"designer" news and stories

Give a bunch of super-crafty DIY types the theme of "indulgence," allow time for their creativity to fester, and what do you get?

You get Sugarcraft, more than a month of sugar chandeliers, felted ice cream cones, watermelon earrings, and any other food-cum-craft project that you could dream up. The designers range from Heidi Kenney of My Paper Crane fame, who crochets food items complete with googly eyes and facial expressions, to the UK's Alison Tennant, who makes confections out of polymer clay - at a 1:12 scale.

Any way you slice it, these artists have some great ideas about indulgence and how it is represented in various mediums (sand art, sugar, paint, needlepoint...the list goes on and on). Go ahead: indulge yourself in a few photos from this year's Sugarcraft. And if you want to see them in person, get over to Chicago - it's going on through August 9.

What do you get when you combine hundreds of engineers, a charitable mindset and about a zillion aluminum cans?

You get Canstruction. Each year, major cities across the U.S. raise awareness about hunger by hosting building competitions, which are then deconstructed and distributed to local food pantries and day care and senior centers.

Since 1992, Canstruction has donated ten million pounds of canned food to organizations, and one hundred more competitions are scheduled for this year.

The designs range from an octopus to bowling pins to a lotus blossom, each carefully designed and meticulously constructed. And if you think the hot dog and condiments are cool, check out the gallery for more food-inspired designs.

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).

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Some of you might recall a post a few months back about the worst foods to eat over your keyboard. Well, designer Duck Young Kong has come up with something akin to a T.V. tray that might protect your keyboard from your lunch. As you can see, it can hold your food and still leave room for you to type. Is this convenient? Probably. Is it a surefire way to get your greasy, grilled-cheese-hands all over your keyboard? You bet. It still looks like a recipe for disaster to me.

[Via TechEBlog]

Have you ever wanted to make sure people know that you love food? You can add a foodie accent to your home decor with these pasta-shaped cushions by designer Keith Mascheroni.

Predictably, the collection is called "Pasta." It features cushions and mats that are made of yellow polyurethane and are shaped into lasagna sheets, raviolis, penne, linguini and fusilli. They can be used both indoors and out - making the possibility of eating pasta salad at a picnic while sitting on the same shapes a strange, but real, possibility.

Unlike regular edible pasta, these cushions aren't cheap and range in price from $125-300 from Helleronline.com.

[Image from designboom.com]