And the winner is...Zon Hearing Aid!
The people have spoken, and last night the People's Design Award was awarded to Stuart Karten Design's Zon Hear Aid. You can learn more about the device (and read comments) at the Cooper-Hewiit site, or just mosey on over to SKD and check the work out there. Congrats SKD and Starkey Laboratories!
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Book Review: Imprint, by Daniel Eatock
The inside cover of Daniel Eatock's monograph Imprint is covered with a rather exhaustive list of tasks that could be construed as either design projects or performance art pieces depending upon one's point of view. While certain items like "I have spent twenty-four hours in a pitch-black room, lying on a mattress with ear plugs in my ears, without eating or visiting the toilet," suggest David Blaine's feats of endurance, others stray from conceptual art into true iterative design. While his project to draw ten thousand circles by hand before selecting the best one sounds like an introductory sketching exercise (and the final circle is indeed nearly Zen in its perfection), the ream of A3 paper consisting of the other 9,999 imperfect circles stands as the real piece of art.
In the accompanying text Eatock admits that he's not an intuitive sketcher, instead describing the ideas behind his work as the true art. Instead I would posit that his process stands as his most substantial artistic achievement. Sometimes, the idea and the output fuse perfectly, like arranging an entire set of Letraset Pantone Markers according to the color spectrum and leaving them open to bleed into 500 sheets of paper. The resulting set of prints was both aesthetically pleasing and, I assume, easily numbered. Inviting participants to help to manufacture "the world's largest signed and numbered artwork" by signing and numbering labels themselves, however, is more intellectually than aesthetically interesting. Eatock works and has trained as a graphic artist, so his output isn't industrial design by any stretch of the imagination, but the process is the same. In effect, Eatock has made the process of the art into the art, and the results are both inspirational and humbling. I once heard that looking at a Picasso makes one want to paint, but looking at Rembrandt makes one want to quit. Miraculously, reviewing Eatock's prolific output manifests both urges at the same time. For any designer struggling to find a place to start, reading Imprint should be ample proof that almost any starting point will look brilliant in retrospect, provided that enough work, practice and repetition went into the final product.
>> continue
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Digital surfaces for the blind
CScout reports on how tactile surfaces are making technology and information much more accessible to people with visual handicaps, and features the Touch Sight Camera, the ReEnvision debit card reader, the Sentio watch (pictured), and the Saifu tablet PC.
"As a range of new interfaces and surfaces for digital devices are developed, it is becoming easier for visually impaired people to use devices sighted people take for granted. Tactile displays enable digital data to be felt rather than seen, making it easier for blind and partially sighted people to access the Internet, keep their credit card details secure, and take and archive pictures."
>> Read article
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MIT opens lab in Italy on sustainable building
The MIT Mobile Experience Lab, within the Design Laboratory, signed a 3 years strategic alliance with the Fondazione Bruno Kessler, a local research institute, to advance research in sustainable connected homes, including subtopics of renewable energy systems, sustainable architecture, social sustainability, and connected information systems to optimize home behavior and people's lives.
The project, which is promoted by the Autonomous Province of Trento, Italy, will conclude with building a full-scale prototype of a sustainable home with new technologies, materials, and applications.
(Also here several former Ivreans are involved including Dave Chiu, Hector Ouilhet and Silvia Gabrielli).
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Rubik's Cube + Pantone = Rubitone
Brilliantly simple. From the portfolio of Ignacio Pilotto, an Argentinian designer.
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DesignPhiladelphia 2008: Student Work at 222 Gallery
Last week marked the end of DesignPhiladelphia, but Gallery 222 is keeping Product 01 and Build 02, two exhibitions of work from two of Philadelphia's premiere design education courses, running through November 1st.
>> continued
>> DesignPhiladelphia 2008: A Clean Break
>> DesignPhiladelphia 2008: The Hacktory
>> DesignPhiladelphia 2008: Matthias Pliessnig
>> DesignPhiladelphia 2008: SOS Stool by Josh Owen
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Using design to crack society's problems
Lots of interesting content in the November issue of Fast Company magazine.
Can design save the world? Hilary Cottam thinks so.
Alice Rawsthorn, design critic of the International Herald Tribune, profiles Hilary Cottam, founding director of the social enterprise Participle, on her use of design to try to change the world for the better.
[If you want to know more about Hilary, read the lengthy interview I did with her last year for Torino World Design Capital.]
Three more who design for society
Meet three visionaries who solve social problems with design thinking: Ezio Manzini (Politecnico di Milano), Marcia Lausen (Design for Democracy) and George Kembel (Stanford D.school).
Building a sustainable design community
Anya Kamenetz reports on the highly laudable Designers Accord: "Valerie Casey is rallying the creative community to her version of a Kyoto treaty for designers -- and her peers are signing on in droves. Now comes the hard part."
Green guru gone wrong: William McDonough
This long feature story is probably a bomb. McDonough, the architect who developed the "cradle-to-cradle" concept, is widely revered as an environmental guru. The article describes McDonough as a great promoter with good intentions, who creates projects with often very mixed or even failed results.
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Living: A new (Italian) pop-up in SoHo
Beginning today and running 'til December 20th, an ambitious new pop-up will take residence in NYC. Living the Italian Soho House will contain over 150 Lombardy-designed furniture and home accessories, film screenings, and panel discussions. Produced by Promos, a specialized division of the Milan Chamber of Commerce, the initiative aims to shine a light on Italian design. Here's more:
The idea behind Living the Italian Soho House is to recreate five spaces found in Italian houses by using elements and products from 35 of the most innovative design companies in Italy. The space at 172 Mercer will include a kitchen and dining room, living room with garden, office and entertainment room, bathroom/spa, and bedroom. There will also be a welcome room, which will host seminars, events, and presentations over Living’s eight-week residency.The items on display in the house were selected by interior designers and include over 150 products from companies including Paola C, Bizzari, Bodema, Luceplan, Progetti, and more. Among the items will be seating, bathroom and kitchen furnishings, lighting, windows, flooring, tables, and more. All products on display will be available for purchase.
And we're confident they'll take American dollars.
All info at the site: www.livinglombardy.it.
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PopTech 2008: Scarcity and Abundance
PopTech 2008 kicked off last week in Camden, Maine to an enthusiastic and boisterous crowd. Addressing this year's topic of "Scarcity and Abundance," presentations ranged from energy awareness to cello lessons (!). WattzOn's Saul Griffith opened the session with an overview of his energy consumption monitoring platform. In its alpha phase, WattzOn allows users to visualize and understand their personal energy footprint. Highlights from the morning included Malcolm Gladwell's discussion of cultural "capitalising" (an analysis of processes that affect success and failure in society) and Paul Polak's call to arms for low-cost, sustainable design solutions in developing countries. The afternoon was ripe with expression as Marian Bantjes' (pictured above) spoke of her transition from traditional graphic design to "meaningful" design. "I started creating work that was meaningful to me..." she said, "and discovered it was meaningful to other people as well...I made a decision to stop working for money. And start working for love."
Chandler Burr, the New York Times perfume critic, led the room through an exploration of scent and its relationship to history, culture and emotion (who knew patchouli smelled that way because it includes rotten LEAVES in its process?!). Ripe with anecdotes and hilarity, he cited the reason for differentiation between male and female perfumes as nothing more than "offering hetero-sexual men the freedom to wear scent in society."
Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic, ended the evening in great spirits with a presentation on the Art of Possibility. Conducting renditions of "Happy Birthday," he emphasized the need to "get up and conduct" in life, as well as the joy of making mistakes and embracing the present. His energy and optimism rang true with the entire crowd as he careened around the Opera House floor, using a young cellist's rendition of a Bach to offer insights on how to weave emotion and nuance not only into a musical piece, but everyday life. "I have a bigger dream," he closed the night with, "that you will live the rest of your life in possibility. That is my dream."
Check out more coverage on the PopTech blog.
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Herman Miller reaches for the Holy Grail of chairs: One size fits all
Is it possible to design a chair that will fit everyone, whether short, tall, fat, skinny? Maybe or maybe not, but if any company can pull it off, it's Herman Miller.
Given this seemingly impossible task, HM's engineers came back with the Embody chair:
The Embody's colorful fabric seat hides a system of 94 plastic coils. Each compresses independently, allowing pointy bones or bulky wallets to sink in without causing nearby areas to sag. The designers also tuned the springiness of each coil based on its location. The coils under your thighs and the soft backs of your knees give easily so they don't chafe; those under the bones in your rear, which bear most of your weight, are the stiffest. Plastic caps on top of the coils tilt in any direction to hug instead of poke your curves.
via popular science
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Creative30 now open for voting
It's a bit broad and uneven, but the Volvo- and Vice-sponsored Creative30 competition/website offers some great creative eye-candy, in the form of 3-minute videos of some of the most phenomenally talented young designers and artists the UK currently has to offer. As the name implies, thirty subjects have been selected to showcase and talk about their work, which ranges from sculpture and visual arts to music, fashion and furniture design. Visitors to the site are invited to cast a vote for their favorite, and the winner drives off in a Volvo (runner up has to settle for 10,000 pounds in cash "to help launch their career").
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Hands on with Microsoft's touch interfaces
CNET News has published a small photo gallery of new user interfaces developed by Microsoft Research. The integration of physics engines looks quite promising.
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Couple makes good with self-designed iPod accessory
And finally, a tale of product success: Jeremy Huber found current methods of affixing iPod Nanos to the body--armbands, cases and the like--unsuitable for his weightlifting routine. He and wife Alissa devised the iStik, a snap-on plastic case containing four magnets, which corresponds with a thin plastic sheet also holding four magnets. The rest is simple: put the sheet inside your clothing and the case outside the clothing, and the magnets do the rest. You can now store your Nano on any part of your body covered by clothing.
(If magnets don't sound like such a hot idea, remember that this is for the Nano, so there's no hard drive to accidentally erase.)
While the object itself is neat, what we found more interesting was the success the Hubers found in a market glutted with corporations all trying to design a hit iPod accessory. The Hubers started by renting a booth at the L.A. marathon, where the hordes of runners saw the wisdom of the gizmo and quickly bought up all 400 of them. This led to an appearance on CNBC's The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch, and the publicity boosted sales--with no dedicated retail space, just a website, the Hubers have racked up $50,000 in sales in just six months! No ID background, and not too shabby.
>> more images
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Special thanks to Mark Vanderbeeken for his contributions to this week's newsletter!
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