Historically speaking, Swedes and Danes haven’t always been the closest of friends, so it’s always reassuring to see the two cultures play nice—especially in the name of good design. And beer. Danish brewery Mikkeller enlisted the help of Swedish design house Bedow to design a series of labels for its 2012 collection of seasonal beers. The end result is a minimalistic and uncomplicated—yet playful—take on Scandinavia’s changing seasons. Literally.
Case in point: Mikkeller’s current release, the Wild Winter Ale. Designed with bitter temperatures in mind, the label features an apple tree that with the help of heat-sensitive ink, loses its leaves as the bottle warms to room temperature. The early editions of the design shows a snowflake transforming into a sun and dandelion seeds morphing into raindrops. Who said drinking beer can’t be a high-design (and uniting) experience?
Veering away from the highly embellished pieces that have been shown the past few seasons, SS2013's metal jewelry trend opts for boldness of shape and suggests an understated sophistication. Designers such as Pamela Love, Bliss Lau, and Balenciaga combine the sleekness of metal with interesting geometrical qualities, tribal influences, and cut-outs. Gold, silver, rose-gold are all fair game in this future primitive style and make an excellent companion to any warm weather ensemble.
Not long after announcing a switch to a subscription cloud-based model for its ever-popular Creative Suite, Adobe steps into the hardware market with the "Project Mighty" stylus and "Napoleon" ruler. The devices are designed to work together, using Bluetooth and an upcoming Adobe app, to mimic the experience of sketching with a pen on paper. From a tactile perspective, the stylus features a pressurized tip to make line drawing feel more natural. Conceptually, the devices are built for collaboration, and have sharing functions built-in to move assets to and from the cloud and whatever tablet you're working on. When we get our hands on them, we'll let you know. [via Design Taxi]
When Evangelia Koutsovoulou moved from rural Greece to Milan, Italy her cooking suffered. She realized city cooks didn't have access to the same herbs founds in the mediterranean country side, so she launched a Kickstarter campaign to start distributing fresher Sage, Bay Leaves, Oregano, and Thyme.
But because she's not the biggest fan of cameras, and Kickstarter campaigns require a video element, she commissioned friends to tell the story of her two-year search for the best herbs in a simple but impressive animated short. Koutsovoulou also designed a strong branding identity for the herbs: each package is shipped in a small foldable bag with a cleanly designed name and information card affixed to the front. A tiny yellow sun at the bottom of the card contrasts the blue sans serif type, and along with the market-style bag, connotes freshness.
Pledge some money and become an official "Oregano Tester"
Put simply, the colors in Nadja Staubli photos are surprising. Whether it's an image of a Martian red sky above an indoor pool, or a three-color pastel mansion shot from the parking lot, Staubli finds colors and shapes that don't seem of this world. Instead her collections read as a kind of happily distorted vacation diary that pays more attention to unexpected patterns in swimming pools, golf courses, and highways than documenting sights and people. [Via It's Nice That]
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