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This is not the next B-Movie but all about the new Gibson Robot Guitar, the world's first guitar with robot technology. The website features a countdown timer showing that the first run will already be released within a few days.
The guitar is tuned by tiny servo motors that tune all strings in no more than five seconds! The inventor Chris Adams took a bit longer, actually some 10 years to perfect the auto-tuning system but worth the efforts. Accordingly: "We checked the guitar out with some nine-year-old kids, and they picked it up immediately. It doesn't come easier than this - pull the knob, strum, push in, done."
The digital guitar, introduced in 2002, was cited by Time magazine as one of that year's coolest inventions. To find out what the Robot Guitar will be like, get yourself a sleeping bag and find the nearest dealer here for its global launch on the 7th of December.
thanks laure!
Posted by: Aart van Bezooyen | Comments (2)
If you still have some time to burn in the cubicle this early Friday evening, check out Lie-Ins and Tigers for a clever, quippy end to the last week in November.
via the serif
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
Mathieu Lehanneur's indoor air filtration system pulls in filthy air to be processed through a plant's leaves, roots, and humidity, reintroducing purified air back into the room.
Bel-Air is a mini mobile greenhouse that continuously inhales the space-polluted air, forces it through three natural filters (the plant leaves, its roots, and a humid bath) before ejecting it, purified.This patented principal has two advantages: Bel-Air is to the American and Asiatic common filter appliances what Dyson is to regular vacuum cleaners. Here, the noxious particles are captured, and transformed inside the system. No more filters to change, and no more clogs.
via dezeen
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (5)Your next job could be...
Located at : Cooper in San Francisco, CA
With the title of : Visual Design Consultant
The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.
Posted by: core jr | Comments (0)
Michal Tatarkiewicz's life-size Subway Drawings look just like the real thing, sans the mystery smells and that creepy dude staring at you.
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
Iken has just announched its Workstation of the Future competition for 2008, open to both students and professionals in Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji, and with prizes awarded for innovation and sustainability. All entries must be submitted by June 30th, 2008.
You are invited to investigate the future design of the work environment - this is your opportunity to showcase your creativity to the Australian design community! Now in its second year, Workstation of the Future 2008 is recognised as one of the most exciting design competitions in the country.Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)Iken in conjunction with various sponsors is offering a unique and exciting opportunity for architects, designers and students to conceive the office of tomorrow. There are great prizes to be won including a D10-day trip to Orgatec, Cologne, a visit to our manufacturer Gispen in The Netherlands and a visit to Okamura in Japan!
At most art openings, you check out the art while sipping drinks. Artist Hannes Broecker has combined the two with his "Drink Away the Art," putting taps on a series of framed cocktails and inviting patrons to imbibe. Sure the frames will look emptier as the night progresses, but by then you'll be too drunk to notice.
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (1)This one's a doozy, and there's a reason we saved it for a Friday: this clip is 28 minutes long.
What is it? A vintage episode of the defunct program "Computer Chronicles," this one covering Japan's Tsukuba Expo '85. What's amazing is that even 22 years later, some of Japan's 1985 technology still drops jaws, like the 14-storey CRT television that kicks the program off. (Also amazing: Sony is introduced as "Sony, a Japanese manufacturer.")
Sure it's a Friday, but I've still got some work to do--do I have to watch the whole thing?
Of course not, just load it up and scan the highlights. One you must not miss: at minute-marker 2:38, check out the gaggle of Japanese schoolboys with hair that just won't quit gathering around an early PC. Never mind that the computer looks like the one from Lost--if their hair doesn't get a reaction out of you, someone should mine you, because you're made out of stone.
via tv in japan
Many a night we've lain awake thinking "Why can't someone throw a conference based on design vis-a-vis the semantics of form and movement?"
Well, our prayers have been answered!
Design & Semantics of Form & Movement conference
December 12th and 13th
Northumbria UniversityOur focus is on the meanings of products and how designers communicate information, functions and ideas to enable these to be perceived and understood by people in their everyday lives.
We have 4 keynote speakers across the two days and 22 break-out sessions. In the break-out sessions researchers from around the world, including the USA, Australia and Indonesia, will be presenting the latest research in this exciting field of design. Our keynote speakers are:
Bernhard Buerdek, Academy of Art and Design, Offenbach am Main
Geoff Hollington, Hollington UK
Peter Higgins, Land Design Studio
Kevin McCullagh, Plan
Our facetiousness aside, this is actually the 3rd annual DeSForM conference. This one is co-sponsored by Philips and Faculteit Industrial Design, more info available here.
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (0)
This short film by Hillman Curtis starts out strong with a fast-paced blow by blow account of all the partners who have served time at the Pentagram machine since its conception in 1962. The second half takes it down a notch with some insight into the daily goings on, a quick look at the various studio spaces, and acknowledges a genuine preoccupation of worrying who the next partner will be. Ending with a slow, overly nostalgic slideshow of employees who stare contemplatively either at the camera or into space, it makes me wonder if they're still thinking who the next partner will be, or mourning a recent death.
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (1)
We wanted to spread the word that last night, Coroflot topped 75,000 portfolios. Thank you to all the members out there who make the site a thriving place for creative work.
Posted by: core jr | Comments (0)There are some fascinating answers in the "Young Digital Mavens" survey put out by advertising company JWT concerning how Chinese view and use the internet, vs. Americans.
Online population
China: 137 million
USA: 165-210 million
Digital technology is an essential part of how I live
China: 80%
USA: 68%
I would not feel okay going without internet access for more than a day
China: 25%
USA: 12%
Interactivity helps create intimacy, even at a distance
China: 82%
USA: 36%
It's perfectly possible to have real relationships purely online with no face-to-face contact
China: 63%
USA: 21%
The internet helps me make friends
China: 77%
USA: 30%
The internet broadens my sex life
China: 32%
USA: 11%
Read the full article via The Economist, with analysis, here.
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (0)The validation of India as both a design resource and market continues as GM opens a car design studio in Bangalore, attached to the existing GM Technical Centre. Now GM's engineers and designers in India can finally argue face-to-face!
Seriously though, the new studio will have 70 employees by the end of the year (added to the Tech Centre's 1,900 employees).
[GM Design Veep Edward T.] Welburn said it will take some time before the studio starts designing complete cars. "It will initially be like a listening post for us to gather and understand local product design requirements," he said.
via sify
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (0)While Apple's got a code of silence resembling omerta, AT&T is a different story: CEO Randall Stephenson has stated there will be a 3G iPhone coming out next year. (You could practically see the thought bubble over his head filled with "Woops--hope Steve doesn't mind I said that.") Whether this will slow Christmas sales of the current soon-to-be-obsolete iPhone isn't yet clear.
via information week
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (0)
For those of you in New York tomorrow night looking for some cultural action but can't afford the Gala tickets to the New Museum opening, head over to the Burg and catch "The Trail" by artist WK INTERACT who's taking over the espeis archetype gallery with his brand of large-scale gritty urban mixed-media painting and installations. Supertouchblog went behind the scenes this week and shared some snaps.
Opening Friday November 30th, 2007. 7pm.
espeis archetype gallery
90 Wythe Ave. (at N. 11th st)
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
New York, NY 11211
In addition to that judge losing his job, it's looking like a bad, or at least weird, week for cell phones. As of today cell phone subscriptions worldwide have reached 3.3 billion people, 50% of Earth's population. Also today, a South Korean doctor revealed that a DoA 33-year-old quarry worker may have been killed by his cell phone. An apparent explosion of the phone burned his chest, fractured his ribs and caused internal bleeding. Police are still investigating.
We love finding out cell phones can kill us, not with cancer but by exploding, on the same day we find out half the planet is now carrying them around.
Edit: Good news! Well, for most of us, not that quarry worker. Turns out he was accidentally killed by a co-worker with industrial machinery--the "exploding cell phone" bit was a cover-up.
via newswire
This spiral-bound Napkin Notebook is sorta backwards when it comes to the true nature of napkin sketching, but we love it anyhoo.
via swissmiss
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)In his post, " OLPC: When Good Design Isn't Enough", designer and business consultant Greg Hinzman points out the deal-breaking difference between customers and users when it comes to OLPC's target market. And of course, when describing its "good design", he took the liberty of making a timely Kindle comparison. (C'mon, who could resist? And note that he's provided some Kindle commentary in the next previous post.)
The best designers act as advocates for the end user, working hard to create a simple, elegant, and enjoyable experience for them. That works well when the users and customers are one and the same. However, very often there are intermediary customers that must also be considered. Maybe that's a little more marketing strategy than designers want to be accountable for, but ignoring the needs of the customer and solely focusing on the needs of the user can be a losing strategy.Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
When multiplied and melded, "old and traditional" can redefine "new and novel" as proven by Yvonne Fehling and Jennie Peiz's Stuhlhockerbank.
via ffffound!
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)Your next job could be...
Located at : HUGE in Los Angeles, CA
With the title of : Interaction Designer - Experience Lead
The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.
Posted by: core jr | Comments (0)
Vancouver's 2010 Winter Olympics will officially be accompanied by these cuddly, scarf and earmuff-clad mascots--animal guardian spirit Sumi, Quatchi the sasquatch, and Miga the sea bear, to be exact. Oh, and there's supposedly some marmot named MukMuk but we had a hard time finding him, so clearly he's too high maintenance, or perhaps, misunderstood. The mascots were designed by L.A. and Vancouver-based illustration and design studio Meomi.
via unbeige
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (1)
We'll stick with our paper hats and folded notes circa jr. high, but at least two people have obviously far surpassed our "beginners" printer paper tricks. Sipho's baby fugu is very convincing as the puffiest of all baby pufferfishes. Philip West's responsible for the super intricate horse head and his tiny textured Yoda is only one in a collection of Star Wars origami figures.
via cpluv
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)Totally scary: this footage of takeoff tests of the Airbus 380 (first) shows the giant bird grinding its tail on the tarmac while sparks fly. Even scarier is the "cross-wind" landing footage (second), where the behemoth appears to be moving sideways more than it's moving forward.
Manufacturing geeks, follow this link to the source--there's time-lapse video of the plane being put together, condensed into 7 minutes.
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (2)This month's posterboy for Autodesk is Swiss manufacturer Franke, just named Autodesk Inventor of the Month. (The news is new, so the Autodesk site's not yet been updated.) Kitchen-, Food-Service- and Washroom-systems designer Franke runs a truly global operation, of the sort that probably leaves globalists salivating: with branches in North & South America, Africa, Asia and Europe, Franke uses Alias Studio and Inventor software to let designers in one region communicate with manufacturers in another. With this system they are able to design everything including the veritable kitchen sink, their specialty.
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (0)
On Saturday, December 15th in NYC, there will be an amazing event taking place through the AIGANY. Cause/Effect: Design As Change Agent boasts a stellar lineup from Phil Patton, Lisa Strausfeld, and Chris Hacker to Randy Hunt, Marc Alt and Lara McCormick. Oh, did we mention Seymour Chwast or Scott Stowell? There are a ton more--too many bold face names to choose from! Here's the pitch:
A one-day event that looks at the intersection of design and social responsibility in its current and historical contexts. When designers respond to local and global crises, design becomes their causal force and change their endgame. In this arena, good design is held to breath-takingly high standards. It is judged instantly ineffectual if it only serves as aesthetic anesthesia and fundamentally flawed if it does not garner real-time results. A wide range of creative practitioners will demonstrate how they have embraced this challenge, tackling the causality of reform in their work while keeping their formalist integrity intact. Join them for an inspiring examination of accountable design that embodies the beautiful solution, the intentionally humane and the ethically sound.
Need further convincing? Steve Heller is moderating the whole shebang.
All info, lineup, and tickets at the site.
Posted by: core jr | Comments (0)The results are in:
Hungarian design student Levente Szabo from Moholy-Nagy University of Art & Design, Hungary, has won the Electrolux Design Lab 2007 competition with E-wash, a compact washing washing machine that uses soap nuts instead of detergent.
(Soap nuts are actually the fruit of the Sapindus shrub and are used in some parts of the world to clean clothes, as it's a re-usable, naturally-occurring detergent with no chemical byproducts.)
"E-wash is a brilliant connection between ancient knowledge and high-tech," comments juror Henrik Otto, Head of Global Design for Electrolux. "It takes someone open-minded to look for solutions from somewhere else and apply them to his own culture."Adds fellow juror Matali Crasset, an award-winning French designer: "It is a global system. It doesn't just address one part of the process."
Szabo says that his starting point was the polluting effect of both the washing process and the production, packaging and transportation of the detergent. "I was looking for a substance that could replace the detergent," he explains. "The soapnut is a natural plant and can be cultivated. It does not harm nature but is a part of it.
"The other problem was the form of conventional washing machine. I reduced the size and made it flat, so it would fit into a small apartment, but also would be able to wash a lot of clothes at the same time."
To read more about the winner and the runners-up, click here.
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (0)"If anything characterizes the 21st century, it's our inability to restrain ourselves for the benefit of other people," said James Katz, director of the Center for Mobile Communication Studies at Rutgers University, in an article earlier this month about the release of cell phone jammers, which people can use to surreptitiously drop the calls of that loud chatterer nearby.
This seems to have extra relevance to at least one courtroom in upstate New York: on Tuesday, the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct voted to remove Judge Robert Restaino from the bench after he flipped out when a ringing cell phone pierced the silence of the courtroom. The judge demanded the owner step forward; when no one did, he spent the next two hours indiscriminately jailing 46 people, including calling back 11 people he had already released on their own recognizance and increasing their bail.
Restaino, citing "certain stresses in his personal life," is seeking appeal. No word on whether it will happen--ironically enough, it's now the judge who's waiting for his phone to ring.
via the new york times and cnet
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (1)
Agata Jaworska is one of the fresh design graduates from the Design Academy in Eindhoven (the Netherlands). We spotted her 'Made in Transit' project in the midst of the graduation show during last month's Dutch Design Week.
Made in Transit is a new packaging concept where food production and distribution go hand in hand. Agata's thinking is focuses on enabling growth rather than preserving freshness, a shift from 'best before' to 'ready by' for fresh foods. The aim is to enable growth throughout the entire supply chain so that the consumer actually harvests the product when he's ready to consume.
Her outspoken thesis demonstrates very well how design thinking can go beyond the operational level of packaging design and becomes a powerful tool for new strategies. Enjoy the story in a more visual with the Made in Transit animation on YouTube
Agata notes she is working together with scientists from the Wageningen University to develop a proposal for funding. Lets wish her good luck and hope today's blog post will be next year's success story!
Posted by: Aart van Bezooyen | Comments (0)
One of the most remarkable things about reading the interviews contained in Debbie Millman's How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer is noticing just how many of the interviewees seemed to know even in their earliest memories that graphic design was their calling. For the reader hoping that the book will live up to its titular promises, learning that the childhoods of many iconic designers already showed indications of their future promise may be disheartening. That said, in any examination of Millman's interviews of established design figures such as Stefan Sagmeister and Michael Bierut, the reader would be remiss in forgetting the value of hindsight. No less than Milton Glaser puts it best in his own interview. When asked about his first creative memory, he responds, "My memory of the past is that there are so many areas that are opaque, and I feel that there are so many areas that I made up later in life."
In some ways, everyone is entitled to writing their own stories, and after a lifetime of design, it's not surprising that successful designers look back on their childhoods as idyllically creative. Paradoxically, many of the designers whose earliest memories were of art still had trouble finding graphic design as a career path. Instead, they approached the field tangentially, embracing graphic design after becoming dissatisfied with fine art, or suddenly realizing the beauty of a layout or a typeface.
As the introduction states, Millman herself knows that the question of how to think like a great graphic designer is not an appropriate topic for a self-help book. Instead, it may be more like receiving the Dharma. As the host of Design Matters, an internet radio talk show, she is quite accustomed to the give and take of a lively Q&A and her questions reveal that fluidity. How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer offers outsiders a rare glimpse into the minds of designers; and they are a multifaceted bunch, united largely by early creative memories, truly philosophical levels of introspection, and most profoundly, a sense of humor (more on that later).
Given the title, however, the prospective reader must wonder what prescriptive advice could be gleaned from the book's pages, I can recommend the following totally unrelated recurrent habitual behaviors: early morning jogs, a borderline compulsion for order, a complete embrace of creative destruction, tenacity and occasional forced isolation. I also couldn't help but observe that that while designing record covers in the seventies and eighties seems to lead inextricably to dissatisfaction with the state of affairs in design at the new millennia; a willingness to take on a variety of clients and jobs seems to generate lasting happiness.
Posted by: Robert Blinn | Comments (1)
"The Laptop Club" is an after-school program for 2nd and 3rd graders in North Carolina, and as you can guess from the name, they design laptops. It's true that they don't go as far as spec'ing out parting lines and ABS numbers, but innovations like one-touch access to "barbie.com" are priceless in their own right. And no, those lines aren't crooked; we think they're just experimenting with alternate ergonomic layouts.
Click here for their story, and even some "designer interviews!"
via design observer
lexicon asks "looking back, can you see earlier signs that you were destined to be a designer?" Lots of answers included LEGOs and taking stuff apart, but we really enjoyed valxcurry's recollection of days as an early critic. "...when i was four i was reprimanded for telling other students that their work 'was yucky'." (Did one of those students design a Kindle? We kid, we kid.)
What were you like? Tell us here.
hot tip from the one and only yo.
Posted by: core jr | Comments (0)
Whether dangling from a push pin or suspended on a wire these tiny PhotoHangers, designed by +d's Juuta Kan, are a preciously different way to display your favorite snapshots. They're also good for postcards, notes, and, well, anything that'll fit in them, really.
via mocoloco
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (1)Your next job could be...
Located at : New Era Cap Company in Buffalo, New York
With the title of : Director of Apparel
The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.
Posted by: core jr | Comments (0)
Chip Kidd's brief message on the Kindle is less than (or equal to) 200 words, yet we had such a hard time deciding on which juicy bit to quote. Here's one:
...the printed book as a piece of technology has yet to be improved upon. And won't. Certainly not by something that looks like a prop from Charlie's Angels and has, are you ready, a whopping ONE typeface. For everything! Yay!
Zing.
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (1)Your next job could be...
Located at : Avenue A|Razorfish in New York, NY
With the title of : Creative Director
The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.
Posted by: core jr | Comments (0)
These bold and bright City Neighborhood posters by Ork Design (a.k.a. Jenny Beorkrem) separate each nook and cranny using the power of type. Not so good for finding your way around town, but most excellent for staring at.
via the serif
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
Window-less rooms can benefit from the faux-portal that is Makoto Hirahara's Bright Blind, mimicking your classic blinded window. The electroluminescent slats lit by a hidden light source are so convincing, we'd be fooled at first glance. Bright Blind operates identically to its "real" cousin, with the turning rod controlling the intensity of light.
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (3)
From Taipei to Saigon and from Florence to Madrid, to say nothing of the Vespa revivals in New York and San Francisco, the streets are buzzing with scooters. Although they burn less gas than cars and take up far less space, they're not without their problems: white laundry in these towns requires extra attention, and riding behind one invariably leads to coughing.
To solve this, MIT Professor of Architecture and Media Arts and Sciences William J. Mitchell and his students in MIT's Smart Cities Group have come up with an electric scooter that houses motors inside the wheels itself. The design retains the space efficiency of a traditional scooter sans the emissions, and reduces costs and parts. "A typical gas scooter has about 1,000 parts, but ours only has 150." The lack of a conventional engine also enables the scooter's folding design, increasing its urban appeal.
The forward-looking Mitchell and his team have also thought about how the scooters could be presented to the public, as cost-efficient rentals. Read an in-depth article on the project here.
via science daily
It's been likened to an iPod and called "the world's most high-tech residential tower" and "the first cybertecture apartment building in the world." The 230-apartment building tilts at a 7-degree angle and is being built in Dubai by Omniyat Properties. Best of all it's called "The Pad," like Fonzie's on their marketing board.
The Pad has just been awarded Best International Apartment at the CNBC International Property Awards in Vegas. So what does the building actually do?
...real-time projection feeds [let you] change your outside view...projecting the Caribbean or New York skyline onto your windows....
Bathrooms fitted with equipment that [monitors] your temperature, weight and blood pressure....
...have dinner with loved ones from across the globe via a video conferencing link projected into your dining room...
Rotating living and dining rooms giving you 360-degree views of Dubai...
...reactive lighting that responds to incoming phone calls and the residents' moods...
The Pad is scheduled to be finished in late 2009.
Via al bawaba
One of the drawbacks to freelancing as a "rendering guy" or a "CAD guy" is that you don't get to see the entire design process. What happens to your expertly detailed drawing once you've uploaded it to the client's FTP?
Designophy expounds on Wired's recent look at frog design to explain, with pictures, several steps of the design process that most of us "specialist" (a/k/a one-trick-pony) freelancers never get exposed to. From modelmaking to mechanical engineering to the down-and-dirty CNC, take a look at how the other half works.
Hey everybody! Only three days left to add your 2¢ to the 7th Annual Design Salary Survey! It takes just a minute, so come fill it out!
Please spread the word too, we could use a little help in the Interior Design and Architecture fields!
The top seven design trends, as reckoned by ThomasNet:
- Global
- Green
- Personal
- Interactive
- "Simplex"
- Feminine
- Health
You're probably thinking "What the heck do those words mean?" Click here for the explanations, with each accompanied by supportive links. (Disclosure: An essay by Core's own Allan Chochinov is cited in the article's resources.)
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (0)
How can you tell when a product's popularity has gone too far? In a recent survey by Washington Square News, twenty percent of NYU students said they would relinquish their right to vote in the next presidential election in exchange for an iPod.
Now if it was one of those be-careful-what-you-wish-for Genies doling out the prizes, the iPods would come preloaded with MP3's of rousing political speeches.
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (2)Like shooting fish in a barrel. We flipped through our copy of the catalog yesterday and were similarly dispirited. Here's a taste of Mark:
My main reaction, though, came from page 5, which advertises the Goyard St. Louis Shopper Tote, a "100% recyclable" canvas bag "made from natural materials." Presumably, carrying this bag up Madison Avenue shows the world how committed one is to environmental causes; all at the mere cost of $1,065.When canvas totes sell for over a thousand bucks, and Barneys colors its slogan green, you know we've turned a corner somewhere. Being good, doing good, creating good become not so much a mission as just another trend to watch in the consumer market - as it appears, gains cachet, then inevitably falls out of favor. That's the thing with fashionable trends: they always come to an end.
Read the whole thing here.
Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (1)
Who could possibly resist a happy cannoli, surprised sardines, a broad-shouldered robot, and a sulky salisbury dinner? Not us, that's for sure! Nicole Gastonguay's needlepoint and crocheted creations are so heart-wrenchingly cute that even the non-food items look good enough to eat.
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
Norwegian-born SWIMS have redefined rainy day footwear, made to slip over the non-clunky shoe of your choice for dry feet and stylish good looks. The interior lining insulates, reduces friction for changing in and out of them, and even polishes your shoes while you walk. SWIMS come in a variety of colors, for men and women (Ms. SWIMS), and in Classic (left) and Mobster (right) styles.
thanks nima!
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (1)"We tried to prove that while parrots repeat, cars talk."
Vincent Fichard and Matthew Jones wrote and directed this traffic-"driven" interactive video project in Dubai where drivers were asked to go around twice if happy (who wouldn't be happy driving a bulldozer?), beep if in love, and flash lights if broke among other mood-reliant choices.
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (2)Your next job could be...
Located at : Trisept Solutions in Milwaukee, WI
With the title of : Web Designer
The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.
Posted by: core jr | Comments (0)
In his Curse of the "D" Word entry, Steven Heller reminds us that "some designers are great because they are exemplary decorators."
handmade letter "D" by saucy dragonfly on flickr
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
The Humanitarian International Design Organization's call for toilet design entries revolved around the need for sanitary waste disposal solutions in the developing world. The top three concepts have just been released, including "Compliance Health Dignity" (a.k.a. The Dignity Toilet, shown above) by Cooler Solutions, engineer Terence Woodside, and industrial designer Mike Loveless.
Lots of designers felt taken by our stories and request to design Sanitary Facilities for people in need. We have choosen 3 designs which we wanted to share with you all. We would like to work further on the design of Mike Loveless, 'Dignity Toilet' in order to see if we could really make it work in the Developing World. All entries captured really good the problematic of what once was also a problem in the Western world. We are trying to find a unique, cheap way adjusted to local customs and possibilities.Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (7)
The holiday gift guides are coming fast and furious now, with NotCot offering 31 of them!", Inhabitat a greenish one, Coolhunting a daily-updated one, treehugger a comprehensive one, Blogher a DIY one, and CNET, well, a manly one.
If we've left someone out, hit us in the comments.
For our part, look for Core77's Ultimate Holiday Gift Guide 2007 coming December 1st! (Can't wait? Check out last year's guide.)
There are line-waiting services in Washington DC that charge $35 an hour; some college punk stands in line, swapping out at the last minute with whatever busy Congressmen ponied up the cash.
This system may finally be supplanted by a little clever code-writing and an object we all carry, the cell phone. CellQ has come up with a system for amusement parks where would-be riders join "virtual queues" with their mobiles, then roam the parks to their content; when their slot on the desired ride is open, they get a buzz.
Yes, we know, the technology is not terribly different from the pagers they hand out at the Cheesecake Factory, but we're so sick of waiting in line--have you been to a New York City post office?--that we're really hoping this one takes off.
via red ferret
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (1)
Here's a profile on designer Tokujin Yoshioka, Design Miami's Designer of the Year for 2008. (You may remember Yoshioka's name from his Media Skin cell phone design, which was recently inducted into the MoMA.) And unlike most profile pieces on Japanese designers, this one highlights Yoshioka's specific thoughts about business vis-a-vis design, rather than offering vague platitudes:
"Companies tend to repeat what has been successful in the past," he says. For a long time this meant that when "bad-looking things sold well," there was no incentive for them to spend money on design. Now, he says, there has been a palpable change in society: "The general public has a more developed sense of beauty."
"Now people in their 30s and 40s are really sensitive to design and have good taste," says Tokujin. "We've got to the point where people can no longer imagine a life without design."
via japan times
Who doesn't like to watch people draw? We're loving this recent UK TV spot for V Water, animated by London-based creative duo Jennifer Chen and Sara Leal for 20:20 London. If only an interface existed like this in real life....
Yet another reason to wish you worked at frog design: getting to screw around with the inaffordable-to-most rapid prototyping machines after hours. In an article about RP, Wired takes a look at Joe Hebenstreit's "engaging" side project--designing a wedding ring for his fiance, and printing a reverse-castable wax prototype to reproduce in platinum. Sure beats the Post-Its and Pilot razorpoints the rest of us come home with.
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (1)
Biometrics are now on-track to replace IDs altogether, with everyone from the officials at Narita Airport, the cops at Central Booking and the proprietors of Disneyworld taking fingerprint samples.
Of the current offerings in biometrics--retina scans, finger- and hand-print identifications, face scans--our vote is for Hitachi's contact-less "finger vein" scanning technology, which has been on sale in Japan since 2006 and is now available in Asia, Europe and North America. A fast and low-hassle finger scan can be linked to your financial information or used like housekeys, and as of October in can be used to start your car.
The thought that we could replace all of this
with this
is alluring indeed. So will it ever happen? Perhaps--just today, India's Punjab National Bank rolled out its first biometric ATM in the village of Gautam Budh Nagar, so that even illiterate customers can withdraw and deposit money. No ATM cards, no signatures, no typing; the machines work by voice prompts, audio recordings, and your finger. PNB plans to have the machines in over 30,000 villages by 2010.
French sculptor Etienne Meneau has designed a wine decanter like no other, resembling blood-filled veins when filled with a tasty red. Both Decanter N°2 and N°4 (a bit "branchier" than N°2) are made of borosilicate glass in limited editions, and with a price of €2000 each, you might opt for a wine of the box kind. Cranberry juice or Kool-Aid could work too.
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So we've all complained about how painfully homely Amazon's Kindle is, but Thibaut Sally's managed to productively channel his frustrations into a nice illustrated breakdown of exactly what irks him so.
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Mischa Vos' Holy Shit toilet paper holder is inspired by a most literal interpretation of the phrase "holy shit."
via pan-dan
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (4)Check out how Elan makes its boards from start to finish, complete with entertaining Finnish/snowboard dude-ish accented narration!
thanks luke!
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (4)This Thursday night in NYC, the SVA MFA Design Criticism department will host its first reading night at KGB Bar in the East Village.
Addressing the concept of home from different angles are Metropolis magazine columnist Karrie Jacobs, design, technology and culture writer David Womack, and conceptual artist Elizabeth Demaray. Jacobs reads an excerpt from her 2006 book, The Perfect $100,000 House, which chronicles the author's nationwide search for a place to call home; Womack recounts the virtues of lightweight living, a revelation received while backpacking in the Sierra Nevadas; and Demaray speaks about a project in which she created alternative plastic housing for homeless hermit crabs.
The event inaugurates a bi-monthly series of reading nights, organized in anticipation of the Design Criticism program’s launch at the School of Visual Arts in Fall 2008.
Thursday, November 29, 7:00–9:00 p.m.
KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street, www.kgbbar.com
More info: 212.592.2561
(Entrance is free; can't criticize that!)
In keeping with Electrolux's eco-conscious Design Lab theme for 2007, the International Forum on Design and the Environment will take place next week in Paris, featuring Matali Crasset, Céline Cousteau, Jason Bradbury, and Henrik Otto in a panel discussion.
Those of us situated less than conveniently close to Paris can catch the Forum on Design Lab TV and/or at the Design Lab blog where a blogger on site will report live with pictures and posts. (Anyone interested in participating remotely can send in questions in advance to the panel via the blog.)
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)Your next job could be...
Located at : Designit in Copenhagen, Denmark
With the title of : Senior Product Designer
The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.
Posted by: core jr | Comments (0)One type of ID badge that has retained the metal aesthetic of the old days is that of lawmen; the heavy metal look projects an air of authority you'll not get from a plastic rectangle. Let's have a look at some older cop badges:
These replicas of the badges commonly seen in America's Wild West are solid brass, except for the center badge, which is nickel-plated copper. (Source.)
Left and right, these police "pie-plate"-style badges from the late 1800s are made of Sterling silver with a 14K gold applique (!) and hand engraved. The Chief of Police (center) gets a decidedly fancier number, with presumably fake inset precious stones. (Source.)
These are the badges of today's New York Police Department, with the Sergeant in the middle and the Detective on the right. They retain the metal look, but are smaller, made of brass alloy, and are most certainly produced in a mold rather than hand engraved. (Source.)
Which is not to say there are no more fancy badges being made--purty custom badges can be ordered (for law enforcement only) online:
And last but not least, the City of Los Angeles' badge, below left, is a predictably glitzy affair. Click here if you're curious to see what those number call-outs represent, but also note that site erroneously states that LA had the nation's first oval badge in 1940. The 1st-issue Philadelphia Police badge, right, is from 1845.
The three TED Prize winners for 2008 are cosmologist Neil Turok, writer Dave Eggers, and religious historian Karen Armstrong. Each winner will receive $100,000, and better yet, "A wish to change the world" will be granted. They'll announce these wishes live at TED 2008 in Monterey, on February 28, 2008 with online presentations to follow shortly thereafter.
Watch the video announcement for effect; the music is just uplifting enough to make you forget it's Monday for, oh, about a minute or two.
via unbeige
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)Everyone's favorite MoMA curator, Paola Antonelli, gives us a nice design-based video back story on the Jaguar XKE (E-type) after a short and flashy Jaguar ad, right here.
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As any corporate employee will tell you, forgetting your ID is the surest way to foul your workday's flow. Getting in and out of the building, the cafeteria, your floor and your office now requires you to wait for security to buzz you in with that tsk-tsk look on their face.
The thin plastic badges we've used to replace their older metal cousins contain far more information and better photos, and any company can plunk down roughly four grand US to produce them; all you need is a simple webcam or digicam, software, and a special printer that can plot accurate barcodes or even encode magnetic strips. Companies like AlphaCard, ZebraCard and Idsupershop sell the printers online, and EasyIDcard offers an online ID-making service for those who don't want to invest in the products themselves.
The printers, alas, leave a little something to be desired in the design department; for the most part they look like Epson printer designers from the '90s taking a stab at early '80s medical equipment.
In an era before biometrics and magnetic strips, how did people know you were who you said you were? Back in the day, people got by on a grainy photo and a uniquely shaped lump of metal. Check out Flickr user LeastWanted's ever-growing collection of vintage ID badges, and be thankful you never had to clip these heavy slabs on the front of your factory overalls.
A fantastic holiday weekend treat! For those of you (very few) who may not already know, Don Norman's shining career began with a post at Harvard and then the University of California, San Diego, where his interests in psychology turned toward cognitive science. As one of the founders of that field, he eventually shifted his energies toward the relationship between user cognition and (computing) technology, which led to executive positions at Apple and Hewlett Packard.
Today he is co-founder and principal of the Nielson Norman Group, a executive consultancy for user-centered thinking; a Professor of Computer Science, Psychology, and Cognitive Science at Northwestern University; and co-director of Northwestern's Segal Design Institute (among too many other titles and activities to list). Importantly for design though, beyond his writing, he is trying to spread the word of design to our engineering and business brethren, so that they get how important design is, and so that we can work better together.
Bruce M. Tharp caught up with Don at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago's design center for a no-holds-barred chat. Don starts things off by criticizing the design of Bruce's voice recorder, talks about his just released book, what he's writing and thinking about now, the relationship between engineering and design, and much, much more!
LISTEN NOW (38 min.) | iTunes | More Broadcasts
Japanese motion graphics firm Groovisions took an architectural drafting convention, axonometric drawings, and used it to create music videos for musician Halfby. (They've also done plan-view and elevation-view music videos for clients as diverse as Nike and Cornelius, but we like the axonometric the best.) The video contains the best elements of Japanese creativity: it's simple but precise, fun, and silly in a good way.
Kites are a 2,800-year-old invention that have been used for everything from simple recreation to message-sending to meteorology. Ben Franklin discovered elecricity with it, the Wright brothers experimented with man-holding kites, and nowadays they're even used to tow commercial ships and yachts.
Now architect Laurie Chetwood has another use for it: energy generation. Chetwood's Wind Dam project uses a 75-meter kite with multiple tethers to funnel wind into a turbine, creating juice. The first prototype is slated to go up on Lake Lagoda in Russia; if it works well, we'll see more. Chetwood is optimistic: "[It's] highly effective at capturing the wind because it replicates the work of a dam and doesn't let the wind escape in the way it does using traditional propellers."
via core form
Weather forecasters say this winter will be unusually mild, so we may be seeing more rain than snow. Cool Hunting's Tim Yu has put up a comparo of the venerable bumbershoot, now updated into several 21st-century iterations, from the fully-automatic to the self-standing to the Red-Dot-Award-winning Senz. Check it out here.
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From the Coroflot portfolio of: Erdem Selek (Istanbul, Turkey)
Featured Project : Dish Drainer
Erdem Selek's multi-tasking Dish Drainer is perfect for those who forget to water their plants...as long as they're good about washing their dishes.
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A 1000-meter stretch of road in Drachten (Holland) is now bright blue thanks to Henk Hofstra.
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)Interesting trend. First Chinese manufacturer Lenovo bought IBM, now Indian automaker Tata Motors is favored to purchase two even more high-profile brands, Jaguar and Land Rover, which are being sold as a bundle by ailing automaker Ford. As India's economy grows, Tata is looking to put themselves on the map and become a global carmaker.
Indian auto designers shouldn't get too excited yet; Unite, the UK's version of the UAW, is lobbying to keep JLR's design and production in-country. Still, if Tata pulls the purchase off and acquires JLR's technology, native designers may yet have their chance to show the world what they can do, perhaps under their own marque.
via the economist
Posted by: hips