A new packaging design for gum packs. This is a simple design by Kyle Gati (a designer with his portfolio on Coroflat). There is more and more of this popping up. His design allows each individual pack of gum to attach to the next one with a special type of adhesive, thus eliminating the need for the extreme amounts of plastic that surround the current packages.Good thinking! And something everyone should be doing. My biggest petpeeve is the hard plastic container that surrounds little electrical devices. It a. is WAY too much packaging for such a small item, b. takes up a huge amount of space in general, and c. is the most annoying thing to get open. If you don’t have a pair of scissors then you are out of luck… hopefully someone will eliminate those someday as well.
http://www.coroflot.com/public/individual_file.asp?individual_id=143790&portfolio_id=1025578&specialty=4&sort_by=4&c=1&

This is a cool concept. I read post on Core77 about a design for a chair. The chair has a piece on the top of it that sort of surrounds the person sitting in it. They say that the chair actually does block out surrounding noise… not to mention that it also blocks out what is going on around the person. While this may not be the most normal thing to bring into a normal office, I could see it being a huge help particularly for designers, or college students for that matter. It would allow the person to concentrate better.The “Workbay” as it is known, was designed by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec.
http://www.contemporist.com/2008/12/10/the-workbay-chair-by-ronan-and-erwan-bouroullec/

Power building people! This is the kind of thing that I think we should see everywhere. Why is this not more prevelant?! At a building in the Netherlands, a new door was installed, which rotates are harvests the energy that it produces. People are going to be pushing the door open all day regardless, this just allows energy to be saved. It was designed by RAU (a designer who’s site I was unable to read, as it was in another language). This supposedly is the first take on this concept. It reminds me of those commercials in which a company says “we power this plant with windmills… and here, we harvest energy from…”. The article that I read speaks about “opening more doors” in order to deal with the issue of global warming… but why are we not seeing every design becoming more like this, just for the sake of saving money on our energy bills. This is super clever.
http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/12/10/energy-generating-revolving-door-by-boon-edam/

We’ve seen this… sort of. PB Teen has created a chair that hooks up to your ipod to give you a unique experience. It is called the “Painted Dot iChair”. The chair is a rocking chair and the sides on the left and right have speakers embedded into them. This reminds me of many different products that are out there… such as hoodies with speakers in the hood that can connect to your ipod. I like the idea however, of this being a place to chill out as well as personalize. Also, I like the polka dots… very cool.
http://cultofmac.com/ichair-surrounds-you-with-sound/5896

Organic... but comfortable?

It is pretty crazy how your experience can change based on your surroundings. For example, I have a PC at home on which I do school work, with older versions of the programs that we use at school. Although things are basically the same, the small things stick out in my mind in terms of comfort. The mac mouse with the balls for a scrolling tool makes a world of difference. I recently read a small article about the “Organic Workstation” design by Stevie Miles Brewu. He designed a new form of desk, essentially. It looks like a huge circle in which the chair attatches to the mounting area for your computer. While the concept is unique, it doesn’t sound that comfortable to me. I like to take my shoes off, put my feet up, have my legs up… I feel that this would be difficult for me to do based on the design layout. And while they are not the most important piece, the small comforts are part of what make great products.
http://www.tuvie.com/organic-workstation-by-stevie-miles-brewu

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