Illuminated, color changing cushions are not new but with the onset of long, dark hours that come at this time of the year, bringing some relaxing, soft colors into the living room has great potential to cheers people up.

To my experience any kind of light radiating object with a soft, tactile feel never misses the surprise effect for onlookers.

The Color Changing Moonlight Cushion, which retails for about $39.- might be just the right colorful dash in your home.

Besides the soft touch feel of this decorative cushion, the color changes when the cushion is stroked – a nice touch which is taking the interactivity one notch up on our interactive textile scale.

The long wait is over for the Pillow remote controller. A few month ago I was lamenting suggesting why brands/retailer do not pick up one of the design inspirations that have shown up for many years, DIY enthusiasts and designer that hacked their remote controller and give it a soft touch.

Brookstone has made the thinking-out-of-the-box step into a soft electronic future with the launch of a Remote Control Pillow stuffed with a universal 6-in-1 remote control which is able to talk to over 500 devices.

Finally you can hug your remote, you can sleep on it and best of all, it will be really very hard to miss place this remote controller.

The R/C pillow has a power-saving auto shut-off feature which puts the the remote functions into deep sleep after 60 seconds of inactivity.

The remote control pillow retails for $29.95 at Brookstone.

[via: Gizmodo]

We had our share on interactive pillow coverage like illuminated pillows or sound pillows but the Pling Plong pillow created by Silje Softing sticks out by it’s playful use of ‘soft’ low tech to give an twist to the story telling for small children.

The pillow itself tells the bedtime story ‘relieving’ you when absolutely needed as you have to finish a project on time from the story telling for your little one.

Pling Plong is a media player integrated into a pillow shape for story telling and sounds. It is designed to stimulate children´s imagination and interest for books.

The Pling Plong pillow is a design concept but if you are interested to get such pillow you can check out Silje’s blog where she documented the creation of the Pling Plong pillow and similar pillow concepts targeted towards children’s imagination power which the grown ups have lost over the years.

It dosen’t have to be always high-tech to create magic and I am sure the Pling Plong pillow will be the next best thing after Mom and Dad for story telling.

[via Yanko Design]

Florence Bost is the creator of a wide range of highly interesting objects made of a hybrid between fabric and new technologies transforming such ‘simple’ items like pillows into an innovative, poetic artwork.

Her lovely range of City Pillows make discrete use of light elements such as LEDs or EL-wires in combination with beautiful design to enhance the visual and sensual experience of the pillows.

Florence inspiration comes from textile materials, colors and the possibilities todays technologies offer allowing her to create the effects she wants to achieve. According to Florence, the ‘invisible’ use of technology is the ‘real’ use of it, seeing the effect but not the technology itself.

It is very important for her not to fall into the gadget / geek side of the soft technology spectrum. The right choice of technology is what gives it the validity to the product.

Florence Bost, founder of Sable Chaud, has acquired a unique expertise in the integration of new technologies. With a formal industrial design education and 15 years of creative research, she has acquired a multidisciplinary vision and solid design experience that puts her work on the cutting edge of soft technology innovation.

She works with a team of experts from diverse domains (including trends, music, electronics, scenography, editorial, etc.) to better address the many facets of contemporary design.

Her projects most often start at the early stages of product design. She has her fingers on the pulse of technological progress, provides idea books, and prototyping.

The Butterfly design for example uses shape-memory materials that open and close the wings by responding to temperature creating the illusion of living creatures.

The City Pillows are available via this site but as Florence Bost’s objects are artworks you need to check directly with her about the price.

Nevertheless, if you have already a cool apartment our house, a City Pillow would be the perfect finishing touch for your interior decoration.