dashdot

Sensor Mirror on Core77

danballou — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 18:07:38 +0000

The simplehuman sensor mirror is making its debut and was featured on Core77 today. The mirror won’t be on most retail shelves until March, but it has to be seen in person to be fully appreciated. The light and optics are incredible!

DSC on Southpark

danballou — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 21:48:13 +0000

The DSC keypad I designed while back in Boston working for Altitude was spotted on South Park. This bumps up my stats for designs featured in cartoons to 2 products on South Park, and one on Beavis and Butthead.

Chill

danballou — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 00:08:25 +0000

Designed by dashdot – a new family of laptop cooling products for Targus. We’ll add more info soon. Just received our first box of production units today!

Fancy Fridays

danballou — Sat, 16 Jun 2012 00:39:27 +0000

We are casual by nature, so we feel like we’re missing out on ‘Casual Fridays’. To make up for it, we decided to institute ‘Fancy Fridays’.

Bloging about being blogged

danballou — Thu, 03 May 2012 00:31:59 +0000

Check out the “Hella Ballou” post on Core 77. It’s great to be mentioned on one of the blogs that I check on a regular basis.

Salvage

danballou — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 01:20:59 +0000

My friend John Douglas is somehow the guy in charge of a 30,000 sq ft warehouse in South Central LA. Last night he invited a handful of friends over to share what the heck he’s been up to in there. The sheer size of the place is really overwhelming. The warehouse was mostly taken up by an abandoned architectural salvage business. He made a deal with the owner to sell off everything inside and convert it into studios and workshops. The new studios are in addition to the 3 craftsmen who were already working in the building.

It’s right off the 110 on Slauson. The building was used as a salvage materials business for about a week, then closed down.

John is a designer / builder that knows a lot about restoring classic Spanish and Craftsman homes. He even keeps it real by doing all his construction drawings by hand on a drafting table. If you woke up from a coma in his office you would have no idea what year it was.

The door to the studio.

John (right) and Pete Deeble (left).

Luc Peltier (right) and Joel Lueb (left)

Upstairs is one of the gnarliest wood shops i’ve ever seen. This picture is just a fraction of what is up there. It also looks like it hasn’t been swept in 10 years. Either way it was incredible.

Down the hall from the woodshop is a ceramics studio that specializes in custom Spanish tile.

Other studios in the building include a foundry, a welding shop, a fashion designer, and a production designer. The place is amazing.

John took us next door to an abandoned (for now) warehouse where we did a little conveyor belt surfing.

and found a trap door that went down to a small pump room covered in 30 years of dust. Also known as where the horror movie starts.

Highline

danballou — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 04:51:46 +0000

This past weekend was the first time I’ve actually walked along the Highline. Even though I’ve heard so many good things, it’s better than I expected. Must be amazing in summer.

THREAT

danballou — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 04:49:46 +0000

I was in NYC this past weekend for the American Design Club’s newest exhibition “THREAT”. I created the Who’s There Chair for the show. The AmDC is an amazing group of young designers that promote creative, American design.

There are much better photo galleries of the event on Core 77 and the AmDC’s facebook page, but here are a few of my favorite designs from the lens of my point and shoot.

Defense Mat by Reed Wilson

Louie by Felicia Ferrone

Turning Violent Aggression Into Fashionable Dance Steps by Society Of Creative Non-Violent Reactions Tommy Knockers by Junior Aesthetic Fundamentalists (AKA Izzie)

AK(Ass-Kicker)47 by Steph Mantis

Boxing Gloves by Kiel Mead

Baseball Bats – 10 Designers were given bats to modify and will be part of a raffle. My ticket went into Jonah Takagi’s (5th from left)

The Who’s There Chair by yours truly.

Build

danballou — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 06:01:14 +0000

New studio is in the works….

Ghost Desking.

Stockholm Design Week

danballou — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 05:56:37 +0000

A couple weeks back, I went to Stockholm for design week. I got the impression that design is to Scandinavia as baseball is to the US. It’s a national pastime. Stockholm is design centric any time of year, but it was really going off for the furniture fair. It’s a small show relative to ICFF, but everything is good, or if not good then at least interesting.

The first night (after a nice plate of pickled herring, Swedish meatballs, and some kind of beet) we stopped by the DFTS party, where they were launching ‘the last ashtray’ by Richard Hutton. His idea was to design a beautiful ashtray to be used for his last cigarette. Then, it can be used for something else. Holding eggs looks possible.

The next day we hit up the furniture fair. So much good stuff.

Spun chair by Thomas Heatherwick for Magis

Not new but I love it – Donuts by Dirk Wynants for Extremis

Waver by Konsatntin Grcic for Vitra.

Anyone remember the move “the peanut butter solution’ ?

A little more pickled herring, and we headed over to the Form Us With Love party. It was on a small island, with candles leading the way to the exhibition space. It was for sure the event with the most excitement and energy. These guys are taking over.

Next stop on the trip was Copenhagen, where I saw so many good bikes.

Check out this stamped metal kids seat.

Two memorable swanky bars in Copenhagen – Ruby was an American Speakeasy / Prohibition type bar, with some seriously gnarly bar tenders. They make high craft cocktails. Have you ever had a drink that tastes like a campfire but still tastes good? They also had a jazz version of the US national anthem playing at one point.

Along the same lines but not as hip, although probably more authentic, was the Library Bar in the Copenhagen Plaza Hotel.

The end.