Core77 Photo Gallery: NeoCon 2009

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

>> view gallery

RCA's Design Interactions Thesis Show 2009

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

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

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

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

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Thomas Thwaites' Toaster Project at the Royal College of Art

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Europe by designers

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

via Design Observer

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Boynq Studio's stellar aesthetics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

via product design hub

Awesome Autodesk Flame demo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

>> view gallery

Core-toon: The Computar

Artist: fueledbycoffee
More: View all Core-toons

The Reflexive Generation

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

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

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

via 50-Plus Marketing and FutureLab

Seoul's comprehensive design makeover

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Click here to read more about the initiative.

via korea times

World Industrial Design Day global list of events

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

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

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

Read the full list of events

Learning from how designers think and work

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

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

>> Read article

Fantastic Norway's Cardboard Cloud

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

From Fantastic Norway:

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

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

Special thanks to Mark Vanderbeeken and fueledbycoffee for their contributions to this week's newsletter.

Please share the Monday Morning Must Read with colleagues, clients and collaborators. Many email programs do not forward messages in their original format, so please use this link: http://www.designdirectory.com/blog/newsletter

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

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

Thanks, Dave!

via Gizmodo

Synesthesia video from Terry Timely

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

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

Engage your senses here.

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Good Signage, Finally Getting its Due?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Follow the Designers Accord on Twitter!

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

NYPD Green

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

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

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

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

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

2 Sustainable Minds upcoming workshops

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

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

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

All info and pricing at the site.

Elliott Montgomery's MicroCycle Solar-Powered Sewing Kiosks

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

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

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

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

Core-Toon: Edible Containers

Artist:
lunchbreath
More: View all Core-toons

Pontiac Stinger - The Car That Could Have Saved Detroit

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

New U.S. car company starting up

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

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

via fox news

Industrial design office workings in the Mad Men era

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

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

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

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

Read the rest of the entertainingly lengthy article here.

OXO gives Universal Design a shot in the arm

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

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

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

Eastman Innovation Lab design videos

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

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

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

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

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

10 Creative Rubik's Cubes

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

Thanks Victoria!

Special thanks to Xanthe Matychak and lunchbreath for their contributions to this week's newsletter.

Please share the Monday Morning Must Read with colleagues, clients and collaborators. Many email programs do not forward messages in their original format, so please use this link: http://www.designdirectory.com/blog/newsletter

New Design Competition Launched! Design a Snowboard for Nidecker!

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

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

Competition Deadline
July 12th, 11:59 pm EST

COMPETITION IS OPEN! REGISTER NOW!!

Wave Sport Kayak Competition WINNER: Ben Nelesen!

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

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

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

Portland Confab panel emphasizes diversity in experience, and in networking

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

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

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

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

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

The Last iPhone, by Robert Fabricant

And speaking of iPhones....

The Last iPhone

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

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

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

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

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

Robert Fabricant is the VP of Creative at frog design

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

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

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

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

>> Read article

Maverick's Nica bluetooth headset with the coolio dock

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

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

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

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

Post-it stop motion video

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

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

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

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

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CATALYST Strategic Design Review

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

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

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

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

30 Essential Books for Industrial Designers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

sources: ny times, mail online, abc science

Interview with Zipcar's Robin Chase

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

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

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

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

Patchwork 3D (rendering software) update on the way

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

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

NEC's solution to multiple-monitor set-ups

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

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

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

via gizmodo

Core-Toon: The BeGrommeter

Artist: lunchbreath
More: View all cartoons

Atoms For Bits: Designing physical embodiments for virtual content

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

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

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Saving (inter)face: Tiny Shuffle needs chunky case

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

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

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

via geeky gadgets

LCD skins can now be applied to objects and change color

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

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

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

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

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

You get the idea. Have any of your own?

via car design fetish

A new map for design

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

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

>> Read article

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

Cardboard Lumber

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

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

Special thanks to Mark Vanderbeeken, Robert Fabricant, Xanthe Matychak and Robert Blinn for their contributions to this week's newsletter.

Please share the Monday Morning Must Read with colleagues, clients and collaborators. Many email programs do not forward messages in their original format, so please use this link: http://www.designdirectory.com/blog/newsletter

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

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

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

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

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Iwasaki Design Studio's elegant G9

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

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

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

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Vote for your favorites! Wave Sport Kayak Hull Graphics Competition

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Book Review: Rethinking Sitting, by Peter Opsvik

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That Is Architecture.

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

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

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

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

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

Core-toon: Dream Product - Lego Remote!

Artist: fueledbycoffee
More: View all Core-toons

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

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

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

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

Adds SCAD professor David Malouf:

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

Feel free to tell the students what you think.

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

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

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

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

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

Forbes' 10 Hot ID'ers

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

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

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

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

Boston Designers Accord Town Hall: Reflections

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

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

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

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Core77's Dutch Master Bicycle: Sneak Peek

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

Special thanks to Emily Pilloton, Xanthe Matychak, Niti Bhan and fueledbycoffee for their contributions to this week's newsletter.

Please share the Monday Morning Must Read with colleagues, clients and collaborators. Many email programs do not forward messages in their original format, so please use this link: http://www.designdirectory.com/blog/newsletter

Core77 Photo Gallery: New York Design Week 2009

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

>> view gallery

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Shape-shifting bicycle prototype

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

Wallmann is one of last week's Coroflot features.

via gizmodo

Innovation as Evolution

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

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

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

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

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

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The painful process of corporate product development

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read the whole piece here.

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

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

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

Watch the video here.

Thanks, Steve!

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

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

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

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Interview with Audi's chief designer

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

Q . Where do you look for ideas and inspiration?

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

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

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

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

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

Read the full interview here.

Core-Toon: Greenwash

Artist: lunchbreath More: View all Core-toons

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

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

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

A truly customizable auxiliary keyboard

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

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

Reflections from Greener By Design 2009

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

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

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Your Future Job is Social Innovator: Predictions from Ezio Manzini

Bottega Altromercato, an example of social innovation from Sustainable Everday

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

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

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

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Ninjas maintaining product dominance over Samurai

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

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

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

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

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

Special thanks to Steve Portigal, Jeremy Faludi, Jen van der Meer and lunchbreath for their contributions to this week's newsletter.

Please share the Monday Morning Must Read with colleagues, clients and collaborators. Many email programs do not forward messages in their original format, so please use this link: http://www.designdirectory.com/blog/newsletter

New York Design Week 2009 in full swing!
The 2009 installment of the International Contemporary Furniture Fair opened this past Saturday at the Javits Center in New York, and Core's intrepid team of bloggers, photographers, videographers and assorted design nerds stormed the floor shortly thereafter.

Initial impressions include some of the same observations from Milan and, on a smaller scale, Brooklyn: a bit more restraint than in previous years, a stripped-down (some would say dulled-down) aesthetic, and a propensity for attaching "eco" to everything from kitchens to wall coverings to kiddie furniture. There are some unexpected flashes of brilliance in among the usual suspects, as always, making the process a rewarding one, for us as well as you (we hope).

Core77's got heaps of content flowing in, both from the Fair itself and from the numerous offsites throughout the city. As in previous years, all posts will be collected on a single EZ-reference page--see link below. In addition, we'll be tweeting impressions from the floor: follow @Core77 to stay in the loop.

>>Don't forget our Essential Guide to NY Design Week 2009 (Mobile version for your phone too!)

>>View all of Core77's New York Design Week 09 coverage

Milan Design Week 09: Post Futurist Manifesto Talks: All in one place!
During Milan Design Week 2009, Core77 correspondent Brit Leissler sought to create a "Post Futurist Manifesto" through dialogues with some of the leading thinkers in the world of design. Interviewing designers, producers, publishers, gallery owners and sociologists, the dialogues centered around the new values that designers (and the design industry) should address, and the new approaches they ought to take in order to confront the paradigm-shifts that we are currently facing. Here's the point of departure:

100 years ago the futuristic manifesto was announced in Italy--to express the spirit of the era, break with all the conventions of the 19th century and replace them with new values. We all know that the futurism of the 20th century went terribly wrong at one point, and eventually ended in fascism. However, it is important to understand that initially it was all about liberation and freedom--aesthetically, politically and socially.

100 years later, the world is in collapse. The futurism of the 20th century has reached its end, and it is well time to create a post-futurist manifesto that seeks to define the true nature of the 21st century, establishing a new value system to replace the ruins of the old.

Check out all the dialogues below, including interviews with conceptual artist Michelangelo Pistoletto, designer Marti Guixe, publisher Sven Ehmann, and many more.

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While much of the design community in New York was ramping up for Design Week last Friday, Coroflot.com unveiled the second installment of its Creative Confab series at the Art Directors Club, to a packed house of 140+ mostly mid- and high-level designers of the digital persuasion. The centerpiece of the three hour event, depicted above, was an hour-long panel discussion on the current realities of creative hiring, from some of the sharpest, most experienced professionals in the field.

Some great quotes from the panel after the jump.

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Designers Accord San Francisco Town Hall: Reflections and Photographs
on Thursday, May 7th, the Designers Accord brought adopters and design community members together for a third installment of the newly formed Town Hall meetings, hosted by LUNAR in their San Francisco studio. With the purpose of providing a forum for members to meet locally and discuss what it means to be active in socially and environmentally responsible ways within the creative community, these meetings have been gaining momentum over the past few months as designers, educators, business leaders, and students come together to participate in the sustainability dialogue.

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Is Design Too Important To Be Left Only To Designers? Bruce Nussbaum lays some kindling
The comments are gaining steam on Bruce Nussbaum's post Is Design Too Important To Be Left Only To Designers? over at BW. The post isn't provocative per se, but the thesis just might be. (My favorite comment: "Is Brain Surgery Too Important To Be Left Only To Brain Surgeons?") Here's the start from bruce:

There is huge anxiety among designers and design educators at the encroachment of business, education, health, energy, transportation and other fields into Design. The evolution of Design from an individual working intuitively to shape beautiful things into a collaborative process of discovering what can come next and making it happen is attracting people to Design for new ways to journey through these confusing and uncertain times. The failure of existing modes of delivering services to consumers, students, patients, travelers, etc., is making Design a hugely important system of reframing old problems and creating new answers. Design Strategy, for example, is new--evolving out of simple design.

via DO

Wave Sport Competition news: Limited Edition of 50 with the winner's design! 1 Week Left!
There is just 1 week left to register and enter the Wave Sport Kayak Hull Trip-Tych Graphics Competition - deadline for submissions coming up on May 25th.

And we're thrilled to announce that the Grand Prize Winner's design will go into production on a Limited Edition of 50 kayaks worldwide! In addition, the Top 5 designs will be applied to Fuse 56 kayaks and displayed at the Outdoor Retailer Summer Market Show in Salt Lake City in July 2009, along with profiles of the winning designers. The Grand Prize winner will receive a $2500 cash award plus a Fuse 56 kayak produced with their design. The remaining 4 Finalists will receive a Fuse 56 kayak produced with their design, or $1000 cash award (in lieu of boat).

All-star judges are Peter Csonka (2008 Freestyle World Cup Champion), Gail Anderson (Creative Director of Design, SpotCo), Sam Moulton (Senior Editor at Outside Magazine), Robert Peerson (Lead Designer, Wavesport), and Eric Ludlum (Creative Director, Core77), so register to enter, fire up those sketchpads, markers, and tablets, and send us your best designs!

COMPETITION IS OPEN! REGISTER NOW!!

Ecovative Design's Greensulate: "The factory is the organism"
Earlier this year we posted about Ecovative Design's Greensulate material, which can be shaped into packaging material and is made from seed husks and mushrooms rather than polystyrene and petroleum. An Earth911 article takes a closer look at Greensulate's fascinating development process, devised by Ecovative principals Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre.

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Core-Toon: Fixie Features + Benefits
Artist: lunchbreath
More: View all cartoons

Object fetishism: Someone please explain
Years ago I was driving down Second Avenue when a yellow cab sideswiped me pretty bad. No one was hurt, though the left side of my car was shredded. The cabbie apologized and said his company would pay for the damages; in a country and city where no one likes to take blame, the guy was clearly a foreigner.

What surprised me most was my friends' reactions--they all seemed shocked that I wasn't freaking out about the way my car looked. "I don't really care," I explained.

"But you love your car," they said.

"No no--I love driving," I said. "Big difference."

What I've found is that when people discover you like an activity, they assume you love and venerate the object associated with that activity. Cooks are expected to polish their pots; surfers are expected to wax their boards lovingly; iPhone users are supposed to buy sexy little skins for them.

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Portrait of the artist as a young businesswoman
Kay S. Hymowitz writes in City Journal about how the design economy has turned bohemian outsiders into a new marketplace elite.

"If industrialization turned design into a modest profession, technology and globalization have expanded and glamorized it into its own economic sector. Call it Big Design.

Computers are the heart of Big Design. They propelled designers from the ranks of ink-stained wretches to those of postindustrial knowledge workers.:

>> Read article

RCA name switch: Industrial Design vs. Innovation Design. Either way it's still ID
And finally, The Royal College of Art's Industrial Design Engineering is looking for a new moniker; they're thinking of switching it to Innovation Design Engineering. Why?

'Industrial design has changed dramatically over the past 20 years,' says [designer Miles] Pennington. 'We are no longer approaching design as a purely object-orientated activity. The experience, system, service offering - indeed, everything around and supporting the product proposition - is now within the designer's influence.'

Miles Pennington is the new IDE department head and co-founder of the UK's Design Stream product/packaging consultancy.

via design week uk

Special thanks to Mark Vanderbeeken and lunchbreath for their contributions to this week's newsletter.

Please share the Monday Morning Must Read with colleagues, clients and collaborators. Many email programs do not forward messages in their original format, so please use this link: http://www.designdirectory.com/blog/newsletter

New NYC Confab lineup, featuring Khoi Vinh and Tom Nicholson
The creative employment field is a constantly shifting one, and the upcoming Coroflot Creative Confab in New York this Friday is no exception. After some re-shuffling, the one hour panel discussion that forms the heart of the event will now include two previously introduced speakers -- design recruiter extraordinaire Judy Wert, and Big Spaceship CEO Michael Lebowitz -- and two new additions about which we're just giddy: Tom Nicholson, CEO of leading digital design agency IconNicholson, and Khoi Vinh, Design Director of NYTimes.com, and author of pivotal design blog Subtraction.com

We'll have more background on each of these veterans as the week progresses, or just take a look at their respective sites for a window into some industry-defining thought on the process and business of digital creation. To hear all four of them discuss the current state of the professions, and meet like-minded creative professionals, get your registration on at the Confab event page on Coroflot here.

Back from Milan; revving up for New York!
If you missed any of our Milan Design Week 2009 coverage (still some coming in too!), you can check out all Core77 Milan coverage here. (Be sure to check out our huge gallery of images here.) And if you're trying to figure out your plans for New York Design Week starting out this coming weekend, view all Core77 New York Design Week coverage here. (Be sure to check out our Essential Guide to New York Design Week too!)

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Spend It Wisely: A Market Research Primer for Designers, by Brianna Sylver
"In the title and throughout this article, I've used the phrase 'market research' versus 'design research' for two reasons: First, 'Design research,' a term invented by the design community, is not recognized or known outside of this group; the term recognized by other individuals in business (and as an established profession) is 'market research.' I'm using this term then, as I believe it has more universal appeal and understanding. Second, when the design community refers to 'design research,' traditional methods such as focus groups and surveys are often dismissed, where more emerging methods like ethnographic research and listening labs get all the ink (or pixels). I'd like to help balance that out..."

>>Read article

Google's grass and goats
To clear the fields of weeds and grass at their headquarters, Google could have hired a lawn-cutting service; instead they went with a greener initiative.

...we decided to take a low-carbon approach: Instead of using noisy mowers that run on gasoline and pollute the air, we've rented some goats...

A herder brings about 200 goats and they spend roughly a week with us at Google, eating the grass and fertilizing at the same time. The goats are herded with the help of Jen, a border collie. It costs us about the same as mowing, and goats are a lot cuter to watch than lawn mowers.

What we'd like to see next: elephants spray-cleaning the windows of the Googleplex.

CoreStore: Melissa + Campana Shoes & Exclusive Interview
On route to Milan last month, we caught up with the Campana Brothers to get the lowdown on their latest project for Brazilian jelly shoe giant Melissa. Exclusively for the month of May, we're happy to offer readers the chance to get your hands on the Campana Zig Zag and Campana Corallo shoes through our trusted partner store Epaulet. Located just across the bridge in Brooklyn, not only do they carry the largest choice of colors online, they're also offering free shipping for orders in the US.

>>Read interview

Core-Toon: Process Map
Artist: lunchbreath
More: View all Core-toons

Folding Skate Deck - A Concept Board
See more here - Thanks Loren!

"Mobility" concept wins Buckminster Fuller Challenge
It took a team of nine to win the Buckminster Fuller Challenge, namely, a team of MIT researchers and students led by professor William J. Mitchell, who took the top prize with their Sustainable Personal Mobility and Mobility-on-Demand Systems:

Mobility-on-Demand systems utilize fleets of shared-use lightweight electric vehicles placed at automatic charging racks throughout a city. The CityCar and RoboScooter, both folding vehicles, along with the Green-Wheel Bicycle, minimize parking space and can be picked-up and dropped-off at any rack. Mobility-on-Demand systems maximize mobility and dramatically reduce congestion and pollution through energy and land-use efficiency.

Top prize is a cool $100,000, to be awarded at a conferring ceremony at the Chicago MoCA on June 6th.

Above is the winning team's RoboScooter, which was realized as a full-scale working prototype. It is, however, just a portion of the winning concept; you can check out the rest of it here.

Shoes designed in two parts, for a perfect fit, no matter the style
Here's a rather unusual footwear concept from a company called Skins:

[Our] innovative two-part, interchangeable footwear structures [consists] of outer collapsible "Skins" and an inner holistic orthopedic support section called the "Bone." The design allows consumers to purchase one inner section, the Bone, and numerous outer Skins, resulting in multiple style variations from the same pair of quality Bones, always with the same feel and fit no matter which Skin is being worn.

Skins' objective is to create a new attire concept that allows and encourages consumers to frequently change their footwear, while experiencing equal comfort in all designs of shoes.

The styles offered range from ballet flats and formal shoes to sneakers, skinned in leather, suede, and "exotic skins and high-tech fabrics."

Data, not design, is king in the age of Google
Can a company blunt its innovation edge if it listens to its customers too closely? Can its products become dull if they are tailored to match exactly what users say they want? These questions surfaced recently when Douglas Bowman (pictured), a top visual designer, left Google.

>> Read article

BKLYN Designs 2009: TMRnyc's wired table
There's some good stuff coming up for Bklyn Designs 2009. Above is the Side Wired Desk by Greenpoint-based TMRnyc, which was borne out of a frustration most of us have:

The Side Wired Desk concept came out of a desire to organize all the visual madness of cords, wall warts, and power bricks sprouting out of my laptop, monitors, hard drives and speakers, spilling on to the floor into an ugly tangle of a powerstrip, cat hair and cables. We are constantly needing to plug a camera or cellphone for a charge. The frustration of searching for a free power outlet to plug into nearby made me ask, "Why can't I just plug this into my desk? Why can't I just plug my desk into the wall with one cord and neatly plug in all of my other gear into the desk."

The design challenge was to make a great looking desk, incorporate a hidden cable management system and power source as well as making it fast/easy to get at the cable ends to rearrange things when as the situation arises. One of the solutions was to make the wire grommets a part of the design. The other solution was to make a hinged tray to manage the cables that can also hold hard drives and any other corded object that clutters the desktop.

After an extensive search there was no result for a desk that met my requirements so I thought. Hey. I'll make my own, then my friends started asking me to make Wired desks for them. We are a UL certified shop for our lighting so it was natural for us to make the jump to wiring up our furniture designs.

BKLYN DESIGNS on a Saturday afternoon...
Just got back from DUMBO and had a good time walking around the exhibition. Some highlights in the next few days, but for now, check out some of what the thing looked like. If you'd like more info, visit bklyndesigns.net. Or just get there on the first Brooklyn stop on the F and take in all of the neighborhood's (noisy) charm...in a good way.

More photos here.

Djordje Jovanovic's models: 3DS Max and a ton of patience
We get headaches just thinking about what Belgrade-based Djordje Jovanovic had to go through to produce these steam trains in 3DS Max. If computer modeling is your thing, check out Jovanovic's stuff on Coroflot.

Book review: Designing Universal Knowledge, by Gerlinde Schuller

Not so long ago, in the Cameron Crow eighties of "Say Anything," sitting down to read an encyclopedia or a dictionary would have represented the very pinnacle of uncoolness. These days, however, a surfer can view Wikipedia intending to find some pictures of the Chicago World's Fair and walk away with an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of serial killers in the United States (OK, the surfer was me, but I'm stable ... promise). Over a decade ago, one of the keynote speakers at my graduation gave a presentation on these things called "hyperlinks" and how they were going to change the world. I'll admit that at the time, the whole affair seemed pretty dorky, but the gulf between the boredom I felt while sitting in the auditorium and my enthusiasm about Wikipedia today encapsulates the difference between hearing about a new technology and actually using it.

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For New York Design Week...Host a Designer!
Live in New York? Love design? Know all the best places, and wanna share all that goodness? This year, Core77 has joined forces with Airbnb, making it easy to rent your room to designers from all around the world. Have extra space in your apartment? Post a room. Traveling to New York and want to avoid high-priced accommodation? Search the Core77 listings.

McMasterpieces
McMasterpieces is a temporary exhibition curated by Monica Khemsurov, who invited New York designers to create finished furniture pieces out of components from McMaster-Carr, an industrial parts supplier. Constantin and Laurene Boym, for example, have contributed an industrial coat rack modified with metal-filled repair epoxy. In Todd Bracher's Stick, a flashlight combines with copper wire and various diameters of aluminum tubing to form a lamp inspired by walking stick insects and deep sea fish.

Participants include: Lindsey Adelman, Ross Menuez, Constantin and Laurene Boym, Jason Miller, Leon Ransmeier, Sebastian E., Todd Bracher, Kristin Victoria Barron, Paul Loebach, Rich Brilliant Willing, Dror Benshetrit, Le-Bom, and Commonwealth. Pictured here are Coat Rack from Timeless Objects by Constantin and Laurene Boym, a nightstand from Kristin Victoria Barron, 34 Grams from Dror Benshetrit and Stick from Todd Bracher.

McMasterpieces
Ace Hotel, 20 W. 29th Street, 8th floor
May 16-18, 1pm - 6pm

Invisible Car running the blogs
And finally, last week's meme is "Invisible Car." See it here.

Thanks for the tip Victoria!

Special thanks to MarkVanderbeeken, lunchbreath, and Robert Blinn for their contributions to this week's newsletter.

Please share the Monday Morning Must Read with colleagues, clients and collaborators. Many email programs do not forward messages in their original format, so please use this link: http://www.designdirectory.com/blog/newsletter

Core77's Milan Design Week Galleries are up!
We've just flipped the switch on Core77's massive galleries of the best of Milan. From the fair grounds and Satellite to the Zona Tortona, Superstudio, and street life, we've got the most vivid, inspiring images from Milan Design Week 2009.

>> view gallery

Coroflot's Creative Employment Confab
Join us on Friday, May 15th, for the second installment of the Coroflot Creative Confab, a networking and knowledge-sharing afternoon for creative recruiters and professionals. The event centers around a one-hour panel discussion by four of the smartest senior designers and recruiters in the Tri-State area, plus ample time for open-format networking with mid- and senior-level creative professionals, and those seeking to hire them. See the Confab page on Coroflot for more details and registration information.

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Core77 Case Study: Modo's IV Pole for Cardinal Health, by Goo Sung
Every research project is a journey. This one started in Basingstoke, England, a small city 50 miles southwest of London in a hospital run by the National Health Service. I was there for Modo to think about IV poles—an ordinary piece of healthcare furniture. Modo researches, designs and builds carts and trolleys for medical devices and customers like Herman Miller, Steelcase and Philips. This project was for Cardinal Health, a $60 billion company.

Most projects start with a defined sense of opportunity—"Make it lighter," "Make it faster," "Make it cheaper." This project was different. Simon Annette, a Product Manager at Cardinal Health, had a vague sense that things can and should be better. Cardinal Health pioneered the use of software to improve patient safety and reduce medication errors, but despite Cardinal's many high-tech innovations, nurses still complained about the poles they used to transport infusion pumps. Simon wanted to change things, and he asked Modo to help.

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Core77's Essential Guide to New York Design Week!
Check out Core77's Essential Guide to New York Design Week, featuring the best exhibitions, events, and parties from the ICFF on out to Brooklyn, from the Meatpacking district, Soho, Tribecca, and Chelsea, to Midtown, the Flatiron, East Village & LES. Check the page often for updates, and don't forget to print out a set for your bag. Want it on your phone? We've got that too!

Got an event, exhibition, or some intriguing shit-disturbing going on during New York Design Week and not on our list? Submit it for consideration to calendar[at]core77[dot]com.

New Design Competition Launches: Wave Sport Kayak Graphics!
Core77 is proud to introduce its latest International Design Competition: Wave Sport Kayak Hull Trip-Tych - A Graphics Competition! Wave Sport has partnered with Core77 to create a new generation of boat graphics for their Fuse 56 river running / freestyle kayak. The Top 5 designs will be displayed at the Outdoor Retailer Summer Market Show in Salt Lake City in July 2009. Winners will also receive a kayak with their own design. Click on for the brief!

Book Review: Sketchbooks: The Hidden Art of Designers, Illustrators and Creatives
Midway through Richard Brereton's Sketchbooks: The Hidden Art of Designers, Illustrators and Creatives, commercial artist and graphic designer Ed Fella confides, "in 1976 an artist friend gave me a sketchbook, saying 'Even though you're a designer, you think like an artist and should keep a sketchbook.'" Well, even if you happen to be a designer and you don't think like an artist, we at Core77 still think you should carry a sketchbook. Whether it's a modest moleskine with battered corners stuck in your back pocket or a fancy leather tome, sketchbooks can serve as practice pages, ways to fill time, as a finished products, or even what graphic designer Pep Carrio beautifully describes as "warehouses of memory."

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1 Hour Design Challenge Winners!!! Business Card Hacks!
The results are in! The latest 1 Hour Design Challenge: Business Card Hacks brought out some serious 3D creativity from the participants, and produced some utilitarian, ornamental, and just plain whimsical business card hacks.

Huge thanks to our sponsors on this challenge: UPrinting and to our guest judge Gino Orlandi. The Top 5 Winners will each receive 1000 free business cards, courtesy of UPrinting, and here they are (in no particular order):

"Business Card Pinhole Camera" designed by Yana

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"Mobility" concept wins Buckminster Fuller Challenge
It took a team of nine to win the Buckminster Fuller Challenge, namely, a team of MIT researchers and students led by professor William J. Mitchell, who took the top prize with their Sustainable Personal Mobility and Mobility-on-Demand Systems:

Mobility-on-Demand systems utilize fleets of shared-use lightweight electric vehicles placed at automatic charging racks throughout a city. The CityCar and RoboScooter, both folding vehicles, along with the Green-Wheel Bicycle, minimize parking space and can be picked-up and dropped-off at any rack. Mobility-on-Demand systems maximize mobility and dramatically reduce congestion and pollution through energy and land-use efficiency.

Top prize is a cool $100,000, to be awarded at a conferring ceremony at the Chicago MoCA on June 6th.

Above is the winning team's RoboScooter, which was realized as a full-scale working prototype. It is, however, just a portion of the winning concept; you can check out the rest of it here.

Project Masiluleke in The Economist
Project Masiluleke, or Project M for short, has been a cause celebre in several design subfields since its primary announcement last October. The project, which centers on text messaging to distribute information about HIV/AIDS treatment in deeply afflicted parts of South Africa, has been warmly praised by interaction designers, proponents of socially conscious design, advocates of technological leapfrogging in the developing world, and much of the design and innovation press as well (like Fast Company...and us).

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Aaron Tang's disappearing stairs
And finally, Carl finally found the guy who did the cool folding staircase concept that we'd seen featured on so many "awesome staircase design" roundups: It's "Curious designer" Aaron Tang, who interestingly enough refers to his design as a door, or "an element of a wall that allows passageway to another environment when opened and restricts passageway when closed." You can check out the rest of Tang's book on Coroflot.

Please share the Monday Morning Must Read with colleagues, clients and collaborators. Many email programs do not forward messages in their original format, so please use this link: http://www.designdirectory.com/blog/newsletter

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

>>View all Core77 Milan Design Week 09 Coverage Here

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

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

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

Michael Lebowitz, CEO of digital media studio Big Spaceship

Johnny Vulkan, partner at innovative branding agency Anomaly

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

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

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

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

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

Click here for more info on the competition.

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

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

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

via josh spear

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

>> Read article

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

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

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

via toolcrib

Special thanks to Mark Vanderbeeken, Rita Cavicchia, Margie Gorman, Elysa Soffer, and Peter Camburn for their contribution to this week's newsletter!

Please share the Monday Morning Must Read with colleagues, clients and collaborators. Many email programs do not forward messages in their original format, so please use this link: http://www.designdirectory.com/blog/newsletter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Michael Lebowitz, CEO of digital media studio Big Spaceship

Johnny Vulkan, partner at innovative branding agency Anomaly

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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[photo credit: Jeffrey Sass]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

>>ENTER NOW!<<

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

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

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

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

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

>> Read article

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

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

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

Special thanks to Lisa Smith, Carla Diana, and Jeremy Faludi for their contribution to this week's newsletter!

Please share the Monday Morning Must Read with colleagues, clients and collaborators. Many email programs do not forward messages in their original format, so please use this link: http://www.designdirectory.com/blog/newsletter

Porsche Design running shoe with suspension

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Frog design's super Social Security card

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

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

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

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

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

SLAP Widgets: virtual controls you can touch

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

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

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Nokia's new website helps globetrotters travel green

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

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

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

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

>> Read article

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iriver's new P7

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

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Winners of the 2009 Medical Design Excellence Awards

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

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

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Pininfarina to design interiors of high-speed Eurostar trains

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

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

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

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Alissa Walker + Rachel Abrams Postopolis Review

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

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

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

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

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The Ripple Effect: Tangible object philanthropy

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

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

...

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

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

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Increase Your Effectiveness in Meetings by 10%

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

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

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

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

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

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Direct Digital Manufacturing as seen in BMW motorcycle concept

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

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

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

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

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

To see photos of the design process, click here.

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Luxury-goods makers embrace sustainability and 'slow fashion'

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

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

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

>> Read article

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

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

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

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

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Special thanks to Carla Diana, Steve Portigal and Mark Vanderbeeken for their contribution to this week's newsletter!

Please share the Monday Morning Must Read with colleagues, clients and collaborators. Many email programs do not forward messages in their original format, so please use this link: http://www.designdirectory.com/blog/newsletter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Design is the Problem: An Interview with Nathan Shedroff

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

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

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

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

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

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New 1 Hour Design Challenge! Business Card Hacks

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

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

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

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

>>Enter your submission here<<

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Herman Miller Launches New Materials Program

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

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

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

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New Moleskine site, new print-your-own pages

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

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

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Neat Receipts: Just in time

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Design and technology at the heart of UK innovation

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

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

The partnership aims to:

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


• stimulate private sector innovation through public procurement


• support SMEs in the technology sector with design advice


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


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

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

>> Read press release

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Beautiful housing fixture series by SDesignUnit

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

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"Google is just an amoral menace"

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

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

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

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

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John Thackara on design in a thermo-industrial society

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

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

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BakerTweet - Insider tips from your local bakery

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

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

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

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'Design the 4th Bin' Competition Now Open!

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

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

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

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Sketch Fu Hits 100 Pages!

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

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

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Special thanks to Michael DiTullo, Mark Vanderbeeken, Bill Hanff and Carla Diana for their contribution to this week's newsletter!

Please share the Monday Morning Must Read with colleagues, clients and collaborators. Many email programs do not forward messages in their original format, so please use this link: http://www.designdirectory.com/blog/newsletter

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

Shoot Your Inspiration Photo Competition Winners Announced!

We're thrilled to announce the winners of the "Shoot Your Inspiration" photo contest, held in conjunction with the 2099 Braun Prize. We had a tremendous turn out, with more than 2,400 photos submitted from around the world. So without further adue:

Grand Prize:
Kids at Play, by Jayashankar - India

Runners up:
The Survivor, by Szabo Balazs - Hungary
Family Love, by Hadi Sattari - United States
Boston, by Felipe Caralho - Brazil

People's Choice Award:
Condor de los Andes, by Cesar David Martinez Rodriguez, Colombia

We had a great time in running this competition and judging it too. In times like these, with all the bad news bombarding you on a daily basis, it is refreshing to see a collection of 2,400+ truly inspiring images. It is well worth an hour of your time to browse through the gallery. We've published all the submissions, along with the a list of the finalists that represent some of our favorites.

Congratulations to all the winners, and to everyone who participated as well!

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Home + Housewares Show 2009...in Cartoons!

Every year, tens of thousands of people mob the International Housewares Show in Chicago, touring through the latest, greatest, and sometimes-lamest homestuff as far as the eye can see. This year, Lunchbreath and Fueledbycoffee walked the show for Core77, preparing an illustrated "Fieldguide" for designers and housewares fans, and rendering (literally) their experiences, insights, paradoxes, and yes...some great finds soon to be stocked in a store near you. Enjoy!

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Home + Housewares Show 2009: First Impressions

Core77 sent Lisa Smith and Caroline Linder to this year's Home and Housewares show this past weekend in Chicago, and while shooting a gallery of images for Core readers (up soon!), they've got a few dispatches from the floor. Thanks Lisa and Caroline!

The International Home and Housewares Show, happening now at the McCormick Center in Chicago, IL, is a maze of the bizarre and the banal, including picture frame air fresheners, pet hair picker-uppers, fingerprintless garbage cans, antibacterial marinaters, high-power vacuum cleaners, automatic hair-cutters, gas-powered blenders, anti-static dusters and instant boot dryers. Products for distinct lifestyles are crammed next to each other in one booth, organized by company rather than market niche. In one display, contemporary, white, eco-plastic desk caddies sit sister-like to Disney window decals. At the same time, larger companies really demand the buyers' attention, presenting an impenetrably branded front of air purifiers, rice cookers and vacuum cleaners with gift bags to boot. For young designers, like ourselves, the spectacle is especially nightmarish; it represents the darker side of our discipline--product design gone wild and unchecked in the marketplace (not to mention our worst fear of all...that we'll end up here soon).

>> continue reading

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Magazine Review by Robert Blinn: Metropolis: Special Product Issue, March 2009

As a reviewer for Core77, the task of locating appropriate books on product and process invariably leads to scouring shelves labeled anything but product design. Coffee table monoliths on designed objects wind up in shelves devoted to architecture, to home decor, to style, to business, or to graphic design. Finding an actual product design glossy in a typical bookstore is about as remarkable as locating a Jethro Tull album that had been filed under "T" in the jazz section of Walmart. Perhaps this is a zeitgeist moment for product design now that Gary Hustwit has released an entire movie about product design in the same month that Metropolis Magazine devotes a whole issue to our profession, so it seemed worthwhile for the book column to sample a text of the monthly variety.

I'm not sure if the recent real estate collapse will dampen the enthusiasm for glossy architecture periodicals, but I'm thrilled that "The Magazine of Architecture and Design" has unabashedly devoted an entire issue to the latter. Setting aside for the moment the paradox between the very green essays and the very shiny advertisements, the columns and articles inside provide a broad sampling of up-to-the-moment thinking on product design, be it "The Product of No Product" as described by John Hockenberry or the sarcasm of Bruce Sterling, who advises struggling designers to ask themselves "what would Maurizio Cattelan do," for which a very literal answer might be -- sculpt an ostrich with its head in the sand. Apologies to Mr. Sterling, but that doesn't quite seem to be the sort of answer readers might be hoping for, since there are many other stronger cases within.

>> continue reading

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Woody Tasch on "slow money"

Woody Tasch believes it's time to pull the reins back on fast money and create a market that values the environment, local communities, and the natural world as much as it does financial growth.

His new book, Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms, and Fertility Mattered articulates this vision.

A long-time venture capitalist and entrepreneur, Tasch knows Wall Street. He is putting that experience to work to create a different model of venture capital through a newly formed NGO called Slow Money, which will invest in companies that build natural and social capital as well as financial capital.

>> Read interview

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Designers Accord Forum at Core77

Speaking of a sustainable economy, for those of you who have adopted the Designers Accord, or who are interested in learning more and contributing to the conversation around sustainable design practice, there is now a dedicated Designers Accord Discussion board over at the Core77 forums. We've got a great moderator, Ann Benoit, and already some juicy discussion underway. For instance, "In an economy where money is tight in every area of business, how do you suggest more sustainable materials and processes to your clients when it might cost them more?"

Got an idea how? Well, get on board!

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I'm a Mac...

In Digital as a Second Language over at AIGA's Voice, Ralph Caplan has a wonderful reflection on the tools of the trade and whether or not technology is, well, a generational thing. Here's a nice paragraph:

Actually, my last book was written in Quark, under the supervision of the graphic designer/book packager who lent me the Mac I used. I had once bought one of my own, but sold it in less than a week, offended by what I then regarded as its patronizing interface. I didn't want to be welcomed by my computer, I don't like smiley faces in any medium, and if I wanted to get rid of a document I'd rather hit a delete button than drag the image of a folder into the image of a trash can. When I replaced it with a PC, however, I found that Windows had copied everything that had made me resent the Mac, and was loaded with cumbersome baggage of its own.

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Nokia's music-inspired headsets

Nokia's recently-concluded Music Almighty Headset Competition, which asked entrants to design a Bluetooth headset inspired by their favorite song, drew over 6,000 entries. The finalists were realized in one-off form by Nokia. Obviously there is a huge gulf of subjectivity between a piece of music and a finished set of headphones, but of the five finalists, at least one looks pretty kick-ass:

>> continue

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Just say no to 'innovation'

Gadi Amit, president of the San Francisco strategic design studio NewDealDesign, wrote a controversial piece on Fast Company, asking us to 'just say no to innovation'.

Promoted as the "in" word in design circles in recent years, 'innovation' has become a mantra devoid of meaning. Glorified by the likes of Bruce Nussbaum of BusinessWeek and David Kelly [sic] of IDEO, "innovation" blurs the boundaries between the worlds of engineering and design. It devalues the real strength of industrial design by forcing an analytical structure over the process of developing a non-analytical design. Similarly, it makes engineering play design, while over-selling its value in defining the "right design".

>> Read article

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From CAD designer to high school teacher

Mike Santalupo was a CAD designer for GM who quit the biz, seventeen years ago, to teach. Now running a Canadian high school design program "recognized by Autodesk as one of the most advanced programs in North America," Santalupo preps kids for going into careers in architecture, engineering, or industrial design.

"[I] discovered a direct correlation between design tools and student work," says Santalupo, in an interview with Alias Design Community. "The more sophisticated the tools, the more creative and innovative the student work."

Read the full interview here.

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Design a better business model

A great piece on emerging designs for social businesses by Marjorie Kelly, co-founder of Corporation 20/20, recently appeared in Strategy and Business

Kelly sites three social business models that are proving to be successful:

1. Stakeholder-owned companies, which put ownership in the hands of non-financial stakeholders; 2. Mission-controlled companies, which separate ownership and profits from control and organizational direction; 3. Public-private hybrids, where profit-driven and mission-driven design elements are combined to create unique structures.

Perhaps the best known social business is the mission-controlled company, Grameen Danone, that is driven by the mission of "Fight malnutrition through food."

Grameen Danone must recover its full costs from operations. Yet, like a nonprofit, it is driven by a cause rather than by profit. If all goes well, investors will receive only a token 1 percent annual dividend, with all other profits being plowed back into the business. The venture's primary aim is to create social benefits for those whose lives the company touches.

As traditional business models fail all around us, designers have an opportunity to focus their creativity on base of the pyramid missions, not only because it's the right thing to do, but because it makes financial and technological sense.

Richard Nelson, an economics professor at Columbia University who co-founded the field of evolutionary economics, observes that social systems evolve because of two kinds of innovation: advances in physical technologies (such as new environmental and energy technologies), and advances in social technologies (such as new forms of organization) . . . These designs can be thought of as emergent new organizational species, occupying a new sector of society that is a greenhouse of design experimentation in which the future of our economy may be growing.

So, come on in to the greenhouse, and read the entire article here

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"Seat" Female-themed auto design competition winner

What should a car designed for a woman look like, and how should it function? Ask Lisbon-based designer Marcelo Aguiar, whose "Seat W" auto concept won the 4th Seat/Automagazine Design Contest (theme: Design a car for the modern woman).

The Seat W integrates several simple, yet useful, solutions, that make it user-friendly in a woman's everyday life, such as storage spaces inside; partial opening of the trunk; side doors opening from the center give good access to the interior and its seats (design inspired by Verner Panton's "Panton Chair"); the glazed surface "from top to bottom" making it easier to watch everything around.

There is easy access to the refrigerator liquid, motor oil and windshield liquid without the need to open the hood and an actual drawer that carries the spare tyre, for those situations that may be less frequent and considered as less attractive from the feminine point of view. The woman's independence is strengthened by making everything easy and simple.

Read more about the winning concept here.

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John Maeda and Becky Bermont on the Harvard Business blog

John Maeda and Becky Bermont, respectively president and vice-president of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), are now periodically writing for Harvard Business' blog for managers in a recurring column called "Redesigning Leadership."

Their first two pieces are Leadership as a Creative Act and Academia vs. Industry: The Difference Is in the Punctuation Marks.

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Bruce Mau sees 'opportunities' in crisis

Speaking of design super stars, Bruce Mau, founder and chairman of Bruce Mau Design, talks with Bloomberg's Cris Valerio about the growth, strategy and philosophy of Bruce Mau Design.

Mau also discusses the regulation of U.S. financial markets and his company's current projects. (Source: Bloomberg)

00:00 Business strategy; efforts to create "value"
04:18 Company's creation, philosophy, growth
12:29 "Opportunities" from crisis; bank regulation
19:24 Upcoming projects, Denver's biennial

Running time 21:30

>> Watch video

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It's my trip in a box, my trip in a box, yeahhh

With his Paco Cube, architect Nagasaka Hisashi of the Schemata Architecture Office realizes that you don't need a lot of space on certain vacations, but he does one better by making that tiny space beautiful. The Paco Cube is a vacation house done up in white epoxy, and the tiny (3-meter-square) structure contains all of the essentials and then some: "A kitchen, shower, toilet, sleeping hammock, desk and lighting." Not to mention the top pops open like a jack-in-the-box.

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Design Green Now

We told you about Design Green Now last year, but the 2009 lineup is set and looks pretty sweet.

Pratt hosts the opener April 1st. Panelist include Mitchell Joachim, PhD, of Terreform 1, and voted by Wired as "one of the top 15 people the Obama administration should tap for environmental strategies." He will be talking about growing animal-free leather in the Brookyln-based bio-lab to be used for accessories. Rolling Stone also included him in their list of the top 100 people changing America.

Tiffany Threadgould, Chief Design Junky, TerraCycle, will present at the "Totally Wasted" panel at FIT on April 2nd about the products they are making from industrial waste streams.

Serge Appel, AIA, Associate Partner at Cook+Fox Architects will present on the Energy panel at Parsons on April 13th about the Bank of America Building, and a new project that springboards off of it.

Moderators for the series include Susan Szenasy, Editor in Chief, Metropolis and Dan Rubinstein, Design Editor, Surface Magazine

The series wraps up at Smart Design in May with a Design Jam. More specifics to be announced at the panels.

...And if you like what these guys are up to with Design Green now, hop on over to ideablob.com and give them a vote. (They are finalists in the current competition and could use some help winning $20,000 to keep the events going.)

Videos from previous events on the west coast are available at designgreennow.com

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Milan Design Week 09 Preview: Materious for Tuttobene

And finally, Core77 contributors Bruce and Stephanie Tharp will be in Milan next month as a part of Tuttobene:

This years edition of Tuttobene presents five international and eighteen Dutch design studio's. Objects on display vary from a cupboard made of domino, a table constructed out of garden hose, lampshades of horsehair to a porcelain computer. What these items share is the sustainable quality of their design. The common denominator is determined by its ecologically and socially sound production and use.

Umbrellas for the Civil but Discontent Man designed by Bruce and Stephanie Tharp of Materious.

"Sigmund Freud contends that aggressiveness is a fundamental human instinct whose inhibition is a necessary obligation of social life. These umbrellas combine a symbol of gentlemanly refinement--the full-sized, black umbrella--with an element from more manly sword-bearing times. The umbrellas offer brief psychological respite from the dictates of social amiability.

Next also designed by Bruce and Stephanie Tharp of Materious.

Next is a clock that addresses smokers addiction and their association of time with their next cigarette. But rather than a mere marker of this connection, it can also be used to regulate cigarette consumption. Place the cigarettes in the holes for the desired smoking times, and remove to smoke."

>> continue

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Special thanks to Mark Vanderbeeken, Xanthe Matychak and Niti Bhan for their contribution to this week's newsletter!

Please share the Monday Morning Must Read with colleagues, clients and collaborators. Many email programs do not forward messages in their original format, so please use this link: http://www.designdirectory.com/blog/newsletter

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

You saw it here first: Alias SketchBook Pro 2010 preview available for free download NOW!

Just announced on Autodesk's AliasDesign site: a preview version of the brand spanking new 2010 release of SketchBook Pro. For FREE.

It won't officially hit stores until sometime in April, but interested digital artist and designer types can head to the site now and download a fully-featured copy that will run for 15 non-consecutive days, enough time to wrap their heads around the thick stack of new features Autodesk is touting, like custom texture brushes, free canvas rotation, and arbitrary straight-edge ruler guides.

An extensive rundown of new features, with video and interview with the SBP product manager is here, trial software download is here for both PC and Mac.

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Core77 Film Review: Gary Hustwit's 'Objectified'

In New York City, I attended what Gary told us was "the first screening of Objectified in front of real, live people." The room was filled with fans, contributors, well-wishers, and a few designers from the film, and though its official release was at a (packed) SXSW premier in Austin this past weekend (Core77's Stu Constantine moderated a panel with Hustwit and 3 stars of the film on Sunday), it was great to get a sneak peek at the thing and have a few days to put some thoughts together. This was a challenging review to write; it was too dark in the theater to take notes (or capture great quotes, though there's a nice set here), and as Marc Alt remarked on the sidewalk afterwards, it is hard for a designer-type to be, well, objective about Objectified.

The movie started out with the obligatory "everything in our lives is designed" segment—an argument as well worn by designers as it is revelatory to non-designers. This set-up was nicely handled though, and made me think of the "Plastic is in almost everything around us" version in Ian Connacher's film Addicted to Plastic. (A less disciplined movie overall, but quite a bit harder-hitting.) Once we're past the intro though, Objectified's themes start to emerge—or theme, actually, since almost the entire movie devotes itself to exploring the intimate relationship between objects and the people who make them. Well, and the people who own them, ultimately.

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Advertisement

NY Designs, a business incubator for design firms, is hosting an event geared toward designers and architects who are involved or interested in renewable energy. Join expert panelists from the wind, solar, and other alternative energy sectors for a discussion of the opportunities for designers and architects to develop renewable energy products. March 25 5:30 - 8:30PM

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Google's measured approach to design makes Chief Designer leave

Making the rounds is this blogpost by Douglas Bowman, Google's (former) Visual Design Leader, where he explains his frustration with Google's overly engineered approach to measuring the impact of minor design changes, for example,

Yes, it's true that a team at Google couldn't decide between two blues, so they're testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4, or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can't operate in an environment like that. I've grown tired of debating such minuscule design decisions.

CNet's Stephen Shankland adds,

I can't speak for Bowman's experience, though I can see how a classical designer might feel stifled by code monkeys. There are plenty of considerations that go into design in general, and pragmatism can be at odds sometimes with passion, boldness, and innovation. And Bowman earlier was a designer at Wired, which is definitely at the bold end of the spectrum.

Overall, however, I find Google's approach to design refreshing and radical in its own way. Choosing color shades and pixel widths on the basis of the behavior of millions of Web page users is a fascinating development to the form-follows-function school of design.

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Design Fiction: A Short Essay on Design, Science, Fact and Fiction from Julian Bleeker

Julian Bleecker has just published an essay (Mark Vanderbeeken calls it "really a 97 page book"!) entitled Design Fiction: A Short Essay on Design, Science, Fact and Fiction. I'm personally a big fan of fictional design, so I'm gonna download it and give it a read. In the meantime, here's Julian on the motivation:

A couple of years ago, in a small discussion group while I was teaching at USC, Paul Dourish presented an early draft of a paper he and Genevieve Bell were working on. If you read this blog, you probably know the paper. It's called " 'Resistance is Futile': Reading Science Fiction Alongside Ubiquitous Computing." It's a wonderful paper for a number of reasons. What is most wonderful, for the purposes of this dispatch, is the clever way the paper creates a conceptual linkage through science-fiction-ubiquitous-computing. The idea that "science fiction does not merely anticipate but actively shapes technological futures through its effect on the collective imagination" and "Science fiction visions appear as prototypes for future technological environments"--well…this is really juicy stuff.

(The paper is generally around in draft form, for better or worse, thanks to the Google. It's forthcoming in the Journal of Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, which is generally only readily available to academics and researchers with access to pricey journals.)

Paul asked myself and a number of people to consider writing something like a response or further considerations kind of thing that could sit alongside the article's publication. I started in on this last summer. Ultimately, for reasons that became clear as I was writing the essay, I decided that there would be more to be said than would be tolerated in a staid, expensive, peer-reviewed academic journal, never mind that there could possibly be a wider conversation beyond the ubicomp community as my thinking ran into film, design, fan culture and unanticipated other places.

The short bit I wrote ended up as "Design Fiction: A Short Essay on Design, Science, Fact and Fiction." It's available as a downloadable PDF, out there in the on The Near Future Laboratory's modest puff of Internet Cloud.

More thoughts here; download there.

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Green product designs from Stanford's ME221

This past quarter, a new green product design class debuted at Stanford--ME221, "Green Design Strategies & Metrics." We had a fantastic group of students--eager, engaged, and sharp as tacks. Below is a sampling of the fun ideas they came up with for class.

The goals of the class were to get them to know the priorities of sustainability (so they can tell whether they're greenwashing or legit, tell whether they're wasting their time or really going after the big game), and then getting them acquainted with the most powerful strategies for green product design: energy-effectiveness, dematerialization, longevity and service-systems, green kaizen, laws and labels, good materials, biomimicry, systems thinking, persuasive design, even a dab of green business thinking. The students weren't just designers, either--lots of mechanical engineers, a few MBA's and a couple other miscellaneous majors rounded things out. Couldn't have asked for a better crew. Because of the large breadth, they did a slew of tiny projects--some hardcore analysis, but mostly conceptual design sketches. Here are examples of them, showing the great variety and depth of thinking that managed to happen in just a few days per project. (Click on an image to see a high-res version of it. Since the projects are about the ideas, not the aesthetics, the text is where most of the meat is.) Enjoy!

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Follow Core77 on Twitter!

Follow @core77 on Twitter for a feed of blog headlines, timely bits of design news, and other delightful (and provocative) design insights.

Follow Core77 now!

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Bottoms up: innovation flows backwards

Call it what you like - "bottom up" or "trickle up" innovation (though one wonders if it will be a flood instead since its the other 90%) - but we can't help but be pleased to see the basic concept of designing products for maximum constraints first and then scaling them up for wealthier markets has finally gone viral. Low income markets and customers are some of the toughest nuts to crack and one hopes this means its a signal to take design for the next billion as the serious challenge that it is as well as a great opportunity for creative cross pollination.

BusinessWeek reports,

The process turns conventional product development on its head. Over the years, multinationals have prospered by turning out premium-priced products for the world's affluent. Rather than also designing products for poorer people elsewhere, many businesses found they could simply pass yesteryear's models down, as if they were unloading fleets of used cars. Lately, big companies such as Microsoft (MSFT), Nokia (NOK), and Procter & Gamble (PG) are discovering that they can profit by targeting the world's masses first. And they can score again by selling these low-priced products elsewhere

"The dominant logic holds that innovation comes from the U.S., goes to Europe and Japan, then gravitates to poor countries," says C.K. Prahalad, a strategy professor at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business and author of The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits. "But now we're starting to see a reversal of that flow."

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New graphics for old libararies

The New York Times tells a nice story about a WPA-like project Pentagram has been cooking up for New York City Libaries. Here's some good background and insight from the studio:

Nearly nine years ago, Pentagram was asked to contribute to a visionary effort by the wonderful (and design-conscious) Robin Hood Foundation: an initiative to build new school libraries in elementary schools throughout the five boroughs of New York City. A range of talented architects would design the libraries; private companies would donate books and funds; and we would provide the graphic design, including signage, wayfinding, and a masterbrand that would tie all the sites together.

Along the way, we discovered something interesting. The libraries are usually located in older buildings with high ceilings, but the shelves in the libraries can't be built higher than kids can reach. This means there is a space between the top shelf and the ceiling, an up-to-six-foot band around the room just begging for something special. That something turned out to be murals. And the results can now be seen in schools all over New York City, including five brand new ones in the Bronx which feature murals by Rafael Esquer, Maira Kalman, Christoph Niemann, Stefan Sagmeister and Yuko Shimizu, and Charles Wilkin.

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Okay seriously. First Tropicana and now THIS?

Admittedly, that first SciFi Channel identity wasn't so great. But honestly.

And indeed the OJ debacle shows up WAY down the piece in the Times:

No discussion of change affecting consumers could ignore what Mr. Howe called the "Tropicana debacle"--the recent decision by a unit of PepsiCo to abandon a major package redesign for Tropicana orange juice after shoppers vociferously complained.

"The testing we've done has been incredibly positive," Mr. Howe said of the Syfy name, reading what he described as a comment from one participant: "If I were texting, this is how I would spell it."

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EU design policy 'will create jobs'

The formation of EU design policy will result in more jobs for designers, according to president of the Bureau of European Design Associations Jan Stavik.

The newly elected Beda president, who last weekend replaced Michael Thomson, is convinced that the organisation's continued European political focus will result in more jobs for designers, 'lifting their ability and focus'.

Stavik's comments come ahead of next month's Staff Working Paper - a precursor to a European consultation paper - which is expected to lead to the formation of EU design policy later this year.

This, he says, [...] will result in EU directives for design in industry, in particular innovation, as well as the 'strategic potential to unlock funds' for related schemes.

>> Read article

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Star Search - U.S. National Design Policy video

Speaking of design policy, one of the activities of the U.S. National Design Policy Initiative is to create a video with US design CEOs advocating the importance of design and design policy to US democratic governance and economic competitiveness. But being down for the People, I feel that it should not just be C-levels who are represented.

So we are seeking the People (US and Internationally) to upload short (less than 2 minute) videos addressing these four questions:
1. What role does design play in US economic competitiveness?
2. What role does design play in the US democratic governance?
3. In what specific ways, would a national design policy further enable design to play those roles?
4. What would you pledge to do to help design play that role?

Art Direction: For consistency, we ask that you film on a plain white background (with semi-decent lighting). I've found that setting up a white board behind me as I face the window during early sunrise or sunset creates beautiful light. Upload the video here (youtube) or here (facebook)

[on behalf of Dori Tunstall, Initiative Organizer]

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Crowdsourcing recycling ideas

How Can I Recycle This? is a UK-based website that aims to crowdsource creative ideas on how to recycle everything under the sun. Readers post queries, i.e. "What else can I use the metal cutting edge on a box of plastic wrap for?" and other readers sound off with suggestions.

Got any ideas (or queries) of your own? For those of you with spare brainpower, the "Packaging" section alone has 147 posts, which oughta tie you up for at least an afternoon.

Suggestions currently range from obvious ("Old jars make great Q-Tip holders") to useful ("expired, unused bandages can be sent to developing countries and re-sterilized") to please-tell-me-you're-joking (shampoo bottle jewelry, anyone?), so these guys can definitely use an influx of eyeballs and fresh brains. Archives by category are here.

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McKinsey maps the world's innovation clusters

How innovative is your city? McKinsey Digital has released a new innovation study of the world's leading cities, grouping them into one of four different categories -- "hot springs," "dynamic oceans," "silent lakes," and "shrinking pools."

The most innovative cities are "dynamic oceans," while the "hot springs" are the types of cities with a lot of economic momentum, but in need of a little Creative Class infusion to make them even more vibrant and diverse. In the chart above, Silicon Valley stands alone as the dominant innovation cluster in the world.

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Core77's 'There Is No Plan B' T-Shirt

While the masses are desperately seeking out exit strategies, we know there is no plan B for designers. You just gotta lock down and make it happen! Printed in New York on asphalt gray 100% cotton American Apparel T-shirts, we only have a few left in small & medium sizes.

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Ciao Milano! Send us your Milan design tips.

And finally, speaking of Core77, got something interesting brewing for Milan Design Week next month (April 22-27th)? Let us know! We will have a team documenting this year's design week, and we'd love to get your event / party / performance / guerrilla tactics on our list of to-dos. Send your Milano tips to: blogs[at]core77.com (please include "Ciao Milano!" in your subject line). Make sure to include a couple of images, a description, and a link (important!) if you'd like us to get the word out early.

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Special thanks to Mark Vanderbeeken, Jeremy Faludi and Niti Bhan for their contribution to this week's newsletter!

Please share the Monday Morning Must Read with colleagues, clients and collaborators. Many email programs do not forward messages in their original format, so please use this link: http://www.designdirectory.com/blog/newsletter

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

The PeePoo Bag: 2.6 people just got their own toilet

Coming off our review of The Big Necessity, we were inspired by a recent email concerning the PeePoo, a plastic bag-cum-toilet for the developing world. So we got in touch with the co-designer of the device, Peter Thuvander, to provide some first-hand reflections on the project. Here's Peter:

It could be that the cruel reality of shit has escaped you. To let you in on the numbers, approximately 2.6 billion people lack sanitation. The consequences of this are horrific. One child in the world dies every 15 seconds due to contaminated water. If there ever was a holy grail of design and technology, this is it.

When long-time client (and now friend) Anders Wilhelmson, the famous Swedish architect), presented a vision of a world-changing system of sanitation, he was extremely passionate: "What if one could shit or pee in a bag? A bag that would sanitize the feces, and then later on break down itself, all becoming manure?"

"Well, yes Anders, that would be fantastic, but how?" I replied.

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Selling the Future: Design and the Financial Crisis

These days Bernie Madoff makes an appearance on the cover (or at least the inside fold) of the paper with alarming frequency and investors far from South Florida are feeling the repercussions not only of his very literal Ponzi scheme but also facing a growing realization that our booming residential and stock markets were also houses of cards. The housing market, however, lacks a gray-coiffed figurehead upon which to pile indignation. Cases could (and have) been made for names like Bliley, Bush, Clinton, Dodd, Frank, Gramm, and Leach, but no one name stands out above the rest and such a politically-centric list neglects all of the actual bankers that wrote the loans, the regulators who ignored the signals, and the buyers themselves. Instead, it appears that the housing bubble was more like a game of musical chairs than corporate malfeasance since so many were playing. As someone who has been renting for the last ten years because home prices in NYC have been ridiculously inflated, I can't say I was surprised by the housing market collapse, but what I didn't realize was that my own well-being was so intertwined with the housing market. Americans, and to a lesser extent the rest of the world, were paying for their purchases by borrowing against their homes, and America was financing its current account by borrowing against its currency. We, as industrial designers, were the makers of all of the products that were being bought, and now the pinch is on us as well. By no means am I the first person to say in hindsight that the economic collapse seems obvious. Indeed, my savings were damaged as much as any homeowner's by the collapse of the stock market, but I didn't realize the extent of my personal idiocy until I read Thomas Friedman's sage opinion piece in the New York Times and realized that I hadn't only seen the current recession in hindsight, I'd passionately argued against its very causes right here in this blog nearly a year ago.

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Philips LEDs the way

Philips' Master LED bulb has the same form factor as the old-fashioned kind, making it "simple for people to use and feel good about using." The bulb draws just 7 watts but gives off light equivalent to 40 watts' worth, and lasts 45,000 hours, as opposed to the 1,500 of its incandescent predecessors. Already available in Europe, the Master LED should make its way to North American shores sometime before July.

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Kinetic Design and the Animation of Products, by Ben Hopson

At this point in history, Industrial Design is poised to undergo major evolutionary changes. New technologies, new materials and increasingly sophisticated consumer tastes all demand colossal transformations. Perhaps most exciting among these is the development of Kinetic Design which entails the aesthetic design of physical movement. Through this practice, industrial designers will not just create forms, but choreograph those forms' movements through space. Kinetic Design will literally open a new dimension for the aesthetic development of physical objects and the world will be richer for it.

At Industrial Design schools around the world, students are being trained to create the objects that fill our lives. Sadly, with few exceptions, today's young designers are walking out into the world with more-or-less the same tool sets as designers of 60 years ago. One can observe this phenomenon quite readily by perusing the course catalogs of leading design schools such as Art Center College of Design or Pratt Institute. Green initiatives and CAD (computer aided design) related courses comprise the only notable updates to curricula around the world. This is astonishingly meager given the rapidly changing nature of the field itself. The addition of Kinetic Design will help broaden curricula in order to stimulate new thinking and new potentials.

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NIKE SFB Tactical Boot

Nike just launched the SFB military boot, a project 4 years in the making led by Nike Innovation Manager Tobie Hatfield. Built for speed, agility, and comfort, the ultra-light SFB's upper is made from a polyester woven shell wrapped in synthetic leather overlays, this means there's no 'break-in' time required (typical with most boots), and it dramatically increases drying time.

The SFB breaks new ground in lightweight athletic boot delivering innovation for athletes in any environment. The SFB, perfect for warm weather conditions, is the lightest, fastest drying, natural motion boot on the planet. It features a Natural Motion Cushioning unit that helps allows for optimal support and speed during heel to toe transfer, translated the boot is made to move and form with the foot's natural motion allowing for quick flexible movement in any direction while drastically reducing the weight of conventional boots. Making it the perfect companion during multi-day backpacking hikes which can be cut short if your boots don't work with your foot.

Offering unparalleled traction, the SFB's outsole is fitted with a directional traction heel sole that utilizes reverse tread bars and a slightly raised heel for better traction going downhill, while the Sticky Rubber forefoot lugs were strategically placed to allow exceptional agility and traction in any terrain. Upping the ante on protection, the SFB's mid-sole comes equipped with puncture and laceration resistant thermoplastic forefoot shield and genuine leather with Kevlar sheath, both placed in the sole of the SFB allowing the boot to form to the foot of its wearer while offering protection from jagged rocky terrain.

>> more pictures

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Jimmyjane's Sex Change Operation

Ethan Imboden worked an industrial designer for firms like Ecco and frogdesign, cranking out designs for everyday products (i.e., staplers and monitors), but grew to feel that he had something more to contribute. After starting his own design firm, he went with a client to the Adult Novelty Expo and saw bad design everywhere. He founded Jimmyjane as a response to that, and set out to use form, color, materials and so on to create premium vibrators. Now he's a visionary creative, with strong ideas about the Jimmyjane brand and how to embody those attributes across a range of products. Imboden fits the Be A Genius and Get It Right archetype we wrote about in interactions. At least, if they are doing as well as they indicated during our recent visit, then they are "getting it right." But we couldn't help but wonder if there wasn't more that they could be doing.

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Fantastic Interview with Richard Kuchinsky

Speaking of shoes, DesignDroplets published a fascinating interview with Richard Kuchinsky, designer and Core77 forum contributor. It's impossible to pick the choicest paragraphs from the thing, but the section on how footwear design really happens will surprise you:

The process as I described earlier just doesn't need CAD for the most part, so it is not used. There would be no point in doing the upper design of a shoe in CAD when a 3 view line drawing in Illustrator is what the pattern maker wants. Outsole design may be done in CAD, though in my experience more frequently it's done as a 2D drawing with dimensions and sections in Illustrator because it's quicker and the mold maker can take into account all the data points for the last, shrink, etc. to create the 3D CAD at the factory in half the time and a quarter of the cost.

I know some of the larger athletic footwear brands are starting to incorporate CAD into the design process more frequently, but in something like footwear I also think the rawness and flow of a sketch translates best into a product that likely may not have a single straight line on it and is never 100% symmetrical.

In the end however, the appropriate tools for the job, are just that, tools. A pencil, a marker a Wacom tablet, or CAD are all tools and each one may be appropriate in a different situation. It is also important to mention that a sketch or drawing should also be viewed as a means to an end. Too often these days, I think young designers fall in love with CAD, or fancy renderings and lose sight of the true goals of the design process- the end product. I had a boss once who made a great point of keeping the designers in check when they would get carried away with fancy renderings and the like. He said, "we are in the business of making shoes. Not drawings."

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Steven Heller on The 2 New Logos

Last week on The Moment Steven Heller investigates the new logos introduced by the Obama administration last week. Here's a nice taste:

What's also interesting about this logo is that its goal is to become obsolete. Just as the W.P.A. was retired when the Depression was over (and World War II began), the ARRA logo is tied to the fate of the economy. "Hopefully, the recovery effort will work so well and so quickly that we're no longer in recovery but back at full strength and don’t need it," Juras said. "The sooner it becomes a historical artifact, the better."

Meanwhile, what does he hope these marks accomplish? "I would say that we are more interested in how people who know little or nothing about design respond to them in their daily lives," he said. "That is to say: Does the logo give the truck driver or the grocery store clerk or the plumber a little more confidence in our economy? Does a young kid derive some hope for the future by stenciling it on her lunchbox? Only time will tell, I suppose."

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"All of it screamingly public": Jessica Helfand, on Facebook

Recently published on Design Observer--Jessica Helfand explores the ecosystem of Facebook, the ramifications for privacy and self, and the particular terrain of posting images (yes, of you) on the social network. How's this:

For anyone under the age of, say thirty or so, the whole notion of open-source thinking is a native habitat that can be applied to everything from group-table seating in restaurants to sharing playlists to data clouds (I tag, you tag, we all tag) -- in short, there's nothing proprietary because people in this particular demographic group don't perceive space as anything you can own. They see it as infinite real estate, to be grazed but not commandeered, shared but not colonized. The beauty of this thinking, besides the fact that it is inherently democratic and gracious, is that it lends itself to a kind of progressive evolution in which everyone wins. It's commendable, really, and speaks well for us all.

On the other hand (and I'm not the first, nor will I be the last to mention it) there are implicit pitfalls in this rapidly growing virtual arena, particularly for those for whom social skills have not caught up with, say, their computational skills. On Facebook, this leads to huge numbers of pictures by kids of kids at parties acting stupid -- yes, stupid -- with cigarettes and sunglasses and cans of beer and face paint. It's kind of sweet and sort of sad and probably meaningless (or so way too many parents of teenagers tell me) and lighten up, I'm told, because they're just posturing, showing the world just how radical they can be. It's safe, because after all, they’re not drinking and driving. They're just on screen.

Or are they?

Read the whole thing here.

And in the same breath, don't forget about Steve Portigal's piece on Core77 last week, Where does Twitter go from here?

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Italy's Newest Boutique School Of Design

Architect Marc DiDomenico, the 2009 President of the American Institute of Architects Continental Europe, is overseeing The Florence Institute of Design International, a brand new "boutique" design school in Florence, Italy:

Just opened in the historic center of Florence, a new international design school will welcome students from all over the world to commence the first full session in January. The Florence Institute of Design International offers a new type of boutique academics focused entirely on international students providing Interior Design, Graphic Design and Architecture programs with both master and semester abroad options available, as announced by Founder and Creative Director, Architect Marc DiDomenico.

>> continue

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A Wind Farm on Your Purse, Courtesy of Ziba Design

Recently brought to our attention by uber-design-consultancy Ziba, a one-off purse created by a few of their Industrial Designers for a charity auction in Portland, Oregon. We kind of dig it for its soft/hard goods split personality (the base is machined from a single piece of reclaimed wood), and the fact that stylized wind turbines now count as decorative elements (the client used as a design reference is the head of a local electric utility).

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60 Bags Biodegrade in 60 Days

Speaking of "green" bags, winners of an honorable mention at this year's Green Dot awards, 60 Bags is a line of biodegradable bags that can last as long as you like or decompose in approximately 2 months. So why not give a present to your garden after you are done buying something for yourself?

60BAGs are the perfect natural answer to the environment's needs. They are biodegradable carrier bags made our of flax-viscose non-woven fabric. Its material was scientifically developed and manufactured in Poland. The flax-Viscose fabric is produced with flax fiber industrial waste, which means it doesn't exploit any natural resources and requires minimal energy during its production. This highly innovative technology enables the bags to naturally decompose approximately 60 days after being discarded, which means they don't require expensive recycling or disposal in landfills.

60BAGs a breakthrough advance over the so-called "green bags" produced with polypropylene material, as well as the thick plastic bags given away by most clothing retailers. 60BAG is a great commercial opportunity for the companies committed to supporting an eco-friendly lifestyle.

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We've got two post-scripts from last week's DesignersAccord Town Hall get-together at Smart Design.

Last week the Designers Accord held its first New York City town hall meeting in Smart Design's Chelsea offices. Designers Accord is a multidisciplinary coalition of designers and other professionals, which aims to spark collaboration and "create positive environmental and social impact." These town hall meetings began last year on the west coast to serve as a venue for face-to-face interaction between individuals eager to share their ideas about sustainable design, and about how to inspire the creative community to think and act in socially and environmentally responsible ways.
This crowd of designers and other sustainable enthusiasts alike gathered for some light fare and settled into an informal discussion led by Jen van der Meer, a board member of Designers Accord, and ten other presenters. In light of the Designers Accord's mission, presenters discussed an array of issues that define the opportunities and challenges currently facing the green design movement, at both local and global levels. Here are three key issues they raised: the imperative of knowledge-sharing projects, the initiative to extend social design causes, and the right balance between open-sourcing green technologies and private property rights for developers.

Knowledge-Sharing Projects
Andrew Personette, of EcoSystems, shared his concern for the lack sustainable education. His solution is the upcoming "Design Green Now" series coming next month to local New York City design schools. The free three-part series will feature New York City industry buffs exploring the themes of materials, energy, and waste in an effort to empower the design community with sustainable design know-how and rhetoric. Be sure to check out the Design Green Now site for more details of this April happening.

>> continue

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Step into my cardboard office...

Nothing is a new commercial creative agency formed by Michael Jansen and Bas Korsten that has just opened its doors in Amsterdam.

The Nothing team took the idea behind the company name (taking nothing and turning it into something) as the starting point for the physical design of the office; which included creating walls, signage, beams, tables, shelving and even a set of stairs out of cardboard.

>> View photos

Bruce Sterling calls it "very informal architecture learning from slums".

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Flotspotting: Stephen Hauser's got it in the can

And finally, Tokyo-based Stephan Hauser's amusing bathroom dustbin addresses the way (and place) that we guys like to read. See more of his portfolio here.

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Special thanks to Steve Portigal and Mark Vanderbeeken for their contribution to this week's newsletter!

Please share the Monday Morning Must Read with colleagues, clients and collaborators. Many email programs do not forward messages in their original format, so please use this link: http://www.designdirectory.com/blog/newsletter

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

A Periodic Table of Form: The secret language of surface and meaning in product design, by Gray Holland

Why does Design so often struggle to communicate its value to the world, when it's something we all recognize?

When we speak of product development, we frequently look at the domains of Design and Engineering separately, evaluating them in different ways. Engineering, at its core, is a measurable process; Design, for the most part, is not. This gives the former an inherent advantage: engineering efforts are easily quantifiable, and this provides them with authority. Design is intuitive, working on the non-verbal levels of our experience, sometimes triggering our most subversive emotional states; this makes it difficult to evaluate empirically. Lacking an analytical vernacular, Design is labeled subjective, when it is actually the agent of universal truth through form.

For the consumer, it's easy to forget how much the emotional response to an object determines his or her relationship to it, but this forgetfulness can be plausibly explained by the dominant role our analytical mind plays in formulating language. Because it is able to say it's in charge, as the executor of structured argument, the analytical mind generally convinces us that it is in fact the authority. Reasoning therefore holds higher status, and emotional reactions are easy to dismiss as immature or irrational. This poses a very real barrier to the acceptance of design as a source of value in product development; enough that it's worth examining alternate ways of evaluating design, transcending this subjective view to create a more universal system of measure.

Form has meaning; it can touch us at such a primal level that our mind is left scrambling to rationalize our emotional reactions. Consider the visceral impression conveyed by a natural setting: The deep serenity felt, for example, while walking through a majestic grove of redwoods. The delicate lace of fern fronds wave as you drag your hand through them as you walk, and your heart jumps into your throat when startled by a deer caught wondering across the trail. These natural forms hold an innate meaning that not only transcends the human experience, but even predates our verbal expression, definition, and measurement. In other words, we did not create this meaning; it comes from the forms themselves, and existed long before we did.

>> continue reading

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Creative Employment Confab
Austin, TX - Monday, March 16, 2009

Are you heading to Austin next month for the South By Southwest Interactive Festival? Join a few hundred of your Coroflot cohorts for a networking event geared for people working in all aspects of today's creative industry. Share insights, connections and successes with leading creative and technical professionals and meet with hiring representatives from companies looking for this type of talent. An all-star panel discussion and a cocktail reception will make this an event not to be missed. We've arranged a discounted SXSW registration rates for attendees too!

>>>Learn More

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Coroflot 2008 Design Salary Survey Results are In!

One year and 4200+ responses in the making, the Coroflot 2008 Salary Survey is live and ready to rock. See how the different professions are faring in these unsteady times, where the salaries are still growing, and what's changed (and what hasn't) in the creative professional landscape over the past eight years. Now in its eighth year, this is the longest-running survey on the web devoted exclusively to the creative professions, from Illustration to Fashion to Interaction Design and beyond, and pulling in responses from over 60 different countries. Charts and a searchable database of responses are available on the survey page here; additional commentary and hints of whats coming up next are on the Creative Seeds blog here.

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Book Review: Design Disasters, edited by Steven Heller

The wild cover design of Design Disasters: Great Designers, Fabulous Failures, and Lessons Learned forced me look to the back of the book to get the precise wording of the title, commas and all. Perhaps that's what cover designer James Victore intended when he spilled half the title off of the front page and presented such an obfuscated grid on the back cover that I had to run down the page with a ruler to try to locate the baselines. Ultimately I found the title written in its full Library of Congress form upside down and aligned with a nested set of bullet points for the contributor credits on the back cover. While I've never been a fan of guessing author or artist motive, the overall effect amounts to making a pleasing harmony out of a relative mess, which actually fits the book's themes pretty well.

Design Disasters collects stories of failure (along with the titular lessons learned) from luminaries such as Stefan Sagmiester, thinkers like Ralph Caplan and Henry Petroski and Core's own Allan Chochinov. Perhaps Steven Heller explains the logic behind the cover in his introduction, which states, "If I were the joking sort, I would just make the type from here on unreadable as an example of failed design." I'm glad he didn't because such an omission would have denied the reader the opportunity to hear the stories contained within. Heller himself describes the creative process with a special emphasis on success through failure. It's an old lesson, but in this age, when design presentations can be changed with a few twitches of the wrist at the mouse, there's no reason why every finished design can't be built from a cornucopia of failures, so much so that perhaps the very nomenclature of failure needs to be reconsidered. Perhaps we designers have already subliminally assimilated this lesson. After all, most people I know don't call it failure, we call it process. For me, success and failure are the same things, just on a different timeline.

>> continue reading

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Core77 Photo Gallery: Transversale 2009

Transversale 2009 offers a full program on the interface between art and design. Contributions of no less than ten organizations in Dortmund results in a wide range of objects and installations by artists, designers, craftsmen, and students exploring the boundaries where art meets design and design meets art.

>> view gallery

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Where does Twitter go from here?

It's an interesting time for Twitter. Although the folks on Twitter are lead user/early adopter types, there is huge buzz about the service. And as with many disruptive innovations, this new-and-different-thing is not well understood and begins to evoke a backlash. The mainstream media (NYT, Daily Show) is enjoying the opportunity to portray the technology - and its adherents - as contributing to a social decline, wasting time, being foolish, self-absorbed, and other cultural sins. But we went through this with cellphones (self-important rich people only), the Walkman (self-absorbed anti-social jerks), and so on. Let's understand the backlash for what it is: a society grappling with emerging behaviors that challenge social norms. See Evan Williams on Charlie Rose for a discussion of "normal people" using the service.

One way to normalize a new behavior is to think about how it's going to make money. Because what's more normal than capitalism, right? So we've got all the Skittles buzz this week. We'd rather consider the designed experience that Twitter is facilitating than the marketing, PR, and money stuff, though. For a primer, you can read our previous thoughts here (summary: What the heck is this thing for? You've gotta use it for a while and see). Of course, all ideas are brainstorming, and not recommendations. Brainstorming works best when people build on the ideas, so we'd love to see all the builds you can come up with on the issues and the stand-in solutions. Note: some of these things may already be available on Twitter.com; but we see them only when we log out, so not sure how much help that is?!

>> continue reading

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A "New Wood Species" Arrived

Accoya Wood considers itself a "new wood species" with properties that match those of the best tropical hardwoods, yet it eliminates the need for logging in our precious rainforests.

How? Accoya is able to process soft, fast-growing pine into long lasting durable wood with a non-toxic treatment. Their technology is based on wood acetylation that reduces the ability of the wood to adsorb water is greatly reduced, rendering the wood more dimensionally stable and, because it is no longer digestible, extremely durable.

Designer Michael Jantzen is already a big fan and used Accoya's wood to realize this M-Velope (photo), an interactive structure that can be turned into various spaces. With durable wood like this surely more fans and designs will follow!

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Design Ignites Change website launches

Worldstudio has just launched their new project, Design Ignites Change, aimed at bringing design thinking to and from high school and college students. Teaming up with with the Adobe Foundation's Adobe Youth Voices, Design Ignites Change "encourages talented high school and college students to use the power of design to address social issues in their local communities through substantive public projects." There are already 15 colleges and universities signed up, who are targeting issues such as racism, economic inequality and climate change. Here's more:

Students are working to develop actual, visible projects aimed to stimulate thought, dialog, action, and ultimately, change. A major component of the initiative is a mentoring program through which college and university students, educators and creative professionals, work with underserved high school students to develop projects that will benefit their own communities, while giving them a voice around important social issues.

Learn more about the initiative here.
Join your school up here.
Check out mentoring here.
Get in on the HotButtons here

[Disclosure: Core77 is a media partner; Allan Chochinov is an advisor.]

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AskNature.org

AskNature is a free, open source inspiration source for the biomimicry community, that organises the world's biological literature by function. The site contains a starter culture of ideas--biological blueprints and strategies, bio-inspired products and design sketches, and biomimics you can talk to and collaborate with.

The Italian online web magazine Genitron Sviluppo interviewed Janine Benyus, the founder of the initiative - now available in English and Italian - part 1 | part 2.

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Steve Portigal on Advertising in Interactions Mag:

Steve's got yet another page-turner at Interactions:

But as we are supposedly increasingly enlightened and empowered as consumers, where do we draw the line with what advertisers are allowed to do? A couple of years ago I was back in my hometown of Toronto. Walking down Bloor St. late one night, we were invited into the cinema for a free screening at a documentary film festival. The emcee introduced the movie and thanked the sponsor, then introduced the director for a few questions, and then rolled the film. We got the usual film-festival promo trailer, a few acknowledgments screens, and then an ad for Cadillac, the sponsor. The audience began to boo. And while I wouldn't normally do this, I shouted out against the booing, "You're seeing a free movie, so shut the $@^& up!" The exchange (watch an ad, see a movie) seemed perfectly reasonable, and the booing seemed more like hipsters on autopilot ("advertising = teh suck - pwn3d") than a considered objection. Sure, I have all the latest ad-blocking software in Firefox, but I'm not joining the Billboard Liberation Front or subscribing to Adbusters. I'm happy to limit my exposure but don't generally need to become an activist either.

Awesome.

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Designers wanted: Join a Think-and-Make-Tank for Soul of Africa

Oxford University's Said Business School is running a sort of Peace Corps for designers. Writes Lucy Kimbell, Clark Fellow in Design Leadership:

We need up to 10 designers who want to use their design practices and skills to help social enterprise Soul of Africa tackle some of the challenge facing it, during a one-day workshop in Oxford in collaboration with MBA students.

The workshop is a participative, creative "think-and-make-tank" that brings together people from management and from design to use visual methods to analyze and tackle specific problems identified by an organization. MBA students from Said Business School will be joined by designers from different disciplines to help social enterprise Soul of Africa engage with key challenges.

Soul Of Africa is a charitable initiative and a self-sustainable project created to facilitate employment and funding aimed at helping orphans affected by AIDS through the sale of hand-stitched shoes. Unemployed and unskilled women in South Africa are trained to hand-stitch shoes, giving them the self-empowering ability to feed their families and provide them with essential health care.

>> continue reading

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The Scamp: Landmine Demining Device gets $2M support

And finally, speaking of design to do good, back in 2005, Joshua Koplin, undertook a project to investigate the world of landmines and demining equipment. It was a daunting task, but after only a few months, he gained an unbelievable amount of expertise, obtained first-hand knowledge by taking trips to Afghanistan and Sarajevo, Cambodia and Thailand. He took on a business partner, Samuel Reeves, to develop a new line of demining equipment, and has continued down this path for the past four years.

Last week, their company, Humanistic Robotics, received a $2 million grant from Bucks County to move their operation from Philadelphia, creating more than a dozen jobs and beginning production on their new product, the Scamp. The Scamp is a demining device which is designed to survive the blast of a detonated landmine (not typically strong, but certainly strong enough to do devastating damage to the human body). It does so by moving slowing across the ground, each wheel exerting 100 to 300 pounds of pressure--enough to trigger an explosion--and "tuned" to the exact characteristics of the mine and field. Hit the jump for the backstory:

>> continue reading

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Special thanks to Mark Vanderbeeken for his contribution to this week's newsletter!

Please share the Monday Morning Must Read with colleagues, clients and collaborators. Many email programs do not forward messages in their original format, so please use this link: http://www.designdirectory.com/blog/newsletter

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

Greener Gadgets 2009: THE WINNERS!

It was a roller-coaster ride of a panel discussion at the Live Greener Gadgets Design Competition Judging at the close of Friday's Greener Gadgets Conference in New York City. After a 10-minute overview of some of the notable entries by moderator Allan Chochinov from Core77, the judges--Jeff Kapec of Tanaka Kapec Design Group, Jill Fehrenbacher of Inhabitat, and Saul Griffith of Makani Power--toured the audience through 13 of their favorite projects before deliberating to get things down to the Top 3 (In pre-judging sessions, they were unable to decide on a set of TOP 10). It was a difficult journey, with the audience ultimately chiming in with shout outs, criticisms, defenses, philosophical meanderings, and all the good stuff you would expect from a wonderful, engaged audience. Thanks for all the participation!

>> continue reading

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Nendo: Ghost Stories Exhibition Photos

Tokyo-based architect and design outfit nendo opened 'Ghost Stories' last week, their first exhibition in New York at the Friedman Benda Gallery (who recently exhibited new work from Ron Arad). The installation presents 40 of their Cabbage Chairs embedded in a sea of suspended cords that fill the gallery space creating a visual haze and forces physical participation if you want to see the chairs up close.

Using a strict black and white color pallet with minimal lighting to create a 'ghostly' effect, the hanging cords echo the pleated texture of the Cabbage Chairs which were originally developed in response to a challenge from fashion designer Issey Miyake.

Each white cord is partially painted black and when viewed from a distance, creates a diagonal block of solid contrast across the curtain wall. Nendo experimented with multiple techniques to dye the cord, ultimately settling on the good old trusty marker as this was the only way to accurately control the length of the black coloring. It took the studio nearly a month to color every cord following specs from a 3D computer rendering.

>> more exhibition photos

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Coroflot Creative Employment Confab at SXSWi in Austin.

Attention Core readers, especially those headed to Austin this month for South by Southwest, and those looking for an additional reason to go. On top of all the bands, film screenings, talks, demos, etc. for which SXSW is justly famous, Coroflot is adding another cool thing: the Creative Employment Confab, a networking event for SXSW Interactive attendees looking to build their professional contacts, look for jobs or employees, or just enjoy the company of some fellow design professionals.

The event is scheduled to run from 1pm to 4pm at the Hilton Austin on Monday, March 16th, and will center around a one hour panel discussion on the future of creative employment, moderated by Coroflot editorial director Carl Alviani. Panelists include a couple of names recently mentioned in these pages: Nathan Shedroff, whose extremely well-received talk at the Compostmodern conference was blogged here earlier this week, also chairs the Design MBA program at CCA in San Francisco, and has written four books on Experience Design in the past year. Jon Kolko will also be there: a Senior Design Analyst at Frog, who taught in the Interaction Design program at SCAD for five years (and wrote about it for Core), edits Interactions Magazine, and gave a well-received talk of his own at the Interaction 09 conference in Vancouver.

A broad array of recruiters and hiring representatives will be on hand, looking to meet creative professionals of all stripes, and presumably take advantage of the open bar as well. Event is free to SXSWi attendees, details are here.

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Cut & Paste Kicks Off 2009 World Tour in LA, This Time with 3D and Motion Graphics

We got a little preview of what this year's version of the Cut & Paste Digital Design Tournament was going to look like when the New York-based crew ran their Design Slam at Autodesk University back in December; and what we saw got us excited. After a couple of years running live action illustration and graphic design competitions in cities across North America and Europe, Cut & Paste has seen fit to add 3D design to the roster, with some impressive results -- if you didn't see the video footage from AU in Las Vegas, it's worth a check.

Now taking this extended competition on the road, Cut & Paste hosted the first of its 2009 events in Los Angeles last Saturday, and from the looks of it, they've got a great design-crowd pleaser of a function figured out. Winning image from the 2D portion of the competition came from rock poster illustrator Janee Meadows, with some strong competition from the seven other Angelenos on stage.

>> continue

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Kevin McCullagh: Design and the Depression

Kevin's got a great piece in the April Blueprint, entitled Design and the Depression. Here's the (bitter) sweet spot:

But the Bring-On-The-Slump crowd are equally self-indulgent. Recessions are marked by bankruptcies, mass unemployment, house repossessions and general misery, not by moral renewal. A mean-spirited Puritanism lies behind those beckoning recession.

Their outlook reveals a shocking detachment from economic and historical realities. The recessionistas just don't get it, they have not grasped the depth of the economic crisis we face. This is no mere downturn, blip or 'natural correction'; it's a process that will last years. It could inflict a terrible toll on the profession. No doubt these commentators come from the kind of backgrounds that weren't blighted by previous busts, but few practising designers and architects will be able to maintain such glorious indifference in the face of the coming havoc.

The prospect facing young designers is particularly bleak. Ian Cochrane, director of Tice group and former managing director of both Fitch and Landor Europe, recently gave a clue to what might happen. He recommended that design agencies should consider a three-day week, and advised design students to 'get out of this business… [which] does not need you'.

Read the whole thing here.

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[photo credit: Ben Garvin for The New York Times]

Furniture trend for schools: Stand and Deliver

Here's a rather interesting trend: Stand-up furniture coming to schools. Apparently, having the option to stand at variable-height desks can help kids burn calories and even improve concentration. As the Times reports,

The children in Ms. Brown's class, and in some others at Marine Elementary School and additional schools nearby, are using a type of adjustable-height school desk, allowing pupils to stand while they work, that Ms. Brown designed with the help of a local ergonomic furniture company two years ago. The stand-up desk's popularity with children and teachers spread by word of mouth from this small town to schools in Wisconsin, across the St. Croix River. Now orders for the desks are being filled for districts from North Carolina to California.

...The stand-up desks come with swinging footrests, and with adjustable stools allowing children to switch between sitting and standing as their moods dictate.

..."At a stand-up desk," Ms. Seekel said, "I've never seen students with their heads down, ever. It helps with being awake, if they can stand, it seems. And for me as a teacher, I can stand at their level to help them. I'm not bent over. I can't think of one reason why a classroom teacher wouldn't want these."

..."We're talking about furniture here," she said, "plain old furniture. If it's that simple, if it turns out to have the positive impacts everyone hopes for, wouldn't that be a wonderful thing?"

Read all about it, and the research going into it, here.

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Nike's new London space, with from-raw-to-finished photos by the designers

This week saw the opening of "Raise your Game," a retail installation by London creatives the Wilson Brothers for Nike's East London 1948 space. It's loaded with sports references translated into design elements:

...the new floor covering is Nike GRIND, a 100% recycled rubber sport surface. 10% (minimum) of the content is made up from the soles of actual recycled training shoes, so approx. 15,000 pairs for this space! The new floor adds bounce + warmth to the space, is very sustainable, and the same material used around the main pitch at MUFC (Manchester United Football Club).

A set of 12 modular units form the basis of the display system for the store's new look interior. Referencing tiered stadium / grandstand seating (universal to most spectator sports), the steel and laminated plywood units are fitted with wheels for easy mobility and can be quickly re-positioned in unlimited configurations. Equally useable as 3 level table-top displays for merchandising, or as auditorium seating for events, back to back the stepped units resemble a classic 'winners' podium'.

Detachable (and multi-positional) hanging rails reference the sea of goal-posts at near-by Hackney Marshes.

A 6 x 8m neon football pitch installation, hanging horizontally from the ceiling, completes the space.

The Wilson Brothers have posted in-progress photos on their blog, so you can see them taking the space from raw to finished. Click here to check 'em out.

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Amazing pictures of production at The Big Picture

Speaking of shoes, Srikanth Jalasutram, a graduate ID student at Georgia Tech, sends in this link from the Boston Globe's Big Picture, called At Work. This from the Globe:

"When the economy makes big news, many photographs of people at work come across the wires, usually to help illustrate a particular story or event. By collecting these disparate photos over the past few months, I found that a global portrait emerged of we humans producing things. People assembling, generating, and building items small and large, mundane and expensive, trivial and important. I hope you enjoy this look into some people's work lives around the world"

And this from Srikanth:

Any product designer who has seen Ed Burtynsky's Manufactured Landscapes Documentary or has attended Allan Chochinov's talk on the social impact of design professions ("We are in the consequence business") will appreciate taking a look at this slideshow of people "producing" or being involved in manufacture of physical objects across the world.

It should prompt designers to think where their problem solving skills are really required--creating new and novel things just for the sake of "design," or really helping people lead better and more fruitful lives by uplifting their living conditions. Contrary to the opinion of some superstar designers who proclaim that problem solving is dead and what the world truly needs is more "beautiful things" (made of translucent plastic), the world urgently needs designers who can bring social equity to the masses through their work.

Image above from the site (AP Photo/Chitose Suzuki).
[Allan is humbled to mentioned in the same sentence as Edward Burtynsky.]

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Not just for profit

Emerging alternatives to the shareholder-centric model could help companies avoid ethical mishaps and contribute more to the world at large.

Around the world -- largely beneath the radar of mainstream awareness -- alternative [corporate] designs are being developed that seamlessly blend a central social mission with profitable operation. These include the burgeoning microfinance industry, emerging hybrids like nonprofit venture-capital firms, new architectures like Google.org that embody "for-profit philanthropy," dual-class shareholding structures, employee-owned companies, the foundation-owned corporations of northern Europe, and a variety of cooperatives on every continent. These models vary enormously in size and mission, but they are significant for the same reason: Together, they represent an evolutionary step in the development of corporate structure.

>> Read article

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Repairing Is The New Recycling!

"Stop Recycling, Start Repairing!", says Core's favorite Platform21. After Hacking IKEA (see photos), and a bunch of other great projects, new design activism is coming up!

The all new Repair Manifesto touches the joy of fixing things, sharing ingenious repairing tips and tricks in order to oppose to a throwaway culture and to celebrate repair as the new recycling.

If you want to support the Platform21 people in making repairing cool again then send your projects to info[at]platform21.com and you might see your project featured at their website or upcoming exhibition. Show opens on March 13, so get inspired, get started.

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Taking Space Coffee to the Next Level

We featured astronaut Don Pettit's inventive space sippy-cup last fall and now see that coroflot member Travis Baldwin may be working with Don on developing it further.

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Students design cockpit of superfast vehicle

And finally, if we were test pilot/drivers slated to drive a land vehicle at speeds of 1,000mph, We'd want the cockpit designed by professionals, not students. But world land speed record challenger Andy Green is confident that the product design students of University of the West of England are up to the task. Twenty of UWE's best worked on the cockpit for the Bloodhound SSC, aformentioned land vehicle:

World land speed challenger Andy Green, OBE tried out a mock-up of the cockpit he will use in his 1000 mph record attempt in 2011 at the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol) recently. Twenty product design students designed and built the cockpit test rig, taking into account the ergonomics of the driving position and relationship of steering, controls, seating and pedals. Product Design Senior Lecturer David Henshall said, "The test rig means fine adjustments to the position of all components can be measured and fed into a computer, so that the cockpit functions as it should do as the driver travels ten miles in 85 seconds." Student Hywel Vaughan said, "Everything had to be spot on. Andy Green's eye line needed to be dead on the 4 degree mark. Any lower and he wouldn't be able to see over the front of the car, any higher and it could interfere with the aerodynamics." Andy Green said: "There isn't a book to build a car like this and the students can't just look at their dad's car for guidance. The only requirement is to have four wheels. To be faced with a blank sheet of paper is quite frightening. The students at UWE have done incredibly well."

For more information, click here.

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Special thanks to Mark Vanderbeeken for his contribution to this week's newsletter!

Please share the Monday Morning Must Read with colleagues, clients and collaborators. Many email programs do not forward messages in their original format, so please use this link: http://www.designdirectory.com/blog/newsletter

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

Autodesk Manufacturing 2010 Announcements: Alias for your Mac, and Plenty More Besides

Autodesk's "Manufacturing 2010 Products Webinar" concluded last week; the one hour webcast serves as the official party line on what software changes are slated for release to the Industrial Design community (among others). In Autodesk's case, this mostly means Alias and its close kin Sketchbook Pro and Showcase, but a few notable things are going on with Inventor as well. Here's the stuff Core readers are probably curious to know:

1.  Alias for the Mac - Yes. It's true, and it's official. According to product line manager Thomas Heermann, they've been building a Mac version for about a year and a half "when [Apple] started shipping really good hardware", and expect to ship it along with the new Windows version in early April. It's a native build, and will have all the function of the Windows version, though we're withholding judgement on whether this constitutes a slam dunk until we actually get a look at the thing in action -- there are far too many examples of crappy cross-platform translations out there for us to get excited, though we'd be shocked if things weren't level after two or three more releases (see Adobe, for example, in the other direction). It'll be interesting to watch the horse race that breaks out in a few months as Alias and Rhino jockey for dominance in the newly opened Mac surfacing market: Alias has more high-end clout, and is the first there with a fully-reatured release, but McNeel's been beta testing it forever, and stands to have a more integrated "Mac-like" product up when they finally make it official.

2.  Realistic Pricing - Realizing, perhaps, that a large and growing fraction of their user base work as freelancers or in small shops with shallow pockets, Autodesk is dropping the price of the most basic version to $4000, which seems to be the magic number upon which many high-end CAD packages are converging (except you, Rhino). The product line, by the way, has re-embraced the Alias name, so that DesignStudio, AutoStudio, etc are now Alias Design, Alias Surface, and Alias Automotive. Note that if you're a car designer, you're probably working for a big company for whom the US$65,000 on Alias Automotive is not as big a concern as the tanking market and the striking assembly line workers.

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Core77 Photo Gallery: Toy Fair 2009

Here's a gallery featuring shots from Toy Fair, spanning two floors of the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York.

>> view gallery

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Advertisement

OLED Design Competition Deadline: Feb, 15, 2009 The OLED Design Contest aims to collect smart and stylish ideas expressing the explosive potential of OLED technology. Entry Deadline: Feb 15, 2009

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Compostmodern 09: Why We're Here

So what, you may be wondering, is this Compostmodern really about? Well for one, it's not just your typical green conference...or your typical design conference, say co-founders Gaby Brink and Phil Hamlett. Compostmodern was created "to inspire designers to think about sustainability beyond just process and materials," says Brink. "That we can bring about change wherever we are, in our own ways."

And here's the fantastic Joel Makower, whose turn as moderator at Compostmodern last year was so influential, he's planning his own green design conference, Greener By Design. Since we saw him last he's also published a book: The Green Economy.

Makower reminds us of one thing that's probably crossed everyone's minds at least once today: This is a very interesting time for this conference to be happening (um, understatement!). It's rather Dickinsonian, says Makower, totally a "best of times and worst of times" scenario.

The best of times: Technology has spurred the convergence of three rather important parts of our lives: energy, information, manufacturing. And this guarantees that we'll be able to use what we learned from the information revolution (how computers became smarter over time and learned to talk to each other) and apply it to our ancient energy grid (someday the exchange of energy will be intelligent and communicate wirelessly).

The worst of times: Makower wants us to think about a number: 5000. 5000 days is about how much time we have to figure all this out. It's about 13 years. In that time we can't just "be more sustainable," have to completely transform the way we think.

All Compostmodern 09 posts:

>> Compostmodern 09: Nathan Shedroff Has Monday's Homework Assignment

>> Compostmodern 09: Dawn Danby Is Throwing a Sustainability Party and Everyone's Invited

>> Compostmodern 09: Emily Pilloton's Very Good Year

>> Compostmodern 09: John Bielenberg and Pam Dorr Think Wrong To Do Right

>> Compostmodern 09: Saul Griffith Runs the Numbers

>> Compostmodern 09: Michel Gelobter Is the Coolest

>> Compostmodern 09: Allan Chochinov's 10-Step Program

>> Compostmodern 09: Eames Demetrios and the Power of Scale

>> Compostmodern 09: How We Already Know This Compostmodern Conference Is Different

>> Compostmodern 09: Tune in Tomorrow For Compostmodern

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Project H's Latest Design Combines Tires, Dirt, Students and Math

Speaking of the Compostmodern conference that started in SF last week, here is another reminder of why we were so excited to hear from Project H founder Emily Pilloton. This time it's the Learning Landscape Math Playground, a simple installation of worn-out tires that serves double duty as a school playground and a tool for teaching arithmetic.

The first such playground was designed and installed at Kutamba AIDS Orphas School in southern Uganda, with support from Project H's New York chapter. And while we think it's a pretty cool idea, and decent use of old tires, we're especially keen on its scalability and locally appropriate bill of materials. Since everything is locally sourced and installation relatively straightforward, this playground has the potential to be easily replicated anywhere you can find a patch of land and some tires -- which essentially means anywhere on the planet.

For more information about the Learning Landscape project, and some of the other thoughtful, useful things Project H has been up to, check out their website or some of Core's previous postings of their work.

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Belgium opens zero-emissions Antarctic research station

My utility bill's always higher this time of year, for a simple reason: Frigid New York winters require cranked heat and longer, hotter showers.

So I'd expect an Antarctic research station to have a crazy utility bill. Instead, Belgium's Princess Elisabeth Station, which was inaugurated earlier this week, is the first zero-emission research station and yep, it's down by the South Pole. How the heck do they heat the place? With a crapload of solar panels and wind turbines.

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Continuum: Rethinking Green for Lean Times

What happened to the green consumer? Sales of hybrid cars, organic food, and solar panels are on the wane, as recession fears forced the hand of the Whole Foods class. The self-described greenies were supposed to lead as early adopters, a small but growing group of committed and conscious consumers willing to vote with their wallets and drive the green business revolution. Yet a new study published by design firm Continuum suggests that this niche understanding of green behavior may have blinded us to a less faddish and more mainstream trend that fits our more frugal times.

Over a year ago, Continuum, which was one of the first global firms to adopt the Designers Accord, launched the aptly named Colorblind research study to understand how people were re-orienting themselves to the idea of environmentally friendly design. Using sophisticated research techniques such as in context ethnography and follow up conversations with over 7,000 people in an online community setting, Continuum focused their efforts on everyday Americans who may or may not consider themselves green. Kristin Heist, one of the designers who lead the study, explained, "part of our interest in taking on the project was in exploring who we could make sustainability more part of the mainstream. We felt like there were plenty of people chasing after the leading edge 'green' consumers. That was a problem, because, to be completely idealistic for a moment, if we are going to save the world, we need to make everyone a part of it."

What Continuum did differently than most standard research studies on purchase intent was to go behind the cover story everyone tells about green. When you ask the average consumer if they are interested in products that cause less environmental harm, they tend to say yes. But when you follow them around the supermarket or visit them in their own homes, you are able to get closer to the truth. What did Continuum discover?

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Gary Hustwit on BoingBoing Gadgets

Speaking of lean times:

I really think designers are going to save our asses and turn this economic situation around. When the economy is tanking, companies need to put more thought into redesigning their systems and products from top to bottom. If a designer can come up with a way to make my product with 25% less material, that's a huge savings if I'm making millions of products. Better design makes that product less expensive to the consumer, more profitable for the company, and it'll use less material resources. So we need to design our way out of this depression!

Read the rest here.

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To Design or Not to Design: Allan Chochinov's conversation with Steve Heller

Allan Chochinov was privileged to be interviewed by Steven Heller for piece just published on AIGA's Voice called "To Design or Not to Design: A Conversation with Allan Chochinov. In the interview Steve and Allan talk about product design, design imperatives, and design education, and it was a great chance to flesh out some ideas around sustainability, responsibility, and pedagogy. Here's our favorite exchange:

Heller: Students have the right to choose to be "citizen designers." I believe my students should not be herded into a pen where all they do is follow the golden rule, but I believe I--we--have an obligation to teach them to design in a responsible manner for a realistic goal. I also believe that they must be taught to convince others of the rightness of what they are doing. Of course, this is a double-edged sword, so to speak: They can be too convincing and, like Bernie Madoff, be total scoundrels. How do we keep designers from pulling the wool over the client's and the public's eyes? I believe we must be diligent about our critiques and what we accept or not. Too often students are allowed to get away with things that would not be accepted by professionals, under the guise of allowing them to grow. Have you been affected by that conundrum?

Chochinov: This is something I talk a lot about in class, actually--the notion of what is "playing fair" and how these students have been manipulated and bullied by all the forces active in contemporary culture, and how they are now learning the skills to fight back, and how they can be used for good rather than evil. I don't want to make too big a deal about this, but the art of design is very often the art of persuasion--whether it happens through a product or an ad campaign or a poster or a piece of interactive media. So preparing the practitioners of that art comes with an added responsibility--on top of the "training" and "educating" I alluded to before.

But when you offer that "too often students are allowed to get away with things that would not be accepted by professionals under the guise of allowing them to grow," I'd like to propose a caution: Professionals are some of the worst offenders, of course, and preparing students for "professional practice" may be preparing them for the compromises, complicity and propagation of the same unsustainable values and outputs that we now understand to be the dark side of design, advertising, marketing and mass production. I think school is exactly the place where they should be getting away with an unbelievable amount--particularly grad school.

Read the whole thing here.

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Experience Design 1.1: Reissued

Everyone who's everyone [sic] these days talks about Experience Design, but 8 years ago, when the book Experience Design first came out, the approach was pioneering. Nathan Shedroff, its author and the guy who basically invented the term, has just come out with a reissue of this seminal book, with new text, new examples, and a new title, appropriately Experience Design 1.1. (That's gotta be the best usage yet.) Here's from the release:

At the beginning of this century, many people confused Experience Design with Web, digital, or interactive design. Many didn't connect design with the development of all experiences, whether realtime/realspace or virtual" explains, Nathan Shedroff. "Now, it's finally become clear to most that the brand experience of any offering must be consistent, compelling, and delightful through all touchpoints in all media." The book explains 50 topics of experience design, highlighting both a digital and non-digital example of each.

The book, a 312 page, full-color job is only US $25, but you can also get it as a PDF download for only US $10. Both are available right here.

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Dmitri Siegel: Paper, Plastic, or Canvas?

A great piece on DesignObserver last week by Dmitri Siegel.

Here's the Yin and the Yang:

Ironically, however plastic bag problem can in large part be traced back to the quality of its design as well. Before the introduction of the ultra thin plastic bags in the 1980s groceries were packed almost exclusively in paper bags. Plastic bags were touted as a way to save trees. Within a few years plastic was dominant and now commands 80% of grocery and supermarket traffic. Comparing a plastic bag to a paper bag it is easy to see why: the ultra thin plastic bag is a vastly superior design. It consumes 40 percent less energy, generates 80 percent less solid waste, produces 70 percent fewer atmospheric emissions, and releases up to 94 percent fewer waterborne wastes. A plastic bag costs roughly a quarter as much to produce as a paper bag and is substantially lighter so it takes a great less more fossil fuel to transport. Plastic bags are among the most highly reused items in the home and are just as recyclable as paper.

The problem is that what is marvelous about an individual plastic bag becomes menacing when multiplied out to accommodate a rapidly growing global economy. The low cost of the bags allowed merchants to give them away and despite the strength of an individual bag, they are routinely packed with a single item or double-bagged unnecessarily. The bag was so cleverly designed that there is simply no barrier to their indiscriminate distribution. Their incredible durability means it can take up to hundreds of years for them to decompose (a process that releases hazardous toxins). Although plastic bags are recyclable, the evidence suggests that even after ten years, in-store recycling programs have barely managed to achieve a one percent recycle rate. It is simply too easy and efficient to keep making and distributing more plastic bags. Meanwhile consumers mistakenly try to recycle the bags through their curbside recycling programs (perhaps because of the recycle symbols printed on the bags) creating a sorting nightmare at recycling facilities across the country.

And then the best sentence of all: "Best intentions are almost immediately buried under an avalanche of conspicuous consumption and proliferation of choice."

Oops. One more: "On the other hand, it is unclear that a consumable can counteract the effects of consumption."

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Moleskines go large

Moleskines are great for scribbling writing on the go, but if you like to sketch, they're just too small. They're finally addressing this, with new products on the way:

This spring, Moleskine is launching The Folio Collection. This series of large format notebooks was created especially for today's creative market, and the papers are FSC Certified. The books will be available in 5 styles:

- Ruled book : 176 pages, available in the A4 format
- Plain book : 176 pages, available in the A4 and A3 formats
- Portfolio : an accordion-style tool featuring big pockets in cardboard and cloth, available in A4 and A3 formats
- Sketchbook : 96 large pages in high quality heavy paper, available in A4 and A3 formats
- Watercolour Album : 60 pages, heavy paper, 200 gsm, cold pressed, available in the A4 and A3 format

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Vending Manchine

And finally, we like the idea of a human vending machine better than an automatic one. Because rather than shaking the machine to get extras, we can try to persuade the operator to give me some.

Human Vending Machines [are] being brought to the UK by Kit Kat.

Rather than being victim to your favoured chocolate bar getting stuck in the mechanisms of a traditional vending machine; the Kit Kat Human Vending Machine is operated by an actual human 'vendor'.

The consumer will experience the speed and efficiency of a normal vending machine, with the added bonus of having a person to chat to and physically hand them their chocolate treat.

The innovative vending machine is part of the latest Kit Kat 'Working Like a Machine' campaign, which plays off the idea that people are overwhelmed with the monotony of everyday life and so need to take a break.

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Special thanks to Jen van der Meer for her contribution to this week's newsletter!

Please share the Monday Morning Must Read with colleagues, clients and collaborators. Many email programs do not forward messages in their original format, so please use this link: http://www.designdirectory.com/blog/newsletter

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

UNITX - Robotic delivery system

UNITX (united networks international transport exchange) is a concept for the transportation of goods to your house using logibots (pictured) which would travel at speed through a massive network of underground tunnels. You'd be forgiven for thinking this was the work of some 3D rendering kid who's watched one too many high budget sci-fi films, in fact it's a project by Viennese entrepreneur turned artist Michael Marcovicia and author of the book, "The end of EBay".

Marcovici dropped out of school at 17, sold hist first company at 23, spent 3 years globetrotting, founded magazines werk-zeug, a technology and art magazine, and streetfashion, a global fashion snapshot mag. He holds international patents to many ideas ranging from inventions for climbing and bicycle equipment to trading systems and electronic payment systems. His eBay business at it's peak had 80 employees and a turnover of 30 million euros a year—the company went bankrupt in early 2005.

The UNITX project proposes to fundamentally change the way our economy works today.

The logibots are able to transport up to 4 boxes with dimensions of up to 60x60x45 cm. They can travel with a top speed of 50 km/h, not only able to move forward and backward, but also up and down in the corridors. This way, sending and receiving merchandise or items in general becomes much easier. Deliveries will only take 20 minutes on average, no packaging is required, special logibots could offer cooling or freezing services, X-Ray or bomb detection.

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Photo: Robert Patrick

How (Not) to Write like a Designer: 5 Tricks You Didn't Learn in Studio

Half technical, half intuitive, the design process is tough to explain. But that’s my job—I’m a design writer. I write so you don’t have to, putting into words the work that you’d rather do than write about. But write you must—website copy, proposals, captions, emails to clients—and though the worse designers are at it, the more work I get, in the spirit of collaboration I’m going to share my secrets. So what if it puts me out of a job.

What follows are five fairly broad tips to keep in mind. Many of them will probably sound obvious. Some of you might be following these suggestions already. That’s good, but having them explained like this will help you see what you’re doing right, or simply give you a new way to think about how you’re already writing. It’s by no means an exhaustive list; add more suggestions in the comments if you want. My goal is to get designers thinking more about writing the way writers do—as a tool, a craft, and yes, an art in its own right—rather than a necessary chore. Your training as a designer will influence your writing, and your work at turning ideas into narratives will influence your design, and who knows, that might not be a bad thing. Pencils ready?

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Advertisement

OLED Design Competition Deadline: Feb, 15, 2009 The OLED Design Contest aims to collect smart and stylish ideas expressing the explosive potential of OLED technology. Entry Deadline: Feb 15, 2009

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Book Review: Women of Design, by Bryony Gomez-Palacio and Armin Vit

Initially reviewing a book like Women of Design: Influence and Inspiration from the Original Trailblazers to the New Groundbreakers offered trepidation because, well, I'm a man, and I thought my opinion might be suspect. Recently, though, the New York Times Magazine (coincidentally a periodical designed by Janet Froelich, profiled in the book) included a thought-provoking article "What Women Want", by Daniel Bergner, about female sexuality and the very real differences in male and female perception of physical beauty and attractiveness. Early in the article, he quotes Kurt Freund, a pioneering sexologist who said, "How am I to know what it is to be a woman? Who am I to study women, when I am a man?"

I'm happy to report that while perhaps we can admit that while there are profound neuroanatomical differences between men and women and their perceptions of the opposite sex, our graphic design and art seem to be measurable by a common yardstick. The work profiled by Gomez-Palacio and Vit amply demonstrates that women produce graphic design in every way comparable to that of men. Indeed, when comparing the graphic elements introduced by masculine Bauhaus visionaries like Laszlo Moholy-Nagy with the work of Ellen Lupton like Thinking With Type (also profiled here), it's obvious that the more modern work is more scientifically thought out and aesthetically pleasing. Indeed when looking at the work of the designers profiled within, aesthetic trends show more improvement across temporal than gender lines. That said, the employment opportunities offered to the women within do seem to skew towards fashion and housework -- multiple subjects cut their chops at Martha Stewart Living, for example -- though I think that may say more about the workplace than it does about design. Looking at the actual work contained within, I couldn't help but notice that stereotypes about the feminine aesthetic seemed to apply more broadly to the client than the designer, which strongly indicates that the capacity of a designer to produce good work for a client has little to do with gender.

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A Newswire Named Sue

AP photographer Mannie Garcia takes a photo of Obama on the campaign trail. Artist Shepard Fairey turns the image into a poster, and gets the pants sued off of him by AP. Then Garcia says he has the rights to the image, not AP, but that he's happy the photo was turned into the poster.

Steven Heller (of the Daily Heller) on the Garcia/Fairey/AP thing:

...I do want to point out that this is not the first time photographs (and other artworks) have been the raw material for graphic works. In fact, the already murky area called "fair use," which Fairey's lawyers are invoking, has been applied before. [Here] are a few that have passed that very test. (Che by Alberto Korda and Paul Davis; Nixon official photo and Andy Warhol; Mao official portrait and Andy Warhol; News photo of Sacco and Vanzetti and Ben Shahn; Michelangelo's Isaiah and Norman Rockwell's Rosie the Riveter.)

>> Continue: view other famous photographs turned iconic graphics.

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Greener Gadgets TOP 50 Highlight: The Laundry POD, a portable hand-oporated laundry machine

For convenience sake, Greener Gadget Top 50 Semi-Finalist Laundry POD, designed by RKS Design Team, combines the salad spinner and the laundry machine, creating a new way to clean our clothes while saving energy at the same time!

While re-engineering and re-designing a salad spinner, we learned resourceful women were buying salad spinners to wash their delicates. This sparked the idea that the salad spinner technology we innovated could be used to create a portable, hand-powered laundry machine that would be far more appropriate for the task, than a salad spinner. The Laundry POD combines innovation and eco-conscious style to save energy, water and answer the need for a quick, easy, eco-friendly way to do small loads.

Like this design? Wanna vote for it or leave a comment? Check out this entry or the entire Greener Gadgets TOP 50 Gallery and help determine the TOP 10 for live judging at the upcoming Greener Gadgets Conference.

>>VOTE FOR YOUR FAVORITE GREENER GADGET NOW!!<<

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Reflections: Design for Sustainability Roundtable at Adobe

Speaking of going green--last Thursday at the San Francisco headquarters of Adobe, a few dozen leaders within the sustainable design industry sat down with tapas and wine for an open discussion about our experiences. Emceed by Josh Ulm of Adobe, the evening consisted of two open conversations, one focusing on the role of the designer, and one on the state of design as an industry. Valerie Casey of IDEO and the Designers Accord, Gaby Brink of Tomorrow Partners, and Brian Dougherty of Celery Design led the sessions, and attendees including myself, Phil Hamlett of the Academy of ArtAcademy of Art, John Bielenberg of Project M, and many others, chimed. My favorite sound bite came from John Bielenberg, who declared "Sustainability needs rebranding."

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Interaction 09: All posts in one place!

From opening parties to closing remarks, Core is all over IxDA's latest gathering in Vancouver. Links to our posts here, links to other coverage below:

Interaction 09: Vancouver is the right town.

Interaction 09: Some nice touches.

Interaction 09: Day One Recap

Interaction 09: Behavior as the medium, and the search for IxD rockstars

Interaction 09: LiveScribe Paper Computing System is cooler than it sounds

Interaction 09: Lightning Rounds

Interaction 09: Coroflot job board, snapshots from day 3

Elsewhere on the web:

Johnny Holland, an English language site based in the Netherlands, has been described as "the Core77 of Interaction Design" (!) -- exhaustive coverage of nearly every session is here.

Doug Lemoine of Cooper gives a succinct run-down of the keynotes here.

Jon Kolko of Frog Design gives a more critical analysis, and a link to the slides from his own talk, on Design Mind.

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A New Hive for Creative Minds in Brooklyn

Writes Andrew Personette, Executive Director of EcoSystems, a consultancy that creates "products, systems, and services for a healthy planet:

If you've never thought of Downtown Brooklyn as an epicenter for creative industries, its time to change your mind. There is a high concentration of designers, eco-entreprenuers, architects and urban planners getting cozy in a coworking environment at 33 Flatbush Ave, about a block from BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music). The building itself is probably "the only building in NYC that has a negative Carbon Footprint. We only sequester, nothing goes out," says owner Al Atarra.

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Today: New Kindle. Tomorrow: New Kindle Competitor

Amazon announced the new version of the Kindle last week with an upgraded design. (The first photo above shows the old Kindle, the second photo is the new.) According to purportedly leaked documents acquired by Engadget, the redesign features a metal back, rounded corners, smaller buttons, stereo speakers on the back, and a surprisingly slim casing.

Meanwhile, a company called Plastic Logic demonstrated a prototype of their forthcoming Kindle competitor, just one day after the Kindle's re-launch, at a tech conference in New York City. The Plastic Logic Reader will allegedly have a 10.7-inch screen, larger than the Kindle--"the company is hoping that the larger size will interest publishers who think that shrinking a newspaper page onto a small screen does not provide a good reading experience," writes The New York Times--but will not be available until next year.

>> continue (video)

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UK Treasury invites designers to a summit to find new ways to save money and improve public services

Angela Eagle MP, Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, hosted a "Design Summit" to identify ways that designers can help government improve efficiency and value for money in public services, and the role design can play in finding innovative ways to achieve savings in government procurement.

The event, held at No 11 Downing Street, took the minister and colleagues across government through some recent examples of how design has helped transform services which, if scaled up nationally, could have a major impact on value for money and efficiency in the public sector.

>> Read article

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Chicago's Driehaus Foundation Awards celebrate lesser-known architects

Is it possible the recession will usher in a new era of unknown, more humble architects? According to the Chicago Tribune, "As the recession lingers and mega-buck, starchitect-designed buildings fall by the wayside, the example set by the Driehaus awards can only grow in importance."

One of the best, but least noticed, architectural honors programs in Chicago is the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Awards recognizing excellence in community design. Every year, these awards showcase projects in the neighborhoods that are not splashy or high-budget, but remind us that a city is only as good as the small buildings that make up the fabric of its streets and blocks.

First prize winner, the SOS Children's Villages Lavezzorio Community Center (photo above)...makes innovative use of donated concrete. Its facade consists of wavy layers of concrete, expressing the fact that donors gave materials to the building at different times as well as concrete's inherent plasticity. Its interior spaces are spatially dynamic and uplifting, enticing both children and their caregivers....

The second-prize winner, the headquarters of Access Living, was designed by LCM Architects and is a model for combining universal design and sustainable design. It's in River North. Third prize went to Kennedy King College, by Johnson & Lee Architects and VOA, which brings solid traditional design to the South Side's troubled, but trying-hard-to-recover, Englewood neighborhood.

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What Your Gadgets are Doing to the Social Web

Web-enabled devices aren't just a one way street, you know. While the effect that new content or services online has on your daily experience with your iPhone, XBox, Blackberry, etc. is readily apparent as soon as you start browsing around, a more subtle form of influence is traveling in the opposite direction: gadget use is changing the way the web works. Slowly, perhaps, but in an enduring and ultimately profound way.

Dana Oshiro, marketing director of the "peer-to-peer tech support site" FixYa has done a handy job of teasing out what some of these effects might be, in a guest post for Mashable.com entitled 6 Gadget Trends and Their Effects on Social Media. Some of the findings are fairly obvious -- location-based sites like Brightkite and Loopt, for example, owe much of their success to GPS-enable smartphones -- while others are more intriguing. Curious how the web will react to pico-projector-enabled phones? Check out the article for a plausible answer.

Image: gregverdino.com

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Photo via Wired

Congratulations to Jeannie Choe and Bryan Haggerty!

And finally, speaking of social gadgets, congratulations to Core77 writer Jeannie Choe and Bryan Haggert, who proposed to Jeannie by writing an iPhone app named Romantech and leading her on a video scavenger hunt around San Francisco.

We wish the iLoveBirds all the happiness in the world.

See the Wired story here.

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Special thanks to Mark Vanderbeeken and Emily Pilloton for their contribution to this week's newsletter!

Please share the Monday Morning Must Read with colleagues, clients and collaborators. Many email programs do not forward messages in their original format, so please use this link: http://www.designdirectory.com/blog/newsletter

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

Materials-savvy designer turns senior project into a company

As part of his senior year ID project, Australian Craig Nottage designed a transparent billiards table; now he's founded his own company in Adelaide, Nottage Design, and made the table a reality. A special combination of glass and resin provide the same resistance you'd get with felt, but are completely transparent; the tubing of the slick ball-return mechanisms are also exposed. At AUS $40,000 it ain't cheap, but it's nice to see someone turn a senior project into a reality--and build a company around it.

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Core77 Photo Gallery: Cologne Design Festival 2009

The Cologne International Design Festival consists of two main (unfortunately competing rather than collaborating) events: The IMM Furniture Show and the Passagen - a show program with a great number of exhibitions in the main fair as well as galleries, show rooms, bars and shops across the city.

>> view gallery

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Advertisement

OLED Design Competition Deadline: Feb, 15, 2009 The OLED Design Contest aims to collect smart and stylish ideas expressing the explosive potential of OLED technology. Entry Deadline: Feb 15, 2009

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Talk to the Hand: Dan Saffer and gestural interfaces, by Andy Polaine

In the recent James Bond film Quantum of Solace there is a scene in which M, Bond and other agents share information and briefings around a multitouch table. Just three or four years ago this would have seemed as sci-fi as the now infamous scene in Minority Report, but this time it felt like MI6 was almost behind the curve.

From the work of Jeff Han to Apple's iPhone, Nintendo's Wii and slew of larger multitouch interfaces such as Microsoft's Surface and MultiTouch's Cell, the era of gestural interfaces is here. Physical and screen-based interfaces have collapsed into each other and both industrial and interaction designers have a whole new set of issues to grapple with.

Dan Saffer's latest book, Designing Gestural Interfaces maps out this new frontier. The positive side is that there are a range of exciting new interaction and product possibilities. The negative side is a potentially confusing mess of gestures, each specific to a brand or, worse, owned by one of them through irresponsible patent usage.

>> continue reading

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1Hour Design Challenge Winners!!! Laser-cut Grip Tape Inlay for a Longboard!

The results are in! The latest 1 Hour Design Challenge: Laser-cut Grip Tape Inlay for a Longboard brought the largest number of entries in the history of the 1HDC, with participants uploading an incredible array of grip tape graphic designs.

Huge thanks to our sponsors on this challenge: Ponoko and Bustin Boards, who have been extremely generous with their offerings. It was a really tough call for the judges, but here are the winners:

"Day of the Dead" designed by delaojoser

"Freedom" designed by leebaz

"Muse 2" designed by b_fuzz

The judges also decided to award a special "King of the 'boards" award to...jerry! who uploaded over 60 designs to this 1HDC. Bustin has generously offered to custom print jerry's "Alligator Clip" design on one of their boards!

Congratulations to the winners, and thanks to everyone who participated!

>> View past Core77 1 Hour Design Challenges

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Bangle: Bye-bye BMW (and auto design)

According to Autoweek, legendary designer Chris Bangle, the man responsible for the much-imitated aesthetics of the BMW 7-series, is quitting the auto design industry to "pursue his own design-related endeavors."

In an interview with the man, Motor Trend mused that Bangle might be "The most influential automotive designer of the early 21st century." For those of you unfamiliar with him, here's a look at some Bangle news, opinions and accomplishments from the past few years:

Bangle on design, from Design Thinking Digest.

>> continue reading (videos)

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BMW's Bangle replacement an even more radical designer?

Following the previous news that BMW's Chris Bangle has quit the business, Driving takes a look at Bangle's "flame" aesthetic:

The "flame surfacing" design language he pioneered involves a contorted mess of convex arcs intersecting each other at sharp angles to create elliptical and trapezoidal contours out of sheet-metal across which, in the right conditions, the light is meant to dance like the flames of a fire. The result has been some of the most unusual shapes seen on BMWs since Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein took part in the company's "art car" initiative in the 70s. Other designers use the name Bangle as a term for a project gone wrong, and "Bangle-butt" has become a derisive label for cars with awkward, protruding trunks. Yet despite the controversy of his designs, Bangle's influence has left an indelible mark on his field and on the industry.

Meanwhile, Wheels 24 posits that Bangle's replacement, Adriaan von Hooydonk, had more to do with "flame surfacing" than most people give credit for, and can be expected to push BMW design into even more radical directions:

Though Chris Bangle shouldered much of the publically expressed anger concerning the forth generation 7 series styling, it was in fact Von Hooydonk who penned the car's lines.

...Von Hooydonk has made his intentions clear. He wishes to push the avant-garde design direction BMW has taken bearings on under Bangle's term even further.

BMW buyers who expected the company's designs (and those of Mini and Rolls-Royce by implication too) to mellow are in for a rude shock. We can only speculate whether [Dutchman] Von Hooydonk likes a smoke with his pancakes in the morning, but his designs are typically sculptural and outlandish in contemporary Dutch design fashion.

We're sure of one thing though. BMW AG board members will be rubbing their eyes or calling for a technician to calibrate their desktop screens when Von Hooydonk's latest signed-off designs are circulated via e-mail.

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Interaction 09: Day One Recap

With workshops wrapped up (see above), day one of Interaction 09 moved into full swing with several solid afternoon sessions, starting with John Thackara's tweet-provoking keynote.

Opening with a fairly dismal end-of-the-world sort of call to action, the talk painted a picture of multiple coinciding peaks, and not in a good way: peak credit, peak oil, peak movement, peak embergy (embodied energy in manufactured goods), peak water, peak protein, peak climate change. The recurring upshot of all of these was an imbalance in resource usage versus carrying capacity, and an admission that some common behaviors, like regularly consuming food shipped from across the planet, are going to have to go away before too long, regardless of how much efficiencies are improved.

The doom and gloom, though lengthy and impassioned, was eventually used as an introduction to potential solutions and attendant design opportunities. The most immediate examples named were assessment tools: protocols with tortuous acronyms for names -- IBAT, MIMES, BBOP, TEEB, ESR -- that offer rigorous ways of accounting for the ecological and social impact of products and services. Such processes, Thackara argued, are crucial to long-term behavioral change, and moreover constitute some fascinating and worthwhile challenges for the concerned interaction designer.

>> continue reading

>> Interaction 09: Some nice touches.

>> Interaction 09: Vancouver is the right town.

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Alex Steffen on Obama, Science, and NASA

WAY late on this, but last week Alex posted a great piece on the necessity of NASA's role "to understand and protect our home planet." Here's the sweet spot:

Here's one of the best small, free ways I can think of for America to signal that change: restore NASA's mission statement of service.

See, back in the dark ages of 2006, Bush hacks in NASA censored the space agency's mission statement. It had been "To understand and protect our home planet; to explore the universe and search for life; to inspire the next generation of explorers … as only NASA can." The next thing we knew, the "understand and protect our home planet" part was cut, implying that NASA has no legitimate role in applying science to the planet's problems.

That should change. Indeed, we should go farther, explicitly adding two key ideas which have always been part of its scientific mission: duty to the future and to the benefit of all humanity.

I think the mission statement should read, "To understand and protect our home planet for the benefit of all humanity; to explore the universe and search for life; to prepare for the future and to inspire the next generation of explorers."

And now that a few days have passed, you get the benefit of the comments. Our favorite? "One small sentence from a man. A giant step for mankind!" Too easy!

Hey: Don't forget to check out Designing for Space: Core77 visits NASA's Industrial Design Team, by Glen Jackson Taylor.

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FUEL, the movie.

We were lucky to score a ticket to last week's New York premier of Fuel, director Josh Tickell's Sundance-winning opus around oil, biofuels, politics, and the military industrial complex (of course; no sarcasm). The event took place at the the Gerald Lynch in Manhattan, and was a packed house of eco-warriors, fans, politicians and well-wishers. The film was great--if a bit long--and despite circling back on itself a couple too many times and mixing genres (also a couple of times), presented an impassioned, convincing, and ultimately inspiring portrait of our dependence on foreign oil, potential alternatives, and a few of the people behind the technologies (and strategies) needed to move us to a more sustainable place.

The film opens opens in theaters on March 13th, so make sure to attend and show your support toward a national release. There's also a huge initiative to get the DVD into every public school for free. (In the meantime, learn more getting the film for your school here.)

Above: Panel discussionists Karen Solomon (Opportunity Green), Marc Alt (Marc Alt + Partners), James Gennaro (NY City Council Member, 24th District), and Josh Tickell (Director, FUEL). Photo: Johanna Bjork.

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A world where the MacBook Air is fat: How will Google's GDrive influence product design?

Back in the '50s computers filled entire rooms, now they barely fill your lap. But there's still potential for them to shrink even further, and I'm not just talking about making the components smaller, I'm talking about getting rid of components entirely.

Google's G-Drive will be a huge step forward in so-called cloud computing, as it will enable us to keep all our files off-site. The way things are going technology-wise, this sounds like a fine, rational next step. But the UK's Design Week asks, "What will Google's GDrive mean for computer design?"

"The freeing of computers from the constraints of a PC will throw up amazing opportunities to design rich and intuitive interfaces," says Patrick Hunt, creative director of product design group Therefore. Click here to see how Hunt, Samsung creative manager Clive Goodwin, Bill Moggridge, and futurologist Ray Hammond think the GDrive will influence product design.

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Interaction Design Pilot Year - gallery of work

The Interaction Design Pilot Year is a collaborative initiative between Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (CIID) and The Danish Design School (DKDS), with the aim of bringing together students, faculty and staff in a multi-cultural, multidisciplinary studio environment to co-create a new kind of education that is relevant for academia and industry.

A gallery of student work produced throughout the year has just gone online.

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Snapshots from PSFK's Good Ideas Salon, London

Guest post from Kevin McCullagh.

Boy do we need some good new ideas right now. In these dark recessionary days, PSFK's Good Idea Salon's mission to search out positive and inspirational ideas was more than welcome. Especially since good ideas will have to be increasingly defended against recessionary cost-cutting and sustainability critiques of generating wasteful and unnecessary stuff.

The power of ideas are both overrated and underrated. These days any novel idea that raises an ironic eye brow is praised...before clicking onto the next cool thing. On the other hand we no longer hold out much hope for truly transformative ideas. The big ones that change the way we look at the world and compel us forward for years.

For example, recent claims that recessions benefit design often point to its flourishing in the 1930s, and see a causal relationship with the great depression. But the pioneers of the Bauhaus and elsewhere were inspired by the radical set of progressive ideas around Modernism, not the make-do-and-mend constraints of the depression. The big hairy audacious ideas of Modernism really did change the world.

So what of the Salon? Mark Earls reminded us that one of the really useful aspects of new ideas are that they help us test out our old ones. So even imperfect new ideas can cast existing ideas in a new light and be indirectly illuminating.

The panel discussion on whether London was witnessing a creative renaissance, like the Kings Cross area that the conference venue was situated, generated some morsels of interest. Matt Brown, thought that London benefited from two very different advantages: cheap space above pubs for people to meet and discuss issues they care about; and the rich cross-fertilisation between science and artists. Although I have to say that in my experience these cross-overs tend to be rather one sided, with the ideas coming for the scientists and the cliches from artists, which the media then duly lap up. The journalist Justin Quirk, made a case for mass intelligence by explaining how the FHM magazine team turned around sales by ditching topless women for articles on quantum mechanics and Iran nuclear program.

The best idea presented at the Salon was Troika's stunning 'Cloud' installation at London Heathrow's Terminal Five, which uses an array of 5,000 mirrored 'flip-dots' as a medium for animation.

The newest idea was presented by Richard Banks, who put the case for digital heirlooms as a way of managing the quality, quantity and meaning of a lifetime's digital content.

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Mozilla Phone developer seeks your input

Designer/editor Billy May has been working with Mozilla Labs on developing "a conceptual 'Mozilla Phone,'" he writes. "I thought it would be interesting to work this project out in the open and thought your readers might like to contribute to the development blog linked here."

Questions he asks of himself (and hopefully, you) are:

- What will make it a Mozilla Phone?
- How can every square millimeter of a phone both input and output information to the user?
- How can our buttons, screens, speakers and trackballs communicate to more of our senses?
- How about a volume wheel that gets harder to turn the louder it goes?

Pictured above is one of his concepts, an OLED Blackberry combining an Optimus Keyboard and a B'berry 7130. Got some ideas of your own, or comments and criticisms? Get in on the process here.

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IDEO founder David Kelley to receive Edison Achievement Award

Come April, IDEO founder David Kelley will have an Edison Achievement Award pinned on him for his "pioneering contributions to the design of breakthrough products, services, and experiences for consumers, as well as his development of an innovative culture that has broad impact." Kelley has had a hand in the design of the first computer mouse, the Palm Treo, and Steelcase's Leap chair, among other things. Fast Company celebrates Kelley's achievements with a series of articles, linked below:

IDEO's David Kelley wins Edison Award for Innovation

17 Career Lessons from IDEO's David Kelley

Ideo's Newest Design Projects (slideshow)

Why a Bowling Shirt Made Me Love David Kelley

Lastly, there's a compelling video of Kelley discussing interaction design up at the Designing Interactions site, definitely worth a look.

thanks noah!

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User-centered design alert: Hans Beck, designer of Playmobil figures, dies at 79.

From the nytimes:

Mr. Beck was the original designer and, for 24 years until he retired in 1998, head of research and development for Playmobil (pronounced playmoBEEL). The company is a division of Geobra Brandstatter GmbH & Company KG, founded in 1876, which originally made ornamental casket fittings and handles. Based in Zirndorf, Germany, it has since manufactured cash registers, telephones, piggy banks, self-watering planters and, starting in 1974, those tiny, round-faced, black-eyed characters with moon-sliver smiles.

Now here's the intriguing part:

After working as a cabinet maker, Mr. Beck was hired by Geobra Brandstatter as a toy maker after showing executives there the model planes he had designed. In the early 1970s, when the company was facing low revenue, its owner, Horst Brandstatter, asked Mr. Beck to design a line of toy buildings and vehicles into which little figures could be placed. Mr. Beck decided to make the figures first, then fashion their environs.

So, ya, he started with the user. Nice.

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A look at Vestergaard-Frandsen, the company behind the LifeStraw

And finally, on one end of the product design spectrum we have idiots making USB-powered sandwich warmers, i.e. useless junk that no one asked for and that hopefully does not turn a profit. On the other end we have Vestergaard-Frandsen.

Chances are you've not heard of the company, but you've probably heard of the LifeStraw, a plastic cylinder fitted with a filter that those in less developed countries can use to drink water--even from puddles--safely. Vestergaard-Frandsen manufactures the LifeStraw and a host of other products that are both innovative and seek to better the lives of poor people around the world.

The New York Times takes a look at the fascinating story behind the company. It will remind you how much of what we design is frivolous!

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Special thanks to Mark Vanderbeeken for his contribution to this week's newsletter!

Please share the Monday Morning Must Read with colleagues, clients and collaborators. Many email programs do not forward messages in their original format, so please use this link: http://www.designdirectory.com/blog/newsletter

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

The Greener Gadgets 2009 TOP 50 Semi-Finalists are up!

The response to this year's Greener Gadgets Design Competition was phenomenal. Entries came in from all over the world, and we were thrilled at the display of creativity and (deep) green design thinking. We've just published a gallery of the Top 50 Semi-Finalists, and now it's up to you to help determine which 10 go to the live judging at the Greener Gadgets Conference in New York City on February 27th.

Visit the Top 50 Gallery now, check out the entries, vote for your favorites, and leave comments. The judges will review the response over the next couple weeks and decide on the Top 10. The Grand Prize for this year's competition is US$3,000, with Second and Third Prizes of US$1,000 each.

Thanks to everyone who registered and entered, and congratulations to the Top 50. NOW GO AND VOTE!!!

Above: Bulb 2.0 by Felix Stark (Germany); Solaris by Iulius Lucaci (United States); BugPlug by Kamil Jerzykowski (Poland).

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Book Review: The L.A. Earthquake Sourcebook, designed by Stefan Sagmeister and edited by Gloria Gerace

Amazon's publicity blurb for The L.A. Earthquake Sourcebook bills it as "the coolest earthquake preparedness-book ever published," which I imagine to be true, but I also can't think of much competition. A collaboration between Stefan Sagmeister and The Art Center College of Design in association with the L.A. Earthquake Get Ready Project, the Sourcebook juxtaposes essays by experts like FEMA Director James Lee Witt with excerpts from authors like Joan Didion. The essays, fiction and graphic design are all interesting and on more than one occasion, I was curious to look into the works of the fiction authors included because the excerpts left me wondering about the works profiled after reading the short three to five page teasers.

The problem, both with the book, and explicitly acknowledged by the authors is that people (presumably both readers and California residents) don't really want to be reading or hearing about "the big one." Despite plenty of content and good intention, the graphic design, fiction and informative work each seem to exist in their own planes rather than coming together in synthesis. Individual graphic exercises like Clifford Elbi's transcription of the names of faults on the lines of the hand in a palmistry chart can provoke thought and inspire conversation, but most of the graphic design serves as bookends for essays rather than providing a template for action. At the very end of the book pages from Martin Kaplan and Darren Ragle's graphic novel "A River in Egypt" actually begin to combine graphic elements with earthquake advice on the same page, but the rest of the book feels more like a collection of (very good) poster design shuffled between informative, but somewhat disconnected essays. That said, I was never bored while paging through the book, which may be the highest praise to which an earthquake manual can aspire.

>> continue reading

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Advertisement

OLED Design Competition Deadline: Feb, 15, 2009 The OLED Design Contest aims to collect smart and stylish ideas expressing the explosive potential of OLED technology. Entry Deadline: Feb 15, 2009

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Cologne Design Festival 2009: All posts in one place

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

» Cologne Design Festival 2009: IMM: d3 Design Talents

» Cologne Design Festival 2009: More Design from the Rhine

» Cologne Design Festival 2009: IMM: Atelier van Lieshout

» Cologne Design Festival 2009: Passagen: Global Street Food

» Cologne Design Festival 2009: IMM & Passagen

VIDEOS:

» Cologne Design Festival 2009: Peter Freund: Nightwriter

» Cologne Design Festival 2009: Nils Wodzak: Mirror Iron Board Closet

» Cologne Design Festival 2009: Jennifer Heier: Relegs Chair

» Cologne Design Festival 2009: Stephan Landschuetz: Sporthocker

» Cologne Design Festival 2009: Mirror in Mirror & Bendy Coat Stand

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The future of organic design

Four panelists -- Paola Antonelli (MoMA architecture and design curator), Ross Lovegrove (designer) and Arturo Vittori and Andreas Vogler (architects and co-founder of the research and design studio Architecture and Vision) -- presented their ideas last week at Hubert Burda Media's Digital Life Design Conference (DLD) on nature as the main role model for design.

>> Watch video

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Philips racking up the iF Design Awards

Design giant Philips has been awarded a crapload of iF Design Awards (crapload = 22!), beyond the to-be-expected Audio/Video and Lifestyle product categories into the more surprising Health & Care, like their asthma-attack warning device, photo at bottom left.

The "design heritage" section of Philips' website reminds us that these guys have been around for a while:

As far back as the 1920s, when Philips was just adopting mass production, we understood that to reach consumers everywhere, we first had to properly understand them. Under the leadership of Louis Kalff, Philips advertising, product design and even architecture were inspired by differences in local preferences and customs worldwide.

By the 1960s, Philips was a strong global brand, but there was still a lack of consistency in our product design. As a result, Rein Veersema created the Industrial Design Bureau, and design was elevated to the forefront of the Philips brand.

Read the rest of the story here, and look at the entire list of their award-winners here.

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Greener Than Thou

The NYT reports on a program at a Sacramento utility to reduce usage through peer pressure.

Last April, it began sending out statements to 35,000 randomly selected customers, rating them on their energy use compared with that of neighbors in 100 homes of similar size that used the same heating fuel. The customers were also compared with the 20 neighbors who were especially efficient in saving energy.

Customers who scored high earned two smiley faces on their statements. "Good" conservation got a single smiley face. Customers whose energy use put them in the "below average" category, got frowns, but the utility stopped using them after a few customers got upset.

After six months, they found that customers who received the personalized report reduced energy use by 2 percent more than those who got standard statements.

The program was developed by Robert Cialdini, a leading expert in persuasion. More Cialdini here.

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India's $10 Laptop

The Times of India reports that a $10 laptop (Rs 500) prototype, with 2 GB RAM capacity, would be on display in Tirupati on February 3 when the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Techology is launched.

The $10 laptop project, first reported in TOI three years ago, has come as an answer to the $100 laptop of MIT's Nicholas Negroponte that he was trying to hardsell to India.

The $10 laptop has come out of the drawing board stage due to work put in by students of Vellore Institute of Technology, scientists in Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, IIT-Madras and involvement of PSUs like Semiconductor Complex.

"At this stage, the price is working out to be $20 but with mass production it is bound to come down," R P Agarwal, secretary, higher education said.

Further commentary also in this Fast Company article.

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"Ergonomics for Interaction Designers" series from Designing for Humans

Rob Tannen and Bressler Group unveiled their concept for the FieldCREW tablet -- a data gathering system for design researchers -- via their excellent Designing for Humans blog last October. The project was notable for evoking memories of the Tricorder and the Speak & Spell, but also for provoking some thoughtful discussion about the physical manifestations of all this mostly-digital User Interface theory that gets bandied about.

That same group has just taken another step, with an excellent and lengthy set of articles on Ergonomics for Interaction Designers. Published as a three-part series, the first post starts by pointing out the increasingly physical nature of the IxD field, especially as gestural and haptic interfaces are coaxing users to interact with their information in ways other than typing, pointing and clicking. The Driving Factors section alone makes the read worthwhile -- here are the first two items:

1. The rapid proliferation of touch screen and other gestural interfaces which combine "direct" physical control with digital interface design. If you want to design for a finger, you have to know how a finger works.

2. The growth of ubiquitous computing leading to an increased range of scale and form factor in devices that contain interfaces, from traditional computers and laptops, to kiosks, tablets, phones, interactive video walls, electronic ink and consumer appliances (to name a few). As a result, people are interacting with interfaces in range of positions and contexts that go beyond simply standing or sitting in front of a screen. So beyond fingertips, knowing how people can reasonably user their bodies to hold, view, reach and interact is valuable.

Anyone tasked with designing any sort of touchscreen or physical motion-based UI would do well to give it a look. (Note to fans of the FieldCREW tablet -- the version 2.0 concept was just unveiled last week).

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Touchscreen interface: Music to your ears, lightshows for your eyes

Speaking of touchscreens, artists have long been pioneers whose initially kooky-seeming notions later become mainstream; without them we'd probably not have loft living, for instance.

Now a handful of musicians are pioneering the adoption of touchscreen interfaces to execute something more complicated than ATM transactions: Light shows coordinated with music mixes. As digital piracy cuts into CD sales, live concerts have increased in importance for big-ticket musicians. And in an era of overstimulation, a stage and a mic just don't cut it anymore.

>> continue reading (videos included)

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Design for social impact & innovation at the Winterhouse Institute

In January 2009, the Winterhouse Institute began a two-year project, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation with a $1.5 million grant, to develop collective action and collaboration for social impact across the design industry - and encompassing a range of other institutions that work on the needs of poor or vulnerable people.

The funding will be used to develop specific programs for social impact by the design community, to host a major conference at Aspen in 2009, to develop case studies with the Yale School of Management, and to create an editorial website to monitor progress in the zone of design and innovation around social issues.

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Inside Chevy's design studio, via flash

To capitalize on the growing awareness of automotive design (and perhaps to offset the field's diminishing fortunes), General Motors has launched ChevroletDesign.com, a website offering a peek inside Chevy's design centers around the world. A flash animation of Chevy designer Tom Peters, rendered god-like in a design studio floating in black space, addresses you directly and reveals "how our designers think." Check it out here.

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Bruce Sterling's bad dream

From the fevered mind of Bruce Sterling and his alter-ego, Bruno Argento, a consideration of things ahead.

"Let's consider seven other massive reservoirs of potential popular dread. Any one of these could erupt, shattering the fragile social compact we maintain with one another in order to believe things contrary to fact."

And a call to do better than this.

"In a world so redolent with wonder, how can we allow ourselves to conduct our daily lives with so little insight, such absence of dignity? We should discover that there is no objective need for such precarity; the planet Earth should not be run as a fire sale. Precarity was supposed to be for the little people; when it is for everybody, its absurdity is manifest. Precarity cannot make us a cleaner, better, or more just society. Precarity is not sustainable. It has nothing to do with economic productivity. It does not help us sustain our precious cultural heritage or our natural heritage, the planet's priceless biodiversity. It is the mayhem of a disturbed ant's nest."

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A hockey-playing student's puck-stopping design

And finally, high school senior Trevor Leahy has used design to give him a slightly unsportsmanlike advantage: Combining skills he learned in a graphic design class with readings on Darwinism and camouflage, hockey goalie Leahy has developed a set of goalie pads that resemble the very net he's guarding.

"When the shooter comes down and only has a split second to shoot the puck, they're looking for net," said Leahy, a senior from Hampton, N.H., who grew up in Byfield. "If you put the net on the pad, they'll shoot at the pad instead of the goal."

So far, Leahy has logged two shutouts with the pads. In practice, two of Pingree's top scorers say, the illusion is particularly effective when there's a scramble in front of the net and they need to shoot quickly... [Opposing players] say they have fired the puck directly into Leahy's pads. The illusion diminishes if they are farther from the net, with more time to shoot.

Leahy, who had the pads custom-made by a Canadian manufacturer, has applied for a design patent.

via boston globe

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Special thanks to Mark Vanderbeeken and Steve Portigal for their contribution to this week's newsletter!

Please share the Monday Morning Must Read with colleagues, clients and collaborators. Many email programs do not forward messages in their original format, so please use this link: http://www.designdirectory.com/blog/newsletter

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

Announcing Coroflot Version 5: Share the Likey

Since its establishment in 1998 as the Core77 Job Board, the site now known as Coroflot.com has gone through several rounds of changes. These expansions and updates have all been directed toward providing our readers--the global network of creative professionals--with the most useful and flexible set of tools possible, for posting their work, staying current, and finding new employment.

Ten years on, with web-based portfolios and job searches the norm rather than a curiosity, the focus in finding and communicating creative talent has shifted to the task of creative community-building. Fortunately, this is something we know all about: Core77 and Coroflot together comprise a vibrant, engaged network of employers, students and professionals several hundred thousand strong, that's growing faster every day, and the newest changes at Coroflot aim to use it to full advantage.

To that end, we're thrilled to announce the release of Coroflot Version 5, retaining the high exposure, diversity, and unlimited posting capacity Coroflot has long boasted, and adding search and networking capabilities unrivaled in the creative portfolio field. Recognizing that 80+% of all creative jobs are discovered through personal networks rather than advertisement, enabling Coroflot's job-seekers and employers to expand these networks is the most effective way to serve their needs. Where previous incarnations of Coroflot--and most other portfolio sites--concentrated solely on giving users tools for displaying work, V5 adds multiple ways for designers to get to know each other, developing relationships with their peers, potential hires, and potential employers.

>> continue reading

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Book Review: The Big Necessity: Adventures in the World of Human Waste, by Rose George

Reviewed by Virginia Gardiner

For those of you who want to become experts on toilets, the reading list isn't long, because not enough serious books have been written on the subject. There's Alexander Kira's seminal book from the '70s, The Bathroom: the first to address ergonomics in this intimate place for industrial design. More engrossing and pithy is Ellen Lupton and Abbott J. Miller's The Bathroom, the Kitchen, and the Aesthetics of Waste. When it comes to eco-toilets, the most informative might be Lifting the Lid: An Ecological Approach to Toilet Systems by Peter Harper & Louise Halestrap, while the most fun is certainly Joseph Jenkins' The Humanure Handbook.

But as of fall 2008, your first book will have to be Rose George's revelatory The Big Necessity: Adventures in the World of Human Waste. With good humor and deep seriousness, George travels the world and presents impressive research about the current state of sanitation.

Colorful encounters with people and places are centered around dismal facts. 2.6 billion people worldwide currently have no toilets--as George puts it, "Four in ten people have no access to any latrine, toilet, bucket or box." Resulting waterborne illness kills about 7000 people every single day. The centuries-old solution that's still current--flush toilets with sewers--is already taxing the richest economies, and won't be sustainable anywhere in the long term.

George asks why such a fundamental aspect of our designed lives remains on the margins of polite conversation. After all, she points out, Le Corbusier called the toilet "one of the most beautiful objects industry has ever invented." Its purpose is unremittingly crucial. "The toilet is a physical barrier," she writes, "that takes care of the physical dangers of excrement."

And toilets embody lots of other shit: physiologies, cultures, infrastructures, economies, even politics. They are a perfect example of how objects are much more than objects. They are the vehicle that carries away our largest bodily contribution to the planet (about a thousand pounds per person per year) and yet our current solution is to flush and forget using several gallons of drinking water.

>> continue reading

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2009 Braun Prize Established in 1968, the international BraunPrize competition aims to promote the work of young designers, highlight the importance of industrial design and increase the profile of innovative product ideas globally. Entry Deadline: January 31, 2009

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Cologne Design Festival 2009: IMM & Passagen

Last week the international design posse gathered at the Cologne International Design Festival in Germany. It consisted of two main (unfortunately competing rather than collaborating) events: The IMM Furniture Show and the Passagen - a show program with a great number of exhibitions in galleries, show rooms, bars and shops across the city.

Shown above are from left to right the unique sideboard by Schub Laden Moebelunikate (made from individual found vintage drawers), Ontwerpduo's "What it is it isn't" shelf, playing with the viewers perception (you can look through a provided lens which makes it look all straight) and Kim Ha-Yan's dinner table for singles.

These are the concrete "Trabant" lights by Tecnolumen, a table by an un-named student of the Fachakademie fuer Raum- und Objektdesign Cham, the beautifully lit hallway of the Koeln International School of Design as well as the "Schwarzlicht Bar" (both part of the students' project "Time Machine") and the "Pit Green" Micro-Golf player - a little adult golf toy, inspired by Tip-Kick. On Sunday there will be the Micro-Golf Worldcup, taking place in the fair hall 3.1.

>> continue

Check out Core77's other Cologne Design Festival posts:

>> Cologne Design Festival 2009: IMM: Atelier van Lieshout

>> Cologne Design Festival 2009: Passagen: Global Street Food

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Zero Pollution Motors: Air to stay?

We were excited when we heard about Zero Pollution Motors and their air-powered car back in '07, but with no news from them in all of '08, we assumed that they folded.

The good news is they're still cranking, and will reportedly begin taking orders this year for their air-powered cars, allegedly deliverable in 2010.

Pure Driving: The Revolutionary Compressed Air Vehicle

If you can, imagine a vehicle that runs on air, achieves over 100 gas-equivalent mpg and over 90 mph, has zero to low C02 emissions, seats six, has plenty of space for luggage, cuts no safety corners, and costs no more than an average economy to mid-size vehicle.

This is the expected performance of the revolutionary compressed air vehicle that Zero Pollution Motors (ZPM) is introducing to North America. The vehicle is powered by the Compressed Air Engine (CAE) developed by Motor Development International (MDI), a 15-year old company based in Nice, France, and headed by inventor and Formula One race car engineer, Guy Negre.

ZPM will begin taking reservations in mid-2009 for US deliveries of our compressed air vehicle in 2010.

Curious? Click here to see some videos about the tech on the company's website.

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Design Versus Innovation: The Cranbrook / IIT Debate

[This text was previously published in print, in Interactions Magazine and IDSA's Innovations Magazine, exclusively available online from Cranbrookdesign.com]

Twenty years ago a seminal article appeared in ID magazine that contrasted two approaches to design and design education: the methods-driven and scientific approach described by Chuck Owen of the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) and the experimental and semantic approach advocated by Mike McCoy of Cranbrook.

These two separate methods evolved into what are today simply known as "innovation" (or "design thinking") and "design," and each has built its own culture within the design profession. Yet some confusion surrounds these concepts, especially about how these two methods interact to deliver products.

By examining the two approaches, we can highlight some of the most critical issues shaping American design. In a debate format, two new voices are revisiting and updating the argument; Scott Klinker from Cranbrook and Jeremy Alexis from IIT.

>> continue reading

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Industrial 'Furniture' Design

Produced in Eindhoven, the VANDERPOLL table is the latest piece from Marijn van der Poll. Made-to-order, the table is built from 3mm plate steel with the option of a stainless steel tabletop (pictured) or black oak.

I wanted to design a table with a strong structural base. To have it 'sit' in your living room and be a central piece in your interior. I wanted to go beyond design as an object with a branded identity and found inspiration in heavy machinery. Massive objects, where functionality and strength dictate the buildup of an object made to last. The company name embossed on the front is thus merely a statement regarding its heritage in a functional way. As an option the name and city on the front can be substituted for it's new owner. A table is a place where family members gather to share a meal and their lives. As such it connects them and reflects their story as much as my role as fabricator.

Marijn's Jetstream table which debuted in Milan last year recently won a '2008 GOOD DESIGN Award' from The Chicago Design Museum of Architecture and Design.

>> view more images

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US National Design Policy Summit Report available

The final report of the US National Design Policy Summit is now available for download.

It covers the rationale and outcomes of the Summit, the process and criteria for ranking of the final 62 policy proposals, the list of design policy related current activities by invited organizations (not just participants), and the raw list of policy proposals.

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Motorcycle designers expanding, while working in secret

It's nice to hear that, economic downturn aside, some design companies are still expanding. Xenophya Design, a UK-based motorcycle design consultancy, has just opened a new design studio in northeastern England.

You may have never heard of Xenophya Design, and well, that's no accident:

Since establishing the company in 2001, Mark Wells and Ian Wride have spent the last seven years building up an impressive portfolio of projects and an equally enviable client list. Although most major motorcycle manufacturers have their own in-house design team they often employ the services of consultancies for smaller design projects or specific aspects of larger projects. Companies without their own design team employ Xenophya to provide a complete design service.

Much of the work produced by consultancies such as Xenophya is never allowed into the public domain. "Some of our most impressive, innovative work is confidential and not meant for public, much less competitor consumption" Ian Wride explains. Changing objectives, markets, and budgets mean it is common for projects to get stopped before they reach production.

Mark Wells hints at his frustration when he says "We are extremely proud of all our work but unfortunately a lot of it never gets to see the light of day. On occasion we have to stay completely anonymous. Some contracts state that we can't even mention that we worked for the client let alone be allowed to use anything in our portfolio.... that's just the way the industry works."

Check out the gallery of concept sketches and designs that these guys can show here.

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Kitchen Budapest

Magyar Telekom's innovation lab, Kitchen Budapest (KiBu), opened in June 2007, is a new media lab for young researchers who are interested in the convergence of mobile communication, online communities and urban space and are passionate about creating experimental projects in cross-disciplinary teams.

KiBu will be presenting three projects at the upcoming Lift09 conference: Tone Tags, Himes and Nighmo.

>> continue reading

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Obama action figure

And finally, while we could never imagine an American toy designer proposing an action figure of the Japanese Prime Minister, it somehow makes sense the other way around.

Well, as much sense as it could make, in a world where one of the "tools of diplomacy" is a Lightsaber.

>> view more pictures

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Special thanks to Mark Vanderbeeken and Niti Bhan for their contribution to this week's newsletter!

Please share the Monday Morning Must Read with colleagues, clients and collaborators. Many email programs do not forward messages in their original format, so please use this link: http://www.designdirectory.com/blog/newsletter

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

imm cologne 2009 Preview: Naked Chair by Out of Stock

The latest project from cross-cultural design collective Out of Stock is Naked Chair, earning it's name from it's minimal wooden frame, folded sheet steel and barebones construction. Super light, the chair packs flat for shipping and can be easily assembled without tools (the seat & backrest are fastened together with wingnuts).

Designers Gabriel Tan and Wendy Chua from Singapore, Gustavo Maggio from Argentina and Sebastian Alberdi from Spain formed Out of Stock after meeting at the Electrolux Design Lab in November 2005.

They'll be exhibiting Naked Chair and other projects at this year's imm cologne in Hall 3.1 at Stand Q.032a.

>> view more pictures

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Core77 Photo Gallery: North American Int'l Auto Show 2009

More subdued than previous years in regard to presentation spectacle, the 2009 North American International Auto Show focused on product - especially high efficiency and electric vehicles. This was the year everyone got serious about "eco" being more than just a nice idea, with almost every major manufacturer introducing a hybrid or EV... at least in concept form. 101 images

>> view gallery

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Advertisement

2009 Braun Prize Established in 1968, the international BraunPrize competition aims to promote the work of young designers, highlight the importance of industrial design and increase the profile of innovative product ideas globally. Entry Deadline: January 31, 2009

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ASUS eeePC

The 5D's of BoP Marketing: Touchpoints for a holistic, human-centered strategy

An overview of the 5D's
The premise of the fortune at the base of the pyramid (BoP) is based on the notion of how to profitably do business with the poor. But few such endeavours have become sustainable businesses, falling prey to bad assumptions, misguided marketing, or poor research. Ken Banks of kiwanja.net wrote recently:

Progress in the social mobile field will come only when we think more about best practices in the thinking and design of mobile projects and applications, rather than obsessing over the end products themselves. By then most of the damage has usually already been done. In my experience, many social mobile projects fail in the early stages. Lack of basic reality-checking and a tendency to make major assumptions are lead culprits, yet they are relatively easy to avoid.

I would argue that this observation can be applied for any product or service meant for the BoP in the developing world, not just for the mobile industry. So how can we apply this understanding in order to design strategies to serve these untapped markets far more successfully?

The tacit mandate for companies interested in the BoP market is that your product or service must either fill an 'unmet' need (of which the poor have many), or provide a way for them to enhance their livelihood or quality of life. Why else would they divert their limited and hard-earned cash for your product or service? So the fundamental consideration before design would be to focus on the benefit to the BoP: Is there an opportunity for social or economic development?

Next, the solution must be well designed—contextually relevant, appropriate, and of course, affordable. But the best designed product or service in the world will not sell if your customer is unable to find it. Since logistics and transportation is as much of an infrastructural challenge in the developing world, distribution becomes critical in ensuring the availability of the product. The entire supply chain might have to be built from scratch.

>> continue reading

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Book Review: Wired to Care, by Dev Patnaik with Peter Mortensen

The concept of "needsfinding" seems unique to our consumer culture. True needs like air, sleep or hunger announce themselves with neurochemical fury, tearing animals away from what they think they should be doing and dragging them into the immediacy of their body. So when we industrial designers talk about the customer's undiscovered needs and how our products can address them, we should admit to ourselves that needsfinding, as we know it, is an oxymoron. For most of corporate America, resonating with their customers is really more about finding things their clients didn't know they wanted rather than needed.

For some clients, though, the issue of wants versus needs does begin to blur. In their book their book Wired to Care on customer empathy, Dev Patnaik with Peter Mortensen wisely begins with the example of Patty Moore, a young industrial designer who wandered out into the city streets with a fake white wig, earplugs, blurry glasses and a cane. For Patty, the needsfinding journey was about discovering what parts of the modern world were incompatible with old age. No doubt the city was filled with plenty of other real elderly women who were perfectly capable of navigating, but it took her Harrison Bergeron outfit of handicaps to make Patty realize just how hard walking a mile in those shoes might have been. What Patnaik has done is realize that the "needsfinding" exercises that industrial designers do that seem so focused on objects and products are really about people and empathy. So while empathy and companionship aren't exactly the most primitive of needs on Maslow's Hierarchy, they are among the most human, and frankly, a little humanity is something that most companies could use a little more of.

>> continue reading

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Get back on the grid with Massimo Vignelli

Massimo Vignelli shares an amazing wealth of knowledge with us, the graphic design & typographic principles he's developed throughout his career in "The Vignelli Canon".

In several teaching situations I remarked the lack of some basic typographic principles in young designers. I thought that it might be useful to pass some of my professional knowledge around, with the hope of improving their design skills. Creativity needs the support of knowledge to be able to perform at its best.

It's an essential resource for designers of all disciplines and best of all it's available to download in PDF format for free--nice one.

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Detroit Auto Show '09: Chrysler 200C Concept

The company perceived to be most on the ropes pulled out perhaps the biggest surprise of the show. The Chrysler 200C Concept scored big points for its great looks, mid-size RWD platform, innovative "uconnect" in-car computer and communication system and extended range electric powertrain. Most notably, the 200C is a realistic running prototype that nails it in every category and could replace the [deservedly] maligned Sebring in relatively short order - if Chrysler is around long enough to build it.

Design-wise, it's balanced proportions and jewel-like details are a treat to the eyes after years of aesthetic atrocities like the Jeep Compass and Dodge Avenger. This is the first design to be released under the watch of new Vice President of Design Ralph Gilles - best known for penning the iconic 300C and being just about the nicest guy in the business.

>> continue

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Photo: Sean O'Flaherty

Tucker design team member Philip S. Egan dead at 88

Speaking of car design, from the Denver Post:

Philip S. Egan, an industrial designer and author who was one of the last surviving members of the Tucker '48 design team, died Dec. 26 in San Rafael, Calif. He was 88 and lived in Fairfax, Calif. His daughter Frances Anamosa confirmed the death.

The Tucker '48 sedan was futuristic style incarnate. And it was fast, capable of 120 mph. Only 51 were ever built. Inside, the car was as sleek and functional as a cockpit. Egan created much of its interior. His layout of the dashboard evoked a coolly elegant jukebox or a really swell cigarette machine.

Read more.
Thanks for the link Steve!

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Finding Seoul's soul

Politicians and breakdancers both aim to kick South Korea's capital out of the dreary Industrial Age into a glorious new era of vibrant arts, culture - and lots of greenery.

CAN the concrete blocks of Seoul be "softened" into a kind of Asian Paris-cum-space-age city? Can hard-working crew-cut Korean men selling dull machines grow longer hair, and then sell snazzy designer products?

This is the ambitious project to remake Seoul into the "Soul of Asia, a city of design and culture", reflecting the total change in mindset from the dour, industrial age and the military dictatorships of the 1960s to 1980s. Now, it's about being a 21st century of democracy, about openness and creativity and the Korean Wave of pop culture sweeping Asia.

>> Read article

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Core77 Photo Gallery : Second Lives at the Museum of Arts and Design

The Museum of Arts and Design inaugurated its new home at Columbus Circle with Second Lives: Remixing the Ordinary, a special thematic exhibition featuring 51 contemporary artists from 17 countries who transform discarded, commonplace, or valueless objects into extraordinary works of art. On view from September 27, 2008 through April 19, 2009, Second Lives includes new commissions and site-specific installations, created from gun triggers, spools of thread, tires, hypodermic needles, dog tags, old eyeglasses, and telephone books, among other manufactured and mass-produced objects. Highlighting the creative processes that repurpose these objects, the exhibition explores the transformation of the ordinary into the extraordinary and stimulates debate on function, value, and identity.

>> continue reading

>> view gallery

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10 Questions for Scott Klinker

From Scott Klinker, here's a nice ray of earthshine, coincident with the recent Michael Cannell / Murray Moss cagematch we blogged about here:

8. Over the past 10-15 years we've seen the emergence of the "star" designer, creating one-off or conceptual products that have been sold in galleries and collected by museums while building their own names into a valuable brand in the process. Do you feel that these designers push design into unexplored territory or do you feel there are some negative side-effects for the profession at large to this elevation of the individual designer?

SK: Of course, I'm all for individual authorship. Design is now a fashion system. Young designers create couture contexts to get noticed. This has made the field much more interesting and created space for new kinds of authorship and new models of practice. The down side comes when design becomes a vulgar side show of young designers trying to out-spectacle each other with heavy-handed concepts. When branding eclipses actual design content, then It's dubious. Memphis predicted this. However, 'Design about Design' is here to stay and Cranbrook - being focused on authorship and making - should be a thought leader in this discussion. As an American school, we have to work harder than our Euro counterparts who have more advanced venues for young designers to show their work and get noticed.

9. As a curator and exhibition organizer, do you feel that the increased design awareness of the general public--through events such as Design Miami--has been a positive development for the design community?

SK: Design Miami has made design rarities collectible, like Art. Is awareness of Art a positive influence on the general public?

Nice.

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frog design explores "Motion" in new issue of design mind magazine

The new issue of frog's design mind magazine is out. It focuses on the theme of "Motion" with feature stories including:

- La Chute > A cover piece by French photographer Denis Darzacq, who interprets the downfall of a generation of Parisians in his photo essay, La Chute or "The Fall."

- Slow Innovation > Associate Creative Director David Hoffer examines what makes for a lasting idea. Why do new ideas have a tendency to ricochet like pin balls around the cultural landscape, while ideas that really last move more like molasses in winter?

- Mind the Gap > Executive Creative Director Tjeerd Hoek explains why designing the space between moments is key to creating an engaging user interface.

- The Unique Brain > frog President Doreen Lorenzo writes a touching essay about the link between Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder and creativity, in which she discusses her son's successful bout with the diagnosis and how it has helped her to better manage uniquely creative talent.

- Alonzo King > Famed choreographer Alonzo King talks about the risks and rewards of collaboration in an interview by San Francisco Chronicle columnist Rachel Howard.

- Driver Experience Design > frog designers look at how we drive and why innovation in the cockpit, rather than under the hood, may be the auto industry's salvation.

- Confessions of Extreme Air Travelers > Seven intrepid travelers are profiled in this story on those men and women who spend more than 300 days a year working the security lines and angling for the exit row.

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Italy first in international design competitiveness survey

The Korea Institute of Design Promotion (KIDP) revealed the results of the National Design Competitiveness Power (NDCP) survey, a new framework to evaluate countries' design competitiveness, reports Dexigner.

The Report on National Design Competitiveness 2008 sampled 80 average people, 30 designers and 20 managers in charge of design at design related firms for each of the 17 countries assessed, and appraised design competitiveness in the public, industrial and civilian design sectors.

The study found that Italy topped the list while France and the US were ranked second and third respectively. Korea and Denmark shared eighth place and Finland came in tenth.

Specifically, France, Italy and the US were ranked high in the public design sector, while the top rankers of industrial design were the US, Germany and Italy. For the civilian design sector, Italy, France and Japan formed a high ranking group.

As for Korea, it was ranked first in a design competitiveness evaluation from the standpoint of human resources, though it left much to be desired in the categories of achievement, environment and investment.

Overall, Italy was the best rounded leader among the 17 countries in the ranking of NDCP index, while developing economies including India and Brazil lagged far behind the top-ranking countries.

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"Checking the Pulse of the Architecture Industry" survey

Look skyward in certain major cities and you're bound to see a bunch of cranes, placed there to construct new buildings back when the economy was humming. As the charts and graphs now slide steadily south, some of those projects are being halted, while others have no choice but to continue. Regardless of their status, the one thing the buildings all have in common: they were all designed by architects.

Back in early November, Archinect launched a survey called "Checking the Pulse of the Architecture Industry."

Over a 2 month period, more than several thousand Archinect visitors responded to the survey. The survey asked architecture students, working architects, unemployed architects and those on the business development side of the industry straightforward questions about their current experiences, feelings about their job security and thoughts regarding their career choice. The results were then compiled, analyzed and finally posted on Archinect on January 15, 2009.

The survey results are displayed in a dynamic format. There is an interactive tool that allows the user to sift through the information and customize the results according to their areas of interest.

The results paint a sobering picture of the economy's effect on architecture job market. We hear from respondents who are experiencing career remorse and deep frustration with their inability to find a jobs after spending many years and a fortune on their education. It all seems bleak until a silver lining is revealed, as architects share their thoughts on how this economy's downward spiral may be a blessing in disguise. The economic collapse may be the very thing the industry needs to reshape design and force innovation.

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Manifest Hope DC Exhibition Photos

Manifest Hope: DC celebrates the visual art that supported President-Elect Barack Obama's campaign. Broken into 3 themes; health care reform. worker's right's, and the green economy, the exhibition brings together work from a diverse range of artists. Notcot published a great collection of photos from the exhibition which unfortunately was only open to the public for a couple of days (it closed yesterday).

>> view more images

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RISD symposium designed to Dazzle

And finally, hard to believe those are drawings and a photo of battleships, but that's what they are. Why the wacky paint job? Well, it's called Dazzle:

Dazzle is a disruptive type of camouflage used in World War I to camouflage ships against German U-boats. The disruptive design resembled Cubist paintings and confused German U-boats on the speed and direction of a ship.

During 1917 and 1918 Maurice L. Freedman was the District Camoufleur for the U.S. Shipping Board in Jacksonville, Florida. He was in charge of dazzling merchant ships. After the War, he came to RISD to study drawing and painting and decorative design. While at RISD he donated over 400 plans and 20 photos of the dazzled ships.

The top-secret nature of camouflage during World War I has made Dazzle one of history's hidden gems, and a collection of Dazzle Camouflage drawings and photographs have recently been rediscovered at RISD. It is believed the RISD collection is one of only two in the United States (the other is at National Archives in College Park, Maryland). Identifying the collection has inspired the RISD library to host an exhibit and symposium.

For many years RISD was not aware of its treasure trove. Identifying this collection has inspired the Library to have this exhibit and symposium. The "Artists at War: Exploring the Connections Between Art and Camouflage" Symposium will examine the questions surrounding the relationship of art and camouflage.

The symposium will be in the Michael P. Metcalf Auditorium in RISD's Chace Center and is free and open to the public on February 14, 2009 from 2-4 pm.

Click here for more info.

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Special thanks to Mark Vanderbeeken and Michael Doyle for their contribution to this week's newsletter!

Please share the Monday Morning Must Read with colleagues, clients and collaborators. Many email programs do not forward messages in their original format, so please use this link: http://www.designdirectory.com/blog/newsletter

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

Greener Gadgets Design Competition 2009

ONLY 3 DAYS LEFT TO ENTER: Deadline is January 15! In association with CEA, Core77 hosts this year's Gr