Quirky is awesome!

I recently discovered Quirky, this which is basically crowsourcing for your product ideas. You submit an idea (which will cost you $99, so it keeps out the riff-raff), and every week through voting etc. they choose a winner to make its way into production. Not only is this awesome because I get lots of ideas for things to make, it’s also great because I get the opportunity to express my opinion about things that are wrong with products before they even make it to market.

Each product gathers “influencers” through its dev cycle, and these influencers are compensated based on their contributions. Funny enough, I found the site and was thinking of submitting that tea cup concept I came up with ages ago. Only to discover moments after I signed up, that the same idea was just enterting the production phase. Not that I’m annoyed, whatever, it was a marginally good idea. I needed a new idea to make feel better about losing out on that one though, so I came up with one. I’m doing research now, but plan on submitting it shortly (and then I’ll share!).

Par7 Vodka

This isn’t a project of mine, a friend on facebook has been working on some designs for the bottle of Par7 Vodka. While at West5 with one of my favorite people (staring at a wall filled with alcohol bottles) we got to talking about what we’d do for a design for Par7 Vodka, and how we’d make it stand out from the rest.

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A better PB&J

What’s the best part of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? Well it’s certainly not the bread. Even if you’re so indulgent as to go with Wonderbread over the healthier wheat alternative… The bread is still simply a delivery mechanism for the tastiness that is the sweet & squishy innards.

So how do we improve on this my friends? Tortillas. I’ve been eating my PB&J on a rolled up tortilla for years, and let me tell you it’s a massive improvement. Not only is the the ratio between savory goodness and grain much more acceptable, but it’s so much easier to eat. With the PB&J safely confined, you can travel freely without worry of spillage, to the tv, or even in the car. I urge everyone to replace their PB&J sandwiches with the far superior, PB&J burrito.

Something from Nothing

I recently attended a Dorkbot! talk regarding rapid prototyping/3d printing technologies hosted by the UW. It was a pretty great talk on a subject that has been coming up a lot lately. Suffice it to say it left me with a few things to ponder. I love the idea behind this technology, immediate (comparatively) gratification for your designs. On top of that, I feel like it helps reconnect designers with the real world. Too often you’re forced to keep your ideas as electronic representations until the final product comes about.

Here are a few things this technology has had me considering recently.

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