Core77

Product Design Hub's got an interview up with concept artist Mikael Lugnegard, who has washed his hands of our profession (see quote below) but still designs his Swedish butt off.

Mikael Lugnegard is a Swedish industrial designer [who] graduated from the Umea Institute of Design, and worked as a lead designer for Duke Dynamics (BMW styling), as a concept designer for von Braun Sports Cars and as a sketch teacher at a number of Swedish design schools. He has also produced his own educational material and is now spending all his time in educating students about different ways to visualize ideas, design and just being creative and having fun.

"I would definitely not label myself as an industrial designer, that title is way to narrow for me and my creativity. I think it's very important to remain open to new challenges and new ways to expand and express our creativity. Even though I was trained as an ID, I found that it did not let me express my creativity in a way that suited my creative process and my goals. I'm a very visual designer, and I don't really care for the ID process with interviews, research and so on. I'm not really that problem oriented in my design. Guess I'm more of an artist in the traditional sense."

Click here for the full interview.

The terrorists "hate our freedom." If that's true, they're probably going to hate our folding bikes.

Montague's bad-ass Paratrooper Tactical Folding Mountain Bike is jump-ready and can be dropped on a static line or attached to a paratrooper. Accessories seem to include a camo wrap for jump time and a handlebar attachment that stores an assault rifle in a "travel" position.

Some deets on the bike's purpose:

Air Drop Ground Mobility The Paratrooper Tactical Mountain Bike was designed as ground mobility for airborne units. It is a sturdy, durable full size Mountain Bike, designed to fold so the bike can be dropped on a static line. Once on the ground the bike is unfolded and serves as effective, efficient and stealthy ground transportation, allowing easy evacuation upon completion of a mission.

LAV / Reconnaissance Scout Using the Paratrooper Tactical Mountain Bike in conjunction with LAV's or APC's, allows the company increased mobility and security. The Paratrooper Reconnaissance model folds so you can attach it to the side of vehicle and serves as back- up transportation. The Paratrooper is a stealthy recon/scout vehicle able to travel with little to no thermal and acoustic signatures.

Alternative to Foot Soldier The Paratrooper Tactical Mountain Bike offers the most efficient form of human powered transportation available. Men on mountain bikes have off-body load bearing capabilities, can traverse any terrain, move at high speeds without breakdown, and can refuel themselves with local water and food. It is also a great moral builder - the guys really enjoy traveling around on a bike rather than on foot.

The only thing that bugs me is they say it allows "easy evacuation upon completion of a mission." I hope that doesn't mean the soldiers are meant to abandon the bikes--you gonna leave these sweet rides behind for the terrorists? If you do, they win!

A bite-sized list of what's happenin' now:

ag ip news
World Intellectual Property Organization examines areas of possible convergence in industrial design law and practice

gizmodo
Cheap, Thin Laptops Suffering From Cheapness, Thinness

fast company
"Starting a Design Studio In a Downturn" four-part article

forbes
Why Dell Can't Do Gadgets

autospies
Volkswagen receives the 2009 red dot Design Award

gizmodo
Steve Wozniak's Most Memorable Gadgets

Sydney-based Shane Crozier's been getting some blog love with his Cycle Wip, as seen above on designcrave.

Be sure to check out Crozier's sketching skills and a host of his other projects (like his Nissan Mori scooter, "Flux" e-desk and White Noise Lamp, below) on Coroflot.

Even using "rapid" prototyping, it took French jewelry house Boucheron's craftspeople 1,500 hours to produce Marc Newson's fiendishly complicated Julia necklace. The fractals-based diamond and sapphire piece will debut tonight in Paris, and unsurprisingly, it will likely be "one of the most expensive necklaces Boucheron's ever made."

Says Newson of his design inspiration, "Fractals are fascinating, complex and rich, and gemstones really lend themselves to exploiting their beauty."

For more on fractals, check out an earlier post of ours on the subject.

via the moment

University of the Arts ID student Can Onart's Felt Stool (above), produced with classmates Elissa Myres and Bethany Casperite, is eight layers of industrial felt over just two layers of veneer. Onart's Gehry-inspired Basket Bench (below) puts steel ribbons to innovative use, with three tiers of arches providing plenty of structure.

Check out a couple of Onart's other pieces on Coroflot.

Australian entrepreneur Bradley Wein had an idea for a device that would make changing halogen lightbulbs, which are trickier to replace than regular bulbs, easy. His ladder-free concept would also eliminate a common cause of injury among the elderly.

Wein approached a team of industrial design students at Swinburne University, who spent eight months developing the concept into a workable prototype. The resultant product, "Down to Earth Lighting," won the People's Choice Awards on Australia's New Inventors program.

How does the device work? Check out the (alas, unembeddable) video here.

via dexigner

Hamburg-based Tobias Bexten's STEM urban commuter bike (above) and VW Caddy Topos prototype (below) were both done while he was a student at the University of Art Braunschweig; now that he's on the prowl for work, we're looking forward to seeing what he comes up with next.

Check out the rest of Bexten's book-in-progress on Coroflot.

As Carl is our resident CAD/3D expert, it takes a lot to make the guy say "These are the most photorealistic renderings I've ever seen in my life." But that casual honor's now been conferred on Studio Sweden founder David Cathro, whose rendering of a 1971 Plymouth Satellite (and others) is so absurdly real, it makes real life look fake.

Check out the rest of Cathro's stuff on Coroflot.

It's not exactly Man vs. Wild. UK communications company Orange has partnered with US design consultancy Kaleidoscope on the Glastonbury Solar Concept Tent, which uses photovoltaic fabric to capture the sun's energy. The tent then turns that juice into heating for the tent-floor, as well as powering cell phone chargers, an LCD control panel and, um, wireless internet.

Furthermore, if you're having problems finding your tent--not out in the wild, but in a crowded festival setting, like Glastonbury--punching a code into your cell phone will make your tent glow in a particular color.

Egads. What would Bear Grylls say?

via born rich

Apple's design chief, Jonathan Ive, was honored at the Royal College of Art's "Innovation Night" on Tuesday, where he took to the stage. The event was closed to the public and much of the media, but geek.com has provided an account of Ive's talk--as reverse-engineered from Mozilla consultant Pascal Finette's Twittering of the event! Oh, the times we live in.

Here's a rather interesting excerpt:

Ive: My drawing skills are terrible... and I'm a lousy presenter. So I focus on designing instead. :)

Not sure if the smiley icon is Finette's addition, or if it's meant to represent Ive smiling after his statement. What is the Twitter transcription protocol? :)

Click here to read more, including Ive discussing some of Apple's design process.

Don't let its size fool you--the latest product from Big Ass Fans, the 8- to 10-foot ISIS model, can reduce energy bills by 25-50%, yet typically uses the same amount of energy as a refrigerator bulb. How do they do it? It's engineered to be lightweight through the judicious use of aluminum, yet the large fan blades still provide plenty of oomph.

If the protagonist from Up had inverted a bunch of these and attached them to his roof, he wouldn't have had to mess with those balloons....

Jake Dyson's Motorlights use a mechanical solution in place of a dimmer switch, incorporating two shutters that allow an arc of light from between 10 and 120 degrees. That might not seem practical in a residential situation, but when you consider that up to 30 of these lights can be controlled by a single remote, it becomes clear that restaurants, nightclubs, and art galleries will probably take a shine to the fixture and the permutations it allows.

Dyson describes the product as "the world's first variable angle uplight, enabling both designers and consumers to vary light angles to suit different environments and needs–-from ambient lighting to spot lighting."

via 3 rings

A bite-sized list of what's happenin' now:

design droplets
"How much do you charge for industrial design" survey

dexigner
Material ConneXion Presents I.D. Magazine's Annual Design Review Exhibition

palestine herald
Husband-and-wife team turn ideas into marketable products

pr newswire
Autodesk Inventor of the Month Provides Smart Transit Information for Riders

hidden wires
Niko wins red dot design award for Mysterious - the invisible switch

l & si online
U2's latest world tour features "World's first transformable LED screen"

As General Electric's Global Research Centers get closer to perfecting flexible, bendable OLED lights, GE asked industrial design students at the Cleveland Institute of Art to come up with some potential applications. The results: Flexible lamps, signage, wall lighting, safety uniforms, and others.

You may see a YouTube video of the concepts floating around the blogs. Avoid it--the video is poorly-executed rubbish. Instead, check out the students' concepts here.

On the other side of Jane Fulton Suri's Thoughtless Acts is There I Fixed It, documenting "epic kludges and adventures in home pwnership", where a kludge is "an ill-assorted collection of poorly matching parts, forming a distressing whole."

Definitely less graceful than the makeshift doorstops and paper shades in Jane's book, these "quick fixes" take a seriously direct (sometimes ingenious, sometimes dangerous) route from broken to "repaired". Our favorite is the padlocked car-door: "Look, this is just how it's going to be from now on, okay?"

Submit your own handiwork and make Michel de Certeau proud.

A few more of our favorites after the jump.

continued...

For his senior thesis at OSU, designer Tylan Tschopp conceived of two camping devices that use manual compressed air storage as their energy source. Why? Because assuming your arms still work, it can't run out of juice, it's lightweight, and there's no hazardous fuels or gases you need to carry with you. Crank up the tank and presto, you've got a heater/stove and a lantern/flashlight.

Also be sure to check out his wicked Police Cycle Light up on Coroflot.

Check out London-based Adam Schacter's CarGo Urban Delivery Vehicle concept on Coroflot:

Urban traffic congestion is an increasing problem which affects countless delivery companies every day. The unique "CarGo" concept addresses this issue with its variable track, wheelbase and load carrying configurations.

Primarily designed for small, inner city deliveries, the battery powered CarGo's innovative design allows the driver to quickly adapt the vehicle to suit both traffic conditions and load volume/type.

On the other end of the size spectrum is his all-terrain Amphibious Rescue Craft:

The A.R.C. (Amphibious Rescue Craft) is a rugged all terrain vehicle that can be used to deliver vital aid and supplies anywhere required including flooded areas which are inaccessible to most other vehicles. Variable height ground clearance combined with large wheels and all terrain tyres provide excellent off road capabilities, whilst a boat hull and retractable wheels enable the A.R.C to plane at high speeds across water with minimal friction and uncompromised performance.

It's certainly not the most practical thing in the world, but the Design Martus Stump and Ottoman set looks like the furniture you'd build if you were trapped in the woods with nothing but a two-man lumber saw. And aside from those polyurethane wheels, it's about as eco-friendly as you can get.

Mac Funamizu's entry in a recent cell phone design competition anticipates a time when holography will become common.

The technology of holography is progressing day by day. In 10 years, I hope it will have already been developed for mass production and will of course used in our mobile phones. The area conventionally used for a display in a mobile phone will no longer need to be a screen with 3D projectors. Instead, it could be a hole....

Another one of his product concepts was designed to combat a problem that, surprisingly, I encountered often in otherwise crime-free Japan: umbrella theft.

OTTO is an electronic musical instrument for realtime manual beat slicing of audio samples.

OTTO was developed by Luca De Rosso as a thesis project for his master degree in Visual and Multimedia Communications at IUAV University of Venice (April 2009), and uses the Arduino open-source hardware platform and Cycling '74's Max/MSP software.

Studio 360 asked Worldstudio to redesign the 30-year old gay pride flag "in honor of the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots that marked the first salvo in the gay rights revolution." While the 1978 original represents unity (inspired by the rainbow peace flag), these proposals tackle some of the issues facing the LBGT community today--same-sex marriage and national identity in particular. For example, Isaac Mizrahi's favorite (top left) doesn't use rainbow colors at all. Instead, it's a modification of the existing US flag, representing only those states that have legalized gay marriage.

See the entire slideshow here and be sure to vote for your favorite!

via the daily heller

Seattle-based Thinknow Design's beautiful line of eco-friendly jewelry is made from recycled wood and papers from sustainable suppliers, and assembled using water-based adhesives.

Thinknow is a product design company created to synthesize art, fashion, and environmental sustainability. Rooted in architecture and global travel, thinknow designs are meant to inspire and capture the imagination while satisfying a collective environmental conscience.

Becky Ellis is the President and CEO of thinknow, a product design division of the architectural firm think, where she leads the design and management of architectural projects worldwide. Becky is a LEED(TM) Accredited professional committed to leadership in the green design community, and exploring the fusion of hospitality, fashion, and sustainable lifestyles.

Click here to check out their site, and/or hit the jump for a gallery of Thinknow images; they really must be seen large to be appreciated.

via examiner - seattle fashion

continued...

"Some people (they are wrong) say design is about solving problems."

"Obviously designers do solve problems, but then so do dentists. Design is about cultural invention."

Statement by Jack Schulze of Schulze and Webb, presented during Matt Web's Reboot talk.

>> View talk

If you haven't yet stumbled across it on BBC News, Engadget or the discussion boards here on Core77, there's a great little article making the rounds today, in which 13-year-old Scott Campbell is asked to give his opinions on the very Walkman his dad once toted (or hauled, if you want to be honest about the size of those early ones).

Besides the obvious entertainment value of hearing a (surprisingly eloquent) youngster discover how to flip a tape over, and "shuffle" tracks by randomly releasing the rewind button, there's some useful insight too, into the unavoidable coupling of intended and unintended consequences when technologies advance. Like the frog in the slowly warming pot, it's sometimes difficult to see the downsides of an improvement while it's being implemented, and even years into a shift as fundamental as the one from linear playback to random-access music devices, we have to put the two side-by-side and see them anew to appreciate how they've influenced our behavior.

The most obvious "loss" of the iPod generation, as mentioned in that Core77 discussion thread, and elsewhere, is the steady demise of the album as a coherent document: when the technology's limitations prevent us from going straight to the song we want, we're forced to listen to the whole thing, and maybe grow to love certain songs whose beauty reveals itself slowly. Without that linearity -- which would be seen as a failure today -- we'd probably have missed out on some beautiful but elusive tracks that our enormous, warbly tape players demanded we endure.

On the other hand, there's plenty we're gaining, and it's more than simply convenience. One danger of looking back on a nostalgiac medium is filtering for the good things and stating them explicitly, while leaving the old drawbacks, and new advantages, unspoken. We're fond of the warm crackle and rich timbre of a soul track on vinyl too, but do we spend as much time rhapsodizing about the sheer joy of being reminded of a song during a conversation, then cuing it up just a few seconds later? Of making music part of the discussion, rather than a distracting 15 minute dig through stacks of albums, often to find the sleeve is empty?

The potential for joy, exploration, emotional connection and (future) nostalgia in new technologies is often overlooked, and that's a pity, because objectively there's just as much to mourn in a new joy unappreciated as an old one lost. Smart 13-year-olds, with a democratic lack of allegiance to either, may turn out to be the best technology critics we've got.

The finalists have been chosen for Zink Imaging's Zero Boundaries Product Design Competition, which had entrants design concepts for use with their "inkless printing" technology (click here to learn more). The three concepts above are:

- Mansour Ourasanah's FlashCard Camera, which prints postcards on-the-go
- Neelam Singh's Warm Note digital, ink-free note writing system
- David Bulfin's Inchworm wall crawling robot wallpaper printing system

Click here to check out the rest of the finalists.