Dedicated to inspiring designers, inventors & the creative spirit in all of us.

At one time or another I’m sure we have all been seated at a table, or next to a table, that has used one of these tricks to accommodate less than favorable seating situations. Now they have been designed as novelty products.

This phonebook booster seat is hilarious, and functional too. I come from a generation where I really had to sit on a phone book or two when I was young.

Reminds me of the old sugar packet trick everyone has used to even the height of the table at a restaurant.

September 22 is Elephant Appreciation Day. In honor of the largest land animal, here is a collection of everything elephant from fine art to origami. Enjoy!

Floor of an elevator made to look like a 1,000-foot drop! I hope no one has passed out in this elevator.

Scale is everything when you are seeing this advertisement from above. From a distance, these people walking over and around this scratching dog look like fleas. 

Everyone dreams about what they would rather be doing; this advertisement shows how extreme that may be for some people.

Clever way to advertise “shark week” on a city bus. I bet it looks way cooler in person!

This vacuum billboard takes a second to get, but it is pretty good.

Nothing says “we sell jumbo muffins” like a car crushing advertisement set-up showing jumbo muffins falling from a billboard.

Awesome billboard idea, but too much white space leaves your logo left unseen.

Driving around the corner and seeing this skyline billboard would set you back. I love how advertisers are creating up exhibit designs to retain the attention of consumers.

Wow, now that is putting trust in the product you are advertising! 3M claims it sandwiched real money into this bus stop advertising campaign.

The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round…

This is a clever way to seek out jobseekers at an ATM. This company has an entire ad campaign with miserable people shown ‘working’ in automated machines, like coffee machines and photo booths, as if they are actually inside.

How refreshing are these images? The sliced fruit design of these Kleenex brand tissue boxes are a step up from the average rectangular design. I haven’t seen them on the shelf at my local Target yet, but I bet they look just as cool in person. The real question is, are they unique enough to have people buying six at a time to make a complete slice?

This image is cool for two reasons. For one, the aesthetics. Vivid oranges and yellows, the whimsical patterns and trance-like spiral on the left. Secondly, it is the path of our robotic friend, the Roomba. Taken over the course of 30 minutes, blogger Signaltheorist used long-exposure photography to capture light and motion to create an art form. Nice work.

Ok, I thought that I had found the ultimate camera a few posts back, but I stand corrected. The Hole-On Ex uses the pinhole camera technique, which takes longer, but adds more character to what you choose to capture. I have taken the time to construct cardboard models and can appreciate the effort in creating this scale model camera. The kit comes complete with instructions, but you have to supply your own 35 mm film. After such a great effort to make digital photography the standard, there is still a desire for doing things the old way, as you can see by this well-designed build-it-yourself camera.

I found this image to be interesting. It is difficult to see what role Photoshop had in the color saturation and juxtaposition. I have seen a lot of design blogs posting  collections of peoples’ things recently, and have noticed a great number of them categorizing by color. Stacks of books, shelves full of knick-knacks, and closets appear to be disregarding the subject of what is being stored, tending only to the color arrangement.

When I first saw this photograph, it was a moment of deep thought.  For a few seconds this image rattled my focused mind and my imagination swelled with questions that my eyes wanted answered. The imagery is very strong.  It looks like the cover of Nevermind, it looks like the split second after a shark bite, or even the ink spray of a squid. Then my mind lapsed into deep thought, again, about explosions in space, vivid colors in darkness, and what it may sound like to see and hear bursts of light in the nothingness of space.  All in all, I hope that you may find some inspiration in viewing this photograph, and perhaps it stirs your imagination into some moment of abstract thought like I encountered.