Suzzannah Johannes from University of Kansas showed this piece in her student Merit award presentation and it was the most artistic design piece I'd seen in a while. It's a two dimensional victorian furniture leg printed between two pieces of glass. I can't wait to see her work when she gets picked up by Droog Design.

This was one of the best conferences I'd attended, because of inspirations like this. I also met some kick-ass creatives at this thing from the speakers and professionals to students from UIUC, UW Stout, U of Kansas, y'all inspired me. I wonder how often people contact each other after conferences... I hope fairly often. Well, if any of you that I hung out with are ever in Chicago or live here, look me up, and I'll take you out to some good eats. You know my email.

This is Ko.
Over and out.

This is some work by seniors at UIUC. It was exhibited at a small gallery near their studio. The designs are by Matthew Vroom, Greg McNamara, Matthew Whitlock(shown here), and Brandon Parod. Beautiful stuff, most of the pieces were found materials manipulated to have the desired lighted effect.

These are the people that made it happen. The organizers for the conference included two students from University of Illinois Urbana Chamapign, Professors, and IDSA Professionals.

"Be afraid to die before you've won some victory for humanity"
- Horace Mann

That is a favorite quote of Tucker Viemeister's mom. He says it is our responsibility as designers to make a better world. He says "If you only have ideas and don't make anything, what's the point?" We as designers are the ones that implement ideas into the world, hopefully for good. He showed us some examples of his recent work for Nike and Coca Cola that he did through Spring Time USA. He also showed us a lot of conceptual work like the "People About to Be Liberated By the United States of America Bomb" or PAL USA bomb, it's a canister filled with stuff from the USA that gets dropped on countries about to be taken over, errr, I mean, saved by the USA. It includes things like hot dogs, baseball caps, and bubble gum.

He went on to explain how true innovation doesn't come easy, but after fights, goofs, mistakes, loss of opportunitues, and dead ends, there is a slight chance that a true innovation will emerge.

All of this inspiring talk makes me energized up to go do something super positive for the world and not just dream about it.

Karim Rashid kills nostalgia on Friday.
Dan Formosa brings back nostalgia on Saturday, 1700 B to the C stylee.
His brief history lesson on Zero included how it was invented by the Babylonians in 1700 BC but was never fully accepted until Fibinacci introduced it back again in 1200. Those lonely years without zero was because it was never accepted, Pythagoras tried but I think Dan said he got murdered or something, over math. So anyway, this is all related to design if you think about it. (I'm still thinking about it)

So then he makes this mind blowing statement: technology evolved but industrial design didn't. He used the example above which shows the pocket Regency Radio from 1954 and the iPod in 2005. hmmmmm suspicious in form eh? Dont' worry, it still comes in your favorite flavors:

Which lead to his point he was driving home: that people must be the central focus, not technology. He gave an example of recent history of design starting from the industrial revolution.
It used to be that:
Companies focused on making -> some thing to sell to -> people
Then in the eighties it became:
Companies focused on developing -> technology to sell to-> people
But now that technology is so advanced, and as he puts it "you can only fit so many pixels per inch" before it doesn't matter any more, so if you remove the technology it becomes:
Companies must focus on -> people

It's someting like this:
1930's -> things
1980's -> technology
2005's -> people

For companies to succeed, he says that they can no longer compete on technology or rely on brand. The product itself is what must shine with a focus on people, and his example was the ipod where it is branded by both Apple and HP.

The way Dan's company, Smart Design, did it was through a happy to anger scale used in their research. How happy are you with the product? He says that products need that personal meaning, technology doesn't matter. Happiness is more important than more buttons and features.


In conclusion my understanding is that the Babylonian Gilgamesh is 2/3 God which mean's he is 0.66666666 god, but those 6's go on forever, that means infinite, and infinite and zero are concepts designed by human beings to communicate, Dan has a Ph.D and we do not. Thank you.

Toshi Fujimura from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, was voted by a panel of judges to represent the Midwest at the National Conference.

The Sexy Judges. Just sssssexy.

Remember November 7, 2000? The fateful day when the voting system failed us, bad design failed us, which ultimately lead to the court determining who won the US election? The ballots in Florida that failed to count each citizen's vote was a failure on design, which failed humanity. Design For Democracy is about to bring true democracy to the United States by bringning good design to the voting system.

Steven Melamed, from Tres Design is a member of the board of directors for Design for Democracy, an all volunteer non-profit organization.
They are solving problems through graphic design, industrial design, and interaction design. They are redesigning the entire voting systems with grants awarded by the government. One such example is the instruction manuals for election judges at the voting centers that explains setting up the the voting machines. They reduced a complicated 10 step instruction booklet to 4 steps. There was also a law whcih stated that the names on voting punch cards had to be written in all-capital letters. Steve and his organization were able to change laws like this so that the entire voting system is easier and more intuitive to use for voters.

Their success has lead to more opportunities - including education. They are exhibiting the new designs that were made for the state of Illinois, Oregon, and Maryland in the Smithsonian. This August they will be part of an exhibit at the Pompidou center in Paris. The international impact that US elections have had will certainly interest the global populace how our voting system will be improved. Design for Democracy is looking for volunteers to design and participate in this problem that affects the entire world.

Dress with linked dollars.

There's always a debate about design vs art, but in fashion, there is no longer a debate, fashion is art. Cat Chow creates wearable art with materials not intended for fashion. Astro turf, industrial washers, and dollar bills are not off limits but instead is an inspiration that fuels her hands on approach to her designs.
She showed her work in the presentation along with other artists work that inspires her. Fashion designers and artists likes Paco Rabanne, Tom Friedman, Elsa Schiaparelli, and Martin Margiela all inspires her own work. In turn, her work influences others designers and artists and gets people to rethink art and fashion.
She was super nice and I heard that she's in a punk band? Can she get more awesome!?

Groups broke out to have discussions on varying topics like the shift of manufacturing to China, the impact of design process in business, and design thinking. Groups were moderated by different people working in thinktank designer like Tucker, and Dan Formosa.

Karim Rashid has a vision for how the world should be, and he spoke about them freely and openly. I felt like I was watching a preacher-man, telling stories, and sharing views for the world, a gospel on design (can I get a Hallelujah! kind of thing)... but in actually, it was more about his philosophies on design, and how he and his studio designs with those ideas and belifs in mind. Because it's a belief, people are disagreeing and agreeing with his views with much passion. More than anything it sparks conversations amongst the audience.
Some discussion that went on were different topics he brought up. Such as how the world is starting to live in a "casual age", a world he calls "more at ease". He wants to design for that age, allowing people to live a seamless life, a world with no obstacles, a place where you don't have to think about the problems. Allowing people to live this way, he says, results in allowing people to think more and contribute to culture.
He also brought up his thoughts on a term he calls "techno-organic", a method in which the technology creates the organic forms; you write the software for what the machine can do and define it's limitations, but the machine itself controls what it wants to make. This focus on machines and technology is based on his philosophies of how nostalgia is dead. New technologies and new ways of life should create new designs, and designing something from the past (examples like the pattern: plaid) should just go away.
This statement sparks so many discussions. Do you disregard the past completely and pave way for the future, push your vision for how it should be? How do we design experiences if we do not know a person's past, their nostalgic past, to gauge what they might enjoy, love? I found parrellels in what he was saying with some religious and spiritual views, like how we should live life in the moment, and appreciate what is in front of them no matter what it is they are doing. It's all a matter of perspective. But a complete removal of nostalgia also removes the awe and respect for the past, where we can learn and then develop a beautiful future without the mistakes from the past. I'm really looking forward to seeing his work in twenty years, when his current designs become nostalgic itself. I want to see where he will be taking the designs at that time.

Mama dropped you too many times as a baby, but you wanna show people your smarts... then when space travel comes up in a conversation, tell them that concepts for using a chemical system to go to Mars is soooo twentieth century. Tell them that instead we'll be using a plasma ion system along with an advanced propulsion system, using the Earth's gravity as momentum to get us to Mars. They'll think yous a genius baby!
Concepts like this and other future concepts for space travel and artificial gravity experiments are being developed by Larry Bell, from Space Architecture. He's using design to conceptualize the future of lunar experiments. Unlike problems on Earth, designed objects in space face different kinds of problems; Solar Radiation, lunar soil clogging mechanical parts, extreme cold and heat that could mean death, and space sickness syndrome (where your body is disoriented).
How do you protect the users? How do you land these vehicles on the moon's surface? How do you design a system for hydroponic experiments in zero gravity? Some future concepts they're developing are inflatable solutions to create the desired area needed for the experiments to be done in space.
Maybe this kind of thing isn't so far off in the distance future...

"Did anyone smell their spoon? Did anyone put the spoon in their mouth? or draw the spoon?" After the participants were convniced that they had described the spoon as much as they could, John Caruso, professor at Notre Dame asked them further questions to truly get a deeper understanding of the spoon.
Generic table spoons were the point of departure for this brainstorming workshop. As the list became massive and the descriptions for a spoon seemed exhaustive, John Caruso started pulling out objects one by one and the audience debated to it's credibitlity to be called a "spoon". Ice cream scoops, serving spoons, ladels were pulled out to break out of the fixed idea of what is actually a "spoon".


John Caruso holds up a scoop with holes and asks what is a spoon?

Karl Williamson and Ryann Pajzko, third year design students from Millwaukee Institute of Art and Design analyze the 'spoon'.

In only two years the designers at Built NY Inc. is already influencing the housewares accesories market into a positive direction. Co-founders, Aaron Lown and John Roscoe Swartz spoke about the "Mojo Majic", the success of their company and brand. Their quick rise to the top is entrepreneruialism at it's finest. They attributed their success to three things: Style, Press, and Sales. For them, the product has to have style, "the style factor is more important than anything else, it's gotta have mojo." Their second key to success, press, got them exposed to over one hundred magazines. Their concentration on style was because function was a given, they said. "What's more serious than industrial design?" says John with a smile and adds "Hey, what's the radius on that!? We're not into that." But with success comes immitations and they frequently face intellectual property issues. 13 companies have already tried to sell the same product or a derivative of it. Hardship doesn't get them down though, because they've seen it before. REI wouldn't carry their products. They sent samples multiple times and was rejected every time. They're presistance paid off when the store finally took the product last year and it became their number one selling accesory last holiday season. They're suggestions for people starting out they said, is to never accept no.

Students are awesome! So much enthusiasm, so much passion! Here are a couple of close views of works by studnets from the hosting school.

Summer Hill is a second year grad student at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Ross Bartels can stick his foot over his head and happens to also be a first year grad student at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

The student portoflio kicked off this morning with about twenty-five professional designers interviewing, reviewing, and critiquing the work of student designers.





Reed Kannas from University of Winsconsin Stout being interviewed.




Paul Zavitkovski being interviewed by one of the Midwest Conference organzers, Doug Carpiaux, from Brooks Stevens Design.



Larry Bell speaker from Space Architecture UH critiques the work of Sarah Ringler.

Designers from Pactiv is shown a portfolio by Rachel Buck from Chicago.

Bruce Nussbaum started off the conference and now we are on to the discussion panel who are answering varying question from the shift of manufacturing to Asian countries, education of the designer, and innovation innovation and some more stress on the importance of innovation. From left to right Dan Formosa, David Kohler, Larry Bell, and Bruce Nussbaum. (if you want me to ask them something post in the comments in the next ten minutes!)

Karim Rashid visisted Chicago last week to speak at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Because of his views on Nostalgia, I thought it might be appropriate to ask him some questions from the past, the very same questions Charles Eames was asked by Madame Amic in 1969... Come back again in a few days to read more about his work and his vision for the world, at the IDSA Midwest Conference!

*What is your definition of design?

Today design is based on an plethora of complex criteria; human experience, social and global issues, economic and political issues, physical and mental interaction, form, vision, and a rigorous understanding and desire of contemporary culture. Manufacturing is based on another collective group of criteria: capital investment, market share, production ease, dissemination, growth, distribution, maintenance and service, performance, quality, ecological issues and sustainability. The combination of all these issues shape our objects, informs our form, our physical space and culture, and our human experiences. These quantitative constructs together shape business, its identity, its brand, its value. This is the business of beauty. Every business should be completely concerned with beauty - and a designer must be fluent in the business of beauty - it is after all what is a collective human need. Design is a modus to contribute to shaping a better more beautiful, more poetic, more intelligent, more aesthetic, more experiential world. The built environment needs to be perpetually improved. Design does change our everyday lives, our commodity, and our behaviors. There are several points that define design simultaneously - production methods, materials, human interface, technologies, comfort, behavior, form, aesthetics, costs, mobility, shipping of goods, ease of assembly, context, use, and most importantly the culture of the company you work with. If it is not a marriage of the designers ideology and the brand, then it will not be successful. Design is not a selfish act, it is a collaborative one, deisng is for everyone, not an elite group.

*Is design an expression of art (art form)?

My work is a merging of Art and design and has to be part of the collectible global culture, not removed, insular, elitist, and irrelevant. The 21st. century is about a new energy, of material, immaterial, of formlessness and form of transparency and color; of smell and vapor, a kinesthetic binary hypercontextual existence - a digital nature, a kaleidoscope of elevated experiences. I am in working in a democratic (Designocracy) field where words like class, elite, taste, and mass are all defunct. One world where everything should be accessible, with no boundaries. The digital age represents this place - irreal and real, virtual, meta physical, and physical spaces, layered together where everyone can participate and everyone is equal. Objects smell, taste, breathe, touch, and participate in all our experiences. I am passionate, obsessed, and try to stay as broad as possible so that I can touch every part of our built environment.

Design and architecture will play an important role in intensifying this reality. It can provide and maintain our enjoyment of living and nurture a direct experience with the energy and Modus of the time. I see the future of our aesthetic world crossing all the aesthetic disciplines so that design, art, architecture, fashion, food, music, fuse together to increase our experiences and bring greater pleasure to our material and immaterial lives. Our motivations should focus around our conscious collective memory and a desire to fill it with ideas that are seamless between art and life. As art takes its ideas from everyday life and I hope that everyday life will take its ideas from art.

*What are the boundaries of design?

Although I answered this above I will add that everyday I live I believe that we could be living in an entirely different world - one that is full of real contemporary inspiring objects, spaces, places, worlds, spirits, experiences with ever-changing new traditions and new rituals- replacing the old. Design has been the cultural shaper of our world form the start. We have designed systems, cities, industrialization - we designed everything. My real desire is to see people live in a the modus of our time, to participate in contemporary world, and to release themselves form nostalgia, antiquated traditions old rituals, kitsch meaningless, and that we should be conscious and sensorially attune with this world in this moment. If Human nature is to live in the past - to change the world is to change human nature.