Shoot Your Inspiration Photo Competition Winners Announced!
We're thrilled to announce the winners of the "Shoot Your Inspiration" photo contest, held in conjunction with the 2099 Braun Prize. We had a tremendous turn out, with more than 2,400 photos submitted from around the world. So without further adue:
Grand Prize:
Kids at Play, by Jayashankar - India
Runners up:
The Survivor, by Szabo Balazs - Hungary
Family Love, by Hadi Sattari - United States
Boston, by Felipe Caralho - Brazil
People's Choice Award:
Condor de los Andes, by Cesar David Martinez Rodriguez, Colombia
We had a great time in running this competition and judging it too. In times like these, with all the bad news bombarding you on a daily basis, it is refreshing to see a collection of 2,400+ truly inspiring images. It is well worth an hour of your time to browse through the gallery. We've published all the submissions, along with the a list of the finalists that represent some of our favorites.
Congratulations to all the winners, and to everyone who participated as well!
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Home + Housewares Show 2009...in Cartoons!
Every year, tens of thousands of people mob the International Housewares Show in Chicago, touring through the latest, greatest, and sometimes-lamest homestuff as far as the eye can see. This year, Lunchbreath and Fueledbycoffee walked the show for Core77, preparing an illustrated "Fieldguide" for designers and housewares fans, and rendering (literally) their experiences, insights, paradoxes, and yes...some great finds soon to be stocked in a store near you. Enjoy!
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Home + Housewares Show 2009: First Impressions
Core77 sent Lisa Smith and Caroline Linder to this year's Home and Housewares show this past weekend in Chicago, and while shooting a gallery of images for Core readers (up soon!), they've got a few dispatches from the floor. Thanks Lisa and Caroline!
The International Home and Housewares Show, happening now at the McCormick Center in Chicago, IL, is a maze of the bizarre and the banal, including picture frame air fresheners, pet hair picker-uppers, fingerprintless garbage cans, antibacterial marinaters, high-power vacuum cleaners, automatic hair-cutters, gas-powered blenders, anti-static dusters and instant boot dryers. Products for distinct lifestyles are crammed next to each other in one booth, organized by company rather than market niche. In one display, contemporary, white, eco-plastic desk caddies sit sister-like to Disney window decals. At the same time, larger companies really demand the buyers' attention, presenting an impenetrably branded front of air purifiers, rice cookers and vacuum cleaners with gift bags to boot. For young designers, like ourselves, the spectacle is especially nightmarish; it represents the darker side of our discipline--product design gone wild and unchecked in the marketplace (not to mention our worst fear of all...that we'll end up here soon).
>> continue reading
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Magazine Review by Robert Blinn: Metropolis: Special Product Issue, March 2009
As a reviewer for Core77, the task of locating appropriate books on product and process invariably leads to scouring shelves labeled anything but product design. Coffee table monoliths on designed objects wind up in shelves devoted to architecture, to home decor, to style, to business, or to graphic design. Finding an actual product design glossy in a typical bookstore is about as remarkable as locating a Jethro Tull album that had been filed under "T" in the jazz section of Walmart. Perhaps this is a zeitgeist moment for product design now that Gary Hustwit has released an entire movie about product design in the same month that Metropolis Magazine devotes a whole issue to our profession, so it seemed worthwhile for the book column to sample a text of the monthly variety.
I'm not sure if the recent real estate collapse will dampen the enthusiasm for glossy architecture periodicals, but I'm thrilled that "The Magazine of Architecture and Design" has unabashedly devoted an entire issue to the latter. Setting aside for the moment the paradox between the very green essays and the very shiny advertisements, the columns and articles inside provide a broad sampling of up-to-the-moment thinking on product design, be it "The Product of No Product" as described by John Hockenberry or the sarcasm of Bruce Sterling, who advises struggling designers to ask themselves "what would Maurizio Cattelan do," for which a very literal answer might be -- sculpt an ostrich with its head in the sand. Apologies to Mr. Sterling, but that doesn't quite seem to be the sort of answer readers might be hoping for, since there are many other stronger cases within.
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Woody Tasch on "slow money"
Woody Tasch believes it's time to pull the reins back on fast money and create a market that values the environment, local communities, and the natural world as much as it does financial growth.
His new book, Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms, and Fertility Mattered articulates this vision.
A long-time venture capitalist and entrepreneur, Tasch knows Wall Street. He is putting that experience to work to create a different model of venture capital through a newly formed NGO called Slow Money, which will invest in companies that build natural and social capital as well as financial capital.
>> Read interview
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Designers Accord Forum at Core77
Speaking of a sustainable economy, for those of you who have adopted the Designers Accord, or who are interested in learning more and contributing to the conversation around sustainable design practice, there is now a dedicated Designers Accord Discussion board over at the Core77 forums. We've got a great moderator, Ann Benoit, and already some juicy discussion underway. For instance, "In an economy where money is tight in every area of business, how do you suggest more sustainable materials and processes to your clients when it might cost them more?"
Got an idea how? Well, get on board!
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I'm a Mac...
In Digital as a Second Language over at AIGA's Voice, Ralph Caplan has a wonderful reflection on the tools of the trade and whether or not technology is, well, a generational thing. Here's a nice paragraph:
Actually, my last book was written in Quark, under the supervision of the graphic designer/book packager who lent me the Mac I used. I had once bought one of my own, but sold it in less than a week, offended by what I then regarded as its patronizing interface. I didn't want to be welcomed by my computer, I don't like smiley faces in any medium, and if I wanted to get rid of a document I'd rather hit a delete button than drag the image of a folder into the image of a trash can. When I replaced it with a PC, however, I found that Windows had copied everything that had made me resent the Mac, and was loaded with cumbersome baggage of its own.
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Nokia's music-inspired headsets
Nokia's recently-concluded Music Almighty Headset Competition, which asked entrants to design a Bluetooth headset inspired by their favorite song, drew over 6,000 entries. The finalists were realized in one-off form by Nokia. Obviously there is a huge gulf of subjectivity between a piece of music and a finished set of headphones, but of the five finalists, at least one looks pretty kick-ass:
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Just say no to 'innovation'
Gadi Amit, president of the San Francisco strategic design studio NewDealDesign, wrote a controversial piece on Fast Company, asking us to 'just say no to innovation'.
Promoted as the "in" word in design circles in recent years, 'innovation' has become a mantra devoid of meaning. Glorified by the likes of Bruce Nussbaum of BusinessWeek and David Kelly [sic] of IDEO, "innovation" blurs the boundaries between the worlds of engineering and design. It devalues the real strength of industrial design by forcing an analytical structure over the process of developing a non-analytical design. Similarly, it makes engineering play design, while over-selling its value in defining the "right design".
>> Read article
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From CAD designer to high school teacher
Mike Santalupo was a CAD designer for GM who quit the biz, seventeen years ago, to teach. Now running a Canadian high school design program "recognized by Autodesk as one of the most advanced programs in North America," Santalupo preps kids for going into careers in architecture, engineering, or industrial design.
"[I] discovered a direct correlation between design tools and student work," says Santalupo, in an interview with Alias Design Community. "The more sophisticated the tools, the more creative and innovative the student work."
Read the full interview here.
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Design a better business model
A great piece on emerging designs for social businesses by Marjorie Kelly, co-founder of Corporation 20/20, recently appeared in Strategy and Business
Kelly sites three social business models that are proving to be successful:
1. Stakeholder-owned companies, which put ownership in the hands of non-financial stakeholders; 2. Mission-controlled companies, which separate ownership and profits from control and organizational direction; 3. Public-private hybrids, where profit-driven and mission-driven design elements are combined to create unique structures.
Perhaps the best known social business is the mission-controlled company, Grameen Danone, that is driven by the mission of "Fight malnutrition through food."
Grameen Danone must recover its full costs from operations. Yet, like a nonprofit, it is driven by a cause rather than by profit. If all goes well, investors will receive only a token 1 percent annual dividend, with all other profits being plowed back into the business. The venture's primary aim is to create social benefits for those whose lives the company touches.
As traditional business models fail all around us, designers have an opportunity to focus their creativity on base of the pyramid missions, not only because it's the right thing to do, but because it makes financial and technological sense.
Richard Nelson, an economics professor at Columbia University who co-founded the field of evolutionary economics, observes that social systems evolve because of two kinds of innovation: advances in physical technologies (such as new environmental and energy technologies), and advances in social technologies (such as new forms of organization) . . . These designs can be thought of as emergent new organizational species, occupying a new sector of society that is a greenhouse of design experimentation in which the future of our economy may be growing.
So, come on in to the greenhouse, and read the entire article here
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"Seat" Female-themed auto design competition winner
What should a car designed for a woman look like, and how should it function? Ask Lisbon-based designer Marcelo Aguiar, whose "Seat W" auto concept won the 4th Seat/Automagazine Design Contest (theme: Design a car for the modern woman).
The Seat W integrates several simple, yet useful, solutions, that make it user-friendly in a woman's everyday life, such as storage spaces inside; partial opening of the trunk; side doors opening from the center give good access to the interior and its seats (design inspired by Verner Panton's "Panton Chair"); the glazed surface "from top to bottom" making it easier to watch everything around.
There is easy access to the refrigerator liquid, motor oil and windshield liquid without the need to open the hood and an actual drawer that carries the spare tyre, for those situations that may be less frequent and considered as less attractive from the feminine point of view. The woman's independence is strengthened by making everything easy and simple.
Read more about the winning concept here.
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John Maeda and Becky Bermont on the Harvard Business blog
John Maeda and Becky Bermont, respectively president and vice-president of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), are now periodically writing for Harvard Business' blog for managers in a recurring column called "Redesigning Leadership."
Their first two pieces are Leadership as a Creative Act and Academia vs. Industry: The Difference Is in the Punctuation Marks.
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Bruce Mau sees 'opportunities' in crisis
Speaking of design super stars, Bruce Mau, founder and chairman of Bruce Mau Design, talks with Bloomberg's Cris Valerio about the growth, strategy and philosophy of Bruce Mau Design.
Mau also discusses the regulation of U.S. financial markets and his company's current projects. (Source: Bloomberg)
00:00 Business strategy; efforts to create "value"
04:18 Company's creation, philosophy, growth
12:29 "Opportunities" from crisis; bank regulation
19:24 Upcoming projects, Denver's biennial
Running time 21:30
>> Watch video
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It's my trip in a box, my trip in a box, yeahhh
With his Paco Cube, architect Nagasaka Hisashi of the Schemata Architecture Office realizes that you don't need a lot of space on certain vacations, but he does one better by making that tiny space beautiful. The Paco Cube is a vacation house done up in white epoxy, and the tiny (3-meter-square) structure contains all of the essentials and then some: "A kitchen, shower, toilet, sleeping hammock, desk and lighting." Not to mention the top pops open like a jack-in-the-box.
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Design Green Now
We told you about Design Green Now last year, but the 2009 lineup is set and looks pretty sweet.
Pratt hosts the opener April 1st. Panelist include Mitchell Joachim, PhD, of Terreform 1, and voted by Wired as "one of the top 15 people the Obama administration should tap for environmental strategies." He will be talking about growing animal-free leather in the Brookyln-based bio-lab to be used for accessories. Rolling Stone also included him in their list of the top 100 people changing America.
Tiffany Threadgould, Chief Design Junky, TerraCycle, will present at the "Totally Wasted" panel at FIT on April 2nd about the products they are making from industrial waste streams.
Serge Appel, AIA, Associate Partner at Cook+Fox Architects will present on the Energy panel at Parsons on April 13th about the Bank of America Building, and a new project that springboards off of it.
Moderators for the series include Susan Szenasy, Editor in Chief, Metropolis and Dan Rubinstein, Design Editor, Surface Magazine
The series wraps up at Smart Design in May with a Design Jam. More specifics to be announced at the panels.
...And if you like what these guys are up to with Design Green now, hop on over to ideablob.com and give them a vote. (They are finalists in the current competition and could use some help winning $20,000 to keep the events going.)
Videos from previous events on the west coast are available at designgreennow.com
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Milan Design Week 09 Preview: Materious for Tuttobene
And finally, Core77 contributors Bruce and Stephanie Tharp will be in Milan next month as a part of Tuttobene:
This years edition of Tuttobene presents five international and eighteen Dutch design studio's. Objects on display vary from a cupboard made of domino, a table constructed out of garden hose, lampshades of horsehair to a porcelain computer. What these items share is the sustainable quality of their design. The common denominator is determined by its ecologically and socially sound production and use.
Umbrellas for the Civil but Discontent Man designed by Bruce and Stephanie Tharp of Materious.
"Sigmund Freud contends that aggressiveness is a fundamental human instinct whose inhibition is a necessary obligation of social life. These umbrellas combine a symbol of gentlemanly refinement--the full-sized, black umbrella--with an element from more manly sword-bearing times. The umbrellas offer brief psychological respite from the dictates of social amiability.
Next also designed by Bruce and Stephanie Tharp of Materious.
Next is a clock that addresses smokers addiction and their association of time with their next cigarette. But rather than a mere marker of this connection, it can also be used to regulate cigarette consumption. Place the cigarettes in the holes for the desired smoking times, and remove to smoke."
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Special thanks to Mark Vanderbeeken, Xanthe Matychak and Niti Bhan for their contribution to this week's 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.
You saw it here first: Alias SketchBook Pro 2010 preview available for free download NOW!
Just announced on Autodesk's AliasDesign site: a preview version of the brand spanking new 2010 release of SketchBook Pro. For FREE.
It won't officially hit stores until sometime in April, but interested digital artist and designer types can head to the site now and download a fully-featured copy that will run for 15 non-consecutive days, enough time to wrap their heads around the thick stack of new features Autodesk is touting, like custom texture brushes, free canvas rotation, and arbitrary straight-edge ruler guides.
An extensive rundown of new features, with video and interview with the SBP product manager is here, trial software download is here for both PC and Mac.
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Core77 Film Review: Gary Hustwit's 'Objectified'
In New York City, I attended what Gary told us was "the first screening of Objectified in front of real, live people." The room was filled with fans, contributors, well-wishers, and a few designers from the film, and though its official release was at a (packed) SXSW premier in Austin this past weekend (Core77's Stu Constantine moderated a panel with Hustwit and 3 stars of the film on Sunday), it was great to get a sneak peek at the thing and have a few days to put some thoughts together. This was a challenging review to write; it was too dark in the theater to take notes (or capture great quotes, though there's a nice set here), and as Marc Alt remarked on the sidewalk afterwards, it is hard for a designer-type to be, well, objective about Objectified.
The movie started out with the obligatory "everything in our lives is designed" segment—an argument as well worn by designers as it is revelatory to non-designers. This set-up was nicely handled though, and made me think of the "Plastic is in almost everything around us" version in Ian Connacher's film Addicted to Plastic. (A less disciplined movie overall, but quite a bit harder-hitting.) Once we're past the intro though, Objectified's themes start to emerge—or theme, actually, since almost the entire movie devotes itself to exploring the intimate relationship between objects and the people who make them. Well, and the people who own them, ultimately.
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Advertisement | NY Designs, a business incubator for design firms, is hosting an event geared toward designers and architects who are involved or interested in renewable energy. Join expert panelists from the wind, solar, and other alternative energy sectors for a discussion of the opportunities for designers and architects to develop renewable energy products. March 25
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Google's measured approach to design makes Chief Designer leave
Making the rounds is this blogpost by Douglas Bowman, Google's (former) Visual Design Leader, where he explains his frustration with Google's overly engineered approach to measuring the impact of minor design changes, for example,
Yes, it's true that a team at Google couldn't decide between two blues, so they're testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4, or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can't operate in an environment like that. I've grown tired of debating such minuscule design decisions.
CNet's Stephen Shankland adds,
I can't speak for Bowman's experience, though I can see how a classical designer might feel stifled by code monkeys. There are plenty of considerations that go into design in general, and pragmatism can be at odds sometimes with passion, boldness, and innovation. And Bowman earlier was a designer at Wired, which is definitely at the bold end of the spectrum.
Overall, however, I find Google's approach to design refreshing and radical in its own way. Choosing color shades and pixel widths on the basis of the behavior of millions of Web page users is a fascinating development to the form-follows-function school of design.
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Design Fiction: A Short Essay on Design, Science, Fact and Fiction from Julian Bleeker
Julian Bleecker has just published an essay (Mark Vanderbeeken calls it "really a 97 page book"!) entitled Design Fiction: A Short Essay on Design, Science, Fact and Fiction. I'm personally a big fan of fictional design, so I'm gonna download it and give it a read. In the meantime, here's Julian on the motivation:
A couple of years ago, in a small discussion group while I was teaching at USC, Paul Dourish presented an early draft of a paper he and Genevieve Bell were working on. If you read this blog, you probably know the paper. It's called " 'Resistance is Futile': Reading Science Fiction Alongside Ubiquitous Computing." It's a wonderful paper for a number of reasons. What is most wonderful, for the purposes of this dispatch, is the clever way the paper creates a conceptual linkage through science-fiction-ubiquitous-computing. The idea that "science fiction does not merely anticipate but actively shapes technological futures through its effect on the collective imagination" and "Science fiction visions appear as prototypes for future technological environments"--well…this is really juicy stuff.
(The paper is generally around in draft form, for better or worse, thanks to the Google. It's forthcoming in the Journal of Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, which is generally only readily available to academics and researchers with access to pricey journals.)
Paul asked myself and a number of people to consider writing something like a response or further considerations kind of thing that could sit alongside the article's publication. I started in on this last summer. Ultimately, for reasons that became clear as I was writing the essay, I decided that there would be more to be said than would be tolerated in a staid, expensive, peer-reviewed academic journal, never mind that there could possibly be a wider conversation beyond the ubicomp community as my thinking ran into film, design, fan culture and unanticipated other places.
The short bit I wrote ended up as "Design Fiction: A Short Essay on Design, Science, Fact and Fiction." It's available as a downloadable PDF, out there in the on The Near Future Laboratory's modest puff of Internet Cloud.
More thoughts here; download there.
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Green product designs from Stanford's ME221
This past quarter, a new green product design class debuted at Stanford--ME221, "Green Design Strategies & Metrics." We had a fantastic group of students--eager, engaged, and sharp as tacks. Below is a sampling of the fun ideas they came up with for class.
The goals of the class were to get them to know the priorities of sustainability (so they can tell whether they're greenwashing or legit, tell whether they're wasting their time or really going after the big game), and then getting them acquainted with the most powerful strategies for green product design: energy-effectiveness, dematerialization, longevity and service-systems, green kaizen, laws and labels, good materials, biomimicry, systems thinking, persuasive design, even a dab of green business thinking. The students weren't just designers, either--lots of mechanical engineers, a few MBA's and a couple other miscellaneous majors rounded things out. Couldn't have asked for a better crew. Because of the large breadth, they did a slew of tiny projects--some hardcore analysis, but mostly conceptual design sketches. Here are examples of them, showing the great variety and depth of thinking that managed to happen in just a few days per project. (Click on an image to see a high-res version of it. Since the projects are about the ideas, not the aesthetics, the text is where most of the meat is.) Enjoy!
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Follow Core77 on Twitter!
Follow @core77 on Twitter for a feed of blog headlines, timely bits of design news, and other delightful (and provocative) design insights.
Follow Core77 now!
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Bottoms up: innovation flows backwards
Call it what you like - "bottom up" or "trickle up" innovation (though one wonders if it will be a flood instead since its the other 90%) - but we can't help but be pleased to see the basic concept of designing products for maximum constraints first and then scaling them up for wealthier markets has finally gone viral. Low income markets and customers are some of the toughest nuts to crack and one hopes this means its a signal to take design for the next billion as the serious challenge that it is as well as a great opportunity for creative cross pollination.
BusinessWeek reports,
The process turns conventional product development on its head. Over the years, multinationals have prospered by turning out premium-priced products for the world's affluent. Rather than also designing products for poorer people elsewhere, many businesses found they could simply pass yesteryear's models down, as if they were unloading fleets of used cars. Lately, big companies such as Microsoft (MSFT), Nokia (NOK), and Procter & Gamble (PG) are discovering that they can profit by targeting the world's masses first. And they can score again by selling these low-priced products elsewhere
"The dominant logic holds that innovation comes from the U.S., goes to Europe and Japan, then gravitates to poor countries," says C.K. Prahalad, a strategy professor at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business and author of The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits. "But now we're starting to see a reversal of that flow."
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New graphics for old libararies
The New York Times tells a nice story about a WPA-like project Pentagram has been cooking up for New York City Libaries. Here's some good background and insight from the studio:
Nearly nine years ago, Pentagram was asked to contribute to a visionary effort by the wonderful (and design-conscious) Robin Hood Foundation: an initiative to build new school libraries in elementary schools throughout the five boroughs of New York City. A range of talented architects would design the libraries; private companies would donate books and funds; and we would provide the graphic design, including signage, wayfinding, and a masterbrand that would tie all the sites together.
Along the way, we discovered something interesting. The libraries are usually located in older buildings with high ceilings, but the shelves in the libraries can't be built higher than kids can reach. This means there is a space between the top shelf and the ceiling, an up-to-six-foot band around the room just begging for something special. That something turned out to be murals. And the results can now be seen in schools all over New York City, including five brand new ones in the Bronx which feature murals by Rafael Esquer, Maira Kalman, Christoph Niemann, Stefan Sagmeister and Yuko Shimizu, and Charles Wilkin.
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Okay seriously. First Tropicana and now THIS?
Admittedly, that first SciFi Channel identity wasn't so great. But honestly.
And indeed the OJ debacle shows up WAY down the piece in the Times:
No discussion of change affecting consumers could ignore what Mr. Howe called the "Tropicana debacle"--the recent decision by a unit of PepsiCo to abandon a major package redesign for Tropicana orange juice after shoppers vociferously complained.
"The testing we've done has been incredibly positive," Mr. Howe said of the Syfy name, reading what he described as a comment from one participant: "If I were texting, this is how I would spell it."
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EU design policy 'will create jobs'
The formation of EU design policy will result in more jobs for designers, according to president of the Bureau of European Design Associations Jan Stavik.
The newly elected Beda president, who last weekend replaced Michael Thomson, is convinced that the organisation's continued European political focus will result in more jobs for designers, 'lifting their ability and focus'.
Stavik's comments come ahead of next month's Staff Working Paper - a precursor to a European consultation paper - which is expected to lead to the formation of EU design policy later this year.
This, he says, [...] will result in EU directives for design in industry, in particular innovation, as well as the 'strategic potential to unlock funds' for related schemes.
>> Read article
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Star Search - U.S. National Design Policy video
Speaking of design policy, one of the activities of the U.S. National Design Policy Initiative is to create a video with US design CEOs advocating the importance of design and design policy to US democratic governance and economic competitiveness. But being down for the People, I feel that it should not just be C-levels who are represented.
So we are seeking the People (US and Internationally) to upload short (less than 2 minute) videos addressing these four questions:
1. What role does design play in US economic competitiveness?
2. What role does design play in the US democratic governance?
3. In what specific ways, would a national design policy further enable design to play those roles?
4. What would you pledge to do to help design play that role?
Art Direction: For consistency, we ask that you film on a plain white background (with semi-decent lighting). I've found that setting up a white board behind me as I face the window during early sunrise or sunset creates beautiful light. Upload the video here (youtube) or here (facebook)
[on behalf of Dori Tunstall, Initiative Organizer]
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Crowdsourcing recycling ideas
How Can I Recycle This? is a UK-based website that aims to crowdsource creative ideas on how to recycle everything under the sun. Readers post queries, i.e. "What else can I use the metal cutting edge on a box of plastic wrap for?" and other readers sound off with suggestions.
Got any ideas (or queries) of your own? For those of you with spare brainpower, the "Packaging" section alone has 147 posts, which oughta tie you up for at least an afternoon.
Suggestions currently range from obvious ("Old jars make great Q-Tip holders") to useful ("expired, unused bandages can be sent to developing countries and re-sterilized") to please-tell-me-you're-joking (shampoo bottle jewelry, anyone?), so these guys can definitely use an influx of eyeballs and fresh brains. Archives by category are here.
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McKinsey maps the world's innovation clusters
How innovative is your city? McKinsey Digital has released a new innovation study of the world's leading cities, grouping them into one of four different categories -- "hot springs," "dynamic oceans," "silent lakes," and "shrinking pools."
The most innovative cities are "dynamic oceans," while the "hot springs" are the types of cities with a lot of economic momentum, but in need of a little Creative Class infusion to make them even more vibrant and diverse. In the chart above, Silicon Valley stands alone as the dominant innovation cluster in the world.
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Core77's 'There Is No Plan B' T-Shirt
While the masses are desperately seeking out exit strategies, we know there is no plan B for designers. You just gotta lock down and make it happen! Printed in New York on asphalt gray 100% cotton American Apparel T-shirts, we only have a few left in small & medium sizes.
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Ciao Milano! Send us your Milan design tips.
And finally, speaking of Core77, got something interesting brewing for Milan Design Week next month (April 22-27th)? Let us know! We will have a team documenting this year's design week, and we'd love to get your event / party / performance / guerrilla tactics on our list of to-dos. Send your Milano tips to: blogs[at]core77.com (please include "Ciao Milano!" in your subject line). Make sure to include a couple of images, a description, and a link (important!) if you'd like us to get the word out early.
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Special thanks to Mark Vanderbeeken, Jeremy Faludi and Niti Bhan for their contribution to this week's 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 PeePoo Bag: 2.6 people just got their own toilet
Coming off our review of The Big Necessity, we were inspired by a recent email concerning the PeePoo, a plastic bag-cum-toilet for the developing world. So we got in touch with the co-designer of the device, Peter Thuvander, to provide some first-hand reflections on the project. Here's Peter:
It could be that the cruel reality of shit has escaped you. To let you in on the numbers, approximately 2.6 billion people lack sanitation. The consequences of this are horrific. One child in the world dies every 15 seconds due to contaminated water. If there ever was a holy grail of design and technology, this is it.
When long-time client (and now friend) Anders Wilhelmson, the famous Swedish architect), presented a vision of a world-changing system of sanitation, he was extremely passionate: "What if one could shit or pee in a bag? A bag that would sanitize the feces, and then later on break down itself, all becoming manure?"
"Well, yes Anders, that would be fantastic, but how?" I replied.
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Selling the Future: Design and the Financial Crisis
These days Bernie Madoff makes an appearance on the cover (or at least the inside fold) of the paper with alarming frequency and investors far from South Florida are feeling the repercussions not only of his very literal Ponzi scheme but also facing a growing realization that our booming residential and stock markets were also houses of cards. The housing market, however, lacks a gray-coiffed figurehead upon which to pile indignation. Cases could (and have) been made for names like Bliley, Bush, Clinton, Dodd, Frank, Gramm, and Leach, but no one name stands out above the rest and such a politically-centric list neglects all of the actual bankers that wrote the loans, the regulators who ignored the signals, and the buyers themselves. Instead, it appears that the housing bubble was more like a game of musical chairs than corporate malfeasance since so many were playing. As someone who has been renting for the last ten years because home prices in NYC have been ridiculously inflated, I can't say I was surprised by the housing market collapse, but what I didn't realize was that my own well-being was so intertwined with the housing market. Americans, and to a lesser extent the rest of the world, were paying for their purchases by borrowing against their homes, and America was financing its current account by borrowing against its currency. We, as industrial designers, were the makers of all of the products that were being bought, and now the pinch is on us as well. By no means am I the first person to say in hindsight that the economic collapse seems obvious. Indeed, my savings were damaged as much as any homeowner's by the collapse of the stock market, but I didn't realize the extent of my personal idiocy until I read Thomas Friedman's sage opinion piece in the New York Times and realized that I hadn't only seen the current recession in hindsight, I'd passionately argued against its very causes right here in this blog nearly a year ago.
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Philips LEDs the way
Philips' Master LED bulb has the same form factor as the old-fashioned kind, making it "simple for people to use and feel good about using." The bulb draws just 7 watts but gives off light equivalent to 40 watts' worth, and lasts 45,000 hours, as opposed to the 1,500 of its incandescent predecessors. Already available in Europe, the Master LED should make its way to North American shores sometime before July.
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Kinetic Design and the Animation of Products, by Ben Hopson
At this point in history, Industrial Design is poised to undergo major evolutionary changes. New technologies, new materials and increasingly sophisticated consumer tastes all demand colossal transformations. Perhaps most exciting among these is the development of Kinetic Design which entails the aesthetic design of physical movement. Through this practice, industrial designers will not just create forms, but choreograph those forms' movements through space. Kinetic Design will literally open a new dimension for the aesthetic development of physical objects and the world will be richer for it.
At Industrial Design schools around the world, students are being trained to create the objects that fill our lives. Sadly, with few exceptions, today's young designers are walking out into the world with more-or-less the same tool sets as designers of 60 years ago. One can observe this phenomenon quite readily by perusing the course catalogs of leading design schools such as Art Center College of Design or Pratt Institute. Green initiatives and CAD (computer aided design) related courses comprise the only notable updates to curricula around the world. This is astonishingly meager given the rapidly changing nature of the field itself. The addition of Kinetic Design will help broaden curricula in order to stimulate new thinking and new potentials.
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NIKE SFB Tactical Boot
Nike just launched the SFB military boot, a project 4 years in the making led by Nike Innovation Manager Tobie Hatfield. Built for speed, agility, and comfort, the ultra-light SFB's upper is made from a polyester woven shell wrapped in synthetic leather overlays, this means there's no 'break-in' time required (typical with most boots), and it dramatically increases drying time.
The SFB breaks new ground in lightweight athletic boot delivering innovation for athletes in any environment. The SFB, perfect for warm weather conditions, is the lightest, fastest drying, natural motion boot on the planet. It features a Natural Motion Cushioning unit that helps allows for optimal support and speed during heel to toe transfer, translated the boot is made to move and form with the foot's natural motion allowing for quick flexible movement in any direction while drastically reducing the weight of conventional boots. Making it the perfect companion during multi-day backpacking hikes which can be cut short if your boots don't work with your foot.
Offering unparalleled traction, the SFB's outsole is fitted with a directional traction heel sole that utilizes reverse tread bars and a slightly raised heel for better traction going downhill, while the Sticky Rubber forefoot lugs were strategically placed to allow exceptional agility and traction in any terrain. Upping the ante on protection, the SFB's mid-sole comes equipped with puncture and laceration resistant thermoplastic forefoot shield and genuine leather with Kevlar sheath, both placed in the sole of the SFB allowing the boot to form to the foot of its wearer while offering protection from jagged rocky terrain.
>> more pictures
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Jimmyjane's Sex Change Operation
Ethan Imboden worked an industrial designer for firms like Ecco and frogdesign, cranking out designs for everyday products (i.e., staplers and monitors), but grew to feel that he had something more to contribute. After starting his own design firm, he went with a client to the Adult Novelty Expo and saw bad design everywhere. He founded Jimmyjane as a response to that, and set out to use form, color, materials and so on to create premium vibrators. Now he's a visionary creative, with strong ideas about the Jimmyjane brand and how to embody those attributes across a range of products. Imboden fits the Be A Genius and Get It Right archetype we wrote about in interactions. At least, if they are doing as well as they indicated during our recent visit, then they are "getting it right." But we couldn't help but wonder if there wasn't more that they could be doing.
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Fantastic Interview with Richard Kuchinsky
Speaking of shoes, DesignDroplets published a fascinating interview with Richard Kuchinsky, designer and Core77 forum contributor. It's impossible to pick the choicest paragraphs from the thing, but the section on how footwear design really happens will surprise you:
The process as I described earlier just doesn't need CAD for the most part, so it is not used. There would be no point in doing the upper design of a shoe in CAD when a 3 view line drawing in Illustrator is what the pattern maker wants. Outsole design may be done in CAD, though in my experience more frequently it's done as a 2D drawing with dimensions and sections in Illustrator because it's quicker and the mold maker can take into account all the data points for the last, shrink, etc. to create the 3D CAD at the factory in half the time and a quarter of the cost.
I know some of the larger athletic footwear brands are starting to incorporate CAD into the design process more frequently, but in something like footwear I also think the rawness and flow of a sketch translates best into a product that likely may not have a single straight line on it and is never 100% symmetrical.
In the end however, the appropriate tools for the job, are just that, tools. A pencil, a marker a Wacom tablet, or CAD are all tools and each one may be appropriate in a different situation. It is also important to mention that a sketch or drawing should also be viewed as a means to an end. Too often these days, I think young designers fall in love with CAD, or fancy renderings and lose sight of the true goals of the design process- the end product. I had a boss once who made a great point of keeping the designers in check when they would get carried away with fancy renderings and the like. He said, "we are in the business of making shoes. Not drawings."
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Steven Heller on The 2 New Logos
Last week on The Moment Steven Heller investigates the new logos introduced by the Obama administration last week. Here's a nice taste:
What's also interesting about this logo is that its goal is to become obsolete. Just as the W.P.A. was retired when the Depression was over (and World War II began), the ARRA logo is tied to the fate of the economy. "Hopefully, the recovery effort will work so well and so quickly that we're no longer in recovery but back at full strength and don’t need it," Juras said. "The sooner it becomes a historical artifact, the better."
Meanwhile, what does he hope these marks accomplish? "I would say that we are more interested in how people who know little or nothing about design respond to them in their daily lives," he said. "That is to say: Does the logo give the truck driver or the grocery store clerk or the plumber a little more confidence in our economy? Does a young kid derive some hope for the future by stenciling it on her lunchbox? Only time will tell, I suppose."
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"All of it screamingly public": Jessica Helfand, on Facebook
Recently published on Design Observer--Jessica Helfand explores the ecosystem of Facebook, the ramifications for privacy and self, and the particular terrain of posting images (yes, of you) on the social network. How's this:
For anyone under the age of, say thirty or so, the whole notion of open-source thinking is a native habitat that can be applied to everything from group-table seating in restaurants to sharing playlists to data clouds (I tag, you tag, we all tag) -- in short, there's nothing proprietary because people in this particular demographic group don't perceive space as anything you can own. They see it as infinite real estate, to be grazed but not commandeered, shared but not colonized. The beauty of this thinking, besides the fact that it is inherently democratic and gracious, is that it lends itself to a kind of progressive evolution in which everyone wins. It's commendable, really, and speaks well for us all.
On the other hand (and I'm not the first, nor will I be the last to mention it) there are implicit pitfalls in this rapidly growing virtual arena, particularly for those for whom social skills have not caught up with, say, their computational skills. On Facebook, this leads to huge numbers of pictures by kids of kids at parties acting stupid -- yes, stupid -- with cigarettes and sunglasses and cans of beer and face paint. It's kind of sweet and sort of sad and probably meaningless (or so way too many parents of teenagers tell me) and lighten up, I'm told, because they're just posturing, showing the world just how radical they can be. It's safe, because after all, they’re not drinking and driving. They're just on screen.
Or are they?
Read the whole thing here.
And in the same breath, don't forget about Steve Portigal's piece on Core77 last week, Where does Twitter go from here?
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Italy's Newest Boutique School Of Design
Architect Marc DiDomenico, the 2009 President of the American Institute of Architects Continental Europe, is overseeing The Florence Institute of Design International, a brand new "boutique" design school in Florence, Italy:
Just opened in the historic center of Florence, a new international design school will welcome students from all over the world to commence the first full session in January. The Florence Institute of Design International offers a new type of boutique academics focused entirely on international students providing Interior Design, Graphic Design and Architecture programs with both master and semester abroad options available, as announced by Founder and Creative Director, Architect Marc DiDomenico.
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A Wind Farm on Your Purse, Courtesy of Ziba Design
Recently brought to our attention by uber-design-consultancy Ziba, a one-off purse created by a few of their Industrial Designers for a charity auction in Portland, Oregon. We kind of dig it for its soft/hard goods split personality (the base is machined from a single piece of reclaimed wood), and the fact that stylized wind turbines now count as decorative elements (the client used as a design reference is the head of a local electric utility).
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60 Bags Biodegrade in 60 Days
Speaking of "green" bags, winners of an honorable mention at this year's Green Dot awards, 60 Bags is a line of biodegradable bags that can last as long as you like or decompose in approximately 2 months. So why not give a present to your garden after you are done buying something for yourself?
60BAGs are the perfect natural answer to the environment's needs. They are biodegradable carrier bags made our of flax-viscose non-woven fabric. Its material was scientifically developed and manufactured in Poland. The flax-Viscose fabric is produced with flax fiber industrial waste, which means it doesn't exploit any natural resources and requires minimal energy during its production. This highly innovative technology enables the bags to naturally decompose approximately 60 days after being discarded, which means they don't require expensive recycling or disposal in landfills.
60BAGs a breakthrough advance over the so-called "green bags" produced with polypropylene material, as well as the thick plastic bags given away by most clothing retailers. 60BAG is a great commercial opportunity for the companies committed to supporting an eco-friendly lifestyle.
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We've got two post-scripts from last week's DesignersAccord Town Hall get-together at Smart Design.
Last week the Designers Accord held its first New York City town hall meeting in Smart Design's Chelsea offices. Designers Accord is a multidisciplinary coalition of designers and other professionals, which aims to spark collaboration and "create positive environmental and social impact." These town hall meetings began last year on the west coast to serve as a venue for face-to-face interaction between individuals eager to share their ideas about sustainable design, and about how to inspire the creative community to think and act in socially and environmentally responsible ways.
This crowd of designers and other sustainable enthusiasts alike gathered for some light fare and settled into an informal discussion led by Jen van der Meer, a board member of Designers Accord, and ten other presenters. In light of the Designers Accord's mission, presenters discussed an array of issues that define the opportunities and challenges currently facing the green design movement, at both local and global levels. Here are three key issues they raised: the imperative of knowledge-sharing projects, the initiative to extend social design causes, and the right balance between open-sourcing green technologies and private property rights for developers.
Knowledge-Sharing Projects
Andrew Personette, of EcoSystems, shared his concern for the lack sustainable education. His solution is the upcoming "Design Green Now" series coming next month to local New York City design schools. The free three-part series will feature New York City industry buffs exploring the themes of materials, energy, and waste in an effort to empower the design community with sustainable design know-how and rhetoric. Be sure to check out the Design Green Now site for more details of this April happening.
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Step into my cardboard office...
Nothing is a new commercial creative agency formed by Michael Jansen and Bas Korsten that has just opened its doors in Amsterdam.
The Nothing team took the idea behind the company name (taking nothing and turning it into something) as the starting point for the physical design of the office; which included creating walls, signage, beams, tables, shelving and even a set of stairs out of cardboard.
>> View photos
Bruce Sterling calls it "very informal architecture learning from slums".
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Flotspotting: Stephen Hauser's got it in the can
And finally, Tokyo-based Stephan Hauser's amusing bathroom dustbin addresses the way (and place) that we guys like to read. See more of his portfolio here.
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Special thanks to Steve Portigal and Mark Vanderbeeken for their contribution to this week's 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.
A Periodic Table of Form: The secret language of surface and meaning in product design, by Gray Holland
Why does Design so often struggle to communicate its value to the world, when it's something we all recognize?
When we speak of product development, we frequently look at the domains of Design and Engineering separately, evaluating them in different ways. Engineering, at its core, is a measurable process; Design, for the most part, is not. This gives the former an inherent advantage: engineering efforts are easily quantifiable, and this provides them with authority. Design is intuitive, working on the non-verbal levels of our experience, sometimes triggering our most subversive emotional states; this makes it difficult to evaluate empirically. Lacking an analytical vernacular, Design is labeled subjective, when it is actually the agent of universal truth through form.
For the consumer, it's easy to forget how much the emotional response to an object determines his or her relationship to it, but this forgetfulness can be plausibly explained by the dominant role our analytical mind plays in formulating language. Because it is able to say it's in charge, as the executor of structured argument, the analytical mind generally convinces us that it is in fact the authority. Reasoning therefore holds higher status, and emotional reactions are easy to dismiss as immature or irrational. This poses a very real barrier to the acceptance of design as a source of value in product development; enough that it's worth examining alternate ways of evaluating design, transcending this subjective view to create a more universal system of measure.
Form has meaning; it can touch us at such a primal level that our mind is left scrambling to rationalize our emotional reactions. Consider the visceral impression conveyed by a natural setting: The deep serenity felt, for example, while walking through a majestic grove of redwoods. The delicate lace of fern fronds wave as you drag your hand through them as you walk, and your heart jumps into your throat when startled by a deer caught wondering across the trail. These natural forms hold an innate meaning that not only transcends the human experience, but even predates our verbal expression, definition, and measurement. In other words, we did not create this meaning; it comes from the forms themselves, and existed long before we did.
>> continue reading
 Creative Employment Confab
Austin, TX - Monday, March 16, 2009 Are you heading to Austin next month for the South By Southwest Interactive Festival? Join a few hundred of your Coroflot cohorts for a networking event geared for people working in all aspects of today's creative industry. Share insights, connections and successes with leading creative and technical professionals and meet with hiring representatives from companies looking for this type of talent. An all-star panel discussion and a cocktail reception will make this an event not to be missed. We've arranged a discounted SXSW registration rates for attendees too! >>>Learn More
Coroflot 2008 Design Salary Survey Results are In!
One year and 4200+ responses in the making, the Coroflot 2008 Salary Survey is live and ready to rock. See how the different professions are faring in these unsteady times, where the salaries are still growing, and what's changed (and what hasn't) in the creative professional landscape over the past eight years. Now in its eighth year, this is the longest-running survey on the web devoted exclusively to the creative professions, from Illustration to Fashion to Interaction Design and beyond, and pulling in responses from over 60 different countries. Charts and a searchable database of responses are available on the survey page here; additional commentary and hints of whats coming up next are on the Creative Seeds blog here.
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Book Review: Design Disasters, edited by Steven Heller
The wild cover design of Design Disasters: Great Designers, Fabulous Failures, and Lessons Learned forced me look to the back of the book to get the precise wording of the title, commas and all. Perhaps that's what cover designer James Victore intended when he spilled half the title off of the front page and presented such an obfuscated grid on the back cover that I had to run down the page with a ruler to try to locate the baselines. Ultimately I found the title written in its full Library of Congress form upside down and aligned with a nested set of bullet points for the contributor credits on the back cover. While I've never been a fan of guessing author or artist motive, the overall effect amounts to making a pleasing harmony out of a relative mess, which actually fits the book's themes pretty well.
Design Disasters collects stories of failure (along with the titular lessons learned) from luminaries such as Stefan Sagmiester, thinkers like Ralph Caplan and Henry Petroski and Core's own Allan Chochinov. Perhaps Steven Heller explains the logic behind the cover in his introduction, which states, "If I were the joking sort, I would just make the type from here on unreadable as an example of failed design." I'm glad he didn't because such an omission would have denied the reader the opportunity to hear the stories contained within. Heller himself describes the creative process with a special emphasis on success through failure. It's an old lesson, but in this age, when design presentations can be changed with a few twitches of the wrist at the mouse, there's no reason why every finished design can't be built from a cornucopia of failures, so much so that perhaps the very nomenclature of failure needs to be reconsidered. Perhaps we designers have already subliminally assimilated this lesson. After all, most people I know don't call it failure, we call it process. For me, success and failure are the same things, just on a different timeline.
>> continue reading
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Core77 Photo Gallery: Transversale 2009
Transversale 2009 offers a full program on the interface between art and design. Contributions of no less than ten organizations in Dortmund results in a wide range of objects and installations by artists, designers, craftsmen, and students exploring the boundaries where art meets design and design meets art.
>> view gallery
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Where does Twitter go from here?
It's an interesting time for Twitter. Although the folks on Twitter are lead user/early adopter types, there is huge buzz about the service. And as with many disruptive innovations, this new-and-different-thing is not well understood and begins to evoke a backlash. The mainstream media (NYT, Daily Show) is enjoying the opportunity to portray the technology - and its adherents - as contributing to a social decline, wasting time, being foolish, self-absorbed, and other cultural sins. But we went through this with cellphones (self-important rich people only), the Walkman (self-absorbed anti-social jerks), and so on. Let's understand the backlash for what it is: a society grappling with emerging behaviors that challenge social norms. See Evan Williams on Charlie Rose for a discussion of "normal people" using the service.
One way to normalize a new behavior is to think about how it's going to make money. Because what's more normal than capitalism, right? So we've got all the Skittles buzz this week. We'd rather consider the designed experience that Twitter is facilitating than the marketing, PR, and money stuff, though. For a primer, you can read our previous thoughts here (summary: What the heck is this thing for? You've gotta use it for a while and see). Of course, all ideas are brainstorming, and not recommendations. Brainstorming works best when people build on the ideas, so we'd love to see all the builds you can come up with on the issues and the stand-in solutions. Note: some of these things may already be available on Twitter.com; but we see them only when we log out, so not sure how much help that is?!
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A "New Wood Species" Arrived
Accoya Wood considers itself a "new wood species" with properties that match those of the best tropical hardwoods, yet it eliminates the need for logging in our precious rainforests.
How? Accoya is able to process soft, fast-growing pine into long lasting durable wood with a non-toxic treatment. Their technology is based on wood acetylation that reduces the ability of the wood to adsorb water is greatly reduced, rendering the wood more dimensionally stable and, because it is no longer digestible, extremely durable.
Designer Michael Jantzen is already a big fan and used Accoya's wood to realize this M-Velope (photo), an interactive structure that can be turned into various spaces. With durable wood like this surely more fans and designs will follow!
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Design Ignites Change website launches
Worldstudio has just launched their new project, Design Ignites Change, aimed at bringing design thinking to and from high school and college students. Teaming up with with the Adobe Foundation's Adobe Youth Voices, Design Ignites Change "encourages talented high school and college students to use the power of design to address social issues in their local communities through substantive public projects." There are already 15 colleges and universities signed up, who are targeting issues such as racism, economic inequality and climate change. Here's more:
Students are working to develop actual, visible projects aimed to stimulate thought, dialog, action, and ultimately, change. A major component of the initiative is a mentoring program through which college and university students, educators and creative professionals, work with underserved high school students to develop projects that will benefit their own communities, while giving them a voice around important social issues.
Learn more about the initiative here.
Join your school up here.
Check out mentoring here.
Get in on the HotButtons here
[Disclosure: Core77 is a media partner; Allan Chochinov is an advisor.]
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AskNature.org
AskNature is a free, open source inspiration source for the biomimicry community, that organises the world's biological literature by function. The site contains a starter culture of ideas--biological blueprints and strategies, bio-inspired products and design sketches, and biomimics you can talk to and collaborate with.
The Italian online web magazine Genitron Sviluppo interviewed Janine Benyus, the founder of the initiative - now available in English and Italian - part 1 | part 2.
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Steve Portigal on Advertising in Interactions Mag:
Steve's got yet another page-turner at Interactions:
But as we are supposedly increasingly enlightened and empowered as consumers, where do we draw the line with what advertisers are allowed to do? A couple of years ago I was back in my hometown of Toronto. Walking down Bloor St. late one night, we were invited into the cinema for a free screening at a documentary film festival. The emcee introduced the movie and thanked the sponsor, then introduced the director for a few questions, and then rolled the film. We got the usual film-festival promo trailer, a few acknowledgments screens, and then an ad for Cadillac, the sponsor. The audience began to boo. And while I wouldn't normally do this, I shouted out against the booing, "You're seeing a free movie, so shut the $@^& up!" The exchange (watch an ad, see a movie) seemed perfectly reasonable, and the booing seemed more like hipsters on autopilot ("advertising = teh suck - pwn3d") than a considered objection. Sure, I have all the latest ad-blocking software in Firefox, but I'm not joining the Billboard Liberation Front or subscribing to Adbusters. I'm happy to limit my exposure but don't generally need to become an activist either.
Awesome.
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Designers wanted: Join a Think-and-Make-Tank for Soul of Africa
Oxford University's Said Business School is running a sort of Peace Corps for designers. Writes Lucy Kimbell, Clark Fellow in Design Leadership:
We need up to 10 designers who want to use their design practices and skills to help social enterprise Soul of Africa tackle some of the challenge facing it, during a one-day workshop in Oxford in collaboration with MBA students.
The workshop is a participative, creative "think-and-make-tank" that brings together people from management and from design to use visual methods to analyze and tackle specific problems identified by an organization. MBA students from Said Business School will be joined by designers from different disciplines to help social enterprise Soul of Africa engage with key challenges.
Soul Of Africa is a charitable initiative and a self-sustainable project created to facilitate employment and funding aimed at helping orphans affected by AIDS through the sale of hand-stitched shoes. Unemployed and unskilled women in South Africa are trained to hand-stitch shoes, giving them the self-empowering ability to feed their families and provide them with essential health care.
>> continue reading
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The Scamp: Landmine Demining Device gets $2M support
And finally, speaking of design to do good, back in 2005, Joshua Koplin, undertook a project to investigate the world of landmines and demining equipment. It was a daunting task, but after only a few months, he gained an unbelievable amount of expertise, obtained first-hand knowledge by taking trips to Afghanistan and Sarajevo, Cambodia and Thailand. He took on a business partner, Samuel Reeves, to develop a new line of demining equipment, and has continued down this path for the past four years.
Last week, their company, Humanistic Robotics, received a $2 million grant from Bucks County to move their operation from Philadelphia, creating more than a dozen jobs and beginning production on their new product, the Scamp. The Scamp is a demining device which is designed to survive the blast of a detonated landmine (not typically strong, but certainly strong enough to do devastating damage to the human body). It does so by moving slowing across the ground, each wheel exerting 100 to 300 pounds of pressure--enough to trigger an explosion--and "tuned" to the exact characteristics of the mine and field. Hit the jump for the backstory:
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Special thanks to Mark Vanderbeeken for his contribution to this week's 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.
Greener Gadgets 2009: THE WINNERS!
It was a roller-coaster ride of a panel discussion at the Live Greener Gadgets Design Competition Judging at the close of Friday's Greener Gadgets Conference in New York City. After a 10-minute overview of some of the notable entries by moderator Allan Chochinov from Core77, the judges--Jeff Kapec of Tanaka Kapec Design Group, Jill Fehrenbacher of Inhabitat, and Saul Griffith of Makani Power--toured the audience through 13 of their favorite projects before deliberating to get things down to the Top 3 (In pre-judging sessions, they were unable to decide on a set of TOP 10). It was a difficult journey, with the audience ultimately chiming in with shout outs, criticisms, defenses, philosophical meanderings, and all the good stuff you would expect from a wonderful, engaged audience. Thanks for all the participation!
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Nendo: Ghost Stories Exhibition Photos
Tokyo-based architect and design outfit nendo opened 'Ghost Stories' last week, their first exhibition in New York at the Friedman Benda Gallery (who recently exhibited new work from Ron Arad). The installation presents 40 of their Cabbage Chairs embedded in a sea of suspended cords that fill the gallery space creating a visual haze and forces physical participation if you want to see the chairs up close.
Using a strict black and white color pallet with minimal lighting to create a 'ghostly' effect, the hanging cords echo the pleated texture of the Cabbage Chairs which were originally developed in response to a challenge from fashion designer Issey Miyake.
Each white cord is partially painted black and when viewed from a distance, creates a diagonal block of solid contrast across the curtain wall. Nendo experimented with multiple techniques to dye the cord, ultimately settling on the good old trusty marker as this was the only way to accurately control the length of the black coloring. It took the studio nearly a month to color every cord following specs from a 3D computer rendering.
>> more exhibition photos
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Coroflot Creative Employment Confab at SXSWi in Austin.
Attention Core readers, especially those headed to Austin this month for South by Southwest, and those looking for an additional reason to go. On top of all the bands, film screenings, talks, demos, etc. for which SXSW is justly famous, Coroflot is adding another cool thing: the Creative Employment Confab, a networking event for SXSW Interactive attendees looking to build their professional contacts, look for jobs or employees, or just enjoy the company of some fellow design professionals.
The event is scheduled to run from 1pm to 4pm at the Hilton Austin on Monday, March 16th, and will center around a one hour panel discussion on the future of creative employment, moderated by Coroflot editorial director Carl Alviani. Panelists include a couple of names recently mentioned in these pages: Nathan Shedroff, whose extremely well-received talk at the Compostmodern conference was blogged here earlier this week, also chairs the Design MBA program at CCA in San Francisco, and has written four books on Experience Design in the past year. Jon Kolko will also be there: a Senior Design Analyst at Frog, who taught in the Interaction Design program at SCAD for five years (and wrote about it for Core), edits Interactions Magazine, and gave a well-received talk of his own at the Interaction 09 conference in Vancouver.
A broad array of recruiters and hiring representatives will be on hand, looking to meet creative professionals of all stripes, and presumably take advantage of the open bar as well. Event is free to SXSWi attendees, details are here.
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Cut & Paste Kicks Off 2009 World Tour in LA, This Time with 3D and Motion Graphics
We got a little preview of what this year's version of the Cut & Paste Digital Design Tournament was going to look like when the New York-based crew ran their Design Slam at Autodesk University back in December; and what we saw got us excited. After a couple of years running live action illustration and graphic design competitions in cities across North America and Europe, Cut & Paste has seen fit to add 3D design to the roster, with some impressive results -- if you didn't see the video footage from AU in Las Vegas, it's worth a check.
Now taking this extended competition on the road, Cut & Paste hosted the first of its 2009 events in Los Angeles last Saturday, and from the looks of it, they've got a great design-crowd pleaser of a function figured out. Winning image from the 2D portion of the competition came from rock poster illustrator Janee Meadows, with some strong competition from the seven other Angelenos on stage.
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Kevin McCullagh: Design and the Depression
Kevin's got a great piece in the April Blueprint, entitled Design and the Depression. Here's the (bitter) sweet spot:
But the Bring-On-The-Slump crowd are equally self-indulgent. Recessions are marked by bankruptcies, mass unemployment, house repossessions and general misery, not by moral renewal. A mean-spirited Puritanism lies behind those beckoning recession.
Their outlook reveals a shocking detachment from economic and historical realities. The recessionistas just don't get it, they have not grasped the depth of the economic crisis we face. This is no mere downturn, blip or 'natural correction'; it's a process that will last years. It could inflict a terrible toll on the profession. No doubt these commentators come from the kind of backgrounds that weren't blighted by previous busts, but few practising designers and architects will be able to maintain such glorious indifference in the face of the coming havoc.
The prospect facing young designers is particularly bleak. Ian Cochrane, director of Tice group and former managing director of both Fitch and Landor Europe, recently gave a clue to what might happen. He recommended that design agencies should consider a three-day week, and advised design students to 'get out of this business… [which] does not need you'.
Read the whole thing here.
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[photo credit: Ben Garvin for The New York Times]
Furniture trend for schools: Stand and Deliver
Here's a rather interesting trend: Stand-up furniture coming to schools. Apparently, having the option to stand at variable-height desks can help kids burn calories and even improve concentration. As the Times reports,
The children in Ms. Brown's class, and in some others at Marine Elementary School and additional schools nearby, are using a type of adjustable-height school desk, allowing pupils to stand while they work, that Ms. Brown designed with the help of a local ergonomic furniture company two years ago. The stand-up desk's popularity with children and teachers spread by word of mouth from this small town to schools in Wisconsin, across the St. Croix River. Now orders for the desks are being filled for districts from North Carolina to California.
...The stand-up desks come with swinging footrests, and with adjustable stools allowing children to switch between sitting and standing as their moods dictate.
..."At a stand-up desk," Ms. Seekel said, "I've never seen students with their heads down, ever. It helps with being awake, if they can stand, it seems. And for me as a teacher, I can stand at their level to help them. I'm not bent over. I can't think of one reason why a classroom teacher wouldn't want these."
..."We're talking about furniture here," she said, "plain old furniture. If it's that simple, if it turns out to have the positive impacts everyone hopes for, wouldn't that be a wonderful thing?"
Read all about it, and the research going into it, here.
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Nike's new London space, with from-raw-to-finished photos by the designers
This week saw the opening of "Raise your Game," a retail installation by London creatives the Wilson Brothers for Nike's East London 1948 space. It's loaded with sports references translated into design elements:
...the new floor covering is Nike GRIND, a 100% recycled rubber sport surface. 10% (minimum) of the content is made up from the soles of actual recycled training shoes, so approx. 15,000 pairs for this space!
The new floor adds bounce + warmth to the space, is very sustainable, and the same material used around the main pitch at MUFC (Manchester United Football Club).
A set of 12 modular units form the basis of the display system for the store's new look interior. Referencing tiered stadium / grandstand seating (universal to most spectator sports), the steel and laminated plywood units are fitted with wheels for easy mobility and can be quickly re-positioned in unlimited configurations. Equally useable as 3 level table-top displays for merchandising, or as auditorium seating for events, back to back the stepped units resemble a classic 'winners' podium'.
Detachable (and multi-positional) hanging rails reference the sea of goal-posts at near-by Hackney Marshes.
A 6 x 8m neon football pitch installation, hanging horizontally from the ceiling, completes the space.
The Wilson Brothers have posted in-progress photos on their blog, so you can see them taking the space from raw to finished. Click here to check 'em out.
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Amazing pictures of production at The Big Picture
Speaking of shoes, Srikanth Jalasutram, a graduate ID student at Georgia Tech, sends in this link from the Boston Globe's Big Picture, called At Work. This from the Globe:
"When the economy makes big news, many photographs of people at work come across the wires, usually to help illustrate a particular story or event. By collecting these disparate photos over the past few months, I found that a global portrait emerged of we humans producing things. People assembling, generating, and building items small and large, mundane and expensive, trivial and important. I hope you enjoy this look into some people's work lives around the world"
And this from Srikanth:
Any product designer who has seen Ed Burtynsky's Manufactured Landscapes Documentary or has attended Allan Chochinov's talk on the social impact of design professions ("We are in the consequence business") will appreciate taking a look at this slideshow of people "producing" or being involved in manufacture of physical objects across the world.
It should prompt designers to think where their problem solving skills are really required--creating new and novel things just for the sake of "design," or really helping people lead better and more fruitful lives by uplifting their living conditions. Contrary to the opinion of some superstar designers who proclaim that problem solving is dead and what the world truly needs is more "beautiful things" (made of translucent plastic), the world urgently needs designers who can bring social equity to the masses through their work.
Image above from the site (AP Photo/Chitose Suzuki).
[Allan is humbled to mentioned in the same sentence as Edward Burtynsky.]
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Not just for profit
Emerging alternatives to the shareholder-centric model could help companies avoid ethical mishaps and contribute more to the world at large.
Around the world -- largely beneath the radar of mainstream awareness -- alternative [corporate] designs are being developed that seamlessly blend a central social mission with profitable operation. These include the burgeoning microfinance industry, emerging hybrids like nonprofit venture-capital firms, new architectures like Google.org that embody "for-profit philanthropy," dual-class shareholding structures, employee-owned companies, the foundation-owned corporations of northern Europe, and a variety of cooperatives on every continent. These models vary enormously in size and mission, but they are significant for the same reason: Together, they represent an evolutionary step in the development of corporate structure.
>> Read article
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Repairing Is The New Recycling!
"Stop Recycling, Start Repairing!", says Core's favorite Platform21. After Hacking IKEA (see photos), and a bunch of other great projects, new design activism is coming up!
The all new Repair Manifesto touches the joy of fixing things, sharing ingenious repairing tips and tricks in order to oppose to a throwaway culture and to celebrate repair as the new recycling.
If you want to support the Platform21 people in making repairing cool again then send your projects to info[at]platform21.com and you might see your project featured at their website or upcoming exhibition. Show opens on March 13, so get inspired, get started.
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Taking Space Coffee to the Next Level
We featured astronaut Don Pettit's inventive space sippy-cup last fall and now see that coroflot member Travis Baldwin may be working with Don on developing it further.
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Students design cockpit of superfast vehicle
And finally, if we were test pilot/drivers slated to drive a land vehicle at speeds of 1,000mph, We'd want the cockpit designed by professionals, not students. But world land speed record challenger Andy Green is confident that the product design students of University of the West of England are up to the task. Twenty of UWE's best worked on the cockpit for the Bloodhound SSC, aformentioned land vehicle:
World land speed challenger Andy Green, OBE tried out a mock-up of the cockpit he will use in his 1000 mph record attempt in 2011 at the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol) recently. Twenty product design students designed and built the cockpit test rig, taking into account the ergonomics of the driving position and relationship of steering, controls, seating and pedals.
Product Design Senior Lecturer David Henshall said, "The test rig means fine adjustments to the position of all components can be measured and fed into a computer, so that the cockpit functions as it should do as the driver travels ten miles in 85 seconds."
Student Hywel Vaughan said, "Everything had to be spot on. Andy Green's eye line needed to be dead on the 4 degree mark. Any lower and he wouldn't be able to see over the front of the car, any higher and it could interfere with the aerodynamics."
Andy Green said: "There isn't a book to build a car like this and the students can't just look at their dad's car for guidance. The only requirement is to have four wheels. To be faced with a blank sheet of paper is quite frightening. The students at UWE have done incredibly well."
For more information, click here.
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Special thanks to Mark Vanderbeeken for his contribution to this week's newsletter!
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