Was excited to win the product design category of the Melbourne Desgin Award last night. Thank you Workshopped for making this product a reality. 

Melbourne Design Awards 2011 - entries open today. 

Just arrived back from an awesome 10 days in Japan, primarily for Tokyo International Toy Show. The trip was fantastic. Will soon post a revised top 12 finds that made it back as excess baggage. 

The reason for the recent relocation down to chilly Melbourne is a new job - product designer at Moose Enterprise. Makers of Might Beanz, Beados, Gomu, Sea Monkeys, Party Animals and Aqua Sand (to name a few), most 20-somethings would remember them more fondly for their colourful yo-yo's, knuckles and fiddle sticks. Having followed Moose Toys since university I'm very excited to now be part of the team. 

Apologies for 5 months blogging absence. I've since moved to a new home in a new city to start a new job which has all kept me quite busy. Now settled, let's start again with plenty to report.

Rowen

Excited to be a finalist for the Bike Rack as Art competition, a joint project between the Powerhouse Museum and the RTA as part of the NSW BikePlan. See the 10 finalists here

"The long-awaited Frank Gehry design for the University of Technology Sydney’s new Business School has been unveiled" and I first thought this was a prank. I don't mind the back facade.. 

New film about 'how trends and creativity become contagious. Looking forward to it.

It's more than a month since favourite toy blogger Andy Heng suffered a stroke, but it's good to hear that he is slowly recovering and has been twittering daily in lieu of updates on Vinyl Hearts and Toysrevil. Looking forward to having him back!

Cat's out the bag. HUB's 20/20Bin was released this morning after Railcorp officially launched it to media today. The new bins to be rolled out later this year will land on 28 busy stations across the Cityrail network. The HUB.20/20Bin boasts a secure cast aluminium construction with clear polycarbonate panels, keeping its guts always on display. More here. 

Series 2 of the popular Simpsons Mini Series Vinyl's were realised today in the states. This second collaboration between Matt Groening and Kidrobot adds less popular (but still awesome) characters to the collection, along with some B-sides of our favourite Springfield family. Unfortunately they aren't being shipped to Australia - oh but a minor obstacle. 

Short break in Japan for the next 10 days, leave in the morning - Osaka, Kyoto, Niigata and a good few days in Tokyo. Keeping some space in the suitcase for a few design toys/trinkets/mobile phone danglers. This video, 'Hayaku: A time lapse journey through Japan' by Brad Kremer has me pretty excited, thanks for the link Kev.

Google Goggles was launched overnight, a new extension to the Google Mobile app which allows you to use pictures to search the web. Image recognition technology isn’t hugely new but Google have managed to make it effective. At the moment it’s great with landmarks, logos, books, DVDs – soon Google believes you will be able to identify animals, foods, products, your children, etc.

Pots + cloak = a new product. I owe this great idea to craven maven aka Saer, who in her food-focused blog has envisioned an array of pots hanging from the rack set in a black and white kitchen. Another of her suggestions is curing meats - I think both have merit. Thanks for the article (and the idea!) 

New nano's - eventually they will have to stop getting smaller and thinner and smaller. I'll jump on the wagon of bloggers talking about these and Apple TV today. La-de-dah.

You-Zu interviews creatives from design, architecture and media in short, light hearted feature spots weekly. And Ke-Zu chose me this week!

I've got a new logo, and it's the work of German graphic designer / wonder Heike Schmidt. Brief was simple - make it etchable, routable, CNC-machinable, embossable, pad printable, engraveable, laser cut-able, readable, vinyl and monotone-friendly and based on simple geometric forms. Simple. And I like it - what do you think? 

Have you seen BP’s mess from outer space? Image below is the immense oil spill spreading in the Gulf of Mexico from a NASA satellite.

HUB Street Equipment's new website is now live. Looking good. 

These are images of an iPad case / stand design which I have been developing but since decided to not push into production. Still plenty of time until the Australian release in late May, but we have already seen many options/junk pouring out of China - there is a entire blog dedicated to them. In this case (hmm) there are simply too many on the market at price points which I could not compete with producing locally (and ethically). Regardless, here are pictures of  the prototypes which will wait until I have my own. Made from 100% German wool felt and lobster suede. 

Really liking this new font from Hoefler & Frere-Jones. Vitesse, in serif and sans.

Still no news of any Dendy theatre or similar picking up this documentary in Australia, but reviews from the states are good. Thought Helvetica was interesting so no doubt Gary Hustwit has given a great treatment to the first doco focused on industrial design. Will keep repeating the short in the meantime.