It should come as no surprise that young Italian designer Emanuele Cecini is looking for work in Scandinavia or London: his design aesthetic is perhaps more like that of the Northern European tradition to the more colorful and otherwise embellished style of the Mediterranean country of his birth.

His concept for an iPod stereo—a brief that has been done to death, no doubt—is easily the standout in his industrial design portfolio. The wood detailing is nicely integrated into the matte gray surfaces, complementing the white trim when viewed from the front and adding just enough un-Apple detailing to the sides.

Still, the remote could stand to match the stereo unit and satellite a little better.

The "Manta" Wi-Fi stereo (with a touchscreen display) seems rather less practical, at least from an engineering standpoint. It looks like the speakers are embedded in the ultrathin, fin-like legs, which leads me to question whether the audio quality suffers for the highly streamlined design.

His furniture designs, on the other hand, face a different problem: they tend to be slightly overdesigned: this approach works for the "Iris" chair and "Dune" bench (both above), which loosely evoke, say, Karim Rashid, but not so much for the "Move" workstation (below), where the offset drawer seems like an affectation.

Likewise, the "Comfortable" school chair doesn't strike me as a huge improvement on the traditional chair/desk combo that I remember from my elementary school days.

Meanwhile, I feel that he's taken off a bit too much of the corners in a digital camera concept, which is one of the less inspired pieces in his industrial design portfolio.

Cecini's graphic design work is decidedly more consistent, though it lacks a gem like "Woozik," relying on typographical forms with simple graphic enhancement.

Nevertheless, for all of my issues with the some of Cecini's designs, he maintains a sense of coherence through the highly uniform presentation of his renderings. They're nothing special in themselves, but the pieces seem to benefit from viewing as part of a whole. He includes a few more graphic design samples in his own website.