COOL HUNTING

 

Royal Jelly Ontour - Ontour, the Storybook-based t-shirt line out of Holland, tells the tale of a girl who loved jelly pudding so much that she turned into a jellyfish in their latest spring/summer 2006 collection. Due out in February, the fanciful idea yielded a series of tees in mostly greens, grays, and pinks. Standouts include "Jelly Invasion," a speckled pattern that mixes silhouetted jellyfish and jelly puddings...

 

Custom Photo ATM Cards - A reader tipped us to Dutch bank Postbank's new custom photo ATM card, called "de paskamer." By uploading a photo via the de paskamer website, customers can easily create a background of their choosing and will receive the card in about six working days. It appears the service is only offered in the Netherlands currently, but similar services for checks are widely available in...

 

Ontour Tees - The Grimm's fairytale of the Bremen Town musicians tells the fable of a donkey, dog, cat, and rooster who, fed up with their day jobs, venture into the world to pursue lives as musicians. For Ontour, a new line out of the Netherlands, the tale was inspiration to launch their clothing label and became the source material for the four shirts in their debut...

 

Missed Connections - Let's talk about feelings. According to Dutch design house Demakersvan, it's a subject not often enough addressed in the contemporary design world, and their assertion just may be true. The vast majority of furnishings either look good or perform a function well, or, if you're lucky, both. They sit idly in our living spaces and favorite clubs, reflecting little more than our tastes and...

 

Afke Golsteijn - Dutch artist Afke Golsteijn isn't the first to work with dead animals as her medium, but none quite achieve the same sweetly creepy aesthetic that comes from her joining of taxidermy and finely wrought details. Equal parts Edgar Allan Poe, Grimm's Fairytales (she calls them "Contemporary Fairytales"), and a more feminine David Altmejd, Golsteijn's work at times reads like a literalized metaphor, such as...

 

How to Disappear Completely - "City Hideout," from Dutch design studio OOOMS, is a portable temporary dwelling made to fit one seated adult. The collapsable metal box resembles the kind of streetside sheds that commonly house electrical devices such as streetlight controls, new-age parking meters, and small generators. The hideout can be easily assembled on any corner or rooftop as the ultimate urban camouflage. The most intriguing feature of...

 

ICFF Preview: De Makers Van - Jeroen Verhoeven, Judith de Graauw and Joep Verhoeven started Studio De Makers Van after graduating from the Design Academy Eindhoven (Netherlands). Their primary intent seems to be taking common materials and re-visualizing them in innovative ways. Word is that they'll have some stuff at ICFF next week, so I'm definitely going to keep a look out for them. There are a few more pictures...