and 20’’ wheels.
hummingbirdbike.com
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Fly longer
What made Parrot’s original Bebop drone stand out from the crowd was its sleek design and small size. The new Bebop 2 sticks with this concept but adds an extra 14 minutes to the flight time bringing it up to 25 minutes on one battery charge. Enough to make good use of the onboard 14 mega pixels camera with a 180˚ fisheye lens. The drone can climb 328 feet in fewer than 20 seconds and has a max vertical speed of 13 mph.
parrot.com
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Smart and stylish
Smart watches are still in their infancy, both when it comes to function and looks. The Swiss-made Withings Activité focuses on the design – just look at that beauty – but takes no shortcuts when it comes to features. The built-in accelerometer can track your steps, distance and sleep, all of which you can further analyze via a dedicated iOS app. Unlike other smart watches, the battery runs not for hours but for months.
withings.com
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Unreality
Gravity? What’s that? Logic? No place for it here. The world of Indonesian graphic designer Jati Putra is based on distortion and manipulation of what at first sight seems like perfectly natural landscapes. Bending horizons, water where air should be, impossible made possible, these mindboggling images are an ode to imagination.
instagram.com/jatiputra/
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Stonehenge updated
Scientists are divided as to what was the use of the original Stonehenge complex. What is the use of the Steelhenge – a modern-day homage to the ancient monument, is not obvious as well. Built by the Swiss architecture firm BUREAU A using 50 blue shipping containers arranged in a ring, the Steelhenge is said to commemorate Geneva’s squat culture. Whether it really does or not, it still caught our attention.
a-bureau.com
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Made to fit
How many pairs of ear buds have you had so far? Probably too many. The creators of the Revols promise that theirs will be the last ear buds you’ll ever need. Yes, they are wireless and the sound quality is guaranteed by Onkyo but the really interesting part is the gel-filled tip that can mold to your ear shape. Once the buds are in place in your ear, a tap in the dedicated app will form them permanently in one minute.
revols.com
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Street Pool
From dim-lit pubs onto sunny squares, the Urban Pool project takes a popular bar game to the street level. Designed and built by a French architect Gwendal le Bihan, the piece is made with concrete and resin to stand up to the challenges of the urban environment. Currently installed in the French city of Nantes, the table can accommodate blackball or eight ball but users are free to come up with their own street games.
gwendallebihan.com
ISSUE #1 – September 2015
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Leica for modern times
Some things are familiar in Leica Q – stunning design, breathtaking photo quality and steep price tag are all part of the company’s DNA. But this time, Leica finally catches up with modern times by equipping the Q with features previously unseen in many of it’s cameras, such as fast autofocus’ touch screen and full HD video recording, making it an irresistible package for more than just the most dedicated fans of the brand.
www.leica.com
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Size matters
It’s so small, yet it’s so big! If you continue to be shocked with the pace at which consumer electronic are getting smaller and more potent, prepare yourself to be amazed with the latest addition to SanDisk’s line of micro SD cards – the Ultra microSDXC UHS-I. It looks exactly the same as any other micro SD, it’s the size of your nail…but it has the capacity of 200GB. Is it enough? Some say it’s never enough but for the time being – it is!
www.sandisk.com
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DYI Supercar
It’s fast, it’s beautiful…and it’s 3D Printed. The company behind “Blade” supercar claims it’s the world’s first car made using the 3D printing technology, but it’s more than that. Combining three-dimensional printing with carbon fiber used to produce the car’s body, the engineers managed to drastically reduce its weight to less than 640 kg. In comparison, a Bugatti Veyron weights 1888 km and is 0.26s slower than the Blade, which goes from 0 to 100 km/h in 2.2s.
www.divergentmicrofactories.com
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Boost your snaps
As fun as smartphone photography is, it still lacks the image quality you deserve if you are serious about you pictures. DxO One is here to help. This smartphone camera attachment will upgrade your iPhone (no word of an Android version yet) with a Nikon 1 grade sensor and a 32mm equivalent, 1.8 lens. This, paired with full manual controls via a dedicated app will allow you to take some truly impressive shots that can be stored directly in your phone’s memory and uploaded online in a matter of seconds.
www.dxo.com
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Bite size art
Any Chef will tall you that – when it comes to food, presentation matters. In fact it matters so much, that it can turn into art. Take the Cubes project by Lernert & Sander design studio. The idea is simple – 98 various kinds of food presented in the form of identical, nearly perfectly cubes. The production must have been tedious – imagine cutting all these? The effect however, is a startling image that is currently making its way to art galleries around the globe. And you can own a copy too – the C-print version already sold out but a 52 x 42 cm poster signed by the artists is still available.
www.lernertandsander.com
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Everyone’s flag
“We came in peace for all mankind,” says the sign left behind the first astronauts to ever walk on the surface of the moon in July 1969. Except for the sign, they also left a flag, not all mankind’s flag but an American one. The designer of the International Flag of Planet Earth, Oskar Pernefeldt concurred that future space missions will need a flag representing human kind as a whole, and came up with an idea. His design represents nature, water and human unity and underlines the inseparable link between them.
www.flagofplanetearth.com
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Get sucked right in
Need more reasons to stay in front of a computer, never go out and spend your life in the digital world? This might be the ultimate one. Oculus rift is a Virtual Reality headset that is set to change the computer games game and take home entertainment to a new dimension. Founded by a Kickstarter campaign and hitting the shop shelves in the first months of 2016 is hailed as the first VR set that actually succeed in making you feel like you’re really there.
www.oculus.com
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Driving forward, looking back
World keeps moving forward but it also enjoys a look back resulting in a number of vintage themed products. The latest addition to that trend – vintage style electric bikes. Take the Vintage Electric Cruz bicycle. It’s powered by a 52-volt battery, requires just 2 hours for a full charge, has a range of 30 miles and top speed of 36 mph. But these are all just numbers. What matters is that it looks like classic California cruiser making it a guaranteed head turner.
www.vintageelectricbikes.com
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Get your suit wet
Ever dreamed of skipping work and going surfing? Or stopping to catch a wave on the way to the office? With the True Wetsuit by Quicksliver, you can. The suit is made of jersey neoprene and a special, water repelling “dryflight” fabric and it comes complete with a tie. A tuxedo cut is also available, for the more elegant surfers out there. Made to order and available in Japan.
www.truewetsuits.jp
