Design 21: Allumonde Ring

On a visit home to CT last weekend, my mom suprised me with an unexpected gift: a set of Allumonde rings from DESIGN 21. The ring, designed by Richard Hutten, is the symbol of the Social Design Network, the online community of socially conscious designers who believe social change can happen through the power of design. As they say on their website, "Better design for the greater good."

According to the Design 21 site, the rings range from $25 for an acrylic set to $2500 for an 18k gold version, however, the acrylic set of 3 I received was marked $6. 19% of the proceeds from your ring purchase go to the charity of your choice and 2% goes to UNESCO.

The rings are sleek and simple, yet the gap at their peak adds a bit of curiousity and intrigue. I'd love to ask Mr. Hutten about his design concept of this little beauty.

I absolutely adore my set—I have the black, turquoise and clear children's acrylic set and wear all three daily on my pinky. Check out the pics below and view all versions on the Design 21 site.

In this industry, we're all pretty much married to design, so we may as well wear its ring!

Loud as a Mouse

Today I came across one of the most successful logo designs I've seen in awhile. Johnson banks of the UK recently re-branded Microsoft's digital advertising awards, named Mouse. The company set out to embed a mouse image withing the type, and as you can see from the graphic: mission accomplished. By utilizing the copyright symbol, changing the color of the "o" and subtracting a specific shape from the word, they were able to create an intriguing, yet simple logo for the awards.

If you could have a pet logo, this would be mine...no contest :)



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