Forget about fixies, Grand Rapids, MI design company Jruiter has created a really cool prototype for a minimalistic inner city bike. The design is so simplified to the point that it doesn’t even have a chain, instead the pedals directly drive the back wheel. Of course the next logical step would be to remove the brakes.

Our project, simplicity in inner city bicycling, was at first glance a fun aesthetic opportunity in new trends, color, and materials. Our target lived / worked in an inner city environment with minimal space. Bicycling at this level can be more about fashion and culture than speed and performance.

After the first few brainstorm sessions we knew there where bigger opportunities. The project ended up rethinking what a “frame” meant, getting ride of basic key components, and creating a new type of compact bicycling. Inspired by the first the “hobby horse” from it’s simplicity and secondly the cafe race scene. Each is an exercise in stripping something down to its core.

via Core77

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guest post by Josh Ellingson

Isotope Comics Lounge is a rarity even among the more experimental of comics shops because it offers something completely different and appealing. Proprietor James Sime (@jamessime) brings a nightlife atmosphere to mainstream comics. Isotope makes you feel that it’s not only cool to read superhero books, it’s downright sexy! It may be unlikely, but it really works, like the time Marvel dressed the Incredible Hulk in a suit and tie. The interior of Isotope seems to have been designed specifically for entertaining throngs of the geek elite. Sure, there are well-stocked shelves of comics and graphic novels of all type, but there’s also a dedicated bar built into the wall for late-night libations. And it’s padded! Folks, I’ve had the drinks, and they know how to party.

It’s a busy week for Isotope. On Wednesday they co-hosted an evening of cocktails and fashion at Bloomingdale’s. The Bloomingdales/DC Comics tie-in is part of DC’s 75th Anniversary and features a range of designer superhero merchandise. The event was co-sponsored by Details Magazine and Warner Bros. in promotion of writer James Robinson’s upcoming run on “Justice League of America”. Robinson was on hand to meet the public, snacks were served, and cartoon-colored martinis flowed freely. Here’s the photographic evidence:

More shots from my evening out at Bloomingdale’s can be found here in my Flickr set.

The party comes back to Isotope headquarters for the weekend, starting on Friday with an exhibition of art by Dean Haspiel. Saturday night marks the biggest event of the year for Isotope as they celebrate APE Aftermath, the unofficial after-party of the Alternative Press Expo. The event always packs the place, so if you’re shy of crowds, you might want to avoid the entire city block.

The highlight of APE Aftermath is the coveted Isotope Award for Excellence in Min-Comics. Last year’s winner of the Isotope Award of Excellence in Mini-Comics was Jonas Madden Conner for his Mini-Comic, “Ocre Ellipse 3″.

APE Aftermath @Isotope
Saturday, October 17th
8pm – 2am
Never a cover
21 and over after 11pm

You can visit Isotope Comics is in Hayes Valley. Suit and tie optional.
Tues- Fri 11am-7pm
Sat-Sun 11am-6pm

326 Fell St @Gough St.
San Francisco, CA
www.isotopecomics.com

photos by Josh Ellingson

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guest post by mikl-em

This Japanese designer enables juice boxes to express their nature…

Japanese industrial designer Naoto Fukasawa has created a series of creative fruit juice packages that have the look and feel of the fruit they contain.

Naoto Fukasawa worked for design firm IDEO for many years and headed their Japanese office. Since he left he has designed furniture, a CD player for Japanese waste-not minimalists MUJI, and had published a book of his work.

His design approach is influenced by an Eastern philosophy called hari (which involves concepts of “tension” and being “well balanced”). In a 2007 interview Fukasawa says:

In product design, hari is about finding the most suitable shape to express an object, or rather for the object to express itself.

More on hari and Fukasawa’s thoughts on design in this September 2008 interview.

via Toxel.com

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Funky Lunch, an online gallery showcasing unique sandwich designs.

Funky Lunch was born out of the desire to turn an ordinary lunchtime sandwich into something a bit different to encourage children to try and eat a varied and healthy lunch.

via Urlesque

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photos by Trapped in Suburbia

The Play More Notebook, designed by Trapped in Suburbia, is a clever little notepad that has sports ball patterns on the back of each page, that when crumpled create tiny paper balls that can be used to play games at your desk.

via Whitezine

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Elephant Bottle Opener designed Jergen Moller for Georg Jensen.

This little guy never forgets how to open stuff! Sweet and capable brushed metal elephant with a lid-popping trunk and twist off belly.

via swissmiss

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Ryen Anderson has a cool Design-A-Pattern feature on his website where you can create combine different images to create a unique background pattern. One of the image options is a squid which I mixed with a skull which looks pretty badass.

Thanks to EvilSigntist for the tip!

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guest post by Burstein!

Keyboardr is a masterstroke of design by Julius Eckert. It starts with the simple interface of a digital clock. With each keystroke in the field-entry box, Keyboardr will automatically search in the engines of your choice (google, google images, youtube, twitter, wikipedia, etc.). This is way more impressive than other meta-search engines for a few reasons. First, it is faster and the UI is much more accessible. Second, you can use it with your keyboard, which makes your searching much faster. This even extends to finding the settings page, which can be done by merely hitting the space bar while the field-entry box is blank.

A new nightly development version of Keyboardr is now open to the public.

Very well done.

Hat tip to Mediapathic

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guest post by Burstein!

One of the things that we appreciate here at Laughing Squid is clever design. That said, some of us are rank amateurs at the design trade, so reading a blur on why a particular logo is cool or clever can be rather illuminating. The folks at Graphic Design Blog have a post of 25 logo designs that have hidden messages. Neat stuff.

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Laughing Squid has had some form of an all black website over 13 years, so it’s finally time for a change. We’ve just launched a new design for the blog with a much cleaner look, that loads faster.

I’ll be tweaking and modifying the theme over time, this is just a new starting point.

If you are reading this via RSS, head on over to the blog and check it out.

We are now using the wonderful Thesis WordPress theme developed by Chris Pearson (version 1.5 should be out any day). It’s one of the best WordPress themes I’ve ever used and is going to allow us to have much more design flexibility and added features.

Of course white is not new to Laughing Squid, we’ve been using it on The Squid List the last few years and it’s also part of the design of my personal website and our new cloud hosting website.

As I rolled out the new theme, I asked people on Twitter what they thought and as expected the reactions ranged from loving it hating it and everything in between.

Now it’s your turn, let us know what you think in the comments.

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guest post by RICK!

Designer Kacie Kinzer asks the question, would total strangers help a little robot?

I wondered: could a human-like object traverse sidewalks and streets along with us, and in so doing, create a narrative about our relationship to space and our willingness to interact with what we find in it? More importantly, how could our actions be seen within a larger context of human connection that emerges from the complexity of the city itself? To answer these questions, I built robots.

The Tweenbots only go in a straight line, their only hope of reaching their destination is a help flag asking anyone to point them in the right direction.

The results?

Mission 1: Get from the Northwest to the Southwest Corner of Washington Square Park [in NY]
Time: 42 minutes
Number of people who intervened: 29

[via Metafilter]

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Pieter Woudt (212-BIG-BOLT) designed a really cool “Enter” doormat that is available through Kikkerland. Maybe he’ll make an “Esc” mat for the way out.

via swissmiss

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guest post by mikl-em

Okay, this a straight up response to the CSS IS AWESOME ‘mug shot’ posted earlier.

I was reminded of the above awesome shirt that was posted as an idea on the Ironic Sans blog (there are a lot of other great and funny ideas on the site).

Then I took a little survey of funny-type shirts online, here are some of the best:

Love both of these. Sold via Wire and Twine and designed by Subtraction.

Here are a few wry type-slinger wares from Veer…

Lots more typographysterical shirts on Veer.com, I can’t fit them all here.

I am so not going to comment on this Zazzle t-shirt by Glorious SOBs.

From the MyFonts blog.

And then there’s the mighty Helbotica…

Helbotica from Chop Shop features on the list of 10 Shirts Every Type Nerd Must Own courtesy of thedesigncubicle.com along with 8 shirts not shown here (and one that is). I urge you to check ‘em out.

By the way, I am very not a type nerd myself. I’ve just known quite a few over the years. And I enjoy studying the humor of bizarre subcultures.

Yes, the joke font springs eternal. *ducks*

images via Ironic Sans, Subtraction, Veer, Glorious SOBs, MyFonts Blog & Chop Shop

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CSS Is Awesome by Steven Frank, available as a t-shirt, mug or button.

via Neven Mrgan

image via Steven Frank

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Mike Rohde made another wonderful series of SXSW Interactive 2009 Sketchnotes covering talks at this year’s conference. Here’s the full series on Flickr.

See Previously: SXSW Interactive 2008 Sketchnotes by Mike Rohde

photos by Mike Rohde

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guest post by Aaron Muszalski

Inspired by a WWII era poster currently enjoying a resurgence in popularity in the United Kingdom, Matt Jones produced the image above, whose timely call to action – “Get Excited and Make Things” – is perfect for the growing DIY and Maker movement. (I especially like the crown of spanners. In fact, in the spirit of the poster, I think I’ll weld myself one out of actual spanners.)

Response for Matt’s design has been so strong that UK t-shirt vendor Howies has made it available as a t-shirt for men and women.

Matt’s version isn’t the first remix of the “Keep Calm and Carry On” poster. Designer Olly Moss previously produced this tellingly satirical inversion, “Now Panic and Freak Out”.

San Francisco art director and culture jammer Matthew Williams produced this Burning Man inspired version, “Get Funky and Burn Stuff”.

Lastly, there’s this appropriately British version, which cheerfully proposes that people simply “Drink Beer and Carry On”. And I think I shall.

images via Matt Jones, Keep Calm and Carry On, Olly Moss, Matthew Williams & Drink Beer and Carry On

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Flickr Clock is a really cool visualization project designed by Stamen that displays Flickr video based on the approximate time it was shot.

You can contribute your video by submitting it to the Flickr Clock group.

See Previously: Flickr Adds HD Video Option For Pro Members

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guest post by Simone Davalos

Many of the illustrious members of the Laughing Squid diaspora are familiar with the Snarky McF*ckbutton, a culturally indicative bit of personal accessory that saves the wearer the time and toil of actually verbalizing how much cooler they are than you (we have written about the illustrious McF*ckbutton in this space before, here).

CTP, the mover and shaker behind the Snarky McF*ckbutton, has been quietly supplying buttons for all occasions, often for free, at many exciting Bay Area events. He would like to continue snarking up the environment in a bigger way, and to this end he has a proposition for you:

The Snarky McF*ckbuttons Factory Improvement Campaign

So what’s this whole thing about? The popularity of our buttons has really taken off over the past couple of years, and it is time for us to take the next step and get a motorized button maker. This will allow us to not only be able to fill your orders more quickly, but will also allow us to finally accept large bulk orders that up until now we’ve had to refer to other companies. It will also allow us to give away even more buttons to even more fund raisers for good causes. Only trouble is the machine is pretty expensive. In order to help us get it we’ve put together a pretty simple and straightforward investment idea that we’re sure everyone will love. In order to help us get it we’ve put together a pretty simple and straightforward investment idea that we’re sure everyone will love.

We are asking for $100 from each supporter, limited to the first 70. We will collect the money over the month of February, 2009, and once we have reached the target of $7,000 we will get the button machine. What’s in it for you? In return for your $100 we will give you 100 snarky buttons of your choice (a $150 value), or a bulk order of 300 buttons of one design (that’s 33 cents each!!), plus you’ll get a 10% discount on all your orders for the coming year. We will fill the orders during March, 2009, in the order that people signed up.

Help Snarky McF get a primo button machine! Enable the advancement of technology that furthers the cause of sarcastic, pithily written button comments everywhere! Be able to say you were there back at the beginning, and whatever, it was way better then.

Details and ways to pay at The Snarky McF*ckbutton website.

See Previously: Snarky McF*ckButtons – Wear What You’re *Really* Thinking

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The French design group Atypyk has come up with a really cool product design concept for a set of wooden wrenches that help you “fix a salad”.

image via Atypyk

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guest post by Violet Blue

It just doesn’t seem fair, how when we get into Second Life and can make our boobs bigger, our legs longer, our hair so big it would make Tammy Faye praise Jeezus for us being so much closer to the lord, or finally getting that tail we’re convinced the doctors snipped off at birth. So it only made sense to local multi-talented researcher, engineer, electronic musician and filmmaker/director behind SF experimental music documentary Noisy People — Tim Perkis decided it was time to call a little Design Review meeting about what the “creative team” should do with his “first life avatar.” Fortunately for us, he made a video about the check-in, where he’s surprisingly supportive despite the changes they’re going to have to make in order for him to launch.

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