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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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