Ask any industrial designer what their goal at the end of the day is, and they’ll most likely tell you this: to make an object that is both beautiful and efficient. But what happens when an object can no longer function as it was designed to? Is it still beautiful, or is it a piece of junk?

Jeremy Hutchison has put together a collection of objects that ask just this question. He asked factories around the world to send him a product with an error that would render it useless. The resulting products are nestled right on the boundary of object and art.

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Herman Miller’s flagship designer Yves Behar, the brains behind the $100 Laptop, NYC Condom and SAYL chair is coming to Australia in February. If you fancy yourself as a bit of legend in the design stakes, you have the opportunity to meet and present your work to Yves and find out for sure. You could even find yourself working at a Yves’ studio in San Francisco.

Cerno have just released a new line of beautiful LED light fixtures, with subtle variation in the vibe — it leans towards sexy elegant on one end to bold industrial on the other.

Now this is what we call lateral thinking. Two students in the Industrial Design program at Syracuse University have invented Google Map envelopes, a concept whereby you beat — or help out — the misdirected postal system by printing out a Google Map as the envelope, showing where the letter is coming from and where it’s going to. What’s more, they want Google to incorporate this function into Gmail, enabling you to send your snail mail directly through the interface itself. Brilliant!

From the 2009 Magis Collection, 360 Family by Konstantin Grcic is a range of office furniture sure to catch the eye. The set consists of a stool, chair, drawer and desk, with the chair stealing the spotlight in what is a beautifully designed range.

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Working out of The Netherlands, Pepe Heykoop has designed a chair that bends in all the right places, and just when you need it to. Titled Restless Chairacter, the chair was his graduation project at the Design Academy in Eindhoven.