Remember that Do Your Own Dew: Mountain Dew Bottle Design Contest we mentioned a few weeks ago? JoshSpear.com mainstay and good friend Scott Rench, AKA Yosoh is in the competition and needs our help. Apparently he’s losing to some knuckle-head designs shown on the middle and left (seriously embarrassing). Scott’s design is on the right, an awesome collection of illustrations in a signature iconic Yosoh style. To vote for him just log on to the site, click bottles and look for artist name Yosoh.You can vote every 24 hours (although it looks like the winners found a way to scam the system, sadly). Voting ends July 14th, lets go support him!

Heather has had (count them) four Blackberries this past year because she can’t seem to keep them from jumping into the Jacuzzi with her. [for the record, only two have been destroyed by jacuzzis -- Ed.] I can’t really blame the Blackberries for wanting a little soak — and a little of Heather’s company — but surely the gizmos should know better. Heather’s been lucky, though. Even if her phones haven’t survived, her sim card, along with the precious digits it stores, has amazingly remained intact.

If her Blackberry didn’t already have the ability to be backed up on her computer, and if she owned a compatible Sony, Nokia or Samsung phone, the USB Phone Book Flasher would keep her info just as safe. All she’d have to do is plug the little guy into her phone, and with the touch of a button she’d have backed up all of the information on her phone and her sim card. That way, her numbers will be safe even if something tragic happens to her current Blackberry (and I think we all know that its days are numbered). With the Phone Book Flasher, Heather could edit her phone book on her computer. And with a capacity of 10,000 records, even Heather should be able to keep in touch with all of her friends. Of course, if your cell phones tend to be short-lived, you should look into the Flasher too.

But no guarantees on getting into the Jacuzzi with Heather.

The team at Behance (who we introduced you to not long ago) is offering a great alternative to the traditional lined and boxed sketch guides so omnipresent on the desks of graphic designers. Instead of overtaking your sketches (and muddling up the scan), the Dot Grid Book offers a very light geometric dot matrix that, according to one fan, “disappears immediately after drawing a line over it,” and allows you to scan the image into Photoshop with minimal need for adjustment. Also, while you’re checking out this handy helper, be sure to browse the other great stuff Behance offers creative types; their Action Method system is a super-helpful tool in keeping all of that brainstorming/creative genius heading in the right direction.

Why do we like Brooklyn Radio? Probably because it’s not actually a radio station, which is good because we don’t listen to the radio anymore. On their newly relaunched website, you won’t find call letters or frequency numbers. Instead of through the airwaves, you can listen to Brooklyn Radio from its website via podcast and streaming audio. You can choose which of the shows (each are updated regularly) you want to listen to, and you can listen at your leisure — free to skip ahead or to pause, if you like.

The new site is an attractive blog format, with a menu of the station’s programming down the left side of the page. Under the “columns” tab there is even some purely editorial content. Overall, the tone of the site (and the columns) is pleasingly informal and comedic. Some of the shows available for a listen include The Rub, which ran a best-of Ghostface show this week, and The Dope Spot, which kicked off its most recent show with a funktastic Bob Marley remix. The Dope Spot’s DJ, Dan Martino, sums up the Brooklyn Radio project best himself. “Good evening, good afternoon, good morning, whenever it is you’re listening,” he says, “this is not real world time; this is internet time.” Yes, it is.

My dear friends and some of my early design mentors at Capacitor Design Network recently relaunched their website with some great examples of their both extraordinary and unique work. These guys really are industry veterans, with more than a decade of design, identity and illustration experience — everything from record covers to Burton collateral, as well as work on the original Xbox logo with Cinco Design. If you’re unfamiliar with CDN, be sure to pop by and explore their portfolio and breadth of work. Congrats on the 10 year birthday and new site, guys!

The Wrigleyville neighborhood in Chicago will never be thought of as a shopping destination, at least not unless you’re in the market for an Old Style, roasted peanuts, or a Hebrew National frank. There are a few spots here and there, though, worth visiting both for city-dwellers and visitors descending upon the Windy City this summer. The recently christened Lakeview Manufacturing Company, just a few minutes from Wrigley field in the heart of Lakeview, has gotten a lot of pub by the local press & scene-spotters — and rightly so. LMC, the latest concept from Lakeview Broadcasting Company owner Stephen Westman and FOB bassist/Ashlee Simpson boytoy/sometimes-tool Pete Wentz, presents itself as a “lifestyle boutique” which seems to mean that it’s just like any other boutique, but with a mini styling salon in the back. The shop goes all out for the ’80s theme with a shag carpet wall, strewn-about copies of Teen Beat, and other endearingly tacky details sure to trigger a wave of nostalgia and possibly, some impulse buys. In addition to Wentz’s Clandestine Industries line of apparel, you can find other rad goodies for both guys and gals from labels such as 426 Brand, DITC, Lying Laundry, Old School Arts & Crafts Movement, and Royale. In contrast to most other “lifestyle boutiques” in the city, most of the stuff here is relatively affordable and won’t leave you weeping in your 16-oz SOLO cup when you spill mustard down the front of your “new” vintage tee. Just remember kids, in the words of Martin Q. Blank: “You can never go home again… but I guess you can shop there.”

A few days ago, I went to check out an instrumental metal band from Sao Paulo called Elma, who covered Portishead in a heavy, swaggering style. Pretty gnarly, right? But wait, it gets even better: They recruited the guitarist’s dark-haired mom as the stand-in for Beth Gibbons. You can pretty much guess what happened — mama totally killed it, much to the adoration of the crowd. The show was the first in a month-long set of groups performing songs by their favorite bands, all organized by online indie record store Peligro and hosted by indie-music-friendly venue Milo Garage.

Although the words “indie” and “record store” sound mutually exclusive in the time of floundering finances for every part of the music industry from record companies to shops, Peligro’s got a niche here in Brazil: they sell import records by bands like the Arcade Fire and Lou Barlow at a savings of up to half the price of traditional outlets because of the low overhead and direct partnerships with the labels. Peligro’s a one-man show by Guilherme Barrella, who heads up the store and a ton of projects including the labels Open Field and Maldita Sea, which is specially reserved for Argentine bands. His most famous signee is the anomalous Tony da Gatorra, and was also responsible for putting on some of the first CSS and Bonde do Role shows. To get a feel of what Brazilian indie sounds like, click on the “ouca” links following each record’s description.

The rest of this year will be busy for the Little Indie Label That Could, including 10 new releases, an online magazine and a regular Peligro night at a club.

Our friends at +41 will be making an appearance at the upcoming Nokia Trends Lab in Berlin along fellow designers Cassette Playa, Surface2Air, and Wasted German Youth. (Nokia Trends Lab, for those who are unfamiliar, is an interesting initiative that connects established artists with up-and-coming local talents in order to co-create multi-media projects across Europe. It’s actually awesome, and kind of a big deal, and we don’t get any of it here in the US. Boo.) I’m sort of thrown as to what else will be going on because the Trends Lab site doesn’t have the event listed yet, but if you happen live in or around Berlin, I’m sure you know more than me — these things are too huge not to hear about, right?

Anyway, the party starts on July 13th and runs through the 15th at Postfuhramt – Orantenburger Str. 35-36, Berlin Mitte. Meanwhile, If any of you can fill in the blanks for us and the rest of our readers, we’d love you forever.

I am fortunate enough to have joint custody of a rather lovely Labrador-Rottweiler mix named Stella, who — just for comparison’s sake — I adore more than my Blackberry and new Macbook combined. Her real dad is my good friend Matt, and when he goes out of town I have her all to myself, which fills me with disgusting amounts of joy and excitement, because there’s nothing I love more than spoiling the crap out of her. One of the super-awesome treats headed Stella’s way is a set of Sushi Pups, which are plush dog toys fashioned to look like well, sushi. I’ll have to get back to you on if (and how fast) she destroys them (the last time I had her she destroyed my entire stuffed animal collection in less than half an hour), but the look on her face when I give her something like this? Absolutely, totally worth it.

You can score your own pooch a single piece, a two-piece or four-piece set of plush deliciousness directly from the Sushi Pups site (where shipping is free for orders over $50) or you can find a puppy-friendly retailer close to you here.

Munich-based Matthias Demacker’s origami.series, a set of designs inspired by the art of paper folding, was just awarded a prestigious red dot design award. Ranked as one of the largest and most renowned design competitions in the world, the red dot award generally receives over 6,000 submissions annually, and to be granted the distinction of a red dot ensures a designer’s ranking among the best of the business. Demacker’s design — available in two sizes and four colors — was manufactured from aluminum, allowing the elegant and fragile appearance of origami to be translated into sturdy piece of furniture with a delicate facade. The origami.series was designed for van-Esch, and their site lists a few dealers overseas that may stock the pieces (disclaimer: The site is in Dutch, so I could be wrong about that), but if you just want to browse Demacker’s other phenomenal work for various clients you can find it here.

I’ve been anxiously awaiting the release of the inaugural line of iPod-protecting Styles from People Like Us for sometime now, and it looks like they’re finally here. Jeremy Somers, a member of the Spear Collective and head of People Like Us has been working hard, and it looks like — once again — the Aussie didn’t disappoint. With so many iPod protectors on the market, do we really need more? I think so, because Styles aren’t your ordinary boring skins, and are not only made from non-destructive vinyl adhesive for protection, but also boast original art from a slew of some of our favorites– Chuck Anderson, Hejz, and Electric Heat (’Bad Horsey’ design shown above), to name a few. They’re available in an impressively wide selection of designs for most of the iPod and iPod Nano chassis for about $15 USD.

So in case you hadn’t figured it out, we’re a wee bit obsessed with clocks around here — not because any of us are necessarily punctual or schedule freaks, but because the design aspect behind timepieces today is so intruiging and innovative. Sometimes they are completely impractical for any normal living situation, impossible to read or will require a heavy black AMEX to purchase, but we love them all most of them, regardless. The Puhlmann Nixie Clock, however, is none of these things: an industrial mix of Nixie vacuum tubes and brushed stainless steel tell the time with a total retro-digital feel. This is the type of piece that could, theoretically, inspire the design of an entire room…or inspire you to, you know, be on time for once in your life.

via Technabob