Real Good Chair
July 17, 2008 | Categories: Furniture

The other day I was browsing Urban Outfitters new fall collection of stuff when I noticed that they were selling the Real Good Chair by Blu Dot as on online exclusive. I’ve always had a soft spot for this chair, but I’m totally surprised to see it being sold through UO. The Real Good Chair is slightly remarkable and fun because it ships to you flat, and then you bend it into the chair shape you see above. My friend Max thinks it looks really uncomfortable, but I say we all suffer for fashion.

I also decided to check around the web and see who else sold these and how much they were going for. The first thing that comes up is Design Public who’s selling the chair for $129, and they claim a low price guarantee. Except that UO is selling the chair for $100 with a $5 shipping fee, which is a much better deal. The only downside is that the version on UO’s site only comes in Turquoise, while Design Public also carries black, white, and red.

I just hope that Urban Outfitters keeps up with this trend and offers more fun furniture!

Bobby

Time’s Design 100
May 15, 2008 | Categories: Architecture / Art / Clothing / Design / Furniture / Magazine

Time Magazine today released their list of the top 100 “most influential design,” a list that covers all aspects of design, or so they say. Reading through this list I wasn’t impressed at all. The list covers 16 different categories from all reaches of design, but I feel like overall they just wanted to make a giant list to seem “cool”, a word I’m learning to hate. It’s also a list heavy on “green” items which seems like a bunch of greenwashing to me, just trying to get some “cool” points on how in-the-know they are.

In their technology section the feature an electric lawnmower that helps save the environment… except that it’s electric, which means it has to be plugged into your home which still creates pollution. Plus the lawnmower isn’t even well designed, unless you get a boner over standard fare Sears merchandise. To offset this green trend, they feature a 6 foot by 11 foot wide television that is not only completely unnecessary, but I’m sure costs at least $100 a month to power, not to mention pollution factors. Not every category is like this though, some are better than others, but overall it seems like they pulled a bunch of things out of their asses.

The website section definitely caught my eye though, especially because Kitsune Noir was somehow not included! (C’mon, that was a joke, I had to…) But seriously, congrats to Grace over at Design*Sponge and Marcus over at Dezeen, they both totally deserved to be mentioned… but who the hell are these other blogs?! If there’s one thing I know it’s blogs and by god I’ve only heard of or read regularly Better Living Through Design. Looking at the list it seems to me like all they did was look at Design*Sponge’s link section and cut and paste them! And what’s with all the green blogs in this list? Green Home Guide is described as “A room-by-room guide for efficient, easy and stylish ways to live a green lifestyle and have a positive impact on the environment”… I’m sure it’s a very nice site and the people who run it are great, but that’s not what design is about, that is an aspect of design as a whole.

I guess if you care at all you can visit the complete list of “influential design” and see for yourself, but personally I think Time needs to stick to reporting on the news.

Bobby

New Urban Outfitters Pillows
January 22, 2008 | Categories: Design / Furniture

I received the new Urban Outfitters catalog in the mail yesterday and was pretty underwhelmed for the most part. But I did enjoy their new collection of pillows, a couple of them with the great illustrations from Julia Rothman. The pillows with the bird and the Statue of Liberty are called ‘Life in the 21st ______”, except you insert New York and City of Lights into the blank space there. I love how bright and beautiful the collages are on them.

The pillows go for about $25 and you can order them online here.

Surf Office Chair by CB2
January 15, 2008 | Categories: Design / Furniture

A few months ago I was looking around for a new office chair, and had sort of given up hope of finding one. But as I was browsing around on swissmiss earlier, I noticed this really cool desk she had posted. I clicked over to the CB2 site, scrolled down, and noticed an amazing looking chair.

It’s called the Surf Office Chair, and I’m pretty sure this was exactly what I was looking for! It’s only $199, it has a leather seat and chrome legs, it’s adjustable, and looks pretty damn comfortable! I even like the tomato/lobster red color it comes in (it also comes in white, as well). I hope they carry this chair for a while, because I still need to pay off X-Mas presents!

Bobby