Artist Jorge Colombo took about an hour to fingerpaint an intricate Times Square scene on his iPhone using Brushes, a $US4.99 iPhone drawing app. Now, it’s the June 1st cover for The New Yorker.

I’m guessing the editors of the magazine saw some kind of weighty symbolism in such a stunt, but landing a New Yorker cover is the kind of honour that would define an entire career for many illustrators. That’s not to say this kind of thing isn’t impressive—it really, really is—but I can’t help imagining some dusty, 93-year-old editor at the top floor of the Conde Nast building seeing his first iPhone in the hands of an intern, losing his monocle over this amazing new tech-nol-o-gee, and impulsively ordering something, anything to do with this MAGICKAL DEE-VICE to be put on the cover, now.

Also odd: for quite a few weeks now, the magazine has been running full-page iPhone App Store ads on its back cover, making this issue a probable iPhone sandwich. Conspiracy!?!? (No.)

Anyway, back to the point: this is pretty neat. You can actually see how Colombo painted his scene, start to finish, in the video below, recorded using Brushes companion app Brushes Viewer. [New Yorker]

That’s right, you make any surface doodle-ready with a few coats of paint. It’s perfect for offices, kids rooms, the fridge or backsplash in the kitchen—anywhere that it might be useful to jot things down. Hell, you could coat an entire room and put up crazy artwork. The possibilities are endless. And the best part is that you can request a free sample from the website—although purchasing enough for a project is going to run you about $US4 per square foot. [IdeaPaint via Apartment Therapy]

While we’ve had RF-blocking paint to mobile phone signals for some time, manufacturers have been thwarted when attempting to stop higher frequencies, like we have on home networks.

Now a team of researchers from the University of Tokyo has developed an aluminium-iron oxide that blocks radio frequencies up to four times beyond existing anti-RF technologies. The paint puts out a magnetic field that resonates at the same frequency as the electromagnetic wave (in this case, a radio frequency) you’re looking to block.

The good news is that the material shouldn’t be expensive to produce. Right now it’s estimated to run $1US4 per kilogram. That’s not super cheap, but neither is the lifetime of blackmail after your neighbour deciphers your network password and threatens to show the world your earnest, self-shot modelling portfolio. [PCWorld via Unplggd]

The paint is unfortunately too rough to be used to stop those darn kids from keying your car because you won’t give them their frisbee back. It contains tons of tiny microcapsules of two types: one with polymer building blocks and the other with a catalyst. The capsules themselves are made of polyurethane to keep the chemicals isolated, and can be used in all kinds of paints, but each microcapsule is about 10 to 100 micrometers in diameter, which leaves the paint containing them rough to the touch and not suitable for locations where aesthetics are important.

When the paint is scratched, the microcapsules burst and spill out their chemical guts, which combine to form a material called siloxane, which the inventor describes as similar to bathroom caulk. This siloxane fills in the crack that created it, and thus we have self-healing paint. Its potential uses are widespread, from aeroplane wings (to stop fractures) to buildings and bridges. The paint is apparently ready to go commercial right now, and the inventors are just ironing out the financial details. They expect it to come to market in under four months. [Technology Review, photo credit: Paul Braun]

It’s not the plastic. I like plastic fine. And painting with other colours, that’s ok, too. It’s just that the overriding reason for painting a plastic device silver is to make it look like metal. It’s stupid! And it needs to stop as surely as wooden panels on station wagons needed to stop 30 years ago and why tofurky is a totally unacceptable replacement for either turkey or tofu.

Silver painted gadgets started in the mobile phone world, and 8 years ago were thought of as a premium finish to those in design circles. “Blame Motorola or Casio,” say some designers I talked to about the trend. Now the “tin man” treatment is reserved for the cheapest devices while the best get done up in real metal. I’m still confused as to why this was a good idea in the first place, and why companies, even some high-end brands, still maintain the facade. (I’m totally looking at you, Pentax, Canon, Dell and Sony.)

First off, it’s insulting to buyer intelligence. Are makers trying to fool us into thinking a device is aluminium or magnesium or stainless steel when its actually a light piece of bent polymer? Maybe from 10 feet away, they’d think that we couldn’t tell the difference, and they’d be right. Visually. Allan Chochinov from Core77, says:

Painting plastic objects so that they appear metallic is a fudge of course—and often convincingly so. But the lie becomes apparent soon enough; at the corners or wherever there’s any kind of friction, the paint wears away to reveal the true plastic.

Industrial designers talk about the virtues of an “honesty of materials” in design practice, and when that honesty is expressed in the final product it’s really great—but rare. With the almost-suffocating cost constraints and real pressure to pump things out quickly, the artifice is just too irresistible.

Yes, the methods of turning a hunk of plastic into a shiny thing is getting better, so these piece-o-craps look better than ever close up. But contextually, they’re not fooling anyone with half a brain. Everyone, everyone, EVERYONE knows that when they see a huge silver TV, even from 30 feet away, it’s probably not made of metal but rather coated with Pantone 877c. And that overly curvy designs are likely plastic sprayed with paint. And mainstream gadgets, like PSPs and DVD players made in China, well, those things are too chintzy to ever get the full metal treatment. They’re not worth their weight in metal.

Which brings us to cost. Yes, like most commercial compromises made in the world, plastic made to look like metal for the most part comes down to saving dollars in manufacturing. Cormac Eubanks, a principal engineer from Frog design told me:

As a raw material metal (aluminium or zinc alloy) is many times more expensive than the same volume of material in plastic. In processing metal, parts need to be die cast, stamped, or (if money is no object) machined. Then one needs to finish them with brushing, tumbling and/or bead blasting. Lastly metal parts need to go through a plating or anodise process to prevent corrosion and oxidation over time. All these finishing steps add considerable additional cost. Painting plastic on the other hand can be inexpensively injection moulded and painted silver in large volumes in a repeatable way.

Secondly, painting polymers to look metallic is insulting to plastic, which isn’t hard and cold like metal, but has its own wonderful qualities and implications. Like translucency, as shown in Zune’s cornershot multilayered finish and Samsung’s red-tinted LCD TV bezels. And resiliency, flexibility, strength and lightness of weight. Or if you like, some plastics can be heavy and stiff, since there are so many ways to make it. Plastic can also insulate from heat and electricity, and when it’s really cold, plastic won’t stick to your hand like a piece of metal does. It can also be easily shaped into radical forms without having to be moved through an extensive finishing and forming process. Those qualities are totally undersold when a machine’s plastic casing is passed off as being made from metal.

Leaving material qualities behind, I’m sure there’s an aesthetic appeal here, too. At least in the minds of tacky Vegas-brained marketers. And maybe at first, the appeal works on those too stupid to catch the drift that they are being had. But as anyone who’s owned a silver painted device knows, within months, if not weeks of heavy use, the thin veneer soon gives way to the gray/white/black plastic underneath. Which would have been fine and beautiful in the first place, had it not been covered up. Worn out silver coloured plastic is uglier than the late Tammy Faye Bakker’s make-up job after a tearful sermon. The Wii in white looks just as nice as it would in aluminium, to me. And because the colour is solid, it’ll look good no matter how often it gets scratched.

Eubanks says that companies should be “true to the material. That means making plastic look like plastic, metal like metal and rubber like rubber. Honesty with materials means you are being honest with your customers.”

I can agree with that. And look forward to the day silver-painted gadgets are no longer made.

This device came to fruition because of EUREKA, an EU research agency that brought together Merck, a power player in the chemicals industry, AkzoNobel, one of the world’s biggest paint producers, and BYK-Gardner, a firm that makes quality control equipment. Together, they were able to produce the BYK-mac, which has a database of more than 100,000 colours to work with.

The device has a spectrometer that not only analyses colour, but also can pick apart the texture of any paint. Texture is referred to as paint components that affect the appearance, but not necessarily the color—most of the time these are the glittery or sparkle effects in the paint, which can change the appearance of a paint job depending on what angle you view it at. All these colours and textures in the database of the BYK-mac have mathematical values attached to them, and fiddles around with all these different colours until it can match what it reads in the spectrometer perfectly.

The Economist also writes that paint matching is much more difficult these days because the complexity of how car paint is made and how it’s applied has increased significantly. Even using a stock paint, applying paint in the wrong direction can make it look mismatched. In any case, there’s no mention of when this will leak into the public sector, but seeing as they have a working prototype, I’d assume we’d see it sooner rather than later. [The Economist]

SEE A SPLASH OF ‘POPBANG’ COLOUR ON THE CHEVROLET MOTOR SHOW STAND!

- Unique Chevrolet Camaro painting wows crowds at British International Motor Show
– Paintings created with remote control cars
– Live demonstration on Sunday August 3

Visitors to the British International Motor Show will be able to check out unique renderings of a pair of very special cars on the Chevrolet stand.

The paintings, of the Camaro Convertible and Beat concept cars – both of which are the stars of the Chevrolet stand, are the work of 25-year old artist Ian Cook from Solihull, West Midlands. But instead of creating the images with a simple paintbrush, Ian used a somewhat unique method of artistry.

The images were created using remote control cars driven through acrylic paints, with further detail added by using old car tyres. As well as cars, Ian has also painted some famous figures from the world of motoring using the same method, including Lord Montagu of Beaulieu and F1 ace Lewis Hamilton.

“I wanted to be an artist from a young age and decided that to be successful I needed something completely unique,” said Ian. “I’ve always been mad about anything with wheels and I figured that using cars to paint cars would capture peoples’ imaginations, so I experimented at home by driving some remote control models through paint.”

Ian, who calls his art Popbang Colour, used a host of replica GM cars to create the Camaro, including three models of the Camaro Concept itself, live on the show’s opening day. He also created an image of the Beat minicar concept, both of which will be on display in the Chevrolet Drivers’ Lounge for the duration of the show.

But those who want to see Ian create a masterpiece in person should pop along to the Motor Show, at London’s Excel exhibition centre, Docklands, on the final day of the event – Sunday August 3 – from 10.00am.

There, Ian will be using his unique painting method to create an image of British racing star Rob Huff’s Chevrolet Lacetti World Touring Car, a week after the series visits the UK for its annual visit to Brands Hatch.

“I can’t wait to get started on the racing car,” said Ian. “With the intricate liveries and body kits, competition cars require an extra level of detail, and that’s where you need skill with the remote control cars.”

One thing’s for certain – Ian’s next creation is sure to go with a bang. Or maybe even a pop…