2007

Best of 2007

2007 marked another great year in the design world, as chronicled by our design links. With this final tribute to ’07, we welcome our new Joomla-based website, which will enable us to post crispy design nuggets more frequently. 2008 is bound to be one wild ride!

Aptera

Aptera, concept car, 230 mpg, high fuel efficiency, sustainable transportation, green car

Futuristic concept car with an amazingly high fuel efficiency of 230 mpg is now in production…

Sam Flores

Sam Flores, painting, art

Flores’ mythology is full of costumed urchins, masked child-heroes and lithe beauties swathed in flowers…

Virgin Galactic Spaceport

Virgin Galactic, Foster + Partners, spaceport, New Mexico, space tourism, design concept, launch pad

Foster + Partners’ sleek spaceport will be a sustainable marvel built in the desert of New Mexico…

Bike Dispenser

bike sharing, urban cycling, bike rental, bike dispenser

Community bike sharing with automatic vending and RFID tracking, which makes it easier to be green…

L.A.S.E.R.

LASER, Graphiti Research Lab, laser pointer, urban art, vandalism, projector display, open source art

Graphiti Research Lab’s open source technology enables a 20-storey high tag with a laser pointer and projector…

December ’07

Maglev Wind Turbines

Maglev Wind Turbine, levitating turbine, green energy, sustainable energy

A colossal levitating turbine capable of generating a gigawatt of electricity, enough to power 750,000 homes…

Pleo

Pleo, animatronic toy, robot dinosaur, Christmas shopping, open source robot

Next year’s hard to find X-Mas present is an open source dinosaur that obeys the three laws of Ogobe…

Guess Who?

Guess Who?, Noma Bar, illustration, caricature, celebrity art

Noma Bar’s illustrations convey personality, reputation and ideology with limited use of colour and shapes…

Tindo

Tindo, solar powered bus, electric hybrid bus, green transportation, public transportation, Adelaide, Australia

A free to ride, solar-power and electric hybrid bus was introduced last week in Adelaide, Australia…

Optimus Tactus

Optimus Tactus, Optimus Maximum, Art Lebedev, keyboard design, most expensive keyboard, keyboard screen

Quick on the heels of the Optimus Maximus, Art Lebedev’s new keyboard will leave you drooling and broke…

November ’07

Brainbow

Brainbow, Harvard, brain mapping, brain imaging, mapping mental illness, brain topography

Harvard scientists are staining brain cells to better understand complex mental illnesses…

Sam Flores

Sam Flores, painting, art

Flores’ mythology is full of costumed urchins, masked child-heroes and lithe beauties swathed in flowers…

Abu Dhabi Plaza

Abu Dhabi Plaza, Foster + Partners, Astana, skyrise, building concept

Foster + Partners staggered matrix of multipurpose buildings is yet another jewel for Astana’s skyline…

Kenji Hirata

Kenji Hirata, New York City, painter, art

NYC based painter incorporates water, fire, metal, wood, and oil, to create a narrative out of the five elements…

October ’07

Aptera

Aptera, concept car, 230 mpg, high fuel efficiency, sustainable transportation, green car

Futuristic concept car with an amazingly high fuel efficiency of 230 mpg is now in production…

Push Button House

Push Button House, Alan Kalkin, shipping container, sustainable home, sustainable retail, pop-up housing, pop-up retail

Alan Kalkin’s recycled shipping container opens in 90 seconds to serve as living or retail space…

PLAY.orchestra

PLAY.orchestra, virtual symphony, art installation, interactive music display

Boxes representing various instruments produce sound when sat upon to create a virtual symphony…

Cho & SCIFI

Minsuk Cho, SCIFI, Han River, South Korea, sustainable building, green architecture

Minsuk Cho and SCIFI’s sustainable city-sized highrise destined for the Han River in South Korea…

Bolgen

Bolgen, Denmark, sustainable housing, residential complex, green architecture

A sylish new residential complex in Denmark, which resembles a series of cascading waves…

September ’07

Single
Hauz

Single Hauz, prefabricated housing, pre-fab home, sustainable housing concept

A prefabricated home on a pole that can be installed on any terrain, but why does it look like a billboard…

Open Burble

Open Burble, Haque, public art, art installation, glowing balloon, balloon cloud

Haque’s project involves community construction of glowing clouds of balloons that dominate the skyline…

Virgin Galactic Spaceport

Virgin Galactic, Foster + Partners, spaceport, New Mexico, space tourism, design concept, launch pad

Foster + Partners’ sleek spaceport will be a sustainable marvel built in the desert of New Mexico…

Shepard Fairey

Shepard Fairey, graffiti art, urban art, culture jamming, culture jammer, painting

A legendary artist whose designs provoke thought about the mechanics of the system we live in…

August ’07

Jen Stark

Jen Stark, paper art, paper sculpture

Awe-inspiring paper sculptures convey the utmost attention to detail and patience in vivid technicolor…

Kubik

Kubik, pop-up nightclub, temporary nightclub, open air nightclub

A lightroom installation and open-air nightclub concept that is built on under-used urban space…

Lorin Brown

Lorin Brown, graffiti art, cartoon art, painting

Student extraordinaire creates colourful creatures that have mass appeal and a modest following…

Bike Dispenser

bike sharing, urban cycling, bike rental, bike dispenser

Community bike sharing with automatic vending and RFID tracking, which makes it easier to be green…

July ’07

Wind to Light

wind to light, wind turbines, convert wind power to electricity, wind powered LED, green LED
Mini wind turbines generate power and illuminate hundreds of LEDs to create floating fields of light…

Yosuke Ueno

Yosuke Ueno, Space Egg 77, art, surreal art, painting
From the artist also known as SpaceEgg77 comes surreal imagery that contains the cosmic building blocks of life…

Light Graffiti

Light Graffiti, stop motion photography, stop motion graffiti, LED graffiti
A new form of graffiti created by capturing the movement of glowsticks and LED lights with short exposure cameras…

City Shrinker

City Shrinker, tilt shift photography, city dioramas, photography
Thomas’ City Shrinker series uses tilt shift lenses to create toy-like dioramas out of picturesque photography…

Shadow Monsters

Shadow Monster, Worthington, computer generated monster, software animation
Worthington’s computer software creates monsters from shadows, which react with realistic sound and animation…

June ’07

Google Street View

Google Street View, Google Map, street level imagery, street level photograph, interactive map

Virtually explore cities by viewing and navigating within 360-degree scenes of street-level imagery…

Michael Lee-Chin Crystal

Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, Libeskind, Royal Ontario Museum, ROM, Toronto, Ontario, Yorkdale

Libeskind’s controversial new addition to Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum started off as a sketch on a napkin…

Chris Noble and Sue Webster

Chris Noble, Sue Webster, garbage art, garbage sculpture, found art, shadow art

Light projected onto piles of household garbage creates unbelieveable self-portrait shadows…

Offsite 2007

Offsite 2007, carbon neutral home, sustainable home, United Kingdom, UK

A design competition to create near zero-carbon houses so that UK homes can be carbon free by 2016…

The Blazing Fiddles

Live on the Grand

The Blazing Fiddles, Jeff Taylor, Adam Poot, Grand River, Caledonia, Ontario

This CD art was designed for The Blazing Fiddles’ sophomore release titled Live on the Grand. The design conveys passion through the use of rich red tones, while energy is exhibited through the unpredictable movement of the fiery background. We’ve been told on numerous occasions that the group continues to receive compliments on the CD art, which likely played a small part in helping them sell over 3,000 copies.

Everything But the Kitchen Sink

The Blazing Fiddles, Jeff Taylor, Adam Poot, Grand River, Caledonia, Ontario

Everything but the Kitchen Sink is the third recording released by The Blazing Fiddles, while this album represents our second opportunity to supply cover art for one of their albums. This time around, the front cover incorporates a complementary logo that we had previously designed for the group’s merchandise. This slightly modified logo appears as though it was scorched onto a freshly ploughed farm field. A nearby stable spews out flames and smoke, while musical notes are faintly strewn about the ashes. These elements combine to suggest that the inferno was caused by the group’s high energy performances.

May ’07

Chromastone

Chromastone, concrete design, concrete lighting, concrete LED

A dynamic display system that seamlessly embeds patterns, numbers and text in concrete surfaces…

Running the Numbers

Chris Jordan, Running the Numbers, photographer, American culture photos

Chris Jordan’s new series is a self-portait of American culture through austere lens of statistics…

PC Design Competition

PC design, Microsoft computer design, computer concepts, computer design concepts, sustainable computers

Microsoft’s PC design competition showcases innovative technology and increased ecological standards…

Reactable

Reactable, electronic music, multi-touch surface, tabletop interface

A collaborative electronic music instrument with a multi-touch luminous tabletop interface…

April ’07

Michel de Broin

Michel de Broin, art, sculpture, green art

A Canadian artist who uses unconventional materials to impose a new relationship between man and space…

Sky Farming

Sky Farming, vertical farming, urban farm, city farm land

Converting skyscrapers into year-round organic crop farms will help reduce global warming…

Electronic Ink Watches

e-ink, electronic ink, Seiko e-ink watch

Seiko’s revolutionary e-ink watches offer various display modes and a 360-degree continuous screen…

Threadless T-Shirts

Threadless, community t-shirt design, t-shirt art

An ongoing T-Shirt design competition, where submissions are chosen for mass production on a weekly basis…

I am 8 bit

I am 8 bit, Gallery 1988, Los Angelos, video game art, video game painting

Nineteen Eighty-Eight’s Los Angeles studio featuring an exhibit of 8-bit video game inspired creations…

March ’07

Corb v2.0

Corb, housing concept, shipping containers, mobile home, sustainable housing

Residential housing concept uses recycled shipping containers, which enables mobility and affordable style…

Colwyn Griffith

Colwyn Griffith, rice crispy art, food art, food sculpture, Canadian sculpture

A series of popular Canadian tourist sites constructed using rice crispies, fruit roll-ups and other processed foods…

Color Shift

Color Shift, billboard art, urban art project

An urban art project made by displaying a continuous stream of alternating colors on a video billboard…

Wind Tunnel Footbridge

Wind Tunnel Footbridge, Michael Jantzen, sustainable design, green energy concept, wind activated

Michael Jantzen’s futuristic wind activated footbridge has five turbines that generate clean energy…

Osgoode Hall Law Games

Osgoode Law School, Law Games, Toronto, Ontario

HC2 was asked to design four t-shirts for Osgoode Hall’s annual Law Games. The school’s Sports Committee specifically requested a variety of designs, which included variations on a vintage video game system logo, seedy adult restaurant chain, as well as a popular 80′s sitcom. In addition to these fun logos, HC2 crafted the 4th t-shirt by including the school’s mascot and colours, as well as a retro gym class vibe. The end result gave Osgoode Hall an unmistakable, and unified presence at the annual competition.

Live on the Grand

Everything But the Kitchen Sink

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