1800 Tequila sent us Glen Barr’s bottle from their Essential Artists campaign – a line of limited edition bottles featuring the artwork of nine artists – Dosa Kim, Glenn Barr, Artillery, Chris Dean, Jorge Alderete, Josh Ellingson, Hannah Stouffer, Jeremy Bacharach, and Urban Medium. There are 1800 of each Essential Artist bottle. The bottles can be purchased for $35 (I couldn’t find a website that listed images and artists, sorry!) and are already showing up on ebay for upwards of $60…!

One nice detail to the bottles – the bottle top becomes a shot glass.

1800 is looking for the next essential artist, via an online competition. The prize is $10,000, plus the opportunity to be featured in a national advertising campaign. We know that there are lots of creative types reading the Sub-Studio Design Blog, so design something pretty and upload it here. It’s a simple submission process, and you can submit up to five designs. Even if you don’t win, you can purchase a bottle with your design for $225. The contest ends in mid-December, so get on it! We took a stab at a design ourselves – Tequila con Vibora! You can vote for our design via the widget below…

Pardon me for posting about a wedding on Sub-Studio, but I couldn’t help myself – the design behind Cabel and Nicole’s wedding is pretty amazing. Inspired by retro 8-bit illustrations, they opted to letterpress their design of a tree with pixel flowers – including debossed pixelated self-portraits. On the backside of the invite, the letterpressed figures show through the paper to create slightly embossed figures underneath the tree.

Custom stamps from Zazzle, custom-made chocolate favors from Deco-Cho.

A pixel flower cake and pixel-like flower petals.

Cabel and Nicole custom laser-etched some Moleskines as gifts for their wedding party.

So there you have it! The coolest wedding I’ve seen in a while…

Via Notcot.

I’m a little late announcing the launch of White & Gold to my Brevity line of jewelry, since I launched it in early November, but here it is! All of the black acrylic pieces are now available in white acrylic with gold-filled chain.

Also new is the addition of the Leaf necklace (above) and four new earring designs. You can check them all out here.

I saw a guy wearing a pair of these Onitsuka Tiger Rakugaki Series on the subway over the weekend and they really caught my eye. I thought for a second they were fully graph papered and the owner got to draw whatever they pleased. Turns out the lines were already there to begin with. Regardless, I like the playful inventiveness of the design.

The new District from Trek is the first mainstream production bike to use a belt drive instead of a chain. The carbon fiber composite belt never needs lubrication or the other maintenance associated with mechanically fastened chains. And with less moving parts, you lose less energy to friction/heat and get more energy into moving those wheels.

The new Sperone Westwater Gallery slated for construction down the street from us on Bowery right next to the New Museum. Foster & Partners is bringing the contemporary voice to Bowery, and it’s a good for the neighborhood. I especially like the ‘moving room’ that will oscillate between the lower galleries and the lobby floor. It opens up a lot of possibilities for site-specific work.

via Curbed

Sean and I made it over to Lladró last night for the unveiling of Jaime Hayon’s Fantasy line of porcelain figurines. The line draws on a fantastical reinterpretation of traditional Lladró themes – love, family, childhood, the circus…Several of Jaime’s existing projects made it into the collection – his Cactus sculpture, the Green Chicken rocking chair, the Showtime Poltrona arm chair, and even his line of Camper shoes – Jaime calls this “positive contamination” from his world to Lladró’s. Prices range from $400 – $3,300 (yowza!).

It was interesting to hear Jaime speak about the process of making the figurines. With a background in industrial design, he had to be both teacher and student when working with Lladró’s craftsmen – teaching them his style, while at the same time having to adapt his designs to accommodate what is physically possible with porcelain. The Lover (above, right) ended up with a bird on his head, not just because all great statues are humbled by the whims of birds, but also because it was necessary in order to keep the figurine straight when it went through the firing process.

The Rocking Chicken Ride – directly inspired by his Green Chicken.

The Love Explosion – mixes in the Showtime Poltrona arm chair with the Lover as he tries to woo a lady.

The Cactus.

Jaime’s new monograph was featured at the opening, too – it looks really great, with tons of process sketches showing how he conceived of the different ideas.

Ruben Trelles sent over VIIDRIO, an eco-friendly, embroidered woman’s t-shirt line. The detail I actually love most is that of the packaging, which is also embroidered to match the enclosed t-shirt. I also admire Ruben’s dedication to keeping the line as green as possible – the t-shirts are made from 100% organic cotton and are embroidered rather than screen printed; the recycled paper band used as the tin wrapper can be removed (no glue) so that the aluminum tin can be reused or recycled. And – if you return five undamaged tins to Ruben, you will get a free t-shirt in exchange. More info can be found here.

While the name of Dill Pixel’s Flickr collection is quite ominous, The End is a collection of end screens for old films. The ‘The End’ gives each image a finality that makes me want to go backwards and find out how they got there. Thanks to EO for the link.

I have been complaining for a long time that besides Macs there are very few good looking computers. Why is that? Is it so hard for HP or Dell to focus on design and to come up with a really well designed computer?

You can imagine my happiness when Plush Department introduced us to their line of Pure* dept. Design Computers – minimalist towers made of ceramic. They also make PC Amplifiers and recently put out a gold version.

Even more exciting is their Pure* Art line, where they have commissioned artists to dress up the original Design Computer, creating limited edition computers. So far the dutch artist, Zender, and Delft Blue, the oldest ceramic factory in Holland, have created editions. Upcoming artists include Mijn Schatje, Piet Boon (in concrete!), and Edward van Vliet. Definitely a company to keep an eye on!