With the Wii topping sales charts weekly and having just pushed out its 50 millionth DS, the time was ripe for Nintendo to release their collaboration with Run Athletics. The company, whose style has been described as urban sport casual, chose their flagship Legacy shoe to display iconic images of Mario, Luigi, Yoshi and others that will be familiar to anyone growing up in the 80’s. The shoes have a black, white, and red colorway with hints of light blue and gray for the designs. The tongue has a prominent M, giving tribute to Mario’s initial. The kicks are limited to just 400 pairs and each comes paired with a Run Athletics x Nintendo t-shirt. If you think you are willing to sport a well designed, albeit geeky shoe, head on over to Denim & Sole.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is a crazy world. As we speak, two men in a small town in South Carolina are fighting over an amputated leg, three nuns in Italy are recovering from a catfight, and people are buying tickets to the Spice Girls reunion tour. In other words, high fives go out to Hypebeast for their simplicity, coming to you in the form of a mellow site redesign. They could have borrowed from the sneaker colorways that they go crazy over; they could have hyped their name by making their logo take up half of the page; they could have made it about them, and not the stuff they write about They could have done a lot of things, but instead they did gray, black, blue, and a teeny little bit of self-promo in the top left corner. And it’s pretty nice. So, even though they didn’t put Mother Superior in the hospital, I still think they deserve to be in the news. From one blog to another, nice job guys (and 101 Media Lab, the Japanese company behind the redesign).

The folks at Atypyk have answered the age old question, Why the hell won’t my dog catch a frisbee? Answer, lack of motivation. If you have trouble getting your canine to put on aerial displays for the reward of a measly sausage flavored biscuit, maybe you should try Atypyk’s Wooferang. This bone-shaped plastic foam boomerang gives Fido the illusion that he’s chasing one of his favorite things, and makes fetching fun for best friend and owner alike. After all, if you love your dog, set him free (or at least let him off his leash). If he comes back to you carrying the Wooferang you just threw, then it was meant to be. Or, uh, something. Related: Atypyk Archive

There’s no question about it: Brazil’s right on the money when it comes to graphic design and graffiti. With motion graphics, though, the due is still locked up in a dark drawer in accounts payable somewhere. Outside of the few well-recognized studios (see: Lobo) there are groups and individuals diligently plugging away, filling the blanks in between with fresh and fly work. Say hi to Matilda; behind the memorable moniker is Sao Paulo duo Raquel Falkenbach and Renato Ferro, who forged a professional partnership this year to put into action a veritable plethora of very good pieces for MTV Brasil and magazines that are nothing short of awe-inspiring. The illustration work is sweet, but their mograph segments are even more incredible. I’m not exaggerating when I say that watching the sleek opening they did for an MTV Brasil special called “Discoteca” under the videos section has made my life better. Someone give these guys a music video to produce already — there is serious potential here.

While it is said that oil and water don’t mix, Singapore native Hunn Wai, a recent graduate of the IM Masters programme at the Design Academy Eindhoven in The Netherlands, could probably make the two work in concert with one another. Exhibiting a design philosophy that revolves around accentuating the “processes and results of collision combinations and fusions of materials, meanings and forms,” Wai has shown his ability to turn two opposing components into a cohesive tour de force of creativity. His graduation pieces, Tre Di Una and Wood X Plastic Shelf are shining examples of this.

Tre Di Una doesn’t resemble your normal set of wooden chairs as much as it does a set piece from a Tim Burton film. Wai turns the generic wood chair on its ear by combining it with the characteristics of plastic clay to break down an iconic structure and transform it into something utterly unique.

The components of Wood X Plastic Shelf may appear to be warring factions, with “sheets of smoke-coloured acrylic impaled by beech poles to construct a shelf.” But Wai actually relies on their confrontational nature and engineers a certain simplicity with his “meticulous technique of programming the components to fit” with one another, and creates quite the lovely shelving unit. IKEA, eat your heart out.

Remember waaaaaay back in kindergarten when you spent your days coloring and someone called it “class”? Well, waaaaaay back then, were you a scribbler or did you stay between the lines? I was more of a scribbler myself. I remember getting in trouble for coloring in the Pacific Ocean with uneven strokes of my blue pencil. But no matter whether you’re the meticulous type, or the scratch-the-pencil-all-over type, Thout Design has a lamp that will fit you.

Check out the Scribble & Spool Lamps; one for the no-nonsense zen-minded ordered person and one for the devout scribbler. They’d also make a heck of a pair over a conference table (or dining table, not that I have one of those) as a representation of the two sides of the brain, or some such agency-type speak you’d like to apply. Either way, I dig’em.

As we told you a little while back, the WIRED LivingHome — a collaboration between Wired Magazine and LivingHome, an innovative prefabricated housing supplier — is of equal interest to gadget heads, architecture fans and conservationists. Currently having its finishing touches supplied at its location in Brentwood, CA, this house combines the latest in environmentally-friendly (and tech geek-friendly) technology, with the refined architectural touch of Ray Kappe. The news we can share with you today is that the project will open to the public from Saturday, October 27th through Monday, November 5th Sunday, November 11th. In addition, we can share the project’s website with you, so you’ll know where to go to satisfy every bit of curiosity you might have about this house. At the website, you’ll find out things like what car the WIRED LivingHome has in its driveway (a BMW Hydrogen 7), and how much the whole thing costs ($4 million). What? Too extravagant for the environmental contingent? Come on, this is Brentwood, baby.

Porsche Design is certainly tapped into “what men want,” and its new collaboration with luxury kitchen designer Poggenpohl is a reminder that men like to spend time in the kitchen too (and what guy wouldn’t want to spend time in a kitchen like this?). The design is abundant with sleek and functional aluminum profiles and frames, glass, integrated lighting, and comes with your choice of driftwood or dark oak fronts to set off the other, more technical and steely materials. All of the doors incorporate innovative mechanisms that dispense with the need for handles — no more inadvertently tearing your drawers off while going for a midnight snack. And what would a “man’s” kitchen be without high tech audio-video integration that will stand up to that chicken wing sauce that you splash while hurrying back to the couch for the last play of the game? Look for this new (and tailored) kitchen concept at Poggenpohl studios around the world in spring 2008 and in the U.S. at the end of next summer; girlfriends and wives: fine…you can come too.