Harman Kardon Makes Crystal Bling Speakers
Ok, we're over the crystal-bling craze, but crystal-bling-steampunk?! Yep. Hold onto your blowtorches n' chisels, design fans, the new Harman Kardon GLA-55 speakers are exactly that. Kurt Solland, the VP of ID at Harman and Core 77's very own 1HDC judge, gave us the low-down:
"The idea was to meld high-tech with craftsman styling and pushing 'Steam Punk' in an elegant way. For the technology side, there are integrated digital amplifiers with special drivers and a proprietary port to allow this to be your complete sound system. All you have to do is plug it in, throw away your old 'boxy' speakers and enjoy. For the design side, I balanced the outside, inside and refractive aesthetic. The outside surfaces had to work harmoniously with the inside surfaces which both had to combine with the refractive nature of the facets…whew! It a way it was kind of like painting with light by utilizing each individual interior as an art installation, it certainly was a very delicate 'chord' to balance just right."
And when you consider these are stuffed choc-full of treats like a 100-watt bi-amplified digital amplifier coupled with DSP equalization, Atlas AL drivers and woofers, PLUS a CMMD tweeter as well as optimisation for digital sound -- oof! -- these beauties won't stay quiet for long. To top it off, the faceted cut-glass enclosures house touch-sensitive volume controls. Yowzas.
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"Peace" by Daniel Chang, Graphic Design, a final poster from a transdisciplinary studio, instructors Martha Rich and Esther Watson, Illustration
Deserve Your Dream: Design Education and Advocacy, by Mariana Amatullo
Social impact projects that come into the classroom and burst out into the field are thrilling. The rush of creativity and the synergy of many minds working together can result in purposeful design projects to great effect: generating tangible solutions that make a lasting difference in people's lives.
Historically, designers have always strived to create positive social change, and many celebrated efforts--think back to the Bauhaus--started in schools. Both of those things remain true today. In fact, design education has a larger role than ever to play in challenging the status quo around the wicked problems of a crowded planet. Despite, and perhaps because of, the world being in such turmoil, this is a very exciting time for design and designers. I firmly believe that with an expanded tool kit, designers can be instrumental contributors to a conversation about the future that it is getting increasingly layered and multidisciplinary. If we are ever to reduce or curtail dire societal ills and achieve sustainable development--by definition, prosperity that is globally shared and environmentally sustainable--responsible design needs to be front and center as part of the equation. (For an engrossing state of the world report, see Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet, by the economist Jeffrey Sachs.)
Educational institutions are vital labs for creative inquiry, entrepreneurial force and experimentation. As such, they can act as a powerful nexus for projects about critical issues that engage students in meaningful work. I have a front row seat in this dynamic field as the lead of the college-wide program Designmatters at Art Center College of Design. At the college through Designmatters, we constantly challenge ourselves to instill in our projects an empathetic approach, and to deliver "real-world" outcomes that have a killer aesthetic. At the root of the process, I am guided by a frontier-like impetus to create unusual alliances that cut across traditional boundaries between development and non-profit agencies, government and business sectors.
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1 Hour Design Challenge: Sick-Ass Car Rendering Winners!
The results are in and we are proud to announce the winners of the latest Core77 1 Hour Design Challenge: Sick-Ass Car Renderings! There were a ton of great entries in this competition, and the added value of seeing time-lapse movies of the renderings as they happened over a 60 minute period was a fantastic treat. Thanks to everyone who participated, and make sure to check out all the entries in the forum.
Our esteemed judge on this this challenge was Ralph Gilles, VP of Design at Chrysler and designer of the Chrysler 300, who had the following overall impressions:
The contest was a great reminder to me of how much fun automotive design as art can be. The variety of styles was cool but I really enjoyed the rare opportunity to watch creation happen real time. Core77 should have more of this on file as it can be really helpful to aspiring designers and is simply a treat to watch.
Click here to meet the winners...
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The art of innovation
The Art of Innovation, a report by NESTA, the UK innovation endowment, explores how fine arts graduates contribute to innovation in the creative industries and beyond, and what policy makers can do to support their contribution.
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Book Review: Process, by Jennifer Hudson
Glossy product design books usually relegate details like ideation sketches, prototypes, parting lines, and injection molds to a supporting role, but Jennifer Hudson's Process: 50 Product Designs from Concept to Manufacture puts them front and center. Highlighting projects from both up-and-coming designers and design luminaries, Process showcases the hours of effort that disappear behind the scenes and are rarely seen by the consumer. Fifty products are each given about a page of explanatory text and are supported by three or four pages of photographs of early prototyping work. Everything from sculptural vases to functional electronics is shown from its birth as an idea to its eventual manufacture. Process reveals all of the details of industrial design that graphic designers (or book editors) might find a bit dull and it shines because of it.
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Pininfarina launches electric car
Pininfarina, the legendary Italian car design company, launched a new electric car, called B0 [pronounced B Zero], at the Paris Auto Show.
This car is not a prototype. It is a mass production model - the first Pininfarina branded car ever - with the first units coming off the production line at the end of 2009, after which production will be ramped up gradually based on the availability of the batteries.
Built in Turin by Pininfarina-Bolloré, a joint venture formed by the two family-owned groups, the B0 electric car is a fully-electric vehicle without any carbon dioxide production, having been designed from the ground up with that aim in mind.
Dedicated to the memory of Andrea Pininfarina who was a firm believer in the project, the elegant four-seater, four-door hatchback can be recharged in a matter of hours from a standard domestic main socket and has a range of 250 km (153 miles).
The B0 has a top speed that is electronically limited to 130 km/h (80 mph) and features potent acceleration, reaching 60 km/h from a standing start (0 to 37 mph) in 6.3 seconds. The B0 also features solar panels on its roof and hood, so as to help recharge its electrical power reserves.
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Designing a desktop alternative in Milan
A group of Italian researchers, led by Giorgio De Michelis, is developing a new "design-driven" way of organizing the contents of a PC, covering both the hardware and the software.
The project - named Itsme - is run by a spinoff of the Bicocca University, which has the sole objective of designing a radically new personal computer concept that is able to easily handle the vast amounts of information and relations, that current desktops and laptops have difficulties with.
The team involved wants to replace the desktop and folder metaphor, as it is not capable of managing the complexity of relations and interconnected histories, with a new one based on the concept of stories and venues.
A first prototype with an easy-to-use interface based on this metaphor will be launched in 2010 and first concepts and ideas will be discussed at the upcoming SMAU technology fair in Milan (15 to 18 October).
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Nursery of the Future shows you how to raise futuristic babies
When designers get asked to re-do a room of the house for publicity purposes, it's usually a sexy room, like the Kitchen of the Future, the Living Room of the Future, or maybe the Bedroom of the Future. More practical rooms, like maybe the Hallway of the Future, or Toolshed of the Future, not so much. So we're bummed that we missed this one day event from last week: baby stuff maker Similac pulled a bunch of innovative existing products together with some conceptual ones to create a Nursery of the Future show.
The event, held in a tent on Columbus Circle in New York last Wednesday, the 24th, showcased some clever existing products for baby, like Scott Henderson's "Mate" table setting for Skip Hop, and a leak-proof sippy cup from Thermos, seen above.
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Sustainable Innovations at the Base of the Pyramid Conference, Helsinki
The Sustainable Innovations at the Base of the Pyramid conference has recently concluded at the Helsinki School of Economics where there were a number of speakers from both business and design as well as developmental organizations such as the UNDP and UNEP. The primary focus of the conference was on sustainable solutions - whether addressing the issues of climate change, the environment, waste, recycling or resources or whether business models meant to serve the poor profitably could be designed to be self supporting over time.
From the design point of view, Dr Prabhu Kandachar of TU Delft's Industrial Design dept spoke on the need for a systems approach that put the users at the center of the design and development process, rather than the profits. His comprehensive overview of the global scenario is available here "Base of the pyramid strategy - eradicating poverty with innovations? "
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Bike Rack Design Competition Entries Unveiled!
Prototypes of the shortlisted entries in the CityRacks Design Competition were installed for public scrutiny at Astor Place in New York last week, the jury are welcoming feedback via comments on the official site and will announce the winner October 24th, 2008.
The competition brief specified for a surface mounted design which a couple of entries hadn't fully resolved yet. Most of the submissions are only intended to lock 2 bikes, multiple clusters would be used on larger sidewalks to accommodate more cyclists.
Another aspect of the competition is that the design should serve as a visual icon and promote cycling in New York, anyone living in the city will be familiar with the numerous bright green bike lanes that have appeared in the last few months as part of an overall initiative to make New York bike friendly.
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Toward a European Internet-of-Things
Europe could take the lead in the next generation of the Internet. In a document entitled "EU Communication on Future Networks and the Internet", the European Commission has outlined the main steps that Europe has to take to respond to the next wave of the Information Revolution that will intensify in the coming years due to trends such as social networking, the decisive shift to on-line business services, nomadic services based on GPS and mobile TV and the growth of smart tags.
They also launched a public consultation on the policy and private sector responses to these opportunities, in order to prepare an upcoming Communication on the Internet of Things. This document will propose a policy approach addressing the whole range of political and technological issues related to the move from RFID and sensing technologies to the Internet of Things. It will focus especially on architectures, control of critical infrastructures, emerging applications, security, privacy and data protection, spectrum management, regulations and standards, broader socio-economic aspects.
A working paper on the Internet of Things accompanies the consultation by outlining the early challenges of this important development.
And to make sure you got the importance of it all: the French have even organised a ministerial conference on it all.
via Bruce Sterling
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Cloning the clone: meet "Darwin" the RepRap 1.0
At the turn of the 21st century the Raelians captured the world's attention with the suggestion that human cloning was being attempted within their ranks. The notion that we can reproduce the precise DNA of another being, has inspired great science fiction, real scientific discovery, and a lot of controversy. The world of design now has its own cloning story: enter the RepRap 1.0 (short for Replicating Rapid prototyper), designed by Adrian Bowyer to produce the majority of its own component parts. Bowyer's RepRap 1.0, nicknamed "Darwin," evolved out of the desire to realize John von Neumann's mid-20th century proposal for a "universal constructor" -- that is, a machine that could copy itself. While the RepRap only reproduces its component parts, still requiring human assembly (leaving the dream of self-assembly yet to be realized), Bowyer points out that humans are themselves excellent assembly machines.
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Jet Man crosses the English Channel
Another contender for the title of Rocket Man is Swiss airline pilot Yves Rossy who just flew across the English Channel wearing a homemade jet-propelled wing in under 15 minutes.
The carbon composite-wing weighs about 121 pounds (55 kilograms) when loaded with fuel, and carried four kerosene-burning jet turbines that kept him aloft. The wing had no steering devices -- Rossy moved his body to control its movements.He wore a heat-resistant suit similar to that worn by firefighters and racing drivers to protect him from the heat of the turbines. The cooling effect of the wind and high altitude also prevented him from getting too hot.
>> view video
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3D body scans used to create 2D sewing patterns
The T-shirt Issue is an experimental project by Berlin designer's Mashallah Design and Linda Kostowski who converted the 3D files of 3 digitally scanned bodies into simple polygon forms that were used to generate unique 2D patterns for the garments.
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f@%k the Rain
And finally, our sentiments exactly. Available here.
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Special thanks to Margaret Maile, Niti Bhan, and Mark Vanderbeeken for their contributions to this week's newsletter!
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