Core77 Photo Gallery: NeoCon 2009

NeoCon happens every year at the Merchandise Mart in Chicago, one of the world's largest indoor commercial spaces. In addition to new products from showroom mainstays like Herman Miller, Knoll, Bernhardt, and Steelcase, two floors of temporary exhibition space are filled out with the latest in products for the interior contract industry. This year, we also visited four off-site events: Making Modern at The School of the Art Institute, The Promise of this Moment, Object Society, and the annual Guerrilla Truck Show.

>> view gallery

RCA's Design Interactions Thesis Show 2009

The annual Royal College of Art Thesis Show is open, and, as usual, the projects are awesome. Ranging from a system that creates clouds that snow ice cream to archival burial vessels, each project takes a close look at the cultural potential for technology now, in the future and in the fictional pas.

Pictured above are Hayeon Yoo's Compass Phone, which indicates the direction and proximity of the person you are trying to reach instead of letting you talk to them, and Will Carey's Gifted, a series of objects and scenarios that allow children to imagine and work towards abilities they may want in the future.

If you can't make it to the show, you can check it all out on the website.

Design Interactions Thesis Show
Royal College of Art
June 26th to July 5th 2009
11am - 8pm
(closed 3 July; exhibition will close at 5pm on 30 June, 1 July and 5 July)

Continue reading

Thomas Thwaites' Toaster Project at the Royal College of Art

Speaking of RCA's Design Interactions Thesis Show...

Want to get some industrial designers riled up? Get them talking about how detached modern consumers are from the manufacturing process.

At some point in their education or early career, most product designers are faced with the realization that current standards of living depend on massively complicated networks of suppliers, manufacturers and distributors, and that hardly anyone considers their existence when making purchasing decisions. Initially a source of fascination, akin to discovering a secret world in your basement or something, it often turns to frustration. A repeated argument of the sustainable design movement holds that if people only understood how much effort and expertise, and how many resources went into the production of their inexpensive goods, they wouldn't be nearly so cavalier about chucking them in the garbage at the first glimpse of something prettier.

Rather than spilling more ink about this global phenomenon, Royal College of Art student Thomas Thwaites (MA Design Interactions) has turned to a demonstration, in the form of a toaster. He's been building one for the past several months from scratch, in the most thorough, radical sense possible: the project has seen him visiting mines and oil drilling platforms to obtain raw materials, synthesizing plastic for insulation, and learning to smelt iron in a microwave.

The irony of employing a complex device like a microwave to enable a relatively primitive manufacturing operation doesn't appear to be lost on Thwaites, and the project as a whole has a clear appreciation of the absurdity of it all. The commentary and description on his own site, and the coverage it received as a work-in-progress back in February on We Make Money Not Art, both point to a complex set of objectives and motivations. "The practical aspects of the project are rather a lot of fun," he observes. "They also serve as a vehicle through which theoretical issues can be raised and investigated. Commercial extraction and processing of the necessary materials happens on a scale that is difficult to resolve into the domestic toaster."

So, while this toaster is clearly ridiculous, are toasters in general? Thwaites is using a commercially available toaster that retails for four pounds sterling as a model for emulation, and places it atop a pedestal in his display, equating it to a work of art or high technology. Which, after reviewing the arduous process needed to build even a crude facsimile of it from scratch, it may very well be.

The Toaster Project will be on display at the RCA SHOW TWO in London, starting Friday, June 26.

Via Develop 3D. Photo Credits: Daniel Alexander (top and bottom), Nick Ballon (middle).

Europe by designers

EUROPE BY DESIGNERS is an international artistic project launched in October 2008 whose aim is to unveil a multitude of images of Europe from the inside and from the outside. Design as the expression of a cultural vision, a political vision or a simple and unposed feeling... Design and its diversity as a new way to catch Europe.

via Design Observer

Advertisement

Boynq Studio's stellar aesthetics

Space-age-y design is hard to pull off, and it takes a tremendous amount of design skill to make something as typically cheesy as a USB-powered light look good; but Netherlands-based Boynq Studio, headed up by Sebastiaan Peersmann and Armand van Oord, definitely pulls it off.

Boynq's line of alarm clocks, computer speakers, and random accessories like aformentioned light and a retractable mouse pad for road warriors are all objects that might've gone awry in the wrong hands, but Peersmann and van Oord get all the details right. Check out their designs here.

From ID student to businessman: Bringing a new electronic product to market

In 1999, Evan Solida was a junior in college studying industrial design and "searching for that one portfolio piece to make me standout from the hundreds of applicants of junior design jobs while first being out of school:"

I was presented with a project sponsored by RCA (Thomson Consumer Electronics) of Indianapolis. The basic premise was to utilize a new technology coined the "silicon-eye," which, in short, was a very small circuit that could recognize objects. Hmmm...how very interesting.

And with that, the Cerevellum, a digital bicycle mirror, was born. The system works by having a small camera lens attached to the seatpost of a bicycle facing reward. The image is then transmitted to a handlebar-mounted display via a small camera. The resulting image is then flipped horizontally so it shows itself just as how a normal mirror would. As it uses progressive-scanning for the display, the resulting image is not adversely affected by road vibration.

Solida graduated and got a design job working for a company in Chicago, but spent the ten years since developing the Cerevellum on the side, setting up a dedicated LLC for the project. Click here to read his six "Things I wish I knew beforehand" tips for how to bring a product to market.

via product design hub

Awesome Autodesk Flame demo

Autodesk's Flame software is responsible for the visual effects in everything from high-end product renderings to Hollywood movies. Check out digital artist Rosano Lepri's impressive Flame reel, which features text overlays telling you what he's adding to each shot. Watch the video here.

Materials: A substitute for harmful BPA, coming to you in a baby bottle

It's scary to think an entire generation of us reading this was raised on baby bottles made with BPA (bisphenol-A), an estrogen-mimicking ingredient of hard polycarbonate plastic. BPA is thought to be a carcinogen.

A new product slated to hit the market in late July is the Weil Baby Bottle, which uses a new copolymer called Tritan. Developed by Eastman Chemical Company, Tritan has the qualities of hard plastic that you need in a reusable bottle--clarity, toughness, and dishwasher-machine-weathering heat-resistance--without the BPA.

The Weil Baby Bottle's launch is still about a month away, so their website hasn't gone live yet. Images are still scarce, but you can expect to see it cropping up on parenting blogs in 30 days or so. In the meantime, materials geeks can learn more about the Tritan stuff, which should be cropping up shortly in consumer and medical products, here.

Core77 Photo Gallery: Medical Design and Manufacturing East; Automation Technology Expo 2009

Speaking of medical products, the MD&M East expo (Medical Design and Manufacturing) is an annual exhibition of medical devices and product manufacturers, and is the world's second largest medical OEM event (next to MD&M West). MD&M runs concurrently with ATX (Automation Technology Expo), which features the latest in automated manufacturing technologies. Correspondent Kyle Steinfeld was on-site, investigating tiny surgical tubes, ridiculously precise measuring devices and massive wire braiders galore!

>> view gallery

Core-toon: The Computar

Artist: fueledbycoffee
More: View all Core-toons

The Reflexive Generation

The Reflexive Generation: Young Professionals' Perspectives on Work, Career and Gender
London Business School's Centre for Women in Business

Organisations know they do not yet understand the needs and perspectives of Generation Y and need to know how this generation can be managed. In a time when old structures like jobs for life are breaking down or disappearing for good the individual is increasingly in charge of shaping his or her own career, skill set and financial planning. In this research we find that Generation Y are in a 'feedback loop' where their past influences their present and future experiences. The 'feedback loop' allows them to re-invent themselves. Consequently we have called them the "Reflexive Generation".

>> Download publication
>> Listen to Dr Elisabeth Kelan - Lead Researcher on Gen Y "The Reflexive Generation" project

via 50-Plus Marketing and FutureLab

Seoul's comprehensive design makeover

In preparation for their 2010 World Design Capital status, Seoul is undergoing an Olympic-sized design makeover headed up by industrial designer Chung Kyung-won. Chung is the Seoul Metropolitan Government's chief design officer and an ID professor at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology.

The Design Seoul initiative has already been underway for several years and has a two-pronged approach: One is to erect public works like the Dongdaemun Design Plaza, the "design information facility" shown above; Two is to support design at a local level, targeting SME's (small- and medium-sized businesses) and providing them with design support.

Seoul will put in about 113 billion won over the next three years to improve the design capabilities of SMEs, as well as their industrial competitiveness. The city has already bought an old hospital building in the Dongdaemun area that will be revamped into the Industrial Design Medical Center, a research and education facility.

"In addition to the design medical center, we will build two smaller design supporting facilities in Mapo and Gangnam," he said. "A design base camp connecting designers and small businesses will be established near Guro Digital Complex as well."

...According to Chung, design can revitalize the city during times of economic difficulty.

"Design is not a luxury. It prospers during financial hardships," he said. "Design Seoul is going to maximize and make the lives of citizens better because Seoul invested in design during this economic crisis."

And despite the economic downturn, the importance of design is growing. According to research by the Samsung Economic Research Institute, 52 percent of Korean CEOs indicated design was the core of their competitiveness and 51 percent said they would invest more in design.

"The design management I pursue is not different from the Design Seoul concept," Chung said. "I will upgrade successful public design to make the city more comfortable and pleasant and develop the design industry to create revenue and make it a new growth power."

Click here to read more about the initiative.

via korea times

World Industrial Design Day global list of events

World Industrial Design Day 2009 is today, and this year's theme is "Industrial Design: the product of human creativity."

World Industrial Design Day aims to provide designers with a collective outlet to acknowledge the merits of the profession of industrial design, as well as provide the general public with an opportunity to appreciate design not just as an abstract, but also as a tangible expression of everyday life.

First declared in 2007 on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Icsid, World Industrial Design Day received considerable attention following a successful series of international events held during the inaugural year in 2008. This year, designers and design enthusiasts are once again encouraged to mark the day by coordinating events within their region.

Read the full list of events

Learning from how designers think and work

Becky Bermont, Vice President, Media + Partners at the Rhode Island School of Design, explores in her latest column for the Harvard Business Publishing blog the foundational tools that designers employ to do their work and wonders what kind of applicability those have to business.

"I see now that designers are people who can make information emotional and visceral, who can make a bigger impact by thoughtfully marrying form and content. They are "experience perfectionists," the ones who always ask about the space a meeting will occur in so they can arrange the room and have music or images playing when people walk in. They are obsessed with materials; they can have a completely literate and thoughtful conversation about the width of a rubber band being used as a book binding, and how it will change the way the book is perceived."

>> Read article

Fantastic Norway's Cardboard Cloud

And finally, check out the expansive, pixellated cardboard cloud that Fantastic Norway designed for the Centre for Design and Architecture student exhibition in Oslo, Norway. We love its simplicity, its massiveness and the reference to unpacking.

From Fantastic Norway:

Being that the exhibition is set to present brand new design objects, we decided to base the architectural concept on the thrill of unpacking. The installation consists of over 3000 hanging cardboard boxes resembling a large pixilated cloud, hovering over the exhibited material. The construction creates a large variety of spaces, from cave like to lifted and open areas, inside the 350m2 exhibition hall. The objects and design concepts are exhibited both inside and outside the boxes.

In an environmental perspective the ambition was to create an exhibition with focus on reuse and low material cost. The cardboard boxes will be recycled at the end of the exhibition, which only leaves wires as leftovers.

Special thanks to Mark Vanderbeeken and fueledbycoffee for their contributions 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

The Node power outlet, a refreshingly simple alternative to the power strip

It made its way around the block in just a matter of hours, but we wanted to make sure you saw this wonderfully simple idea for a power outlet from Metaphys in Japan. After plugging your devices in to the two notches that run all the way around the device, you can turn them all on or off through the button in the middle. Fantastic!

Thanks, Dave!

via Gizmodo

Synesthesia video from Terry Timely

We designers love almost any trick that shakes us from our traditional thinking patterns. Synesthesia, "a neurologically based phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway [wiki]" is one such trick.

The latest short film from Terry Timely explores the theme of synesthesia with the richness of a 17c. natura morta painting and sprinkles on top.

Engage your senses here.

Advertisement

Good Signage, Finally Getting its Due?

Sitting in on the sessions at the Society for Environmental Graphic Design's (SEGD) annual conference in San Diego last month, we were struck by how similar some of the concerns and discussion points were to those of other designers. Environmental graphics serve a crucial role in defining the character and navigability of public spaces -- especially big, complicated ones like museums and hospitals -- but frequently go unnoticed unless they're absent or poorly designed.

Imagine our joy, then, at the notoriety now being accorded SEGD Fellow David Gibson, not only from the professional organization that honored him last month, but from the design world as a whole. Gibson's recently released book on signage and wayfinding (pictured above) is the subject of an excellent interview in the May issue of Metropolis, and his studio, Two Twelve Associates, has been racking up awards over the past few years for its groundbreaking approaches to signage and wayfinding for clients like Radio City Music Hall , Johns Hopkins Hospital, and the City of Baltimore. The scale of such tasks both excites and unsettles us -- imagine your field of expertise requiring design solutions for an area hundreds of acres in size.

Signage and wayfinding in general seem to be gaining a higher profile in the US of late, perhaps as part of renewed interest in urban infrastructure, or a greater focus on alternative transportation brought on by economic and environmental concerns. This article in particular, by Alissa Walker for Fast Company caught our eye last week, pointing out how something as humble as cycle-oriented street signage can dramatically alter the viability of cycling in a city (Los Angeles) not historically known for its bikeability. It's just a proposal at the moment, by designer Joseph Pritchard, but it's got the advantages of clarity, low implementation cost, visual differentiation, and if all the above is any indicator, good timing.

NeoCon 2009: New from Humanscale--Diffrient World Chair, Element Task Light and Humanair

Humanscale introduced several new products at NeoCon this year, all incorporating new technology to make things lighter, brighter, more energy efficient and, in general, more effective. Though the technology was enough to impress us, Humanscale also demonstrated a tremendous attention to design, unifying the technology cleverly and simply with the form and use of the object. For example, in the Element task lamp (designed by Mark McKenna), the heat sink for the LED also forms the head of the lamp--it not only keeps the head (including itself) cool to the touch but also allows the user to re-orient it by hand, a mighty achievement considering that heat sinks are usually pretty unfriendly components. It should also be mentioned that this light uses a new technology developed in Korea that allows a single LED to produce a wide angle of bright light.

Diffrient World Chair, by Niels Differient (pictured above), takes advantage of recent advances in "dynamic recline technology", allowing the chair to recline using only "two frame components, the user's body weight, and the laws of physics," eliminating the need for a complex mechanism. This simplification reduces the number of components by about 75 percent, allowing for a lighter and more comfortable chair with a much more environmentally-friendly production process.

Finally, Humanair is Humanscale's first foray into the world of air purifiers, and focuses on providing very clean air (99% virus and contaminant free) to a "clean zone" around the head of deskbound workers. According to Tom Revelle, the idea has been bouncing around Humanscale for some time, but the technology that enables it is brand new.

Be sure to check out Humanscale's website for more information.

Follow the Designers Accord on Twitter!

@designersaccord is a great source of information and provocation on all things (and practice) sustainable. Won't overwhelm your client, and will give you some great links, inside info on upcoming events, and new content on the site. Adopters and lurkers all welcome!

NYPD Green

Despite the press announcement made back in April, it wasn't until yesterday that we finally spotted one of the New York Police Department's new Nissan Altima Hybrid Patrol Cars prowling the streets of downtown.

(Unfortunately the lead-footed copper was faster than our cameraphone, but click here to see some awesome captures by NYC's Flickr brigade.)

The Altima Hybrids have been assigned to areas of the city where their fuel efficiency presents the greatest economic and environmental benefit - both in precincts with a large coverage area and smaller precincts prone to heavy stop-and-go traffic.

"These new patrol cars will help fulfill the PlaNYC goal of reducing City government's carbon footprint," said Mayor Bloomberg. "Through savings in fuel, these Altimas can quickly cover their additional cost, from then they will save taxpayers money - another example of how going green is good for our environment and our pocketbooks."

...At $25,391 per vehicle, the Altima hybrids cost about $1,500 more than the conventional Impala. At 35 miles per gallon for city driving, the hybrid Altima gets double the gas mileage of the Impala, which gets only 16 miles per gallon.

2 Sustainable Minds upcoming workshops

Sustainable Minds will be holding two workshops in the next few weeks, titled "Mastering Environmental Impact Assessment in the Design Process." Here's what you'll learn:

1. Ecodesign principles and product innovation through ecodesign strategies
2. Life cycle thinking and a whole product systems approach to product design
3. To have a deeper and practical understanding of what life cycle assessment (LCA) is
4. How to conduct a Sustainable Minds, Okala-based LCA to produce quantifiable environmental impact results to support design decisions
5. How to consider integrating SM LCA in your design process and service offerings

The workshops will take place on June 26th in NYC with Joep Meijer and Terry Swack (Andrew Dent guest presenter!), and on July 10th in San Francisco with Philip White (lead author of Okala).

All info and pricing at the site.

Elliott Montgomery's MicroCycle Solar-Powered Sewing Kiosks

"How tightly can a product's lifecycle be compressed... and what are the ramifications of doing this?"

These are the questions Elliott Montgomery asks with his MicroCycle project--a mini manufacturing station-turned-public outreach kiosk that recently appeared on the south end of Union Square in New York City. Here, he and his posse created fabric shopping bags (made from salvaged materials, natch) but doesn't sell them. Instead, you can buy one by providing "an idea" for localized manufacture, materials sourcing, or the like. He designed and built the solar units for Solar1's outreach project I Heart PV.

@Jennifer van der Meer's a fan: "What's so fun about Elliott's installations is that he gets people to think in the immediate, about the waste streams available in their neighborhood, today, that can be recommissioned into something useful. He also thinks in terms of future reuse, plotting identified waste streams on a map, and posted online as an open source database.

Learn more about this project and Elliott's other work at epmid.com. Bonus for Core77 readers: Elliott's the creator of Aperture, entered in the 2008 Greener Gadgets Design Competition!

Core-Toon: Edible Containers

Artist:
lunchbreath
More: View all Core-toons

Pontiac Stinger - The Car That Could Have Saved Detroit

Pre-dating blockbusting lifestyle vehicles like the Honda Element by a full decade the Pontiac Stinger had the concept, look and the spec list of today's Gen-Y/Tween hits. Where would Detroit - and more importantly, American consumer culture - be today if it had been Green-lit?! Watch the video here.

New U.S. car company starting up

Speaking of cars, it seems like a helluva time to start up a U.S. car company, but that's exactly what San Diego based V-Vehicle (VVC) is aiming to do. With a factory going up in Louisiana, the well-funded V-Vehicle hopes to "reestablish American leadership in the global automotive industry," starting off with an as-yet-unseen vehicle designed by Tom Matano, the man behind Mazda's Miata. (Matano's blurry sketches, above, are taken from a promotional video. Note the in-dash iPhone dock.)

Few other details exist about the car, although it will reportedly be either electric or a hybrid that uses an unspecified alternative fuel. Production is slated to begin in 2010.

via fox news

Industrial design office workings in the Mad Men era

The most fascinating reading I'll have all day is Metropolis' "Nelson & Company: Iconic Workplace, 1947-86" which looks at the inner workings of George Nelson's office in its heyday:

The office was straight out of Mad Men, with men in crisp white shirts and ties, and the few women in black dresses--cigarette smoke everywhere, classical music in the background, and Nelson, ever the impresario, standing in the middle of the tumult with a camera dangling from his shoulders. "Everybody worked hard and late," [graphic designer Don] Ervin says. "We were all underpaid, but it was like going to a special camp."

The article interviews designers, architects, and even the former receptionist to paint a vivid picture of not only what it was like to work there, but of Nelson's free-floating process. Michael Graves, Lucia DeRespinis, Tomoko Miho, Irving Harper and others provide colorful anecdotes explaining how Nelson's "greatest genius may have been his skill in bringing them together."

"The 20 or so designers sat together in the same long studio at three rows of desks--architects, industrial designers, graphic and interior designers," explains designer Ron Beckman. "We were aware of what each was doing. It was a very democratic arrangement that encouraged collaboration across the various disciplines...."

Read the rest of the entertainingly lengthy article here.

OXO gives Universal Design a shot in the arm

While OXO products have been helping people open jars and peel carrots for years, they've recently focused their Universal Design prowess on a more prickly subject: Syringes.

Research done by biopharmaceutical company UCB showed that patients with rheumatoid arthritis have trouble administering self-injections. Seeking a solution, UCB partnered up with OXO, which identified six areas where they could make improvements (the five call-outs on the image above, plus easy-to-open packaging), and the Cimzia pre-filled syringe was born.

How different is the Cimzia from previous syringes? Extremely different; hit the jump to see an historical timeline of syringe designs.

Eastman Innovation Lab design videos

Eastman Innovation Lab has launched a series of design-inspired videos on their site, featuring the likes of Yves Behar of Fuse Project, Ravi Swhney of RKS Design, and Josh Nakaya of Art Center. The production values are pretty high on these, and if you're interested in the background, check out Gaylon White in Orbiting the Hairball.

The video with Ravi also features Eric Barnes, Founder & CEO of the KOR ONE water bottle we've gone on about.

Design Roundtable: What Will Cell Phones Look Like 10 Years From Now?

Core contributor Alissa Walker moderates a panel discussion of (Fast) Company Men as they discuss the future and impact of the holy cell phone. Here's a good bit courtesy of Robert Fabricant:

How have cell phones changed our behavior? It is remarkable to me how it has taken the iPhone to create this momentum in the U.S. market: to get people to engage with mobile experiences outside of basic communication. When I travel outside the U.S., particularly in the developing world, the engagement with mobile devices is so much higher. Mobile minutes are quickly becoming the most liquid currency in Africa and other emerging markets. Even in very remote regions, you see people using their devices to transact and fulfill a broader range of needs than we see here in the U.S. And that is with the most basic Nokia phone. Forget multi-touch.

10 Creative Rubik's Cubes

And finally, we've seen a few of these Rubik's cubes around before, but it's nice to have them collected into a sweet set of 10. Ignacio Pilotto's Rubitone (above) is the sentimental favorite around here; we're simply afraid of the Pentamix.

Thanks Victoria!

Special thanks to Xanthe Matychak and lunchbreath for their contributions 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

New Design Competition Launched! Design a Snowboard for Nidecker!

Nidecker Snowboards has partnered with Core77 to produce the Nidecker Snowboard Competition, an international design competition inviting designers to create custom snowboard graphics. The Grand Prize winner will receive $2500 and be included in the Nidecker 2010/11 line, and the Top 4 will be produced in a limited run and receive a snowboard with their own design. They will also all be displayed at the international SIA Show in Orlando and at the ISPO Tradeshow in Munich in February 2010, along with profiles of the winning designers. And...the designer's name will be featured on the side of their board!

Design Brief
For this competition, Nidecker is challenging designers to create the next generation of snowboard graphics. Designers can submit designs of any style or content, and participants have the entire topsheet of the board as their canvas. Just download the templates and create!

Competition Deadline
July 12th, 11:59 pm EST

COMPETITION IS OPEN! REGISTER NOW!!

Wave Sport Kayak Competition WINNER: Ben Nelesen!

And speaking of competitions, the voting ended last night and we have a winner for the Wave Sport Kayak Hull Trip-Tych Design Competition! The Grand Prize goes to Ben Nelesen, who receives $2500! The 4 Finalists, Sam Bevington, Mike Serafin, Jared Schmale, and Danny Louten will each receive a kayak with their own design, and all of the Top 5 designs will be displayed at the Outdoor Retailer Summer Market Show in Salt Lake City in July 2009.

Congratulations to the winner, and thanks to everyone who entered!

>>CHECK OUT THE GALLERY NOW to see the Grand Prize winner, the Finalists, the Semi-Finalists and all the Notables.

Portland Confab panel emphasizes diversity in experience, and in networking

A successful design team is rarely composed of single-talent professionals, and rarely comes from a single source of referrals. This was one of the recurring themes of the third Coroflot Creative Employment Confab, held this time in a pleasantly un-rainy Portland, Oregon, and featuring a panel drawn from some of the region's most renowned design-driven employers.

Nike, Intel, Ziba and Cinco Design have all achieved notoriety in their fields for churning out great ideas and great products at a reliable pace, and the representatives of those firms on hand last Thursday -- Beth Sasseen, Nick Oakley, Chelsea Vandiver and Kirk James, respectively -- each claim heavy reliance on professional diversity for their success. That diversity, it turns out, manifests not just within teams (Ziba's designer + engineer + researcher + social scientist groupings are a good example), but within individual designers.

Continue reading

Advertisement

Apple's kick-ass App display wall at WWDC (and oh yeah, there's a new iPhone)

Apple had a brilliant, NYU-ITP-worthy display up at the Moscone Center (captured by TechCrunch): a grid of 20 Cinema Display monitors loaded with icons for iPhone apps available at the app store. The cool part: Every time an app was purchased, it pulsated on-screen, leading to a pebbles-dropped-in-water effect.

The new iPhone 3G S is on the way in a couple of weeks. The differences between this generation and the last are subtle and mostly internal: More RAM and storage, faster processor, better camera with video and touchscreen manual focus, voice control, digital compass neatly linked to map app.

The Last iPhone, by Robert Fabricant

And speaking of iPhones....

The Last iPhone

What if you are holding the last iPhone ever made?
What if the 3G-S looked no different than the 3G?
What if the 4G looked no different than the 3G-S and so on...?
What if all iPhones looked the same from now on?

What if it didn't matter that the iPhone could be made 1/16" thinner next year?
What if it didn't matter that the iPhone could be produced in a host of different colors and metallic finishes?
What if the design could not be improved upon?
What if Apple stopped releasing new iPhones?

What if you could expand the capabilities of the iPhone infinitely through software?
What if there were a billion different apps available to download instantly?
What if you could plug-in new hardware modules to extend the capabilities even further?
What if you could send in your iPhone to have the internal components upgraded each year?

What if you subscribed to the iPhone instead of owning it?
What if the iPhone was guaranteed for life?
What if you never bought another phone?
What if Apple really decided to think differently?

(What would you be willing to pay for a Continuously-Upgraded-iPhone-for-Life? I would love to hear your answers...)

Robert Fabricant is the VP of Creative at frog design

The latest 21st century profession: the digital smuggler (currently very active in Iran)

The Guardian News blog reports on how Iranian people are turning into digital smugglers to spread their message, despite depleted phone and internet services.

"In days gone by, crushing a revolution was a lot easier. There were no mobile phones to co-ordinate street action or relay what was happening to the outside world. Even more importantly, there wasn't an internet. Now it is common to hear of "internet" or even "twitter revolutions" - as Andrew Sullivan on the Atlantic has already described the current protests in Iran.

It is precisely for that reason that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appears to have - temporarily at least - shut down Facebook, Twitter, mobile phone networks and unsympathetic websites. Nevertheless, Iranians are still managing to feed out information, embracing the technology that the moderate Mir Hossein Mousavi employed during his ultimately unsuccessful election campaign."

>> Read article

Maverick's Nica bluetooth headset with the coolio dock

What initially drew our eye to the Nica bluetooth headset is the design of the docking solution: the disc-like earpiece attaches magnetically to the top of the Desk Dock, continuing its clean, cylindrical shape.

The company that produces it, Maverick Lifestyle Corporation, has a Modernist philosophy that re-examines "commonly held assumptions to make way for new - and better - ways of doing. Modernist objects tend to be clean, sleek, and highly efficient. Apparent simplicity often masks ingenious engineering."

The product designers have also paid careful attention to ergonomics, with a larger, open-air speaker (i.e. no ear canal insert) that's more comfortable to wear for prolonged periods, and a flat overall shape that fits neatly in a pocket. "The result is a less-geeky, iconic form, and also the most comfortable headset on the market," says Maverick CEO Craig Janik.

Previously available only online, Maverick will begin selling the Nica in stores this summer.

Post-it stop motion video

It's all over, but we'll post it (ha ha) anyway. DEADLINE, a clever little film from SCAD senior, Bang-yao Liu. Love the soundtrack from Royksopp (they capture the sound of design, don't they). Watch the video here.

Book Review: Sketchbook: Conceptual Drawings from the World's Most Influential Designers, by Timothy O'Donnell

After reviewing Sketchbooks: The Hidden Art of Designers, Illustrators and Creatives just a few weeks ago, it seemed premature to cover another one so soon, but any drawing teacher would concur: you can never do enough sketching. Sketchbook: Conceptual Drawings from the World's Most Influential Designers by Timothy O'Donnell covers similar material in a slightly different manner. While Brereton's book caught artists and ad execs at their most candid, O'Donnell documents primarily illustrators and designers doing real projects. Thus the art throughout is more precise, a little tighter and far less kooky. While this bodes well for the pencil chops of designers as a whole, it also means that looking at some of these sketchbooks is totally demoralizing.

Looking at the book as a whole, however, is beyond lovely. Laid out on a grid with four unrelated serif and sans fonts (no superfamilies here!) it coheres harmoniously ... and that's even with Johnny Hardstaff's frenetic sketches on the page. Hardstaff, however, is the only artist that appears in both O'Donnell and Brereton's books, probably because his skills with a felt tip are so damn tight. Lots of other talent abounds too. Ayse Birsel of Birsel+Seck says of her partner, "Bibi draws like a god," and although I don't know what god draws like, he (that would be Bibi) is as good as Mr. Hardstaff. Birsel+Seck are product designers to boot ... plus Yahweh might find Johnny Hardstaff's sketches a little risque. What Sketchbook: Conceptual Drawings from the World's Most Influential Designers does far better than The Hidden Art of Designers is illustrate the creative process. Each serves a different master. While Brereton's book was about love, O'Donnell's book is about results. Fortunately for the reader, viewing these conceptual sketches doesn't feel like work at all.

Continue reading

CATALYST Strategic Design Review

If you like strategic design thinking with a healthy dose of green, check out the new CATALYST Strategic Design Review, produced by the graduate Design Management Program at Pratt Institute (chaired by the amazing Mary McBride) and edited by Erin Weber. Here's the pitch:

CATALYST is designed to spark conversation about the role of strategic design in shaping successful business. Its intent is to provide an opportunity for design leaders and innovators to share theory and best practices for a future that's economically, socially and environmentally sustainable.

The inaugural issue explores New York City "as an incubator for strategic design," and takes on issues of redesigning urban school systems, green architecture, and the High Line (opened yesterday!). Core77's Allan Chochinov has a (reprinted) piece in it as well, and don't miss the "9 Things to Know About Pro Bono."

Check out the publication here (online only), and explore additional topics on the CATALYST blog.

30 Essential Books for Industrial Designers

Looking for even more reading? Ditch the Jackie Collins and be the design geek at the beach with one of Design Sojourn's "30 Essential Books for Industrial Designers," which avoid the usual coffee-table claptrap in favor of meatier fare authored by the likes of Kenya Hara, Don Norman, Bill Moggridge, and other heavyweights.

The books are divided into three sections: Thinking, Process, and Designer Skills, with Amazon links provided. Just be sure to keep the sand out of your Kindle.

Good Guide helps you research how "green" products and materials actually are

The excellent website Good Guide, started by Dara O'Rourke (the UC Berkeley professor who first drew attention to Nike's Asian sweatshops), helps readers cut through marketing B.S. to find out what's actually in the products they buy. Click on a category under Food, Personal Care, Househould Chemicals or Toys and up pops a supply-chain analysis that shows you how green or healthy the product's ingredients actually are, beyond the often outrageous claims listed on the packaging.

The "News" section of the site occasionally has information directly pertinent to industrial designers vis-a-vis materials. Two recent examples: A link pointing out that bisphenol A (a plastic ingredient found in baby bottles, CD cases and sunglasses) can raise the risk of heart disease in women, and another highlighting the dangers of silver nanoparticles, which appear in toys, eating utensils, refrigerators, and footwear.

They've also got an iPhone app that lets you use the camera's phone to snap a product's bar code and get info on it.

Here's to hoping Good Guide expands their coverage to include consumer products like laptops, appliances and furniture.

sources: ny times, mail online, abc science

Interview with Zipcar's Robin Chase

Urban Omnibus and The Infrastructurist have teamed up to interview Robin Chase, the co-founder of Zipcar.

Robin talks about everything from founding Zipcar to her new ride-sharing project, Go Loco, to bigger visions about infrastructure, transportation and the internet. For example:

Infrastructure is destiny. Think about how we built out the national highway interstate network in the '50s. We built highways, we ripped out all the trolleys, and we didn't build any trains. We created our destiny as a car dependent nation because that's the infrastructure we built up. When we think about sprawl, we must remember that we built our houses on one-acre lots and now our choices for interaction are defined by that.

The whole thing is too long and rich to excerpt well, but be sure to read the whole thing here.

Patchwork 3D (rendering software) update on the way

Above are renderings done with Patchwork3D, French company Lumiscaphe's rendering software, which has been knocking around since 2003. The forthcoming version 3.2 update promises some type of "fast rendering technology" (that's as specific as they get) that lets users edit visual characteristics in real time and see results instantly.

So how does it work? We'll have to wait until August's SIGGRAPH, when 3.2 will be released, to see.

NEC's solution to multiple-monitor set-ups

Holy crow: Attendees of next week's InfoComm 09 in Orlando will get to see NEC's ridiculously huge 43" wraparound monitor, the CRV43, apparently inspired by those curved cab driver mirrors. The $8,000 beast is going on sale this July and was designed for those who use two- and three-monitor setups, as it provides all the real estate without those pesky seams.

The carefully chosen photographic angles above make it look as if the CRV43 is a flatscreen, but the orthographic views tell a different tale:

Man--how much must this thing weigh? I can imagine setting this thing up, then watching as my desk collapses and the monitor crashes through my floor and the three below me, leaving neat, crescent-shaped holes in each.

via gizmodo

Core-Toon: The BeGrommeter

Artist: lunchbreath
More: View all cartoons

Atoms For Bits: Designing physical embodiments for virtual content

"Hello, Dave." The LaCie 5big Network hard drive has a HAL-like presence

Embracing compression
After moving into a teeny New York studio and going through the psychically exhausting task of purging possessions, I found myself frozen in the middle of the room holding the dictionary in my hands, quickly coming to terms with an inevitable fact: it had to go. Many people gasp at the notion of doing away with books (clothes, yes, electronics, of course, but books—never!) but lets face it, dictionaries (aside from a few luscious grand, old tomes) don't age well. They aren't made for casual browsing, they don't reflect the dynamic nature of language, and they take up a lot of precious shelf space. I hesitated to admit it, but I knew I could manage just fine with an iPhone app or another online lexicon that pulled data from the mighty digital "cloud." Out it went. While I was at it, I wondered what other space saving digital conversions I could make. Could I compress all my CDs to MP3? Could I invest in one of many advertised services for digitizing every last one of my photographs? Where would it end? These thoughts then led me to the line of questioning that keeps designers up at night: "What would life be like in an object-less home?" "What physical artifacts would be spared cloud absorption?" and the grand daddy of all questions, "With more and more of our artifacts being replaced by digital files, when do physical objects matter, and why?"

Continue Reading

Saving (inter)face: Tiny Shuffle needs chunky case

I'm told that aspirin is mostly powder, because the actual active ingredient is so miniscule that it needs to be surrounded by filler caked into the shape of a pill just so you can pick the darn thing up.

We're seeing a similar sort of thing going on with the iPod Shuffle, which is so tiny and button-less (the controls being a tiny plastic blip on the headphone cable) that operating it while driving would be nigh impossible. So a company called Scosche has designed the , which chunks it out a bit and more importantly, adds large(r) control buttons, making it easier to operate while behind the wheel.

If you think about it, the Shuffle's lack of a screen probably makes it a better choice for use while driving than a regular iPod, as you won't be tempted to take your eyes off the road to scan a playlist.

via geeky gadgets

LCD skins can now be applied to objects and change color

A company called Kent Displays has developed something called Reflex Technology, whereby a thin but rugged LCD "skin" can be applied to laptops, cell phones, MP3 players, etc. and change color. Most impressively, it only requires power for the instant you change the color; after that it keeps the new shade but draws no juice.

The demo video (unembeddable, alas) must be seen, it's absolutely nutty. Click here and check out the second vid featuring the Reflex Double Layer.

The reason we think this tech could be of huge importance to ID'ers is because it transmits feedback without us having to peer into a screen. It could also serve as a much better indicator than, say, a red LED indicator dot, in that the entire object changing color is much more obvious, easier to spot, and doesn't draw any power.

Some obvious uses of this tech I'd like to see:

- I want my cell phone to start changing color, like a banana going bad, when it's running out of juice. I'd also like it to change color depending on who's calling.
- I want my doorknob to change color when it's locked.
- I want my shop vac to change color when it's full or when the filter needs to be changed.

You get the idea. Have any of your own?

via car design fetish

A new map for design

As the focus of design shifts from the production of finite goods to a practice of experimentation, ideas take precedence over products - a reflection by Paola Antonelli, senior curator of design and architecture at New York's Museum of Modern Art.

"There are myriad forms of design, many of which don't require movement of materials and artifacts; only curiosity, an internet connection, and the ability to seek, learn, and synthesize from other fields and cultures. These mutants are the future of design and the place to find them is not at big design trade fairs, but rather in interdisciplinary gatherings, pluralistic exchanges and, especially, in certain schools."

>> Read article

Photo: Kenichi Okada and Christopher Woebken's Animal Superpowers. Courtesy of the Royal College of Art

Cardboard Lumber

And finally, if you're looking for something to build, Instructables has you covered: Cardboard Lumber. The text on the glueing step is the best:

Lay our your cardboard on a flat surface and get your first layer ready. Apply a VERY large amount of glue to one section by POURING it on the surface and spreading it evenly. If you think you used too much, then you almost have enough glue on. Now apply glue to the piece to be put on for the second layer. Don't think of this as glueing cardboard together! Think of it as paper m

Special thanks to Mark Vanderbeeken, Robert Fabricant, Xanthe Matychak and Robert Blinn for their contributions 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

Posted in: Newsletter [Permalink]

Motorola celebrates 25 years of mobile phones with 12 concepts that look nothing like mobile phones

Motorola's struggles with product design over the past few years tell a well-documented cautionary tale. The close observer can practically watch the monthly tides of design strategy ebb and flow, washing an occasional, gem-like RAZR or PEBL up on the beach, along with the more frequent seaweed-pile of a phone, too tangled up in its own confused strands to draw covetous eyes away from shinier competitors' offerings. These variances of design success have been an ongoing topic on Core77 for years, swinging between high praise and scornful rebuke, and sparking some impassioned discussions on the boards as well. The upshot: Motorola's clearly shown that they can do good design, so why don't they do it more often?

Part of the reason for this unevenness, compared with Nokia, LG and others, may well be the vision thing: Motorola was first to the dance with its Star-Tac 25 years ago, but has spent most of its time since then with little coherent sense of what its devices, and by extension its brand, ought to be like.

In conversation last week with Dickon Isaac, Motorola's North American design manager, the possible explanation of a "design mythology" came up: the idea that a set of universal aspirations are crucial for an organization to develop the drive and coherence necessary for real innovation and a unified identity, much as engineers in the 50s and 60s looked to the gee-whiz sci-fi of their youth for inspiration in developing the space program.

Continue reading

Iwasaki Design Studio's elegant G9

Speaking of mobile phones, it's hard not to like the "Global Use" G9 phone, which breaks out of the typical iPhone-ocity with louvered keys on the slide-out deck, a chunky dock, and minimalist, elegant on-screen graphic design.

The G9 was designed by Ichiro Iwasaki, the man behind iida, a/k/a Iwasaki Design Studio.

(As for the "Global Use" moniker, the product copy mentions that the phone can be used worldwide, though it seems that depends on which model you buy.)

Advertisement

Vote for your favorites! Wave Sport Kayak Hull Graphics Competition

Don't for get to vote on your favorites in our Wave Sport Kayak Hull Trip-Tych Competition! The Grand Prize winner receives $2500, and the Top 5 designs will be displayed at the Outdoor Retailer Summer Market Show in Salt Lake City in July 2009, in addition to getting a kayak with their own design.

>>CHECK OUT THE GALLERY NOW to vote on the Finalists and view the Semi-Finalists and Notables.

Steven Heller on trophy designs (and the generation that consumes them)

I will never forget visiting a friend down south and remarking upon how many trophies one of his kids had in his room. "Good at sports, huh?" "Waddaya mean?" "I mean, look at all these trophies." "I don't understand, every kid has this many trophies." "Huh?" "You get a trophy for completing the season; you don't have to win." "You cannot be serious?" "Yup. Every kid has this many."

And then a week later was the first time I heard the term "trophy generation," so that was quite the timing on the meme-o-meter.

Anyway, Steven heller takes on the topic of the easy win, and of the designers who fulfill their desires in this all-too-brief piece for the Times' Moment entitled "Graphic Content | And the Trophy for the Most Generic Trophy Goes To . . ." Here's a shining facet:

While industrial designers (and design students) spend their days thinking up more beautiful and efficient ways of making almost everything, I have yet to meet a single one who cares about the state of the common trophy. (Of course there are some uncommon trophies around). Are mass-produced trophies such a lost cause that, like fast-food menus and laundry tickets, designers cannot be bothered to improve them?

Book Review: Rethinking Sitting, by Peter Opsvik

Our collective backs hurt. Between text messages and mouse movements, repetitive injuries are on the rise and people spend increasing portions of their days on their (increasingly large) behinds staring into a CRT tube. If the behaviors of our primate relatives are any indication of our pasts, sitting in static positions with our fingers in a blur is simply not a task for which the human body was built.

Peter Opsvik, a Norwegian designer, has been working on improving the human working posture for over forty years, with a single-mindedness that makes his whole career look like one extended project. Rethinking Sitting showcases Opsvik's career with a variety of chairs that make Bill Stumpf's Aeron seem downright anachronistic. While the Aeron looks like it could have been inspired by H.R. Giger's Alien and sports levers that promise comfort, the sparse Scandinavian design of Opsvik's chairs belies their versatility. Most chairs are composed of simple bent birch and cotton padded supports, with nary a lever to be found, but once a human being sits on it, the chairs deform, flex and rock into a variety of positions. While sitting in one of his chairs for an extended period of time remains the most visceral way to understand his designs, Rethinking Sitting does an admirable job of presenting ergonomics to those of us in less comfortable postures.

In a short introduction, Opsvik explains that the basic structure and design of chairs has remained unchanged since ancient Egypt, before quickly turning to theory and biomechanics. Speaking of chair design with a near philosophical reverence, he notes that it's harder to watch a parade than to be in one, and then ponders why "Prussian discipline" of the 1800s is still central to the design of our working places. The human body wants to move. All of his chairs stand (rock?) as testament to this single insight. Through vibrant sketches, prototypes and photos, he illustrates this concept over and over again: the body moves and the chair conforms.

Continue reading

Portland Creative Confab preview: 2 Questions for Beth Sasseen of Nike

For a high-profile, design-driven company like Nike, populating the studios with the best designers on the planet is more than just an aspiration, it's a matter of brand survival. And while much can be said for the company's famously pro-designer culture as a tool for attracting top talent, picking the right applicants out of an enormous pool can be a daunting task.

Beth Sasseen has been doing creative hiring since the early 90s, first for Lucasfilm in California and Singapore, then for Nike starting in 2007. This long experience finding great designers from across the globe who are also great fits, and getting them to stick around, is what draws us to put her on the stage for next week's Creative Confab in Portland, Oregon, a few miles from the Nike World Campus in Beaverton.

1. Given the highly specialized nature of many design disciplines, and the difficulty of identifying a truly great portfolio, is it crucial (or even helpful) that a recruiter of creative professionals have some design training herself?

Learning a list of job requirements is easily done, but if the role for which one is recruiting is more specialized, deeper training is a good idea. For design recruiting, having an inherent interest in things that are more creative than analytical is helpful, if not necessary. I am a visual person, so I sympathize greatly with the creative process designers go through. I've tried recruiting for finance and accounting roles before and that just didn't come as naturally.

2.You've mentioned that a good recruiter has to serve as a career counselor for misguided applicants sometimes -- under what circumstances does this level of engagement become necessary, even with a designer who's not getting the job?

The opportunity occurs most often with students and professionals in transition, two circumstances in which everyone, not just designers, probably feel most vulnerable. The career counselor in me comes out when I sense defeat in a candidate's voice. The hiring process is full of hurdles, so the last thing a candidate should feel is failure if they haven't gotten the job.

Sasseen will be sharing the stage with recruiters and designers from Ziba, Intel, and Cinco Design, as we talk about creative hiring from both sides of the process. The event also offers the chance to meet and trade notes with some of the best design firms and creative professionals in the Pacific Northwest. See the Confab page over on Coroflot for more details, and registration information.

Coroflot's Creative Employment Confab
Thursday, June 11th, 2:30-6pm
University of Oregon, Portland - White Stag Block
70 NW Couch St. @ NW 1st Ave, Portland, OR

That Is Architecture.

Just sent in by Cameron Sinclair, this is the definition of short and sweet. (In addition to being the definition of, well, you get the idea.) Watch the video here.

Mapping Power: Using design to get where we want to go

Chart used by the Friends of the High Line to excite the public and win its support. This projected timeline shows plantings and bird species they will attract to the High Line during the first four years. Image © 2004. Field Operations with Diller Scofidio Renfro. Courtesy the City of New York.

John Emerson writes about the power of visually mapping power as a tactic to effect positive social change. In the article published in Communication Arts, he uses a variety of different examples such as how Friends of the High Line used visuals to raise the funds to save the elevated rail line in Manhattan and transform it into a unique, elevated public park; the effectiveness of Al Gore's message as designed by Duarte Design; a chart providing the power relationships contained within the civil strife in the Congo or even the process of domestic violence in households. As he says,

What is power? It's an abstract dynamic, an engine behind the visible world. Power can be found in relationships, in the flow of resources or information, in signs, symbols and ideas or built into the environment. There's no doubt that visual media has the power to influence an audience, but visual media can also be used to visualize power itself. Visualizing power is a way of interpreting and understanding it. And this understanding can become a basis for challenging it. Design can be used to describe and locate power, to pressure those who hold power, and ultimately to facilitate and generate power by bringing people together.

Core-toon: Dream Product - Lego Remote!

Artist: fueledbycoffee
More: View all Core-toons

ID students envision Freescale's forthcoming "smartbook" category of devices

"Bigger than a smart phone, smaller than a notebook and different than a netbook." Technology companies Freescale and Qualcomm are working on a new category of mobile computing devices called smartbooks, with the former having tapped industrial design students at the Savannah College of Art & Design to mock up some concepts now on display at Taipei's Computex show.

"As the smartbook market emerges, new form factors and product categories will evolve to support and better align with user needs, and our engagement with SCAD demonstrates Freescale's intention to lead this evolution," said Glen Burchers, Consumer Segment marketing director for Freescale. "This initiative has given Freescale valuable insight into how end-users prefer to interact with smartbooks...."

Tasked with creating new models and paradigms that improve on the designs and user interfaces common to most first-generation netbook products, the participants developed a range of highly innovative, yet practical, designs optimal for leveraging the small, fanless dimensions and low-power operation of Freescale's i.MX515 processor.

Adds SCAD professor David Malouf:

I wanted to point anyone interested in the full story of this work to check out the student process book, final presentation to Freescale and concept videos all posted here.

Feel free to tell the students what you think.

And be aware that the students were tasked with a lot more than coming up with "mock ups". The work is based on substantial contextual design research and the output of design work included total eco-system design including 2 new visions for market specific operating system UIs.

Peek inside those gadgets: iFixit launches a user-driven teardown site

As we first mentioned in March, iFixit's been showing panicked people all over the world how to repair their abused and overused electronics by themselves. Occasionally, the iFixit team takes apart a new piece of hardware (like the Kindle 2 and Pleo pictured above), documents it, and posts it as a teardown, letting thousands of people take a look at what's inside and disassemble it themselves.

Today, they've seriously extended this part of the site by launching a user-driven teardown platform. The new creation tools allow anyone to author guides, and, with so many people contributing, who knows what we'll see disassembled? Kyle Wiens, the CEO of iFixit, is explicit about the variation they hope to see: "The deviation from writing Mac teardowns foreshadowed today's epic announcement. We hope that people use our flexible teardown platform to create teardowns of devices of all kinds, not just Apple products."

To introduce the teardown creation tool, iFixit has posted several user-authored cell phone teardowns and a step-by-step guide of exactly what's involved in publishing. It's all laid out for you, so show the world some gadget guts!

Forbes' 10 Hot ID'ers

Forbes has released their list of "Ten Trendsetters in Industrial Design," as they point out that ID seems to be making gains in the downturn:

At a time of economic belt-tightening, the products that offer both beauty and function are rising in popularity. Furniture, autos, computers, even light bulbs are all subject to reinvention by the world's most talented creators of utilitarian products.

Says Deyan Sudjic, director of the Design Museum London and a design and architecture critic: "Consumers are looking for things that reflect longevity, rather than quick disposal."

So who made the cut? Click here to read (and see).

Boston Designers Accord Town Hall: Reflections

On May 14th, the good folks at Continuum hosted the fourth Designers Accord Town Hall, rallying Beantown's sustainable design community for a candid discussion on their design practices. Here's the recap from the discussion, which ranged from fired up to down-to-earth.

Dave Laituri, founder and partner of Sprout Creation, kicked off the evening by sharing his company's journey to create the Vers iPod sound system--real wood, hand-crafted audio systems. At the helm of Sprout, Dave is trying to make a "dent in this sustainable thing" with every aspect of his product--from material sourcing and supply chain influencing to packaging and take back programs.

Guided by the belief that "ideas enacted are more important than ideas," Dave shared with us lessons from the frontlines of trying to infuse "better" into his product: better sound, better design with minimized environmental impact. It's here that he introduced us to Less Brown. This isn't a partner, investor or key stakeholder; but rather, it's the idea that in this pursuit of sustainability we shouldn't talk about the destination of being green--because like the holy grail, you'll never get there. There's always something better you can do. Green is never a final destination.

Continue reading

Core77's Dutch Master Bicycle: Sneak Peek

And finally, we're putting the final touches on our limited-edition Dutch Master bicycle, the ultimate blend of street and cruiser riding. Designed and hand-built in New York, It will hit the pavement later this month so we can't give too much away yet - but rest assured, this will be one super smooth summer ride!

Special thanks to Emily Pilloton, Xanthe Matychak, Niti Bhan and fueledbycoffee for their contributions 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 Photo Gallery: New York Design Week 2009

Photos from our coverage of New York Design Week are now online! Check the gallery for photos from ICFF at the Javits Center and satellite shows in the Meatpacking District, SoHo, Brooklyn and Midtown.

>> view gallery

Pacific NW Readers take note: Coroflot Creative Confab comes to Portland, June 11

Hot on the heels of the highly-energetic, highly-crowded (140+ person) New York City installment of the Creative Employment Confab, Coroflot is bringing the panel + networking event to the City of Roses in its only Pac NW appearance, Thursday, June 11 at the University of Oregon's White Stag Block in Old Town.

As before, the event will run for three hours, feature ample opportunity for networking with local creative professionals and recruiters, and center on an engaging panel discussion with some of Portland's top designers and design recruiters. We'll be spotlighting each of the panelists over the next week, but you can get start getting yourself acquainted right here:

Chelsea Vandiver - Head of the Communications Design Group at Ziba
Beth Sasseen - Senior Design Recruiter at Nike
Nick Oakley - Industrial Design Lead for Mobile Platforms at Intel
Kirk James - Creative Director at Cinco Design

In addition, there will be a limited number of dedicated Recruiter packages available for design-driven companies looking to establish a presence at the event -- check the registration page for details.

Coroflot's Creative Employment Confab
June 11th, 2:30-6 pm
The White Stag Block
70 NW Couch St. in Portland, OR

Advertisement

Shape-shifting bicycle prototype

You don't have to sit through the entire two-minute video to get the idea, but German industrial designer Stefan Wallmann's position-changing Zweistil bicycle prototype is definitely worth a look. Click on the vid before it gets yanked for copyright issues, as I'm guessing Wallman didn't pony up for the Rawhide rights.

Wallmann is one of last week's Coroflot features.

via gizmodo

Innovation as Evolution

From a recent New Yorker issue on Innovation, Adam Gopnik writes a lyrical piece about evolution and innovation, comparing the animal kingdom to the creative and business processes of making things. He starts off looking at the multi-bladed shaver, but the most evocative portion was about book lights, highly condensed for excerpting here:

I have tried them all, without much success...Some hang around your neck, some sit on your stomach; some clip onto the edge of the book, where they shake and waver, and some bend around the book's binding to shine creepliy on the pages. None of them quite do the trick...Failure, it seems, generates variety, too, but it is is the variety of futility, the small changes made in a lost cause. It takes the eye of God to see, in the acts of man, which are the children of delight and which the dead ends of despair.

The Context of 'Low Product': How designers can help articulate a new social language, by Ann Thorpe

Will "no product" become the new brand? John Hockenberry provocatively suggests that given the global economic crisis, "no product" is now plausible. But how plausible given our society organized around economic growth? I'm talking here about consumerism as both the primary purpose of growth, and its principal driver—the high product context.

Reliance on continuous growth makes the economy unstable (it must grow or it collapses) as well as unsustainable (it strives for infinite growth on finite planetary resources). Tim Jackson provides a very accessible overview of this situation in his great new report, Prosperity without Growth?, in which he also proposes an alternative—a steady state economy. Enter the "low product" context. Enter the Nomadic Prayer Space, knitfitti and the floating swimming pool. Before getting to the examples and the implications for design of a steady state economy, let's explore "growth" a bit more.

Continue reading

The painful process of corporate product development

When I saw that diagram above, which is an approximation of the product development teams at Sun and Apple, I thought the same thing as you: Where the heck's the industrial designer?

Even in diagrams, it seems, we are invisible. Sigh.

The diagram is from an article on corporate product development processes in Product Design and Development. If you've ever wondered how stuff gets made outside of design firms, in situations where you've got literally dozens of departments that all have to sign off on various parts of the process, then this will make fascinating reading for you.

Of course, if you've already lived this process, as a designer it can be just plain frustrating. An excerpt:

Example #2: (Industrial Design vs. Mechanical Engineering)

At Sun we had a very talented Industrial Design (ID) group. On a new "Thin Client" computer project, the manufacturing and design strategy called for utilizing an external OEM partner in South Korea. A problem came up during development which highlighted the very different views (assumptions) we had of each other's processes.

Early in the project the ID group released a cool looking 3D surface CAD model of the enclosure. The OEM ME's began adding detailed features such as wall thickness, mounting bosses, ribs, etc. However when they came across a problem they did what they normally do - they fixed it! ...but didn't tell us.

A month and a half later the ME's sent back 3D CAD models of the finished enclosure for our review and approval. I setup a design review which included the lead Industrial Designer. The ID person noticed that a change had been made to the top vents. The change violated the new corporate "design language".

This was bad because the new computer was one of a family of products that were being introduced with the new look. The vent shape was a key design element used to identifying the next generation of faster/better computers.

It turns out that the OEM's mechanical engineers discovered early on that the vent shape would have prevented the parts from coming off of the plastic mold so they changed it. Apparently, they considered the change minor, not worth mentioning, and in the interest of time simply made the change.

The lead Industrial Designer was angry that he hadn't been informed of the problem. He assumed he would be consulted whenever a change affected aesthetics which was modus operandi for all previous projects where the mechanical design was done internally....

Read the whole piece here.

Continuum presents Resonance, a video about design strategy and "getting it right"

Continuum has put together an illustrative (and very watchable) video about their outlook and process. While they do begin to discuss what design strategy is and how it is developed, the video's primary focus is to indicate the importance of finding the "right" solution: the one idea that brings diverse insights together and fits into the tight space between meaning and profitability. The video suggests that finding this space requires good research and discussion practices, but also a bit of creative intuition:

The real challenge lay less in the technical problem but often...in trying to solve the human problem. It's about understanding their needs and their aspirations and meeting them in some way. So, we are serving them. But sometimes their needs are to be surprised and delighted, and they can't tell us how to surprise and delight them. That has to come from us, as creative people in our profession.

Watch the video here.

Thanks, Steve!

Book Review: I Miss My Pencil, by Martin Bone and Kara Johnson

Martin Bone is one of us. The opening pages of his collaboration with Kara Johnson, I Miss My Pencil, include fetishistic shots of everyday objects like kitchen knives and attache cases that the authors know and love. In the short blurbs of text that accompany the beautiful product shots, Johnson explains a part of the product lifecycle that designers too often ignore. Recounting the effect of a ding on her experience as a car owner, she explains, "My previously flawless car now registered a dent above the back rear wheel. But my love did not waver. In fact, perhaps surprisingly, it grew: I love my car even more now with this little dent," that now serves to remind her of a weekend snowboarding. After the personal introduction, Pencil embraces the holy grail of industrial design: infusing shiny new products with the same love that grows naturally out of a shared history (or dent).

No strangers to industrial design, both authors work at IDEO, with Bone as design director and Kara Johnson leading the materials team. A series of 12 projects done for the sheer joy of creation, I Miss My Pencil reads like a student's wet dream of industrial design 101. The book is broken into three sections: Aisthetika, which deals with sense and experience, Punk Manufacturing, which combines craft and mass production, and Love+Fetish, which might be enough to titillate any objectophiles out there. Using about as much white space as I've ever seen in a book Mr. Bone and Ms. Johnson populate their tabula rasa with plenty of full bleed artful photographs and IM formatted conversations about their products. In yet another designer detail, the voices in those exchanges are each given their own font, with Bone speaking in dot matrix and Johnson a businesslike serif. At once joyous and confusing, I Miss My Pencil left me incredulous in the same way an avant garde indy movie produced by a major studio would. Every once in a while a completely impractical beautiful thing slips past consumer focus groups. At numerous times while reading, I wondered what sort of person would want to read a book about the joy of following absurd premises like "what does a laptop taste like?" to their logical (!?!) conclusions. Perhaps the audience for that sort of thing is tiny, but I think it includes us.

Continue reading

Interview with Audi's chief designer

Audi's auto interiors are widely considered some of the best in the biz, combining functional layouts with exceptional build quality and well-chosen materials. So how do they do it? An Autospies interview with Stefan Sielaff, Audi's chief designer, sheds some light on the process.

Q . Where do you look for ideas and inspiration?

A . I believe designers should go out of the studio, travel, go to other countries. There are traditional hot spots like Italy. We always visit the Milan furniture shows. We even go to Singapore for the fashion shows. When we look at the art markets, the Chinese and Indians are making strong statements now.

For clear and clean product design, Scandinavia is still a place to go, where we draw a lot of inspiration. From an architectural point of view, we look to the U.S., at architects like Frank Lloyd Wright. I'm a big fan of Frank Gehry.

Q . How hard is it these days to get the money you need to design good interiors with good materials?

A . I fight a lot to get what we want and what my team needs. I understand the management side. We have to earn money with our product. On the other hand, I want a nice product.

The customer is very intelligent and able to see if the company or the brand has spent a certain amount of money on the product or if it is just playing a game with the customer. Our president, (Rupert) Stadler, has a finance background but understands that if we save money on design, it hurts the company.

Read the full interview here.

Core-Toon: Greenwash

Artist: lunchbreath More: View all Core-toons

Demo of Asus' forthcoming all-in-one "nettop" keyboard

Next month Asus will launch their Eee Keyboard, which looks like an ultraslim keyboard with an iPhone slapped onto it. Touted as a "nettop," the device actually contains an entire PC, with the idea being that you can carry it around and plug it into any available display.

We were curious about the potential for the Frankensteinian integrated-touchscreen interface, but as Slashgear's hands-on review shows, the device may not be ready for primetime. Skip the first two minutes of the vid, the action doesn't start until about 2:04 (and avoid watching altogether if Failblog-worthy demos pain you to see).

A truly customizable auxiliary keyboard

Speaking of keyboards, while working in Photoshop and CAD I've always wanted physical, dedicated buttons to perform certain oft-repeated actions, but my laptop's QWERTY ain't got the space. Could this be the answer? The DX-1 Input System has 25 programmable, label-able keys you can stick anywhere on the transparent tray, which you can also slide labels under (like the transparent sheet on top of a Wacom tablet). It seems better to me than that Optimus Maximus keyboard with the LCD keys, because you can actually select the layout here and sort of tailor the ergonomics.

No mere concept, this thing is actually in production and for sale here.

Reflections from Greener By Design 2009

Last week in San Francisco was the Greener by Design conference, which we've already noted was well-covered by Reuters. But if you want the short version, here are some personal notes.

Greener by Design 2009 was actually the best conference I've been to in a while. Not so much because of the speakers or format--though they were definitely great--but because of the conversations with other people between talks. How does that happen? Maybe it was just coincidence; it was a standard-format gig, not an unconference like foo camp. Maybe it was that Joel Makower did a good job of getting interesting people to attend, and had decent-length breaks between sessions. In any case, it was well worth the time. Here are a few notes from the event.

Continue reading

Your Future Job is Social Innovator: Predictions from Ezio Manzini

Bottega Altromercato, an example of social innovation from Sustainable Everday

"The main activity of designers will be as social innovators," said Ezio Manzini during an intimate conversation with o2NYC on May 6. Ezio's talk outlined an exit strategy for conscious designers, a shift from making things to designing tools for a better society. For those of us who have signed on to the green revolution, who commit to having the conversation with clients, sourcing better materials, reducing life cycle impacts, doing the hard work of greener design, we need an exit strategy. How do we stop making things less bad and start actually solving for climate change?

Ezio Manzini has been thinking about the sustainable design problem for 20+ years. A professor of Industrial Design at Milan Polytechnic, he is Director of CIRIS (the Interdepartmental Centre for Research on Innovation for Sustainability), and is the author of several books on sustainable design: The Material of Invention, Artifacts: Towards a New Ecology of the Artificial Environment and Sustainable Everyday. Ezio feels he has "been telling the same story for 20 years. Always change it by the end it is the same." What has changed lately, though, is his rhetoric, from the soon to be possible to the here and now. That is the opportunity that crisis brings--a chance to rethink how we've been operating as a society, and offer new visions for how we can live.

Ezio first pointed out the problem with the green design movement, and its focus on "fixing the past," which is "doomed because it requires asking people to 'reduce,' asking them to have 'the same, but less.' Instead we need to offer them 'different, but better.'" So what's better?

Continue reading

Ninjas maintaining product dominance over Samurai

And finally, Guerilla marketing firms annoy the crap out of me, but I have to admit that Latvian firm Ninja BTL's business card would probably not get lost in the shuffle on my desk.

But a ninja product I could really use is this flash drive, which can hold up to 2GB of ninja secrets.

Not to be outdone by their sworn enemies, Samurai have retailated by designing themselves an umbrella.

They might not have thumb drives, but at least they will stay dry!

(The umbrella is actually by design duo and longtime Core contributors Bruce Tharp and Stephanie Munson.)

Special thanks to Steve Portigal, Jeremy Faludi, Jen van der Meer and lunchbreath for their contributions 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