Freehands: Now Shipping

by Josh Rubin

I announced Freehands a little over a month ago and am happy to post an update that our inventory is now in and orders are being filled! In case you missed the previous post, Freehands, the gloves that let you keep in touch, feature fold-back thumb and index finger tips to expose the fingers you need to use a touch screen, keyboard, MP3 player, PSP or simply to pull something out of your wallet. Small magnets keep the folded back tips from flopping around when they're folded back.

For our first season we wanted to keep things simple. We created three unisex styles: Fleece, Stretch and Leather available in sizes extra small to extra large. We decided to only make them in one color: black. Perhaps the best part, they're $20 (Fleece), $30 (Stretch) and $40 (Leather).

Buy before Saturday and enter the promotion code COOLHUNTING at checkout to get a 20% discount.

Herbert Baglione:Two Broken Knees

by CH Contributor

by Ariston Anderson

Herbert Baglione is one of Brazil's most provocative exports, currently bringing his humanistic paintings to a new show in London. Baglione got his start as a street artist, painting huge figures onto the sidewalks and intersections of São Paulo throughout the '90s, but has since taken only to the galleries drawing on his street background.

His latest work, "Two Broken Knees," projects extreme human figures in a style influenced by cave paintings. The show is comprised of twenty paintings that bring to life urban textures and typography in the medium of acrylics and enamel. To Baglione, the show is a ritual in search of lost faith in urban settings throughout the world. Check out a video of Balione at work, below.

Two Broken Knees
21 November-20 December 2008
Lazarides Gallery
8 Greek Street
Soho, London
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tel. +44 (0)203 214 0055

Illustrator Matt Duffin

by Karen Day

Trained architect Matt Duffin's sparse illustrations of symbolically loaded objects, anthropomorphic donkeys, and children's toys, are full of dark and blank spaces that make their subjects seem isolated and alone to the point of dread. Extreme sources of light up the drama of Duffin's images, and despite the storybook-ish quality of his wax drawings, they convey a sense of impending doom.

Digital By Design

by Karen Day

In a world becoming more advanced every minute, with everything from virtual reality pinball machines to the common smart phone, it's difficult to make sense of it all. U.K. design studio (and CH heroes) Troika (check out Troika on CH Video here) does just that with their recent book, "Digital By Design," a complete survey of the most innovative digital products and works of art today. Way more than your standard coffee-table book, "Digital By Design" assesses the relationships between technology, product design, immersive environments and human interaction from a standpoint of how they relate to our daily lives. Commissioned by renowned art publisher Thames and Hudson and featuring a foreword by MoMA's design curator Paola Antonelli, Troika explores intelligent design and the designers behind the objects extensively and with an objective perspective.

Graduates of the Royal College of Art, the trio behind Troika are particularly well-suited for the project, drawing on their backgrounds in graphics, communication, art, product design and engineering to create works that toy with technology's role and capabilities, most notably their recent digital sculpture, "Cloud," at Heathrow airport (see our 2006 video for examples).

The book is available at Borders and Amazon.

The Protist

by Doug Black

A collaboration between brothers Matt and Justin Kleiner, the Protist is a music, art and design hybrid based out of Santa Barbara. Their latest project is a series of paintings that are meant to correspond with a soundtrack of original compositions. Images take traditional Japanese archetypes and couple them with more contemporary graphics and word fragments. Songs are brooding electronic soundscapes that take cues from electronic acts like Modeselektor and more recent Radiohead, a band who's song "Reckoner" they remix for the project.

The project's conceptual underpinnings use nature to illustrate different cycles, like life and death, or night and day. Following the same theme, the music tends to vacillate between lighter and darker moods.

You can view paintings and listen to the corresponding music on the Protist's website. Music, the clothing and other merchandise (also of their design) is available as well.