Clever idea by Gustafson Porter at the Venice Biennale. Helium balloons float shade cloths to create a very elegant outdoor gathering space. Tent rental companies beware?

Abandonalia has some amazing photographs of abandoned sites. Textures and colors abound in these old institutions, reversing the previous sterility and order.

Wonsuk Cho's gorgeous X-Ray Lights takes iconic fixtures and makes them the lamp shades.

Marc Owens created the Receipt Clock - a physical twitter machine of sorts. The Receipt Clock prints out the time and date on a lined slip of paper, which allows you to write a personal message which is significant to that particular moment in time.

Sascha Akkermann's Procontra shelving system - love the topographical nature of the shelves.

Great branding and packaging of McCraw's Confections by Craig Skinner.

Love the mountain top detail in Lanjaron Water bottles. Designed by Tridimage.

The Octopus Floor Chandelier by Inside - beautiful!

The Plamp by moomoo architects. The lamp doesn't have a traditional bulb, using several dozen meters of light tubing as both the shade and the light source instead.

More from Ontwerpduo (post 13903) - I love the detail of the wood joint in this aptly named project, Joints.

Julien Breton photographs incredible "light calligraphy" images. I wish I knew more about his process, because it boggles my mind as to how he does it.

Sony launches The Super-Slim New Cyber-shot T77 and Cyber-shot T700 ~ comes in a range of colors, and even has "anti-blink technology"!

The Big Picture chronicles 2008 in photos. This is their first installment of three.

I did similar explorations of city maps for my architecture thesis, but Lee Jang Sub has taken the idea one step further and turned his drawings into a set of products, titled the 'Complexcity Project'.

Mortimer Bust Candle by Thomas Grünfeld - love this sculpted candle of a bust. It would be perfect on top of a fireplace mantel.

Cristóbal Schmal, aka nomono, has an amazing illustrative portfolio...

The Ivy Armchair by Paola Navone - an outdoor chair meant to be overgrown by ivy.

Amazing, affordable animal portraits by Sharon Montrose.

JVC's Sound Garden concept - a green sound system made of renewable, sustainable materials - and it doubles as a vase!

wow...amazing, crazy balloon sculptures by Jason Hackenwerth depicting organisms, sea creatures and imaginary monsters.

Labware lamps - just one product from Benjamin Hubert's newest line debuting at 100% Futures next week.

Pretty glass jewelry from Sci-Fi.

A lovely Charcoal Water Pitcher that uses Japanese Iouseki stones and Binchotan charcoal to filter the water.

Sexy stacking chairs by Four Design!

Studio Voortman & Girod created Ssstoell and Kkkrukk - a chair and stool designed to look like multiple iterations of the same object just repeated and slightly shifted - a comment on digital copying and pasting.

Yong Jieyu's Domestic Hunting Tools illustrate the need to bring our food sources closer to home.

Lights by Piet Hein Eek at the London Design Festival 2008.

James Gulliver Hancock's Super series - a set of sculptures exploring altered perception and extension.

I love the playfulness of Perfectos Dragones' Bagu Lamp - so colorful and reminiscent of the lunch box drinks I enjoyed as a kid.

Enjoying the side turned drawer set by schubLaden.

Beautiful porcelain tableware by Claire Coles - love the delicate, lace-like impressions.

Kenji Miyazaki's EAT wallet for Erect - helps keep the environment clean by providing portable storage space your cigarette butts, until you can dispose of them permanently in a garbage can.

Christopher Bettig of theMountainLabel makes these awesome laser etched drawings of Richie Tenenbaum (from the Royal Tenenbaums). The figures can be made from poplar, oak, or ash and are around 12 inches tall.

Poketo launches their Australian Series wallets - showcasing designs from artists down under. The wallets will launch stateside in late November.

Julien de Smedt designed the Twirl house for the Next-Gene 20 Project in Taiwan. The house is excavated into the landscape and brings light into the house by lifting up and creating 'tears' in the ground plane.

Too weird - x-ray photographer Nick Veasey uses either skeletons in rubber suits, or cadavers to capture the human form in his photographs. When working with cadavers, he has around eight hours to pose and shoot before rigor mortis sets in.

The amazing, abandoned resort of San Zhi in Taiwan.

Hans-Christian Schink's Verkehrsprojekte deutsche Einheit project includes beautiful portraits of mundane urban structures such as bridges, highways, etc.

The Fruit-Template - part of nendo's collection of 1% projects - where only 100 pieces of each product were made - "to give owners the chance to experience the joy of owning 1%"!

Jewelgraphy cards by innovative design firm D-BROS, plus lots of other great products.

Love this zebra print by Richard Wilkinson.

David Ngo's Toumei sake carafe has an LED in the base that illuminates the remaining sake. As the carafe is emptied, the light becomes less diffuse.

Meixner Schlüter Wendt Architekten designed the Dornbusch church in Frankfurt. The old church facade is reflected via spatial subtractions in the new facade. MSWA has some great images of their creative process on their website.

Interesting Tender Tub by Maren Hartveld. It's made from a polyurethene coated foam rubber, which keeps it soft and warm instead of the traditional hard and cold tub.

Yoav Kotik's work with bottle caps has focused on jewelry, but he currently has an exhibition at Periscope Gallery in Tel Aviv showcasing bottle caps transformed into sculpture and home decor products. My favorite is the bottle cap light shade.

Gitta Gschwendtner's Animal Wall - 1000 nesting boxes for birds and bats on Cardiff Bay's Century Wharf, existing in dialogue with 1000 new apartments and houses that have gone up in the area recently.