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Lecture:Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Part of Avant la lettre: Insights 2009 Design Lecture Series " />
This post is a bit of an experiment for me. It’s also has taken a couple days to complete hence the slow down in posts this week. I started off digging around the podcast U from iTunes checking out what I might have missed while listening to my regular podcasts. I came across what the Walker Arts center had and was impressed. One of the more interesting lectures to me that I saw was from the people at Process Type Foundry. I’d bought Locator back in the days when I was in Canada so I thought that talk was one that I should start off with. So walking back and fourth to work for a couple days I listened to it. I really enjoyed it—actually so much so I watched again at home. The first time around I didn’t get to see any of the visuals which played a significant part in the talk. So the second time around I focused on the visuals and made some notes.
Those notes kind of grew into the second part of this post. I haven’t worked with Locator for quite some time so I thought this was the perfect opportunity to set my notes in type. That’s what I did above. But since I was experimenting already I figured I take a look at the digital relationship between my original paper/pen notes, to laying it out with Locator while treating it like an image, and then to compare that to copy + pasting it in standard html.
So that’s the scoop with the post—I highly recommend watching the talk, I got a lot out of it. In upcoming posts I might talk a bit more about that.
Process Type Foundry, Minneapolis
Eric Olson and Nicole Dotin
Lecture:Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Part of Avant la lettre: Insights 2009 Design Lecture Series
Learn how they name typefaces
Work in parallels
Draw influence from other fields
Gathering ideas
Things that fall to the side
“it hadn’t had its dayâ€
Influence in the pile
Gathering ideas*
Bunch of ideas, they came together
There are other possibilities
Post Script
· 256 characters…
Q. What is the Facebook font?
A. Klavika
Collect jump off points
“I’m not the type police, I’m not trying to write a ticketâ€
Patterns = Shapes repeat
Rhythm = left to right
Range
Slice of culture—draw parallels
Didn’t want to look at a set of solutions that are already solved
Abstract to typeface
“persistence in the continuous face of failureâ€
Pattie Maes, an associate professor in MIT’s Program in Media Arts and Sciences, leads research in human-computer interfaces at MIT’s Media Lab. She recently spoke with MHT associate editor James M. Connolly about the lab and innovation.
“There is a wealth of information available, and most of it these days is digitized. I feel that we still don’t have good ways to know what information may be available and what is relevant to whatever we are currently doing, to be able to access information, especially while we are in the middle of something. The current computers and the interfaces that we use, they are not really the ideal information-accessing devices.
Today’s hardware devices, the iPhone as well, they all assume that you completely shift your attention to the device if you want to access some information. You have to basically completely drop what you are in the middle of and redirect your attention to the screen and use a pointing device, whether it’s the mouse or your own fingers, and then use a keyboard to enter information. It’s very disruptive.”
A fictitious company called ENT International has filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Code.
Some of the items listed in the catalogue of the bankruptcy clearance auction are perfectly mundane, others are fictitious. Put together they offer a detailed insight into the inner workings of a large corporation closely inspired by the Enron scandal continue
The Renovation lampshade by Daria Burlinska and Wojtek Traczyk is made from modules of cast-off plastics, almost like flower petals. I love the organic lines and scale tho I bet it's a bitch to clean.
Warnings on iPhones come in a different couple flavours. There’s the blue dialogue box that mentions how a person has surpassed their 100 twitter api calls per hour or mentioning that there was a loss of internet connection. There’s also those red pop up’s that cover the corner of an app mentioning how many “things†are inside to be clicked. I think those red dialogue boxes have been there from the beginning of the iPhon UI. As I was looking at them I kind of wondered why they were placed on the top right of the app? Was it more likely that there would be action taken if a red box popped up there. Why not on the left side, people read from left to right—maybe they flipped a coin… I’m not sure but looking at them this morning I wondered how that decision was made.
While looking at those red pop up’s I also noticed something else. There was a distinct pattern that I was clustering my apps. Curious to see how they fit together I blocked out the shapes to see the areas where my thumbs were pressing. As it happened I noticed five distinct categories of use. Task, photo, physics, reading, sound and communication. For the most part these groups came together organically. Taking a look at those patterns gives me a pretty good indication on how I use a mobile device that connects me with anything I want.
With that info in hand I figured I could map out the areas that I press the most. I could see how the proximity of my left and right thumbs related to usage on a daily basis. Each corner had varying degrees of importance while the middle was the least used.
My second screen is a lot more disorganized, but it’s not used nearly as often as my default first screen. Do you have similar usage patterns or do you have a unique system for the apps you use the most?
This DIY magnet template is based on the Konigi wireframe stencils and includes 3 sheets of elements that might be useful in whiteboard prototyping. Simply download and print the PDFs onto Printable Magnet Sheets, optionally laminate them so they’re usable with dry-erase markers, and cut. Lamination is recommended for writing on magnets. Konigi uses and recommends the 3M LS950 No-Heat Laminating System.
Snapped this pic just as i was walking out of CAboom ~ not sure who the artist is (ideas?) ~ but upon looking at it closer when i got home, its a pretty freaky Michael Jackson facial evolutionary spiral... see it up close on the next page.
On pieces that caught my eye at the Black Maria Gallery booth in CA|Boom ~ Renee Lawter's Energy Efficient Dinos are just too funny. Compact florescent with wings? Flying out of the mouths of dinos? Who have incandescents as spines? See the full pieces, framed and all on the next page...
I didn't know what to expect when i heard CA|Boom had moved from barker hanger (which i love!) to that abandoned feeling Robinsons May space in Beverly Hills... and from March to the same dates as the Dwell on Design Show... but i had to check it out none the less. It takes a few minutes to cover - but the thing worth seeing is the art! A few great local galleries are showing some fun work... like Thinkspace!!!
That piece above is one of a series by Brett Amory in his "Waiting" Series ~ and it's absolutely STUNNING. A must see in person. There's just an incredible way it pulls you in ~ beautiful color palette ~ and then as you get closer you notice the details and emotional distance between the 3 tightly seated communters who float like an island in the space... Love the hoodied guy too... There's something terribly fun about the shift to seeing more art works with the beautiful illustrations/characters woven into larger more complex and/or abstract pieces coming in... leave it to Thinkspace to lead the way. Take a look at a few of their other pieces showing at CA|Boom which also caught my eye on the next page!
p.s.
LA kids - if you're not on the Sour Harvest list, you should be. It's far better than asking me what shows are happening each week!
I swear i won't buy a full box of produce just to get one of these amazing Yeti's Best boxes. BUT, i may not be below begging them to let me have one next time! Wandering whole foods i got terribly distracted and started taking quick pics with my point and shoot of the Yeti Produce!!! Only to realize that as i turned around it was a Whole Foods brand box... and there were other retro/designer boxes as well! Yeti is definitely the best, and Cosmic second best ~ but you must check out the rest on the next page!
Roundup time! Felt strangely reminiscent tonight, and i was looking through the last few pages of NOTCOT.org, it felt like the perfect time for a 3am roundup! So click the pics to find out more...
Late night browsing: these Horizon Fire posters caught my eye while catching up on Change The Thought. The work of Manchester-based designer Paul Tebbot is just stunningly retro, minimalist, and utterly captivating! See 3 more of my favorites on the next page!
Talk about a cool way to get potential students interested in your university: Zokei Quest, a faux 16-bit tour of the Zokei University campus in Tokyo, done in the style of an RPG. Via Offworld.
Now that I’ve had a couple of days with my new iPhone GS I thought it would be interesting to compare my old behaviour with my slower 2nd generation 16 GB iPhone I used to have. I noticed a great improvement with my everyday stuff. The keyboard is a lot faster and smarter. I rarely make mistakes hitting the wrong key which in turn has made typing easier. I’ve heard people complaining about the horizontal mode, for me I rarely use it because the visible screen is too small. While the copy + paste feature isn’t unique to just the 3GS, it is something that I’m using on occasion for email. Search was another welcome feature for the OS upgrade.
The camera is back to being fast. For the longest time it would take forever to open—it was brutal. I know can open my iPhone, press the camera button and take a shot is less than a couple seconds. Really helpful for me when I see something that catches my eye walking around NYC. The video is another great piece of hardware. The video quality is pretty good considering where it’s coming from. Experimenting with some video sites to upload, YouTube is in a great position as it only takes one click to upload from the iPhone. Flickr is the big loser in that when I tried to email the video it didn’t work, Vimeo was a pain as I had to upload from my computer and it wasn’t instant. While I won’t be using video all the time it’s nice to have it. I’m really curious to see what people start using it for.
Surfing the web is really fast. It’s always been decent through wifi but it’s even better now. I’m disappointed in the 3G network. I was expecting faster load times outside. I’ve noticed that the network doesn’t pick up very well while walking. When I’m standing it’s a different story—things load pretty smoothly. It’s kind of weird. Because the web is a lot faster I’m using some different apps that I haven’t really used before. I’m using Evernote to collect things and checking a couple headlines with Net Newswire. I’m also back to checking up on flickr. If I need to search for an image I’ll use Cooliris.
I had high hopes for Tweetdeck on the iPhone but it’s crashing all the time. While it’s cool to see multiple columns that are synced with my desktop, it visualizes direct messages poorly. I like how Twitterfon threads those conversations. I’ve fond myself going back to Twitterfon after my short lived excitement for the Tweetdeck.
Would I ever go back to my old iPhone—probably not.The speed enhancements that make recording ideas and capturing visuals is an amazing tool. Could the network be better—yes. But for the day to day activities that makes life this designer’s life interesting I don’t think I would let it be more than an arms length away from me.
Just noticed I didn’t mention music or podcasts, that’s kind of interesting…
No one recycles styrofoam the way Michael Salter does. And i know that any time i get an email from him, there is probably something amazing coming in... and this time it was truly epic! He has created a life size Formula 1 race car out of styrofoam!!! Take a look at his latest show at the Portland John Ross Plaza Studio... "a full scale replica of a Formula One race car made from scrap styrofoam pieces, 3 pretty big wall paintings, and 24 framed digital drawings." Wow. Lots of pics on the next page ~ check it out from all angles!
It's good to get inspired by other disciplines once in a while. Here's a combination that I hadn't seen before, but that put a smile on my face when I did: FoodUX - gastronomic inspiration for UX designers. As the author puts it:
FoodUX is a passion synergy of the creation of memorable culinary experiences and the design for compelling user experiences.
We present an alternative video-making framework for children with tools that integrate video capture with movie production. We propose different forms of interaction with physical artifacts to capture storytelling. Play interactions as input to video editing systems assuage the interface complexities of film construction in commercial software. We aim to motivate young users in telling their stories, extracting meaning from their experiences by capturing supporting video to accompany their stories, and driving reflection on the outcomes of their movies. We report on our design process over the course of four research projects that span from a graphical user interface to a physical instantiation of video. We interface the digital and physical realms using tangible metaphors for digital data, providing a spontaneous and collaborative approach to video composition. We evaluate our systems during observations with 4- to 14-year-old users and analyze their different approaches to capturing, collecting, editing, and performing visual and sound clips.
On fun random Monday posts ~ it's been feeling like SUCH a monday (and from the tweets i'm seeing, sounds like its going around) ~ and not in a good way! So, since it seems a little early for happy hour to start... how about some silly alcohol schwag? I couldn't help giggling when this Red Stripe USB key showed up from Fader/Red Strip ~ presenting "It Was Written" featuring Terry Lynn and John Hugo - it's their collaboration on five new songs celebrating jamaican music! (You can even download them for free) And at first i thought it was a half bottle and a cupcake (i never did figure out how that would make much sense, but hey! who am i to judge that?)... but i'm thinking its so you don't lose your cap when the key is in use? Also the graphics are awesome ~ love how the text is made up of pencils and rulers, etc... see the pics on the next page!
They scare me ok? I hate being stuck in between them. I hate the noise they make and I hate how some rig drivers are total dicks, bullying other drivers. The Scania Truck concept by Adam Palethorpe aims to clean up our air with hybridized diesel engines and put all those truckers on probation by way of an innovative light system embedded in the front wheel hubs. Bad drivers are given red lights, good drives get green.
Humanscale's first LED task lighting solution is set to make its debut at NeoCon 2009, June 15 - 17. The new Elementâ„¢ light by Mark McKenna, Design Director of the Humanscale Design Studio, offers groundbreaking advancements in LED technology, and is the first of its kind to meet all of the Department of Energy's criteria for an LED task light.
All current-generation LED task lights use a series of LEDs in a cluster or bar to generate illumination. This solution's biggest drawback is the series of shadows it creates across the work surface, causing vision issues. In addition, current-generation LED lights provide inadequate illumination, small or oddly shaped illumination footprints, and poor, bluish-colored light quality. The Element light eliminates each of these shortcomings with a single low-watt Multi-Chip LED that does not cast multiple shadows, meets the Illuminating Engineering Society and DOE's guidelines for comfortable ergonomic reading, and offers a large footprint of comfortable neutral white 3500K light.
Element also offers exceptional sustainability. It's the only LED task light that consumes less than seven watts while also providing ergonomic lighting levels--the equivalent of a 70-watt bulb. Plus, it's constructed primarily of eco-friendly aluminum and contains 40% recycled content. Additionally, Element is 99% recyclable, ships in 70% recycled packaging, and can be integral to the achievement of a number of valuable LEED credits. Lastly, the light is slated to earn the Energy Star label.
Element's unique aesthetic is born from its heat-shedding design. A series of metal fins keep the unit cool to extend the life of the LED--rated at 60,000 hours--and keep lighting performance at optimum levels. Easy replacement of the Multi-Chip LED also ensures a long usable life for Element, unlike most LED task lights, which often cannot be repaired and must be replaced in their entirety when the LEDs fail.
With so many lost souls out there "finding themselves" via quarter, third, and mid life crises these days... i loved the idea of reminding us all that "not all haystacks contain needles". It's not about looking hard enough to find what you want... if its not there! Usually. Really its about looking in the RIGHT places? Making smarter decisions as we "grow up"? I love this one as a reminder to look up to when you're faced with more opportunities than are feasible, as it alleviates some of the guilt in turning a few down.
On more favorites ~ it was such a pleasure to see Dan Funderburgh again ~ and then literally stand and lose myself in his latest wallpaper pattern. Everyone at the Faesthetic curated "This must be the place" show at the Scion Space in Culver City worked in black and white + one color (Faesthetic style!) ~ and this time the color was their choice of teal. Well, Dan Funderburgh loves the black and white (me too!) ~ but when presented with the teal paint options at Home Depot ~ he couldn't resist using a splash of Ariel's Song. Yes. The Disney paint colors for Behr... from the Princess collection. I think it's the color of her tail? So his black and white wallpaper, with laser-cut/burnt out black and white pieces in black frames... got their splash of color with the Ariel's Song painted side of the wallpapered coffin. He always did find the most intriguing ways to create serenely complex edgy compositions that make your head spin if you look long and hard enough. So take a look at things up close on the next page... it was particularly interesting to watch people pose for pictures with his Ariel tail colored coffin face.
Wow. Matthew Curry's mural at the Faesthetic curated "This must be the place" show at the Scion Space in Culver City was irresistible. Also, always fun to fall for someone's work and then have a chance to meet him ~ incredibly nice guy, as inspiring to talk to as his work is to stare at. His work is so intricately layered, you can literally stare at it and keep discovering new details. It's heart breaking to imagine that incredible dragon mural get painted over at the end of the show... if only i could transplant it to my outdoor wall, it would be so awesome! But i digress... the whole show was stunning, and here's just your first taste. See more pics of Curry's pieces on the next page...
p.s.
his background is as multilayered and fascinating as his work... RISD Illustration grad ~ twice grammy nominated designer/illustrator/painter ~ principal of design studio Imagefed...
Radius Design sent over their new Wall Clock Radius - besides the minimalism of the design, what I like most is that the user can set up the dimensions of the clock themselves - you can set the circumference of the dots yourself - turn the whole wall into a giant clock, or give only a small corner to the clock.
For first time users of the subway, the experience can be quite stressful. There’s a lot of unknowns and questions that can easily pile up in one’s head. Am I going the right way, will I get off at the right stop, am I even going in the right direction? And then there’s the turnstile. As easy as it is to buy a ticket that entire experience can be unpleasant. The ticket machine isn’t hard to use but I’ve watched plenty of people fight with those machines.
The MTA has now added another level of complexity and confusion by allowing advertising on the actual turnstile. In theory it’s not a awful idea to try to raise money selling the space. However H&M kind of pushed the boundaries in a bad way. A quick glance made me think of warning because of the red and the $5 number as price. For a moment it even confused me. I was like what “I now have to pay five bucks to use the subway?!?†It wasn’t until I took a closer look that I realized it was an ad. But how many people that don’t speak english or know what H&M is will be completely confused. Is the subway $2 or $5? It’s a really poor implementation and while I’m not surprised there aren’t any guidelines for this type of advertising perhaps there should be. A good place to start would be that the advertising shouldn’t suggest that it’s actually more money to ride the subway (no pricing) nor feel like a harzard (red color).
A somewhat controversial post by Helge Tennø, strategic director and digital planner at digital agency Screenplay in Oslo, Norway.
“Products are just stuff, and represent nothing of value on their own. It is first when they are introduced to a situation (or context) of importance to the customer they become valuable. It is the situation surrounding the product that is important, and it’s in this situation companies are real experts at adding great value.”
Newspaper to New Paper Project from Dentsu Tokyo for Ichida Garden. Old newspapers were overprinted to provide wrapping for fruit and veg sold by a street vendor.
It was one of the winners in the Packaging category of the recently announced D&AD’s Yellow Pencil awards.
If ya didn't know, now you do - BMW does make bicycles. I've been obsessed with bicycles as of late reviewing several from Trek, Puma, and Areaware but the BMW Cruise Bike surprised me by being priced well within the realm of reality; $800. Ok that does sound expensive but compared to the 3 bikes mentioned above, the price point is more than competitive.
The cruiser has a hydroformed aluminum frame. Hydroforming is a technique commonly used for shaping tubular structures like truck and car frames. A metal tube is placed inside a mold and then filled with pressurized oil until it conforms to the mold. The result is a strong, lightweight structure.
And as cruiser bikes go, this one is much more my steelo than those Venice vintage classics everyone is riding.
I'm loving Pradeepan's final project from his senior year of school. He's currently banging away secret projects at Clarks UK and I'm sure the experience will add a layer of tailored precision to his already imaginative design aesthetics.
Is it possible to completely fall for the way someone sees the world? Because i want to live in the world that Kevin Dart has created for Yuki 7 - filled with non-stop jetsetting adventures through the 60's where "everyone should be SUPER cute" in adorable bikinis and gorgeous clothes and armed to the teeth while relaxing and calculating devious schemes and brilliantly daring escapes in mid-century modern furniture if not laying on the beach. If these feel familiar, we did an amazing giveaway of the series of 4 Yuki 7 posters over the holidays. (I'm still jealous of Jory for winning!)
Seductive Espionage: The World of Yuki 7 - This is the second book from Fleet Street Scandal ~ it is built around the fictitious world of Yuki 7 ~ and they brought together some incredible artist friends to help bring her story to life. From an awesome action packed trailer (you may have seen as .org # 22010 - but its also on the next page!) ~ to absolutely stunning interpretations of this silver screen siren. See a peek at the t-shirt and into the book on the next page!
p.s.
Can someone please turn this into an animated series or movies? It's as if they pulled out my favorite parts of the old Bond films that the new ones lack... just add some mind blowing gadgets in perhaps?
p.p.s.
I totally flipped out seeing a quote from myself on the back cover! Definitely a NOTCOT first, and i'm so honored to be there! The doodle and signature/note inside the book also made my heart skip a beat... See the pics on the next page already!
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Mind the gap: ethnographers navigate the space between users and designers (pages 40-42)
An interview of Michael Barry and Griff Coleman, principals at Point Foreward, a Bay area firm that uses ethnographic research to inform the design of consumer products
Robots in space… and the scientists that mimic them (pages 36-37)
An ethnographer delves into the origins of the “Rover Dance” and the meanings behind it
Furniture made for children are ether small versions of furniture for adults, or they tend to have strong colours and crazy shapes that leaves little space for imagination. These different design categories became the starting point for a new furniture concept. The aim for Please design was to create furniture that could work in a space that adults and children share while keeping a playful spirit. Giving the furniture strong characters without being gender orientated.
MyAnimo bench and A4 screen wall are lightweight furniture for children from 3 to 6 years old. They are inspired by the way children see the world. MyAnimo’s abstract shape wants to encourage imagination and can be a hippo as well as a cave. They can be connected together to create a longer curved bench or a tunnel.
A4 screen wall has got it’s name and proportions from a standard paper. The different cuts gives a playful expression and makes them easier to carry. The screen wall can give privacy for bedtime stories or become a house or a fort during play.
The felt is a good sound absorbent and has a warm tactile feeling. The material is mouldable polyester made from recycled PET. Both A4 and MyAnimo can be stacked tightly and take little space when stored away.
As a part of the concept a kids book was developed together with illustrator Ingrid Wållgren. The book tells the story about MyAnimo and A4 and encourage children and adults to recycle PET bottles.
Last night I made my way to White Rabbit one last time to hear the Dot Dot Dot SVA MFA in Interaction Design talk: The Service Designers. In the preamble we learned that the series will pick up in the fall every Wednesday evening at SVA. As a way to build community around a new program and share knowledge I really enjoyed the entire series—I think I missed one talk, maybe two over the course of its start last winter. Comparing all the talks, I think the Service Designers group was probably the most informative of all the Dot Dot Dot’s in my opinion. They all had a lot of points to consider as a designer and I would recommend any of them as speakers for events to anyone that is looking for people on the brainier side of things.
Chenda Fruchter, Assistant Commissioner, Director of Content & Agency Relations, Department of Information Technology and Telecommunication, New York City
It probably shouldn’t have come as a surprise that with a title the length that Chenda has it would take some time to explain what she does. She talked a bit about NYC 311 as a whole and briefly about the newly launched www.nyc.gov/apps/311. Unfortunately the ten minutes went by really quickly so there wasn’t a lot of time to go in depth. Hopefully as the new 311 site get’s used, more information about it’s design and evolution will be published.
Jun Lee, Partner, ReD Associates, New York
On one level the talk was fascinating to hear about the role of play in children’s lives, and in theory even more so when combined with doing work with Lego as a case study. However I suspect there was an NDA signed with Lego. None of the implementation nor suggestions of what Lego should do came out except some generic points that could have been associated with a lot of toy brands that are in competition with video games.
Jennifer Bove, Principal, Kicker Studio
This presentation played well to the time limit of ten minutes. I hope that Jennifer’s slides become available online because this morning I can’t remember all of the five points she mentioned—but for what it’s worth I thought they all seemed pretty sound. The only thing that struck me as a bit strange was the questions afterwards. I couldn’t tell if it was staged or not. Something about the question of designing for failure seemed a bit expected, though on the role of iteration I didn’t think she gave a strong answer…
Sylvia Harris, Information Design Strategist
I always have a fear of hearing a speaker that I’ve already heard before. Are they going to talk about the same thing as the last time or something completely new? Thankfully her talk about her fixing the experience of the Hospital that she’s been to with her child was new to me and worth the listen. The questions afterwards were really good about how the project actually came to be as it wasn’t explained by Sylvia in the beginning.
Three of the four talks were streamed live at the time of the event at www.theuxworkshop.tv/the-service-designers. It looks like that url will also host the archived presentations which I would highly recommend watching once they go live.
My weekly Tokyo post for MoCo Loco is up, this time covering a couple of prototypes from Nosigner for KDDI’s iida line, a Muji and Rebita collaboration, and a color update to 100%’s Straw Vase.
Swedish experimental design group APOCALYPSE presented four new products made from materials with history at the DMY design festival in Berlin last week.
The Pot and Shelf Torso uses a few of the 360 million tires consumed yearly in the EU. As pots and shelves, the tires get a new life. The material is made by granulated tires ground into a powder which is mixed with recycled plastic. The binding is reinforced with a patented molecule. More than 95 % of the content is made from recycled materials and it can be recycled over and over.
The Lamp Blob is made from start clumps from the plastic industry. In order to adjust the the machinery some of the melted plastic becomes waste and is by APOCALYPSE given a second life as lamps.
The Parquet Multicolour Herringbone is also made from recycled car tires and plastic packages. This new version comes in five different colours.
The Soap Original and Perfume is made of reused cooking oil from falafel kitchens. The Soap is redefining the concept of luxury and questioning animal and other dubious cosmetic ingredients. The Soap Original is neither perfumed nor coloured and has a light old-fashioned soap scent thanks to the saponification process. The Soap Perfume is scented with our own organic perfume Ultra Fresh Bakery Bouquet.
As someone that is looking from the outside in now, I started thinking about what the AIGA on a National level today might be missing. Of course this is coming from the pov of someone that isn’t seeing what is going on in the background nor actually doing anything to help that out. But from a strategic overview there’s a lot of philosophical design points that don’t seem to be in parallel with what is going on today. 1. First and foremost there’s a generational shift/gap that no one is talking about. A lot of the older designers didn’t trust the computer when it made sense to use one and fought it hard. The extension of that thinking today is the web. The same denial is back. I find this attitude to be more prevalent on the East Coast than the West Coast. 2. Designers are in denial of how people communicate today. It’s not through the craft of the stationery package. No one denies that every element counts but in today’s instant messaging world the art of craft doesn’t cut it. 3. DIY—this kind of seems obvious but it’s actually a bit more severe. Professional DIY is not about those weekend hobbyist that are full time scrapbookers. I’m talking about the business people, scientists and other professions that have adapted design thinking and left the graphic designer in the dust. What’s up with that? 4. Nostalgia—graphic designers love getting sentimental about the past glories of old designers. It’s great to know about the past so you don’t make the same mistakes blah, blah, blah… The thing is, we really are in an unprescidented unprecedented time of commerce, technology and communication and by listening to old designers that originally shunned the computer are not going to help right now. It’s ironic that design is supposed to change things for the better and create something out of nothing, yet designer’s aren’t willing to do the same for themselves. 5. Art is not design, and design is not technology. Graphic design is many things yet those terms get intermixed and confused all the time. 6. Selflessness—there’s a great question out there. “Who would you rather see succeed, the client or yourselfâ€. If you would rather win every time over as opposed to the clients goals, why not just be an artist? 7. Definition—while it’s almost pointless to try to define what graphic design is, or even design for that matter, yet the typical graphic designer is very quick to point out what they don’t do. Sadly that only creates walls that the real world tends to ignore and the only people left in the dark are the wall builders.
Uniqlo does it again, introducing yet another flash web app to help promote the brand, this time in the form of a calendar that shuffles time-lapse videos of tilt-shift style photos. Looks great, and they’ll release it as a screensaver soon too. Via Marxy.
UFO  (Unidentified Feeding Object) is a mono-use disposable plate designed by Andrea Ruggiero for InDisposed – an exhibition which invited designers to address notions of disposability in everyday products. Lightweight and rigid, UFO is designed to to be used at picnics, garden parties, beach parties or barbeques and disposed of by launching it into the bushes – exactly like a frisbee. Upon impact, the plates break into smaller pieces and then serve to feed birds, squirrels or rodents, referencing the waste=food principle. The very act of launching the plate makes its disposal shameless and fun (a cross between an olympic discus event and a Greek wedding) and the impact of the plate becomes a necessary component of the process. In Italian, such mono-use objects are referred to as “usa e getta” or literally, “use and throw” in English. Though semantically disturbing, this was the inspiration behind the UFO concept. UFO is made of a unique composite of blended bird seed, potato starch, guar gum, and a seaweed-like binding agent. The plates are highly resistant to wet foods, vinegars and sauces, yet completely biodegradable, non-toxic, and vegan.Â
The latest issue of Vodafone’s Receiver Magazine is all about a new era of human interaction that is marked by perpetual conversations and perpetual info drip-feed, as enabled by the umbilical of the mobile.
Two new contributions explore the time paradox created by this constant communications flow:
Tools for mediated communication were developed to satisfy needs for contact and exchange with others. They expand our range of movement, they can set us free from tiring routines and toilsome processes so we should have more time for the people and activities that mean the most to us. That’s the theory, at least.
Sharon Kleinman asks: Does your everyday experience tick all these boxes? And thinks that if so, then you’re lucky… Because constant contact has become so convenient that we have to stop ourselves from cramming as much as we can into every second.
Leisa Reichelt, on the other hand, is grateful that constant contact enabled us to experience a kind of ‘ambient intimacy’ with people we care for, but in whose lives we’re not able to participate as closely as we’d like. For her, tweeting and facebooking are a particular way of communicating that we’ve used in off-line life since we first evolved language: Phatic communication. It is not about conveying meaning, it’s about being in touch.
Mac Funamizu explores on Johnny Holland what digital devices with physically changing displays might look like and how their interface language might be conceived:
“We all know how great a touch screen is… But have you ever thought that it’s a nightmare for the blind? You never know what you’re touching because everything is flat. All the information and status is on the screen, so a user has to take the device up from a pocket, touch the necessary buttons and see with his eyes. In the future information is told in 3D.”
Robert Fabricant wrote about the role of the designer in behavioural change and describes three new design strategies: persuasion design, catalyst design and performance design.
“Instead of aspiring to influence user behavior from a distance, we increasingly want the products we design to have more immediate impact through direct social engagement. Institutions that drive the global social innovation agenda, such as the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, have shown an interest in this new approach, but many designers hesitate to pursue it. Committing to direct behavior design would mean stepping outside the traditional frame of user-centered design (UCD), which provides the basis of most professional design today.”
I don't do roundups nearly regularly enough ~ so here's a few random pics that amused me as i wandered back over what we've been up to over at NOTCOT.org the last week... as usual - click the images to find out more!
I can’t think of a better city than NYC to spend as much time walking as possible. There’s too many obvious reasons for me to list here except to say it’s pretty hard not to walk a block and not find something interesting to look at, and in most cases be inspired by. Street art used to be a big part of that for me. The common cliches of finding and seeing stuff in obscure corners as a daily exploration used to abound. I’d take pictures and post it to flickr etc. Funny or perhaps more sadly is that I’m not doing that nearly as much at the moment. What happened? It’s really sterile at the moment. For all I know there could be a great movement going on one block past were I usually walk, but I don’t think that’s the case. On the flip side there’s a lot of chatter about street art online as I’ve noticed with this page I created to collect all Street Art News, but my reality as I walk back and forth around the city (and occasionally Brooklyn) is that there isn’t much to note because there’s nothing to see. It’s blank. Could it be that people are focusing more on gallery work (which is fine if that was the goal in the first place), maybe it’s a reflection that people don’t really feel inspired at the moment due to the economy? Are people focusing more on twitter to get their message out? It’s just a guess on my part but I’m getting kind of tired of not seeing anything at the moment.
The site of Participle, a UK social design consultancy, contains some good materials on the design of the next generation of public services.
Only the Lonely: Public Service Reform, the Individual and the State
Article to be published in the forthcoming issue of Soundings.
In 2008, Participle worked with a diverse group of over 200 older people and their families in Westminster and Southwark. We spent time in their homes, going shopping with them, helping with the odd job and introducing them to one another, gaining insight into how individuals and families see themselves, their aspirations, their dreams.
The aim of our work was to ensure a rich third age, one that every citizen, regardless of income level or assets might live: a life less ordinary. Specifically, in Southwark our goal was the design of a new universal service that might be replicated nationally - supporting older people to live in a way of their choosing as they age. In Westminster our work has been more closely focused, we have worked only with those who define themselves as lonely, the majority of whom are over 80 and housebound with the goal of facilitating rich social lives.
This article briefly tells the story of this work, the affordable solutions we have designed and the nascent lessons for how we might re-think a welfare state, its relationship to individuals and most importantly of all to wider social bonds.
Video postcards from a town called Thriving
After an intensive 3 months of discovery and an even more intensive month of idea development Reach out is now entering the prototyping phase. We’ve developed a vision of a ‘youth development service’ based in a fictional town called Thriving. A town where young people and adults take part in loops of doing, sampling and reflective experiences. (Very nice example of low-fi experience prototyping!)
Employability - the Bev 4.0 Way
It is time for a radical re-think that makes new vertical connections between the British people and a macro vision of our future economy. And new horizontal connections between skills, apprenticeships, learning and work.
Imagine a service that starts from where you are, visualises where you want to be and then supports you to plot a path – bringing modern and personal techniques to bear.
The field of mobile gestures is a fascinating one that Nokia is keenly exploring and researching, with explorative designers Younghee Jung and Dan Macleod on the frontline.
Last week the people of Nokia Conversations had the opportunity to chat to them at The Inside Story design day in London about their ideas on mobile gesture design, the research they’ve been doing, and the tools that have been developed to help test how well future mobile gestures might work.
“As part of their fieldwork they ask people from many countries and a broad spectrum of cultures to play out scenarios of how they might perform a task with a gesture that feels natural to them, using simple plastic mono block phones as props.
They set out a series of tasks for people, such as silencing a ringing phone. Sure, the flip-to-silence gesture is already alive in a number of devices, such as the Nokia 8800 and N97, but it was great to hear examples of some of the physical gestures people suggested in their research. A few of my favourites that Younghee and Joe mentioned were people wanting to squeeze the phone to shut it up, while others put their index finger over their mouth to shush it or simply covered the phone with their hand. The strangest, but my pick of the bunch was simply staring at your phone with a rather annoyed look, as if it were a naughty child that needs to be quiet.”
In a video interview they talk about the creation of the gesture phone prototype that they use to explore this new dialect of physical interaction designed to let you perform tasks and communicate in very new ways.
Information Architects have released the fourth edition of their annual Web Trend Map, and it’s looking better than ever, all in black. IA’s Oliver Reichenstein dropped by PauseTalk earlier this week, and to hear it from him, it was actually quite an involved process to get the poster produced this year — see photos from the printer — but the result made it well worth it. Also, if he ends up doing what he suggested for next year, I can guarantee you it’s going to be absolutely amazing.
Thinking more about how information is finding me, I thought a great example of info flow in terms of news was to compare how I got info about the Obama Cairo Speech. The first blast came from twitter where I learned from WSJ that they were live blogging the speech.
While that was a good start, I actually wanted to read the entire speech. Right after the speech had been completed I was looking for it online to no avail (now that a couple hours have passed it’s not that hard to find it). While searching I got an alert email from Huffington Post that they had the Obama Egypt Speech: VIDEO, Full Text.
I thought it was just interesting to note how I got some info that I was looking for by semi automated means, not by people I know but by my interests.
Of course I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that Daylife does a pretty good job of collecting quotes of Obama all the time. So after I’d taken a look at my alerts I viewed all that we had at [www.daylife.com] .
Design Museum is celebrating London's large segment of creative people past and present with an exhibition studded with A-list designers like Zaha Hadid, Tom DIxon, and Paul Smith.
Speaking of which, Smith's created a rubbish bin for the city of London. The bunny bins encourage people to properly dispose their garbage by illuminating its ears every time you use it. If you live near Covent Garden or Holland Park, head on over and snap a few pics for me please!
I haven’t had a chance to check it out for myself yet, but Designboom has posted a few photos from the newly opened Uniqlo megastore in Shinjuku — it was designed by Nicolas Gwenael’s Curiosity.
I’m surprised that I haven’t come across any mentions of Project Natal anywhere except from blogs of people that work at Microsoft—if the demo actually works in real life it’s quite a build up from the wii.
How would you visualize relatedness? What if you could feel through the senses of a fish? How to work with children as designpartners? The interaction design students at master and bachelor level at K3, Malmö University invite you to come and look, try and discuss their ideas on these topics at their graduation show at Orkanen (Nordenskiöldsgatan 10), Malmö on the 10th-12th of June. Join in, mingle, add a few pieces to the puzzle…
Saturday night was Manhattanhenge in NYC. Named by Neil DeGrasse Tyson, there’s a brief period when the sun while setting will line up directly with the streets of NYC. This year it was May 30th, around 8:17. pm After watching this phenomena for the past couple years I had a pretty good idea where I wanted to take my photo this year. In years past I’ve tried to get the Flatiron Building in with the sun. This year it was going to be the Empire State Building, it was just a matter of deciding what street to be on. 34th Street was the obvious choice—but it became clear to me that a lot of other people were thinking the same thing, and that the street was going to be pretty busy with car traffic. So I went one street south which was a smart idea. There was almost no traffic and I had the street to myself (and image) which isn’t exactly that common in Manhattan.
From time to time people will mention the grid of Manhattan as a great system. For me, the island is laid out in such a way that a person can find where they need to go sans map if they know how streets and avenues work. So to be able to see the grid and nature fall in line in such a manner once a year, it’s something to take note of. You can find more info about it on Wikipedia [en.wikipedia.org] , Neil DeGrasse Tyson [research.amnh.org] , the explanation from Natural History and my post from a couple years ago [designnotes.info]
“The main activity of designers will be as social innovators,” said Ezio Manzini during an intimate conversation with o2NYC on May 6.
Ezio’s talk outlined an exit strategy for conscious designers, a shift from making things to designing tools for a better society.
For those of us who have signed on to the green revolution, who commit to having the conversation with clients, sourcing better materials, reducing life cycle impacts, doing the hard work of greener design, we need an exit strategy. How do we stop making things less bad and start actually solving for climate change?
Researchers Daniela Sangiorgi (Lancaster University), Stefano Maffei (Politecnico di Milano) and Nicola Morelli (Aalborg University) launched this month a new site on service design research:
“It aims to collectively build an understanding and foster a dialogue on where ideas and concepts of Service Design have come from, how these evolved over the last two decades as well as report and review current research and service design practices. The motivation is to consolidate existing knowledge and to support the growth of a research community that engages in meaningful research relevant to the challenges design is dealing with today and in the future.”
Currently the site contains a series of interviews with key people in the field of design research, including Ezio Manzini (Research Unit Design and Innovation for Sustainability, Politecnico di Milano), Cameron Tonkinwise (Parsons The New School for Design), Robert Young (School of Design, Northumbria University) and Clare Brass (SEED Foundation).
Alice Rawsthorn, design critic of the International Herald Tribune, reflects on the fact that the appearance of most digital products bears no relation to what they do, and what that might mean for future design.
“The dislocation of form and function has set a new challenge for designers: how to help us to operate ever more complex digital products.” [...]
“The first wave of U.I. designs sought to reassure us by using visual references to familiar objects to help us to operate digital ones.” [...]
“The next phase of U.I. design will take this further. John Maeda, the software designer and president of the Rhode Island School of Design, believes that our current “awkward mechanical dance†with computers will be replaced by an intuitive approach.”
The “Cut&Paste Digital Design Tournament 2009″ is happening this Saturday (May 30, 17:00-20:30, 2,000 yen) at Womb in Shibuya. Tokyo is one of the last stops of this international competition, and it should be quite the event — just have a look at the participants listed below. There’s plenty more info at the event’s official site. Above, a video look at the 2007 edition.
3D
Tomoyuki Sugiyama / Digital Hollywood University
Christophe Defaye / AOKI Studio
Isao Nishigori / P.I.C.S.
Shuhei Morita / YAMATOWORKS
Hideki Watanabe / CGWorld
Motion Graphics
Junji Kojima / teevee graphics
Ichiro Tanida / John and Jane Doe Inc.
Koichiro Tsujikawa / Director?
Shinya Nakajima / Tohoku-Shinsha
Takeshi Nakamura / Caviar
My weekly Tokyo post for MoCo Loco is up, this time covering new offerings from Ryuji Nakamura, the “Japan Brand Pop Up Shop” in NYC, and the “Group Exhibitions: Shinagawa.”
A friend of mine from Brussels asked me an interesting question recently. She was wondering what I thought was the future of radio. I’d never really considered such a question before. It would be easy to lump radio into the same dieing media categories like newspapers, magazines and possibly local tv news. And on one level most radio stations are owned by a media conglomerates already. But there was something interesting when I started to group some of the audio ways I listen to music and news.
[hypem.com] is a great example of curated aggregation. They Pull in music from blogs and sort it by artist and song.
[www.columbia.edu] is a niche station that is celebrating Benny Goodman’s centenary birth by playing 600 hrs of him straight at the moment.
[ckua.org] It’s a hybrid station that appeal to both local and world music fans with a focus on quality artists that might not be picked up by traditional stations.
[www.npr.org] is a station we all know about. I’m still p.o. that they canceled the Bryant Park Project, but as a media entity they have as much potential as anyone else out there at this point.
As I was writing these connections up on my whiteboard, I realized that I needed to make space for the internet. But then I realized I listen to all of these different channels online to begin with. As obvious as that sounds it’s noteworthy because each of those four stations aren’t trying to be all things to all people. So as there is the potential to do anything, there’s still focus to strengths that each carry online.
I should also mention [www.cbc.ca] and [www.bbc.co.uk] too—however they do have a large segment of tv which the other four examples don’t have and to some degree are trying to be all things to all people…
The latest issue of Ubiquity, a web-based publication of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), contains a fascinating account by Phillip Tobias on the emerging design principles that will generate a positive user experience, and satisfied and loyal users.
“Think of one of your favorite items and imagine it right in front of you. You can probably describe it in great detail to someone. However, try to describe it without mentioning or referring to colors, shapes, text, or any other visual elements. This is a challenging task, and attempting to describe any item to someone in this manner most likely will cause ambiguity and confusion. Subconsciously, we create an embedded image in our mind based on an item’s appearance or brand. Dick Berry in “The user experience” denotes this embedded image as a user’s mental model or conceptual model. A user interacts with physical items, builds up experiences, and as a result creates a mental model over time. This mental model can contribute to the success of product marketing and software. At the rapid rate of progression of technology, the acceptance of software with identical functionality can come down to user experience. A product can leverage itself above the rest by the superiority of its design. This article will discuss the emphasis on design as a primary vehicle for strategy, flow, and affordance as it pertains to user experience in a device or system.”
Ubiquity is dedicated to fostering critical analysis and in-depth commentary on issues relating to the nature, constitution, structure, science, engineering, cognition, technology, practices and paradigms of the computing profession.
If you’re not familiar with Ideablob, it’s a pretty simple, but brilliant, concept. Participants (or blobbers, as they’re called) post an idea, and the ideablob community votes for what they think is the best. Winners receive, in addition to the prestige of being a champion blobber, 10,000 seed capital towards the development of their idea, and there’s a new winner every month. Simple, but brilliant.
This month, we’re proud to announce our friend Sami Nerenberg is a finalist with her idea, Room by Room! Room by Room is an eco-home redecorating reality show for low-income housing where ten inner-city high school students will participate in six weeks of eco-design bootcamp for a chance to win a health home make-over. Sami is brilliantly talented and incredibly motivated, serving as the youngest adjunct faculty at RISD (where she’s also an alumn), a member of Grain Design, a Timberland Earthkeeper Hero, and an all around awesome person. She’s got tough competition (including Paul Polak, who we also love), but with the Brown University’s Community Environmental College behind them, the Majora Carter Group as their media consultant, Timberland as their publicity outlet, RISD as their cohorts,we think they’re in good shape.
You can vote for Sami and see the Room by Room preview here!
We love it when design students hold their own next to the big guys, and we're thrilled to report that the Cranbrook Academy of Art, Pratt Institute and the Rhode Island School of Design presented stellar booths at this year's ICFF, all culminations of classes and workshops that focused on various aspects of contemporary design issues.
Hit the jump for more details on all three groups!
One of our readers that I had the pleasure to meet at the NSS last week was Amy Tischer - a recent industrial design graduate from Philadelphia University. She sent over her amazing Urban Nature tea-light holders, which were inspired by natural elements and patterns found in urban environments. Amy designed the tea-light holders in her sophomore year as a project for Foster's Urban Homewares. The tea-lights are made from extruded steel tubes, 3d laser cut, and powder coated. See more of Amy's work here.
BBC technology correspondent Mark Ward reports on a research project that uses Facebook, mobile phones, and energy meters to nudge people into living healthier lives.
“The three-year project will see how people react when data is fed back to them about their energy use and activity levels.
While it has been established that such feedback can alter behaviour, the researchers want to unpick the mechanisms of such change.
The research, called the Charm Project, builds on the work of academics Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein which implies that the way people are told about poor lifestyle choices influences how they react.
Instead of simply telling people to stop, it has been shown that it is more effective to reveal how one person’s behaviour ranks against their peers.”
I’m really happy to mention that my Agile Design talk at Creative Mornings can now be seen on Vimeo at [www.vimeo.com] . The entire video is about half an hour with the Q & A—I guess I went over my ten minute slot, ha. I just want to thank Tina and the entire Creative Mornings team for giving me the opportunity to talk, setting up the event and producing a great video that ties my talk together. I also wanted to thank James A. Reeves who was hanging out in Finland and was the virtual skype guest, and Core Industries for sponsoring the talk.
And please let me know what you thought of the talk. I’m kind of curious to hear from designers who are working in a more traditional framework of waterfall. Does agile seem like a good idea or something that should be left to engineers? And to save some time, here’s the links from the last slide…
The Age of the Unthinkable: Why the New World Disorder Constantly Surprises Us And What We Can Do About It by Joshua Cooper Ramo
Steve Calde, a principal design consultant at Cooper, writes in Cooper Journal on the implications of designing for first time use.
“A person is a first-time user exactly once (and in the case of the infusion pump, because of training and observation, nurses were actually never really first-time users), and in many cases a beginner for only a very short while. The first-time user scenario is always important to get right (as is that highly emotional first impression); for some products such as an airport check-in kiosk or a public emergency defibrillator, for example, it’s the most critical one and deserves the most elegant solution. But for countless other products that target people who will use the product to accomplish complex workflows over long periods of time, the first-time use case is likely only one of many secondary scenarios that deserve attention.”
Carl Honoré, author of In Praise of Slow and Under Pressure and a self-proclaimed proponent of the Slow Movement, is the writer of the latest contribution to Vodafone’s Receiver magazine. In his piece, Honoré argues that in a world of limitless information and constant access to other people, we often don’t know when to stop our urge to connect and communicate:
“You cannot be truly ‘in the moment’ when you’re juggling several moments at once. You cannot make the most of now when you turn ‘now’ into a frenzy of multitasking.
Being ‘always on’ transforms communication technology into a weapon of mass distraction. [...]
Constant connection makes us chronically impatient. We come to expect everything to happen at the touch of a button – and get angry when it doesn’t. As the actress Carrie Fisher once quipped, these days “even instant gratification takes too long.”
Being ‘always on’ also makes it hard to stop and stare; to smell the proverbial roses. We miss the details, the fine grain of the world around us when our eyes are glued to a screen. We lose the joy of discovering things on our own, or by chance, when we stick to routes prescribed by a GPS download. When travel involves firing off a stream of texts, tweets and audio-video footage to friends and family back home, we never completely immerse ourselves in a new place.”
Alice Rawsthorn of The New York Times has published an article on social design and service innovation:
“When Ritt Bjerregaard became lord mayor of the city of Copenhagen in 2006, she was astonished to discover how many working days were lost when civic employees fell ill, and how much it cost — roughly €100 million, or $140 million, a year.
City officials made various attempts to tackle the problem. Training programs were introduced for the worst-affected staff, as were research tools to help managers monitor the incidence of sick leave and its impact.
The mayor and her colleagues then decided to analyze the problem in greater depth, and invited consultants to pitch for the project. The one they chose was ReD Associates, one of a new breed of hybrid consulting groups that combine design with other disciplines, such as ethnography, psychology and anthropology, to tackle social problems as well as commercial ones.
Rapidly though this area of design is expanding, it is still so new that it does not have a name, at least not one that has stuck. “Social design,†“service design†and “service innovation†are among the favorites”.
On Fora.TV you can find a video of RISD president John Maeda’s talk at O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 expo, where he discusses people participation processes at RISD.
The world of fashion and design is inundated with a seemingly endless list of rules. Think of ‘Less is More’, ‘Form Follows Function’, ‘Keep it Simple’, ‘Dress Your Age’ and the list goes on and on. They’re familiar sayings that some designers consider to be valuable words of wisdom, which serve as a guiding line and source of inspiration.
To others, these rules are mere restrictions: design dogmas and fashion formulae that need to be bended, twisted or broken altogether.
Granted, creativity knows no bounds and therefore it seems rather ridiculous to restrict that creativity by sticking to a couple of age-old rules. However, in some cases the rules seem more like the basic principles that every designer should love, honor and obey.
Never Use White Type on a Black Background And 50 other Ridiculous Design Rules collects 51 famous and obscure design rules that are accompanied by chronologically placed quotes (courtesy of designers, architects, fashion designers, typographers and other creatives) and an image that either negates or supports the rule.
Whichever side of the fence you yourself are sitting on in the rules debate, you’re bound to find this book a source of inspiration, comfort, joy or just good old fun. Enjoy.
It's always such a pleasure to go visit the DesignGlut booth at ICFF ~ i'm not sure how to describe it other than delightfully edgy ~ it is so playful, yet realistically dark ~ basically i always end up wanting everything ~ and as silly as Kegan Fisher and Liz Kinnmark may seem, they manage to pull it off this playfulness with more charisma and seriousness than you may expect from a design duo selling your eggs pants. Their photo shoots and booth design were stunning as always, and they're even launching a new product... the Candlestrip ~ just like what it sounds like ~ candles with plug bottoms, ready to stick into almost any outlet (i still think they were pretty risky to have outlet plates as well as candle prototypes in the same booth waiting to be plugged together!) ~ but basically the candles go into a power strip like holder!
Take a look at some closeups of the new goodies, and their fun booth on the next page!
p.s.
i hate that every time i see them i feel like i need to buy a few dozen more hookmakers!
It's always such a pleasure to go visit the DesignGlut booth at ICFF ~ i'm not sure how to describe it other than delightfully edgy ~ it is so playful, yet realistically dark ~ basically i always end up wanting everything ~ and as silly as Kegan Fisher and Liz Kinnmark may seem, they manage to pull it off this playfulness with more charisma and seriousness than you may expect from a design duo selling your eggs pants. Their photo shoots and booth design were stunning as always, and they're even launching a new product... the Candlestrip ~ just like what it sounds like ~ candles with plug bottoms, ready to stick into almost any outlet (i still think they were pretty risky to have outlet plates as well as candle prototypes in the same booth waiting to be plugged together!) ~ but basically the candles go into a power strip like holder!
Take a look at some closeups of the new goodies, and their fun booth on the next page!
p.s.
i hate that every time i see them i feel like i need to buy a few dozen more hookmakers!
Just in time for the 50th Anniversary of the Guggenheim Museum in New York, Lego has begun to produce an Architecture Series, starting with a collection of six Frank Lloyd Wright buildings. Among the collection, of course, will be the Guggenheim Museum and Fallingwater, and all six are available at the Guggenheim gift shop or Brick Structures. Great gift for designers!
Scandinavian luxury lifestyle brand Georg Jensen has appointed designer Todd Bracher Creative Director of the brand and head of a new creative force consisting of the Georg Jensen internal design team, the Georg Jensen designer network and Copenhagen based design consultants OeO.
As part of the new strategy Todd Bracher will be working together with his long-time partner Thomas Lykke and Anne-Marie Buemann from OeO, a Danish based, and strategy-driven design company with vast experience from the design industry. The new set-up allows Georg Jensen to unite the best of today’s Danish and international design competencies with a strong strategic and commercial approach to new product introductions.  Â
“I am thrilled and honoured to be joining Georg Jensen. To be part of this brand and to help sculpt its vision has been a long-term dream for me. Georg Jensen has a specific language and intelligence, it communicates on so many levels.  The possibilities are endless and we intend to explore themâ€, Todd Bracher says.
Getting ready this morning to take Madison out I noticed that we had some new doggy poop bags. Never the one to miss an opportunity to take a closer look at things through the lens of a design mind, I thought I’d throw them up onto the blog. Before people get angry about the plastic issue they are degradable. I don’t have a car and I walk to work so my carbon footprint is minimal as it is—so cut me some slack on the bags. Anyhow, the claim to fame for the Mutt Mitt is that once you put a hand in the bag it’s a little easier picking up the business. I’ve illustrated that by showing how I would pick up an apple. I also thought it would be fun to show how Madison was making sure she got some of the apple afterwards. What’s nice is that the bag is black where the stuff is hidden. Another great feature is that they’ve made the bags hangable in a closet—how helpful is that? As big as the bags are (I’ve put a pen beside the first image to show scale), I think it would have helped if the bags flared out a bit on the bottom. The natural motion is to try to expand the hand though it’s a bit constrained because of the inside. With that aside it’s a nice improvement on the standard bag or paper I’ve used in the past.
We told you about InDisposed last week in the ramp up to New York Design Week. Yesterday we were able to catch up with Jen Renzi and Dan Rubinstein who took us through a tour of some of our favorite items. Lots of nice anecdotes here, so if you enjoyed the show the first time, make sure you check out this backstage pass! Here's the pitch:
InDisposed asks 15 thinkers to address the theme of disposability, waste and wastefulness through design. The result is 15 mass-produceable pieces made from sustainable materials with disposability in mind. At the end of the show, each object will be ceremoniously and responsibly disposed of in the manner designed for it.
Cacomixl brings up the point “What’s this trend of pages that expand by clicking “more” - like Twitter? Click away then back and the page resets to “less”. What a hassle!†Up until yesterday I hadn’t really thought about, but since he threw it out the question I’ve been thinking about a couple solutions. But before I suggest anything I was wondering if anyone seen successful examples that take a clicker back one step afer pressing the more button?
Kohler's brushed nickel Flipside showerhead, whose shape recalls an old-fashioned radio mic, flips its workings to deliver four different types of sprays. The form is sensual but chunky, designed to be easy to manipulate even with soapy hands.
Their new Reve collection features sleek, geometric lines intended to both please the eye and remain easy to clean. The lavatories come in both pedestal and wall-mounted (shown here), with the latter featuring a hardware-free integrated handle that accesses the pull-out drawer. The one-piece toilet is dual-flush.
Though New York Design Week has mostly wrapped up, there is still some nice work to be seen in longer running shows around town. One of these is Lost & Found, curated by Anna Cosentino at Spring Design & Art in DUMBO, running through July 31st.
The show asks 13 artists and designers to interpret the Lost & Found theme through new or existing work. The result is a range of objects that reflect, among other things, humour, narrative, luxury, comfort and usefulness. For example, Peter Cole responded with a collection of sculptures that transform toy horses into distinct characters through a careful accrual of appendages and costuming made from other found objects. Angel Chang, a fashion designer, worked with a thermochromic ink manufacturer to obscure a map of downtown Manhattan with heat-sensitive orange ink. This map is then revealed in small bits and pieces through the actions of the wearer of the garment.
Other pieces include: I Live Here by Steve Butcher, a set of photographs documenting ways that Yucatan locals mark paths in long stretches of jungle using discarded packaging; Made Out of New York by Gregoire Abrial, a series of furniture pieces made from scavenged material from the streets of different New York neighborhoods and marked with a location ratio; and Bread Sole Shoes by Stijn Ossevoort, a pair of shoes that leave a trail of bread crumbs, functioning as an example of what the designer calls "Placebo Design," an object that is designed to make the user feel psychologically secure over providing a distinct function. Pictured above are Bookscapes by Katya Marritz and L'il Hankie by Peter Cole .
More photos after the jump.
LOST&FOUND
May 16- July 31, Tues-Sat: 12-7pm Spring Design & Art
126a Front St., Brooklyn NY
Designer Srdjan Simic's Paket table for Offi goes from cube to table for four, with integrated seating.
Gauthier Poulain's unusual Hold-V and Hold-H cabinets are meant to evoke travel with leather straps holding the velvet-finished "cargo" to its bent-wood base.
Ken Okuyama's angular Orizuru chair is made from a single sheet of plywood, molded and capped with maple veneer.
A few weeks ago I felt like repainting my old pine wood Ikea Dresser. I painted the corpus pure white, touched up its drawers with some shiny cyan and replaced the wooden knobs with white porcelain/steel knobs. I’m quite happy about the result, what do you think?
How do you integrate a basket in the handlebar? That was the question the Danish based design company Goodmorning Technology asked themselves when developing the city bike concept for New York Department of Park & Recreation. They wanted a basket that would be at the
bike the whole time and that never could be stolen or lost. In the New York Bike project phase they developed the special integrated handlebar that will help many a biker from now one!
The bike porter is made of tubes and is as easy to put on your bike as a normal handlebar. Goodmorning Technology has developed a whole range in many colors and with integrated designed bags if you wish! The patent is filled out the and all intellectual property belongs to Goodmorning Technology. The bike porter is perfect for fixies and other street bikes as well as standard bikes.
The basket will from now one never be stolen, easy destroyed and at the same time, the designed bags are easy to fill up in the shops and take along. You can also use your own bag, laptop or whatever you need!
Goodmorning Technology has showed it before with the New York City bike, but this is first time as a single product without the bike.
How do you integrate a basket in the handlebar? That was the question the Danish based design company Goodmorning Technology asked themselves when developing the city bike concept for New York Department of Park & Recreation. They wanted a basket that would be at the
bike the whole time and that never could be stolen or lost. In the New York Bike project phase they developed the special integrated handlebar that will help many a biker from now one!
The bike porter is made of tubes and is as easy to put on your bike as a normal handlebar. Goodmorning Technology has developed a whole range in many colors and with integrated designed bags if you wish! The patent is filled out the and all intellectual property belongs to Goodmorning Technology. The bike porter is perfect for fixies and other street bikes as well as standard bikes.
The basket will from now one never be stolen, easy destroyed and at the same time, the designed bags are easy to fill up in the shops and take along. You can also use your own bag, laptop or whatever you need!
Goodmorning Technology has showed it before with the New York City bike, but this is first time as a single product without the bike.
From El Salvador comes the design duo of two Carloses (Lopez and Garcia) called 2CC Arquitectura Diseno. Their fiberglass and leather MUKA object, above, defies single-category description; it's either a bench, a table, a stool, a bookshelf or a magazine rack, depending on which way the user orients it.
Philippe Starck's modular shower system for Axor made its North American debut at the ICFF.
The Axor Starck ShowerCollection offers a designer- and installer-friendly, building-block system for creating a shower from individual elements that can be freely combined, thus allowing complete design flexibility.
The basis of the modular collection is the perfection of the square: All elements of the collection emanate from a simple 5-inch x 5-inch module. Devoid of any curlicues or frills, this basic building block can house any of several functions: thermostat, volume and diverter controls; handshower or showerhead; even lighting, sound and shelving modules.
A shower for the modest this ain't--one of the overhead components, designed to "deliver an exceptionally luxurious showering experience," is called the Axor Starck ShowerHeaven and it dumps water on you from a 28-square-inch fixture. Now you can experience what it feels like to be a winning U.S. football coach.
Among our discoveries in yesterday's wanderings through Brooklyn: a small collection of exclusive furniture pieces commissioned by local design incubator/furniture mainstay The Future Perfect, which has been bringing the work of designers from Brooklyn and beyond into the light for the better part of a decade now.
The tiny exhibition, down in the basement beneath the PBR-grasping crowd in FP's courtyard, included this clever, historically rich piece by Joel Voisard, entitled simply Box Cart. Joel walks us through the (surprisingly functional) operation and construction of the cart in this video. Pay close attention to the hidden internal construction that allows the vintage boxes to be accessed from either side, and the extreme portability afforded by a wheelbarrow-based frame. Lovely stuff, if you've got the space.
London-based designer Min Hoo Park has been showing his Integrated Table concept at the fairs for a few months now, but to truly grasp its awesomeness, you need to see the thing in action.
Here, Min walks us through the various flips, plug-ins, and modulations that make this such a seductive piece of furniture/art: the dishes, cup, vase and candelabra plug neatly into dedicated sockets, and the tray and tabletop remove for greater flexibility. Wait for the end, when he unveils its tall, elegant cousin with integrated champagne bucket and tapas table.
The days of the bare sink in the bathroom are long gone, as designers are now running wild with bathroom furniture intended to hide our toiletry clutter and bring aesthetic sophistication into the loo.
Leading the way is Italy-by-way-of-Chicago company Lacava, which combines furniture made in the U.S. with washbasins and faucets from Italy. As they point out:
Europe is a land of small businesses with a long history of fierce competition....each one tries to distinguish itself from the others by developing original designs. This is true in all fields. Bathroom furnishings are one of them. Nowhere else in the world can you find such a variety of artistically designed bathroom furniture and accessories as in Europe.
This explains Lacava's absolutely staggering amount of products encompassing sinks, cabinets, vanities, and more, in dozens upon hundreds of permutations. Anyone seeking inspiration for matters of the bathroom can spend literally hours browsing their site. Check 'em out here--you're bound to find something you've never seen before.
We ended the weekend rush last night at a few packed events featuring work from local designers.
American Design Club showed pieces in the windows of the Design Within Reach Flatiron location, where we ran into some of the charter members of the organization, including Kiel Mead, Charles Brill, Theo Richardson, Alexander Williams and Annie Lenon. After lots of hi's and bye's and a stop at the phenomenal taco stand on Bedford + North 1st (or thereabouts), we moved over to the shared courtyard of The Future Perfect and A&G Merch in Williamsburg, where we enjoyed the cool air and checked out exclusive work from Jason Miller, Scrapile, Claudia + Harry Washington, and Joel Voisard.
Monday morning at the Metropolis pavilion marked the beginning of the full day conference on Design Entrepreneurs entitled "Innovate." Susan Szenasy, Metropolis Editor and Chief, and Bruce Brigham, President of the American Society of Interior Designers, took on the hosting duties.
The first speaker was James Ludwig, the head of global design at Steelcase, the pioneering green furniture manufacturer and majority owner of IDEO. Speaking rapidfire, the clearly enthusiastic Ludwig explained how his planned three year stint at Steelcase grew into a ten year residency. Accompanied by beautifully designed slides that would make a typesetter proud, Ludwig began by talking about "the language of design," but rapidly morphed into a discussion of usage and production. He drew an illuminating continuum of architectural scale versus user scale showing how large and lasting products needed to be timeless, but small user-scale products could afford to be both timely and personal. From there he discussed Steelcase's design philosophy (smart, desirable, and viable). As a sign of the times, he listed sustainability under the "desirable" category rather than the more obvious smart or viable, but perhaps that befits a company that received the first LEED Certification for a manufacturing plant. After that framework he broke headlong into several illuminating case studies very rich in both process and slides.
A relatively quick and easy way to turn your Danish eyewear shop into a design destination? Locate it in the Meatpacking District, and fill it to a depth of 14" with plastic balls. Guaranteed to generate traffic, some exceptionally playful photos as well (more after the jump), and the best overheard quote of the day: "Ow! Be careful not to step on the balls..."
In all of the discussion about the negative effects of outsourcing, one solution rarely discussed is the hands-on one. John Reeves, founder of a small furniture manufacturing company that bears his name, dealt with the concerns of poor offshore working conditions by moving to Vietnam and starting a fabrication shop in person, building some fantastic, durable furniture along the way. The chairs, tables and benches he produces with his Vietnamese co-workers are cast in aluminum sourced from recycled engine blocks and conduit, and the results are curvaceous, solid and thoroughly modern.
One of the most seductive examples of sustainable manufacturing we've seen at the Javits this year, and the sort of object that might, as John points out, be "dug up from a field 500 years from now," still perfectly serviceable.
Mockett is the type of company an industrial designer would never get bored working for. They make a variety of cool-looking and useful items across seemingly interminable categories (Kitchen, Bath, Closet, Hardware, Cable Management, etc.) and often come up with simple but never-before-seen shapes and form factors. The breadth of their products is staggering--everything from adjustable-height table legs to doorstops to pop-up power outlets, the list goes on and on.
Check out their suh-weet hubless caster, above. I thought the same as you when I first saw it--"Looks cool but must be weaker." (I was wrong; each caster will support up to 150 lbs.) Comb through their site for literally hundreds of other cool products and designs.
Graypants' Scrap Lights are made from used cardboard boxes. The pendant lamps range in diameter (depending on the size of the box from whence they came) and come in three different shapes: disc, bell, and irregular.
Japanese office furniture manufacturer Okamura wants you to get down--low to the ground. Their ergonomic research indicates that a "lower, reclining seating posture" leads to a "well-relaxed yet highly-concentrated condition suitable for intellectual and creative work." Hence their Cruise workstation and Luxos chair, which put the user in a posture that looks less like a desk jockey and more like a racecar driver.
Another Okamura piece of note is their ProUnit FW modular desk, with an "invisible structure" that stretches for three meters yet doesn't require supporting legs, meaning plenty of bodies will fit and no one has to bang their knees.
Lastly, their NT folding table quickly and easily breaks down, rolls out of the way, and nests to make the most out of available space.
Up on the eighth floor of the newly-opened Ace Hotel on 29th Street lurked one of the nicest surprises of Design Week so far: the clever, topical and sweetly presented McMasterpieces show, curated by former ID Magazine editor Monica Khemsurov.
The pretext, noted earlier here on Core, is pretty straightforward. Each of the 13 designers or studios submitted an item or collection constructed entirely from parts sourced from the McMaster-Carr catalog of industrial materials, with some surprisingly artful and functional results. Presentation was in keeping with the down-to-earth premise, with a list of parts used (complete with catalog numbers) in a single hotel room decorated in Ace's humble, comforting style. Todd Bracher's Stick Lamps, pictured above, are constructed from bent aluminum and steel tubing and LEDs hacked from flashlights; more projects and party photos after the jump.
Norway-based Varier Furniture's "intelligent sitting" philosophy is simple and alluring: "If humans can move in a natural way, even when sitting, the body will feel better and possibly also last longer." The company combines Form & Function with Movement & Variation, resulting in beautiful chairs that allow the freedom to sit in a variety of positions and still remain comfortable.
The great thing about attending an exhausting furniture trade show like the ICFF is that you occasionally get to rest your dogs by lounging in pieces like these. As you can guess, once I hit Varier's area, I didn't want to get back up.
Above: The Penguin, Peel Club, and Tok, the latter being the sexiest update on the Eames classic we've yet seen.
After a day of touring some of the offsite events in Manhattan, we headed to the Meatpacking District to check out the string of events revolving around the 414 Gallery on West 14th Street. After stopping there for snow-cones and chocolate biscuits, we visited Studio Dror at Yigal Azrouel, Bond BeLow Tech at the Milk Gallery and the annual after party at Shadi and Company's wedge shaped rooftop studio, where we met the designers behind Playful: Finnish Design.
Stilvoll's beautiful, versatile Crescendo C2 desk uses clever, and nearly invisible, mechanical engineering to provide access to multiple storage compartments, expand in size, adjust in height, and tilt portions of the desktop up into drafting-table angles. Comes in three heights: "School & College," "Secretary" and "Standing-Desk." This is a combination of industrial design and craftsmanship at its finest, and the walnut version is particularly eye-pleasing in person.
Walking by the Stella McCartney store in the meatpacking district you can't help but notice, stop, stare and giggle at the window filled with inflated dinosaurs ~ some even taking over the heads of mannequins while others swoop down on those with their arms raised... It's bizarre to say the least, but part of me can't help but wonder what it takes to get hired to come up with and execute THAT idea. It sounds like it'd be terribly fun! See more pictures on the next page... the close ups crack me up.
p.s.
if you're in need of fun attention grabbing playful ideas like these, we should chat!
Here’s a couple photos from last night’s earthquake in California. Of course it’s not showing us what’s on the ground currently but it does me for a compelling composite knowing that something happened there and there isn’t much news being reported just yet. I came across this tweet that mentioned Recent Earthquakes in California and Nevada. One of more fascinating pieces of data is that they give a kml file that opens in Google Earth. Watching the globe zoom into a street view for the first time was really compelling. Once I had zoomed in and out a couple times to check out what was near by I came across this tweet which gave me the idea to do that myself. So with the co-ordinates this is where I landed. This morning the co-ordinates changed slightly in location, but it’s still in the same vicinity.
There’s a lot of potential to put info hooks down the road once people know what to do. People marking their location as they file personal experiences is a start. That’s almost automatic now with people that have geo capabilities with their camera. The next step is have the descriptive text attached to the file as it’s pushed out to the interweb. Scale becomes an issue though, if every single person pushed out the same kind of info at the same time how would someone be able to edit it? If a person can zoom in/out with a map it probably wouldn’t be that hard to cluster similar news to location so a person needing unique info could find it easier.
Ørgreen Optics and Artsee's "Playground: Where Danish Design Meets Japanese Perfection" ~ was an unexpected surprise as i turned the corner near the Standard NY while wandering the meatpacking district... you know i can't turn away from a room of balls... especially a room of pink, silver, and black balls! Unfortunately it was a bit of a tease, since they were only about ankle/shin deep ~ so no ball pit diving! Oh, and how can you ignore the huge hot pink glasses outside too...? Unfortunately they were closing the doors as i wandered past, but it is Ørgreen handcrafted Danish architectural eyewear Solo Exhibition at Artsee Gallery - See more pics on the next page!
Instead of just talking about ICFF this year, I thought I should actually go to the Javits Center and see everything for myself. Thanks to my friends at Metropolis Magazine they passed me on a pass. Before I started walking around I made a couple guidelines. I didn’t want to be there for more than an hour, I was only going to walk through the aisles and when I got home I’d check the listings of the sites to see what I actually remembered seeing and liking. Sure that’s kind of a strange process but for me to be objective I really felt that the designs had to stand out for themselves. By going through so much stuff the best natural filter for me would be trying to remember afterwards what I thought was worth talking about. Below are the things that I remembered and thought were worth taking a second look at. Did I miss anything?
A lot of the booths were kind of predictable. Some people had a decent budget while others didn’t. Personally I think an overwhelming budget for a booth is a bit strange to me. Pretty much the only stand out for me was from Kikkerland. I’ve seen can’s used to create stuff before but this was a nice evolution. Great use of an iconic brand, the booth had a lot of life and at the end of the show nothing will be wasted.
I’m not familiar with Deadgood, but I was immediately struck by their great use of typography and memorable name. It again stood out for me because they were unique and had some life to what they were showing.
I like things that can scale modularly while not looking just like a box. It seems to me like this thing can grow in all sorts of unimaginable ways.
Another idea with lots of potential. It’s pretty cool to see what a thin piece of glass and light can do.
I thought the shapes and colours were interesting. Another really cool starting point to do some interesting stuff with.
I though Areaware had a great roster of products that I’d want to buy.
Nice to be able to see these in person, didn’t actually get to hear them. I hope they sound as good as they look.
Any time there’s something designed to control fire it’s going to score highly with me. These mini fireplaces are things I’d want in my apt.
It’s kind of surprising that I think this was the only site that actually showed where they’re located. I saw a ton of tweets about how I should visit booth numberwhatever, but I literally had no context for numbers, and I don’t recall seeing any numbers listed anywhere on booths.
This was possibly one of the worst logos I came across for ICFF. However the energy that all the designers brought to their sections of their design booths was cool. I noticed that there were a lot of people hanging out in this area.
Design Week offsites tend to cluster in a handful of neighborhoods: last night most of the action was in SoHo, and Sunday revolves around the urban grunge/over-the-top environs of the Meatpacking District. Extending a trend we noticed last year, truly new design displays were few and far between, with the majority of "events" being simply a bit of music and some plastic cups of wine in an unmodified high-end retail space.
One pleasant exception, and easily the most worthwhile destination in the area for design seekers, is the the Design 09 show at the 414 Gallery (414 West 14th St.). The space acts as a sort of gallery concentrator, gathering together recent work from IDEA/Brasil, IDSA New York members, Iceland Design Center, designboom, LO-TEK, and a number of other design and architecture studios.
A few favorites are shown above, including one of Fernando Prado's brilliant adjustable lamps, and one of the best examples of a chunky wooden screen we've seen in quite a while, part of designboom's show.
A packed crowd filled the Metropolis Pavilion on Sunday afternoon to hear Michele De Lucchi interviewed by Paola Antonelli. With two such luminaries it was anyone's guess who the audience had come to hear. Antonelli, of course, is the senior curator at the MoMA and De Lucchi is a design icon whose trajectory included the Memphis Collective and Alchimia. Upon introducing De Lucchi, Antonelli explained that they had forgone slides in favor of an open discussion since his industrial design was something anyone would recognize upon seeing. Quite an understatement. As the designer of the iconic Tolomeo lamp for Artimide, De Lucchi literally defined the form that most people recognize as an office desk lamp.
Rather than focus on the objects we know so well, Antonelli instead chose to interview De Lucchi about his life and philosophy. Since De Lucchi had been involved with so many pivotal movements, his anecdotes were a virtual who's who of design icons. After introducing him with the quip, "changing the world one chair at a time," Antonelli let him tell his life story. After ostentatiously choosing to arrive at the Milan Triennale in a Napoleon outfit, De Lucchi met Ettore Sottsass, the center of the Memphis Collective, and the rest, as they say, was history. Antonelli and De Lucchi's easy banter filled the rest of the hour with non-stop quotables and a direct connection to the very origins of postmodern design.
Bouncing around Greene St last night in Soho I took in a couple openings that were close in proximity. Droog was by far the best suited for holding an evening event of the three with their large bottom floor available to pack in a lot of people. Up until yesterday I hadn’t actually been inside droog so I took the opportunity to take some pics of stuff that grabbed my attention. One of my fav. things was the Lucky Cat table. Just like a pinball machine you shoot a metal ball. Sounds are made once the glass kittens are hit. I did notice that the ball didn’t randomize as much as one would expect though. Moss’ party was again full and while it seemed like a cool place there was literally no space to walk around nor real opportunity to look at anything. Ya it’s a party but it still would have been nice to have a glass of wine, shoot some pics, have a convo and move on. Last of the three on my list was Cite. I’d already been to a preview that I thought quite highly of already so I wasn’t really expecting much more. Unfortunately I got there about twenty minutes before eight and they had stopped serving drinks which was too bad. But on the bright side I saw a couple other objects that hadn’t arrived the day before.
Walking around taking in the work I def. was asking myself about the object as design or art question. Part of the issue is the scalability of it—simple production methods that could be replicated quite easily versus those one of a kind things that aren’t really easy to produce en masse. What’s better? I think that’s an open question that is replied with “it depends on the contextâ€. So while I don’t have a definitive answer I was happy to see a bunch of stuff that I hope I don’t see in Target anytime soon.
We'll be on the street tweeting the highs and lows from the meatpacking district today for a few hours, starting at around 1:30pm EST. Follow us @core77 on Twitter, and we promise not as many posts as yesterday...and with pictures this time!
This year's ICFF saw the launch of British designer Alexander Purcell's APRRO line, which includes the Tour and JFK Lounge chairs seen above. Click here for more pieces by Purcell.
Netherlands-based bERT&dENNIS (that's Bert van der Grift and Dennis van der Burch) strive for "Simplicity, fluidity, angularity, utility; organic forms vie with subtle references to Bauhaus, kitsch, traditional Japanese." Below is their new Fold lounge chair, followed by DotShop. Click here to see more of this Dutch dynamic duo's work.
Alan Heller's ergoErgo "combines the health benefits of an exercise ball with the comfort of a cushioned seat;" perching atop the constantly swaying stool forces you to engage your legs and back to stay upright. (Having used an exercise ball as my desk chair for approximately two years, I can see one clear advantage of the ergoErgo--it won't get thoroughly dirty like exercise balls do, since the only part of the ergoErgo that comes into contact with the floor is the bottom.)
The offsite events during NY Design Week are often as engaging as the main event at the ICFF--in some cases more so--and offer the advantages of a serene, manageable environment, and no pesky registration requirements.
One of the more promising this year is "400 Years Later," a mostly-for-sale collection at CITE in SoHo, featuring the work of 23 Dutch designers that ranges from adorable to innovative to downright bizarre. We had a chance to walk through some of the show's highlights with curator Alissia Melka-Teichroew yesterday. The resulting video is exactly what you hope to get from a Design Week show: a showcase that changes your idea of what objects do and how they're made.
Some of these projects have been around for a while, so it's not quite April fresh, but we couldn't help but be impressed all over again at some of the student furniture projects from the Virginia Tech College of Architecture and Urban Studies at the ICFF. The use of curvature and corners to add rigidity to the bent sheet-metal seats shows some real structural insight, for example, but this is coupled with a high level of finish and a playful decorative bent as well. There's also some nice use of laser-cutting here, thankfully in a way that emphasizes the flexibility of the process, rather than resorting to the mechanical aesthetic we usually see.
The first thing to charm our socks off at the ICFF this morning: The Emergency Chair from Houston-based designer D.E. Sellers. We've seen plenty of laser-cut or CNC-routered plywood furniture over the years, and D.E.'s website shows a certain obsession with the form, but this particular implentation has a few new things going for it. The built-in handle, for example, that allows the un-constructed sheet to be easily toted is cool, as are the laser-etched graphics of assembly instructions and "emergency" icons like an ambulance and a Band-Aid.
What we really love, though, is the story: the idea that an emergency of some sort might arise, and this chair could come to the rescue in the nick of time, through rapid transformation into essential seating. Yes it's absurd, but it focuses the design in some wonderful ways. It means the cuts are perforated, so that the sheet holds its form until snapped apart by hand (the attachments are quite thin, so this is feasible), and the completed chair is an endearingly clunky, assymetrical hodgepodge, with obvious cutouts where pieces once fit together in the plywood sheet. Not pretty, but we're not sure everything has to be.
Listeners who trekked to the Metropolis pavilion at the far back of the ICFF had the opportunity to hear Brooke Stoddard interview Anna Lindgren and Katja Savstrom from the female foursome Front. The two Swedes explained what went into the work that wowed the attendees in the Milan Furniture Fair, provided detail on projects they'd done in the past and gave glimpses of projects to come. Presenting their designs from inception to completion, they began with each design brief and told the story of how that concept became a tangible object. Given the breadth of the products they've designed, the process was an adventure.
While they lacked the verbal showmanship of Cameron Sinclair's presentation last year, success for them is the manufacture of compelling products rather than inspiring audiences to give, although the pricetags on their Mooi animal furniture may tell a different story. Beginning an extended clip of Eddie Murphy talking about the value of vases in Trading Places and ending with a video game which had the player attacking furniture, the audience was clearly not in for a typical design presentation.
The 2009 installment of the International Contemporary Furniture Fair opened this morning at the Javits Center in New York, and Core's intrepid team of bloggers, photographers, videographers and assorted design nerds stormed the floor shortly thereafter.
Initial impressions include some of the same observations from Milan and, on a smaller scale, Brooklyn: a bit more restraint than in previous years, a stripped-down (some would say dulled-down) aesthetic, and a propensity for attaching "eco" to everything from kitchens to wall coverings to kiddie furniture. There are some unexpected flashes of brilliance in among the usual suspects, as always, making the process a rewarding one, for us as well as you (we hope).
Expect heaps of content in the next few days, both from the Fair itself and from the numerous offsites throughout the city. As in previous years, all posts will be collected on a single EZ-reference page--see link below. In addition, we'll be tweeting impressions from the floor: follow @Core77 to stay in the loop.
We'll be on the floor tweeting the best (and some of the worst) from the floor of the ICFF at Javits today for a few hours, starting at around 10:30am. Follow us @core77 on Twitter, and if you're there, let us know--we can meet for some nasty coffee somewhere (or sneak you into the press room for the good stuff!)
We'll be on the floor tweeting the best (and some of the worst) from the floor of the ICFF at Javits today for a few hours, starting at around 10:30am. Follow us @core77 on Twitter, and if you're there, let us know--we can meet for some nasty coffee somewhere (or sneak you into the press room for the good stuff!)
Firstly, oh yes, i will probably be that girl at the supermarket rocking the metallic bronzey Tom Dixon tote in line... with my random magazines staying dry from wet goods and showing off the title perfectly in its exterior pocket ~ clearly made FOR that reason! You will suddenly know exactly what mood i'm in... artsy, businessy, car-y, fashiony?
But seriously ~ how can anyone resist these parties in empty Soho condos on GORGEOUS days with never ending Veuve Clicquot flowing ~ Tom Dixon lighting and furnishings surrounding you ~ and nearly 360 skyline views to stare out at? Dwell hosted a great party! Met some really cool folks ~ and yes... i'm impressed with their very trendy tote. Also see the sweet grassy kid friendly rooftop i spotted as well as many water towers... and all the Tom Dixon goodies on the next page!
If you’re a fan of design it’s really hard not to luv the Dutch. This morning I got to walk around and view a lot of design pieces that until know I’ve only seen as jpgs at 400 Years Later—CITE Goes Dutch. As much as online is the future it will be impossible to replicate the experience of seeing objects in person. To me it was nice to finally see some of this stuff in person, though for a media preview I’m not sure why they had to in case anything. Aside from that hmm there were a couple stand out’s for me that I was wanting to buy on the spot. The first was a natural glass blown water filter called Primal Water desinged by Anouk Omlo. It was the first thing that curator Alissia Melka-Teichroew talked about. It was a smart start as the sound of the water descending through the talk echoed the parallel to the water visuals dripping off the walls and floor it represented.
There’s only so much one can take in during ICFF this week. I’ll probably float around the Javits over the weekend but as a start I’m not going to be so sad if I don’t see every single design show as I got a pretty good blast today.
SixInch is launching the La MDF chair at ICFF this year, designed by Tom De Vrieze. The chair is composed of CNC-milled medium density fiberboard, seeking to offer comfort with a minimum use of materials and machinery. Club chairs are also in development.
More after the jump.
SixInch
ICFF, Javits Center, Booth #1836
May 16-19, 2009
David and Im Schafer, known as Studiomake, are a husband and wife team recently graduated from the Cranbrook Academy of Art. They are participating in Designboom Mart, selling work and displaying prototypes of their graduate projects.
Pictured here are Flawed, a series of ceramic cups and bowls that were made by playing with the nuances and irregularities of slipcasting techniques, and Many Different Assemblies, objects resulting from the omission of registration keys from a two-part plastic mold.
More projects after the jump.
Designboom Mart
ICFF, Javits Center, Booth #1976
May 16-19, 2009
Below is an email that Debbie sent out a couple hours ago. To be honest I think it’s quite amazing that she’s collected over 100 conversations from around the design world and other people that are worth talking to. Even more amazing is for every conversation there’s been a priceless amount of energy in trying to understand each person before she talks to them. It makes me very tired even thinking about it. So with her permission I’ve just copy + pasted the email so people can get an idea of who she has conversed with. Yes I’m there in the list (and it’s a big deal to me), but that’s such a small part of it. I think I’ve listened to almost every single episode minus a couple from this year as I’m still trying to catch up. Up until I moved to NYC I could claim listening to every episode live, though now that streak has been broken unfortunately.
As I read the email I tried to make a couple mental notes of a top five that I can still recall after 100 episodes. This isn’t a best of by any means, but more like if I only had five hours to listen to my favourite podcasts, which interviews would I want to go back to.
Art Chantry
A guy that wasn’t afraid to go back to school to learn something new.
Shepard Fairey
The fact that hey had emergency eye surgery the night before yet was still willing to talk the day of was quite impressive.
Andrew Zolli
This was one of the first strategy people that I heard about while back in Canada. I really should also add Grant McCracken too now that I think about it.
On May 14, 2009, at 4:35 PM, Debbie Millman wrote:
My dear friends!
Tomorrow marks a very special day for Design Matters: it is my 100th broadcast, and my Season Five Finale!
Design Matters began in February of 2005 with an idea and a telephone line. Mostly, I started out doing it for myself–I thought it would be a great way to ask my heroes everything I wanted to know about their lives and their thoughts and their careers without seeming stalker-y. In the process, I gleaned the most magnificent view of some of the greatest design thinkers and practitioners of our time. I realized the opportunity to share the brilliance of my guests with a listenership I never expected was the gift of a lifetime.
On behalf of all of my amazing guests listed below, I want to thank you for supporting the show, and for offering encouragement and friendship.
Until Season Six–watch for wonderful new things!
Love
-debbie
*
Abbott Miller
Alan Dye
Alice Twemlow
Allan Chochinov
Andrea Dezsö
Andrew Zolli
Ann Willoughby
Art Chantry
Bad Boys of Design 1: Armin Vit, Mark Kingsley, Michael Ian Kaye, Petter Ringbom, James Victore
Bad Boys of Design 2: Rodrigo Corral, Bennett Peji, Tan Le, Felix Sockwell, Mark English, John Zapolski
Bad Boys of Design 3: Josh Chen, Manuel Toscano, Layne Braunstein, Alan Dye
Bad Boys of Design 4: Marc Alt, Mike Essl, Ray Fenwick, Michael Jager, Alberto Rigau
Barbara Kruger
Bill Grant
Brian Collins
Carin Goldberg
Cheryl Swanson
Chip Kidd, part 1
Chip Kidd, part 2
Christoph Niemann
Dan Formosa
Daniel Pink
David Barringer
DeeDee Gordon
Design Blogs: Speak Up, Design Observer, Be A Design Group + Personism
David Carson, Not
Doyald Young
Eames Demetrios
Ed Fella
Editorial Women: Joyce Kaye, Michela Abrahms, Laetitia Wolff + Barbara de Wilde
Ellen Lupton
Elliott Earls
Emily Oberman
Eric Kandel
Gael Towey
Gary Hustwit
Gong Szeto
Gordon Hull
Grant McCracken, part 1
Grant McCracken, part 2
Grant McCracken, part 3
Hillman Curtis
Jakob Trollbäck
Janet Froelich
Jan Wilker + Hjalti Karlsson
Jeffrey Keyton
Jeffrey Zeldman
Jessica Helfand
Joe Duffy with guest host Nate Voss
John Fulbrook
John Maeda
Jonah Lehrer
Jonathan Hoefler + Tobias Frere-Jones
Josh Liberson + Ethan Trask
Kenneth Fitzgerald
Kurt Andersen
Laurie Rosenwald
Lisa Francella + Pamela DeCesare
Luke Hayman
Luba Lukova
Maira Kalman
Malcolm Gladwell + Joyce Gladwell
Marian Bantjes, Alexander Gelman + Michael Surtees
Marty Neumeier
Michael Bierut
Mick Hodgson
Milton Glaser
Minda Gralnek
Modern Dog
Natalia Ilyin
Neville Brody
Nicholas Blechman
Paola Antonelli
Patrick Coyne
Paul Sahre
Paula Scher
Peter Buchanan-Smith
Petrula Vrontikis
Rick Valicenti
Sean Adams + Noreen Morioka
Seth Godin
Shepard Fairey
Spoken Word
Stanley Hainsworth
Stefan Bucher
Stefan Sagmeister
Steve Sikora, Charlie Lazor + Tom Wright
Steven Heller, part 1
Steven Heller + Veronique Vienne
Steven Heller, part 3
Steven Heller + Lita Talerico
Todd Pruzan + Sam Potts
Vaughan Oliver
Virginia Postrel
William Drenttel + Jessica Helfand
William Lunderman
World of Branding
World of Las Vegas
World of Leisurama: Jake Gorst, Alastair Gordon + Andrew Geller
Y Conference 2009: Lorraine Wild, Liz Danzico, Andrea Pellegrino, Mark Randall, Shel Perkins
Ze Frank
debbie millman
president, design, sterling brands
radio host, design matters
empire state building
350 fifth avenue suite 1714
new york new york 10118
www.sterlingbrands.com
www.debbiemillman.com
There is a nice group exhibition opening tonight at the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York. The show is called ‘Design For A Living World‘, a project of the Nature Conservancy, showcasing the work of 10 designers including Stephen Burks, Hella Jongerius, Yves Behar, Ted Muehling and Isaac Mizrahi that explores our connection to the natural world through sustainable materials, products and design.Â
As an example Stephen Burks spent a week in Australia working with an aboriginal community, the Noongar people, to explore their return and connection to their land. Hella Jongerius went to the maya forest in Mexico and Isaac Mizrahi to southwest Alaska.
Eric Olson and Nicole Dotin
Here are some fun recent posts from 
Snapped this pic just as i was walking out of CAboom ~ not sure who the artist is (ideas?) ~ but upon looking at it closer when i got home, its a pretty freaky Michael Jackson facial evolutionary spiral... see it up close on the next page.
On pieces that caught my eye at the 
I didn't know what to expect when i heard CA|Boom had moved from barker hanger (which i love!) to that abandoned feeling Robinsons May space in Beverly Hills... and from March to the same dates as the Dwell on Design Show... but i had to check it out none the less. It takes a few minutes to cover - but the thing worth seeing is the art! A few great local galleries are showing some fun work... like 
I swear i won't buy a full box of produce just to get one of these amazing Yeti's Best boxes. BUT, i may not be below begging them to let me have one next time! Wandering whole foods i got terribly distracted and started taking quick pics with my point and shoot of the Yeti Produce!!! Only to realize that as i turned around it was a 
Roundup time! Felt strangely reminiscent tonight, and i was looking through the last few pages of 
Late night browsing: these 
No one recycles styrofoam the way 
On fun random Monday posts ~ it's been feeling like SUCH a monday (and from the tweets i'm seeing, sounds like its going around) ~ and not in a good way! So, since it seems a little early for happy hour to start... how about some silly alcohol schwag? I couldn't help giggling when this Red Stripe USB key showed up from Fader/Red Strip ~ presenting "It Was Written" featuring Terry Lynn and John Hugo - it's their collaboration on five new songs celebrating jamaican music! (You can even 
With so many lost souls out there "finding themselves" via quarter, third, and mid life crises these days... i loved the idea of reminding us all that "not all haystacks contain needles". It's not about looking hard enough to find what you want... if its not there! Usually. Really its about looking in the RIGHT places? Making smarter decisions as we "grow up"? I love this one as a reminder to look up to when you're faced with more opportunities than are feasible, as it alleviates some of the guilt in turning a few down.
On more favorites ~ it was such a pleasure to see 
Wow. 
Is it possible to completely fall for the way someone sees the world? Because i want to live in the world that 
I don't do roundups nearly regularly enough ~ so here's a few random pics that amused me as i wandered back over what we've been up to over at 
is a new and interesting book from Bispublishers.
It's always such a pleasure to go visit the 
Walking by the 
Firstly, oh yes, i will probably be that girl at the supermarket rocking the metallic bronzey 
