Core77

Matt Webb and his opening presentation at reboot 11. Scope - Design and contributing to culture; ourselves as individuals and the big picture; taking action.

Bruce Sterling's closing talk at reboot11 on Favela Chic, Gothic High Tech and where we are heading.

"Thousands of fashion minded people at an airport and no one is flying off?" Exactly, after few years of Spanish sun, this year's BREAD & BUTTER trade show takes place from 1-3 July at the historical Tempelhof Airport in Berlin.

Last Tuesday, the Swedish rockers Mando Diao kicked off the event with some great songs. The rock concert is followed up by an even bigger trade show where hundreds of brands such as Adidas, Marc O’Polo, Dickies, Lee, Nike, G-Star, Wrangler, ... (see brand bible), are showcasing their latest collections for the upcoming year.

Have you ever seen a super size fashion show at an airport? More photos after the jump!

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NextLevel Galerie presents Materia, French designer's Nicolas Le Moigne's first solo show.

Materia gives Nicolas Le Moigne a golden opportunity to ennoble four raw materials. Wood, glass, clay and steel disguise themselves and become the centrepiece of an exhibition devoted to the duality between art and handcraft, between highly refined objects and the commonplace.

Matera by Nicolas Le Moigne
NextLevel Galerie, Paris
through July 25th

More pics after the jump.

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The annual Royal College of Art Thesis Show opens today, and, as usual, the projects are awesome. Ranging from a system that creates clouds that snow ice cream to archival burial vessels, each project takes a close look at the cultural potential for technology now, in the future and in the fictional pas.

You already saw Thomas Thwaites' Toaster Project, but pictured above are Hayeon Yoo's Compass Phone, which indicates the direction and proximity of the person you are trying to reach instead of letting you talk to them, and Will Carey's Gifted, a series of objects and scenarios that allow children to imagine and work towards abilities they may want in the future. Finally, the process behind the development of Dot Samsen's Coin Flipper (a decision making device) is illustrated in the following below:

If you can't make it to the show, you can check it all out on the website.

Design Interactions Thesis Show
Royal College of Art
June 26th to July 5th 2009
11am - 8pm
(closed 3 July; exhibition will close at 5pm on 30 June, 1 July and 5 July)

More projects after the jump.

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The Makers Market is a new open air marketplace presented by American Craft, The Noguchi Museum, R 20th Century in conjunction with the Socrates Sculpture Park State Fair in Long Island City this weekend. The 30 makers and craftsmen exhibiting come from around the United States, selling objects as diverse as textiles, ceramics, and motorcycles.

Participants include:
Andrea Corson, Atlas Industries, Batle Studio, Circle A Cycles, Craig Watson, Daniel Michalik / DMFD Studio, Elyse Allen Textiles, Eric Bonnin Ceramics, Eric Silva, Esque Studio, Found My Animal, Garnish by Kara Hamilton, Gratz Industries, hivemindesign, Hope Ginsburg / Sponge, Jane D'Arensbourg, Judith Trezza, Kitty Jones, Neil Hadlock, Palo Samko, Patrick Weder, Platform, Produce, R 20th Century, Sanam, Emami, Satomi Kawakita Jewelry, Shelton Studios Inc, Spring design&art, Teroforma, Thaddeus Wolfe, Urban Aesthetics, LLC and Walt Siegl Builder

Andrew Wagner (American Craft/Readymade Magazine) will moderate a discussion between the principals of R, The Noguchi Museum and Socrates Sculpture Park on Saturday at 3pm.

Makers Market at Socrates Sculpture Park
Preview Event: Friday 26 June, 6-8pm / $50 per person*
Saturday 27 June, 11am - 7pm / Free
Sunday 28 June, 11am - 5pm / Free
Panel Discussion: Saturday 27 June, 3pm / Free

More preview pics after the jump.

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Sitting in on the sessions at the Society for Environmental Graphic Design's (SEGD) annual conference in San Diego last month, we were struck by how similar some of the concerns and discussion points were to those of other designers. Environmental graphics serve a crucial role in defining the character and navigability of public spaces -- especially big, complicated ones like museums and hospitals -- but frequently go unnoticed unless they're absent or poorly designed.

Imagine our joy, then, at the notoriety now being accorded SEGD Fellow David Gibson, not only from the professional organization that honored him last month, but from the design world as a whole. Gibson's recently released book on signage and wayfinding (pictured above) is the subject of an excellent interview in the May issue of Metropolis, and his studio, Two Twelve Associates, has been racking up awards over the past few years for its groundbreaking approaches to signage and wayfinding for clients like Radio City Music Hall , Johns Hopkins Hospital, and the City of Baltimore. The scale of such tasks both excites and unsettles us -- imagine your field of expertise requiring design solutions for an area hundreds of acres in size.

Signage and wayfinding in general seem to be gaining a higher profile in the US of late, perhaps as part of renewed interest in urban infrastructure, or a greater focus on alternative transportation brought on by economic and environmental concerns. This article in particular, by Alissa Walker for Fast Company caught our eye last week, pointing out how something as humble as cycle-oriented street signage can dramatically alter the viability of cycling in a city (Los Angeles) not historically known for its bikeability. It's just a proposal at the moment, by designer Joseph Pritchard, but it's got the advantages of clarity, low implementation cost, visual differentiation, and if all the above is any indicator, good timing.

Yesterday we wandered the showrooms on the 3rd, 10th and 11th floors of the Merchandise Mart. While there's not really any comparison to giants like Herman Miller, Knoll, Steelcase and Haworth (who has a wading pool in their space), we thought that the work and presentation of Bernhardt Design, Coalesse and Janus et Cie was particularly refreshing and worth noting.

Bernhardt showcased brand new work from their Global Editions line, including the Hyde chair designed by Fredrickson Stallard (pictured above), the Area table by Marc Thorpe and the Calibra sofa from Gloria and Harry Washington. Coalesse recently teamed up with the Italian furniture company Emu, distributing outdoor furniture from EMU's Advanced Collection to North America. Designed by the likes of Patricia Urquiola and Paula Navone, this collection of super durable furniture gets inspiration from things like hair clips and topiary. To celebrate this new partnership, they covered a room in thousands of specially printed green post-it notes, to give a sense of the outdoors. To a similar effect, Janus et Cie installed a fake topiary in an empty showroom just for the occasion, showing the new Miralook and PayPai Chairs, for both indoor and outdoor use.

See more from these three after the jump.

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Every year, Morlen Sinoway opens the loading dock outside of his Fulton Market gallery to local artists and designers as a temporary exhibition space, coincident with and in response to the annual NeoCon trade show at the Merchandise Mart in Chicago. Now in its 5th year, the Guerrilla Truck Show has become quite the institution, with over 25 trucks exhibiting, and for many visitors to NeoCon, a must-see item on their list of things to do in Chicago.

We stopped there last night on our way out, and despite the pouring rain, the scene was vibrant as designers, artists and spectators hopped from truck to truck. Exhibitors included new designers, up-and-comers and local retailers like Materious, Craighton Berman, Noel Ashby, Designlabworkshop, Koomalsingh Design, Steven Teichelman and Angela Finney-Hoffman of Post27.

If you're interested in Guerrilla Truck Shows of the past, check out their Flickr stream.

More rainy pictures of last night after the jump.

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To help raise money for the restoration of the historic Eames house, Lucia Eames is opening her Petaluma home and private collection to ticket holders of the first annual Eames Foundation Fundraiser. The afternoon sounds action-packed with exhibitions of furniture and photographs, film screenings, kite making, and a group activity inspired by the Powers of Ten film. Finally, the evening will end in a silent auction, including a chance to bid on an overnight stay for two in the house in question. Tickets are $500 for the general public, $400 for members and $250 for students and teachers. More information can be found on the official invite.

Eames Foundation Fundraiser
June 21, 2009, 1:00 PM-6:00 PM
Petaluma, CA

A successful design team is rarely composed of single-talent professionals, and rarely comes from a single source of referrals. This was one of the recurring themes of the third Coroflot Creative Employment Confab, held this time in a pleasantly un-rainy Portland, Oregon, and featuring a panel drawn from some of the region's most renowned design-driven employers.

Nike, Intel, Ziba and Cinco Design have all achieved notoriety in their fields for churning out great ideas and great products at a reliable pace, and the representatives of those firms on hand last Thursday -- Beth Sasseen, Nick Oakley, Chelsea Vandiver and Kirk James, respectively -- each claim heavy reliance on professional diversity for their success. That diversity, it turns out, manifests not just within teams (Ziba's designer + engineer + researcher + social scientist groupings are a good example), but within individual designers.

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The Mighty Bearcats have teamed up with the newly formed Object Design League to present The Promise of This Moment, a collection of pieces from 14 Chicago designers that "augment the everyday". Coincident with NeoCon, the show will open on June 15th in Wicker Park, Chicago.

This exhibition highlights the capacity of objects to transform banal and commonplace activities into moments of play, relief, beauty and delight. While the objects presented in this show fit squarely into the corners of the everyday -- like buttoning up your shirt in the morning, switching an appliance on and off, or not making the bed--they also create new aesthetic and experiential opportunities within routine.

Participants include: Craighton Berman, Greg Bethel, Peter Bo, Jason Chernak, Bradley Duncan, Giffin'Termeer, Steve Haulenbeek, Materious, Bryan Metzdorf, Michael Savona, Garrett Smith, and Smith & Linder.

Pictured above are Michael Savona's Goose Cones and Smith & Linder's double-sided Pipette Lamps

The Promise of This Moment
2035 W. Wabansia
Opening: June 15th, 6-9pm
June 15-22: Viewing by appointment only (contact jchernak@gmail.com)

More images after the jump.

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If you're in NYC this weekend and looking to get your game on, check out the Come Out & Play 2009 festival, taking place, well... everywhere. The festival starts today and is open to the public, giving people the chance to participate in games that include myriad combinations of low-tech/high-tech mashups. Games include real world environments, mapping and GPS technologies, mobile apps, constructed sculptural props and public screens. The New York Times calls the event a showcase of "participatory art" and comments on how its events "break down walls between artist and audience".

The Come Out & Play website describes some of the games from previous years:

Friends faced off in life-sized Pong using only their ears to "hear" the ball. (Papier-mache) pigeons were pummeled with wiffleball bats. Bicyclists armed with spray chalk and stencils competed to claim and build bike lanes. Stragers worked together to build and race blindly through labyrinths as part of a ancient lost sport. Payphones produced points and Tompkins Square Park became a putt-putt course. 200 people performed stunts to display on the Reuters screen in Times Square.

http://www.comeoutandplay.org

Kiosk, the Soho store that purveys everyday goods curated from locations around the world, hosts mini-exhibitions in their 2nd floor space on Spring Street. Tonight marks the opening of their 12th, an homage to the prolific and humorous postcardist Ken Brown. The opening party is tonight, June 11th, from 7-9 pm, but the show will run through the 20th.

Here is a short interview with Ken, pulled from their blog:

Background: "My first experience as a practicing artist was as a film maker. During the late 60's I created dozens of short experimental films that became part of a New England based light show which for over 2 and a half years played with everyone from Jimi Hendrix to the Velvet Underground, the Who etc."

Reason: "I've always loved postcards. They are the original populist medium, affordable, accessible and abundant and, as an artist interested in skirting the gallery system, they seemed like an ideal way to get work out to a larger audience. I admit that I had no idea what I was doing and had no business plan, but in 1975, I took what little savings I had and invested in a print run of 2000 each of 12 different photographic postcards."

Development: "In 1985, in another feet first production, we moved to NYC. I continue to juggle design work as an active art/entrepreneurial enterprise while also producing regular spots for MTV and Sesame St. Also in 1985, Harper and Row (now Harper Collins) publish a collection of my cartoons- Notes from the Nervous Breakdown Lane"

Influences: I have a long standing love of American pop culture and it remains a constant theme throughout my work.

How many cards: Over 34 years and close to 700 different designs, a rough guess would be about 2 to 3 million cards littering the landscape.

Summation: "I love living in New York and thrive on the culture and general visual vibrancy of the place. uh oh, ... starting to ramble"

Kiosk Mini-Exhibition #12: Postcards from Ken Brown
June 11-20th; Opening June 11th: 7-9pm
95 Spring St.
New York, NY

Sick of sitting at your computer? RECESS is a new series of creative-community sporting sessions that offer "an alternative lifestyle to the otherwise rudimentary activities that dominate and sometimes dull our urbanite senses." Simply put, it's an ongoing series of sports and games featuring, no not Bjorn Borg (darn!), but some super stars from the creative world.

Make it out to Colonel's Row at Governor's Island, NY on June 20th to ring in the first RECESS, featuring a badminton competition sponsored by Tretorn. Van Leeuwen ice cream & Le Gamin food mobile truck will be onsite to offer delicacies while Kronan and BioMega will offer attendees an opportunity to test ride their bikes. You can watch, laugh, point fingers -- all that stuff you gotta keep to yourself in the office -- while meeting a bunch of creatively-minded folks. Not to mention learn how to hit some shuttlecocks. Now that's a good time.

Registration for the Icograda World Design Conference 2009 is now open. The event will be hosted by the Central Acadamy of Fine Arts in Beijing, China from the 24th through the 30th of October.

The theme of this year's Congress is Xin. Literally signifying human speaking, and hence Message/Letter in Chinese, Xin represents a primitive means of communication. Today, however, it has come to encompass many more dimensions. Under this theme, Icograda World Design Congress Beijing 2009 will explore contemporary issues surrounding communication design through a series of presentations, discussions and pre-Congress workshops.

Speakers include:
Jan van Toorn, Sol Sender, Patrick Whitney, Kohei Sugiura, Huda Smitshuijzen Abifares, Studio Pip & Co/Andrew Ashton, Peter Bankov, David Barringer, Ruedi Baur, Pierre Bernard, Brian Collins, Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, Base Design, Kiko Farkas, Peter Hall, Dan Hill, Zuzana Lednicka, Laurence Madrelle, Victor Margolin, Achyut Palav, Peet Pienaar, David Pigeon, Rick Poynor, Qiu Zhenzhong, Dexter Sinister/David Reinfurt, Michael Rock, Helmut Schmid, David Small, Hilton Tennant, Troika, Michael Vanderbyl, Yao Dajuin and Yoon Ho Seob.

Many institutes throughout China will also host a variety of pre-conference workshops, including: Chinese Banknote Design in Shenzhen, Contemporary Creativity of China Traditional Hand-woven Fabric in Ji'nan, and Sign's Design and Application of the Shanghai Style in Shanghai. Icograda is seeking both workshop leaders (airfare provided within China) and participants for these workshops. Browse the full list here.

The University of Washington Design Show 2009, showcasing the work of graduating BFA, BA and MFA students, opens today at the Jacob Lawrence Gallery at the University of Washington School of Art. Exhibited projects include: Cykel, a bike and stand designed for a bike-share system, by Brian McAllister; and the Storage Sleeping Bag, which holds insulation and other necessities, by Michelle Lavasseur. Picture above are Eli Stillson's Trapster car and McAllister's Cykel.

More after the jump.

UW Design Show 2009
June 9-20
Jacob Lawrence Gallery
University of Washington School of Art

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Nick Oakley's first design job was in Terence Conran's London studio back in 1979, where he labored under the legendary figure for a bit less than US$1 per hour. The 30 years since then have seen the RCA and Northumbria graduate developing consumer products, professional equipment, corporate identity, and transportation programs, before focusing in on mobile computing while working at IDEO in the 1990s. As design lead at Intel's Mobility group, Oakley is one of the company's primary sources of next-generation mobile computing concepts, responsible for projects ranging from the far out blue-sky to market-ready notebook designs--many of which have seen production under third-party nameplates in the past decade.

This relative anonymity, coupled with the extraordinary technical fluency necessary to work at a relentlessly pragmatic firm like Intel, poses some unique challenges for hiring designers, which is why we've asked Nick to join us on the panel this Thursday at the Portland installment of the Coroflot Creative Employment Confab.

His two questions:

1. How is seeking and hiring designers different in the US vs. the UK? Do you find certain qualities easier or harder to find in the two countries?

I think there's always been a difference between Euro, and certainly UK designers vs. the US equivalent. It's always seemed as though UK design education and practice tuned designers in to a different set of sensibilities--perhaps supporting ideas and approaches based around the meaning and qualitative attributes of products. The US in contrast has always seemed to me more research- and process-based, and tends to encourage more rationalist, process driven designers. As Intel is fundamentally a data and process oriented company, US designers probably wind up being a better fit.

2. Do you find that Intel's reputation as an engineering-led company makes it easier or more difficult to attract and retain highly qualified designers?

Intel is an ingredient brand and a technology driven company, and therefore not an obvious first choice for a highly qualified designer. Much of the work is conceptual, exploratory and for internal consumption only, so very little makes it to volume production, which for many designers trying to build a portfolio can be a bit of a turn-off. With unconnected business groups within the company approaching design in different ways, it's also probably difficult for a prospective candidate to get a 'read' on a career opportunity with us, and whether it would be a match for long term career aspirations.

Oakley, along with directors and recruiters from Nike, Ziba, and Cinco Design, will form the core of the Portland Confab, an afternoon-long informational and networking event for designers, creative directors and recruiters from the product, apparel, branding and interaction design fields. Tickets are still available, and this will be the only Confab in the Pacific Northwest; check out the Confab page for details and registration info.

Coroflot's Creative Employment Confab
Thursday, June 11th, 2:30-6pm
University of Oregon, Portland - White Stag Block
70 NW Couch St. @ NW 1st Ave, Portland, OR

Additional Confab info:

2 Questions for Beth Sasseen of Nike
2 Questions for Chelsea Vandiver of Ziba
Fast Company coverage of the Austin Confab in March

Join: Design Seattle exists to promote "emerging American design by providing designers a forum to show work and get feedback. We strive to be the adhesive that binds a thriving, but fragmented, furniture and product design design community in Seattle." Organized by Iacoli & McAllister, Ctrl+Alt+Design, their 1st annual design review, will do just this, bringing designers and objects from around the North America to the Pacific Northwest. Join them at their opening on June 12th in Seattle, maybe on the way out from the Coroflot Creative Confab in Portland?

Participants include:
Brite Collective, Heath Bultman, Dreamlets, FortyFive-09, Grain, graypants, inc, Iacoli & Mcallister, Jeff LaCoste, LiT, Ladies & Gentlemen, Meet Me Here, Militia Limited, Paul Piacitelli, Submaterial, urbancase, Tricia Martin, Erik Johnson, Misewell, Timothy Liles, Elisa Werbler, Andrea Claire, Charles Constantine, Sallyann Corn, Martin Konrad Gloeckle, Joe Kent, Kiel Mead, Jason Neufeld, Stanley Ruiz, and {knee shy}

OPENING RECEPTION
Friday June 12, 2009
7pm - Midnight
Ouch My Eye
1022 1st Ave S - Seattle - 98134

Lineweights is a group of designers from San Francisco that promotes "learning, creating and sharing through visual representation," primarily focusing on sketching. On June 14, they are hosting a Sketch Crawl for the very first time! Join them and other Bay area designers at the San Francisco Zoo for a day of "sketching the animal kingdom" with different techniques, styles and expressions. If you can't make it, be sure to check their blog for sketches and tutorials.

Lineweights Sketch Crawl
12-5pm, June 14th
San Francisco Zoo

For a high-profile, design-driven company like Nike, populating the studios with the best designers on the planet is more than just an aspiration, it's a matter of brand survival. And while much can be said for the company's famously pro-designer culture as a tool for attracting top talent, picking the right applicants out of an enormous pool can be a daunting task.

Beth Sasseen has been doing creative hiring since the early 90s, first for Lucasfilm in California and Singapore, then for Nike starting in 2007. This long experience finding great designers from across the globe who are also great fits, and getting them to stick around, is what draws us to put her on the stage for next week's Creative Confab in Portland, Oregon, a few miles from the Nike World Campus in Beaverton.

1. Given the highly specialized nature of many design disciplines, and the difficulty of identifying a truly great portfolio, is it crucial (or even helpful) that a recruiter of creative professionals have some design training herself?

Learning a list of job requirements is easily done, but if the role for which one is recruiting is more specialized, deeper training is a good idea. For design recruiting, having an inherent interest in things that are more creative than analytical is helpful, if not necessary. I am a visual person, so I sympathize greatly with the creative process designers go through. I've tried recruiting for finance and accounting roles before and that just didn't come as naturally.


2.You've mentioned that a good recruiter has to serve as a career counselor for misguided applicants sometimes -- under what circumstances does this level of engagement become necessary, even with a designer who's not getting the job?

The opportunity occurs most often with students and professionals in transition, two circumstances in which everyone, not just designers, probably feel most vulnerable. The career counselor in me comes out when I sense defeat in a candidate's voice. The hiring process is full of hurdles, so the last thing a candidate should feel is failure if they haven't gotten the job.

Sasseen will be sharing the stage with recruiters and designers from Ziba, Intel, and Cinco Design, as we talk about creative hiring from both sides of the process. The event also offers the chance to meet and trade notes with some of the best design firms and creative professionals in the Pacific Northwest. See the Confab page over on Coroflot for more details, and registration information.

Coroflot's Creative Employment Confab
Thursday, June 11th, 2:30-6pm
University of Oregon, Portland - White Stag Block
70 NW Couch St. @ NW 1st Ave, Portland, OR

In August, the MoMA will post an exhibit featuring over 140 works by Ron Arad. It will be the designer's first large-scale U.S. retrospective.

Among the most influential designers of our time, Ron Arad (Israeli, b. 1951) stands out for his daredevil curiosity about technology and materials and for the versatile nature of his work. Over the past twenty-five years, he has produced an outstanding array of innovative objects, spanning from the limited to the almost unlimited series, from carbon fiber armchairs to polyurethane bottle racks. This exhibition will be the first major retrospective of Arad's design work in the United States. A designer and an architect, trained at the Jerusalem Academy of Art and at London's Architectural Association, he has also designed memorable spaces, some plastic and tactile, others ethereal and digital.

Arad relies on the computer and its rapid manufacturing capabilities as much as he relies on the soldering apparatus in his metal workshop. His beautiful furniture can even receive and display SMS and Bluetooth messages from mobile phones and Palm Pilots. Idiosyncratic and surprising, and also very beautiful, Arad's designs communicate the joy of invention, pleasure and humor, and pride in the display of their technical and constructive skills.

Ron Arad: No Discipline

In the lead up to next week's Coroflot Creative Confab--this time held in the small but astoundingly design-y city of Portland, Oregon--we're individually introducing each of the event's panelists, as we did for last month's New York installment.

The first of our four panelists to get the Two Questions treatment this time around is Chelsea Vandiver, who heads up the Communications Design Group at Portland-based, internationally focused, multi-disciplinary design studio Ziba. In an industry known for instability and frequent shifts of locale and title, Chelsea has managed to stick with the award-winning consultancy for a decade now, creating print, web and environments for clients as diverse as P&G, Nike and FedEx, and building an innovative, flexible 12-person design team in the process.

1. A lot of effort is made by many studios to retain good designers, but you've mentioned it's sometimes advantageous to let a restless employee move on, knowing they may return further down the line. When is this a good idea, and why?

Working at a design studio is not that different from being in a relationship. Commitment is essential to producing great work. The designer and employer must meet each other's needs in order for it to work. Every design studio has a unique culture and body of work, just like every designer has a unique personality and style. We're all looking for the perfect match. When things don't work out, it's important to not take it personally. The chemistry just didn't work, and chemistry is essential to the creative process.

I view turnover in the creative industry as normal and essential to the growth of the designers and the design studios. The circulation of design talent in Portland makes our design community tighter, our work better and keeps our creatives happy.

2. Ziba got its start as an Industrial Design consultancy, but has since expanded into a number of other, related fields. As head of the Communications Design group, how do you convince applicants that their work will be valued as much as at a straight-up graphic design studio?

I don't. Truth be told, work will not be put on a pedestal here. Designers who come to Ziba, come for collaboration. Their work is one piece in a larger puzzle. We are offering them the opportunity to be part of something bigger.

Honesty is crucial in an interview for both parties. If I set false expectations, I will be setting the designer up for failure and disappointment.

Vandiver, along with three other top-of-their-field designers and recruiters, will be pulling from her extensive design, hiring, and team management experience during her hour on the Confab panel. The event also offers the chance to meet and trade notes with some of the best design firms and creative professionals in the Pacific Northwest. See the Confab page over on Coroflot for more details, and registration information.

Coroflot's Creative Employment Confab
Thursday, June 11th, 2:30-6pm
University of Oregon, Portland - White Stag Block
70 NW Couch St. @ NW 1st Ave, Portland, OR

If you're in New York this weekend, industrial designer Malcolm Fontier is launching his latest travel bag collection with a special silent auction of custom painted bags by a range of talented artists to raise money for the Dress For Success non-profit organization. The exhibition in Tribeca will open at noon and the party kicks off at 7pm. More details here.

Saturday, June 6th, 2009
Solefood
38 Lispenard St. (btwn. Broadway & Church)
New York, NY 10013

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On May 14th, the good folks at Continuum hosted the fourth Designers Accord Town Hall, rallying Beantown's sustainable design community for a candid discussion on their design practices. Here's the recap from the discussion, which ranged from fired up to down-to-earth.

Dave Laituri, founder and partner of Sprout Creation, kicked off the evening by sharing his company's journey to create the Vers iPod sound system--real wood, hand-crafted audio systems. At the helm of Sprout, Dave is trying to make a "dent in this sustainable thing" with every aspect of his product--from material sourcing and supply chain influencing to packaging and take back programs.

Guided by the belief that "ideas enacted are more important than ideas," Dave shared with us lessons from the frontlines of trying to infuse "better" into his product: better sound, better design with minimized environmental impact. It's here that he introduced us to Less Brown. This isn't a partner, investor or key stakeholder; but rather, it's the idea that in this pursuit of sustainability we shouldn't talk about the destination of being green--because like the holy grail, you'll never get there. There's always something better you can do. Green is never a final destination.

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Deadline is June 1st, so if you've got some composition chops (maybe even tucked away behind your mad design skillz?), get in the game!

The AIGA Winterhouse Awards for Design Writing & Criticism seek to increase the understanding and appreciation of design, both within the profession and throughout American life. A program of AIGA, these annual awards have been founded by Jessica Helfand and William Drenttel of the Winterhouse Institute to recognize excellence in writing about design and encourage the development of young voices in design writing, commentary and criticism.

$10,000 for the top prize, plus a $1000 student prize. Last year's winners are here.

Last week in San Francisco was the Greener by Design conference, which we've already noted was well-covered by Reuters. But if you want the short version, here are some personal notes.

Greener by Design 2009 was actually the best conference I've been to in a while. Not so much because of the speakers or format--though they were definitely great--but because of the conversations with other people between talks. How does that happen? Maybe it was just coincidence; it was a standard-format gig, not an unconference like foo camp. Maybe it was that Joel Makower did a good job of getting interesting people to attend, and had decent-length breaks between sessions. In any case, it was well worth the time. Here are a few notes from the event.

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