http://skinnyships.com/index.php?/design/jello/

Objective: Re-branding of identity and packaging for Jell-o, repositioning the target market toward kids, and still appealing to adult consumers familiar to Jell-o from their childhood.

Description The re-branding of Jell-o sought to recreate the classic feeling of joy the gelatin dessert had brought to previous generations without relying on nostalgia.

By introducing a cast of fun stylized characters and a visual vocabulary that feels fresh and fun, the new Jell-o identity burst with vibrancy and joy. The simple graphic fruit characters, bright color-palette and naive typography makes the brand feel playful and pop without veering into overtly saccharine or Saturday morning cartoon territory.

Heinz’s Beanzawave is the world’s smallest, portable microwave and powered by the USB port on a laptop computer. It stands just 7.4inches tall by 6.2in wide and 5.9in deep, currently is only a prototype. It costs around £100($160), so the cost of production could fall to the point where it becomes profitable to manufacture on a large scale. ‘The single serve microwavable Snap Pots allow people to quickly heat and eat. We are therefore delighted to be working with Gordon as the Beanzawave is the perfect partner to Heinz Snap Pots, allowing a nutritious snack to be whipped up anywhere in just 60 seconds.’

What could be cooler than designing and building your own customized motor home from scratch? How about this: add not only every standard camper car amenity but also include a hydraulic lift system to give yourself a second-story Japanese-style zen loft space complete with rice paper windows and tatami mats.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ilufP76vy8

This industrious crew of friends converted an old truck into a contemporary and fully-equipped mobile home and even documented the process to prove it (and illustrate it for those who might want to follow their example). Metal construction makes the entire load more light-weight and manageable.

Since completely their project, they have taken their creation on the road and traveled through much of Japan, stopping in camping sites and parking spots wherever they found them along the way. Suddenly, due to the transforming element of the design, normal highway height restrictions are no longer obstacles.

Inside, everything on the first floor of this custom mobile house has a thrown-together look – a kitchen, living area and utilities built for saving space and increasing functionality. On the second floor, however, it is a different story – function gives way to feng shui and spatial relationships, simple decorative touches, warm materials and soft lighting take over.

Best of all, it is clear that the creators of this crazy modern moving house have taken the time to enjoy the fruits of their labors, tripping around the country but also pausing to gather, communicate and celebrate along the way.

–Via dornob

One way to think of a bedroom is as that space where you can remove yourself from the rest of the world, relax and remain disconnected from everything outside while you recharge for the next day. How better to do that than by (literally) hanging out in a box (designed by ECDM) that is physically separated from the rest of your home?

Complete with bed and television, this clever box bedroom is in many ways a central element within this place – defining and displacing space around it, making its presence known on all sides but also positively shaping circulation around it.

However, while it exists in such a central location it is also completely concealed from the primary living area below – as secluded as one could ever need to be and completely safe inside on a bed inside of a steel box hanging from the ceiling.

Moreover, when not in use as a sleeping space the lip of the bedroom provides comfortable-height informal bench seating for guests. Why just loft your bed when you can simply loft your entire bedroom?

–Via dornob

In branding products, designers often get distracted by clever logos, cool fonts and other engaging design elements that have little or nothing to do with the product being sold.

With the color, look, feel and touch of real fruit skin these creative juice boxes by Naoto Fukasawa not only more closely reflect what is being marketed but also provide a more-than-just-visual sense experience – extending beyond normal industrial design parameters

In addition to the bannana, kiwi and strawberry designs the designer has experimented with soy milk that resembles tofu – perhaps that particular one takes it a bit too far.

— Via dornob

The Digital Measuring Tape ($25) has a easy-to-read display to display measurements, and comes with an internal memory to store measurements and push button conversion of lengths into imperial or metric. It also just like a standard tape measure, so even if the batteries have run down, you can use it like a standard tape measure. • Tape length is 16 feet • Displays 5 different measurement formats (feet inches fractions, inches fractions, inches decimal, feet decimal, centimeters decimal) • Takes two LR44 batteries (included)

— Via likecool

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1R3X7rGALIc

I was at the Farmer’s Market and they were making this for someone!

When the connection between two Scottish canals was disconnected, a clever solution to reconnect them was employed. Instead of linking them by a series of locks, a giant rotating wheel was constructed to lift and lower the boats the 79 feet from one canal to the other.

These caissons always weigh the same whether or not they are carrying their combined capacity of 600 tonnes (590 LT; 660 ST) of floating canal barges as, according to Archimedes’ principle, floating objects displace their own weight in water, so when the boat enters, the amount of water leaving the caisson weighs exactly the same as the boat. This keeps the wheel balanced and so, despite its enormous mass, it rotates through 180° in five and a half minutes while using very little power. It takes just 22.5 kilowatts (30.2 hp) to power the electric motors, which consume just 1.5 kilowatt-hours (5.4 MJ) of energy in four minutes, roughly the same as boiling eight kettles of water.

Here’s a time lapse of the wheel at work, also embedded below.

— Via kottke

Underground homes tend to conjure mental images of hobbit holes and otherwise rounded, earthen residences. This extremely modern house by KWK Promes defies popular conventions and, despite its organic green roof, is constructed of clean lines and clear shapes.

Viewed from above or around, the house blends wonderfully into the landscape – even the gentle curves and straight lines seem to work with the horizon and trees in the distance. The grass also absorbs moisture and helps regulate temperatures inside of the home.

The barrier between inside and outside is highly permeable, providing continuous connections for residents with the natural world around them through giant sheets of floor-to-ceiling glass.

Best of all (for the owners anyway): the lush green roof is only accessible from inside of the house through a set of secure stairs, reserving it as a private getaway for the home.

While from certain perspectives the home blends visually with its surroundings, from other angles it appears to be simply a well-designed modernist house like any other.

— Via dornob

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Sisyphus Office is an exhibition organized by San Francisco based artist, curator, and co-founder of The Thing Quarterly, Jonn Herschend and based out of Skydive, a Houston, Texas gallery. The artists involved in the project are collaborating with businesses and offices in and around Houston in order to highlight art as an integral and necessary distraction in our day to day life. The artists and offices involved in Sisyphus Office are working physically and conceptually with the notions of existentialism, capitalism, artistic romanticism and deadpan slapstickism as a means to examine the artifice that keeps us clinging to reality and distracted from the void. Sisyphus Office is about punching the clock, and then punching it again…but harder the second time. It’s about transcending the mundane through the beauty and absurdity of distraction. It’s about recognizing the comedy in the tragedy of the day to day… and then waking up again to do the same thing all over again the next morning. David Fullarton’s contribution is an installation in the offices of Houston radio station 90.1 KPFT entitled “What I do at work when I’m supposed to be working.” It consists of a number of small works made entirely from office supplies, which are pinned up randomly around the office, in amongst the notices, flyers and memos that were already existing in the environment.