Bits ‘n Pieces is a traveling exhibition of work by international designers, architects, computer scientists, and material and technology researchers. It will showcase projects still in their development stage, as well as furniture, architecture, jewelry, graphic design and products that anticipate the next phase of the digital revolution, focusing on how society is imbued with, shaped by and shapes technology.

Welsh product designer Chris Chapman has created this fun and relatively hassle free solution to the home vege patch.

Coca-Cola had several fashion labels create limited-edition Coke Light bottles in an effort to raise money for victims of last year’s earthquake in Abruzzo, Italy.

On September 7, the James Dyson Award will be given out to the individual who best designs “something that solves a problem”. Here are 5 of our favorite contenders for the prize…

Image credit: Getty Images, Dan Banda Lee/Flickr
Lee Washington, a product design student currently studying in London at Central Saint Martins, recently posted a video describing an ingeniously simple concept design for headphones that will not get tangled. Essentially, the idea is to apply the same technology of a Ziploc bag to the two separate wires, allowing users to seal them together before putting them away.
Hopefully it will make it’s way to production, and we can all stop fumbling with tangled ear buds, or even bother with learning the best way store headphones. It’s one of those great inventions [...]

Richard Fine and Nathan Frank sent us a set of their new products the other day. The guys have evolved since they launched their original Help I Have A Headache pack and their new range covers cuts, sore feet, sneezes and tired eyes. Taking the products back to basics and presented in plain English, they are wrapped in compostable materials: molded paper pulp and bio plastic from corn resin. They also fit perfectly in that narrow cabinet in your bathroom. With the attention to detail plus the cute messaging throughout the packs we can’t wait for our next little sting [...]

In light of today’s competitive business climate and more conspicuous consumption, conversations are increasingly focused on innovation as a means to deliver a differentiated experience and capture customers’ attention, loyalty and disposable income. Speaking to that notion, Business Week has showcased 10 examples of product innovation, shaped in part by designer Hartmut Esslinger.
Esslinger, founder of the 40-year-old San Francisco firm Frog Design, has worked with many companies including Apple, Louis Vuitton, and HP.  He shares with Business Week 10 tips for successfully and consistently innovating, including, among others:

“If it isn’t somehow good for the world, it’s not going to be [...]

Situated somewhere between a cocktail napkin and a smartphone, this notepad concept developed by Piotr Górski is ideal for the Luddite in all of us, who secretly craves a bit of elegant, low-tech design in our lives. The slim, credit card sized tablet utilizes the qualities of rubber and foil in combination to create temporary imprints that can be made using any pointed object from an included stylus to a swizzle stick. When passed across the surface, an attached slider bar produces a clean slate that can be written on again and again. Just one of many product innovations viewable on Gorski’s [...]

Crowd-powered product design site quirky has generated two finished products that are up for pre-order on their site. The first, a universal wire retractor, named the Sling Back, is a stackable cord management device that can roll up and dispense up to 3 feet of cable. So far they have 103 of the 500 pre-orders necessary to make this product a reality.
Secondly, there is a souped-up version of the traditionally bland looking arm sling. The product team at quirky has added features and designs which look to be significant upgrades to both the comfort and usability of the standard sling. [...]

Nascent online service Quirky is hoping to eliminate the opaque process of product research, industrial design, marketing, and manufacturing that stands between inventors and consumers, collapsing them into a streamlined, democratized online discussion they’re saying takes only days from start to finish.
Anyone with an idea and $99 can pay to pitch their proposal to Quirky’s users, who after deciding whether or not the idea is viable, will then provide feedback as the idea approaches manufacturing, voting on potential names, logos, and product design choices. Once the product begins selling, those in the Quirky community who contributed most to the feedback [...]

For some, the simple rooster on a clear bottle with a green cap is a forgettable product on shelves busy with hot sauces, but for many, the bird proudly endorses a spicy concoction worthy of its cult following.  This increasingly popular sauce is Sriracha and its history is not made up of calculated promotions or lofty big business goals.
David Tran, founder of Huy Fong Foods and creator of Sriracha, came to the US from Vietnam in 1980 and immediately began producing the hot sauce he had developed at home.  It was a simple home chili paste infused with garlic that [...]

Amron Experimental’s Brush & Rinse Toothbrush is pretty much like any other toothbrush out there, except it has a slightly grooved back that redirects water from a running faucet into an easy to sip arch of water. That’s it. Simple perhaps, but it does beat using your hands, or a glass to grab water after brushing your teeth.
Will the world be dramatically changed because of the Brush & Rinse toothbrush? Definitely not. But it is an interesting tiny tweak that adds functionality to the device in a subtle way.
[via Engadget]

A while back, we wrote a short post about the Engaging Ideas Card Pack and mentioned, “We haven’t gotten our hands on the full set, but it looks like a neat package for a broad range of ideas.”  Well, now (thanks to Rob Fox) we’ve gotten our grubs on the entire pack and sifted through the stack of colorful cards.
The first impression is that they look like a deck of large novelty sized playing cards printed on thick stock cardboard.  The front side of each card is an image meant to invoke the message or activity presented on the back.  [...]

A while back, we wrote a short post about the Engaging Ideas Card Pack and mentioned, “We haven’t gotten our hands on the full set, but it looks like a neat package for a broad range of ideas.”  Well, now (thanks to Rob Fox) we’ve gotten our grubs on the entire pack and sifted through the stack of colorful cards.
The first impression is that they look like a deck of large novelty sized playing cards printed on thick stock cardboard.  The front side of each card is an image meant to invoke the message or activity presented on the back.  [...]

Taking a page from their customer friendly food service model, Burger King recently took “Have It Your Way” into the realms of D.I.Y. fashion.  A collaboration between 5 designers and artists tasked with reinterpreting elements of Burger King’s icons and logos culminated at an event held in Chicago on October 24th.  The gathering invited participants to take part in the studio creation process by silk-screening the final designs onto their own clothing in any combination they chose.  Essentially, a clever form of marketing that allowed Burger King to subvert their own image, while at the same time maintaining recognizable aspects [...]