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Frank Kozik's brightly colored toy smoking rabbit for Paul Budnitz's Kidrobot typifies the intersection between graphic design and product design. Is it a product design, graphic design, or art? Perhaps it is simply a masterful exercises in anti-form, since its shape needs to be serve more as a canvas than a standalone product. Steven Heller and Lita Talarico's The Design Entrepreneur: Turning Graphic Design into Goods that Sell profiles Kidrobot, along with around fifty other companies who have managed to convert graphic design into "goods." Some, like Shepard Fairey's Obey posters, can be produced as pure printed graphics, while others, like Constantin Boym's "Buildings of Disaster" manifest as matte grey 3-D objects, though admittedly with graphic sensibilities.
The Design Entrepreneur is structured with introductions written by Heller and Talarico, followed by a series of case studies. Each case study consists of an interview with the designer, along with photos of finished products and inspirations. The main emphasis, however, is on the entrepreneurial process. Nearly all of the subjects started small and without clear business plans. Their companies grew organically by making one-offs, selling to friends, and just having fun. Only later did the enterprise grow to a scale that required management. While this should be heartening news for aspiring product design entrepreneurs, I couldn't help but wonder whether turning graphics into goods is simply somehow, well, easier than it is for industrially designed products. With digital design tools and large format CMYK printers it seems as though graphic design ambitions lend themselves more to modest beginnings than hundred thousand dollar injection molds. Fortunately, with the advent of 3D printers and CAD visualization, making products and prototypes is getting easier by the year. So as startup costs fall, and Heller and Talarico's book about goods made by graphic designers may have a lot to teach those of us involved in capital-intensive product design.
Posted by: Robert Blinn | Comments (2)
Prototypes of the shortlisted entries in the CityRacks Design Competition were installed for public scrutiny at Astor Place in New York today, the jury are welcoming feedback via comments on the official site and will announce the winner October 24th, 2008.
The competition brief specified for a surface mounted design which a couple of entries hadn't fully resolved yet. Most of the submissions are only intended to lock 2 bikes, multiple clusters would be used on larger sidewalks to accommodate more cyclists.
Another aspect of the competition is that the design should serve as a visual icon and promote cycling in New York, anyone living in the city will be familiar with the numerous bright green bike lanes that have appeared in the last few months as part of an overall initiative to make New York bike friendly.
Click through for details of each entry
Europe could take the lead in the next generation of the Internet. In a document entitled "EU Communication on Future Networks and the Internet", the European Commission has outlined the main steps that Europe has to take to respond to the next wave of the Information Revolution that will intensify in the coming years due to trends such as social networking, the decisive shift to on-line business services, nomadic services based on GPS and mobile TV and the growth of smart tags.
They also launched a public consultation on the policy and private sector responses to these opportunities, in order to prepare an upcoming Communication on the Internet of Things. This document will propose a policy approach addressing the whole range of political and technological issues related to the move from RFID and sensing technologies to the Internet of Things. It will focus especially on architectures, control of critical infrastructures, emerging applications, security, privacy and data protection, spectrum management, regulations and standards, broader socio-economic aspects.
A working paper on the Internet of Things accompanies the consultation by outlining the early challenges of this important development.
And to make sure you got the importance of it all: the French have even organised a ministerial conference on it all.
via Bruce Sterling
Posted by: Mark Vanderbeeken | Comments (1)
Our friends at iLounge have launched a new competition, challenging readers to "submit an original high-resolution photograph of an iPod or iPhone in a provocative setting--a person, people, and/or eye-catching background can appear along with the device." The entries are just starting to bubble in, and apart from the (obvious) goat and chicken entries, we're just not feeling it yet. This is either too easy or too hard, but check out the rules and see if you can help raise the bar here. (Yup, that was intentional.)
Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)
The past two Designism events at the Art Directors Club in NYC have been provocative, maddening, fun, profane, and yes, enlightening, so don't miss version 3.0 of the annual event, coming up in 2 days. Here are the details:
Join the third annual gathering of leading creatives committed to social activism and instigating change through media. The evening promises controversy, conversation and includes a moderated debate, lightening round presentations and the launch of a new support system to help put your ideas into action.
The evening takes place on Thursday, October 2, 2008, ADC Gallery,
106 West 29th Street, NYC.
5:30-6:45pm
Sappi Ideas that Matter Exhibition and Opening
Drinks & Snacks
FREE with RSVP (for opening only)
7:00-9:15pm
Designism 3.0
$30 Members, $40 Non-Members
Design activism deconstructed! Participate in an evening of discussion, debate, and presentations on Design Activism produced by Brian Collins, COLLINS, and Benjamin Palmer, The Barbarian Group.
Click below for the lineup. All details and RSVP are at the ADC site.
Posted by: core jr | Comments (0)
Actually, it's not the dirt itself that creates the electricity in this innovative system, recently featured at MIT Technology Review -- it's the microbes that live there. Microbial fuel cells have been "more or less a laboratory curiosity" for some time now, apparently, harnessing the naturally occurring bugs in soil, manure and waste water to generate very small currents, but the amounts of energy generated were thought to be too low for any practical use.
Lately, though, a Massachusetts startup called Lebone Solutions, with the backing of a World Bank grant, has begun taking microbial electricity to an environment to which it is uniquely suited: rural African villages with no electric grid and plenty of battery-powered electronics.
As cell phones, radios and LED lamps become more pervasive, it's not uncommon for African consumers to purchase them even when that means a long walk to the nearest generator to recharge it -- the benefits are simply that great. Despite its low output, the microbial power solution has a few characteristics that make it especially appropriate: low initial cost, readily available materials, and low maintenance. As Base of the Pyramid markets become a bigger deal, look to unfamiliar technologies like this to help light their way.
Posted by: Carl Alviani | Comments (2)
Pinel et Pinel's ridiculously cool products transcend mere furniture; from luxe picnic sets to workstations, media cabinets to folding bike holders, the luxury trunkmaker manufactures a variety of experiences that all fold up into a box. Check out their website and dig, or hit the link below and see our convenient one-stop-peeping roundup.
From the Coroflot portfolio of : Tamsin van Essen (Prague, Czech Republic)
Featured Project : Medical Heirlooms
Tamsin van Essen has drawn the line between communication and industrial design, allowing her objects to function as well as educate. In her words:
"Exploring contemporary attitudes to disease and obsessions with perfection, Medical Heirlooms is a collection of ceramic apothecary jars that appear to have been affected by various hereditary diseases -- osteoporosis, psoriasis, acne, cancer, syphilis. As heirlooms, the jars can be passed down through the generations of a family in the same way as the medical conditions: a legacy of ill health."
Also check out her Contamination project we saw at the London Design Festival last week.
More images after the jump!
Posted by: core jr | Comments (0)
A bite-sized list of what's happenin' now:
mondaq
Canadian case study: Infringement Of Industrial Designs
5d conference
This Saturday - 5D: The Future of Immersive Design Conference
supply chain digest
Supply Chain Comment: Chrysler's Prototype Electric Car and Outsourcing Product Design
japan c
Japanese Pop Culture Lecture - Dolls: From the Cute to the Grotesque
international business times
Synaptics Adds Two Innovative Advanced Gestures to Library of TouchPad Gesture Recognition
design management institute
DMI Webinar: The Evolution of a Creative Team
I can't get enough of furniture that folds into neat little boxes; it may be unrealistic, impractical or unaffordable, but it seems like such a great design solution to combat the endless tides of clutter most of us live with.
This latest line-up, Kenchikukagu from Toshihiko Suzuki Architect & Associates, consists of a bed, kitchen and workstation. Check out the video:
via treehugger
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (1)
In our eyes, designer Rooz Mousavi's Obag concept takes "form follows function" a bit too far. The circular shape is eye-catching and neat, but is it really any easier to roll through the concourse than a regular bag with wheels? Isn't there an awful lot of wasted space in a circular shape, particularly for an object that's meant to store things? Lastly, will the amount of space the bag takes up while stowed warrant the amount it actually holds?
What do you guys think?
via fun forever
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (7)
Yesterday NYC-based Smart Design held the first of their Customer Experience Lifecycle workshops at Frost & Sullivan's Fourth Annual Innovations in New Product Development and Marketing 2008.
Smart Design's Customer Experience Lifecycle workshops focus on the three essential stages a consumer has with a given product/service: awareness, decision-making and usage. The awareness stage is a pre-purchase 'read' that encapsulates an individual's first reaction to a product/service and their initial emotional response - i.e. curiosity, intrigue, confidence, etc. The second stage is the decision-making that entails a closer inspection of the given product/service, with the final 'read' being a post-purchase usage experience. This is drilled down into two sections, a consumer's first time use and an ongoing usage experience."Focusing on a consumer's experience over time encourages repeat customers and promotes brand loyalty," commented Tom Dair, Co-Founder and President of Smart Design. "Businesses can only compete on price and technology for so long before parity is reached. The next level centres on design. Companies are under immense pressure nowadays to come up with new ideas and developments for innovative designs to compete for market share. However, they don't always realise the importance of a customer's emotional responses that greatly influence an individual's decision to buy, use and keep a product."
To keep abreast of future workshops, tune in to Smart Design's website. For more details on how this particular workshop went, click here.
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (0)
At the turn of the 21st century the Raelians captured the world's attention with the suggestion that human cloning was being attempted within their ranks. The notion that we can reproduce the precise DNA of another being, has inspired great science fiction, real scientific discovery, and a lot of controversy. The world of design now has its own cloning story: enter the RepRap 1.0 (short for Replicating Rapid prototyper), designed by Adrian Bowyer to produce the majority of its own component parts. Bowyer's RepRap 1.0, nicknamed "Darwin," evolved out of the desire to realize John von Neumann's mid-20th century proposal for a "universal constructor" -- that is, a machine that could copy itself. While the RepRap only reproduces its component parts, still requiring human assembly (leaving the dream of self-assembly yet to be realized), Bowyer points out that humans are themselves excellent assembly machines.
Senior Industrial Designer
Mormedi
Madrid, Spain
We're looking for people who can understand human behaviours, brands, trends, perceptions and overall interactions; people who can creatively synthesize analysis and put themselves in the mind of the consumer and client company to help them achieve their goals... Excellent sketching skills. Highly developed modeling and rendering skills (Alias, pro-e, 3ds max, v-ray), and computer design & presentation skills ( Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign )
The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.
Posted by: core jr | Comments (0)
Glossy product design books usually relegate details like ideation sketches, prototypes, parting lines, and injection molds to a supporting role, but Jennifer Hudson's Process: 50 Product Designs from Concept to Manufacture puts them front and center. Highlighting projects from both up-and-coming designers and design luminaries, Process showcases the hours of effort that disappear behind the scenes and are rarely seen by the consumer. Fifty products are each given about a page of explanatory text and are supported by three or four pages of photographs of early prototyping work. Everything from sculptural vases to functional electronics is shown from its birth as an idea to its eventual manufacture. Process reveals all of the details of industrial design that graphic designers (or book editors) might find a bit dull and it shines because of it.
Posted by: Robert Blinn | Comments (6)
If you've been looking for any reminders of why Muji is so worthy of your adoration and respect, the online counterpart to the most recent installment of The NY Times Magazine Fall Design Issue has a sweet little summary of this Japanese brand that has come to nearly define accessible minimalism for the modern era. The Unbrand, a photo essay and short article by Armand Limnander, gives the company's history in brief, offers a short overview of some of its lesser known products (bread-crust snacks? egg shell pie?), and a reiteration of our biggest complaint about Muji -- in the whole of North America, there are still only three.
Posted by: Carl Alviani | Comments (0)A bite-sized list of what's happenin' now:
marketwatch
Autodesk Student Community is Redesigned
business standard
Book by Director of India's National Institute of Design looks at how cities tackle design
the australian
20 triumphs of Australian design from the past 20 years
business daily
BMW 7 series has set new design standards
travel blackboard
Singapore-based creative teams needed to design for World Expo showcase
punch
LG adapts products for the Nigerian market
dark roasted blend
Monowheel Madness (tons of pictures)
Here's a nice twist on another bottle cap project, the lamp is delivered with approximately 40 bottle tops, to cover the light completely you have to collect the rest yourself. Lucy Norman exhibited her CAPtivate Lamp at [re]design during the London Design Festival.
via inhabitat
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (0)There are certain outfits you can only pull off if you're svelte; and there are certain accoutrements you can only get away with if you're portly. Take the Booze Belly, for instance: it's a cross between a flask and a fanny pack, designed to smuggle booze into events, and it's only going to go unnoticed if you've got a spare tire to mask it.
It is, unsurprisingly, a huge hit with the college kids. Product demo below. (You can skip the second half--the outtakes are only funny if you've just finished draining a Booze Belly.)
Interestingly enough, the guy in the video says it holds 32 ounces while the website says it holds 750mL--which is only 25 ounces. What accounts for the difference?
They say a soul weighs 21 grams. I guess "spirits" weigh 7 ounces.
Another contender for the title of Rocket Man is Swiss airline pilot Yves Rossy who just flew across the English Channel wearing a homemade jet-propelled wing in under 15 minutes.
The carbon composite-wing weighs about 121 pounds (55 kilograms) when loaded with fuel, and carried four kerosene-burning jet turbines that kept him aloft. The wing had no steering devices -- Rossy moved his body to control its movements.He wore a heat-resistant suit similar to that worn by firefighters and racing drivers to protect him from the heat of the turbines. The cooling effect of the wind and high altitude also prevented him from getting too hot.
I want one!
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (0)
Our sentiments exactly. Available here.
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (4)
The T-shirt Issue is an experimental project by Berlin designer's Mashallah Design and Linda Kostowski who converted the 3D files of 3 digitally scanned bodies into simple polygon forms that were used to generate unique 2D patterns for the garments.
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (0)
Spotted on B3ta last Friday (and posted almost a year ago!), this completely awesome DIY speaker made from a styrofoam plate is something you can bust out in 10 minutes. You'll also need:
- Foam plate
- Two strips of paper
- Two business cards
- Copper wire, AWG 32 (enameled)
- Tape
- Glue (hot glue works great)
- Neodymium magnet
- Audio plug
More videos at the site, and tons of comments, feedback, and suggestions too.
Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)
Having arthritis is bad, and so is having to shoot someone in the face. God forbid you experience both of these situations at the same time.
In case you do, certified NRA instructor Matthew Carmel has developed the Palm Pistol, "an ergonomically novel handgun designed for seniors, disabled and others with limited manual dexterity."
The Palm Pistol is an ergonomically innovative single shot double action only defensive firearm chambered in 9mm that may be fired using either hand without regard to orientation of the stock. Suited for home defense, concealed carry or as a backup gun. It is also ideal for seniors, disabled or others who may have limited strength or manual dexterity. Using the thumb instead of the index finger for firing, it significantly reduces muzzle drift, one of the principle causes of inaccurate targeting. Point and shoot couldn't be easier.
Just because bystanders are screaming doesn't mean your joints should be.
Living in a cosmopolitan city like New York, you tend to take a boastful pride in being able to distinguish different languages, even if you can't understand what's being said. When tourists from the heartland can't tell the difference between Cantonese and Mandarin, Jamaican patois and Haitian French, or even Urdu and Arabic, you might let out a snooty snicker while reading your Economist down at the diner.
But go to one of the big international airports, Mr. Cosmopolitan, and it's full-on Tower of Babel. Was that...Yiddish? Finnish? My seatmate says he's from Latvia, what do they speak there again? Yet all of these people have the same needs--gotta find the bathroom, the gate, and someplace to buy five-Euro bottles of water. Meaning airport signage has gotta be spot-on and informative in a way that signs leading to the Holland Tunnel do not have to be.
Do they get it right? Check out Dutch signage specialist Sander Baumann's kick-ass roundup and analysis of international airport signage, from Ataturk to Zurich, and tell us what you think.
via design work plan
Torino is like the Detroit of Italy--well, with better food and a mayor who's not looking at jail time. And come to think of it you would probably have a hard time getting shot in Torino. Okay, the only thing Torino has in common with Detroit is a history of automobile design and production.
Torino was recently named the first World Capital of Design by ICSID (International Council of Societies of Industrial Design), and in living up to the name, they're holding their "Dream" exhibition:
"Dream" - one of the main events of Torino 2008 World Design Capital - is a stroll through almost 60 years of creativity that convinced the world of carmakers - and consumers - to accept new stylistic features, to demand greater performance and safety, to create new ways to adapt car interiors to the many demands of business and leisure.Alessandro Barberis explains what convinced the Chamber of Commerce to support the event: "The numbers speak for themselves: in Piemonte, the automotive sector has roughly 950 businesses, 108,000 employees and the best results in Italy, with an increase in turnover in 2007 of over 9%. Our region is a grand and historical capital of automobiles, design and Italian style. Thus, what better place than Torino to show the dream of cars. And what better time than now: the year during which our city is the World Capital of Design."
Eat your heart out, Detroit.
via car domain blog
Senior Handbag Designer
BCBG MAX AZRIA GROUP
Los Angeles, California
Design and develop handbags: Keep up with current trends; bring in new ideas through competitive shopping and vintage research... Meet with Design Director frequently to review sketches, discuss production/fabric/and other daily issues...
The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.
Posted by: core jr | Comments (0)
What do an astrobiologist and game developer have in common? Well, if the game developer is the legendary Will Wright and the astrobiologist is Jill Tarter, then the answer is quite a bit--from visionary predictions of the role of artificial intelligence in the near and distant future to the potential of finding intelligent technology beyond our planet. Wright, who became a regular visitor to Tarter's labs at the SETI Institute while developing his recently released game Spore, sat down earlier this month with Tarter for seed.com's Seed Salon. Wright and Tarter's discussion weaves in and out of science and fiction, illustrating how slim the border between the two can be and how the imagination can allow a better view of both. As Wright explains:
I think of games as being an amplifier for the imagination of the players, in the same way that a car amplifies our legs or a house amplifies our skin. Not only are we able to build much more elaborate models on a computer, which can keep track of all the numbers and the repercussions, but we're also able to share and communicate those models to others. It becomes a tool of self expression.
So if you were looking for an excuse to spend more time playing Spore, here you go.
Posted by: Margaret Maile | Comments (1)
On 6 October, the Institute for the Future will launch Superstruct, the world's first massively multiplayer forecasting game.
This is more than just a game that allows for speculation of the future but actively solicits you to work on the problems we might face and how to keep them from destroying our planet.
Watch the five videos detailing the super threats and read the Global Extinction Awareness System report before you get started.
More background on O'Reilly Radar
via Smart Mobs
Posted by: Mark Vanderbeeken | Comments (0)
Second Lives: Remixing the Ordinary will be the inaugural exhibition at the Museum of Arts & Design when it opens to the public today at it's new home, 2 Columbus Circle. The exhibition features work by 50 international established and emerging artists from all five continents who create objects and installations comprised of ordinary and everyday manufactured articles, most originally made for another functional purpose.
The exhibition includes works by well known designers, Ingo Maurer, the Campana Brothers and Tejo Remy, as well as internationally acclaimed artists, such as Tara Donovan, Xu Bing, Do Ho Suh, and El Anatsui.
More after the jump.
Posted by: toolgirl | Comments (0)
Typographic artist Oded Ezer's I ♥ NY poster uses a 3D sculptural technique he developed in an earlier work called The Finger.
"This 70x100 cm poster is a homage to Milton Glaser, whose famous I ♥ NY logo is one of the things that stuck into my mind forever. Glaser's design is simple and direct, and I felt it will be still recognizable even if I will make it more complicated"
Based in Israel, Ezer made a conscious decision to produce more work in English after his presentation at TYPO Berlin when he noticed the audience's enthusiasm for the single piece he showed in English, the rest of his work was in Hebrew and only understandable by a few people.
The 1 Hour Design Challenge entries keep coming in! Above, check out bennybtl's effort, and notice the low-tech/hi-tech template use.
Get all the details and enter your 1HDC Sick-Ass Car Rendering here!
Posted by: core jr | Comments (0)British designers Andrew Lang and Harry Dobbs are battling it out next week with their Y-stand to win the CityRacks Design Competition in New York. 10 finalists were selected to prototype their outdoor bicycle racks which will be installed throughout the city to see how they stand up on the mean streets.
If you want to try them out first hand, check this map for location details, all 10 designs will be presented September 30th at Astor Place and the winner will be announced on October 24th.
Andrew and Harry explain the thinking behind their Y-stand in the video above and there's a bunch of pics of the prototypes being made after the jump.
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (8)
Background rendering by Coroflot member David Fearnley.
A quick post to let you know that this month's 1 Hour Design Challenge: Sick-Ass Car Renderings is coming to a close this Sunday night at 9pm PST.
There are some great entries so far, and we encourage all designers and students to enter!
CRITERIA:
Judging will be based on quality of presentation and whether or not your work could have realistically been done in 1 Hour. The 1 hour does NOT include thinking in the shower, procrastinating, setting up the video camera, editing the video, uploading to Core77, or anything not related to creating the sick-assest rendering you can come up with. Use this Core77 4 minute sketch session as guidance for how to set-up your camera. If you're a digital hack, a screen capture will do nicely.
PRIZE:
Publicity in the October Core77 Newsletter, publicity on the Core77 Blog, bragging rights that Ralph Gilles, VP of Design at Chrysler chose your design!
JURY:
Guest judge on this 1HDC is Ralph Gilles, the VP of Design of Chrysler, and designer of the Chrysler 300. Community discussion is encouraged to help ensure the best design wins.
Important guidelines and entry link after the jump!
Posted by: core jr | Comments (0)
We spotted this 1HDC video in the wild on YouTube a couple days ago, but have been waiting for the designer to post it to the forum before we shared it with you here. Vaughan Ling (aka kakapoopie) has got some serious rendering chops, and his time-lapse photoshop movie is completely sick-ass. Add the Keltech Strikes Back by DJ keltech soundtrack, and you've got yourself the best Friday afternoon design break imaginable.
Inspired? Wanna throw down? Get all the details and enter your 1HDC Sick-Ass Car Rendering here!
Remember that the guest judge on this 1HDC is Ralph Gilles, the VP of Design of Chrysler, and designer of the Chrysler 300, so sharpen up those pencils and fire up that tablet!
Posted by: core jr | Comments (1)
The School of Visual Arts has just announced the launch of its website for the MFA in Social Documentary Film (SocDoc). The goal of the program, chaired by the director/producer Maro Chermayeff, is to encourage filmmakers, journalists, social activists and others a chance to make documentary films that will influence social policy.
We're always getting "Is it Coro-flot? or Coro-flow?" Finally, a cousin here: Sock-dock or Soh-dock?
(An information session will be held on November 8 at 141 West 21 Street, NYC, Room 101C from 2:00PM to 4:00PM.)
Posted by: core jr | Comments (1)
Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media, speaking today on the economic and societal importance of social networking sites, emphasised the new economic possibilities they bring for European industry.
After giving a rather clever overview of what is going on in the field, and in Europe in particular (even mentioning the CERN rap song), Reding advocated self-regulation as the main way to make sure this environment remains safe for everyone.
>> read speech
photo: European Commission
Posted by: Mark Vanderbeeken | Comments (0)
The world's love affair with the mobile phone shows no sign of abating, with the head of the UN's agency for information and communication technologies predicting that there will be 4 billion mobile phone users - or more than half of the planet's estimated 6.7 billion inhabitants - by the end of this year.
Hamadoun Touré, secretary general of the International Telecom Union, said growth has been driven by consumer take-up in developing markets such as China, India and Latin America.
>> Read article
Posted by: Mark Vanderbeeken | Comments (0)
The international event Multiverso: Icograda Design Week will take place in Torino (Italy) from 13-19 October 2008 and is entirely dedicated to the new scenarios in the fields of communication design. The Design Week is part of Torino's celebration as the first World Design Capital.
The full programme includes a 3-day international conference, exhibitions, forums and 4 workshops for students and young professionals.
Posted by: Mark Vanderbeeken | Comments (0)
A bite-sized list of what's happenin' now:
marketwatch
Finalists Selected for Climate Clock Design Competition
business daily africa
Kenya: Going beyond drawing at design school
scoop
Designlab '08 Finalists For "Internet Generation"
metromode
Detroit's CCS: Talent By Design
all hip hop
Parsons students game design: shaping Little Big Planet
huliq
Global Sales of the Prada Phone by LG hits one million mark
dexigner
IDI Design Awards Announces Shortlisted Entries
Check out this list of Core77's event coverage of London Design Week in one easy-to-browse place.
London Design Festival 2008: 100% Design: Is Design Sobering Up?
London Design Festival 2008: 100% Design
London Design Festival 2008: 100% Design: Good Design Manifesto
London Design Festival 2008: Plastic Fantastic
London Design Festival 2008: Tent London
London Design Festival 2008: Changing Dimensions
London Design Festival 2008: Create Berlin
London Design Festival 2008: Cardboard Cafe
London Design Festival 2008: Designersblock: Selfridges Window Displays
London Design Festival 2008: Complex Cities
London Design Festival 2008: Tom Dixon Factory
London Design Festival 2008: Foundry Popup Store
London Design Festival 2008: Heather Gillespie's glass creations
London Design Festival 2008: Designersblock: Seoul Young Designers Pavillion
London Design Festival 2008: Designersblock
VIDEOS:
London Design Festival 2008: Video Drive-By: What's on Wattson?
London Design Festival 2008: Video Drive-By: Mathias Hahn at OKAY Studio at The Aram Gallery
London Design Festiva 2008: Video Drive-By: Hiroko Shiratori at OKAY Studio at The Aram Gallery
London Design Festival 2008: 100% Design: Video Drive-By: Hector Serrano's Waterdrop
London Design Festival 2008: Video Drive-By: Designersblock
London Design Festival 2008: Video Drive-By: Designersblock: Gnocchi Bar by Arabeschi di Latte
London Design Festival 2008: Video Drive-By: Tent London: Theodosis Zeniou's Domestic Landscape
London Design Festival: Video Drive-By: Tent London: Custhom's Thermachromatic Lamp Shade
London Design Festival 2008: Video Drive-By: Designersblock: Seung Kwan No's Digital Painting
London Design Festival 2008: Video Drive-By: Designersblock: Nosigner's BentoBox
London Design Festival 2008: Video Drive-By: Designersblock: Haidee Drew's Cog Containers
This year during the London Design Festival Designersblock had their show right in the center on Covent Garden's Piazza. A great venue filled with a wild mixture of works from a total of 60 UK and international designers - some of whom we have already shown here in the past view days. Now some more impressions of what was on. In the pictures above are Chooi-Leng Tan's wonderfully surreal pot light, Taschide's intriguing light cube, Hive's Slash Lamp, Tea Un Kim's lamps made from recycled nylon stockings and PET bottles, the Metropolitan Works Creative Industries Centre presenting some of their technology (in this case 3D scanning and stereo lithography) and Ben Rousseau's attempt to revive the 80's perspex-meets-neon-light-look.
Some snapshots of the venue itself - we particularly liked their solution of elevator entertainment! It seemed they played a kind of Designersblock Radio with various interviews (but the journey to the second floor was too short to be sure on this). In the pictures below are some of the products presented by the KithKin Store (created by recent St. Martins graduates): Maria Gil Ulldemolins' easy to light birthday candles, Louise Graham's Added Value adapters to enhance the value of mass produced/packaged consumer goods, Tamsin van Essen's Contaminated set of cups (seemingly infected by bacteria) and Matthew Plummer Fernandez' Sound of Light - a casing for a flourescent tube light, made by recording and graphing one second of the 'hum' sound produced by the light, transferred into a 3D shape.
As usual Designersblock presented a refreshing and unconventional collection of objects and therefore proofed once more its significant role in providing a counter balance to the M.O.R. design stuff to be seen at 100% Design and most other venues during the London Design Festival.
>> View all London Design Festival 2008
The Wire Stay for Doug Mockett is the latest product from New York-based design agency Harry Allen. The simple extruded flexible rubber let's you group cables neatly together and can be fixed to a wall or desk by drilling through the center groove, or using some good old double-sided tape on the base which has a serrated surface. The WM25 wire management device is available in powder blue, mango and avocado.
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (1)elliotts21 decides to double down with the hand rendering inspired by Yo's demo. 6 minutes and change, and in real time too!
Come on all you trans folks out there. One weekend left!
>>Get all the details and enter here!<<
Haidee Drew's Cog Containers series is inspired by familiar thoughtless actions and how physical engagement with an object can be encouraged through physical connections between objects and the movement created through interlocking cogs. The use of rubber makes people less hesitant to touch the objects, creating a tactile experience with silverware. She has rather cleverly transferred ideas, normally more associated with classical engineering, and applied them to some quite deliciously impact-full product design. The wheels of industry imaginatively subverted into playpower!
>> View all London Design Festival 2008 coverage in one place
Forget the Loch Ness monster, Liverpool is home to a new mythical creature. Korean artist Choe U-Ram has created an animatronic sculpture based on oars, rudders, ship motors and other nautical devices. Controlled by custom software via 12-channel DMX, the 2-ton creature expands and contacts like tidal forces.
The Opertus Lunula Umbra (Hidden Shadow of Moon), is the scientific name that Choe has given to his fictitious creature which is part of the fifth Liverpool Biennale with the theme "Made Up" that encourages artists to delve into the realm of make-believe for their inspiration.
Co-commissioned by Liverpool Biennial International 2008 and FACT, the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, the piece is exhibited in FACT's atrium courtesy of Art Station, Poznan, Poland and bitforms gallery in NYC.
View more images and read the artist's statement after the jump.
Posted by: toolgirl | Comments (0)At Designersblock Nosigner was presenting his Sumi lunch box. He is working with traditional crafts people in Japan to produce his traditionally based but modernly interpreted BentoBox. Beautifully crafted and delicious to look at it saves a great part of the Japanese cultural heritage by transferring traditional craft techniques and objects into the third millennium.
>> View all London Design Festival 2008 coverage in one place
Graphic Designer
Hoefler & Frere-Jones, Inc.
New York, New York
First and foremost, this position demands an absolute mastery of typography, and candidates must have experience with (and enthusiasm for) a wide range of media. You will be responsible for designing and executing all visual materials associated with an established, evolving, and highly visible brand, so experience with identity design is a plus...
The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.
Posted by: core jr | Comments (0)Alexander Romer, the collaborative architect who helped Collectif EXYZT bring the Southwark Lido project to London earlier this year, has worked with a wide range of creative collectives, and an even wider range of designers and architects:
Whoever I hire would need to make space for others; interpret and advance an initial idea, and also, of course, take pleasure in developing projects with others. But probably the most important trait would have to be patience: a collective decision is often followed by the disappearance of some of the members...
Read the full interview
More Creative Seeds
The Seoul Young Designers Pavilion was part of this year's Designersblock in Covent Garden. The group of young Korean designers was showing a wide variety of objects. In the pictures above are Sungmin Hong's wall-mounted Book Holders, the Ylum light installation by Moon-Jung Kim & Sung-Su Kang, Jaehyung Hong's Wire Buttons that ease the use of headphones and Sante Kim's Winebottle-Speaker made - as the name suggests - from recycled wine bottles. Also shown is Nosigner's Egg Lamp, made of real chicken eggs that survived all the way from Japan. Nosigner was not part of the Young Designer exhibit, but was nearby.
In the pictures below are Min gyu Jeung's rubber phone Damn You for aggressive outbreaks during phone calls, one example of Esther Lee's wonderful outstanding series of Escape illustrations (all describing men trying to escape from square environments) and Hwang Kim's Folding bed for Homeless made from cardboard (he intends to adapt them to the british environment by making them waterproof). All in all it was an inspired and imaginative effort from Korea's new young front line designers in an overall pleasurable Designersblock.
>> View all London Design Festival 2008 coverage in one place
Seung Kwan No is an experimental animator, working with Hangul, the Korean Alphabet. He was presenting his Digital Painting, inspired by movement in urban environments, transferred into an animated Hangul relief.
>> View all London Design Festival 2008 coverage in one place
From the Coroflot portfolio of : Caspar Schmitz (Cologne, Germany)
Featured Project : umbrella table
Caspar Schmitz in collaboration with Ralph Ludwig created this highly functional table inspired by the umbrella. For an animated experience click here.
More images after the jump!
Posted by: core jr | Comments (0)Nathan Philpott and Jemma Ooi from Custhom Design presented their ingenious Thermochromatic Lamp Shade at Tent London. The Origami ball changes color once it is turned on.
>> View all London Design Festival 2008 coverage in one place
Posted by: Brit Leissler | Comments (0)
Is "Good Design" enough? The recent emergence of design criticism and writing programs at a number of design schools suggests that the answer might just be, "no." This past fall New York City's School of Visual Arts (SVA) added an MFA in Design Criticism to their range of studio-based MFAs, in October of this year the University of the Arts London will launch its new MA in Design Writing Criticism, and in March 2009 Victoria University of Wellington's School of Design (NZ) will debut a new undergraduate degree program in design criticism. These programs and others like them represent a much needed response from within the design community to the growing presence of design across popular media, from mainstream news stories on Target's latest design conquests to the proliferation of lifestyle magazines promoting a popular (if watered down) kind of design literacy. Alice Twemlow, co-chair of SVA's D-Crit program, said in a recent interview for subtraction.com:
To me it's clear there's momentum gathering around the need to clarify design criticism's purposes and processes. D-Crit will work alongside these other initiatives to improve the quality of public discussion about design. Our specific goal is to help provide a new generation of critics with the tools to generate writing and thinking that is imaginative, historically informed and socially accountable.
While architecture and the fine arts have a long tradition of theoretical and critical discourse, the comparatively young design disciplines are just beginning to establish a supporting body of critical writing. The slow development of criticism within design may in fact be related to the very concept of "Good Design," which traditionally has prioritized rationalism, functionalism, and aesthetics over a deeper recognition of the broader cultural and contextual implications of design. But the reign of "Good Design" may be coming to a close as the discursive floodgates open, fueled by design criticism graduates with new ways of thinking and writing about design.
The recent spate of press coverage and blog twitters about Sarah Palin's 704 series Kazuo Kawasaki designed titanium frames brings to mind an old saying, "The clothes make the man." So, does it also follow that that "The eyewear makes the woman?" Or we could expand our theory somewhat and ask if "The eyewear makes the woman qualified?"
As Palin and her supports labor to shore up the vice-presidential candidate's credentials for the job against what some say is significant evidence to the contrary, it is curious that so much attention is given to her choice of eyewear. It is hardly surprising for the press to analyze the sartorial selections of female politicians--we are just now recovering from the intense scrutiny of Hillary Clinton's pantsuits, and who could forget Condaleezza's "boot-gate"?--yet glasses, a small though arguably functional accessory, seem insignificant by comparison. However, their relative contribution to a larger "ensemble" belies the unique and transformative power of glasses on women. They have a semiotic charge that can simultaneously de-sex (remember Dorothy Parker's famous couplet, "Men don't make passes/at girls who wear glasses") and empower. If you buy into the vernacular of popular culture, then you will easily recognize that dowdy, intelligent woman wearing glasses in the classic Hollywood film, who will (before the credits roll) let her hair down, take off her glasses and transform into a sexy vixen who finds satisfaction and fulfillment in love (read: sex). If we follow that line of logic backwards, we can return the starlet to her un-sexy, intellectually respectable identity, by sweeping her hair back up and putting on the glasses.
So perhaps the 704 series Kawasaki frames are Palin's way of dethroning her old beauty queen persona and of adding a layer of studious authority to all those close-ups. Or maybe she just doesn't like contacts. Either way, like Clinton's pantsuits they are signifiers and not qualifiers, and we would much rather know about Palin's plans for bringing health care to the uninsured than how many pairs of glasses she owns.
Posted by: Margaret Maile | Comments (11)A bite-sized list of what's happenin' now:
zd net
IBM stresses the green-ification of product design and management
the moment blog
"The Digital Ramble" essay on Industrial Design
the hindu business line
Industrial Design Division of Tata Elxsi's branding techniques
marketwatch
Concrete Redefined as an Innovative and Green Solution
pr web
San Francisco Autodesk Gallery Showcases Design Process
greener buildings
Design Contest Offers $10,000 Prize to Up and Coming Innovators
inquirer
The designer behind GM's green car
What we really like about the Lessev Charging Station, top (and to a lesser degree, the Bedford Smart Recharge Station, bottom) is the way the cable holes are dealt with. Designer Takafumi Nemoto's elegant six-pointed "icon" has solved the problem of how to pass a large coupling through a surface without leaving behind a gaping hole. The gods are in the details.
via c scout japan and gizmodo
Somewhere between the aesthetic of Art Deco motifs and a Cylon prop from Battlestar Galactica, glass artist Heather Gillespie's pieces made a splash at Tent London this year.
The designer maker in love with the art of copper wheel engraving during the year that she spent at the Glass College in Kamenicky Senov in the Czech Republic.
As the work is blown, it changes shape and structure and once it starts to cool, it becomes fixed as if it were trapped in time. The piece is then transferred to a kiln called a "lehr". After twelve hours of cooling, the piece is ready to handle.
After studying the piece, Gillespie assesses the best way to cut and polish it. Normally progressing from a fine to coarse belt on a machine called a "linisher", she begins to cut the glass quickly and vigorously, polishing it straight after. Then marking out her design onto the glass, Gillespie readies it for intaglio engraving.
Now if she can just embed some FTL jump discs inside them, we might solve the world's gasoline crisis.
View all London Design Festival 2008 coverage in one place
In hotel rooms, I often wish for a stereo to connect my iPhone to; buying portable speakers is one solution, but that would be one more thing I'd have to carry and plug in to a dwindling supply of outlets.
Griffin's AirCurve is one more thing you'd have to carry, but not (neccessarily) plug in. The non-electronic device is essentially an acoustic amplifier, using "a cleverly designed coiled waveguide that collects the sound from the built-in speaker of your iPhone, amplifies it, and projects it into the room."
The AirCurve only runs $19.99. Also, since it looks like a dock, it acts like a dock; you can plug in the cable that came with the phone to charge it. Which reminds me of the other thing I often wish for in hotel rooms: a power strip.
Episode 3 of Michael and Rocko's sketch demos. This month, Michael and Rocko tackle the current Core77 1 Hour Design Challenge and sketch up a hydrogen powered Dodge subcompact car... in 6 minutes. This is not sped up kids, this is the real time stuff. Notice how he works the overall form of the vehicle before he starts to visualize what the details are. Form before detail always. Rocko's music pick went a little more obscure, to make the bonus name that tune a bit more challenging. If you missed the first 2 episodes, see them here:
Episode 1:
Core77 Show+Tell: Converse Design Director, Michael DiTullo, Sketches a Sneaker in 4-Minutes
Episode 2:
Core77 Show+Tell : Converse Design Director, Michael DiTullo, sketches an i-Something in 4-minutes
The V4 Ferarri motorcycle concept (by Israeli ID'er Amir Glinik) is cool, but to me it's the opposite of fried chicken: I think it's better with the skin off.
via industrial & art
For those of you waiting for core-fave Jessica Helfand's newest book, Scrapbooks: An American History, you can tide yourselves over with the website, The Daily Scrapbook. Here, you can check out (amazing) specimens, watch video, get a great list of links, and indulge your inner scrapbooker. For people who like stuff--and goodness knows designers like stuff--The Daily Scrapbook will be a nice way to start off your Thursday.
Image above from Dorothy Abraham
The Providence Phoenix has an interview up with John Maeda, the designer and author Esquire named one of the 75 most influential people of the 21st century, and RISD's new president. An excerpt:
Q: In taking on this role, you talked about how technology is outpacing our ability to use it, and you pointed to the importance of more traditional arts, like throwing a pot. Talk a little about that and why this was an appealing opportunity.
My career has always kind of oscillated. I grew up in a tofu factory, where we were very hand-crafted oriented; I went to MIT; I went to art school, I got back my hands. I went back to MIT again as a professor, and lost my hands even more. And then I sort of came back to here, and came back to my hands. So I'm kind of like trying salty, then sugary, then salty, then sugary.
Read the entire interview here.
Seoul-born and Barcelona-based designer Lee Jang Sub exhibited the most recent incarnations of his Complex City Project at Tent London. Zoetropes and wall sconces laser-cut with reinterpreted wall graphics based on maps of some of the world's major metropolises.
Explaining his concept, the designer says:
This project is an exploration to find a concealed aesthetic by using the pattern formed by the roads of the city which have been growing and evolving randomly through time, thus composing the complex configuration we experience today. I perceive the city's patterns as living creatures that I recompose to form an urban image.
View all London Design Festival 2008 coverage in one place
Posted by: toolgirl | Comments (0)
No dog likes wearing the Elizabethan collar, a/k/a the "satellite dish," but it's the only way to keep post-op pooches from licking their wounds and ripping out stitches.
As humiliated as your dog may become while wearing the collar, they've still gotta eat; but they can't access the food bowl with the contraption on. The angled, elevated Hugx dog bowl was designed to serve that end. Not only is it selling well, it recently won the "Lifestyle Innovation Award" at New York's Pet Fashion Week (even beating out Alessi).
Industry kudos aside, as both a dog owner and an industrial designer I've got some problems with the form factor:
Why is it shaped like a dog, with the bowl located at the head, no less? Does it make sense, design-wise, to have a dog eating out of another dog's head? Can you imagine the human tableware equivalent?
top photo: wikipedia
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (3)
Long before the development of tarmac, radicals and activists have taken to the streets to agitate against the man. Last week (Sept. 19 to be precise) this tradition was honored in the fifth-annual Park(ing) Day event, which unleashed pitchforks and rolls of sod in a cleverly executed takeover of 450+ parking spaces in more than 80 cities around the world. Protesting the domination of car-culture in cities from Amsterdam to Brisbane, Park(ing) Day-ers reclaimed parking spaces in the name of human habitat, creating temporary green spaces for urban dwellers.
The annual event was developed by the San Francisco design collective REBAR, who opened up this global design challenge with the question:
Feeding the meter of a parking space enables one to rent precious downtown real estate, typically on a 1/2 hour to 2 hour basis. What is the range of possible occupancy activities for this short-term lease?
Armed with pocket change and a desire to go barefoot during lunch hour, Park(ing) Day's guerrilla gardeners took back our automobile-clogged streets for one day, one hour at a time.
Posted by: Margaret Maile | Comments (0)
Tom Dixon and George Smith transformed a Knightsbridge ballroom into an upholstery factory during the London Design Festival, creating a new collection on site. Although we seemed to have entered during a siesta period when no construction was actual taking place, it has to be said that Tom Dixon managed to create a most welcoming and harmonious environment where one felt invited to to sit down, relax, read the newspaper or even fall asleep (judging by a contented happily sleeping visitor). This tends to indicate the work of someone who understands what environmental and furniture design should actually deliver, which is good aesthetics and emotional content - and showing the process how the objects are actually made is the cherry on the cake.
>> View all London Design Festival 2008 coverage in one place
Posted by: Brit Leissler | Comments (0)Thanks Dee for the link!
Posted by: core jr | Comments (0)
Foundry and partners were converting an industrial warehouse into a galley-like shopping space for visitors to buy and discover some of the world'sexclusive design brands. During the time of the London Design Festival the venue operated as a 'pop-up' retail store and was accompanied by a one-off design showcase. On display was everything from production pieces from UK and International design brands, experimental concepts, digital installations, limited edition, gallery pieces by new and established designers. This new retail concept will be repeated three to four times a year to offer fresh new ideas each time.
The Popupstore partners/exhibitors included Moooi, Thorsten van Elten, Andromeda, Nero3, Decode London, Kathleen Hills, Voonwong & Bensonsaw, Viable, Christopher Pearson, Samual Wilkinson. It wasn't really all hot new stuff that you heven't seen before but a nice selection of pieces in an unconventional and pleasing environment.
>> View all London Design Festival 2008 coverage in one place
Furniture Designer
Thinc
San Francisco, California
Thinc is a creative agency specializing in branding, positioning, merchandising, product development, and marketing for consumer products. We are seeking a Furniture Designer with a strong Industrial design background to join our freelance team in completing current projects.
The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.
Posted by: core jr | Comments (0)The Rotman School of Management, part of the University of Toronto, brings their Design Thinking Experts series to New York next week, with an event on Oct. 2. The line up features John Maeda (President of RISD), Roger Martin (Dean of the Rotman School), and Tyler Brule (editor Monocle Magazine), debating this topic for an hour or two, followed by a reception. This is a great opportunity for designers to here some smart folks discuss what is certainly a hot topic, these days more than ever.
The Rotman School regularly produces events at their main campus, and occasionally in cities around the world, discussing the intersection of design and business. A complete listing can be found on their site.
Oct. 2, starting at 4PM
Thomson Reuters Building, 3 Times Square, New York
Regitration here
Weekly finds from the 3D world.
SolidWorks
How D'assault bought SolidWorks and not SolidEdge -- the inside story
Live blogging the 2009 SW press event in Barcelona (covered by literally dozens of different sites, but this one's probably the most fun to read)
Who owns your copy of SolidWorks? -- IP issues in 3D CAD
Pro/Engineer
Explicit vs. parametric modeling, the history of PTC, and the drive toward easier CAD (if you're a Pro/E driver, this is a must read)
The Boston Globe article that started the PTC debate (registration may be required)
Inventor
Sheet Metal Punch features Skill Builder: Part 1 and Part 2
Autodesk Intent automation video tutorial
Vectorworks
What's new in the 2009 Vectorworks release
Other stuff
3D CAD for your iPhone
SYCODE offers Rapid Prototyping plug-ins for Inventor, SpaceClaim, Solid Edge and Alibre
Background rendering by Coroflot member David Fearnley.
We wish the camera were over the shoulder, but elliotts21's Core77's 1 Hour Design Challenge rendering time comes in at a cool 57:59, giving him 2 minutes to grab a RedBull and start a second entry (just kidding). Here's the designer in his own words:
Okay, so this whole video thing has proven to be a huge pain in the neck. I finally got it all sorted out and the results follow. Time is in the upper left corner of the screen (1s. recorded every 30s of real time, so the video appears pretty choppy - it actually surprised me how much of the time I'm not actually putting stylus to screen).My rendering is of a small Italian exotic - think modern day Dino and you won't be too far off. I know, I know, the perspective is a little forced and the back wheel is both too tall and narrow, but hey, I would have tweaked it if I weren't so worried about the time limit!
>>Get all the details and get in the game here!<<
A bite-sized list of what's happenin' now:
art info
"Great design pieces tend to end up in New York"
seeking alpha
Jonathan Ive: More Valuable to Apple than Steve Jobs?
cnet
Video: T-Mobile's new G1 (Android)
b.o.d.w.
Upcoming Business of Design Week conference in Asia
greenspace group
Greenspace Launched as Creator of Environmentally Sustainable Exhibits
andromeda murano
Karim-Rashid-designed Andromeda lighting at Trianon Palace Hotel
Ten years ago, if you were designing a laptop bag and wanted to see what people carried in theirs, you could either a) hire a research firm or b) get a job in airport security. But now ID Ethnographers need look no further than Flickr. (For those too lazy to dig through the link, hit the jump for our compiled roundup of shots.) It's not as in-depth as a focus group, but you also don't have to provide cookies, juice, and those envelopes filled with crisp hundred-dollar bills.
Forbes' neat little photo essay, "11 Ways To Lose Laptop Backaches," includes the obvious (the MacBook Air, the iPhone) but goes on to look at some Hmm, how about those? options: the Fujitsu Lifebook, the iGo Stowaway Keyboard, the Samsung Q1 tablet, and others. A good, quick look at some alternate form factors for mobile computing.
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (0)1. For iPhone 3G users, looks like that nifty, freshly-designed mini power adapter is no good; Apple's safety-recalling it. The prongs can break off inside of an outlet, and apparently it's not a good idea to try and fish them out with a fork.
Starting Friday, October 10th, you can get yourself a free, re-designed replacement (with a green dot on it for clarity) by either ordering one on the web, or going to an Apple store.
2. Once again the rumor mill starts churning; chatter indicates some type of Apple product code-named "The Brick" may be making its debut in mid-October. Is it a new product? A re-design of an existing product? Something to "break Windows?" No one knows, and everyone's guessing.
via tuaw
Christopher Pearson showed his Animated Stone Carving in the Foundry Popup Store at this year's London Design Festival. Digitally Animated trompe l'oeil's create the effect of a traditional relief carving using directional lighting and specialty projectors. This is the first piece of Christopher's Digital Relief Series and is also constantly shown at the Concord Lounge at Heathrow's Terminal 5 (yes, they fortunately haven't lost it).
>> View all London Design Festival 2008 coverage in one place
We know you love our photo galleries but if you are in need for more visual inspiration, check out this National Geographic Photography page. For over 10 months, they have been featuring photo galleries that make great photo stories on people, places and nature from all over the world.
For a touch-point with design, we recommend you start browsing the "Design by Nature" gallery with lots of examples on biomimetics, a young science of adapting designs from nature to solve modern problems, as demonstrated by the boxfish project.
"The boxfish's surprisingly streamlined form inspired Mercedes-Benz's bionic concept car. Flowing vapors during wind-tunnel tests in a Stuttgart facility show off the car's aerodynamics, which helps boost its gas mileage to as high as 70 miles per gallon." (photo by Robert Clark)
If this photography is your kind of game, then you might want to submit your top shot for the 2nd Annual National Geographic Photography Contest (before October 31).
Posted by: Aart van Bezooyen | Comments (0)
Principle Industrial Product Designer
Acushnet Company
Brockton, Massachusetts
Qualifications that Acushnet Company looks for in this position will be a Bachelors Degree in Industrial Design, Engineering or related field is required. Minimum of 10 years experience in Industrial Design of consumer products is required. Footwear Industry experience preferred. Proficiency with computer based concepts/design/graphic packages such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Alias, etc. required. 3D CAD design software (solidworks, Delcam, Rhino, etc) and rapid prototyping experience required. Proficiency with Sensable 3D Modeling System is a plus. Must demonstrate excellent communication, presentation and project management skills. Must be willing and able to travel both domestically and internationally.
The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.
Posted by: core jr | Comments (0)
Innovation by Design is an Irish programme of workshops, research and mentoring, run by the Centre for Design Innovation, aimed at business growth through user-led design.
The programme enabled the companies and organisations involved -- a precision toolmaker, an agricultural co-operative, a software developer, an educational institute, an airport, and a heavy machinery manufacturer -- to launch new brands; generate hundreds of ideas; explore new markets; create prototypes for new products; redesign their product development processes; deliver new and enhanced services to their customers; brief and contract design agencies; and in one case, to rename their company.
>> Read the report with all six case studies (pdf)
Posted by: Mark Vanderbeeken | Comments (0)
In addition to offering some hints at Toyota's endless rise to world-dominating automaker, last week's Calty Design Research visit offered another sort of draw -- the opportunity to see some fun, expensive toys in action. Pictured above, top to bottom:
- The 3D CAD review set-up in action (see video here)
- Programming and running the "small" 3-axis CNC mill
- Vacuu-forming and painting a hubcap for a full-scale concept model
- One of several palette walls used to aid in color and finish selection
- Using a Leica 3D scanner to read a small hand-carved model into digital point-cloud data
- The room-sized 5-axis CNC where entire quarter scale (and larger) models are carved from blocks of REN. We weren't actually allowed to photograph inside the mill, but if you're curious...it was a car.
After the jump: bloggers in the clay studio.
Posted by: Carl Alviani | Comments (2)
A bite-sized list of what's happenin' now:
eweek
Adobe CS4
blog toronto
OCAD's "Design in India: A Paradigm of Ascension" lecture today
dexigner
Jump the Gap: 3rd International Roca Design Contest
carolina newswire
HumanCentric Specialist Speaks at National Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Conference
interior design
Week-long Design Event in Philadelphia
canadian architect
Good Design Show opens the new Contemporary Space Athens
cartel agency
'Objectified': The Blog for Gary Hustwit’s New Documentary is More Than Promotion
Sorry for the late notice, but tonight, Sept. 23, IDSA Atlanta and the Museum of Design Atlanta are hosting an evening lecture with Core77's own Allan Chochinov. The event will be held at the Art House Gallery, a community-oriented art and design cooperative, with a nice gallery in downtown Atlanta. If you can make it stop by to say hi!
Date: Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Time: 6:30-8:30pm (talk is from 7pm)
Where: Art House Gallery, 309 Peters Street, Atlanta,GA 30313
RSVP required!
Apparently Police in Amsterdam didn't fully comprehend Sagmeister's contribution to the ExperimentaDesign festival removing his installation — a sentence made from 250,000 Euro cent coins — within 24 hours of it launching. Scott Burnham, creator and curator of the Urban Play project for Droog Design describes the events on his blog.
It seems that the Amsterdam police were called by a resident of one of the overlooking buildings early Sunday morning to report that someone was "stealing an artwork". As the story goes, people were pocketing a few of the coins, which was also expected, but things got a bit out of hand when a resident saw this happening. So the police responded, and, in a rather bizarre instance of police efficiency, they proceeded to "secure" the artwork, by sweeping up the entire installation.
Police are now willing to return the coins and Burnham is seeking suggestions for what to do with them. ExperimentaDesign will run through till November 2nd, surely enough time for a witty response.
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (0)
It's no accident that BoxCycle, a site for buying and selling used cardboard boxes started in San Francisco, a city embedded with tech-savvy citizens renowned for their commitment to simply living a better quality of life.
Let's face it, when you need to move the temptation to hit up Staples for a stack of new boxes is often a time saving decision, in an ideal world of course you'd walk the streets and scavenge grocery stores to collect enough boxes for the move. BoxCycle gives you the best of both worlds, the convenience of online shopping with PayPal and the ability to re-use boxes.
You could probably even sell your boxes again when you're done, it's like craiglslist except someone else handles all the communication and matchmaking work. Prices range from 75 cents for an extra small box to a $1.25 for an extra large box.
via PSFK
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (1)
Project H Design needs two clicks of your mouse! The humanitarian product design nonprofit founded by Emily Pilloton (who wrote A Call To Action For Humanitarian (Product) Design), is in the final showdown to win $10,000 from Ideablob for their Design For Education project and needs your votes this week. After making it into the Top 8, they're mustering up all the votes they can get from September 22 to September 30 in the hopes of winning the cash to better fund this humanitarian design initiative. The project team is designing educational math toys for a school for AIDS orphans in Uganda, and a sister product for the US market. The toy will combine elementary math concepts with play and craft, and will be implemented at the Kutamba School for AIDS orphans in 2009.
Ideablob hosts a monthly contest that awards $10,000 to one great idea, aka the one that receives the most votes.
Please help Project H fund their Design For Education project by voting for them on Ideablob!
Posted by: core jr | Comments (0)
Prada's latest collaboration with Rem Koolhaas and AMO is a multifunctional space called the Prada Transformer in Seoul, South Korea. Designed to accommodate different art, cinema, and fashion events, the space is transformed by rotating and flipping the structure with cranes into one of the 4 different floor configurations.
The form of the Transformer is derived from a Tetrahedron and when rotated each side facilitates a different cultural program. Each of the four programs will function on unique steel framed shapes including a hexagon, a cross, a rectangle and a circle. Thus, over the course of the exposition, floors will become walls and walls will become ceiling.
I know what you're thinking, imagine rotating the space during an opening.
via freshnessmag
The interior and furniture designer Theodosis Zeniou from Cyprus is presenting his "domestic landscape" - a pop art wall installation that can metamorphose into a table with a chair and lots of storage space. We particularly like his color-coordinated clothes matching his design - an overall fun and colorful installation, spotted at Tent London.
>> View all London Design Festival 2008 coverage in one place
Posted by: Brit Leissler | Comments (0)
Green Prefab Architect Michelle Kaufmann has released a white paper calling for "Nutrition Labels" for houses. The white paper highlights the need for a universal sustainability labeling standard that would empower homebuyers to make smarter, more sustainable homebuying decisions.
"Nutrition labeling allows consumers to purchase food according to the quality of its nutritional content. We want homebuyers to be empowered with the same sort of information when it comes to making a decision about what house to live in," said Michelle Kaufmann, founder and chairwoman of Michelle Kaufmann Companies. "We have to start holding the houses we live in to the same standards as the food we eat. Our habits concerning both are vital to our own wellbeing as well as the wellbeing of the environment."
The white paper is available for download at www.mkd-arc.com
Zaha Hadid is playing dress up again, except this time it's more than just shoes. The starchitect has teamed up with Chanel to created traveling museum for a traveling exhibition centered around that legendary quilted bag.
Having just exhibited in Tokyo and moving on to London in Spring 2009, the Mobile Art Project is a futuristic pavilion created by Hadid which will feature 20 international artists. Curator Fabrice Bousteau promises work inspired by the elements that give the quilted bag from Chanel it's identity. "Their unique visions, unexpected interpretations - poetic cheeky and inspirational - reveal the multiple facets of this emblematic bag in all their artistic expressions."
So is this another shameless marketing ploy masquerading as an art event? At least Chanel had the courtesy to build their own pavilion instead of just renting the Guggenheim or the Brooklyn Museum to set up shop.
The touring exhibition will kick off in the Rumsey Playfield in New York's Central Park from October 20-November 9. Admission is free but visitors must register in advance for up to 4 free tickets here
It sounds too good to be true, so let's face it, it probably is: The Airborne Hotel concept--another nifty entry in the Create the Future contest--purports to increase airplane capacity while affording more individual comfort.
The Airborne Hotel, or abh, is an innovative seating system for wide-body aircraft that optimizes the available cabin space, ensuring a fully-reclining seat-bed for every passenger on board, while maintaining--and even increasing--passenger capacity of aircraft.The design's functionality is based on the bi-level configuration of its seating modules, which enables the utilization of the otherwise empty overhead space in an aircraft cabin. Each module is designed to weigh about the same as a conventional airplane seat; this is possible because the modules' honeycomb structure allows for multiple points of anchoring and fastening to the aircraft's fuselage, thus enabling the use of lighter materials. Another element of the design is its unique implementation of three aisles throughout the passenger cabin; this feature is essential to the design's efficiency, and also increases corridor space by 50%.
I'll tell you right now, I could deal with constant flight delays and being trapped on the runway if I could sleep through the whole ordeal. If this concept hits prime time, I'd look forward to the extra shuteye.
via the airline blog
The designer collective Arabeschi di Latte are presenting their Gnocchi Bar that they installed at Designersblock. It is a tiny temporary cooking studio, a corner where people could learn how to prepare gnocchi - a traditional home made potatoes pasta, easy to do and fast to cook. It was a great pleasure to watch the Italian group enthusiastically trying to culinary convert the Brits away from their microwave food culture to rediscover the pleasure of making and using old traditional tools. And it seemed they successfully managed to make people step away from their "couch potato life style", possibly for good? What a great project - bon appetito!
>> View all London Design Festival 2008 coverage in one place
The FunFab is a neat little product that's apparently not ready for prime time. The concept is simple enough: a digital photo frame with a built-in printer. Pick an image you like on-screen, hit a button and bang, you've got a hard copy.
But as you can see in this demo, the device does not adhere to WYSIWYG (or the product photo) and appears to crop images, which is plain to see despite the demonstrator's lame attempt to hide the cropped edge with her hand.
We also wonder why it prints upside down--would it be that difficult to rotate the printing mechanism, or the display, 180 degrees? We know there's no logical reason why the image has to be printed in the same orientation as the on-screen image, but any other way just doesn't make visual sense. We lament this kind of lack of attention to design detail. Get it together, FunFab!
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (1)
If you live in Tokyo and you're feeling nostalgic about your daily commute, or you're just visiting and want a crazy tech-noir souvenir then you might want to pick up one of the Yamanote Line Watches. It's an almost perfect replica of the stations electronic signage and is available for the Shinjuku, Ikebukuro, Ebisu, and Shinagawa stops.
Unfortunately that's as good as it gets, there's no train timetables, no maps and no real-time updates so you can plan your trip like clockwork. For ¥25,200 ($240) you just get a watch that simply tells the time and date — okay, and maybe a bit of attention at the next Gibson book meet.
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (0)
We all know what "power leakage" is: You leave things plugged in, and even when they're off, they're sucking small amounts juice out of the wall. If you could turn disconnect all of those devices every time you're not home, like during the eight hours a day you spend at work, your electricity bill would be lower and the planet would be a little greener.
Here are some solutions, in order of convenience:
1. Before you leave, you hunt down and unplug everything.
2. Everything is plugged into power strips, and before you leave, you hunt down and switch them all off.
3. You use a system like Arizona State University student Travis Andren's proposed Power Dam system (photo above), his entry into the 2008 Create the Future design contest.
That last one is a simple concept--you've got a wireless master switch that kills all of the outlets in your house; come home and just flip it on. (Each outlet would also have some ports for "always-on" devices, for those of you who download massive bittorrents during the day.)
So--anyone have any ideas for Solution #4?
via gizmag
Today T-Mobile pulls the wraps off the G1, the first smartphone to use Google's Android operating system.
The G1 is something of a reactive product that targets both the iPhone and the Blackberry; the G1's touchscreen is meant to rival or at least compare to the former, while the free, no-data-plan-required Gmail access targets the latter (Blackberry users pay at least $15 for e-mail access). The addition of a slide-out QWERTY keyboard should also appeal to Sidekick users.
Google's Android operating system is meant to usher in a new generation of smartphones, with Motorola, LG, Samsung and others all slated to release phones (of different designs, naturally) featuring the system.
Here's a demo of the Android OS performed on Google Developer's Day earlier this month.
And here's a link to a demo/description of Android from Google Headquarters, shot late last year.
By the by, for those of you who checked out the latter link--is it just us, or does Sergey Brin look like a young Eric Bana?
via p.c. world
[Top photos courtesy rizzn.com]
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (3)
Nokia developed Agenda 2015 (pdf) as a vision of how the physical world will fuse with the digital world seven years from now. It's a look at how people will be connecting not only with one another, but also with every place and thing in the world, as well as the surprising ways in which they will use these connections to enhance their lives.
Over the coming years, Nokia's research will focus on eight areas identified in Agenda 2015. Together, they explore the experiences people will have seven years out, the technology and interfaces they will use, and the infrastructure required to make it happen. computing, and device integration.
Posted by: Mark Vanderbeeken | Comments (0)
Creative Director
Pratt Institute
Brooklyn, New York
The Creative Director is the senior member of the Institute's design team who manages the design staff and is responsible for establishing and implementing the Institute's overall design strategy and visual standards.
The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.
Posted by: core jr | Comments (0)
Background rendering by Coroflot member David Fearnley.
If you haven't already entered, let this be your wake-up call! Above, check out Processlucas's time-lapse movie of his "Prismacolor marker and pencil sketch of a sci-fi observation vehicle." We LOVE the use of old-school templates, and the iPhone timer is a very sweet touch.
Here are the deets:
Remember that we want to see you put to paper the sickest ride you can dream of. Seriously, we want to SEE you do it. This 1HDC is more than just a 1 Hour Design Session. To be eligible you must video tape yourself spilling your ink and your soul into this one. We will then ask you to compress that one hour down into a 2 Minute Video and post it, along with an image of the final rendering, for the world to see.
Doors open:
Tuesday September 16, 2008
9 PM PST (4AM GMT)
Doors close:
Sunday, Sept 28, 2008
9 PM PST (4 AM GMT)
CRITERIA:
Judging will be based on quality of presentation and whether or not your work could have realistically been done in 1 Hour. The 1 hour does NOT include thinking in the shower, procrastinating, setting up the video camera, editing the video, uploading to Core77, or anything not related to creating the sick-assest rendering you can come up with. Use this Core77 4 minute sketch session as guidance for how to set-up your camera. If you're a digital hack, a screen capture will do nicely.
PRIZE:
Publicity in the October Core77 Newsletter, publicity on the Core77 Blog, bragging rights that Ralph Gilles, VP of Design at Chrysler chose your design!
JURY:
Guest judge on this 1HDC is Ralph Gilles, the VP of Design of Chrysler, and designer of the Chrysler 300. Community discussion is encouraged to help ensure the best design wins.
Important guidelines and entry link after the jump!
Posted by: core jr | Comments (2)Mark Moskovitz's Real Work is a collection of objects and videos that target modern workers who "have lost a meaningful connection to genuine exertion in their daily routine." It's a fictional gym that laments the honest labor lost in the "trade up" (read deal-with-the-devil) for hours in front of the computer. Here's Mark in his own words:
This shift has drained the integrity from our exercise resulting in the simulation based gym phenomenon. The noble desire to eschew idleness has ironically created a machine that goes nowhere and does nothing; on but idling--humming to the arrhythmic tune of isolated beats in isolated headphones. Exercise does have a significant intrinsic value, but we've reinvented, re-valued, and recently re-wired it (think Wii) not as a by-product of an honest gesture, but as a simulation based currency. In the process, we're losing the concrete skills associated with that labor that fulfills our spirit and beautifies our surroundings.
The work is on display at Vertigo Art Space in Denver Colorado until October 15th, but for those of you who can't make it, here are some pieces and artist descriptions below.
More of Marks work is at his site: www.fiftytwothousand.com
Labor Movement. Labor Movement is the centerpiece of Real Work. It is a machine that reminds us through materials, design, and raw construction that our lives have evolved in such a way that we've compartmentalized exercise so that it suits our schedules but carries little honesty in terms of a holistic, well-rounded life. How many masons or pipefitters would need a gym membership?
Nothing is Better than Something. 2-Channel Video. trt: 6 mins. This video is a head to head competition of dirt collecting between the artist using a Dyson Vacuum and the artist only using his hands and saliva to see who can collect more dirt; essentially a battle between ingenuity through technology and ingenuity through elbow grease. While it doesn't advocate that we trash the concept of the vacuum, it does remind us of an era before we used electricity and machines for everything, even that which didn't necessarily need it.
Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)
The New School has announced that Bruce Nussbaum, one of the leading thinkers and writers about the intersections of innovation and design, has been appointed Visiting Professor of Innovation and Design. He will work broadly across The New School, with a faculty "home base" in the School of Design Strategies at Parsons The New School for Design, which houses degree programs in design and management, integrated design and environmental studies.
Nussbaum will surely find a highly stimulating environment in an excellent university so defined by its rich history of dissent and democracy, European exile culture and social research. In short, we couldn't be more pleased.
Congratulations, Bruce.
Posted by: Mark Vanderbeeken | Comments (0)
Selfridges window displays are without doubt the Rolls Royce of window display culture - so it is a great honor for Designersblock to have been asked to commission some of their veterans to design seven windows of the legendary London department store - and even more so for the chosen designers! They were displayed during the London Design Festival and will continue to do so until 25. October 2008 on Duke Street.
The above four examples are the 1:1 scale model of the Concorde engine by PostlerFerguson (they bought the manuals for 5 quid on ebay!), Matthew Plummer Fernandez' Apifera (inspired by comparing the function of window displays to the art of attraction of flowers), (We)Make's Beryl & Friends recycled lamp shades and Toby Summerskill & Jim Rokos' Kaleidoscope. All of them truly mouth-watering installations that are certainly worth going to Oxford Street for.
>> View all London Design Festival 2008 coverage in one place
Tired of keeping up with the Cletuses? Sick of your neighbor boasting about his renovated double-wide? Then get yourself into a Tabbert--you'll be the toast of the trailerpark in your spanking Paganini Caravan.
Paganini--more a five-star hotel or a luxury yacht than a caravan.The interior, pure elegance and grace. An exclusive living ambience for highest demands that conveys a feeling of extensive and open spaciousness.
Outstanding quality and great love for details in a completely new dimension.
And that's a new dimension that Cletus and his muddy Pro-Keds will be barred from entering! Enjoy your NASCAR satellite feed in luxury and privacy. Get yourself a Tabbert Paganini today! Dealers are standing by. (Standing by in Germany, yes, but they're standing by.)
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (1)
Core friends Archinect have launched a new feature called 'ShowCase' and to kick things off, they've started with Dupli.Casa located in Ludwigsburg, Germany by Jürgen Mayer H. Completed 2006-07, the villa is based on the footprint of the house that was originally built on the site in 1984.
Waterdrop, a new project by Hector Serrano for Roca (in collaboration with Javier Esteban), was presented at this year's 100% Design in London. It's a spectacular and engaging experience capturing the beauty of water. Why water? The Spanish sanitary company Roca says "it is our soul, it is the reason why Roca exists. It runs through every one of our products and is the protagonist of our stage, the bathroom." An unconventional and truly beautiful installation that certainly stuck out at this year's 100% Design!
>>View all London Design Festival 2008 coverage in one place
Posted by: Brit Leissler | Comments (0)Justina and Luke sent in this drive-by walk-through from Designersblock, the curated exhibition in the heart of Covent Garden. Featuring over 50 international designers showing a wide range range of prototypes, objects, installations and projects, favorites were the Liquid Light piece by Chooi-Leng Tan, fabric/wallpaper projects by Assma Hussain, and YLEM's reflective Brilliant Wings.
Thanks Justina and Luke!
>>View all London Design Festival 2008 coverage
Posted by: core jr | Comments (1)
Wow the Judges really went out on a limb here, the second London Design Medal was awarded to Marc Newson at the London Design Festival last week. No stranger to awards, he follows Zaha Hadid who took out the prize in 2007. Based on this pattern which mirrors the order of Design Miami's 'Designer of the Year', we suggest Tokujin Yoshioka start planning his acceptance speech for 2009.
via Iconic View
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (0)A bite-sized list of what's happenin' now:
p.c. world
Microsoft's commercials made on a Mac
c.c.t.v.
China Industrial Design Week opens in Ningbo
autocar
Toyota iQ design competition
a.j.p. online
Children's Furniture Design Takes Off at Heathrow's Terminal 5
times online
"Consumer goods and military might": Cold War Modern at the Victoria & Albert Museum
stuff
Rick Wells and Formway Furniture win Design in Business Award
india times
Creativeland Asia Laboratory: Good ideas for sale
Whenever I'm having a problem installing a new product or trying to fix something, first place I go is Google. The beauty of the internet is that dozens, hundreds, or thousands of people have experienced the same problems as you and are happy to photographically share their solutions.
This is true even of problems you're only thinking about having. During a recent search for the best way to set up multiple displays (which I will one day be hypothetically able to afford), I came across Mitch Haile's Flickr photostream. The persistent Mitch has been playing around with multiple displays since way before they were flat, and his year-on-year progress is fascinating to watch:
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2007
2008
via tuaw
One of the more interesting mash-ups we've seen in a while, "Tokyo-jogging" lets you run wild through the streets of Tokyo with your Wiimote tapped into Google Maps' Street View. The technology is not quite up to speed yet to support this but the idea is awesome.
via gizmodo
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (0)
The current trend in high-end bathroom sinks is to make them flat, but no matter how slim they get, they've still got all that piping underneath; after all, the drainage has to go somewhere. But Italian manufacturer Axolute has solved this little aesthetic dilemma with their Horizontal Integrated Siphon technology, which allows the water to go sideways, into the wall.
Installation probably won't be cheap, or easy, though aesthetes should appreciate the new design possibilities opened up by the hidden plumbing. But this solution is not for people with long hair--God forbid you need to access the drain trap.
via luxuo
More options for the diehard cyclist who wants to commute to work in style without sacrificing performance, starting at £120 it's not cheap but if you're down with the ¾ look then Rapha's 'plus 4s' could be for you. Providing management are onboard with shorts at the office of course.
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (0)
How absurd can a "Limited Edition" product get? Does something become more useful, or desirable, because only ten of them are made?
Sruli Recht pushes the boundaries with "The First Bullet-Proof Gentlemen's Pocket Square." The limited edition Kevlar kerchief is being sold at Iceland's Liborius boutique and boasts the following description:
The Bullet-proof Handkerchief
For the Promiscuous Idealist whom
Lives in Elegant Danger
And lest anyone forget the device is little more than a novelty, there's a disclaimer:
The store and designer take NO responsibility for schmucks and wooden-heads who feel compelled to test the endurance or resistance of the textile in any way.Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (0)
Footwear Color Designer (m/f)
PUMA AG
Herzogenaurach, Germany
Create and apply color and material palettes to seasonal footwear product lines. Work closely as a member of the Product Line Management, Footwear Design and Product Development Teams, assisting in planning and merchandising of seasonal footwear product lines. Travel to domestic and international markets to develop and monitor fashion/consumer trends that can be applied to PUMA's own product range.
The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.
Posted by: core jr | Comments (0)
Interior architects B3 Designers have turned their east end studio into an intriguing Cardboard Cafe, made from 8.000 (!) cardboard boxes! It was certainly one of the more inspired projects to be spotted at the London Design Festival, although the hired (!) staff representing the young studio didn't quite do justice to neither the great project nor the admirable value system of its creators. So we were misinformed regarding the disposal of the structure, however the studio have been in touch and we were informed that the boxes will in fact be used again to show the project at other exhibitions in the future - so it's a cheer for the good guys! Vive la cardboard revolution!
Part of the Tent London event was the show Create Berlin, featuring 20 young design teams from Germany's capital. In the pictures above you can see the modular shelf system Swoc by Elt la Benn & Kvadrat, made from re-inforced felt, LLot LLov's Lola light installation, merging fashion and product design, one example of Mashallah Design & Linda Kotowski's project The T-shirt Issue and Susanne Phillippson & Peter Ibruegger's Guardians of Neurotic Narcissism. And of course the huge Berlin Bear, squeezed into the gallery, being forced to listen to design talks - where were the animal rights activists?
Changing Dimensions is an exhibition of recent RCA graduates showing "a selection of projects adding a new dimension to everyday objects". Featured above are Luka Stepan's Folding Stool that turns from a 2D wall piece into a 3D stool and Bernadette Detten's Checkered Floor Necklace, Staircase Bracelet and wooden turned heals from her collection of Chest Pieces & Other Bodies.
Walking through Calty, you're only hit occasionally by the importance of where you are: with all the palm trees, the chatty hosts, the leisurely lunches, and the clay-carving sessions, it's easy to forget that this is the North American design headquarters of the most successful car company in the world. The company that led the New York Times Magazine to ask in a cover story last year whether it "has evolved into the world's most sophisticated modern corporation."
For all that, it's not so overwhelming. The campus is modern and bright, but smallish. One of the media specialists joked that it's "hidden behind a church," and that's actually kind of right: a suburban mega-church with a one acre parking lot, but still.
The main studio is in Toyota City, Japan, of course, and there are sites in France, Michigan and elsewhere in Japan, but Calty has cranked out a lot of cars familiar to American drivers, especially lately: the "designed and built here in America" claim that Toyota makes about the 2007 Tundra, their presumptive F-150 killer, is because of Calty. So is the RAV4, one iteration of the Prius, and several of the recent Scions (see concept cars above, and more after the jump).
Posted by: Carl Alviani | Comments (0)
Tent London seems to have received a bit of a quality booster this year - is there finally some quality control going on? It is a very diverse and entertaining show happening again in the Truman Brewery on Brick Lane as part of the London Design Festival. Here some impressions, more to follow in a later post and of course in our gallery. From top left to bottom right:
Milk Jug & Sugar Bowl by Undergrowth Design, Motorlight by Jake Dyson, Lazy Chair by Freshwest, Easy Chair and Vektor Light by Dirk Winkel, Yuri Suzuki's ingenious Sound Chaser with track-lines made from cut-up records, Will Boex sitting on his bench made from pencils, Tom Higgs' Boson Chair made from bamboo I-beams inspired by bridge construction and light clamps by Song bong kyu.
Posted by: Brit Leissler | Comments (0)Hiroko Shiratori demonstrating her unconventional folding chair, presented at the show "Under the same Roof" in The Aram Gallery in London featuring new works of the designer collective OKAY Studio. Also featured: Cupboard by Mathias Hahn, wooden chair by Tomas Alonso, part of the Chocolate Chanedelier experiments of Jordi Canudas and chair by Yael Mer and Shay Alkalay.
Talk about a GreenerGadget! Swedish designer Peter Thuvander has designed an induction-powered yo-yo charger for iPhones and other Apple handheld devices. Housing a lithium ion cell, and based on the OLPC crank and this dandy wind-up remote, Peter is betting that the physics are close to there. "The remote control needs only 30 cranks--which is nothing when you yo-yo," argues Peter. He's also thinking about what road warriors call "opportunitic charging": "I think I'd at least use it as an emergency device for all the dead iPhone moments I have."
Or at least to change the channel when you've seen one too many "HI, I'm a Mac..." commercials.
Learn more at www.peterthuvander.se.
Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (1)
If you grew up watching Miami Vice or even caught the 2006 feature length movie, you know that when it comes to superior fire power, equipment and technology, the drug lords win hands down--but not this time. After a 2 hour boat chase through the Straits of Florida last August, drug runners were stunned at their capture claiming it was like being chased by a UFO.
The ship wasn't alien, however. It was an 80-foot, 60-ton, $6 million experimental vessel, built for the Defense Department, called the Stiletto. A Batman-esque, double-M-shaped hull allows Stiletto to operate in extremely shallow waters. A carbon fiber body let's the thing cruise at up to 60 knots. And a series of gigbit ethernet connections allows radars to drone-controllers to infrared sensors to be positioned anywhere throughout the ship.
Developed for the Pentagon's now-defunct Office of Force Transformation, the Stiletto eventually found a new life fighting the war on drugs although if you were tasked with writing the script for a television show, it's just a question of time before the bad guy's get their own.
via wired
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (0)Planning to put down the pencils and mix some beats this weekend, get some tips from Richie Hawtin's video demo of his latest set up and the application Traktor which allows him to sync up to 4 tracks at the same time. Often criticized as 'faking it', Hawtin defends the application seeing it as the heart of the operation freeing him up to concentrate on the music and more interestingly, can be shared across an ethernet with multiple DJ's at a live event.
via PSFK
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (0)
If you weren't one of the 750 attendees at the IDSA's national conference in Phoenix last week, you can grab a peek at what went down in the flickr pool they've just posted and if you did go, add your pics. Word is despite a few missing regulars, attendance was good and there was a visible presence of a new generation of designers.
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (1)
If you're in NYC tonight, ride a bike to this: Pentagram's Jim Biber and Abbott Miller will be talking about their stunning work for the Harley-Davidson Museum at the Architectural League. Here's the pitch:
Occupying a 20-acre reclaimed industrial site in the heart of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the museum's design, echoing the materials and aesthetics of its contents and context, creates a new paradigm for the integration of a corporate museum into its local community, while also clearly presenting the Harley-Davidson design story to a global community of enthusiasts.
The Ride: Designing the Harley-Davidson Museum
Friday, September 19
7:00 p.m.
The Urban Center
457 Madison Avenue
You can be sure scrapping the retired fleet of F-117 Nighthawks is not part of a government recycling program. Developed after experience with the increased sophistication of Soviet surface-to-air missiles in Vietnam, the F-117's first flight was in 1981 but it wasn't publicly acknowledged by the US Air Force until 1988.
The last plane to fly was on August 11, 2008 to the Tonopah Test Range in Nevada where a special retirement village houses the remaining stealth fighters while they await their fate with a monster Caterpillar out back.
via gizmodo
Arts Co is organizing the exhibition "From Now To Eternity" as part of the London Design Festival. Several designers were asked to find out how plastic inspired their creativity and explore the material's versatility - transparent or opaque, hard or pliant, able to take on a myriad of colors and forms.
Plastic is with us virtually from now to eternity: impervious to bacteria, acid, salt, rust, breakage and, in some cases, able to withstand heat, plastic is something of a miracle substance. One hundred years ago, when it was first invented, no one could have anticipated that plastic would present one of our biggest recycling challenges.
Featured above are Stuart Haygarth's ingenious Millenium Chandelier made from recycled party poppers, FAT's Soft Hercules made from flexible PU foam, Tomoko Azumi's beautiful Shaker Shadow objects made from recycled PEP, Raw Edges' Plastic Nostalgia Wardrobe with original Fisher Price Toys from the 70's, Tom Price's Fleece Chair made from found polyester fleece & resin and last but not least Rolf Sachs' PE vacuum sealed Dressed to Impress.
Posted by: Brit Leissler | Comments (0)
Mathias Hahn is demonstrating his latest design - an adjustable metal lamp. It was presented yesterday at the opening of the show "Under the same Roof" in the Aram Gallery in London. Curated by Daniel Charny it features new works of the designer collective OKAY Studio.
Located in a mountainous region between Osaka and Hiroshima, Shuhei Endo's rusted steel Bubbletecture H visitor center emerges from the landscape employing a number environmental systems including the life cycle of the entire site. The 10,000 square foot structure is broken into 3 distinct sections featuring a theater, bookshop, galley and a workshop. If you missed the July issue of ICON magazine which featured this superstructure, the coolhunter has a great write up and more pics.
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (0)
A bite-sized list of what's happenin' now:
voxy
Air New Zealand Launches Specialist Aircraft Interior Design Business
scoop
Luxury shower and tapware manufacturer wins Design In Business Award 2008
dexigner
Purisme Letter Opener: Cutting-Edge Design Wins International Awards
the raw feed
The Next-Generation PC Being Built for Children
the sun times
Eulogy for Chrysler designer John Herlitz
taiwan journal
Taiwanese design talent on show in Taichung
marketwatch
Interface design testing: Open Solutions' Enterprise Usability Lab
Our friends at PSFK are taking their show on the road again, this time to Singapore:
PSFK Conference Asia is a creative business event with speakers from companies that include MTV, NASA, and Panasonic; agencies that include Flamingo International, Mindshare, Profero and Wieden + Kennedy; and leading creative visionaries that include Jeff Staple and Mark Dytham.Held in Singapore on October 10th 2008, this event will be PSFK's 6th conference following successful installments in London, Los Angeles,
New York and San Francisco.We aim to inspire an audience of creative thinkers to make things better.
Click below for the agenda.
Posted by: core jr | Comments (0)
I'm a moderately enthusiastic iPhone user, but must admit that one thing I miss about the telephony experience is flipping a phone open or closed to take or break a call. So yes, it's with a bit of envy that I regard the form factor for Research in Motion's new BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220, the first flippable smartphone. The unmistakable tactility and the metaphor of opening or closing a little door for each call produces a subtle satisfaction that can't be matched by watching an icon disappear on a touchscreen.
Which do you prefer?
via forbes
The Eiffel Tower is to enclosed buildings as the Antec Skeleton is to desktop PC's. The open-air design has room for four drives and definitely looks like you shouldn't spill coffee on it. We're not sold on the concept, but in a time when everyone is driving towards Apple's silver sliver minimalism, it's nice to see someone trying something different. And remember, everyone hated the Eiffel Tower in the beginning.
via engadget
As a mark of having been in the business of making convertibles for 25 years, Saab will be displaying their 9-X Air BioHybrid concept at next month's Paris Motor Show. The four-seater was designed in such a way that despite its racy looks, the roof is relatively flat, not the series of swooping, compound curves we've come to expect in a contemporary coupe. It makes it easier to tuck away and heck, maybe they can start selling the flatpack roof through one of their country's other big firms, Ikea.
Click here for a massive gallery.
via autoblog
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (0)
Next week don't miss this dose of American Pride, design style:
"The American Design Club presents its inaugural exhibition, Outside of Sorts, and bring together a variety of Americans, designers, and different approaches to the theme of "Outside." The American Design Club (AmDC) Founded 2008, aims to bring together designers working under the American Flag, membership is open - it is suggested, although not necessary, that members are designers and/or Americans. Currently there is a lack of representation of American designers, outside our borders, and a similar lack within. The AmDC seeks to heighten awareness for emerging designers, further promote a sense of community among one another, and to provide exhibition opportunities.Outside of Sorts draws designers from all walks of life, including works from California and Texas, to the local-grown Brooklyn scene. It marks a great first collection of the American Design Club and promises a bright future. The theme has been interpreted literally in some cases with objects to be used outside, conceptually with products on the outside looking in, and with work whose relationship is tangential to outside ideas, green, play, or things we commonly find when we leave our home. The show offers pieces for sale such as furniture, lighting, jewelry, table top accessories, however, much of the show involves the rare chance to view prototypes only. The curators liberally interpreted the submission parameters in order to show the widest variety of work being done in the United States, and to great effect. The team of curators includes Charles Brill, Henry Julier, Annie Lenon, Kiel Mead, Theo Richardson, and Alex Williams."
Outside of Sorts
September 25th - 30th
Opening Reception Thursday September 25th, 6-9pm
Character, 19 Prince St, NY NY 10012
The H1 'Fugu' Rescue Helicopter by designer Matt Bassett is optimized for space efficiency, his concept would carry a similar payload to a Chinook but in an aircraft that's 40 feet shorter. Click through to see the model and a large view of his awesome rendering.
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (1)
A commercial company's ability to innovate is inversely proportional to its proclivity to publicly release conceptual products.
>> read article
via freegorifero
Posted by: Mark Vanderbeeken | Comments (0)
One thing at this years 100% Design in London that is difficult to capture by camera but still worth mentioning is the "The Good Design Manifesto", created by Richard Shed. It is a collection of 100 brief responses from industry experts to the question "What is good design?". Here you can find a little video with interview snippets by Sam Hecht, Jamie Hayon, Libby Sellers, Thorsten van Elten and many more and here are some of the responses which are written on various walls of the 100% Design venue:
Good design...
...makes ordinary people's life more meaningful. (Lavrans Lovrie, Livework)
...brings the intelligence of nature together with man's production capabilities. (Jonathan Prestwich)
...is finding new places where what we can dream meets what we can make happen. (John Miller and Anna Hart, Mark)
...is considerate and harmonious. (Paul Velentine, Smallpond)
...is sooo boring. We need GREAT design: Vision. Humanity. Sex. Death. Art. Love. (Richard Eisermann)
...is serious fun. (Nina Tolstrup)
...is no longer about 20th century debates around form or function. Good design will ensure we got a future on this planet.
Industrial Designer
Burton Snowboards
Burlington, Vermont
We're looking for an Industrial Designer to serve as a cohesive link for the design and development process in the binding category. You will: Interface with Engineering regarding design concepts and their applications to product. Assist in the boot/binding/board co-development process. Prototype design concepts in 3 dimensions in the Burton prototype shop...
The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.
Posted by: core jr | Comments (0)
As part of Coroflot's never-ending quest to give you the razor-sharp career-building tools you so richly deserve, Carl Alviani has unearthed an internship-finding guide from a few years back and given it a Web 2.0 era makeover. While some of the advice is timeless (do your homework, be persistent), certain aspects of the search have definitely changed. Like number 3, for example:
The array of resources available for researching a company is massive and growing. There's the official company website, of course, but that's just for starters. You should also look them up on a couple social networking sites, read their blog if they have one, and search for articles that have been written about them in the last couple of years. Coroflot and Design Directory are also great sources of information--in addition to a company profile, many staff designers working at a firm will have their own corefolios or their own personal websites, and you need to look at those as well.
Or this bit on tracking down a contact name:
Once upon a time, finding out who to send things to meant cold-calling, but there are more ways than ever now to get around this. Many design worlds are small, so asking colleagues and professors if they know anyone who knows anyone can often yield a name. If you come across the name of a senior designer or design director while doing your research, jot it down and search out more information on that person: chances are good they're a reasonable first contact.
If you're staring an uncaring world right in the face, with a pile of student loans at your feet, take a look, and offer your own stories and tips.
photo: I, Timmy
So, we're back from Toyota's Calty Design Research studio in palm tree-infested Newport Beach, CA, and it was about as thoroughly pleasant a press visit as could be imagined. A small group of design bloggers got a walk-through of the studio, presentations by three different designers working on the 2009 Venza (a new Boomer-seeking "crossover sedan" that Calty's been developing since 2005), and some nice touches like a hands-on clay sculpting demo and a visit to the room-sized 5-axis CNC.
More coverage to come, but let's start off with a short video of Venza chief exterior designer Ian Cartabiano doing a PS render of a concept sketch, followed by some 3D CAD fly-throughs:
A couple of things to notice about Ian's technique and set-up. First off, despite having access to pretty much any interface technology out there, he's going for what looks like a 12x12 Wacom Intuos--not a Cintiq--and rendering over a scanned pen and paper sketch. According to Cartabiano, who also teaches auto rendering at ArtCenter, there's a lot of variation among designers; while Photoshop is pretty standard, input devices are a matter of personal preference. Ian prefers the Intuos' responsiveness, and reiterates what a lot of other top designers have said about sketching: there's no substitute for the tactile feedback of paper.
Also of note: custom pen shapes for different applications, a stylus that never stops moving, and lots and lots of layers.
For a different angle on this demo--literally--check out Jean Aw's coverage on NotCot. She managed to stick around all the way until Ian signs his name.
The 3D CAD is from a large presentation room where more developed designs are reviewed by management. The Alias models (yep, it's all still Alias, though according to Calty president Kevin Hunter, the engineers re-build in CATIA prior to tooling) are projected eight feet high and spun around in real time, inducing a tiny bit of vertigo and enabling an unnerving level of scrutiny ("yeah, can we zoom in on the lip of that cup holder? Thanks...")
After the jump: photos of a clay studio, material and color boards from the 50s, and the fastest Wacom hands we've ever seen in our sheltered little lives.
Posted by: Carl Alviani | Comments (0)Greta Corke, one of the three partners of DIY Kyoto, makes an introduction to Wattson - their latest invention. It is an award-winning product that helps you save money and do some good for the environment at the same time. Impossible you think? Go and see how it works.
Posted by: core jr | Comments (0)
A font walks into a bar. The bartender says "Hey, we don't serve your type here." and he called the Serif.
Typographunnies - enjoy, vote or submit your own font joke.
Answer to the title question after the gap.
Brought to you viia Metafilter
Posted by: Niti Bhan | Comments (2)
More impressions from today's 100% Design in London. Tom Dixon showed more of his "shiny balls" (Mirror Balls) and the solid wooden Slab Chair that he already presented earlier this year in Milan. Also in the pictures above (amongst others) is the velcro lampshade "Face to Face" by Luis Eslava for Almerich and the "Handjob" coathooks by Thelermont Hupton.
We are touring the London Design Festival - today is the first day of 100% Design. It's busy as expected and the general first impression is that the designs are finally way less baroque-ish then in the past two years and there is a return to simpler shapes. There seems to be a big revival of the 50's, or rather a new aesthetic interpretation of it. Sustainability is also a big issue as well as the inspiration from natural forms. In the next few days we will keep reporting about all the different events and new trends from the city on the Themse. Also check our gallery, it will be updated frequently so in case you can't be there yourself you will get a good impression of what you are missing - or actually not since we bring it right to your screen.
"A picture is worth a thousand words" - "Design means being good not just looking good" - "Never use an image behind your text" - "Design is a good idea" - "Good design is good business" - "Form follows function"
Ridiculous Design Rules offers a place to post pretentious sound bites about design that you've heard from colleagues, clients or anyone else who thinks they know more than you.
Phillippe? He is one of the 'lucky' winners of last week's poll to find the most ridiculous figure on the site. Unsurprisingly, especially if you saw this video, Phillippe Starck beat off stiff competition from Bill Bland, Plato and ... to be crowned 'The Most Ridiculous' with a majority of 58%.
This week's poll questions which is the most ridiculous building The Eiffel Tower, The Gherkin, The Bayterek Tower, or The Endless Column - cast your votes here.
Posted by: Aart van Bezooyen | Comments (0)A bite-sized list of what's happenin' now:
design week u.k.
Priestman Goode takes product design approach to exhibition
marketwatch
Package Design: Tom's of Maine Selects R&D
media bistro
Frog Design's Honest Account of IDSA 2008
webwire
Altec Lansing Unveils New Brand and Design Identity
macsimum news
Apple releases 'Smart Garment' patent
design boost
Speaker list announced for DesignBoost 2008 forum
parsons
New York Magazine and Parsons Present: 40 Years of NYC Design
Nicholas Lovegrove and Demian Repucci's Greenaid is a reusable polyester shopping bag that can be neatly shoved inside a neoprene outer shell. The choice of a grenade for the form factor is a bit unusual, but from a tactile perspective seems very appealing; the more we look at this thing, the more we want to grab one.
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (0)
Griffin's new Clarifi case for the iPhone has a nifty feature: a close-up lens that slides into place over the original. The sliding lens increases focus depth from the standard iPhone camera's 18 inches to a much shorter 4 inches, enabling you to shoot a business card and capture all the details clearly. And since the sliding mechanism is integrated into the protective case itself, there's no attachment to lose.
via tuaw
Here's an interesting manufacturing vid of how crayons are made, or at least how they were made in the '70s; it's difficult to imagine there are that many actual human beings in a Crayola factory these days.
via kottke
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."
Today's announcement of the call for entries for the 2009 Buckminster Fuller Challenge couldn't have been timed better.
The world financial system is in chaos; vital ecosystems are under stress; climate change and its consequences are daily news; and the bare essentials of human life - food, water, and shelter - remain out of reach for billions of people.Challenges of this magnitude require bold, visionary strategies; they require what Buckminster Fuller called "a design revolution." Great stand-alone solutions - pieces of a larger puzzle - are out there, but it will take more than an innovative gadget or isolated technological breakthrough to tackle the problems of a complex and interconnected world.
Enough said. If you've got your visionary thinker cap on, the throw your hat in the ring. The winner gets $100,000 - enough to kick start your project.
Entry deadline: Nov. 7, 2008
The registration process, and a gallery of last year's entries can be found on the BFI web site.
Tim Brown has launched a blog on design thinking sprinkled with a smattering of social impact, Bruce Nussbaum tells us as he extols on the three things he likes about it. Here's a snippet from Brown's about page to get you started,
This is a blog about design thinking. I am in the process of writing a book on the subject and this is the place I would like to share ideas and have a discussion. If you want to get an overview on how I see design thinking then check out the article I wrote for Harvard Business Review here.Posted by: Niti Bhan | Comments (0)As you will see as you read the posts, I have lots of questions. If you can help me with any answers or perspectives I would be very grateful. If you let me know who you are I will also do my best to acknowledge anything that makes it into the book.
Bruce Sterling presented this piece from 2043 as a keynote address at the Game Developers Conference in Austin, Texas, on September 16, 2008.
"Someday the computer entertainment industry would be big. Big enough, and stodgy enough, that it actually WOULD employ towel designers. There would be oceans of money and huge budgets on an industrial scale. There would be room for armies of creative guys who actually did create towels."
>> read speech
photo: flurb
via Timo Arnall
Posted by: Mark Vanderbeeken | Comments (0)
Industrial Design Team Leader
DEKA R&D Corporation
Manchester, New Hampshire
The winning candidate will advocate for Industrial Design, working with program managers to determine how best the ID group can add value to our projects and our company. The candidate must have experience with new product definition and development, team building and leadership. Additionally, the candidate will advocate for manufacturable design solutions while contributing creatively individually and to the overall work product of the group.
The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.
Posted by: core jr | Comments (0)Weekly finds from the 3D world.
Inventor
Getting comfortable with Driven Dimensions
Dynamic sections video tutorial
Pro/Engineer
Visualization and simulation roundup for 2008 (registration required)
SolidWorks
Two macros that will drastically speed up your assembly work
SYCODE's ass-saving STL import converter
Rhino
PanelingTools plug-in 4.0
Visi
Vero Visi - non-linear unfolding software for serious sheet metal design
3DVia
D'Assault launches 3DVia Shape2.0 - a worthy competitor to Google SketchUp?
The original caption sums it up nicely - Tinysaur is tiny. The model above is made from a postal service envelope, cut to size on a Epilog Mini 35 watt laser. These were available for a brief time on Etsy, but are sadly sold out. If you've got the shop for it, you can download the original pattern and shrink it to a tiny size on your own!
via NYC Resistor
Posted by: StuCon | Comments (0)
Trying to use an iPod Touch with gloves on is like trying to program the microwave while wearing oven mitts. Here with help are Dots Gloves:
Dots Gloves offers simple, affordable gloves adorned with metal dots that enable use of the iPhone, iPod and iTouch without direct finger contact. The smooth, curved surface of the dots provides completely safe, scratchless use.
They even let you spec out which fingers (thumb, index, middle) you want the dots on, and at ten bucks a pop they're dirt cheap.
via dvice
Printing a Book, Old School from Armin Vit on Vimeo.
When people ask if industrial designers "design machines", maybe this is what they mean. Spotted on MUG this morning, SpeakUp's post from last June features a wonderful video of the processes and machinery involved in bookbinding from 1947. Now THIS is a great design snack!
Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)
Designing a house for a designer is like baking a cake for a pastry chef: per-res-sure! But Tokyo's Koji Tsutsui Architect & Associates gave it a shot anyway, designing a domicile to an industrial designer's exacting specifications:
It was required that this house be not only private in nature but also in coexistence with the client's feelings for his life's work, the industrial design. The client gave Koji Tsutsui several requirements including an open atelier to outside; a study with a view to the car; a living/ dining space where his treasured industrial products will be displayed; and completely separated guest room and bed room for sleep. On the other hand, considering that the act of thinking about design is part of the client's daily life, the division between designing and living needed to be as ambiguous as possible. Each room had to be divided while also softly connecting them together at the same time.
The client remains unnamed, but we're going to guess it's Nendo's Oki Sato or maybe Naoto Fukusawa. Hit the jump for more pictures of the house, and/or click here to read more about it.
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (8)
Metropolis Mag has an entertaining interview up with Murray Moss, the design maven whose SoHo storefront has been presenting design both high and low since 1994. An excerpt:
World-saving mission: I never established Moss as the gift shop for the United Nations. I called it Moss because I intended it to be autobiographical--completely biased, prejudiced, limited to my experiences, my likes, my dislikes at any given moment--in an effort to keep away from a notion that there even is such a thing as good design.First act as "design czar": I would resign.
Read the whole thing here.
Wouldn't it be nice if objects appeared when you needed them, and disappeared when you didn't? Take your large flatscreen TV, for instance--when it's on it's great, and when it's off you've got a big, black rectangle hanging on your wall.
Consumer electronics manufacturer Beamax has applied that thinking to their X-Series Dellegno projection screen, which disappears into its base at the touch of a button. It's less hassle than having a ceiling-mounted disappearing projection screen, and it recently won the Best Industrial Design Award at Denver's Cedia Expo consumer electronics show. The video below is like most other product videos we've seen lately--poorly produced--but it should give you the idea.
In this interview on AlJazeeraEnglish, former CNN news anchor Riz Khan speaks with world renowned creativity and education expert Sir Ken Robinson who strongly believes the current state of education may begin holistically but progressively focuses "on the head, and then just to one side."
via Designverb
Posted by: Mark Vanderbeeken | Comments (0)
Industrial Designer
HoMedics Inc.
Commerce Township, Michigan
We are seeking an Industrial Designer with the ability to turn their design talent into the consumer products of the future. As part of our industrial design team you will develop innovative solutions for both concept and production of HoMedics consumer products. This is an outstanding opportunity for an industrial designer with 5-10 years of experience to work with a growing department in a World Class organization.
The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.
Posted by: core jr | Comments (0)
Background rendering by Coroflot member David Fearnley.
Cars are a huge part of our lives. They not only drive us from point A to point B, they drive memories. From that first road trip with the crew to losing our virg...er...keys, we have a long standing love affair with our automobiles.
In honor of this cultural icon, we're stepping it up a notch: We want to see you put to paper the sickest ride you can dream of. Seriously, we want to SEE you do it. This 1HDC is more than just a 1 Hour Design Session. To be eligible you must video tape yourself spilling your ink and your soul into this one. We will then ask you to compress that one hour down into a 2 Minute Video and post it, along with an image of the final rendering, for the world to see.
Doors open:
Tuesday September 16, 2008
9 PM PST (4AM GMT)
Doors close:
Sunday, Sept 28, 2008
9 PM PST (4 AM GMT)
CRITERIA:
Judging will be based on quality of presentation and whether or not your work could have realistically been done in 1 Hour. The 1 hour does NOT include thinking in the shower, procrastinating, setting up the video camera, editing the video, uploading to Core77, or anything not related to creating the sick-assest rendering you can come up with. Use this Core77 4 minute sketch session as guidance for how to set-up your camera. If you're a digital hack, a screen capture will do nicely.
PRIZE:
Publicity in the October Core77 Newsletter, publicity on the Core77 Blog, bragging rights that Ralph Gilles, VP of Design at Chrysler chose your design!
JURY:
Guest judge on this 1HDC is Ralph Gilles, the VP of Design of Chrysler, and designer of the Chrysler 300. Community discussion is encouraged to help ensure the best design wins.
Important guidelines and entry link after the jump!
Posted by: core jr | Comments (0)
It's neither pads nor skirts, but art movements.
First, Takashi Murakami on Maximalism
ESQ: In sci-fi films, futuristic design is often ultrastreamlined and bright white -- giant iPods and such. Does that vision of the future bother you?TM: Really? In the world of P-Funk, Parliament comes from outer space in a UFO. I think that the aesthetic you are describing is an observation of only a narrow part of the field that doesn't take into account all the directions. I'm sure that funky space clothes will become mainstream again in the future.
And, Richard Meier on Minimalism
When I look out a window, any window in the world, from Brooklyn to Rome to Fatehpur Sikri, India, I see a concert of light and color working together in ways that cannot be contrived. In my work as an architect I cannot imagine a situation in which I would try to compete with or imitate the environment that surrounds my buildings. My job is to acknowledge nature, to create relationships between the interiors and exteriors, and to bring order in a way that substantiates the spaces we live in and move through. I take the work seriously, but I recognize other styles of art and design. Sometimes I even admire them. I saw some big, soft, comfortable porch chairs on Long Island, New York, some years ago and liked them so much I thought I'd design a contemporary version. I tried it, and the prototypes are sitting in storage, where they will remain. Minimalism is not the only style, but it's my style.
Plus, they've got slideshows: Richard Meier and Takashi Murakami
Posted by: Steve Portigal | Comments (1)
It's that time of the year again when it seems like every city is having a design week before the onslaught of winter. Not to be left in the dark, Helsinki's theme for 2008 is light, "visible in installations brightening urban spaces, as well as a creative light bringing people together". To get you in the mood, here's a few pics from last year's event.
Helsinki Design Week
September 25th - October 6th, 2008
Steve Portigal tips us to this great piece on The Technium where Kevin Kelly riffs on the plummeting-to-zero cost of just about everything in the "new economy of abundance," and the attendant increase in value of metering each of those everythings. Hmm, maybe that wasn't so clear. Let's go to KK for the sweetspot:
I can get free email, free storage, free photo manipulation tools, free genealogical sharing, free phone service, free twittering, free...well almost free anything...knowing that the hosts are monitoring (metering) my usage.Monitoring everything--all flows of materials, all flows of energy, all flows of people, all flows of attention--naturally creates rivers, if not oceans, of data about the flows of data. This flood of meta data is driven in part because the costs of bandwidth and computer cycles is itself "too cheap to meter." But in fact, meta data is too cheap NOT to meter--if we mean only to count and monitor it. The value of measuring the meta data of any bit seems to increase as the cost of the bit decreases.
At first glance there is a worry that an avalanche of data from all possible sensors, running 24/7/365 will simply drown us. What value can their be in saving every email, every web page EVER, every keystroke? One thing we've learned from radical self-trackers and life-bloggers is that while the value of ubiquitous monitoring seems nil at first, data streams of trivial actions are often the streams that become most valuable later on. Your night-to-night sleep patterns are worthless right now, but they might form an incredibly valuable baseline in the future if some emerging illness were to disturb them. Likewise in business, mass logs of ordinary customer behavior are now almost a hassle but might become the foundation for both new innovations and aids in discerning failures in future products and services.
Imagine a world were any set of historical data was available to you. Everyone has their own favorite data stream from history they would love to have. Such a trove would transform our lives. For that reason, monitoring everything will become commonplace. Cheaply metering data, in fact, is what propels the free economy. Metering is a type of attention. Products and services will be given away in exchange for the meta data about their use. Data about the free is now more valuable than the free thing itself.
In ID school they always told us "You're not just designing a product; you're designing an experience." That maxim becomes readily apparent when you're designing a system of products encompassing everything from furniture to lighting to technology and making it all work together, as it's intended to in Hewlett-Packard's Halo teleconferencing system.
It consists of one half of a conference table, placed opposite three huge plasma screens in a specially designed studio. Callers in other studios appear on the screens in life-size, as if they were sitting opposite. All studios are designed with the same furniture and decoration, to aid the illusion. There are no delays: sound and image are perfectly synchronised. Users can make eye contact with one another across the continents. Sound emanates from the right direction, adding to the verisimilitude. It is not quite like being in the same room, but close enough to allow natural conversation, with all the interruptions, gestures and telling facial expressions that entails.
Must have been fun to design, and we'd be quite curious to see the rejected concepts.
As we were looking over press photos like the one above, we couldn't help but feel a sense of familiarity with how the faces were presented. Surely, we felt, we had seen something similar before. Then it hit us:
Who knew? The guy who did the opening credits for the Brady Bunch was an interface genius! It totally looks like Mike is looking at Greg!
...and Peter!
...and Bobby! Although frankly, in this shot he doesn't look too pleased with Bobby's performance.
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (0)
Aaron Perry-Zucker, a senior graphic design student at the RISD has teamed up with DesignObserver to produce Design/ers for Obama. Here's the low/down:
Many artists including Shepard Fairy have already proven that poster art is not a dead medium in the United States and have also shown how much of an impact a single poster can have. It is in this spirit Design/ers for Obama was created. With the goal of supporting Barack Obama's campaign for presidency, Design/ers for Obama will introduce new tools and opportunities to web-powered grass roots organizing that has already revolutionized campaigning. Sponsored by www.designobserver.com, Design/ers for Obama is a community art project for Obama supporters, whether visually inclined or not, to aggregate and rate Obama poster art that is available for download in a variety of sizes that can be easily printed by anyone. At such a turbulent (yet exciting) time in our nation's history, collaboration has never been more important.
You gotta love the flowchart at the site!
If imitation is considered the highest form of flattery then having your GUI made into cupcakes has to be the pinnacle of success as an interface designer. Nick and Danielle Bilton won The Cupcake Decorating Championship at last night's Ignite NYC II with their iPhone Cupcakes.
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (1)
A bite-sized list of what's happenin' now:
freep
Airport design on a budget: Detroit Metro's design success
exchange morning post
Construction Begins on Canada's Most Energy Efficient Office Building
3 rings
"Modular studio of plastic research" Dust Deluxe's Strukt Table
h.k. design centre
Alessi's "Tea and Coffee Towers" exhibition
designersblock
Designersblock London opens Sept. 18
renewable energy marketing
Upcoming National Renewable Energy Marketing Conference
anark
CAD/CAE Model Clean-Up webinar
An impromptu low rez capture of the last 17 minutes of John Maeda's inauguration speech at the First Baptist Church in Providence, RI. Friday evening, September 12, 2008. John is now officially president of RISD.
via InfoDesign
Posted by: Mark Vanderbeeken | Comments (0)
Japan C, an eleven week festival celebrating contemporary Japanese culture opened it's doors last night at the historic Felissimo House in New York for the launch of Design Japan Week. Over 70 Japanese firms are showcasing products spanning home and fashion accessories to gadgets, food, beauty and pop-culture for wholesale, market feedback and simply to inspire.
With the theme Cool, Cute, Clever and Creative, there was certainly no shortage of kawaii (cute) products presented in a way that you could be forgiven for thinking you were in an upscale department store. Some of the items are indeed for sale, and there will be an auction in the final week with proceeds going to Bette Midler's New York Restoration Project to plant cherry trees along the Hudson River.
If you can look past the exhibition logotype which oddly employs a red copyright © symbol with no explanation (or relevance), it's a well curated collection of interesting Japanese products, diverse enough to satisfy a broad cross section of design fans.
Japan C
August 16th - November 1st, 2008
Felissimo Design House
10 West 56th Street
New York City
Click through for more photos from the opening
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (0)
It's that time of year again: The past two Designism events at the Art Directors Club in NYC have been provocative, maddening, fun, profane, and yes, enlightening, so don't miss version 3.0 of the annual event. Here are the details:
Join the third annual gathering of leading creatives committed to social activism and instigating change through media. The evening promises controversy, conversation and includes a moderated debate, lightening round presentations and the launch of a new support system to help put your ideas into action.
The evening takes place on Thursday, October 2, 2008, ADC Gallery,
106 West 29th Street, NYC.
5:30-6:45pm
Sappi Ideas that Matter Exhibition and Opening
Drinks & Snacks
FREE with RSVP (for opening only)
7:00-9:15pm
Designism 3.0
$30 Members, $40 Non-Members
Design activism deconstructed! Participate in an evening of discussion, debate, and presentations on Design Activism produced by Brian Collins, COLLINS, and Benjamin Palmer, The Barbarian Group.
Click below for the lineup. All details and RSVP are at the ADC site.
Hit snooze here.
Posted by: Aart van Bezooyen | Comments (0)
Our theory: One of the architects over at Herzog & de Meuron once dated a Manhattan window-washer who made that architect's life a living hell. Out of this sprung a hatred for all window-washers that could only be sated by building a 56-story luxury skyscraper to confound, frustrate, and perplex them. Revenge is a dish best served vertically.
via dezeen
This absolutely ridiculous "danger scenario" presented by a Pentagon researcher warns of how terrorists might plan attacks using, get this, World of Warcraft.
Apparently the bad guys would create characters, log on, and plan to attack a castle, using sophisticated code like "there are 110 Gold and 234 Silver inside," but--gasp!--110 and 234 are actually map coordinates for the White House! OMG! Those clever fiends!
If this doesn't illustrate just how out of touch the "intelligence" community is, we don't know what will. First of all, surely there is a better way to communicate numbers to one another than to go through the trouble of playing this game.
Second of all, as anyone familiar with people who actually play this game knows, you want terrorists playing World of Warcraft, and in fact you should be encouraging it. Get them hooked and they'll never leave the house. If the intelligence community wants to make a difference, they should find the terrorist camps, lay broadband there, and drop copies of the game like pamphlets.
via wired
Benjamin Hubert's Heavy Lights use a rather unusual material for a pendant lamp: concrete. The 5mm thick shades come, unsurprisingly, in grey, and in two different sizes. Hang them directly above a glass dining table or your own head--what could go wrong?
via 3 rings
The Brooklyn-based design collective Thwart Design have just announced the launch of Tools for Dying, a site that parodies the modern furniture company Design Within Reach and its forthcoming Tools for Living stores. Rob Price and Kathy Park describe their project as follows:
"Five of the world's most iconic designs are interpreted with a comical twist. Whether you're lounging (forever) in the Eames Plywood Lounge Coffin or settling into the Graves urn, one can celebrate the transition to death with the right design aesthetic."
Other tools for dying include the Eames Plywood Lounge Coffin, Nelson's Funereal Flowers, Michael Graves's Urn, Corbusier's Coffin Pillow Pouf and Philippe Starck's Juicer Sickle.
Posted by: Brit Leissler | Comments (0)
Not really designed as a serious light source, the lemon light by Yuri Suzuki is more of a value recognition enhancer to make people appreciate the value of power.
"Modern life is characterized by a separation of actual natural resources and the electrical power we use in daily life. The origin of electrical power has become invisible to us. People have forgotten about the natural forces that originally produce our light, heat and power. We are only faced with switches and electrical outlets in our homes and offices."
In order to use this light powered by a lemon battery, one actually needs to buy a real lemon, cut it in half and insert the light into it. It only just produces a weak light and thereby makes people aware of the value of power: If you need half a lemon for a weak light, then how many full lemons would you need for a strong one?
Posted by: Brit Leissler | Comments (0)
Designer, Basketball
Converse
North Andover, Massachusetts
Unique Abilities Required: Manual dexterity to manipulate design, art and drafting tools. Moves around campus to attend meetings. Travels internationally and domestically. Irregular working hours around concept debut, tech package deadlines, and other delivery dates in product creation calendar.
Technical: Exceptional ability to ideate, create and develop projects around project briefs and market needs from conception to finish. Drawing, Sketching, 2D and 3D Capability or ability to learn; Photoshop, Illustrator, Microsoft Office.
The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.
Posted by: core jr | Comments (0)Via the getting-better-every-month Design Mind blog from Frog, an observation on this month's new favorite marketing word. And the winner is...vibrant! Spurred by an encounter with the term in Wired magazine's explanation of its design changes last week, Frogger Tim Leberecht places the word in its generational context:
Like "compelling," "sexy," "engaging," or "authentic," vibrancy is the new best friend of marketers who are constantly on the search for attributes that are not trivial, not overused, and that appear to originate from some remote outside-of-marketing-jargon universe where the language is still compelling, sexy, engaging, authentic and -- yes, vibrant.
Of coincidental note, we just arrived in Southern California this afternoon for a seminar at Toyota's Calty Design Research center, where the press kit names one of the cornerstones of the Toyota Design Philosophy as Vibrant Clarity. And it turns out they've been doing so for quite a while now
Maybe that's why they're crushing GM? Exceptional buzzword prediction skillz?
PRO INNO Europe is a new initiative of EU's Directorate General Enterprise and Industry which aims to become the focal point for innovation policy analysis, learning and development in Europe, with the view to learning from the best and contributing to the development of new and better innovation policies in Europe.
One of their most interesting initiatives is the INNO-GRIPS project, which aims to develop a vision for European design, analyse current barriers to better use of design in companies and how to lift them, explore the rationale and added value of European involvement in the domain, and set out possible building blocks of a European policy for design.
Posted by: Mark Vanderbeeken | Comments (0)
The European Union is providing initial funding of more than 300m euros for the new European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), located in Budapest, Hungary and aimed at generating more European technological advances.
The EIT hopes to pool the expertise of universities, research bodies and businesses in new partnerships.
Renewable energy and new-generation IT projects are among the priority areas.
BBC article
It's been about 18 months since we started seeing heavy Chinese blog buzz on wristwatch cell phones, and about 75 years since Dick Tracy first had one. So...where the heck are they? Do Chinese consumers get to bandy these things about while we Westerners are stuck with mere iPhones?
Anyways, for those of you who missed 'em the first time around, let's have a look at some of the form factors.
Hyundai's Personal Mobile Gateway takes SD cards, plays MP3s and videos, and runs GSM.
This is the Van Der Led MW2, purportedly from the Netherlands. We say "purportedly" because the Dutch have an excellent grasp of English, yet the product copy for this dual-antenna, MP3-playing phone says it's "little bit waterproof."
The CECT Yami W100 ain't winning any beauty contests, but it does come in a crapload of different colors.
The follow-up CECT Yami II won China's Consumer Electronics Appliances -- Best Industrial Design Innovation Award, despite what looks like a complete failure to hire a professional photographer.
The Australian M300 only has five buttons and is supposed to be the world's smallest wristphone; the screen appears to be about the size of a postage stamp.
The Chinese M810 boasts a camera and the disturbing disclaimer that the product's beauty shot "may vary slightly from the actual product."
Lastly, we've always wondered: Do you think Dick Tracy went for the 5,000 unlimited, or the 450 with evenings and weekends free?
Droog & Dutch communication agency KesselsKramer have collaborated to produce S1NGLETOWN, an exhibition exploring a new kind of urban space for the single citizen.
S1NGLETOWN focuses on the world of contemporary singles. Its relevance is broad, as all of us are likely to belong to this group at some stage in our lives -- and likely more than once. In fact, some sources predict that a third of people in developed countries will be living alone by 2026.
Welcome at S1NGLETOWN
Venice Architectural Biennale
Sept. 14 - Nov. 23, 2008
A bite-sized list of what's happenin' now:
ciol
The importance of validation in design
polish market online
Polish industrial design promotion in Spain
n.y. times art & design
Jean Prouve: The Chair Man Still Holds Sway
c.n.n. money
"Italian Style 2008" to Take Center Stage in Chicago
furniture world online
Store Design: Customers Judge You In The Blink Of An Eye
sindh today
UK firm to help Indian car makers with design
design week u.k.
Product design calls on universities to stop undermining them
Office of Product Design launched Ding, a cast iron casserole dish reinterpreting traditional Chinese cookware at Maison et Objet earlier this month. It's the first piece from their forthcoming collection Cultural Connections and Everyday Objects, unfortunately there's no info on the website yet to explain what exactly this means but we're guessing there'll be some more east meets west in the mix.
via mocoloco
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Many have felt that New York City's drinking water is some of the most delicious (uh, those New Yorkers feel that way about everything!), but one company has decided to marry that sentiment with the greenest of intentions by bottling tap water and selling it as a product. (At least you know what you're getting.)
Tap'dNY is a New York City bottled water company with a local twist and knack for honesty. We don't travel the world from Fiji to France seeking water or offer the usual bottled water gimmicks. We work with NYC’s public water system to source the world's best tasting tap water, purify it through reverse osmosis and bottle it locally, leaving out ludicrous transportation miles. We offer an honest and local alternative to thirsty New Yorkers, giving them a smarter choice: to drink their own (award winning) water.
Learn more here.
Thanks to Ashley for the tip!
Stefan Buchberger, a design student at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna created a modular fridge unit for the Electrolux Design Lab competition 2008. Designed for people sharing a flat, his concept allows you to keep your part of the fridge clean without having deal with others who may have lesser standards when it comes to hygiene. The real question is can you lock it to keep thieving housemates from raiding your fresh milk supply.
The fridge consists of a base station and up to four stackable modules. The modules allow each individual user to have his or her own refrigerator space and can be customized with various colorful skins as well as with add-ons like a bottle opener or a whiteboard.Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (4)Handles on the sides of the modules make them easy to transport. "If you move to new flat, you can just transport your module like a suitcase and hook it up to the base station in your new flat," Buchberger explains.
The Camera industry is hectic right now gearing up for next week's Photokina in Cologne, the worlds largest photography trade show. After what seems like an eternity in the digital world Leica have finally announced the D-LUX 4 (top) and D-LUX 3 (bottom). There's fierce debate amongst the point-and-shoot community as to whether its worth Leica's price tag vs picking up one of the Panasonic Lumix models which feature a Leica lens at a much more affordable price point.
Leica D-LUX 4
24 - 60 mm
10.1 million effective pixels
Available from October 2008: £590
Leica D-LUX 3
25 - 125 mm
10 million effective pixels
Available in black or white from October 2008: £420
And if you're looking for something a little more serious, Leica have updated the M8 digital rangefinder camera which will you set you back £3990.
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The shortlist has been announced for the Thames Water "On Tap" design competition, geared towards getting Londoners to drink tap water in restaurants; the idea was to make it more palatable by pouring it from well-designed carafes. Check out the frontrunners here.
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (0)Julius Caesar might have held the title "Dictator in Perpetuity," but his actual mark on history is a bit of a mixed bag.
The man whose conquests turned Rome into an empire is now remembered chiefly for a salad and a type of haircut popular in the West Village of the 1990s. Obviously, neither of those "legacies" last very long, either in our 'fridges or on our heads.
But the man is finally getting some more permanent love with CaesarStone, a quartz stone material used for countertops; Australian bathroom design company Omvivo is now using it in their Geo Washplane sink.
Sinks like these and others we've seen lately are flat, finally taking into account that nobody fills a sink up with water and splashes that on their face like some kind of savage. Put another way,
Behavioral changes over the years indicate that we are now using a continuous flow of clean water, inspiring Omvivo to change the whole design approach to a 'washing vessel'. Without the need to hold water, a basin could be slim, elegant and sculptural, and at the same time use considerably less water through the utilisation of a restricted water outlet.
Lastly, contrary to popular belief, the Orange Julius is not named for Caesar. Don't say you never learned anything by reading Core77!
Senior Soft Goods Industrial Designer
Belkin International, Inc.
Hollywood, California
Belkin is looking to hire an experienced and extremely creative Senior Soft Goods Industrial Designer. As a member of Belkin's creative team, you will tap into emerging fashion and lifestyle trends in the soft goods space and design solutions for portable music experiences. Designing soft goods solutions that are targeted, functional, iconic and simply beautiful will be your area of emphasis and challenge.
The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.
Posted by: core jr | Comments (0)
An exhibition on the life and works of Finnish architect Eero Saarinen is on until the 4th of January 2009 at the Walker Center and the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts. Here's a slideshow, an interview with his daughter, Susan Saarinen and a snippet from the review,
In the United States throughout the 1950s, it was a Finnish-born architect, Eero Saarinen, who shaped American dreams and ambitions with innovative buildings and imaginative furniture.For 11 short years, Saarinen was a creative dynamo, spinning out designs of extraordinary originality -- the swooping, birdlike TWA terminal at New York's Kennedy Airport and St. Louis' Gateway Arch; buildings for Yale University, General Motors, Bell Labs, IBM and John Deere; homes, churches, embassies, and those icons of modernism, the pedestal chair and table.
He was a household name and magazine cover boy, his face on the front of Time in 1956 and his "womb chair" satirized by Norman Rockwell in a 1959 Saturday Evening Post cover.
And then it ended.
Photo credit: Joel Koyama
Posted by: Niti Bhan | Comments (1)
DaeKyung Ahn, who goes by DK Ahn, has a unique chair - View - on display at the 100% Design show, one that he has designed to teach us about how we make social judgements.
He makes a profound observation about how people see each other by their most obvious characteristic at a certain time or in a certain situation. Even when circumstances change for the other and his behavior changes accordingly, we don't tend to allow that second impression to enter or last in our minds as another "view" of the person. So, if a strong impression is made on us during a person's moment of anger, we will see that person as angry, despite a subsequent meeting in which the person is rational and calm.
In the material world, though, Ahn observes, people are more willing to accept different perspectives; they perceive, for example, that a table's legs are not perpendicular to the floor when seen from above, and they allow that vision to stay in their minds.
"It is very ironic that it is difficult to see the physical world through a particular view point without changing that view point in our mind," Ahn writes.
Ahn designs the View to teach social perspective, using his obvious mathematical skills to create a chair that is a perceptual puzzle. It is only through use of the chair that all of its views can eventually be seen, but even then the totality of the View will remain a mystery.
Another 'View' of the same chair after the gap. Text and photo credit InventorSpot
Posted by: Niti Bhan | Comments (2)Alex Steffen of Worldchanging introduces this essay by Adam Greenfield as one that "speaks, with an almost fevered clarity, about the American relationship to the future, at a moment when America's role in crafting the future may well be the planet's most important uncertainty."
"Mainstream Americans, where they were once called to dream and to believe that their best days as a community still lay ahead, are now at war with the future." [...]"In the relatively narrow field of my interests - ambient informatics, the networked city - can be seen something profound writ small: among fully-developed nations, the US stands out as having generally rejected "futuristic" interventions in everyday urban life, to the point that what I'm bound to present as innovative to US audiences is almost laughably banal elsewhere."
And don't miss out on the passage where he argues why Sarah Palin is "future shock personified".
Read the essay (alternative site)
Posted by: Mark Vanderbeeken | Comments (0)
NY1's got a video up on bicycles customized with an absolutely sick amount of stereo equipment. No embed on the video, but the link is here.
Sir John Sorrell CBE, 63, is chairman of the London Design Festival, which he devised and founded in 2003. During a 40-year career, he co-founded Newell & Sorrell, one of Europe's biggest design businesses, with his wife, Frances. He chaired the UK Design council from 1994 to 2002, is chairman of the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (Cabe) and co-chair of The Sorrell Foundation, set up to inspire creativity in young people. He has three adult children and lives in London with his wife, Frances.
Here's a snippet from the frothy interview,
How important is it to you to live in a well-designed house?Very important. I can't operate unless I have a calm and organised environment. I think beauty enhances your life. Good design creates a better quality of living and can dramatically affect your mood.
To make up for it, FT has another write up on The best of British design graduates, a nice round up of the New Designer's show. No slideshow however, pity that.
Posted by: Niti Bhan | Comments (0)All Things Digital has posted the full interview with Dean Kamen on his amazing "Luke" prosthetic. Watch part one above, then hit the jump for parts 2 and 3. You gotta watch 'em all.
Posted by: core jr | Comments (2)
While the London Design Festival may officially kick off tomorrow, it really doesn't get going until the 18th with 100% Design, Tent London and the Designersblock events. A newcomer to the program this year is Popup Store taking place in the East End featuring Moooi, Thorsten van Elten, Andromeda, Nero3, Decode London, Kathleen Hills, Voonwong & Bensonsaw, Viable, Christopher Pearson and Samual Wilkinson.
For a short period of time, the venue will operate as a 'popup' guerrilla retail store and will be complemented by an exclusive design exhibition. On show will be everything from one-off, mass production pieces, fashion, digital installations, limited edition and bespoke artwork from new and established designers.
Popup Store
Sept. 17-23, 2008
11am-7pm daily
187 - 211 St John Street.
(Off Clerkenwell Road on the nth. side)
Yet another great project from the students at the Royal College of Art's IDE program -- this time, Spanish designer Cristina Ferraz Rigo takes the light out of lamps and pours it all over the place. The thesis project, called (DE)light (remember the days when you could name something with just words and not have to worry about clever punctuation?), uses chemoluminescent reactions to create luminous liquids, then puts them through all sorts of clever applications: taps that dispense light, light in a bottle, streams of light, etc.
According to Rigo, the compounds can glow up to 20 hours, and research suggests they could be made rechargeable with further development. Aims of the project are typically broad and sweeping. Says Rigo:
My aim is to look at all the resources we have and then try to redesign new future scenarios, rather than "redesign" what's already just to make it perform better. In this case, I was curious about the fact that domestic lighting has not changed, essentially, that much since Edison's invention: you always need a power source and a physical device (call it lightbulb, fiberoptic, led). What I wanted to do is to give a total different approach to light, make people realise we can think of objects that surround us different and shape the technological advance a different way.
More images, and video of the liquid light in action, after the jump.
The NetFlix Origami site offers a step-by-step guide to making numerous origami pieces from the tear-off NetFlix flaps that are typically thrown away. That should keep you occupied for a bit while we wait for the quality of video on demand to match DVD.
via gizmodo
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (1)
It's every cyclists dilemma, how do you ride to work dressed well enough to convince the client you're the right choice for managing their tight-ass budget without keeping a second wardrobe at the office. Enter Outlier, classically tailored pants made from Schoeller 3xDry and Nanosphere fabrics. They're water resistant, breathable, quick drying, grease, stain and abrasion resistant.
We could not have hoped for a better result, over the past year we've been testing these garments day in and day out, through rain and snow and even one frightening crash. The bike was destroyed, the knees battered and bleeding, yet the pants were just fine and that was exactly the quality of construction we knew we needed.
Good news for those worried about stretched knee's in their Cheap Monday's.
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (1)
Made from a single standard size sheet of steel, London-based design group Formtanks' goal was to produce "more from less". Once cut using CAD/CAM technology the 3fold desk is hand formed and boasts minimal material wastage of less than 4% per linear meter.
You might have to start saving tho, constructing your own life-size Mikroworld starts at £3,851.
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (5)
From the Coroflot portfolio of : Guillaume Bordas (Hong Kong, Hong Kong)
Featured Project : PUZZLE
You gotta love these build-your-own sunglasses, packed (and merchandised) flat. Click below for the step by step instructions.
Posted by: core jr | Comments (0)via b3ta
Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)
Worried that your cubical kitted out with generic looking hardware and periphery equipment has become indistinguishable from the dude that works in accounts receivable, step it up a notch with Hulger's latest addition, the worlds first wooden VoIP phone made from American walnut and brass.
PAPPA*PHONE is available at: hulgershop.com
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (0)
C.STEM 2008 - Breeding Objects is a two-week event in Turin, Italy devoted to digital fabrication and mass-customization, anticipating future developments in design process and technologies.
The exhibition, opening on 19 September, will present works designed and produced through creative and innovative processes: global news feeds woven into sweatshirts, chairs 3D printed out of frames from a computer-animated form, experimental custom ceramics and jewels shaped by online users, Google maps carved into wood, lamps shaped by the fight with a punchbag, 3D printing machines that print themselves… Participating artists and designers are:
AEDS - Ammar Eloueini (France, Lebanon)
Ebru Kurbak & Mahir Yavuz (Turkey)
FLUID FORMS Hannes Walter, Stephen Williams (Austria, New Zeland)
The Rep Rap Project – Adrian Bowyer (UK)
Nervous System - Jessica Eve Rosenkrantz & Jesse Louis-Rosenberg, (USA)
MOS - Michael Meredith, (USA)
TheVeryMany, Marc Fornes (USA)
1 / 1 - Cait & C. E. B. Reas (USA)
ISOPT - Susanne Stauch (Germany)
Andrew Vande Moere (Australia)
Fabrizio Valpreda, Cristian Campagnaro (Italy)
There will also be conferences and talks on computational design, digital fabrication and creative information visualization, aiming to foster innovation and encourage knowledge sharing between companies, designers, researchers and students.
Posted by: Mark Vanderbeeken | Comments (0)
We talked a little bit about the potential uses of accelerometer-enabled technology for learning about human behavior last year, but the Fitbit is one of the first examples we've seen of actually turning that potential into a viable product.
Essentially a very smart 3D pedometer, the Fitbit clips unobtrusively onto your jeans or bra strap during the day and figures out how far you've gone and how many calories you've burned. The $99 price tag, though, is justified by some serious added functionality. Taking cues from the Wii and the Nike+ iPod system, Fitbit has enough logic to distinguish between walking, running and riding in a car, and syncs the daily results with the user's computer, posting them to a socially networked website. Moreover, it analyzes sleep patterns when worn at night by detecting REM-induced tremors.
According to MIT Technology Review's coverage, the unit managed to impress several higher ups in the technorati when unveiled this week at Techcrunch50, including Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly Media, and Evan Williams of Twitter, who commented on its smooth website integration and strong design.
Due to go on sale at the end of the year, and destined to spawn a crapload of imitators.
More photos and website screenshot after the jump.
Posted by: Carl Alviani | Comments (1)
Dr. Prabhu Kandachar, Professor of Industrial Design Engineering at TU Delft will be among those speaking at a conference focused on "Sustainable Innovations at the Base of the Pyramid" to be held on Sept 26th and 27th at the Helsinki School of Economics. He heads the BoP Design Lab at Delft and they have a hefty collection of student projects completed over the past couple of years available for download (18MB PDF)
Other speakers include Torben Vestergaard, designer of the award winning Life Straw as well Rama Bijapurkar, India's leading consumer insights researcher and consultant and Dr. Simona Rocchi, Director of Sustainable Design, Philips Design. Simona Rocchi was in charge of the user-centric co-design process for the low-smoke biomass stove Chulha, which just received the IDEA2008 award from IDSA. Yours truly will be reporting on the actual event soon so watch this space if you're into sustainable design for the 'other 90%'.
Posted by: Niti Bhan | Comments (0)
In an age when technology is omnipresent, in a society of flux, transparency and of widespread surveillance and paranoia, the Internet seems to have become the favorite support system for an upsurge in rumours and wild conspiracy theories. New media now give rise to the very same controversies that surround Science Fiction and scientific progress in general. Dark Designs questions the current relevance of conspiracy theories and their digital avatars and will explore the notion of art, technology and conspiracies in a series of events taking place in venues across Yverdon-les-Bains in Switzerland. The event takes a thoughtful and incisive look at the concept's ambiguity, history and links to philosophy, research, art and technology.
More after the jump.
Ideation Office Strategist
Herman Miller
Zeeland, Michigan
The ideation office at Herman Miller is focused on identifying products and services that define the solutions that customers want and need for one of the most innovative companies in the world. As an ideation strategist you will lead the process to identify and develop these new ideas through research insights, user needs, corporate strategy, and future trends to support the core business markets – Home, Work, Healthcare and International.
The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.
Posted by: core jr | Comments (0)
With more reds and yellows than an over-sauced hot dog, Target will open four bold and bright Bullseye Bodega pop-up shops in Manhattan this Friday, September 12th. The short-lived faux-degas (designed by Brooklyn-based David Stark Design) will be open all weekend, until Sunday the 15th, every day from 10 AM to 10PM and will promote Target's current list of 22 designer partnerships. Check out Apartment Therapy's sneak-peek slideshow.
Midtown: 57th and 6th
Union Square: Broadway between 11th and 12th
East Village: Bowery and 2nd Street
SoHo: Broome between Wooster and West Broadway
thanks erik!
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (2)
Mechanical artist Nemo Gould makes sculptures out of recycled and found materials -- we've seen that before.
What we haven't seen before is recycled sculpture that's not only fantastically creepy and retro (think robots with teeth and mechanical evil pixies), but also animated. Gould's sculpture Little Big Man, shown above, features a smaller robot visible in its guts that appears to be driving it. See io9's post on Gould for a video of it in action from a recent show at the San Jose Museum of Art, and Gould's own site for photos of the rest of his menagerie.
More: Fantastic 5-minute video interview with Nemo, describing his process ("I'm just this pair of hands, helping them assemble themselves") and waxing philosophical about the nature of design, old and new -- put together by Upper Playground:
Posted by: Carl Alviani | Comments (0)Weekly finds from the 3D world.
3D Studio Max
Transforming objects with Move, Rotate, Scale, etc.
SolidWorks
A SolidWorks power-user classifies the other 3D CAD packages on the market
Design automation using the TactonWorks plug-in
Splitting parts video tutorial
Pro/Engineer
Pro/E parent company PTC puts itself up for sale
Visual Components releases a new 3D factory simulator (registration required)
Inventor
Editing Base Solids with the Stretch Trick
Overriding Mass Properties tutorial
CATIA
Dassault's big plans for CATIA V6 and 3DVIA (registration required)
We love the sound of recycling which makes this Chiquita Chandelier by Dutch designer Anneke Jakobs a welcome surprise. It's been a while (2003) that Anneke started cutting out banana shapes from Chiquita cartons that she rescued from the streets during her college years.
Today, Anneke enjoys some credits in the latest (greener than ever) Bright magazine where we spotted her work. She mentions: "At the end it's everyone's choice to spend their time or their money on something." and appropriately offers a digital manual (pdf) for download so we can spend some time making a chandelier ourselves.
If you don't want bananas to rock your ceiling, you might want to play with wine glasses, ballpoints or coffee stirrers.
Posted by: Aart van Bezooyen | Comments (1)
Let's, for a moment, table the green principles, the innovative solutions, the user-centric methodology and remember why we got into design in the first place - to kick some fucking ass!
renderings from Igarashi Design (where there's more)
found at core.form-ula, where it seemed to stir similar feelings among our architect brothers
A couple more shots of Igarashi's design pr0n next page
Posted by: shaggy | Comments (2)
I saw something like this happen as a kid. Except it was a pair of dogs. And they were connected at the butt, not the head.
Sculpture by Steve Bishop
via pan-dan, via today and tomorrow
White is for Wonder Bread, homes. Get with these 80's-awesome colorways or sport the black coiled one for some Secret Service cachet.
Approx. $85 USD shipped
Buy them at the aiaiai store
via vlu
Posted by: shaggy | Comments (1)
Well, we're really talking about the Observer effect, but still, you gotta wonder about this one. On Monday, BBC News (love them) launched a new initiative called "The Box" unleashing a logotized BBC shipping container out into the wild, LoJacked with a GPS transmitter, and trackable on its very own website. You can even contribute your own pictures.
The goal of the year-long project is to "tell the story of international trade and globalisation by tracking a standard shipping container around the world. It is a project which plans to deliver content for television, radio and online audiences - telling the individual stories behind what makes the global economy tick."
This sounds like a really great project (inspired by Marc Levinson's book), but the lack of anonymity here cannot be good. Cue taggers please...
Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)
DaddyTypes point us to this collection of customized Champion Comet pedal cars to benefit the AACA (Antique Automobile Club of America). Here are the details:
Eleven pedal cars, designed and built by Steve Pasteiner, PSI, restorer Fran Roxas, Dale Adams Enterprises, Mike Brown and the team at Al Prueitt and Sons, among others, are set to cross the block. Each builder started with a replica of the Champion Comet, before chopping, cutting and refinishing. The transformations reflect countless hours of labor and the effort normally seen in construction full size examples."The attention to detail evident in some of these pedal cars is exceptional," said RM’s managing director Ian Kelleher. "They are miniature rolling works of art and certainly capture the look and flavor of yesteryear."
More info and pics at Hemmings Auto Blogs.
Posted by: core jr | Comments (0)
If you happen to be in Barcelona, Felix Madrazo and Supersudaca, the Dutch-Latin American think tank for architecture and urban research, proudly invite you to the opening of the exhibition SUDAPAN Endles(s)trips competition this Friday from12 noon to 8pm in the RAS gallery.
Organized by the collective Supersudaca in association with The Prince Claus Fund and with the support of IAAC (Institute of Advanzed Architecture of Catalunya), Sudapan is the first international competition about alternative ideas for mass coastal tourism in one of the fastest tourism development regions of the third world, the Riviera Maya in Mexico.
Seeking to bring the concerns of mass tourism to a wider audience, this project builds upon the Al_Caribe project that Supersudaca curated for the 2nd Architecture Biennale in Rotterdam back in 2005.
Comments by members of the jury about the competition after the jump.
Senior Performance Apparel Designer
adidas
Portland, Oregon
As a Senior Apparel Designer in our Running category, you will be fusing together these scientific principles of body movement with futuristic fabric construction and importantly creating a design aesthetic that appeals to the athlete...
The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.
Posted by: core jr | Comments (0)
New London Architecture (NLA) will host a timely exhibition and series of talks and conferences this autumn, titled London's Towns: Shaping the Polycentric City. The programme will highlight one of the major shifts from the policies of Ken Livingstone as Boris Johnson plans to focus on outer London - the suburbs - the places where most Londoners live and work.
The massive spread of London that took place in the 1930s absorbed towns like Kingston, Croydon, Harrow and Romford into the metropolis. Generally surrounded by suburban developments of detached and semi-detached homes with gardens, and celebrated in John Betjeman's poem Metro-land, these areas of London seem to come off second best when compared to the Mayor's policies on the central boroughs and Thames Gateway. This conference and exhibition looks at the characteristics of the suburban ring of the capital and the part these areas play in the planning of London.
Program details after the jump
For years I've been wrapping my gifts in New York City Transit subway maps--they're iconic and more importantly, free.
Those looking for something with a little more panache can wrap their gifts, as Edwina Rogers does, in real sheets of U.S. dollar bills.
The wife of Washington lobbyist Ed Rogers gets the money sheets from the United States Bureau of Engraving and then slices and dices as you would any wrapping paper to best fit the gift and get the best pattern on the front of the package.A sheet of 32 one dollar bills costs about $55 USD and you can order them for yourself here.
Pretty crazy. Hit that link and you can order sheets of greenbacks in denominations up to $50.
via luxuo
Ecolab's Proforce Cleaners bottle design, internally nicknamed "Legoland," cleverly fits a 16 oz. spray bottle within a 1.25 gallon refill tank. The boxy, volume-maximizing design is better for shipping pallets (98.5% space utilization) and easier to store in a broom closet.
Packaging geeks who want to read details about stress engineering modeling and optimized in-line filling lines, click here.
via a.m. steeman
Product Placement is a series of designer talks organized by Julie Taraska and Kimberly Oliver taking place as part of Japan C, an eleven week exhibition of all things Japanese at Felissimo in New York.
Product Placement:
A personal, behind-the-scenes look at how things get made.
Exploring product design from and for Japan with designers Atsuyo et Akiko, Jeff Miller, Hideaki Matsui, Eric Chan (Ecco Design), Masamichi Udagawa (Antenna Design), and design buyer Kari Woldum (DMW: Tools for Living).
September 10th, 2008: 7-9 pm
Felissimo Design House
10 W. 56th St.
New York
RSVP: Sept10@japan-c.com
The Make Some Green competition deadline is coming up quick. Keeseh Studio is inviting students and design enthusiasts to "celebrate the pursuit of ecodesign through an international competition to utilize waste material.
"The goal of the competition is to promote upcycling by encouraging the use of wasted or remnant materials to generate innovative designs and redefine the standards of environmental sustainability by fostering balance between conservation and development. This competition provides a stepping stone to help educate viewers of the vast opportunities and future development of environmentally friendly processes, materials, and products."
Culminating in an exhibition on November 7th at Keeseh Studio, 3 winners will receive prizes, and be part of the A Better World By Design conference taking place November 7th-9th. (List of conference speakers is here.)
All competition entries must be received digitally or by mail no later than October 1st. For details and entry form, visit the site.
A bite-sized list of what's happenin' now:
on milwaukee
Students design "Zero Gas" car for GM
marketwatch
SCA Packaging Launches Design Challenge 2008
seattle p.i.
New Urbanism designs buck the crappy housing market
kitchen bath design
International Fair for Architectural Ceramic and Bathroom Equipment Launches Design Competition for Students
packaging digest
10 Innovative Packaging Ideas
al bawaba
LG Showcases Smart Living at IFA with Art-Inspired Designs and Innovative Technologies
fibre 2 fashion
MyDesignIn unveils 3D Room Design for consumers
From the Coroflot portfolio of : Alistair Messom ( Nottinghamshire, United Kingdom )
Featured Project : Vehicle rendering
For a new perspective, roll around in this! (Click below for proof of a fourth wheel).
Posted by: core jr | Comments (0)
If you're rocking the IDSA National Conference in Phoenix this week, don't forget to bring your work for the Core77 Portfolio Review taking place on both Thursday & Friday.
The format is simple, students get 30 minutes to set up, doors open at 4:45pm and you've got one hour to showcase your skillz and get feedback from seasoned professionals. We know the real networking will take place afterwards in the Biltmore pool but think of this as an opportunity to make the introduction.
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[Website is up: http://nineplanetswanted.org. Make sure you check out "Newsprint"]
Manuel Toscano will deliver his opening remarks in the United Nations Lobby tonight amongst an installation designed by ZAGO and commissioned by the United Nation Development Program (UNDP) entitled The Nine Planets Wanted!
The initiative launches the campaign One Planet One Chance, "allowing visitors to physically experience abstract data related to global warming and take measure of the inverse relationship between responsibility for climate change and vulnerability to its impact."
Using key facts and figures from the 2007/2008 UNDP Human Development Report, the installation consists of 12 monumental beanbags (made from car interior remnants, natch), representing a comparative view of carbon dioxide volumes emitted around the world. (The largest of these beanbags is 9 feet tall!)
Here's a bit from Manuel's remarks:
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We like Apple products, sure, but we're not willing to sit in an auditorium and bang out quotes like a court stenographer. But for those of you who simply can't wait to see what today's announcement will bring, Engadget will be live-blogging today's "Let's Rock" event, as will CNET. The fun starts at 10am PST, 1pm EST.
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Ever wonder how a company like Target gets their designers, from marquee names like Starck to and up-and-comers like Sami Hayek? Businessweek's got the answer with their write-up on Culture & Commerce, an NYC-based design "talent scout" company:
[Materials consultant] Michele Caniato...founded Culture & Commerce with entrepreneur George M. Beylerian in 2000. They applied the concept of Hollywood talent management to product design. "We're a matchmaker and guardian angel," says Caniato, adding that the firm has negotiated $65 million in designer contracts to date....Before introducing designers to companies like Target or other clients...Caniato analyzes their mass-market potential and spends up to nine months coaching them on how to work with large corporations. He also negotiates financial and legal details of a deal and acts as a liaison between the two parties, managing scheduling, budgeting, and contracts.
In return, the designers, who retain final say on the look of their products, pay 25% to 30% commissions under 4-to-10-year contracts with the agency. And they get to focus on coming up with unique products. "Before, I wasn't designing a lot," says Hayek. "After, I began designing again."
Read all about it here.
Alex Haw is an architect, teacher, writer and video maker operating at the intersection of design, research, art and the urban environment. Working from a consistent theme regarding the culture of voyeurisms in contemporary society, the 34 year-old researches the possibilities of electronic media, video installations and the built environment in work that moves seamlessly between Art and Architecture.
Using raw data to produce dramatic visual effects, Haw's recent project, Incel, at the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (or Borse) juxtaposes the fortification of the Borse with the fortification of a nearby prison to produce luminous data spatialisation. The allure of data in the distance is mediated by major systems of spatial control. Incel examines the way the Deutsche Borse is represented in space by reassessing the familiar & ubiquitous DAX graph suggesting the extensive use of the same optical fibers that the system relays through.
Seeking to convey the richness and intensity of the activity visible of the Frankfurt Borse, and to scrutinize the detail of the intensity with which it fluctuates, Incel maps 1,500 of the dynamic instruments on the Exchange, subdividing them exponentially by the dominant sorting systems.
More after the jump.
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Tikitag is an Alcatel-Lucent venture based in Antwerp, Belgium which provides a service to link the real world with the online world for consumer and business usage via easy-to-apply RFID tags. Currently still in Alpha, the beta launch is planned for launch on October 1st, with the availability of tikitag starter packages and tag packages via e-commerce.
via Bruce Sterling
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What are designers doing to address the critical issues facing today's world? How are engineers developing new technologies to improve life on earth? Where are entrepreneurs finding surprising opportunities in this mess?
At A Better World by Design, a three day conference in Providence, RI, "you will hear answers from dozens of world-class professionals and academics that will change the way you think about global crises and push the limits of user-centric, affordable design."
via Dexigner
Posted by: Mark Vanderbeeken | Comments (0)
Senior CAD Designer
Buell Motorcycle Company
East Troy, Wisconsin
Fresh off the release of the groundbreaking new 1125R, Buell Motorcycle Co. is looking for experienced 3D Surfacing Designers with strong visualization, communication, and organizational skills to help make the next statement in motorcycle chassis design.
Position entails intense 3D surface modeling of parts for production while working in conjunction with Industrial Designers and Engineers throughout the product development cycle.
The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.
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Designer Athanassios Babalis created a shopping bag and stool from recycled bottle caps for the Green Design Festival 2008 in Athens which starts this Wednesday. Babalis collected the caps from his workmates and an extended network of friends using 370 to make the bag and 1250 for the stool.
The simple technique he developed can be applied to many other objects and is detailed in a diagram after the jump.
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (0)
Hard drives aren't often pieces of hardware that evoke excess attention or kudos, but these recent entries by Fabrik are getting the kind of raves usually reserved for cell phones and sneakers, and we'd have to say it's probably justified.
Designed by LA-based Stuart Karten Design (SKD), the SimpleTech SimpleDrive updates the previous Pininfarina-designed version that evoked so many oohs and ahhs when it came out last year. Depending on your aesthetic instincts though, this one's maybe even nicer, with a pared down organic shape that minimizes part count and works the vertical-or-horizontal-mounting trend of the past few years to great effect.
The media darling of the moment, though, has got to be the [re]drive, also by SKD. Yes, we've seen electronics wrapped in bamboo before, and we've rolled our eyes and muttered "greenwashing" under our breath, but this looks to be the real green deal--the metal portion of the 500GB drive is recycled aluminum, and the super-sweet randomly crinkled side panel serves as a heat sink that obviates the need for a fan. The drive auto-powers up and down with your computer, has an Energy Star rating for low consumption, and ships in recycled packaging with installation instructions printed on the box.
So why did we wait til now to blog these guys when Gizmodo mentioned them a month ago? According to SKD, both drives have recently been picked up by megabox retailer Best Buy, taking it out of the realm of gimmick and into something that might show up on your co-workers desk next week. And we're glad.
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Helsinki-based designer Lincoln Kayiwa has reinterpreted the clothes rack with DINO. Arguably the sculptural wave patterns created by the varying coat hanger heights are better suited to public spaces like museums and night clubs than the home wardrobe which demands a little more functional use of space.
London-based Afroditi Krassa has designed the394 Yellow Pages business card holder (and picture stand), a lovely instance of reuse, albeit with a chromed steel tube thrown into the mix. Here's the procedure:
This card holder design re-uses last year's YellowPages directory as its main material. The directory needs to be trimmed to the right diameter (approx. 394pages), rolled up and inserted into a metal tube. The size and exact use of the object is up to the maker, from photos to notes, business cards to envelopes. The product can be stored either vertically or horizontally.
Of course, you could use a toilet paper tube instead of the steel, but then you'd be rocking a whole different feel. Yup, it's a quick trip from Moco to Make.
More info at www.afroditi.com.
Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (1)And speaking of the Hadron Collider, next time you're stuck preparing for a heavyweight technology-laden client presentation, try spicing it up with a bit of explanatory rap.
Checkout more great physics videos on wired.
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British inventor Kane Kramer developed the original iPod at the age of 23 in 1979, his prototype was capable of playing 3.5 minutes of music stored on a chip, a limitation he believed would change as storage capacity increased. Unable to raise enough funding, he let the patent expire in 1998. Even Apple admits to the iPod's origin; Kramer helped defend them in a patent lawsuit filed by Burst and to this date was only compensated for his time in the court case.
...I was up a ladder painting when I got the call from a lady with an American accent from Apple saying she was the head of legal affairs and that they wanted to acknowledge the work that I had done.'I must admit that at first I thought it was a wind-up by friends. But we spoke for some time, with me still up this ladder slightly bewildered by it all, and she said Apple would like me to come to California to talk to them.
The dispute between Apple and Burst.com has since been settled confidentially out of court.
via gizmodo
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