Core77 Coverage from Milan!
Core77 was live in Milan last week, collaborating with Italian furniture manufacturer Lago and taking part in their Appartamento project. Staff of Lago and Core77 were living together in the apartment for the duration of the design week, sharing the kitchen, shower and wardrobes. Core77 correspondents Andrea Paustenbaugh, Brit Leissler, Nate Silverstein, and Greg Buntain are continuing our extensive coverage of all the hot happenings at the fair and surrounding events. In addition, we invited design luminaries to be interviewed in our space - creating a set of "post-futuristic dialogues". Look for continuing blog posts, videos, and galleries all week!

>>View all Core77 Milan Design Week 09 Coverage Here

The Creative Confab comes to NYC next month
The Coroflot Creative Confab is a combined panel discussion and networking event, in which creative professionals and hiring directors come together to hear a panel discussion on the state of creative employment, and find out who is hiring and what they're looking for. The first installment in Austin, which posted video footage recently, was an excellent start, featuring an instructive hour-long talk with design pros from Dell, frogdesign and California College of the Arts, and plenty of post-talk business card passing.

So we're happy to announce that the second Confab, in New York City, has officially released its schedule and panel list. In a nod to the tremendous presence of interaction, new media and marketing-related design that goes on in the city, the panelists consist of four designers sitting comfortably at the forefront of these fields. They are:

Liz Danzico, chair of the MFA Interaction Design program at the School of Visual Arts

Michael Lebowitz, CEO of digital media studio Big Spaceship

Johnny Vulkan, partner at innovative branding agency Anomaly

Judy Wert, founder and executive recruiter at creative hiring agency Wert & Co.

The event will once again be moderated by Coroflot Editorial Director Carl Alviani; topics will be similar to those from Austin -- the state of creative hiring, the changing requirements for career advancement in the creative professions, and plenty of first-hand anecdotes -- but with a greater focus on design for interaction and digital media. A wide array of representatives from some of New York's most creative companies will be on hand as well, to answer questions about their own talent needs and make contacts with local designers.

The Confab will take place at the beginning of NYC Design Week, on Friday, May 15th, from 2 to 5 pm at the Art Directors Club in Manhattan. For further information and to purchase tickets, check out the Confab page on Coroflot.

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Nationwide cardboard chair design comp picks finalists
Six cardboard-chair-designing finalists have been chosen for the 2009 Chair Affair Design Competition, sponsored by the American Institute of Architecture Students and the International Corrugated Packaging Foundation. Next week all six will be on display at the AIAS 2009 National Convention and Design Exposition in San Francisco, after which first, second and third prizes will be awarded.

Above is ID student Jonathan Coop's design, which was made by repeatedly stamp-cutting the same shape and gluing it together at a range of offsets.

Click here for more info on the competition.

Updated helmet design pays attention to the way they're actually used
One of the more interesting details in Mark Bowden's book "Blackhawk Down" is that the older, more experienced Special Forces soldiers did not wear ballistic Kevlar helmets, opting instead for plastic Pro-Tec skateboard helmets. The latter were more lightweight, more comfortable and did protect from the head bumps a Special Forces troop was bound to encounter while crawling around in tight spaces, although they offered zero protection from bullets. In short, they were willing to sacrifice safety for comfort.

Similarly, in New York during summer you'll often see messengers whizzing around on scooters with their helmets perched on top of their heads, like bulbous beanies. Obviously it offers little protection that way, but it is significantly cooler, temperature-wise.

Apparently messengers do the same thing in Brazil, and Sao Paulo design firm Questto Design noticed. Their design of the Capacete E8 helmet, produced by Brazilian firm EBF, has a hinged lower fascia that can be tilted up and out of the way, providing some temperature relief while ensconcing the rest of your noggin.

via josh spear

Hester Vlaming's decidedly different shoe designs
Dutch footwear designer Hester Vleming, after spending 17 years designing shoes for others, is now striking out on her own with her own line and company. See more of her unusual shoes on Coroflot.

Pilotfish's bendy music phone concept
The last time we brought you news of Pilotfish, it was back in '06, following their Onyx touchscreen cell phone concept, which unfortunately never saw actual production. Perhaps things will be different with their new Ondo, a flexible (literally) music phone currently making the blog rounds.

Change by Design
In this upcoming book, entitled "Change By Design - how design thinking transforms organizations and inspires innovation," Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO, shows how the techniques and strategies of design belong at every level of business.

The myth of innovation is that brilliant ideas leap fully formed from the minds of geniuses. The reality is that most innovations come from a process of rigorous examination through which great ideas are identified and developed before being realized as new offerings and capabilities.

This book introduces design thinking, the collaborative process by which the designer's sensibilities and methods are employed to match people's needs with what is technically feasible and a viable business strategy. In short, design thinking converts need into demand. It's a human-centered approach to problem solving that helps people and organizations become more innovative and creative.

Design thinking is not just applicable to so-called creative industries or people who work in the design field. It's an approach that has been used by organizations such as Kaiser Permanente to increase the quality of patient care by re-examining the ways that their nurses manage shift change or Kraft to rethink supply chain management. This book is for creative business leaders who seek to infuse design thinking into every level of an organization, product, or service to drive new alternatives for business and society.

Michael DiTullo's Advice for Students
"There is no better time to be a great designer, and no worst time to be a mediocre one." Read the rest here.

Nicolas Allard's mind-bendering renderings
It's hard not to like Nicolas Allard's sketching style, which ranges from crisp to frenetic, and his impressionistic vehicle and vehicle interior renderings blur the line between art and design. See his full book on Coroflot.

"A massive cybernetic hemorrhage in ways of knowing the world"
Bruce Sterling's cover story for Interactions Magazine is a recommended read:

"We have entered an unimagined culture. In this world of search engines and cross-links, of keywords and networks, the solid smokestacks of yesterday's disciplines have blown out. Instead of being armored in technique, or sheltered within subculture, design and science fiction have become like two silk balloons, two frail, polymorphic pockets of hot air, floating in a generally tainted cultural atmosphere.

These two inherently forward-looking schools of thought and action do seem blinkered somehow-not unimaginative, but unable to imagine effectively. A bigger picture, the new century's grander narrative, its synthesis, is eluding them. Could it be because they were both born with blind spots, with unexamined assumptions hardwired in 80 years ago?

There is much thoughtful talk of innovation, of transformation, of the collaborative and the transdisciplinary. These are buzzwords, language that does not last.

What we are really experiencing now is a massive cybernetic hemorrhage in ways of knowing the world."

>> Read article

Designers Accord Philadelphia Town Hall: Reflections and Photographs
We've got two post-scripts from last week's Designers Accord Town Hall Meeting at Bresslergroup in Philadelphia. Thanks to Rita Cavicchia and Margie Gorman for their thoughts, and thanks to Elysa Soffer and Peter Camburn for their photographs!

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Peugeot Design Comp winner's concept comes to life (sort of)
Colombian designer Carlos Arturo Torres Tovar won last year's Peugeot Design Competition; as part of his prize, he now gets to see a full-scale mockup of his concept, now on display at the Shanghai Motor Show. (The other part of his prize wasn't too shabby either--a check for 10,000 Euros and an X-Box.) Check out Autoblog's gallery of the winning design here.

Makita marketing idea is full of holes
And finally, pointillism by power tool: This unusual Makita billboard hopes to create a memorable message by using what looks to be a 3/8" bit to put 20,081 holes in a white surface. Talk about drilling something into our heads.

via toolcrib

Special thanks to Mark Vanderbeeken, Rita Cavicchia, Margie Gorman, Elysa Soffer, and Peter Camburn 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

Core77 is in Milan! Come by and see us!
Core77 is proud to have an awesome team on the streets for this year's Milan Design Week, with Andrea Paustenbaugh, Brit Leissler, Nate Silverstein, and Greg Buntain covering the best from the Italian design extravaganza!

In addition, we are delighted to announce that Core77 is collaborating with the amazing Italian furniture manufacturer Lago, taking part in their Appartamento project. Staff of Lago and Core77 will be living together in the apartment for the duration of the design week, sharing the kitchen, shower and wardrobes. Some will leave to work on the fair in the morning and others will "stay at home" to welcome "off-show" visitors during the day. Core77 will have it offices on-site, creating and producing their Milan design week coverage live from the Appartamento. In addition to our usual extensive coverage of all the hot happenings at the fair and surrounding events, this year we will invite people to be interviewed in our space, reporting live daily from the Appartamento project.

With these interviews, we are seeking to create a set of "post-futurist manifesto" dialogues, featuring some of the most provocative thought leaders in the world of design discussing where design is headed, what its new opportunities are, and what potential futures may be facing us.

Watch the Core77 blog, filling up live, while the project is taking shape. And if you're in Milan, please stop by to visit us! The address is via Tortona 21 MILANO, from April 22 through 27. [MAP] Caio!

New York City Creative Confab announced!
The Creative Confab is a combined panel discussion and networking event, in which creative professionals and hiring directors come together to hear a panel discussion on the state of creative employment, and find out who is hiring and what they're looking for. The first installment in Austin, which just posted video footage recently, was an excellent start, featuring an instructive hour-long talk with design pros from Dell, frogdesign and California College of the Arts, and plenty of post-talk business card passing.

So we're happy to announce that the second Confab, in New York City, has officially released its schedule and panel list. In a nod to the tremendous presence of interaction, new media and marketing-related design that goes on in the city, the panelists consist of four designers sitting comfortably at the forefront of these fields. They are:

Liz Danzico, chair of the MFA Interaction Design program at the School of Visual Arts

Michael Lebowitz, CEO of digital media studio Big Spaceship

Johnny Vulkan, partner at innovative branding agency Anomaly

Judy Wert, founder and executive recruiter at creative hiring agency Wert & Co.

I will once again have the distinct pleasure of moderating what promises to be a fascinating discussion. Topics will be similar to those from Austin -- the state of creative hiring, the changing requirements for career advancement in the creative professions, and plenty of first-hand anecdotes -- but with a greater focus on design for interaction and digital media. A wide array of representatives from some of New York's most creative companies will be on hand as well, to answer questions about their own talent needs and make contacts with local designers.

The Confab will take place on Friday, May 15th, from 2 to 5 pm at the Art Directors Club in Manhattan. For further information and to purchase tickets, check out the Confab page here on Coroflot.

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Motorola's handheld MC17 computer awarded thrice
While Motorola's fortunes might be declining, at least one of their products is being honored for its design: Their MC17 mobile computer for shoppers, which has racked up no less than three industrial design awards (the International Design Excellence award, the iF Product Design award and the Good Design award).

The MC17 is intended to let shoppers "scan items, check prices, locate complementary items, access personalized promotions, and create gift and wish lists" and has been "well-received by our customers," says a Motorola exec. Our question is, where are those consumers, i.e. where can we see the device in action? We've not spotted any in New York nor on a recent trip to the UK; holler in the comments if you've seen the device in action.

Nathan Mills' bentwood picnic table
Am heavily digging Sydney-based Nathan Mills' "Schlicht" table-bench combo, made from a single piece of material and bent to shape. Check out the rest of his book, which spans everything from package design to power tools, on Coroflot.

Maker Faire Africa is happening! August 13-15 in Accra, Ghana
Now this would be an event worth seeing.

It was only last October that we first reported proposals of hosting a Maker Faire-type event that would bring together the considerable home-grown technological developments of sub-Saharan Africa. In the six months since, organizers have not only decided it was a goal worth pursuing, they've also set a date and location, obtained permission from Make Magazine to ally themselves with the established Maker Faire brand, and assembled an impressive team to make it happen, including Emeka Okafor, director of TED Africa, and Eric Hersman, founder of Afrigadget.

Like previous Maker Faires in the US and Europe, Maker Faire Africa would serve as a showcase for independently developed technologies, hacks and projects from amateur and small-scale makers. Unlike those events, the Ghana Faire will serve as a chance for many of the attendees to meet in person for the first time, and exchange ideas that have been regionally confined until now. Given the broad array of locally appropriate solutions we've seen over the past couple of years on Afrigadget and elsewhere, getting these guys together in a single place could be genuinely revolutionary, especially if vendors able to support their activities with improved resources are included.

Time does seem a bit rushed for an undertaking so ambitious, so any readers interested in publicizing, sponsoring or attending what's sure to be an unprecedented and fascinating few days are encouraged to visit the official Maker Faire Africa site to learn more. For the merely curious, profiles of African makers who'll be attending the Faire are up there as well.

New Puma VS new Nike VS new Adidas
"PUMA City, a unique retail and event space made exclusively from shipping containers. Two levels of retail and one level bar, PUMA City is launching in Boston as part of the upcoming Volvo Ocean Race, an around the world sailing event."

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Jeremy Chen's digital camera for the elderly
Shanghai-based Jeremy Chen's Elder People Snapper is the camera I'd like to buy for my parents: It's simple, clean-looking and chunky enough to grab onto. See the rest of Chen's work, including a photo printer designed to team up with the Elder camera, on Coroflot.

Philadelphia Designers Accord Town Hall Meeting on Sustainability
If you are in Pennsylvania next week don't miss the Philadelphia Designers Accord Town Hall Meeting on Sustainability:

Sign up now to discuss sustainable design practices. Local members of The Designers Accord are calling all design professionals to action. The Designer’s Accord is a global coalition of design leaders working together to create positive environmental impact.

SCHEDULE: 6:00-6:30 Socializing, networking. Light refreshments will be served. 6:30-6:45: Update on the Designers Accord Movement. 6:45-8:00: Unconference format, where up to 10 people have 5 minute slot to present ideas, cases, provocations. Suggested topics include sustainable business practices, product life cycle analysis, and knowledge sharing platforms. Presenters sign up at the event. 8:00-9:00: Identify key themes based on locally relevant issues, and the content of the presentations, and conduct short breakout groups to discuss the major themes identified.

Admission is free, but space is limited, so RSVP to esoffer {at} bresslergroup.com.

Work from Hiroshi Ishii's Tangible Media Group at MIT. From the left, Glume modular modeling medium, Senspectra modeling toolkit, and Topobo programmable robot toy.

Physical pixels: design for the not so near future
Last week, the Boston's Hynes Convention Center housed the CHI conference, an annual event which showcases the world's best and brightest in Computer Human Interface Design. Though by its nature this conference often very software focused, this year's was very concerned with the physical, and mobile devices, wearable computing and tabletop surface displays played a larger role than ever before.

Amongst the many presentations of hybrid software-hardware experiments and studies into the practicalities of interface development was one highly conceptual presentation/panel entitled "Eek! A Mouse! Organic User Interfaces: Tangible, Transitive Materials and Programmable Reality" where heavy hitters presented their own visions of how computing devices will move away from the keyboard and mouse and manifest in unexpected forms. "Industrial design is the new interface design" was the mantra of the week, and this panel was composed of researchers whose passion lies in the tangible manifestation of dynamic data. According to the panel, which included famed researchers Hiroshi Iishi and Pattie Maes from the MIT Media Lab, along with Seth Goldstein of Carnegie Mellon University, Sony's Jun Rekimoto and media artist Sachiko Kodama, data-laden, sentient, computational devices will be embedded in the very fabric of everyday objects.

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[photo credit: Jeffrey Sass]

Kyocera's flexible, folding phone concept
Kyocera's EOS folding concept phone incorporates a flexible OLED screen, changing its form factor from a clamshell into something more closely resembling a wallet or clutch-purse. Explains Kyocera industrial designer Susan McKinney:

The concept Eos envisions a future where we have a more humanistic relationship with our phones. Appealing to our haptic senses, a soft, semi-rigid polymer skin surrounds a flexible OLED display. The metaphor of a "living" skin was used for its notions of protection and constant evolution, providing a heightened user experience.

Shape memory allows keys to morph up from its surface when needed and fade away when not in use. The flexibility of the screen allows for greater adaptability of form and interaction – it maintains a compact shape (the size of a small wallet) for simple phone calls, and unfolds to reveal a large widescreen display. The device feeds off of our physical interaction with it, translating kinetic energy into an electric charge via an array of nano-scale piezoelectric generators. The more we interact with Eos, the more energy it creates - without using batteries.

Though the Kyocera future concepts are still in their early design stages, the design teams from San Diego and Bangalore are exploring many different ways and possibilities of infusing some of the concept ideas into their near future lineup of phones and devices.

Journal Review: Design and Culture, a New Journal from the Design Studies Forum
The Design Studies Forum has started a new journal called Design and Culture, dedicated to investigating the way that design impacts and is impacted by culture, nurturing the study of design history and criticism, and encouraging better communication between the professional and academic design communities. The journal is published three times annually by Berg Publishers in March, July and November. The first issue was released in March, and the contents of this inaugural issue have been posted online at no charge.

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1 Hour Design Challenge Highlight: 'Seed Card' let's you plant your business card and grow a flower!
The entries are pouring in for this month's 1 Hour Design Challenge: Business Card Hacks, where designers and makers are invited to create ingenious items out of ordinary business cards. The concept above, "Seed Card," is a twice-ingenious design. The business card is part seed paper, part paper. You tear off the seed paper part and plant it in some soil, then use the remaining portion of the card as a plant flag with the card holder's info on one side and the flower type on the back. Says designer Greenman, "We typically use flowers to think of, or remind others of us, so I thought it was appropriate." Nice.

View all the 1 Hour Design Challenge Business Card Hacks right here, and upload your own. The 5 top designs will win 1000 free business cards from our sponsor, UPrinting.com.

>>ENTER NOW!<<

Persuasive design for sustainability
There's a difference between green engineering and green design. Green engineering reduces people's ecological impact without requiring them to change their habits--for instance, replacing coal power with wind power; the consumer still just flicks the light switch, and their lights turn on just the same. Green design reduces people's ecological impact by changing their habits--for instance, better urban design lets people walk to work rather than driving to work. Everything has a user interface, even cities. How easy is it to find transit, how close does it go to where you want and when you want? Is there a corner store a block away, or just a big-box store five miles away?

Package design, good and bad
While the BBC has an article up looking at the "most egregious offender in the matter of excess packaging"--that's Easter Egg purveyors--the 2009 American Package Design Awards look at the other end of the spectrum. The awards cover 11 categories ranging from Food and Beauty to Sports and P.O.P.; above are two of Target's winners in the Structural/ Technological innovation category. Click here to check 'em all out.

Luxury-goods makers embrace sustainability and 'slow fashion'
The International Herald Tribune organised a conference a couple of weeks ago on sustainable luxury, and according to an article published in the newspaper itself "leading industry executives say that they are trying to change the image of the luxury goods business by embracing new environmental and labor standards."

Many in the industry now speak of the need to go from a world that had embraced a concept of "fast fashion" -- where dresses or handbags are designed and produced quickly to meet the latest fad and then thrown away the next season -- to one that embraces "slow fashion," where goods are made by hand and meant to endure for decades.

This nascent "slow fashion" movement has taken its cues from the now-popular "slow food" movement, which -- besides emphasizing slow cooking methods -- has also made efforts to support small, local farmers and to promote the use of local, seasonal produce.

>> Read article

Pedro Gomes' communication concepts
Lisbon-based Pedro Gomes'
neato On Time Headset System is a bracelet-based cell phone concept with an integrated bluetooth headset; his IDAT concept, designed for hospitals, is a modular system of patient records that can be carried around, plugged in and down- or uploaded, and projected onto flat surfaces (think X-rays without the wall-mounted lightbox). See more of Gomes' concept work on Coroflot.

Blast from the past: Hi-tech workstation from 1995
And finally, Gary Fulkerson, who runs a design/engineering firm by the name of The Core Ideation (no affiliation with Core77), sent us these pics of The Webcruiser, a workstation circa 1995. ("Sorry about the mullet," Fulkerson writes, "it was in style back then.")

We love how bulky the monitors looked back then--the workstation almost looks like a James-Bond-villain-esque contraption designed to kill the occupant using the monitor, gravity, and some kind of release switch.

Special thanks to Lisa Smith, Carla Diana, and Jeremy Faludi 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

Porsche Design running shoe with suspension

Here in London is the first time we've actually seen Porsche Design's Bounce S running shoe (sorry--"trainer") in real life. The insane-looking kick has metal springs and lever arms built into its suspension and is designed to actually deliver increases in propulsion, rather than merely cushioning your footfalls. No word on whether it actually works--the darn things cost more than my ticket back home.

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3D CAD News and Tips: special Autodesk Tech Day edition

Conveniently located near to Core's Portland office, Autodesk's Manufacturing Solutions Headquarters in Lake Oswego, OR opened its doors last week to a dozen or so CAD nerds and bloggers (including Core77's), for a preview day slightly reminiscent of high school. Dubbed "Manufacturing Tech Day," the schedule had us herding from room to room for a series of seven hour-long sessions in which the product leads for Alias, Inventor, AutoCAD Mechanical, and a few other packages sprinted us through the newest bits of each program for 2010. Here's what we gleaned for the Industrial Design community.

ALIAS
Yes, it really runs on a Mac. We told you that already, but here it is in picture form. That's the Mac. And that's Alias. And it only crashed once.

Improved interoperability between Alias and Inventor. Also something we mentioned before, but it was nice to see another live demo. With the compressed timeline, we only got a few minutes of Alias + Inventor interchange, but it's reasonably impressive stuff. The demo consisted of free-form modification of the vent shapes on the helmet model above, as a set of Alias surfaces, then switching over to Inventor and watching the thoroughly detailed solid model update with the new shapes, including fillets and draft. This is similar to the passing of information down the stack in solid modelers with surface functionality, such as Pro/E and SolidWorks, but with Alias' surfacing capability. There are always limitations to how much you can stress a system like this, but it looks at first glance to be about as robust as a single parametric modeler approach.

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Core77 wins 'Best Design Website' on Treehugger's Inaugural Best of Green Awards!

Core77 is very proud to have been selected as "Best Design Website" in their first-ever Best of Green: Design + Architecture awards. We are humbled to be in such great company, and honored to be on the list. Thank you Treehugger!

Oh: Most unexpected "best of" pick in the bunch?
Best Material: Dirt

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Frog design's super Social Security card

"Of the three forms of identification we have in the states--the other two being the passport and driver's license--[the Social Security card is] the one that unlocks your life," says Frog designer Laura Richardson. To that end the design firm presents the Troika, an aluminum SS card with a multifunctional screen.

"By combining the familiarity and proportions of a standard ID card with the durability of a water-resistant, flexible screen and the security of biometrics, [a card like this] could revolutionize the future of identification," says Richardson.

Two things are of note here: One, this is a concept design only, cooked up specifically for a Forbes.com "Special Report on Identity." Two, it is ironic that while this card is intended to be a superior vehicle for the delivery of crucial information, the very article that presents it provides no legend or explanation of those five numbers on the photo above. But from what we gather, it's like this:

1. Thumbprint reader, or thumbprint storage pad to be scanned by a reader?
2. Changing screen
3. Buttons that change the screen from SS to Driver's License to Passport
4. Some type of protective rim
5. Aluminum body

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SLAP Widget set. a) Keypads. b) Knob. c) Slider. d) Keyboard.

SLAP Widgets: virtual controls you can touch

Ever since multi touch technology made its way into our lives through public displays and handheld devices, we have been in a state of infatuation with virtual controls. We pinch photos, flick menus, and spin maps around a virtual globe with ease. As seductive as these experiences are, there are still times when the tactile feedback and accuracy of physical objects are still preferable, and researchers at RWTH Aachen University in Germany in conjunction with UC San Diego have created the Silicone Illuminated Active Peripherals, or "SLAP Widgets" system to try to get a better handle on it.

SLAP Widgets are real live plastic and silicone objects that are used in conjunction with a multi-touch table to allow users to control interface values through physical push buttons, sliders, knobs, keypads and keyboards. When a widget is placed atop the surface projection, a camera can read markers located underneath it in order to identify and locate where it is. The system then projects a contextually appropriate virtual control (such as a color-coded button, slider, dial locations or querty keyboard) onto the surface, and the clear plastic widget comes to life with the bright, animated forms that appear illuminated on the screen underneath it. The user can then manipulate movable parts, such as moving the slider knob or spinning the dial, and the display responds to user input in real time. In other words, when text input is needed, a keyboard can be placed on the surface in order to invoke a keyboard display underneath it. Markers can be read as keystrokes are pressed, and the user gets the benefit or dynamic, contextual input along with the tangible feedback of pressing real, physical keys.

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Nokia's new website helps globetrotters travel green

Nokia has a great green travel resource that is up in beta mode called Green Explorer, writes Jaymi Heimbuch on treehugger.

"It is geared specifically for people who want to travel in an eco-friendly fashion and provide their own travel tips, and the site has quite a few features that can make it a top resource when it comes out of beta.

Green Explorer has been up and running since the beginning of December. It features travel news, eco-centered information about destinations, tips from fellow green travelers, easy carbon offsets, mobile device access, and loads more.

Nokia is adding this service not because they make any money off it, nor because it ties in very strongly with their mobile device manufacturing. They're adding it because it's the right thing to do. The company is working to come up with many services like this that focus on the environment.

>> Read article

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iriver's new P7

The latest rectangle-that-goes-in-a-dock-and-improves-your-life is iriver's P7, a portable media viewer that lets you view photos, watch movies/TV shows and listen to music. Apple kind of already makes one of these things--with a special added feature that lets you, like, talk to other people--but P7 proponents will point out that its larger 4.3" screen should provide a better viewing experience. No arguments from me there; I swear 30 Rock is less funny when it's viewed small.

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Winners of the 2009 Medical Design Excellence Awards

One area of industrial design that cannot afford to be frivolous is medical device design. The 32 winners of the 2009 Medical Design Excellence Awards competition are all serious pieces of hardware, ranging from dental lasers and anti-germ keyboards to diagnostic tools and laboratory equipment.

All of the winners will be on display this June at the Medical Design & Manufacturing East 2009 Conference and Exposition being held in New York. You can take a sneak peek at the winners here, on the MDEA site, which also has archives of previous years' winners dating back to 1998.

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Pininfarina to design interiors of high-speed Eurostar trains

In a sign of the times, Pininfarina, the world-class design house that is best known for its work in the car industry, with prestige marques such as Ferrari and Maserati as well as volume manufacturers including Peugeot, Alfa Romeo, Ford and Volvo, is now embarking on more environmentally sustainable initiatives.

Not only are they developing the revolutionary, electric BlueCar that is due to go into production in 2011, they have also just been tasked with the design of the interiors of the high-speed Eurostar train fleet that links Britain and mainland Europe.

>> Read press release
>> Read article (The Guardian)

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Alissa Walker + Rachel Abrams Postopolis Review

Alissa Walker and Rachel Abrams debrief over at UrbanOmnibus on last week's Postopolis in Los Angeles. Here's a taste:

A: I think it represented a very interesting convergence of information and urbanism. I think blogging as a phenomenon is kind of boring to talk about, but what it represents is really just a faster way of disseminating good ideas about where and how we live (and Twitter is maybe even better). Maybe the point of all this is that we're able to affect cities more intelligently by understanding them better, and now, thanks to our ability to share this information more efficiently, we will? What do you think?

R: I absolutely agree that the draw for me was far more the subject matter, than the format - I'm taking the 'it's the content, stupid' approach, as usual. Converging on shared interests creates community, and that's one reason I made the trip out here - to participate, instead of just reading about it. When I've described Postopolis to others, I've made a point of saying it's about urbanism and technology: the intersection of physical place and information space, not just about blogging about cities.

That said, there's definitely a quality to this that's defined by the format - something appealing about seeing some of my favorite online foragers coming out from behind the screen to put faces to what and who they've gathered on their blogs. I mean, when I scroll through archive lists of months and years of posts, my mind boggles that there's a real person, with bills to pay and a life to lead, behind these editorial ziggurats that the rest of us gobble up and trade with others. But more impressive than the discipline of maintaining that curatorial role is what they've documented: Yes, your idea that we're able to impose ourselves on the city by understanding it better is key; how better representations of cities improve our understanding, experience and engagement with cities is of particular interest to me - I'm here for the dynamic data visualizers, the graphic storytellers, the spoken word poets, pretty much anyone who forsakes PowerPoint.

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The Ripple Effect: Tangible object philanthropy

The Ripple Effect site, created for Washington State University's Ripple Effect program, gives visitors an alternative to "giving money." Designed by Hornall Anderson, the site uses just the perfect amount of Flash for bit of delight, then gets quickly to the goods. Here's the pitch:

The site invites visitors to "purchase" tangible gifts such as a goat, a water well, or even a seed kit, for people in under-developed areas and provides interesting facts on how each donation will make a real difference to families, communities and the broader population.

...

It's simple. Let's say you purchase a crop seeds kit for $32. The benefits of that $32 are multiplied threefold. The crops provide a family with needed nutrition, income that improves access to education and health care, and the security that comes from diversified farming.

The "How it works" piece in the learn section, but you can get started right at the homepage.

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Increase Your Effectiveness in Meetings by 10%

There's a strong fascination cum infatuation with semi-secret rules that explain why we do what we do. Even In Treatment uses Gladwell (the form's biggest popularizer) to forward a common misconception about therapy while creating dramatic tension.

In a recent counter-intuitive example, a study indicates that people ordering from a menu that includes healthy and less-healthy options will feel more free to choose the less-healthy option. The theory isn't totally clear (perhaps a vicarious "I've been good" hit comes from the presence of those other items) and its extensibility to other choice behaviors isn't at all clear.

And in the "no duh" category, another study that looked at radiologists found that "when a digital photograph was attached to a patient’s file, radiologists provided longer, more meticulous reports. And they said they felt more connected to the patients, whom they seldom meet face to face." Although I wonder if the folks at the passport office, with their surplus of mortifying headshots, would support this study, it really just makes sense and could be applied to all sorts of intermediated interactions, both asynchronous (i.e., mortgage applications) and synchronous (ie., tech support chat). For further study, does an avatar or a stock photo work as well as photograph? Do other biographical details work as well? And how long does this effect last?

If you're into anecdotes and theories that can help you explain, predict, and otherwise impress those around you, check out Lone Gunman, Overcoming Bias and Freakonomics .

Meanwhile, we're ready to casually cite the classic marketing/business/social science examples, such as the Add An Egg phenomenon, the Kitty Genovese effect, how a waiter's tip can decline precipitously based solely on the waiting-time for the bill (citation anyone?) and the Hawthorne Effect.

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Direct Digital Manufacturing as seen in BMW motorcycle concept

Lighter, smaller, more agile: That was the mandate that Machineart Industrial Design followed for their BMW R1200GSM concept bike, which was designed used Direct Digital Manufacturing techniques:

GSM body parts were modeled in Alias Studio Tools and SolidWorks 3D CAD software, and produced in ABS-M30 plastic directly from 3D CAD data using two Fortus 3D Production Systems from Stratasys.

Fortus systems use FDM, the leading technology in 3D printing and 3D production. Fortus systems eliminate the need to make tooling to mold plastic parts and allow easy revision and customization from one set of parts to the next.

A total of 16 parts were made in the large Fortus 400mc and Fortus 900mc machines, including two parts that served as the female halves of molds used to cast polyurethane foam seat cushions--an example of direct digital manufacturing of manufacturing tools.

The lower cowl near the exhaust pipes is produced from PPSF (polyphenylsulfone) a heat-resistant material option for the FDM process. This process enabled making ABS-M30 body parts in less than a month, saving many months of time over traditional prototyping methods.

To see photos of the design process, click here.

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Luxury-goods makers embrace sustainability and 'slow fashion'

The International Herald Tribune organised a conference a couple of weeks ago on sustainable luxury, and according to an article published in the newspaper itself "leading industry executives say that they are trying to change the image of the luxury goods business by embracing new environmental and labor standards."

Many in the industry now speak of the need to go from a world that had embraced a concept of "fast fashion" -- where dresses or handbags are designed and produced quickly to meet the latest fad and then thrown away the next season -- to one that embraces "slow fashion," where goods are made by hand and meant to endure for decades.

This nascent "slow fashion" movement has taken its cues from the now-popular "slow food" movement, which -- besides emphasizing slow cooking methods -- has also made efforts to support small, local farmers and to promote the use of local, seasonal produce.

>> Read article

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Scott Amron's new product: Selling new soap in old bottles

And finally, we're obviously big fans of Scott Amron: His award-winning toothbrush/waterfountain, offswitch/coathook, magnet/moneyclip, and our favorite so far, disappearing trash/trashcan. Now the King of the Hybrids brings us New Soap/Old Bottle, a product/service that buys brandname liquid soap and packages it up in reused bottles. Kinda smart. Here's the backstory:

We sell brand name liquid soap packaged in old plastic soda bottles, plastic water bottles and glass beer bottles to help clean up our environments. Each bottle is cleaned, sanitized and processed for reuse as packaging for your favorite brand of liquid soap. Big companies aren't going to do this on their own. So we'll do it for them. We buy name brand liquid soap by the barrel and package it in old bottles here in America.

Pretty great idea. 'Til he gets shut down, of course. (Maybe that disappearing trash can will come in handy then!)

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Special thanks to Carla Diana, 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.

Design is the Problem: An exclusive excerpt from Nathan Shedroff's new book on sustainable design practice

This week marks the launch of Nathan Shedroff's latest book, Design is the Problem: The Future of Design Must Be Sustainable, published by Rosenfeld Media. The book is a must-read for all designers and businesspeople interested in sustainability and creating value, and Core77 is proud to publish the first excerpt from the book...fittingly, its introduction. Make sure to check out our interview with Nathan Shedroff, where he talks in more depth about the objectives of the book, his thoughts on design and business, and the opportunities for the future.

Also, Core77 readers will receive 15% off the purchase of the book, so read the introduction, read the interview, and then buy the thing for yourself, your staff, your clients, your students, and every other design and businessperson on your giftlist! Enter code CORE77 at the rosenfeldmedia.com site.

Introduction
This isn't a book about sustainable design. Instead, it's a book about how the design industry can approach the world in a more sustainable way. Design is interconnected—to engineering, management, production, customer experiences, and to the planet. Discussing and comprehending the relationship between design and sustainability requires a systems perspective to see these relationships clearly.

I hate discussions that start with definitions, but the truth is that the terms "sustainable" and "design" at the beginning of the 21st century are both malleable and subjective enough to warrant an explanation. However, I'll try to get the definitions out of the way quickly and efficiently to get to the larger discussion.

>> continue

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Design is the Problem: An Interview with Nathan Shedroff

Core77's Editor-in-chief Allan Chochinov sat down with Nathan (well, email was more sustainable, being on opposite coasts) to chat about the book, the challenges ahead, the culture of business, and the amazing opportunities for designers right now.

Chochinov: Let's start with the title, Nathan. "Design Is the Problem" is certainly a wonderful provocation, and then you follow it up with a subtitle imperative: "The Future of Design Must be Sustainable." I know that the first publisher you worked with balked at the title. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Nathan Shedroff: I'm grateful to Lou Rosenfeld who accepted the book and title. I think he's still a little concerned that designers won't find the book though.

The first publisher complained that the title "didn't say what the book was about." They envisioned that the book was about sustainable design, which is only partly true. For sure, the book discusses sustainability—what it is, why it's important, how to approach it, and how to design for it. For those already on this path, this book can help with that journey; we'll get them with the subtitle.

But, I didn't want to only attract designers already interested in sustainability. Design is the Problem is a provocation to the designers (and engineers and managers, etc.) who aren't yet ready to talk about sustainability and I want to draw them into a discussion about the contribution design has had in promoting consumption and the potential role Design can have in creating a more sustainable world. It's a discussion the Design world needs to have because sustainability isn't merely a few more things to add to the design checklist. If some are a little put-off or challenged by the title, they should jump into the conversation. Designers need to take a larger, systems-perspective to their work and to the world and a book like, Sustainable Design for Dummies, isn't going to challenge them enough to change their mindsets.

>> continue

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Advertisement

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New 1 Hour Design Challenge! Business Card Hacks

We've just opened up our latest 1 Hour Design Challenge, this time asking designers to come up with Business Card Hacks. Here's the brief:

Business cards, those ubiquitous 2" x 3.5" pieces of paper stock, can be the perfect vehicle for invention. Bend one and it becomes a chopstick rest, add some paper clips and a bulldog clip and create an office pet, cut some notches in a bunch and you've got a versatile construction toy.

This 1 Hour Design Challenge invites designers to come up with a new use for the business card. The only condition is that it's gotta be 3D in some way. You can add materials or remove materials, but it should be obvious that your design started out as a business card. Post sketches of your idea, or if you can construct it in an hour, upload photos of your creation. Or embed a YouTube video for that how-to vibe.

The top 5 entries will each receive 1000 free business cards from our sponsor, UPrinting. Guest judge is Gino Orlandi.

>>Enter your submission here<<

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Book Review: New Skateboard Graphics, by J. Namdev Hardisty

Graphics are such an integral part of skateboard culture that at first the blonde woodgrain on the cover of New Skateboard Graphics barely registers as the maple blank of a board. Nearly 300 decks are printed on the inside front and rear folds of the book on an orderly white background but the colorful little ovoids could pass for children's Band-Aids at a distance. While I'm sure that early attempts at mastering the tailslide have sent more than a few kids home with Scrappy Doo bandages, J. Namdev Hardisty's book demonstrates just how far skate culture (and design) has progressed since the green Vision Gator that left me bleeding more than once somewhere in the eighties.

For a graphic designer or a product designer interested in applique, New Skateboard Graphics is an eyeful. In the foreword, Michael Leon explains the realities of the modern sales environment where the consumer tends to observe the boards with the bottom graphics visible at a distance on a wall or in miniature in a catalog. Hardisty follows up with a short essay on the two-way connection between the branding of the company and the aesthetics of the riders, but from there it's all about the graphics. The rest of the book is framed as a series of collections that reveal (to some extent) the ethos of each company. We see the candy colors of Enjoi, the Crumb meets Steadman squiggles of Heroin, and the etched B&W artistry of Mystery all in one place. The boards should provide an immediate emotional connection to who's ever fallen off a rail, but their visual language is bound to delight even those with two left feet.

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MIT's wearable "Sixth Sense" device turns any surface into an interface

Imagine a wearable device that lets you physically interact with interfaces that appear in front of you on any surface, where and when you want them. You can watch a video on your newspaper's front page, navigate through a map on your dining table, and flick through photos on any wall. The "Sixth Sense" system from Patti Maes' Fluid Interfaces Group at the MIT Media Lab does all this through a prototype built from $300 worth of off the shelf components. You can even take a photograph by simply holding your hand in the air and making a framing gesture.

Though the system appears to be in a state of "frankenstein"-type assemblies of webcams, projectors, mirrors, fingertip color markers and helmets it's not hard to imagine a streamlined device that could be easily donned.

>> continue

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Herman Miller Launches New Materials Program

The new Herman Miller Materials sampling program is officially a go!

Herman Miller has launched a new program designed to make all 1,600+ materials accessible, understandable, and fun to explore. Samples of all materials are bound into a 15-volume set of reference books--each the size of a hardcover novel--that breaks with the industry tradition of three-ring binders with removable pages. Books in the reference library are constructed using a proprietary process that welds the pages into a cover, thus enabling a closed-loop reclamation program consistent with Herman Miller's sustainable goals.

A new website has been launched that features all 1,600+ materials. A custom algorithm displays all swatches in continually shifting color arrangement governed by multiple search criteria. The website was designed to replicate the real-life experience of browsing and designing with actual materials.

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New Moleskine site, new print-your-own pages

Moleskine, that beloved notebook of so many so far and wide, has just relaunched their website with a new "MSK" format that lets you print your own pages (including a wizard that helps you along--why do things always need a "wizard"?!) It also boasts a gallery of special projects, user-created artwork, and a line-up of special editions. Things are just getting populated, but let us know in the comments how you like the printable pages and links to your favorite (or your own!) artwork.

Too rich for your blood? There's always this old standby.

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Neat Receipts: Just in time

After going through the pains of doing my 2008 taxes, I needed to find a way of organizing myself better. So on the advice of Andy Ihnatko in a podcast, I got the Neat Receipts for Mac. At $170, it seemed a bit pricey for a low res-scaner, but I thought I would give it a try, and after spending just an hour with it, it is completely worth the money. Here's why:

Organization. It does a great job with receipts--it reads the receipt's total, date, and even separates out the sales tax. It also determines whether the receipt is for a meal, transportation, or general retail, making organizing the receipts fast and easy. It even does a pretty good job with taxi receipts, which are usually the worst printouts. Going through the first three months of receipts for this year took about an hour--including clean-up and review of the receipts to make sure everything was read correctly.

Design. The device is very "mac-like," with simple, clean lines and looks pretty attractive on the desk. It's a small and lightweight feed-style scanner, and is easily portable; I can toss it in my shoulderbag without a problem.

Features. I have not yet tried all of the features, but on top of doing receipts, the device also scans business cards and documents--exporting to excel and vcf files for the business cards.

Security. I have multiple backups of my hard drive, and feel much more secure having the digital copy of my receipts than hard-copies.

On the downside, the software for the scanner is great, but still feels very first-generation. I've had it crash on me twice so far, and there are a couple of things that could work a little better. Overall a good investment though, and just in time for April 15th!

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Design and technology at the heart of UK innovation

A new Design Council and Technology Strategy Board partnership places design and technology at the heart of UK innovation.

The Design Council and the Technology Strategy Board have announced a new partnership that will see the two organisations working closely together on joint projects to strengthen design's role at the heart of science and technological innovation.

The partnership aims to:

• generate innovative solutions to social challenges through new collaborations between designers and technologists


• stimulate private sector innovation through public procurement


• support SMEs in the technology sector with design advice


• use design to accelerate the commercialisation of innovative technologies emerging from university research


• raise awareness of the role of design and technology in finding solutions to global environmental challenges

The first major project under the new partnership will be launched next month and is linked to the Home Office Designing Out Crime initiative run by the Design Council.

>> Read press release

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Beautiful housing fixture series by SDesignUnit

In designing the "interior identity" for South Korea's Daelim construction company, Seoul-based SDesignUnit has ensured that light switches, temperature controllers, outlets, etc. all have the same simple but beautiful visual language. Check out their site to see more and larger images, but be warned--these guys have visual language down pat. English language, not so much.

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"Google is just an amoral menace"

The launch of Google StreetView in the UK, with photos that are much more detailed than those in the US, has touched a raw nerve, and is now creating a backlash for the company as a whole.

Here is an excerpt from a much commented Observer piece by Henry Porter:

Despite its diversification, Google is in the final analysis a parasite that creates nothing, merely offering little aggregation, lists and the ordering of information generated by people who have invested their capital, skill and time. On the back of the labour of others it makes vast advertising revenues - in the final quarter of last year its revenues were $5.7bn, and it currently sits on a cash pile of $8.6bn. Its monopolistic tendencies took an extra twist this weekend with rumours that it may buy the micro-blogging site Twitter and its plans - contested by academics - to scan a vast library of books that are out of print but still in copyright.

A contribution by John Lanchester of the London Review of Books is less polemic, but also he is concerned about the "utopian/dystopian issue [which] is a constant theme with Google's services" and is not amused by "how very free [the company] is with other people's intellectual property, while being highly protective of its own."

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John Thackara on design in a thermo-industrial society

Make sense, not stuff: design and the green economy
What would designers design, if they did not design products, or posters? The question is not a rhetorical one. On the contrary, [John Thackara] believes design schools in particular [are] in danger of being marginalised by the speed with which the world is changing. He developed this theme in a text called Make sense, not stuff: A three step plan to connect design schools with the green economy. It's for Cumulus, the international network of design schools, whose next conference is in London 27-30 May.

Metrics of Thermo-Industrial Society (Florence event)
"These are my principles. If you don't like them, I have others". Groucho Marx could also have been talking about environmental standards. Our world is awash in eco information, but starved of meaning. Hundreds of organisations churn out a flood of reports, graphs, studies, punditry - and lists. So [John Thackara] jumped at the chance to write a text about the issue for an event called Green Platform which opens at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence later this month. Green Platform takes a complex critical view of the "crisis in our thermo-industrial society".

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BakerTweet - Insider tips from your local bakery

The BakerTweet Box sends updates on every fresh tray of cakes and pastries as they come out of the oven, so you'll know when to time your visit to the bakery. Proving once again that necessity is the mother of invention, the team at POKE's London office built BakerTweet for the Albion, their favorite bakery across the road from the office.

Everyone knows the best time to get your baked goods is when they're fresh out the oven. So we figured that this could be a killer use of Twitter. Letting followers know that fresh goodies are ready right now. But bakeries don't want laptops or phones lying around in the kitchen. Flour, eggs and technology don't mix so well.

The prototype was built using open-source electronics platform Arduino and the interaction is minimal, to send a message to local customers following the twiiter feed, you turn the dial to select what's just been baked and press the button. Simple. POKE will publish a 'how-to' in the next days if you want to make one. Given the popularity of the Tweet-a-Watt in the recent Greener Gadgets competition, we're sure there's going to be a lot more single-purpose twitter powered devices in the coming year.

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'Design the 4th Bin' Competition Now Open!

Core77 is proud to be a sponsor of a new competition aimed squarely at E-waste. Valiant Technology in association with the Per Scholas, Core 77, Metropolis Magazine, and The Architect's Newspaper has just launched "Design The 4th BIN" a competition aimed at designing the next generation E-waste logo and an E-waste BIN for New York City.

The winning logo is to be released as a public domain/creative commons design, to be as familiar as the "mobius strip" on every paper and plastic recycling bin.

The winning bin is intended as inspiration for the next generation of E-waste collection system in New York City, to help building owners, businesses and residences comply with the new laws going into effect in 2010 restricting the disposal of electronic waste.

>> continue

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Sketch Fu Hits 100 Pages!

And finally, back in late 2007 Nick Maloy posted the above footwear sketch page with the simple challenge for others to ante up. The last 3 years have seen 100 pages of responses as "Sketch-Fu" has become the most popular topic with nearly 1,500 responses.

Check it out, post up a sketch of your own
or
Check out a few of my personal favorites

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Special thanks to Michael DiTullo, Mark Vanderbeeken, Bill Hanff and Carla Diana 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.