The Best of Core77: Our Favorites from 2008!
2008 has been an incredible year for us at Core77. Design event coverage, competitions, blog posts, articles, Drive-by Videos, interviews, galleries, 1 Hour Design Challenges, FlotSpottings, book reviews, discussion boards, portfolio highlights...there's just too much to take stock of. But in the spirit of somehow wrapping our heads around it all, we present a selection of some of our all-time favorite items from the world of Core77 2008. We hope you enjoy this look back, and we join you in looking forward to another great year ahead.
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Bruce Nussbaum: INNOVATION IS DEAD.
Whoa? Bruce Nussbuam, arguably the most effective and dedicated proponent of the term "innovation" ever, dropped an I-Bomb on Wednesday (the last day of 2009!) by declaring the word dead. Here's the start:
"Innovation" died in 2008, killed off by overuse, misuse, narrowness, incrementalism and failure to evolve. It was done in by CEOs, consultants, marketeers, advertisers and business journalists who degraded and devalued the idea by conflating it with change, technology, design, globalization, trendiness, and anything "new." It was done it by an obsession with measurement, metrics and math and a demand for predictability in an unpredictable world. The concept was also done in, strangely enough, by a male-dominated economic leadership that rejected the extraordinary progress in "uncertainty planning and strategy" being done at key schools of design that could have given new life to "innovation. To them, "design" is something their wives do with curtains, not a methodology or philosophy to deal with life in constant beta--life in 2009.
And what does he nominate to take its place? Well, that's what links are for.
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Brilliant water-based eyeglasses for the masses: No optician required
British inventor Josh Silver, a former professor of physics at Oxford University, has come up with a game-changer of a product design with his water-lensed glasses.
Silver has devised a pair of glasses which rely on the principle that the fatter a lens the more powerful it becomes. Inside the device's tough plastic lenses are two clear circular sacs filled with fluid, each of which is connected to a small syringe attached to either arm of the spectacles.The wearer adjusts a dial on the syringe to add or reduce amount of fluid in the membrane, thus changing the power of the lens. When the wearer is happy with the strength of each lens the membrane is sealed by twisting a small screw, and the syringes removed. The principle is so simple, the team has discovered, that with very little guidance people are perfectly capable of creating glasses to their own prescription.
You can mass-produce millions of these, rather than manufacturing myriad individual lenses each tuned to a user's specific vision deficiencies. And while the one-size-fits-all mentality may not fly in developed nations, Silver's goal is to help the hundreds of millions of people in developing countries who suffer from poor eyesight.
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"Funky Furniture" roundup
WebUrbanist has put together a thick list of "142 Fantastically Funky Modern Furniture Designs." Spanning beds, chairs, tables, storage, hanger devices, clocks, mirrors, sinks and even wallpaper, the list contains some objects that make you proud you decided to be a product designer, and some objects that, well, don't. But there's definitely a ton of eye candy.
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People-centred design in times of frugality
What are the profound cultural changes currently taking place and are people-centred designers well equipped to help companies and institutions address this new context?
>> Read article
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Compact dwelling for the homeless
Speaking of "people-centred design", artist James Westwater's "Homeless Chateau" was produced as an art piece, but we can't help but wonder if it oughtn't be produced for usage:
Homeless Chateau, 2008, is a prefab one person living module, measuring approximately 4 x 8 x 4 feet and made from FSC certified and recycled materials.It is designed to be used inside another building, such as a warehouse, and is fully self-contained, including a bed and cooking and toilet facilities. There are hooks for clothing and towels, and a built-in shelf unit, made from a pallet, for storage of food, books and other items. A rubber flap over the entrance provides privacy, and one end of the structure is made from translucent polyurethane to let in natural light.
Homeless Chateau is fabricated from standard 4 x 8 and 4 x 4-foot sheets of plywood, OSB and construction signs, and can be knocked down, transported flat, and erected quickly and easily with just a screwdriver. Once assembled, the structure can be moved around the host space on its casters and then set in place with a temporary foundation--two bricks under the front. Homeless Chateaux can be easily reconfigured and combined to make dual-occupancy and eight-foot-tall structures.
Westwater's website, and links to his other "Plywood Chateau(x)," is here.
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Saigon student's folding electric bike becomes a reality
For students, designing a concept vehicle usually means producing lots of renderings, but an industrial design student at the Ho Chi Minh City University of Architecture actually built one that runs.
Truong Minh Nhat's Capella is a lightweight, compact electric bike that folds into a backpack. Truong sourced the parts from local manufacturers, convincing several of them to make the bespoke components demanded by his design: "I had to convince and explain a lot to bike component makers, although I was making only one and offered them high prices."
The Capella was Truong's senior thesis and has a 12-kilometer range. Now that it's complete and functioning, Truong has obtained intellectual property rights and is fine-tuning the design, hoping to get the weight down to just 10 kilograms, before seeking a Vietnamese-market manufacturer.
via thanh nien news
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Cut&Paste Digital Design Tournament 2009 introduces new 3D category
The Cut&Paste crew are hitting 2009 hard with their line-up of 2D, 3D, and Motion Design events in sixteen cities worldwide. If you're not familiar with the format, designers battle it out in 20 minute rounds live on stage until there is only one left. This year, the first ever global championship will be held in New York where all 48 winners will converge Olympiad-style.
If you think you've got the skliz and can make it to one the hosting cities, there's still time to sign-up. The deadline for North America is January 14, Europe and Asia/Pacific is February 6th.
Core77 caught the first-ever Industrial Design edition of Cut&Paste at the recent Autodesk University in Las Vegas.
Click here for the CUT&PASTE TOUR DATES.
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Rumor about Apple tablet device: Does this make sense to you?
The web is abuzz with rumors of Apple's allegedly forthcoming "7-9 inch iPod Touch," i.e. tablet device, reported by TechCrunch and giddily re-posted by dozens of weblogs. But no one seems to be looking at the claim closely--for example, here's the supposed rationale for Apple making such a device:
Apple has been experimenting internally with large form tablet devices for years, one source says, but there was concern that users wouldn't like the device. The difference now is the iTunes app store, which has thousands of games and other applications that are perfect for a touch screen device with an accelerometer. Apple says more than 300 million applications have been downloaded since the App Store launched in July 2008. Combine the App Store, iTunes and a browser and you have one heck of a device.
Um...the iTunes App Store is indeed "perfect for a touch screen device with an accelerometer," and Apple already makes that product--it's called the iPhone/iPod Touch. How does the success of the App Store correlate with a decision to produce a device with a larger screen? Are we the only ones this doesn't make sense to?
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And it shall be called the iPill.
And finally, speaking of apple products, via MIT Technology Review, Philips Research is currently prototyping an ingestible pill that uses a microprocessor, transmitter, and pH and temperature sensors to allow physicians to dispense meds with...well...surgical precision.
It's a cool device and all, and the ability to take internal readings while targeting therapy can only be a good thing, but aren't there enough iThings already? We're kind of wondering if Apple's most lasting legacy will be its linguistic influence, and everything electronic begins with a lower case 'i': how soon until email is iMail, a lamp is an iCandle, Velcro is iTape, etc.?
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Special thanks to Mark Vanderbeeken for his contribution to this week's newsletter!
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