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.

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…

Dutch designer Marcia Nolte has created a somewhat horrifying series of photographs, called Corpus 2.0, in which the human body is artifically modified to accommodate various products, including headphones and high heels, as shown above. The underlying suggestion behind the exhibition has something to do with evolution, but the striking thing to my eyes was the clean, minimal photography, which reinforced the idea that all these “evolutions” would only be possible through surgery.

There are several crazy processes by which the human body is physically modified or stretched to fit a certain purpose. There’s the horrifying procedure known as Foot Binding, the collarbone-distorting ‘neck elongation‘, and the famous lip plate. All these various unpleasantries make me cringe like hell.

Above we see the “cellphone shoulder” and “texting hand” examples. The insane thing is that, out of all those extreme modifications linked to above, Nolte’s commercial-products exhibition actually hits closer to my own experience. How? Well, my little toes seem to be moving slightly inwards after two years of me pushing my wide feet into long, thin Converse All-Stars for the past few years. Maybe I just can’t remember what my toes looked like before, but now something seems, well, off. If only I had some before and after photos… 

So, I endure this apparent body transformation for the sake of a brand, a product, an image I’m trying to cultivate. It’s not severe and it’s not anywhere near as ugly as the extreme modifications in Nolte’s photos, but it’s a physical change nonetheless, and one done at the expense of a brand. Credit goes to this designer for making me think more about it; the above photo shows a modified “cigarette mouth” and a nose with a built-in ridge for glasses.

Hold up, though: this concept explores some of the same ground, and it’s by another young Dutch designer. Jewellry for your eyeball. Crazy, those guys, I tell you.

Anyone who shoots photos or video with any kind of serious interest likely had a mild breakdown a week ago, as Canon suddenly launched the newest in its line of high-end digital SLRs–the EOS-5D Mark II. It also received a reasonable amount of press on various design blogs, and there’s one reason above all: HD video. The camera is ridiculously powerful, with a 21-megapixel sensor and reportedly stunning low-light conditions (iso 25600, for the love of god). That same sensor, with all the same ISO options, lets you shoot actual HD for up to 30 minutes, using any lens you can attach to the camera.

This means your expensive fisheye, your heavy-but-amazing telephoto, hell, any lens you have is suddenly a high-end HD lens. The implications for that are stunning, as many have noticed; the top consumer dSLR is now, basically overnight, an incredibly versatile video camera not tied to any fixed set of optics. This means video productions previously unthinkable due to lighting constraints and lens prices are now within the reach of anyone with, say, $10,000. Needless to say, the hyperbole is flying on this one, and for good reason.

Most of said madness surrounds Reverie, the short film/ad made by Pulitzer-Prize winning photographer Vincent Laforet. A large-format quicktime version hit the web on Monday and promptly exploded. Laforet is an “Explorer of Light”, which means he’s “one of the photographers that works with Canon on making better cameras,” and after a quick visit to Canon’s offices, he managed to convince the company to lend him the newest, just-arrived model for the weekend in order to see what he could do with it.

The potential was there for making a short film that would be hosted on the Canon website, but nothing was guaranteed. Laforet had never shot a film before, ever, and had less than 12 hours of preproduction. When you see the results–sans filming or location permits, on a budget of $5000 that included a 2-grand helicopter ride–it starts to dawn on you that this really is a watershed in digital imaging, exaggeration aside. There’s a youtube version below, but the full quicktime HD edition is far better.

Laforet explains exactly why the camera is going to change the industry:

The 5D MKII camera produces the best stills in low light that I’ve ever seen – what you can see with you eye in the worst light (such as sodium-vapor street lights at 3 a.m. in Brooklyn) – this camera can capture it with ease.

It was shot with 100% still photography equipment (lenses, grip/mounts, and a single Profoto 7b battery strobe pack (the strobe wasn’t used – just the modeling light))- with the exception of an expensive video tripod and head, and an LED light…

This camera is the ultimate “equalizer” – you no longer need half-million dollar’s worth of high definition video cameras and lenses delivered by a truck with its own driver to shoot a high definition film in low light – you just need a $2,700 camera and a few lenses

This is a leap of change that is sped up – it’s happening overnight.

A few other photographers got their hands on some pre-production models, including incredible Vancouver wedding photographers Bebb Studios, who posted several samples and a video review. Bebb’s Jennifer strikes the same note:

In my personal opinion, this camera changes everything.

Not to mention that the camera shoots directly in quicktime, which is instantly usable in Final Cut Pro, according to Laforet:

It produces Apple’s Quicktime .mov files btw – simply copy them off of your CF Cards – double click on them – and they open up in the Quicktime player w/o a single hiccup at 1080p… Drop them into Final cut pro and start your edit… no rendering is necessary. Oh – and realize that it took us less than 20 minutes to copy over more than 12 hours of footage off of the CF cards…

Canon’s suggested retail price (for the body alone) is $2,699.00. It ships in November, which means this year, thousands of Christmas-morning, present-opening videos will suddenly look far too professional.

Widely known for his wonderful Helvetica documentary (plus the great I Am Trying to Break Your Heart), Gary Hustwit’s new film is called Objectified, and it’s all about the world of industrial design. Due for an early 2009 release, the film’s blog went live a couple of months ago, and since then he’s been updating it with some real good stuff.

Now, the film is going to be fantastic, no doubt, but the great thing in the meantime is that Hustwit’s been featuring a weekly series of guest posts, entitled Objectify Me, in which “people we like discuss objects that inspire them.” This week he featured Debbie Millman, president of the design group at Sterling Brands, describing a piece of design I must confess to having absolutely no interest in whatsoever: barrettes. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen, or ever will see, a barrette that I found halfway notable, but Millman’s story about stealing her best friend’s unique little barrette (and the desire/guilt/greed that went along with it) is nicely done.

There’s no commentary about coveting the object of desire, or the irresistible childhood pull which led her to recreate that notion as a grown designer because the associated feeling was just so irresistibly powerful and forceful and etc etc etc… just a simple story about childhood greed and jealousy; draw your own conclusions about its formative role.

Stephen Heller, who writes and designs for the New York Times Book Review (among many other responsibilities), also contributes a good, short study on Paul Rand’s El Producto Cigar Tin. Hustwit’s site is a wonderful way to get the film some attention: the blog and its design posts really do take up 90% of the site, while the film provides a classy, recessed framework. If only all movie promotion was this diverse and worthwhile.

Hustwit is still finishing the film, but if the quality of the site and its related previews are any indication, this is going to be a killer tour through the wide world of industrial design. I was just thinking about that world, actually: a few friends of mine studied industrial design back in university. Every time I had to explain to various parents or other such figures exactly what kind of course my friends were taking, the words “industrial design” were invariably met with confusion.

A lot of people assumed it had something to do with designing factories, or working in factories, working in industries located primarily in factories, or optimizing an assembly-line. In a factory. The word “industrial” had become synonymous with a kind of “mechanized industrialization process”, which isn’t technically incorrect, but the verbiage ended up leading most laypeople way off in the wrong direction.

My friends eventually took to calling their course of study “product design”, which doesn’t cover the full range of what industrial design is, but remains graspable as a concept. To my mind, the only high-profile work in industrial/product design to really capture the public eye in recent years has come from Apple, specifically from Jonathan Ive.

When I say to “capture the public eye” I don’t mean to move units or look beautiful, since hundreds of products do that every year–what I’m talking about is actual public attention being paid to the industrial design (and designers) of a specific product–in this case, the iPod, and to a lesser extent the various iterations of the iMac. (Although Ive designed the iPhone too, it’s really all about the user interface).

With that said, I can’t wait for the film to bring some wider attention to some of the many other designers doing good work out there–keep your eyes open.

When a friend of mine kept sending me images of the fixed-gear bike he wanted to buy, endlessly salivating over its appearance, I was confused. I’d seen these kind of bikes before, in the window of a shop in Toronto’s Kensington Market, or just on the street, driven by speeding bike couriers whose propensity for purposefully biking at incredible speeds without using any handbrakes absolutely confounded the hell out of me.

A fixed-gear bike, according to wikipedia, is a “bicycle without the ability to coast. The sprocket is screwed directly onto the hub and there is no freewheel mechanism… whenever the rear wheel is turning, the pedals turn in the same direction.” If you’re moving on the bike, so are your legs.

At his behest, I stared at a few of the bikes online, and after a few minutes, realized there is a strong appeal in the bike’s simple lines. Something about how the chain never comes off the sprocket, never moves around or gets switched to different sprockets by a complicated gear system appealed to me, made me think of that proverbial kid’s bike I probably never really had. The lack of any cables–often no braking system at all, short of skidding–was also appealing, both visually and as someone who enjoys the thrill of riding bikes in a city. Here was a completely new-styled one I could drive now, today, as an adult, and all the cool guys already had them.

Lots of fixed-gear bikes still do come with a simple front brake. After my friend had mentioned that some afficionados think having any brake at all is a kind of sellout, I knew there had to be a thriving subculture going on with these things. Rules, admonitions, and serious message-board discussions of authenticity were obviously raging. If my friend, after only a few days of searching for a bike to buy, was already outlining the fixed-gear zeitgeist to me, there were clearly some passionate people out there.

Turns out that’s exactly the case. A comprehensive New York Times article from last year tells us that people love the bikes for the “modernist blending of form and function and a look that matches what they’re made for, which is going really fast on a banked velodrome track.”

The subculture of fixed gear bikes is one of the strongest magnets for newcomers–it’s like stumbling upon skateboarding or surfing before everyone really knew what the hell they were. While this breeds an insularity and a fair share of philosophical posturizing, it also comes with an appealing exclusivity:

Surfing 50 years ago and skating 25 years ago were small, below-the-radar pursuits with their own rituals and secret codes and vernacular.

The article quotes Johnny Coast, who runs his own custom shop, and calls the fixed-gear scene a:

metaphorical extension of a squatters’ lifestyle that connotes, as he puts it, “living a certain way, subsisting on recycling, not wasting, finding liberation, freedom as a revolutionary act, like in a Hakim Bey sense, primitivist, spiritualist anarchism.”

The lack of brakes that characterize the die hard fixed-gear bikes are the thing that, despite looking amazing, frighten me the most, but most people explain it through a mix of risk and responbility: the lack of brake adds a certain deliberate danger/excitement to the biking, which then forces you to be as humanly conscious of you and your bike as possible: “It’s like playing chess,” he said. “You think out your moves from a block away,” says a rider in the article.

Recently a new film popped up that chronicles the fixed-gear (also known as track bike) scene in Seattle. Called Fast Friday, it’s now available for order online. Check out the short trailer here!

(Updated: one of the in-house Criterion designers provides a helpful list of designers who created each DVD in our list. Thanks, Eric!)

If you have even a passing interest in international film, you already know all about the Criterion Collection and its unabashedly cachet series of expensive DVDs. This is a series that has set an industry standard for special editions, rich extras, essay-packed print inserts, and meticulous print restoration. They’ve also released several international classics in definitive editions that have destroyed the relevance of every single film studies faculty the world over (maybe I exaggerate slightly).

Take just some of the classics of Italian filmmaking as an example: Criterion has essential editions of The Leopard, Amarcord, and the lost classic Mafioso on the market, a crucial influence on The Godfather and a wonderful film, that until 2007 never saw a North American release. If in a single year you managed to watch every disc Criterion has put out (they’re up to 453 now, not to mention that Janus pack) you’d have taken one of the most comprehensive arthouse film courses in the world.

But it’s not just about what’s on those DVDs or in those luscious booklets that draws me to Criterion’s stuff. See, I used to work at a CD/DVD shop. My days were punctuated with small pleasures, like routine visits from various ‘prized’ customers temporarily off their medication, or rabid Frank Zappa fans out to steal 3 hours of my time (often the two were indistinguishable). When I wasn’t sneaking smokes by the dumpsters in the back, I was eagerly tearing open fresh shipments of new DVDs.

The Criterion ones were, without a doubt, the sweetest to discover. Before sadly entering them into the store’s vast inventory, where they were inevitably misfiled on a shelf, nestled among far less deserving brethren, I would cherish each disc, temporarily forgetting that my measly salary prevented me from ever buying more than one every two months. A lot of this perverse behaviour of mine was due to the cachet Criterion managed to create by being the most exclusive and expensive DVD producer around, but the rest of my silly obsession was all about packaging, packaging, packaging.

Criterion hired and continues to hire some fine artists to do great graphic design work for its small packages, and when they aren’t comissioning originals by various stars from the world of illustration, they’re finding and using as packaging the most perfect piece of vintage memorabilia from a film–that damn rare French poster you’ve never seen before and would kill to have as a reprint today. So here, for you, I’ve collected my favorite 10 Criterion packages. If some of this material was available in larger–say, poster-sized–formats, I’d be giving those jerks at Criterion even more of my business. As it stands, jpegs will have to suffice:

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
10) The Battle of Algiers – A remarkable film with a beautiful piece of packaging. This is faux-documentary filmmaking at its best. Watching this is like reading 18 long articles about the “grey areas” of torture and terrorism.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
9) Pierrot Le Fou – Remarkable colour usage on this Godard classic. This is one of Criterion’s recent releases, and of late they’ve been branching out to various illustrators and comic book artists for some covers, while still managing to use one-sheets and various film stills to make the best covers in the business when necessary.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
8 ) The Bad Sleep Well – Many of the Japanese films Criterion releases have some splendid artwork, often far more detailed than this minor Kurosawa picture, but the design and execution, as it ties into what the film is about (an executive hunting down his father’s killer in the corporate environment of postwar Japan, thank you Criterion website summaries), is brilliant.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
7) Boudu Saved From Drowning – Here’s what Criterion does beautifully: if there’s a wonderful piece of artwork already available for a film, especially period artwork, they use it. They fix it up and they present it perfectly, using original typography or extremely close reproductions. This cover is an absolute joy to look at.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
6) Breathless – The best minimalist packaging they’ve ever done. Take a look inside to see the rest of the set, it’s equally beautiful and brilliant. Godard gets all the good designs, so he does.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
5) The Honeymoon Killers – My favorite of Criterion’s alternative-context covers (also see Ace in the Hole). Every ad that surrounds the circled one has a thematic link with the film itself. Seriously, when do you ever see DVD covers this good?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
4) Traffic – Not Soderbergh’s film, but the new release of an older Tati film. Here’s another example of some old illustration, freshened and updated to work perfectly. Beautiful typography and design. I’d pay for that on a shirt, I would.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             
3) Contempt – Another one of my favorite let’s-use-an-old-poster covers, this image of Brigitte Bardot is so linked to the film itself that I’m immediately transported back to when I first saw it, in the one arthouse theater in Ottawa. I was in high school, I saw a quotation from Martin Scorsese (or Coppola) calling it “the best film ever made about film-making”, and decided to go. I’d never seen an arty French film before and at the end I had absolutely no idea what was going on, yet I can remember scenes from that film better than hundreds I’ve seen since. I love this packaging and require it on a poster immediately.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
2) Berlin Alexanderplatz – Another very recent release. I don’t have much to say about it, having not seen the film, but the design is seriously pushing me towards a nearby CD/DVD store, where in a few hours I could find myself at the counter, in a kind of consumerist trance, hastily paying for and running home with this set. It is 15+ hours or so… would a single day’s viewing time suffice?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
1) Le Samourai – A beautiful, dark, brilliant film, and my favorite cover of the list. Nothing but Alain Delon adjusting his hat before he goes out to shoot some people and live by a perverted version of the Bushido code, but in Paris, in the 1960s. Incredible.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

Millions of people spend the first moments of daylight fighting with their alarm clocks. On a good morning, the alarm clock will win and all those night owls will roll out of bed to face the daylight. Occasionally though, we win (or lose?) and hit the snooze button just enough times so that the alarm clock surrenders and stays silent. The wake-up war aftermath often leaves us with lack of time and sanity, clothes that barely match – if at all, a bad hair day, and on the worst days can even cause loss of job. Yes, war is ugly.

Lucky for us, designers and clock companies have been working around the clock to shake up your wake up routine. Your bedroom will be a battlefield no more! The strategy: New alarm clock designs are meant to get people moving around. Once awake, they couldn’t go back to sleep even if they wanted to.

The new tossable alarm clock by Toyo Trading allows you to throw your alarm clock at anything you want. It has a motion detector on it that puts the alarm in snooze mode when it hits the wall. (Or cat, or picture frame, or whatever.) The catch? It’s just on snooze so you’ll have to get up and look for it if you want to turn it off again. The alarm clock comes in hand grenade, soccer ball and baseball models, and is made of soft PVC material, so you can’t shatter your television screen (or seriously injure your cat,) by mistake.

Wanna feel like an action movie star every morning? Then you may like the DangerBomb from Banpresto. When the alarm goes off, the user has to diffuse it by “cutting” the right wire which is randomly selected each morning by the clock itself. Pick the wrong one and the clock goes “KABLAMO!” If that doesn’t get your juices flowing, you may want to see a doctor.

If all that is just too much excitement first thing in the morning, then you could try the Silent Alarm Clock by Johan Brengesjo. Yes that’s right, silent. The clock comes with two rings for you and your significant other, or you can just put one on each hand. When it’s time to wake up, the rings will vibrate silently. The only way to put them on snooze is to shake your hand around. Every time you delay the inevitable, it takes more effort to shut them off next time until finally you are jumping around and shaking your hands like a monkey. The best part is that each ring can be set to different times so even though you may be shaking your jazz-hands at 6:00 a.m., your lover can rest comfortably until 7:00 a.m.

Is food your primary motivator in the morning? If so, then the Wake n’ Bacon by trio Matty Sallin, Daniel Bartolini and Hsiao-huh Hsu should do the trick. Simply put a frozen slice of bacon into a metal tray built into the side of the clock. Ten minutes before you have to get up the clock will start to cook your bacon, filling your entire room with the smell of a nice hot breakfast. Granted you only get one slice of bacon, but the guys are working on one that gets you an entire meal. Considering that there are no buzzers, bells or vibrations people will have to be EXTREMELY motivated by the smell of food in the morning for this to work.

Morning light is the instigator of many battles, making alarm clocks one of life’s necessary evils, and snooze buttons their wicked minions. Hopefully new technological breakthroughs will help those morning protestors and heavy sleepers find the perfect mix of bells, smells, and vibrations to get them up in time.