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Product Pick Of The Week: The Good Vs. Evil Foosball Table





I really never thought of Foosball as a high-end sport. My personal Foosball experience consists of seeing a Foosball table grace the main room of every fraternity house at UC Berkeley, the rec rooms of most families in Marin County (where I grew up) and got lots of recognition as a staple in Joey and Chandler's kitchen on the ever popular sitcom, Friends.



But Eleven Forty doesn't make ordinary Foosball tables. Uh uh. They have created The Opus. Every detail is thought out. Each table is hand crafted with etched glass, stainless steel and assorted exotic woods. Utilizing computer technology, precision engineering and innovative construction, it has transformed a recreational game into a piece of functional art.



Here are a few pics of the hand crafted details:








Now, as if it weren't enough to create such a beautiful 'game', as an owner you are treated to amazing service from Forty Eleven.


And, if you thought all that was cool, check out their coup de grace, The Good Vs. Evil Edition. This is a limited edition “opus football table” by Eleven Forty for the super exclusive 20LTD. Only 20 were made and it retails for $23,207.70 USD




The Team of Evil XI consists of: Pot (as in Pol Pot), Lucifer (you know...Satan), Caligula, Ripper (as in Jack), Impaler (as in Vlad the), Hitler, Macbeth (as in Lady), Hyde (the darker side of Dr, Jekyll), Klebb (as in Rosa), Idi Amin, Catcher (as in the Child).

Playing for Good XI : Claus (as in Santa), More (as in Sir Thomas), Moore (as in Bobby), Gordon (as in Flash), Robin (as in Christopher), God, Assisi (the saint), Jekyll (The lighter side of Mr. Hyde), Mary Poppins, Mother Teresa, M.K. Gandhi.





I can't think of a more fun way to pit Ghandi against Hitler, can you?

All Hands on Deck(s) : Skateboard Deck Design Competition


The collective expo will take place in Bucharest/Romania and will feature works from numerous international artists along with Romania’s finest.It first started at Inoperable Gallery in Wien, now Bucharest is the next stop. For submissions, please send an e-mail to skateboardart@gmail.com including some personal works. The deck can be in any condition (old, new or broken) and can be customized using any technique; deadline - 10th of may. We are sorry but we can not support deck and shipment charges. If not returned to the artists, the decks will afterwards move to the next venue; who knows where that might be.

Questions and answers via e-mail: contact skateboardart@gmail.com

A Moment of Respect & Prayer


I just wanted to say how sorry I am about the tragedy that befell Virginia Tech yeterday. It's a horrible and horrendous event and my thoughts and prayers go out to all and any affected.

Design You'll Just Eat Up! Cakes by Kate Sullivan



Above: The Warhol Cake

Above: The Mod Cake

Kate Sullivan of Lovin Sullivan Cakes makes the most amazing cakes I have ever seen.I'm not sure I could bring myself to eat them! I simply had to share a few of her edible masterpieces with you, but you can see them all and learn more about Lovin Sullivan Cakes here.


Above: The Tea Party Cake

Above: The Monsoon Cake

Above: The Silhouette Cake

Above: The Kaws Cake

Above: The Guggenheim Cake

Lovin Sullivan Cakes

I Heart Tim Gunn. All About The Fashion Guru.




The Headmaster of Fashion
By ERIC WILSON
NY Times, 4.12.2007

A deceptively sweet-looking Daniel Vosovic arched a dark brow beneath his willfully tousled curls, turned to the man seated to his right and cut straight to the bone.

Tim Gunn juggles two roles these days, as the chief creative officer of Liz Claiborne and as a judge of aspiring designers on TV.

“If you ever send an e-mail to me and sign it, ‘Best wishes,’ I’ll know you’re just trying to pacify me,” he said with a mocking tone that had the effect of a match dropped on kindling. Tim Gunn’s face turned as red as Laura Bennett’s hair.


Tim Gunn walks the line at open auditions for “Project Runway” in Times Square.
photo: Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times

This happened on Saturday morning in a Midtown hotel during tryouts for “Project Runway,” the Bravo reality series about dueling designers on which the meticulously unflappable Mr. Gunn serves as mentor, moral guide and cautionary sounding board to a cast of generally flailing contestants, like the fecund Ms. Bennett from the third season.

Mr. Vosovic, a second-season runner-up who was helping assess the incoming class of the fourth season, teased Mr. Gunn between his candy-coated send-off of the 20th applicant, a huffy Russian named Vladimir, and his abrupt dismissal of Rebecca, a substitute teacher with unnaturally red hair who described her work as “a combination of Martha Stewart and Tim Burton.”

Rejection is an art best crafted by experience. Mr. Gunn is the Michelangelo of the form. Here, a sampling of his words to a series of washouts:

“I don’t think you have the depth of experience yet. In fact, I know it.”

“This really is not what we’re looking for.”

“I appreciate what you’re trying to do. Do I love it? No.”

“We’re going to pass. Best wishes.”

Viewers of “Project Runway,” not to mention alumni of Parsons the New School for Design, where he was long a faculty member, will have no difficulty summoning up the posh, lilting voice of Mr. Gunn, who has been parodied on late-night television for the softly scolding undertones of intellectual feyness in his delivery of the word “designers.”

Ashleigh Verrier, a 2004 Parsons graduate, said that Mr. Gunn’s mannerisms are so ingrained in her mind that “I can still hear him saying, whenever I drape a piece: ‘Well, can she walk in it? Can she hail a taxi?’ ” Former students speak of Mr. Gunn as if he were Miss Jean Brodie or Mark Thackeray in a more expensive suit.

“I believe from a historical standpoint, Tim is going to go down as someone who brought fashion to an academic level and culturally put it on the map,” Ms. Verrier said.

As an academic whose role was intended to lend an air of dignity to a show about making stars of untested designers, Mr. Gunn, 53, was an unlikely candidate for breakout celebrity on “Project Runway.” Yet he has struck a chord with young people who admire his buttoned-up demeanor and the way he treats designers: as if he were a principal. Mr. Gunn, who until last month was the chairman of the Parsons fashion department, is the foil for all their flamboyance and inexperience.

His success has surpassed that of any of the winners of the show. Bravo has announced plans for a spinoff called “Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style,” which is pegged to an actual guide Mr. Gunn wrote with Kate Moloney, an assistant chairwoman of fashion design at Parsons, published by Abrams Image.



Above: Tim Gunn's Book


And last month, Mr. Gunn was lured away from Parsons, where he began working as an admissions director in 1983, to become chief creative officer of Liz Claiborne Inc., one of the nation’s largest apparel companies. At the executive level, Mr. Gunn will serve as a voice for the roughly 350 designers employed by Claiborne’s 45 brands, a role the company has likened to a creative dean.

To read the Liz Claiborne press release, click here

And he will continue to appear on “Project Runway,” which will return late this year.


Above: Contestants’ creations at auditions for "Project Runway."
Virginia Sherwood/Bravo

With the show’s popularity, Mr. Gunn changed fashion in an abstract way, making it more appealing as a career to a generation of young people who see design as a ticket to celebrity, reflected in a flood of applications to design schools across the country.

Talking to Larry King in August, Mr. Gunn described the show’s appeal: “Fashion is so fully embedded in our culture today that there are mythologies about it. And if anything, this show demystifies much of that and really makes fashion very, very accessible to the public at large.”

Now, at Claiborne, Mr. Gunn is attempting a more concrete real-world makeover: to bring a sense of excitement about fashion to a corporate culture known for blandness and to effect a change in the perception of its brands, from outdated to fashionable.

Can Mr. Gunn, in his words, make it work?


Above: 2 T-shirts for sale bearing the phrases "Make It Work" and "Carry On", both made popular by Tim Gunn

IT’S a huge learning curve for me,” Mr. Gunn said last week at the company’s offices in the garment center, across Seventh Avenue from Parsons. “I’ve been living in a rarefied bubble, really, for a total of 29 years. Because we were dealing with theory, we could write our own scenarios, where nothing ever fails and nothing is ever lost in the shipping process. It’s a very different universe.”

His role at Liz Claiborne is a new one for the company, part of a mandate by Bill McComb, the chief executive, to foster an image of “irresistible product,” even if that requires raising some prices. The implication is that the company, which like many large, publicly traded apparel businesses, places a premium on financial performance, also recognizes the value of design.


Above: Backstage with Jeffrey Sebelia, the Season 3 winner.

And Liz Claiborne is in need of a face-lift. Profits at the $5 billion company dropped considerably last year, by about 20 percent. Mr. McComb, who joined Claiborne in October, said there was a feeling internally, among designers, that the company had become too numbers-oriented. He thought that Mr. Gunn would inspire them, as he does on the show, to take creative risks.

“If dollars and cents drive your design, you risk becoming a commodity line,” Mr. McComb said. “And that’s the death of a fashion business.”

Mr. Gunn, in a black pinstripe suit one day and a black turtleneck under a black leather blazer the next, may be well suited for the job. At Parsons, he revitalized a fashion curriculum that had not changed since 1952. He introduced students to critical thinking, fashion history and the realities of commercial business. He made the school’s annual runway show more competitive for seniors by presenting only the best collections, which had an unexpected result of making instant stars of its top graduates: Ms. Verrier, Chris Benz and Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez of Proenza Schouler.



On the other hand, Mr. Gunn has faced criticism from some students about changes they perceive as encouraging those who fit an idealized, or commercialized, image of successful designers over independent, freewheeling thinkers.

Moreover, “Project Runway” has drawn complaints for trivializing the profession. Stan Herman, the designer, speaking on the industry last month at a panel organized by the Fashion Institute of Technology, said, “It needs to be taken with a grain of salt because there are many kids who don’t know anything else about fashion besides ‘Project Runway.’ ”

Mr. Herman later said that the show has had a positive effect on enrollment in design schools and credited Mr. Gunn with presenting a balanced picture of the business. But he was concerned, he said, about the show’s track record of producing more celebrities than successful designers.

“We are living in an era of instant gratification, and the show is built on that premise,” he said. “The fact is that fashion is an art form or a form of commercial art that takes years and years of development. I find when they just use personalities, they miss a lot of the hard work that goes into our industry.”

Since casting began in Los Angeles last month, Mr. Gunn has been insulted by rejected applicants and questioned about the future of the show after poor turnouts there on some days. Last year he sparred in the press with Jay McCarroll, the first winner, who was irritated by Mr. Gunn’s criticism of his slowness in starting a post-“Runway” career. Other contestants are quick to defend Mr. Gunn as supportive of the development of designers’ careers.

“He will be to Liz Claiborne what Anna Wintour is to Bernard Arnault,” said Emmett McCarthy, a second-season contestant, referring to the advisory relationship the Vogue editor has with Mr. Arnault, the chief executive of LVMH.



Above: Yes, you can actually buy a Tim Gunn Bobblehead


Mr. Gunn seems unfazed by his celebrity or the backbiting that ensued. People might assume that “Project Runway” had a halo effect on his personal fortunes, but he said this was not the case. “I couldn’t be any more single,” he said. At least he was able to afford a new rental apartment in Manhattan, in London Terrace, where he was on a waiting list for nine months.

“For the first time in my life I have a grown-up apartment,” he said. “There’s a closet in the bedroom!”

Even confidence came to him slowly, as an art student at the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington and later as a teacher there.

He had been an unhappy child, introverted, a stutterer, spending sunny days in his room reading books, practicing the piano, playing with Legos, idolizing mad King Ludwig II, who spent his spare time designing castles. He was the last one chosen during mandatory team sports — a disappointment to his tight-lipped father, George William Gunn, an assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who served as the ghostwriter of J. Edgar Hoover. (His mother, Nancy, helped establish the library of the Central Intelligence Agency. His great-grandfather Harry Wardman was a builder of row houses and hotels in Washington.)

“I was the one they called the horrible slurs that ended up being prophetic,” Mr. Gunn said. “Little did I know.”

Between the ages of 12 and 20, he was enrolled in no less than a dozen schools — not for academic reasons, but because he could not handle the social interaction. In college, he discovered his passion for design. The assemblage work of the sculptor Joseph Cornell held a particular sway over Mr. Gunn, who was attracted to the neat boxes of photographs and the surprising juxtapositions.

“I thought there must be a way of synthesizing all the different parts of my life in my own way,” Mr. Gunn said. “I really think it was Cornell who caused me to have the confidence to say I’m going to be an artist.”

But his epiphany came, oddly enough, at a moment when he was faced with rejection, and what would seem in retrospect to be one of many prophetic moments. An artist looked at his student work at Corcoran and told him, “I’d rather look at the space this work displaces than look at this work.” Best wishes.

As we know, Mr. Gunn did not become a great sculptor. (end of NY Times article)


Above: Tim Gunn on Project Runway "Make It Work"

Tim Gunn's Bio as listed on Bravo TV/Project Runway site:

Timothy Gunn is Chair of the Department of Fashion Design at Parsons The New School for Design. Gunn has been a vital part of the Parsons community for more than 23 years. In August 2000, he was appointed chair of the fashion design program with the charge of retooling and invigorating the curriculum for the 21st century. Under Gunn's direction, the department has strengthened its position as the indisputable leader in fashion design education in America and as one of only a handful of leading programs in the world. The school will celebrate the centennial of the program, which was the first of its kind in the nation, this year.

Gunn credits the seminal changes in the department's curriculum with the meteoric success of the dynamic design duo of Jack McCollough ’02 and Lazaro Hernandez ‘02 of Proenza Schouler, whose senior year thesis collection was bought off the school's runway by Barneys New York. This academic and fashion industry “first” was a mere bellwether for the graduating classes to follow and set in motion an industry clamoring for young, innovative design talent, including up-and-coming designers such as Ashleigh Verrier ’04.

Prior to his appointment as chair of the fashion design program, Gunn spent most of his career at Parsons as Associate Dean of the school. In that capacity, he worked closely with the academic departments and helped develop programs and relationships abroad, including the international spectrum of Parsons affiliates in Paris, Korea, Japan and the Dominican Republic.

Gunn has lectured widely on fashion and lifestyle design and Parsons' influential role in putting America on the global design map. His interviews have appeared in publications as diverse as Time and Newsweek, Crain's New York Business, Martha Stewart Living, Elle Magazine and Women's Wear Daily, and his television interviews have appeared on CBS, NBC, and the Metro Channel.

Located in the heart of New York’s Greenwich Village, Parsons The New School for Design is one of the largest degree-granting colleges of art and design in the nation, with more than 3,500 students in degree programs, and 1,700 non-degree students from all 50 states and approximately 60 countries. Parsons has been a forerunner in the field of art and design since its founding in 1896. Parsons’ rigorous programs and distinguished faculty embrace curricular innovation, pioneer new uses of technology, and instill in students a global perspective in design. For more information, visit www.parsons.newschool.edu.


Meet Nik Ainley & his Screensavers, Prints & Digital Art

 

 Welcome to Shinybinary version 2.1, the online portfolio and design playground of Nik Ainley. 

 Who? 
Nik Ainley is a UK based designer who has a passion for producing personal art and illustrations. After teaching himself Photoshop in his spare time while gaining a degree in physics at Imperial College London, he has since moved full time into the design world. He is constantly trying to further his expertise in digital media, and won't stop until he has mastered all the tools he needs to fully realise his designs.

Buy A Lamborghini With That Tax Refund. The Tonino Lamborghini Coffee Machine.





Ah, tax day. April 15th.
Think you're getting money back from the Government this year?


Well, you may not get enough back to buy yourself a Lamborghini (and if you do, can I please have the name of your accountant?), so how about the next best thing to get your motor running?

The Tonino Lamborghini coffee machine.


Limited to just 1,000 examples, the handbuilt machine is a caffeine-lovers symphony in Beluga black, featuring numerous stainless-steel parts, including a front panel that carries the automaker’s iconic bull logo.



Lamborghini apparently even roasts their own coffee beans, so one can see the fun one might have making up Murcielago mudslides, Espada espressos, and so on.

For you? 895 pounds (or around $1750 USD). In other words, most of us can fuggeddaboudit… but perhaps we can splurge on a pound of beans.

NOW ON SPECIAL Here with the following goodies:
Limited edition Tonino Lamborghini coffee machine
Strictly limited to 1000 machines the Tonino Lamborghini coffee machine is a work of art.



Each machine is individually engraved with its number and signed by Tonino Lamborghini himself.

Supplied with

* Free Delivery
* Free 2 year warranty

* Free set of 6 Tonino Lamborghini espresso cups and saucers


* Free 36 Tonino Lamborghini brand E.S.E. coffee pods
* Free Milk Frothing Jug
* Free CD-ROM & printed user manual

Also Includes FREE Barista Kit

The Tonino Lamborghini coffee machine is hand built from the finest materials, the finish and quality of these coffee machines is stunning. The brewing process is operated by the lever which is a reproduction of the famous Lamborghini gear stick. The metal body is finished in hi gloss Beluga black. All the controls are finished in immaculate chrome.



You can use the machine to make Espresso, cappuccino, latte, Americano and other coffee specialties. Or you can just admire the what is undoubtedly on object of beauty.

Ownership of the Tonino Lamborghini coffee machine is as exclusive as the cars themselves.
Technical Specification

* "Beluga" black bodywork
* Handcrafted stainless steel finishing
* Tonino Lamborghini logo engraved on front stainless steel panel
* Tonino Lamborghini signature and Limited Edition number engraved on stainless steel base
* High capacity brass boiler
* Heating surface for cups
* Pull-out plastic water reservoir
* Coffee dispenser with single-dose standard pod system
* Cappuccino maker / steam dispenser
* Separate warm water dispenser
* Soft touch switches with chromium finishing
* Anti-scale filter
* Electrical rating 240V-50Hz
* Power consumption 850W max
* Average power consumption in stand-by mode <50W
* Physical dimensions (HxWxD) 335 x 260 x 330 mm
* Weight 12Kg
* Water reservoir 2lt
* Noise level <65dB

Operating Data

* Operating temperature 10-40°C
* Relative humidity 30-90% non condensing

Certifications

* CE, FCC
* EMC (Dir. 89/336/EEC)
* Safety (Dir. 72/23/EEC)
* Environment (Dir. 2002/96/EC – 2002/95/EC)

Damn, I Hope He's Worth It. The 8 Million Dollar Diamond Wedding Dress.



above and above right: as worn by Korean Song Yu Ah at a fashion show in Osaka.

The world’s most expensive wedding dress, valued at 1 billion Japanese yen (Dh31.2 million, USD 8.4 million), has been created by Japanese designer Yumi Katsura. It is made from silk-satin and embellished with zari-embroidery and 1,000 pearls, a green 8.8 carat diamond emblem and a five carat white gold diamond, which is one of only two in the world.




About Designer Yumi Katsura

As a pioneer of bridal fashion, Ms. Katsura is always at the forefront of this industry. She continues to realize dreams of the wedding through worldwide bridal events. So that she has become known "Missionary of Bridal".
Her various licensed total 30 throughout Japan. The annual gross sales of her brand reach 13 billion yen.
There are 4 direct management shops under her control in Japan, and her franchises now total 70. More than 30,000 brides wear wedding dresses designed by Yumi Katsura for yearly.
She staged bridal collection show throughout Japan as well as in such foreign locations as New York, Los Angeles, Paris, London, Barcelona, Monaco, Moscow, Bucharest, Singapore, Jakarta, Bombay, New Delhi, Honolulu, Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai, Dalian, New Delhi, Manila, Kuala Lumpur, Ho-chi-minh.

Born in Tokyo, Japan. Graduated from Kyoritsu Women's University, Department of Apparel Science Studies, Faculty of Home Economics. Studied the techniques of haute couture in Paris at Les Ecoles de laChambre Syndicale de La Couture Parisienne.

Yumi Katsura's Website

Wedding attire designed by Yumi Katsura
-Ms. Nadia Comaneci and Mr. Bart Conner (Olympic Gold Medalist)
-Mr. & Mrs. Kazuyoshi Miura (Japanese soccer player)
-Mr. & Mrs. Masashi Nakayama (Japanese soccer player)
-Designed the wedding gown for Catherine Turner in the 20th Century Fox movie, "Jewel of the Nile."The special vestment for Pope John Paul II.

Open House: Architecture & Technology for Intelligent Living: An Exhibition at ACCD




Open House: Architecture and Technology for Intelligent Living,” an exhibition of visionary housing projects by 10 young architects,opens on Saturday at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.

Standouts include Seoul Commune 2026, a cluster of towers covered in vines that provide shade and regulate interior temperature, and the Jellyfish house, which was designed to help clean toxic water on a stretch of reclaimed land on San Francisco Bay and is encased in an organic water jacket that reacts to changes in light and temperature.



Dunehouse is sheathed in skin that responds to the climatic extremes of the Nevada desert, while Open the House!, covers its occupants in temperature-responsive fabric. The show also includes vintage models of housing like Buckminster Fuller’s 1928 Dymaxion House and the Monsanto House of the Future.



Through July 1 at Art Center’s South Campus, 950 South Raymond Avenue, Pasadena, (626) 396-4254 or artcenter.edu/openhouse.

Funky Find of The Week: Watches Made From Parts Of The Titanic!






Titanic Resurfaces as Luxury Watch, BASEL, Switzerland (Reuters) -- Steel and coal from the Titanic have been transformed into a new line of luxury wristwatches that claim to capture the essence of the legendary ocean liner which sank in 1912.

"It is very luxurious and very inaccessible," said Yvan Arpa, chief executive of the three-year-old company that hopes the limited edition watches will attract both collectors and garrulous luxury goods buyers.


Ivan
Arpa, CEO of "Romain Jerome" presents the "Titanic-DNA" watch that contains authentic parts of the Titanic ocean liner drawn from the ocean floor.
"So many rich people buy incredibly complicated watches without understanding how they work, because they want a story to tell," Arpa said. "To them we offer a story."

The North Atlantic wreck site of the Titanic, which hit an iceberg and sank on its first voyage from the English port of Southampton to New York, have been protected for more than a decade but many relics were taken in early diving expeditions.

Romain Jerome said it purchased a piece of the hull weighing about 1.5 kg (3 pounds) that was retrieved in 1991, but declined to identify the seller. The metal has been certified as authentic by the Titanic's builders Harland and Wolff.

To make the watches, which were offered for sale for the first time in Basel for between $7,800 and $173,100, the Swiss company created an alloy using the slab from the Titanic with steel being used in a Harland and Wolff replica of the vessel.



The gold, platinum and steel time pieces have black dial faces made of lacquer paint that includes coal recovered from the debris field of the Titanic wreck site, offered for sale by the U.S. company RMS Titanic Inc.

Arpa said the combination of new and old materials infused the watches with a sense of renewal, instead of representing a reminder of the 1,500 passengers who drowned when the ocean liner met her tragic end off the coast of Newfoundland.

"It is a message of hope, of life stronger than death, of rebirth," he said in an interview in Romain Jerome's exposition booth in Basel, where more than 2,100 exhibitors are flaunting their latest wares amid a boom for the luxury goods sector.



The company will make 2,012 watches to coincide with the centenary anniversary of the Titanic's sinking in 2012. Arpa said the young watchmaker would unveil a new series next year commemorating another famous legend, but declined to offer clues of what it is.

UPDATE: since this post, the titanic DNA collection of watches has expanded to include ceramic watches, gem encrusted versions and more:







See the full collection and learn more here.

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