My First Autobahn Tape by Donkey Creative Lab is a brilliant kid’s product. Rather than stick to static and expensive toy car sets, the tape allows you to create custom and temporary streets anywhere you please. Fancy one long road through your playroom? How about a complex web of Paris streets weaving around your bedroom? Any road design is possible with this fantastic tape. If I were a kid, I would run some roads up the walls and across the ceiling. Perfect for travel too…

If you were a kid and this was your community centre, would you ever want to go home? The Sports and Leisure Centre in Saint-Cloud, France was opened over a year and half ago but I still can’t get over the fantastic use of colour. Designed by KOZ Architectes, the environment-friendly building is a bold gem of architecture. Arch Daily called it a “little castle and cubist mountain” which is a pretty perfect description for a building that houses the imaginations of so many children. The colourful exterior glass is a palette of pure harmony. The thick stripes could have gone horribly wrong but, with fantastic colour selection, they seamlessly compliment each other like a perfectly organized crayon box. I love the night shots of the centre as the illuminated horizontal rooms “light up” numerous vertical swatches of colour. Inside the building, the architects repeated the same systematic colour system to create an easy navigation system for children and reflect a bold graffiti-like style. If I lived in Saint-Cloud, I would try to find an apartment with a direct view of this beautiful building. Oh and I might try out that climbing wall bathed in chartreuse light… More city councils need to follow the lead of Saint-Cloud and explore vibrant architecture for community centres and other public spaces as they really can become sources of city design pride and more imporantly, colourful castles of child-like wonder.

(photographs by stephan lucas and via arch daily)

Pattern, colour, type, slipcase, booklets, print. All good words alone but even better when they come together. Case in point? This limited edition box-set by Fontsmith for the 10th anniversary of their typeface library launch. Designed by Thompson Brand Partners, each of the ten booklets is written by a typeface designer and explores the creative process behind type design. Such a beautiful piece of print with fantastic colours and patterns. The photo of the booklet spines in a stack or spilling out of the bespoke slipcase just makes me plain happy…

(spotted on collate)

On a very rainy Monday here in Vancouver, this photograph by Sërch is making everything seem brighter. The world needs more rustic hot pink staircases, don’t you think? Love how the light is bouncing from the pink wall to the white one resulting in a beautiful shade of light pink. I don’t know where that staircase ends but I imagine it is something pretty magical…

(image via sërch and spotted on buddha interiors)

I love these meticulously and artistically crafted paper flowers by Thuss+Farrell, a married Brooklyn-based design and photography duo bursting with insane talent. What a fantastic mix of bright colour, pastels, patterned detail and texture. The pops of black make the flowers feel artful and modern rather than simply pretty. I wouldn’t mind a vase full of these beautiful examples of papercraft….

(spotted on simplesong)

As you may know by now, I love seeing how brands and designers display colour swatches. Nowadays, the auto industry uses glossy photographs or website customizers to show the dazzling paint jobs available on new models. They are an effective modern way of advertising colour but I am in love with this strip swatch style used for Plymouth Barracudas in the 1960′s and 1970′s. It certainly must have made car buying a more creative experience! I’m thinking the display model could be parked all over a city as its own eye-catching advertisement? I wish car companies still created stripe models like this. I would be first in line to buy the sample swatch car…

(images via blog dos carros antigos and just a car guy)

I spotted this Barbiturik shoelace packaging on Lovely Package this afternoon and was instantly smitten. Test tubes featuring a mix of typefaces and stuffed with colourful fabric? I’m sold. Shoelace packaging is rarely an example of great design but these might set a new standard. From the tubes to the bright contrasting colours of laces and aglets, I wouldn’t mind having the whole set simply as a desk accessory! Barbiturik was created by Rémy Hernandez after he suffered a skateboarding crash that left him a quadriplegic. His passion for skateboarding sparked the creation of the brand. An inspiring story you can read more about here.

(images via lovely package)

I love this cover for Domenica, the Sunday magazine of national Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore. Verona studio Happycentro were asked to create a piece focused on food without actually using food as a material. The studio chose paper as their muse and designed some truly handsome shelves of modern papercraft food. I love that faceted red apple, striped pink onion and fabulously patterned banana. If only milk came in such sleek cartons…

(spotted on el jardín rojo)

I have posted about the sublime embroidery work of Evelin Kasikov before but with every visit to her website, I am reminded of Evelin’s immense talent and am inspired to post again. A project that I just love is her Stitched CMYK Colour Chart. Embroidering the cyan/magenta/yellow/black or CMYK colour model required in colour printing, Evelin creates a handmade printing process that charts colours combinations by an interval of 25%. Designed for the Digital Soirée event at Central Saint Martins, this piece is a beautiful fusion of meticulous handmade design and the technological aspects of printing. I can’t wait to see where Evelin takes her fantastic CMYK embroidery talent next. Perhaps a completely embroidered Pantone guide?!

How spectacular is this cover for Novum Magazine by German design studio Paperlux? The colourful triangle pattern is beautiful in its own right but the ingenious printing technique that creates moldable facets and insane texture is extraordinary. The ‘making of’ video shows the sculptural paper piece in motion as well as a glimpse into the technology and methodical design required to create the cover. Colour, texture, pattern, printing brilliance and paper sculpture? Not sure it gets better than that.

(spotted on/images via graphic exchange and paperlux)

Designed by Proud Creative, I love this branding for luxury jewellery firm Guy & Max. Most jewellery companies seem to go down that “pretty proposal” route but Guy & Max feels bold, masculine and fiercely modern with a high fashion edge. Oh and I think their shop has the most beautiful awning I have ever seen. By using just the right shades of black in just the right geometric pattern, the piece feels like a sculptural work of facets. Same goes for the business card as it feels like a paper sculpture rather than a flat piece of paper. Throw in some sublime macro photographs of diamonds and this branding is officially gorgeous. With such a great look, I can only imagine the stunning jewellery being created by Guy & Max.

(spotted on september industry)

Flowers, cones, leaves – nature is never short on extraordinary inspiration. Kathy Klein deconstructs objects of our environment and uses the parts to create unique flower circles called “danmalas”. From the sanskrit ‘dān’ meaning ‘the giver’ and ‘mālā’ meaning ‘garland of flowers’, the designs created showcase the stunning colour, texture and shape in nature and how they can be brought together to create completely new patterns. Kathy has made her beautiful danmalas all over the world and after spying a few quick shots of the circles in place, I am obsessed with seeing more. A danmala coffee table book please! (You can order your own danmala or purchase Kathy’s prints and cards here)

(thanks for the inspiration Heather!)

When it comes down to it, make up is just pot and tube colour swatches. Perhaps that is the main reason that the displays, design and styling of cosmetics is always inspiring to me. I just love the whimsy and handmade-feeling design of Topshop’s make up line created by designer Sarah Thorne. Their main line is a chic mix of matte greys, uncoated paper, black patterns and hand drawn illustrations. In addition, each fashion season sees the launch of trend led make up range with inspirations such as ‘sand storm’, ‘festival’, ‘heavy duty’ and ‘smoke and mirrors’. I love how detailed and just plain artistic the packaging is. How stunning is the sandstorm mountain range packaging with dashes of colour and pencil lines of gold? The illustrations look like there were drawn with make up and the pieces feel like art. From metallic foils to scalloped box edges to the hand drawn type that unites all the products in every range, Topshop makeup are worth buying simply as examples of beautifully crafted design.

(images via sarah thorne, unity and form and the dieline)

Minimega is a design studio and online shop that creates fabulously patterned and colourful stationery, paper products, gift wrap, cards and more. Their dots, triangle or nautical pattern gift wrap would make even the strangest present look fantastic. I wouldn’t mind framing a sheet or two. On top of great products, Minimega is focused on the environment with 100% recycled paper, vegetable-based inks and no unnecessary chemicals. I really love Minimega’s product photography and styling. Full of colourful details, the shots are just plain inspiring. I’m fairly certain any design studio would benefit from an frilled ice cream paper decoration… (Oh and Minimega even has an awesome blog bursting with hue!)

I always love the creative (and often handmade) ways T Magazine, The New York Times Style Magazine, interprets their classic logo for each cover design. I definitely need to do a ‘colour hero’ feature on the whole inspiring series soon. In the meantime, the new Fall 2011 Travel issue has a fantastic cover featuring plants that shift in colour from a season of bright green and chartreuse to a season of bronze, orange and brown. Created by landscape designer Judy Kameon and photographer Erik Otsea, it is a gorgeous texture-filled piece of design showcasing nature in all its colourful glory. I can’t really tell you how often my dreams involve creating a T magazine cover…

(images via cover junkie)

Castle is an Australian homeware and design company at the top of my current obsession list. The mastermind of colour-loving designer Rachel Castle, the line is just bursting with creativity and vibrant hues. From bedlinens and cushions to fabric garlands and one-of-a-kind art pieces, Castle seamlessly fuses exquisite handcraft detail with a geometric design soul. I just love Castle’s handstitched embroideries with their bright colours and blend of fabrics including vintage French linen, flax Belgian linen, Australian wool, moleskin and velvet. Oh and the styling of their product photographs is ridiculously stylish. I wouldn’t mind living in those set designs. Yes, I think I would be quite happy to wake up in some colourful sheets with a handmade fabric garland draped across my chic art pieces. What more can I say other than I am utterly in love with Castle!