Designer: Julien Vallée
Julien Vallée is a graphic designer based in Montréal, Canada who emailed me his portfolio and I am blown away at the amazing videos and his presentation style. You have got to spend some time checking out his site.
Designer: Vivien Muller
I featured her ‘Octube’ earlier in the year, now Vivien Muller is hitting us with another concept. “GoGreen” is the new phrase that seems to echo around the world. With many joining the bandwagon, it shows that many of us are trying to make a conscious effort to adapt to a more sustainable lifestyle. PhotonSynthesis is a device by designer Vivien Muller, which is a solar-cell bonsai lookalike, tree charger. You can charge your cell, your Mp3 player or a number of other electronic gadgets by plugging in to the tree. With its’ 57 photovoltaic panels, the sun can power your tree during the day – no water needed. The solar energy is stored into a battery, allowing you to plug up anytime you need to. Gadget cables and adapters can be hidden away beneath the trees’ “soil”. Definitely a decorative way to go green!
Designer: Wooteik Lim
So here’s something different. It’s not tech related, not I.D. per say, and though simple, is plenty difficult to execute. Fragile candy sends a sharp message.
Designer: Christina Ferraz Rigo
(de)light, by Christina Ferraz Rigo, is a project that reinterprets the concept of light as we know it. What does it mean when you can pour illuminated liquid from archetypical components like a lightbulb? When something so intangible becomes tactile and easily transferrable. The project challenges fundamental design paradigms about how we use lighting, how it’s displayed, and how it’s controlled. Imagine what our world would look like.
Texts from the designer:
My first lamp explores the greatest metaphorical potential of my project by presenting liquid light in its most pure state: as a liquid contained in a bottle that can be manipulated as liquids normally are. Along with this bottle, I have created a set of two glasses that represent a lamp and a bulb – see pictures on the right. By pouring the liquid light into the glasses, the object meaning is given to the light – two new lamps have been created. However, the liquid remaining in the bottle reminds you of its intangible essence – there is no need of a lamp in order to have light. Light remains unattached to an object and able to be placed in any imagined context. I have used the quotidian gesture of pouring as a way to attach, or detach, light to its archetypes.
For the other lamp, I worked with the pervasive idea of the lamp. I worked with proportions and shape in order to create a perfectly recognizable archetype of a lamp. Alongside this process, I implemented the idea of liquid light by using the archetype of liquid, a tap. Therefore, I created a lamp that looks typical when first seen, but creates a hint of curiosity and delight when a closer look is given and the tap on it is noticed. The user starts then to imagine how the lamp would work, and ends up discovering that the lamp switches on – gives light – when the liquid light starts to fill it. In order to switch it off, the tap has to be open and the liquid released.
