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Radio head: Consumers customise their own earphones

Japan – The look of portable music can now be as personal as the sounds that are played.

Audio equipment manufacturer Fostex is enabling customers to design their own headphones online. Kotori headphones can be customised by colour, and the size and shape of each casing component can be selected to meet the tastes of the user.

Seven pre-set themes are available, such as Pop, Sweet, Cool and Vivid, to help customers get a design variation that is tuned to their tastes. Within each theme are 15 colour variations, including bright yellow, green and purple. Each part of the headphone can then be modified.

And for those less imaginative, a shuffle option will find a random variation of colours and style.

This customisation in products is part of a wider growth in democratic branding as explored in Brandtocracies.

Health check: Clinic design inspired by first-class travel

London – A concept for a hospital recovery room has taken design inspiration from first-class air cabins.

The Recovery Lounge concept, by UK design consultancy firm Priestmangoode draws on the compact but comfortable design used in first-class cabins in airplanes.

Semi-private cubicles are staggered to maximise the number of beds that can be fitted in. The beds themselves can be adjusted depending on whether the client needs to lie down or sit up. Pop-out televisions and bedside storage can be hidden within the cubicle walls. The furniture is moveable and very little touches the floor, so that the space is easy to keep clean.

The design concept also has private patient zones when more privacy and comfort is required.

As LS:N Global reported in Revamped Utilities, clinic spaces are receiving a makeover, meeting the growth in wealth of the private healthcare consumer.

Boxed up: Temporary bar brings light on a budget

Porto, Portugal – A pop-up bar has been built with a previously unexplored building material: IKEA storage boxes.

Local architects Diogo Aguiar and Teresa Otto used 420 IKEA boxes to build the Temporary Bar for the Associação de Estudantes da Faculdade de Arquitectura in just in one week. Students from the Oporto School of Architecture also lent a hand with the project.

During the day the bar is a closed unit constructed of the multiple white cubes. By nightfall, the front wall partly opens to reveal the bar. Inside this bar is luminous, dynamic lighting that changes with the DJ’s set list. Responding to music, these lights transform the façade at night with blue and red hues.

Read more on innovative collaborations in our report on the new Brandtocracies era.

Hand wash: Skincare brand ventures into clothing care

Melbourne – Luxury cosmetic brand Aesop has teamed up with French fashion label A.P.C to create a premium fabric wash for clothes.

Using the same precision and attention to detail as for its premium skincare and cosmetics – including soaps and gel cleansers, balms and oils – the Aesop chemists developed Fine Fabric Care specifically for hand washing fragile garments. The delicate product contains extracts of pettigrain, lemon and cedarwood, and is tapping the growing affluent consumer who is interested in design-led domestic products.

Aesop and A.P.C’s Fine Fabric Care is another example of a partnership between two complementary brands, a topic we analyse in Brandtocracies.

Utility wear: Designers give fashion a new function

Berlin – A new clothing line by ffiXXed is creating a new meaning for utilitarian clothing. The design and art collective’s summer line, called Unseen Utopias, has incorporated a specific function into each of its items.

Garments include the ‘shopperbag shirt’, which cleverly allows shoppers to carry groceries in a bag that is integrated into the design of the shirt, and a ‘bookhanger’ that lets people carry their favourite novels as accessories.

The new clothing collection also aims to explore the relationship between the natural environment and the wearer. For example, the Desert Sunhat and Mosquito Net Hat Extension draw on practical outdoor wear and are designed to mediate the experience of nature.

As explored in our Retail Report, these garments will be valued by consumers during the Turbulent Teens, who are buying in order to express their ethical, environmental and community ideals.

Perfect serve: New vodka adds superfood variety

Stockholm – A new vodka drink is tapping the growing popularity of the açaí berry.

Berri Açaí by Absolut contains vodka, açaí berries that grow on palm trees in South America, blueberries from North America and Europe, and pomegranate from south-west Asia.

‘It has an elegant, focused berry aroma, a pure, vital and slightly juicy taste, and a smooth, crisp and berry finish,’ says Laura Stephen, global marketing director for Absolut.

The new flavour comes in a transparent bottle and features an image of a deep-purple berry vine climbing around it.

The new vodka follows the trend for adding superfood ingredients into food products, a theme explored in our Food Futures report.

Hole-in-one: Mini golf design swings to Milan

Eindhoven – Dutch design collective La Bolleur will bring their fun interactive designs to this year’s Milan Design Week in April.

As we reported in October, the eight designers transformed a disused farmhouse into a mini golf course, during Dutch Design Week. The nine-hole course and clubhouse with bar will be re-installed at Via Voghera 11 in Milan for the design festival.

Previously La Bolleur has turned the farmhouse into a ping-pong club, a redundant brothel into a restaurant and an empty swimming pool into a party space.

LS:N Global will be reporting on key new designs and trends shown at this year’s Milan Design Week.

Wow factor: Bar receives monthly makeover

Miami – Taking the pop-up concept to the bar, a new drinking venue is receiving a makeover by a different artist each month.

The bar is run by the creative collective OHWOW, made up of artists, musicians and designers. The monthly rotation invites a different artist to design an interior, placing drinkers in the middle of an on-going installation. Local artists Freeguns are the current designers who have covered the bar’s walls with tiny illustrations.

The next designer will be Todd James, famed for his graffiti in the New York City subway system. James will fit the bar with colourful graffiti paintings including pink, naked women.

Read more on innovative collaborations in our report on the new Brandtocracies era.

Circus act: Diners are the entertainment at new restaurant

London – Diners take centre stage at the new Circus restaurant in Covent Garden.

The restaurant, created by Tom Dixon, takes its design cues from the Surrealist art movement, and places diners amongst burlesque performances and drag acts. The designer’s ‘Tall Chairs’, as well as 20th century design classics such as Artek’s ‘Golen Bell’ lightshade and a Verner Panton ‘Shell’ chandelier, surround the main dining table. Budding performers amongst the diners can also use the bespoke dancers’ pole in the lounge.

Circus demonstrates the innovative ways of engaging consumers that we explore in our Dreamtelligence trend report.

Guest house: Hotel mixes design with heritage

Stockholm – A hotel is updating its heritage for a modern, design-savvy guest.

The building that is now Hotel Skeppsholmen, situated on an island in the heart of the city, dates from 1699. It used to house Karl XII’s personal elite force and is known to locals as The Long Row. Barracks that used to accommodate six soldiers have been transformed into stylish rooms for paying guests, with names such as the Admiral’s suite and the General’s suite.

The hotel has been designed by Swedish architecture firm Claesson Koivisto Rune and Erséus Architects and features traditional and local materials such as a reception desk in solid, brushed aluminum as well as linseed oil-based paint on timber.

‘We have moved away from ‘gloss and shine’ as we want to focus on traditional Swedish heritage,’ Joachim Olausson, managing director of Hotel Skeppsholmen tells LS:N Global. ‘We serve Swedish classics such as meatballs in the restaurant, our staff wears Swedish designs by Acne, and Byredo Parfums has created a unique fragrance for the hotel as well as providing the toiletries.’

Brands are increasingly moving away from excess to focus on craftsmanship and heritage – see our Alphalux trend report for more on this shift to an emotional engagement with design.

On your bike: Vintage cycle hire available around city

Melbourne – A new service provides tourists with vintage bikes for hire at various locations throughout the city.

Founded by cycling enthusiast Matthew Hurst, The Humble Vintage company offers a personalised bicycle hiring scheme with bikes for hire from cafés, clothing stores and beachside vintage shops

All bikes have 10 gears and come with a helmet, lights, lock and map of the city. The bikes available include a ‘fine flat-bar Graecross’ and a ‘super cute pink Halpin mixte’ with reflective pink cables.

‘They’re vintage, obviously, but have all been restored and have the feel of your friend’s bike,’ Hurst says. He is also giving cyclists little bundles of newspapers around the city that feature riding routes with cafe and bar reviews.

Simple, yet convenient service – a key theme for brands as they engage with a new consumer Retail Report.

Upmarket vending: Automatic sales machine gets makeover

Berlin – A new vending machine is combines the convenient of online retail with the immediacy of physical shopping.

The Berlinomat, designed by Coordination design agency, is in the German capital’s central station and uses the established mechanics of online shopping to automatically sell items to customers. A touchscreen interface mimics the online shopping experience, and gives detailed descriptions of the 42 available products. All the items for sale are designed locally in Berlin and range from clothing accessories to travel essentials to a pepper mill.

But whereas online shoppers have to wait for goods to arrive, the vending machine provides shoppers with their merchandise and a receipt straight away. Soon these vending machines will pop up all over Berlin: Tegel airport and Galeries Lafayette will be next, before being rolled out internationally.

In the Upmarket Vending trend that we have noticed, automatic shopping devices are helping to cut overheads and are adding a premium experience to convenience retail.

School dinner: Children grow their own schoolyard

New York – School children will soon be able to tuck in to food from their schoolyard.

Restaurateur and food activist Alice Waters developed The Edible Schoolyard programme in the hope of transforming children’s relationship with food.

Pupils at the school in Brooklyn will plant, harvest and prepare food such as potatoes, carrots and cabbage in their own garden. These activities will be tied into the general curriculum, connecting food to subjects such as science and art. The pupils will get hands-on, year-round education about food.

Four constructions will complement the garden by producing energy and heat, collecting rainwater, sorting waste and processing compost. In addition, a mobile four-season greenhouse extends the growing season into colder months.

LS:N Global is increasingly seeing a move towards locally produced food. Recently we reported on a concept for a supermarket where produce is grown onsite.

Curiosity shop: Retail goes surreal in new collaboration

London – A collaboration between the British textile company Sanderson, footwear designer Tracey Neuls and contemporary artist Nina Saunders is creating a surreal retail environment.

The Most Curious installation in Neuls’ shop, TN_29, features a sculpture by Saunders: a melting chair upholstered in blue and white vintage Sanderson textile sit next to a series of thin tree trunks. Two shoe designs by Neuls are also on show; covered in red and green Sanderson textile, they appear like falling leaves.

The project will be on display until 30 June at 29 Marylebone Lane. Read more on partnership brands in our report on the new Brandtocratic era.

Smell-o-gram: Colorimeter pinpoints aromas

Illinois – Picture being able to pinpoint the exact coffee aroma you want on a graph. That might soon be possible, as researchers at the University of Illinois have developed a ‘colorimeter’ that visually maps out smells.

Tiny squares of polymer film hold 36 drops of carefully designed dyes. These pigments change to colours such as green, blue and red when exposed to various chemicals such as ammonia and fluorine.

The result, demonstrated on cards, shows each smell’s unique fingerprint. This means that subtle differences in complex aromas such as coffee can be illustrated on a graph.

This is a great example of a development that is driven by convenience-seeking ‘Turbulent Teens,’ for more see our Retail Report

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Grow your own: Supermarket concept will produce food on-site

Rotterdam – Rather than using fuel-guzzling distribution channels and freighted food, a new concept demonstrates how retailers could sell goods produced entirely on site.

Bergen Kolpa Architects developed the the Park Supermarket concept for the Architecture of Consequence exhibition.

In the concept, plots of land in Randstad, a former food production area of Holland which is now urban, have been created and the resulting produce would be sold in the supermarket. Each food department in the supermarket has its own dedicated hectare in which to grow its produce. For example, risotto rice can be grown on water terraces, tilapia fish raised in basins, and kiwis and avocados cultivated along undulating fruit walls.

With consumers increasingly seeking local food, as explored in a recent Insight News story, and concerns about carbon-consuming freight, the Park Supermarket concept could soon become reality for major grocery retailers.

Face lift: Wine gets a new identity

Oggau, Austria – Soon you’ll be able to recognise a wine by its face.

The Oggau Wine Estate produces nine wines that differ in character and age, under the brand name Gut Oggau. In order to distinguish them from each other, the wine estate asked the design agency Jung Von Matt to come up with an individual identity for each of the wines.

The agency assigned a face, story and name to these different attributes and created a family consisting of grandparents, parents and children. The result includes sociable Winifred Rosé and down-to-earth Bertholdi Red. Within the first six weeks of these faces being shown on the bottles, Gut Oggau sold 15,000 units.

‘Just like every man, every wine has its own individual character ranging from young to mature, from playful to complex,’ account manager Jung Von Matt says.

Brands are increasingly communicating the stories behind their goods, as explored in our Luxury Insight report.

Foggy thinking: Invention catches drinking water from the air

Frankfurt – A designer has come up with an innovative construction that turns fog into drinking water.

The United Nations predicts that two thirds of the world’s population will suffer from water shortage in 2025. The tent-like DropNet construction by German designer Imke Hoehler will bring a solution to some of the worst hit places as it filters water droplets from fog clouds and causes the droplets to unite. Each unit can collect 10-20 litres of water per day.

The best locations are coastal areas or those between 400m and 1200m above sea level, such as parts of Chile, Haiti, Peru, Nepal and Spain, Hoehler states.

To see more smart solutions to environmental and ecological issues, see our new Retail Report. This idea certainly leaves us on cloud nine.

Express yourself: Beauty retailer creates multisensory space for brands

Milan – Launching its largest European store, beauty retailer Sephora introduces an architectural concept that allows brands to express themselves.

The store, at the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, opened at the same time as Milan Fashion Week. Set over three floors, it is designed for brands to entertain their customers: music and images add creativity to the store atmosphere. In addition, individual store areas are defined by colour to create a more emotional shopping experience.

‘We want our clients to express their personalities,’ Laura Schiatti, Sephora Italy’s marketing director tells Women’s Wear Daily.

The concept taps into the themes of Edu-tail-ment that we explore in our new Retail Report, exploring how new retail environments are behaving as entertainment spaces in order to encourage customers into stores once more.

Mood food: Restaurant recreates a homely experience

Paris – Home is where the heart is at a new restaurant in the French capital, giving diners the experience of being a guest at a friend’s dinner party.

Forgoing pretence and glamour, Derriere creates a familiar atmosphere: bookshelves are loaded with piles of books, a bed is in the middle of a room and a ping-pong table add to the feeling of being in someone’s home.

Depending on what mood diners are in, they can watch films in the movie room, or have cocktails in the boudoir. And should they enjoy themselves a bit too much and tiredness sets in, they can always have a quick nap on the bed.

Derriere is on rue des Gravilliers in Le Marais district, behind (Derriere means behind in French) Le 404 restaurant and Andy Wahloo cocktail bar.

Places such as Derriere aim to create an emotional experience with design that taps into our Rough Lux direction.

Kitchen vision: Multi-functional table becomes heart of the home

Stockholm – A new kitchen concept illustrates how we will live in 2050.

Heart of the Home, developed by Electrolux, is an interchangeable cooking surface that adapts to people’s needs. It functions as an all-in-one kitchen table, cooking surface and bar.

Pots and pans will be long forgotten, instead people will simply place ingredients on the surface. Cookbooks will also be unnecessary: the appliance analyses the ingredients and presents a list of suitable recipes. The user then decides with his hand how large the cooking area should be; by pushing the surface down, the desired depth is created.

The concept taps into the themes of our Homestead 3.0 trend report, where we look at recent innovations for urban spaces.

Picture it: Cut-out camera brings people back to analogue photography

Brno, Czech Republic – A design studio is encouraging people to acknowledge the art of photography before the digital revolution.

Hubero Kororo is providing a free downloadable paper cut-out camera for anyone to use.

The retro-looking Rubikon becomes a functioning camera once users have glued it together. It is used as a teaching aid at some schools for pupils to learn about photography in a simple and fun way.

‘I would also like to offer mass photographers an alternative way not to take just gigabytes of pictures but also some shots with unique atmosphere and specific creative approach,’ designer Jaroslav Juřica says.

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Tools for action: Affordable housing toolkit aims to engage citizens

*New York – * To get people involved in their community, a pop-up workshop in Manhattan provided an affordable housing toolkit.

The kit, designed by the Center for Urban Pedagogy, includes an interactive felt chart, an illustrated affordable housing guidebook and access to online maps that chart the income demographics and housing costs of any neighbourhood in New York City.

The toolkit equips community members with the knowledge to develop positive visions for their neighbourhood and the terminology to articulate these to the experts.

Brands are increasingly getting engaged by giving something back to the community. We explore this in depth in our Civic Branding micro trend.

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In your face: People awake to new sneaker campaign

Boston – A new sneaker campaign aims to become part of consumers’ daily life, through 365 days of online video and an iPhone app alarm clock.

The New Balance 365 project is a collaboration between lifestyle agency Mother New York and Swedish film director Jesper Kouthoofd. A series of 365 short films by Kouthoofd, one for every day of the year, aims to encourage consumers to think about balance. The films will be posted on the website daily until February 21 next year.

An alarm clock that can be downloaded as an iPhone app will remind people of the campaign. This provides a unique way for New Balance to interact with its audience. As explored in our Brandtocracy trend report, widespread use of social media means consumers are increasingly demanding a personal relationship with brands.