Almost any and every creative office or agency has some sort of music playing in the background while they work (ourselves included!), through an iPod or the likes of Pandora or Spotify accounts. Whether it's listening for motivation, inspiration, or just for fun, Designers.mx has taken the relationship between music and design a step further. The website asks designers to create a "mix tape" of their favorite songs to listen to while working and design a "cover" for it. These hand-picked playlists are available to stream for free from the website, and also include contact information for each of the mixers. Not only is it a great spot to hear new music and thoughtfully curated playlists, browsing through the covers is a great resource for spotting new design trends and tendencies.

A collaboration between National Geographic, Rally Interactive, and designer/illustrator Valerie Jar led to the creation of a National Parks app that functions as a "passport" of sorts, which allows you to check-in to the national parks you visit and chronicle your time there. The entire app looks beautiful, but we were especially drawn to Jar's icon illustrations. Each National Park has a one color icon that illustrates characteristic landscapes from each park. Between the color palette, typography, and use of negative space within the illustrations, each icon is executed well and uniquely, yet the entire set is very unified and successful. Nicely done, Valerie!

Billed as the "World's Cheapest Digital Camera", IKEA is entering the world of electronics. Decidedly low-tech for a tech product, the small camera is made of fully recyclable cardboard and runs on two AA batteries. Although you take the photos blindly and without use of an LCD screen, a swing-out USB plug uploads the photos to your computer in seconds. US availability and pricing have yet to be confirmed, but it is expected to be released in stores soon. While the camera has yet to be added to the English version of the website, details can be found on the Swedish site. Whether it is a marketing ploy for a new line of eco-friendly furniture, or a new product to push IKEA into the electronics marketplace, it will be interesting to see in which direction the megastore chain takes their newest ideas. A video featuring the camera designer discussing how to use it can be seen here.

London-based designer and illustrator Owen Gildersleeve could probably be a surgeon, if he wanted to be. His cut paper illustrations and tactile typography have the precision of a machine, while still being fully saturated in his own whimsical style. In what is a surely time-consuming process, Gildersleeve cuts each (and sometimes many-layered) element by hand and then arranges the layout. From book covers, to national print campaigns and websites, Gildersleeve's final products clearly show how much work goes into his craft. Definitely impressive.

From Cairo, Egypt, (by way of Zimbabwe, New Mexico, and San Francisco) multidisciplinary artist Gavin Worth creates beautifully expressive wire sculptures. Rather than sculptures fully in the round, Worth's wire creations are closer to three-dimensional renderings of contour line drawings. The thin wire used also causes the sculpture to visually take on a different form, depending on which vantage point you view it from. We think the emotion shown through such simple materials is impressive. Well done!

Foregoing previous forays as a graphic designer, Paige Smith - the artist behind "A Common Name" - has expanded her reach into street art in the Los Angeles area. Rather than traditional 2D street art methods, Smith uses 3D geometric paper shapes to create hidden "geodes" across the city. Paper is folded, painted, then placed in holes of buildings, crevices, and decayed spaces in urban LA neighborhoods. The bright, glittering geodes not only call attention through color, but they mimic natural crystal, quartz, or other mineral growth found in nature. We think it's a really clever way to brighten up urban or industrial outdoor spaces! Smith also runs a blog which details the creation and installation of her urban geodes.

Part productivity tool and part casual app, Paper has quickly become a go-to for beautifully designed and incredibly useful iPad apps. With a gesture-based interface, Paper enables users to engage in mobile visual thinking and idea creation in the same way they might sketch something on a Post-It note or napkin. Recommended for use with a stylus, users can quickly share sketches, diagrams, or other ideas with social media sites or create multiple in-app "journals" to keep personal ideas organized. Paper is free on the App Store, with the option to purchase different brushes.

The Japanese contemporary artist Riusuke Fukahori has an interesting muse -- his pet goldfish. He is best known for his paintings of goldfish, however, his paintings could be easily mistaken for sculpture. Fukahori paints using acrylic on clear resin, poured into containers, which gives the paintings a three-dimensional appearance. The photorealistic goldfish are painted layer by layer, which gives the final product multiple viewing and vantage points. Incredible! Fukahori's work was most recently shown at ICN Gallery in London.

You don't have to be a film critic to appreciate good motion graphics. Art of the Title takes a look at title sequence and opening credit design in film and television. From current blockbusters like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, independent hits like Blue Valentine, and classic films like To Kill A Mockingbird, Art of the Title shows a behind-the-scense glimpse at what it takes to create successfully designed digital and film sequences. Posts include the video clip itself alongside in-depth interviews with the creators and directors, photo stills, and insight into the creative process of designing motion graphics. Very interesting!

Ranging from sculpture to painting (and things in between) Clark Goolsby creates intriguing and colorful pieces that surround the subject of the fragility of life. Neon color palettes find their home in Goolsby's collages - geometric mixed media pieces and paintings - while his sculpture and installation work has more anatomical and human elements, drawing inspriation from things like the Dead Hand system, a doomsday device built during the Cold War. Goolsby's work was most recently exhibited in Dallas and Los Angeles.