Design of the Week (No.13)

Stir-ring my imagination this week is:

(No.13) The Kikkerland Drowning in Debt Salt and Pepper Shakers by Sebastian Errazuriz

I thought this was highly appropriate for Design of the Week number '13'. This poor little fellow is up to his eyeballs in salt. 

Designer Sebastian Errazuriz (great name) says of his product:

"Like so many of us, these two humble workers have found themselves buried under an inescapable debt. Whether its debt or unemployment, these two little salt and pepper shakers humbly attempt to represent the struggle that is the sign of our times." 


"As soon as the seasonings are used the two workers slowly emerge, only to find that they will soon be covered again."

A bit arty farty for my liking to be honest, but I like the idea behind it. When I first saw it I thought it was representational of some gangster mob torturing a victim... that's a bit cooler really isn't it?! (well, not for the victim!).

The other thing that is slightly weird is that you save the little man as you use up the salt (or pepper), it's a shame it doesn't work the other way around. It's like debt consolidation I guess!?

I'd like to have seen Indiana Jones in the pepper one, with his whip up in the air trying to escape a pit of quicksand! Maybe I'll save that for the Stir™ range if someone doesn't pinch the idea from my blog ;-)

The Kikkerland Drowning in Debt Salt and Pepper Shakers retail for around £16.50, a bit too much I think. Still, great fun!

Design of the Week (No.12)

Stir-ring my imagination this week is:

(No.12) Fred and Friends Mr. Tea Infuser

This week I begin my look at tea infusers. For a product that you would have thought had become somewhat redundant since the introduction of the teabag, there are a remarkable number of designs on the market. And not only that, there are some really quirky and, dare I say, outlandish, designs! So much so that I suspect this won't be the first tea infuser making it into design of the week.

To kick things off, I bring you the 'Mr.Tea' Infuser (no relation to the ex-special forces, Mandinka hair-styled, plane fearing, 80's tough guy!). 

This little dude sits on the side of your tea cup / mug and infuses boiled water through his pants! An extraordinary talent, I hope you'll agree! I love the way he's posed so that he looks comfortable both inside the cup and slumped up against the outside of the cup. It's enough to make me want to buy my tea loose! 

Mr.Tea retails around £7. I want one :-)

Design of the Week (No.11)

Stir-ring my imagination this week is:

(No.11) Clear Hive Honey Set by Biodidactic

This weeks Design of the Week (ish month) is a pot for your honey. What's lovely about this design is how it has taken inspiration from nature. The glass pot itself is shaped like a honeycomb and the dipper inspired by a bee's backside! 

Now I have a lot of time for bees, they do a wonderful job for mother nature. We get quite a few bees in Essex and I'm always keen to stick some lavender in the garden for them and buy honey from our local farm shop. For those of you who are not great lovers of honey, you should be. There are so many different varieties and flavours you're missing out!

Anyway, back to design. The Hive Honey Set is available in clear and frosted glass and retails around the £35-50 mark. Not cheap, but you're buying a piece of art and that glass design is not the easiest to manufacture. Love it!

Chasing the Holy Grail

When I was growing up all I wanted to do was draw. I'd find myself a quiet corner, grab a pencil and scribble away for hours. I loved the creative freedom I had as a child to create whatever I wanted, no holds barred. It didn't matter what it looked like, whether it was in perspective, if it was even in the right colour, because my imagination did the rest.

The older I got and the more I progressed through school, the more serious art became. I now wanted things to look as close to real life as possible. I spent years honing skills with paintbrush and pencil always striving perfection. 

Then I went to university to study design and my style had to change. Lose, free and most importantly, fast, was the order of the day. This didn't suite my cack-handed lefty pencil grip and I found it really difficult. When your thumb overlaps your forefinger and your wrist twists inwards it doesn't lend itself to producing long, sweeping lines! We also used a lot of marker pens, again designed for speed. 

And then it all changed. Computers took over. Why spend 6 hours doing a hand rendered illustration when you can produce it in two hours in a spectrum of colour combinations? Why use tip-ex (remember that?!) on an engineering drawing when you can easily alter your measurements in CAD (Computer Aided Design)?

Ironically, by the time I reached professional design, the pencil was dead. I can honestly say, in 6 years in the profession, I have barely done a hand draw illustration. Yes, scrappy sketches in a notebook to communicate an idea, but nothing more. Nowadays I draw in Photoshop, Illustrator and 3D CAD software. What is startling is that my chiropractor now tells me my right hand is now stronger than my left from all the mouse work! I have software that tracks my movements - yesterday, in approximately 7 hours, I moved my mouse 50 meters and clicked over 11,000 times! Is it any wonder I have RSI problems?!

So what am I getting at with this little story? Well, this week I bought some new rendering software - KeyShot 4. It's used to 'colour in' my 3D models. I've not updated my rendering software in years (probably 10 years!!) and I was truly astonished at A; How easy the new software is to use (no messing about with complex lighting setups), and B; How fecking ace it looks!! 

The 'Juicy Cactus', a lemon squeezer I designed
and rendered in KeyShot 4.

I think I am finally getting close to the holy grail; a photo realistic visual / illustration, that can trick the viewer into believing it is a photograph. This, I guess, is something, I have been pursuing since a was a kid. Being a perfectionist can be useful as a designer, but it can also be a sin. Thankfully, this new software is making the perfectionist in me a little easier to deal with! :-)

A stationery set, also rendered in KeyShot 4

Design of the Week (No.10)

Stir-ring my imagination this week is:

(No.10) Wine For Your Life - Wine Bottle Opener

Hello all, this week a bring you a wine bottle holder. Artori Design (based in Israel) have come up with this ingenious design for holding your wine bottles. A silhouette of a man and women can be seen running away from a falling object - the object being your wine bottle!

The brilliance of this product is it's simplicity, from a perspective view point (shown below) you can see just how simple the design is. It's just one sheet of metal, cut and bent in to shape and coated black. It reminds me of Godzilla, I love the way you can see the movement in the man's tie and the woman's hair!

Artori Design do loads of other great designs around this theme, but I think I'll save one or two for future posts! A special mention too for the name 'Wine For Your Life', great pun!

I've seen this design retailing between £12-18.

 

Blowing The Lid Off Egg Poachers (Literally...)

When I was a lad we had a metal egg poacher that came out of the cupboard every six months. As I recall (this was the 1980s so forgive my hazzy description) it was made up of 4 metal 'cups' with little wire handles that sat in a disc on top of your saucepan. Although it looked wondrous, me and 'r' kid always preferred boiled eggs - because you got toasty soldiers and could use the top of the egg to create a little crash helmet for your finished shell (and then destroy it!). 

It would seem it has become a tradition for people to buy me novelty kitchenware for Christmas and this year I was given a microwavable egg poacher. Surely this can't be right I hear you say, you use boiling water don't you? What act of Satan is this?! Well I intended to find out so gave it a go...

Today I will be comparing two egg poachers, the Poach Perfect Silicone Egg Poachers and the Joie Microwave Egg Poacher.  The reason I'm doing this is because I've had the silicone ones for over a year now and in my opinion they work great, so we'll see how the micro-witch poacher compares (no bias creeping in I promise!):

Poach Perfect Silicone Egg Poachers

 Joie Microwave Egg Poacher

Using the Joie Microwave Egg Poacher:

Bang and the egg is gone!

First off I tried the 'Joie' and was immediately instructed to crack the egg in to the orange base and pierce the yoke. Reflecting, this seemed a funny act (piercing the yoke), given that this is what you normally do with your toast soldiers once you've cooked it. Anyway, I presumed this was to stop your egg exploding in the microwave and continued. The rather fetching chicken themed cover was then added and the poacher placed in the microwave for two minutes on a medium heat. After about one and a half minutes this happened (see picture right). No toasty soldiers for me!

I hoped this was a one off and that perhaps I hadn't pierced the egg yoke enough, so tried again...

...and made a bigger mess! 

At this point the wife was enrolled to clean the microwave while I resulted to plan B; boiling water...

Using the Poach Perfect Silicone Egg Poacher:

Egg-straordinary!

Sometimes, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. So (rather hungry at this point), I reverted back to the tried and tested. The lovely thing about silicone egg poachers is, they're easy to use and even easier to clean. They also work wonderfully. You simply line the inside of the poacher with a little olive oil (you only need a drop), crack your egg into it, season and pop in a pan of boiling water.  You then cover the pan with a lid and wait four minutes to cook. The best thing about silicone of course is that it is pliable so you can remove the egg easily. And voilà! A tasty and healthy snack (without an explosion!)

Rik x

If you're interested, the Poach Perfect Silicone Egg Poachers retail at around £3, a bargain!

Design of the Week (No.9)

Stir-ring my imagination this week is:

(No.9) Creature Cups

It's been more than several weeks since my last 'Design of the Week'. For this I apologise. I went on holiday in October, got food poisoning, had a nasty incident with lawyers and turned 30, so I hid myself in a cupboard for 3 months. 

But I'm back! (hooray!...) and here's my favourite design this week; the Creature Cups (click to enlarge).

These little critters are great fun! I'd love to try them out on my gran: 

Me - "Here you go love, a lovely steaming hot brew. I've put two sugars in it just like you like it. I love you Nan..."

Nan - "Oh you are a dear, you've always been my favourite..."

"You do know I'm diabetic?..."

(Sip, Sip, Sip)

"Arrrgggghhhh! What the what?!!" (Nan collapses) 

Only joking! But it would be ace to prank people. My favourite has to be the Octopus - please feel free to buy it for me (they retail at around £10). Sadly the cups don't come with a saucer (not very British) but this can be forgiven as the designers, known as 'Yumi-Yumi', are based in Brooklyn!

So, kudos to you 'Yumi-Yumi', I love 'em!