William Sonoma offers this set of animal cookie cutters to make your own detailed assortment of homemade zoo cookies. The spring-loaded handle presses details into the cookie to get your kids’ imaginations roaring. And not only does the site offer this cool kitchen gadget, it also has a video tutorial of how to make the homemade cookies, with recipe and all!
There is something about knowing about the designer, as well as the design, that has always intrigued me. By learning more about the designer’s thought process, I can better understand their failures and successes to help me when I design. Ikea offers an animated feature to showcase a few of their designers and how they arrived at the design you see in stores. It is so cool to see the problems and solutions that are commonplace for both aspiring inventors and professional designers who bring products to market. Take a minute to view some of these design narratives, and try to picture yourself taking on these very same design challenges.
This holiday season has found many people re-gifting by means of a white elephant gift exchange. Curious as to where this term derived from, I came upon this article that explains the curse that is the white elephant. As it turns out, those useless, kitsch, or obsolete items you own may be the ideal gifts worth wrapping up for that company or family white elephant gift exchange.
I just realized the smart thing to do when asking Santa for pricey items. Just ask for the accessory first, then when he chuckles and asks “What is that for?”, it leads to great conversation about that ‘cannot live without’ item. Like this Flip case that is pretty much useless without the camera. (PLEASE don’t leave me hanging on Christmas morning Santa, have an elf make me a Flip camera too!)
Innovative design goes further than just product design. I once again found myself searching the Etsy website using their color match feature. This interactive, color-coded search feature allows shoppers to pick-a polka-dot color blob that matches that missing color in their life. Scroll over the endless field of hues, and then click your chosen color to access a wealth of products available that match that color. Now that is great design.
