click images to enlarge | tree page marker by megumi takagi
Happy Earth Day! …what? You say that was yesterday? But every day is earth day, right? Ok, I’m just trying to make up an excuse for not posting this yesterday, which was my original intent. I wanted to share some work from the recent Konica Minolta Art and Eco Awards. I briefly covered this last year, but decided to pay more attention to it this year. And I apologize for the lack of consistency in images but they were scarce and I had to dig them up from multiple sources.
The first place prize went to Remo-Kuma, a polar bear that controls the use of electricity in a household. Created by Shozo Kuze and Mariko Sakamoto, the polar bear responds to head petting, back rubs and butt pats. Check out the cute video below!
Although they lost out, I was fascinated by some of the other entries such as this Knot chair by Miyashita Tomoya. It can be configured to accommodate almost any kind of position.
Image courtesy of legiter
One of the most gorgeous entries, in my opinion – hence the numerous images – were these Tree Page-markers by Megumi Takahashi, an editorial designer. They function almost identically with those grass pagemarkers except these, as curiosity mounts in a certain book, a forest grows, rather than a yard of grass.
Images courtesy of tsui design
The markers depict several varieties of trees and each blade of paper is made from its respective tree. Lovely.
One other piece that caught my eye was Icicle by Fujita Manabu and Takuma Yamamoto, of design unit PLUS. It was made from thow-away straws that are plentiful in any fast-food joint.
Image courtesy of mycom journal
