Winner of Next-Gen PC Design Comp
To hear creatives tell it, napkins exist solely to have ingenious thoughts, ideas and schematics scribbled on them. Avery Holleman developed that trope into a PC concept--and won Microsoft's Next-Gen PC Design Competition. Not only did he land $20,000 for his troubles, the design was apparently handpicked by Bill Gates, winning the Chairman's Award as well.
Next up: Apple needs to make a tablet we can wipe our mouths on.
via tg daily
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Brad Bonning's dream of garbage-driven motoring comes one step closer
Above is a photo of auto enthusiast Brad Bonning in his aluminum Bonning Roadster, which has just undergone Australian road certification testing. Should Bonning's three-wheeled vehicle be approved and find the appropriate funding, it will be perhaps the first mass-produced automobile that runs on garbage. The engine, developed by sustainable technology firm Eco Nova, runs on refuse.
We say "appropriate" level of funding because while Bonning has already had offers to produce the car, he's turned them down for reasons of economics; the car's goal is not just to be produced, but to be affordable. "To have [the car] become a really expensive, elite product is the opposite of why I did it," Bonning tells the Australian Daily. "If it costs the same as a Porsche or a Ferrari, it defeats the purpose."
via the daily
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Electric cars in the US: Can logistics win the war?
And speaking of cars, it used to be that you won wars by getting your guys to kill their guys. The Vikings, the Romans, and you name it knew you either had to get more guys or better weapons.
Then warmakers got crafty and started bombing factories, oil depots and supply lines. If you can't get your truckloads of bullets up to the front, and if you can't gas up your superior jet fighter, it doesn't matter how good your tech is, or how many guys you've got.
What's our point? Logistics matter, and it's how you win.
Just look at electric cars. We've been hearing about them for how long now, and how many of us actually have them? Why are they so expensive and out-of-reach?
The latest company hoping they can finally make electric cars a widespread reality in the U.S. is Scandinavia-based Think Global, who's bringing their product Stateside in '09. They are hoping to succeed based on at least two angles: design and logistics.
Even more than its well-funded sponsors or cutting-edge technology, the Ox's killer app could be its design. To date, most electric cars available in the U.S.--small, unsafe, and underpowered--have been intended strictly for the earliest early adopters and the most faithful green believers. In contrast, Think's senior vice-president for design, Katinka von der Lippe, says the Ox is a "real car, a big step away from the cuteness of [other] electric vehicles."The company's business model, says James, is similar to that of PC maker Dell (DELL), which fueled its rise by ruthlessly optimizing its manufacturing and supply chain. Think's ultralean manufacturing system lets it build production facilities for about $10 million, compared with the billions invested in new plants by old-line manufacturers. That means more factories closer to customers, further cutting costs.
In addition, factories "could also be the retailers," says James, which would add a unique element to Think's branding. The company, he says, will be profitable if it can sell 10,000 vehicles a year. At 20,000 to 30,000 units in annual sales, Think can cut its component costs in half.
That focus on innovative manufacturing, in addition to the high-tech Ox itself, may ultimately set the company apart from previous attempts--and, Think is betting, finally help jump-start the U.S. market for electric cars.
via businessweek
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KOR ONE Water Vessel (Actual Size!)
For those of you who like to refill, reuse, and rehydrate, there's a new water bottle coming to town, and it's a serious design contender on aesthetics, ergonomics, materials, and manufacturing. KOR partnered with core-fave Gaylon White and the Eastman Innovation Lab on the project, utilizing their Bisphenol-A (BPA)-free Tritan copolyester. They partnered with California-based RKS on a one-handed lid latch system (no lost caps!) that seals the bottle even when laying flat, and they tapped manufacturing partner Nypro to gate the part so there would be a clear, lens-like bottom. Here's Eric Barnes, founder and CEO from Kor: (We really like the "from KOR" part, natch.)
One of the top priorities for the KOR ONE was durability--bottle materials and construction had to support a long product life to be in keeping with KOR's pillar of sustainability. The bottle had to be made of materials that were as healthy for consumers as they were for the environment. The product had to be easy to drink from and have a "big gulp" feature to allow a high-volume, thirst-quenching flow. The bottled had to be easy to refill from a sink, a refrigerator, or a water cooler. The cap had to offer one-handed operation and be impossible to lose. All these features and more had to be delivered in an eye-catching package that appealed to consumers seeking a luxury product to elevate their lifestyle. Buying the final product should make consumers feel good on at least three levels...they're doing something healthy for themselves, they're doing the right thing for the planet, and they're treating themselves to a premium product they can be proud to display in their homes, in their offices, and on the road.
>> More info and pics.
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The organic Cloud
The Cloud is an organic sculptural landmark that responds to human interaction and expresses context awareness using hundreds of sensors and over 15,000 individually addressable optical fibers. Constructed of carbon glass, spanning over four meters, and containing more than 65 kilometers of fiber optics, the Cloud encourages visitors to touch and interact with information in new ways, manifesting emotions and behavior through sound and a dichotomy of luminescence and darkness.
Located in downtown Florence outside the Fortezza da Basso. the Cloud is part of the "Redesigning Fashion Trade Shows" project that Pitti Immagine runs with MIT Mobile Experience Lab. It is a long-term project to creatively rethink the trade show concept and propose innovative technologies, perspectives and sensory experiences for fashion trade shows.
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Rob Walker: "The Invisible Badge"
Rob comes on stronger than he's used to in this essay published on ChangeThis (a collection of manifestos for CEO-types--honest). In The Invisible Badge: Moving Past Conspicuous Consumption, he discusses the true motivations for acquisition and display, moving past Veblen through Virginia Postrel, landing somewhere over the (Maslow) rainbow. Here's a nice taste:
In his book about luxury, Living It Up, scholar James Twitchell compared the effect of certain rarefied, high-end brands with a dog whistle. As an example, he pointed to the various sorts of logo treatments on a Prada bag. A bag with a small logo would likely be more expensive than one with a big logo--and one with no logo whatsoever would be the most expensive of all: Only true cognoscenti would "hear" it. "This was connoisseurship applied to consumption," he wrote.During the course of reporting my book Buying In--which deals with the intersection of personal narrative and consumer behavior in some detail--I had many interesting conversations with young creators of a newer generation of brands (I call it the "brand underground") that take Twitchell's dog whistle idea into a new realm.
These brands--like Barking Irons, or The Hundreds--may be unfamiliar to you if not are a participating in the subcultures they are part of. But they do communicate participation in a subculture, and in a way that has a lot more in common with Twitchell's dog whistle than with, say, the aggressively flamboyant regalia of punk: As in the luxury arena, you need the proper background to understand what you were seeing. To everyone else--underground arrivistes, Twitchell might say--the brand symbols mean nothing and probably don't even register. Brand underground badges are, in effect, invisible.
And this is not a failure; it is the goal. It suggests a tighter relationship between the brand producer and the brand consumer, and speaks more directly to that most crucial relationship: the relationship between the consumer and consumed.
If the underground logo is a badge, it's one that is most noteworthy for how few people can see it.
Download the PDF here.
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Projects like these beg the question, at what point do you pull out. Chinese company Harbin Smart Special Aerocraft spent 12 years and $4.1 mil. to build a working flying saucer to carry out aerial photography and geological surveys. With a maximum flight time of 40 minutes, it makes google earth a pretty cheap alternative (we jest). If they are going to insist on building a saucer, it would be way cooler if they took some styling direction from Jack Frost's 1958 "flying Jeep" project.
via dvice
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Raw-Edges duo Yael Mer & Shay Alkalay's Volume seats are made out of big sheets of pattern paper or wallpaper, folded into a hollow structure and filled with expanded polyurethane foam. They're currently exhibiting alongside designer Peter Marigold at the Fat Galerie in Paris until the 28th of June, 2008.
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Holographic Conferencing
Star Wars here we come! Telepresence technology has been around for a bit, but Digital Video Enterprises has just taken it to another level. They recently unveiled the DVE Telepresence Stage, a portable telepresence system for projecting realistic life-size people and floating 3-D objects onto a stage environment. As if that wasn't enough, they also created the DVE Huddle Room 70, a telepresence group system with a hidden, eye-level codec and a frameless display image.
With gas prices at an all time high, $59,000 to $84,000 for one of these may just be a viable option!
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A Semigood Design
Seattle based Semigood Design pointed us to their danish inspired cantilever Rian Stool, which is as understated and quirky as their name. Producing custom made pieces for almost a decade, Semigood are committed to sustainability, crafting their furniture from wood considered to be the most abundant hardwood in the States and sourced from FSC certified forests in the Mid-West and North East.
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Afrigadget.com: Incredible Design, Without 'Designers'
Under the heading Accidentally Amazing Design Blogs, Afrigadget.com has got to be among the most fascinating, without trying specifically to appeal to the ID community. Recently named by Time Magazine as one of the 50 Best Websites of 2008 (though it's been around since 2006), the site is a frequently updated survey of home-grown craft and technology from across the continent, with a strong focus on the sub-Saharan region (Anyone know of a similar site for North Africa? We're curious.)
The more predictable water pumps, nut shellers (see pic above), and creative recycling projects are in full effect, but also some distinct instances of technological leapfrogging: the image below, culled from Jan Chipchase's excellent blog, annotates a typical cell phone service and charging station in rural Uganda, and includes in the same post some discussion of technology hacking sub-cultures in practically every developing country on earth.
For all the talk permeating the design communities about appropriate technology, creative re-purposing, and design for the other 90%, looking through blogs like this one gives the distinct impression that we're missing the boat -- design solutions for the developing world may, in fact, be coming along quite nicely without us.
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90 Models in 90 Days Project
This is one way to build out your portfolio and ramp up your skills, Swedish designer Josefin Kvist is on a mission to design a new piece of furniture and blog a scaled model everyday for 90 days. Core's only advice, "completion triumphs perfection". We're not sure who coined the term but we doubt it was a designer.
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OFIS Architects Complete Competition Winning Soccer Stadium in Slovenia
It only took 10 years and 10.8 million euro but finally the folks in Maribor, Eastern Slovenia have a world class soccer stadium. Designed by OFIS Architects, the stand seats 12,500 spectators, houses four gymnasiums, a fitness club with swimming pools, shops, and restaurants.
Check bustler.net for details and photos.
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Help Products: Do one thing and one thing well?
And finally, Chris Hacker might be on the cover of I.D. Magazine, but these hipsters are promising to go even greener. We love the packaging, and the tone of the site is nice and flip, but does that posture translate when you're ordering, say, some penicillin? Maybe not. Still, we wanna see what they're going to do with the copy on condoms. "help, I have to be ready"?
via trendcentral
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Special thanks to Mark Vanderbeeken for his contributions to this weeks newsletter!
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