London Design Festival 2008: All posts in one place
Check out this list of Core77's event coverage of London Design Week in one easy-to-browse place.
London Design Festival 2008: 100% Design: Is Design Sobering Up?
London Design Festival 2008: 100% Design
London Design Festival 2008: 100% Design: Good Design Manifesto
London Design Festival 2008: Plastic Fantastic
London Design Festival 2008: Tent London
London Design Festival 2008: Changing Dimensions
London Design Festival 2008: Create Berlin
London Design Festival 2008: Cardboard Cafe
VIDEOS:
London Design Festival 2008: Video Drive-By: What's on Wattson?
London Design Festival 2008: Video Drive-By: Mathias Hahn at OKAY Studio at The Aram Gallery
London Design Festiva 2008: Video Drive-By: Hiroko Shiratori at OKAY Studio at The Aram Gallery
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Core77 Toyota Calty Studio Visit, Round 2: How they're winning
Walking through Calty, you're only hit occasionally by the importance of where you are: with all the palm trees, the chatty hosts, the leisurely lunches, and the clay-carving sessions, it's easy to forget that this is the North American design headquarters of the most successful car company in the world. The company that led the New York Times Magazine to ask in a cover story last year whether it "has evolved into the world's most sophisticated modern corporation."
>> see more
>> Core77 Toyota Calty Studio Visit, Round 1: How the pros use PS
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IDSA National Conference 2008 Photos
If you weren't one of the 750 attendees at the IDSA's national conference in Phoenix last week, you can grab a peek at what went down in the flickr pool they've just posted and if you did go, add your pics. Word is despite a few missing regulars, attendance was good and there was a visible presence of a new generation of designers.
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Background rendering by Coroflot member David Fearnley.
1 Hour Design Challenge: Sick-Ass Car Rendering!
Cars are a huge part of our lives. They not only drive us from point A to point B, they drive memories. From that first road trip with the crew to losing our virg...er...keys, we have a long standing love affair with our automobiles.
In honor of this cultural icon, we're stepping it up a notch: We want to see you put to paper the sickest ride you can dream of. Seriously, we want to SEE you do it. This 1HDC is more than just a 1 Hour Design Session. To be eligible you must video tape yourself spilling your ink and your soul into this one. We will then ask you to compress that one hour down into a 2 Minute Video and post it, along with an image of the final rendering, for the world to see.
Doors open:
Tuesday September 16, 2008
9 PM PST (4AM GMT)
Doors close:
Sunday, Sept 28, 2008
9 PM PST (4 AM GMT)
CRITERIA:
Judging will be based on quality of presentation and whether or not your work could have realistically been done in 1 Hour. The 1 hour does NOT include thinking in the shower, procrastinating, setting up the video camera, editing the video, uploading to Core77, or anything not related to creating the sick-assest rendering you can come up with. Use this Core77 4 minute sketch session as guidance for how to set-up your camera. If you're a digital hack, a screen capture will do nicely.
PRIZE:
Publicity in the October Core77 Newsletter, publicity on the Core77 Blog, bragging rights that Ralph Gilles, VP of Design at Chrysler chose your design!
JURY:
Guest judge on this 1HDC is Ralph Gilles, the VP of Design of Chrysler, and designer of the Chrysler 300. Community discussion is encouraged to help ensure the best design wins.
Important guidelines here
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H1 'Fugu' Disaster Relief Helicopter
The H1 'Fugu' Rescue Helicopter by designer Matt Bassett is optimized for space efficiency, his concept would carry a similar payload to a Chinook but in an aircraft that's 40 feet shorter. Click through to see the model and a large view of his awesome rendering.
>> see more
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Desktop form factor: "Open source" computing
The Eiffel Tower is to enclosed buildings as the Antec Skeleton is to desktop PC's. The open-air design has room for four drives and definitely looks like you shouldn't spill coffee on it. We're not sold on the concept, but in a time when everyone is driving towards Apple's silver sliver minimalism, it's nice to see someone trying something different. And remember, everyone hated the Eiffel Tower in the beginning.
via engadget
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iYo Yo-Yo powered charger for iPhone
Talk about a GreenerGadget! Swedish designer Peter Thuvander has designed an induction-powered yo-yo charger for iPhones and other Apple handheld devices. Housing a lithium ion cell, and based on the OLPC crank and this dandy wind-up remote, Peter is betting that the physics are close to there. "The remote control needs only 30 cranks--which is nothing when you yo-yo," argues Peter. He's also thinking about what road warriors call "opportunitic charging": "I think I'd at least use it as an emergency device for all the dead iPhone moments I have."
Or at least to change the channel when you've seen one too many "HI, I'm a Mac..." commercials.
Learn more at www.peterthuvander.se.
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Design thinking by IDEO; Thoughts by Tim Brown
Tim Brown has launched a blog on design thinking sprinkled with a smattering of social impact, Bruce Nussbaum tells us as he extols on the three things he likes about it. Here's a snippet from Brown's about page to get you started,
This is a blog about design thinking. I am in the process of writing a book on the subject and this is the place I would like to share ideas and have a discussion. If you want to get an overview on how I see design thinking then check out the article I wrote for Harvard Business Review here.As you will see as you read the posts, I have lots of questions. If you can help me with any answers or perspectives I would be very grateful. If you let me know who you are I will also do my best to acknowledge anything that makes it into the book.
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Touchscreen-friendly gloves
Trying to use an iPod Touch with gloves on is like trying to program the microwave while wearing oven mitts. Here with help are Dots Gloves:
Dots Gloves offers simple, affordable gloves adorned with metal dots that enable use of the iPhone, iPod and iTouch without direct finger contact. The smooth, curved surface of the dots provides completely safe, scratchless use.
They even let you spec out which fingers (thumb, index, middle) you want the dots on, and at ten bucks a pop they're dirt cheap.
via dvice
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PRO INNO Europe
PRO INNO Europe is a new initiative of EU's Directorate General Enterprise and Industry which aims to become the focal point for innovation policy analysis, learning and development in Europe, with the view to learning from the best and contributing to the development of new and better innovation policies in Europe.
One of their most interesting initiatives is the INNO-GRIPS project, which aims to develop a vision for European design, analyse current barriers to better use of design in companies and how to lift them, explore the rationale and added value of European involvement in the domain, and set out possible building blocks of a European policy for design.
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Disappearing projection screen wins award
Wouldn't it be nice if objects appeared when you needed them, and disappeared when you didn't? Take your large flatscreen TV, for instance--when it's on it's great, and when it's off you've got a big, black rectangle hanging on your wall.
Consumer electronics manufacturer Beamax has applied that thinking to their X-Series Dellegno projection screen, which disappears into its base at the touch of a button. It's less hassle than having a ceiling-mounted disappearing projection screen, and it recently won the Best Industrial Design Award at Denver's Cedia Expo consumer electronics show. The video below is like most other product videos we've seen lately--poorly produced--but it should give you the idea.
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Kevin Kelly: Everything, Too Cheaply Metered
Steve Portigal tips us to this great piece on The Technium where Kevin Kelly riffs on the plummeting-to-zero cost of just about everything in the "new economy of abundance," and the attendant increase in value of metering each of those everythings. Hmm, maybe that wasn't so clear. Let's go to KK for the sweetspot:
I can get free email, free storage, free photo manipulation tools, free genealogical sharing, free phone service, free twittering, free...well almost free anything...knowing that the hosts are monitoring (metering) my usage.Monitoring everything--all flows of materials, all flows of energy, all flows of people, all flows of attention--naturally creates rivers, if not oceans, of data about the flows of data. This flood of meta data is driven in part because the costs of bandwidth and computer cycles is itself "too cheap to meter." But in fact, meta data is too cheap NOT to meter--if we mean only to count and monitor it. The value of measuring the meta data of any bit seems to increase as the cost of the bit decreases.
At first glance there is a worry that an avalanche of data from all possible sensors, running 24/7/365 will simply drown us. What value can their be in saving every email, every web page EVER, every keystroke? One thing we've learned from radical self-trackers and life-bloggers is that while the value of ubiquitous monitoring seems nil at first, data streams of trivial actions are often the streams that become most valuable later on. Your night-to-night sleep patterns are worthless right now, but they might form an incredibly valuable baseline in the future if some emerging illness were to disturb them. Likewise in business, mass logs of ordinary customer behavior are now almost a hassle but might become the foundation for both new innovations and aids in discerning failures in future products and services.
Imagine a world were any set of historical data was available to you. Everyone has their own favorite data stream from history they would love to have. Such a trove would transform our lives. For that reason, monitoring everything will become commonplace. Cheaply metering data, in fact, is what propels the free economy. Metering is a type of attention. Products and services will be given away in exchange for the meta data about their use. Data about the free is now more valuable than the free thing itself.
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European Institute for Innovation and Technology
The European Union is providing initial funding of more than 300m euros for the new European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), located in Budapest, Hungary and aimed at generating more European technological advances.
The EIT hopes to pool the expertise of universities, research bodies and businesses in new partnerships.
Renewable energy and new-generation IT projects are among the priority areas.
BBC article
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Modular Refrigerator for Student Houses
And finally, Stefan Buchberger, a design student at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna created a modular fridge unit for the Electrolux Design Lab competition 2008. Designed for people sharing a flat, his concept allows you to keep your part of the fridge clean without having deal with others who may have lesser standards when it comes to hygiene. The real question is can you lock it to keep thieving housemates from raiding your fresh milk supply.
The fridge consists of a base station and up to four stackable modules. The modules allow each individual user to have his or her own refrigerator space and can be customized with various colorful skins as well as with add-ons like a bottle opener or a whiteboard.Handles on the sides of the modules make them easy to transport. "If you move to new flat, you can just transport your module like a suitcase and hook it up to the base station in your new flat," Buchberger explains.
>> see more
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Special thanks to Mark Vanderbeeken and Niti Bhan for their contributions to this week's newsletter!
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