What I Made – When Scott Bedford’s eldest son started to draw, Scott realized he should revisit his childhood’s favorite past time and started creating and drawing again, too. As a creative industry professional, Scott decided to merge his two passions -creating and illustrating- and What I Made is where he shares his artistic projects.
Each project is something anyone could do, and the cool part about Scott’s endeavors is he always includes a step by step how-to illustration. One great example is the Coca-cola Light (see below).
What I Made is the proud winner of the prestigious 2011 Webby Award and
Webby People’s Voice Award for Best Personal Blog/Site. Aside from the unique concept of this blog, its overall design is simply stunning, and a quick visit to this blog will show you just why Scott’s spot won these awards.
SHFT – “Curating the Culture of Today’s Environment” is what SHFT creators, activist/actor Adrian Grenier and film producer Peter Glatzer strive to deliver. Explore SHFT’s huge video archive where each video tells a different unique story about the environment and the good souls trying to make it better. In addition to video, SHFT offers top-notch content on a variety of topics including art, design, energy, fashion, sports, travel and more.
SHFT not only looks great, it also delivers engaging content on important matters, whether cultural or environmental, or both. Another cool feature on SHFT is the shop section, although some products featured there can get quite pricey. Either way, SHFT is a shining eco star! Here’s a cool video I found here, Backyard Sun Boxes by musician Craig Colorusso, showing music created by the sun and the solar panels Craig put in his backyard. Each solar panel was set to play one guitar note on loop, with the all the notes collectively making a B-flat chord. Amazing, isn’t it?
Pica Pic – This digitalized collection of the old favorite handheld electronic games is a sweet piece of geek heaven on Earth. The execution of this project is phenomenal, and as you can tell from the screenshots below, the interface is amazing and conveys the “real” look and feel you never dreamed was possible. All that is left is to visit Pica Pic, select a game (there are numerous old favorites to choose from), and go back in time. Pica Pic is the creation of Hipopotam Studio.
Donkey Kong Jr. (Nintendo Game&Watch)
Who doesn’t like pretty things? Design is a very broad term used to describe numerous different industries (there’s graphic design, industrial design, packaging design and many others). For the purpose of the Thursday post, though, my Top 10 website list focuses mainly on interior design sources that offer brilliant, creative and yes, aesthetic ideas we can all appreciate and be inspired by, and even implement at home.
1. Apartment Therapy – When it comes to interior decor, Apartment Therapy is one of the biggest fish in the design pond. Since its launch, this cool site has expanded to additional lifestyle realms including technology, children, green and cooking, although the main Apartment Therapy page is by far the best of the bunch. Find amazing home design inspirations via AT’s beautiful home decor photos and posts showing how small renovations make a huge difference. Here’s a cool design idea I found on Apartment Therapy: Hanging Furniture.
Roundup: Hanging Rattan Chairs
2. Contemporist – With an extensive readership of over 40k subscribed users, Contemporist is all about beautiful design both inside and outside the house, architecture, furniture and lighting, and more. Although the architecture section of the site offers innovative and luxurious buildings I’d die to live in, the furniture category is where I found lots of interior design ideas. Contemporist is the designer at heart’s must stop.
3. IKEA Hackers – Interior design is full of innovation and creativity, but what good is it without sensible hands-on application? IKEA Hackers is the DIY design site that is both beautiful and practical, therefore a definite top design site to check out. Explore the numerous IKEA furniture upgrade projects this site has to offer, explaining in detail what Ikea products to buy and step-by-step explanations on how to turn them into a premium piece of furniture at home. You can also submit your own upgraded IKEA project and share it with others. Here’s a super cool example cat owners with small apartments will appreciate: Hol Cat Litter Box with Sliding Top. Click the images below to see the project from start to finish.
4. Swiss Miss – This design blog and studio by Tina Roth Eisenberg is a fabulous source of design inspiration to both industry professionals and esthetics-conscience individuals. Swiss Miss is full of design ideas (spanning across different fields) with a clean, white space theme -Tina’s Swiss homeland roots. She’s a renowned talent in the global design arena with famous clients such as NYC’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Food Network, and she also teaches at the prestigious Parsons ,The New School of Design. With such credentials, I needn’t explain why visiting Swiss Miss is an absolute must.
5. HolyCool – Sometimes a well-designed home is the result of the little things in it. HolyCool is a design blog showcasing oh-so-cute, cool objects and home products with a twist you won’t find anywhere else, and these will add a chic tone to your home. Each post covers a certain product or set of products, and includes a brief description along with a link to the online store selling the item. Have you ever seen such a sweet egg cup before? Find this and hundreds of other cool products on HolyCool.
6. Design Mom – Gabrielle Blair, a talented designer and a mother of six has created this blog which presents the intersection points between design and motherhood. The result is nothing short of inspiring, well-written posts on the many facets of design (including fabulous cooking as well). As you will agree after visiting Design Mom, motherhood can be quite a colorful and creative adventure!
7. DECOmyplace – Check out real living places of people all over the world, submitted by users who decided to share their design whim with the online community. Browse styles, themes and living space categories for the site’s full nine yards wonder. DECOmyplace is a fun, gorgeous and inspiring source of home decor you should visit on a regular basis. In addition, you can submit your own pad’s design ideas. My personal favorite is the one below.
8. KNSTRCT – Simply entering this site will pull you right into the warm and fuzzy world of design. KNSTRCT explores the ingenuity of design in various fields including architecture, interior design, fashion, travel, transportation, art and product design. The entire site has a sophisticated, upscale look and feel, as do the individual posts KNSTRCT always garnishes with large high resolution photos. This one is certainly special and it is filled with brilliant design ideas.
9. Design*Sponge – This design site is one of my personal favorites. As you will discover, it combines all of the elements each of the above sites offers. Design*Sponge has a sophisticated taste of design and style, but without the posh attitude. It offers a large DIY section, offers great (and practical) interior design ideas and product reviews, among many other features. In short, it’s an A-list design site. Here’s a cool before-and-after example of Julie’s kitchen. Amazing, isn’t it? Total cost: $15,000 and this included all new appliances!
10. All My Faves’ Design MiniFaves – For all of the fabulous design sites listed above and many other top online design pics, visit our Design MiniFaves page dedicated to the pretty things in life. Aside from architecture and interior design you will find there grade A graphic and Web design sites as well as well-designed sites, such as Jim Carrey’s gorgeous official site.
TwistedSifter – Here’s a sweet website that will satisfy your crave for interesting and creative things online. TwistedSifter finds all the most popular stories, photos and posts currently on the Web, and the site’s use of large photos whenever possible makes it visually appealing as well.
TwistedSifter offers a variety of categories for you to explore. These include Picture of the Day, The Shirk Report (the funny side of the Web), Current Events, Galleries and more. In short, TwistedSifter truly offers a hot spot for interesting and creative content the Web has to offer. Click the image below to go to my favorite post.
Portrait of Muhammad Ali, created by Michael Kalish. Photograph by Jon David
Back of a Webpage – 100% fun, this simple yet unique website showcases what websites look like reversed – from the back, based on people’s imagination. What does that mean, exactly? See some pics below and you’ll get it.
Here’s the back view of Flickr – see the image, just like an actual photo from a developed film.
And here’s a creative submission, showing the back side of YouTube.
The Dieline – This packaging design hub is a beautifully created website with a mission: “to define and promote the world’s best packaging design, and provide a place where the package design community can review, critique and stay informed of the latest industry trends and design projects being created in the field.”
What makes The Dieline so special is its professional know-how and community oriented approach. They’re here to inform, help and inspire. Aside from the gorgeous packages covered, The Dieline also has designated sections for job offerings for those working in the industry, The Dieline Conference (next one will take place on June 22nd), and a special Dieline page for wine packaging. Here is a package design I instantly fell in love with:
Urbio Vertical Garden, designed by Enlisted Design and Volare Studio, San Francisco
Chuckville – One of the leading meme threads online these past couple of years was the buzz around Chuck Norris’ capabilities and unbeatable power, presented as short aphoristic -and funny as hell- statements about legendary Chuck. T-Mobile, together with Symbio, took advantage of the online buzz surrounding Norris’ formidable fame (one example claims Chuck Norris’ tears can cure cancer, but he never cries) to create this fun and hilarious promotional site.
Chuckville includes all the factors that make a website a sweet success: the design is beautiful and creative, the background music is amazing and the interactivity of this site offers an enjoyable user experience. For the ultimate Chuck Norris adventure try to beat the Kong-Fu legend himself at Chuck-Lin. Search for it as you stroll around Chuckville.
Chirply – Looking for cute and beautiful designs for notebooks, greeting cards and other stationary items? Chirply is here to offer a fresh design spirit, “making better greeting cards, notebooks, and wrapping paper through better design.”
On Chirply.com you can do a number of things, and this sense of multiple options is part of what makes this such a great site. You can browse designs, vote for your favorites, submit your own, and of course buy gorgeously designed greeting cards.
Here are two beautiful designs I just fell in love with at first glance:
Let the Ideas Fly The Ideas Fly By ChaX
Bookshelf Porn – This Tumblr blog is a visual mecca for book lovers worldwide or, as the blogger behind Bookshelf Porn explains: “A photo blog collection of all the best bookshelf photos from around the world for people who *heart* bookshelves.”
Even if you’re not a huge books buff, Bookshelf Porn is loaded with beautiful photos to check out. I recommend starting with the Editor’s Picks. Here are my personal favorites:
Re-purposed Newspaper Stand Bookshelf via Poetic Home
Prettybooks: Yale Rare Book Library (by Nick Hollot)
Toy Design Served – Another beautiful creation by Behance Network, Toy Design Served focuses on the amazing and captivating design of, well, toys -for both kids and child-at-heart adults. The focus here is on gorgeous design and innovation, and you will find these two characteristics in abundance on Toy Design Served.
Explore the gallery and vote for your favorite designs. Here are two examples of what I wish I had had as a kid.
Glueless Paper Toys by Claudiu Stefan
Luli Bunny’s Momiji Book Club dolls
Mitoza – You start off with a small seed on the ground. Then you are presented with two options; a flower pot or a bird. Each selection you make prompts yet two more options and so forth. This mitosis-like game is brought to us by Gal, a young Israeli man who loves to create, travel and share his thoughts (Mitoza is the Hebrew pronunciation of the biology process).
Mitoza is a whimsical exploration of numerous possibilities, and I invite you to discover the many turns this fascinating story can take. Enjoy.
