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The Dutch Postcode Lottery and and cross-media event PICNIC present the PICNIC Green Challenge, a call for products and services that contribute to an eco-friendly lifestyle, directly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and score highly on convenience, quality and design.
Just like last year, the entrant with the best idea will win €500,000 ($770,000) to execute the winning plan, and receive expert coaching and a starting list of customers!
Posted by: Mark Vanderbeeken | Comments (0)
There's some inevitability about Michael Bierut taking on this object, a favorite of industrial designers if there ever was one. Here goes:
Charles F. Brannock only invented one thing in his life, and this was it. The son of a Syracuse, New York, shoe magnate, Brannock became interested in improving the primitive wooden measuring sticks that he saw around his father's store. He patented his first prototype in 1926, based on models he had made from Erector Set parts. As the Park-Brannock Shoe Store became legendary for fitting feet with absolute accuracy, the demand for the device grew, and in 1927 Brannock opened a factory to mass produce it. The Brannock Device Co., Inc., is still in business today. Refreshingly, it still only makes this one thing. They have sold over a million, a remarkable number when one considers that each of them lasts up to 15 years, when the numbers wear off.
Read the whole thing.
Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)
National Geographic's Man-made has a great segment up called "Tokyo: Living Small in the Big City." In addition to photos of space-tight designs, there's an informative video of architect Yasuhiro Yamashita (photo above), designer of Tokyo's Penguin House, discussing how to use three design tricks--admitting light, manipulating sightlines, and playing with ceiling height--to make a small space seem big. Click here to watch.
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (0)
Glynn Kerr: World Famous Motorcycle Designer and MCN Columnist will speak at A&S BMW Motorcycles tomorrow May 15th, 6:30-8 p.m:
Although you may or may not recognize his name, if you've ridden a motorcycle in the past 25 years, you've ridden something that has been designed or influenced by Glynn.As the co-founder and President of the Motorcycle Design Association, Glynn has an exciting presentation for us about the development of motorcycle styling. He'll share photos and sketches of prototypes, as well as demonstrate the actual design process! This will be an informal presentation and your questions will be welcomed!
Find more great design events at the Core77 Calendar.
Posted by: core jr | Comments (0)
Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe, and Charles Rennie Mackintosh all designed iconic chairs; but it was Raj, Dwayne, and Rerun--the cast of What's Happening--that sat iconically. Every time they were in Rob's Diner they turned the chairs around and straddled them backwards.
Raj and the boys would have felt right at home in Andrea Ruggiero's Tempo chair, an unusual seat that forgoes a back in recognition of the fact that, well, there are plenty of people who don't sit normally. The brief from Swedish furniture manufacturer Offecct asked Ruggiero to explore "new ways of sitting," and the NYC-based designer (we'd link to her site, but it appears to be blank) came up with an attached surface that can be used as a laptop perch or a writing surface.
Would the Tempo be comfortable long-term? Maybe or maybe not, but that's besides the point:
Tempo addresses the need for informal, transitional seating in public spaces--where people transiting from one fixed or formal situation to another can sit and have a short break, take notes, type an email, or have an impromptu meeting."Offecct's brief presented a distinct opportunity and helped identify a need for informal short-term seating in public spaces," explains Andrea Ruggiero. "However, the tricky part was resolving the ergonomic issues associated with the different sitting positions, while ensuring that it could be used comfortably by a diverse user group." Prototype testing and user evaluation was conducted with a broad range of users, ranging from petite females to large males.
We know at least one large male who would've loved the Tempo. RIP, Rerun.
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (2)The super touchscreen technology known as Multitouch is a revolutionary advance in interface design that makes the iPhone possible.
As shepherded by Jeff Han's company Perceptive Pixel, it enables CNN to present election results in a novel way, becoming "a stupendous way to explain a lot of complicated data."
And perhaps most importantly, multitouch means we can play huge games of Missile Command without that lame-o trackball.
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (1)
From a design standpoint, birds look like they can fly. They're small, light, feathery and they've got, you know, those wings. But did you ever realize every manmade thing that can fly, from blimps to 767s to Sikorsky helicopters, don't look like they can, or should?
Here with more proof of that is a Japanese kite. Doesn't look so big in the top photo, right? Well how about the one below?
Obviously it took a lot of bodies to realize this project, and we'd love to see the meeting that made it happen:
Kite Guy 1: I think we should make a kite this big.
Kite Guys 2 thru 50: How big?
Kite Guy 1: This big.
Kite Guys 2 thru 50: Okay!
Lastly, here's a shot of something else that oughtn't fly: a twisted airplane that caused great concern last year for everyone, at least for the 10 seconds it took them to realize it was Photoshopped. Why, internet, why?
kite via tokyo times
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (1)
What would George Jetson drive? If he was a scooter kinda guy, the modded Kybele CyberScooter, above, probably wouldn't be a stretch. This and a host of truly incredible scooter mods, with both pics and links, are up on Pink Tentacle. (Photo above from autobloggreen; photo below from tokyo scooter's Flickr page.)
The UK Design Council has published a designer's guide to designing out crime from products, systems and services with advice from those who've done it, young crime victims and technology experts.
The site also contains an overview of graphic, product and systems that tackle hot product crime, including the Bikeoff bicycle stands, orange school projectors, the Immobilise online security service, anti-theft number plates, biometric security for mobile devices, service design for secure bike hire schemes, and cutting crime at a Birmigham hospital through improved wayfinding and increased natural surveillance.
Posted by: Mark Vanderbeeken | Comments (1)
With the technology still prohibitively expensive, fully interactive signage could remain in the realms of cinematic fantasy, but three recent, small-scale projects using architecture and dynamic content might point the way forward, writes Scott Billings in UK's Design Week magazine.
Posted by: Mark Vanderbeeken | Comments (0)
Takeshi Miyakawa's interesting Fractal 23 bureau makes use of every one of its cubic inches, even if it's not immediately obvious to the user. You can see more of the Brooklyn-based designer's work here.
Posted by: hipstomp | Comments (0)A quick sampling of some of the homegrown technology that makes the Maker Faire such a kick: There's some bizarre transit, in the form of ACME Mufineering's motorized cupcakes; a "giant, fixed-gear, two-person dicycle" called Unwheeldy (hard to describe, but watch and it'll all make sense); and Tom Sepe's Whirlygig Emoto, a steampunk'd electric cycle complete with 15-mile range and, um...operating steam whistle.
Indoors, things were just as charming: Sisyphus V uses a rotating magnetic arm to propel a steel ball through sand, creating Zen-garden geometric patterns; that crazy ferrofluid you keep reading about populates the hand-cranked Magnetoscope, turning magnetic fields into impossible-looking 3D artwork; and the spooky moving images of a homemade camera obscura turn out to be the result of something as simple as an LED light and some bits of shiny foil on a turntable.
Posted by: core jr | Comments (0)