1 Hour Design Challenge: Back-to-school Bag Winners!
We've poured through the entries, the crew at Timbuk2 have voted, and the winners of the latest 1 Hour Design Challenge have now been chosen!
First place (and prize!) goes to the Locker bag by Guntar, for his innovative acrobatics--melding a backpack with a locker-friendly form factor. Here are the judges: "This was not only a great concept, but a great presentation as well. We like how the functionality was well thought out, considering the needs of the everyday student. The fabric swatches were a great touch--it gave us a lot of ideas on how else the bag could look and feel. Critique: We'd like to know how long this really took him..." [Ouch!]
Second place goes to School Is Hell by jknodell. This bag spoke nicely to the vernacular, and you gotta love the call-out on the spray can holster: "Alternative use for beverages." Very green of you jknodell! Here are the judges' comments: "We loved this idea. We like how the designer took a concept that most kids could relate to and made a bag for them. The militaristic, modular theme really lends itself well to school bags, as everyone needs their bag to function differently for their personal requirements. Fabric is so important to this bag, helping to tell much of the story. We would want it to be a fabric and/or print that is true to our military. Also, give more thought to how the bag is worn."
Third place goes to vespaw's Hoodie Bag, which put a smile on all our faces and seemed pretty darn commercializable--and bloggable! Here are the judges: "Beautiful presentation, great sketches. We like the idea, and think kids would dig it too. We also like the idea of elastic rubber. Our overall impression is that more time was put into the sketch than the idea behind it."
The Timbuk2 judges were very impressed with the participants' ability to attack the problem in under an hour. Comments Senior Designer Bopanna Ulliyada, "Some designers had a design in their head from the very beginning, some started with the aesthetic, some thought about function first, some needed more time... The overall response and enthusiasm to the entire contest was great."
And their advice to those who didn't make the top 3?: "Though some of the designs were just as good as the final 3, the lack of sufficient explanation was the reason they weren't picked. This draws back to presentation skills and the need for call-outs on the sketches, or a brief write up on the sketch. Not everyone judging at Timbuk2 was a designer, and that's the norm in a real world situation."
Congratulations to everyone who participated in this 1 Hour Design Challenge, and enjoy your sweet custom Timbuk2 bag Guntar!
>>View all of the entries here!
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Contract Basics for Freelance Designers by Carl Alviani
Flying by the seat of your pants is a pile of fun until you crash and burn; for all you freelance designers out there who never bother with contracts, trusting luck or the good graces of your clients to keep you safe from harm, have we got an article for you.
Over at Creative Seeds, Carl Alviani teams up with patent attorney Joe Makuch to give you the bare bones basics of legal protection for creative freelance work. If you don't know an NDA from an SLA, best take a look at this snippet:
The most immediately useful aspect of a contract is the degree to which it dispels uncertainty. A chat and a handshake are comforting, but it's remarkable how many slight differences in understanding can emerge once you start writing them down.To begin with, do you want to use any of this work in your portfolio? Better get it in writing. Because so much creative work relies on confidentiality to maintain its market advantage, clients can be wary when it comes to use of the concepts you generate. It's not unheard of for a freelancer to be prohibited from publishing any images associated with a project, even after it's complete and out in the world. It's also not unheard of for a client to not care one way or the other, or to change their mind on what's permissible halfway through a project.
Even recent grads and occasional moonlighters without the deep pockets to engage a high-priced attorney have some recourse, it turns out:
The simplest sort of "contract" is just a clear list of agreed points followed by a short disclaimer. Makuch points out that simply adding two or three sentences to the bottom of a quote or Statement of Work can do much to protect the designer from liability; while not the same as a binding contract, it still holds significant legal weight should action be threatened...the disclaimer simply states that you, the Vendor, are not to be held liable for any damages claimed against the client as a result of the product's performance (obviously more of a concern for designers of physical products than print or web designers, but you'd be surprised).
Read the rest, and get schooled here.
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Peugeot's Design Comp draws killer entries; still time to cast your vote
You've got about one week left to vote for your favorite concept from Peugeot's Design Contest 2008, which closes on September 15th. We've gotta say the judges this year had pretty sharp eyes--out of the 29 finalists, there's nary a dog in the bunch. Check out the well-rendered bad-assery here.
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Jump ropers get air at Art Center's Serious Play conference
Conventional Wisdom: Eight Ways to Save Design Conferences
Show's over, kids! Design conferences have become exercises in regenerated, wasteful spectacle. A self-described conference junkie shows us how to bring back the magic.
"Have I died?" I swooned, gnawing my way into a third mound of chili cheese French fries. These were not your typical chili cheese fries, mind you. These fries came with a full condiment bar; overflowing, help-yourself buckets of offbeat fry adornment that included three--three!--varieties of mayonnaise. I nodded back at Bruce Nussbaum between large, ungainly forkfuls of cheese sauce swirled with so much ketchup that it had turned pink, too focused on deciding which flavored mayo I'd ladle over my next serving (chipotle or truffle?) to actually pay attention to a word he was saying. What I heard instead was my inner monologue shrieking over the mastication of fried potatoes: "Now this is what I call a design conference."
Art Center's third biennial conference, Serious Play, held this past May, was packed with such sensory overload. There were blinking Google martini glasses and sleek Steelcase seating; rockstar designers and rocket scientists. I made friends with Eames Demetrios. I talked physics with a Mentos-and-Coke fountain-making scientist. When I left I had two grand-slam presentations still ringing in my ears: The adorable John Maeda and a heartfelt Paula Scher.
But even after my fry binge, I found myself riding around Pasadena in a chauffeured Hyundai, clutching a bag overflowing with designed-for-all Target products, feeling oddly...empty.
>> read on
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Core77 Photo Gallery : FIETS Bicycle Show
"Bicycle" is the title of a 100-day event (Jun.22 - Oct.5) full of activities and lectures anchored by a central exhibition at the Designhuis in Eindhoven. The exhibition provides a great overview on the variety of two-wheelers designed for sports, transport, or just showing off! There are some 18 million bicycles in the Netherlands--check out some of the best ones here. Aart van Beezoyen's got your ride.
>> view gallery
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Materialogical's Sexy Syllabus
The next time you're sitting in your portfolio class and your professor's critiques don't seem to be making sense, consult his or her syllabus to figure out if you should take them with a grain of salt.
Incorporating slick presentation skills, Matthew Hoey, Instructor of the Materials 2 Course for the department of Product Design at Parsons School of Design, has just raised the bar of expectations for both student and teacher.
Using a combination of simple presentation software and an interactive learning system called Blackboard, Howey has structured the class to be an eco-friendly course on materials. With the goal of being paperless and interactive, students will receive and submit assignments via the electronic drop boxes, while compiling powerful learning content using a variety of Web-based tools.
To that effect, Hoey also designed the accompanying website Materialogical, which will eventually feature more than 100 examples of materials that the students will maintain and build upon during the semester, thus creating a package so tight, we want to fling it across the room like a rubber band.
The site's planned launch is on 9/16 for the start of the 'NATURALS' class.
Image: Matthew Hoey & Savannah Enright
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Industrial design and human factors, user-centered design improves interfaces
Rob Tannen, the director of research at Bresslergroup discusses simplicity in Appliance Design magazine.
... there are misconceptions about the relationship between product complexity and usability. There's an implicit assumption among many in the appliance design world that, all things being equal, a product with more features will be a product that is more difficult to use.
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Not your Standard FEMA trailer
As the eastern seaboard awaits the triple threat of Hannah, Ike, and Josephine, the New York City Office of Emergency Management (OEM) is preparing to mount an exhibition of the winners of it's Post-Disaster Provisional Housing Design Competition, "What If New York City..."
The question that the international competition sought to answer was "What if New York City were hit by a Category 3 Hurricane?" and is based on a "fictional but realistic" New York City neighborhood that has been devastated by a hypothetical Category 3 hurricane. The competition investigates how residents can be provided with safe and comfortable living spaces that can be quickly deployed and adapted to different site conditions or reused in subsequent emergencies, while still remaining environmentally sustainable and cost effective.
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Want to cast polyester? Talk to Vincent de Rijk
Archinect's got a killer interview up with Vincent de Rijk. Who is he?
Vincent de Rijk is perhaps one of the most well know architectural model makers in Europe. He graduated from the Design Academy Eindhoven, with an industrial design degree. His proximity to the architectural scene in Rotterdam, at around the time when now-famous firms were emerging has resulted in a multitude of rich collaborations that continue to this day.Vincent has developed techniques of model making dealing with plastics, specifically the casting of polyester in which he is the foremost expert. His education and practical skills along with a keen understanding of the aims and ambitions of architects have made him a sought-after, and coveted partner on all important competitions and commissions throughout Europe & North America.
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To Make a Stock Pop, Innovate
Buried in last weekend's Sunday NYTimes is this quick and dirty piece that you might want to bookmark, print out, and stick in your clients' faces:
There is a big temptation for companies to cut their R.& D. spending, especially during bear markets. That's because such expenses immediately reduce the earnings a company can otherwise report, in return for rewards that are uncertain at best. And even if there are rewards, they surely won't materialize for several years. Such thinking is shortsighted, however, according to the professors, who focused their study on R.& D. expenditures at 69 publicly traded companies in 19 technological categories from 1977 through 2006.
Read the article here.
Thanks Lori!
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OdeChair: Contemporary organic chairs from Jolyon Yates
Okay, these can be pricey, but if you find Wendell Castle a bit overwrought, check out Jolyon Yates' furniture designs, hand made in Northumberland. We asked Jolyon for a bit more info about the pieces, and then asked him if we could paste his comments right here.
I have been working in the car and the boat industries for many years as well as in University, teaching. The ODE chairs are kind of a reaction to loveless mass production--the rather lofty ideal emanating from the suspicion that when we mass-copy an object, the love that goes into designing such a piece is largely lost.
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Designers as leaders: John Maeda talks to the WSJ about the future of learning
John Maeda is the first designer to be appointed President of RISD or any other college, according to an interview published today by the Wall Street Journal. Certainly the first design school or designer covered in the WSJ, he's described as,
Mr. Maeda, age 42, looks disarmingly like the cartoon figure on the cover of "Computers for Dummies"; he says he represents an intertwining of art and design, technology and the handmade.
From his interview,
"A designer is someone who constructs while he thinks, someone for whom planning and making go together," says Mr. Maeda, cocking his head, widening his eyes, moving his hands as if he were shaping a pot. Mr. Maeda considers himself post-digital; he has outgrown his fascination with hardware and is driven by ideas. "I want to reform technology. All the tools are the same; people make the same things with them.Everyone asks me, 'Are you bringing technology to RISD?' I tell them, no, I'm bringing RISD to technology." He describes a visit to the campus by an executive from Yahoo. Mr. Maeda took him to see the visual resources center in the new library. Hundreds of thousands of drawings, photographs and news clippings, and images of art, architecture and decorative arts -- on slides -- are cataloged and stored in old-fashioned metal and wood file cabinets. The Yahoo executive was stunned. "This is a real live Google!" Better, says Mr. Maeda.
Read the whole interview
Illustration credit: Ismael Roldan, via WSJ
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From HANDCRAFT to MINDCRAFT: Danish Design at 100% Design
From Sept. 18-21, MINDCRAFT will be featured at 100% Futures during the London Design Festival. With the MINDCRAFT exhibition, the Danish Crafts organization presents an overview of Danish craft and design, which highlights the development from traditional craft and applied art to innovative and conceptual design.
As part of the 10th anniversary show 'forget me knot' for London design shop mint, MINDCRAFT will also be presenting works by leading Danish designers Cecilie Manz, Ditte Hammerstrom, Louise Hindsgavl and Astrid Krogh.
Textile stone by Pernille Fagerlund
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New bottle for Elmer's, and everyone else
And finally, Elmer's Wood Glue, long a staple of wood shops here in the US (including the ones where we spent way too many of our ID school days and nights), is undergoing its first major packaging change in just about forever. The offset spout design, shown here next to the long-standing centered shape, makes laying down a long bead considerably easier and more precise, but posed a significant printing challenge. Enter Eastman Innovation Labs, whose Embrace resin films were able to shrink over the weird asymmetric shape, giving the bottles higher shelf visibility and more space to distinguish between types.
The Innovation Lab website offers an impressive assortment of other tricky materials, in this gallery, clearly aimed at the ID and packaging design set (they're also partially responsible for the POM Wonderful bottles that the branding community swooned over a couple years back). If you're planning to re-invent a wheel or glue bottle anytime soon, go take a look.
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Special thanks to Niti Bhan and Tool Girl for their contributions to this week's newsletter!
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