Is the above from a new series of artworks by a contemporary designer, an explosion of scientific data, or a photograph of a strange creature discovered by deep-sea biologists? Well, while most of the following images are just crying out to be placed on a T-shirt, they actually have little to do with design, fashion, photography or art, and much more to do with cyberspace…

Spread from Spanish designer Jaime Hayon’s new book, Work, showing the finished version of the
Camper-Hayon shoe

Spanish designer, Jaime Hayon has a head of hair as vivacious and shiny as his work. His new book, Work, offers a full-bodied insight into his elaborately quirky, yet impeccably realised designs. From opulent table lamps mimicking a skyward explosion of bubbles, to a pair of overtly chic monochromatic shoes (designed for Camper), Hayon and timid are two words that dispel each other like incompatible magnets…

A few weeks ago, designer Matthew Dent’s latest project was unveiled. He’d won a competition where the winning entrant would get to see their design made up and eventually used by millions of people. Not bad going. But then Dent is lucky (and skilful) enough to have created the look of the UK’s new coinage, which is set to be put in circulation by the Royal Mint later in the year. The reverse of each coin will feature a section from the Royal Arms shield, which is then replicated in its entirety on the reverse of the £1 coin. The 1p, 2p, 5p, 10p, 20p and 50p coins can then be laid out to recreate the shield itself. Dent, 26, currently works at London studio Three Fish in a Tree having studied graphic design at the University of Brighton, and he talked to us about the design that lies behind this rather impressive project.

Land Design Studio has worked with Studio Simple to create Station Masters – a new interactive digital art gallery experience in the Eurostar departure lounge at St Pancras International in London…

The Aeron chair – a triumph of empiricism over aestheticism?

No design studio is complete without one: Daniel West traces the history of the Aeron chair

Of the fourteen composers whose work was played out during Marina Frolova-Walker’s talk at the British Library last month, only one warranted the garish accompanying graphic to help describe his peculiar artistic condition. In A Revolution in Sound: Russian Avant-Garde Music of the 1910s and 1920s, Frolova-Walker described the work of the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin and played a section from his Prometheus Opus 60 (written in 1910). It began, as we heard, with a very mysterious chord; one that Scriabin could have no doubt described in some of the vivid colours featured on the keyboard above. Having a form of synaesthesia, what Scriabin wrote in sound, he saw in colour. It was this that drove him to try and create what would have been one of the most adventurous multimedia experiences ever performed…