Core77 Photo Gallery: Gizmodo Gallery 2009
Returning for their second year, gadget blog Gizmodo presented over 60 devices in New York including a collection of vintage electronics, a giant 3D Etch-a-Sketch, a live band ArcAttack performing with home-made tesla coils, many hands-on interactive demos and the crowd favorite—an automatic pancake making machine.
Sketching in Hardware is Changing Your Life, by Fabricio Dore
Detail of an XBee module in a prototype for the Tweet-a-Watt, a hacked wireless home-power monitoring system by Ladyada. Source: Flickr
One weekend this past July, an invitation-only group of 40 artists, designers, and researchers from design hotspots and leading institutions such as IDEO, Microsoft Research, NYU, Stanford, Umeå Institute of Design, Wired Magazine UK, and Yamaha, among others (complete list here), gathered in an (almost) secret location in London. During the fourth-annual Sketching In Hardware Conference (SH09), three big-impact themes emerged: tools to support the design of better, more complex experiences; the challenges of open innovation; and the basic conditions for open devices to become a reality
What is Sketching in Hardware?
The napkin sketch is the lingua franca of all design. We all do it because—hundreds of years since we started doing it—it's still the best way to get inspired, to get unstuck, to get real.
Until recently, electronic-device design has been sprinting up the steep incline of Moore's Law. Our ability to conceptualize early ideas is tripping on its shoelaces. It's hard to simplify the inherent dynamism of an electronic device—no matter how elaborate the margin doodle; it often confuses more than clarifies. And how could it not? Electronic devices are alive and interactive. They gather information about their environment or user, process values, and respond accordingly. Even the most well-intentioned sketch quickly reaches the limitations of the medium.
Be our Ambassador. Invite your friends to try Masterfile. They'll get a 20% discount on any image purchases made within 90 days, and you'll earn a 10% Referral Fee. There’s no limit to the number of purchases they can make. So reach out and cash in!
London Design Festival 09: Tent Digital
For the first time this year, Tent Digital was part of the Tent London show during the Design Festival last week. The show consisted of various installations, some of them interactive. Watch this video to get an idea.
Gizmodo Gallery '09 Walk Through
We caught up with gadget blog Gizmodo editor and tech junkie Brian Lam for a personal tour of the Gizmodo Gallery. Packed with DIY interactive creations, vintage gadgets, weird and expensive devices, a huge tv, and an automatic pancake making machine (awesome), the highlight for us was Austin band ArcAttack and their daily performances with sound producing telsa coils. Watch the video here.
Call for Entries: Metropolis' Next Gen design comp
Metropolis Magazine has announced a call for entries for their Next Generation design competition, titled "One Design Fix for the Future":
Good design determines how well products, spaces, and systems work from the beginning. We think that great design ideas can make things work even better. One Design Fix for the Future challenges you to prove us right--whether you are an architect, interior designer, product designer, landscape designer, graphic designer, communication designer. We're looking for ONE design fix you can make now in your designed environment--the products you use, your home, your workplace, your city, or any commercial application--that, in scale or as inspiration, can improve our future.To enter, provide one small (but brilliant and elegant) fix--leading to an incremental (or dramatic) change in sustainability. Your fix needn't have anything to do with "environmentalist engineering" to make a difference. Concentrate on what you know best, are aching to improve in a way that deploys your training and imagination.
Grand prize is ten large, and the deadline's not 'til late January 2010 so you've got a little time for this one. But hurry up--those holidays will be here before you know it. Click here to learn more.
CCA students reconsider the digital camera
At the Intel University Design Expo last week, several students from the California College of the Arts were showcased for their innovative work with cameras and mobile technology, exploring new ways to capture landscapes, print photos and connect with your children.
The Capture 180, by Lucas Ainsworth takes a wide angle photo and unwraps it onto a photographic hemisphere, storing the information as metadata. Users may view the photo by peering around with a digital screen, giving the impression that the camera is a window into a still moment in time. As Ainsworth says, "if it's a photo of fireworks, you can point the camera over to the left see the faces of the people sitting next to you- it's like the camera never left the place."
Matty Martin's Punch is a camera that prints photos by punching a halftone pattern into paper, offering an alternative to the digital printers or polaroids that require film or ink cartridges. "Meant to bridge the disconnection between digital photography and tangible images," Punch makes printing an easy and inexpensive process. The camera requires no ink or film, can be charged by hand and will work with any paper, from a dollar bill to a business card.
'The 4th-Bin' Design Competition winners!
Congratulations to the winners and runners up The 4th Bin Design Competition, and be sure to check out more pics and full-on descriptions at the site. To get you started though, here's a quick taste (yup, there were 3 2nd-place winners; judges couldn't make themselves rank 'em!):
BINS
1st Place
"Expand Recycling"
Springtime
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
2nd Place Winner
Smart Design
Colin Kelly
Carolina Krupinska
Alistair Bramley
NYC, USA
2nd Place Winner
"e-Bin"
Studio Bagherian
London, UK
Pictorial Highlights from IDSA Project Infusion
We're back from a few days in Miami Beach attending the IDSA 2009 Project Infusion conference. Here's a handful of pictures that touch on the breadth of the experience. More pics in the Flickr pool.
Although there was no giant robot at the Core77 party (see 2007) it was still a great time, with a lot of intense conversation, some of the "No, I love you, man!" variety.
Oh, of course. South Beach. A guy in a Formula 1 (or similar - car experts? anyone?) street-legal Indy Experience car pulls over on Ocean Ave. so his passenger can chat on his cell phone. Conspicuous consumption taken to a new level.
Core-toon: Segway Hacks
Artist: fueledbycoffee
More: View all Core-toons
Oregon Manifest builders vie to build the perfect commuter bike
Speaking of transportation, this is how we like to spend our Friday mornings here in Portland, when we can: drooling over astonishing examples of the custom bike-builder's art, applied to the long-neglected niche of commuter bikes. The Oregon Manifest Constructor's Design Challenge kicked off this morning at a pop-up shop in the Pearl District of this bike-bonkers town, filling the room with eye candy for tasteful pedal-pushers.
The Challenge brings together 30+ of the nation's top bike builders to compete in the category of Best Commuter Bike Ever. The ensuing obsessive detailing and clever constructions are familiar to those who pay attention to high-performance road and racing cycles, but lavishing this level of attention on something designed to get you and your stuff to work is a more recent phenomenon, at least in the public eye. Yes, there was some gorgeous welding and brazing work to be witnessed, but equally impressive to us were the artfully built racks (like that on the Donkelope entry, pictured above), light mounts, fenders, and other workaday features that make your bike a daily transport device.
Book Review: Change by Design, by Tim Brown
About halfway through Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation, Tim Brown repeats Tom Peter's much cited comment that "the MFA is the new MBA." In doing so, however, he doesn't fully endorse the sentiment. Instead Brown observes that the dynamic skills required in business share as much in common with the creativity required for a design practice as they do with the critical thinking required for the MBA. On the back of the book jacket the author observes, "this is not a book by designers for designers, this is a book for creative leaders who seek to infuse design thinking into every level of an organization." In that way it straddles the gulf between the MFA and the MBA. Clearly learning to draw is a far sight from learning how to run a discounted cash flow analysis and the skill set doesn't overlap. We need both MFAs and MBAs. But the crux of what Brown is getting at is what McKinsey & Company referred to as the "T-Shaped" person, where the vertical axis represents the depth of the skill set that forms their core competency. Valuable design thinkers, however, "cross the T," holding not only deep familiarity with their core role, but also a disposition for collaboration across enterprises. A "design thinker" isn't just an artist and isn't just a number-cruncher. Instead they need to be knowledgeable enough about each to be conversant: to be a member not of a multidisciplinary team but of an interdisciplinary team.
If this all sounds a little like business-jargon-tinged self-help ... well, it is. Business books tend to be written in a peculiar dialect somewhere between anecdote and allegory, and Change by Design is no exception. Perhaps owing to the Harvard Business School case method, it seems de rigeur in business books these days to present lessons as anecdotes about business interactions (e.g. Shimano's core business of bicycle sprockets and derailleurs was flattening) followed an analysis of the market and the causes of said shift. At the "B-School" the initial case would be followed by rigorous debate and a written analysis of what the company should do to change its position. In Change by Design, the reader learns what solutions IDEO reached (e.g. returning to the comfort and familiarity of coasting bikes from childhood). Regardless of the success of that coasting initiative, however, the real lesson is in the allegory as Brown provides that proves the centerpiece of the book: "The reason for the iterative, nonlinear nature of the journey is not that design thinkers are disorganized or undisciplined but that design thinking is an exploratory process; done right, it will inevitably make unexpected discoveries along the way, and it would be foolish not to find out where they lead." Reading that, then, perhaps industrial designers should be thrilled; the processes that we learned for "needsfinding" and "directed research" truly are akin to the case method. Perhaps that's what Peters was getting at after all.
2 Questions for Emily Delmont of Google Creative Lab
Google, from the outside, is a strange and magical place.
First off, their effectiveness: they didn't exactly invent the internet, but it'd be hard to find a part of the internet's modern form that hasn't in some way been shaped by their efforts. That's unique, and phenomenal.
Second, and maybe more interesting from the designer's perspective, are the unique ways in which they engage their employees: from their famous "20% policy," to their remarkable workspaces, to their coder-driven development process, essentially unfettered by the demands of marketing.
So, what would it be like to work as a creative professional amidst all this braininess, peculiarity, and success? The two-year-old Google Creative Lab, an idiosyncratic venture in the best Google tradition, offers a small window in. Headed by former Ogilvy co-president Andy Berndt, the Creative Lab was conceived as a cutting-edge multi-platform branding studio with a pile of creative talent and a single client. Finding the right creatives for an entity so bizarre and exciting is a daunting task, and we at Coroflot have been extremely fortunate to gain the ear of one of the people most responsible for completing it: Creative Lab recruiter Emily Delmont.
SEE Bulletin on design and future EU innovation policy
SEE is a network of eleven European partners sharing knowledge and experience on how design can be integrated into regional and national policies to boost innovation, entrepreneurship, sustainability and social and economic development.
Their first bulletin is now online. Make sure to check out their article on the future EU innovation policy which gives an excellent update on what the European Union is doing to stimulate design and user-driven innovation.
Alexandros Stasinopoulos' watch concept wears mechanical achievement on its sleeve
And finally, check out Greek designer Alexandros Stasinopoulos' bugged-out Ora watch concept.
Writes Stasinopoulos by way of explanation"
The purpose of mechanical watches is not just to display the time. They are, and ought to be, the showcase of human achievements in the fields of engineering, aesthetics and of course craftsmanship - just to mention a few. It is essential for mechanical watches through their form and functions to reflect these values and therefore to be the mediums to push the limits and discover new territories of creation and technological advancement.
Special thanks to fueledbycoffee, Steve Portigal and Mark Vanderbeeken 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
