I’ve just learnt from IndyBlogs’ Shopping Bag that the wonderful Robert Ryan (who I occasionally confuse with the equally talented with scissors Peter Callesen) is planning to open a shop here in London!

This is great news for me as it’ll be in my neck of the woods - near the Columbia Road Flower Market - giving me the chance to ooh and ahh at his designs (and then ouch! at the price tags) in person, rather than on his Etsy shop.

Both Ryan and Callesen have some remarkable work on their sites so if you’re unfamiliar with them I highly recommend a look!

Zaha Hadid, the first female recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, was chosen by Karl Lagerfeld to create the Mobile Art CHANEL Contemporary Art Container, pictured below. Hadid, described by The Times last year as “the world’s most flamboyant architect” due to her “breathtakingly sensuous designs”, seems like an obvious choice for a man quoted as saying “I don’t like standard beauty – there is no beauty without strangeness.”

Hadid was awarded the Pritzker, considered to be the Nobel Prize of architecture, in 2004 and is arguably one of the most talented architects of her generation. According to the Museum Marketing Blog (where I found the pictures above and below), the Pavilion was inspired by Chanel’s signature quilted bag, but the official Chanel Mobile Art site says the exhibition inside the pavilion which will include work “inspired by the elements that give the emblematic quilted bag from CHANEL its identity”.

I can’t find a definitive answer as to if the Pavilion is also based on the icon bags - if you know please comment!

There is a great little vital tour of the exhibition space on the Chanel Mobile Art site where the concept is described:

“It is important to note that Mobile Art is less an itinerant exhibition than an artistic experience in a nomadic building. This is how both the architecture and the exhibition were conceived.”
…
“When you see pictures of the scale model, you notice that the architecture is completely organic. The walls are not straight.

Once inside the structure of Mobile Art, you find something undefined and fluid. It feels temporary, giving the impression of a virtual reality.
It plays on the idea of being in another dimension, in a cinematic universe.”

The tour starts in Hong Kong next month and comes to the UK in June 2009.

A long wait but hopefully one that’s worth it!

The photo site Flickr is great for a number of reasons - one of them being you can see what other’s photos have been taken with the LG Viewty, showing off its abilities.

This, for example, is a classy winter shot of ice on a tree branch:

21. Dezember 2007 by ernscht

The camera fares well indoors as well, as shown by this macro shot:

Xbox 360 Controller by Skyfall

And the indoor shots are proven with this dinky shot of a scale model:

New Rotterdam Central by jacco.org

I found all these photos and more at Flickr’s photos tagged with “Viewty”. There’s also a clutch of Viewty phone owners’ groups there - LG Viewty, Viewty KU 990 and Viewtyful. If you have a Viewty, join up and we’ll keep an eye out for your photos.

Another revolutionary aspect of the Viewty is the possible ISO light sensitivity setting of 800. Whilst normal digital cameras regularly have an ISO 800 setting (and above) it is unusual for a camera phone to have such a high setting. Such a (relatively) high rating will allow you take better pictures in darkened conditions and addresses a common complaint with camera phones generally – that they don’t work well in low light. The Viewty also includes Smart Light technology ensuring better and brighter images indoors and at night.

The fun video shows the relative difference in light sensitivity between ISO settings by recreating Van Gogh’s Starry Starry Night with 30,000 post-it notes. Keep your eye on the bottom right hand corner to see the ISO setting increase along with the light.

Comparisons with a standard digital camera have been excellent, Dial-a-Phone is certainly impressed with the Viewty’s capabilities, and you can see the results of our own low light test here.

Amazing how much influence design has in our expectations of what’s behind the packaging. It’s only when someone challenges those expectations that we realise how important design is.

Michael Young has designed a genre breaking whisky bottle for Japanese brand Nikka. It’s a far cry from what we would instinctively expect a whisky bottle to look like. The design of whisky bottles almost without fail emphasises the heritage of whisky making and you can always see the liquid in the bottle.

Young’s design by contrast has left no traditional element untouched, it’s black, contemporary and self-consciously different. It’s simplicity is most striking and at least initially you have no idea what’s in the bottle – you could even be forgiven for thinking it was vodka. So a bit risky perhaps but the cool factor is massive with this design and you can see it appealing to a new generation of whisky drinker.

The same is true for much of technological design – coming up with a simple but radical change in design can make all the difference.