Coroflot's 8th Annual Design Salary Survey now online!

Since 2001, Coroflot has been conducting its annual salary survey for the design industries. By contributing your 2 cents, you are helping to build an amazing resource for both designers and employers. It will take less than 1 minute: Get started here! (Then you can check out last year's results.)

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Dog lamp by Charles Kalpakian

Inspired by graffiti, nature, sculpture, lighting, music and souvenirs, designer Charles Kalpakian's playful lamp 'dog' stores books on his back and lights up by pulling his tail several times, a dynamo stores energy and provides light. Yazter recently interviewed Kalpakian here and there's a heap more work on his site hellokarl.com.

>> more pictures

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Coroflot Creative Seeds: Six things to consider when setting your freelance rate.

So, how much are you worth?

We're not talking in a philosophical, meaning-of-life sort of way, but the much harder, more immediate sort of worth: cash money, and your first client has just asked how much of it you want for an hour of your creative time. For anyone new to creative freelancing, picking a rate can feel nearly as tenuous as selecting a "card, any card" from a deck fanned out on a magician's table, but there does turn out to be some logic to it.

Over at Creative Seeds, Carl Alviani has a rundown of six things the remember when focusing in on that magic number; here's #5:

An hour worked is not an hour billed.

You only get to bill your client for time spent producing deliverables for them: the renderings, the prototypes, the presentations, the sketches, the research reports. One thing young freelancers are often astonished to discover is how, at the end of a long hard day, they've only generated 4 hours worth of work for their client.

It's a discouraging realization, but really it shouldn't be; that's just how freelancing works (it's how staff jobs usually work too, if we're ruthlessly honest in our accounting). There's time spent marketing yourself, time spent learning new skills, and time spent recovering from mistakes. There's also time spent on the phone with a professional acquaintance, reading blogs and sites relevant to your field, and responding to emails from potential future clients. This stuff is necessary too, but it's not billable. In fact, a good rule of thumb is that for every hour you bill, you'll be working for two. Once this settles in, five hours entered into a timesheet on Monday doesn't look so bad.

>>Read the whole article here.<<

photo credit: zoomar

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McDonald's Unbranded. Seriously.

News from Tokyo of a couple no-logo McDonald's opening up early this month. No weird clowns, no golden arches, no...anything really, just a black storefront with red trim and a big burger in the window. Taking a cue from In-n-Out, the menu's exactly two items long: quarter-pounder and double quarter-pounder. Further proof that red, black, and white is the king of all corporate color schemes, from Coke to the Nazis. Check the new website here.

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Call for engineers: help design an eye-mounted camera

When someone gets hit by a car, it's a tragedy. When they suffer permanent injury, such as losing an eye, it becomes a lifelong tragedy. When they seek to turn that tragedy into art, though, it becomes an opportunity, and a fascinating one at that.

Tanya Vlach is a fifth-generation San Franciscan who suffered just such an injury back in 2005, and has both the prosthetic eyeball and eye-patch to prove it. Judging by her blog, she also received a radically altered perspective on life and the nature of perception, and this brings us to the opportunity.

Tanya wants to put a camera in her head.

>> continue

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I'm an Aerostar, I'm a Cutlass Supreme

In the HuffPo (sure, we can call it that, why not?), aging rocker Neil Young (heck, what's a tired journalistic cliche between friends?) offers up a vision for How To Save A Major Automobile Company.

The big three must reduce models to basics. a truck, an SUV, a large family sedan, an economy sedan, and a sports car. Use existing tooling.

Keep building these models to keep the workforce employed but build them without engines and transmissions. These new vehicles, called Transition Rollers, are ready for a re-power. No new tooling is required at this stage. The adapters are part of the kits described next.

At the same time as the new Transition Rollers are being built, keeping the work force working, utilize existing technology now, create re-power kits to retrofit the Transition Rollers to SCEVs (self charging electric vehicles) for long range capability up to and over 100mpg.

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The Met's first interactive opera

The day's of projecting video live on stage to enhance the visual experience has come a long way, last Friday's performance of "Faust" at the Metropolitan Opera was the most sophisticated interactive technology they've incorporated to date.

...Microphones (not the broadcasting kind) which are attached to the singers and positioned over the orchestra gauge volume and pitch. A system of infrared lights and cameras detect motion; similar technology is used to catch people trying to cross the United States border with Mexico, Mr. Lepage said.

A flock of digitally created birds swirls during Faust's opening aria. As Mr. Giordani's pitch changes, the birds change directions. As the volume surges, they swoop. When soldiers, supported by cables, march perpendicularly up the scaffolding on a projection of grass, the blades waver and part.

For the water-reflection scene, a high-definition camera captures the image of the moving boat. The software flips the image upside down, creates a shimmer and then instructs a projector to play it back simultaneously on the screen below the boat. The movements of ballet dancers during the "Menuet des follets" cause projected images of curtains to flutter and billow. In the production's most striking moment a JumboTron image of Ms. Graham's face appears behind her, emanating flames, as she sings "D'amour l'ardente flame."

New York Times via PSFK

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Hiroshima: The Lost Photographs

An absolutely fascinating article over at DesignObserver by Adam Levy on a set of post-nuclear photographs and their provenance. Here are a couple tastes:

But think of Hiroshima and what comes to mind is the mushroom cloud. Awesome in its way, with its bulbous head and towering stem, it is nonetheless an abstract image freed from human agency.

The lack of visual evidence of the atom bomb's effect has helped us to forget its devastating impact. To see is to remember. Up until now, there have been few publicly available images of what happened on the ground when the first atomic bomb exploded. As a result, Hiroshima has become, as the novelist Mary McCarthy wrote in 1946, "a kind of hole in human history."

These images go some way towards filling in this hole in our historical memory. Taken during the weeks following the bombing, they show a landscape that is eerily vacant and quiet, like ruins from a vanished civilization. But why were they taken and by whom? And how is it that they ended up in a pile of garbage?

And just a little bit more:

These photographs are significant not only for their visual message but also for their very existence as a group, for their cohesive documentation of an event of which we have few other still images.

Although the images taken by the Physical Damage Division don't depict the human suffering of the atomic bomb they do provide a vital function. They say: this is what we, mankind, are capable of unleashing upon each other. Like ruins, they refer back into time (this is what we have done, are capable of doing) while simultaneously warning of a future we have not yet encountered (they give substance to our terror of the use of another nuclear weapon).

Read the whole essay here.

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Many thanks for this guest post just in from Ashley Thorfinnson and Sahar Ghaheri.

Snapshots from A Better World by Design Conference

Undergrads passionately conversing on leaf-littered lawns between rows of red brick buildings set an almost overly iconic stage for the learning and discovery at this weekend's A Better World by Design Conference in Providence, RI. There was a laidback optimism in the air as we wandered between events at RISD and Brown, where students and professionals with lofty dreams of saving the world came together to gain advice from those who have already begun creating a better world by design. A few highlights are below:

Cameron Sinclair, Keynote Speaker
Despite showing up late, we were psyched to kick off our weekend by catching Cameron Sinclair's spectacular keynote speech. We laughed, we were moved, and we were beyond-inspired to follow his lead. Declaring the need for an absolute systemic change in the design world, Cameron spoke about creating economic engines for reconstruction in disaster-stricken areas, and of the importance of treating communities and clients as equal partners in the design process. Quoting another, Cameron likened his organization, Architecture for Humanity, to an "Al Qaeda for good...with sleeper cells all over the world, ready to activate." By establishing this worldwide network, he illustrated the power of creating a highly responsive design community that effectively matches skills with needs--or as he put in yet another colorful analogy, "match.com for the humanitarian design world."

>> continue

>> Designing a better world: behind the scenes at A Better World by Design conference

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Bicycle-sharing mania takes hold in Europe

In increasingly green-conscious Europe, there are said to be only two kinds of mayors: those who have a bicycle-sharing program and those who want one.

Read article

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New Dutch five euro coin

Speaking of Europe, the new Dutch five euro commemorative coin by Stani Michiels commemorates architecture. Check out the design process. Really stunning work.

via Design Observer

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House Industries Exhibition Opening Photos

The exhibition Letters and Ligatures showcases recent work from the Delaware-based type foundry House Industries. Click through for more photos from the opening and if you're in LA, the show at Subliminal Gallery will run untill December 5th.

>> more photos

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Cupboards, cupboards everywhere, nor any place to sleep.

New York architecture studio HWKN (Matthias Hollwich and Marc Kushner) has a new shelving system called the Wall Unitizer that looks kind of like a cupboard virus has sprouted and spread through your apartment. It's a bit of an Archigram-style take on turning the home into an extension of the body. The walls are everything you need: shelves, seating, desk space. Plus, if you live in a typical coffin-sized city apartment, everything's within arm's reach!

So far they've only done one, for some lucky client on the U.E.S. It was heavily customized, down to optimal chair and desk height, but I hope they think of mass producing this thing. More info on the shelves and the studio here.

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Selling SolidWorks in Rwanda

Great, short report on using CAD in sub-Saharan Africa over on CAD Insider. In this case, it's Chillington Rwanda, a factory in Kigali that makes wheelbarrows, stonecrushers, and other locally necessary machinery. The article follows an attempt by local consultancy Gasabo 3D, as they try to convince the factory of the advantages of 3D modeling in a business environment where computers are still relatively scarce.

It's an interesting read for the juxtaposition of the familiar (engineers sit around a table with tech drawings and calipers, debating the next step) and the bizarre (a broken crusher wheel is replaced by hand carving a wooden replica, which is then measured and made into a casting form), and for a peek at the future of CAD in emerging markets.

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Photo from AP: Chris Bensch, curator of collections, shows off the newest inductees into the Toy Hall of Fame, a stick.

Stick enters Toy Hall of Fame. No, a real stick.

Okay, technically, the Stick, Skateboard, and Baby Doll were inducted, but we're mostly interested in the stick part. You gotta hand it to those folks in Rochester for having the guts to do this, and to (sorry) draw a line in the sand with what any/every parent knows all too well:

"It's very open-ended, all-natural, the perfect price--there aren't any rules or instructions for its use," said Christopher Bensch, the museum's curator of collections. "It can be a Wild West horse, a medieval knight's sword, a boat on a stream or a slingshot with a rubber band. ...No snowman is complete without a couple of stick arms, and every campfire needs a stick for toasting marshmallows."

Guts indeed, given the backlash they must've received from one of their 2005 inductees: the cardboard box. We have no pick for next year; the cardboard box and the stick are it.

Thanks tort!

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SNIF tag: Social Networking for dogs

And finally, if you feel it's time for Fido to get into that whole social networking thing then this may be for you. The SNIF tag is a wireless gadget that clips onto a dog's collar. As you take your dog for a walk amongst all the other SNIF-enabled hounds at your local park, the tag records your dog's erm, interactions and shares the data with other tags.

>> continue

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Special thanks to William Bostwick, Mark Vanderbeeken and Steve Portigal 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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