Lush - Re-thing Bathtime

While in Lahina Town Maui I stumbled on an interesting shop called Lush. Upon research I found that it is a multi-national company that hand makes products such as Shower Jellies and Solid Shampoos that are organic and oftentimes Vegan. This new kind of soap "Shower Jellies" are made into a gelatin soap. I purchased one and found it quite amusing. The scent lasted a lot longer on my body then conventional soap. I was pleased with that product.

Another particularly interesting product is their solid shampoos. They say this is environmentally friendly in that 1 bar saves 3 150 mL shampoo bottles. They have bars made out of different oils, flowers, and nuts. They even have shampoo bars made with plants and fruits that can lighten your hair color.

Yet another uniquely designed product is their massage bars. These are oils kept as a solid until you want to use them. The heat of your hand melts the oil, however if not touching you at room temperature the bar remains solid. These two are made with all natural ingredients with seed and nuts oils that enrich the skin.

Although there are many other uniquely designed products the "bath bomb" will be the last one I talk about. These powdery solid balls come in all kinds of forms. There are ones that make bubble baths, there are moisture ones that leave your skin moisturized, and then there are the fizzy ones that color and strongly scent the entire bathroom. All of them scent your skin and the scent is long lasting.

This company has decided to keep their products organic and hand made to help the environment. Their products come wrapped in recyclable paper instead of plastic. This is just one of the various companies who are trying to help our environment rather then hurt it. It would be worth your time to give their innovative products a try!

Home Housewares show in Cartoons

http://www.core77.com/blog/events/home_housewares_show_2009in_cartoons_12975.asp

The designing blog site Core 77 did a cartoon series are the new household inventions that were in the Housewares show in 2009. The cartoon shows how in the attempt to improve household items, there have been a lot of just adding useless materials and starting over. This is a big part of design. Sometimes improvement involves starting over and other times you just add or remove some things. The cartoon blog was an attention grabbing and interesting way to exploit the truths about the various products that were in the show.

These cartoons are blog of Core 77 that are exposing the sometimes frivolous inventions that are tried out. It shows what might be interesting and succeed as a product and what might fail as an experiment. It shows the truth in that many already good products are changed just to find out that the simple may be better.

Wedding Cake Designs

Kate Sullivan is the artist of the above cakes. She makes the most beautiful unique wedding cakes in New York. Her design of these cakes is so unique people around the country are interested in investing in such art. The real question is do you really want to eat such a beautiful work of art.

These are a collection of wedding cakes by Michelle Wibowo. She runs cake shops around London England. She has unique talent for baking cakes. She makes cakes for all occasions with just as much flavor for design these imaginative wedding ones.

As you can see design can encompass even the aspects we never dreamed about design being apart of. Like even our wedding. My wedding is just around the corner and in the process of planning it I never knew how much I would actually have to design. The cake is just one of the many items necessary.

Blogs To Follow!!

http://www.core77.com/

This professional blog site has tons of articles on new innovations. This site blogs about the appearance and workings of the latest and rarest designed inventions. There are a variety of different inventions reviewed and talked about. Everything from water purifiers to the next car is discussed here. One blog I found most interesting was the ANTMBL a new idea for an automobile. It is completely different from anything I've heard of. They want you're vehicle to be completely redesigned and summoned by phone. You can read the story at http://www.core77.com/blog/featured_items/the_end_of_driving_mike_and_maaike_introduce_the_autonomobile_13908.asp

http://www.underconsideration.com/quipsologies/ This blogging site has a variety of different types of blogs. Some are on particular paintings that are done in series, others are on everyday designed items such as licence plates. The title of the blog site is quipsologies. There are articles on typefaces and pretty much a lot of different two dimensional works of art. The motto of this site is "Quipsologies is about sharing your interests, recommendations and intrigues: Keep it useful and fun." This is precisely what is done here. One I liked was on "Treasure Everywhere" This was a plethora of photos of old sign for stores and locations and such. It showed that there is still beauty in all the old antique signs of the time before.

Design Culture and Language

Culture has been defined as an integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends on the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning according to Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluchhohn in Culture a critical review of Concepts and Definitions. Design is the planning that lays the basis of everything. Another name for design is engineering of which there are different aspects of design. Language is a system of communication shared between people in the same region. Culture and Language work together in a way to allow design to occur. Culture is what causes things to been designed and influences why and how it is designed. Language allows people in their culture to communicate and initiates the discussion of how a design will be carried out. Altogether there is a power in language that allows the culture to communicate and design and engineer things for a better world.

My Design Mindmap

Here are the various areas of design. This mindmap, although armature shows just some of the different aspects that design entails. Design is such a vast subject there are so many branches of it. Even in this one I forgot ceremonies such as weddings, churches, and other many things that we couldn't place one there.

Ads

Advertising is a big part of design in today's world. Advertisements can range from commercials to sculptures and everything in between. Generally people think of a boring commercial or a billboard with a picture of alcohol, however, there are some diverse advertisements out there that were designed to catch your attention. No everyone will stop to read a billboard or watch the commercials between televisions but advertisements such as this are hard to turn away from.

What if you were walking in the park and came across this bench? I believe that most people would take more then just a glance out of this. This took a creative designer who knew that people just aren't interested in the conventional ads. He knew that something such as a bench not really serving its purpose would draw the attention and even get the point across.

Here is another unconventional advertisement, even though it is only a picture it still has a message. From first glance you want to see why this girl has a post it on her forehead. Further examination shows that it is her name. This tells pretty much the whole story. This guy try to avoid not remembering her name in the morning after what seems to be a one night stand sticks a post it on her head to remember her name. This one again draws attention because of its uniqueness and humor.

Through examining these advertisements I would say that going the unconventional route get the message across more clear. If someone is entertained by the design of the advertisement or the meaning behind it they are more likely to remember it and discuss it with their peers.