“Product design used to account for 80 percent of companies’ requests,” he said. “Now it has declined to about one-third of our total business. Design strategies and improving brands and services are becoming more important.”

Ideo designers also undertook a renewal project for TownePlace Suites, an extended-stay hotel by Marriott.

They changed the hotel’s lobby to make guests feel at home and renovated hotel rooms to create suites.

The Regali Senza Moneta (or Gifts Without Money) initiative, is a barter-based marketplace located in Turin, Italy. Participants can come together to exchange objects, services and knowledge. Money is banned from the market, which aims to affirm the value of exchange and create connections.

The Piccadilly Hotel has long been a stalwart of Kings Cross nightlife. From all black to beige and back again the club has been kept steadily with the times, reflecting the zeitgeist with aplomb. The latest revamp by Make (Patricia Bondin and Antionia Pesenti) breathes a gust of European cool into the upper bar while reasserting the lower internal bar as a nightclub where the DJ is king.

The brief was to resolve the acoustic issues that had prevented DJs from ramping up the sound, causing both the DJs and crowds to move away from the venue. The result is a cohesive space comprising several areas of activity that are entirely acoustically absorbent or neutral with even the metal treatment working as a sound barrier. The DJ has been brought back to central stage and the club has the look of a club, while upstairs the elegant Aviary is quietly kooky in a Danish design kind of style and a good place to start or end an evening.

Mr. Durant, 26, who works in online advertising, is part of a small New York subculture whose members seek good health through a selective return to the habits of their Paleolithic ancestors.

Or as he and some of his friends describe themselves, they are cavemen.

The caveman lifestyle, in Mr. Durant’s interpretation, involves eating large quantities of meat and then fasting between meals to approximate the lean times that his distant ancestors faced between hunts. Vegetables and fruit are fine, but he avoids foods like bread that were unavailable before the invention of agriculture. Mr. Durant believes the human body evolved for a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, and his goal is to wean himself off what he sees as many millenniums of bad habits.

Case-mate, a designer of innovative accessories for mobile devices and electronics, today announced the launch of a new brand experience called I Make My Case. I Make My Case is the first Web site of its kind in the mobile accessories space that allows users to create their own original composition by re-mixing the designs of internationally-renowned graphic artists, including Joshua Davis, Deanne Cheuk, Thomas Hooper, Matt Moore, Hannah Stouffer, Ray Frenden, Anthony Yankovic, Nigel Dennis, Shadow Chen, Chuck Anderson and more. Consumers who want the end-result without the effort can purchase a pre-designed case from the site as well.

Designed for true customization, I Make My Case allows users to choose all elements of their case starting with the background color scheme and shade. From there they can pull in a variety of elements, including artist-rendered illustrations such as dinosaur skulls, gems and doodles to ink blots to images of hands and lips, just to name a few.

Levi’s and Opening Ceremony have joined forces to co-brand a unique new line of men’s and women’s products which will hit stores next month. Starting with a spring collection, the two retailers will launch a multi-season project featuring eight color fabric selections, including fuchsia, teal, lavender, beige, curry, olive, navy and white. The collaborative line will be launched during Fashion Week in all of Opening Ceremony’s stores, as well as the new Ace Hotel location. Beginning February 19th, the line will also be featured throughout the entire first floor of the Levi’s store in New York’s Union Square.

This is nothing new and I am not a Lagerfeld fan, but I somehow wish I had a bike just to buy one of those ….

For the fourth instalment of signature limited edition helmets, Jérôme Coste, the Creative Director behind Les Ateliers Ruby, teamed up with the unstoppable force of fashion nature, Karl Lagerfeld, in order to inaugurate the creation of eccentrically chic and impeccably crafted collector’s headgear in editions of merely twelve. This new fashionable take on the classic Pavillon Helmet introduced us to an impressive number of four versions which premiered at the Karl Lagerfeld Autumn/Winter 2009/2010 collection.

from PSFK: For The Love Of Bikes is a design collection by student Vanessa Marie Robinson. She’s created a number of unique products aimed at making the growing world of cycling better. Robinson’s creations include cycling gloves that offer increased visibility, messenger bags designed specifically for storage of otherwise cumbersome helmets, and a special bench that discreetly holds bike tools.

Featuring simple drawing and animation tools, Shidonni is a website that allows children to easily create and interact with characters of their own creation. With their parent’s permission, kids can also submit their favorite characters to the Shidonni team, who will translate the drawings – no matter how whimsical – into a custom stuffed plush toy.

Piscine de Pontoise, located in the Latin Quarter, is the oldest swimming pool in Paris. It was built in the 1930’s and is the perfect reflection of the “Sports” architecture at the time. Not only is the pool famous for its structure, but but also for the events it has hosted: a Cousteau diving session, Johnny Weismuller training sessions, a fashion show, and it was also the main set for a 90s French movie called “La piscine”.

At a time where there’s a lot of debate on how we should be transforming our cities to make them more sustainable and pleasurable to live in, one of the answers is in rehabilitating old structures instead of bringing them down. Piscine de Pontoise is a valuable example of why it’s a good idea to maintain old city buildings. The pool has kept up its charm and special features (2 floor balcony changing rooms, wrought iron railings and numerous pillars), but at the same time has evolved into a modern sports complex.