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The SEMA show, an annually-held automotive specialty products trade exhibition, closes in Las Vegas today. The industry-only event doesn't allow members of the general public to enter, but Car & Driver's got loads of photo galleries depicting what went on, like the tricked-out Scions seen above. Hot-rod heads can click here for more.

A bite-sized list of what's happenin' now:

helsinki times
"Snowball," upcoming Finnish-Chinese design industry event

dexigner
Milan Polytechnic starting Masters in ID for Architecture program, in English

cnet
Does cell phone design still matter?

gerson lehrman group
Nokia, Apple and Google - Driving the Mobile Revolution

reuters
Technology doesn't isolate people: U.S. study

nyt art & design
Finding a Bit of Animal House in the Bauhaus

One of the oldest physical things proving man's intelligence is tools, and when we find them on archaeological digs we then attribute a certain amount of cleverness to whatever tribe's bones we found them under.

I am fascinated by modern tool design. Now that adjustable wrenches, sheetrock screws and power drills have been long established, modern tool design largely revolves around making existing tools faster, more efficient, and/or safer, like the Eurekazone cutting system or the Kreg Pocket Hole Jig.

Another area of tool design focuses on clever little items that enable you to do more with less. As an example, when driving screws in something you often have to pre-drill a hole, then grab a second tool to drive the fastener in. So you have to carry two gun-shaped things that both do essentially the same thing, rotate a bit at high speeds. Solving this is Eagle Tool Company's Sheet Metal Installation Tool (spotted on toolmonger), a combination drill bit and driver attachment that transforms from one to the other by means of a sliding collar, which means you now only have to carry one tool.

A second device along these lines is Jorgensen's ISD clamps, which look like other pistol-grip clamps but have a neat little trick: You can connect two of them together to make an even longer clamp, so you don't have to go to the store to buy an extra clamp for those odd jobs spanning greater distances.

The Scoop High Chair, designed by British firm Seymourpowell, brings design to the table--from a toddler's position. Looking rather like the customer throne from a hair salon, the Scoop's rounded surfaces leave no place for dirt to accumulate and can be height-adjusted, from sofa to table height, by means of a foot pedal that drives the pneumatic lift.

Unlike its brethren barber shop chair, the Scoop isn't mounted to the floor; the round base conceals castors, so it can be wheeled out of the way for cleaning. And the adjustable integrated table acts something like the safety bars on an amusement park ride, keeping the child in place and obviating the need for a harness. When it's time for the kid to come out, the table can be slid forward for easier access.

via dexigner

Remember the hot girl (or guy) in your high school? If they had a sibling, that sibling was almost never hot, and didn't try to be; they realized the incumbent had the hot thing locked down, so they went in a different direction. Siblings of the hot were really witty, and told great stories, and knew where to get booze for the party, and in general were more fun to hang around with.

That's basically Knoll's Generation chair. With competition like the Aeron and the Embody, the Generation strives to do the things those chairs cannot, and succeeds at them. Whether or not those things are things you desire in a chair depends largely on how you sit, or don't sit.

We spent every day for just over a month testing out the Generation. Hit the jump for our findings.

continued...

A laptop is, like cell phones and MP3 players, a pretty solitary device; you might show something on any of these things to your friends once in a while, but 99% of the time it's just you in front of it, or vice versa.

A Boston-based startup called Litl is releasing a laptop-like device called the Webbook that is, by virtue of its physical design, inherently more social. For starters, it's got a hinge that enables the keyboard to go all the way around, lending it the form factor of an easel.

With its screen exposed, the litl webbook is now ideal for passive or "lean back" web activity like enjoying photos, listening to music, or consuming news, weather, and other web content.

The litl was designed to enhance home web use, with a bright screen featuring a revolutionary 178-degree viewing "cone." Most traditional computers are designed for a single user, but the litl's unique screen technology allows a group of people to clearly view the screen at the same time.

The Webbook also has a scroll-wheel-type-thingy embedded in the hinge, so you can physically change internet "channels," but if you don't feel like using something as antiquated as a physical dial, there's a remote control as well.

Interestingly enough, the device is basically OS-free, at least from a user standpoint--there's no logging in, because the device is always on. There's no hard drive to crash. And it takes care of its own maintenance, downloading patches and implementing them automatically.

Learn more about the $699 device here.

In one of the more bizarre USB products we've ever seen, The Beatles' Apple Corps corporation, in conjunction with record label EMI, are releasing the entire Beatles catalogue...in a USB flash drive shaped like a Granny Smith apple. The data contained on the drive will include 14 albums, 13 mini-documentaries, liner notes, album art, and rare photographs.

They're only making 30,000 of these things, which will be released in early December and go for under $300. We're not sure how we feel about the form factor, although it would be interesting in future, if this trend continues, to replace this

with this:

Led Zeppelin in the grapes, Hendrix on the bananas...yep, the future never quite looks like we pictured.

We're digging Mini's MINIMALISM Calendar for 2010, which challenged designers--roughly 4,000 of them--to produce "creative interpretations of the topic of efficiency and CO2 reduction." The only visual design guideline was that a profile of the iconic car had to be somehow integrated.

Twelve finalists were chosen from the thousands of submissions, and the resultant calendar is now on sale here.

The Youthmobile 2030 Design Challenge asked some of the world's leading auto design studios based in SoCal--Audi/VW, Honda, Mazda, Nissan, Toyota, and GM--to design a car we might see some 21 years in the future that would be coveted by the young demographic.

With an emphasis on out-there technologies--Honda's concept incorporates human DNA, for chrissakes--the descriptions are a little more complicated than we can sum up in a caption, but you can check out more about each entry at the links below.

Audi's eSpira/eOra

GM's Car Hero

Honda's Helix

Mazda's Souga

Nissan's V2G

Toyota's Link

The winner of the competition will be announced on December 3rd. Click here for more info.

A bite-sized list of what's happenin' now:

design management institute
"What the Hell Have We Done to Design? (Really Thinking about Design Thinking)"

dexigner
U.K.: Robert Brunner to give talk at Design Museum

freep
Fiat plan can't stop at small cars: Chrysler needs help in building midsize winners

businesswire
SolidWorks Launches Donation Program To Raise Awareness of Sustainable Design

times of india
India: Ex-National Institute of Design prof releases book

constructalia
Living Steel showcases next-generation architecture in "House for steel" book

Above are the "tofu" and SuperFoam chairs we showed you last week; below is the latest block-with-holes-in-it designed for seating we've come across, the Paper Chair by Razy2, the Polish design duo behind the awesome TAB table.

Rather like a huge block of Post-Its, the Paper Chair's sheets can be scribbled on and removed during phone-call doodling; another cool features is that, since the block is not laminated together, magazines or newspapers can be stuffed between the sheets of paper like a bookmark. Just don't stuff a document in there, or good luck finding it again.

The thing I appreciate about Sony: When they go into "design battle" with a competitor, they don't ape the opponent's design as every other company seems to do these days, but come up with their own lines instead. Such is the case with their recently-released L Series Vaio touchscreen PC, which forgoes the silver gloss and gooseneck stand of Apple's iMac, opting instead for a positively Bauhausian screen-frame that provides a space for the keyboard to be tucked into when not in use.

Ironically, it seems Sony is taking their competitor's old motto, "Think Different," to heart.

It's tough to call them "toys" when they're made out of porcelain and precious metals, but that's technically what these are, Yakuza tattoos and all.

Zeitgeist Toys was born from an obsession to create designer art toys that utilize craftsmanship and fine materials like metal and porcelain in a way that is a novelty for this genre. Touching the object you should instantly sense the superb quality of material, individually hand-made and finished.

Berlin-based Zeitgeist Toys is part of Create Berlin, a design network dedicated to keeping that city on top of the global design game.

via beautiful life

Have you ever been sitting in your panic room during a home invasion and thought to yourself: Why the heck don't I have my collection of prized wines down here? Most of us know that helplessly monitoring armed intruders in ski masks while they pillage your parlor goes down easier with a spot of 19th century Madeira. "Oh, look at that," you'd say, staring at the grainy black-and-white image while absently swirling your glass, "the little bastards are taking the Rembrandt."

There's this company called Spiral Cellars that doesn't really make panic rooms, but they do make these cool turnkey wine cellars. They do everything: These guys show up in a van, jackhammer through your foundation, build this crazy spiral staircase that's got the wine bottles stored in a spiral around the periphery, and even take care of the paperwork with your local government.

Okay so I realize this is out of the reach of most of us--I think if I was that rich, I wouldn't ever even need to look at the internet--but relatability be damned, I can't help but find this company and their product fascinating, what with their wide variety of motorized trap doors and the like. And while home invasion isn't cool, panic rooms and secret wine cellars are cool. Very, very cool.

A bite-sized list of what's happenin' now:

haaretz
Profile on Israeli ID'er Yaacov Kaufman

nyt home & garden
"An Ode to '70s-Style Living:" Return of the living room conversation pit, by furniture designer Jason Miller

design droplets
Industrial Design Portfolio Advice: Back to Basics

shanghai daily
Vibrant Seoul takes city design pride to heart

temple news
Aid by design: Student artists and designers help communities around the world through International Design Clinic

biz community
South Africans excel at industrial design

Designed by Duncan Fitszimmons of VITAMINS design in London, Monster Monster is the "evil arachnoid pedestal your laptop deserves." Pretty cute, but won't this slip of the desk? Nope—though not pictured, each laser-cut stand is detailed with rubber feet to grip both the laptop and the desk.

Available in clear and red.

Good God--I'm guessing the designers of the object below clearly watched Back to the Future as children and remember the gi-normous speaker that blew Michael J. Fox across the room.

This roughly six-foot-tall behemoth is called the Wall of Sound, and has, absurdly, been designed specifically for use with the relatively dimunitive iPod.

"It looks frightening," says the product copy, "and it IS frightening." The $4,500 price tag has not dissuaded consumers; the first production batch of the WOS sold out completely, and they're now taking orders for round two.

via cult of mac

Designer Joongho Choi, who created a design blog stir earlier this month with his counterbalanced lamp, is actually part of South Korean design collective Idealgraphy, whose other members' work is also well worth looking at. Below are just a few projects:

Eunwoo Lee's Magic Hour bookshelf.

Hyeji Kwon's Fly Up table.

Hakgon Joo's Better Wood Shelf.

Hwajin Jung's The Light Container.

Hyunsoo Choi's Space Music Flow cell phone concept with Bluetooth speaker cradle.

The first and last Choi's mentioned in this entry, Joongho and Hyunsoo, also collaborated on the Potplate with integrated trivet.

Idealgraphy is rather unique for an Asian design collective in that they actively promote individuality rather than the group-think more culturally common in the region. Check out the rest of this collective's killer work--which will take up more than a little time--here.

Razy2 is a Gdansk, Poland-based design duo comprised of architect Paulina Krauza and designer Jacek Ryn, both of them still students. And their TAB home/office table is coming apart at the seams: The ash wood top slides open to reveal a number of compartments that can hold cutlery and/or office supplies, making it an office desk for one or a dining table for six.

"We re-thought everything two-wheeled, with simplicity in mind," says Joey Ruiter of jruiter + studio, a Michigan-based design firm. "This is as stripped as you can get."

Ruiter's referring to their as-yet-unnammed inner city bike prototype, conceived of as a Spartan two-wheeler designed specifically for short-range urban travel and manufactured with the absolute bare minimum amount of materials.

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.

The project ended up rethinking what a "frame" meant, getting ride of basic key components, and creating a new type of compact bicycling. [We were] inspired first by the "hobby horse" for it's simplicity and secondly by the cafe racer scene. Each is an exercise in stripping something down to its core.

The final design came down to a frame system and a really difficult rear hub. Everything else is rider preference.

Before all of the bike fanatics get all fired up, we know this bike doesn't solve everyone's personal transportation dreams. Performance-wise, the bike is on the slow side, quirky, and fatiguing over longer distances. Consider it a cafe racer with the performance of a beach cruiser. The positives are easy quick turns, huge power to the rear wheel to go over curbs and other city scape structures, and great start / stopping / sitting situations.

The bike components can vary but overall it would be made up of 29" rims, huge big apple tires, a rear hub (planetary internal freewheeling, unicycle through axle) and a single front disc brake.

We wanted to make sure you didn't miss Alex Creamer's brilliant packaging idea for spaghetti: the pasta sits on top of a 3d model of the Chrysler building, reflecting its form when the box is opened.

We can't wait to see the what other Spaghetti buildings Creamer models—the Great Pyramid of Giza, maybe?

via eat me daily

I found this picture-frame plate and attendant breakfast-slash-landscape-portrait hysterical, the kind of kitschy thing you'd either love your spouse for presenting you with at the table...or divorce them over. Ironically it doesn't contain any cheese (at least physically) and sadly it's of unknown provenance, spotted on Dzine Press' massive "60+ Creative Ideas about Kitchen Decorations," containing tunz-and-tunz of interesting kitchen products, both conceptual and actual, some you've seen before and some you've not.

The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that "over 2 billion computers, televisions, wireless devices, printers, gaming systems, and other devices have been sold since 1980." A fair amount of those are now sitting in landfill, ready to leach their environmentally-poisonous flame retardants, lead, and other chemicals into the ground.

The U.S. Senate is currently fiddling with a bill to deal this ever-growing pile of "e-waste," and it looks as if a large part of the burden to prevent the pile from growing will fall to product designers:

[One of the] research aims of the bill [is] to "reconsider product design and assembly to facilitate and improve refurbishment, reuse, and recycling of electronic devices, including an emphasis on design for recycling." The bill acknowledges that the problem is endemic to current product design standards, and many designers will have to take into account the total life-cycle of their devices to help mitigate the gadget pileup.

The bill is called the Electronic Device Recycling Research and Development Act, or the more manageable S.1397, and it's been posted in its entirety online; click the link above if you want to wade through the legalese, and click the link below if you'd just like to read a summarization.

via ars technica

To quote The Smiths, there is a light that never goes out...well, conceptually, anyway. From Athens-based furniture designer Constantinos Hoursoglou comes the Bye Bye Bulb, a sort of product homage:

The minimal design aims to celebrate this iconic object of our civilization, without distractions, by placing it on a visual 'pedestal'. Using an LED light source the bulb is back-lit, creating the illusion the it emits light. It important to note that the bulb is intact, maintaining it for the ever at its original condition

BBbulb was produced in a limited edition of 130, one for every year of the bulb's existence since its invention in 1880 by Thomas Edison.

The "limited edition luminare" was designed, in tribute, after the EU banned the incandescent light bulb this past September.

Despite receiving harsh reviews upon its release (here and here), Trek's Lime bicycle, with the neat fold-up storage seat, has been awarded the People's Design Award (via online voting) at the 2009 National Design Awards. To refresh your memory, the Lime was designed specifically for non-cyclists:

Introduced as the answer to the millions of American adults who do not ride a bike, the Trek Lime bike was the first to feature Shimano's revolutionary Coasting system. At the center of Lime's design is the reminder that riding a bike should be as enjoyable today as it was when you were a child. With its comfortable, upright riding position, automatic transmission and pedal brakes, Lime is designed to ride the way we did as kids -- spontaneously, socially, and to experience the sheer joy of motion. Lime is the ideal bike for the casual rider who wants a fun, convenient and stylish way to run out for a cup of coffee or a breath of fresh air.

A bite-sized list of what's happenin' now:

the sacramento bee
Little-known HTC ready to bring its brand into the limelight

china daily
12 Time Spaces - A Concept Exhibition on Chinese Living Style

electronista
Apple patenting wireless headset with media player

the wall street journal
Interview with David Chipperfield, "One of the world's most important architects"

the a to z of building
Researcher Creates Architectural Skin That Interact with Weather

laptop mag
Notebook Design 101: Touchpad Do's and Don'ts