Cannondale Stealth Concept Bike
The F-117 Nighthawk may have been retired but its spirit lives on in Canondale's Stealth Concept Bike which debuted earlier this year at the Eurobike Show in Germany.
The styling direction of the Cannondale Stealth Concept was, as the name reveals, inspired by Stealth fighter jets, which have a very distinctive edgy shape in order to be invisible on radar. Another source of inspiration was last year's Lamborghini Reventon sports car, whose faceted surfaces and custom flat paint lend the car a unique and stealthy appearance.
>> continue
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Book Review: Art & Sole: Contemporary Sneaker Art & Design, by Intercity
Let me disclaim one thing before I get into the beautiful details of reviewing Art & Sole: Contemporary Sneaker Art & Design; I'm profoundly unhip. Even though I visited my grandmother in NYC on a yearly basis and spent a few years of grade school in Asia, I spent high school in Nebraska, so my insecure trend-following formative years were a world away from city graffiti or Tokyo fashion. That said, Intercity's Art & Sole blew me away. For those of you like Turtle on Entourage who relentlessly follow tiny variations (and limited editions) of sports-themed footwear guaranteed never to see a basketball court, you have my deepest apologies if I confuse an Air Max 90 for a 95. But for the rest of us, Art & Sole should be an eye-opening visit to the wild nexus between commerce, guerilla art, mass production and customization that is limited edition sneaker design.
Art & Sole is divided into two parts: "Sneakers & Art" and "Art & Sneakers" (I thought four ampersands in one sentence might be a few too many). Despite the palindrome, the titles are pretty self-explanatory. "Sneakers & Art" showcases collaborations between artists and sneaker manufacturers. Much of the work consists of vivid graphic art applied to the (occasionally literal) canvas of a major brand sneaker, but some of it showcases the very leading edge of industrial design: laser etching, CNC stitching and algorithmic patterns. Both the one-offs and the oxymoronic mass-customization series impress with beautiful photos and succinct and clear explanatory prose for those of us who don't recognize names of sneaker designer / graffiti artists like Futura 2000, but also of some surprise footwear icons like John Maeda. The second part, "Sneakers & Art" includes sneaker inspired 2-D art that, while cool, shouldn't be nearly as interesting to industrial designers as some one off custom jobs like Takara Tomy's Nike Transformers, fully articulated transformable sneakers. Just as amazing as the content of the book is the fact that Intercity managed to catalog and photograph hundreds of customized sneakers, many of which were produced in extremely limited runs, and all of which appear to be in spotless condition. For anyone interested in where popular fashion is headed, and where industrial design is likely to follow, Art & Sole represents quite a catalog of possibilities.
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One Factory, One Forest: Design, Ecology and Micro-Economic Development in Guyana, by William Gordon
For the past year I have been developing furniture with a factory named Liana Cane in Georgetown, Guyana. As I write this, a chair I designed there a year ago is sitting in a container on a dock in New Jersey waiting to get through customs. I have been waiting a long time to see this chair and for this project to be completed. My excitement is combined with the anticipation of returning to Guyana in January to work on a new project in the rainforest, and is checked by the long road ahead to get the products I have already designed to market.
Once the chair is released from customs, I'll then have to negotiate with an irate man named Lennox who kept it—and several other items—as stowaways in his container; he will have to bear the burden of the overages and duties that are building everyday as it sits on the dock. It has been delayed by U.S. customs looking for drugs in products from Guyana—just one of the many barriers to trade when you live in small, developing economies. This is why he is so mad. Jocelyn, the owner of Liana Cane, wrote me today that if I "chat him up," give him some cash "towards his worries" and don't mention her name because she "really cussed him off when he asked for more money," he might give us the chair we have been trying to launch for a year. This is not a typical vendor relationship. Jocelyn is also not your typical factory owner. But it all makes sense after having spent time in Guyana.
Through it all I can't wait to return and start it again.
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Core77 Photo Gallery : Euromold 2008
The 15th edition of the EUROMOLD fair takes place in Frankfurt (3-6 Dec.) covering the product development process from the first idea to final finishing. This year we take a closer look at new materials and technologies, research projects, and the works of upcoming designers.
>> view gallery
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Human Rights: Student Voices at Art Center
Beginning last week and running through January 4, a 25-poster exhibition called Human Rights: Student Voices will makes it U.S. debut in the Great Hall at the Pasadena Central Library. Organized by Art Center College of Design and sponsored by France Los Angeles Exchange (FLAX), the show premiered this summer at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, France. (It was designed to mark the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted in Paris in 1948.)
More info at the site.
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Architecture Lecture Posters from Fall '08
Speaking of posters, Archinect have published a comprehensive round up of recent Lecture Posters from Fall '08. Good resource for anyone tasked with designing their own school's poster in the future.
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Better Place follow-up: Israel's first plug-in parking lot
For those following the exploits of NewDealDesign as they partner with Better Place to make the world a...um...more accommodating environment for your electric car, we've just gotten word of a milestone.
The photo above is not a rendering, it's the first real-life manifestation of a plug-in parking lot as designed by NewDeal, and it's online and operational in Tel Aviv. Anyone with a depleted car looking to get on with your emissions-free commute, get yourself down to the Cinema City parking lot in Pi-Glilot post haste.
Read the Guardian's story on Better Place here.
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Alissa Walker's totally awesome design poem
At the latest de LaB (design east of La Brea) design event, Alissa Walker read her poem, The Night Before Layoffs--a fantastic piece referencing everyone from Frank Gehry and Richard Koshalek to Brad Pitt and Maarten Baas. Here're the first few stanzas. Click on for more deliciousness!
The Night Before Layoffs
by Alissa Walker
Twas LA in a downturn and all through downtown,
Not a crane was stirring; no foundations in-ground.
The scaffolding covered the buildings with care,
In hopes that the financing soon would be there.
Eli Broad was asleep, on his piles of money
With $30 million for MOCA nestled close to his tummy.
And Gail Goldberg was snoozing, so was Mayor Villaraigosa,
Telling staffers to wake them when all this was over.
When on Bunker Hill there arose such a clatter,
Louder than NIMBYs in the Republic of Santa Monica!
Upon this disturbance the journalists swooped,
If only to prevent bloggers from getting the scoop.
The electronic billboards gave off such a glow
That the luster of iPod ads was on objects below.
When what should our wondering eyes next detect,
But a hybrid Lexus, and eight starchitects!
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Chewy morsels of design thoughts
Luke Wroblewski gives us Design Skills for Strategy: the short version
* Pattern Recognition: allows us to identify relationships within information. (the data).
* Story Telling: gives us a way to organize data into something meaningful by focusing on a big idea and supporting messages (the synthesis).
* Visual Hierarchy: gives us a way to tell the story effectively (the means).
* Empathy: allows us to make the story memorable and impactful (the meaning).
Read indepth explanation here.
Rob Tannen summarizes tips for creating effective design competition entries after his experience as Juror for the ID Magazine Annual Design Review, a snippet here,
The judging process is based on expert review and consensus - in other words the criteria changes from year to year based on the expertise, opinions and criteria of the particular judges in each category. At the same time, the nature of the judging process - one full day of going through a large number of entries - suggests the following to submitters:1. Treat the Entry Process Like a Design Project: Successful designs meet the needs of their users. [snip]
Brianna Sylver writes on the application of tools and techniques from the field of design to human relationships on her new blog "Designing Marriage", taking design thinking a step further than possibly imagined. Here's a snippet from her introductory post back in October,
First things first, let me just mention that I'm not a marriage therapist. Nor am I a psychologist, psychiatrist, counselor, life coach, or belong to any other profession where I might regularly engage in activity where I advise people on how to operate in their daily lives. What I am, however, is an innovator, a designer, an ethnographer, a problem solver and a facilitator. The content of this blog will be rooted in the spirit of innovation, invention, iteration, and prototyping and how these principles apply to marriage and your most intimate relationships. [...] Over the years, I've found the same methods and frameworks that I use in my consulting work at Sylver Consulting to be quite helpful in opening the lines of communication with my husband of two years, Adriano Galvao.
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Herman Miller Thoughtpile: Penny for your thoughts? (Penny = free Embody chair)
We need to print a retraction: Herman Miller's new Thoughtpile website, which we mentioned in our review of the Embody chair, is giving away a free Embody once a week, not once a day.
Even still, readers interested in a free $1,600 chair should definitely hit the site up. To recap: Thoughtpile asks a new question each week, and asks you to answer, or vote on other answers. Previous questions have been:
What's one thing you'd redesign to make your world better?
How can we keep our cities vital?
How can technology become more human?
What's a green idea that could help the economy?
How can the workplace foster more innovation?
How can we lead more productive lives?
At the end of each week, the answer with the most positive votes then wins a free Embody. You stand a good chance of winning because the site has not yet reached critical mass--there's not that many answers, and the quality of them varies widely. So hit the link, cogitate, and enter!
This week's question: "How can we become better consumers?"
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Design as Advocate for Social Change: The Mayan Project
The IDP (International Design Partnership) is taking a page out of eco-tourism's book by trying to connect underprivileged areas with dollars from wealthier nations. But they're replacing tourism with, interestingly enough, product design:
Eight top-class designers from South-Africa, Great Britain, Peru, Chile, Mexico, the USA, Germany and Australia are meeting in Mexico City...to develop a merchandising concept for traditional products from the Maya cultural stronghold Mani in order to improve the local living conditions.
At press time there was no linkable information on the 'net concerning this project, though we have managed to get ahold of an interview with German participant designer Carsten Buck. It's titled "Can social change be initiated by design?"
For a detailed explanation of the project, and the Buck interview, click here.
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New and improved CritBuns come with their own product ecosystem of cruelty.
We didn't hear about it in time to include it in our Holiday Gift Guide, but have no doubt the latest version of CritBuns would be right up there in the hallowed 77 otherwise. Perfect for the design or architecture student in your life, CritBuns were conceived by founder Joe Gebbia after an 8-hour drawing critique at RISD in 2000 and the numb asses that ensued.
Since starting production in 2005, the portable foam cushions have racked up an avid following and a mini-culture revolving around the occasional absurdities of the critique process for which they were designed. Our favorite portion of the site for now: CritQuotes, where readers are invited to submit their own gems from especially rough session:
-"You could have blown your nose on this and it would have looked better."
-"Those flanges look like shit."
-"So what drugs made this alright?"
Submit your own, or buy a set of CritBuns for someone you love, here.
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Special thanks to Niti Bhan for her contributions to this week's newsletter!
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