Milan 2008: Moooi

The Salone del Mobile Milano wouldn't be complete without an appearance from these decadent Dutch masters of luxury. The Marcel Wanders Couture wallpaper collection enveloped the entire stand, immediately setting the classic Moooi tone. Visitors followed a path through a series of themed rooms, and shaped cut-outs in the walls allowed a sneak peek into the next room. Love or hate their highly decorative aesthetic, you can't deny Moooi's continued commitment to quality and holistic direction.

Pictured above:
CLIP TABLE by Blasius Osko & Oliver Deichman
LOLITA by Nika Zupanc
RANDOM LIGHTS by Bertjan Pot

>> more pics

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Murray Moss on the state of ID

Reading about industrial design in an art magazine is like reading about America in The Economist--why do we Yanks have to learn about our own country by reading another country's magazine? Simple: lack of good indigenous coverage.

Art Info has a "What is design?" chat with maven Murray Moss, who discusses the current state of industrial design and explains why he's "finished" with "standard-issue modernism." Click here to read.

For more on Moss, BusinessWeek's got a profile on the man here.

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Advertisement

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1 Hour Design Challenge: TWO DAYS LEFT
Things are heating up at Core77's 1 Hour Design Challenge, "THE Olympic Torch."

Brief:
Here's your opportunity to design an Olympic Torch for the city of your choice without Jacque Rogge going all Steve Jobs on you. ANY CITY GOES. Pick your hometown, favorite vacation spot, a city with historical significance, or a random city determined by dart throw. The torch design should represent that city/country and the Olympics in general.

Last Call:
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
4pm EST

Jury:
Winner will be selected by the Core77 Admin. Community discussion is encouraged to help ensure the best design wins.

>>> Click Here to Enter Your Submission <<<

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Book Review: What is Exhibition Design, by Jan Lorenc, Lee Skolnick & Craig Berger

Exhibits like Bodies at the South Street Seaport and the Darwin Exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History may be capable of producing both wonder and horror, but not all visitors may realize the history of the discipline behind them. What is Exhibition Design illuminates the thread of history spanning from the cabinets of curiosities popular in the Renaissance, through church reliquaries, worlds fairs, and department stores. The journey brings the reader all the way to our present-day knockdown displays and provides a tour of the process behind their creation along with striking images of the results.

>> read full review

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Feel More Human launches light green lifestyle site

At first glance, Feel More Human seems to have everything for the conscious consumer with a modern design sense. The online store has an eco-friendly home and lifestyle section, with tables from Scrapile, sofas from Dutch designer Bjorn Mulder, and even a Buddha cat perch made from renewable bamboo plywood. There is a content section featuring interviews with inspiring eco-entrepreneurs, a classifieds area where visitors can buy or sell their pre-owned modern design goods, and the whole operation is powered by 100% wind energy.

Yet scratch beneath the surface and you'll find that even those with the greenest of intentions have a hard time making the most environmentally sound choices. Mixed in with all of the bamboo, reclaimed wood, and toxin free fabrics are not-so eco foams, lacquers, plywoods, and plastics, like the NotNeutral Melamine Snack Set for kids. How did a kid's dinnerware with melamine, a resin manufactured by mixing urea with formaldehyde, get onto a site devoted to sustainable lifestyles? Or chrome, a material known for emitting toxic elements into the air, land, and sea, which can be found in several items in the store, such as the Tokyo Shelving Unit or the Valis Chair. Jill Stalowicz, the company's founder, says, "smart design goes beyond aesthetics now, people are questioning how products are constructed." The lesson here is that the practice of green is harder than the promise, and that Feel More Human might want to take a look at how all of its products are actually made.

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Appropriating Sub-cultures: Read About It, Then Watch It Happen

Interesting coincidental postings on two Core fave blogs--Design Observer and io9--that gain an added dimension when viewed one after the other. First, Steven Heller at Design Observer constructs this impassioned (though familiar) accusation of the predatory nature of mass marketing, lamenting the ever-shortening space between the growth of a sub-culture and its appropriation into popular culture and commerce. Then, sci-fi blog io9 gives a near perfect example of it happening at this very moment: a compelling list of examples indicating fan-glam as the next big "authentic underdog" to get yanked into the mainstream.

What's fascinating about reading these two together is realizing how quickly we forget that many now-hip subcultures were once genuinely lame, scary, or deeply obscure. It's one thing to note that pop-art was something only a handful of weirdos were into before Laugh-In used it in their set design; it's quite another to realize that the Trekkies and comic book collectors getting tossed into trashcans last year are on their way to becoming The Next Big Thing.

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Garbage in space: New pics

There's not much to comment on here that isn't self-explanatory, and certainly this isn't a problem we weren't aware of before, but if you need more reasons for designers to stop the madness and take account of the consequences for everything they put into the world--or out of the world in this instance--then sure, bookmark away. Seems things are a LOT worse than was previously thought. Here's Gizmodo:

The European Space Agency has just released images showing all the satellites and human-made debris now orbiting space as a result of 51 years of launching stuff since Sputnik. That's about 6,000 satellites up there—of which only 800 remain operational—plus thousands of other objects from launches and accidents. According to their mindblowing simulations things are getting a lot worse...While the idea of bringing back used stages and satellites back to Earth may seem too expensive, in the long run it's clear that leaving all this trash up there is going to have huge consequences to the development of space exploration and colonization. Those concepts may still seem science fiction for many, but as these simulations show, the current and future problem is very real, and could be extremely dangerous.

ESA link is here, with hi-rez images. Yay--New wallpapers!

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Platform design and mass customization

MELD is a Norwegian product development company, that's in the business of mass customization by way of platform design.

According to MELD, "the world is not ready for mass customization on a grand scale. Presented with the choice of 'anything', most people will be overwhelmed and simple draw a blank. To both educate and react to this reality, platform design give a basic starting point, a first step in moving to a mass customized world."

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Five-year-old inventor comes up with a better broom

Most five year olds are busy eating glue, but inventive tyke Sam Houghton watched his pop sweeping out the yard and came up with an idea for a better broom. "I was swapping from one broom to the other and he asked why," explains Houghton's father. "When I said it was to pick up the different leaves and twigs it must have got him thinking. He got a large elastic band from the shed and put it over the two brooms, holding them just the right way to use both together."

Sam, who's reportedly a fan of Nick Park's animated inventors Wallace & Gromit, explained his design succinctly: "I saw my Daddy brushing up and made it. There are two brushes because one gets the big bits and one gets the little bits left behind."

Although the Houghtons have no plans to start selling the device, Sam's innovation is protected: Houghton senior works as a patent lawyer and promptly hooked up the paperwork.

via bbc

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A farm on the roof tops down on Canal Street

The folks at New York magazine asked four architects to come up with fantasy buildings for the plot at Canal and Varick in NYC. We like this one from Work AC that is an apartment building topped with a working farm. The concept was born out of ideas generated during at Young Architects Program at P.S.1.

"We thought we'd bring the farm back to the city and stretch it vertically," says Work AC co-principal Dan Wood. "We are interested in urban farming and the notion of trying to make our cities more sustainable by cutting the miles [food travels]," adds his co-principal (and wife) Amale Andraos.

Unfortunately, of the four concepts in the article, this one is presented as the least practical. Growing food near where people live? Doesn't seem all that impractical to us!

See the other 3 concepts here.

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Automotive design driving plastics innovation

You've heard of PET and HDPE; have you heard of TPO?

Driven by the automotive industry, plastics companies like Borealis and Sabic are making material advances and devising new production methods.

Pictured at top in a Fiat 500, Borealis' new TPO (polypropylene-based Daplen thermoplastic olefins) is being used for bumpers and dashboards; the new plastic's properties are "excellent scratch resistance and the ability to achieve uniform thickness over a large surface area. Its low thermal expansion over a broad temperature range ensures consistent high quality for large, moulded parts and precise fitting to other exterior panels."

Sabic's new Visualfx resins use two-shot molding and hydrographics. The former (photo below, in an Opel Corsa) is a method of layering resins with hardware or wiring embedded inside, which can enable glowing switches and knobs with translucency and internal light sources. The latter is a method of "immersing a part in an ink pattern floating on water like a film. The pattern adheres to the part [and] can wrap around the part to provide better coverage than with traditional in-mold decoration applications."

via jobwerx and jobwerx

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Milan 2008: MYTO chair

And finally, check out those innovative plastics from the automotive industry on the exhibition floors of Milan Design Week: Inside the Triennale, Basf revealed the process for making Konstantin Grcic's new cantilevered chair, MYTO. The chair is innovative in that it is made entirely of BASF engineering plastic Ultradur High Speed (chemically speaking, PBT: polybutylene terephthalate) till now only used in the car industry.

Actual prototypes were on view -- black cardboard mock-up included! (see top right)

more pics

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Special thanks to Jen van der Meer, Xanthe Matychak, elle* and Mark Vanderbeeken for their contributions to this weeks newsletter!

Please share the Monday Morning Must Read with colleagues, clients and collaborators. Many email programs do not forward messages in their original format, so please use this link: http://www.designdirectory.com/blog/newsletter

Email us your feedback and comments. We are looking for stories, case studies and global news on where and how design can make the difference.

The Designers Accord: A conversation with Valerie Casey

The Designers Accord is a grassroots movement aiming to integrate sustainable thinking into design practice. This month, Core77 will integrate the list of design firm adopters of Designers Accord into the Design Directory--the global database of design firms, providing a platform for adoption of the accord, and a forum to be featured as an adoptor. Core77's Allan Chochinov invited Valerie Casey, founder of the Accord, to discuss the initiative, how it got started, and how it all might end. (Well, in a good way.)

Allan Chochinov: So let's start at the beginning Valerie. I know that the Designers Accord (then called the "Kyoto Treaty of Design") first came on our radar when we blogged that Frog Design Mind issue from last summer, and gushed on your lead essay in the thing. Can you tell me how this idea started, and what prompted you to pitch a "Kyoto Treaty of Design" in that publication?

Valerie Casey: I'm amazed at how many people ask me about how this started. I suppose it's a natural question, but for me I still find it remarkable how designers at all levels, from all disciplines, in countries all over the world relish hearing what someone else's breaking point / crisis of conscience / epiphany was around this topic. (I literally get dozens of emails each week from people telling me their stories and asking about mine.)

>> view article

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Milan Preview 2008: Charles & Marie Pop-Up Shop

The "quintessential lifestyle navigator" Charles & Marie are getting physical next week and offering you the opportunity to take something home from Milan besides too many photos and a hangover.

Charles & Marie
Via Tortona, 12
20144 Milan
April 14- 21. 2008
Daily 10:00-21:00

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Portland's Top Coffee Roaster Dumps the Clover, and Why This Matters to Product Design

The talk of the coffee scene in this coffee-obsessed town for the past couple of weeks has been all about Starbucks and their decision to buy Clover. Not just some more Clovers--the $11,000, networked, hyper-programmable machines that seem to have single-handedly raised the nation's interest in single-origin brewed coffee--but the entire company.

Coffee Equipment Co., the Seattle-based manufacturer of the Clover, was revealed on March 26 to have been purchased outright, as part of the Green Nymph's bid to re-establish itself as...well, a place that makes good coffee. Reacting to the growing numbers of serious caffeine consumers defecting to smaller roasters like Intelligentsia and Portland's own Stumptown, the purchase is part pragmatic, but largely symbolic: it's one thing to say you're serious about improving the quality of your product, but another to attach this intention to a physical object that says "good coffee" more than just about anything on the market at present. Stumptown's reaction was swift: they're getting rid of every one of their Clovers, effective immediately.

Why this is interesting to product designers is the way in which a well-designed object is quietly serving a powerful symbolic purpose, with hardly anyone acknowledging it. The Clover is, in fact, a beautifully designed piece of hardware, extremely modern in both appearance and function, and it's doubtful it would have developed the cult following that made it so desirable to Starbucks in the first place were it not. The saga of its rise, embrace, acquisition and ensuing outcry is a precise, accelerated example of how a well-designed product can become a vessel into which people pour their beliefs, expectations and senses of betrayal; the parallels with Apple run more than just skin deep.

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New Favorite Thing: The Protomold Sample Cube

We blogged about Protomold a couple of years back; they're a Minneapolis-based company that does quick turn-around injection-molded plastic sample parts by rapidly building soft tooling from a client's CAD database to get actual molded parts shot in a matter of days. What we didn't realize (until now), is that shortly after that posting, they came up with one of the coolest gimme trinkets we've yet to see: The Protomold Cube.

Described by one friend as "an ME degree in a box," the Cube is a single molded piece that folds into cube shape, and features physical examples of over a dozen guidelines of good injection-molded part design: there are snap fits, pass-core features, live hinges, ribs, knit lines, textured surfaces, and several examples of how to design and not design a boss to minimize sink. Best of all, it's free through the Protomold website to anyone who can convince them they're a bona fide designer or engineer. If they'd handed these out on the first day of Production Methods class, we could've slept in for the entire semester.

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RSS Alert: New Article up at Coroflot's Creative Seeds: Building Your Portfolio Website: Six Things to Never Do, by Carl Alviani

Over at Coroflot's Creative Seeds blog Carl Alviani has compiled a short, brilliantly informed list. This article is the perfect place to learn what to do, by knowing what not to do with your online portfolio. Here's a snippet:

As with so many things in design, and real life, getting a portfolio website right seems to be less a matter of what you do than what you don't. Compiling Miles' observations together with other comments I've heard over the years, a few clear prohibitions seem like a good place to start...

1. Don't think you're a web designer unless you actually are.
This is the Achilles heel of many creative professionals: the belief that being competent in one creative capacity qualifies you for another. Most of us recognize that a great cinematographer probably won't be such a great architect, but a huge number of industrial, graphic, interior, and other designers seem to forget this rule, and try to build a great website from scratch...

4. Don't write like a 12-year-old, or like a used car salesman.
If a visitor likes the work, they will read the copy, so make sure it reinforces the positive impression they've already got. As ridiculous as it seems to repeat it: spell-check everything. You're not seeking out a writing job, but you are trying to show intelligence, rigor and attention to detail; frequent misspellings imply the exact opposite, especially because they're so easy to avoid.

>>read full article<<

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Origami Side Table, zero tools & hardware required

Expanding MIO's range of flat pack, sheet metal products for the home, Philadelphia designers Jaime Salm and Young Jin Chung have developed the Origami Side Table.

>> see full post

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2008 Dyson Awards

The 2008 Dyson Awards were presented by James Dyson himself to an eager crowd in New York City. In conjunction, IDSA and Dyson also presented the 4th annual US-based 'Eye for Why' competition, challenging students to re-envision a product that excels in performance and surpasses competitors by improving on a product's shortcomings.

Ryan Jansen of Southern University at Carbondale won the Eye for Why prize with his clever "Rake n Take" that facilitates the leaf raking and gathering process (pictured at bottom).

First prize for the Dyson Award went to Michael Chen's Reactiv jacket (middle left photo), designed to combat hostile cycling conditions in the city. Second prize went to another cycling-inspired solution, the Single Handed Brake Lever, (pictured at top) designed by a group of Canadian engineering students. The SHBBL facilitates braking using only one hand. Genius solution for everything from handicaps to carrying groceries while pedaling!

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Muji Chronotebook: a non-linear way to plan.

Have you found yourself writing as small as you can, between two events, just to squeeze something in? There never is enough space between those rigid lines in a day-planner. This is why some of us have abandond our pencils altogether, and begun to schedule our days via iphone, and computer. At Muji, they have simply changed the nature of the day-planner into an organic process. Now you can literally schedule your day "around" a certain time. With Muji's recently-awarded Chronotebook design each page starts with a two simple circles, am and pm, waiting to let your day grow, rather than shrink.

via e v e r y w h e r e

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All Chipchase, All The Time

The NYT magazine is set to run a lengthy feature about the work Jan Chipchase is doing for Nokia.

The premise of the work is simple - get to know your potential customers as well as possible before you make a product for them. But when those customers live, say, in a mud hut in Zambia or in a tin-roofed hutong dwelling in China, when you are trying - as Nokia and just about every one of its competitors is - to design a cellphone that will sell to essentially the only people left on earth who don't yet have one, which is to say people who are illiterate, making $4 per day or less and have no easy access to electricity, the challenges are considerable.

Only two days ago, Chipchase stopped in San Francisco (between London, Seattle, Tokyo or some such itinerary) and gave a talk (entitled Street Hacks) about some of his work, hosted by Adaptive Path. And today, The Economist has an photos+voice mail gizmo where Chipchase tells stories throughout his week.

While it's not all gold (and what is), both the work and the worker are fascinating and inspiring. And the exposure is nice to see. We're going to recommend his publicist to all our friends!

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For city-dwelling gardeners

And finally, all of us who live in a city know that doing proper gardening is like running your own business from prison: technically possible, but very tricky to pull off.

Here to help is designer Francois Clerc, whose Graine de Pot is "a wholly biodegradable object which lasts about nine months. The seed is planted in the Spring so the plant can be enjoyed all Summer. In October everything can be thrown away in an organic rubbish tip [sic] to be turned into compost."

For more info click here.

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Special thanks to Steve Portigal and Elle* for their contributions to this weeks newsletter!

Please share the Monday Morning Must Read with colleagues, clients and collaborators. Many email programs do not forward messages in their original format, so please use this link: http://www.designdirectory.com/blog/newsletter

Email us your feedback and comments. We are looking for stories, case studies and global news on where and how design can make the difference.

Design for the Next Billion Customers, by Niti Bhan and Dave Tait
Niti Bhan and Dave Tait, having just returned from exploratory research in Africa to understand the mindset and consumer behavior at the bottom of the pyramid, share their insights for designers hoping to serve this population. The research was conducted for Experientia, an Italy-based international experience design consultancy.

"Design has a social function and its true purpose is to improve people’s lives."
--Nokia Design Manifesto

This theme shows up, in one form or another, on most of the application essays made to design schools. Young designers aspire to improve people's lives by creating products that matter. They dream of Eames, timeless designs and creating products that get called 'Classic.' But the real world soon starts putting commercial demands on the designer's time and talent, and the dream gets slowly wrapped up in dust, to be tucked away, as focus shifts to styling trendy products that catch the fickle consumer's eye. Planned obsolescence influence the very consumerism and market forces that now demand 'New!'

Times change however, and today an opportunity to rediscover the timeless value of good design exists. As markets saturate across North America, Europe and Japan, global brands turn to the emerging market opportunities available in developing economies. Also known as 'the next billion consumers' or the 'bottom of the pyramid' (BoP), they have become the new target for design and innovation as rising incomes and growing economies make these aspiring consumers an attractive prospect. However, having been ignored until now, they are not as conditioned by mainstream global marketing.

view complete article

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FLX - The Squeezable USB-Drive
This is not the world's smallest accordion but FLX, a flexible USB-drive. Design student Jacek Ryn recently designed and prototyped his idea at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdansk (Poland).

The casing is made of a colored silicone and makes smart use of the materials' natural elasticity to reveal the plug when pushed into the socket, and automatically slip back when removed.

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Advertisement

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Making Matters
To all those who slaved over blue foam and chip-board models, who sprayed one too many Krylon cans dry (wearing a mask, of course), Richard Sennett's latest book is your new bible.

"The Craftsman", aptly titled, is a conglomerate of case studies that explore the relationship of hand to mind, craftsmanship to Enlightenment. Herein, Sennett, a renown London-based sociologist with a zest for the human experience (and a great cellist - who knew?!), argues that the most basic, fundamental ability we humans share is that of craft. When properly trained, this process functions as muscle memory, literally training the mind while working the hand. If its up to Sennett, all those hours spent learning how to throw clay pots, plane wood, and mix plaster for some toy-design/coffee-maker/mobile-phone project actually might just make you, the designer-cum-craftsman, a more enlightened person,

View entire post.

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Secret Life of Machines: Watch a Quirky British Gentleman Explain How Everything Works
So, The Secret Life of Machines is not a show we grew up watching...but boy do we wish we had. A late 80's gem of the art of edutainment, it attempts to explain the construction, history and workings of all sorts of outwardly mundane contraptions, in episodes with straightforward names like "The Vacuum Cleaner" and "The Fax Machine."

Rather than veer into the pedantic or cheesy, though, it gets the balance just right, with a charming and engaging English gent named Tim Hunkin hosting, some fun, jittery explanatory cartoons, and lots of field trips to factories, print shops, and other places you didn't get to see as a kid.

Difficult and expensive to get hold of until recently, The Exploratorium in San Francisco has been hosting all 18 episodes as Quicktime streams on their website, much to our delight. If you've ever wondered why photocopiers keep breaking, this is a great way to find out.

Via Mental Floss (which refers to the show as "like an early version of MythBusters, minus the myths").

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Milan Preview 2008: Designersblock
Possibly their most ambitious exhibition to date, the Designersblock crew from London are taking over Piscina Argelati in the Navigli district just over the canal from Zona Tortona. There are 3 swimming pools, an inside space and outside space for exhibition, presentation, event, performance, and camping. Check out their blog for a full list of the designers exhibiting.

Designersblock Milan 2008
Piscina Argelati
Piazza Arcole / Via Fillippo Argelati, Milan
April 17-21, 2008
Daily 11.00-20.00

Opening Party: April 16, 18.00-23.00
Second Party: April 19, 20.00-24.00

view entire post

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RSS Alert: New Gallery up at Core77: Aircraft Interiors Expo 2008
What are industrial designers doing in the cockpit? How much comfort can you put in one seat? Aart van Bezooyen visits the (spacious) Aircraft Interiors Expo 2008, where a billion-dollar industry gives him, and us, a sneak peek.

>>view gallery here<<

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Gore puts the me in we
As part of the entire effort to spread the Alliance for Climate Protection's green word, Al Gore recently commissioned the Martin Agency, based in Richmond, VA, to whip up a sweet logo that would get the masses off their asses. Steven Heller has dissected the appropriately-hued circle with indispensable clever word play in the NYT's latest Week in Review.

A logo is routinely the most difficult component to design because it is so important, and usually the client wants to be closely involved. An effective logo is a kind of calculus, the sum of disparate parts that adds up to a memorable image or icon. In this case, the logo is something of a risk because it is neither the name nor initials of the organization but a visual pun on the words We and Me.

Does it succeed in being a distinctive mnemonic? We'll be in a better position to judge when we know if Mr. Gore's organization has picked up steam and created a buzz.

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Wind and seesaws bring power to villages
Designers and engineers turn their skills to developing new means of energy generation. Here are two recent approaches, the first, a product design student's concept to use a seesaw in African schools, from the BBC.

Design student Daniel Sheridan has created a simple see-saw which generates enough electricity to light a classroom. The device works by transferring the power, created by a child moving up and down on it, to an electricity storage unit via an underground cable. The Coventry University student has won £5,500 in funding to develop the idea.

The second is a wind turbine that can be built for less than $100 and has been developed by Engineers without Borders to be tested in Guatemala, from Wired.

Unlike the large-scale assemblies found in wind farms, the roughly two-foot-wide and three-foot-tall turbine has a vertical axis. McLean said that orientation worked better in the choppy conditions likely to meet the turbine out in the field, where it'll be bolted on to buildings, towers or even trees. ...The engineering team had to make their design simple enough that it could be assembled from cheap and widely available components.

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~Elt, the Icelandic belt invisible to metal detectors
~Elt is the latest product from Sruli Recht's poetic collection of accessories. Inspired by the way fingers lock together when clasping our hands, this lead to the idea of using a series of teeth for fastening instead of a belt buckle. Not only does this technique allow the belt to remain flat to the body–versus any kind of knot, fastener etc.–with no metal components at all, it's one less item to remove next time you're clearing airport security. And while you're checking out his site, don't miss the bulletproof handkerchief, the ideal pocket square for your next formal occasion.

view entire post

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W(e are )here: Art for Map-lovers in Minneapolis
Core readers currently suffering through the tail end of a Twin Cities winter have something to look forward to in April. Intermedia Arts, a community gallery and studio space in Minneapolis, will be hosting an exhibition of map-based art called W(e are )here: Mapping the Human Experience. No word on exactly how big the show will be, but some samples of the featured artists' work are intriguing enough to make us wish we could make it: Chris Harrison's map of bible verse references above is just one of a number of fascinating examples of graphics that toe the line between informational and artistic, to great effect.

Most intriguing is the Psychogeographic Map Making Party, scheduled for April 24, during which:

...you'll form small groups and set out on foot in search of unique insights into the urban fabric of the surrounding Uptown neighborhoods. Utilizing Google Earth, a projector, and a wall sized "canvas," groups will then layer their experiences over a projected representation of the city, resulting in one map that communicates the participant's collective experience.

Show runs from March 31 to May 9, in the Lyn-Lake neighborhood of Minneapolis.

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What's driving innovation in food packaging

Packaging designers need to think more laterally, and in terms of systems, rather than discrete elements, says a report into food packaging by trend research group The Future Laboratory. They claim packaging designers need to think about the challenges facing them - from preservation, cost-effectiveness and brand experience to sustainability and waste minimisation - in a more holistic way.

But while consumer concerns about materials and waste reduction have formed the basis for design thinking in packaging over the past decade, concepts such as downgauging, light-weighting, concentrating, and the use of biodegradable, recyclable and renewable materials need to move on, says the report.

read full article on Design Week

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Upcoming exhibit on UK-based Industrial Facility
Come May 9th, London's Design Museum will be hosting an exhibition on UK-based ID firm Industrial Facility. With nearly 50 designs completed for "no-frills" Muji, Industrial Facility cranks out designs for simple but ubiquitous items intended for "mass production in foreign markets." Click here for more info on the exhibit.

via digital arts online

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Young design grad redesigns British coins
And finally Mathew Dent, a young graphic designer submitted his concept for a competition to redesign British coins. These coins were released into circulation yesterday. While there's controversy and fuss over this massive change in the look and feel of the coins by traditionalists, I'm sure Mr. Dent who won 35,000 pounds sterling was glad he didn't listen to his parents.

Mr Dent, who grew up in Bangor, North Wales, said the competition had also fascinated his parents.He added: 'They were quite captivated by what I was doing and had their own ideas for the design - which of course I ignored.'

Via This is Money

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Special thanks to Aart van Bezooyen, Niti Bhan, Elle* and Carl Alviani for their contributions to this weeks newsletter!

Please share the Monday Morning Must Read with colleagues, clients and collaborators. Many email programs do not forward messages in their original format, so please use this link: http://www.designdirectory.com/blog/newsletter

Email us your feedback and comments. We are looking for stories, case studies and global news on where and how design can make the difference.