Stick a sheet of paper on a dinner table, throw some Crayolas down with it and this is what you get at the end of the night:

Some photos from the awards dinner:

A lot of people loaded into the Round Barn Center.

Watching the student presenters kick out the jams.

Fellow BlogSquadder Don Lehman is getting crunked.

Bust a move?

The floor punch?

The robot?

Those Kansas gals popping and locking.

Some of the core conference team: (L to R) UIUC ID sudents Mona Haggag and Danielle Moorman, and UIUC ID Professors Deana McDonagh and William Bullock Director David Weightman.

Friday night:

Really! Gross! Nachos! And! Beer!

Champaign street life.

Bassmonsters ID house party.

The crazy-ass design of the Historic Lincoln Hotel. (By the way-- it's haunted. In 1930 a lady hung herself on the 4th floor-- no joke.)

Ko covered Cat Chow, the Chicago-based conceptual fashion designer, earlier but i thought I would add a couple more pics and thoughts:

- Cat Chow's fashion work seems to focus on repetition of elements, meticulous details, and purity of concept, with amazing results.

- Some of my favorite designs were her measuring tape dress (a dress made out of woven measuring tapes) and of course the $1 bill dress (1000 donated $1 bills, shredded and restitched).

- She was comissioned to make a dress for Nokia out of cell phone front faces... And what did she name it? "Cell Out"

- Cat Chow talking about her amazing chainmail dresses: "I worked in a chainmail store for a while... and I asked them to pay me in rings...

- I recommend checking out her website for more visuals-- Cat-Chow.com.

Cat Chow dropping science.

A detail of her amazing zipper-dress-- a dress made entirely out of one continuous piece of zipper tape!

The Impact Conference Gallery Opening! Along with a slide display of midwest student work, the UIUC Art/Design department announced the official opening of their product design gallery. The initial exhibition of products were all donated by companies and designers around the world, along with an open call for submissions for other innovative products.

Milling around the projected student work.

Knob tweaking on the wheels of steel.

British accents are fun to listen to.

Some kettles in the collection.

In the house: Stumpf, Rashid, Lovegrove, Eames, etc.

The Kohler Purist Hatbox toilet. This is the second time I posted a toilet this weekend. This one costs $4000. Brings new meaning to the term "sitting on the throne"...

No content, just eye candy:

Appetizing, no?

Milling around the lobby.

Jim Morrow of Morrow Design talking to a student.

Bruce Nussbaum of Business Week gives a student the lowdown on what it takes to get a Gold IDEA award.

Checking out the Alias Cintiq. Check out the dude munching on chips.

More hot Alias Cintiq action. The dude in the middle looks like he's going to pass out.

Milling around. Wishing we were out side...why?

Cuz it's BOOOTIFUL outside.

Bryce Rutter is the CEO of Metaphase, an ergonomic-centered design firm out of St. Louis, MS. Not only is he a huge advocate of user-centered design, but he's also a really really engaging public speaker. (He talked about Kinesthetics and Larry Flynt in the same lecture, but thats besides the point.) A really talented (and really funny) public speaker is hard to evoke in written word, but I'll attempt to capture a few parts of his lecture in bulletpoint form:

- His definition of good design: "I defined great design as cool looking things that work as well as they look. This may seem obvious, but take a look around you and you will see a lot of products dont match up."

- On the fusion of design and research: "In this day and age its very difficult for a product to come to market out of one person's mind and one person's pen. Its also very risky. Bean counters at the companies we work for want something tangible to trust and understand so that they can communicate back to the rest of their company. Research is quantifiable, and is in a language that marketers can better understand. With multidisciplinary design teams, research can help justify design decisions, and at the same time design can get a better understanding of the research findings."

- Dope terminology I'm totally gonna drop in my next concept presentation: Kinesthetic novelty. Material temperatures, finishes, and textures matter too! Check this out: recent MIT research shows fingertips can detect a raised dot 3 microns high. THREE MICRONS. That's, like small and stuff.

- It's the details that matter: "The latest buzz word in design is experience design... well let's not forget about the little stuff! I have 40 coffee mugs in my kitchen, but I grab the same coffee mug every single day. Why? Well I did a little analysis one morning and I realized that the reasons why are that the handle lets me use two fingers, the ceramic doesn't burn me, it has a thinner rim so I don't dribble..." Ah the curce of the designer-- you can't even drink a cup of coffee without thinking about HOW you're doing it.

- On food packaging: "There's a reason you eat the entire package of Oreos-- you can't close the packaging! ...At least that's my excuse..."

- And the coolest product his firm worked on: a 'Cereal-on-the-go' packaging solution that allows you to fill up a special cup with milk, snap on a ceral 'pod', and then make a bowl of cereal IN YOUR MOUTH. (!) They even contoured the cup so you can see over the rim when eating and driving. Can't wait to see if I can use my cell phone at the same time.

Have you noticed how Alias has been pushing their sketchbook software like crazy recently? What's the deal? Well here's why-- their new focus is on innovation-- they want to "shift from tools for making to tools for thinking". This may seem like a bit of an odd statement for a company that is known for it's 3D surfacing software, but maybe it's to be expected in this age of the "Information Economy". In an age where tech support, manufacturing, and engineering have all drifted off shore, we all know design is the next logical victim. It would appear Alias sees this, and believes that a lot of today's designers will be spending most of their future careers in concepting products, and not creating surface data. So, Alias tells us that "ideas and innovation can never be outsourced".

Let's sure hope so.

I'm at a conference full of smart people presenting cool stuff, and what am I super impressed with? Urinals you can flush with your foot!

Loosely interpreted quote from Bruce Nussbaum of Business Week:

"Companies are not just manufacturing in China because of the cost savings. The Chinese governemnt has invested a lot of time, money and energy into building a very large infrastructure to support manufacturing commerce. It's not just because they're cheap-- you've got to give them more credit than that."

Jim Wicks of Motorola, on the design of the Pebl phone's expressive opening mechanism:

Jim: As a designer it's really nice to have a user open a product and illicit an emotional response... it's kind of like opening your wallet and finding money in it!

Audience member: Or a kimono.

Jim: Well, that all depends who's in it.

Paul Hatch, the infamous and outspoken director at TEAMS Design in Chicago, kicked off the first lecture here at the Midwest Conference with his lecture on naked design... since it's really hard to write and watch another lecture, I am going to let the photos do the talking:

That's Paul.

I agree. Paul started his lecture with the outline of a sportscar. When he asked the crowd to name the car, they were unable to-- without seeing the details and surfaces of the vehicle. His main point was that the many designers sketch by defining the basic outline of a product, but the essence of the design lies in the surface details.

Paul illustrates the power of the visceral in recognizing form-- in the above image George Bush was flipped upside down, with his eyes and mouth right side up-- he was still completely recognizeable, in both instances.

Jacko is a freak in either orientation!

The basic elements of controlling form-- which he continued to elaborate on throughout his lecture. We all know these basic elements, but do we take the time to pick them apart and really consider them?

At this point in the lecture Paul began to illustrate the use of the basic elements of building form by doing some PRESENTATION SKETCHING. I've been to a bunch of business conferences, but this is the first time I have seen this done in a way that was more than demonstrative. Paul brough up various generic CAD forms or product forms, and sketched over top of them on his tablet PC to illustrate his point.
I think it's safe to say that the death of paper in ID has fully arrived-- and not a moment too soon. Now if only I could convince my boss that I *need* a tablet PC...

After 2 hours of trying to get the interweb working at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, I'm up and running... notes to follow soon!