Una nueva forma de tomar café… como sepuede apreciar es monodosis…. se sumerje en agua o leche caliente… dos vueltas, y listo.

Diseñador: Im Jeong Heo

I’m just going to say it: this bacon is really cute. Sarah Illenberger took to the scissors to make a recipe for chili con carne, and I think it looks positively delicious.

Take a look at these incredible abstract and retroesque pieces by designer and illustrator Andy Gilmore. Born, raised and based in Rochester, New York, Gilmore applies the understanding of one practice with the other – applying the proportions of harmony to form and colour – colours as chords – and scales as tonal gradations, in order to create these geometric works of art.

His clients include: the new york times, foursquare outwear, seed magazine and the webby awards. If you love his work as much as we do, you can get your hands on a print (or even a t-shirt) over at Etsy

Andy was also the first illustrator we contacted to design a poster for our first offline event – TreeLife

We are excited to be talking with Mini Cooper globally about TCH customized designer car wraps, so that Mini owners can really feel they are a cut above everyone else as far as coolness is concerned. We are imagining the fun that owners will have in selecting their favorite design and designer for their very own cool Mini.

We would love to hear from designers/illustrators/art directors who would be interested in submitting a design for consideration as one of the final 25 options. If you are interested, please email us and we will give you the details on how to submit your design. Have you seen our Mini in Neon colors?

We believe you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but you can judge your favorite drink by its label. Vitaminwater is crowdsourcing its next flavor through the launch of their Flavorcreator app on Facebook, marking the first time that fans of Vitaminwater can collaborate to create the next flavor.

Vitaminwater enthusiasts will have the opportunity to name the flavor, write the bottle copy and design the label via a contest with the winner or winning team receiving a $5,000 prize from Vitaminwater.

Bottles designed by TCH Design

Robert Bradford creates his life-size and larger-than-life sculptures of humans and animals from discarded plastic items, mainly toys but also other colorful plastic bits and pieces, such as combs and buttons, brushes and parts of clothes pegs.

Contrary to some reports, he’s not a self-taught artist who tinkered in his shed one day and suddenly decided to create something out of his kids’ discarded toys. He is a London-born and U.K. and U.S.-trained visual artist who, like many artists, also had another career on the side. His was that of a psychotherapist.

In 2002, he started to consider the possibilities that his children’s forgotten toys could have as part of something bigger. Bradford says he likes the idea that the plastic pieces have a history, some unknown past, and that they also pass on a “cultural” history as each of the pieces represents a point in time. Recycling is not his primary concern, but each sculpture certainly keeps quite a few pieces from becoming landfill. Some of the sculptures contain pieces from up to 3,000 toys and sell for £12,000 (US$19,000). –

With creative flavor combos like smoked salt, blackberry sage, and spicy Mexican hot chocolate, Compartes makes their hand-dipped truffles with organic chocolate and other premium ingredients. Topping each piece with colorful graphic designs like elephants (with curry ganache), skulls (raspberry rose), and chandeliers (hazelnut gianduja). For a company that has been around for almost sixty years, Compartes approach to chocolate is definitely not old fashioned. We talked to chocolatier Jonathan Grahm to find out more about what makes Compartes chocolate so distinctive.

How do you keep Compartes relevant and up to date for your customers?
What I did with Compartes was pretty much restart it from the ground up. I kept the name and some of the recipes that I really loved, but basically reinvented and reimagined the whole company. A couple of years ago, I also became very fascinated with organic ingredients and changed my whole lifestyle, then I decided to do the same with all of the ingredients I use in the chocolate. We get seasonal produce and herbs from the farmers market that we infuse into the chocolates. I find ethnic markets, I google exotic ingredients and I’m always going and trying new types of food and dishes to experience new spices and flavors that I haven’t tried before.

What is your favorite Compartes truffle flavor?

Continue reading and see more images after the jump.

My favorites are the smoked sea salt and the honey peanut butter sea salt. I love the combination of savory and sweet and of course chocolate and salt. Although, I must admit that my newest creations are always my favorite.

What new flavors do you have available?
For holiday, flavors will include blackberry and sage, apple pie, gingerbread, fig and balsamic, olive oil and rosemary, cinnamon latte, cardamom and coconut and much more. Our flavors are seasonal so they are constantly changing.

Compartes chocolates are also sold in Tokyo. Why do you think artisanal chocolates are so popular there?
Compartes won first place in a chocolate competition in Tokyo a couple of years ago. They really love artisanal goods in Japan and I think they are very much about quality rather than quantity. They really appreciate handcrafted goods and are willing to spend money for good products. My chocolate appeals to our Japanese fans as they have the beautiful design elements coupled with exotic flavors that they haven’t experienced in chocolate before. We will be opening a store in Tokyo hopefully by the end of 2010. I love Tokyo and I’m so excited to bring Compartes chocolates directly to the people of Japan in our own retail space.

The truffles feature colorful graphic designs. How are the designs put onto the chocolates? How do you choose new designs for each flavor?
For the designs, I basically just use what I like and what I’m into at the moment, right now I am loving my antler prints. We have lightning bolts. Geometric prints are always fun. For Holiday we will have polar bears, penguins, nutcrackers, etc. I really love the design aspect of the chocolates as well, I want people to have a very interesting and unique experience when eating our chocolates, cool designs coupled with amazing flavors.

What’s next for Compartes?
We just launched our brand-new website and online store which I am super excited about. I am also really excited about our artisan chocolate bars, I have been making those for several years in store but I recently put them all up on the website and created all these new flavors. They are made with 77% cocoa content single origin dark chocolate and studded with various ingredients like apples and cinnamon, orange peel and pink pepper, strawberry and banana, etc. I love them because they are so simple yet sophisticated. They are $8 each and make the perfect compliment to put on top of any gift, a great stocking stuffer.

Packaging has power – enormous power – over what we buy. The fashions we wear express who we are. Packaging does that for products. We identify with a product because we believe that it does for us what we wish it to do. And as any brand manager will tell you, we buy the “brand promise”� and the package carries a lot of that promise.

Try this test scenario. You are dying to break your shampoo routine, or for some reason cannot find your usual brand. How do you select an alternative? You generally pick a package that appeals to you or draws your attention. Often you do that out of necessity – you don’t have the chance to taste or try most products. The package must do the selling right there on the spot.

Ask retail anthropologist Paco Underhill (author of Why we buy and Call of the mall) and he’ll likely produce studies and surveys on shelf impact, shopping behavior and consumer psychology, all showing that it does matter what the box looks like, even when we say it doesn’t.

Martin Lindstrom’s latest book Buyology – Truth and Lies about Why We Buy covers the results of Lindstrom’s $7-million study that attempted to figure out what really makes us vote with our wallets. The over-arching revelation – if it is indeed a revelation – is that, more often than not, we as consumers do not know why we buy. We do not know what actually affects us when we make a buying decision.

What we do know – and what marketers know – is that it is all about emotions. How does the brand make us feel, is what matters. Our first impressions, whether about products or people, are strong and quick. In many cases, packaging is the main influencer. The billions spent on packaging and branding annually are not spent on spec. Marketers know it works, although even they don’t always know how or why.

Packaging has a huge impact on many other things as well, not just on our buying decisions. On store shelves, the battle for space and shelf impact is tough. There is a reason why a box of twelve pills is five or more times larger than it actually needs to be to contain the pills. Theft is one concern, possibly also anti-tampering, but mostly it is about taking up space, taking it away from the competition.

As the brand gains shelf space with the bigger box, other things happen as well. The bigger the box, the more shelving is needed. The more shelving is used, the larger the store needs to be. The larger the store, the higher the rent and the more staff is needed to keep it running. We can keep going along this route.

The larger box also means larger cartons to ship the boxes, larger warehouses, larger trucks and so on. A larger box uses up more materials, more trees are cut down, more plastic is used, more garbage is accumulated… And of course, it all costs more. We are not trying to say that packaging is the cause of all ills, but we are suggesting that designing and producing “a slightly bigger box” is not a small decision.

We also feel that we must finally start seriously caring about the environmental impact of unnecessary and eco-unfriendly packaging. Designers, manufacturers, retailers and consumers are the ones that can influence what happens in the packaging world. Packaging manufacturers will follow and start making whatever the market wants to buy. Ideally, of course, manufacturers of packaging should also invest more in developing eco-friendly options, but if unfriendly options keep selling well, why would they change?

Our daily behavior proves that branding and packaging are important. There is nothing inherently wrong with that.

But there is a bigger picture and it includes the inconvenient truth that much of packaging still ends up in garbage, in landfills or in the oceans.

The challenge is to keep the cool, the impact, the fun and the practical function of packaging, but to do it in a way that doesn’t do any damage.

As always, we at The Coolhunter are looking for genuinely original packaging. Let us know when you see it!

From milk cartons to cosmetics, if its packaging that really pops, let us know about it! - Tuija Seipell

Looking for a design studio who can deliver – look no further than TCH Design

For all the uses of a calendar—marking engagements, identifying days, counting down time and organizing schedules—digital might suffice but nothing beats the charm of a well-designed paper version. More than just a simple record of duties and celebrations, calendars themselves add a chic touch to environments with beautiful illustrations and images. Past years, we’ve highlighted calendars from MWM, Tielen, Studio On Fire and Stephen Turbeck and this year we gathered together ten more to keep 2010 festive all year round.

Artists on Their Bicycles New York Calendar
This limited edition calendar features artists such as Ryan McGinley, David Byrne with Cindy Sherman, Maurizio Cattelan and Amy Granat, all on their bikes around NYC, captured by Swiss photographer Lukas Wassmann. A run of 500, each comes numbered and sells from the Swiss Institute of Contemporary Art New York for $45.

Pentagram Typography Calendar
The typography calendar from the famed multi-disciplinary design studio Pentragram is a font nerd’s delight. Each month features a different font with a brief explanation of it and the its designer. Available in a small or large size, Veer carries both for $26-44.

Crispin Finn 2010 Year Planner
The over-sized, hand-printed calendar from Crispin Finn allows a full-year view, with space to write plans (and erase them) on its 100% recycled paper composition. Ideal for offices or the immensely organized, the calendar’s simple motif can make a dramatic statement spanning 40″ x 28″. It sells from Crispin Finn for £10.

The Moustache Calendar
The wire-bound moustache calendar features black-and-white, medium format photos of the “sex-confident” students and alumni from the Rhode Island School of Design. A limited edition, the calendar sells for $15 online or at independent bookshops in Providence, Rhode Island.

Linda & Harriett Calendar
Fastened together with a ribbon, the Linda & Harriett calendar includes 12 letterpressed cards, each with a month view on one side and a detachable postcard image on the reverse. It’s available from Linda & Harriett for $30.

Caitlin Keegan Radial Calendar
Brooklyn-based illustrator Caitlin Keegan prints her radial calendar using soy-based inks on recycled paper. The engaging design allows for a year-long view and provides enough space to note important dates each month. The calendar can be purchased for $25 from her online shop or at the upcoming Lena Corwin holiday sale.—Julie Wolfson

D-Bros Joy By Day By Toy Calendar
From the creative Japanese design studio D-Bros this interactive calendar begins as a blank slate but soon gets filled with favorite activities through the use of clever stickers. Known for their quirky but sharp designs, D-Bros is the child of design agency Draft Co., Ltd., who believes that strong design plays a huge role in the future of society. Colette carries it for €40.—JW

Fornasetti 2010 Calendar Plate
A yearly tradition since 1968, the Fornasetti handmade porcelain calendar plate is a limited edition of 700, each numbered and signed by the artist who painted the piece. An Italian sculptor, painter and interior decorator, Fornasetti is still celebrated today in items like scarves and wallpaper. The calendar plate sells from Unica Home for $326.

Moleskine Daily Desk Calendar
The small but generous daily desk calendar from Moleskine serves as both a calendar and daily planner with ample space for jotting down notes. Boasting standard Moleskine features, the calendar comes with an expandable inner pocket and an elastic-band closure, from MoMA Store for $20.

Puzzle Calendar
A fun desk accessory that keeps life organized, the perpetual puzzle calendar includes numbers and icon blocks that denote holidays and special events, all easily rearranged month to month. It’s available from Paper Source for $13.

One Canoe Two Letterpress Calendar Poster
From the letterpress studio One Canoe Two, the hand-printed poster calendar reflects the objects found in everyday life with drawings of items such as hammers, scissors, cameras and kitchen utensils. Printed on sturdy paper, the limited edition poster is available from the Missouri-based studio’s Etsy shop for $75.—JW