Strawberry milkshakes and juice boxes shaped like fruit: Two things that make us grateful for April heat waves.

Food & Wine's own Dana Cowin alerted us to this luscious milkshake on the Saveur Web site, accompanied by a recipe that calls for an ingenious combination of strawberry ice cream, strawberry sorbet and strawberry jam.

The juice boxes, meanwhile, are the brilliant invention of Naoto Fukasawa, a Japanese industrial designer who designed the boxes to mimic the look and texture of the fruit they contain: pictured here are banana and strawberry, along with soy, which rather uncannily mimics a block of tofu. We can't help but feel that these boxes blow the Capri Suns of our elementary school days out of the water, or at least the sandbox.

[Saveur via Dana Cowin]
[Via TokyoMango]

Your favorite beer may have just gotten a makeover. To those wandering the suds store in vain searching for those classic pyramid-sporting, Tintin-esque brews, listen up: Pyramid Hefeweizen will henceforth be known as Haywire Hefeweizen (above left), and Pyramid Apricot Ale is now Audacious Apricot Ale. Pyramid Breweries, America's 11th largest brewing company and fifth largest craft brewer, just announced this "revitalized brand positioning," and we're pretty surprised by the assertive redesign.

We're not alone. "Do they make beer or energy drinks?" quipped one BeerAdvocate user. Others, however, are more blasé: At Charlotte, N.C.'s Flying Saucer Draught Emporium, which stocks over 200 beers, general manager Daniel Parks remarked, "I don't think it will change [sales] one bit."

Typically reserved brewers have been shaking it up a bit of late: Sierra Nevada named a new year-round brew Torpedo IPA, a step up from their unadorned line of Pale Ale, Porter, Stout and Wheat. In Pyramid's case, this may be due to a recent buyout by flamboyantly designed Magic Hat's parent company, Independent Brewers United. (Pyramid did not return several requests for comment). To us, Haywire and Audacious sound like sheer marketing, uh, audacity.

Will you miss the Pyramids of the past the way we will?

There's design creativity that makes sense and needs to be mass marketed, designs that are almost there but need some tweaking, and then designs that are just plain silly.

MocoLocco has shared about the above design, Min Hoo Park's Unified Dining Table from IMM Cologne 2009. As you can see, the plates, glasses, and even vase and candleholder are a part of the lacquered table. You dine by candlelight, apparently drinking your wine and other beverages through straws, and then flip it over for a regular table top when you're done.

As it is there, it's quite silly, but maybe this designer is onto something. Get a click-in cup, so you can drink, and turn the inside into a dishwasher! Eat at your placesetting, flip it over to enjoy your table, and when it's time to eat again, your place setting is all clean.

Of course, you can't have a bunch of guests over unless you get them your own tables, but at least some loners could revel in the design.

[via Serious Eats]

We've heard a lot about reusable grocery bags this year. Not only did Whole Foods stop supplying plastic grocery bags on Earth Day this year, but the city of San Francisco banned them as well.

There is certainly no shortage of reusable shopping bags out there, but Whole Foods is rolling out one with some celebrity power behind it. The organic grocery store chain has teamed up with Sheryl Crow, who designed the new bag. The bag features the design of a tree with some of Sheryl's words on it and is made from 80% post consumer product.

I think I'll check it out next time I'm in Whole Foods. What do you think?

[via Just Food]

I came across this cool set of chopping boards over at InventorSpot recently and thought they were worth sharing.

The set of cutting boards is designed to like like tabs in a file folder, and they're color coded to indicate what should be cut on each: red for meat, white for poultry and pork, blue for fish, and green for vegetables and fruits. They are also a good size at 8" by 12". I also love that the chopping boards are in a container, so they look neat and tidy on your counter.

You can find the Index Chopping Boards at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) online store. Be aware, though, that you're paying for design. At $85 for the set, this is some pricey kitchen ware. If you have the money to spend, this could be a nice addition to you kitchen. For me, though, I'll just stick with my inexpensive, yet reliable, cutting boards from Target. What's your take on the Index Cutting Boards?

There's a new magazine out of France, and it's kinda cool in that weird, hipster-y PoMo sort of way. It's called Yummy, and its calling itself a "JunkFoodDesignMagazine" (because spaces between words are so passé).

The magazine - and web site - are mostly en Français, but obviously, art transcends language, and all that jazz, so your lack of French-speaking skills will not hinder your appreciation - or revulsion - from the site.

The featured art runs the gambit from Whodonut?, Virginia Barre's slightly disturbing illustrations of people living in a fast food nation, to Show Her, which seems to be a big excuse for the artist to show photos of a half-naked woman in a rainstorm, occasionally holding a soda bottle (hence, the food connection, I suppose).

Go check it out - you might just be inspired to make some food art of your own. Or just be really grossed out.

Designboom, a mod blog devoted to the latest and greatest in product design, recently came out with the winners of its 2006 Dining in 2015 contest. The challenge was exactly as it sounds: to design a food-related product that would be useful in 2015 at work, in travel, or at home.

Chefs and designers from Italy and Japan judged the entires and came up with the top three and an honorable mention.

Let's start from the bottom and work up. The honorable mention [ed. note: shown in photo] was an eco-friendly solution to dinner prep: silicone and nylon triangle-shaped buckets that allow the cook to boil three different foods all in one pot, thereby saving energy, time, and water. I totally expect it to be selling out on QVC in no time.

Third place? A creative ceramic salt and pepper shaker that forces you to physically break open the canister to access the spices inside. The goal of the project? There isn't any, really, but we bet it's really, really fun to break open. Save it for a day when you're really pissed off at someone, and then smash away. (But don't get carried away - - then you'll just have a mess of salt, pepper, and white ceramic shards to clean up).

Have you ever had to quickly run to your computer to use google or had to search through the indices of a few cookbooks to look for equivalent measure conversions? If so, you'll probably like this idea from a practical standpoint, and if not, you might like it from an artistic one. This Equivalent Measure wall transfer is easily applied to a kitchen wall or cabinet by rubbing the design with the included burnishing tool. Once on, it is permanent and can easily be washed without rubbing off, although it won't damage the wall in any way. It lists common equivalencies that most cooks will need to reference from time to time and has a graphic of lightly colored measuring spoons in the background, which gives it a slightly "country" feel and prevents it from looking like you simply decided to write on your wall. It measures 14" x 19" and comes in light or dark brown.

If you have neat writing or are reasonably artistic, you might want to consider skipping the $70 expense and trying to do it yourself.

When Allrecipes redid their layout back in October, the design was met with less than positive reviews from users, who complained about the readability of the text, the number of advertisements and the difficulty of actually locating the main recipe on the page. Epicurious, one of the other leading online recipe sites, is now testing out a new look for their recipe pages. Fortunately, they don't seem to be going to extremes with their makeover.

The old view had a banner ad at the top of the recipe and put the user ratings, menu suggestions and related links down the left-hand side of the page. The new layout eliminates the top banner ad and moves the user reviews onto the right-hand column. The ads that used to appear in the sidebar have been eliminated as well and that space is now occupied with links to reference guides and the Epicurious recipe feed link. Along the top of the recipe, there are several tabs that make it easy to switch between the photo, reviews and the recipe itself without relying on the browser's back button.

Overall? The changes look good and it probably won't be long before Epicurious switches over to the new layout completely.

[thanks, alanna!]

Pepsi is reworking their image and giving the look of their brand a total overhaul. The plan features a "360-degree marketing campaign", but the first thing that most consumers will notice is that their cans will look very different than before. Starting next month, the company will begin using more dramatic designs on their cans, bottles and branded cups and will be rotating the designs every few weeks to "reflect themes close to the hearts of teens and young adults." The theory is that younger consumers will be more interested in something more visually stimulating than their current design and that if there is a sports or music-themed can, a music fan might be more likely to purchase it. The logo itself will not change, but since Pepsi has only changed their can design 10 times in the 109 year history of the company, this new plan is quite a departure from tradition.

Also in pursuit of the drinking loyalties of the "millennial generation," the company will be running more contests, games and sweepstakes and will be sinking more money into merchandising (did you know that you can buy a Pepsi dress?) and advertising. Different contests and prize-winning opportunities will be associated with the different Pepsi products, giving consumers "different experience each time they buy a Pepsi" and "a passport to the things they enjoy most." Oh, and they'll be getting Pepsi, too.

Is you dream refrigerator a giant Subzero or a colorful, retro Big Chill? Designers are already thinking outside of the box when it comes to restyling refrigerators and, if they get their way, we might be looking at a totally different appliance in the future. This is the Tree House Fridge, a design concept from the team of Chuan Shi, Wenying Lu, Chuan Shi & Yu Li at Yanko Design. Its unique layout presents an interesting possibility of what fridges could be like in the not-too-distant future. Each of the branches will be specifically designed to store a certain type of food - cheese, produce, etc - and will have a slide-out compartment in the trunk for larger things and drinks. To take advantage of the tree shape, the branches will have holders on the doors where fruit can be stored and "picked" at will.

A tree, of course, seems a bit extreme, but it is not so far-fetched to imagine separated, specialized compartments that will keep food fresher than the salad drawers that many refrigerators are equipped with now.

One of the reasons that Archie Comics have been popular for more that half a century is that the characters had a simple, recognizable look that readers - past and present - know and love. It was created by Dan DeCarlo, known for his pin-up drawings as well as for his cartooning, in the 1950s. Unfortunately, their poorly-drawn new look could very well kill the long running series. Whether you read the comic now or read it at some time in the past, it is clearly the end of an era and worth a moment of silence.

To get your fix of the pinup look, you'll have to look elsewhere - like at chocolate bars. MarieBelle has an entire line of pin-up girl chocolate bars. There are 12 designs to choose from and each is available in milk (35% cacao) or dark (60% cacao) chocolate. The smooth chocolate is stamped with the MarieBelle logo underneath the wrapper.

Update: Apparently, the characters (via Betty's "blog") don't like the makeover either. Hopefully they'll stick with the old designs.

OXO is well-known in the US for their sleek designs and both the functionality and reliability of their products, but when they decided to go global with their much-loved kitchen products, the company discovered that what one market is looking for, isn't exactly right for another. And that people don't look at kitchen gadgets the same way in Japan as they do in the US.

In Japan, the tools were less-than-popular, to put it mildly. The large and user-friendly sizes of the tools, which are widely considered to be easier than their smaller counterparts with the company's target demographic - baby boomers - in the US, were too unwieldy for Japanese women who held their cooking spatulas "like a pen." A few design tweaks (and the opening of a Tokyo office) later, the company had Japan-only spatulas and a salad spinner that was 35% smaller than the original, which appealed to space-conscious consumers. They have commissioned Japanese designers to come up with new Japanese-friendly designs from graters, storage boxes and kettles to appeal directly to the Japanese aesthetic and functionality. For example, the graters specifically work best with daikons, rather than cheeses, which are used with most US graters.

The company hopes to introduce some of their Japanese designs here in the US next year.

While I enjoy the flavor of a good frosting, I find that it can often overwhelm a cupcake, especially with cupcake bakeries pushing the trend towards really piling it on. Once there is more frosting than cake, it's time to cut back. As a result, I often opt for glazing cupcakes with chocolate or a powdered sugar glaze to make things simpler and maintain a good cake-to-frosting ratio. Another option is to just use a simple dusting of powdered sugar. Sprinkles don't really adhere to this type of cupcake topping, but by using a stencil, cut out of a stiff piece of cardstock or other thick paper, you can easily dress them up.

For this design, I used a simple line design and dusted the cupcakes with a mixture of cocoa powder and cinnamon, but anything that will create a color contrast will work well. If you are going to use a sticker buttercream-type frosting, you can use colored sugars with the stencil to make designs that way, but it's best to keep the frosting level and not pile it on to ensure a clear pattern.

Kitchen trends come and go, but there are certain aspects of both design and technology that seem like they're here to stay. One trend is for professional-quality appliances, particularly stoves and ovens, as many home cooks want to be able to prepare four star cuisine in their own kitchens, not just approximations of it. In a similar vein, kitchen islands are still popular, as they create a useful workspace for more complex cooking. In other words, we're seeing a preference to technique over technology.

But technology is really growing quickly and for those who prefer streamlined stovetops to gas or electric pro stoves with huge flames, induction heating is supposed to be making a splash in the market. At Yanko Design, designer Terence Woon conceived this wall unit as a way to further streamline the kitchen, incorporating a variety of appliances into one small space. His vision includes (from left to right) a juicer, blender, toaster, multimedia interface, scale and water dispenser. Personally, I think I might still prefer individual appliances, but we can't say with certainty what we'll end up with.

What would you like to see in the kitchens of the (near or distant) future?