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NOVEMBER 22, 1999
Color Me Bad
Lots of familiar objects are being re-designed; now so, too, are the objects we use to design objects. Pilot has just released a new line of mechanical pencils in red, orange, yellow, green, blue, soft blue, and violet that can be erased using ordinary erasers. Seems the guys over at Pilot figured out a way to get the lead-paint-wax mixture to come off the paper without shredding your concept sketch into a tattered rag that says YOU'RE FIRED. So now we can screw up in color.
The Pen Is Mightier Than The Sword
For us design researchers who like to scour the papers and clip articles, Japan's Kyocera Corp. has a new tool for us. The Ceramic Pen Cutter Twin is a regular ball-point pen, except the end that we normally chew on has a nice, sharp blade on it. The durable ceramic cutting edge is perfect for slicing articles or threatening fellow researchers who disagree with you.
"Lo-Jack For Humans"
Tracking bracelets move up to the pocket. Japan's NTT Mobile Communication Network Inc., the country's largest cell phone manufacturer/service provider, has started marketing tracking devices for humans. The friendly-looking, pocket-sized gadgets were purportedly created so family members can keep track of addle-minded children and forgetful elderly folk.
Each tracking device has its own ID number. To learn the location of the tracking device holder (or technically, the location of the tracking device), you call into a central line and punch in the ID number. Then, the friendly folks at NTT Information fax or e-mail you a map with the holder's current location.
Of course, the devices will be of limited use until the government starts secretly implanting them inside our bodies. Cheatin' spouses will simply leave them in the office to back up their "I'm working late tonight" alibis. And prank-minded elderly folk or defiant children can always give mom & pop a good scare by throwing the things onto cross-country freight trains.
The devices cost approximately US $10 per month, plus an unspecified amount that you pay for in human dignity. I think the next step is to rig them up with stun technology so callers can deliver punitive shocks.
The Bad Thing About Being An Eskimo
.Citizen Watch Co. has just released a new watch, the Eco-Drive Thermo, that needs no battery changes. Instead, the $1,000 watch is equipped with a thermal power-generation system that draws power from the wearer's body heat. Say, has anyone seen The Matrix?
"Hi, it's me. I'm at the intersection of--AAAAGH!!!"
In a sign that the Japanese Government may care more for its citizens than the U.S. Government, the big boys over at Tokyo have just banned the use of cell phones while driving. The reason? Last year in Japan yielded 33 traffic fatalities related to cell phone distraction. Amazing when you consider that in New York City alone, at least 33 people are killed each month for reasons like taking too long at the payphone, hogging up all the dryers or snapping up the last bag of Doritos at the 24-hour bodega, yet none of these has yielded any new legislation.
NOVEMBER 12
Talking Trash
More garbage in our future: Disposable cell phones. An inventor named Randice-Lisa Altschul has patented the tech to manufacture cell phones so cheaply, they could be sold like phone cards. Her concept is that we should buy cell phones as needed, with included talk-time, and pitch 'em in the trash when the minutes are used up.
Altschul (pronounced "E-vil-in-CAR-nate") says her "toy mentality" is what enables her to come up with ideas as brilliant as this one. "An engineer's mentality is to make something last, to make it durable," she told the New York Times. "A toy's life span is about an hour, then the kid throws it away." Ms. Altschul, appropriately enough, hails from New Jersey, a state with a garbage content so profound it makes the Staten Island dump look like the Vatican.
Inspired by Ms. Altschul's revolutionary thinking, I've got some suggestions for future ideas she may be able to develop:
- Disposable Fax Machines. No more changing the paper! Receive a fax once, then throw the damn thing away. Handles located on the sides would make it convenient to heave the whole piece right out the window. - Disposable Automobiles. Manufacture a car so cheap that rather than stopping and parking, we can just jump out of the moving things when we reach our destination. (Where does the car go after that? Not my problem.) - Disposable People. Instead of going through the hassle of separating from troublesome spouses, unliked co-workers and argumentative family members, we could simply set them on fire when we're done with them.
Baby Don't Go
An example of Design Backfire: Turns out the baby walker, that weird contraption that looks like a pair of underwear with an exoskeleton, may be detrimental to babies' development.
Researchers at S.U.N.Y. Buffalo and Case Western Reserve University conducted tests involving babies who used walkers (henceforth referred to as "users") and those who didn't. Users were slower to learn to sit upright, crawl, and walk than those who had to rough it. Users also scored lower on tests of mental and physical development. Tell me that isn't scary. And while the tests haven't looked into it, I'd wager there's a correlation between baby walkers and people who leave their turn signals on, talk back to movies and have subscriptions to the National Enquirer.
Baby walkers operate by supporting the user's weight in the "saddle," while still letting the tyke's feet touch the ground. I guess the idea is that the kid should learn to walk without having to carry his own weight. Maybe later he can learn to do algebra without having to perform the calculations.
"Just Make My Desk Bigger."
Michael Brill, a design professor at S.U.N.Y. Buffalo, is holding a two-day seminar entitled "Shifting Perceptions in Workplace Design: Implementing Workplace Design Techniques to Maximize Productivity and Increase Profits."
Brill is a proponent of something called "New Officing," which advocates the "three strategies of hotelling, work-from-anywhere and radical redesign." Apparently Brill hasn't paid any attention to the dismal failure of Chiat-Day's ridiculous melted-crayons-virtual-office-of-the-future scheme. (In the design world's dead silence following this realization, you could almost hear the sound of Gaetano Pesce falling off the face of the Earth.)
Who should attend the seminar? The propaganda brochure says:
- Senior Designers
- Furniture Manufacturers
- Architects
- Consultants
- Fire-eaters, acrobats and professional clowns (this last one is my idea, to spice it up a little bit.)
The seminars will be held in three cities, starting in mid-November. Registration is a whopping $995, so if you want to go you can forget about getting Ma that operation this year.
Credibility alert: The pamphlet advertising this event notes that Mr. Brill is "known for his trademark red suspenders." (My own trademark accessory, a large, unsheathed machete, never seems to get me the same publicity. Go figure.)
"Shifting Perceptions in Workplace Design" November 18-19, 1999 - Chicago
December 1-2, 1999 - Boston
December 8-9, 1999 - San Francisco
For information, call 800.950.1314, x.2612. .
Sony's Plan To Take Over The World...
...Starting with your living room. Apparently Sony's future business plan involves getting rid of the home computer, by designing appliances that can get on the internet themselves. Toshiba has shown similar desires by developing a microwave that can download recipes off the 'net. Where will this lead? I'd hate to think in two years' time I'll come home and find out my toaster spent the day looking at porn sites.
Anyway, for a more detailed look at this plan of Sony's, I'd recommend you read the article on the subject in the new issue of WIRED (November 99' issue). The reason I recommend you check out WIRED's version of the story is because they have all the reporting resources of a world-class publication, whereas I have the reporting resources of a lone schmuck from Queens (which, coincidentally, I am).
Bat Ban
Batman always had all these cool objects; I always wondered who his industrial designer was. I'm guessing it's definitely not Dan Bishop, founder of Bat Busters, an organization that sells bat-proofing kits on their website: www.batbusters.com
While the website has got nothing to do with industrial design, it's worth a gander, filled with unintentionally amusing bat facts, bat observations, and random bat crap. Especially amusing are the names of the different types of bats listed, such as the Pallid Bat, the Evening Bat, the Hoary Bat, and the Big Brown Bat (not to be confused with the Big Brown Bag, which some people use for shopping).
Bishop's take on human/bat relationships is touching. "At all times, nondestructive methods should be used to alleviate conflicts between people and bats," he points out, hinting that litigation isn't the answer. And in the Bat Facts section, the eloquent Bishop refers to the Hoary Bat as "an accomplished migrant." Like they laid down a railroad or something.
For those of you in between jobs, he also offers Bat Control Apprenticeships. That oughta round out that resume nicely, no?
NOVEMBER 5
> Rosy Palm and Her Five Sisters
Looks like Palm Computing, makers of the Palm Pilot (duh), will have even more interesting products coming out soon. They've just announced a partnership with Symbian, the consortium formed by cell phone manufacturers Ericsson, Matsushita, Motorola, Nokia, and Psion. (It's like the Mafia, but with Roaming charges.)
Why the partnership? To give consumers wireless Internet access. Combine Palm's user-interface expertise with Symbian's wireless know-how, and you've got a powerful alliance. This might be the best combination since that clutz with the chocolate bar bumped into the guy carrying peanut butter. (Who the hell walks around with an open jar of peanut butter, though.)
What does this mean to us designers? It means there's gonna be an entirely new category of objects for us to design. We had the radio, the TV, the phone, the computer, and now we've got this thing. So, break out the pen and paper and tell us what a Portable Wireless Internet Accesser should look like. Or, go run around with an open jar of peanut butter and see what happens.
> 20th Century Rocks
Congress may suck at making decisions, but they've sure got some good Industrial Design stuff in their Library.
C. Ford Peatross, Curator of the Architecture/Design/Engineering Project of the Library of Congress, is comin' to New York with a barrel of slides under his arm. His upcoming lecture, titled "Twentieth-Century American Design Archives," features projects by Raymond Loewy, Richard Neutra, I.M. Pei, the Eameses, etc.
To catch this lecture and see slides of the archives, head over to the Cooper-Hewitt. Beats having to take a trip down to D.C., where people lie, cheat, steal, and act the way you would if you lived in a land of 50 states but resided in a special district that's not really a state at all.
"Twentieth-Century American Design Archives" Tuesday, November 9, 6:30pm
$10 for Members and students
$15 for Nonmembers, drifters and people who never finished school
> Wallpower
There's a reason human beings hate acne (or worse, Back Acne a/k/a "Bacne"); 'cause texture is subliminally very important to us. So check out "Printed by Block - Wallpaper and Textiles," also at the Cooper-Hewitt. It's a collection study organized by Gillian Moss, Curator of Textiles, and Joanne Warner, Assistant Curator of Wallcoverings (now that's gotta look weird on a business card).
Wednesday, November 3, from 1-3pm.
$20 for Members and Students.
$35 for Nonmembers, lefties and people who did poorly on the S.A.T.s. Call 212.849.8380 for info.
> Raisin' Brand
Two scoops: There's a convention called "Wonderbrands" coming up in San Fran. It's co-sponsored by Metropolis magazine and the ICFF. The propaganda reads as follows:
"COME HEAR GET INVOLVED TAKE THE PULSE AND MAKE YOUR MARK..." (They're Branders, not syntax experts.) "...Branding by Strategy and Design. Join the world's finest Branders from architecture to advertising, design to e-commerce."
Speakers include Doug Chiang (Design Director of that movie, what was it called, oh yeah: "Star Wars Episode I"); Steven Skov Holt, a frogdesigner; and David Carson, who's just plain famous. There're plenty of others, of course, but we'll let them tell you about it. Call 1.800.272.7469 for info, or check out the website at www.metropolismag.com.
If you wanna go, registration is just $545, which I believe can be waived by sending in one arm and one leg. The conference is November 12-13 and will be held at the Presidio's Golden Gate club in San Francisco. On that note, let me put an annoying jingle in your head: "Rice, A-Roni...the San Francisco treat." Mission accomplished.
> Lassie Come Home (And Tell Us How You Feel Inside)
Nothing speaks more of a society glutted with product than the existence of needless accessories for pets. Our fine society's latest: Mood Collars for dogs ($25-$30). Uses the same "technology" as mood rings--colored orbs on the side of the collar supposedly pick up your pet's skin temperature and transmit its mood to you by changing hues. For example, amber means "introspective." Blue means "frolicsome."
Y'know, dogs are already designed with convenient mood indicators: when the tail wags, it's happy; when it sags, it's not. And what the hell can an "introspective" dog be thinking anyway? ("I must get in touch with my inner puppy.") Here's something else to think about: If you need the dog's collar to tell you he's feeling "frolicsome," perhaps one of the two of you need to be put down.
> We'll Try Not To Kill You
Lots of automobiles have safety features that protect its occupants; now Ford has designed truck features to protect the other party in the event of a collision. In smash-ups between SUVs and sedans, the people in sedans tend to get dead faster. The reason? SUVs tend to penetrate the other car's cabin or ride right over it, meaning you may get a better look at the guy's license plate than you would have liked.
Ford's design solution is to install energy-absorbing, low-mounted steel bars beneath the bumpers. The hollow bars are placed at roughly the same level as the bumpers of regular passenger cars, and are intended to prevent penetration of the cabin by "hanging up" or catching on the other car's doorsills or bumpers.
A similar solution, though one more frequently endorsed by drug dealers in L.A. and New York, is to "drop" the suspension, Low-Rider-style. So next time you see one of those tricked out Pathfinders scraping the pavement and pumping past on the West Side Highway, just tell yourself, "Wow, that guy is awfully considerate."
> Barney Rubble, Defense Contractor
Seems the U.S. military has come up with a new hi-tech weapon for the ongoing Iraq conflict: bombs made entirely out of concrete. A block of concrete dropped in the right place can still destroy its target, without what the military calls "collateral damage" (blowing innocent bystanders into small, CNN-friendly pieces). Coming soon: Ground troops armed with rocks and knuckle sandwiches.)
> "Make My Day--On Second Thought, I'll Make Yours."
Looks like people are using guns to kill themselves more than others. According to the recently released National Vital Statistics Report, in 1997 guns were used for 13,522 homicides, vs. 17,566 suicides. (It's unconfirmed, but I'm willing to wager that sales of Morrissey albums were up in the same period.)
This raises interesting questions about proper product usage, which become hazy when the product is designed to blow holes in people. And this trend can't sit well with gun companies; customers that off themselves aren't likely to be repeat buyers. Perhaps Colt should spend less time making bullets and more time making anti-depressants.
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