Salt by: Funkstörung. What can I say about this track that hasn’t already been said? It’s a dope beat, and a collaborative effort by Michael Fakesch and Chris De Luca who made up Funkstörung. I love the haunting melody on the guitar, and that eerie minimal brass section that drops in every now and then. Almost sounds like the ghosts of a jazz quartet haunted the production while this track was being produced. Perfect song to listen to while nursing a hangover, or while working on a typical Portland rainy day.

The packaging is pretty fantastic as well. Definitely unconventional, but it screams Funkstörung.

Happy listening

- m / Colorcubicâ„¢

These days, we’re busy working on a lot of baby-related design projects and we just completed splash page designs for Blank Apparel Baby and RockMyBaby, two Australian-based baby apparel sites being launched in the next couple months. We were given carte blanche to design the brands and here are the results:

RockMyBaby is a rock-centric baby apparel site. We designed a “rock” wordmark with a cute skull being swaddled by the R’s decender as well as a cool VIP pass for the splash page.

A soft and fun approach was taken when designing the Blank Apparel Baby logo, integrating a rainbow, cloud, and subtle smiley face. I don’t know about you, but this whole scene makes us feel like warm laundry and fabric softener.

- c / Colorcubicâ„¢

Hello everyone, sorry for not writing on here for a while. We’re really under the gun to get a lot finished in a short amount of time, all while keeping up on here. So anyway, if you remember several posts back, we featured some brand identity work that was currently in the works for some clients of ours. One piece in particular was for “Rogue Samurai Farmâ„¢.” Anyway, we all decided that Rogue Samurai Farm needed a change in the identity direction we were moving in. We were thinking of something along the lines of minimal meets stencil, or something that could potentially be used as a stencil. So far everyone seems to be really happy about the outcome, and so we’re now moving in the direction of implementing this design into some mock-up collateral pieces to promote RSF. Let us know what you think… or not.

Enjoy

- m / Colorcubicâ„¢

Okay, so normally I try to refrain from really venting on here, although I’m sure if you’ve kept up on our blog, you’ve noticed that sometimes I can get a little irritated (that being an understatement). I don’t know why, but I always have high expectations when it comes to products being designed well, that I just assume the people responsible wouldn’t release such a beautiful product if it didn’t function as well as it looked. That being said, I thought it would be appropriate to beat the shit out of our office phone, revealing to you that this phone, in fact, functions as poorly as it looks in the picture above.

Vtech really pulled one over on us, so I thought I would help them out by taking a photograph of their supposedly “amazing” brushed aluminum, wireless, expandable, phone in it’s true form, and not the shit they peddle for truth on their website as a beautiful, functioning phone.

To put it simply, this phone is everything I hate about misleading aesthetics. I’m a firm believer in the perfect harmony of aesthetics & functionality. If it looks great, but it functions poorly, then you need to start over, and rethink your approach. If it functions well, but it’s designed poorly, then you need to start over, and rethink your approach. It’s quite simple actually, rather rudimentary in fact. If 1 + 1 = 2 (and any elementary student can produce such results with such a simple equation), then I think it’s safe to assume this simple logic is floating around the heads of the people responsible for producing garbage such as this, and passing it off to sell people, leading me to only one conclusion… they deliberately released this piece of crap to the public just for $$$.¢¢

You think a company like Vtech would allow their products ample testing time before releasing to the market, but apparently they don’t.

So to sum this up, DON’T BUY VTECH… at all. If you already have, then my heart goes out to you.

Oh, and if you’re sitting there, scratching your head, asking yourself “so what is soooo terrible about this phone?” It always, ALWAYS!!!! loses connection to the “base.” What does that mean exactly? I have no f&*!ing (why do I that? People know what I’m really trying to say) idea at all, but what I do know is that when it loses connection to the “base” it stops functioning completely, leaving us to have to speak with our clients over speaker phone, all while it’s feeding back. What does Vtech do to resolve this problem? Nothing whatsoever. Oh, I’m sorry, that’s not true, they actually go a step further and add to the waste that’s already piling up on our planet by sending us a replacement of the exact same model, with all the bugs included, knowing very well it still won’t work, but that’s their extended warranty. Thanks Vtech, you make our jobs that much more difficult. Oh, and by the way, Vtech, your site sucks híppos potámios (also known as the hippopotamus) nuts. So do yourself a favor and go away, because if you can’t do a simple thing like commissioning an agency (or better yet, a professional, and not some friend of the family) to design and develop your website, than you’re not ever going to meet my expectations ever again when it comes to your crap peddling products.

Enjoy

- m / Colorcubicâ„¢

Well, I went ahead and jumped on the bandwagon to remix Radiohead’s hit single titled “Nude”, under my moniker Masmöd. Apparently this is supposed to be some kind of competition, but I’m just doing it for fun. If you wanna vote for me that would be dope, but no obligations.

Anyway, enjoy

- m / Colorcubic™ / Masmöd™

Preface: This is not about Daniel Johns’ rock band. Read on if you want to learn about the most perfect chair in the world.

I had briefly touched on the topic of Hadi Teherani’s Silver Chair in a previous post, and now will expand upon what I had coined my Unicorn of all chairs. Before any more words are typed, we must visualize this fabulous (and thankfully un-mythological) beast:

The three bears: cub, mama bear, and my favorite, papa bear.

If you like butts and you cannot lie, here’s a great shot I can’t deny + foot stool.

It don’t matter if you’re black or white… or brown, or even orange.

When I sit down at my desk pictured above… oh crap, I can’t fool myself.

I’m not too worried about Silver becoming a common seating solution like the Aeron. The Silver Low (cub) costs $4625, Silver Mid (mama bear) is $5040, and Silver High (papa bear) $5610. Even the damn foot stool costs $1811, which is more than the Aeron Chair itself! To have the chair customized, it’ll cost you even more.

The Silver Chair was designed by Hadi Teherani for company Interstuhl. Teherani is an Iranian-born architect by trade who recently embarked in the design of consumer goods and interior design. Teherani is best known for his famed architectural achievements such as Munich’s Swiss RH Centre and the Dockland office building in Hamburg. On silver-chair.net, the chair’s own website, a wonderful statement captured the soul of this chair:

“Design needs to make an emotional connection with the character of materials and their use; layer by layer must be peeled away in order to reach the heart of meaning and discover a new context. It was our aim to make the technical complexity in Silver invisible and reach the poetic plateau of perfection in seating. A chair which is only suitable for use in an office is not enough. Aesthetics without ethic is deception.” Note that the Silver Chair is 98% recyclable.

This is no ordinary task chair, dinner chair, reading chair, or anything chair. Silver’s design is so versatile that with customization of various materials (aluminum, wood, leather, glass, fabric and more), the chair can adapt to any environment. Could you imagine using an Aeron chair as part of your dining decor? It would look absolutely frightful.

Some of the Silver’s design influences included classic Mercedes-Benz coupes, the sharp angles of fighter jets, and the Sydney Opera House, all which can be summed up in Interstuhl’s words as “Security in technology, hidden function, shell concept, and futuristic baroque.”

In a nutshell, the Silver Chair is absolute perfection.

- c / Colorcubicâ„¢