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)
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.
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!
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.
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.
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