PROBLEM: WALLETS CAN BE CHEAP AND ANONYMOUS.

For me, wallets have always been about function over form. I have to take my wallet out of its resting place so many separate times in a day, that it’s got to hold everything perfectly and just plain work. Most wallets do this, to a degree—but do they do it for long?

Not really. If you’re the type that can’t buy an expensive wallet because you know you’ll be sitting on it, and moving your rear end in and out of various chairs all day, visiting god knows what sorts of stresses and strains on this little leather thing that contains much of your life—you know what a disintegrating wallet looks like. Leather that no longer seems leather, mysterious pockets that weren’t there a few weeks ago suddenly appearing as the material becomes shredded, torn; you’re likely destined to go through a ton of wallets in your lifetime.

PROBLEM: THEY CAN ALSO BE OVERPRICED AND EXCLUSIVE.

Or are you the cardinal opposite, the wallet connoisseur? Have you always splashed out for a top quality purchase, genuine, beautiful leather, something you can be proud of every time you pull it out of your pocket? If so, you’ve probably paid a damn lot for these things, and either way, used them into oblivion.

PROBLEM: WALLETS AREN’T SO INTERESTING.

While there are a ton of wallets out there, both cheap as all hell and expensive as some other, richer part of hell, most wallets follow the same form. A simple fold, wide enough that each side can hold various debit and credit cards, and the entire span will take your money and papers and put a nice crease right in the middle.

If you’re lucky—or not—your wallet might contain a little pocket for change, which, you will know if you routinely use it, changes shape depending on how many little coins you’re carrying around. Not always fun to have poking into one of your two cheeks.

PROBLEM: THE EUROPEAN-STYLE MEN’S BAG ISN’T REALLY A WALLET, EITHER.

So, is there a solution, a way out of this imaginary problem that I’ve sorta created here? Sure, there are plenty: abandon the wallet and use a sort of bag. If you’re in Europe and need to feel safe-in-numbers when it comes to fashion, you’re in luck, as plenty of people carry these around here, and there are tons of good models to choose from. If you can choose a kind of shoulder/purse/bag/pouch well and choose it with style, you’re set. This opens up a whole new world of accessorizing to you.

But what if you can’t really make that leap? What if you just want to get a damn good looking wallet, one that stands out and is strongly designed, but still functions, looks, and seems like the familiar wallet form you’ve been using your whole life? What’s out there?

PROBLEM: WALLETS DON’T LEND THEMSELVES EASILY TO FRESH, CONTEMPORARY DESIGN.

Not much. There are chain wallets, super-thick wallets, super-thin, minimalist wallets, wallets branded with various comic book characters that just don’t put in the effort, but there aren’t that many interesting wallets around. Sure, you might stumble upon a few fantastic specimens here or there, but most likely they’ll be one-offs, some kind of limited edition from a big designer that is so overpriced it’d be a shame to use it as a regular wallet.

And these are few and far between—you’re far more likely to find a $200 t-shirt done by an expensive designer’s hand, or even a designer canvas tote bag than you are to find a kick-ass wallet.

AND SO, A SOLUTION.

As a fun and exciting answer to all of these problems, I present Poketo. Their slogan: Art for your everyday. That’s exactly it, too: they make wallets that you can use as your everyday wallet, but they’re interesting enough that you can pull them out and simply admire them for their design, too.

SEE, WALLETS CAN BE AS NUMEROUS AND EXCHANGEABLE AS PURSES!

Besides just some great design work, in which Poketo have brought together a whole stable of illustrators and artists to do fantastic limited edition wallets, Poketo have also suggested a kind of revolutionary idea in their ‘surprise packs’. That’s the notion that you can have more than one wallet on the go, that the wallet should be enough of a minimalistic venture that you can switch the entire thing over to another one, just like many females cycle through various purses/handbags and their respective contents.

They do this by not giving you the option of fattening up the wallet too much—its design constricts you into eliminating every kind of card and addition you aren’t going to be using on a daily basis. And the great thing is that 10 of these wallets will only set you back $100. Ten wallets!

AND THERE ARE DOZENS OF NEW MODELS COMING OUT ALL THE TIME.

They’re also constantly producing new wallets from new designers, who are doing these designs freelance. This means the art is both recognizable if you follow illustration in any way, and wildly varied and exciting. Their site is overflowing with great designs.

The construction of the wallet itself is what allows Poketo to do this. It’s not a custom-crafted piece of leather, rather just a nice print, inserted into a piece of plastic, and molded into the form of a foldable wallet. Nothing fancy, no heavy custom printing or stitching jobs here. But it gives the company great creative license in the amount of models they can feature. It’s unlikely you’ll ever see wallets as varied as this, even if they all have the same external shell.

LIMITED EDITIONS DON’T NEED TO SIGNIFY RIDICULOUS PRICES.

Thankfully Poketo isn’t really overcharging for their product, but continues to produce limited editions, which is a concept that I absolutely cannot get enough of: the idea that limited editions don’t need to be expensive. They can be limited, sure, and once they’re off the market you can sell them for whatever the hell you want, but as these wallets keep coming out, they’re gonna keep costing $20 and nothing more.

THUS, POKETO IS GOOD.

And there you have it. Wallets that aren’t your father’s fine-crafted leather, but are instead something closer to a great stream of well-designed t-shirts: you change them up infinitely, they keep coming out, they look great, and they don’t cost that much.

Sure, they aren’t the most well-put-together things in the world, but they signify a big change. Now, pulling out your wallet isn’t just fun because you’re gonna spend some money—you get to stare at it, too.

Back in the 1970s, the French racer Herve Poulain came up with the great idea to have an American artist paint his car. Instead of choosing someone who would do a relatively standard, acceptable, and OK job, he chose Alexander Calder, who created the memorable piece of work you see above. Although Calder died just a year later, he started a movement in art and car design that continues to this day.

While it’s not a grand, sweeping, big-time art trend, it is something that marries the otherwise little connected worlds of professional racing and contemporary art. Although many modern car designers can rightfully be called artists, and many of the designers as far back as the 1950s were creating cars that still look like masterpieces today, it wasn’t until this pairing that we started to see the car-as-canvas.

BMW decided to remain in the spotlight, and comissioned several other prominent artists to do their own cars. Not only are the cars themselves fantastically adapted to this sort of thing (there’s just something about that 1970s BMW racing design that holds a coat of unconvential paint so much better than, say, a Porsche), but the works of art created are quite memorable, too.

Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, and Andy Warhol all contributed work, and at the moment there are only 16 of these BMW art-cars in total. They’ve recently been sent on tour, and after short residences in Korea and Russia, they’re currently in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. They’re staying just until February 24th, after which they’re headed to New York and Mexico.

These cars are normally on display at the BMW museum in Munich, and the coolest thing about them is that most were actually used in races. I would pay to see someone racing an Andy Warhol car, I would, even though the Frank Stella one (above) is actually the most impressive.

This put me in mind of some other recent “art cars” we’ve seen, and we thought it a good idea to round them up here:

The aforementioned Ferrari Testarossa from 1957 isn’t an art car, but it should be. Just look at that detailing: it’s a 1950s (Italian) idea of what the future would look like, except it hasn’t gone out of style in any way.

Some recent new forumla 1 rules mean that the cars have to be completed redesigned, but look, the McLaren team car actually looks pretty awesome! Straight out of the damn future, I say.

Chris Gilmour has done up some very fine cardboard models of the Fiat 500 and the Aston Martin DB5. No, these aren’t just little models, which wouldn’t be much of anything to pay attention to—these are full-sized recreations.

Here’s artist Romero Britto’s take on a recent Audi model. At the time Jalopnik reported on it, it was available for sale in Miami. Definitely inspired by the BMW cars, it doesn’t quite reach their level, but isn’t bad.

This one was pretty famous in the blogosphere last year: a Lamborghini made entirely of steel tubing. It’s amazing, because the photos look exactly like something done up in a 3d program, and then inserted into real-life photos, except the entire thing is real-life.

Any more amazing combinations of art & cars you know of? Let us know!

AIGA (The Professional Association for Design) does a yearly survey called AIGA 365: The Year in Design. They’ve chosen a whole series of top examples for 2008 to put into the archives, all sorted into 10 different categories. From their writeup:

AIGA’s suite of competitions is widely recognized as the most discerning statement on design excellence today, extending a legacy that began 90 years ago. By means of the competitions, AIGA creates a chronicle of outstanding design solutions, each demonstrating the process of designing, the role of the designer and the value of design.

Their 29th Annual Year in Design is online now, and I’ve sifted through the 10 categories and pulled out some of my favorite selections. And so, for your enjoyment:

Brand and Identity Systems Design: Bretenic Limited Stationary System

Here’s a piece of work from a Toronto design shop that uses good copy and comical prose to illustrate why a lawyer and specialist is good to work with. It’s well-presented and direct, and the approach of the piece matches the approach of the client, which is funny and down to earth.

Corporate Communications Design: Take Action Postcards to the Edge

There weren’t a ton of wonderful examples in here, I found, but this set of postcards about dissidents being persecuted in other countries is concise, catchy, and embodies a spirit of design slightly different than much of the NGO “design ghetto” (if such a thing exists, and from my impressions it sort of does).

Editorial Design: New York Times Magazine

These guys don’t quit. I’ve written about their extremely skilled lead designer before, and these two nominations here are making me think about a subscription. Consistently, eye-catching, and beautiful to look at, week in and week out. I missed the recent food issue, which I’m sure was full of various mouth-watering things alongside some fantastic articles.

Experience Design: Detroit Institute of Arts Interactive Installations

Although I can’t vouch for this, not having been to the museum, the idea of watching a period meal being served while you sit at a kind of virtual table, as a way of presenting silverware and other period flatware and furniture and cooking habits, is kind of awesome. Plus it’s easily the best way to answer that eternal question we’ve all grappled with: “how can I make my 18th century flatware collection relevant to contemporary youngsters?” Now you know.

Information Design: The Normandy Campaign

I wish computer technology was at this stage back when I was sent to museums on various school trips, although I remember the series of blinking lights and various switches that moved things were equally as enthralling as this interactive touch-screen map of the Normandy campaign probably is. Everything is fun when you’re a kid. Ah hell, it still is.

Motion Graphics: TV Land Refresh

This category, I’ve got to say, is lacking a touch–the nominations were fine, but not mind-blowing, and from a design standpoint I just don’t think Modest Mouse’s Dashboard video needs to win a prestigious design award. I know it’s motion graphics, but that’s a wide category, considering what I eventually chose at their best selection: this refresh of the TV Land network, which is clean, contemporary, and not annoying. For a retro network that shows nothing but old reruns, it’s great, actually. No old TVs with rabbit ears sticking out of them or bouncy retro graphics–although I’m an unabashed fan of vintage things, showing Brady Bunch reruns doesn’t mean you have to embrace the tv-in-the-60s aesthetic for your entire network.

Packaging Design: Ultrasilencer

Well I wanted Criterion’s Breathless DVD set, but the Ultrasilencer takes it. When the hell are you ever going to get a Vacuum Cleaner with modernist Helvetica styling on all its packaging? This wins my personal award for “making Jordan kind of interested in a product he wouldn’t otherwise give a crap about.” Thanks to this design I seriously started thinking that maybe this product was some kind of revolutionary thing, until I realized the object I was thinking about was a vacuum cleaner.

Promotional Design and Advertising: Planet Propaganda

The posters of Planet Propaganda, collectively, win this one. This is a massive category and it’s kind of ridiculous to choose one, especially since I just complained about ‘honorifics’ in another article, but hey, I’m not actually handing out awards here, just picking my favourites.

Typographic Design: Sculpture Today

This ‘Paper Alphabet for Sculpture Today’ is fantastic. Typography done with paper that looks beautiful. Plus the “C” looks like my cherished Commodore 64 logo.

Book Design: Underachiever’s Manifesto

While there are a ton of quality choices here, the Underachiever’s Manifesto gets my vote. It was a tossup between this and a few others (All the Sad Young Literary Men I really like), but the “mistake is the whole point” simplicity of the cover won me over.

I once had a Peugeot. No, not a car, but a street bike I bought for $80 at a garage sale. It was the best bike I’ve ever owned. A friend of mine had the exact same one, and we used to call them… wait for it… twin cobras. I have no idea why we came up with that name, or what the hell a snake and its brother had to do with an elegant French bike from the 1970s, but it made a fun bike even better.

Now I’m largely exposed to Peugeot through their numerous cars here in Europe, although for months I was confused by the Italian pronunciation, thinking these people were talking about some other, mysterious brand I couldn’t spell, and frankly I’m still not sure exactly how to say the name at all. Most likely my French Canadian education has had me pronouncing the name wrong all along, so what I thought was poo-zho is probably pyoo-zho or per-zho. Sometimes I don’t really know what the hell I’m doing.

Since phonetics prevents me from saying their name right and my driving license is no longer valid here, the only reason I’m writing about Peugeot is because their latest Design Competition caught my eye. From their site:

Create a Concept Car which is designed to evolve within the cities of the future, whilst retaining the key values of the 21st century. The projects should bear Peugeot’s stylistic codes and must contain the following four aspects included in this design competition: environmental awareness, social harmony, interactive mobility and economic efficiency.

They narrowed it down to ten finalists that you can view right here, and just recently chose their winners. In third place was China’s Lou Ke, who designed a sort of scissory-double-motorcycle thing. His wacky writeup:

I don’t think this type belonged “20?” “30?” or “90?”,so i give the name “x0x”,but the car shape is more like “oxo”,so it is. A electric power car.

The car looks like a toy,because the color is no stress just like tomorrow life,naive and freedom.

Then you must drive a car with out learning how to drive it. The “oxo” is one of this type.

Drive the car is easy than in games,with the “PEUGEOT Phone” help,the car can be controled or autorun. The “X” system inside is save the space when the car parking,and through narrow or crowded street. The car wheel allowed the car lateral movement,rotate in-situ,and so on..

With the nimble and smart friend help,you must have a perfect tomorrow.

Second place went to Emre Yazici of Turkey, with a sort of single-passenger two-wheeled car that isn’t a motorcycle and fits right with Minority Report. He says:

Peugeot EGO has been conceived as a lean vehicle in every aspect. It is easy to own, easy to maintain, and easy to operate. And, most importantly, it is easy on the environment. The majority of the vehicles at the rush-hour in a big city, carry a single passenger. EGO is designed for a single passenger [...] Steering is performed by independently changing the rotational speed of the wheels. So, u-turns at the same spot is possible. The agility of EGO has virtually no match. Say good-bye to the clumsy and unsafe steering wheel, and also to the pedals. The driver employs a joy-stick to perform the manoeuvres, and to control the speed simultaneously.

And our winner is Carlos Arturo Torres Tovar of Colombia, with his design called the RD, which is easily the best-realized out of all the entries. I’m not one that’s always too crazy about futuristic, curvaceous, speculative-looking design, but this is real nice. Unfortunately his writeup is entirely in Spanish, but it’s OK, the pics and video are more than sufficient.

You can see all the winners at Peugeot’s (that’s pronounced pee-you-gee-ott, I’ve decided) website, right here.

Miniaturization continues unabated, a ream of consumer products getting smaller and shrinking down to previously unthinkable new sizes. Our latest and slightly kind of amazing new example is the projector, that heavy, fan-blowing noisy thing you see hanging from the ceiling of a University classroom or sitting on the desk in a boardroom. Somehow, now, again, without any damn notice, there’s one that fits in your pocket and hooks up to an ipod. What the hell?

It’s the Optoma Pico, which hooks up to iPods, PSPs, Digital Cameras, and the like. If you’re an ad agency on the go and need to fire up a presentation to a client while you’re sitting in a bar, forget both crowding intimately over the screen of your iPhone. Pull this out, hook it up, and amaze everyone with an image on the wall.

The New York Times’s David Pogue, resident technology-for-the-masses guru, had an exclusive look at this device and wrote up a review of it, back on election day.

it produce[s] an astonishingly bright, clear, vivid video or still image. That’s right — from a projector you’ve pulled from your jeans pocket.

The minimum distance for this projector is eight inches from your “screen”; the maximum is 8.5 feet away, at which point you get a 65-inch image. And it really, really helps if you dim the lights or use a properly reflective movie screen.

Even so, the Pico projector is the first of its kind — other micro-projectors are on the way — and over all, it’s awesome. When it goes on sale in two weeks, it will give parents a completely portable backseat-of-the-minivan movie theater for the kids. It will let photographers display their portfolios with much greater size and impact than they’d get with a scrapbook — right from the digital camera, if need be. It will permit spur-of-the-moment demos or pitches for corporate presenters or independent filmmakers, wherever they happen to be, without having to set anything up or reserve a room.

Whether the consumer market will feel an urgent need for a pocket-sized projector is another thing: it’s easy to fall back on excitement and look past the notion of whether or not such a product is actually useful. But I’m sure it is–the very notion of miniaturizing projectors will eventually lead us to that golden, shining moment in the future, the moment wherein we’ll walk up to a touchscreen, press a button, and a tiny beam of light we can barely see will project some kind of spinning image of our dreams, right in front of us. Why is it that all my expectations of future technological direction can be traced back to 3 or 4 movies?

Getting back to the projector, though: it’s the versatility of it all that’s incredible. I think this is a ridiculous moment, overall, for the amount of new technology that is suddenly being crammed down into small spaces. We’ve got a full-fledged HDTV camera with interchangeable, pro-level lenses in the new Canon EOS Mark II 5D, the juggernaut that is the iPhone, a netbook revolution, and 3d Printers that don’t take up a room but rather just some space on your desk. The amount of time between these innovations keeps shrinking exponentially. What seems to be different this time is we’re not looking at leaps and bounds in say, processing speed, but in the physical nature of things: product size, digital imaging, incredibly small but still-usable products.

When the launch of the new Macbooks gets a video detailing the exact industrial design process as a crucial launch component, there’s some kind of new object-design era at hand, no? It’s a fun time to be buying stuff.

The 151-year old American magazine The Atlantic just had a redesign. Since that very magazine employs quite a few political bloggers that I read every day, and since their posts tend to be peppered with links to new Atlantic ad campaigns and various articles, including some about the redesign, I couldn’t escape it.

I love seeing how magazines are put together. We get the issue and it seems as though it’s always existed, that the typesetting and layout has never really changed, just because of the combined weight of all the issues before it. So when a magazine (even one I don’t read on paper like The Atlantic) changes its design and shows us exactly how it was done, I’m fascinated.

Instead of just a simple layout refresh, the magazine went all out and hired Pentagram for the design and Havas (well, a subsidiary of international agency Havas) for some eye-catching promotional work.

What I love about seeing this process is that we get some rejected design ideas. While I initially thought the new cover was a bit too busy (it looks like a wordle diagram), future issues will feature photography, and the idea of the first one was to push the flow of ideas that emenate from the magazine’s writers. Look at the rejected idea on the left: although I like the design, I think it’s too backward looking and sits in the realm of “we are a prestigious magazine”, which is a design I believe the Atlantic’s editors were trying to escape from. The New Yorker’s already got that aesthetic side of the market sewn up. Plus the design on the right seems a touch too contemporary–there’s no acknowledgement whatsoever of the “timelessness” of the Atlantic Brand. Here’s lead graphic designer Michael Bierut:

The Atlantic, we discovered, demands a careful balance between intellectual engagement and entertainment. In a magazine of ideas, writers depend on words to build their arguments, but we didn’t want The Atlantic’s pages to look like homework. Nor did we want to diminish the gravitas that its subjects demand by larding the book with graphic tricks that could be rightly dismissed as eye candy.

One of the main examples is this site here, called Think Again, which is (sort of) also called The Atlantic Project. It contains a series of great photography–neon signs that ask specific questions, which then open up to show a video, a blog post full of comments, and of course, a relevant Atlantic article that generated the idea.

Some innovative ideas were brought to the marketing, as well: The Atlantic is advertising on an entirely new surface: muffin tops. They’re also planning restaurant menus and drugstore shampoo shelves. The point is to reach people where they “eat, buy takeout food, and shop,” which is “where people’s brains are most at rest.” The idea is to create a jolt: small and subtle advertising about “big ideas” where you’d least expect it.

I’m one of those relatively new wine drinkers that knows next-to-nothing about actual wine, but just enough to pretend that I know what I’m doing when selecting one. If I’m with a group of people who don’t usually buy wine, they defer to me. This is about as good an idea as closing one’s eyes and selecting a wine at random, but hey, I’ll take the extra responsibility.

This is mainly because it lets me do that certain type of wine-browsing–you know the one–where you walk along the racks, picking up certain bottles, turning them over, and muttering comments to yourself that you hope your friends take for informed musings on a particular vintage. If they only knew I was just saying “this one is a red one…” or “this one is from France…”

Despite my solid sommelier credentials, I’m not above occasionally choosing wine based on its packaging. I once bought a bottle of Ontario wine with a twist-off top because it had a bunch of well-designed raccoons on the bottle. It wasn’t that good (at least… I don’t think it was that great), but what can you do when faced with an awesome bottle?

That’s the question I might have to ask myself when I finally happen upon these products in-store, three examples of great design applied to the wine bottle. Our first example is a Shiraz called Boarding Pass, and comes from Australia’s R Wines. It’s a top example of creative packaging design as applied to a pretty constrained medium–if you want to be taken seriously as a wine producer, wild innovations in bottle design and shape usually mean you’ll get looked over by serious buyers. This is a perfect compromise: the design is fresh and original, and the playful luggage tag around the neck is a great touch. I’d go out of my way to buy this just so I could take it somewhere.

The second bottle to catch my eye comes from Spain–it’s the Baud-designed Lazarus Wine, with its packaging done entirely in Braille. Another great piece of work that would have my cash if I walked by it on a rack, no questions asked. Again, it’s tricky with wine, as most innovative design skirts the original/gaudy line, and subtlety is crucial in putting out a bottle that’ll catch the eye without drawing a follow-up groan.

My last candidate isn’t a bottle design at all, but rather these custom wine tags from popptags. They’re funny, honest, and letterpressed on recycled paper. There are tons of well-written, witty cards out there now, but these are both seriously funny and beautiful to look at. I’d go nuts if I got a nice bottle of wine with a tag on it that said “Nothing Says Thank You Like a Bottle of Wine I Know Nothing About.” Plus “The Wine Store Guy Said This Was Good” is a printed version of the exact line I spoke when recently giving someone a bottle. I think my friends and family know what they’re getting this year–yes indeed, a bunch of hilarious tags attached to thick $5.00 bottles full of red liquid.

Big news for packaging design enthusiasts and all people (well, everyone who has ever bought a product in the last 10 to 15 years), ubiquitous online retailer Amazon.com has launched the Frustration-Free Packaging service.

I was trying to understand the reasons for the lack of interesting packaging among most major manufacturers (again, there is plenty of innovative packaging out there, and www.thedieline.com will prove that to you in three seconds), and said the following: “It’s not easy to spend money on a beautifully done piece of clear plastic today, when your customers are just going to cut into the thing with a pair of scissors anyway.” I was referring to those endless little packages with the clear plastic and wire ties. The ones you literally have to attack with a kitchen utensil, the ones that make every consumer long for simple boxes that open when you try and open them.

Every one’s worst experience is probably trying to get one of those famous clear-plastic-clamshells open without any strong scissors nearby, or maybe using a butter-knife because that was the only thing you had around (or a set of keys). A nightmare at best, a grievous hand injury at worst.

So Frustration-Free Packaging is a welcome, welcome relief. The two best reasons for why this is good: the packaging is recyclable, and it can be shipped in its own box. There’s a certain modern ridiculousness to re-packaging something that is already packaged just to send it in the mail, especially when these products are simply not designed to sit on a shelf (speaking of which, if you want a digital shelf of amazon stuff, try this site).

So that’s the environmental angle. Then there’s the sheer frustration angle, which Amazon calls “Wrap Rage”. They’ve put up a gallery of images featuring disgusting cuts to people’s fingers from serrated plastic edges, useless packaging of posters in large boxes, and frustrating wire ties making small babies cry.

Since this is Amazon, the internet’s biggest online retailer, they’re going big with the whole project, envisioning this as a multi-year endeavour that will eventually encompass their entire line of products. And they aren’t just receiving the products in their original boxes, and then trashing them and repackaging. They’re working with the manufacturers to get these things pre-packaged, straight from the factory.

There’s something appealing about this: imagine every manufacturer that sells anything on Amazon eventually packaging all its stuff in plain, recyclable cardboard boxes. A store like Toys R Us might suddenly change, and the idea of selling the products through endless glossy packaging will give way to a kind of playroom, where one or two instances of the toy or product will lead us to a counter and an easy, non-descript box containing the product. It already works this way at IKEA, for the most part–why not elsewhere? This could be the start of something big…

Wires are messy and ugly. When it’s time to charge something you own, and that time is every 2 or 3 days, you have to find an outlet, find the AC adapter, and then place that expensive item on some (precarious) surface for several hours.

During that time, many things can and often will happen: a beloved family member may stupidly trip over the wire, ruining the gadget, the adapter, or the wall outlet. If the device in question is a phone, its vibrating ringer might go off, whereupon it will do a small dance as it tries to heave itself off whatever ledge you’ve left it on, in hopes of cracking or breaking some part of its expensive display. Or someone might just sit on it. I charge things and leave them on chairs far too often.

None of this is very elegant or consistent or enjoyable, you can never find the right adapter when you need it, and the wires collect dust and hair if you leave them in one place for too long, or are lazy about cleaning.

This litany of factors has contributed to a convenient and somewhat obligatory new invention–the charging station. Several of these products are either on the market right now, in various stages of prototyping, or have been done by resourceful DIYers. Let’s take a look at ten fine contenders.

The Chargepod Base Unit

This isn’t really a charging station at all, but rather a device meant to eliminate all your AC adapters. How’s that for organization? You can just box up all those stupid wires and shove them in the garage, because you’ve got this magic miracle of electricity doing everything for you. Their slogan is “one charger. one outlet. infinite possibilities.” Yeah sure it’s a little grandiose, but hey, this thing might just live up to its life-changing slogan’s promise.

From their site: “Chargepod is a 6-way charging device that allows you to charge multiple cell phones, PDAs, headsets, and most other mobile electronics with a single power cord. Just pick out the manufacturer-specific adapters for your devices and throw away the dozens of power cords and wall warts that are cluttering your office and home. Chargepod uses voltage regulator technology and interchangeable power adapters to safely charge all of your mobile devices regardless of manufacturer or model.”

Ryan’s $25 DIY Charging Station in an Old Chest

This one (he did two, actually) is seriously perfect. This should be a product. Our man Ryan knows all about the aesthetic torture of ugly cables and various charging devices lying around. Here he takes his fondnessfor organization and sticks it in a vintage case. From his quality writeup: “I wanted a solution that would mesh well with my living room while keeping the functionality of the other stations. Something that was cheap but didn’t look it. Something that was easy to use and eventually modify down the inevitable upgrade road.”

KangaroomStorage Bamboo 3-Pod

This one is basically just a box that conceals a power bar/power strip, but it’s elegant, and it holds your iPhone, iPod, camera, or regular phone pretty well. From their site: “It has three built-in, roomy slots to hold your cell phone, PDA, mp3 player or camera. The sliding front door allows you to conceal a 10″ power strip (not included) and all the devices’ charging cords in one area. The charging station looks great on any desk or you can also mount it on the wall (dry wall screws included).”

The Powerwise, by Asa Elmstam and Johanna Strand

Here’s an elegant, minimal solution from Sweden, which also functions as an OK bench. Doesn’t seem to be on the market–just a design, for now. From the site: “The charge station Powerwise lowers energy consumption, reduces standby times and diminishes the risk of fires. It also keeps all your chargers in one place and frees your walls and floors from untidy and unsightly tangled cords and plastic gadgets. Collaboration with Åsa Elmstam, 2008″

The Folio Charging Station

Just for your mobile phone, but great. Minimal and useful. I’m sure IKEA is going to start selling something like this soon. I hope so, since this item no longer seems available from the Chiasso website I originally found it on.

Their writeup: “Here’s an innovative and attractive way to keep your mobile phone charged and ready for action. This modern design features a single piece of stainless steel that curves into a sleek cradle. It has a large hole at the top. Simply plug your mobile’s charger into the wall outlet, through the rubber-lined hole and wrap the cord around the attached pegs, on the bottom of the cradle. Keep the charger plugged in to hold the station in place and provide a home for your phone. Works with horizontal and vertical outlets and just about any mobile phone and charger. Stainless steel with rubber. Please note, rubber ring around opening should not be removed for your protection.”

Lessev Mobile Station

This one is extremely simple, but works perfectly. Stick a power bar (not sure if it’s included) and your various adapters inside, and whatever you’re charging sits on top. From the manufacturer: “This discreet yet stylish container hides all your unsightly chargers and cords, simplifying your space—and your life. With all of your electronic devices stored in one place you’ll never have to panic about finding them again, or about untangling a web of nasty cords.”

Instructables DIY: drocko’s Night Stand Charging Station Lamp

That name would probably have to change if this ever gets launched as a product, but it’s nice nonetheless, although it doesn’t have any sort of fancy storage for the items you’re charging. But whatever. Drocko says: “I had a beat up night stand that I wasn’t using. It would just sit there and collect dust. With a little bit of work and some new paint I turned it into a night stand that is also a lamp and a charging station for my portable devices!”

Another DIY project: Flickr User Strabes Hacks His Nightstand

Pretty straight forward, this one. “I decided to use a nightstand I had in my house for a lifehacker-style landing strip / charging station. The results are great.”

The Pottery Barn’s Bedford Smart Recharge Station

This one’s a little more country kitchen, but hey, everyone has things that need charging, even people with fancy Pottery Barn kitchens where this might fit in. From the website: “Enhance your home with the modern ease of technology without sacrificing the tradition of comfort and style. Each piece in our Bedford Smart Collection has a dual purpose – Smart Technology seamlessly connects you to high-tech accessories by keeping electronics and cords discreet while also organizing and holding household items.”

Instructables DIY again: PROD’s Ikea Power Charging Box

Not the most beautiful thing in the world, but it costs only 11 euro and doesn’t take very long to do, provided you’re comfortable with some basic wiring. Plus he’s got a fundamental energy-saving difference: “One major difference I wanted for my charging station: the ability to turn off each power supply individually instead of having all on while charging a single device.”

Did we miss any notable ones? Don’t care about charging stations and would rather risk the fire hazard and live with 15 adapters jutting out of a power bar at every which angle? Let us know in the comments!

The iPhone has opened everyone’s eyes to the potential of touch-based development, and although it still seems to be generally used by News Anchors or in expensive store kiosks, Microsoft’s Surface is pushing things forward too. There’s a ton of smaller-scaled development going on, too, and one example that recently popped up on the invaluable Make Magazine’s blog really caught my notice.

It all started after the designer, Alpay Kasal of Interference Incorporated, saw some glass mirrors with LCD panels built into them. According to him: “They’re meant to be the bathroom of the future, complete with news and weather to accompany your toothpaste in the morning. Sounds nifty, but it looked completely un-fun. It lacked a human touch.” So he got to work.

The amazing thing about the speed of all this development is that now, leaps like this take mere weeks and months. We’ve got LCDs embedded into mirrors? Ah, what the hell, let’s make them full touch-screens! That’s exactly what happened, and this is just a few guys messing around. I know it’s probably time to stop being so amazed by things that existed entirely in the world of films for years (touch-screens and immersive computing), but I’m still not used to it yet, and these examples just keep on coming.

Kasal captures an interesting idea here: “interacting with buttons and animation layered on your reflection and the world behind you is unlike any other touchscreen experience. This unexpectedness, to me, is precisely the allure of HCI and all things touch-capable.” I think the reason it makes it unlike any other experience is because a mirror is so permanent and universal, so old, while something like the surface of the iPhone is a wild reimagination of the telephone keypad. That’s old too, but nothing like a reflection.

We all know what a mirror is, babies get confused by them, we give them to our pet birds to play with, they’ve sort of been around as long as there’s been water on the planet. So when we walk up to a mirror and can suddenly make a bunch of starbursts and text appear on it without disturbing the kind of reflection we’re used to, it feels like a massive jump forward.

To me it’s one magic step towards those Heads-Up-Displays we’re all waiting for (well, I’m sort of waiting for one), that pair of sunglasses that displays news headlines as though they’re floating up out of that tree we’re glancing at, and does it with an effortlessness that feels like, well, a movie. On a side point, I’ve got to find a new point of comparison besides sci-fi and movies, but I doubt there is one. I keep wanting to make a reference to Back to the Future 2 here.

Check out the videos (Hi-Def on Vimeo, HQ on Youtube), plus some of their other projects.

Watch in HD on Vimeo: http://www.vimeo.com/1867956
Watch in HQ on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAI9mF_cBu0