Give us the skinny on your ugly and win
By Design Daily Team,
If you’re looking for a way to jazz up your laptop, we can help. Or more appropriately, designers Adrian Hailwood, Sable & Minx, Annah Stretton and Saben can help. In the lead up to New Zealand Fashion Week, HP and Microsoft have teamed up with these top Kiwi designers to create some ‘tech chic’ with the release of limited edition custom designed skins (adhesive covers) for selected HP notebooks. And because we love you so much, we’re giving you the chance to show your laptop some designer love by winning your favourite skin.
How to win
We want you to let us in on your ugly design secret. All you need to do is tell what the most ugly gadget you’ve ever owned is, along with which designer skin you’d prefer to win.
More about the HP designer skins
The four designers each designed their own unique print, which be will given away on a first-come-first-served basis to fashion-conscious kiwis purchasing selected HP notebooks from this coming Monday onwards.
The skins are made to fit HP Pavilion notebooks (30cm x 24cm) and HP Mini Notebook (26cm x17cm)
Adrian Hailwood
Titled Catherine, Adrian’s skin design comes from his blue lady series of light boxes. His inspiration for this work is twofold drawing on the stylistic overtures from 1950s designer Vladimir Tretchikoff and the Moroccan style of his 2004 show. Adrian’s work is about putting a modern spin on classic design.
Saben
The print is drawn from the spring summer 2010/11 collection called “The Invention of Grace”. It is a vivid play on abstract modernist pattern. The manipulation of generating a 2D image from a 3D product plays again with the theme of invention.
Sable & Minx
Based on their Garden of Eden silk print that is at the centre of their summer collection, the intense azure blues and purples are reminiscent of tropical oceans and summer flowers invoking a sense of luscious tropical beauty.
Annah Stretton
Inspired by legendary Wild Western anti-heroine Calamity Jane, Annah’s design celebrates individuality and rebellion. Annah’s design is all about inspiring women to stop playing it safe and resume lives less ordinary.
Comments
Jeremy Blandford
well it was my treasured possession at 16. Turquoise blue textured vinyl covered mono record player … lift up lid … just primo for playing the first Beatles LPs. When I look back it didn't really have much “design”. Kitch, square corners, wooden box, covered in vinyl … but wow it did the job and I loved it and felt cool!!!
Vincent Heeringa
I know I'm not allowed to win this but I do want to share my design shame: in the 90s my brother-in-law discovered a Talbot Solara in someone's garden. He repaired it and sold it to me for $50. What a horrible, horrible piece of AngloFranco uncooperation. Ugly, unreliable and rusty as all hell, it drove like a pig.
Mind you it was cheap. Here it is in all its shuddering glory:
http://tinyurl.com/248t49m
Deirdre Robert
Perhaps this is showing my bad taste but I think that record player sounds very cool Jeremy!
Jason Phillips
In the mid to late 80 the ugly gadget of my desires has a bright yellow waterproof Sony Walkman!
Man I thought I was the bees knees.
Looking back though it was just an ugly yellow brick with really uncomfortable headphones!
The object of my desires is now the Annah Stretton - Calamity Jane inspired Skin!
Smokin!
JP
rich
my first real bike at the age of 10 - motogard - moto-X!!!!!
damned and doomed from the first time i lay my eyes on it…slightly teary eyed that it wasnt a redline or HMX 500…oh well..
it weighed about 450Kg's and is probably the reason New Zealand is so far down in the southern hemisphere….it was so heavy i took it on my pamphlet run and couldnt bike it back up a hill..i had to ditch it into a bush and walk home to get dad to go and pick it up…where we lived had a steep driveway and all i could do was ride it down the drive and street and it use to leave trenches of broken concrete in its wake and rode like a cruise liner beaching itself on a coral reef…fundamentally it was “road” bike…and structurally it was like a JCB digger and almost became the first pushbike liable for road user charges….it was as cool as a rotten piece of fruit chucked at your head and drew attention every time like the first time you pissed your pants at primary school… it was a design blunder but not so ugly…. i always told my parents i loved it and never broke their hearts….i dont know where it is now, but it will be here long after us and the earth. i am glad i owned it because it made my childhood interesting - sable & minx would be cool please!!!
Anita Erceg
Quite honestly it would have to have been my 'brick' cellphone i received for my 18th birthday, it was a huge Nokia and when put to my ear it looked like i was speaking in to a shoe, at this time newer,slimmer phones were coming out but my parents thought this would be ideal for me! There was no chance of slipping it into a pocket, or wearing it on a lanyard (unless i wanted my chin down around my ankles!) the only positive thing about it was i always felt secure walking home at night, one belt from it would have knocked any intending assailant out for the count.
I would LOVE the Saben skin pretty pretty please :)
Karen Williams
Loving the Sable & Minx design. :)
It took me forever to track down the model number.. but it must have beena good ten years ago that I was the very proud owner of a Motorola T900 mobile phone. A vision in cheap-looking transparent blue plastic and sporting a QWERTY keyboard in its clamshell type design.
http://www.michdhh.org/assistive_devices/images/T900.jpg
The true pleasure in owning this phone lay in the fact that not only was it a joy to behold, but you couldn't actually make or receive phonecalls on it without plugging in a set of headphones with a built in mic. Great - until it broke.
It's said that you shouldn't own anything which you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.
Sadly, this hideous phone was neither.
Simon
It would have to be my first computer. The Spectravideo 2000, all in chucky off-white plastic, and complete with cassette drive. The monitor was a second hand colour TV. Pixel-tastic.
Simon
Blue Lady
Anne
my ugliest gadget would have to be the electric breast pump. Looked ugly, sounded ugly, I did feel silly, maybe not ugly using it. It did give me some baby free time though. That was quite a few years ago but I don't think these gadgets have changed much over the years.
Annah Stretton - Calamity Jane skin would be my choice.
Margaret
To my shame and not being gadget prone I have to confess to fashion instead. Condemned to wear Charlie Browns to school instead of cool Treks or even cooler Nomads [camel coloured]. Pleading to my mother was of no avail - months of delivering the Star did the trick and I eventually bought my own. Mum hasn't bought me much in the clothing line since then
Would love Adrian Hailwood
Bren
I had an old Epson printer, ker pumk, ker pumk.
Never quite printed in straight lines
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