IdeaPaint turns virtually anything you paint into a dry-erase surface and any room into a hub of creativity and collaboration. Well thats what the nifty looking website says anyway.

The application in an office space is obvious, but I think this would be great as a home application. Especially for the new homes in Boise Idaho.

Make a room, cover it in this stuff – and you have a free-for-all room where you can let the children (or inner children) vandalise to their hearts content. Excellent for creative development of the brain, we say.

Let it be known that we love multi-tools. Leathermans, Gerbers, SOGs and of course the classic Swiss Army Knife. Every man needs a multi-tool. And this, is one of the sexiest ones we’ve ever seen.

But you wouldn’t expect any less from Porsche Design, who are indeed the same folks who make those fast cars. The design group has been around since the 70′s (under the name F.A. Porsche) and have been making tons of nice things.

This Swiss Army Knife is made for Wegner, who are one of the major Swiss Army Knife manufacturers. They also do some nice watches.

Wegner P’3700 by Porsche Design

We love the iPad, but we are frankly detest the ‘look at me’ that most of the available cases give off. The dodo case that Kevin Rose was raving about is nice. But it looks like it’s sold out pretty much everywhere.

Here is a nice alternative from Etsy seller PadandQuill. We love how simple, retro and vintage it looks. Looks like it’s been made with traditional bookbinding methods, which we love. At 55 bucks its not cheap, but it is handmade and looks like there is a lot of attention to detail in this. We’d say it’s worth the money for the originality and beauty.

Get it here.

Filmed by director henrik hansen and his team in 2010, Shinya Kimura founded Zero Engineering in Okazaki Japan in 1992. Initially his shop was named Repair Shop Chabo but the name was changed the following year to Zero Engineering. He soon gained a reputation for his minimalistic and vintage looking bikes that combine form and function. As you can see by his bold, raw and minimalist builds.

His name was soon synonymous with what people often refer to as Zero-style. A Zero-style bike is typically based around a rigid gooseneck, a pre-1984 Harley Davidson engine, springer front end, spoked wheels and often includes parts of the bike remaining in bare metal. The inspiration came from wabi sabi (austere refinement) and the beauty of the raw materials and incorporating the essence of wa (harmony) into his designs. Shinya and his crew were also known for putting their work to the test by participating in different vintage race series with their motorcycles.

These are the most zen motorcycles we have ever seen. Truly beautiful.

More at his website, Chabott Engineering

We like the Messenger Bag, Duffel and the Laptop Sleeve. Prices aren’t bad either.

Get them direct from Ragged Edge

No idea how accurate it is, but who cares – it’s there to look nice and give you bits of statistical weather data. If you really want to know the weather forecast, ask the internets.

Available from ThinkGeek for USD$79.95

For the first release in the series, Furni have teamed up with designer Bobby Solomon, founder of Kitsune Noir and Brooklyn-based Dan Funderburgh. The piece is painstakingly detailed with a neo-victotorian pattern. The outcome is nothing short of stunning, the woodgrain gives the piece depth and the etching just makes more a work of art than something to tell the time by.

The series is limited to 88 pieces and is available exclusively through furnicreations.

- Limited edition of 88 / 44 natural & 44 black
- Measure 16″ high x 9″ wide / These are HUGE!
- Laser cut acylic hands are reversible, come in black and white
- Solid birch body, handcrafted in Canada
- Battery operated
- Ships Globally

Limited to 88 pieces and sold exclusively by Furni for US$198

I’ve been itching to make a post about the iPad, but the internet is pretty much reaching iPad news/hype capacity – Degourget doesn’t need to add to the bloat. Even Conan is tweeting about it.

But this was too nice looking not to post. Every new gadget/device needs a calculator application, right? Well this one is very minimal, very simple and very sexy. The history tape feature looks pretty useful too.

Shift Apps calculator app, aptly called Digits.

Features include:

• Autosave feature: resume where you left off the next time you launch Digits Calculator.
• Scrollback: one touch to delete mistakes and go back in tape history.
• History tape: a convenient record of what you entered five seconds ago or five days ago.
• Pick your own background color.
• Dedicated total display: always know the running total.
• CE and AC be gone! Digits has backspace.
• One-touch flagging of the last item on your history tape.

And for real iPad news/reviews – go to the experts at Touch User Guide.

Now a collaboration between PRPLMNT and Saint48 comes Wood Shock Watches. They are basically normal G-Shock watches, featuring hand- and laser-crafted wooden bezels.

Available in black or red for about USD$250.00

via diptnyc

Crazy, maybe. But this Japan. And this is exactly (well maybe not in those words) what was requested of Japanese architect Takuya Tsuchida.

He’s managed to build a house, with a motorized lift, that quite literally brings a car up from the garage to display in the living room.

Check out the result below, pretty damn stunning.

photos © Koichi Torimura
via what we do is secret

Freelance graphic designer Logan Walters has come up with a nice little project that he has called the Wu-Note Project. Inspired by similar projects by other designers. He has set himself out to redesign all the classic album cover artwork for the Wu-Tang Discography, which is notorious for some horrible badly aged artwork. Call them media-mashups, visual remixes, redesigns or whatever. We think they look pretty freakin sweet.

He’s got them available on his website and on flickr.

If you’ve got any of these albums in your iTunes or on your iPod – it’d be a nice visual update and a reason to revisit the albums.

Our faves are below.

via Geddem

Well we’re fans of tattoos in various forms, how about tattooed furniture? Traditional Japanese style?

Well the unfortunately named ‘Yakuza’ is a digitally tattooed wooden table by Reddish Studio. It looks like it’s part of a collection. We have no idea what the ‘digital tattoo’ process involves, but it definitely looks pretty cool. It’s made out of veneered MDF with some kind of digital printing technology.

From the makers:

In its design, the table is treated as a living body, receiving its character from a unique tattoo printed on its surface. The wood texture acts as skin, becoming a platform for expressing a strong cultural and personal identity.

The digital printing technology enables to easily treat each table individually, making them unique – just like people.

Price on inquiry. So you can assume it’s pretty damned expensive.

Available from Generate Design

Okay so you must all be getting sick of your vintage 80′s Casio by now. But have you noticed how hard it is to find yourself a unique timepiece? Pretty much everything out there is some form of Nixon, Fossil or Diesel watch. And yeah – pretty much every man and his douche has one.

Enter LIP watches.  The French brand LIP has been around 150 years but have been hard to obtain anywhere outside Europe.  Now, under the watchful eye of Lip’s new design director Prisca Briquet they have now reissued some of their most important models from a modern collection that remains as visionary today as when first launched 35 years ago.

Although some of these designs are distictly seventies, the rounded corners – square faces and general boldness echoes the designs of mid-century modern era.

The 142 year old French watch brand LIP is reintroducing some of their most important wristwatches – a series from the early 1970s that remains as visionary today as when first unveiled almost four decades ago. These timepieces were created from a melting pot of Pan European industrial, architectural, interior and graphic designers, all given carte blanche by LIP to create some of the most original watches ever produced.

Of the seven original designers between 1969 and 1976, Roger Tallon has made the most lasting impact. A true renaissance man of the mid-century. Tallon’s contributions to the Modern era include the Teleavia, the earliest portable television, the world’s first Helicoid staircase (part of the Museum of Modern Art collection), and the ultra modern French high speed TGV trains. His asymmetric Mach 2000 series has since become an icon for LIP with their unmistakable primary colored spherical pushers and crowns.

Under the watchful eye of Lip’s new design director Prisca Briquet are now being reissued, along with several other classic styles that have received updates.

Watchismo is the main online retailer – they stock a pretty large collection.
Including all the models we are displaying below. And yes, thank god, they ship internationally.

It’s NBA playoffs right now so a hoops junkie like me doesn’t really need any extra basketball related distractions in their life but the NBA Europa design concept managed to cut through the endless LeBron and Kobe highlight reels to pique my interest.

Put together purely as a concept by a graduating senior at the University of Tennessee, the NBA Europa is an 8 team European NBA spinoff.  The finished project features uniforms and logos for the league and all 8 teams as well as a style guide and assorted paraphernalia.

While still only a student’s dream, the logos kick the crap out of the existing Euroleague teams and I’d be happy to rock the Stockholm strip on the court. (one thing i definitely wouldn’t rock? His goatee. Check the video.)

You can check out some of the logos and uniforms below or go visit the blog he wrote documenting the entire process or the final presentation and team sheets

Blog

Fideo and project overview

Project Booklet

Full logo sheet and Uniforms

Team Logos

Uniforms

League Logo Prototypes

Do you yearn for a sexy laptop case? Are you one of those people who need to have their phone surgically attached to them? Or are you just frustated by failed attempts to keep a pen near your moleskine at all times? Fear not vain and/or incompetant airhead trendsetter, Hard Graft are here to make everything right again.

Hard Graft are Austrian “purveyors of fine handmade felt & leather phone and ipod cases, macbook sleeves and bags”. With a devotion to natural and sustainable materials all of Hard Graft’s products are made using 100% wool felt and premium European ainline leather. (I have no idea what ainline leather is but i’m sure this link will explain it for you better than i ever could).

The newly released series include herringbone elastics which help you hold into place all your peripherals such as cables, magazines and pens. You can even attach some of the smaller cases to the larger laptop sleeves, ensuring that if you do lose that laptop now you can rest easy in the knowledge that your iphone, sat nav and latest copy of Hello! went with it.

I’m a big fan of the moleskine pen hold in particular. One of the things that always kills me is discovering the loss of a pen as you seek to scribble down that moment of fleeting genius.  I swear to god cancer would be a distant memory if not for all those times I’ve been left pen-less.

Check out their store for the full range which includes some swanky looking all leather jobs in addition to the felt range.

And see heaps more photos of the range on their flickr.