It’s almost the weekend… which means I’ve got a chance to check out the events going on for The London Design Festival that’s running until the 25th of this month. I’m looking forward to visiting the Designersblock and 100% Design exhibitions, and hopefully It’ll give me lots to talk about next week.

Have a good weekend everybody! And if you’re going to any of the London Design events, keep a look out for me, I’ll be wearing a hat.

More info on The London Design Festival.

I’m not sure if it makes me emotional… but I love the design stylings of Studioilse, especially on projects like Studio House, New York and Babington House. Plus, they know how to knock up a nice dining table too.

See more work at Studioilse.

Absolute discretion provided to lovers. Newly renovated & styled La França Hotel in Barcelona is said to be for “couples”, if you get what I mean. The discreet and stylish interiors are set to provide lovers with a romantic hideaway in one of Europe’s greatest cities.

It certainly looks beautiful inside (the parking lot even has curtains), but the best part are the prices, starting from €42 up to €88 for the grand suite. I’m off to Barcelona next month, and I’m paying a lot more for a standard room in another hotel, than La França charges for their grand suite. Hmmm….Perhaps it might be time to change my booking?

Find out more at La França.

Update: The beautiful interior design work at La França was done by Lázaro Rosa Violán.

A reminder for those in London today. Today (Wednesday 19th of September) at 5pm, in a ‘Great Light Giveaway’, the designer Tom Dixon will be giving away 1000 ‘Blow’ lights and CFL bulbs on a first come first served basis at the North Terrace of Trafalgar Square, London WC2 to celebrate the London Design Festival. Anyone in the area should get themselves down there to grab themselves a free light.

More info at Tom Dixon.

P.S. if anyone wants to grab one for me, I’ll be extremely grateful and I’ll love them forever!

Challange to the concept of jewelry, or a porkchop in a bag? I’m not going to get all deep on you, so I’ll just say that Ted Noten is crazy. But good crazy, not ‘eating spiders and mumbling absurdities’ crazy. His jewelry designs consist of porkchops, golden bullets, cocaine, starlings, broken coffee cups and a whole heap of other bizarre objects.

Just go and check it out for yourself at TedNoten.com

Acclaimed British designer launches own brand. I’m a fan of the work of Matthew Hilton, and I’ve continuously lusted after the Wing Armchair that he designed for SCP. So it’s good to see that the british designer has decided to launch a new brand under his own name at 100% Design this year. I’ll be at the event later this week, so I’m looking forward to seeing the new product range in the flesh, but in the meantime, you can check out the distinctly wooden themed items at MatthewHilton.com

Golden storage for your precious data. Be dazzled by the golden bling of the LaCie Golden Disk designed by Ora-Ito (brand name of the french designer Ito Morabito). A storage device capable of storing 500 GB of your computer garbage within it’s lovely golden casing.

Check out the LaCie Golden Disk.

Art + Design = Miller Studio. Having been a former assistant to Artist Jeff Koons, and also a former designer for Karim Rashid, you can kind of get a sense of why the work of Jason Miller of Miller Studio verges between art and design. The colourful geometric patterns that can be made of his shipping container tiles would look suitably at home in an art gallery, as they would in your bathroom.

Shipping container tiles are ceramic wall tiles inspired by the landscape of shipping containers in Newark, New Jersey, or any other seaport.

See more great work at Miller Studio.

Art & Underwear. Although we’re used to the use of homo-erotic photography being used to flog underwear to the greater public, Bulge are doing it with a twist. For €99 you can buy a package consisting of a signed, numbered & framed photographic print of a subject wearing an item of Bulge underwear, and also the item of bulgewear featured in your print for yourself in your size.

So if you’re into artwork of men in their pants, and you happen to be in the market for a new pair of y-fronts, you better get yourself over to Bulge.

Do your household chores in style. Washing-up the dishes no longer has to be unglamourous. Jon Aspinall has created a baroque style washing-up bowl to clean the dishes in. Maybe it’ll make scrubbing the leftovers of last night’ lasagne off you plates more appealing? If I didn’t have a dishwasher, I’d totally buy one of these.

See more work by Jon Aspinall.