I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner—after all, the Paper of Record has been reporting on the perhaps inevitable confluence of fashion and the rise of cycling (don't call it a trend) for the past couple years, including a particularly telling September 2009 article entitled "Whose Bike Are You Wearing?" In other words, as much as couture has picked up on the growing popularity of biking, we've seen far less of the opposite.

Enter Carson Leh's beautifully brogued bicycle saddles, which have far more in common with handmade dress shoes than, say, a $20,000 Hublot × BMC. Rather, they hearken back to the signature details of oxfords and derbys, a logical intersection of Leh's obsession with vintage footwear and his passion for cycling. Alden Seats is the result, and his inaugural collection of saddles features wingtip-worthy patterns and faux-quilting for a specific contingent of style-conscious cyclists. (As a member of that target audience, I was interested to learn that the now-ornamental perforations originally served as a drainage system for leather shoes intended for wet terrain.)

Like Melbourne's Busyman Bicycles, Leh started out by refurbishing existing saddles with custom patterns. Thus, Alden seats are a "line of ready-to-ride leather covered seats that maintain and improve the same hand made quality and style of my current custom seats."

There will be three seat shapes to start, with four leather colors and nine distinct designs. Styles will include a retro road and track seat, a Dutch-style comfort seat and a slim Pivotal style BMX and MTB seat. These three styles cover the main markets of cycling. Alden would primarily be centered around the rapidly growing community of cyclists purchasing lightweight Dutch-style city bikes and custom bike builders of road and track bikes.

Video after the click...

After ten years of writing about art and design, Anna Carnick wanted to sit down with eight of her favorite designers as well as "those that defy categorization" and ask them to weigh in on how design, as a profession, has changed over the years and where they think its headed. Design Voices includes brief profiles followed by in-depth interviews with Giulio Cappellini, Ross Lovegrove, Massimo Vignelli, Stefan Sagmeister, Maarten Baas, Tokujin Yoshioka, Dror Benshetrit and Milton Glaser. Though they all address the changing relevancy and application of design, I still have one question: where the ladies at? Any female designers out there? Male dominance aside, here are some highlights.

We all know fluorescent bulbs flicker; wave your hand in front of one and you see the stroboscopic effect. And even though the lights can flicker faster than the human eye can detect, it can still cause problems: "Although humans cannot see fluorescent lights flicker, the sensory system in some individuals can somehow detect the flicker," says a 1989 lighting research study on the topic. "Ever since fluorescent lighting was introduced in workplaces, there have been complaints about headaches, eye strain and general eye discomfort." I'm wondering if this recent Li-Fi technology will cause the same problem.

Hopefully not, because Li-Fi is a really neat idea that essentially promises to replace your wireless router with a simple (LED) lightbulb that does double duty, both illuminating your room and sneakily transmitting data. By cycling the light on and off faster than we can see, it produces binary. And binary, of course, is data. It's basically fiber optics without the fiber, relying instead on line-of-sight. And it works: Li-Fi researchers at the University of Edinburgh led by Li-Fi pioneer Harald Haas have already transformed standard LED bulbs into 130-megabit-per-second routers.

Senior User Experience Designer
Canvas
New York, New York

Canvas, a New York digital agency, is seeking a full-time Senior User Experience Designer to build its UX practice. They are looking for a well-rounded UX designer who enjoys crafting highly-polished, beautiful and effective interfaces for web, mobile and other digital touch points... and seeing the work brought to life by a motivated, multidisciplinary in-house team!

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The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.

In keeping with the inclusive spirit of our second annual design awards, everyone is a winner—or at least everyone who registers for the Core77 2012 Design Awards. As those of you who participated last year already know, registrants will receive a complimentary limited-edition poster (while supplies last). Created to promote the design awards, it not only features the essentials about our program, it also tells the story behind its construction.

Designed by our friends at Studio Lin, who also designed our awards identity, the poster's function is twofold: a call for entries and, on the reverse side, a wall calendar. Displaying the full 2012 year, the calendar highlights key dates and deadlines for the awards program, which registrants and entrants will find particularly handy. Thus, the poster doubles as an organizing tool that captures the ethos of the Core77 Design Awards by recognizing the time and effort that goes into great design.

Furthermore, we'd like to acknowledge the quality of the collaboration and materials that went into the poster itself. Print nerds may be interested to know that the poster uses Mohawk's Superfine Ultrawhite Eggshell 70 lb. Text 2/2 stock, and Pantone 021U and Gold 871U. Rhode Island's Meridian Printing did a fine job of the printing, folding and delivery of this artifact—especially considering that the folding itself is integral to the design, revealing the identity and the making-of the poster in the initial unfurling.

The poster is a wonderful commemorative item for this year's awards program and we have a bountiful supply of these exquisite display pieces. Register early and we'll mail you one to display on your studio or classroom wall. Click here to register today!

Photo Credits: Studio Lin

Taipei-based Bitplay has been around for just a couple years now, but their playful lamp designs were among the obvious highlights at this year's New York International Gift Fair.

Why shouldn't we have fun with our everyday objects? It's important for things to be usable and elegant. But what if there's the possibility of a little something more—a little bit of playfulness in how we interact with our objects? That's the idea behind bitplay. We design objects that have a sense of humor, that bring a little magic to our everyday interactions.

Founded on the idea that "little delights can trigger something big," the "BANG!" lamp, in particular, splits the difference between clever novelty item and instant classic. It's an LED table lamp with a remote control shaped like a handgun. Pretty straightforward and, based on our brief target practice session, fairly accurate.

5468796 architecture's Bond Tower

Each year the Architecture League honors a group of up-and-coming North American architecture firms as Emerging Voices, an award that recognizes "a distinct design voice" and "the potential to influence the disciplines of architecture, landscape design and urbanism." This year the panel selected eight firms: INABA, 5468796 architecture, SCAPE Landscape Architecture, Studio NMinusOne, Oyler Wu Collaborative, SsD, Arquitectura 911sc, and Atelier TAG.

To commemorate the achievement, each firm will present their work as part of a lecture series hosted by the Architecture League beginning on March 2nd at Cooper Union, in an auditorium designed by past Emerging Voice winner, Morphosis. Tickets go on sale this week, but if you'd like to know a little bit more about each firm before attending, here's a rundown of the first half of the bunch. Stay tuned for part 2.

INABA's New Museum installation

INABA
Location: Los Angeles
Mission Statement: Inaba takes an analytical approach to form-making and building and an analysis-based approach for its urban planning and development projects. They also create "artifacts," or installations and art objects.
Major Projects: Said "artifacts" have been exhibited by The Walker Art Center, The Whitney, New Museum and the Storefront for Art and Architecture. They've been published in The Financial Times, FRAME, Domus, Art Review, Artforum, The New York Times, Archinect and BLDGBLOG.

In Roman times people would gather to watch singular spectacles like gladiatorial combat. But nowadays we stage spectacles to promote spectacles, using viral marketing stunts to promote theatrical releases. The latest is this "Flying People in New York City" video by guerilla marketing agency Thinkmodo (the same people behind that Times Square stunt for Limitless) and the flying people, alas, are not real people:

The movie being promoted is the superhero sci-fi flick Chronicle, being released today in the UK and on Friday in the 'States.

via techcrunch

Over the past couple weeks I've spent some time digging into Keyshot 3, the latest release from Luxion. I was optimistic when Bunkspeed and Luxion parted ways, splitting the excellent HyperShot into two separate software packages, Bunkspeed Shot and Luxion KeyShot. If you don't remember, the core of HyperShot more or less became Keyshot. The computer I used to review is a MacBook Pro, with Windows 7 (via Bootcamp).

My CAD tool of choice is Solidworks complimented by PhotoView 360 for creating renderings. I've tried a number of other tools, such as Maxwell, but I kept coming back to PhotoView. It is integrated into Solidworks, scenes are easy to setup, there are enough options (but not an overwhelming amount) to dial it in. Renders don't need to bake forever to look decent and the results are "good enough."

A New Version

KeyShot 3 has arrived with a large number of enhancements and new features. The most notable being the integrated animation tools. Out of the box this feature is fully functional, and small preview movies can be saved. An add-on purchase is required to unlock exporting full resolution animations. In addition, from the render queue to the material editor, everything is cleaner, more intuitive and redesigned.

Installing and licensing KeyShot 3 was simple. A free demo version is available from Luxion's website along with a handful of plugins for popular CAD packages. As a designer who is primarily Mac based, I was pleasantly surprised to see Windows and OSX versions.

For this review, I sought a realistic scenario where I'd need software like KeyShot 3. High end design renderings are often used to evaluate the appearance of products that are difficult to prototype and as virtual photography for marketing and promotion. Complex & translucent objects are usually a good test for rendering software in regard to realism and speed. I decided to design a glass bottle for a fictional, high-end liquor brand: Hylian Mead. The "client" is the Hylian Meadery, located in the kingdom of Hyrule (the setting for Nintendo's Legend of Zelda video games) After a few thumbnail sketches, I settled on a design.

The avocado is venerated the world over. The fleshy fruit, native to Mexico, can be found as far as Bali or South Africa. Its bulbous shape and dark rind became the subject of a nuanced correspondence between designers Christiane Büssgen of Germany and Jesús Alonso of Mexico.

Through emails and sketches the two romanced the fruit to hypnotic levels, fleshing out projects in tableware with mixed materials in porcelain, wood, and metal. The avocado silhouette became the basis for the duo C4's Project Avolution presented at New York Design Week in 2011, combining a passion for food and natural materials, where each item on the table is related to a part of the avocado through its material or shape. Think skin, shape, and pit. Then add the avocado as ingredient.

The two designers first met in 2010 during New York Design Week and kept a vigilant avocado log. Christiane had been making porcelain avocado prototypes for more than a year, excited by their porous skin and bowl shape. Jesus extended the dialogue with poetic sketches and his own cultural context.

Artist: lunchbreath
More: View all cartoons

If you've ever agonized over getting the lighting and reflections just right in your 3ds Max vehicle rendering, just imagine doing all of that in real life. Tabletop product photography is challenging enough, but car photography—where you're dealing with an enormous and ultra-reflective object whose surfaces seem to bend in every direction—takes it to a whole ’nother level.

"One of the biggest problems shooting pictures of cars is controlling the light," says Lance Kouchi of the So Cal Viper Club, an auto enthusiast group. "Sunlight always puts hot spots on the car or there is incredible glare." In the photo below, you can see the massive overhead softbox rigged up in photographer Lyle Okihara's studio, where Lance's Dodge Viper ACR was the shooting subject. Softboxes like these are used to diffuse the light, softening and spreading it over as wide an area as possible.

A less expensive alternative to ginormous softboxes—which can reportedly run upwards of US $300,000, depending on the size—is to use standard studio lighting and bounce light off of an enormous overhead reflector, as seen in this shoot by the UK's Pure Creative Marketing.

Depending on what kinds of reflections you need, these overhead "bounces" can get absurdly large, as seen below in Belgium's Izmo Studio.

While the New York International Gift Fair plays host to all variety of tchotchke, knick-knack, doodad and gewgaw, the more refined work tends to stand out among the visual supersaturation. Case in point: the understated debut collection of newcomers Benwu Studio collectively bore the hallmarks of minimalist design, yet each piece had a fascinating backstory rooted in Chinese culture. Indeed, designers Hongchao Wang and Peng You, currently based in Cleveland, Ohio and London respectively, began collaborating in order to "focus on materials, traditional techniques and crafts. Designs are highly inspired by fashionable/architectural elements and Zen philosophy."

The "Sunmao" stool takes its name from the Chinese term for "tenons and joints," drawing on an ancient construction technique that is now familiar mostly as a wooden construction puzzle/toy. It is perhaps best explained by its fabrication video:

The "Hakkak" Lamp, designed to work as a pendant or a floor lamp, is also inspired by ancient building techniques, but it requires a bit more explanation:

Attention student designers: The 2012 James Dyson Award is now open for entry, seeking solutions from design or engineering students from Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Japan, Malaysia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, UK and the US.

If you students were to enter most world-class design competitions, you'd undoubtedly be at a disadvantage for lacking the resources and experience of, say, a legacy design firm. Alternatively there's always an abundance of small-scale student design competitions, if you don't mind designing your ass off for a chance to win a gift certificate to Houlihan's. But the Dyson comp carries a US $15,000 purse and is geared towards you specifically because you're young and have little experience. In Dyson's own words,

Young people have an unsullied view of the world. Budding engineers and designers can use their fresh perspective to develop wonderfully simple solutions to baffling problems. Original ideas and rigorously engineered projects will attract the attention of the judges. I challenge applicants to think big and use the award as a springboard for your idea.

You've gotta love the six-word brief—"Design something that solves a problem"—and lack of a registration fee. Also, even recent students can enter; anyone who was an undergrad design or engineering student anytime in the last four years is eligible.

Details are here.

Oyler Wu Collaborative outdoor pavilion in Taipei

Each year the Architecture League honors a group of up-and-coming North American architecture firms as Emerging Voices, an award that recognizes "a distinct design voice" and "the potential to influence the disciplines of architecture, landscape design and urbanism." This year the panel selected eight firms: INABA, 5468796 architecture, SCAPE Landscape Architecture, Studio NMinusOne, Oyler Wu Collaborative, SsD, Arquitectura 911sc, and Atelier TAG.

Each firm will present their work as part of a lecture series hosted by the Architecture League beginning on March 2nd at Cooper Union. Tickets go on sale this week, but if you'd like to know a little bit more about each firm before attending, here's a rundown of the second half of the bunch. Be sure to check out yesterday's post with the first four.

Oyler Wu Collaborative
Location: Los Angeles
Mission Statement: Oyler Wu's website is light on text and heavy on images and video, which makes sense for architects who seem to be less interested in the conceptual side and more focused on materials and building processes. In this video you can watch a hand-made woven net transform into a large, steel-frame pavilion.
Major Projects: Installations for Sci-Arc, various outdoor pavilions and a jutting, steel housing complex in Taipei.

Sustainability notwithstanding, the disposable mobile phone is certainly a practical solution for emergencies, travel, children and disaster relief. Insofar as these are the applications of any disposable phone, they're listed as "Use Cases" on SpareOne's website; the true innovation behind the device lies in its shelf life of 15 years, courtesy of a single AA battery.

Of course, the most salient innovation of the SpareOne lies in NextOfKin Creatives' unconventional design, which features the mundane portable power source in lieu of a screen. Rodney Loh of the Singapore design firm explains: "When PSL and XPAL approached Thomas [Tellier] and myself at NextOfKin Creatives to strategize this spare phone idea, we knew immediately that it has to be simple and 'life-proof.' The archetype of a screen was logically used to showcase and glorify this simple but iconic long-lasting AA battery."

According to the website, SpareOne is "the only cell phone in the world powered by a standard AA battery." The lifetime of the charge, if the device goes unused, is effectively the shelf life of the battery (the 15 hour figure comes from the Energizer Ultimate Lithium L91, which yields up to 10 hours of talk time).

Imagine you lived in a San Francisco home like the one below, on a downhill one-way street, and drove a stickshift. Assuming you pull into the garage head-on, that means every morning you need to back out in reverse and uphill, all while watching out for the oncoming cars that will require you hit the brake and the clutch mid-maneuver. I guarantee you're going to stall out at least a few times a month, not to mention ride the clutch a bit more than you ought.

Inside the same house we see the solution being built:

In this morning's car photography post, we caught a glimpse of the automotive turntables that we know from car dealerships, auto shows and the Batcave. Now we'll take a peek at the work of Carousel USA, one of the largest U.S. manufacturers of the devices, started by a mechanically-inclined guy named John Thomson.

Project Manager
Walt Disney
Celebration, Florida

Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Online, a digital media arm of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, is currently seeking a Project Manager to drive the execution and delivery of Disney-quality productions for Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Online. His or her primary responsibility will be to coordinate the process and the execution of the project across the Creative Development and Production, Technology and Business Development teams.

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The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.

Lest it seem unambitious to "creative unconventional and timeless objects" these days, Shiny Hammer actually delivers with a series of distinctive articles of furniture. In keeping with designer Samuel Aguiar's interest in balancing "use and art," he approaches design "as a couturier or an architect would do, [such that] each creation becomes a representation of a lifestyle, an environment or a culture." The projects date back to 2010 in terms of original ideation, but they've been realized over the past year and a half and have only recently come to fruition.

The Plee chair features a single bent aluminum form atop vaguely Eiffel chair-like legs.

This chair is the result of a manufacturing process developed by Shiny Hammer called C.I.M. which is aimed at using a bending process which is rough yet sophisticated. The end result is unpredictable, although controlled. As a result, each chair is unique.

Lisbon-based studio Cabracega recently collaborated with designer André Gonçalves on USMA, "a clock without a visual interface," which is intended to "bring the countryside into the city."

In Portugal, the urban population keeps growing year after year, in accordance to the world tendency for desertification of the rural space. In the urban space, the pace is increasingly fast because time is money and every second counts.

USMA is a clock without a visual interface, resorting only to sound to mark the passage of time. The sound of the church bell is the clock hand, which intends to bring home the rural experience with the definite goal of giving a new rhythm to city life.

That's right, the clock has no display: instead, it simply indicates the time by chiming the number on the hour—as well as a single chime every half hour—in the manner of a traditional clocktower.