Coroflot's 8th Annual Design Salary Survey now online!

Since 2001, Coroflot has been conducting its annual salary survey for the design industries. By contributing your 2 cents, you are helping to build an amazing resource for both designers and employers. It will take less than 1 minute: Get started here! (Then you can check out last year's results.)

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Dog lamp by Charles Kalpakian

Inspired by graffiti, nature, sculpture, lighting, music and souvenirs, designer Charles Kalpakian's playful lamp 'dog' stores books on his back and lights up by pulling his tail several times, a dynamo stores energy and provides light. Yazter recently interviewed Kalpakian here and there's a heap more work on his site hellokarl.com.

>> more pictures

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Coroflot Creative Seeds: Six things to consider when setting your freelance rate.

So, how much are you worth?

We're not talking in a philosophical, meaning-of-life sort of way, but the much harder, more immediate sort of worth: cash money, and your first client has just asked how much of it you want for an hour of your creative time. For anyone new to creative freelancing, picking a rate can feel nearly as tenuous as selecting a "card, any card" from a deck fanned out on a magician's table, but there does turn out to be some logic to it.

Over at Creative Seeds, Carl Alviani has a rundown of six things the remember when focusing in on that magic number; here's #5:

An hour worked is not an hour billed.

You only get to bill your client for time spent producing deliverables for them: the renderings, the prototypes, the presentations, the sketches, the research reports. One thing young freelancers are often astonished to discover is how, at the end of a long hard day, they've only generated 4 hours worth of work for their client.

It's a discouraging realization, but really it shouldn't be; that's just how freelancing works (it's how staff jobs usually work too, if we're ruthlessly honest in our accounting). There's time spent marketing yourself, time spent learning new skills, and time spent recovering from mistakes. There's also time spent on the phone with a professional acquaintance, reading blogs and sites relevant to your field, and responding to emails from potential future clients. This stuff is necessary too, but it's not billable. In fact, a good rule of thumb is that for every hour you bill, you'll be working for two. Once this settles in, five hours entered into a timesheet on Monday doesn't look so bad.

>>Read the whole article here.<<

photo credit: zoomar

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McDonald's Unbranded. Seriously.

News from Tokyo of a couple no-logo McDonald's opening up early this month. No weird clowns, no golden arches, no...anything really, just a black storefront with red trim and a big burger in the window. Taking a cue from In-n-Out, the menu's exactly two items long: quarter-pounder and double quarter-pounder. Further proof that red, black, and white is the king of all corporate color schemes, from Coke to the Nazis. Check the new website here.

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Call for engineers: help design an eye-mounted camera

When someone gets hit by a car, it's a tragedy. When they suffer permanent injury, such as losing an eye, it becomes a lifelong tragedy. When they seek to turn that tragedy into art, though, it becomes an opportunity, and a fascinating one at that.

Tanya Vlach is a fifth-generation San Franciscan who suffered just such an injury back in 2005, and has both the prosthetic eyeball and eye-patch to prove it. Judging by her blog, she also received a radically altered perspective on life and the nature of perception, and this brings us to the opportunity.

Tanya wants to put a camera in her head.

>> continue

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I'm an Aerostar, I'm a Cutlass Supreme

In the HuffPo (sure, we can call it that, why not?), aging rocker Neil Young (heck, what's a tired journalistic cliche between friends?) offers up a vision for How To Save A Major Automobile Company.

The big three must reduce models to basics. a truck, an SUV, a large family sedan, an economy sedan, and a sports car. Use existing tooling.

Keep building these models to keep the workforce employed but build them without engines and transmissions. These new vehicles, called Transition Rollers, are ready for a re-power. No new tooling is required at this stage. The adapters are part of the kits described next.

At the same time as the new Transition Rollers are being built, keeping the work force working, utilize existing technology now, create re-power kits to retrofit the Transition Rollers to SCEVs (self charging electric vehicles) for long range capability up to and over 100mpg.

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The Met's first interactive opera

The day's of projecting video live on stage to enhance the visual experience has come a long way, last Friday's performance of "Faust" at the Metropolitan Opera was the most sophisticated interactive technology they've incorporated to date.

...Microphones (not the broadcasting kind) which are attached to the singers and positioned over the orchestra gauge volume and pitch. A system of infrared lights and cameras detect motion; similar technology is used to catch people trying to cross the United States border with Mexico, Mr. Lepage said.

A flock of digitally created birds swirls during Faust's opening aria. As Mr. Giordani's pitch changes, the birds change directions. As the volume surges, they swoop. When soldiers, supported by cables, march perpendicularly up the scaffolding on a projection of grass, the blades waver and part.

For the water-reflection scene, a high-definition camera captures the image of the moving boat. The software flips the image upside down, creates a shimmer and then instructs a projector to play it back simultaneously on the screen below the boat. The movements of ballet dancers during the "Menuet des follets" cause projected images of curtains to flutter and billow. In the production's most striking moment a JumboTron image of Ms. Graham's face appears behind her, emanating flames, as she sings "D'amour l'ardente flame."

New York Times via PSFK

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Hiroshima: The Lost Photographs

An absolutely fascinating article over at DesignObserver by Adam Levy on a set of post-nuclear photographs and their provenance. Here are a couple tastes:

But think of Hiroshima and what comes to mind is the mushroom cloud. Awesome in its way, with its bulbous head and towering stem, it is nonetheless an abstract image freed from human agency.

The lack of visual evidence of the atom bomb's effect has helped us to forget its devastating impact. To see is to remember. Up until now, there have been few publicly available images of what happened on the ground when the first atomic bomb exploded. As a result, Hiroshima has become, as the novelist Mary McCarthy wrote in 1946, "a kind of hole in human history."

These images go some way towards filling in this hole in our historical memory. Taken during the weeks following the bombing, they show a landscape that is eerily vacant and quiet, like ruins from a vanished civilization. But why were they taken and by whom? And how is it that they ended up in a pile of garbage?

And just a little bit more:

These photographs are significant not only for their visual message but also for their very existence as a group, for their cohesive documentation of an event of which we have few other still images.

Although the images taken by the Physical Damage Division don't depict the human suffering of the atomic bomb they do provide a vital function. They say: this is what we, mankind, are capable of unleashing upon each other. Like ruins, they refer back into time (this is what we have done, are capable of doing) while simultaneously warning of a future we have not yet encountered (they give substance to our terror of the use of another nuclear weapon).

Read the whole essay here.

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Many thanks for this guest post just in from Ashley Thorfinnson and Sahar Ghaheri.

Snapshots from A Better World by Design Conference

Undergrads passionately conversing on leaf-littered lawns between rows of red brick buildings set an almost overly iconic stage for the learning and discovery at this weekend's A Better World by Design Conference in Providence, RI. There was a laidback optimism in the air as we wandered between events at RISD and Brown, where students and professionals with lofty dreams of saving the world came together to gain advice from those who have already begun creating a better world by design. A few highlights are below:

Cameron Sinclair, Keynote Speaker
Despite showing up late, we were psyched to kick off our weekend by catching Cameron Sinclair's spectacular keynote speech. We laughed, we were moved, and we were beyond-inspired to follow his lead. Declaring the need for an absolute systemic change in the design world, Cameron spoke about creating economic engines for reconstruction in disaster-stricken areas, and of the importance of treating communities and clients as equal partners in the design process. Quoting another, Cameron likened his organization, Architecture for Humanity, to an "Al Qaeda for good...with sleeper cells all over the world, ready to activate." By establishing this worldwide network, he illustrated the power of creating a highly responsive design community that effectively matches skills with needs--or as he put in yet another colorful analogy, "match.com for the humanitarian design world."

>> continue

>> Designing a better world: behind the scenes at A Better World by Design conference

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Bicycle-sharing mania takes hold in Europe

In increasingly green-conscious Europe, there are said to be only two kinds of mayors: those who have a bicycle-sharing program and those who want one.

Read article

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New Dutch five euro coin

Speaking of Europe, the new Dutch five euro commemorative coin by Stani Michiels commemorates architecture. Check out the design process. Really stunning work.

via Design Observer

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House Industries Exhibition Opening Photos

The exhibition Letters and Ligatures showcases recent work from the Delaware-based type foundry House Industries. Click through for more photos from the opening and if you're in LA, the show at Subliminal Gallery will run untill December 5th.

>> more photos

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Cupboards, cupboards everywhere, nor any place to sleep.

New York architecture studio HWKN (Matthias Hollwich and Marc Kushner) has a new shelving system called the Wall Unitizer that looks kind of like a cupboard virus has sprouted and spread through your apartment. It's a bit of an Archigram-style take on turning the home into an extension of the body. The walls are everything you need: shelves, seating, desk space. Plus, if you live in a typical coffin-sized city apartment, everything's within arm's reach!

So far they've only done one, for some lucky client on the U.E.S. It was heavily customized, down to optimal chair and desk height, but I hope they think of mass producing this thing. More info on the shelves and the studio here.

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Selling SolidWorks in Rwanda

Great, short report on using CAD in sub-Saharan Africa over on CAD Insider. In this case, it's Chillington Rwanda, a factory in Kigali that makes wheelbarrows, stonecrushers, and other locally necessary machinery. The article follows an attempt by local consultancy Gasabo 3D, as they try to convince the factory of the advantages of 3D modeling in a business environment where computers are still relatively scarce.

It's an interesting read for the juxtaposition of the familiar (engineers sit around a table with tech drawings and calipers, debating the next step) and the bizarre (a broken crusher wheel is replaced by hand carving a wooden replica, which is then measured and made into a casting form), and for a peek at the future of CAD in emerging markets.

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Photo from AP: Chris Bensch, curator of collections, shows off the newest inductees into the Toy Hall of Fame, a stick.

Stick enters Toy Hall of Fame. No, a real stick.

Okay, technically, the Stick, Skateboard, and Baby Doll were inducted, but we're mostly interested in the stick part. You gotta hand it to those folks in Rochester for having the guts to do this, and to (sorry) draw a line in the sand with what any/every parent knows all too well:

"It's very open-ended, all-natural, the perfect price--there aren't any rules or instructions for its use," said Christopher Bensch, the museum's curator of collections. "It can be a Wild West horse, a medieval knight's sword, a boat on a stream or a slingshot with a rubber band. ...No snowman is complete without a couple of stick arms, and every campfire needs a stick for toasting marshmallows."

Guts indeed, given the backlash they must've received from one of their 2005 inductees: the cardboard box. We have no pick for next year; the cardboard box and the stick are it.

Thanks tort!

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SNIF tag: Social Networking for dogs

And finally, if you feel it's time for Fido to get into that whole social networking thing then this may be for you. The SNIF tag is a wireless gadget that clips onto a dog's collar. As you take your dog for a walk amongst all the other SNIF-enabled hounds at your local park, the tag records your dog's erm, interactions and shares the data with other tags.

>> continue

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Special thanks to William Bostwick, Mark Vanderbeeken and Steve Portigal 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

Email us your feedback and comments. We are looking for stories, case studies and global news on where and how design can make the difference.

Maarten Baas' 'Clay Furniture - Stacking Chairs'

UGLY: How Unorthodox Thinking Will Save Design, by Tad Toulis

Is 'Good Design' an asphyxiating dogma?
Design is a peculiar activity: It's a creative process, but a process that subscribes to and reinforces certain restrictive attitudes. It can be rigid and self-policing, since a profession that earns its living by discerning what is good and bad must necessarily become judgmental. Ultimately this judgmental nature creates and enshrines certain points of view, which left unchallenged, become dogma. Today, one could argue that this dogma, generally predicated on longstanding ideas of 'rightness' and 'beauty' is choking the profession down, and worse yet, stifling its creativity as it faces some truly great problems—problems which if handled with new thinking and true creativity, will define the substance, practice and contribution of a generation of designers.

Pretty: Right priced beauty
But wait. Truth and beauty are good things, right? Not necessarily. Design's traditional preference on establishing 'order' has had the consequence of driving a collateral and unchecked pursuit of beauty. Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, of course, and as such is subject to the vagaries of cultural bias and popular opinion. By degrees this pursuit of beauty has gradually been replaced with the much more predictable and less admirable accomplishment of achieving 'pretty'. And while consumer culture, planned obsolesce and design culture in general have benefited soundly from the creation, production and documentation of pretty things—the pursuit of pretty hasn't pushed the discipline of design into the tighter, less comfortable and ultimately more rigorous inquiries that outside forces (sustainability for example) are aligning to demand of us.

How might product designers better position the discipline to take on the hairy problems of sustainability, economic uncertainty, global competition and the like? Well, one thing is for certain, simply co-opting present patterns of consumption into activities and services linked to conservation won't get us there. That path might work if the world population of 6.5 billion was to stay fixed, but with an additional 3 billion consumers arriving to the party by 2050 we'll need to find more expedient (read: more creative) solutions.

>> continue

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Ron Arad 'Guarded Thoughts' exhibition photos, New York

Ron Arad's 'Guarded Thoughts' exhibition opened at New York's Friedman Benda Gallery last night presenting a new body of work continuing with his mix of cutting-edge technology and hands-on craftsmanship. While security did their best to prevent fingerprints (on everything), it was a free-for-all on the mirror finish ping-pong table.

A retrospective of Arad's career spanning 30 years opens at the Centre Georges Pomidou in Paris on November 18th, 2008, and will subsequently show at the MoMA in New York in 2009 and The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 2010.

>> continue

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Tokyo Design Festival 2008 : All posts in one place

Check out Core77's event coverage of Tokyo Design Festival in one easy-to-browse place:

TOKYO DESIGNER'S WEEK:

» Tokyo Designer's Week 2008: 100% Design

» Tokyo Designer's Week 2008: Brent Comber

» Tokyo Designer's Week 2008: 100% Design & Blickfang

» Tokyo Designer's Week 2008: 100% Design - First Impressions

» Tokyo Designer's Week 2008: Kicks off Today

DESIGN TIDE TOKYO:

» Design Tide Tokyo 2008: Tide Main Exhibition

» Design Tide Tokyo 2008: DMY

» Design Tide Tokyo 2008: Claska & Cibone

» Design Tide Tokyo 2008: Prototype Exhibition

» Design Tide Tokyo 2008: Frank Gehry

VIDEOS:

» Tokyo Designer's Week 2008: Video Drive-By: Michael Young

» Design Tide Tokyo 2008: Video Drive-By: Claudio Colucci

» Design Tide Tokyo 2008: Video Drive-By: Shay Alkalay & Yael Mer

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Core77 Photo Gallery : Designers' Open 2008

Designers' Open 2008 is one of the biggest design events in east Germany. During three days (24-26 Oct.) in Leipzig, we captured the power of a young design generation during a creative fight club, design exhibitions, historical art fair, and downtown specials.

>> view gallery

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Pentawards - 2008 Packaging Design Award Winners

Core77 pals The Die Line have published the winners of the 2008 Pentawards packaging design competition at their site. There are 11 pages of gorgeous and ingenious packaging projects to review there. Shown above is the Coca-Cola Alu Bottle designed by the Anglo-American Turner Duckworth agency. Congratulations to all the winners.

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Coroflot Creative Seeds: Questions for Jordan Nollman of Sprout Studios

Even if you don't recognize Jordan Nollman by name, you probably recognize a lot of his work, and definitely recognize the names he's worked for: Astro, IDEO, Ziba, Eleven, Razorfish, etc. After a successful six years at Astro, though, Nollman has decided to leave, in favor of working independently for personal care product firm Clio, and his own Sprout Studios.

Over at Creative Seeds, Carl Alviani has a nice little interview with Jordan, touching on royalites, his career so far, the attraction of going indy, and where all the designers in Boston live. Here he is on the importance of design school:

A lot of the basic, practical stuff, you can learn in high school: drawing and computer skills. What I learned in design school, more than anything, was how to talk to people and learn things from them. It's funny, I didn't actually receive my degree until three years ago--I had three Spanish classes to complete!--but I don't think a single employer ever checked up on this. If you've got a good portfolio and good references, that's what they pay attention to.

>>Read the whole interview here.<<

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World Economic Forum summit in Dubai produces design manifesto

The World Economic Forum's inaugural Summit on the Global Agenda, which just closed in Dubai, was billed as a new and unique gathering of the world's most influential thinkers - leaders from academia, business, government and society.

Structured in a network of over 60 Global Agenda Councils, the Summit provided a platform to share ideas and collaboratively address some of the key issues on the global agenda, with the aim of becoming a "brains trust" for solving major international problems.

The reports of each of the Councils are already online. The Council that dealt with design chose to write a design manifesto.

The group was chaired by Chris Luebkeman, director of global foresight and innovation for ARUP, and included Paola Antonelli, senior curator of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Tim Brown of IDEO, Brian Collins who now runs his own ad/marketing company in his own name, Chris Jordan, a photographic artist, Toshiko Mori of the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Bruce Nussbaum, assistant managing editor at Business Week, Alice Rawsthorn, design critic at the International Herald Tribune, Milton Tan, Executive Director of DesignSingapore Council, Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts, and Arnold Wasserman, chairman of The Idea Factory in Singapore.

Others in the group who couldn't make it to Dubai were Chris Bangle, director of design for BMW, Hillary Cottam, founder of Participle in the UK, Kigge Mai Hvid CEO of Index in Denmark, Larry Keeley of Doblin, John Maeda, President of RISD and William McDonough.

Other reports to read are the ones developed by the Global Agenda Councils on the Future of Mobile Communications, the Future of Media, the Future of Entertainment, the Future of the Internet, the Geography of Innovation, Strategic Foresight, and Technology and Education.

via Bruce Nussbaum

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Interview: Designing and developing the Wii Balance Board

Here's a pretty fascinating (and long!) interview with two of the developers of the Wii Balance Board which, if you think about it, must have been a bear to design; nothing like this had ever been made before, and the developers knew if they couldn't keep the costs down, their project would be axed.

Inspiration for the device came from some pretty strange sources, not the least of which was...Sumo wrestlers. Read on.

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Online Flash-Based Mass Customization Application, or... "Design Your Own Coaster!"

No, we didn't start doing inkblot personality tests... this one comes from studio:ludens who is developing some interesting digital design tools. After a couple of testing weeks, they now launched their epa:kato application, or beter "design your own coaster!"

With this online design tool, you can play with shape, patterns and repetition to create a unique design. Click here to try for yourself!

Note: don't expect a monkey proof product - the developers actually wants you to drop comments, critique, questions, suggestions for improvement or praise here.

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Studio Jo Meesters launched "Odds and Ends, Bits and Pieces" at last month's Dutch Design Week, a collection of four pieces made entirely from 34 discarded wooden beams and 16 leftover blankets. The ongoing experimental project TESTLAB aims to reuse discarded materials by combing craftsmanship with mass production techniques to create new types of furniture.

The basic principle in Jo Meester's work is sustainability. By integrating various aspects of craftsmanship, sophistication, and detailing, Meesters aims to imbue his projects and products with an emotional value. In this way, he emphasises his commitment to the creation and perception of a bond between object and user.

>> more images

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Cradle to Cradle Design in Practice at Nutec 2008

"Can products and materials be healthy for humans and the environment, combine functionality and aesthetics, be produced with fairness in every aspect - and be economically successful at the same time?"

The answer is: "yes!" according to over 100 experts and more than 50 suppliers who will present themselves at the upcoming Nutec 2008 event in Frankfurt, Germany (12-14 November 2008).

Nutec stands for: Nutrients - Upcycling - Triple-Top-Line - Eco-effectiveness - Community, and focuses on the use of natural resources in closed cycles and rethinking the way in which products are designed.

The event is being organized by the Messe Frankfurt in collaboration with the EPEA (Internationale Umweltforschung) and Prof. Dr. Michael Braungart and should be a trend-setting congress and exhibition for the use of materials, products, and services in an entirely new approach.

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The Year's 50 Best Inventions

Time Magazine released its list of the 50 best inventions of the year. The winner? A home DNA-testing kit. The Speedo LZR is on the list, and so's the spinning skyscraper, the memristor, three different electric cars, and a new ping pong serve. There are a couple surprises (namely, the LHC didn't come in first! Holla back, Hadron!), and a few head-scratchers. Annoying blog posts came in at #42. Srsly?

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Coroflot's 8th Annual Design Salary Survey now online!

And finally, since 2001, Coroflot has been conducting its annual salary survey for the design industries. By contributing your 2 cents, you are helping to build an amazing resource for both designers and employers. It will take less than 1 minute: Get started here! (Then you can check out last year's results.)

 

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Special thanks to Mark Vanderbeeken and William Bostwick 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

Email us your feedback and comments. We are looking for stories, case studies and global news on where and how design can make the difference.

[Apologies for the delay on the newsletter; now it's extra special!]

SPR Pressurized Rover

Designing for Space: Core77 visits NASA's Industrial Design Team, by Glen Jackson Taylor

Evan Twyford and Carl Conlee are two of three industrial designers working in NASA's Habitability Design Center (HDC), and in just over 2 years they have transitioned the department from one that dealt only with small isolated ergonomic projects to working on arguably the most exciting project at NASA today—a next generation pressurized lunar rover. Since working at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) they have had robots walk past their office door during meetings, experienced zero-gravity flight, had their bodies 3D scanned, and worked alongside some of the most talented engineers and scientists in the country. The thing is, NASA doesn't actually have an industrial design department. They don't even have a design department. Not technically, anyway.

Pictured left to right: Richard Szabo, Travis Baldwin, Carl Conlee and Evan Twyford

Meeting the team
"Things have changed so much since we started, people here don't really understand what Industrial Design is or how it fits into the bigger picture. But once they work with us and see the services we provide—visualizing information, realizing concepts—they see the value of what we do," explains Evan.

>> continue

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Tokyo Designer's Week 2008: Frank Gehry

Frank Gehry doesn't typically do one-off pieces but after much convincing, he agreed to design the visitors bench for the World Company building in Tokyo, Japan's largest fashion house with over 90 labels and 3000+ retail outlets. It was just installed a few weeks ago and we were able to sneak in for a closer look last night while they were hanging a banner in the front for design week.

>> continue

>> View all Tokyo Design Festival posts here.

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1 Hour Design Challenge: Voting Booth Winners!

The results are in and we are proud to announce the winners of the latest Core77 1 Hour Design Challenge: Voting Booth! There was a wonderful selection of entries in this round, and the lead up to November 4th provided some nice design fuel. Thanks to everyone who participated, and make sure to check out all the entries in the forum.

Our esteemed judges on this this challenge were William Drenttel and Jessica Helfand of Winterhouse, creators of The Polling Place Photo Project (now a New York Times project) and founding editors of Design Observer. Here are their overall impressions:

Voting is a serious civic activity--perhaps the most important citizen engagement in a democracy. The challenge of one-hour solutions for voting booths might seem to run contrary to the scope and complexity of the enterprise, but we are nonetheless impressed with the range of solutions offered here. Some are serious, some are playful, and some are politically ironic. A carnival ride where you see the future implications of your vote? A monkey with a tamborine superimposed between the candidates? Throwing rocks at the portraits of the candidates you least like? We are amused. We are going to (generally) error, though, on the side of serious proposals, these being serious times. Congratulations to the winners, and thank you to all who took the time to participate.

And now for the winners...

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Core77 Photo Gallery : DesignPhiladelphia 2008

Our DesignPhiladelphia 2008 gallery is now online with images covering a full week of events in the city of brotherly love. Highlights include Philly Heart Design local designer exhibition, A Clean Break: Pop-up Neighborhood, Make:Philly Art Cart Derby, and many lectures and exhibitions. Enjoy!

>> View Gallery

View all DesignPhiladelphia 2008 posts:

>> DesignPhiladelphia 2008

>> DesignPhiladelphia 2008: SOS Stool by Josh Owen

>> DesignPhiladelphia 2008: Matthias Pliessnig

>> DesignPhiladelphia 2008: The Hacktory

>> DesignPhiladelphia 2008: Two Days Left

>> DesignPhiladelphia 2008: A Clean Break

>> DesignPhiladelphia 2008: Student Work at 222 Gallery

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New JBL Eon's designed by RKS

JBL has just dropped the latest set of EON portable loud speakers, designed by RKS, and band-types at the Core77 office say, "we want these," citing the triple handles as a very desirable selling point. Seeing as we don't have a practice pair though, let's go to the press release. Read to the end for the best part:

The full, foam-backed, perforated metal grill provides an added measure of protection to internal components, while offering a clean, uncluttered look to the entire line. The speaker's shape, like the EON's power, projects from the rear of the speaker where the amp is housed. "The design flows from the back of the speaker in a single, accelerating curve," explained Lance Hussey, RKS Vice President of Design. The bold port vents provide a visual accent and evoke fond memories of the original EON.

>> continue reading

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Book Review: Desire: The Shape of Things to Come, by the editors of Gestalten

Desire: The Shape of Things to Come, by Gestalten Press is visually interesting on every page. The oddly framed and somewhat flat front cover's picture of simple wooden furniture and gaudy gold tableware is by no means representative of the elegant furniture designs contained within. The introduction by Andrej Kupetz sets the tone by explaining the context of 21st Century design as a natural successor to the functionalism of Louis Sullivan's edicts and the visual expression of the Memphis movement. I still find the description of eras from the last fifty years as "modern" and "postmodern" somewhat confusing, but since it has become common usage I understand the authors need to use the terms. More interestingly, however, the remainder of the book does provide some new and useful (though not likely to become common usage) categories for recent design movements.

After the introduction, the book is structured in four parts: The Modernists, The Inventors, The Taletellers, and The Entertainers. Each section has a short introduction detailing the movements and their major players. The layout includes a mix of full bleed photographs, silhouettes and nicely gridded pictures with descriptive text. For some work, short background essays on the designers accompanies the photos. A lot of the furniture included in Desire transcends the neat categorization that the author provides, but is equally effective at provoking the emotion to which the title aspires. Though much of the work profiled here is more exhibition piece than industrial production, any reader is likely to discover something to lust after. For me, it was Kjellgren and Kaminsky's "Pompous Fat Armchair" which looks like set design from the Matrix met an 80's couch and a folding umbrella in an S&M club. Since that may not quite be your thing (and both the designers and myself admit that it isn't normally ours either), I encourage readers to find their own wish list inside.

>> continue

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Ben Fry on the intersection of art and technology

On this Business Week podcast, Ben Fry, co-developer of the Processing open-source programming environment and recent winner of the prestigious Muriel Cooper Award for interactive digital communication, discusses the ever-increasing crossover between art, design, and technology.

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Network Citizens

Social networks are providing tremendous opportunities for people to collaborate. But until now, thinking has focused only on how organisations can respond to and capitalise on networks. This report by the UK think tank Demos argues that we have to look equally at how networks use organisations for their own ends. That is where the new contours of inequality and power lie that will shape the network world. We have to face networks' dark side, as well as their very real potential.

Bringing together in-depth case studies of six organisations, Network Citizens maps the key fault-lines that people and organisations will have to address in the future world of work. Not doing so puts at risk the very qualities we had invested in them: openness, innovation, collaboration and meritocracy. Since networks can act for good or ill, incubating the talents and ideas of the many, or promoting the interests of the few, the need for a new set of responsibilities is growing. If we are network members, we must be network citizens, too.

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TechShop previews its new Portland location, by Molly Purnell

TechShop, the membership-based machine shop for DIY gearheads, has been a favorite of us here at Core for a while, getting glowing mentions here and here. The biggest criticism we've always had of the place is that there's only one of them, and it's in Menlo Park, CA, which is great if you're a Silicon Valley tool nerd but annoying if you're a tool nerd anywhere else.

Thankfully, that's starting to change: after more than a year of anticipation, several of the planned expansion locations are starting to see some action, first at the Durham, NC Techshop, whose building was previewed in July, and just last week in Portland, OR, where Core contributer Molly Purnell hopped on a bus to the industrial section of nearby Beaverton to check out the new space, and talk to some other excited makers. Here's what she found:

On the bus I get to know Dave, a self-proclaimed inventor and maker who's excited about TechShop's CNC router. Dave builds Fretted Dulcimers which are apparently coming back into fashion in the Japanese hand-made instrument market, and he needs access to the shop in order to build prototypes.

Dave seems to be the typical clientelle of TechShop; a maker with big dreams, little space, and no equipment. TechShop's goal is to remedy this situation for the 300 or so potential members that came to the opening event. TechShop plans to have milling machines, lathes, welders, a laser cutter, an electronics shop, blacksmithing tools, a finishing room, workstations, a 3D printer, and of course the coveted CNC router. Along with all of this equipment there will be a tool and materials shop, a small library and a communal kitchen.

The greatest benefit of Techshop will be the probable development of community. The owner of TechShop, Jim Newton and the Portland shop manager, Denney Cole, claim that the community is one of the greatest drawing powers for continued membership. Most builders know that another's experience and knowledge is the best tool available.

>> continue

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Emily Pilloton and Project H in the LimeLight

An existence as "makers of stuff" has long been accepted but, more recently, it's been thrown out many a proverbial window by designers worldwide. To set things on track to where they always should have been, Emily Pilloton founded Project H, a non-profit organization that puts design to work for humanity, habitats, health, and happiness. Its latest project is Design for Education, an initiative to design tools to improve teaching and learning in both the US and developing markets.

Learn extensively about what Project H is up to now and Pilloton's P.O.V. on the future of design over at Ecolect LimeLight.

I'd love for communities, both in the US and in India, Africa, Asia, and beyond, to begin to view design as something we rely on to solve our problems- one of the first lines of defense in ameliorating social ills. Design can be a form of capital, a form of public health, and a vehicle for social and political progress. I hope that Project H becomes proof of that.

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image credit: Curventa Bloodhound SSC

She gets lousy mileage, but man is she fast

We're conflicted about putting these images up because yes, we're supposed to be designing green vehicles to save the planet, not land-rockets that go over 1,000 miles per hour; but darn if this thing doesn't look cool.

You read that right: Curventa's Bloodhound SSC is a car (well, a land-based vehicle, anyway) designed to hit 1,050 m.p.h., which would make it faster than a bullet fired from a .357 Magnum. The three-year mission is still in progress, and if an actual production model ever sees the light of day, we can tell you they needn't include a seatbelt and airbag; slam into anything at those speeds and you will probably disintegrate entirely.

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New human-centric innovation university in Finland

During a recent speech Professor Yrjo Sotamaa, former Rector of the University of Art and Design Helsinki (TaiK), described Finland's educational strategy to remain at the forefront of innovation:

The new strategy aims at strengthening the core competencies of Finland through a radical university reform. And it is turning innovation thinking 180 degrees around to human-centric thinking. It does not lessen the importance of technology and business know-how, but in the future the innovation drivers are stronger tied to the needs of users and the opportunities on the market. The shift to user-driven innovation highlights the importance of design. Design has a huge and very new potential for innovation."

Aalto University, scheduled to officially open its doors in Autumn 2009, is a new university being created through a merge between the Helsinki School of Economics, the University or Art and Design Helsinki and the Helsinki University of Technology. The merge between the three universities will create a new science and art community from the three universities of technology, business studies and art and design and provide possibilities for multidisciplinary and strong education and research.

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Johnny Lee, YouTube, and the future of prototyping

Is Prototyping finally entering the pop-cultural lexicon?

Where it was once an opaque techno-fabulous term used by Q in James Bond flicks, or forming the dubious core of a Star Trek episode, we've now got a word that actually has meaning for the average TV viewer. "Prototyping" arouses interest and fascination, but lately it's also started feeling accessible, like a sexier version of building a birdhouse in the garage with your dad.

Case in point: in addition to reality TV phenomena like Project Runway, Mythbusters and Junkyard Wars, all of which feature on-the-fly construction as part of the drama, we can now count Discovery Channel's Prototype This, which not only uses the term in its name, but invites viewers to submit ideas of their own. This is a marked break from the established depictions of hi-tech: people pay attention when Apple rolls out a new product, but Steve Jobs never asks viewers to suggest what they ought to be working on next.

Now it looks like Prototyping may have its greatest advocate yet, in the form of recent Carnegie Mellon grad Johnny Chung Lee, whose YouTube video explaining how to hack a Wiimote into a VR display has earned him a TED talk, a pile of job offers, and over six million views. If you haven't seen it yet, you pretty much have to stop whatever you're doing and watch it right now:

>> continue

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Attack of the Human Vending Machines!

And finally, Japan loves vending machines (jidoohanbaiki, I think). Food, books, clothes -- get it all by pushing a button. And remember this? They're so ubiquitous you can wear a vending machine suit and blend right in (kind of).

Taking this obsession to its illogical extreme, on November 18th, Uniqlo invades Times Square with an army of Human-Powered Vending Machines. Provocative commentary on the depersonalization of retail space design, or bizarro publicity stunt?

>> continue

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Special thanks to Mark Vanderbeeken and Molly Purnell 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

Email us your feedback and comments. We are looking for stories, case studies and global news on where and how design can make the difference.

And the winner is...Zon Hearing Aid!

The people have spoken, and last night the People's Design Award was awarded to Stuart Karten Design's Zon Hear Aid. You can learn more about the device (and read comments) at the Cooper-Hewiit site, or just mosey on over to SKD and check the work out there. Congrats SKD and Starkey Laboratories!

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Book Review: Imprint, by Daniel Eatock

The inside cover of Daniel Eatock's monograph Imprint is covered with a rather exhaustive list of tasks that could be construed as either design projects or performance art pieces depending upon one's point of view. While certain items like "I have spent twenty-four hours in a pitch-black room, lying on a mattress with ear plugs in my ears, without eating or visiting the toilet," suggest David Blaine's feats of endurance, others stray from conceptual art into true iterative design. While his project to draw ten thousand circles by hand before selecting the best one sounds like an introductory sketching exercise (and the final circle is indeed nearly Zen in its perfection), the ream of A3 paper consisting of the other 9,999 imperfect circles stands as the real piece of art.

In the accompanying text Eatock admits that he's not an intuitive sketcher, instead describing the ideas behind his work as the true art. Instead I would posit that his process stands as his most substantial artistic achievement. Sometimes, the idea and the output fuse perfectly, like arranging an entire set of Letraset Pantone Markers according to the color spectrum and leaving them open to bleed into 500 sheets of paper. The resulting set of prints was both aesthetically pleasing and, I assume, easily numbered. Inviting participants to help to manufacture "the world's largest signed and numbered artwork" by signing and numbering labels themselves, however, is more intellectually than aesthetically interesting. Eatock works and has trained as a graphic artist, so his output isn't industrial design by any stretch of the imagination, but the process is the same. In effect, Eatock has made the process of the art into the art, and the results are both inspirational and humbling. I once heard that looking at a Picasso makes one want to paint, but looking at Rembrandt makes one want to quit. Miraculously, reviewing Eatock's prolific output manifests both urges at the same time. For any designer struggling to find a place to start, reading Imprint should be ample proof that almost any starting point will look brilliant in retrospect, provided that enough work, practice and repetition went into the final product.

>> continue

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Advertisement

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Digital surfaces for the blind

CScout reports on how tactile surfaces are making technology and information much more accessible to people with visual handicaps, and features the Touch Sight Camera, the ReEnvision debit card reader, the Sentio watch (pictured), and the Saifu tablet PC.

"As a range of new interfaces and surfaces for digital devices are developed, it is becoming easier for visually impaired people to use devices sighted people take for granted. Tactile displays enable digital data to be felt rather than seen, making it easier for blind and partially sighted people to access the Internet, keep their credit card details secure, and take and archive pictures."

>> Read article

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MIT opens lab in Italy on sustainable building

The MIT Mobile Experience Lab, within the Design Laboratory, signed a 3 years strategic alliance with the Fondazione Bruno Kessler, a local research institute, to advance research in sustainable connected homes, including subtopics of renewable energy systems, sustainable architecture, social sustainability, and connected information systems to optimize home behavior and people's lives.

The project, which is promoted by the Autonomous Province of Trento, Italy, will conclude with building a full-scale prototype of a sustainable home with new technologies, materials, and applications.

(Also here several former Ivreans are involved including Dave Chiu, Hector Ouilhet and Silvia Gabrielli).

via Gianluca Salvatori

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Rubik's Cube + Pantone = Rubitone

Brilliantly simple. From the portfolio of Ignacio Pilotto, an Argentinian designer.

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DesignPhiladelphia 2008: Student Work at 222 Gallery

Last week marked the end of DesignPhiladelphia, but Gallery 222 is keeping Product 01 and Build 02, two exhibitions of work from two of Philadelphia's premiere design education courses, running through November 1st.

>> continued

>> DesignPhiladelphia 2008: A Clean Break

>> DesignPhiladelphia 2008: The Hacktory

>> DesignPhiladelphia 2008: Matthias Pliessnig

>> DesignPhiladelphia 2008: SOS Stool by Josh Owen

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Using design to crack society's problems

Lots of interesting content in the November issue of Fast Company magazine.

Can design save the world? Hilary Cottam thinks so.
Alice Rawsthorn, design critic of the International Herald Tribune, profiles Hilary Cottam, founding director of the social enterprise Participle, on her use of design to try to change the world for the better.
[If you want to know more about Hilary, read the lengthy interview I did with her last year for Torino World Design Capital.]

Three more who design for society
Meet three visionaries who solve social problems with design thinking: Ezio Manzini (Politecnico di Milano), Marcia Lausen (Design for Democracy) and George Kembel (Stanford D.school).

Building a sustainable design community
Anya Kamenetz reports on the highly laudable Designers Accord: "Valerie Casey is rallying the creative community to her version of a Kyoto treaty for designers -- and her peers are signing on in droves. Now comes the hard part."

Green guru gone wrong: William McDonough
This long feature story is probably a bomb. McDonough, the architect who developed the "cradle-to-cradle" concept, is widely revered as an environmental guru. The article describes McDonough as a great promoter with good intentions, who creates projects with often very mixed or even failed results.

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Living: A new (Italian) pop-up in SoHo

Beginning today and running 'til December 20th, an ambitious new pop-up will take residence in NYC. Living the Italian Soho House will contain over 150 Lombardy-designed furniture and home accessories, film screenings, and panel discussions. Produced by Promos, a specialized division of the Milan Chamber of Commerce, the initiative aims to shine a light on Italian design. Here's more:

The idea behind Living the Italian Soho House is to recreate five spaces found in Italian houses by using elements and products from 35 of the most innovative design companies in Italy. The space at 172 Mercer will include a kitchen and dining room, living room with garden, office and entertainment room, bathroom/spa, and bedroom. There will also be a welcome room, which will host seminars, events, and presentations over Living’s eight-week residency.

The items on display in the house were selected by interior designers and include over 150 products from companies including Paola C, Bizzari, Bodema, Luceplan, Progetti, and more. Among the items will be seating, bathroom and kitchen furnishings, lighting, windows, flooring, tables, and more. All products on display will be available for purchase.

And we're confident they'll take American dollars.

All info at the site: www.livinglombardy.it.

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PopTech 2008: Scarcity and Abundance

PopTech 2008 kicked off last week in Camden, Maine to an enthusiastic and boisterous crowd. Addressing this year's topic of "Scarcity and Abundance," presentations ranged from energy awareness to cello lessons (!). WattzOn's Saul Griffith opened the session with an overview of his energy consumption monitoring platform. In its alpha phase, WattzOn allows users to visualize and understand their personal energy footprint. Highlights from the morning included Malcolm Gladwell's discussion of cultural "capitalising" (an analysis of processes that affect success and failure in society) and Paul Polak's call to arms for low-cost, sustainable design solutions in developing countries. The afternoon was ripe with expression as Marian Bantjes' (pictured above) spoke of her transition from traditional graphic design to "meaningful" design. "I started creating work that was meaningful to me..." she said, "and discovered it was meaningful to other people as well...I made a decision to stop working for money. And start working for love."

Chandler Burr, the New York Times perfume critic, led the room through an exploration of scent and its relationship to history, culture and emotion (who knew patchouli smelled that way because it includes rotten LEAVES in its process?!). Ripe with anecdotes and hilarity, he cited the reason for differentiation between male and female perfumes as nothing more than "offering hetero-sexual men the freedom to wear scent in society."

Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic, ended the evening in great spirits with a presentation on the Art of Possibility. Conducting renditions of "Happy Birthday," he emphasized the need to "get up and conduct" in life, as well as the joy of making mistakes and embracing the present. His energy and optimism rang true with the entire crowd as he careened around the Opera House floor, using a young cellist's rendition of a Bach to offer insights on how to weave emotion and nuance not only into a musical piece, but everyday life. "I have a bigger dream," he closed the night with, "that you will live the rest of your life in possibility. That is my dream."

Check out more coverage on the PopTech blog.

>> PopTech 2008: Day 2

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Herman Miller reaches for the Holy Grail of chairs: One size fits all

Is it possible to design a chair that will fit everyone, whether short, tall, fat, skinny? Maybe or maybe not, but if any company can pull it off, it's Herman Miller.

Given this seemingly impossible task, HM's engineers came back with the Embody chair:

The Embody's colorful fabric seat hides a system of 94 plastic coils. Each compresses independently, allowing pointy bones or bulky wallets to sink in without causing nearby areas to sag. The designers also tuned the springiness of each coil based on its location. The coils under your thighs and the soft backs of your knees give easily so they don't chafe; those under the bones in your rear, which bear most of your weight, are the stiffest. Plastic caps on top of the coils tilt in any direction to hug instead of poke your curves.

via popular science

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Creative30 now open for voting

It's a bit broad and uneven, but the Volvo- and Vice-sponsored Creative30 competition/website offers some great creative eye-candy, in the form of 3-minute videos of some of the most phenomenally talented young designers and artists the UK currently has to offer. As the name implies, thirty subjects have been selected to showcase and talk about their work, which ranges from sculpture and visual arts to music, fashion and furniture design. Visitors to the site are invited to cast a vote for their favorite, and the winner drives off in a Volvo (runner up has to settle for 10,000 pounds in cash "to help launch their career").

>> see some of our favorites

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Hands on with Microsoft's touch interfaces

CNET News has published a small photo gallery of new user interfaces developed by Microsoft Research. The integration of physics engines looks quite promising.

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Couple makes good with self-designed iPod accessory

And finally, a tale of product success: Jeremy Huber found current methods of affixing iPod Nanos to the body--armbands, cases and the like--unsuitable for his weightlifting routine. He and wife Alissa devised the iStik, a snap-on plastic case containing four magnets, which corresponds with a thin plastic sheet also holding four magnets. The rest is simple: put the sheet inside your clothing and the case outside the clothing, and the magnets do the rest. You can now store your Nano on any part of your body covered by clothing.

(If magnets don't sound like such a hot idea, remember that this is for the Nano, so there's no hard drive to accidentally erase.)

While the object itself is neat, what we found more interesting was the success the Hubers found in a market glutted with corporations all trying to design a hit iPod accessory. The Hubers started by renting a booth at the L.A. marathon, where the hordes of runners saw the wisdom of the gizmo and quickly bought up all 400 of them. This led to an appearance on CNBC's The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch, and the publicity boosted sales--with no dedicated retail space, just a website, the Hubers have racked up $50,000 in sales in just six months! No ID background, and not too shabby.

>> more images

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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

Email us your feedback and comments. We are looking for stories, case studies and global news on where and how design can make the difference.

That's a yacht of work

That there is the Sentori 58R, a 58-foot flybridge motor yacht designed by Christian Gumpold and Christopher Gloning for their postgrad industrial design diploma thesis at the University of Applied Science in Graz, Austria.

"The target is serial production," says Gumpold, explaining that an actual prototype will be ready by February of 2009. He and Gloning are in the process of founding a design studio specializing in naval architecture.

"The exterior design of the yacht is strongly inspired by automotive design and communicates a simple, clear linework, with the emphasis on a coupe-like appearance," Gumpold explains. "The interior design has the language of modern interior architecture and contemporary living, together with a number of highly innovative detail solutions never seen on a yacht of this size."

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DesignPhiladelphia 2008: Matthias Pliessnig

Matthias Pliessnig's bent wood furniture has been seen here before, but last night he introduced some stunning new pieces during his Debut Solo Exhibit at the Wexler gallery. The centerpiece of the exhibit is a large steam bent oak seating sculpture titled Providence. It's the result of over 5 weeks of careful planning, prototyping, bending, and forming. Also included in the gallery is a collection of mixed media sculptural studies that Matthias creates along with his furniture.

Hopefully we will see more bent goodness from Matthias now that his new studio in Philadelphia is up and running.

>> more images

>> also check out : DesignPhiladelphia 2008: SOS Stool by Josh Owen

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1 Hour Design Challenge: VOTING BOOTH

This month's 1 Hour Design Challenge is timelier than timely, focusing on the theme of voting booths. Everyone is welcome to take part, so fire up those pencils, markers and tablets and get in the game! Cause hey, participation is a central component of this one.

THEME:
Voting Booth

DOORS CLOSE:
Thursday, October 30, 2008
9 PM PST (4 AM GMT)

BRIEF:
As we approach the upcoming November election, the role of design and experience will once again take center stage. The ballot design fiasco of the 2000 election taught us that the ramifications of design decisions can be profound, so for this Core77 1 Hour Design Challenge, we invite designers to submit design solutions for the "voting booth." Designs submitted can include both voting machines and environments, but we are looking for strong concepts that explore the way we vote, where we vote.

HOW TO ENTER:
Participants must execute their design in only 1 hour, based on an honor system. Upload images and a brief text description of your design to the designated discussion forum.

Jury:
Winners will be selected by Jessica Helfand and William Drenttel of Winterhouse, creators of The Polling Place Photo Project (now a New York Times project) and founding editors of Design Observer. Community discussion is encouraged to help ensure that the best designs win.

CRITERIA:
Judging will be based on quality of presentation, strength of concept, and ambition of idea.

PRIZE:
1st prize will receive a gift basket from Winterhouse, including maple syrup, t-shirt, a copy of Design For Democracy, boxes of Obama O's and Cap'N McCain's cereal, and other special surprises. 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners will be featured in the Core77 November Newsletter and on the Core77 Blog.

>>Enter your submission here<<

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Design-for-All Voting System from Norway

Given our current 1 Hour Design Challenge: Voting Booth, we are particularly keen on the Design-for-All voting booth, which just won the States Design Competition and will be developed for a pilot study for next year's elections in Norway.

Designed as a collaboration between KADABRA Product Design, Innovativoli Industrial Design, and Blueroom Graphic Design (all of whom share a studio in Oslo), the project is the centerpiece of a comprehensive set of voting materials comprised of a ballot box, graphic profile, signage and ballot. Here's a bit more from the team:

A voting system is not truly democratic until everyone who has the right to vote can do so without encountering physical or mental barriers. As the initiator of this project, the Norwegian state wished to focus on inclusiveness--a good voting experience for everyone regardless of physical or mental impairments. By including "elite users" in the creative process, all the elements of the voting experience are designed to be just as available to the visually impaired, wheel chair users, or illiterates, as they are to an "ordinary" user. The proposed project lifts the elections to a higher functional level, and injects a feeling of solemnity and pride both for the voters and the volunteers.

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Reusable shopping bag for outdoor gearheads

Scruffy canvas bags with recycle symbols on the side not really your style? Lightweight tent manufacturer NEMO has a snappy alternative for the rip-stop loving gear geek in all of us: shopping bags made from factory second tents. Pick one up here, and while you're at it check out some of their other green-leaning innovations, like tents made with bamboo poles and 90% recycled fabric.

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Business Innovation Factory 4

We were at the Trinity Rep Theatre in Providence for the Business Innovation Factory 4, a 2-day "conversation, not conference" and collaborative innovation summit. Storytellers (not speakers) shared their tales that exemplify and demonstrate social engagement and deep business value. The lineup was a veritable who's who of movers and shakers in the business of innovation and social entrepreneurship (doing good while makin' bank). Highlights include a welcome from Saul Kaplan, and presentations by Marc Ecko of Marc Ecko Enterprises and Sweat Equity Enterprises, and Acumen Fund founder Jacqueline Novogratz.

>> more opening pictures

>> Business Innovation Factory 4: Day 1 Wrap-up

>> Business Innovation Factory 4: Day 2 Wrap-up

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Peugeot design comp winner announced

Peugeot has chosen the winner for their design competition. Top prize went to Colombia's Carlos Arturo Torres Tovar for his folding RD concept, video below.

His 3-wheeled design is called the RD and like most of the other entries, it is small and made for driving on narrow roads. During periods of heavy traffic or when space is limited, it can fold upward and shorten the overall length by a substantial amount.

>> check out the video

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FindDesign now a Firefox plugin

For those of you who (understandably) like your google searches design-biased, you might already be using Find: Design. But now you can get the filter built right into your browser with this plugin. Happy surfing!

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SENS concept: a cell phone for the blind

Recognizing that the so-called "blind man's dimple" on the '5' keypad of most cellular phones is actually of little use to the blind, designer Takumi Yoshida came up with the SENS concept.

To improve interaction between the user and the phone, SENS combines touch sensors and regular mechanical keys to provide real-time audio feedback. When the user touches a key, the phone tells them what key has been touched without actually registering it as an input. The user may hover across the keys to gain feedback on which key they are touching. Once the user is sure their finger is on the correct key, they can then press it just like on any other standard handset; a click sound is then fed back to confirm the input. In order to eliminate the need for other people in public to also hear the audio feedback from the phone, SENS has an integrated Blutooth headset which ensures it can't get misplaced.

The concept was developed in conjunction with students from the UK's Royal National Institute of Blind People. Click here for more info.

via gizmag

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Apple design, old vs. new

It's not that we dislike having smaller, sleeker objects, but with Apple's announcement yesterday of new laptops, we couldn't help but notice how small the visual difference is between this generation and the last. Why? Because as objects get "tighter," well, there's simply less to design. Everything goes into the details; broad design strokes seem to fade in importance.

To see what we mean, hit the jump and take a look at these older Apple products, manufactured during a time when there was still enough meat on the product to hang some design onto, so to speak.

>> more historic photos

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Helmet patch to track Soldiers blast history

A low-cost disposable strip of plastic that can record a soldiers exposure to explosions for up to seven days is hoped to help doctors learn more about brain injuries. Soldiers are increasingly injured by experiencing multiple shock waves from powerful explosives, not necessarily from being hit directly.

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) signed a $5 million contract with Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) to develop the strip of tape which will contain printed electronics, analog memory, and sensors.

The information collected will be added to a soldiers medical records making it easy to track their blast history. 25 prototypes to test components are scheduled for Spring next year and 1,000 units for field testing are planned for 2010.

via dvice.com

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How can I be more strategic?

Victor Lombardi has written 8 short bulletpoints addressed to designers keen on becoming more strategic in their work. Here's a snippet,

Designers often ask this question. Sometimes I think the question arises from a genuine desire to be doing something else which is more strategic in nature, and sometimes I think what is being asked is, how can I convince or influence others to do things my way?

The answer might be the same or it might not. I've started to keep track of the answers I hear to shed some light here.

1. Change your title, brand identity, clothing, etc. in order to change perceptions of what you offer.
2. Charge more money so that only the people who have real strategic influence can afford you.
3. Bootstrap your way into different work.
4. Be strategic. In Porter's definition, strategic is long-term planning. Avail yourself of strategic tools both simple (e.g. roadmaps) and complex (futures analysis and design).

Have something to add? Go read the rest and comment here.

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Movable Braille timepiece by David Chavez wins Spark Design Award

Industrial designer David Chavez picked up a Spark Award for his movable Braille timepiece Haptica which displays a real-time readout in Braille using a military time format. He shares the Award with some industry-heavyweights including Fuseproject, Smart Design, Essential Design, James Dyson, One and Co, Pentagram and IDEO.

84 designs won bronze, silver, gold or the ultimate Spark! Award. The winning entries are on display until January 2009 at the Autodesk Gallery, One Market, San Francisco.

View Winners

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USA Lapel Pin designed by Michael Bierut

And finally, Men's Vogue magazine has commissioned Michael Bierut to design a "politically neutral" USA pin "in an attempt to end the flag-pin controversy." Comments Bierut, "I tried to defamiliarize a very familiar configuration of letters. A flag is a corporate logo. A monogram is much more private." 5000 of the pins are for sale with the proceeds benefiting a great nonprofit, Puppies Behind Bars.

Here's more on the organization:

The New York-based charity, which has been training prison inmates to raise service dogs since 1997, has recently turned its attention to veterans, with a new initiative called Dog Tags. The program provides dogs for soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan who are physically injured or suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. The dogs, Labradors and golden retrievers, are trained to do everything from reminding their companions to take their medication to allaying combat-induced fears that make everyday life back home impossible.

Support the cause here.
More story here.

(Photo: Richard Pierce)

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Special thanks to Niti Bhan for her 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

Email us your feedback and comments. We are looking for stories, case studies and global news on where and how design can make the difference.

Growing furniture, the Venus chair by Tokujin Yoshioka

Tokujin Yoshioka's chair made from growing natural crystals will headline the exhibition Second Nature opening on the 17th in Tokyo this week. The Venus chair builds on his earlier work such as Honey-pop (2001) which used a honeycombed paper structure to obtain it's strength and the Pane chair (2006) made of a translucent spongy material called polyester elastomer. The Venus chair is grown in a tank, the production process half controlled by Yoshioka and half left up to nature.

The Second Nature exhibition will feature work from Noriko Ambe, Makoto Azuma, Campana Brothers, Asuka Katagiri, Ross Lovegrove, Kaiji Moriyama & Takeshi Kushid, Yukio Nakagawa ikebana and Tokujin Yoshioka.

>> more pictures

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Stepmothers of Invention: Branding Firms Enter the Industrial Design Fray, by Carl Alviani

In a perfect world, we wouldn't need to sell what we design--people would just know. When Industrial Designers imagine utopia, it's not only full of beautiful, functional products, it's also full of consumers who recognize them instantly and without prodding. Persuasion, in the form of logos, ad campaigns, and the ever-broadening array of activities known as branding, has attained the status of Necessary Evil to many of us. Designers--as we repeatedly tell each other in school, in the studio, and at conferences--are all about function, emotion and progress; persuasion is for shills.

If we're honest about it though, we'd have to admit that branding and ID have been intimately related for a long time. Moreover, a lot of product designers have made their careers by getting in on the branding game in the past couple of decades. It shouldn't come as any surprise to hear that the same thing is starting to happen in reverse--branding agencies are doing product, and they're doing it fairly well.

Should product designers feel threatened? Depends on who you ask.

>> continue

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Spain throws its hat into the Eco City ring.

One of the more unexpected charms of driving through the Spanish countryside is the proliferation of windmills, especially in the windier, higher plateau areas in the north of the country. We're not talking about charming medieval ones that Quixote took for giants either -- Spain is rapidly becoming one of Europe's leaders in green energy, and broad acceptance of wind power is a big part of it.

As if an annual 30% growth rate in wind energy weren't enough, the Spanish are also going after the sustainable living thing in a more immersive way, with plans released recently for a completely carbon-neutral city on a pair of hills in the storied Rioja wine-producing region. Consisting of 3,000 homes, the Logrono Montecorvo Eco City will include wind turbines and photovoltaic cells to supply all of its own energy needs, and just received approval from the local government.

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Core77 Photo Gallery : FreeDesigndom 2008

FreeDesigndom 2008 is the first edition of a new annual design and fashion event in the Netherlands, with four-week program of festivals, exhibitions and symposiums including Experimenta Design, Hacking IKEA, Sustainable Design Collective and Red Light Fashion in the heart of Amsterdam.

>> view gallery

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Japan's Hakusan Porcelain company discuss their design driven approach

PingMag caught up with Keiichi Matsuo of Hakusan Porcelain, an eighth generation ceramic company in Nagasaki, Japan. His father introduced a design-based approach to traditional crafts in the 1950's employing designer Masahiro Mori.

As the story goes, the famous industrialist Konosuke Matsushita was disembarking from an airplane after a trip around the world when he said "This is the beginning of the Design Era." My father heard that and thought, "Oh, so that's what era it is. But, what is design? If Konosuke Matsushita says it's the Design Era, then it must be so. OK then, let's hire a designer. I wonder where we find one of those?"

Peaking in 1980, a slow decline set in as sales began to drop off year after year, the economy burst and by 1998 Matsuo thought he was going under. Things changed for the better when he sidestepped his distributors and began exhibiting at Tableware trade shows. The collection was met with a positive reaction and the company discovered a new audience for their contemporary minimal range.

Read the full interview here.

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Book Review: The Design Entrepreneur, by Steven Heller and Lita Talarico

Frank Kozik's brightly colored toy smoking rabbit for Paul Budnitz's Kidrobot typifies the intersection between graphic design and product design. Is it a product design, graphic design, or art? Perhaps it is simply a masterful exercises in anti-form, since its shape needs to be serve more as a canvas than a standalone product. Steven Heller and Lita Talarico's The Design Entrepreneur: Turning Graphic Design into Goods that Sell profiles Kidrobot, along with around fifty other companies who have managed to convert graphic design into "goods." Some, like Shepard Fairey's Obey posters, can be produced as pure printed graphics, while others, like Constantin Boym's "Buildings of Disaster" manifest as matte grey 3-D objects, though admittedly with graphic sensibilities.

The Design Entrepreneur is structured with introductions written by Heller and Talarico, followed by a series of case studies. Each case study consists of an interview with the designer, along with photos of finished products and inspirations. The main emphasis, however, is on the entrepreneurial process. Nearly all of the subjects started small and without clear business plans. Their companies grew organically by making one-offs, selling to friends, and just having fun. Only later did the enterprise grow to a scale that required management. While this should be heartening news for aspiring product design entrepreneurs, I couldn't help but wonder whether turning graphics into goods is simply somehow, well, easier than it is for industrially designed products. With digital design tools and large format CMYK printers it seems as though graphic design ambitions lend themselves more to modest beginnings than hundred thousand dollar injection molds. Fortunately, with the advent of 3D printers and CAD visualization, making products and prototypes is getting easier by the year. So as startup costs fall, and Heller and Talarico's book about goods made by graphic designers may have a lot to teach those of us involved in capital-intensive product design.

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"Muji To Go" lands at JFK

If you're traveling through JFK (and have some cash to burn) you'll soon be able to pack a little lighter; Muji To Go is opening an outpost at the New York airport in two weeks, as they did in Hong Kong's airport earlier this year. With nearly 400 items focused on "travel and mobile," the 596-square-foot store expects to see high traffic. If it takes off, no pun intended, you can expect to see more Muji To Go at an airport near you.

Click here to download the Muji To Go catalog.

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just imagine...what will life be like in 2020?

CNN, in collaboration with Ericsson, looks at the future in 2020.

In addition to feature articles focused on people such as Ross Lovegrove and Rem Koolhaas, the site contains entire sections on the future of nature, cities, space, living spaces, community, health, transport, and education.

The same site also features an article on interior design of the future, with a extensive photo gallery.

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Seoul Design Olympiad - A design festival of Olympic proportions

Most event organizers would be content with producing a three-day conference featuring 20 speakers from around the world, including Ross Lovegrove, Daniel Libeskind, Yves Behar, Kim Young-Se among others. But the Seoul Design Olympiad has greater ambitions. The conference, which concluded on Sunday, was just one element in a month-long celebration intended to promote design and the design industry to the public in leading up to 2010, the year Seoul will be officially designated as the World Design Capital.

Other elements in the program include a design business exhibit, a young designers market with more than 50 participants, a design competition exhibit housed in three tents showcasing more than 100 entries, a car design exhibit, a street furniture exhibit (designed by citizens!), fashion and lifestyle exhibits, a custom art installation that literally wraps the entire Olympic Stadium, installations from more than 20 schools and continuing presentations from speakers world wide.

The best part is that the entire event is free of charge and open to the public. So the consumers of all this future-looking knowledge, for the most part, were not a select group of industry insiders, who already know and believe in the power of design. Instead it was a mainstream audience, young and old, including families with children, something you don't usually see at a design festival. The city of Seoul has done a great job in promoting ideas and visions usually confined to the halls of art and design schools to the mass market, and should serve as a model for how other municipalities world wide can help educate people about the power of design in ways that easily relate to their daily lives.

>> lots of pics!

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eco:Drive

At the Paris Motor Show a couple weeks ago, the Italian car manufacturer Fiat unveiled eco:Drive, an innovative, easy-to-use social software application that helps drivers improve how efficiently they drive. It analyses their driving style and helps them to use less fuel by reducing their CO₂ emissions and to save money.

(and make sure to choose the correct language - choices are English, French, Italian and ...International English)

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Why Apple doesn't 'do' concept design

On the Counternotions blog, the author - known only as Kontra - writes at length about the concept of releasing concept products that many companies such as Microsoft, Nokia and various automobile manufacturers indulge in. He points out that Apple doesn't 'do' concepts and hasn't released one to the public since the eighties then tells us that 'real artists ship'. His post expounds at length on Steve Jobs' approach to visionary product design and Apple's strategy of releasing real products not just concepts. Here's a snippet,

Pretenders don't quite understand that design is born of constraints. Real-life constraints, be they tangible or cognitive: Battery-life impacts every other aspect of the iPhone design - hardware and software alike. Screen resolution affects font, icon and UI design. The thickness of a fingertip limits direct, gestural manipulation of on-screen objects. Lack of a physical keyboard and WIMP controls create an unfamiliar mental map of the device. The iPhone design is a bet that solutions to constraints like these can be seamlessly molded into a unified product that will sell. Not a concept. Not a vision. A product that sells.

It turns out that when capable designers are given real constraints for real products they can end up creating great results. In Apple's case, groundbreaking products like the iMac