Core77 Photo Gallery: New York International Gift Fair 2009

The New York International Gift Fair is "the premier gift and home accessories market in the U.S.", with 2,900 exhibitors and 30,000 buyers traipsing through the Javits Center to see the latest and greatest. We joined the crowd in search of the best new tabletop objects, housewares, and accessories. Take a peek at what we found in the latest Core77 gallery.

>>view gallery

Order Design Revolution by Emily Pilloton

I am very excited about the new book written by Emily Pilloton and published by Metropolis Books, entitled Design Revolution: 100 Products That Empower People, available from right now. I was honored to write the foreword for the book, and having seen an advance copy—it was designed by the amazing Scott Stowell of Open—am really psyched about the potential of the project. It's filled with a collection of some of the most inspiring designs and design initiatives imaginable, and I believe it will serve as a great sourcebook for designers everywhere looking to make a positive impact. Core77 will have an exclusive interview with Emily coming up in October, but in the meantime, check out the book online, and learn a bit more about it at the Project H page.

Is British design dead? A high level debate

Alice Rawsthorn and Jonathan Glancey, two of the world's top design critics, address the issue of contemporary British design.

Rawsthorn, the design critic of the International Herald Tribune/The New York Times, argues that British design is not what it used to be, including most importantly public design - as exemplified by the "achingly embarrassing" 2012 Olympics logo.

Glancey is the UK's top architecture critic. In his piece in The Guardian, he reflects on Rawsthorn argument, adds some more examples of design ugliness, but argues that "it's not a lack of homegrown design talent that's the problem, but the way that the economy and our ways of life have changed since London Transport, the Post Office and other public corporations led the way in public design."

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DRC - Design Research Conference
Oct. 1-2, 2009
Chicago, IL

The Design Research Conference (DRC), hosted by the IIT Institute of Design, brings together a growing community of design professionals advancing the role of design research in innovation. A forum for discussing the current and emerging issues in the field, the conference fosters the collaboration of forward-thinking, creative professionals and students from a variety of disciplines.

Register Now!

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New York International Gift Fair faves: Joseph Joseph's clever kitchenware

Joseph Joseph is one of our favorite kitchenware companies, as their designs are functional, attractive, space-saving, and well-thought out. Their fold-flat colander is made with living hinges, meaning the whole thing is molded in a single piece; the space-saving Nest 8 contains four measuring cups, small and large mixing bowls, a colander, and a sieve all in one compact package; and their Index chopping board set ensures that you can chop raw meat, fish, veggies, and cooked food all on separate surfaces, preventing contamination.

New York International Gift Fair faves: Umbra gets us hooked on magnets

Umbra was in attendance with their usual line of I-want-to-touch-that hook racks and hanging cubbies, but our standout fave was their Magnetter mail and key holder, designed by Thea Yuzyk and featuring a magnet hidden inside the curved wood.

Alas, the darn thing is so popular (and affordable, at $14) that it's out of stock.

Glass-spotting: UK pub brawls will beget a new drinking container

In the more dangerous New York of the early '90s, the glassware of any off-the-radar nightlife spot was a dead giveaway to the sort of place it was. The ones that served drinks in plastic cups and had tin ashtrays were generally more trouble-prone. You knew this because one night you'd be at a place that used regular glasses, a fight would break out, and someone would get a glass, bottle or ashtray smashed into their face; next week you'd go back and all of the cups would be plastic.

I'd always naively thought of this as a bygone phenomenon, but apparently fighting with glassware is still an issue in Great Britain. According to statistics 5,500 Britons a year are involved in booze-fueled altercations that end in shattered glass and stitches, and the United Kingdom's Home Office Minister Alan Campbell feels the problem can be solved through design: "Innovative design has played an important role in driving down overall crime, including theft, fraud and burglary," said Campbell. The Home Office has thus commissioned a new plastic cup design for pubs.

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Design Tales: Designing a successful plastic pint glass

In response to the above post on forthcoming plastic pint glasses for pubs in the UK—and the attendant outcry by bar patrons—we received a report from Sydney-based industrial designer Andrew Simpson, who has experience with this particular problem. Simpson's company, Vert Design, was commissioned by Fosters to design a plastic pint glass for use on a a rooftop bar, and he shared with us some of the findings from his process.

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Ikea catalog from 1965

Vienna-based Ikke Tikke Theo blogger Sara has a mother who likes to save Ikea catalogs. Which is lucky for us, because it means we get to see this one...from 1965!

Is it just me, or does the stuff look pretty cool? With Ikea's rep for build quality, though, one has to wonder if any of these pieces are still kicking around.

There's a few more shots here.

via kottke

Groove armada: More transistor radios than you've probably ever seen in your life

Speaking of collections, recording engineer Michael Jack's gi-normous Flickr pool documenting his transistor radio collection is an old-school-industrial-design gold mine, with hundreds of photos of the intricately-designed little fossils. It was brought to our attention by Cult of Mac, who've been having fun highlighting Jack's comparison of certain antique models to Apple's iPod.

iPhone bicycle ergonomics app would make an awesome human factors tool

Wildlab.com's Test Rides iPhone app is geared to help you match your body to a bicycle of appropriate size. After photographing yourself in the specific position seen above, you then mark your joint locations on-screen, enter the dimensions of a bicycle, and the app tells you whether it's a good fit or not.

We're excited by the human features potential of this app not just for bicycles, but for furniture and workstation design. While it probably won't replace the classic Human Dimension and Interior Space designer's bible anytime soon, with a few tweaks this program could quickly give you vital dimensions of people reaching for cabinets, ascending stairs, slouching into unfocused unconsciousness, et cetera.

via wired

Folding bicycles to parked cars ratio

Speaking of bicycles, how many Brompton folding bicycles can you fit into a single parking space?

Forty-two, according to this photo. But with my luck I'd be the first guy who needed to retrieve my bike, and it would be the red one in the middle.

via gizmodo

NYC cyclists to get cool Fuseproject helmets

And more on bikes: though I've yet to see one, Yves Behar's Fuseproject was apparently commissioned by the City of New York to design a branded series of helmets that will be distributed "at community events." The two-piece helmets consists of a polystyrene shell (the actual protective part) that gets covered in fabric (the branded part). No word on how these things will be distributed, but this being design-conscious NYC, you can be darn sure there's gonna be a long line!

via fly lyf

Book Review: Classic Cars: 100 Years of Automotive Ads, by Jim Heimann and Phil Pattonk

The collapse of the US auto industry stands as one of the national tragedies of this generation, but it also provides boundless opportunities for ironic reflection when looking through a book like Heimann and Patton's Classic Cars. The first time we opened their book of historic auto ads, it revealed a blue '67 Olds Toronodo, complete with a matador against a red background, framed against the caption, "After you've walked off with all the honors, what do you do for an encore?" Regrettably we've found out. The copy on the back of this coffee table books contrasts the Stone Age and the Bronze Age with the 20th Century — The Automobile Age. The 20th Century has come to a close, and there's little doubt that the age of the automobile is at an end as well. That said, a hundred year retrospective on any human endeavor reflects not only on the products produced, but upon the values and the cultures that produced them.

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John Maeda on when a good idea works

John Maeda, president of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), has written a long article in the MIT Technology Review on how he recalls the Processing programming language and development environment taking shape in the creative hands of Ben Fry and Casey Reas.

"Processing was written and developed by two boys next door who are also visual and computational geniuses. Fry and Reas wrote it for themselves—and also for the world at large, to help everyone share in the rich vocabulary of computational expression. Processing exemplifies my core belief about education today: let the new generation do their thing and just get out of their way. Download it today, and play."

During his time at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea in Italy [where I worked as well], Casey Reas crafted the Processing tool, also with the help of many of the Institute's students - a fact that is mentioned in a comment by Victor Zambrano ("argonaut").

>> Read article

Photo: Casey Reas uses Processing to create high-resolution photographic prints. "This image was generated by thousands of autonomous software agents carrying out their instructions," he explains. "Shapes are drawn as they intersect-the size and colors are determined by the agents' behaviors."
Credit: Casey Reas/Bitforms Gallery, NYC

Competition: Design a T-shirt Fit for a CEO

Business Week's new T-Shirt design competition differs a bit from the usual. Instead of designing a T-Shirt to be printed and distributed to the masses, designers are tasked with desiging a T-Shirt fit for a specific CEO, from anywhere in the world and throughout history. That's right—your CEO can be a dead CEO.

Here's the competition brief from Helen Walters:

Design a T-shirt for a CEO. The CEO can be alive or dead and from anywhere in the world. Don't actually print a T-shirt, but email a jpeg of your design (either just the graphic or the graphic as it might look on a shirt) to me: helen_walters at businessweek.com. Also include brief details of who it was designed for, and the thinking behind the design. Finally, include some information about yourself — your name, location, age and current occupation. We'll feature the best in a slideshow on BW.com.

The deadline is September 4th. Find more details here.

Seed Magazine's "Workspace" checks out Smart Designer

We're loving Seed Magazine's "Workbench" feature, where they visit the workspaces of people they like. Previous visitees included author/physician Oliver Sacks and zoologist Nancy B. Simmons, and this morning we ID'ers got one of our own, Smart Design's Richard Whitehall, "who is leveraging the power of design cues and functionality to convince people to live greener lives." Click here for an interactive look at Whitehall's desk and its design-assisting clutter.

thanks greg!

Picnic set inspired by garden tools

And finally, David Derksen has designed a picnic furniture set inspired by garden tools and the specific interactions they suggest. For example, a wind-up light bulb atop a wooden stake can be used in any outdoor green space as temporary lighting, then hung on the garage pegboard when done. Made from rubber, steel, and ash wood, the rest of the set includes a fold-up bench with a handle, a rubber mat for either the bench or a grassy lawn, and a bucket that doubles as a carrying compartment and a stool. We love the industrious feeling that this collection evokes in the service of fun.

Contine reading

Special thanks to Mark Vanderbeeken for his 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

Oops! Sorry for the mix-up. Here's this week's newsletter!

Matthew White's amazingly thorough police cruiser interior re-design

Massachusetts-based Matthew White displays some impressive re-think skills and thoughtful, intelligent design touches in his project re-imagining police cruiser interiors. In preparation for the project, White went through interviews with members of the Boston police department on how cops really use their cars.

Although policemen are the ones who write us tickets for not wearing our seatbelts, ironically they are informally excused from wearing theirs due to their bulky utility belts, hip-mounted pistol holsters, and occasional need for quick egress. And not wearing a seatbelt is hardly a luxury for police; they often fare badly in car accidents.

White's Urban Patrol Vehicle Officer Seating design takes those issues into account, with seating contoured and segmented to accommodate the bulky belts, and lower-support seating surfaces that actively "step down" during egress, facilitating quick exits.

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The Coroflot Creative Confab is coming to San Francisco!

For all you Bay Area readers who've been waiting so patiently, we're pleased to announce that the fourth installment of Coroflot's Creative Employment Confab has been scheduled for Wednesday, October 21st, at the Autodesk Gallery at One Market Street in San Francisco.

The series, which has been building in size through its dates in Austin (for SxSW), New York (during Design Week), and Portland, OR, is expected to hit some unprecedented attendance numbers in SF, if reader feedback and requests are any indication.

The format will be similar to previous events, with an afternoon panel discussion covering topics creative hiring, followed by a reception which mixes design directors, recruiters, and creative professionals in an environment tailor made to encourage network-building and knowledge-sharing. New for the SF date will be an optional morning session, offering a pair of concurrent workshops, one directed at job-seekers, and the other at talent-seekers.

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Interaction designer Alexis Brion on interfaces in consumer products

Ah, the minutiae of physical interface design. Alexis Brion's insightful gripe on the Design vs. Art Blog points out that most camera manufacturers have uniformly adopted a rather silly interface feature: The wheel that isn't a wheel.

The problem with this design is that the wheel does not behave like a wheel, meaning that it can not be rotated in any direction. In most cases, we saw that wheels were actually 4 buttons put together. Even worse, those buttons usually had totally different functions.

Come to think of it, I have always subconsciously hated that little ring button, but never thought about it much until Brion brought it up.

Another piece of Brion's I enjoyed was "Telephone design for elderly people," featuring the phones pictured below and listing some do's and don't's. Am loving the handwritten speed-dial list the Doro phone on the left! I'm not even old and I want one.

Book Review: A Fine Line: How Design Strategies are Shaping the Future of Business, by Hartmut Esslinger

While not exactly summer beach reading, Hartmut Esslinger's new book on Design Strategy, A Fine Line crams as many ideas, themes and disparate story arcs into its 180 pages as a Dan Brown novel. For the first few chapters Esslinger follows the tried and true business book methodology of using real world examples to illustrate lessons in leadership and strategy. For the last three chapters, he begins to apply the design lessons he learned in the corporate world to what he terms "industrial-colonial capitalism" -- the problems of the modern age caused in part by the last century of design strategy. The beginning brims with ideas and scattershot observations about people and companies that occasionally distract from the underlying message, but by the end Esslinger has hit his stride, talking about big ideas applying principles with real insight.

Esslinger's clearly not afraid to express his own opinion and in the early pages. When he recounts the garage days of his fledgling consultancy, frog, the book engages in a fair amount of "I told you so," and name dropping as he heaps praise upon friends (e.g. "the brightest minds of our age, including Dieter Motte, Akio Morita and Norio Ohga of Sony ...") and scorn upon enemies (e.g. "including Paul Kunkel, who wrote a largely inaccurate and trashy book about Apple's Design in those early years"). Depending upon your perspective, these early chapters could be refreshingly candid or unpleasantly gossipy. That said, Esslinger's certainly entitled to a few "I told you so's". From his very earliest work, when he proposed that the clockmaker Kienzle use radio signals to synchronize with an atomic clock (in 1968!) his brand of design thinking was met with frequent skepticism and disdain. Today, however, companies all over the world chase the sort of strategic design thinking that frog pioneered, radio clocks are a standard (you've probably even got one in your pocket, depending upon whether you set your cell phone's clock or it's time zone) and Kienzle clocks are mostly museum pieces. Fortunately, much of frog's design is still in production.

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DRC - Design Research Conference
Oct. 1-2, 2009
Chicago, IL

The Design Research Conference (DRC), hosted by the IIT Institute of Design, brings together a growing community of design professionals advancing the role of design research in innovation. A forum for discussing the current and emerging issues in the field, the conference fosters the collaboration of forward-thinking, creative professionals and students from a variety of disciplines.

Register Now!

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Letter from Finland: should Helsinki receive the World Design Capital 2012 award?

The other day I noticed a flurry of excitement in the lobby of the Design Factory and asked Pirjo, our coordinator, what was up? Apparently some big things, not only was the rector of Aalto University due to arrive but so were Dr Peter Zec (of the Red Dot Design awards fame) and Ms. Dilki DeSilva both from the ICSID - they were on an evaluatory visit of Helsinki, since the city is now a finalist for the title of World Design Capital 2012.

To be honest, I was concerned after I heard this. Should Helsinki even try for this title in the first place? Did it need it? I mean you don't hear of San Francisco or Milan even applying for these things, so why should Helsinki? Sure, its not the first city you think of when you say design, but imho, being design savvy comes in individual flavours.

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Woodshop Remakes of Design Classics

Karl Zinsmaster, Bjorn Ricke, Summer Covell, and Travis Bookler have been collaborating on a series they call Constructs. Investigating the "legitimacy of material, icon and author," design classics are remade in humbler materials that evoke the shop: Castiglioni's Arco lamp is interpreted as a cinder block, a work lamp, conduit and paint; Le Corbusier's Petite Lounge is reconstructed from rebar and Quikrete packages; the classic Noguchi table is replicated in Oriented Strand Board; and a historical Mondrian painting is remade in ceramic tile samples.

We love this project not only for its simplicity and humour, but also for the clever and insightful ways the designers have interpreted the essential elements of these design icons, distilling them into the simplest of constructions without losing their recognizability.

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Designers Accord Charlotte Town Hall

Designers Accord has organized another Town Hall, this time in Charlotte, North Carolina. An early adopter of the DA, BOLTgroup will be hosting the meeting at their offices on August 27th. This event includes planned presentations from leading practitioners to be followed by an hour of open discussion. More information here.

Designers Accord Town Hall: Charlotte
Thursday, August 27th, 6-9pm
BOLTgroup
1415 S. Church St., Suite S
RSVP by August 21st to bolt@boltgroup.com

Platform21 "Most Remarkable Repair Contest" Now Online!

We love repairing and it seems we're not alone here. Ever since Platform21 presented its Reparing Manifesto (earlier) they received over 60 inspiring entries in the Most Remarkable Repair Contest.

For instance, Platform21 now offers a solution for broken china: the new repair technique Bison kintsugi (photo).

Designer Lotte Dekker developed a new view of gluing porcelain based on kintsugi, an old Japanese technique in which porcelain is repaired with gold leaf. It's an extremely time-consuming, expensive method. Dekker found Bison glue to be the perfect Western variant for making beautiful yet simple repairs.

Watch all entries here

Core-Toon: Creative Director

Artist: lunchbreath
More: View all cartoons

Samsung's sneaky little two-faced camera

Samsung's new TL225 camera not only has a hee-yuge LCD on the back, it's got a little one on the front. Why? So it can show you a countdown timer for group shots, let you properly frame your arm's-length self-portraits, and remind you to smile. Useful, or gimmicky? Jury's still out. But we worry that it's just a matter of time before someone releases a camera with LCDs on all six faces.

SunFlower LEEDS

These awesome, 12-foot-tall, sunflower-inspired solar panels are part of a permanent (and functional) art installation in Texas. When the Mueller Development, a 10,000-soul New Urbanism community in Austin, signed off on the development of a large retail lot within their confines, part of the agreement was that the developers pay for something to draw the eye away from the less-than-attractive strip of loading docks behind the store.

Massachusetts-based art duo Mags Harries and Lajos Heder were commissioned to design an installation, and the result was SunFlowers, a series of fifteen solar towers that look like flowers. They soak up enough sun during the day to power the on-board LEDs at night, and excess juice goes back into the grid. Everyone wins, including the environment. Suh-weet!

All photographs by David Newsom.
via good magazine

Announcing the Reburbia Winners!

After a flurry of judging, the Reburbia winners have been announced! Our own Allan Chochinov was one of the judges, but we haven't heard a peep out of him until now. Still, we weren't so off target with our finalists preview post —though we didn't know it, we featured both the grand prize winner and the people's choice award.

Anyway, all talk of prescience aside, here's the breakdown:

Grand Prize: Frog's Dream: McMansions Turned into Biofilter Water Treatment Plants by Calvin Chiu
Second Place: Entrepreneurbia: Rezoning Suburbia for Self-Sustaining Life by Urban Nature, F&S Design Studio and Silverlion Design
Third Place: Big Box Architecture: A Productive Suburb by Forrest Fulton
People's Choice: Urban Sprawl Repair Kit: Repairing the Urban Fabric by Galina Tahchieva.

Congrats to the winners for their thoughtful re-imagining of America's suburbs, to be featured in the December 2009/January 2010 issue of Dwell magazine. For now, you can read more about all the notable entries, finalists and winners here.

Pioneers of Change: a Dutch design festival on Governor's Island, New York

It's the 400 year anniversary of the arrival of the Dutch in New York. Given the strength of Dutch design, it's no surprise that this is being celebrated by designers in NYC, first by Jan Habraken and Alissa Melka-Teichrow's exhibition 400 Years Later (covered by our video crew at ICFF in May) and now with Pioneers of Change, a Dutch design festival that will take over Governer's Island for two weekends this September.

Initiated by NY400 and curated by Renny Ramakers of Droog, the festival invites big Dutch talent to produce exhibitions, projects, and performances at the 11 officer's houses on the island. This includes 2012 Architecten, Atelier NL, Maarten Baas, Franck Bragigand, Droog with Marije Vogelzang, Herman Verkerk, Rianne Makkink and Hansje van Halem, Experimental Jetset, Pascale Gatzen, Christien Meindertsma, MVRDV and The Why Factory with Work Architecture Company, Painted, Erwin Driessens and Maria Verstappen, Parsons The New School for Design, Platform 21, Marcel Schmalgemeijer, NL Architects and Michael Schoner, Richard Hutten, Atelier van Lieschout, and Chris Kabel.

In addition to work from all of the above, there will be a Dutch pop-up shop (all merchandise under $100) and a series of discussions between designers from the Netherlands and New York concerning contemporary notions of luxury (for a start).

Don't miss this! Get full program and attendance details here.

Pioneers of Change
Governor's Island, NYC
September 11-13 & September 18-20

LAND! Image by the Experimental Jet Set for Pioneers of Change, courtesy of Droog

PACT: Change Starts With Your Underwear

PACT, a new sustainable and charitable underwear brand, launched last week. Developed in partnership with Yves Behar of fuseproject, the brand focuses on both environmental and social change. In addition to manufacturing the underwear at the highest of environmental standards (all within a 100-mile radius in Turkey), the brand has partnered with three organizations that work for big causes: 826 National (which supports literacy in youth), ForestEthics (protecting our forests), and Oceana (protecting our oceans). Each organization has their own underwear collection, characterized by a special representative print. PACT then donates 10% of total sales to each nonprofit.

We love that PACT has considered all aspects of this brand: from local manufacturing all the way to the online store, where shoppers can browse by cause in addition to fit and print. Oceana is pictured below—we're looking forward to seeing more organizations and patterns.

Mark Wentzel's Fat Eames Chairs

And finally, Mark Wentzel, an Atlanta-based sculptor, has modified the classic Eames lounge, "super-sizing" its cushions with foam and automotive upholstery, "alluding to topics of global obesity and consumption, and the potential cooperation among artists, designers, scientists and manufacturers to address such issues."

Wentzel's use of the Eames lounge as a basis for this statement not only emphasizes its status as a classic (even when overstuffed, the combination of materials and silhouette remain recognizable) but also represents a fruitful overlap between art and design works: in order to make his sculptural statement, Wentzel borrowed directly from the historical and cultural narrative of the Eames lounge as a designed object, evoking its particular typification of enduring, desirable, and mass-produced products.

The lounges are on view now through September 11th at the Global Health Odyssey Museum in Atlanta, GA.

Special thanks to lunchbreath and Niti Bhan 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

Etch-a-Sketch 3D

o2 Creative Solutions is an "experience design firm" that seeks to combine design, communications and technology. Up above is their Etch-a-Sketch-inspired Sketch-3D tool (featuring Core-fave Mike Doyle!):

Sketch-3D is an interactive, integrated software/hardware system that enables users to create their own anaglyphic 3D drawings. By using a ubiquitous interface metaphor (the "Etch-a-Sketch"), Sketch-3D allows anyone to participate in generating stereoscopic imagery in a way that is simple and engaging. In addition to the personal experience, Sketch-3D can be scaled to work with any output device from large scale projection to plasma displays to an integrated LCD. This versatility allows for Sketch-3D to be tailored to fit a wide array of installation environments.

No word on how to erase it, but we're guessing you have to get two people to rip it off the wall and shake it vigorously.

Core77 visits new Ziba HQ

The first thing that strikes you upon viewing the new Ziba headquarters is its size. It takes up most of the streetfront on two sides of a block on the edge of Portland's Pearl District, floating with unlikely grace atop an expanse of vacant retail space.

That space, founder Sohrab Vossoughi explains, serves several functions: once rented, the retail will help offset the considerable expense of construction; it encompasses some portions of the headquarters that would be less practical on higher floors, like the model shop and parking space for 60 bicycles; and it elevates studios and project rooms full of confidential material out of easy view. This "box on a plinth" construction has already been explored by Portland's giddy architecture press, and the effect is oddly charming: a sparse, airy box whose presence has been literally jacked up. The moment of the building's unveiling, too, adds to the impression of loftiness and improbability: at a time when design consultancies across the globe are shedding staff and costs, the construction of anything grander than a shack imparts a sense of optimism bordering on foolhardiness.

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Maker Faire Africa is on!

After several months of anticipation, the first ever African installment of the Maker Faire technology conference is underway, in Accra, Ghana.

The Maker Faire Africa website sports some profile of participating makers, a frequently updated blog, photos, and a feed from the event's Twitter stream, and there are some tantalizing early posts on Afrigadget , including the results of a 30 minute design challenge using repurposed plastic water bags, and a solar-powered food dryer of Kenyan design. A MFA photostream has been set up on Flickr as well, and should be filling up as the conference progresses.

Ghana's been playing host to some other locally-sourced design events as well. The 2009 International Development Design Summit just wrapped up in the inland city of Kumasi, a five week conference and workshop, developing projects ranging from low-cost batteries to more efficient rice threshers.

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Water Fountains Across The United States

From Op-Art: Thirsting for Fountains, in the New York Times last week:

If drinking fountains were as ubiquitous as fire hydrants, there would be no need for steel thermoses, plastic bottles or backpack canteens. Thirsty folks could just amble over to the next corner for a sip of free-of-charge, ecofriendly, delicious water. But there are only about 2,700 public fountains in New York—and those are mostly confined to our parks and playgrounds—so we're still forced, in the dehydrating August heat, to carry our water around with us, like camels.

In support of more water fountains (and less steel thermoses), the NYT Op-Ed department asked eight illustrators to spend an hour at their local fountain, taking notes on its qualities and clientele. The result is a mini-catalog of water fountains across the United States, from the generic to the majestic. Diverse in form, they mostly worked well, serving a steady queue of people. One exception: Los Angeles' Westwood Park fountain, which was "lukewarm with a sour mineral taste," approached by no one except the illustrator himself. Despite its obvious shortcomings, we thought this fountain's design was unique, which makes us wonder—isn't this a perfect arena for design exploration? Is there more great stuff we can do with water fountains beyond making them accessible to children and dogs? Can water fountains delight as well as serve?

See all of the illustrations and observations here.

Core77 Photo Gallery: Sydney Design Festival 2009

The Sydney Design Festival, which takes place in the first half of August, is now in its 13th year. Though this international design event revolves around the Powerhouse Museum, many offsite events promoting independent designers are staged throughout the city. Donald Corey was on site at Launch Pad, Workshopped, and the Object Gallery and shares his experience with us in the Core77 Galleries.

>> view gallery

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DRC - Design Research Conference
Oct. 1-2, 2009
Chicago, IL

The Design Research Conference (DRC), hosted by the IIT Institute of Design, brings together a growing community of design professionals advancing the role of design research in innovation. A forum for discussing the current and emerging issues in the field, the conference fosters the collaboration of forward-thinking, creative professionals and students from a variety of disciplines.

Register Now!

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Cell phones and education on Change Observer

Juliette LaMontagne has an awesome essay up on Change Observer discussing the potential role of the cellphone in education. It's hopeful and clear, and for those of you who think that there's no way to make a marriage here, there's just enough to move you to the other side. Here's the pitch:

But advocating for cell phone use in education is about more than cost, sustainability or parity; it's about accessing points of entry. When it comes to technology integration, you need to meet students (and teachers) where they are. When you begin with a tool they already know and love, you're less likely to be met with the kind of resistance you might otherwise get to institutional hardware or software. For teachers, eliminate the fear factor and you've empowered a previously disenfranchised group of self-professed Luddites. For students, who treat the cell phone like an appendage, you're capitalizing on an existing passion for the technology.

and the hit:

We design inquiry-based curricula that send students out into the world to investigate, collect, report, reflect and engage. In doing so, students gain a sense of themselves as producers of knowledge. They become part of a continuous learning loop of inputs and outputs mediated by teacher and student alike. With basic mobile functions like voice, text and camera coupled with web 2.0 technologies, students' knowledge can be shared locally and globally, all the while developing critical communication and collaboration skills. Audiocasting, photoblogging, polling, surveying and language acquisition are just a few of the activities that utilize mobile devices for learning. These are context-specific opportunities for students to share with authentic and limitless audiences.

Read the whole thing here. (Or better, of course, on your mobile browser!)

Ron Arad: No Discipline

Cages sans Frontières, an undulating Mobius ribbon of fabric covered steel, hangs literally and figuratively over the Ron Arad exhibit, No Discipline at the MoMA through October 19th. Winding its way through the a precisely-lit room on the back of the 6th floor, the shelf/sculpture serves as showcase for some 100-plus pieces of the celebrated Israeli designer's furniture-as-art (or is it the other way around?). Polished steel chairs and glossy silicone surfaces caught and scattered the spotlights from above, such that the whole room felt like a gallery show channeled through "A Space Odyssey." Between the high contrast lighting and the amorphous forms, we found it difficult to take any subdued photographs. Both the show and the items within were truly works of art ... and for an ostensible industrial designer, perhaps that's the problem. Rather than include explanatory plaques next to the items on display the exhibit offered four-sheet pamphlets with short descriptions of each of the items on display. Under the description of the Cage sans Frontières in five point type are the words "Private collection." Not only was the furniture in private hands, but even the armature on which it was displayed was considered worthy of acquisition. Devoid of any obvious function outside of the exhibit, I can only imagine that it was purchased as, well, art.

Given the high prices his work tends to sell for and the general visibility of Arad as a design figurehead, it's tempting to make a straw man of him by observing just how far his indulgent one-offs (also the name of his studio) are from the democratization of design. Given our current economic climate, it's easy for us to look back upon the bombast of Arad's work, apply a price tag, and experience something between revulsion and regret. It's also not entirely fair. Accompanied by the throngs of spectators, studio lighting, hardwood floors, and yes, the Cage sans Frontières, Arad's work is often indulgent, frequently decadent and quite consistently gorgeous. Whether custom-pigmented fiberglass, 3-D prints, hand welded steel and 20-piece editions could ever be called industrial design might be missing the point. Arad is doing something closer to haute couture; his medium just happens to be steel. So rather than quibble about the ethics of high design or whether thirty years of work is enough to warrant a retrospective, a far better way to spend the afternoon would simply be to let go of any thorny-preconceptions and simply enjoy the show.

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Incheon International Design Award 2009: Green Design and Daily Life

Designboom, in partnership with Incheon Metropolitan City, brings us the Incheon International Design Award 2009: Green Design and Daily Life. The competition (with a total of $41,000 in prize money!) asks designers to submit concepts in three categories: Green Design for Humans, City and Green Design and Green Design and Communication. In other words, products, architecture, environments, and visual communication entries will all be accepted. The judges include: Jerszy Seymour and Karim Rashid among them, so show them your best!

More information here.

Deadline: August, 25, 2009

Coroflot hits 150,000 portfolios!

A brief moment ago, something momentous happened over on the front page of Coroflot: the Odometer-of-Creativity that's been ticking off the site's population for the past few years just flipped over, to reveal the mind-bendingly enormous value of 150,000 portfolios. That's, like, a portfolio for every man, woman and child in a mid-sized town of 150,000 people!

In honor of this milestone (and the 1.5 million or so images that come along with it), Carl over at Creative Seeds has put together a short review of the top five most popular portfolio images on the site, as determined by the user-powered Me Likey system. Three of them are pictured above -- Oliver Rosito's Zero Mouse, MisoSoup Design's K Workstation, and the "At Your Command" lighting series by Daniel Loves Objects! To see the list in its entirety, and some observations on what it takes to make an image almost literally one-in-a-million, check out the post here.

The Nine Eyes of Google Street View

Last week, Art Fag City posted the latest installment of IMG MGMT, their annual image-based artist essay series. In "The Nine eyes of Google Street View", artist Jon Rafman posts selections from his collection of Google Street View screenshots, exploring the range of culturally meaningful (not just informational) images captured by the nine-lensed Google cameras. His collection covers a lot of ground, but it's all strangely cinematic, capturing bleak urbanity, perfect rainbows, armed robberies, and surreal landscapes equally well.

An excerpt:

Within the panoramas, I can locate images of gritty urban life reminiscent of hard-boiled American street photography. Or, if I prefer, I can find images of rural Americana that recall photography commissioned by the Farm Securities Administration during the depression. I can seek out postcard-perfect shots that capture what Cartier-Bresson titled "the decisive moment," as if I were a photojournalist responding instantaneously to an emerging event. At other times, I have been mesmerized by the sense of nostalgia, yearning, and loss in these images—qualities that evoke old family snapshots.

via today and tomorrow

Core-toon: Redefining Modern Luxury

Artist: fueledbycoffee
More: View all Core-toons

Leica brings camera customization to an extreme level

Camera manufacturer Leica's new "a la carte" ordering system means you can trick your Leica out in the manner of a car, albeit with slightly more options--around 4,000 different configurations.

CLDFX tested the possibilities:

Choose your type of camera, you can either choose the Leica M7 or the Leica MP which is completely manual and independent of battery power.

From here everything is possible, one can choose between 3 different surface finishes, whether one likes the classic vintage engraved top cover or not, if the controls should be chrome or black.

The 6th step probably has the most eye catching result, here you pick the leather cladding, Leica offers 13 different materials and colors from red over to an awesome black lizard look.

After having chosen the body it's time for the viewfinder magnification, most interesting for people wearing glasses and the bright-line frame sets. The last part deals with the personal engraving.

via design you trust

Renovo's hi-tech wood frame bicycles

You can't get much greener than Portland-based Renovo Hardwood Bicycles' R4 Pursuit, made from two CNC'd halves of wood bonded together lengthwise (yielding a hollow core).

You can see images of the R4 at Renovo's website or read about Renovo's bike-making process here.

1 Hour Design Challenge Deadline: Ideation Sketches Highlights

Entries are starting to come in on our latest 1 Hour Design Challenge: Ideation Sketches, inviting designers to create the most number of ideation sketches, on any subject, in 60 minutes. For example, take these shoes by Serbio Mora:

Think you've got some chops? Competition deadline is August 30th, so grab some pencils, hit the timer, and enter to win! All details at the site.

New energy-boosting LED tech: The breakthrough we've been waiting for?

LEDs promised better-quality lighting at cheaper prices, and while we've seen the tech popping up in everything from traffic lights to Cinema Displays, it has yet to achieve ubiquity, due to manufacturing and efficiency costs. Could that be about to change?

Scientists at the independent, nonprofit research institute known as SRI International (formerly Stanford Research Institute) have figured out a way to vastly increase the output of OLED lights. The new technology "employs a regular pattern of cavities, implementing a structure that generates as much as five times the light output of a standard OLED per watt consumed depending on the color being displayed." (Those of you who speak geek and are interested in how it actually works can click here.)

Unfortunately it also adds another letter to the acronym, meaning what was once LED and became OLED has now stretched to the rather unwieldy COLED (that's Cavity Organic Light-Emitting Diode). In any case, by researchers' estimates this tech could be consumer-ready as early as next year, which will hopefully lead to the LED--sorry, COLED--product explosion we've been waiting for.

via gizmag

Redesign your Farmer's Market

Co-produced by The Architect's Newspaper, Good Magazine, The Urban & Environmental Policy Institute at Occidental College and the LA Good Food Network, Project: Redesign Your Farmer's Market is a competition that seeks improvements on the current model for farmer's markets. This could take the form of a venue, product, distribution method or marketing mechanism, as long as it increases returns to farmers and improves the accessibility of healthy food to urban residents. For inspiration, be sure to read Alissa Walker's Good Magazine post on design and the farmer's market.

Find more information about the cause, the guidelines, the judges and the prizes here.

Deadline: September 1st

Vote for your favorite Reburbia finalist!

Dwell Magazine and Inhabitat have posted the top 20 finalists of their Reburbia competition, which challenged designers to develop new visions for the future of the American suburb. The entries range from extreme, eco-conscious interventions to sharply observational proposals. For example, Chiu envisions a drastically altered future for suburbia in Frog's Dream (pictured above), where McMansions have all been abandoned and are repurposed as biofilter water treatment plants, taking advantage of existing transportation systems to surround the city with a rich suburban wetland. We're not sure why the McMansions remain standing (aren't there toxins in there?), but it does make for a provocative visual!

On the other side of the spectrum is the Urban Sprawl Repair Kit (pictured above), a set of drawings that proposes small changes to common suburban building types, combatting sprawl. We love that Galina Tahchieva, the designer, visualized her new-urbanist ideas in true suburban style: developer-inspired, mock-watercolor renderings.

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Recent articles at Design Philosophy Politics

An extension of Design Philosophy Papers, Design Philosophy Politics is an e-zine exploring the complex relationship between design and politics, a topic that's been had a lot of exposure lately. In their words: "Design Philosophy Politics aspires to be rigorous in its criticism of the unsustainable and affirmative in its embrace of potentially effective actions towards sustainment."

We wanted to make sure you were alerted to their latest articles, including a piece by Tony Fry about climate-at-risk cities, a report by Cameron Tonkinwise about "projects focused on designing away 'stuff,'" and an analysis by Ben Highmore that "channels the social, personal and economic reverberations of a very ordinary chair." There are quite a few gems in there, and deep archives for your perusal.

Thanks, Andy!

Craftsquatch's social media throw pillows

And finally...In case you don't see enough of this on your monitor already, Craftsquatch's social media throw pillows bring social media into your living room! They're available through their Etsy store, naturally.

Via Mashable.

Special thanks to 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

Nidecker Snowboard Design Competition Winners!

The results are in for the Nidecker Core77 Snowboard Design Competition! Designers from around the world were invited to create the next generation of snowboard graphics for Nidecker's famed snowboards, and the response was overwhelming. Over 3,000 designs came in from all corners of the globe, and we are thrilled to present the winners. The Grand prize winner will receive $2500 and be included in the Nidecker 2010/11 line, and Nidecker has been generous to expand the Finalists to include 5 designs, each to be produced in a limited run. The Grand Prize winner and each of the Finalists will receive a snowboard with their own design, and 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!

We've got a huge gallery of Winners, Finalists, Semi-Finalists and Notables up at the site. There are some truly amazing designs in there!

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Pulse: a new urban bike concept from Teague

Pulse, Teague's new concept for an urban bike, addresses all the necessities of a standard bike commute. Taking cues from both fixed gears and cafe-racers, Its features include electric turn signals controlled from the handlebars and a luminescent frame that lights up when you need it. We especially love the specialized caged bike pedals--they're counterweighted to always sit "the right way round," allowing the rider to benefit from their three-fold increase in efficiency without suffering from having to clip into upside down pedals at every stoplight.

Here's the pitch from Teague:

150 years of continuous/passionate refinement have resulted in bicycle components that are both ultra efficient and ultra reliable. And yet this passionate perfection hides in plain sight. The power of design is its ability to create (animal) magnetism around compelling ideas in relevant context. Dana Krieger, Industrial designer at Teague presents a tribute to the triangle. A reinterpretation of an icon, which unifies individual components into a coherent statement in tune with contemporary needs (and attitudes). Equal parts gym membership, fashion statement and Kyoto pact contributor--Pulse is a transportation solution in synch with the needs of today's urban denizen.

More info here.

Redesigning the Prosthetic Arm: SVA project site is up!

So proud to announce the launch of The Prosthetics Project, the completed website for the prosthetic arm design project my SVA graduate class completed last fall. The designer of the site, Jackie Lay, did a fantastic job, and there's a ton of great work to take a look through. Here's the backstory from the site:

During the fall semester of 2009, 21 students embarked on a journey to conduct design work around upper limb prosthetics. Through readings, research, and an incredible group of guest critics including Aimee Mullins, Jon Kuniholm, Frank Wilson and Elliot Washor, the students attempted to put a dent in what may arguably be one of the most daunting design challenges imaginable--to design a better prosthetic arm.

The students took different approaches to the problem: some attacked it directly with mechanical improvements to existing prosthetics. Others offered devices and garments that introduced alternative modalities or provided new functionality. Some students took a more abstract approach, creating formal, often sculptural, gestures as a way to help us think about the notion of 'prosthetic,' while others took an extremely conceptual approach to investigating the paradigms and cultures around prosthetics and amputees.

Many of the projects were targeted at kids, arguing that there may be wider leeway in what would be deemed acceptable to the user. Some of these push the definitions of function, providing devices that are playful and life-affirming. The more sobering investigations in the group try to address the realities of arm amputees--as much as is possible by designers with both limbs.

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Keep up with the Reading Ahead design research project

Over the last two weeks Portigal Consulting has been working on Reading Ahead, a design research project to explore the evolution of books, and reading. We're blogging every step in the process including deciding what type of participants we want, the interview guide, and highlights from the fieldwork [here and here]. Coming soon are our earliest hypotheses, and more of the data from the field (including participant photo journals, and participatory design artifacts), leading towards a full presentation of findings, opportunities, and design concepts.

You can follow the project as it unfolds here.

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DRC - Design Research Conference
Oct. 1-2, 2009
Chicago, IL

The Design Research Conference (DRC), hosted by the IIT Institute of Design, brings together a growing community of design professionals advancing the role of design research in innovation. A forum for discussing the current and emerging issues in the field, the conference fosters the collaboration of forward-thinking, creative professionals and students from a variety of disciplines.

Register Now!

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Frog design's Nick de la Mare on Design Research

On a related note, Nick de la Mare, Creative Director at frog design, has an illuminating essay up on Creativity Online explaining the methods and madness behind the unsung field of Design Research. An excerpt:

The traditional arc of a project puts research up front, defining the problem, touching upon all relevant areas and coming up with opportunities that track back to that defined problem. From those insights, designers start designing and eventually something gets made. Ideally, months later, the end result still correlates to the research that started the project. Often times, however, a game of telephone has occurred and the researchers' opportunity areas have transformed into something very different.

This waterfall approach goes back to the industrial revolution; it's battle tested but increasingly untenable. Clients want to see progress, things happening, concrete examples that give them confidence in the partner they've chosen. Unwilling to sacrifice time and money for something they think they already have, they chop research from the plan and the end result becomes based on the designers' intuition and little else.

Read the rest here.

Case Study: Freescale Netbook Design at SCAD, by Dave Malouf

"Last quarter I had the privilege of teaching a class sponsored by Freescale Semiconductor. Freescale produces computer chips in various categories—the market segment that approached us was the mobile market, whose chips are used in many of the cellphones and other mobile products in high circulation today, including Blackberry and Asus. Specifically, Freescale makes an architecture of CPUs known as ARM. Significantly different from the Intel x86 architecture CPUs that run almost all desktop, laptop and netbook class personal computing systems, ARM attempts to compete against Intel's ATOM CPU chipset. Atom is currently being used in two classes of devices: the netbook (like the HP Mini and Asus Eeee Pc) and Mobile Internet Devices (MID). ARM differs from the Intel Atom in that it runs cooler (saving space because they don't need a fan), uses less power (offering extended battery life or a smaller battery), and can't run Microsoft Windows. All three of these qualities offer both industrial design and interaction design opportunities.

Freescale conducted extensive research with existing non-Windows netbooks and learned that both the user interface and form factor issues co-mingle in these devices. They approached our industrial design department and asked us to work on concepts that address these issues for specific markets: tweens, teens and soccer moms..."

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Nathan Shedroff's design courses...for free!

Speaking of design studios, Nathan Shedroff, who we interviewed earlier this year, has just released the teaching materials for three design studio courses developed around his popular design books Design is The Problem, Experience Design 1.1 and Making Meaning. Published under a Creative Commons license, the material is free to use, and "meant to help design and business educators teach concepts of sustainability, meaning, and experience design."

Shedroff's taken this to the next level—in addition to syllabi, you can find presentations in three file formats, evaluation criteria guidelines and assignment templates, all ready to go (just fill in the instructor name) but also highly adaptable to changes in the design industry and course context. Definitely worth a look for any design educator, and the rest of us could learn a thing or two as well.

Core-Toons: Design Management App

Artist: lunchbreath
More: View all Core-toons

Office porn: Never mind NSFW, is work safe for you?

The sad truth is most of us spend the best hours of the day sitting in an office, experiencing the Dilbertism where you need to e-mail someone lucky enough to be sitting near a window to figure out if it's raining outside. Those of us that are unlucky are even diagnosed with Sick Building Syndrome and environmental illnesses from things like toxic carpet adhesives and off-gassing MDF.

The luckiest among us work in beautiful and green offices of the type illustrated in The Good Office: Green Design on the Cutting Edge, architect John Riordan and Kristen Becker's 228-page collection of cutting-edge office porn:

In The Good Office, the bridge is gapped between the working world and the environment, offering innovative ideas for sustainable office buildings, with examples from around the world. This book shows how by being respectful to the environment, offices can benefit from increased sunlight, better air quality, and eco-friendly building materials, creating a more positive space for both the environment and the worker.

...The Good Office is a thorough exploration of the innovative work being done by the world's most visionary architects, and reveals that good design and green design are one and the same.

Mother Nature Network has an interview up with Becker and Riordan on their motivations behind the book here.

New Nikon camera: To serve and project

Object convergence and the rise of the Little Black Box that Does Everything: Nikon's new Coolpix S1000pj camera not only shoots at 12.1 megapixels and has a 2.7" LCD--the darn thing has a built-in projector. The VGA projector will throw images of stills or video up to 40" at a distance of two meters, and while the 10-lumen brightness means you won't be selling tickets to the neighbors, it's not too shabby for something that fits in your pocket and runs less than $500.

Darren Rees' killer product photography

Speaking of photography, most ID rendering guys worth their salt are masters at photorealistic studio shots. You know the type: Fantastic camera angles, perfect highlights and shadows, seamless grey background with a touch of gradation.

But when it comes to straight-up product photography, it's advertising's deep pockets that attracts some insanely high-level talent. Check out Paris-based photographer Darren Rees' luminous work, mostly done in the service of BMW and Mercedes-Benz.

via presidia creative

NO MORE FEEDS PLEASE! How abundant information is making us fat.

Lately I've been unusually cranky: It may be the frustrations of a difficult marketplace where economic adversity forces one to tolerate the otherwise intolerable. It may be the extra hours of summer sunlight here in the Pacific Northwest, which brings about an initial euphoria that can descend into mania. But with a gnawing conviction, I've come to believe that this crankiness is the physiological manifestation of an uneasy realization: there is too much opinion in the world and precious little fact. For the past two months I've found my idle thoughts converging on three disjointed but persistent topics: food, information and society. With time these three topics have paired themselves off into a set of relatively stable couplings: Food and Information, Information and Production, and Production and Society.

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New 1 Hour Design Challenge! Ideation Sketches!

We've just pulled the switch on the latest 1 Hour Design Challenge: Ideation Sketches! This time, we're inviting designers to create the most number of ideation sketches, on any subject, in 60 minutes. Get all the details here.

Holograms you can feel

Totally nuts! Researchers at the University of Tokyo have developed holograms that provide tactile feedback. It's one thing to see a three-dimensional ball floating in space but quite another to actually feel it, and that's the promise of this latest technology, which will hopefully revolutionize interface designs of the future.

The trick is to combine motion tracking (via Wiimotes, of all things) with ultrasonic waves, which can be tuned to provide tangible feedback at a focused point in space. It's difficult to describe in text, but that's why we have YouTube; check this video out to see what they're developing.

via sidequesting

thanks dali!

Design in the wild, part two: Assessing high tech in a no tech environment

17 days and 201 miles of walking later, the Big Walk I described last month has come to a close. For the backcountry inclined, I can highly recommend the John Muir Trail as a true scenic masterpiece; for those more interested in product design, there's plenty to tell also.

For starters, my stance on electronics in the backcountry is mostly unchanged -- they are to be avoided whenever possible. The two electrically-powered objects in my pack, a headlamp and a camera, both performed well, but batteries are dense little things, and add noticeably to the weight of anything requiring them. The charge remaining in the camera, moreover, became a subject of constant concern: things just get more and more scenic as you head south down the JMT, and the worry that a photo snapped on day 14 would prevent us from shooting one on day 17 superseded concerns about hypothermia and twisted ankles, and that just ain't right.

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Designers Accord LA Town Hall: Reflections and Photographs

We've got a post-script from the Designers Accord Town Hall Meeting at Continuum in Los Angeles. Thanks to Theresa Chiueh for her thoughts and photographs!

Los Angeles inaugurated its first Designers Accord Town Hall meeting in Venice at Continuum's studio. Attendance was amazing—about 60 designers came to the event, representing all parts of LA: the Valley, Pasadena, Hollywood, Long Beach, and Orange County. Local design schools were also well represented by faculty and students from Art Center, OTIS, and Cal State Long Beach. RKS Design, BLACK Design, Stuart Karten Design and Ashcraft Design were all there, and we were lucky to have Marty Smith visiting from Hong Kong! It was heartwarming to see the design community gather in the former Charles and Ray Eames studio—you could feel the spirit of design in the studio as people mingled over pizza and drinks.

Alexandre Hennen kicked it all off by presenting Colorblind—Continuum's research study conducted with Communispace to understand why and how people make "green" choices. Alex shared some interesting insights from the study. For example, people don't understand where they have the biggest impact on the environment. They focus on trash and recycling although it has little impact compared to the food that they consume and the transportation that they use. The environment is an abstract place outside of their home—it's difficult to understand the impact their actions have on it. As a result people don't do things because it's good for the environment—they make choices to benefit themselves and their families in the short term. As designers, we can help people connect their short term choices with their long term implications and to understand better what role they play in sustaining our world for future generations.

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Rubik's Cube Sandwich

And finally...The Rubix Cubewich.
via Make, who call this the "Rubik's Coronary"

Special thanks to Steve Portigal, Tad Toulis 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

IDEA/Brasil 2009 Awards

The IDEA/Brasil Award is a satellite version of the International Design Excellence Award (IDEA) organized by Objeto Brasil in association with APEX-Brasil and endorsed by the IDSA. This year attracted over 1200 entries ranging from small design studios to large corporations, 103 of which received an award.

Similar to the IDEA Award, many of the projects go well beyond the scope of strict ID but are truly inspirational, click through for our selected highlights from 2009's winners.

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Letter from Finland: a little piece of design thinking heaven

One afternoon last week, instead of sitting down to complete a research paper due for a conference later this year, I suddenly found myself embroiled in an intense conversation about the nexus of design thinking, sustainable innovation and the fuzzy front end. Lotta Hassi of Decode Research group wondered out loud why there weren't any definitions available of design thinking and I couldn't resist piping up. An instant best friendship was born. While some might think of bananas, this experience best describes what its really like to be sitting at Aalto University's Design Factory. You never know when someone will want talk about business or design or technology or simply the challenges of innovating in today's uncertain times.

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Liquid Wood Is Plastic of Tomorrow, Say Scientists

Plastic was one of the great innovations of the 20th century, but German scientists believe a new invention, liquid wood, could soon supplant the chemical in terms of everyday usefulness.

"Car parts and other durable items made of this bio-plastic already exist, but the chemical hadn't been suitable for household use until now, due to the high content of sulfurous substances used in separating the lignin from the cell fibers. The German researchers were able to reduce the sulfur content in Arboform by about 90 percent, making it much safer for use in everyday items."

Read the article here.
photo: worth100.com

10th National Design Awards

We wanted to make sure that you didn't miss any of the coverage of the 10th National Design Awards at the White House, hosted by First Lady Michelle Obama. The award categories spanned all corners of design, ranging from Architecture all the way to Design Patron. Among the winners were Bill Moggridge, for lifetime achievement, and the Boym Partners, Salvor Projects, and Smart Design for product design.

Be sure to check out the videos of the awards ceremony and associated design events at the Cooper-Hewitt here.

Why Does the Best Design of 2009 Still Look Like 2000?

Speaking of design awards, we picked some of our faves for the latest IDEA Awards, but Valerie Casey's got a fun piece up about designers and their beloved forms. She was actually a judge on the thing, but noticed some conspicuous repetitions from the field. Read the piece here for more, and for several other "before and afters."

Book Review: Less and More: The Design Ethos of Dieter Rams

Anyone who thinks that minimalist or clean product design begins and ends with Jonathan Ive would be well served to check out the latest exhibit on Dieter Rams. Unfortunately, the exhibit in question was already held at the Suntory Museum in Osaka, Japan … but the contents of the retrospective have also been catalogued in a book, Less and More available in limited numbers through the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. Rather than working for Braun, Rams was Braun, since of the 1,272 products designed during his stay, "Rams, or teams in which Rams was a member, designed 514 of them." During that time, they crafted the design language for everything from stereo amplifiers to electric shavers, and much of that language remains applicable today.

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Advice for new (digital) designers

Liz Danzico of the new MFA Interaction Design program at SVA asked a bunch of great folks to respond to the following in 30-second video spots: "So you're thinking about becoming a designer? If I could tell you only one thing about going into the field, my advice would be ___________ ." The results are great, and very fun (and quick!) to watch. Core contributors Steve Portigal, Alissa Walker, and Jon Kolko are in there, but all advice-givers deliver something useful and inspiring.

Core-toon: Stick of Buttergum

Artist: fueledbycoffee
More: View all Core-toons

The Dalston Mill

Guest post by Virginia Gardiner

In Dalston, a westerly section of East London's Hackney, 2000 square feet of wheat recently appeared alongside a d.i.y. vertical axis windmill. The rakish structure looks downright poetic under English summer clouds. For geniuses who never pondered the original meaning of "windmill": wind power mills grain into fine flour and mealy bits. At the base are two wood-fired ovens for bread-baking and (indispensably) a bar.

Built by the French architectural collaborative EXYZT, The Dalston Mill will be up until August 9th as part of the Barbican's Radical Nature show. Though EXYZT were having problems with the turbine connection, they fixed it within a day. Meanwhile Fergus Walker was on hand with his wonderful People-Powered Flour Mill, which connects a bicycle wheel to a portable grinder using a flexible drive shaft, enabling stationary cyclists of all ages to produce their own wheatflour.

Collaborators' Guide hosted a bread-baking event where the product was local currency. Baker Dan Lepard fired up the ovens and helped a bunch of Londoners make dough, the kind you spend. The "Dalston Slice" is a coin-shaped, hard flatbread that you can trade for goods in participating shops, the expressed purpose "to reconnect and rebuild the once vibrant web of local businesses and traders in the community," in a diverse neighborhood that bears all the signs of credit-crunch gentrification.

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Canadian local food campaign

Well, yes, it's brought to us by mega mayo firm, Hellmann's, but this local food video brings out the best in data visualization. Check it out here.

via Josh Knauer

Europeans overwhelmingly consider the environmental impact of products they buy

Interesting European Commission press release:

"Four out of five Europeans say that they consider the environmental impact of the products they buy reveals a Eurobarometer survey published today. Environmental consideration was highest in Greece where more than 9 in 10 of those surveyed said the impact of a product on the environment plays an important aspect in their purchasing decisions. In the same survey Europeans were evenly divided about claims by producers on the environmental performance of their products while nearly half thought that a combination of increased taxes on environmentally-damaging products and decreased taxes on environmentally-friendly products would best promote eco-friendly products. There was also strong support for retailers to play a role in promoting environmentally-friendly products and for mandatory carbon labelling."

>> Read full press release (available in 22 languages)

Print asks 4 design teams to riff on the spliff

Well, on the packaging for legalized marijuana, actually, and you can see all the design solutions at the Print website. Design above from The Heads of State.

2009 Open Architecture Challenge finalists announced

Architecture for Humanity has announced the finalists for their 2009 Open Architecture Challenge, which invited entrants to design schools for underserved areas around the globe.

Shown up top is Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios & AfH UK's "Adaptable Hillside Classroom: A multi-functional classroom in rural Uganda," a design that uses the angles of the local topography to create an amphitheater effect while reducing the need for earthmoving equipment in its construction. In addition:

[The community] wants an assembly, dining and gathering space that can be used for community events and rented out during holidays to provide income. To economise on space and resources, it is proposed that a block of 3 classrooms can open up and combine into a larger, multi-use space. The classrooms are angled round in plan and the outer walls open onto a covered external space that they all face in towards, creating a natural gathering space. Acoustic problems with opening walls between classrooms are also avoided. The site for the new building is towards the bottom of the school, near the road, which gives the school a presence on the main road and provides easy public access when necessary.

Check out the rest of the finalists here.

Steven Heller's 'O Say Can You See' talk at Fabrica

More Heller fandom, but this video is just the best. Presentations of 20 minutes are nice, and 40 minutes can really bring it home, but an hour? Well, don't let that scare you...you'll wanna watch the whole thing straight through. Promise.

Watch the video here.

Milan's new Design Supermarket

If you love design, it's hard not to envy the Italians. Citizens of Milan can now shop at Design Supermarket, a sort of MoMA-meets-Walmart located within La Rinascente department store. In addition to the main floor, which is stocked with housewares, flatwares, lighting and clocks, there are shop-within-a-shops for Alessi, Kartell and Nespresso; and in keeping with the recession, items can be had for as little as 9 Euros.

via psfk

Lisbon's Experimenta Design: it's about time

ExperimentaDesign (EXD) is an international Biennale, taking place in Lisbon, Portugal, dedicated to design, architecture and creativity.

The theme of the 5th edition of EXD launches an in-depth analysis on the subject of time. Focusing primarily on the flows and mechanisms of acceleration and fragmentation, it then surveys its impacts across contemporary society, which manifest themselves at all levels: the development of objects and devices that heighten the capacities of the human being, the growing mobility of both individuals and information, the redesign of the space where collective life unfolds, changes in communication processes and the appearance of new structures and languages, or in other words, innovation.

Speakers include Paola Antonelli, Alice Rawsthorn, Ben Fry, Stefano Boeri and many more.

>> Download the press kit

New Transmaterial Website

Transmaterial, the online companion to Blaine Brownell's similarly titled book series, has just been relaunched as a highly searchable database of the latest in "materials that redefine our physical environment", designed to better facilitate access to critical developments in the field. For some choice tidbits, check out the Bubble Screen and Super Cilia Skin.

And speaking of materials, Material Stories, run by Core contributor Aart van Bezooyen, has just published its second Get Inspired newsletter, exploring material resources and innovative projects that address the theme of "Power." The newsletter includes a feature on the Greener Gadgets competition and an exclusive interview with James Dyson.

Read the whole thing here.

Lazerian's labware-inspired candle holders

Finally, UK-based studio Lazerian will be launching The Minerals Collection at 100% Design in London this September. These hand-made, beech candle holders take formal cues from conical flasks usually found in science laboratories and are named after the minerals that give the candles their distinct color.

Special thanks to Virginia Gardiner, Mark Vanderbeeken, Xanthe Matychak, Aart van Bezooyen, Niti Bhan, and fueledbycoffee for their contributions to this week's newsletter.

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