Welcome to the Liv Design blog, an eclectic mix of great design and quirky finds

Liv Design love bikes... What better way to start the day than an early chilled out ride on your Cafe-racer motorbike around the deserted streets of Rome. Great little film – nice soundtrack, sweeping shots... Watch the film

At the start of the year we launched our brand new Liv Design website. Throughout last year we spent a lot of time collating feedback from clients, customers, suppliers and fellow members of the creative industry to see how they used our website, what they wanted to see, what they liked about the previous website, and what they didn't like. We looked at making the user experience simpler, more enjoyable, informative and direct. We created a blog style front page to allow quick and easy browsing of news stories from Liv Design and the design industry. This gives a greater flavour of our character, what we do, and what makes us tick. This allows for more frequent updates and showcase a greater number of news stories and articles. The home page is flexible so it will fit to your screen and browser window, plus it will only load a limited number of stories until you scroll down, whereupon the page loads more articles. There are many other improvements to our website (which now ...

This is a great idea for 'Seoul Cycle Design' competition by Iranian Hamed Kohan. The idea was shortlisted from over 3,000 participants.  Liv Design love this idea and it opens the door to a multitude of ways to personalise your cycle, or maybe other means of transport. These cycle tyres feature a tread pattern of hearts. The competition was organised by Designboom and the Seoul Design Foundation. Imagine if tyre makers went ahead with it? Add you logo to your company van perhaps? Personalise you car tyres with your name? We'll see what the future holds...

If you're a bit bored of your Blackberry or iPhone and dream of days gone by, then why not take some inspiration from designer Richard Clarkson with the gorgeous  Rotary Mechanical Smartphone . Like many people (including us at Liv Design), you hunger for the good ol' days of mechanical and rotary devices, this concept is great. Old meets new. The phone features two interchangeable brass dials with a rotary dial and a button dial. The body is electroplated copper which is over painted and designed to age/improve aesthetically as it wears. And for people who don't know what the Steampunk genre is, it's the dark gothic fantasy world where victorian-esque mechanical creations meet futuristic steam operated and clockwork devices. Nice...