Some months ago, somewhere in Las Vegas, a set of very lady-like, yet very intoxicated ladies leaned over a table whose surface responded to their touches. They put they’re fingers on it (pink!), they wrote their names in it (green!), they set their vodka sodas on it (a rainbow explosion!). If they had been allowed to dance on it, the resulting thrills might have been somewhat comparable to 1967’s Monterey Pop Festival, but with more clothing (well, not much; it was Vegas) and less acid. Not many months after pictures of the girls’ neon adventures posted on facebook, pictures of a similar concept were posted on this website. Now, much to everyone’s pleasure, the Las Vegas/Joshspear.com experience has been made commercially available via commercially produced pressure-sensitive panels-turned-tabletops, via Kloss International. With a price tag of 1200 British Pounds, the table may still be restrictive of even the most professionally dainty dance moves, but hope can be found in the following: The same panels used to form the table’s top will soon be available for use as an architectural component — or, in other words, a floor-to-ceiling color-blasting experience. Time for some updates, Sin City!

Via BornRich

We all love two things here: design and technology, so when were told to check out a site that combines both, we were stoked. CSSArtillery is a showcase for state-of-the-art websites. Visitors to CSSArtillery will find thumbnails of sites which can be sorted by category or ranking. You can comment on the site, Digg it, and rank it using rollover squares. Designers may submit their site through a detailed form, then presumably an editor decides whether it’s worthy or not to display on the site. The information on how this exactly works is not clear. Once you make it on, the benefits are plentiful: increased traffic, free promotion, and the possibility of receiving offers form work. Whether you are web designer looking for that inspirational spark or someone who just appreciates clean design and innovative web programming, this site is worth checking out.

Smacker Journals, If’n Books limited-run note-jotters (so named for their size, apparently perfect for hitting people), are designed by artists and bound by a bookbinder. The artists, currently, are Alec Thibodeau, Jen Corace, Sarah Neuburger, and Ray Fenwick (who, if you are keeping track, I am still in love with). The bookbinder, always, is Deb Dormody, a professional bookmaker by trade whose albums, organizers and journals are sold all over the US and on Etsy, and whose bindings are as prettily homemade as a 1950’s Jell-O mold. The journals themselves are hand-printed in batches of one hundred in Rhode Island, where Deb’s deft fingers (and her proximity to Canada, ie, Mr. Fenwick) ensure a finished product that’s crafty, classy, and just DIY enough to find favor with hipsters and anti-hipsters alike. Get your assault on here.

Our Friends at DNA11, who have made their name creating custom portraits from DNA and fingerprints, recently paired with MAC Cosmetics to bring you the KISS Portrait, a modern and personalized art piece whose purchase benefits the MAC Aids Fund. Kiss Portraits, which became available today, are created through a fun, interactive process that relies on the involvement of both buyers and designers. The process begins when customers receive a MAC VIVA GLAM lipstick in the mail and get to work capturing the perfect pucker on accompanying KISS sheets. Once a satisfactory smooch is produced, customers send the lip print back to DNA11’s designers, who hand-trace the image, customize it to the customer’s size and color specifications, print it on high-quality canvas, then varnish and frame it according to the order. The completed piece is then returned to the owner, ready to modernize and sexify a bit of very lucky wall space. DNA11’s new site, which also launched today, offers shoppers thousands of choices to aid the creation of their KISS Portraits, as well as newly updated pages for the DNA and FingerPrint Portraits (both of which we’ve told you about before). If you’ve yet to check out this company (or the great concept behind it, From life comes art), be sure to do so; we’re big supporters/followers of what they do, and we’re betting that you’ll join the fanclub once you take a look too.

I spent most of this weekend listening to uber-designers like Josh Davis and master guru Erik Natzke at OFFF. Suffice it to say, these guys are amazing at what they do. I also heard founders Dan Phiffer and Mushon Zer-Aviv describing their new project, ShiftSpace.

ShiftSpace is basically an open source plugin, primarily for Firefox, that allows users to create a second layer of information that floats above any webpage. Users can highlight text, embed video, leave comments, and create link trails on any website. Doing so doesn’t disrupt the original page at all, and any other ShiftSpace user who logs onto that page can interact with the previous “spaces” (ShiftSpace’s name for these notations) left by other users. While the interface is a little clunky — it is still in its infancy — ShiftSpace provides the best approximation of truly social web browsing that I’ve seen yet.

They’re also offering development grants through Turbulence.org, so if this sounds like its up your alley, get over there and help them make it great!

Graphic designers in the T-shirt biz collectively turn out innumerable designs every month, but it’s rare to find our favorite ones selling their creations for more than just — and sorry to be so blatant — profit’s sake. That’s not a terrible thing, of course, because everyone needs to make a living, but as a person who also provides services I’ll bet they wouldn’t mind some of that money going to a good cause. Christopher Sleboda and Kathleen Burns of Part of It thought of the same way. Why not give these artists a place to sell shirts that go to a bigger pot? So they started Part of It this year to motivate artists like Jeremyville (whose shirt is pictured) and Dustin Amery Hostetler to make shirts with graphics that specifically relate to a cause or charity of their own choosing, with all sales of that shirt going to that organization. The list runs the gamut, from the International Dyslexia Association to the Arts Commission of Greater Toledo, which are places that wouldn’t necessarily receive the attention from the population of T-shirt buyers otherwise. If you’re not in the market to add the 500th T-shirt to your closet, they’ve got an awesome selection of tote bags too.