One thing you’ll find on every designer is an interesting watch.  This is the one accessory that designers will drop a boat load on to have bragging rights of the coolest watch.  I think these watches by Romain Jerome have to top the scales as the most extravagant.  There are not many products out there that can charge more money than a lot of cars and have no guarantee or even be able to touch it.

The metal oxidized ring on the watch (reminiscent of many Michigan vehicles) is actual metal from the Titanic.  Some of the watches have been coated with a substance to preserve the look but one of the models stays true to its material and must be kept in a glass jar filled with argon gas to keep from the continual attack of oxidation.   Why make it a watch that you can’t wear?  Why not just make it clock for a shelf?

Anyway there is also a version that doesn’t even tell time, only if it is day or night.  Do you really need something to tell you that?  Exessive design at its best but they do look sweet.

There will be 2012 watches made in honor of the Titanic which will be available in 2012.  The 100 year anniversary of the 1912 disaster.

Thanks for the link Garrett!

I don’t think so, but these newest sketches of the RR4 sure look a lot like the Cadillac Sixteen. Not that it is a bad thing since the Sixteen was a bad ass car. My issue is the similarity of design.  Is Rolls taking some lessons from the Chinese brands?  Meaning copying design is a sign of a compliment.I know this is just a teaser sketch but lets make a big deal out of it.  Here is the scoop from RR design:

According to Chief designer, Ian Cameron, “The RR4 has a more informal presence than the Phantom models with a greater emphasis on driving. In design terms this is expressed through its slightly smaller dimensions and more organic form, yet with powerful, purposeful proportions. It is a true and uncompromising Rolls-Royce in every sense.”

I wonder if this will be direct competition to the Bentley Continental GT. Rolls is planning on this car slotting in below the Phantom.  With smaller proportions and hopefully a smaller price tag this could be a huge hit for the wealthiest out there. The RR4 will be for sale in 2010 and at some auto show in the upcoming season. Yeah, more cars for the wealthy, just what we need.

More pics after the jump..

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For this week’s Web of the Week  we take a gander at Geekologie.com, a website devoted to “the scientific study of Gadgets, Gizmo, and Awesome”.  It’s essentially your standard geek-tech blog, but not the run-of-the-mill computer tech kind.

Focusing on geek-chic products (solar-powered speedboats, anyone?) with cool design possibilities, and a sprinkling of other geek-memes (videos, games, etc) the site is easy to get immersed in on your average Monday morning.  The design-related products are often as impractical as a flux capacitor, and yet we can’t stop staring at them like 3-yr olds in a Kay Bee toy store.  And with a Top 8 list of “So Cool” things to see on their site (and their sister site, I Watch Stuff) it can be easy to forget to work on that TPS report today.

Geekologie.com… Check it out, and bring on your inner geek.

It is always great to hear other voices speak out other than our little thing we have going on here. Jay Leno goes off about the American car companies. He makes a lot of good points that seam so simple to achieve. Yet nothing is being done. Read on below to get your Monday Tuesday going. Sweet, short week!

The type of vehicles America makes best are, unfortunately, not the type of vehicles that people really want anymore. Nobody builds better trucks than the Americans do. Not even the Japanese build as good a truck as the Ford F-150 or the Chevy Silverado.

It’s the same with performance cars. The Corvette Z06 has 505 horsepower, comes with a big warranty, and can hit 200 miles per hour. It weighs almost exactly the same as a half-million-dollar Porsche Carrera GT and gets higher mileage — 26 miles per gallon.

Where we seem to lose it is in the low-bucks econocar. I used to be able to identify any American car from 25 yards. Now they all have this jellybean look. It’s a mystery to me, because the one thing we used to do better than anybody else was build cheap, extremely high-quality cars. We did it for decades, all the way back to the beginning of the industry Read more

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Well, we finally hit the issue of gas prices, as we are all feeling the burn these days.  What does it foretell for the future of the automotive world?  For design and designers?  Listen in to hear what we have to say!

Oh, and we were plagued by interruptions.  That’s what happens when yours truly forgets to book a conference room.

 

 Car Design Fetish Episode 010 [33:04m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (34)

We often come across great designs worthy of an in-depth article, interview, or design critique.  This is not one of those times.  This my friends, is the Flatmobile: a 19-inch tall (flat?) Batmobile replica that is a fully-functional car. Powered by a jet engine capable of exceeding speeds of over 100mph, the vehicle is able to catch any short criminals in Gotham.

Surprisingly, the car is still twice the height of the Fiero my father used to own.

Full images after the jump.

(Thanks, Mike!)

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PadStyle is a decor blog with posts on stylish furnishings for your home.

That’s what the site’s brief one-liner states. As part of our new regular weekly feature, we will dive headfirst into the interwebs and bring you a new design-related site to enjoy every Wednesday. This first week we ask you to turn your attention to PadStyle.com, a modern furniture website, hosted by furniture shop Prime-Furniture-Source.

PadStyle looks at affordable modern furniture that you can buy for your home, as opposed to the oft-maligned sites that dangle a design carrot in front of you in the form of a product that will never escape from concept phase.  Just about everything on PadStyle can be bought online or in stores.  The other neat feature about the site is that it looks at what makes a product special, such as its materials or its assembly, instead of just aesthetics.  Think of it as a blog version of Wallpaper magazine, with products that won’t necessarily empty your wallet.

Overall, it’s a pretty good site to draw some inspiration from.

(Thanks for the link, John!)

If you’d like to send us a link to one of your favorite design sites, email us at cardesignfetish at gmail dot com.

Recently, we at CDf  have been making the rounds at various art & design schools for their annual shows, often fondly remembering the days when we “used to design cool cars”.  We’ve been ogling vehicle designs, sketches, models… secretly critiquing, and always wondering if the student concepts could foretell the future design direction of some giant automotive OEM.

While not a said gaint OEM, Local Motors has emerged as a way for students, designers, and enthusiasts to create compelling vehicle designs that may one day actually make it to market as an LM product.  Utlizing a crowd-sourcing concept, LM has created a community (heavily designer-centered… yay!) where individuals submit work to their pre-defined competitions (such as the recently completed California Off Road Machine).  The winning design receives a monetary award, with the possibility to sell the concept to LM for an additional sum.  We will do a full deep-dive of Local Motors very soon.

To find out how you can enter the latest competition, and to see entries from the previous competiton, read on!

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We all love design when it’s purposely going against the norm.  NONOBJECT likes it so much, that it devoted an entire book to it.  It then took it a step further and created the nUCLEUS, a bike concept so fresh that it’s square.

Literally.

The nUCLEUS is definitely a bike like no other.  Its pure aesthetic is based on flat blades of material that offer up a different idea of how to create an aerodynamic form without the typical jungle-cat design of modern bikes.  The theory is that the bike’s blade-like panels cut through the air as it speeds down some futuristic Akira expressway, all the while raising and lowering its haunches to create a better seating or riding position.  The “ultra-strong composite” panels are interchangable so that you can put in the leopard stripes and get back the ultimate look of an animal that the box is trying to change.

Oh, that would be soooo meta!

More photos and link after the break! Read more

It is almost Friday so I am sure you are all bogged down right now waiting for the day to end.  I know I am since I have a vacation day tomorrow.  Here is a little something to soak up 5 minutes. 

Tricked out Mouse is a fun site to customize your generic mouse we love to touch.  We put the fetish spin to it and yes that is a hot tub in the rear.  Hellz yeah!  The site was built by Singularity Design for Kensington Computer Products.  The site has also won a Silver Addy in the 2008 Philadelphia Addy awards.

Here are a few examples from the gallery.   Go ahead and have some fun with it.