Ciba Inc.
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Basel
4002
Switzerland
Tel.: +41 61 636 49 16
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“X” Marks the Spot! #10
Minis, by nature, seem to invite customization. Something about the design of the car has made every Mini a canvas for its owner to declare his or her individuality. (Perhaps it is also a self-fulfilling tradition, as this has happened throughout the carmaker’s history?) In any case, Mini are aware of this and have provided a platform for their aficionados to design and present their unique designs on their site.
Do you travel a lot? Do you go to faraway places where you don’t speak the lingo? Do you get stymied when trying to explain your needs abroad? At the recent Premium exhibition in Berlin (EDIT: review here!), I came across the ideal solution! The ICOON universal wordless phrase book contains pages upon pages, lists upon lists, set upon sets, of everything you could ever want to communicate – objects, adjectives, feelings – in picture form. Divided intuitively into twelve categories, it ensures you’ll never have to suffer the physical contortions of extemporaneous sign language when travelling; you’ll just need to open a page and point.
This month’s materials search resource is Materia. Materia is just celebrating its tenth anniversary and its library contains over 1,500 innovative and future-oriented materials. Materials in their library can be searched via a powerful search engine, and each material is then presented with a full range of descriptive and performance-related data. Full disclosure: we are pleased that the Top 8 Color Trend Vision stylings from 2007 are available in the Materia library.
We featured the Lego Factory in “X” Marks The Spot! #3, but the recent 50th anniversary of the Lego brick inspired us to look at their site again. And it’s pretty good! www.lego.com seems to be a giant, fun playground for the aficionados and the newbies, for young and old, for anyone intrigued by the wealth of creative opportunities inherent in a simple plastic brick …
It’s apparently the world’s largest art website. The great and the good, the famous and the infamous, the established and the rising star, they are all to be found at the Saatchi Gallery, alongside listings of exhibitions and museums and blogs and galleries and essays from the whole wide world of art.
Another young design company we have featured in XYMARA.com, Formfjord, have won an award! Formfjord‘s Francois – a candle holder which maintains the level of the flame due to the diminishing weight of the remaining candle stub – has won a Design Plus Award at Ambiente 2008 in Frankfurt. Congratulations to them!
Finally, Italian design is world famous, but you may sometimes be forgiven for getting confused: there is such a bewildering range and number of designers and products out there! How to navigate these pretty, but dense seas? If you speak German or Italian, Made In Italy is the website for you. This portal attempts to bring together designers, brands and products, all into a one-stop-shop where you can browse at will.