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"It does not matter how good are the designs by landscape architects Field Operations and architects Diller Scofidio and Renfro: when it becomes a public park, it will cease to be a magical lost domain, and that is the end of it. Manhattan will have gained a valuable pedestrian resource, but lost a secret."
When I got to this part in Hugh Pearman's testament to the virtue of urban dereliction I had to go dig up the above image - it is from the proposal slideshow for the redesigned High Line. The starting point for the architects' pitch was "keep it" - keep it green, keep it simple, etc. -a rubric founded in the appeal of the derelict structure. A nice mantra, but as Mr. Pearman makes clear, it is one that, given the context, is impossible to reduce to its most basic form: just keep it.
Not building: the lure of desolation found at Things Magazine
Posted by: shaggy | Comments (0)
A nice case study on reverse engineering parts. (Spoiler alert! here's the ending:)
As the first manifold came off the CNC machine, it was taken to the engine shop for polishing and testing on the dynamometer. The manifold generated the same peak power as the original, and the power curves were nearly identical. It was installed in the engine of the car driven by Jeff Burton, and sent on its way to the next race – the Pocono 500.
[Thanks to Shane for sending this in.]
Hytrel, with the best properties of both rubber and plastic, has been celebrated here before. Now, studio1am releases some sweet jewelry made from the stuff. From their site:
Industrial Bloom's flowerlike facade is contrasted by the materials from which it's made. Shavings of Hytrel, a high tech thermoplastic elastomer, are typically discarded during the machining process. We've embraced the individually unique shapes emitted by this production process and use it as the focal point. Each is combined with black or orange rubber cord to offset the delicate white flower. Designed & Made by Donna Piacenza and Jody Work.
Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)
Have any designers been working with scientists in Europe lately? If so, it's time to wake up your science team for an award including Prize-money with a capital "P".
"The new European "Science-to-Business Award" of Degussa AG, Dusseldorf, Germany, is more than just a totally new kind of award for innovation at the pan-European level - with prize money of 100,000 euros it is also one of the highest-endowed research awards anywhere."
- Read more at www.degussa-award.com
Yikes. You'd be a bit weirded-out just by the name of the thing, and then by the actual 100% cotton onsies, but IpodMyBaby.com's World's Cutest Baby Contest? ("Win the entire family of iPods...Is your baby the World's Cutest? Submit a picture of your little one wearing the iPod My Baby Click-Wheel One-Piece or Baby T-Shirt to our celebrity judges at ipodmybaby@gmail.com by Dec 15th."
Then you look at the actual list of celebrity judges and go, yowza! Xeni, Katie, David? Maybe you just need to ask, is all.
Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)
John Thackara (switch-thrower and prime-mover of Doors), has signed on as program director of the UK's Designs of the Time (Dott), a year-long festival of social innovation and service design. (Dott is an innitiative of the Design Council and One North East.) Check out Dott's website here; sign up for their newsletter here; Read John's blog—and all things perceptive—here.
psprca.com
6 students from Design Products, Industrial Design Engineering and Interaction Design at the Royal College of Art have designed a landscape of concept furniture derived from the statue-like forms of people sitting, standing or leaning against walls engaged in playing the PlayStation Portable (PSP). The furniture is designed for use specifically when playing the PSP, and can be tried out during the exhibition.
Exhibition Dates
2-10 December 2005
Entrance Gallery
Royal College of Art
Kensington Gore
London SW7
Opening Hours
10am - 6pm daily
This looks to be very good. From the press release:
Postcards as we know them today didn't come into being until 1907. This new postal service development neatly collided with the invention of the first affordable and portable amateur camera. In a brilliant feat of marketing, Kodak created a service called Real Photo Postcards that allowed a person to make a postcard out of any photograph they took and send it for just a penny. This craze took off and was popular throughout the early 1900's. Real Photo Postcards is a collection of the most outlandish and idiosyncratic, beautiful and even occasionally bizarre images of this early postcard period.
Assembled from the collection of Harvey Tulcensky, and edited by corofriend Laetitia Wolff, this would make a nice holiday surprise
(For NYC folks, check out the book party Dec. 15 at The Rubin Museum of Art. RSVP to publicity-at-papress.com.)
Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)
If you're still into Brooklyn Style (man these things turn over quick!), then you'll want its unofficial DIY manual: TURf. Inside you'll find super-clear instructions on how to build coffee tables made from pallets (yup, let's start there), desk organizers made from sawed-up LPs, and a Shoji screen made from 6-foot utility shelving track. Not sure if you're a candidate for this book? Check here.
Meet the Pong Clock from Cultivate.
While this game of pong randomly plays, the so called players score the time. The left player scores the hours, and the right player scores the minutes.
Duffman, from the Simpsons, is now a real product delivery system.
Belgian design contest: Designing a Sustainable Future. You still have plenty of time to work on it as the deadline is March 1, 2006. On their website is a sustainability guide that is also worth checking out.
Click here for details.
Steve Portigal has a comprehensive report of 4 design oriented events he attended this fall on his blog. Here's a blurb,
I'll try to describe some of the things that struck me about the various events I was involved in. Of course, my friends and colleagues were organizers, presenters, and fellow attendees. It's possible I'll piss someone off with what I have to say, but I'll do my best to be gentle but direct.
It's very long. Skim, skip, or skip ahead, as you see fit.
The four conferences were:
Creative CanUX in Banff in September
About, With, and For (AWF) in Chicago in October
Designing for User eXperience (DUX) in San Francisco in November
Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference (EPIC) in Seattle in November
Read the full report here.
Posted by: Niti Bhan | Comments (0)
New LaCie Brick Hard Drives, designed by Ora-Ito, look like legos. They stack, but don't exactly lock in place like real legos. Starting at $150, the drives come in 160GB (white), 250GB (red), 300GB (blue) and 500GB (red). Use these to build a giant-sized lego pinhole camera, with excessive storage capacity.
Posted by: StuCon | Comments (0)A recently published survey by DesignSingapore on the design industry has a number of positive findings:
* Design Service Providers forecast an annualised growth of 24% over the next three years.
* Industrial & Product Design firms in particular, forecast growth to be as high as 34%.
* About 80% of Design Service Clients polled reported seeing better sales through use of design.
The design industry survey polled a total of 300 companies in fields such as fashion and design accessories, industrial and product design, visual communications design and real estate development. Another 2,000 members of the public between the ages of 15 to 64 participated in the design awareness survey.
Posted by: StuCon | Comments (0)
"Colorized" RAZR launching Friday, read Wired.
Posted by: Niti Bhan | Comments (0)
Looks like MIT not only asked Continuum for concepts for their $100 laptop project, but frog as well. The downfall of this one seems that frog deviated too much from what MIT wanted.
Posted by: Don Lehman | Comments (0)
The ECHO project, from the ID program at Western Washington University, is an inventive and creative experiment focusing on turning industrial waste and scrap into viable and desirable products. Students intercept industrial waste before it reaches landfills and then use this as source material to produce innovative products. The project teaches principles of recycling, design, marketing and production in one shot. Shown above are a back-massaging device from scrap wood and CO2 containers (Adam Weisgerber) and a trivet made from a stove heating coil (Kyle Cornelius). The students have produced 20 duplicates of each product, and the results are now for sale at the Whatcom Museum of History and Art Gift Shop in Bellingham (and selling like hotcakes). Too bad for the rest of us outside of Washington state. Hopefully next year the items will be available on line.
Some 2000 industrial designers, architects and product developers travelled to Frankfurt this month to learn more about the latest developments in the world of material innovation. Find photos and references at our latest Material Vision 2005 gallery, for your inspiration.
It just ended a couple of hours ago, but the New York Times has a great little article and slide show on The Tantamounter. It's a week-long art project at the Leo Konig gallery, in which visitors are asked to put objects into one side of a large wooden box full of Austrian artists, and wait until a handmade copy of the object emerges from the other side. Brilliant idea, I just wish I'd heard about it sooner.
Posted by: Carl Alviani | Comments (0)
IP issues aside, we would buy 2 dozen of these right now. Except that they're not available for a few days. (Maurers shipped to MoMA end of last week; the rest are on deck.) Black Friday indeed. www.emulationkit.com
On Wednesday, December 7, (7-9pm), Core super-fave Ralph Caplan will be at Design Within Reach to sign copies of his book, Cracking the Whip, a collection of 63 essays amassed during Caplan's lengthy career as a design writer, critic, lecturer, teacher and consultant. (Read C77's review and a selection of leads here.) If you've never seen Ralph in person, you gotta put this date in your calendar. And bring a friend. Bring two.
RSVP to nycwest14th-at-dwr.com by December 6.
Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)
If I were an innovation consultant I'd trot this out at every opportunity. Which kind of company are you? Plastic-Santa-is-good-enough kinda company or Brownout-causing-splend-tacular kinda company? via waxy
From the Google corporate history
By January of 1996, Larry and Sergey had begun collaboration on a search engine called BackRub, named for its unique ability to analyze the "back links" pointing to a given website. Larry, who had always enjoyed tinkering with machinery and had gained some notoriety for building a working printer out of Lego™ bricks
Perhaps building electronics of out of toys leads the way to great things? Posted by: Steve Portigal | Comments (0)
Armand B. Frasco has started a blog on all things IKEA. (He's the one behind moleskinerie.com, a blog on Moleskines -- pronounced mol-a-skeen-a, according to the fine print on his site). Anyway, there's a keener for everything out there.
[Thanks to Rob for the link.]
"Creative effort should help to improve manufactured goods, not just tart them up," writes Larry Elliott in the Guardian. A nice piece that inevitably trots out the iPod as exemplar, but we can always forgive that. Here's a morsel:
Here's the state of play: to the extent that the Cool Britannia hype had any effect, it was to persuade vast numbers of young people to enrol on design courses. A decade ago, one in 64 students was doing design; now it is one in 16. There is a vast pool of potential talent out there for business to draw on, should it want to.
The problem is that an awful lot of British industry doesn't want to. Only 8% of firms have a process for managing design, and 69% spend nothing on design. A mere 32% of companies have developed a new product or service in the past three years.
[Thanks to Luke for the tip]
Can only imagine what the toolbox would like to keep this collection of miniature wearable tools from Stanley in Japan, unless you could just settle on one.
[ via: coolhunting ]
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (0)
For those of you not ready to take on the world of medium format photography, Adrian has just completed the 35mm version of his Lego Pinhole Camera series. Now that's what I'm talking about !!
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (0)
Today the new at&t logo was unveiled by the company formerly known as SBC. Their news release says,
The company said the new logo was designed to look three-dimensional, "representing the expanding breadth and depth of services that the new AT&T family of companies provides to customers."
Here is the Bell Memorial site with all the historic logos.
Lowercase type was chosen for "at&t" in the logo "because it projects a more welcoming and accessible image," the company said.
"Looking at the big picture of robot development, it's clear that this is a pivotal moment, a time of huge change," said Masakazu Sato, robot researcher at the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation.
"Robots are starting to come into home environments, not just normal environments but also in terms of welfare, to assist older people in doing activities at home."
Read full article here.
Posted by: Niti Bhan | Comments (0)
The Word Sprout is a plant in a can. Water it, and a bean sprout will grow displaying your message (if you order more than 5000; else "I Love You"). Man, it wasn't that long ago that custom-printed M&Ms seemed far out.
#1 - the chariot
#2 - concrete
#7 - barbed wire
Read the full list (with some justification) here.
[via MetaFilter]
Posted by: Steve Portigal | Comments (0)
Right about this time, busy industrial design students are putting the finishing touches on their "lamps that change color with the day to reflect the changing blah blah blah." Well, we hope you can do better--at least formally--than this. ('Course, given that you're staying up all night to get your lamp done in time for crit, you could always order one of these to help get you up in the morning. [redferret]
A quick, charming site and some clever products leave us wanting more from 366cm, a studio created by Sergio Streun and Vincent Schertenleib. Check out the decanter, above, and their used phonecard ashtrays. (The phonecards are used, not the ashtrays...oh, you know what I mean.)
You could google image search it, or just check out the Radio Attic. [Thanks to John for the link]
If you're a knife buff, you know all about Fibron's line of Pakkawood composite materials. If not, their worth a look. Pakkawood is a wood/resin composite made by impregnating ordinary wood or wood fibers using a proprietary process to yield a bulk material which is dimensionally stable, and can be machined, and polished just like a hard polymer. The material is waterproof, and heat resistant, and comes in a variety of grains and colors. Though the nature of the impregnation process makes large pieces difficult to make, and expensive, Pakkawood is perfect for tool handles and accents where real wood doesn't wear well.
Posted by: Dominic Muren">Dominic Muren | Comments (0)Michael Beirut writes a very thoughtful piece on the current buzz around innovation at Design Observer titled "Innovation is the new black". Here's a snippet,
With this new vision of design-as-innovation identified -- somewhat chillingly, if you ask me -- in Business Week as "the Next Big Thing after Six Sigma" (the ironically-intended capitalization is theirs), perhaps a new golden age of respect for designers -- or innovators, or whatever you want to call us -- is upon us at last. Or maybe it simply announces the availability of a turbo-charged version of the kind of frantic rationalizations that we've always deployed in our desperation to put our ideas across. Either way, I'm reminded of something Charles Eames used to say: innovate as a last resort. Have we run out of options at last?
Posted by: Niti Bhan | Comments (0)
Sugiura's pan-Asian perspective, his brilliant use of Eastern motifs, and what one might term his "Asian grammar of design" have made him a seminal influence on designers not only in Japan but also in India, China, Taiwan and South Korea. In this two-part conversation with The Book & The Computer's editorial director Tsuno Kaitaro, Sugiura describes how he came to be the catalyst for a remarkable "multisubjective community" of creative minds throughout Asia.
Link to gallery of Sugiura Kohei's work and more.
Posted by: Niti Bhan | Comments (0)That is such an old story among designers that perhaps it is small wonder that designers tend not see themselves as leaders. If they have learned not to expect their professional judgements to sway clients or employers, how can they imagine leading corporations or communities, to say nothing of exercising leadership in the developing global arena? It is simply impossible for most designers to think of themselves as having a place in high councils of decision making.
But that is where designers are most needed -- at the top. It is a travesty that the only professionals close to the CEO's are lawyers and accountants. Designers have more to offer, because increasingly our organizations need to be design driven, not just market driven. To truly prosper, our global society must have its needs met, not just its wants.
Read the full article titled Designers as Leaders by Richard Farson
Posted by: Niti Bhan | Comments (0)
Rob Walker's latest Consumed piece looks at the strategic approach of Haier, one of the few Chinese brands making inroads in the US.
Instead of a "technology push" approach (a Bell Labs cranking out wonderful inventions that are then pushed into the marketplace), [Sull] says, they are adept at using a "consumer pull" strategy, studying and responding to their customers' needs.Posted by: Steve Portigal | Comments (0)
...
Sull, the business-school professor, says that U.S. companies operating in China already know that the fiercest competitors there are the domestic ones. "The thing that should really make them nervous," he says of U.S. companies, is the ability of Chinese manufacturers to export "their ability for rapid consumer-pull innovation" to the United States. Which is exactly what Haier is trying to do.
The European Ceramic Work Centre is an international workplace where artists, designers and architects explore the technical and artistic possibilities of ceramics.
Two new projects are starting in 2005 with a focus on the relationship between ceramics and architecture. One project will focus on the brick and the other will focus on combined residencies. If you're interested, now is the time to get moving - closing date is December 1.
Posted by: Aart van Bezooyen | Comments (0)
Pretty much, according to Owen Gibson writing in the Guardian, which co-developed along with a firm oddly called ID Magasin, a simple device that records all of the 3500 or so advertising messages that an average London commuter sees in a day.
The results: "In 90 minutes, Owen saw 250 adverts from more than 100 brands in 70 different formats. The number recalled without prompting was 1."
www.guradian.co.uk (registration required)
Posted by: Cordy Swope | Comments (0)
Echo Memoirs creates custom coffee-table books for Pregnancy, Travel, Bar/Bat Mitzvah, Anniversaries, Engagement, Wedding, Family History, Pets, Friendship, Business, Retirement, Birthdays, Mother's Day, Graduation, Showers, and more. To create your book, they take about 150 hours to interview relevant stakeholders, transcribe, write, copy-edit, design, and print. First copy is $6,000, with reprints about $200.
Brinco ("jump" in Spanish) is a uniquely designed sneaker, inspired by information and materials that are relevant to, and could provide assistance to, those illegally crossing the border. Artist/designer Judi Werthein has made 1,000 pairs in China, for $17 each, and has been giving them away at migrant shelters and more. The shoes were introduced in August at inSite. Werthein spent two years doing design research, interviewing shoe designers, migrants, aid workers, even an immigrant smuggler. AP story about the project here and another story/interview here.
Posted by: Steve Portigal | Comments (0)
The 'chemical barcode' consists of a group of chemicals that can be integrated into the composition of any material. When the material is illuminated under light of a particular frequency, a unique emission spectrum is detected by a hand-held reader. That is, an individual pattern invisible to the naked eye can be assigned to a product to identify it as authentic.
Not sure how effective this attempt will be to take on the counterfeiting industry but it could make for some interesting textile experiments next time you're clubbing.
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (0)
Chemical burns, ruined clothes, 11 years, half a million dollars - it's not easy to improve the world's most popular toy. Yet the success of one inventor's quest to dye a simple soap bubble may change the way the world uses color.
You gotta respect Tim Keho's enthusiasm and dedication to the cause.
article at: popsci | found: pixelsurgeon
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (0)
The much anticipated 'designer battle' Cut&Paste is on tomorrow night. 8 selected candidates will fight it out live on stage in 15 min rounds.
Cut and Paste Contest
Saturday, Nov. 19th
Doors open 9pm, competition starts 10pm.
$10 entry ($5 with RSVP)
MI-5
52 Walker St (btwn Broadway & Church)
New York, NY 10013
Contestants:
Dianna Dalsass
Francisco Perez
Jesse Raker
John Siers
Andrew Sturgess
Anisa Suthayalai
Daniel Weise
Miriam Weiskind
For more details : website
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (0)Peter Drucker's passing away last week has been well covered in the business news and blogs, here is a comprehensive post on his lifetime contribution to the theory of business management. However, for Core77, I wanted to add this famous quote from him,
"Business has two basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs."
In his habitually prescient way (he made this comment in 1954), Peter Drucker identified that the creation of customer value--through invention or through brands--is the only sustainable foundation for business.
Posted by: Niti Bhan | Comments (0)
Wired Magazine's debut (temporary) store opened in SoHo NY today. The shop will be open from Nov. 18 - Dec. 24. Cashing in on the lucrative christmas season, they're offering a high-end selection of digital gadgets, laptops, luggage and of course for your most loved one - a Suborbital Spaceflight ($102,000.00). There'll be no queues at the register this year; all purchases are made at the laptop checkout station with goods delivered straight to your door. Check the website for a full list of in-store promotions & DJ parties.
WIRED Store
160 Wooster St
New York
Oh, If you're looking to lease a retail space in SoHo beginning 2006? Try here.
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (0)
Rob walker has a new Flickr project stewing at Flickr, collecting images of Martin Luther King Boulevards across America. View the project description here, Rob's site here, and the Flickr pool here. (Also mentioned here.)
(Meant to blog Rob's incredible gesture on his Letters From New Orleans book proceeds earlier, but buy the book and help out.)
Opening this evening (5-7pm), and running through Decebmer 18th, this show, held at the Firehouse Gallery in Burlington Vermont, features the work of over a dozen industrial, product, and graphic designers and artists through the display of limited edition, functional objects. [Link.]
(Above, Jed Crystal's Minimal Lamp)
via Gridskipper, comes this snippet about the launch of the newest Olympic mascots,
The "Five Friendlies" are Beibei, a fish creature; Jingjing, a panda; Huanhuan, a malevolent fire demon; Yingying, an antelope; and Nini, a swallow. Halved and strung together, their names ("bei jing huan ying ni") translate to "Welcome to Beijing." They can also combine to form a giant hospitality robot.
Here's the copy:
Peter is a enthusiastic tennis player on weekends. He's a family man and fires up a grill like no other. But Monday to Friday from 9 to 5 he sits down and becomes...CHAIRMAN!
The inspiration for this project came from comic book heroes. I figured I'd try and give today's CEO the ultimate corporate seating object with special powers. The chair can be moved by turning a switch, which lifts the chair and keeps it suspended above the floor by a thin layer of air. The two hundred pound chair can be moved with a finger.
Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)
Like we needed industrial design and 3D modelling to figure out how pour a beer? The TurboTap is,
... groundbreaking, fluid-controlling draft beer technology is the product of a unique collaboration between fluid engineers and draft industry experts. We knew there had to be a better way to control and improve draft pouring.
Following initial design prototyping, core development work began in 2002. In late 2004 we formally launched a commercial model that easily could be installed at large scale venues and was capable of pouring perfect beer at up to four times the flow rate of conventional taps. [...]
This state-of-the-art, yet deceptively simple, piece of pouring technology delivers yield, speed, beer consistency and taste. Our competitors thought big. We thought smart.
Prototyping must have been thirsty work.
Posted by: Niti Bhan | Comments (0)
The International Herald Tribune has an interesting article analyzing the success of the "pen top" computer in the children's market - launched by Leapfrog - as compared to the adult market where it didn't catch on. Maybe sometimes after a product is designed, you realise it suits a different audience better than the one originally intended.
Posted by: Niti Bhan | Comments (0)
The Doraemon Shop in ShimoKitaZawa is one of those places, designers would die for to visit if they only knew it existed!
PingMag get the complete lowdown (essential reading for anyone planing a trip to Tokyo) and meet with the shop owner who's also graphic designer, TV writer, photographer and claims to have a waterproof method to win every possible horse race. Awesome !!
Also, don't miss their 100% Design Tokyo final report.
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (0)
Here it is. [MIT, cnet, engadget] (Images: Design Continuum)
So you think that when your appliances are unplugged that they are not drawing power? Read about how a little design issue adds up to a lot of energy consumption.
Posted by: Bruce M. Tharp | Comments (0)
A little background about the history of green design in architecture from a pioneer who has recently designed, paradoxically, "the world's largest green residence (15,000 sqf)." Hmmm.
Check out the NYT article.
Read full article with explanations.
Now that is not a headline you see very often these days. But we got an invite from idea consultants BrainStore calling for Americans of all types to join them in Wolfsburg, Germany to help develop ideas for new car features for Volkswagen. Sounds like a fun day, and make up to 200 CHF plus travel accomodation expenses. Go to www.brainstore.com/jobs to apply.
Posted by: StuCon | Comments (0)
Samsung is demoing two new handsets at 2005 APEC IT, showing off the company's WiBro (WiMAX) technology. The H1000 (pictured right) and the M8000 (pictured left) are the world's first WiBro phones, and likely won't be the last.
Via Wired.
Posted by: Niti Bhan | Comments (0)
This is kind of awesome, especially when you toggle from "not to scale" to "to scale". Here's what you get for that trip:
TUNNEL No. 3: Seventy stories below daylight "sandhogs" install air ducts in a new artery for New York City's water. City Tunnel No. 3 will add 60 miles (97 kilometers) to a multilayered subterranean network that slakes the city's thirst, transports its people, and channels its light, heat, and voices.
Can a SimSlaker be far behind?
[via MUG]
Metropolis Magazine presents Tropical Green, a two-day conference on Green Building in Tropical Zones that will take place in Miami, February 9-10, 2006. Here's the pitch:
With Miami's current building frenzy, the city needs to consider sustainable design principles urgently, and not only for environmental reasons. Indeed: such an earth-friendly approach is also a smart business investment, offering long-term profits and, in many cases, higher selling prices.
The two-day Tropical Green conference will be an invaluable experience for architects, interior designers, developers, city planners, politicians, and voters in search of learning the ways of 21st century design that will both help the environment and their wallets.
Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)
Product designers have always kept a special place in their hearts for the Freeplay wind-up radio. Now we can double our jollies--right down to our toes--with this pedal pusher. It even comes with jumper cables.
We like the phone-number-in-the-page-title thing for sure, but these skates are sick. Not for the feint of heart, of course, Freeline Skates are dual independent skates, sideways stance, allowing riders to "achieve high levels of traction and carve smooth 'S' turns while riding downhill and dance like a fish on the flats and uphill." Extremely portable, extremely fast, kinda extreme all around.
[Thanks to Craig for the tip.]
As part of the media blitz pushing their new "M5" bottles, Coca-Cola has put together this, a collection of "Video Short Stories" (i.e. music videos) pairing five bands with five motion graphics firms from different continents.
Brazilian studio Lobo does a great job with stop-motion self-assembling toy robots trundling around to The Flaming Lips, and The Designer's Republic comes up with a pretty but bloodless entry set to a similarly thin track by Citizen Bird. MK12's interpretation of Guided By Voices is stunning, with a gorgeous blend of green-screen shots and super-flat CG. Check out the "Making Of" reel that goes with it: it's probably better than the video itself.
Posted by: Carl Alviani | Comments (0)
Check out this great ad for MINI in this month's Metropolis: a working drawing template, complete with customization stencils. You've got to love the detail and care that MINI and ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky have put into building this brand.
Posted by: Don Lehman | Comments (0)
A creative use of neoprene.
Re-f-use, a design exhibition on sustainable product design, officially opened yesterday at the Delft University of Technology. This exhibition has been touring throughout Europe for over five years and has been updated featuring app. 150 examples on sustainability. More information and inspiration at the accompanied website with a product overview and designer opinions on sustainability: www.re-f-use.com
So you think you've got the right design stuff?
How about entering the American Helicopter Society/NASA student competion. This year you need to design a new 2-place turbine training helicopter. Proposals are due in June so you still have time to brush up on your aeronautical engineering. Don't try and pull this one out with an all-nighter.
Check it out.
Freshened-up for your surfing pleasure, bookmark our new off-site section, featuring New and Essential Design Books, Magazines, and a highly-tuned links list of essential sites and blogs on Objects, Culture, Business, Materials, and Technology.
Again, the transparent screen flickrmeme is on fire! (More Friday-fodder.)
The cartoon band Gorillaz used some oldskool trickery to perform live on stage recently.
Cara Speller, producer of the Gorillaz live extravaganza at the London animation house Passion Pictures, said: "It's quite old technology. It's essentially Pepper's Ghost, which was a Victorian invention of reflection and projection on to mirrors."
Discussions have been held with ILM to incorporate a more sophisticated technology for the world tour in 2007.
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (0)
Still mezmerizing; check out pretty-much-live search terms at Excite. (Link is to unfilterd queries...live a little!)
PopSci's annual celebration of innovation presents a wide collection of impressive inventions and technologies. Some of the more interesting items include an electicity generating wave farm, a AA battery-powered mobile phone charger, and colored soap bubbles called Zubbles. While presenting a nice showcase and some eye candy, the feature could be better if it wasn't so commercially oriented.
Posted by: StuCon | Comments (0)Dev Patnaik has an excellent article over at BusinessWeek, and here's a snippet,
It's easy to infer from this that design has been over-hyped as a strategic business tool. But in fact, both Song and TED point to an underlying dynamic that companies need to understand to fully leverage the power of design. At its essence, design is most effective when it plays the role of a front end for a more comprehensive strategy and back-end system.
As I was scanning the web for places to promote my sister's vintage clothes site* I came across Old Woodies - ha ha, yes, I just said that - a site dedicated to all things Wood and Car. Some of the highlights are: early racing woodies like this "boat-tail skiff" - a 1925 Panhard capable of doing 115mph;
woven cars (an economical alternative to steel construction) - the wicker woodies;
the original wooden bucks used to form the Ferrari 330 gtc - a quote from Pininfarina: "Their collaborators often came from the furniture industry, so they were used to working with wood," - yeah baby!;
Crazy cars aside, the underlying story is of the free-spirited exploration which accompanies all young technologies. A little nostalgic here, but a fun reminder of what design is about.
*And for you hep cats out there who might be interested - Check out Lulu's Vintage, or as I like to call it "The Retro Retreat for the Fashion Elite"
Posted by: shaggy | Comments (0)
More photo updates from the crew over at mocoloco.
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (0)
Last week's NYTimes had a whole section on digital gifts and design, including pieces promoting good design as a means of increasing customer satisfaction, high end phones and an audio slide show illustrating the points in the Style Meets Function article.
Posted by: StuCon | Comments (0)
Arjan Steketee
Eindhoven, Netherlands
Nice work and comprehensive skill set on display here... Read on and catch glimpse of the birth of a public transportation baby: a stout little square-jawed bus. Be sure to check the purple Colt rendering while there, a nice counterpoint to the larger vehicles.
THIS is what I'm talking about! Industrial design has never been very good at putting out good solid books at the level that architecture and graphic design consistently does. Impact, edited by Deana McDonagh, ID professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, flys right in the face of that.
Impact documents the 2005 IDSA Midwest Conference and features content from presenters including: Tucker Viemeister, Bruce Nussbaum, Karim Rashid, Dan Formosa as well as student work. All encompassing content, good clean layout, and a point of view make Impact a book you would want to put on your design bookshelf. We can only hope that more industrial designers are inspired to create works like this.
UPDATE: Impact comes in a limited edition run of 1000 but you can get your own personally numbered copy from Deana herself by mailing a $25 (US) check made out to the University of Illinois. The mailing address is:
School of Art + Design
University of Illinois (Urbana/Champaign)
128 Art and Design Building
408 East Peabody Drive
Champaign, Illinois 61820
Parasite Suitcase
Slotcar Camera (large)
Its a day of fruit, water and cardio after last nights Third Annual Gala & Chocolate Fashion Show which featured original outfits made of or with chocolate, and the catering by some of New Yorks leading Chefs ensured a night of total chocolate decadence.
New York Chocolate Show
November 10-13, 2005
Metropolitan Pavillion & Altman Building
Entrance: 125 West 18th Street
(between 6th & 7th Avenues)
Eschewing the podium in favor of a Lavolier and his rubber soles, Paco Underhill presented at Parson's as part of their Dept. of Design and Management Stephen Weiss Memorial Lecture Series. Underhill kicked off his talk by asking how many attendees had seen one of his presentations before (just a couple)--begging their forgiveness for any retreaded material. And, most certainly, what we had heard must've come out of his mouth oh, about 20 thousand times...but it was still great.
His title was "Why Merchants and Marketers are Nervous," but it was really a review and primer on retail ethnography with a dusting of trendspotting over top. There were recurrent references to gender division (almost to the point of making that its own lecture), with callouts to the fact that men design, own, and manage a huge majority of stores, though women shop in them; by 2010, the overwhelming majority of graduates from professional schools will be women; "I can walk in, look at the shelves, and tell you the 10% of Walmarts that are run by women;" 70% of American women are working outside the home--"is it any wonder that eating habits have changed?"
Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)
Engadget's got the best of England's new "Let's Keep Crime Down" campaign graphic--a strange collision of graphic design, advertising, and product. [Link]