RSS Feeds:Hear, Hear puts together an insanely comprehensive and in-depth interview with journalist and NYT's Consumed columnist Rob Walker (who gets called R. Walker here for some Crumb-esque reason that eludes us).
The "where do the ideas come from" question is everybody's favorite, and I understand why. I've written more than 150 Consumed columns, and the range is very wide. It can be soap for Third World consumers one week, and donks the next. So, basically, it's my life, I'm looking for ideas all the time. It s a constant process.Posted by: Steve Portigal | Comments (0)
Win a Trip to Germany! The BraunPrize, in conjunction with Core 77, is offering you the chance to attend the awards ceremony, with travel and two nights hotel stay included. This year marks the 16th edition of the bi-annual BraunPrize, held in Kronberg, Germany (September 12, 2007). To enter the drawing, complete the form here and correctly answer the 3 multiple choice questions. On August 16, one lucky winner will be selected to receive the all-expense-paid trip to Germany and an invitation to the gala awards.
For full details, rules and schedule click here. Deadline: August 15, 2007.
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Is this a sign of urban landscapes to come? A new building at 804 Ninth Avenue in Manhattan rests its two top floors comfortably atop an older building that may as well be shrugging its shoulders and saying, "Eh." Either the developer failed to obtain rights to demolish the submissive structure, or this design was part of the plan all along. For now, it's somewhat of an anomaly here, but trends can't start without precedents, right?
thanks bryman!
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (6)
Nic Kolya's newest projects involve painstakingly hand-sliced sheets of A3 paper and various dolla-dolla billz from around the world. His A3 Cities series portrays the feel of various cities in simple profile form with no color or third dimension. The International Currency project is a reflection upon the circulation of money and asks the various bills where they've been. You can actually snag Kolya's A3 pieces on Etsy for $40 a piece.
via coudal
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (1)
We've designed ways to move it, filter it, cool it, and heat it, but it's still dirty. The air we breathe is greatly affected by pollutants and emissions from industry activity, so here's a great way for you to get involved in making a change.
On June 21, 2007, the EPA proposed stronger limits on smog in our air. But doctors and scientists say the new limits don't go far enough. And now powerful polluters are pushing back, trying to stop any change. Here's your chance to make your voice heard. Adopt a square mile of sky over the U.S. and sign the petition to demand clean air now.
adoptthesky.org ask you to "adopt" one square mile of sky by simply signing the petition--it's free. This call to action is organized by Earthjustice, who "evens the odds in court against law-breaking industries and government agencies, protecting the environment and human health." The movement aims to overrule polluters and industry groups that are fighting higher air quality standards and persuade the EPA to take a cleaner route. An little added incentive to sign up is the fun interactive site that shows all signatures and a map of adopted sky space throughout the US.
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)Using plastics to foil crime? For this year's U.K.-based Design Innovation in Plastics student competition, entrants were asked to design polymer-based safety/security products. Top prize went to Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design student Sara Bellini, whose purse-based suction cup adheres it securely to cafe tables, preventing passersby from doing the snatch-'n-grab. For her winning design Bellini won an internship, a scholarship and 1,000 pounds in cash, and with her sticking purse she has little fear of losing it.
via modern plastics
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (0)
In "Crossing Cultures" (pdf), a new article published in IDSA Innovation Journal, Kevin McCullagh sets out the challenges in designing for global markets:
"Few design managers can avoid the headache of an international diversity of tastes. Since the 1980s, brand owners have dreamt of the economies of scale that global products promise, but managers on the frontline know that the reality of designing products for world markets is much more complex and ambiguous. The rogues' gallery of product faux pas that made disastrous translations to local culture is testament to the number of bear traps out there."
After speaking about many cultural differences, McCullagh acknowledges that "the most powerful products transcend national boundaries and touch our common humanity."
McCullagh recently also wrote the much discussed "Riding the Flux" article on Core77.
Posted by: Mark Vanderbeeken | Comments (0)
"What is a Meta-Tag? What kind of measurement is DIN A1? What kind of clearance and documents do you need before using copyrighted material?"
Umm, apparently this book, The Little Know-It-All: Common Sense for Designers, is "First Aid for Clueless Designers" but if truly clued-in designers are supposed to know the answers to all those questions, they must be rare breed...or we're totally clueless here? Usually, when you find yourself in a situation that calls for answers to such questions, it's fire-under-the-ass enough to motivate you to self-educate yourself in a jiffy...but hey, why not brush up on some factoids beforehand, ey?
This book is divided into sections explicating unique vocabulary used in design, printing, typography and photography and includes helpful tips and concise analysis in contiguous areas such as advertising, multimedia, business, copyright and project management. It is structured thematically and equipped with a resourceful index that references numerous sources and links. This indispensable manual is complete with graphics that illustrate and supplement the texts, making it a stimulating reference book for students and newcomers while serving as a trusty companion for professional designers and media professionals alike in their everyday work.
via swissmiss
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
Once upon a time, anyone could make anything, because everything was made of sticks and rocks. Then came more advanced technology, and with it, specialization. Bakers baked bread and wheelwrights built wheels, but only because they were better at it--the average farmer's family could probably bake their own bread if it came down to it. In the past couple of centuries, that's been going away, because things get more complex, and while baking bread requires patience and practice, engineering an airplane requires a college degree.
But running alongside all of that have been the tinkers; the ones who may not be able to build complex objects from scratch, but through enough messing with them have figured out how to fix, modify, rebuild, and maybe even improve on them. Think HAM radio geeks, think home-built computers, think Anthony Hopkins in The World's Fastest Indian.
G. Pascal Zachary at the New York Times thinks that's going away too, and that it might be the fault of The Design Elite and their stranglehold on the process of innovation. In this article from July 29, Zachary investigates websites like Instructables that encourage hi-tech tomfoolery, and mourns the growing legion of common consumer goods that resist their pokings and probings. The iPod is once again the poster child for highly designed desirables, this time in a somewhat negative light which it shares with other products that are "dominated by a top-down, elite innovation model that doesn't allow for customization."
Posted by: Carl Alviani | Comments (0)
Some of our favorite products to consume are the products that we put in to our mouths--food! Yet, like much of the stuff that we consume, we don't really know where it's been. Worldwatch Institute has a neat little piece that tells us how to keep it real when it comes to good eats.
Here's a taste:
Eating local keeps money in the local economy, helps preserve farmland, and usually means tastier food. In the midst of food safety crises, eating local also brings a certain peace of mind because the shopper can get much more information about what they are actually buying.
Learn more about the Slow Food movement here, how to track your Food Miles here, and the similarities between good food and smart design here.
Posted by: Xanthe Matychak | Comments (2)
Design folk sure love their tools, but designing them isn't exactly a glamorous task, especially when you're assigned with reinventing the, um, hammer! ATOMdesign was approached by leading hammer brand Vaughan & Bushnell to update this iconic tool of all tools--to "transform an American icon."
...And so the S2 was born. It sports a split-head, which means the shock produced when the hammer makes contact is interrupted in order to minimize stress on the user's hand, wrist, and arm. The S2's engineering pounds nails in with a "dead blow" effect--preliminary testers averaged just two strikes to drive a nail. The hammer still keeps it real with a traditional (sustainably-acquired) hickory wood handle despite its otherwise snazzy makeover. Old and new-school craftspersons alike can enjoy the familiar feel of a contoured wooden handle with the added modular convenience of being able to easily replace the hammer head.
ATOMdesign celebrates legit recognition of its accomplishments with the S2 which just scored Bronzeness in the 2007 IDEA Awards and is now featured in ID Magazine's 53rd annual Design Review.
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (5)
Not too long ago, we reported on electrical engineer Scott Amron's pet project, Die Electric, where he experiments with strange objects that abstractly conserve power. His newest product is the Off light switch hook that grants extra utility to a normal light switch in order to add a real incentive for the user to keep it in the "off" position as often as possible. Lights on? Then you can't hang your undaroos here, sorry...
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (5)
Flero, Italy-based multidisciplinary design firm Icon Design Studio has just announced the D-mension shelf, a streamlined, modular shelving system made in aluminum and stainless steel, produced by PZ. The units, shaped like lower-case d's, can be arranged in a staggered, abstract, or symmetrical formation based on the user's personal taste.
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
As bad as we want to see a Google vs. Microsoft commercial spoof a la Mac vs. PC (hint hint--can someone whip that up right quick?), we're gonna have to stick with side-by-side spec comparisons for now. Gizmodo's got a preliminary rundown of each team's mobile footage-gathering setups, from efficiency to video recording tech, right down to looks.
They're both sporting Chevy rides, but from opposite sides of the spectrum. Windows uses behemoth gas-guzzling Tahoes, while Google keeps it zippy and conservative with Cobalts. Google's Ladybug2 spherical 6-camera digital video systems sit modestly atop the Cobalts while Microsoft makes a real spectacle of itself with "six huge cameras, two GPS antennas and what could be a laser rangefinder on top, all connected with giant cables."
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
We've enjoyed Peter Marigold's work in the past--most notably his adaptable Make/Shift shelving units, but his newest project delves into something more abstract. Marigold describes his new Split series simply as this:
The inverted angles of a shape split into pieces will always add up to 360 degrees.The angles can be interchanged but will always form a whole.
Timber logs are split into four wedge pieces that are then fitted into the corners of shelves, tables, and storage towers possessing shapes that are dictated by whatever angles result from the split.
A Split instillation is currently on display at Paul Smith in Milan until October 11th.
via dezeen
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)A small band of designers in South Africa is trying to boost their country's manufacturing economy, and they believe they have just the ticket: promoting industrial design. South Africa's Industrial Designer's Society has been observing the Asian "tiger" economies, particularly South Korea, in order to see what role ID has played in that country's economic success.
South Korea has ID programs at some 156 colleges and universities, producing 3,400 ID grads in any given year. In contrast South Africa has only 25 industrial designers in the entire country, and IDS chairperson Bernard Smith feels they are worse off for it.
"Abroad, industrial designers are generally paid well and work in an enabling environment where they are given sufficient access to research and development resources. The result is continuous innovation, which is the lifeblood of companies," [Smith] comments.The newly formed association's mission is to consolidate the industrial design profession and promote the benefits of industrial design to all stakeholders as a competitive, value-adding resource in South Africa.
Read a more detailed explanation here.
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (0)
Jordan Farkas' guerilla ad campaign for Mothers Against Drunk Driving, recently featured on New Creatives, involves these Grim Reaper decals oh-so-cleverly slapped onto side view mirrors. Drivers of "treated" cars are definitely in for a surprise the next time they change lanes, however, let's hope they're sober at the time 'since being in an altered state might convince some that it's for real.
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (1)
We'll never get tired of looking backwards at the future. Check out this collection of never-ran concept cars from the 1930s through the '60s, with winners like the '58 Ford Nucleon (left), which was envisioned to have a nuclear power source, and the '61 Gyron (right), which balanced on two wheels with the help of a gyroscope. For true automotive mayhem they should have combined these two concepts--what could go wrong?
via aol cars
In a practice dating back to ancient Rome and attributed in origin to Julius Caesar, where the Acta Diurna ("daily events") of political and social events were posted on the city walls, Helsinki, Finland's capital, has launched The CityWall (images - video), a large multi-touch display installed in a central location, a great example of the simplicity of multi-touch displays and surface computing, and the collaborative and playful human engagement that it naturally leads to.
Using a series of intuitive gestures users can navigate and arrange media as if you were manipulating physical pictures. The touchscreen technology which enables this direct interaction has been specifically designed so that several people can interact directly with display at the same time.
The CityWall is located in downtown Helsinki, Finland. It can be found in Lasipalatsi opposite Forum. The touchscreen technology and applications have been developed by the Ubiquitous Interaction research group at the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology, as part of IPCity.
Via Influx Insights, Surface Sightings and The Daily Galaxy.
Land of robot receptionists and more mobile services than you can shake iPhone at, Japan has so far offered few opportunities for foreign students wanting to study digital design at the center of the tech revolution. That's about to change. Keio University is launching a new Graduate School of Media Design that will offer Masters and Ph.D courses in both English and Japanese. Headed by renowned digital artist and filmmaker Masa Inakage, the new program is focused on training "the next generation of media innovators." The core curriculum includes design, technology, management, and public policy. Students will also develop their own research projects in partnership with international corporations and organizations.
David Womack talks to Professor Inakage about the new school, media design in Japan, and the next generation of ubiquitous devices.
LISTEN NOW (17 min.) | iTunes | More Broadcasts
Posted by: core jr | Comments (1)
The UK Design Council website has posted a nice case study on how Belgium's postal service turned to design to help it make the transformation from outmoded institution to flexible service provider.
When in 2001 the European postal markets were being gradually liberalised, the Belgian post office (De Post) embarked upon a wholesale, design-led reinvention, appointing Fitch:London to help transform it from an out-dated institution into a sharper, more customer-focused retailer.
Fitch:London, supported by Belgian research group Columbus, undertook an in-depth discovery and definition period. Management interviews, trends analysis, customer segmentation and consumer profiling led to the identification of three key concepts: communication, community and convenience.
Posted by: Mark Vanderbeeken | Comments (0)
Parsons The New School for Design as announced the winning entries from its first Sustainable Design Review for 2007. The review asked student participants to define sustainability in their own terms, illustrated by their concept submission. This year's first place winner is Caroline Pham who's entry is a public art instillation that encourages biophilia (appreciation of the living world) by bringing natural sunlight into underground subway stations by way of fiber optics and sunlight collection panels. (Good lord we could really use summa that here in NYC.)
You can check out the entire results report here.
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (1)
Who knew you could make brake pads from nuts or tires from vegetables? This green racer, called Eco One, is 95% biodegradable and runs on biofuel. With the exception of the steering wheel, seat (can anyone say soy foam seats?), and chassis, the car is entirely made out of biomass--hemp and rapeseed oil for the body, ground cashew shells for the brake pads, and potatoes for the tires. The biofuel, btw, is a mixture of sugar beets and fermented wheat.
Via TreeHugger
Everyone knows it's not easy being green, but if you want to get greener and don't know where to start, this here handy lil' guide could be a nice option for ya. IDSA's just published the Okala (hopi for "life sustaining energy") Design Guide for 2007--it's an "introduction to ecological and sustainable design for practicing and beginning designers...It envisions a future where we recognize the value of global ecology and work to insure its protection." This year's revised version, supported by Eastman Chemical Corporation, Whirlpool Corporation and the IDSA/EPA Partnership, serves to emphasize usability to designers and design students.
The Okala promo site gives you a sneak peek at a few sections, but if you want the whole shebang, you'll have to cough up $19 for a copy. If it's a crew, and not just you, discounts are granted for larger orders, and apparently, over 60 D-schools in North America have already requested copies.
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (1)
The Design Management Institute's 32nd Interntional Conference will focus on what the future holds for design managers and strategists. There's a long list of speakers that include Jesse James Garrett, Director at Adaptive Path, who will discuss Delivering Long-Term Design Value in a Short-Term World, Jeff Dietrich, Senior Analyst at Ecotrends, who will explain Thinking Ahead: Road Signs of the Global Economy, and Gianfranco Zaccai, President and CEO of Continuum, discussing how The Future of Design Is Not What It Used To Be, just to name a few. Registration is currently open.
The 32nd International Design Management Conference
Thinking Ahead: The Changing Role of Design and Design Management in Business
September 23-26, 2007
Kingsmill Resort & Spa
Williamsburg, Virginia, USA
These recycling bins caught my eye along Orchard Road in Singapore. Clever use of product design - note the change in the shape of the bin marked "Paper" and graphic design - each section has its own colour combination and collage to make these stand out yet not look very obviously like garbage.
Logitech has just announced their new ergonomic Wave keyboard. At first glance it doesn't appear different than the other warped-shape keyboards on the market, but closer scrutiny reveals the keys are curved in two different axes, making us Core bloggers curious to try the thing.
In addition to the standard hotkeys, the Wave features a typing-speed indicator, and an "error rate tracker" that lets you know how many times you had to hit the backspace key. Not sure what good either of those features are, but at any rate, we'll have to wait 'til August to get our hands on one.
via daily tech
The reception can be a little spotty, and we're not sure about the two-axis naviation (purists, we), but TUN3R is a nice transposition from the analog to the digital to the digital to the analog. (You know what I mean.)
Fittingly, from b3ta!
Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)
Street, avenue, and boulevard-defacing specialist, Roadsworth, has paid a visit to Amsterdam. One of his most playful "installations" is this stenciled drain plug positioned oh-so-appropriately near a sewer cover.
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (1)
Sadly, the Charles and Ray Eames piece most likely to be recognized by the general American public is that chair from the set of Frasier. But the Philadelphia Inquirer has coverage of one of their true design triumphs, their 1949 house in L.A.'s Pacific Palisades:
The glass-and-steel structure, evoking a Mondrian painting, was meant to inspire affordable housing after World War II. An Eames scholar says the house "is the most important innovation in home design since the tepee."
Read the article here.
I've always felt that name recognition must be far preferable to the sort of fame found in Us Magazine. Somehow the hordes of paparazzi chasing Paris Hilton in the hope of catching her at her worst moments never seemed to have an appeal for me, but I've still always assumed that Bill Gates or Salman Rushdie could probably reap some modest benefit from fame and grab a previously unavailable table at Masa or Jean Georges by the virtue of their names alone. In his piece "How to Become Famous" in the collection Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design, Michael Bierut, among the most famous living graphic designers on the planet, humorously recounts the sorts of benefits those of us in the design community can expect to reach at the pinnacle of our success: His sister-in-law, who's a dental hygienist in Ohio, once had a client who recognized her last name as that of a "famous" graphic designer.
Seventy-nine Short Essays collects an assortment of rants, morality tales, observations and thoughts on the culture of graphic design that, while rarely epoch shaking, candidly explores the benefits and pitfalls of running a successful design practice (and, more importantly, getting there). Bierut founded and writes for the respected design blog Design Observer and serves as a partner in the esteemed offices of Pentagram. Seventy-nine Short Essays collects his writings from Design Observer as well as pieces from a scattering of other industry periodicals.
Consequently, the collection gives the reader indirect insight into Michael Bierut's mind and daily thoughts without directly presenting the reader with a central thesis or takeaway, but its subtext makes his philosophical bent rather clear. As a human (artistic?) endeavor, design itself is a comment on the human condition, and any design aficionado will still find a lot to learn from the pages within. As he notes in the first chapter of the book, "Warning: May Contain Non-Design Content," Bierut's essays are not simply explorations of grids, fonts and serifs. Instead, he tends to concentrate on the moral or political implications of being involved in a discipline that has blossomed from the pages of rare illuminated manuscripts to the visual clutter of what's euphemistically referred to as "urban sprawl".
Not surprisingly, however, Seventy-nine Short Essays bucks the trend with it's elegant and artful design. Each chapter is set in a different typeface. Indeed, the Appendix, which includes notes on the type, the designer and the date of inception for the font used in each chapter, may just be the most interesting part of the book. I found myself wondering about font choices throughout my reading and was pleasantly surprised by the fifteen pages at the end thoughtfully included for those of us actually curious about that sort of thing.
Posted by: Robert Blinn | Comments (0)If you're looking for a recap on what went down in the series of lectures and discussions at the Postopolis! event in New York, Inhabitat recently posted this video highlight; catch the full 15 min version over here.
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (0)No: "Gooooaaaaaaaal." Yes: "Bleep blop. Doot doot." Okay, we suppose you can still have both, but a solid game of soccer isn't guaranteed with Aleksei R. Stevens' modified ball--you'll be too giggly and distracted from the motion and touch-reactive music and sounds. Stevens, a Brooklyn-based composer, music technologist, and educator, embedded into the SoundBall a motion sensor that knows whether its being hit, thrown, or spun, then sending the info via Bluetooth to a computer that controls sound and music. The video above shows both children and adults having "a ball" (yuk yuk) at Sony Wonder Labs in NYC.
There's still a few days left to get your entry in for the iDA competition and go in the running for title 'Designer of the Year'. Categories include Architecture, Interior, Fashion, Product and Graphic Design, and there's a student award for each field with a $3000 cash prize.
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (0)
If you're in the Boston area, this might be a nice event to check out to jump-start that brain and get some new thoughts a-brewin'. Metropolis Mag's Susan Snazy will host a series of conversations on "the importance of design history in our fast-forward world" in addition to the debut of the traveling tour of the film "Site Specific: The Legacy of Regional Modernism. This short documentary sheds light on the "climate and place-sensitive architectural experiments of the Sarasota School."
Site Specific Tour
July 31, 2007, 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM
Boston Society of Architects/AIA
52 Broad Street, Boston, MA 02109
RSVP: 617-951-1433 x.221
Oprah went green. They're yapping about sustainability on FOX news too. So it's no surprise that hints of greenwashing have surfaced at Disney World, where droves of Micky-lovin' attendees can see how the Mouse helps to "shape" the environment...and produce too.
EPCOT Center is unmistakable--a gigantor geodesic dome a la Bucky Fuller. The acronym expands to read "Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow," originally conceived "to be a futuristic model community based on utopian modernist ideas of communal living, no cars and no private ownership."
Our pals over at Inhabitat payed Disney's giant golf ball a visit to check out the last remaining thread of the intended plan, the LAND exhibit which features tours of the 2.5 million square feet of greenhouses that produce food for EPCOT inhabitants and act as experimental grounds for high-tech and high-yield indoor plant growing techniques.
The entire agri-tech research center area has been re-branded under the rubric of "sustainability" and now includes a public exhibition on agricultural technology and global ecology called 'Living With Land' - a rousing exhibit on farming and agricultural innovation which takes the very 1950's-esque position that humanity can solve its food shortages and environmental problems by improving agricultural technology. I'm not really sure that I buy this, but the exhibit was certainly a fascinating romp through the history of "the future".
In the end, you can always leave it to some naive intern to blow up the spot. He explained that most of the produce is genetically modified and that they use styrofoam pots because they're cheap and disposable. On top of that, it's interesting to know that Epcot's major sponsor is Nestle (dun dun dunnn!). And of course, it's laughable that branding mogul Disney would pass up an opportunity to slather on the Mouse sauce--this time in the form of prominently-displayed Mickey-shaped veggies like pumpkins and cucumbers. The Mouse is most certainly in the house.
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)If you've still got some emails sitting in your inbox that you haven't checked (tsk tsk), or especially if you're one of those people who have over 300 emails hanging out in there (you know who you are), this hour-long how-to video is worth stepping away from being indecisive about what to do with that message you just received. It's pretty entertaining to boot.
More than checking. Less than responding. The secret to accomplishing "Inbox Zero" is revealed by empty email inbox guru Merlin Mann himself as he explains the tips and tricks to a room full of Google employees.
"The thing you don't do is just let it sit around for no reason," Mann explains. Filtering, automation, responding, forwarding, and (oh-god-I'm-really-doing-it) deleting are all part of effective processing, which once mastered, will lead you to the promised land that is Inbox Zero.
via lifehacker
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
Celebrated designer Milton Glaser has curated "Everything I Do Always Comes Back to Me", a collection of photography, painting, sculpture, digital art, cartooning and 3D and graphic design by over 25 artists that responds to the theme "The Missing Peace", bringing together "the artists' personal interpretations of and reflections on the Dalai Lama's philosophies and ideals." All pieces are by SVA faculty and alumni including James Victore, Carrie Levy, Julian LaVerdiere, and Stefan Sagmeister, who's featured piece granted the name for this show.
Through August 22, 2007
Everything I Do Always Comes Back to Me
SVA Visual Arts Gallery
601 West 26 Street, 15th floor
New York, NY 10001
(above: Violin by Wei Lieh Lee)
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
In this age of ATM cards, it seems absurb that we once had to queue up at a bank counter when we needed cash. And once Hitachi's latest technology goes live, it may seem absurb that we once had to stick a plastic rectangle in a slot to buy things.
This September Hitachi will begin testing their "finger vein money" system, whereby users no longer carry cards with magnetic strips, but present their finger to an infrared scanner. Identified by the unique pattern of veins in their finger, they are then linked with their bank information and can make purchases and the like. The system is already in use with door-access systems. If the trials go well and "finger vein" tech goes into widespread use, it would take a gruesome industrial accident for you to "lose" your keys or ATM card.
via pink tentacle
Topoware is a tableware collection that questions the landscape of dining. Taking inspiration from the recent popularity of geography as a media of communication and more specifically with topographic maps, which define heights of a landscape two dimensionally, Topoware in turn, "outlines" the dining experience.
Made up of cups, plates, bowls, placemats and a tablecloth, the collection explores the visual and social landscape of dining by using outlines and descriptions to describe, question and push our eating experience, making it really feel like a journey.
The designers are Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino (Canada) and Karola Torkos (Germany), and an article by the former on the design process behind the collection was just published in Ambidextrous, the design journal of the Stanford d.school.
Posted by: Mark Vanderbeeken | Comments (0)
Powered by Google, Blackle was created on the premise that a black, as opposed to a white, computer screen saves a significant amount of energy. Multiply that by the number of searches conducted a day and we're on to something.
We know that not everyone is crazy about the look of a black screen, but part of this sustainable design gig is about examining our perceptions of beauty. Maybe if the bevel and embossed logotype were tweaked just a bit.
via do.
Posted by: Xanthe Matychak | Comments (19)
Remember Bubble Boy the movie? This one is for real. Artist Arnd Drossel has started his Inner Balance tour throughout Germany to create more awareness for mental patients that seem to have lost their 'inner balance' in life. The 120 kilo sphere, made by the mental patients themselves, has a 2-meter diameter and is made out of some 250 bent steel wires. Social engagement has never been this cool.
via SPIEGEL-ONLINE
Posted by: Aart van Bezooyen | Comments (0)
In 1977, the Eames' made a great movie called Powers of 10. Starting with a sleeping man at a picnic, the film takes the viewer on a journey out to the edge of space and then back into a carbon atom in the hand of the man picnic, all in a single shot.
Today, we can experience Nano Journeys, an interactive tour into the worlds of the micro- and nano-cosmos. Three different tours lets us scale down into the human arm, into a computer processor, or into the LED of a car's headlight to discover the smallest dimensions of our universe.
The latter journey is part of an information campaign by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research to inform the larger audience about the research and everyday impact of nanotechnology.
Posted by: Aart van Bezooyen | Comments (1)
Inventables is a Chicago-based consulting firm that discovers materials and technologies for clients like Nike, Herman Miller, BMW, Boeing, and Black and Decker to help them achieve novel and profitable product innovations. Now, what if you were granted access to said materials and technologies to come up with awesome innovations of your own?
Students and recent grads are now invited to enter into the Inventables 2007 Student Competition that weighs their ability to come up with solid creative solutions. A $15 registration fee grants participants online access to 25 of Inventable's materials and technologies to apply to a fresh design concept that is directly inspired by at least one of the selections.
Winners will receive cash prizes and will also snag a feature in the Inventables quarterly magazine distributed to clients, as will also be announced on their website. Deadline for submissions is December 31st, 2007.
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
Mutatoes is a collection of "non-standard fruits, roots, and vegetables found at Berlin's super- and farmers markets." Uli Westphal's been gathering and photographing these Mutatoes since last year and is still diligently adding to the group, and rightfully so since "the Mutatoproject serves to document and archive these last survivors of biological variety."
via swissmiss
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)"Who are tomorrow's architecture and industrial design leaders?" asks a design association. Apparently the answer is, someone 39 years old or younger.
The European Centre for Architecture, Art, Design, and Urban Studies is holding design competitions for both architecture and ID, but you've gotta be under 40 (and a citizen of the EU or surrounding environs) to qualify. Co-sponsored by the Chicago Athenaeum. Whippersnappers can read about it here.
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (0)
Today Welsh citizen Iwan Lloyd Roberts will be meeting with designers from Mega Bloks, a Montreal-based toy company, to present his designs. Roberts has been a fan of Mega Bloks products since he was three years old, which was...three years ago.
Six-year-old Roberts was invited to the meeting by parent company Mega Brands' CEO, Marc Bertrand, after Roberts' mother forwarded some sketches of the tyke's innovative ideas. So what are the ideas? No one's saying for now; maybe the cute little kid signed a cute little Non-Disclosure Agreement. If any of Roberts' toy concepts make the cut, they'll hit the market by Christmas '08.
So you skateboard, rollerblade, and Razor yourself around, do ya? Well, the Magic Wheel (bicycle wheel + rear steering caster + molded encasement), scheduled to hit the pavement in August, could be your next mode of scooting, given you've got about $245 to shell out. The story's the best part. Apparently, some unnamed Swiss designer was "bored and was also sick and tired of everyone whizzing around on aluminum scooters so he thought sod it and retired to the garden shed for a while." Yield: Magic Wheel.
via technabob
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San Francisco-based architecture firm Group 41 will provide $10,000 worth of design services to those who 1. own some open land and 2. want to live in a home fashioned out of recycled shipping containers. The sustainable container home itself along with schematic and design development come free of charge, and construction documents, permitting/bidding, and construction phases are priced at cost.
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We reported on the debut of Damien Hirst's diamond-encrusted skull not too long ago. Some may still be rolling their eyes and others might find this behind-the-scenes, technical breakdown of the process to be down right interesting--from casting to plating to setting, right down to the (actual) teeth. And if that still doesn't do anything for you, then at least there's this:
via notcot
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Designer and developer Guy Thornhill has announced his successful launch of Respire cases into the market. The magnetic case securely holds an asthma inhaler, protecting it from dust and debris that can get stuck around the mouthpiece in pockets and purses and also acts as a sleek mask for those who don't enjoy the decades-old, function-based design.
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (2)
Scientists have come up with an adhesive that makes the guy who invented Velcro look like a simpleton. While the latter inventor picked burrs off his dog for his lightbulb moment, researchers at Northwestern University studied two animals to develop Geckel, a biomimetic material combining gecko and mussel "technologies."
Geckos have millions of tiny hairs on their feet that stick to whatever they touch; although that makes no sense to most of us and the principle doesn't apply to moustaches, that's apparently how they're able to climb things and lower your car insurance.
Mussels don't climb much of anything, but they can secrete a gluelike protein that enables them to stick to things underwater, even when pounded by crashing waves.
Researchers combined these principles to make a sort of tape covered in millions of hairs, with each hair coated by mussel-like glue. The reusable adhesive sticks well even to things that are slippery when wet, like Bon Jovi.
The next animal/product-developer match-up we'd like to see: aardvarks and James Dyson.
If you find yourself ingesting fruit and dots like there's no tomorrow, it'd be quite fitting to be seen in this PAC-MAN helmet-type thing. It's not exactly a helmet because it's plush and won't protect you from spills on your dirt bike and such, and it probably won't protect you from nerd-hating bullies either. Real enthusiasts can score one as long as they've got a cool $29.99.
via shiny shiny
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Scooping up a Gold award in the Consumer Products category is the Palm Peeler designed by and for Chef'n Corporation. This vegetable peeler reinvents the way we skin veggies (geez, finally!) by protecting fingers from the blade and from cramping while keeping a clean, modern look.
In the Medical and Scientific sector, the Nanopoint cellTRAY, another Gold winner, is an incredibly advanced microscope slide with an integrated bio-incubator that enables researchers to perform time-lapse imaging of living cells. This is an industry first, accredited to the work of Carbon Design Group and Nanopoint Inc.
IDEO and Eclipse Aviation's 500 Very Light Jet design snagged a Gold in both Transportation and Interaction Design. It's a small twin-engine, 6-seater (including the pilot!) turbofan jet aircraft--the first very light jet to receive approval from the FAA. It has a highly mechanized, automated, modular build like a model kit and its interior takes only two hours to assemble. The jet's cockpit interface not only looks cool, but is the result of implementing intuitive controls, reducing clutter and fatigue, and increasing motion efficiency.
The student selections were very utility based this year, with Best in Show awarded to Gold winner and University of Cincinnati student Ryan Eder for his exercise machine designed for users with or without disabilities, The Access, a truly universal design.
View all 2007 IDEA Award winners here.
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Murray Moss has ordered up a special treat for the August 2nd opening of the Moss outpost on Melrose in Los Angeles: a charred Steinway grand piano from Dutch designer Maarten Baas.
The scorched grand piano will stand beneath a grand Swarovski crystal installation. This theatrical display should come as no surprise coming from Moss, a man who has been quoted saying that, "Every day should be like opening night."
The New York Times features an online audio slide show on the Moss-Baas west coast collaboration. Tune in here.
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Sketch 120 is a two-hour live competition to be held on June 28th at the Old American Can Factory in Gowanus, Brooklyn. Design in 5 (comprised of designers five years or less out of school) of the Architectural League of New York invites all designers and creatives five years or less out of school to sketch out their solution to "an inevitable physical and visual result of all of this construction" in New York City--on the spot, live, in front of a judging panel. The jurors include James Biber, FAIA, Partner at Pentagram Architects, Andrew Blum, Contributing Editor, Metropolis & Wired magazines, Lauren Crahan, Partner at Freecell, and Alex Washburn, Director of Urban Design, Department of City Planning.
A design problem will be given to participants promptly at 3:00 pm to solve in roughly two hours. All work will then be pinned up and the invited jury will hold an open discussion and critique with participants. A critical conversation will emerge from the questions posed and work generated by the original brief.
Sketch 120
Old American Can Factory
232 Third Street and Third Avenue
Brooklyn, New York
3:00 pm to 6:00 pm
Voyeurism isn't just for checking out hot, unsuspecting neighbors or patrons of your local locker room--how often do you get to rifle through someone else's pockets (not recommended)? Much like the whole Face Your Pockets shebang sans scanner, a Flickr group called The Items We Carry has formed, exhibiting, uh, the stuff we carry around in our pockets and purses.
via coudal
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Steve Heller, prolific writer, not-blogger, educator, art director, Core77 Broadcast Host, and "biggest fan" to graphic design, will be honored with the Masters Series Award and a retrospective exhibition. From the release:
Curated and designed by Kevin O'Callaghan, chair of 3D Design at SVA, the exhibition highlights the inspiration and collaboration behind Heller's many achievements as a writer and art director. On view will be over 100 covers of The New York Times Book Review that Heller art directed and a visual anthology of his major publications, with select volumes available to peruse. An adjacent video installation will feature interviews with co-authors Mirko Ilic, Lita Talarico (co-chair of the MFA Design Department at SVA), Seymour Chwast, Marshall Arisman (chair of the MFA Illustration as Visual Essay Department at SVA) and Gail Anderson (on the faculty of the MFA Design Department at SVA) about their collaborative process.Posted by: core jr | Comments (0)
The idea here is that no matter how great the cause, pro bono work is a stretch for any busy professional, right? With that in mind, Architecture for Humanity proposes that you instead donate a day's salary toward owning your choice of 365 days of pro bono, for-a-good-cause design services around the world. "Think of it as community service plus design (minus the parole officer.)" Own the Day.
For your good gesture, you get to own the day on the Architecture for Humanity website. Once you have made a donation, you can choose the day of your choice, and your name will appear on their sites calendar for that day - as well as a spot on the homepage.Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
Street artist D*Face took your standard random pole-out-of-the-ground and turned it into a missile-like structure--cracks in the sidewalk and all. Shazam!
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This year's 81 IDEA winners include everything from warehouse equipment to computer peripherals to medical care designs to innovative kitchen products. But if you read the accompanying text, it is striking how many of them stress simplicity and ease of use.
In many cases, ethnographic observations and qualitative contextual research went into the design of these products, e.g. the Midea 3KG Mini Washer, the Bank of America's Keep the Change service, Costco Gourmet Settings.
Refreshing is also to see this approach filter down in the design of healthcare products or products for the disabled, such as the Intel Mobile Clinical Assistant, the Magic Wheels 2-gear wheelchair drive , the Universal Toilet, the e-Sullivan (a portable handheld communicator for deaf-blind people - see picture), and the MYGO (an electronic guide stick for blind people) - with the latter three being student projects.
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When being electrocuted, they say it's not the volts that get you, but the amps; and in an earthquake, it's not the actual quake that kills you, it's your house coming down on top of you.
Environmental engineer Dominic Dowling has solved this problem in an innovative, unabashedly green and extremely low-cost way--by building houses out of mud, and buttressing them with bamboo. One of his mud constructions will be displayed next week at Australia's Sydney Design Week '07.
The benefits of mud construction aren't just confined to the Third World, he says. "Look at the massive amount of energy required to build modern houses using steel and concrete. There's the energy required to make those materials, and transport those materials. "If you can make something from the earth, it can be sourced very close to the location. And, at the end of the day, it can all just be returned to the earth. It's got to be the way of the future.
"[Mud homes] aren't just something poor people in developing countries live in. It's a wonderfully appropriate construction material for Australia because of its environmental advantages, its thermal advantages, its aesthetics and its liveability. Internally, earth construction controls the climate so wonderfully you don't have to rely so much on energy consumption for heating and cooling."
Dowling's anti-quake house kit is constructed of similarly humble materials: bamboo, string and wire netting. "We reinforced an existing house in less than two weeks for $50," he explains. Read all about it here.
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Hot on the heels of American Airlines' announcement, United has also announced they are upgrading their Business Class cabins, though the latter firm's changes won't be ready until 2009. Like American BC flyers, United's patrons can also expect 76" "lie-flat" seatbeds, as well as a 15.4" screen, an iPod adapter and a USB charging port. Video of the "lie-flat" seats can be seen here.
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We're all aware that Nokia ain't no stranger to clever marketing, but its new JEALOUSCOMPUTERS.com | A Global Warning N95 campaign is actually over the top and hilarious enough to steal some limelight away from you-know-whatPhones for a moment or two. The whole package is chock-full of viral ads, "victim" reports, instructional videos, and opportunities for user participation. The above image is taken from a collection of "medical pictures from a doctor's office", showing a female who's been smacked in the face with a keyboard, a seemingly rare case among a flood of laptop bite casualties.
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BMW recently commissioned an in-depth study, "The Secret Life of Cars and What They Reveal About Us", to grasp what drivers really need by examining not the horsepower, crash safety, or 0 to 60, but how drivers and passengers react behaviorally and emotionally en route.
From regional color preference to getting in and out to hand signals to family time spent in the car to places to put "stuff" to where couples like to sit, the report covers the relationship owners have with their vehicles in hopes that the research will provide a base to achieve as high a caliber of design and engineering for the user's experience as is already implemented for physical performance.
via dezeen
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In conjunction with his current inside story, "China Makes, The World Takes", for the Atlantic, James Fallows also narrates over an illuminating slide show, "Made in China", that points out key factors in the unique ebb and flow upon which the "manufactured metropolis" of Shenzhen sustains itself. Fallows provides a concise yet fascinating and info-packed report on work-centered lifestyle, necessity-based work ethic, and the resulting surrounding environment.
via coudal
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American Airlines has just announced they're beginning installation of their "Next Generation Business Class Product" on the new 777's. Those able to cajole their companies into paying for the upgraded seats will get:
- ergo power seating with 5-way motors
- "lie-flat" seating that transforms into a 76-inch bed
- privacy dividers
- multiple interlocking tray tables (the Business Class version of building a fort with couch cushions)
- "move-forward" seats that slide forward 10 inches, so you don't have to converse with the guy next to you
- Bose noise-canceling headphones
- tilting LCD monitor
- power ports
and last but not least,
- that curtain separating you from the peanut-eating philistines in steerage.
The "Flagship" passengers in First Class will get all of the above, plus swiveling seats and personal sat-phones. AA expects to have the installations sewed up by late 2007.
Crappy photo, we know. But you're looking at the attendant image for U.S. Design Patent #428,549, the "High Heel Shoe with Ergonomic Toe Design." You read right, ladies, this is a design patent for a high heel shoe that doesn't compress your toes into a podiatric mess.
U.S. entrepreneur Carolyn J. Ruffin, who holds the patent, is looking for a company to start cranking these puppies out. On the fence? Read the persuasive PR copy:
Once introduced, consumer acceptance will be immediate and enthusiastic. This design may be worn by CEOs, business executives, secretaries, church-goers, models, and any woman attending formal events.
CEO's and models! What are you waiting for?
This hilarious Skittles spot illustrates the "Skittles touch," where everything and everyone this dude touches frustratingly turns to the chewy, fruity pellets.
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
Olafur Eliasson's Your House, is a hand-bound, laser cut book that renders the negative space of the artist's house at a scale of 85:1. The book features an exclusive production including a three month production set up and support of computer expert Georg Maria Sagurna to slice up a house in 454 detailed profiles.
Your House demonstrates how new technologies make it possible to rethink our daily products and breaks boundaries by bringing papermaking, paper cutting, laser technology and architecture together in a single book. The piece of paper art is manufactured by the Kremo laser cutting specialists and is commissioned by the The Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Posted by: Aart van Bezooyen | Comments (0)
They call him the Blade Runner, and watching him run is a curiously futuristic experience. Ridiculously rapid double amputee, Oscar Pistorius, recently took his first second place against able-bodied athletes and now stands a chance of Olympic eligibility. The thing is; 20-year old Pistorius is simply way faster than any other amputee. Already the 100m, 200m and 400m world record holder at the Paralympics, he is also faster than the women's times from the 2004 Olympics.
Ossur, the company that manufactures Pistorius's blades, was featured last week in a BusinessWeek article on their incredible new lifelike foot. However their athletics racing blades haven't changed fundamentally in a decade. Granted, Ossur continually refines the shaping, improves the aerodynamics and other details, making Oscar Pistorius the only Olympic sprinting hopeful with an engineering team working on his legs.
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Ashamed that we didn't blog this earlier, finally somebody has.
Posted by: core jr | Comments (2)Happy 10th anniversary to Archinect.com! Let's take a look back...
Congrats, Paul.
You've come a long way, and more importantly, have led the way for many.
From the Coroflot portfolio of: Harald Cramer
Featured Project : ORYX Time Trail Bike
Harald Cramer's ORYX design won him a $1,000 scholarship from the 2007 Dimension 3D Printing Group Extreme Redesign Contest. The ORYX bicycle is a custom-made time trial bike designed to be shockproof without loosing traction. The one-sided wheel suspension and crank have been shifted to the inside, which Cramer says adds to the overall aerodynamics. The crank itself has been integrated into the bicycle frame, and includes an enclosure for the chain to help prevent injuries. Cramer's concept also finds a solution to the challenge of changing tires. One push of a button makes it possibly to easily slide the wheel off from one side of the bike and cut down on the repair time and hassle.
Take a peek at Cramer's work over at Coroflot.
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All of these chairs are identical in size and shape, but there's one important difference between them. Each chair is made from a different material. One's marble. Another's redwood. The others are in concrete, acrylic, wickerwork, attaché-case metal, polyurethane foam, felt and even hay.
The result is intriguing. Each material transforms the appearance of the chair, creating what seems like an optical illusion. The transparent acrylic chair seems to melt away to nothingness. The marble one looks chunkier, and the redwood chair chunkier still. That's exactly what their designer, Naoto Fukasawa, wanted to happen when he hit upon the idea of creating a series of chairs to illustrate the impact of a single design decision - the choice of material.
Fukasawa's nine chairs are part of Vitra Editions which are exhibited at Vitra's production complex in Weil-am-Rhein on the border of Germany and Switzerland.
via IHT
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Core77's Discussion Board's 1HDC Beta winners are in.
1st Place: DrivenD - Hot Dog Grille
2nd Place: BrianMullins - Desk Light
3rd Place: runrobots - Pocket Framer
DrivenD will receive a pair of Core77 Blue Fom Shoes, while the two runners up each get a new Core77 tee shirt.
Stay tuned for 1HDC v1.0.
The PINQY has been invented by Erik Crommelynck, a discreet tool for putting out the beginnings of a fire. At just 14 cm. tall, the bulbous fire extinguisher is targeted for home use, providing a far more compact, manageable fire safety tool that will quickly see off the beginnings of a house fire.
Its compactness makes the PINQY not just a nice gadget but also supports its lightweight and ease of use that makes fire extinguishing more accessible for children, elderly and less-abled people. Check out the PINQY demonstration videos where kids can be fire-fighters for one day.
Posted by: Aart van Bezooyen | Comments (2)
Since everyone is sick to death of Harry Potter hype at this point, we're helping our pals Mimoco, makers of Mimobots, spread the word on the upcoming launch of nine new Core Series 2 Mimobot Art Toy USB Flash Drives. The products will hit the airwaves at SD Comic Con starting July 25, and in true marketing media frenzy fashion, the characters are being announced one at a time through selected media partners as part of a scavenger hunt.
We're happily participating, and so we're proud to introduce RayD8. Shown above is his angry side, and his happy side is after the jump. The scavenger hunt has a few more rules and twists, but you should read all about that on the Mimoco site if you want to participate.
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The results are in for Design 21: Social Design Network's three-way competition. Designers from 59 countries submitted over 800 entries for the three competition categories, which were:
"Heated Issue" - Design an awareness campaign to educate the public on the issue of global warming.
"Child's Play" - Design an object that encourages children to cultivate their own imagination and creativity.
"ShelterMe" - Design a temporary emergency shelter for deployment in a natural disaster.
Design curator Cynthia Smith, who judged the ShelterMe competition, said: "Overall, I was struck by the large number and variety of innovative solutions submitted, which is an indication of the expanding interest in socially responsible design. The selected finalists reflect the range of thinking for what is required; not necessarily one approach for any geographical area or situation."
Click the individual links above to see the winning designs. Also, stay tuned as Design 21 will be announcing more competitions in coming weeks.
While it's not technically ID-related, Core staff couldn't help but notice the hubbub outside their New York office this morning as neighbor Scholastic gears up for tonight's big product launch. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is scheduled to go on sale tonight at midnight, and Scholastic's SoHo location, their world headquarters, is hosting an extravagant release party starting at 5pm.
As of 9:30am teens could already be seen queueing on the sidewalk, noses buried in tome-like copies of the previous Potter installment, amidst Hollywood-set-like renditions of magical environs from J.K. Rowling's universe.
A mere block away is Apple's flagship SoHo store, which saw its own spectacular product launch three weeks ago. So what's going on over there now? The store was calm and mostly empty, abundant iPhones still line the tables, and at least one wizard was catching up on e-mail before he goes on shift.
Ridikulus!
Why does new technology need to be smaller and have more features to be better? Why are so many gadgets so soulless that we are happy replacing them with new ones after only a year? Nicolas Roope thinks we both can and should design products that age beautifully so that we cherish them for a lifetime.
Roope is the founder of Hulger, the 'retro' telephone handsets that plug into your computer or mobile phone so that you can make digital calls with old-fashioned style. He is also one of the creative directors and co-founders of digital agency, Poke.
The Hulger handsets are more than just a clever gimmick though, and the philosophy behind them reveals a deeper understanding of culture and technology. In this Core77 Broadcast, Andy Polaine interviews Roope about Hulger's 'wear in, not wear out' motto and the need for a sense of wit and charm--not only in the design of physical products, but also digital services.
Additional links: Hulgerisation, Bill Amberg.
LISTEN NOW (38 min.) | iTunes | More Broadcasts
This month's Popular Science magazine has a special feature on the future of the environment . Among the articles is a great piece on how to build a better laptop.
Here's a bit:
In 2009, worldwide laptop sales are expected to surpass desktop sales for the first time--reaching more than 150 million. Most people will keep a laptop for just three years or so before shelving it or tossing it onto a junk heap. Here's how designers plan to make this ubiquitous gadget more eco-friendly across its entire life span, from manufacture to recycling.
Read the full article here.
Posted by: Xanthe Matychak | Comments (0)
While Japanese automakers have been moving into one of Detroit's last redoubts in America, full-size trucks, things are moving in the opposite direction back home. Domestic auto sales in Japan are at their lowest point since 1977, leading trendsetter Honda to announce they're shifting their domestic focus to minivehicles, cars with 660cc engines.
The microcar category has weathered the sales slump well, partially because the Japanese government gives minivehicles tax incentives, and partially because Japanese consumers don't mind driving cars slightly larger than American lawnmowers.
Since 1993, farmers in Japan's Aomori prefecture have been creating crop art by mixing colored rice plants in with the regular stuff. This year's theme is Hokusai's famous woodblock prints, faithfully reproduced in the fields. To see some mind-blowing field renderings from previous years, click here.
via pink tentacle
Who'da thought a career in ID would get you to the White House? Yesterday's National Design Awards, held at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, honored 10 designers and architects including Jonathan Ive and even Adobe (as in Photoshop). The awards were sponsored by the Cooper-Hewitt and you can read about it here.
via washington post
There's an awesome roundup over at archinect featuring music videos that pay homage to architecture either directly, with forms and shapes, landscapes, or by exuding urbanism. The Feist video up top shows off the many things we love about airport architecture.
thanks bryman!
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
Designed by Naoko Miyoda for D-Bros, these clever La Dolce Vita biscuit-shaped greeting cards in "chocolate" and "vanilla" look real enough to eat.
via cube me
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Here's some instructions on how to build your own human-powered charger for stuff that needs charging. As long as you know how to ride a bike can pedal sitting still on a stationary bike, you're good to go. These folks up here are juicing up their cell phones, but don't be shy when it comes to powering laptops, Wiis, or toaster ovens.
via make
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (1)
If you're wondering why Danish design company Komplot's new Nobody Chairs look like a familiar industrial part, it's because they're manufactured using the same technique to form removable shelves in car boots. The chairs are composed of industrial felt poured into a gigantic heated form press, yielding a one-shot treat for your seat.
via dezeen
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
The Centre for Design Innovation, Ireland's national centre of excellence for research and promotion of design within business and the public sector, clearly incorporates many of the latest insights in design thinking. Check out the blog too.
Posted by: Mark Vanderbeeken | Comments (0)
frog Design's stalwart efforts with Design Mind have proven consistent at the very least, most recently illustrated with its Kyoto Treaty of Design proposal. A great follow up now approaches in the form of an event, The Many Shades of Green, where three conversations on environmentalism will transpire--"how an NGO, a corporation, and a set of individuals are each making it their mission to battle global climate change."
Addressing today's environmental crisis will require widespread action from governments and non-profits, companies and individuals alike. Drawing upon their distinct backgrounds, our three speakers will discuss the unique challenges and opportunities they face in working to effect change - from the top down, the ground up, and everything in between.The Many Shades of Green (RSVP)
Thursday, July 26, 2007 at 6:30 PM
frog design, inc.
420 Bryant Street
San Francisco, CA, USA
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
Whoever's in charge of promotions for The Simpsons Movie sure wasn't tooling around at work. On top of the whole 7-11/Kwik-E-Mart switcharoo, FOX is now releasing limited edition soundtracks packaged in--what else?--a freakin' pink frosted donut with sprinkles, a.k.a. Homer's fave treat.
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (2)
You may have seen luxury handbag designer Anya Hindmarch's "I'm Not A Plastic Bag" bags around and maybe thought nothing of it other than "okay, obviously you're not a plastic bag, so what?" What you might not know is that at 8am this morning, 15 Whole Foods stores around NYC began a first-come, first-serve sale of 20,000 of these $15 cotton grocery bag alternatives, limited to three per customer. A similar event for the bags in Taiwan required riot police and landed 30 people in the hospital. The Hong Kong sale was so crazy that the cops had to shut down the entire shopping mall. Because of such mayhem, the Hindmarch bag events held in Southeast Asia will resume only on the internet. The real message to not use polyethylene plastic grocery bags seems to have gotten lost in the race to score a limited edition fashion accessory with a luxury brand name attached. Will patrons covet them as trend wear and not as carry sacks for trout, zucchini, and Doritos? It'll surely be "the day" when we witness people exiting the supermarket with pocketbooks in these not-plastic-bags and their groceries in, well, plastic bags.
If you're upset that you missed out this morning, there'll definitely be a chance for you to get ripped off on eBay. And if you just want a sturdy, reliable alternative to plastic grocery bags, check these out.
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (1)
Speaking of color, COLOURlovers has rounded up over 40 summer color palettes to inspire you during these hot middle months of the season. If you've got colorist's block, you can't go wrong with these palettes...although we're not sure what "depressed" is doing here...
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
Color treatments are a vital element in any design--from magenta to poop brown--or even whether or not one chooses to use any color at all. "Is green the new black?" asks MocoLoco to nine designers, regarding what colors they favor in styling their designs.
We just have to paint our objects some color, that's it - we almost never use color as an emotional tool. - Art LebedevPosted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
If you're in the Surrey, UK neck of the woods and tend to seek out ways to stay on top of sustainable trends and happenings, the Sustainable Innovation 07 event might be worth some time and cash. This 12th Towards Sustainable Product Design conference will give attendees the chance to discuss sustainable solutions in home life, mobility, and the food industry, and learn about what's already in the works.
Sustainable Innovation 07 will provide a platform to discuss 'state of the thinking' in sustainable innovation, technology, product and service design and development. It will highlight best practice and provide a range of case studies and examples. Sustainable Innovation 07 will include invited and refereed papers covering sustainable innovation from academics, consultants, designers, sustainability, environment and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) managers as well as other business functions.
Sustainable Innovation 07
Towards Sustainable Product Design 12
12th International Conference
October 29th - 30th 2007
Farnham Castle International Breifing and Conference Centre
Farnham, Surrey, UK
A design-school lesson we'll never forget: Years ago GM exported their Chevrolet Nova to South America, doing virtually no market research and assuming the car would be as big a success on that continent as it was in North America. Unsurprisingly, the car failed to sell in Spanish-speaking countries. Why? Because in Spanish, "no va" means "it won't go."
Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu has done an interesting study on the opportunities and pitfalls possible with exporting products to emerging markets. One big mistake is Chevy's classic blunder, giving foreign markets the same ol' thing you give them back at home, without even so much as a name change.
The DTT study also shows companies that get it right, like Nokia, a company that cleverly designs models with features specific to that region's needs. For example, Nokia cell phones in emerging markets feature things like:
- built-in flashlight, for countries where electric lighting is not yet common
- dust-resistant keyboards for dirt-track villages
- call-time tracking and multiple address books, for regions where phones are shared among families or villages
Nokia's tactics have been successful--an estimated 40% of Nokia's sales are in the up-and-coming markets in the Middle East, Africa, China, and Latin America.
Read more details of the study here.
via industry week
New York Times designer Khoi Vinh has a great entry up about the need for "Designed Deterioration," which is different than planned obsolescence in that the former hopes an object actually improves through aging.
I've noticed recently that the concept of what we might call designed deterioration is fairly anathema to digital hardware. The objects we purchase from purveyors of digital technology are conceived only up to the point of sale; the inevitable nicks, scratches, weathering, and fading they will encounter is not factored in at all. The result is that as they see more use, their ignorance may recede, but they wear it poorly. They don't age gracefully.
Click here to read the rest.
via the guardian
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (0)With R&D increasingly being farmed out to the masses, competition-style (i.e. the X-Prize, Darpa's Grand Challenge), deep-pocketed NASA is getting in on the action with its Centennial Challenge.
...the space agency is offering prizes as high as $5M to anyone who can solve a new series of problems that Nasa's space engineers cannot.
...The aim is to tap the largely ignored--but knowledgeable--community of space junkies and garden-shed inventors worldwide, rewarding innovation and fresh design.
...Since the contests replace traditional research grants, Nasa is prepared to reward successful participants with large sums of money--and the inventors retain commercial rights to more money further down the line.
Sounds like a bundle of cash for the right designer/engineer. What'd be even cooler is if they threw in some free rides.
To see the complete list of Challenges, click here and scroll down.
via the independent
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (1)
Core favorite We Make Money Not Art pointed the way recently, via an interview with artist Paolo Cirio, to a new "crime" reaching epidemic proportions in the shops and newsstands of Japan: Digital Shoplifting.
According to the BBC article describing it, young Japanese (mostly female) shoppers are getting quite comfortable integrating quick photos into their phone discussions. So comfortable, in fact, that it's a crime.
The Japanese Magazine Publishers Association is describing the common practice of shooting and sending snapshots of cute dress and hairstyle layouts in magazines as "information theft," and is spearheading an advertising campaign to discourage it. It's too early to say for sure whether it'll be effective, but our money is on "not a chance." The BBC article mentions the difficulty shop employees have distinguishing between chatting and taking snapshots, but there's the deeper issue of calling an action illegal when it is expressly encouraged by the introduction of a recent technology.
Posted by: Carl Alviani | Comments (9)
"Whether we admit it or not, grids are an essential part of our life. Without grids, our lives would be messier, uglier, and more confusing places to live in," states The Art of the Grid, an advocate and pusher of all things "grid." Take these Grid-It! notepads for example--inspired by celebrated grid-based publications such as Le Modulor by Le Corbusier and Raster Systeme by Josef Muller-Brockmann, these pads aim to help organize your thoughts within the lines, boxes, and sections derived from selected works of such top-notch gridmasters.
via super colossal
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
We FLOTspotted Brazilian designer Rafael Morgan's elegant Hope Table not too long ago, and he's already busted out with a shiny new concept, The Light Drop. This wall-mounted lighting element illuminates the custom-molded polycarbonate (or silicone) bulb with an embedded LED in the faucet. The rotating tap allows the user to intuitively switch the fixture on and off and control the intensity of light.
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (2)
Mayor Bloomberg's proposal to implement a congestion charge on vehicles entering NYC during peak business hours got stalled by state lawmakers in Albany and he is pissed (from the NYTs):
"New York City is today poorer because of Albany's inaction yesterday," the mayor said at a news conference this afternoon. "I can tell you who lost yesterday: The people breathing the air, the people trying to do business in this city, the 95 percent of people who use mass transit to commute into the city and who are going to have to pay more. Those are the people who lost yesterday."
and:
"[The State Senate doesn't] read the mail or they don't read the newspapers," he said, adding that it would be difficult "to not know about congestion pricing if you can read."
Ouch. Well, maybe lawmakers can't read, but design-outlaws sure can. We also know that congestion pricing is just one of many ways to smarten-up urban design. Find out more here, here, and here.
Posted by: Xanthe Matychak | Comments (3)
How do you afford your ID lifestyle: Turns out, with lots of hard work. Double booked meetings, lunch appointments, daily deadlines, I didn't see any time penciled in for spiking hair perfectly or selecting which black t-shirt to wear, turns out most of us work for a living.... Check out the schedules of designers on the boards and post yours up.
A hot thread passed on by the one and only Yo!
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Having been to more than our share of furniture fairs and design school exhibitions, we've seen benches made out of everything; but this is the first we've seen made out of tennis balls. Dutch design team +Remy/Veenhuizen came up with the benches for a Rotterdam museum, where they're not just art pieces, you can actually sit on 'em. See more from this dynamic duo here (hope you can read Dutch!).
via inhabitat. Learn more on the Reclaiming Design Video.
East-coasters might not notice that bagels come, not only sliced across for fixins, but cut in half again to yield two sandwich-like pieces, until they're in some other part of the bagel-yielding country where this doesn't happen and you're left confused as to why you feel uncomfortable and a bit panicky. Civrot, a native New Yorker, has experienced exactly that, and dishes on the frustration of dealing with the communication issues involved with getting a bagel "cut in half".
I have been living on the West coast for almost five years now and whenever I order a bagel I have to remember to always ask for them to cut it in half, which results in a bewildered look. "You mean cut it in half again?", while making a vertical cutting motion with their hands, they ask. To which I respond, "Yes." However sometimes they need more of an explanation. "Well its already cut in half to put the cream cheese on it.", some say. Yes of course it is. How else can you get the cream cheese on the bagel? Just spread it on the top?
via coudal
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (3)
We hope Mr. Dizzia's ex-girlfriends and past hot-to-trot flings don't mind being named and categorized in his uber-comprehensive visual chart that details every intimate relationship he's experienced over the past 23 years. Spread across a timeline, each lady's got her own line-up of symbolic characteristics and actions for categories like "how we met", "what we did", "impressive attributes", and other factoids. You'll know if he's kissed them or "um yeah"-ed them, how emotionally invested he was (all the way up to "let's make babies") and other unique properties marked in red that you're left to decipher yourself. We're guessing Robyn was a klutz, Jennifer was a drama queen, and The Canadian was from Canada.
via infosthetics
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (1)
We truly live in an age of miracles. Everyone knows when you're eating from a tin of brownies you want an edge-piece, as they have more baked-edge surface area; now the Edge Brownie Pan ensures every square that comes out of the tin is an edge-piece. Can also be used for lasagna, macaroni and cheese, and all those other foods whose textural payoff is in the crust.
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (10)
Tutto Bene, an annual collaborative presentation of designs that exemplify storytelling and a powerful message, has had all past shows held exclusively in Milan, but this year will mark its debut in London. Submissions are currently being accepted from designers all around world until July 27th, 2007 (so hurry!), with the selection process beginning on August 1. The exhibit will be held at Shoreditch Town Hall from September 20 - 23, 2007, in unison with 100% Design London.
Download PDF application here.
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
"Why only save photos in your iPhone, when you could imprison your friends for eternity," says Stillframe on his Flickr description of these smoosh-faced contact photos. We're pretty stoked about this home-brew iPhone experiment--much more cost efficient than projects involving blenders.
thanks amit!
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
Here's a switch: King of cluttered interface design Microsoft has filed a patent for an interface without the taskbar. The replacement marker for each open window you've got will come from something they're calling "Clippings," more akin to thumbnail images than text tabs. No word on when we might see products integrating the new design, but details of the interface patent are here.
via unbeige
The one thing that prevents some of us from sporting watches is that they look so, well, watch-y. Catering to straight-up jewelry fans, Philippe Starck's Veiled watch for Fossil appears to be a simple linked cuff to the unassuming eye, but the wearer won't ever be late or lose track of time thanks to the electroplated crystal face that camouflages itself into the band. It'll cost you a $150 wad to trick out your wrist with this illusory timepiece.
via mocoloco
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
What the heck is this, you ask? "Good News" by UK artist Robert Sollis is, quite simply, a daily newspaper with every piece of bad or negative news cut out of it. You could say things aren't looking too good these days.
via dumptrumpet
The demise of Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, now two years ago, has lead to the birth of several innovative companies, such as CuteCircuit, Experientia, Fluidtime, Interaction Design Lab, Project Bureau, ToDo, and Zora, as well as an innovative educational start-up in Denmark: the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design.
The school was founded by Heather Martin and Simona Maschi, both former Interaction-Ivrea professors. Alie Rose is the school's project manager. Martin and Maschi are also teaching at the Anne Kirah's 180º Academy in Denmark.
Click on "continued" for the school's press release.
Posted by: Mark Vanderbeeken | Comments (0)
Theo Stewart-Stand's heavy duty wallets don't beef it up in size, shape, weight, or looks, but in performance and protection. These minimal-sleek wallets are tightly woven with industrial steel thread-the same stuff they use in aerospace applications--resulting in a cool-to-the-touch fabric-like weight and feel without the cons of stretching and discoloration.
An added bonus was discovered in the making: RFID scanning blockage. Tech-savvy identity thieves can use concealed scanning devices to burgle your personal and financial info, picking your virtual pocket. Also, if and when those of us in the US are issued with RFID chip-clad RealIDs, the feds'll have us tracked down like branded cows in no time. Stewart-Stand's wallets act as a what physicists call a Faraday cage, shielding out external electrical fields, allowing you to keep your info and civil liberties to yourself, with whom they belong.
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (1)
"If success or failure of the planet and of human beings depended on how I am and what I do ... How would I be? What would I do?"
- Buckminster Fuller
If all designers, engineers, and innovators possessed Bucky's sense of urgency to heal and progress the health of our planet and humankind, our Wii's would be dusty and the bars would be empty. But maybe all we need is a little push--some kind of incentive--and the Buckminster Fuller Challenge aims to do just that. The call for entries specifies "design science solutions within a broad range of human endeavor that exemplify the trimtab principle. Trimtabs demonstrate how small amounts of energy and resources precisely applied at the right time and place can produce maximum advantageous change."
Each year, this challenge will bear a single winner to be awarded with $100,000 to use towards the development and implementation of their winning concept. The entry period for this year is between September 4th and October 30th, 2007.
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)Nintendo's Wii harkens back to the early days of home videogames, before it was dominated by Doom-playing sociopaths, when even your parents might curiously pick up a controller to see what the fuss was about. Now feast your eyes on commercials for the original Nintendo home videogame system (simply called "Nintendo" in the 'States, but called the "Famicon" in Japan).
via plasticbamboo
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (0)
Here's two from Treehugger with similar themes: the first is a competition to design sheds, and the second is a woman who lives in a shed.
Maybe the woman from the second entry should submit her shed to the first, spawning a third entry. That would be so...meta-shed.
Each timepiece in the newly launched Mr. Jones Watches collection is produced in a limited run of 100 pieces. We really like The Decider model--perfect for those of us who struggle with everyday choices like butter or margarine, blonde or brunette, chipmunks or prairie dogs, and so on and so forth. Simply ask yourself a yes or no question, pull the winding crown, and there you have it. About $161 gets you all the (yes or no) answers to life.
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
Here's a killer hack on how to make a $200 Montblanc pen for about five bucks. The idea is so simple we kick ourselves for not thinking of it. Hint: you need the smooth-flowing refill, not the pricey pen housing!
via boingboing
With 500 mini-turbines cranking up hundreds of LEDs like fireflies, Jason Bruges Studio's Wind to Light instillation really jazzes up the Royal Festival Hall in London's South Bank. The onedotzero / RIBA London commission stirs up wind-power awareness by way of direct visual demonstration--no explanations necessary. "Wind to Light is an experimental piece, an investigation into the viability of wind power," states Bruges. "I hope it will prove thought-provoking as well as being an art piece that can be enjoyed by people of all ages."
via cubeme
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
These bite size jam-blasters look good enough to eat--but if you really tried then you wouldn't be able to blast jams at all and health problems would most likely ensue. SEMK's compact Cupcake speakers plug right into laptops, media players, and the like, and will have all your sparkle princess friends drooling with envy.
via technabob
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (3)
Despite some striking resemblance to limb-severing wires a la Aeon Flux, Neko Design's Orbit bracelet won't sinter your wrists, but will make them appear to have super force field-like powers. A silicone-elastic inner web holds the aluminum band away from the wrist for a floating effect.
via design spotter
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (1)
Ford's announced its plans to apply green efforts to 2008 Mustangs, not with hybrid engines, but seat backs and cushions made of soy-based materials. Working alongside Lear Corporation, Ford's new soy-foam seats are made of twenty-four percent renewable content with a more energy-efficient production process that churns out less CO2 than today's standard practice that makes heavy use of petroleum-based polyol foam. Production of the soy seats is planned to start in August, in conjunction with the '08 Mustang roll out.
via autoblog green
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (1)
Extravagant, over-the-top art pieces, like the skull in Damien Hirst's For the Love of God show, may attract faithful followers to the White Cube gallery in London, however, your run-of-the-mill skeptics can be expected to scoff, avoid the exhibit, and maybe utter a malicious phrase or two. A certain skeptic named Laura took it, oh, we'd say a couple steps further by setting up her own rogue show on the sidewalk right outside the gallery in response to Hirst's $100 million, 1100+ carat skull. The reactive artist spent a month crafting her 6522 Swarovski crystal version of the skull which was haphazardly propped in a vitrine atop a trash pile that appears ready for pick-up.
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
Water that floats freely and makes contact with minerals is able to regain its vitality and its crystal structure. This was the inspiration for Dutch designer Nienke Vording to develop a series products for water consumption.
Ice Lolly's are frozen around a natural crystal. The ice is flavoured with mint, pepper, lavender, walnut, star anise or other pieces of fruit. Each of the frozen elements give their own natural taste and smell to the water.
Posted by: Aart van Bezooyen | Comments (2)
The Peabody Essex Museum has a great interactive feature for their exhibit entitled Joseph Cornell: Navigating the Imagination. What may be lost by not being able to view the show in real space--though we encourage you to see it if you're passing through Salem, Mass--is gained by being able to manipulate the work in real time.
Cornell's curiosities always make you want to reach out and touch. Well now you can.
Posted by: Xanthe Matychak | Comments (0)
Engadget reports that GW Micro has developed a new type of PDA designed specifically for the blind and sight-impaired, called the VoiceSense. The assistant runs a modified version of Windows CE and features a vocal guidance system, a full function PIM, web browser, MP3 player, Daisy talking book player, FM radio tuner and MSN Messenger -- all accessible through its custom Perkins-style Braille keyboard. The device has a 540MHz PXA270 processor, 1GB of RAM, and also boasts 802.11b/g, USB 2.0, audio in and out jacks, SD and CF card support, and runs 12 hours on a full charge. The PDA is available right now for $1,795, though the price goes up to $1,895 after July 15th.
Posted by: Mark Vanderbeeken | Comments (0)
Intel has done an about turn and joined the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project instead of trying to compete with it. Nicolas Negroponte, who had previously said Intel should be ashamed of themselves for trying to sell it's own cheapo laptop called the Classmate, has welcomed the wayward chip maker with open arms.
via BBC News
Posted by: Tasos Calantzis | Comments (0)The New York Times has answered a question we asked earlier in the week: How do accessory makers design on-time wares for products (like the iPhone) that secretive companies haven't released yet?
...accessory makers have been hampered in their planning by the same situation that greeted consumers: most were not able to get their hands on a device until June 29, when the cellphone was first sold... Even the largest manufacturers were given nothing more than general dimensions. Several companies got their first look at the actual phone only a few weeks ago when Apple engineers certified their products.
Aha, so most companies have to wait their turn, just like us consumers.
Still, it's no wonder that once the 'phone was released, scores of designers everywhere scrambled to make ready a multitude of products, as seen in the article; accessories--that's right, just the accessories--for the device have been forecast as a US $2.25 billion market by the end of 2008. That's a huge bundle of cash for what are essentially holsters, slipcovers and screen protectors.
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (0)
That's not a Photoshop filter; shooter Helga Steppan arranged and photographed her belongings by color, and the results are on display at a London gallery. Check out her other tones here.
via neatorama
Abstract performance art comes in a wide variety of flavors, but we're pretty keen on this analog representations of common video editing effects by gymnasts on a trampoline. The entire show was done in one take, in front of a live audience, with no room for error...well, technically, they did make room for error--and one of those swirling rainbows of death to boot!
via infosthetics
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)Check out this video featuring Daniel Bizzell, lead industrial designer for the PBS invention show Everyday Edisons.
What may look like the work of a stencil, ink, or screen-equipped illustrator are actually carefully-cut incisions on paper by an X-acto knife clasped by the hand of Nikki McClure.
via mocoloco
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (1)
Spore, a newly launched Australian design studio, addresses the power of styling in making associations. Recliners drip with notions of puffiness, slouchiness, old people, and just plain fugliness. Spores Articulating chair attempts to "ease" younger folks into accepting the idea of reclining chairs by literally acting out a transition from an upright chair to a straight-maxin' relaxin' tribute to the La-Z-Boys we all know and love/hate.
thanks melanie!
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
Japanese writing utensil mavens at Pentel combined nanotechnology and some major pow-wowing with expert aromatherapists to develop Ain Supplio pencil leads--writing leads with long-lasting fragrance that--get this--enhances your mental capacity! Tiny nanocapsules hold scents for long periods of time--nearly three years in an unopened package, two years in the case case, and three months or more if left out, exposed to air. Hmmm...throw it in a Hello Kitty pencil and call it a joke, right? Well, there must be some merit to this madness since these lead sticks scooped up the 2007 Stationery of the Year Award, legit! Ain Supplio sets come in three scents, Refresh, Healing and Positive, cost under $2 each, and should be available for back-to-school time.
via pink tentacle
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)The UK's Civil Defence Supply is something like James Bond's Q-branch, as it "manufactures and patents unusual devices and gadgets" for police officers and soldiers. But whereas Q cooked up exploding cigarettes, umbrellas that stabbed the user to death and ejector seats for unwanted passengers, CDS focuses on "preserving life by avoiding lethal force wherever possible."
21-year-old Amin Ismail was recently hired by CDS on the strength of his senior project for his degree in product design, innovation and marketing. Ismail's gadget is a wrist-worn translation device that is more than a mere concept; he and CDS cranked out a prototype that will be on the ground in Iraq by next week. Ismail hopes his design will "improve the communication between soldiers and Iraqi people in high-risk situations where any misunderstandings might lead to tragedy."
Below is a video of Ismail's invention, and while it's not exactly a Michael Bay production, it does give you a pretty good look at the device.
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (0)
They've been hidden in church steeples and disguised as trees. Now the city of Oceanside outside San Diego is trying to turn a 65-foot cellular-relay tower, seen by 350,000 motorists daily, into a "work of art." The city's Arts Commission is hoping for approval to cover the tower in a "netlike swirl of material around the pole [with] dozens of foam seabirds in and around the netting." Wish we had pictures of the actual design to show you, but until the Oceanside Planning Commission says yes, we've got nada.
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (1)
The results are in for Lightouch's Design Competition 2007, which drew 939 submissions from 53 different countries.
The seven finalists from China, France, Italy, Korea, New Zealand and Singapore attended a three-day prototyping workshop at the National University of Singapore (NUS) under the mentorship of FLOS designer Mr. Joris Laarman. As part of the competition's last stage, the finalists were tasked to produce a final prototype of their winning ideas.Grand winner Caitlyn Sara MacKenzie from New Zealand will receive a learning trip to the FLOS factory in Milan, on business class travel, sponsored by FLOS. The winning work entitled "1296" is created with 1296 incised cuts within a two dimensional plane creating an organic form, a delicate dance echoing through layers of contortion. "1296" was selected by FLOS for its manufacturability and good_market potential, the high quality of the prototype, and the designer's overall presentation.
Business class from New Zealand to the FLOS factory in Milan, not too shabby! Check out Caitlyn's design, and the other finalists', here.
The weirdest CAD application we've ever seen: Quick Scene is a CAD program you can use to quickly draw schematics of car crashes. Contains pre-drawn symbols and "one-click 3D," letting you accurately render automotive mayhem in "less than 10 minutes." It's either designed for insurance workers or Calvin from Calvin & Hobbes.
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (1)In 1947 Life Magazine asked the most famous cartoonists of the day to draw their signature characters, side by side, twice: once with eyes wide open, once blindfolded. If only there were an ID equivalent! We'd love to see what Le Corbusier and Loewy would've whipped up in a darkened metal shop.
via dumptrumpet
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On the auction block is the world's oldest working "car," if you can call it that, an 1884 De Dion Bouton. It's so old it doesn't even have the crank in the front; you gotta shovel coal into the "engine" and let it warm up for 30 minutes, making it virtually impossible to steal.
The steam-powered contraption is going on sale in California next month, where it's expected to fetch in the neighborhood of US $2 mil.
via madville
While their previous attention-grabbing project was somewhat "magical" in its own right, the ladies of Front Design have busted out with the appropriately titled Magic Collection, which was developed in collaboration with real magicians who shared their secrets of illusion. For example, the Levitating lamp appears to have a shade that floats, when in fact, it is suspended by clear threads and illuminated by a light embedded in the stand. The Vanishing sideboard appears to have no drawers and floating handles, thanks to the strategic placement of mirrors at 45 degree angles. Front recently debuted this collection at Design Miami/Art Basel 2007.
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
In the UK they call it a "boot," in the U.S. the area at the back of your car is a "trunk," so called because in the days of the Model T, that's what was really lashed to the back of your ride.
Looks like that thought might be coming back, at least in Europe, where more people have teeny, tiny cars that don't have a lot of storage. The Autoruck is essentially a backpack for your car, to hold stuff you can't fit in the trunk/boot. All it needs is a mesh side pocket to hold a sports bottle filled with gas.
via gizmag
At this point, we've all heard the hype about those expensive square watermelons they sell in Japan, but did you ever stop to think how they got that way? Also, check out other crazy-shaped melons like pyramids, faces, hearts, and stars. When these heart and star cucumbers have just sprouted, larger molds are placed to surround them, forcing them to take shape as they reach full maturity--surely a great way to get the little ones to eat some veggies...
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
Check out Matthias Pliessnig's new steam-bent oak and ash seats, Point Network and Delapitated Flow, which are more like functional sculptures. These hand-crafted pieces use wood in as a medium to express dynamic line, the envelopment of negative space, and weaving techniques.
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
Have you checked off every box on your to-do list today? Time to crumple it up, toss it, and start a new one, right? Behance Research says hellz no! They want you to bask in your own done-ness. What better way to pump up one's own productivity than to surround themself with documents of progress, proof of discipline and taking action? "There is no better push-towards-taking-action than action itself."
via lifehacker
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
"What if a bank really did give power to the people?" Nedbank of South Africa is doing just that, with what is said to be the world's first solar-powered billboard. The energy generated is used to power a local school kitchen for 11000 kids.
Via: Trend Hunter
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The second issue of Coroflot's new bi-monthly publication is out, featuring eleven totallyexcellent Coroflot members who answered the call for work on the theme of Axis. There's some stunning work in there, so check it out. Here's the pitch:
When we think of an axis the first thing that comes to mind are the balanced opposites that are needed for rotation to take place. Like two duelling magnets, contemporary art and design requres conflicting forces to have movement or power. It is for these reasons that the axis is a weighty topic to present and discuss in the art and design making process. Where do we start with our first line? What are the opposing forces that move around this central mark? How do these forces affect our viewer/consumer? The work of artists in Coroflot Issue Two deal with the ideas of axis and with opposites ranging from 'rebellion vs. regulation' to 'price vs. value' to 'appropriation vs. creativity'.Download It Here. (15.8mb pdf) Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)
When the words "multiple touch-points" are uttered, you may immediately picture an iPhone, however, we're not discussing multi-touch here, but we'll still be talking about Apple, unsurprisingly enough. Irene Pereyra discusses the danger of designing for a multi-faceted experience in "The Pitfalls of Multiple Touch-Points." In response to a piece by Adam Greenfield, she highlights the shortcomings of blind over-branding, where a great opportunity is missed to connect with the consumer. The prime example here is the nike+ collaboration between Nike and Apple, which offers up a Nike running shoe/iPod nano fitness package that lures the buyer in, then quickly traps them into a "brand monopoly" where customization is very limited and the progression of the experience becomes stunted by a severe lack of choices to be made. In situations like this, each point of a multiple touch-point experience must be designed as an optimal experience in and of itself as well as a harmonious junction in respect to every other point and the experience as a whole. When this kind of thorough approach is neglected, the experience suffers, and consequently, so does the brand.
thanks yael!
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
Plaid. What does it mean to us? It's just a pattern right? You know, it's all over the place, from trendy teens' fashions to bedsheets to curtains to...rubik's cubes to--the branding of an entire nation? "It is vital that we keep Scotland as the mecca for tartan worldwide and this national register will go a long way in helping to achieve this," states Jim Mather. He and other folks at the National Archives of Scotland are quite (criss and) cross regarding inauthentic misuse of these historically and culturally rich patterns, so they're now working hard to file thousands of designs into a national registry.
via unbeige
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
Remember the good ol' days, when the picture went out on your cathode-ray tube TV, and slapping the side of it would restore it? Or if your portable CD player broke, but it would still play if you held it at a certain angle?
This physical manipulation never seemed to work with cell phones and dropping calls. We tried every physical trick we could--keeping our fingers off the antenna, standing by the window, holding the phone off our face--but nothing ever worked.
Now scientists at Canada's Queen University believe they know why: dropped cell phone calls are a result of, get this, solar flares. Apparently those pesky little sun farts muck with the cell towers here on Earth. So until Verizon launches a special solar lander to fix the problem, we can stop trying to game our phones into cooperating.
via textually
When we hear the name Saul Bass we immediately think of his stark two-color Hitchcock posters. But check out this little animated gem--a graphic delight but it's the soundtrack that takes it over the top.
The best is the pre-Copernican chant: Does-the-er-earth-move? Neh-eh-eh-ver.
via do
Posted by: Xanthe Matychak | Comments (1)Core-fave Jeremy Faludi has another great post on Worldchanging, outlining state of the art and issues with green materials and green chemistry. Here's the start:
You can't do green design without green materials, and material innovations tend to come from chemists. Chemists also produce many products in their own right: paints, adhesives, cleaning products, whole industries. So what are chemists doing to save the world?Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)There's currently one famous green chemist in the world: Michael Braungart (founder of EPEA, co-founder of McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry and co-author of Cradle to Cradle). The world needs about a hundred more.
A sweet (sorry) essay by Jessica Helfand on DO, riffing on Sauteed Rooster Comb via a recent family visit to Catalan. Here's a taste (double sorry):
Where food is concerned, the relationship between what things look like and how we respond exists at its most primal level: what is a gut reaction, after all, if not something that attacks your gut? Food preferences are personal, idiosyncratic, and odd. They're also framed by things like appetites, religious preferences and allergies; swayed by things seasonal, products regional, and palettes likely to be unpredictably mercurial. And no matter what it is or how picky we are (or aren't)--the fact remains that what food looks like has a huge bearing on what we taste.Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)
One of the obvious-when-you-think-on-it but easy-to-forget aspects of globalization is the dramatic and misunderstood cultural differences around the planet. The issues with China and the integrity of their consumable products that we buy, swallow, take, and brush with are a perfect example. What really is happening over there that makes such a thing possible and perhaps even common?. Seems the Chinese are sensitive to the potential market erosion as confidence drops, so they've taken action and have executed a government official who had taken bribes to approve untested medicine. Yoiks.
Posted by: Steve Portigal | Comments (1)
Photos by Anne Hong
On view at Material Connexion is a new exhibit featuring the work of a recent graduates from the ITP program at NY University. The works embody digital technologies, but also showcase material advances and the connections possible when these worlds intersect.
Shown above is The Orb, by James Nick Sears and Ron Sears, a 12 inch ring of LEDs rotating at 1700 RPM. The software controlling the apparatus makes it appear as a model of the earth, or as a spherical sculpture covered with abstract patterns.
The exhibition will be on view through August 3, 2007.
Material ConneXion
127 West 25th Street
New York, NY
Monday - Friday 9:00 AM until 6:00 PM.
From the Coroflot portfolio of : Mike Doscher
Featured Project : Wirebus Concept
Saint Peters, Missouri-based 3D artist Mike Doscher's got crazy nice skill not only with 3D renderings, but also with hand-renderings and concepting, as illustrated above. His Wirebus Concept is an answer to what we might be cruising about in if cablecars were the most popular way to get from A to B. The specific problem he presented to himself was, "What if you had a city or some other kind of weird situation where the most common way to get around were cablecars? Can you make a cablecar look cools?" Hey Mike, you already did!
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (1)
The photo up above: Buildings? No, letters. Click here to check out one of the more unique fonts we've ever seen.
via dumptrumpet
Like early Letterman, Blendtec's "Will it Blend" series puts things in blenders.
Their latest addition? The iPhone.
Enjoy.
via neatorama
Plants lovers might want to take a gander at this new plant pot that encases roots and soil with fabric as opposed to plastic, ceramic, terracotta, and the like. Hova FabricPots are stable, yet lightweight, comprised of a fabric sleeve attached to a solid base with a zipper to allow expansion for easy extraction of the root ball when re-potting. The fabric sleeve allows for proper aeration of the soil enabling the free flow of air and wator vapor while keeping liquids at bay. Hova pots are available in two shapes and various patterns with a price range of $30 to $40 for those who love to spoil their houseplants.
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
Seventy-four years ago, graphic designer Harry Beck produced the first map of London's metro system. Seventeen years ago, Paul Middlewick starting spotted animals hidden in the designs. Although they look less like purposeful designs and more like the animals seen in constellations, they're still kind fun to look at. (They're also mostly benevolent animals; absent are the rats, pigeons and cockroaches you'd be bound to find in a NYC subway map.)
via funforever
Bay Area ID folks are gearing up for a celebration of accomplished local industrial designers who's work will be exhibited at "Prototype to Product" in SFO's United terminal, presented by iDSA SF and the San Francisco Airport Museum. The hefty list of featured designers includes IDEO, Lunar Design, Fuse Project, One & Co, Smart, NewDealDesign,and Knoend. An opening reception will be held on July 19th at the SF Aviation Museum and the exhibition will run until January 1st, 2008.
Prototype to Product
SFO United terminal
July 19, 2007 - January 1, 2008
Another great example of material reuse--a temporary bandshell made from rescued car hoods, circuit panels and solid-core doors.
via: TreeHugger
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We're big fans of curious object-based street like that of the Sprinkle Brigade and Concrete Jungle--so it's no surprise that this project caught our collective eye as well. These teeny-tiny hand-painted people are left around the streets of London "to fend for themselves." This little guy is nearly invisible atop that plant when you take a step back.
via boingboing
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
...ain't it the truth.
As a designer, do you know the difference between a trademark, a copyright and a patent? Did you know that patents and copyrights don't overlap--except in the area of product design? The business section of the San Francisco Chronicle breaks it all down for you here.
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (1)
MIT Technology Review put a brief article up at the end of June describing some of the unrealized potential in the iPhone. Turns out that, in addition to having the interface to kill all portable interfaces, it is tricked out with a number of just slightly utilized sensors; specifically an accelerometer, an ambient light meter, and an IR motion sensor. While Apple has applied these to the admirable goal of rotating your screen and adjusting your brightness for you, some other smart people have already been busy using them for more creative ends. Like learning about human nature.
Now, take a step back: Accelerometers are motion detectors--they get used to help measure distance walked (pedometers) and the intensity of car crashes (impact meters), among other things. Some creative designers have figured out how to make them fun (Nintendo Wii). It's not a huge stretch to combine this sort of data with light, motion and sound sensing to start getting a picture of what a user is doing all day, moment to moment. Standing, sitting, and walking have recognizable signatures, and from there it's a short computational step to recognizing when a user is cooking, working, hanging out, shopping, etc. It's like a diary, but honest. It's like Twitter, but less irritating.
Posted by: Carl Alviani | Comments (2)
Friends have babies and the old toys come up from the basement. Dusted this one off and had to take its picture.
There's nothing more satisfying than putting a square peg into a square hole, but what's puzzling is that space-invaders piece. Remember that one? Is that shape considered simple geometry in Finland, or what?
Posted by: Xanthe Matychak | Comments (1)
Singapore with hummus! Sim City in real time! It's hard to escape the buzz about Dubai: The world's tallest building. The world's largest man-made islands. The world's only seven-star hotel. So, lured by a roster of big name designers (and the prospect of skiing the black diamond slope at The Mall of the Emirates), Frogdesign creative director Luke Williams and Fast Company senior writer Linda Tischler, made the trek to the kingdom for its first International Design Forum in late May.
What they found was a lot more complex than the hype: a city caught between the temptation to ape Vegas and the growing realization that by doing so, it may be losing its soul. Williams and Tischler talk about the design mash-up at the Burj Al Arab (think "Star Trek" meets "Saturday Night Fever"), architectural motifs that look eerily like the digestive system of the camel, a condo project that Apple's copyright guys might want to investigate, Oliviero Toscani's fashion advice, and why Arab mothers don't want their sons to grow up to be designers.
To read more on Dubai's red-hot real estate boom, $1000 cocktails, and the ruling Sheik's authenticity angst, check out Linda Tischler's postings on the Fast Company blog: Future shock, Real Estate, Authenticity.
LISTEN NOW (33 min.) | iTunes | More Broadcasts
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It's the kind of thing you figure is a prank, but then you see it on CNN. Adventurer Kent Couch attached 105 helium balloons to his lawn chair, then cut the tether; he then spent the next nine hours airborne, traveling a distance of 193 miles through Oregon.
His equipment? Four plastic bags filled with water, for ballast (released via a spigot); a handheld GPS device; a parachute; and some snacks.
This is 47-year-old gas-station attendant Couch's second balloon ride; for the first he carried a BB gun, which he used to shoot out some of his balloons as a reverse ballast. However, that made the descent too rapid, necessitating a parachute bail-out. This time Couch configured the balloons closer to him, so he could release their helium by hand.
But instead of releasing the helium into the air, Couch inhaled it so he could make pipsqueak voices on the way down.
Actually we're kidding about that last part. Because that would be crazy.
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (2)
We're told that the economic future belongs to the BRICs: Brazil, Russia, India and China. How will these rapidly industrializing countries change the face of international business? How will they change the face of design? Will young designers be required to know Mandarin or Cantonese? Will English still be the langua franca? Check out the discussion started by No.2 on this topic, and put in your two cents.
For those you who need design all of the time--even in your fiction--meet Ethan Hoevel, a talented New York designer and the protagonist in The Tourists, a juicy first-novel by Jeff Hobbs.
Here's a taste:
[Ethan's] life flows on like someone's dream. He is seen and adored and he never has to look for work or invitations to parties or publicity or sex--it all finds him, which is an anomaly in a city where the vast majority of people spend the vast majority of their time hopelessly seeking all of those things. But this dream is not necessarily Ethan's...Ethan Hoevel has a deeper need, and I will come to know (and I still believe I am the only one who will ever truly know) that it is a need for something darker.
You wanted young designers in complicated love triangles? You got it.
Posted by: Xanthe Matychak | Comments (0)
We're not sure why you might want, or need, rocks that burn like candles, but the technology exists, so what the hey. Rocklite Candle Co. fits quartz, sandstone, and other rocks with a glass reservoir that you pour candle oil into, then strike a match and voila.
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (0)
Whoa-ho-ho! Check out the interior of Boeing's new 787, designed by Seattle-based Teague, as in Walter Dorwin. Click here for the rest of the flicks. Pretty plane.
Also, Teague President and CEO, John Barratt, talks to David Kirkpatrick, Sr. Editor of Fortune Magazine about the design of the 787 and how Teague aimed to re-enliven the spirit of flight.
"We're going for it...it's going to be a breakthrough plane...."
via scifi
Greasy plastic. That doesn't sound pleasant, but it may be the future; researchers at Carnegie-Mellon have discovered that adding grease to certain plastics greatly increases conductivity, paving the way for things like roll-up newspapers that use electric ink, debit cards that shock you when you try to overdraw, and whatever else you crazy kids can think of.
Please note that the grease is chemically embedded in the plastic, not slathered over it like it is on the wax paper at KFC. The scientific description of how it actually works made our eyes glaze over--we're designers and dreamers over here--but science hounds who know what copolymers are can drool over the details here.
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (0)
This Kevin Chang dude, a JP Morgan analyst based in Taiwan, is really getting people up in a tizzy, claiming to have been informed by unnamed persons in the Apple supply channel about a nano-like iPhone to rear its head in the fourth quarter. There's also an application for the U.S. Patent and Trademark office that shows "a multifunctional handheld device with a circular touch pad control, similar to the Nano's scroll wheel." Apple's keeping its mouth shut for the time being. If this thing, in fact, does make an appearance later this year, will bite-size cellie chatters be up to the challenge of matching last month's hype for its bulkier predecessor?
via crave
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
With today's marketplace glutted with frou-frou aerodynamic dustbusters and the like, it's easy to forget what the first part of Industrial Design means. So check out the Crown TSP 6000 Turret Order Picker, the only forklift to win a Red Dot award and a place in Germany's Red Dot Design Museum.
Designed for tight warehouses stacked to the rafters, the TSP 6000 has a supertight turning radius, a swiveling operator's chair, multitasking controls built into the armrests, and a host of other cool features you can check out here. In a pinch, Ripley could've used this thing to kill the Queen in Aliens 2.
Core77's Discussion Board's One Hour Design Challenge turned up some interesting drawings. My personal favorite is Runrobot's Pocket Framer--a key ring attachment that allows you to view the world in whatever aspect ratio you wish. The three designs to receive the most votes so far are DriveD's Hot Dog Grille, Sain's Shampoo Bottle, and Runrobot's Pocket Framer. The first place winner gets a pair of Blu Fom Shoes, and the two runners up each get Core 77 t-shirts. Voting is still underway, so head over to the board and cast your vote. The winners will be announced Monday, July 16th.
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This limited edition (only 200) hark back to the olde school blasts out 55 decibels of your favorite jams using no power at all. The patent-pending Phonofonics II dock features two small crevasses that hold earbuds to amplify playback through its ceramic horn. According to its makers, the $875 sculpture/device transforms the high-pitched buzzing quality from headphones into "a warm, rich and resonant sound."
via gizmodo
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
Check out these creepy, tiny soaps shaped like hands. As much as we want to ogle at how "cute" these visually literal hand soaps are, it's a bit disturbing to know that they'll slowly disintegrate into slimy, disfigured shapes that once appeared to be supple baby-size hands reaching out from a plate...
thanks raluca!
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
Since secretive Apple doesn't release their products to aftermarket companies in advance, we always wonder how the accessory makers manage to quickly come up with mass-produced cases and such. Did they make an intern wait in line for the iPhone, then have them run it back to them so their designers could spend five sleepless nights in a row whipping up sleeves?
In any case, Sena's now got cases for the iPhone, looking slightly higher-end than the usual Belkin fare. With five different cases ranging from magnet-flip to dockable to ultra-slim, some ID'er is lying unconscious on the company couch, having been there since the drawings went out the door.
Check out these power button earrings which are just two power buttons from old Powerbook top cases modded with earring hooks. Geek chic to the max!
via make
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (1)This afternoon the Design Management Institute will host an online webinar featuring Jesse James Garrett from Adaptive Path. He'll discuss the key elements that drive people to flock to technology products and what differentiates products that stir up a buzz and ones that get left in the dust.
Success requires grounding your development approach in a deep understanding of user psychology. Companies often see the time and money invested in product development go to waste simply because the final result doesn't accurately reflect the needs and expectations of the customers who have to use the product. In this presentation, Jesse James Garrett looks at ways to build customer insight into your designs so that they resonate with your audience, and they build customer loyalty.
The Elements of User Experience: Driving Customer Loyalty Through Design
July 10, 1pm EDT
Logo-a-Gogo is an exhaustive collection of logos, wordmarks, and insignia from corporations, entertainment venues, resorts, sports, brands, product campaigns, and other sources from countries around the world. They've broken the collection up into encyclopedic alphabetic chunks (i.e., Cake to Crisco) and have posted 'em to scribd. Here's a chapter for perusing. Link.
Posted by: Steve Portigal | Comments (0)
Cardesignnews' "Studio Photos" page is an invaluable resource for auto designers: it's a database of photographs of tons of different cars, all shot from the exact same angle, and presented in a nice, neutral grey on a featureless white background. But while the thumbnails are free, downloading a photo you can actually trace off of requires membership: about US $140 a year for individuals, unless you can sweet-talk your studio or school into getting a group membership.
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (0)
As you strap yourself into the airplane seat and the flight attendant runs through the safety demo, you can't help but wonder: do those inflatable slides-cum-lifeboats that "deploy in case of a water landing" actually work?
While we've never heard of a plane making a water landing and survivors floating around in those things, it turns out the inflatable pontoons in the skids of helicopters do in fact work. On Saturday a chopper went down in Manhattan's Hudson River, but after impact the pilot inflated the pontoons, preventing the craft from sinking like a stone. No one was hurt.
via newyorktimes
Last week, the Times Square district gained its latest sign as the logo of the New York Times was installed on the Eighth Avenue facade of its new Renzo Piano-designed headquarters tower.
But what looks like a simple sign -- if a 110-foot-long logo set as a 10,116-point version of the newspaper's iconic Fraktur font can be called simple -- is actually an intricate assemblage of nearly a thousand separate custom-designed pieces, each a painted extruded aluminum sleeve a little more than three inches in diameter.
Read the story of how and why design firm Pentagram came to design the sign.
Posted by: Mark Vanderbeeken | Comments (0)
We love the Airtrain to JFK International Airport but one can't help but wonder if the logo is misguided. The plane component of the mark certainly looks like a directional but it's always accompanied by that menacing black arrow. And that menace is always pointing to an opposite direction.
More fun with signage can be found here.
Posted by: Xanthe Matychak | Comments (1)
Those of us who heave grocer's delectables in our own bags know that it ain't easy being green, well, at the supermarket at least. It takes a mish-mash of awkward totes to hold all the ingredients for a week's worth of meals, and if you're a walker or biker, you better be ripped and have great balance...or a granny cart. It'd be easier to grab a Baggu or two in lieu of those cumbersome totes and the omnipresent crunchy-plastic sack. Baggus are are made from strong rip-stop nylon, weigh about 2 ounces and can hold up to 25 lbs of weight. They carry about two to three plastic grocery bags-worth of stuff and if used for one year, you'll have told 300 to 700 plastic bags to "talk to the hand Baggu." When empty, these carry-alls fold into a flat 5 by 5-inch pouch that you easily pop into a purse or pocket. And best of all, responsibility won't break the bank--grab one for $8, three for $22, or six for $38--and if you get the six pack, just remember that each bag holds two to three times more than the average bag!
via josh spear
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (7)
We've always enjoyed a hoot 'n holler when it comes to electronic error messages in unexpected places, but the last place we'd want to see them is at, uhh, ahem, the airport!! After all those bag searches and smelly feet, you think they'd renew their antivirus subscription at the very least.
sirbrett84's flickr via technabob
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (2)
Electrical engineer Scott Amron has just launched Die Electric, an online exhibition of non-power-devouring objects that make use of electrical outlets to replace device that do, indeed need electricity to live. The collection of commentary prototypes includes the Cork Outlet Plug, shown above, which responds to "the burning of fossil fuels to generate electricity" by "[plugging] potential leaks."
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
Carabanchel 16 is a public housing complex commissioned by the city of Madrid to realize an efficient and sustainable solution to public housing shortages. Alejandro Zaera Polo of Foreign Office Architects designed the 88-unit building with a sharp focus on the needs of its occupants in correlation to relevant aesthetics and functionality. The complex receives relentless direct sunlight and heat which is effectively relieved by wrap-around terraces with full-coverage, folding bamboo shutters. Residents may open or shut these frames to any degree of their liking, resulting in an ever-changing profile with varying degrees of angles, planes, light, and shadow.
via inhabitat
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
Cooper Hewitt's handed over the curator's baton, not to one singular person this time, but to a company--IDEO to be exact. The famed design firm hand-picked items from the museum's permanent collection to illustrate truly innovative, problem-solving designs spanning five centuries. The exhibit, both physical and online, utilizes three "lenses", Inspiration, Empathy, and Intuition, to "explore these objects and the very human impulses that motivate designers and the contexts in which objects are created and used." The online visitors to post personal commentary on each selected object, and they can even add their own object selections.
Using artifacts from Cooper-Hewitt's collection, IDEO presents an object-centered entry into design thinking--an approach to problem solving that is inherintly human in its drive to improve what already exists and create what does not.
IDEO Selects : Works From the Permanent Collection
Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum
through January 20, 2008
UK-based furniture and product design company sonodesign has just released the Profile series which includes the Profile Lamp and Profile Shade, comprised of repeated shapes in panels of acrylic surrounding a centrally placed bulb.
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
Researchers at the University of Tokyo have spent ten years devising a new sort of immersive 3D display system. TWISTER is a two-meter-wide cylinder that's user-centric--literally: you stand in the center of the device while 50,000 LED lights rotate around you at 1.6 revolutions per second. (Let's keep those hands at our sides, shall we?) At each position in its 360-degree orbit, each LED flashes different "pixels" to give the illusion of complete immersion and even depth. Hard applications haven't been settled on yet, but let's hope this one doesn't go the way of VR.
via pinktentacle
Metropolis has a good Q&A with ex-Apple designer Robert Brunner, who's left Pentagram after ten years (and taken all 12 of his staffers with him, ouch) to start his own firm (again).
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (0)
Here's a photo essay entitled "Solving the enigmas of everyday design," which asks a dozen questions like:
- Why are CD cases smaller than DVD boxes if the discs are the same size?
- Why is milk sold in cartons and soda in cans?
- Why do men's and women's clothing have buttons on different sides?
- Why do some cars have the fuel fill cap on the left, others on the right?
The questions are taken from economist Robert H. Frank's book The Economic Naturalist: In Search of Explanations for Everyday Enigmas. Any product designer should know at least half of these but if you don't, the answers are provided, so you can have your Cliff Clavin moment at the bar.
via internationalheraldtribune
It's been an incredible weekend of robot-on-robot action here in Atlanta. Were it not for the taco salad I had at the Georgia Aquarium Experience, I would be full only of inspiration. As it is, my thoughts are somewhat tempered by my biliousness. I thought that the aquarium would be an interesting counterpoint to RoboCup. Fish are, after all, Nature's robots (along with insects). Instead the whole experience sent me spiraling downwards, causing me to wonder if these stunning achievements of technical prowess are really just a distraction from the real problems that our facing our planet. I don't want to Gore you to death, but here are a few thoughts on where we're heading.
Posted by: David Womack | Comments (5)
One possible consolation for today's traumatic defeat may be Team Osaka's awesome custom laptop.
Posted by: David Womack | Comments (0)
In a stunning upset, Team Osaka lost to the German team NIMBRO 5-7 in the Humanoid Championship, Small Size. This despite significant advancements by Team Osaka, including a stealthy sideways kick that sent the German player's cameras spinning. I caught up with Tomotaka Takahashi after the match to find out what went wrong.
Posted by: David Womack | Comments (0)
Team Osaka is favored to win the humanoid league soccer championships again this year--they walked away with the Louis Vuitton Humanoid Cup in 2004, 2005 and 2006. Team Osaka's secret weapon is Tomotaka Takahashi, one of the world's leading designers of humanoid robots. His pioneering work may make possible a dream that stands out as strange even in the strange world of humanoid robotics. A female league.
Posted by: David Womack | Comments (0)
I was prepared to accept that we humans are nothing more or less than the spark of our synapses. I was ready to consider that the human exceptionalism may be on its way out--that our tools may soon overtake us. Nothing, however, had prepared me to see a team of robots shaped like hockey pucks play such kick-ass soccer.
The RoboCup Federation was formed with the goal of fielding a team of fully autonomous humanoid soccer players by the year 2050 able to defeat the human world-championship team. Soccer was chosen because of the range of physical movements as well as for the cognitive skills required to make strategic decisions and play on a team. Were it not for the outdated qualifications "fully-autonomous" and "humanoid", and the goal was simply to produce a winning team of soccer-playing robots, I think they'd have a fighting chance of being ready for the 2010 games in South Africa.
Posted by: David Womack | Comments (1)
At the party I talk to two very nice Chinese researchers who tell me, in an extremely polite way, that China is about to open up a big can of robot whoop-ass on us unsuspecting Yankees. They're fronting something in the order of 30 teams to RoboCup this year and are hosting the event next year. To which I reply: Chinese robots? I mean, aren't there enough Chinese?
It turns out this beer-fueled response was only half stupid.
Posted by: David Womack | Comments (0)
The press release put out by event sponsor Louis Vuitton describes RoboCup as "an international research and educational initiative for artificial intelligence and robotics with a focus on soccer-playing robots." About 300 teams from countries, including Bulgaria, Iran, Slovakia and Thailand, travel here to compete and share their love of robots, making it the largest annual gathering of robotics experts. But I still can't figure out why Louis Vuitton would sponsor this event. My understanding is that the robots themselves play in the nude and--as to the engineers and scientists that create them--something tells me they are not in the market for couture suits and man-purses. Better try Comic-Con.
But this is a time to put stereotypes aside. After all, these robots are playing soccer.
Posted by: David Womack | Comments (0)
David Womack is in Atlanta--we hope suitably dressed (and protected). Check out all of David's upcoming coverage right here. BLOOHHHHGGGGGG!!!
Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)
Guest post from Kris to send you into the weekend:
Think your dual output video card and having your laptop next to your desktop make the grade? Not for these WoWHeadz: 46 machines for 2 people to play and a set up that would make you cringe from the cables. Farming much are we?
Link.
Posted by: core jr | Comments (1)
Click here for some interesting CD-surface designs that actually incorporate the hole. (And don't worry, none are vulgar.)
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (1)
Take a look at any industrial designer's home desk and you're bound to see at least a couple gewgaws they whipped up themselves: pen holders, monitor stands, custom cell phone cradles, you get the picture. But we're limited in what we can produce on a tabletop by our tools and whatever's on hand at the local hardware store.
That's why the book/video Reproduce Almost Anything : Basic Silicone Mold Making, by Ben Ridge, seems like a guide all of us ought to have. But is it any good? Can we really do this stuff ourselves? Blogger Tim Whitney decided to find out; he purchased the book and reviewed it on his site. Happy reading (and happy moldmaking?).
Timeless Design: What the heck is it? How do we intentionally design products to be timeless? Do we want products that people will keep for 50 years and bequeath to their children? Is that appropriate for all product categories? Will it help the environment? Who will pay our salaries when everyone owns things that last a lifetime? Valxcurry opens up this Pandora's box of questions over at the C77 board. Check out the commentary, and let us know what you think.
A hot topic passed on from the one and only Yo!
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From the Coroflot portfolio of : Byung Cho
Featured Project : Land Rover Carver
There's no question that cars are this guy's cup o' tea. Recent CCS graduate and Detroit-based designer Byung Cho's Carver concept for Land Rover explores transportation geared toward winter sports enthusiasts. This particular model is branded as a Burton edition, perfect for extreeeme snowboarders who want to hightail it over to the freshest snow off the steepest drops. Check out his collection of mostly trans-focused sketches and renderings, which are off the hook.
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (1)
In the spirit of the recent release of Transformers the movie, PingMag caught up with Melbourne born Alex Kubalsky, a toy designer at Takaratomy living in Tokyo who created the transformations for Bumblebee, Mirage and a heap of merchandise.
... I tried to get into industrial design but didn't: I got top marks for the portfolio and the interview - but there was this drawing test. In the end, I just ran out of time and I failed miserably...
Gemma Holt showed off her new Pencil Jewellery designs at this year's RCA Summer Show. The series features links crafted from cut pencils that are then gold foiled and stamped with her own hallmark design and chained together. The hexagonal shape represents the cross-section profile of a standard pencil.
via dezeen
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
The first European regional conference of the Usability Professionals' Association (UPA) will take place in Torino, Italy, named the 2008 World Design Capital.
The UPA Europe 2008 conference will focus on usability and design and is expected to take place in October or December 2008. Designers, researchers and usability specialists from around the world will be invited to share and learn about innovative ways to design better products and experiences.
Posted by: Mark Vanderbeeken | Comments (0)
Check out this bitchin' house made entirely of various old doors near Elberton, Georgia, snapped from a car cruising by at 55 mph!
thanks steve!
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (3)
Computer engineers and biologists are currently collaborating in a bizarre experiment in a Massachusetts swamp. Turtlenet is a project where researchers have attached small solar-powered computers to the backs of 15 actual snapping turtles.
The idea behind the technology is to create a network of constantly moving devices that record and store information, transmit data from one device to another, then relay all the saved information to a central location while running on self-charging batteries.
The computers record the turtle's vital signs (we swear we're not making this up), and when they come within 1/10th of a mile to each other, the computers start swapping information. In this manner info about all the turtles is relayed back to the base station, node-by-node style, at UMass Amherst.
And why are they doing this? Biologists get to track the turtles, which are in danger of extinction, and the computer guys get to test wireless communication networks.
Animal lovers, have no fear; the computers are lightweight, postcard-sized, and attached in such a way that mating is still possible.
via ap
Three friends make a Rube Goldberg machine in the woods out of sticks, stones and vines. The Discovery Channel Canada captures it. Check out this clip of Rube Goldberg meets Henry David Thoreau.
via makezine
Apple released its Web iPhone developer guidelines today, and people ain't wasting time. Technology analyst Raven Zachary's iPhone Developer's Camp, which starts tomorrow, has been in the works for 3 weeks, with sponsors including Adobe, Yahoo and Belkin.
"The focus is on people who are developers, designers, and testers," says Zachary. "[Participants will work in teams over the weekend to build and launch applications for the iPhone. On Sunday, our goal is to have on our site, iPhoneDevCamp, links to a number of applications for the iPhone."
via pcworld
A new company in New Zealand wants to make furniture design dreams a reality for those who don't have workshops of their own. Ponoko users from around the globe can take advantage of the online tool where designs are uploaded for a local Ponoko factory to churn out and send to you as an actual realization. You can then place your product in Ponoko's online marketplace where anyone can purchase your design and you get paid. This whole shazam is still in the beta-zone and we're not exactly sure how the cash-flow works, but it sounds pretty interesting for a start. You can keep up with Ponoko news at their blog right over here.
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (1)So there needs to be some kind of iPhone something-or-other today, right? Might as well be David Pogues' silly video of his "I Want An iPhone" song, bellowed to the tune of "I Did It My Way."
via gizmodo
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
We still haven't escaped the ubiquitous iPhone chatter, but here comes some news that may divert your attention for a second or two. Multi-touch will soon be implemented into a new mouse according to Apple's newest patent filing, showing a clear-cased, mouse with a customizable interface that uses cameras and illumination to detect directional movement on the mouse, "clicking", and other tactile commands. Mighty Mouse might have to step down from its throne when this pretty new thing comes along...
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
Plastic sandwich bags are all-too-easy to use once then toss in the trash, especially if you've got a whole econo-pack to last you a lifetime. Mobi bags are printed with fun, colorful designs that add some visual pizzaz to tuna fish sandwiches and mid-day snacks. Sure, they might cost a little more, but because it's difficult to throw pretty things away, you may find yourself reusing them--this will rectify the cost dilemma and also reduce the amount of plastic trash you send off to landfills.
via mocoloco
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (1)
Tomorrow is the deadline for the One Hour Design Challenge, so no more procrastinating! The rules are simple - design and illustrate a product in one hour. Post your work in the discussion forums. Winner gets a new pair of shoes, with limited edition Core77 Tshirts to the runners up. Shown above is 'Rubber Suction Art' by Raffi99.
Posted by: StuCon | Comments (0)
This would be in Roadside America, if it weren't in Canada. The Fridge Wall, fronting onto Sutil Point Road on the south end of Cortes Island in British Columbia, was built by "a guy named Marc." His intent, apparently, is to cover the entire structure in adobe or cob, but that would kinda ruin the whole thing, no? And the graffiti? Sure, a one-liner, but it's not confirmed if it was applied by Marc himself or by an adoring fan. Well, a fan with a sense of humor, anyway.
Bonus punchline: Click on the "continued" link below for a recently-added scrawl.
Thanks to Eric for sending this in!
Project X Challengers are business and product development case studies in manga form. Cup Noodle, 7-11, and Datsun are the entries in the series so far.
via ethnography.com
Posted by: Steve Portigal | Comments (0)ID freelancers may not often take holidays, but now it looks like we're getting one of our own, kind of. The International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (a sort of global IDSA) has just announced that June 29, 2008 will be the first "World Industrial Design Day." 2007 will be filled with a series of lead-up events, until the holiday finally arrives and families gather 'round the ID tree to shower us designers with praise, recognition, free Wacom pen tablets, untold riches, and...sorry, we're getting carried away. Anyways, yeah, June 29th '08, put that one in your calendar, folks.
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (0)
Gotta love Ikea Hacker, where DIY mavens show you how to make laptop stands from cheap stools and entertainment centers out of inexpensive bookshelves. If you've got ReadyMade on your self-made coffee table, you need this link in your bookmarks.
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (0)
Here's a spoof site, complete with tech specs, that couldn't have come at a better time. iDea doesn't really poke fun at Apple products as much as it encourages us to remember that great ideas are abound in our minds and imaginations, and all we need to do is write them down, draw them out, and follow through. Either that, or paper napkins are some kind of miracle tools that've been overlooked for ages.
A triumph of design simplicity. Small enough to fit into a shirt pocket and weighing less than a credit card, the iDea offers a revolutionary portable platform for all your thoughts. Anytime, anywhere your next bright idea happens you'll be prepared to capture it with ease.
We're loving the accessories options which include the iDea Brainstorm (napkin holder), InkSync input set (pen and pencil), iDea PostUP (a roll of duct tape), and itTAch (a binder clip). Har dee har.
via coudal
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
Cut & Paste wants you to take center stage once again for the upcoming 2007 tournament this fall. The call for entries deadline is July 17, and from that point, chosen candidates, based on "Originality, Technique, and Overall Dopeness", from each city will perform a 15 minute test round to qualify as a live tournament contestant. Like last year, they're not skimping on the prizes with a 13" Macbook for first place, Wacom Intuos3 Tablets for semifinalists, Adobe CS3 Master Collection for the Audience Prize, and a Wacom Cintiq 21UX Pen-Based Display for the Jury Prize. Eight final contestants selected from each city will be announced on August 3rd, 2007.
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
Street artist Laurent's bold and simple Tetris wheatpaste piece on the streets of Paris is a nice contrast to the illustration-heavy majority of paste-ups.
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
We're wondering if any of these bidders first attempted to visit their local Apple store to see if, perhaps, a store clerk might give away one of these iPhone bags for free...you know, just any kind of attempt before dropping 305 dollaroos on a freaking shopping bag. The eBay auction title reads "iPhone Carrying Bag. Holds 4GB and 8GB Phones!" They probably could've gotten more for it if they didn't leave out that it can hold a bunch of other stuff too, like all brands of cell phones, ripe fruit, or shredded paper. Other sellers peddling these bags are so bold as to offer them at $500 as the "buy it now" price!
via gizmodo
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (1)
Wasabi-injected chocolates and petit fours are obvious choices for an outgoing sweet tooth, but these wagashi, seasonal Japanese confections, are artfully crafted to please both the eyeballs and taste buds. Get the breakdown and more details on this "eye candy" over at PingMag.
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)Initial estimates of first-weekend iPhone sales were 525,000 units, but an analyst at Goldman Sachs says actual sales were "at least" double GS's previous forecast of 350,000 units.
If that's true--that Apple sold 700,000 units already--at an average price of $549 between the 4 and the 8 gig, that translates to US $384 million dollars in sales. In a weekend.
Eep.
It's the opposite of model-train-set miniatures; here's some shots of everyday objects writ large by what appears to be a group of Israeli industrial designers. Click here for Erez Sherman's entire photoset of the exhibit.
via neatorama
To promote the upcoming Simpsons movie, its producers have begun converting 7-11s to full-on Kwik-E-Marts, complete with products from the cartoon universe that you can actually buy and consume. Full photoset here.
If you check the parking lot of the Burbank location, above, it looks like Chief Wiggum is already in attendance, possibly stocking up on Krusty O's.
thanks kpb3ar!
A few months ago I wrote here about the presentation of the Torino Geodesign project, a competition of ideas - open to designers, architects, visual artists and graphic designers - who are interested in designing objects, utensils and services in collaboration with communities residing in the Turin area and companies based in Piedmont, Italy.
The project is organised by Torino 2008 World Design Capital in collaboration with Abitare magazine (and lead by its editor-in-chief Stefano Boeri) and a call for proposals (pdf) has just been published. Deadline: 30 September.
Posted by: Mark Vanderbeeken | Comments (0)
Royal Philips Electronics today announced its global asimpleswitch.com consumer campaign showing that solutions for reducing energy consumption can be simple and actionable without compromising on quality of life.
By partnering with The Alliance for Climate Protection and the global Live Earth concerts on July 7th 2007, Philips aims to inspire more than two billion people to take simple steps, such as changing a light bulb, to lead a more energy efficient life. Part of the campaign is a consumer website www.asimpleswitch.com, launched on July 4 2007. Visitors to the Live Earth concerts and the Live Earth and MSN websites will be invited to record a personal 'simple switch' pledge either online or via SMS. Philips will track these collective pledges to change to energy efficient lighting and calculate the resulting energy and costs savings on the asimpleswitch.com website.
Posted by: Mark Vanderbeeken | Comments (4)
Interesting progression of articles at the NY Times over the past month on the rapidly (like, brushfire rapidly) expanding phenomenon of virtual product crossover.
First, on June 6, this article in the Technology section talks about the popularity of websites like Cartoon Doll Emporium, that allow kids to virtually dress up their online avatars with enormous flexibility, and then chat about them. Then the Business section examines the difficulties and opportunities of selling virtual versions of real consumer goods on Second Life on June 11. And last week, the Fashion & Style section runs this eye-opening bit on the joys of dressing up your virtual WWF wrestler or Grand Theft Auto thug--especially among otherwise fashion-averse men in their 20s and 30s.
Replicating familiar real-world objects in virtual worlds is not a new thing by a long shot, of course. Players have been duplicating their homes, cars and selves in Second Life, the Sims...heck, some of us tried to re-create our hometowns in SimCity back in 1992. The trajectory that's being traced in this latest series of stories is important from a design perspective though, because it is in some cases inverting the flow of concepts between real and virtual. This has implications for how objects and clothes get designed and sold in the fairly near future.
Posted by: Carl Alviani | Comments (1)
Recently a great deal of attention has been paid to what makes some societies successful and others less so. From the macroeconomic perspective, Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel garnered a great deal of attention as well as a Pulitzer Prize for its exploration of the synergies that agrarian cultures gained from population density, as opposed to the autonomous roving societies typified in hunter-gatherer cultures. Richard Wright explains this synthesis more thoroughly in his book Nozero where he hypothesizes that population density generates a group dynamic (based on capitalism and trade) where self-serving individuals working for their own benefit can create positive-sum games, where all parties can benefit from serving their individual well-being. Ultimately when Diamond and Wright speak about "success" they are speaking of innovation; and while we all may agree that innovation is a good thing, neither author provides a mechanism for creating innovation outside of a society.
So given a desire for creativity, what can an individual do to spur progress? Although regimented sequences and heuristics seem anathema to creativity, Curt Cloninger sets out to create an itemized protocol for generating creativity in his book Hot-Wiring Your Creative Process. Many remedies for creative stagnation have been proposed in the past, mostly involving pursuing alternate or "out-of-the-box" approaches such as brainstorming or sabbaticals for creative thought. Folk wisdom usually advocates that the best way to attack a creative problem is to run away. Leave the dilemma behind and allow the subconscious mind to tackle the problem while your conscious mind takes a walk in the park, sometimes literally.
Cloninger takes the opposite tack, emphasizing the importance of a creative "process." In his mind, it is better to simply "do" than to think. Hot-Wiring the Creative Process includes clear methodologies and examples of iterated approaches (yes, including brainstorming and flashcards for inspiration), but he also advocates exercises to keep creativity flowing, particularly tasks that are not related to the job at hand, but closer to a designer's personal passions. Much like most art teachers, Cloninger emphasizes the importance of speed and artificial constraints. By limiting the number of possible avenues, a designer can feel free to focus on particular areas rather than being overwhelmed by all of the possibilities of a project. Constraining time further liberates a designer from fussiness and tightness, two of the most reviled adjectives in art class. For those of us who've gone to school for art or design, this is all stuff that we've heard before, but may need to hear again.
today's the 4th of July.
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
Wakey wakey! Don't sleep in too late or you'll be in for a rude awakening when the fireworks roll around. If you're already up, avoid handling the limb-blasters yourself and take a moment to appreciate the often overlooked kitsch-cool label art instead.
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
1: Lead in cathode ray tube and solder
2: Arsenic in older cathode ray tubes
5: Antimony trioxide as flame retardant
4: Polybrominated flame retardants in plastic casings, cables and circuit boards
3: Selenium in circuit boards as power supply rectifier
6: Cadmium in circuit boards and semiconductors
7: Chromium in steel as corrosion protection
8: Cobalt in steel for structure and magnetivity
9: Mercury in switches and housing
Via the BBC's article on the WEEE directive on recycling consumer electronics in the UK now in effect.
Posted by: Niti Bhan | Comments (0)"Public Design Center, Inc. is an independent 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded in January of 2007 with the mission of providing design-studio production for groups and projects which focus on economic development and sustainability in underserved communities.
We provide print and web production for projects in impoverished areas with emphasis on rural issues, urban planning, bio, wind and solar energy, economic development, organic farming, energy conservation, microfinance, and sustainable building."
Posted by: Niti Bhan | Comments (0)
Spanish motor-maker SunRed has revealed its concept idea for a solar-powered motorbike.
When/if something like this ever goes on sale, it'll be perfect for pottering about in city traffic jams while feeling smug over how small your carbon footprint is - a modern state of mind we're calling "Carbon Smugness".
via.
For the last few years Brad Holland, a pioneer of contemporary conceptual editorial illustration, has been on tireless mission: To insure that the existing copyright law is not altered in such a way as to erode the rights of artists in this electronic information age--an age, incidentally, where intellectual property is so highly prized that mega corporations seek the exclusive rights to use any art, regardless of creator, for their own profit. As a founding member of the Illustrator's Partnership Holland has become a true expert in copyright legislation. In his new role as advocate, he has spoken up for the rights of all artists, and he's been a witness before congressional hearings on the efficacy of retaining strict laws that protect the fundamental intellectual property rights of artists, illustrators, and designers.
Steven Heller caught up with Holland after one his many an exhausting periods of preparation another legislative battle, when they discussed the importance of retaining long-term copyright protection and the reasons why certain groups and industries are fighting to ease, if not abolish, copyright in the United States.
Thanks to Randy Hunt for co-production on this Broadcast.
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Posted by: core jr | Comments (2)
Three industrial designers and two mechanical designers over at IDE Incorporated spent two years going through six different designs before producing the RT700, the road bike to end all road bikes. It's just been awarded Outside magazine's "Best Road Bike 2007" and has already racked up awards from the IDSA and BusinessWeek.
The innovative design features an aerodynamically-shaped seatpost with an uncircular design that means you don't have to manually "center" the seat. The top tube is flattened to hold fabric food containers of the sort calory-burning triathletes use. Even the seatstays have been considered; here they're designed to present an easily-discernible hourglass silhouette to riders behind, which is important during group rides or pack races where cyclists behind you need to be able to see you.
The RT700 is manufactured by Kestrel, old hands at carbon fiber; bike fetishists can check out the details here.