The 5 Tenets of Project H

This week on Inspire, Adobe's experience design publication, Emily Pilloton, who founded the fast growing Project H just 16 months ago, writes about the 5 tenets that drive her organization:

There is no chapter without action.
Design with, not for.
Start locally, scale globally.
Document, measure and share.
Design systems not stuff.

Each article discusses one of the above tenets in depth, revealing much of the process and thought behind the growing number of projects that Project H supports. For example, here's a short excerpt from "Design Systems Not Stuff":

The New York chapter's initiative, Empowerment Through Food, is another great systems-approach to the design process. The project uses food (production, distribution, and consumption) as a platform to teach public high school students about ecology, health, and even business skills. The Empowerment Through Food initiative could easily have entailed the design of super cool planter boxes for a roof garden atop every public school in Manhattan. And while the planter boxes themselves are part of the design, they are only the material aspect, part of a bigger curriculum that encompasses the school's own production of cafeteria vegetables, plant sales that create an enterprise around education, and an adaptable in-classroom curriculum. It is this system that carries the power, not the aesthetics of the planter box. It is a holistic approach such as this, one that asks the big questions and leaves behind something sustainable that can be owned by users, rather than just more design.

The complete list of articles can be found here.

Jars that express the world's age distribution

The Age of the World containers, by Mathieu Lehanneur, beautifully illustrate the age pyramids of 5 different countries through variance in the 100 layers that stack up to form them. Each ring represents the size of an age group in one country's population, beginning at birth and ending at death. Currently, France, Japan, Egypt, Russia and the USA are represented, but custom pieces will be available for commission, after they are shown at the Issey Miyake store in Paris during Fashion Week in October.

Design Research Conference - Oct. 1-2, 2009

This year we're proud to be a media sponsor for the Design Research Conference (formerly known as About, With and For), hosted by IIT Institute of Design in Chicago. The two-day event runs over Oct. 1 & 2, and features a list of great speakers (you'll note a few Core contributors!) along with a number of hands-on workshops. The event focuses on Design Research, of course, and in addition to the workshops will be more participatory than previous installments, with student presentations, twenty-minute lightning round TED style talks, and other group activities and networking opportunities.

The early-bird registration discount ends on July 30, so hurry up to save almost 1/2 off the full price. Check the Google map of destinations and attractions surrounding the conference that they've set up. You can spend two days just enjoying downtown Chicago!

When the phone rings, turn your finger ring into an earring

Too cool to be true? The Orb Bluetooth headset folds neatly into a ring you can wear on your finger when it's not in use. A tiny FOLED (that's flexible organic light-emitting diode) display shows caller ID and calendar info. To activate the headset, you just twist it from a ring into an "S" and stick it in your ear; it receives your audio via bone conduction.

And best of all, unlike products like Apple's original bluetooth headset, the Orb will come in different ring sizes, to fit all comers.

We sure hope this thing's real! Gizmag says it's due to hit the market come January 2010. It'll be a great new way to ring in the New Year. (Sorry.)

via dvice

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Nokia's 3720 phone: Kick it, shoot it, chip it, drop it

"Handle Without Care" is the tagline for Nokia's new rugged 3720 phone. In this silly but fun video, the phone is put to the test versus a golf club, paintball gun, rugby boot, tall ladder, swimming pool, and beer.

Watch the video here.

Resource for DIY wearable technology

How To Get What You Want is a fantastic resource for DIY wearable tech by Kobakant, makers of the wearable toy piano. Tutorials include: constructing fabric pressure sensors; cutting soft circuits out of copper using a vinyl cutter; making a knit touchpad; sewing robust traces; and lists of both conductive and non-conductive materials. They're very comprehensive and insipring, so if you've ever had an itch to make a piece of smart clothing, this is the place for you!

Thanks Nick!

Physical interface design: CMU's inflatable buttons will be a game-changer

When it comes to designing a physical interface, you've got a big choice to make: Go the Blackberry route and spec out proper buttons, which offer tactility but are fixed, or go the iPhone route and opt for a touchscreen, which can display an infinite amount of menus but offer zero tactility.

That choice may soon become moot, thanks to researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the novel screen they have produced. Made from latex, portions of the screen can be "pumped up" or "sucked in" using an air pump to create physical buttons.

How rad is that? And if they are able to get the buttons smaller, it should be a relatively easy matter to write software that will translate visual text into Braille, opening up touchscreens for use by the visually impaired.

via popular mechanics

What if we looked at social media as a design problem?

Great little piece over at Harvard Business from David Armano on the intricate relationships between social media, design, and business. Armano calls for design strategy for social media that looks less like MacGyver hacks and more like, well, more like strategy with planning and intentionality. Of course, hacks are a great start, but if your approach to social media still looks like "just add twitter," then maybe it's time to go back to the drawing board.

Get the full story here.

100 Years of Design Manifestos

John Emerson of Backspace, a design consultancy dedicated to research, development, and promotion of design in the public interest, maintains a great blog called Social Design Notes. Today he posts, for the edification of us all, a list of design manifestos going back a hundred years.

World Design Capital 2012 shortlisted cities announced

Following deliberations on 17 July 2009, the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID) announced on behalf of the members of the World Design Capital Jury that the City of Eindhoven (The Netherlands) and the City of Helsinki (Finland) have been selected for the shortlist of cities that will move on to the next round of evaluation in the hopes of becoming World Design Capital (WDC) in 2012.

The evaluation for the WDC designation is founded on a comprehensive assessment process spanning a five-month review and deliberation period, during which time, applicants were requested to demonstrate evidence of their strengths in the following areas: Design, Programming, Infrastructure and Financing.

The final jury deliberation will take place in September 2009 in Montreal, Canada, and the official announcement of the WDC 2012 designated city will occur during the ICSID World Design Congress in Singapore on 25 November 2009.

>> Read ICSID press release

John Maeda IDSA Webinar

Forgoing his own lunch break, John Maeda just took a short hour to serve up a tasty webinar for the IDSA's Designer Spotlight Series. Addressing the challenge of "Open Source Administration", Maeda expounded on his philosophies of humanizing technology through social medias, specifically focusing on his own efforts to create more communal and creative networks in his present role as president of RSID. If you could get past the microphone echo, Maeda's talk, as usual, was perfectly simple, refreshing and human. Reminding us that "electrons move at the speed of light, [people] don't", he touched on his implementation of internal blogs and digital message boards for the RSID community, the importance of finding "authenticity" within large organizations, and the realization that he had evolved from a "CEO" to a "moderator" at RSID. The whole thing rang true with evidence-of-community-makes-humans-happy speak and we're thrilled to see someone finally bringing design schools into the 21st century. The tab for digging into this Spotlight hour can be a bit steep ($70-$85), but it sure beats listening to waitresses complain about their kids. Check out the full listing here.

And yes, we did do a screen shot of JM's presentation from a tiny laptop so it's a bit rough around the edges. And yes, that is Maeda's very own LIVE mouse arrow in the top left corner.

A National Design Policy?

Allison Arieff, author of the NY Times blog By Design, has written an article on the movement to establish a National Design Policy, discussing its context, figureheads, potential impacts and possible drawbacks. It's a wonderful read and, more importantly, makes a strong case for design's potential to contribute meaningfully to the development and implementation of new policies.

A brief excerpt follows, but be sure to read the whole thing here.

To be sure, the reasons for the mortgage crisis extend far beyond undecipherable documents but, as the design anthropologist Elizabeth Tunstall explains, people often didn't (and still don't, as they attempt to rework those flawed mortgages) understand what they were getting into. Much of the crisis was, quite simply, based on poor information. "The ability to implement policy is contingent on the way people interact with those policies," Tunstall explains. "This is where the interaction between design and policy comes in."

Health care offers another textbook case of how essential that interaction between design and policy can be. As the Obama administration advances its health care agenda, it would do well to recognize that it's not just about policy and economics but how well information is presented to the broader public. Integral to the success of health care reform, Tunstall argues, is clear understanding of what's to be gained. (Interestingly enough, Republicans recently issued this horrendous example of information design as a means to argue against the Democrats' health care plan.)

On a related note: Tom Dair, of Smart Design, is visiting the White House this week as a recipient of the National Design Awards. Like Arieff, he's optimistic about design's role in our new administration and is looking for the perfect soundbite to convey this to Michelle Obama. If you've got an idea, let him know by commenting at his Fast Company blog .

Nonsensical Info Graphics by Chad Hagen

The Onion's Hot New Consumer Products

The Onion has been "bought" by Yu Wan Mei, the Chinese amalgamated salvage fisheries and polymer injection corp, and, in addition to a total brand overhaul and "adjustment" in pespective, they're now reporting on the hottest new consumer products, manufactured by the salvage fishery themselves.

Our favorites include the Yu Wan Mei Device and Gel, available exclusively in the Onion store. Though it's difficult to discern the function of these mysterious products, the catalog captions clear it all up:

Yu Wan Mei device: The device has been completed and is now available for sale. Code 41-Virtue-00b.

Gel: Made with all ingredients, this gel is perfect for any occasion. Child and adult enjoy it equally, sometimes, as do even pets! If you need gel, buy this gel.

View the rest of these Chinese product spoofs here.

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Superstrong but lightweight steel beams

Imagine an I-beam you could carry on your shoulder--you'd be thankful you could haul it without needing a crane, but you probably wouldn't want to build structures out of it, thinking it surely wouldn't be strong enough.

Well--wrong! A new material called LSB, or LiteSteelBeam, is as strong as any hot-rolled steel I-beam, but it's 40% lighter. The result of six years of research and testing, LSB "can be cut, drilled, screwed, bolted, welded, and nailed using standard tools."

Already in use in Australia, LSB is now being manufactured in the U.S.

via fine homebuilding

Ford design researchers experimenting with virtual people

"We found in the past that if they didn't understand the buyer, designers would just go off and design something for themselves," [said Moray Callum, executive director of Ford Americas design].

Solution? Ford is experimenting with a rather novel technique: Designing a car around a fictional but psychologically-fleshed-out avatar named Antonella (photo above).

Antonella was the guiding personality for the Ford Verve, a design study that served as the basis for the latest-generation Fiesta. A character invented by Ford designers to help them imagine cars better tailored to their intended customers, she embodies a philosophy that guides the company's design studios these days: to design the car, first design the driver.

..."Invented characters get everyone on the same page," Mr. Callum said. "Personalizing gives context to the information we have. Sometimes the target demographics are difficult to relate to by, say, a 35-year-old male designer.

...Ford's goal in using made-up characters is that they will help produce cars that transcend national traits and are instead built around international, psychological archetypes.

Read more about this fascinating process here.

via ny times

Think outside the parking box

Speaking of cars, designboom and Nissan are co-organizing Think Outside the Parking Box, an international design competition that seeks to challenge and reinvent conventional ideas of urban parking.

Can't Park? Reduced parking availability and rising parking costs? Browsing aisle after aisle, fighting over the same parking spot? Got a ticket? Little aesthetic attractiveness of urban parking lots? As much as people love to drive, all good things must come to an end: Parking.

designboom and Nissan Motor Company are looking for YOUR artwork that illustrate your perception within the theme 'Think outside the parking box'. Challenge conventional urban parking! playful enhanced parking technology, robotic facilities, safety, dynamic services, green parking ... creative solutions that address urban parking problems, statements of objections, creative-innovative-and-hilarious ideas in form of videos, art- design objects and illustrations can be submitted.

Nissan Motor Company, Ltd. is currently the third largest Japanese car manufacturer. Two years ago Nissan launched Qashqai, a new breed of vehicle for the urban world. It is the first model to be styled by Nissan Design Europe in London and pioneered the crossover category in Europe. Qashqai is now Nissan's best selling model. You are asked to include the 'Qashqai' or part of it (rear-view mirrors, grills, wheels, wheel caps,...) in your artwork.

View the competition brief for complete guidelines and registration instructions. Deadline: September 27th.

Scream, a hand woven aluminum chair

And finally, Scream is a new aluminum chair from Bannavis Andrew Sribyatta of PIE Studio, an eco-friendly furniture design firm. Made with the same method as their prize-winning Steel Tongue chair, the piece is constructed by hand-weaving an aluminum skin over a stainless steel frame. According to PIE, " The inspiration derives from a screaming mouth exposing the Uvula. The Uvula moves down and touches the floor as one sits on the chair."

Special thanks to Emily Baltz, Mark Vanderbeeken, Niti Bhan, and Xanthe Matychak 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

U.S. town designs their own cash; website redesigns national money

We all know that time is money, but the town of Ithaca, New York is the first community to take that phrase and, well, put their money where their mouth is.

Their locally-use only, redesigned cash is called Ithaca Hours:

Ithaca Hours is a local currency system that promotes local economic strength and community self-reliance in ways which will support economic and social justice, ecology, community participation and human aspirations in and around Ithaca, New York. Ithaca Hours help to keep money local, building the Ithaca economy. It also builds community pride and connections. Over 900 participants publicly accept Ithaca HOURS for goods and services. Additionally some local employers and employees have agreed to pay or receive partial wages in Ithaca Hours, further continuing our goal of keeping money local.

...unlike US dollars when you spend an HOUR you know it is going to stay in our community, keep circulating, supporting our economy and maybe even end up right back in your pocket.

This was spotted on the website of the Dollar ReDe$ign Project, which recently held a design competition for U.S. currency. Some of the entrants/winners are pictured below, and you can check out the rest here.

"Mini Giant" crawling printer concept wins Zink design comp

Designer Paula Adina Sumalan has won first prize in the "Futures" category for the Zero Boundaries Zink Product Design Competition, which asked entrants to design concepts using Zink's "inkless printing" technology.

Sumalan's "Mini Giant" concept...

...is a robotic printer that self-propels itself over a sheet of ZINK Paper of any size to create a print. Imagine, with the Mini Giant, a large format poster printer can now fit in the palm of your hand!

Click here to learn more, and here to see the rest of the winners.

DK Ahn's Domestic Manufacturing Machine

Speaking of crawling devices, DK Ahn, a recent graduate of the Royal College of Arts in London (and previously featured here on Core), is investigating methods of domestic manufacturing in a project that he calls Microfactory.

DK writes:

MICROFACTORY is a project centered around designing domestic manufacturing machinery. The project allows people to make their own products at home easily as well as share their own designs. By focusing on concepts of open-source design and the principles of reusing materials around the home, Micro Factory looks to use design to develop new manufacturing methods which benefit society as a whole.

This first object in this series is called MOW, a portable tabletop cutting device that can slice through light sheet materials like cardboard, polypropylene and wood under 2mm thick. The user can download or create a pattern and send it to MOW via Bluetooth, at which point, the device, controlled by 4 cables, automatically orients itself and cuts the pattern from the material.

Thanks, Niti!

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The passing of Julius Shulman, photographer of modernist architecture

Sadly, Julius Shulman, passed away last week. The 98-year-old Shulman was a famous photographer of modernist architecture--if you've ever taken any sort of 20th century design course you've definitely seen his work in your lecture hall slideshows. And with clients like Frank Lloyd Wright, Charles Eames, Eero Saarinen and countless others, you've undoubtedly seen numerous coffee-table books graced with his images.

For a comprehensive look at this famous shooter's work, you need look no further than Google Images; for something more curated, check out the L.A. Times' Julius Shulman slideshow.

Hartmut Esslinger answers the tough ones

Gizmodo's got an interview up with Hartmut Esslinger, the founder of frog design and the man behind Sony's iconic '70s products and Apple's "Snow White" design language of the '80s. And luckily for us, this isn't just a rubdown piece--they ask the tough questions we want to hear the answers to. An excerpt:

Were there times when companies were afraid to go as far as you wanted them to? Are there any examples of companies that refused to make design improvements--perhaps because of cost--and paid a larger price for that?

Strategic design is not about "going as far as possible" but about "going the best way together". As said above with the Apple Snow White example, the interactive relationship between client and designer is a vital element for success or failure. So, even as I may push for more advanced solutions, the client may have many reasons not to follow. At the end of a day, each jointly achieved result shall be a healthy compromise, motivated by achieving the best for the user and/or consumer. Naturally, there are some negative examples where I couldn't convince clients, which I also describe in my book: Polaroid which stuck too long to chemical image creation, Maytag which refused to innovate in a strategic way and Motorola which missed the opportunity to create the iPhone long before Apple did.

Read the rest here.

Good design is not enough - why supply chains matter to the user experience

Designer Enric Gili Fort points out that focusing on the front end of getting a new product to market is simply not enough. With all the attention paid to Apple's cool designs and unique user experience, what's often overlooked is the role of an efficient supply chain that puts it all together and gets it out to the customer's hands in time. Here's a snippet,

So how does this relate to designers? Face it, talking about supply chain and the way a company structures itself to deliver its products is not the best way to get designers' attention. All these behind the scenes processes and its consequences can cause designers' eyes to glaze over. "Supply chain" is neither shiny, nor glamorous, does not help win design awards, and is an unsexy term.

But if the designers' goal is to really help companies to launch successful products, they really will have to start thinking about it next time they present their glossy reports to clients. No doubt clients will ask: "And how will my company launch this product?"

The answer "focus on the user experience" is not enough for a company, it is just the starting point. Companies need a routing plan. They need to find out the best and most creative ways to organize themselves in order to deliver (supply chain). Different products require organizations to structure themselves in different ways (supply chain, again), and innovators have to pay close attention to this if they want to increase the chances of market success.

40th Anniversary of Apollo 11's lunar landing

Apollo 11th's lunar landing took place 40 years ago today, after a momentous launch on July 16th, 1969. The web's been buzzing with moon-news for awhile now (see our previous post here) and we wanted to share with you a few more of our favorite links.

NASA has gone to special lengths to digitally restore the old moon footage. You can watch the full list of clips at NASA's site or just the condensed montage below. For a full trip through Apollo 11 history by video, check out Mashable's chronological round up of YouTube clips.

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Brilliant articulated clock by Sander Mulder

Core-fave Sander Mulder (previously featured on core here and here), has just released Continue Time. The clock's second hand rotates around the minute hand, which rotates around the hour hand, creating a dynamic, kinetic sculpture that can, amazingly, still be read like a normal clock. Made of brass and aluminum, the clock is available from the designer in a limited edition of 25.

The idea for this design started with a move. Sander explains below:

While moving to a new house our clock was damaged severely in transport, to a point where it's minutes- and seconds pointer fell of the central axis, and where just laying in the transparent bubble cover. Witnessing the random patterns that occurred with the hour pointer still rotating, the first concept for the Continue Time clock was born.

Opportunity Green New York Party

The east coast eco-literati were out in force last night at New York's Environment Furniture showroom for the Opportunity Green party. The 3rd Annual Opportunity Green Conference takes place November 7-8, 2009 in Los Angeles. The mission is simple, empower individuals and organizations with actionable knowledge and inspire leaders of the new green economy. This year's line up of speakers looks great and arguably it's one of the best times of the year to visit LA - maybe try convincing your boss on the merits of the conference before mentioning that!

Opportunity Green
November 7-8, 2009
UCLA Covel Commons
Los Angeles, CA
www.opportunitygreen.com

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Brilliant (literally) anti-paparazzi device

Most photography studio strobe lights are what they call "slaved," or light-triggered by means of internal sensors; when one of them fires, all of them will fire simultaneously, so you don't have to plug a wire from your camera into all of them during multiple-light set-ups.

NYU Interactive Telecommunication Program student Adam Harvey has harnessed this simple technology to devise a brilliant anti-paparazzi device that goes well beyond Ashton Kutcher's Tweets: A purse with a flash sensor and flash. His clutch purse contains a sensor that is triggered by a flash going off, and it instantaneously fires its own flash, completely ruining paparazzi shots.

Harvey is currently working on the patent and hopes to have the bag ready for sale by Spring 2010.

via gizmag

GM's classic design center gets second life in education

"'The profession was invented in this room,'" says Richard Rogers, president of the College for Creative Studies (CCS), as he stands in the dusty construction site that used to be the General Motors Argonaut Building."

The profession Rogers is referring to is automotive design, and the excerpt is from Autoweek's article on GM's Argonaut Building in Detroit, GM's former design center and the birthplace of many American motoring classics. The building is being donated to the Center for Creative Studies, to help breathe life into a new crop of designers:

The massive 11-story Argonaut Building, built in stages in 1928 and 1936, is in the midst of a $145 million renovation. It is one of the few bright spots on Detroit's horizon these days. The project will redevelop the 760,000-square-foot building, donated by GM, as "an integrated educational community focused on art and design."

...The Argonaut will offer space for CCS programs, including new graduate programs, with dining and dorm space for 300. The building also will house a new sort of middle and secondary school, devoted to design. The idea is to hook inner-city kids early in the creative process and foster them along the way. Students of all ages will be able to learn from one another so, the theory goes, talent can be seamlessly encouraged and developed from first budding to full blooming.

Read all about it here.

Core-Toons: Ed Hardy Recipe Card

Artist: lunchbreath
More: View all Core-toons

New "photographic fabric" material

Researchers at MIT have developed an unusual fabric made from light-sensitive fibers woven into layers. The resultant material essentially acts as a huge, flexible camera, able to capture images (albeit rudimentary ones) of whatever is near it.

"We are saying, 'instead of a tiny, sensitive object [for capturing images], let's construct a large, distributed system,'" said Yoel Fink, researcher leader and Associate Professor of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. "While the current version of these fabrics can only image nearby objects, it can still can see much farther than most shirts can," he added.

With funding coming from multiple sources notably including the Army Research Office and DARPA, the first applications will, surprise surprise, be military-based. But if this tech trickles down to the mainstream, it will redefine the term "fashion photographer."

via dvice

2009 Ideas that Matter deadline extended

We're excited to announce that Sappi Fine Paper has extended the deadline for their 2009 Ideas that Matter competition to July 31st. In case you are first hearing about this phenomenal grant program now, here's a bit more information:

Since 1999, Sappi's Ideas that Matter program has awarded $9 million worldwide in grants to support causes that range from youth centers and health care awareness to wildlife protection and sustainability. Individual designers, design firms, agencies, in-house corporate design departments, design instructors, individual design students and design student groups, who are performing pro bono work for a nonprofit organization can apply for an Ideas that Matter grant. Grant awards range from $5,000 to $50,000 per project and may be used to cover implementation and out-of-pocket costs. This year's Ideas that Matter winners will be announced this fall.

For more information or to submit an entry, visit the competition website here.

Core77 Dutch Master launch photos: Apple Store and Ace Hotel

Thanks to everyone who came to the Soho Apple store in New York last weekend for our "Meet the Designers" session. The 240+ slide presentation took the audience behind-the-scenes to explore the Dutch Master's design process, the challenges of fitting modern components on a bike frame that hasn't changed in 30 years, and Kt Higgins from the Bushwick Bike Shop showed us some of the more rare and obscure custom bikes she's worked on. An after party at the recently opened Ace Hotel seriously couldn't have been a more fitting place to showcase the Dutch Master.

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A book-sensitive reading lamp

And finally, Reading lamp, designed by French designers Jun Yasumoto, Alban Le Henry, Olivier Pigasse and Vincent Vandenbrouck, is wonderfully simple: it's "a lamp that shuts off when you put a book on it, and that turns on when you take your book to read it."

Special thanks to Niti Bhan 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

Core77 Introduces the Dutch Master limited edition bicycle!

Core77 proudly introduces a limited edition bicycle—named the "Dutch Master"—celebrating New York bike culture and a heritage of local manufacturing.

The Dutch Master is based on the beloved Worksman cruiser frame—a workhorse foundation used throughout the New York delivery community, and manufactured in Queens, New York for over 110 years. Core77 customized the frame, fitting it out with a carefully curated set of components, each with its own story.

The bike was hand-built by KT Higgins, a Brooklyn-based ex-bike messenger (infamous for her crash in the movie Pedal), and proprietor of Bushwick Bike Shop, her one-year-old bikeshop in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn.

The Dutch Master features stem and pedals from Brooklyn Machine Works, maker of high-end, indestructible parts. The Brooks saddle and the Dapper Dan grips, both leather, provide unparalleled feel and an authentic patina. The BMX Crankset is complemented by front and rear drum breaks from Sturmey Archer, and the shock-absorbing Schwalbe "Fat Frank" cruiser tires provide smooth-rolling, urban-friendly traction and durability.

The wheels are hand-built in Brooklyn with Swiss DT spokes, and the rear wheel is equipped with bike pegs, so that you can carry (at least) one of your posse home at the end of the night.

Core77 was founded in Brooklyn in 1995, and one of the reasons why the bike project is so exciting for us is that it both recognizes the history of the company and celebrates small manufacturing in the area.

The Dutch Master will be on display in the lobby of the trend-setting Ace Hotel New York, located at 20 West 29th Street, for one week, from July 11 through July 18th.

The bike will be produced in a limited edition of 25. For more information, ordering, videos, and press photos of Core77's Dutch Master Bicycle, visit www.core77.com/dutchmaster.

Design in the wild: What a product designer takes on an 18-day walk

Products are interesting, but highly specialized products even more so. One of the reasons we get more excited about high-performance cars than regular passenger ones, or precision machine tools over the sort you find in a typical garage workshop, is that such objects tend to wear their functions on their sleeves. Fast cars look fast because that's their primary reason for existing -- anything that doesn't work toward this end tends to get left off, and a new development that speeds them up tends to find wide acceptance in short order.

I don't drive fast cars, but I like to go on long walks. And in a smaller, more humble way, backpacking gear has a similar clarity and honesty to its design. Aesthetics, accessories, and comforts still exist in such goods when they can, but almost always in profound deference to function, durability, and most crucially, light weight. This is what makes such gear so fascinating, and why I spent dozens hours in my teens and early twenties poring over Campmor and REI catalogs the way some kids I knew obsessed over automotive magazines.

I'm off on vacation starting this weekend, and we all agreed it would be an interesting exercise to catalog the gear I'll be hauling along, especially given the nature of the holiday: a 211 mile walk called the John Muir Trail, that rambles at high altitude, without meeting a single road, from Yosemite National Park to Mt. Whitney in California's Sierra Nevada mountains. It's by far the longest trail I've attempted, and the weight and durability requirements on accompanying gear are exceptional.

Here's what's coming along, categorized (with a respectful nod to the late, great Colin Fletcher, who used similar terminology in his classic Complete Walker reference series) by the "room" of the house that the gear approximates -- for a backpacker's kit is nothing more than an extreme distillation of the home he or she has left behind:

Kitchen (left to right): butane lighter, double-walled plastic mug, Victorinox Swiss Army knife, polycarbonate spoon, spatula, coffee maker with lid, microfiber rag, hard anodized aluminum pots, MSR Dragonfly stove with fuel bottle and windscreen

Comments: Food is eaten out of the pot or the mug, which is quite well insulated and extremely light; a great example of materials advancement translating to improved performance. The knife is a "Tinker" model, one of the few to dispense with the corkscrew in favor of a Phillips head screwdriver -- I've yet to have need of either, but it seems more likely I'd want to screw something down than open a bottle of wine at 12,000 feet. The problem with Swiss Army knives is that I usually only carry one when on vacation, which isn't all that frequently, so I lose and re-buy one roughly every two years. Good thing they're still under US$25.

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'Same, Same but Different' DMY design Awards, 2009, © Rosa Merk, courtesy DMY Berlin

Same, Same but Different: DMY 2009

The delusion of an unsustainable economic system, along with the time required to forge a new one - based on innovation - and the scarcity of resources, have changed the leading trends in design: public space, recycling, re-use and open source technologies dominated the creative sphere of design at the international DMY Design Festival in Berlin.

DMY started out in 2003 when 20 friends got together to show each other their works and exchange ideas; 7 years down the line, it has grown into an international design festival, contemporary design platform and representative of Berlin as the city of design (UNESCO), connected to an international network of creative cities.

Renowned as a 'trend barometer' in the design industry, the DMY design festival has succeeded in maintaining the creative flair and informal atmosphere of its original format while becoming a multifaceted event with global appeal.

Berlin provides an ideal setting for a design festival, and, by capitalizing on empty spaces and underused urban areas, it has succeeded in giving creativity an active role within the city in terms of culture and economy, as well as attributing special importance to the existing characteristics of urban spaces. 20% of Berlin's population is under the age of 25 and one tenth of the working population is involved in the creative economy, which accounts for over 21% of its GDP, making the German capital one of Europe's most creative hubs. Described by foreign residents as an 'open city' Berlin's creative scene has been attracting designers and artists for years. The festival jury of the DMY Awards was in fact composed of foreign designers and curators who have chosen to live and work in Berlin (Jurgen Bey, Hurgen Meyer H., Ines Kaag).

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HFBK Hamburg's Annual Exhibition: Sound, Light, and Big!

One of Hamburg's favorite art and design schools HFBK Hamburg opened its door for its annual exhibition, or "Jahresausstellung". From 9-12 July 2009 young and post-graduate design+art students present their best works. A great opportunity for upcoming students to get a taste of the school's competence.

More snapshots here.

Vadim Kibardin's killer clock concept

Designer Vadim Kibardin's suh-weeeet Black & White Clock turns two dimensions into three with a series of four OLED digits, each with their own power source.

A light sensor would figure out if it's bright or dark in the room, adjusting the numbers accordingly--going dark to form numbers during the day, and bright white at night.

Status: Concept stage, seeking a manufacturer.

Frog founder's design tips slideshow and book

Frogdesign founder Hartmut Esslinger shares a " 10 Ways to Invent Winning Products" slideshow with Businessweek, as part of an article reviewing his book A Fine Line: How Design Strategies Are Shaping the Future of Business.

Throughout his book, Esslinger is keen to proffer tips on how design can affect both innovation and the bottom line. Apple stories abound, including intriguing behind-the-scenes tales that humanize both Jobs and Esslinger. But the writer also includes anecdotes of his design firm's work for an impressive, disparate collection of the world's leading brands, including Disney, Louis Vuitton, and SAP.

In brief case study after case study, Esslinger builds momentum for his main argument. "Creative strategy offers clear benefits over the traditional supply-chain dominated approach to business," he writes. How? By producing solutions designed for human beings rather than mere commodities. Apple's status as the poster-child for a design-centric approach that has paid off with continuous profits underlines his argument.

Monarchy Rocking Stool

Yiannis Ghikas has designed the amazing Monarchy Rocking Stool, designed to rock forwards and from side-to-side, swiveling without turning over, allowing "the user to escape the dullness of the ultimate stability." Watch the video here.

Reburbia: A suburban design competition

Dwell Magazine and Inhabitat are co-producing the Reburbia competition, an invitation to envision an alternate design future for the American suburb:

Calling all future-forward architects, urban designers, renegade planners and imaginative engineers: Show us how you would re-invent the suburbs! What would a McMansion become if it weren't a single-family dwelling? How could a vacant big box store be retrofitted for agriculture? What sort of design solutions can you come up with to facilitate car-free mobility, 'burb-grown food, and local, renewable energy generation? We want to see how you’d design future-proof spaces and systems using the suburban structures of the present, from small-scale retrofits to large-scale restoration--the wilder the better!

Judges include: Jill Fehrenbacher, Sarah Rich, Fritz Haeg, Geoff Manaugh, Thomas Ermacora, Paul Petrunia, and Core77's Allan Chochinov.

The deadline is August 1st, so hurry up and enter!

Core-toon: Coffee Temperature Acceptability Index

Artist: fueledbycoffee
More: View all Core-toons

Material Vision 2009: Nano-Stone and More Innovative Materials

Recently, Aart van Bezooyen traveled to Frankfurt with a team young designers to visit Material Vision 2009. This excursion is a part of his teachings as visiting professor at the Bremen University of the Arts (HfK Bremen) which focuses on the aesthetics of materials and manufacturing in design.

Material Vision is a biannual trade show showcasing the latest materials and technologies for product developers, designers and architects. He asked the students, or "materials scouts", to share what they liked best. Here's what they found!

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© Filip Dujardin / OWI

Urban Camping: escaping into the city

Urban Camping is a project by Belgian Architects Oscar Rommens and Joris Van Reusel of Impot.exportARCHITECTURE that provides a novel solution to high demand, low-budget travel accommodation in city-centres and inconveniently located campsites in city outskirts.

Camping is commonly perceived as a getaway from the city into nature. Oscar Rommens and Joris Van Reusel, on the contrary, propose an 'escape' into the urban environment, to create a unique travel experience for adventurous city wanderers. The UC structure is a mobile, multi-storey campground erected as a vertical growing landscape and positioned to encourage social interaction between travellers and city dwellers.

© Filip Dujardin / OWI

UC will be erected in Copenhagen on July 25 to August 1 2009 at the global cultural diversity event OUTCITIES 2009, as an initiative by the city of Antwerp to promote its innovative tourism policy.

William Drenttel visits Alabama

On Design Observer last week, William Drenttel posted a piece reflecting on his visit to Alabama, with intersections with H.E.R.O. (Hale Empowerment and Revitalization Organization), Project M, Americorps, and some other good folks. (Project M will be coming to Winterhouse this summer; I will be lucky enough to be a guest critic.) The piece is reflective with just a teaspoonful of the critical, and has great links throughout. Here's a taste:

Hale County is ripe to become a national center for design research into rural poverty. It is uniquely positioned, given the convergence of design disciplines already in place there, the consequence of these initial efforts by architects and designers who have already established deep roots in the local communities. To be fair, conflicts may well arise: so many designers working in one zone will raise questions of identity and turf; local communities may be confused by an unexplained and sudden influx of do-gooders; new work inherently raises political issues about existing racial and political structures; and the current focus on housing and architecture does not expand design input to other potentially critical needs in the realm of healthcare, education or social services.

Read the whole post here.

Portland Confab video: How Nike, Intel, Ziba and Cinco hire designers

Up now on Creative Seeds: video of the entire panel discussion from last month's Coroflot Creative Confab in Portland, OR. If you've ever wished you could corner a group of recruiters and senior designers and ask them exactly what it takes to get a job in their studio...well, we did it for you.

Topics covered include:

- Where recruiters look for leads on new hires
- What a portfolio can't show
- The dangers of relying too much on a single source of referrals
- How creative teams in large corporations deal with official hiring channels
- Finding the narrative in an applicant's work history and online presence
- The advantages of maintaining a long-term database of potential hires
- The necessity of presenting a true picture of your skills and personality, even if it's not what the employer's looking for
- The difference between skill sets for staff positions and freelance ones

Panel discussion video, part one

Panel discussion video, part two

Starting a Design Studio During a Downturn, by Jennifer Bove

The final installment of Jennifer Bove's Starting a Design Studio During a Downturn has been posted on her blog at Fast Company, useful for anyone in the midst of starting their own practice or even thinking about it. A combination of reflection, encouragement, and survival tactics, Jennifer recounts her own experiences starting the design studio Kicker in September 2008 and surviving one year of economic downturn, emerging with four paying clients and a few showcase pieces.

A short excerpt follows below, but be sure to read the whole series here. Also, check out Core contributor Carl Alviani's post on this same topic over at Creative Seeds.

We've met the challenges of the new economy head on and come out fighting. We had a strong message, and now a strong showpiece. So when our pipeline began to thin again, we did what any designers would do--primary research. We needed to get our message to the right people. So we talked to experts in the field, devised a plan, and charged ahead. It's all or nothing when your business's future is on the line.

Thanks, Alissa!

Keyring in the shape of a Key - Duh!

And finally, Split Ring Key is the latest hybrid object from Scott Amron:

Carry your keys on your other key. Real working key blank. Key blank can be cut by any key cutter to fit KW1 or SC1 keys.

Awesome!

Special thanks to Aart van Bezooyen, Marcia Caines, 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

Tools of Engagement: The New Practice of User-Centered Design, by Robert Fabricant

This is a time to ask questions. Not small questions but big, fundamental questions. What role did Design play in contributing to our current global crisis? And what role should/will Designers play in leading us out of this mess? The gloves have come off over the last few months with a raft of posts by influential design thinkers questioning the impact of Innovation and Design Thinking, two of the most fashionable elements of contemporary design practice, on business practices.

I have already written about the drive for more direct social engagement among designers, particularly young designers, as reflected in programs like TU/e and design firms like Project H. By embracing a more active form of engagement and influence, these designers are asking perhaps the most fundamental question of all: do we need to shift the conventional notion of User-Centered Design (UCD) and rethink the very foundation of contemporary design practice?

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Only 6 Days Left! Design a Snowboard for Nidecker!

Produced by Nidecker in partnership with Core77, the Nidecker Snowboard Competition invites designers to create custom snowboard graphics for Nidecker boards. There are 10 days left, so enter now!

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

6 DAYS LEFT! REGISTER NOW!!

Allan Chochinov at Compostmodern Video: The Prosthetic Arm Project

I was proud to present at this year's Compostmodern Conference in San Francisco, and prouder still of the student work I was able to share with the attendees. Now the videos of the day's presentations are up on the site, and the talk I gave, "Denting an Impossible Design Problem in 10 Sustainable Steps" is there to share.

The presentation centers around a 10-week project my graduate students in the SVA Designer as Author program completed around "designing a prosthetic arm," and we were incredibly privileged to have Aimee Mullins, Frank Wilson, John Kunniholm, and Elliot Washor come in as guests. Diana Lui shot portraits of the students at the conclusion, and I have to say that this was an incredible teaching (and learning) experience. Humbling, daunting, and elating at every twist and turn.

One of the students, Jackie Lay, is completing the project website which will include way more info on each of the student's work than I could include in the talk, but catch this video in the meantime for the story on the genesis, design, and development of the whole thing. I'll post a link to the project site as soon as it's up. Thanks again to all the students who made this happen--it was an incredible experience to be a part of.

Be sure to check out all the Compostmodern videos here.

Marc Newson's fractal necklace

Even using "rapid" prototyping, it took French jewelry house Boucheron's craftspeople 1,500 hours to produce Marc Newson's fiendishly complicated Julia necklace. The fractals-based diamond and sapphire piece will debut tonight in Paris, and unsurprisingly, it will likely be "one of the most expensive necklaces Boucheron's ever made."

Says Newson of his design inspiration, "Fractals are fascinating, complex and rich, and gemstones really lend themselves to exploiting their beauty."

For more on fractals, check out an earlier post of ours on the subject.

via the moment

Paul Hawken's Commencement Address: Required reading

Valerie Casey reminded me to reread Paul Hawken's commencement address given at the University of Portland on May 3rd. It is impossible to pick the best sections here; the speech builds upon itself in the most beautiful way, and seems blasphemous to pick out any one or two paragraphs to paste right here.

Get inspired. Read the speech now.

The Bathroom Reinvented: Virginia Gardiner's Loo Watt

We wanted to make sure you saw this video documenting Sophia Gardiner's development of a low-cost, low-impact, and highly sanitary loo, with the hope of transforming the (on average) two-pounds-per-person-per-day of human waste into a usable commodity.

If you're interested in hearing more from Sophia about poo, you can find her January review of Rose George's The Big Necessity: Adventures in the World of Human Waste here.

Watch the video here.

Hoberman's Transformable Screen for the U2 360° Tour

Constructed of stainless steel and aircraft aluminum, the display is made of 888 LED screens, with 500,000 pixels spanning across them, providing concertgoers with clear and visually stunning images. It has a screen area of 3,800 square feet, and weighs approximately 120,000 pounds.

Hoberman Associates has teamed up with Innovative Designs and Barco to create the Expanding Video Screen, a transformable elliptical screen for the U2 360° Tour. Based on Hoberman's patented Iris structure, this "fusion of architecture, stage scenery and extreme technology" stretches upwards to form a 7-story cone around the band, displaying footage directed by the Irish artist Catherine Owens.

Letter from Finland: Wired to care - meeting and exceeding customer expectations

"Wired to Care", a recent book by Jump's Dev Patnaik, is the response that came to a young grad student's lips after she heard my answer to her question on how I was liking being in Finland. Her explanation was that the book talked about small companies that grew around really really wanting to meet and exceed their customer's expectations but facing the challenge of holding on to this quality after growing beyond a particular size. Yes, that can be a problem but the topic on hand was the Finnish bureaucracy.

Let me explain: My answer to her question led me to expound on the biggest difference I've found here in Helsinki compared to living in a few 'hotspots' around the world (San Francisco, Singapore, Bangalore etc) What stands above and beyond any experience I've had elsewhere has been my interactions with the local government or public services. Call it service design, customer or user experience, the fact remains that the Finns have somehow managed to find an answer that works when it comes to leaving the end user feeling on top of the world. Yes, I may digress into hyperbole here but as any of you who have faced the experience of dealing with customer service that's so regimented according to prescripted interactions that if you miss some requiredlopaper or information you're instantly incapable of being assisted would recognize, the opposite is bound to be a pleasure.

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Core-Toons: Unsolicited Proposals to Detroit

Artist:
lunchbreath
More: View all Core-toons

Michael Bierut on design and the economy

Swissmiss points to a really good video of Michael Bierut discussing design and the economy, prior to his AIGA Philly lecture. Pretty short, and pretty great.

Watch the video here.

Tweet-talking JIVE (i.e. Twittering on Jonathan Ive)

Apple's design chief, Jonathan Ive, was honored at the Royal College of Art's "Innovation Night" on Tuesday, where he took to the stage. The event was closed to the public and much of the media, but geek.com has provided an account of Ive's talk--as reverse-engineered from Mozilla consultant Pascal Finette's Twittering of the event! Oh, the times we live in.

Here's a rather interesting excerpt:

Ive: My drawing skills are terrible... and I'm a lousy presenter. So I focus on designing instead. :)

Not sure if the smiley icon is Finette's addition, or if it's meant to represent Ive smiling after his statement. What is the Twitter transcription protocol? :)

Click here to read more, including Ive discussing some of Apple's design process.

Ralph Caplan on Empathy and Design

Core-fave Ralph Caplan has a sweet essay on the role (and limits) of empathy in design up on the AIGA Voice site. Here's a taste:

Empathy in design focuses on the user as a person, not just a consumer. And because it can be very difficult to imagine someone else's needs, we try getting the necessary information directly. This endeavor is supported by the wisdom of the ages, or at least by a Native American legend admonishing us not to judge anyone without first walking a mile in his moccasins. But, with moccasins as with so much else, one size doesn't fit all. Once I was researching an article about prisons in Connecticut. The state was at the time experimenting with a program that encouraged lawyers and judges to spend a voluntary weekend in the jug in order to better understand the sentences for which they were responsible. It was a well-meaning experiment, but I doubt that being locked up taught the prosecutors and judges much about incarceration that they didn't already know. Their experience would have been nothing like that of the real inmates, who did not wish to be there and did not know when they would get out. Empathy would have to supply what a weekend behind bars would not.

Read the whole thing here.

Thanks Steve!

On loving the Walkman for what it was, and the iPod for what it is

If you haven't yet stumbled across it on BBC News, Engadget or the discussion boards here on Core77, there's a great little article making the rounds, in which 13-year-old Scott Campbell is asked to give his opinions on the very Walkman his dad once toted (or hauled, if you want to be honest about the size of those early ones).

Besides the obvious entertainment value of hearing a (surprisingly eloquent) youngster discover how to flip a tape over, and "shuffle" tracks by randomly releasing the rewind button, there's some useful insight too, into the unavoidable coupling of intended and unintended consequences when technologies advance. Like the frog in the slowly warming pot, it's sometimes difficult to see the downsides of an improvement while it's being implemented, and even years into a shift as fundamental as the one from linear playback to random-access music devices, we have to put the two side-by-side and see them anew to appreciate how they've influenced our behavior.

The most obvious "loss" of the iPod generation, as mentioned in that Core77 discussion thread, and elsewhere, is the steady demise of the album as a coherent document: when the technology's limitations prevent us from going straight to the song we want, we're forced to listen to the whole thing, and maybe grow to love certain songs whose beauty reveals itself slowly. Without that linearity -- which would be seen as a failure today -- we'd probably have missed out on some beautiful but elusive tracks that our enormous, warbly tape players demanded we endure.

On the other hand, there's plenty we're gaining, and it's more than simply convenience. One danger of looking back on a nostalgiac medium is filtering for the good things and stating them explicitly, while leaving the old drawbacks, and new advantages, unspoken. We're fond of the warm crackle and rich timbre of a soul track on vinyl too, but do we spend as much time rhapsodizing about the sheer joy of being reminded of a song during a conversation, then cuing it up just a few seconds later? Of making music part of the discussion, rather than a distracting 15 minute dig through stacks of albums, often to find the sleeve is empty?

The potential for joy, exploration, emotional connection and (future) nostalgia in new technologies is often overlooked, and that's a pity, because objectively there's just as much to mourn in a new joy unappreciated as an old one lost. Smart 13-year-olds, with a democratic lack of allegiance to either, may turn out to be the best technology critics we've got.

Jake Dyson's motorized-aperture light fixtures

Jake Dyson's Motorlights use a mechanical solution in place of a dimmer switch, incorporating two shutters that allow an arc of light from between 10 and 120 degrees. That might not seem practical in a residential situation, but when you consider that up to 30 of these lights can be controlled by a single remote, it becomes clear that restaurants, nightclubs, and art galleries will probably take a shine to the fixture and the permutations it allows.

Dyson describes the product as "the world's first variable angle uplight, enabling both designers and consumers to vary light angles to suit different environments and needs–-from ambient lighting to spot lighting."

via 3 rings

Design is not about solving problems

"Some people (they are wrong) say design is about solving problems."

"Obviously designers do solve problems, but then so do dentists. Design is about cultural invention."

Statement by Jack Schulze of Schulze and Webb, presented during Matt Web's Reboot talk.

>> View talk

I.D. Magazine's Annual Design Review 2009 results online!

Though some of you may have already seen them in print, the winners of the I.D. Magazine Annual Design Review have been posted online.

Winners include Peek, IDEO's email-only device with a silicone keypad, and One & Co.'s Periodic Table, made from reclaimed Douglas Fir coated in silver. Also pictured are Harry Allen's First Aid Kit for Johnson and Johnson and Design Virtual Studio's Link desk lamp.

Check out the whole gallery here, and if you'll be in New York City sometime between now and August 21st, go see the objects in person at the Material ConneXion.

A UK call for change in design education

Design education is not keeping pace with the growing demand for new design professionals able to operate in a range of service-based environments.

The paper, Social Animals: tomorrow's designers in today's world by Sophia Parker, published by the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), argues that design education is still largely hinged on industrial principles.

Students need to be equipped with a broader range of research and communication skills, alongside their more traditional design skills, and encouraged to think more laterally about the sites and spaces where these could be used.

The report outlines six challenges for design educators.

via Dexigner

There, I Fixed It

And finally, on the other side of Jane Fulton Suri's Thoughtless Acts is There I Fixed It, documenting "epic kludges and adventures in home pwnership", where a kludge is "an ill-assorted collection of poorly matching parts, forming a distressing whole."

Definitely less graceful than the makeshift doorstops and paper shades in Jane's book, these "quick fixes" take a seriously direct (sometimes ingenious, sometimes dangerous) route from broken to "repaired". Our favorite is the padlocked car-door: "Look, this is just how it's going to be from now on, okay?"

Submit your own handiwork and make Michel de Certeau proud.

Special thanks to Mark Vanderbeeken, Xanthe Matychak, Niti Bhan, Steve Portigal 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