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Friday, April 29

Three Purdue University industrial designers who tapped into memories of their own childhood cycling misadventures have built a bike that ditches the training wheels but keeps rookies stable.

Called SHIFT, it slowly transforms from a tricycle to bicycle configuration as the rider pedals faster, then returns to trike formation as the rider slows down.

Lead designer Scott Shim hopes the design, which won top honors recently at an international bicycle design competition, can help children slowly gain the skill and courage to pedal off on their own. [more]

Continued at Yahoo News

Posted by: Niti Bhan  | Comments (0)
Friday, April 29


WARNING: do not watch this until you are ready to leave work because it is all you will be able to think of the rest of the day (or possibly, the rest of your life).

Everybody at the Beach

from Gorilla Suit, which is full of other good stuff like The Abominable Snowman is Depressed
Posted by: shaggy  | Comments (0)
Friday, April 29
First details of soon-to-be-published research on forming great teams We found that teams that achieved success -- by producing musicals on Broadway or publishing academic papers in good journals -- were fundamentally assembled in the same way, by bringing in some experienced people who had not worked together before. The unsuccessful teams repeated the same collaborations over and over again.
Posted by: Steve Portigal  | Comments (0)
Friday, April 29
Dan Saffer, an about to graduate student at CMU's graduate program in Interaction design chronicles his school days in his blog.
Posted by: Niti Bhan  | Comments (0)
Thursday, April 28
The latest FreshMeat is up, looking at the issue of cell phones on airplanes.
The cell phone continues to be a surprisingly prominent item in our public discourse. The idea of the phone exists on multiple simultaneous fronts: - a technology platform for multimedia (i.e., camera phones and text messaging) - an economic booster (ringtones, just the latest flavor in mobile merchandising are big bucks, perhaps even a legit solution to the problem of music sharing) - a designed accessory that displays economic and social status (or at least aspirations thereof) - check out Bling Kit for cell phones, including Swarovski crystals, the rhinestones of the new millennium - a performance item to either facilitate or impede social interaction (just when we were beginning to get used to the handsfree users who appear to walk around talking to no one, the New York Times reports on a supposedly emerging behavior where people use their phones to avoid face-to-face interactions, making like they are talking to someone - but are really talking to no one) - a challenge to unstated but powerful social norms (in one of many examples, a man got out of his car and punched another driver who was talking on his phone instead of moving when the light turned green
Posted by: Steve Portigal  | Comments (0)
Thursday, April 28

A gallery show of old-skool video game inspired art: i am 8-bit, [via]




The perfect display medium: Super Mario levels on 4 meter long rolls of tape: Pepsi Japan Promo, [via]

Posted by: shaggy  | Comments (0)
Thursday, April 28


The perfect cross-over combo of form and ritual, re-arranging one's days by hand: slide sheet calendar, slide box calendar
Posted by: shaggy  | Comments (0)
Thursday, April 28
Following Don's earlier post and this gushing (subscriber-only) article in Metropolis, here's another piece about the design of Minneapolis, with some thoughtful pros and cons. From the SF Chronicle.
Posted by: Steve Portigal  | Comments (0)
Wednesday, April 27
Excellent piece from 37signals about features, innovation, and connecting with the customer in meaningful (more than functional) ways
The salesman made a big deal about a feature I'd heard a lot about already: the bud vase mounted in the middle of the dashboard. That, I thought at the time, has got to be the stupidest feature I've ever seen in a product. Who has time to keep fresh-cut flowers in their car? Do you really want your car smelling like dead daisies?
Posted by: Steve Portigal  | Comments (0)
Wednesday, April 27
Twenty-Five Years of Post-it Notes is a fantastic essay covering the innovation, technology, inspiration, invention, manufacturing, marketing and ultimately the cultural impact of the little, yellow, and different semi-sticky pages.
Post-it Notes, on the other hand, were dynamic, customizable, business casual. They inspired spontaneity, rapid ideation, free association. You could link one seemingly unrelated idea to another without worrying about any logical cohesion of ideas; that�s what the glue was for. After all, the digital drudgery of Office Space and �Dilbert� didn�t tell the full story of office life in the eighties and nineties. It was also the era of Wired and Fast Company, the rebel businessman, thinking outside the box.
Posted by: Steve Portigal  | Comments (0)
Wednesday, April 27
Nokia has just launched their N series - smartphones also known as multimedia handsets.

This information via Metafilter thanks to costas. There is an extensive discussion here on this topic. "N91 in particular looks like it's shooting straight for the iPod crown: 4GB hard drive, 3G, global GSM, WiFi b/g, Bluetooth, USB mass storage, FM radio and a claimed 12.5 hrs of battery time"

Posted by: Niti Bhan  | Comments (0)
Wednesday, April 27
This Fast Company piece is presented as a consideration of individuals who have their own brands, but I didn't quite get that out of it. It's mostly individual stories of people who are the faces on businesses. Martha Stewart is the classic person-as-persona-as-brand but the examples here are all over the place and the article doesn't work as an investigation of that. It is an interesting set of quickie stories from prominent/famous business leaders, however.
Todd Oldham It makes no difference to me whether my name's on something or not. I just like to design stuff. My style is an amalgam of inspirations that come from spending part of my childhood in Tehran, where I strolled the colorful bazaars, mixed with a cowboy culture from Texas, where I was born. Somehow, my designs come out in a way that has become a signature. But I never forget that the appropriateness of the end product is as important as the design.

(via Agenda)

Posted by: Steve Portigal  | Comments (0)
Wednesday, April 27
Dan Lockton is a designer persuing an advanced degree in the Technology Policy program at Cambridge-MIT in the UK. His dissertation project addresses the increasing role of controls built into products, labeled as 'features' that "restrict or enforce modes of behaviour or use on the part of the consumer, often in ways with parallels in software licensing techniques and digital rights management." Examples range from printer cartridges that 'expire' on a given date whether they are used or not to cars with hoods that can only be opened by the dealer to the lowly cone-shaped water cup that encourages users to throw empties in the trash rather than leaving them standing around.

It is a topic with many implications for designers as the line between products and services becomes increasingly porous. He is actively seeking input from the design community. Check his web site on the project for contact information and a bunch of great links.

Posted by: StuCon  | Comments (0)
Wednesday, April 27

Searchscapes is a tridimensional map of Manhattan using existing data from the web creating a 3D space largely out of invisible data; facts, memories, experiences, stories and news. Does this feel a little bit like Hackers or is just me?

Posted by: squee.gee  | Comments (0)
Wednesday, April 27

It doesn't get much better then this, the R2-D2 Builders club race their R2 units at the Star Wars Celebration III convention in Indianapolis.

"In the past, a builder also had to guess how the droid was shaped. Every film used several robot shells, some in different sizes, so there is no reliable measurement for the dome diameter or height."

read review : wired.com

Posted by: squee.gee  | Comments (0)
Wednesday, April 27

Virtual Stapler [via MUG]
Posted by: Allan Chochinov  | Comments (0)
Wednesday, April 27

Dyson has dropped his latest product and proves once again why he has become the top selling brand of vacuum cleaners in the UK and is close to doing so in the US as well.

"The Ball" uses a ball (go figure) to create a unique pivoting action for greater control and ability to get those hard to reach areas.

Dyson.com has updated to show the COMPLETE development process and highlight all the key features of The Ball. Well done, James.

Posted by: Don Lehman  | Comments (0)
Tuesday, April 26

Are there any rules?

Only some basic ones.
1. The actions can not be of significant financial cost to the artist. (i.e. - if you would like Chris to dress in a clown suit, you must provide a clown suit.)
2. The artist will not participate in highly illegal activities.
3. The artist can not be put in any extreme physical danger.

Visit the site here. Sweet design too.
[Thanks Tort; via NYTimes]

Posted by: Allan Chochinov  | Comments (0)
Tuesday, April 26
Anyone in Vienna this week should look out for one of the Pure Austrian Design events in conjunction with the eponymous book launch.
Posted by: squee.gee  | Comments (0)
Tuesday, April 26
A very interesting take on the public image of a designer by Adrian Shaughnessy, guest observer today at Design Observer. Here's an excerpt:

How galling this must be for designers from the �design-as-business-tool� school. They work tirelessly to promote design as the ultimate edge-giving device for the corporate world, and yet this is what big business thinks about designers. It is no less galling for those of us who view design as primarily an aesthetic and cultural activity. No one benefits when designers are treated as figures of derision. Yet perhaps we deserve to be lampooned? Perhaps we are guilty of such excessive self-absorption that we haven�t noticed that we are despised by those who can help us most? Perhaps our unspoken determination to be regarded as artists has resulted in our elevation to global laughing stock?

Something to think about...

Posted by: Niti Bhan  | Comments (0)
Tuesday, April 26

In January and February, working under the title of "Sweet Dreams", 24 students from the Koln International School of Design presented design concepts for new candy/confectionery and packging at the ISM Cologne - the largest and most important sweets and biscuits fair in the world. The web site includes large pictures of the projects, including "Noobs", shown above, by Lutz Westermann and Roney Leigh Dubnov Raz.

Posted by: StuCon  | Comments (0)
Tuesday, April 26
Stratasys release PC-ABS filament Rapid prototyping system maker, ‹a href:"http://www.stratasys.com"›Stratasys‹/a› announced the release of a new material blend: PC-ABS, a blend of polycarbonate and ABS plastic.

Stratasys PC-ABS is for use with the following T-Class systems: FDM Titan, FDM Vantage S, and FDM Vantage SE. Two layer-thickness settings are available: 0.005 and 0.010 in. (0.127 and 0.245 mm). A 0.007 in (0.178 mm) layer thickness is planned for future releases.

Posted by: al dean  | Comments (0)
Monday, April 25
Or "How to Build a Computerized Android Robot Head for $600.00." This one comes courtesy of Boing Boing. Very cool, but those eyes creep me out. Look at this image and tell me "The Road Warrior" villian doesn't come to mind.
Posted by: csven  | Comments (0)
Monday, April 25

With the upcoming unveiling of Microsoft's new XBox 360 game console (they just couldn't call it an "XBox 2"), the spy images are set to fly. The one above comes courtesy of the folks over on IGN. They're even evaluating authenticity by citing it being a CMYK file, among other things. Wowsa. If I ever fake a design, now I know. For any other designers out there thinking of pulling a fake someday (and am I ever tempted), read the whole spiel and get some ideas here.

Posted by: csven  | Comments (0)
Monday, April 25

Must be something in the air: If you weren't impressed with Thwart Design's Bacon Bracelets, you can lick your wounds and slap on one with these Bacon Strips Bandages. Or, maybe the bandages are just baby-size bracelets. Ok, it's a slow news day. (Thanks to Sally for the link.)
Posted by: Allan Chochinov  | Comments (0)
Monday, April 25

Typography meets furniture at the TYPOSONIC international typography exhibition in Ingolstadt, Germany with karl & fidel from Walking Chair. Say 'Hallo' to Hello Furniture.

Posted by: squee.gee  | Comments (0)
Monday, April 25
A couple weeks back at the district conferences, IDSA and Microsoft showed a cheesy 30-second teaser promoting a design competition that they would announce today, April 25th. My first thoughts were, "Lame."

But, go figure, here comes April 25th, I head over to competition website, and it�s not half bad.

The challenge: �Rethink the Windows-based PC experience today and the role it plays in people's lives. Envision how the digital lifestyle�from personal productivity at work or home, to entertainment, mobility, lifestyle and form�all play a part in development. Think big, be bold, and inspiring, but pay attention to sustainable technologies, and ecological and environmental innovation.�

Prizes are fairly large: $50,000 Judge�s Award, $50,000 Chairman�s Award (selected by Bill Gates), $25,000 Public Choice Award.

Posted by: Don Lehman  | Comments (0)
Friday, April 22
Via Stay Free! Daily comes EVOLUTION BY MARGARITA a new bra that is "designed to create a natural cosmetically enhanced look."
Posted by: Steve Portigal  | Comments (0)
Friday, April 22
In awarding 30 products this month, MDEA jurors make special note of the many which make substantial breakthroughs. Three articles in the April issue tackle the role of design in improving use, comfort, quality, process and patient survival.

Prescription for Award-Winning Design: Go to the Doctor
Keeping the Patient in Mind Leads to Outstanding Design
One Small Step for Medical Devices

Posted by: Chris Gielow  | Comments (0)
Friday, April 22
I'd posted a link to this app in the forums previously, but I only noticed the price recently. It's not going to replace the big boys, but it's hard to go wrong here. There are people selling shareware for more. Check it out >>here<<. And check the gallery too. Some nice renders, including the one above by Francois Locqueville.
Posted by: csven  | Comments (0)
Friday, April 22
New York Magazine has a detailed design case study on Target's new prescription bottle. The bottle is part of the ClearRx prescription packaging system, which is based on original designs developed and patented by Deborah Adler, a 29-year-old graphic designer. The final design of the new bottle was developed by Klaus Rosburg of SONIC Design, who worked with Target and Adler over several months to fully develop the system. The new bottle will be widely available beginning May 1.

Chris Bernard sent me this link.

Posted by: Niti Bhan  | Comments (0)
Friday, April 22
As part of the David H. Liu Memorial Lecture Series at Stanford, Paul Saffo from the Institute for the Future spoke briefly last night, in a talk entitled The case of the blind venetians; reflections on innovation and what makes Silicon Valley tick

It was a simplistic story he told: in essence that Silicon Valley is a specialized version of the California myth, which is a distillation of the American Dream. read my loose notes

Posted by: Steve Portigal  | Comments (0)
Friday, April 22

Kris Krug's got a very nice interview with Doug Rushkoff at his blog.

Here's a taste: "Currently, we innovate for patents, and create for copyrights. These are the only ways we have come up with so far to reward innovation. And it eventually requires that some form of artificial protection be enforced. That�s because we have an economic reality based on scarcity rather than abundance."

And another one: "It�s the adherence to quarterly, short-term goals and shareholder expectations that have led corporations down their profitless, innovation-lacking paths. They look to decrease the bottom line without expanding the top line. So they can't make investments in long term strategies like real research and development, or creating a culture for their products. They can�t look to the longterm impact of their products without sacrificing what shareholders believe are their own short-term interests. Shareholders want the stock to go up, now. That�s all they understand. And the stock only goes up if revenues go up that quarter."

Posted by: Allan Chochinov  | Comments (0)
Thursday, April 21


"Every consumer decision now carries with it class and status implications in a way it didn't used to," said Barry Schwartz, the author of "The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less" (Ecco Books, 2005). "As you add dimensions to goods, you add ways in which people can distinguish themselves." Thus is created a perpetual chase after status and cool.

These articles at the NYTimes just re-enforce this sense that craft, with its innate scarcity, will soon dominate completely the high-end of design. It's going to be all about them one-offs!

- Who Pays $600 for Jeans?
- Dredged From the Deep, Pickled Paneling (registration required to view)
Posted by: shaggy  | Comments (0)
Thursday, April 21
PTC announced that Pro/Engineer will shortly provide 64-bit support for Windows XP Professional x64 Edition - specifically on HP workstations with 64-bit Intel Xeon processors, so for those looking to upgrade to the next generation platform, your CAD tools are getting up to speed. According to the press release "PTC worked closely with HP and Intel to develop a natively ported 64-bit version of Pro/Engineer. The new version allows users to take advantage of the massive amount of addressable memory available on the HP workstations based on 64-bit Intel Xeon processors with best-in-class application performance. Pro/Engineer has displayed no limit to the size or complexity of the assemblies that it can handle. The only limitation has been the maximum amount of memory that could be managed by 32-bit operating systems. With this restriction removed, customers can work more effectively on the most demanding engineering and design challenges, with increased productivity associated with the ability to create, manage, retrieve and visualize assemblies of any size or complexity." Pro/Engineer Wildfire 2.0 64-bit is scheduled to be available concurrently with the availability of Windows XP Professional x64 Edition in late April.
Posted by: al dean  | Comments (0)
Thursday, April 21
If we need a sign about the way the wind is blowing, the news that Art Center College of Design, Pasadena has joined forces with INSEAD, France "to offer a joint program that teaches the role of creativity in business decisions, how innovation really works, and why design may be as important to corporate management today as Six Sigma was in the '90s." is a leading indicator. Read BusinessWeek's full article here.
Posted by: Niti Bhan  | Comments (0)
Wednesday, April 20
Android8, a purveyor of fine vinyl toys and other accessories, has teamed up with Josh Spear, a contributor to the CoolHunting blog, to launch a toy design contest. Deadline is June 1, and the winner will be immediately produced and sold by Android8. Sounds good to me.
Posted by: StuCon  | Comments (0)
Wednesday, April 20

Media A has produced a web video for NASA and their Robotics Curriculum Clearinghouse. The video will premiere on April 22 at the US-FIRST Robotics Education Conference in Atlanta. NASA RCC identifies and vets robotics-related curricula, and makes them available to the educational community.

Posted by: Allan Chochinov  | Comments (0)
Wednesday, April 20
The Politecnico di Milano wishes to announce that 35 scholarships of 4,000 Euro are available for various programs on our Milano campuses, including Master programs from the School of Architecture in Urban Planning and the School of Design in Product-Service-Systems Design, which are taught in English. More information on these and other degree programs and scholarship opportunities can be found on our website, at http://www.polimi.it/english/. Scholarship application is concurrent with admissions application, and closes on the 18th of May for non-EU students and June 30th for EU students.

Further information or enquiries can be made to Geoff Moody at:
geoff.moody@polimi.it

Posted by: Niti Bhan  | Comments (0)
Tuesday, April 19


Nike Ovolo - say "ahhhh" - two tongues are better than one. mmm, what else... they look super sweet with the heel suspended like that.
Posted by: shaggy  | Comments (0)
Tuesday, April 19


Pegboard Videogame Desktop Toy/Accessory - coming soon from Tomytec! Not clear if they will light up, which would be, just, too good. found on waxy
Posted by: shaggy  | Comments (0)
Tuesday, April 19

Belgium designers Disorder Collectiv release design idols, a series of 10 posters featuring Konstatin Grcic, Michael Young, Tom Dixon, Denis Santachiara, Marc Newson, Alessandro Mendini, Karim Rashid, James Irvine, Marcel Wanders and Stefano Pirovano.

[ View Posters ]

Posted by: squee.gee  | Comments (0)
Tuesday, April 19
another fuel cell vehicle this one designed by seymourpowell.
Posted by:  | Comments (0)
Tuesday, April 19
The U.S. military has assembled the world's most formidable hacker posse: a super-secret, multimillion-dollar weapons program that may be ready to launch bloodless cyberwar against enemy networks -- from electric grids to telephone nets.

read article: wired.com

Posted by: squee.gee  | Comments (0)
Tuesday, April 19

Ah, the golden age of industrial design known as the 80s. Those were the heady days when a man could walk tall knowing that the 60 degree chamfer was king and combining teal, pink, forest green, and a marblized black and white pattern made you a genius. The foam models are prototypes of the original Mac mouse.

Alas, this breed of aesthetic has faded away and is now only occasionaly spotted on ironic Diesel watches.

Posted by: Don Lehman  | Comments (0)
Monday, April 18
Translated monthly column from Form, the German design magazine.

From the writer's bio:

erik spiekermann is information architect,type designer (ff Meta, itc Officina, ff Info,ff Unit, LoType, Berliner Grotesk et al) and author. He was founder (1979) of MetaDesign, Germany�s largest design firm with offices in Berlin, London and San Francisco. In 1988 he started FontShop.

He holds an honorary professorship at the Academy of Arts in Bremen, is board member of ATypI and the German Design Council, and president of the istd International Society of Typographic Designers. In July 2000, Erik left MetaDesign Berlin. He now lives and works in Berlin, London and San Francisco, designing publications, complex design systems and more typefaces.

Posted by: Niti Bhan  | Comments (0)
Monday, April 18

Everyone's favourite OS vendor, Microsoft has teamed up with and Dassault Systemes (developers of Catia and owners of SolidWorks) have revealed plans to "collaborate to support" Microsoft's Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) format in Dassault's XML (3D Extensible Markup Language) format.

If you don't know, Dassault (themselves working with Lattice3D) developed the 3DXML format as the basis for its data exchange and communcation strategy. It's a high accuracy geometry format that also allows the user to store all manner of product structure (BOM etc.) information. For the techies, its based on Gregory Patches, which mean you can store high-order surfaces in datafiles that are mere Kb, rather than Mb bloat that we CAD users are used to. This technology is also going to be built into SolidWorks and eDrawings at some point in the future.

Essentially, what this announcement means is that when Longhorn (the next rev of Windows) is releases, 3DXML will be fully compatible. Microsoft's XAML language is the format for "Avalon," the code name of the next presentation subsystem for the Windows US - which is going to be fully vector based and will take advantage of graphics processors to handle UI matters more efficiently.

Posted by: al dean  | Comments (0)
Monday, April 18
In Cordy Swope's latest article, Visionary Stupidity, he wonders what it would be like to have Donald Trump as a client. We'll be able to find out this Thursday night, as someone on The Apprentice hires Smart Design to help advance their chances with the Donald.
Posted by: StuCon  | Comments (0)
Monday, April 18
If you've seen the movie "Minority Report", then you know you want one of those gesture interfaces shown in the movie. Well, it may be available sooner than you think. Read more about current developments >>here<<.
Posted by: csven  | Comments (0)
Monday, April 18
Adobe has announced a definitive agreement to acquire Macromedia in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $3.4 billion.
Posted by: Steve Portigal  | Comments (0)
Sunday, April 17

The complete Core77 gallery will be online shortly.

Posted by: squee.gee  | Comments (0)
Sunday, April 17

I spent the summer of '03 working for Blu Dot in Minneapolis and fell in love with the city. Great design scene, lots of stuff to do in the summer, and the coolest beer billboard ever.

One of my favorite MPLS attractions (besides the Mall of America) is the Walker Art Center, which reopens today after a year and a half expansion. Designed by Herzog & de Meuron, the add-on doubles the museum's exhibition space. I can't wait to check it out next time I'm in town.

Take a tour of the Walker, courtesy of the MPLS Star Tribune.

Posted by: Don Lehman  | Comments (0)
Sunday, April 17
Metropolis has posted their 2005 design education survey. This year is all about the role of research in design.

Go tell 'em what you think.

Posted by: Don Lehman  | Comments (0)
Friday, April 15

Ok. Another new design firm website, this time Design Concepts. Mercifully no flash intro movie, good, quick interaction, and very nice nav icons (particularly the Method/sweat drip one). But for all you design process freaks out there, there is, again, an exhaustive list of design steps/services listed here in that same Method section (click on the Method/Services links on the left). These are nice lists to answer "just what it is that industrial designers do" (and bill for!), but don't be tempted into using them to puff up your latest proposal. (You wouldn't do that, would you?)
Posted by: Allan Chochinov  | Comments (0)
Friday, April 15
Nabisco 100 Calorie Packs are a brilliantly simple packaging and branding innovation. Give people more control over what they eat by packaging a fixed calorie amount. 100 calories seems like a harmless enough amount to snack on and it's an easy number to help tally your daily intake. Portion control is a complex aspect of dieting, with endless confusion about what is a portion? What is a serving? The 100 Calorie brand takes precedence over the ingredient brand (although some of those such as Oreo Thin Crisp are special-to-this-product-line extensions, with presumably lower-cal reforumulations).
Posted by: Steve Portigal  | Comments (0)
Friday, April 15

Last night in New York City, the IMC Expo, held at the Chelsea Art Museum, opened to a big crowd of enthusiastic visitors/interactors. Billed as a "hybrid technology tradeshow and art exhibition," the event pulls heavily from NYU's ITP (past event coverage here), and features exhibitions, live performances, educational symposiums, and special events. And the best part? All of the stuff worked! (At least last night it did.)
Posted by: Allan Chochinov  | Comments (0)
Friday, April 15

There's a lot of very very tired looking punters wandering the streets today including ourselves, but we blame the Finish crew, they made us stay out - really! Excellent stuff from the Israel group show 'promisedesign' and the very whimsical 'made for china' exhibition. Other highlights included the usual suspects 'droog design' and a sophisticated concept show from japan 'nextmaruni 12 chairs'. Stay tuned for a serious gallery of photos online early next week when I get a chance to do some editing.

Posted by: squee.gee  | Comments (0)
Friday, April 15

The Attraction Project, from GLO H Design, is an exploration of single purpose retail environments. All in Japanese.

Posted by: StuCon  | Comments (0)
Friday, April 15
Whoa. Bruce Sterling took a few detail photos of the earthbound sibling of the Martian rovers. Check them out on his blog. Shweet. Makes me want to hunt up some more; they must be on the web somewhere.
Posted by: csven  | Comments (0)
Friday, April 15
When Mark Cuban isn't writing about his basketball team, he's usually writing about... you guessed it... Software and Technology. Most recently his blog entry was about a subject that gets a lot (and I mean a lot) of attention from designers on the Core forum: mobile devices. Read his perspective about them, the death of the PC and more here. And check out some of his older entries if you have time. Good reading.
Posted by: csven  | Comments (0)
Friday, April 15
Posted by: squee.gee  | Comments (0)
Thursday, April 14
An almost article posted on The Innovation Blog articulates the New school : Old School changes happening in Design today. The author is Mark Dziersk.

Hosted by Herbst Lazar Bell, the blog seemed to be updated reasonably frequently and with interesting observations on innovation.

Posted by: Niti Bhan  | Comments (0)
Thursday, April 14

Fueled by the occasional espresso to help recover from last nights parties, its day 2 and the weather is excellent again. Checked out some of the bigger satellite shows today including very impressive presentations from Cappellini, Thonet, Cassina, B&B Italia and Agape. No time to rest, we're off to meet the crew from Designersblock.

Posted by: squee.gee  | Comments (0)
Thursday, April 14
Posted by: squee.gee  | Comments (0)
Wednesday, April 13
This video is a mini-user-interface nightmare, done for comic effect, pushing on some social norms and auditory alerts.
Posted by: Steve Portigal  | Comments (0)
Wednesday, April 13

Day one of the Milan Design Week 2005 and after a somewhat convoluted process to enter the Salone Internazionale del Mobile, we were once again overwhelmed by the shear scale of this event and the expense the industry heavy weights went to in their stands. The young designers offered some fresh ideas, clearly working towards a more object based market. Stay tuned for more pics over the next few days.

Posted by: squee.gee  | Comments (0)
Wednesday, April 13

I haven't been to ipodlounge in quite awhile, but they've got a 3000+ image gallery there with some interesting pics. Check out the sick Black Bird Park Flight Test Center reflections above. (There's some podcasting joke to make here, but I just can't come up with it.)
Posted by: Allan Chochinov  | Comments (0)
Wednesday, April 13
Design firms' websites tend to be agonizingly slow and Flash-laden, but Bresslergroup's new website is fast and efficient. And for those of you interested in official design processes, this site has 'em all (including "the four i's": Investigate, Imagine, Implement, Impact). We'd still cut out the intro movie, but firms just can't seem to give those up. Guess the clients love 'em.
Posted by: Allan Chochinov  | Comments (0)
Wednesday, April 13
Since I'm on a "weave" kick (or rather, the news I'm reading is), check out this very informative article over on BusinessWeek online regarding the next wave of computer chips. No purty pictures, but if anyone has a shot of that Infineon chip factory mini-monorail, show us.
Posted by: csven  | Comments (0)
Wednesday, April 13
I've just posted an entry on the above device to my reBang web log. Too cool not to cross post it here.
Posted by: csven  | Comments (0)
Wednesday, April 13
The New York Times online is carrying a nice write up of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum's show, "Extreme Textiles: Designing for High Performance". A good read and worth registering just to see the entire image above credited to Cary Wolinsky/Aurora. Sweet.
Posted by: csven  | Comments (0)
Tuesday, April 12


Newsdesigner, Your number one source for newspaper design news, has an interesting collection of frontpages covering the Pope's passing along with some personal insights on preparing designs for such eventualities. While there found some cool related sites: sports designer , news page designer, today's front pages - images of over 400 newspaper front pages!
Posted by: shaggy  | Comments (0)
Tuesday, April 12

FemDefence. That's all I have to say.

(via Gizmodo)

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Tuesday, April 12

Apple's new OS, 10.4 Tiger, is dropping April 29th with tons of cool new features. One of them is Safari RSS, which will include functionality to receive updates from any site using RSS tags. Blogs like Gizmodo and MoCoLoco are already preprogrammed in. (Hey Apple, where's the love for Core?)

The more interesting thing is Apple has been SUING bloggers, for running stories on the company's upcoming product launches. (If you had been reading Think Secret or Gizmodo, you would have heard about the iPod shuffle and Mac Mini weeks before they were released.) Will Apple kick sites like Gizmodo off after they report on the next top secret product launch? You can't have it both ways guys.

By the way, I will still probably buy Tiger the day it launches. They own my soul.

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Monday, April 11


This month the yearly Aircraft Interiors Expo took place in Hamburg (Germany). 'The place to be' for aircraft industries trade people and all kinds of aviation freaks. We all know about the R&D budgets available within aircraft industry, so I guess we can also expect some hot items over here! Well, here's one which is worth mentioning...

Textron Fastening Systems unveiled its Intevia™ Intelligent Fastening Technology. In a nutshell these guys brought dumb fasteners to life using microprocessor technology.

Where's the fun? Well, their applications sketch "remote (dis)assembly at the click of a button", "fasteners being networked hotspots that continuously monitor a product's status", ''super easy (non destructive) dismantling".
All together great stuff for product assembly, recycling disassembly, preventing product failure, etc. Just check out the imagery.

One thing that worries me is: "what if my 'smart fasteners' crash or get hacked? I'd probably be scraping product parts together?" Time will tell... because this stuff is definitely not 'aircrafts only'.

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Monday, April 11
My latest grocery product review has been posted.
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Monday, April 11

Found out about this from one of the organizers, wish I was in the 'nati to take part...in his own words...

"Breakout is a full week of events intended to stretch students beyond their routine. For three days, we invite speakers to UC that have all made careers out of being masterful at being multidisciplinary. We hope these speakers ( Dario Antonioni, David Gensler, Kyle Cooper ) will inspire students to think beyond their training, education, and experiences, and enable careers and interests that blur the lines between disciplines.

After the lectures, we will host a design charrette that brings together artists, architects, and designers with an open-ended design problem. We will exhibit these design entries at the Mockbee, along with a celebration featuring live music and refreshments."

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Monday, April 11
First time I saw her: She had the all-beer fridge open, light spilling out, and I caught the cheekbones and the determined set of that mouth, but I also caught the black glint of polycarbon at her wrist, and the bright slick sore the exoskeleton had rubbed there.
from "The Winter Market", one of William Gibson's shorts. And one which provides a kind of counterpoint to this article over on New Scientist. Both are worth reading.
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Monday, April 11
The appropriately titled "Design Journal" is an international design practice, theory, management and education publication that is issued three times a year. Designers from around the world submit papers and only the best of the best make it in. For those of us that stay up late at night pondering the importance of everything from "The materiality of wearable computers" to "Mood boards as a catalyst and resource", this magazine is for us.
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Sunday, April 10
LukeW reviews Two Icons, Two Perspectives, One Conversation at the San Jose Museum of Art. See also my previously posted review of the earlier Rashid/Esslinger event.
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Saturday, April 09

Interaction Design students at the RCA in London have created the Turning Back Time clock, a timepiece prototype for lovers.

"At the start of the relationship the couple separates the two clocks which allows them to each use the clock and also starts an internal time counter. Each partner can now turn back the time on their own and their partners clock by using the buttons on the keyring. This comes useful for instance after an argument. It is also possible to turn the time ahead in case you want to see each other earlier. By putting together the two keyrings again, the two displays become one which shows you the total time you have been in your relationship up to now." (via)

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Saturday, April 09
Check out all the coverage, from sessions to, well, just about the kitchen sink at BlogSquad central. Here're some pics: (That last one's there for its impressive foot-flush design. Who says all the design highlights happen in the keynotes!)
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Friday, April 08

Found the above image on C|Net. Air vid; apparently sans ID. Let...me...at...it.

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Thursday, April 07
Frank Gehry made an appearance on The Simpsons last weekend. I've looked for days to find an image from the show to blog here (not set up to do my own screencaps) and voila, an article about pop culture and architecture appears. But mostly, gaze upon the image. The episode featured a nice shot at the design process, where Gehry receives a letter from Marge urging him to design a Cultural Center for Springfield. Gehry crumples the letter, disgusted, and throws it to the ground, then sees the resulting form and has an architectural epiphany. The resultant design is the balled-paper-as-building. Not as bitter, yet, as the Python Architect Sketch or the Kids in the Hall Architect and the Atrium (no transcript online that I could find; suffice to say the architect tells the clients "Screw you and screw you!" several times).
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Thursday, April 07
Gizmag is carrying this cool bit on Gekkomat climbing feet. Nice combo of ID and Engineering, but have to admit I was hoping it used technology based on recent discoveries into how real gecko feet function (like that sticky tape stuff). Then I could have started a building cleaning service! Oh well.
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Thursday, April 07

It's all too familiar to us: materials selection, process development, design and patents. But for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?

Jelly and jam company Smucker's is defending its patent on its version of the classic sandwich. Smucker's claims its "Uncrustables" sandwich deserves to be patented because it uses peanut butter and crustless bread to keep the company's well-known jelly from escaping. The company has filed U.S. Patent No. 6,004,596 to defend its claim.

The company said its refinement on the lunch box standard deserves government protection because it invested in the idea and the process. But the U.S. Trademark Office does not think Smucker's really has a better design. As a result, a federal court will decide the case of the patented sandwich.

What's so special, the company said, is the way it surrounds the jelly with peanut butter to seal in the jelly and keep it from soaking into the bread. Then, the crusts are cut off and the edges are crimped together. That may not seem like such a reveloutionary idea, but to Smucker's, protecting its patent is worth millions.

"Good designers borrow; great designers steal." - Picasso

See a video on MSNBC.

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Wednesday, April 06
"A common trap for design thinking is searching for perfect designs�the belief that there is a single right answer to a given problem, and a designer should be able to realize it given enough time. [...] You have to know the realities of the competitive and financial plan your team is working from, and adjust the goals of your design work to match them. On most Web schedules, it's critical that design energy is prioritized and focused.

Scott Berkun's Essays - Real life advice you can use as a designer

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Wednesday, April 06
Help yourself to the 57 page