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Don't let its size fool you--the latest product from Big Ass Fans, the 8- to 10-foot ISIS model, can reduce energy bills by 25-50%, yet typically uses the same amount of energy as a refrigerator bulb. How do they do it? It's engineered to be lightweight through the judicious use of aluminum, yet the large fan blades still provide plenty of oomph.
If the protagonist from Up had inverted a bunch of these and attached them to his roof, he wouldn't have had to mess with those balloons....
Jake Dyson's Motorlights use a mechanical solution in place of a dimmer switch, incorporating two shutters that allow an arc of light from between 10 and 120 degrees. That might not seem practical in a residential situation, but when you consider that up to 30 of these lights can be controlled by a single remote, it becomes clear that restaurants, nightclubs, and art galleries will probably take a shine to the fixture and the permutations it allows.
Dyson describes the product as "the world's first variable angle uplight, enabling both designers and consumers to vary light angles to suit different environments and needs–-from ambient lighting to spot lighting."
via 3 rings
A bite-sized list of what's happenin' now:
design droplets
"How much do you charge for industrial design" survey
dexigner
Material ConneXion Presents I.D. Magazine's Annual Design Review Exhibition
palestine herald
Husband-and-wife team turn ideas into marketable products
pr newswire
Autodesk Inventor of the Month Provides Smart Transit Information for Riders
hidden wires
Niko wins red dot design award for Mysterious - the invisible switch
l & si online
U2's latest world tour features "World's first transformable LED screen"
As General Electric's Global Research Centers get closer to perfecting flexible, bendable OLED lights, GE asked industrial design students at the Cleveland Institute of Art to come up with some potential applications. The results: Flexible lamps, signage, wall lighting, safety uniforms, and others.
You may see a YouTube video of the concepts floating around the blogs. Avoid it--the video is poorly-executed rubbish. Instead, check out the students' concepts here.
On the other side of Jane Fulton Suri's Thoughtless Acts is There I Fixed It, documenting "epic kludges and adventures in home pwnership", where a kludge is "an ill-assorted collection of poorly matching parts, forming a distressing whole."
Definitely less graceful than the makeshift doorstops and paper shades in Jane's book, these "quick fixes" take a seriously direct (sometimes ingenious, sometimes dangerous) route from broken to "repaired". Our favorite is the padlocked car-door: "Look, this is just how it's going to be from now on, okay?"
Submit your own handiwork and make Michel de Certeau proud.
A few more of our favorites after the jump.
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For his senior thesis at OSU, designer Tylan Tschopp conceived of two camping devices that use manual compressed air storage as their energy source. Why? Because assuming your arms still work, it can't run out of juice, it's lightweight, and there's no hazardous fuels or gases you need to carry with you. Crank up the tank and presto, you've got a heater/stove and a lantern/flashlight.
Also be sure to check out his wicked Police Cycle Light up on Coroflot.
Check out London-based Adam Schacter's CarGo Urban Delivery Vehicle concept on Coroflot:
Urban traffic congestion is an increasing problem which affects countless delivery companies every day. The unique "CarGo" concept addresses this issue with its variable track, wheelbase and load carrying configurations.
Primarily designed for small, inner city deliveries, the battery powered CarGo's innovative design allows the driver to quickly adapt the vehicle to suit both traffic conditions and load volume/type.
On the other end of the size spectrum is his all-terrain Amphibious Rescue Craft:
(more...)The A.R.C. (Amphibious Rescue Craft) is a rugged all terrain vehicle that can be used to deliver vital aid and supplies anywhere required including flooded areas which are inaccessible to most other vehicles. Variable height ground clearance combined with large wheels and all terrain tyres provide excellent off road capabilities, whilst a boat hull and retractable wheels enable the A.R.C to plane at high speeds across water with minimal friction and uncompromised performance.
It's certainly not the most practical thing in the world, but the Design Martus Stump and Ottoman set looks like the furniture you'd build if you were trapped in the woods with nothing but a two-man lumber saw. And aside from those polyurethane wheels, it's about as eco-friendly as you can get.
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Space-age-y design is hard to pull off, and it takes a tremendous amount of design skill to make something as typically cheesy as a USB-powered light look good; but Netherlands-based Boynq Studio, headed up by Sebastiaan Peersmann and Armand van Oord, definitely pulls it off.
Boynq's line of alarm clocks, computer speakers, and random accessories like aformentioned light and a retractable mouse pad for road warriors are all objects that might've gone awry in the wrong hands, but Peersmann and van Oord get all the details right. Check out their designs here.
The illumi-knob is a clever, sub-$20 device that snaps onto your existing doorknob and provides a useful nighttime function:
The device uses a passive infra-red sensor to detect any movement within 10 feet and then turn on two gentle LED light rings. It's not bright enough to wake anyone, but more than enough to get you safely to - and through - the door.
The silicone rubber sleeve can be adjusted to fit most door handles and won't interfere with lock or keyhole access.
The illumi-knob runs on 3 AAA batteries and automatically turns itself off after 10 seconds if it senses no further movement.
If all goes right, the device will be available next year at Absolutely New.
via gizmag
A bite-sized list of what's happenin' now:
finding dulcinea
Innovative Building in Estonia Illustrates Power of Design
bicycle retailer
International Cycling Union's 3:1 Rule Could Impact Bicycle Product Design
gizmodo
Criticism of Apple's use of materials
pocket lint
Twittering home automation
design news
Refillable Water Bottle Wins NPE Award
pr newswire
Herman Miller Acquires Nemschoff, Inc.
In 1999, Evan Solida was a junior in college studying industrial design and "searching for that one portfolio piece to make me standout from the hundreds of applicants of junior design jobs while first being out of school:"
I was presented with a project sponsored by RCA (Thomson Consumer Electronics) of Indianapolis. The basic premise was to utilize a new technology coined the "silicon-eye," which, in short, was a very small circuit that could recognize objects. Hmmm...how very interesting.
And with that, the Cerevellum, a digital bicycle mirror, was born. The system works by having a small camera lens attached to the seatpost of a bicycle facing reward. The image is then transmitted to a handlebar-mounted display via a small camera. The resulting image is then flipped horizontally so it shows itself just as how a normal mirror would. As it uses progressive-scanning for the display, the resulting image is not adversely affected by road vibration.
Solida graduated and got a design job working for a company in Chicago, but spent the ten years since developing the Cerevellum on the side, setting up a dedicated LLC for the project. Click here to read his six "Things I wish I knew beforehand" tips for how to bring a product to market.
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Shortly after Michael Jackson passed away yesterday, the digital ripples could be felt by fans and non-fans alike: Twitter and even Google were temporarily jammed into inaccessibility, and story-breaker TMZ went down as fans around the world tried to figure out what was going on.
The iTunes Music Store, in contrast, went up--as of this morning, of the top 10 most popular albums, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, and 10 are all Michael Jackson's.
I myself learned of MJ's death through a pre-crashed Tweet that read "wtf! michael jackson died?!"
When prompted, folks of an older generation can recall exactly where they were when they heard the news that JFK had been assassinated.
With this generation, it seems most of us were in front of our computers. Perhaps the question they'll ask in future is "What site were you on when Michael Jackson died?"
King of Pop, R.I.P.
A bite-sized list of what's happenin' now:
design week uk
UK groups slow to back World Industrial Design Day
huff strategy
Canada: Magazine examines industrial design programs
bluelarix
What is your Return on Investment on industrial design?
packaging mag
Ease of Use Program a first for Packaging industry
pr web
New Report on Medical Device Total Product Lifecycle Practices
pr newswire
Autodesk Unveils Inventor Fusion Technology to Help Engineers Speed Time to Market
To derisively refer to a small apartment as a "rabbit hutch," or to use the expression "all cooped up," indicates that most dwellings for rabbits and chickens are not desirable residences. Here to change that is UK-based Omlet with their uber-designed Eglu, "designed to be the house that the chickens [and rabbits] themselves would choose."
The amusingly well-conceived dwelling features a removable lid for easy cleaning, a pull-out tray for droppings, a top-mounted door handle to keep your fingers peck- and nibble-free, and a reach-in "eggport." And we love the enthusiastic product copy:
The eglu has wooden perching bars and a generous nesting box for egg laying - all the practical features that your chickens need. As well as this come thoughtful extras such as the modern twin walled insulation and draught free ventilation that keeps your chickens warm in winter and cool in the summer.
Man! It sounds better than some apartments I've seen in the East Village.
Want to get some industrial designers riled up? Get them talking about how detached modern consumers are from the manufacturing process.
At some point in their education or early career, most product designers are faced with the realization that current standards of living depend on massively complicated networks of suppliers, manufacturers and distributors, and that hardly anyone considers their existence when making purchasing decisions. Initially a source of fascination, akin to discovering a secret world in your basement or something, it often turns to frustration. A repeated argument of the sustainable design movement holds that if people only understood how much effort and expertise, and how many resources went into the production of their inexpensive goods, they wouldn't be nearly so cavalier about chucking them in the garbage at the first glimpse of something prettier.
Rather than spilling more ink about this global phenomenon, Royal College of Art student Thomas Thwaites (MA Design Interactions) has turned to a demonstration, in the form of a toaster. He's been building one for the past several months from scratch, in the most thorough, radical sense possible: the project has seen him visiting mines and oil drilling platforms to obtain raw materials, synthesizing plastic for insulation, and learning to smelt iron in a microwave:
Step 2, Attempt 2: Smelting Iron Ore in a Microwave from Thomas Thwaites on Vimeo.
The irony of employing a complex device like a microwave to enable a relatively primitive manufacturing operation doesn't appear to be lost on Thwaites, and the project as a whole has a clear appreciation of the absurdity of it all. The commentary and description on his own site, and the coverage it received as a work-in-progress back in February on We Make Money Not Art, both point to a complex set of objectives and motivations. "The practical aspects of the project are rather a lot of fun," he observes. "They also serve as a vehicle through which theoretical issues can be raised and investigated. Commercial extraction and processing of the necessary materials happens on a scale that is difficult to resolve into the domestic toaster."
So, while this toaster is clearly ridiculous, are toasters in general? Thwaites is using a commercially available toaster that retails for four pounds sterling as a model for emulation, and places it atop a pedestal in his display, equating it to a work of art or high technology. Which, after reviewing the arduous process needed to build even a crude facsimile of it from scratch, it may very well be.
The Toaster Project will be on display at the RCA SHOW TWO in London, starting Friday, June 26.
Via Develop 3D. Photo Credits: Daniel Alexander (top and bottom), Nick Ballon (middle).
In one of their more extreme car mods, Florida-based The Car Factory took a crappy little Chevrolet econobox, ripped the "skin" off and added their own. The result: A fully functioning car with a rather out-of-this-world body.
Transforming a Chevy Aveo into something you'd actually want to drive is no mean feat. If only GM had hired these guys a few years ago....
via car scoop
Because we seem to be talking about trophies a lot lately (like here and here), we wanted to make sure you saw Aleksandra Mir's massive collection of 2,529 sporting trophies, presented this month at the Schim Kunsthalle in Frankfurt.
Aleksandra's site features extensive documentation of the show, including a full write-up and interview, excerpted below:
Trophies are indeed mass-produced articles, however, each one here has been individualised by an engraving, and tells a personal story. 'Triumph' is an archive of popular culture and part of a contemporary history that appears to be as fleeting as the sheen of the lauded metal cup. The thousands of trophies recall the 'echo of hands clapping and the image of vigorous young bodies', as Mir says, mirroring the transitoriness of victory and youth, which can be neither halted nor kept. Most trophies end up being thrown out and thus what they remember is lost, though it is still engraved on their front. They are like holiday snaps that fade over time and cannot preserve the adventures and experiences forever.
On view only through this Friday, June 26th at the Schim Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, so if you're in the area, you better make a run for it.
More images after the jump.
We designers love almost any trick that shakes us from our traditional thinking patterns. Synesthesia, "a neurologically based phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway [wiki]" is one such trick.
The latest short film from Terry Timely explores the theme of synesthesia with the richness of a 17c. natura morta painting and sprinkles on top.
Engage your senses here.
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Wintercheck Factory is a new company that aims to remain an independent entity while keeping the price of their products relatively affordable. In order to do this, they've decided to forego traditional retail outlets and explore alternative methods like roaming showrooms, selling from truck beds and online retail. The furniture comes flat-packed for shipping, but manages to avoid the folded/notched/perforated look that's become so popular, opting for colorful volumes and skinny legs instead.
The site also includes cute videos of product prototyping, manufacturing and use. Very nice -- we're looking forward to seeing more from these guys!
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Absolutely loving these Stagger Bookshelves, which feature an open center channel that provides a clever way to store those absurdly tall coffee table design books. Glass-doored cabinets on top, pull-out drawers on the bottom, and beautiful all around.
This one doesn't come to you from a factory--once they get your order, Ottawa-based SIDD puts a single crafstman on the job, and eight weeks later your hand-built piece is ready to go.
Be sure to check out SIDD's other beautiful objects, like the Domino Coffee Table and Blok Wall Shelf, at their showcase page.
L.A.-based Joel Bell's videogaming furniture designs for Pyramat LLC feature things like wireless audio, integrated subwoofers and surround sound speakers, detachable storage cases, a control panel to tie everything together, and breathable microfiber fabric to keep you cool when the gaming gets hot.
Check out the rest of Bell's thick portfolio, spanning everything from furniture to sporting goods, on Coroflot.
It made its way around the block in just a matter of hours, but we wanted to make sure you saw this wonderfully simple idea for a power outlet from Metaphys in Japan. After plugging your devices in to the two notches that run all the way around the device, you can turn them all on or off through the button in the middle. Fantastic!
Thanks, Dave!
via Gizmodo
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Telescopic handlers, rough terrain forklifts, multi-purpose vibratory compactors; companies like JCB Excavator remind us that there's lots more to vehice design than sleek sportscars and monster motorcycles.
Check out JCB's vehicles here. You can also peep the book of Gary Major, JCB's head of industrial design, up on Coroflot.
Archaeologists who dig the following up in 10,000 years will be able to use it to point out that by 2009, American society was surely in decline.
When we first heard about the Army using military-style videogames as a recruiting tool, we felt the notion of wooing American youth into joining an operation where you're meant to kill insurgents, and equating that with something you do on an X-Box, was kind of obscene.
The Air Force has stepped up their recruitment efforts with this super hi-tech Dodge Challenger (itself a symbol of decline, coming from a once-great, now-failed automaker that must go through 40-year-old car design archives to find a winning design from its past).
The Challenger Vapor features radar-absorbing stealth-black paint, not unlike what is used to mask stealth bombers. The Vapor is set to run almost silently, thanks to "stealth exhaust".... You need biometric verification to enter the cockpit.... The driver can view night/thermal vision projections on the windshield while sitting in a compartment that looks like something out of Crimson Tide.
If the driver doesn't feel like getting out of their bunker he or she can command Vapor from a remote control system (even through internet) modeled after the Air Force's Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.
via dodgepedia
Last night when I took my dogs out, there was no line at the Apple Store in SoHo. This morning when I took them out again, the line was a paltry 1/3rd of a block, nothing compared to last year's madness. (However, Engadget reports the 5th Avenue line is pretty bad.)
A large part of that probably has to do with the fact that most people in line will be first-time buyers, as previous iPhone owners will not get the subsidized price.
We were surprised to see a bunch of the Apple-centric blogs reporting misleading headlines like "AT&T Drops iPhone 3G S prices for early iPhone adopters" and the like; it must be AT&T Marketing's dream to see these posts. If you read the fine print or go through their pain-in-the-ass website to find out what applies to you, you'll find that if you were an AT&T customer for at least a year before the original iPhone launch, then you can now get the reduced pricing.
I myself bought the first iPhone when it came out, dropped my then-current carrier and paid the kill fee to switch to AT&T. A year later I upgraded to the 3G when it came out. Yet I am not eligible for a subsidized upgrade until December of this year. You'd think AT&T would try to reward customers that queued up two years in a row and switched to their network at the expense of a kill fee...and you'd be wrong.
Analysts are predicting the new iPhone will sell roughly 500,000 units on launch day, or about half the business the 3G did in its first day. Still a lot of units, and if you're curious to see how they get packed up, here's a video of a packaging plant in action, via macrumors:
Humanscale introduced several new products at NeoCon this year, all incorporating new technology to make things lighter, brighter, more energy efficient and, in general, more effective. Though the technology was enough to impress us, Humanscale also demonstrated a tremendous attention to design, unifying the technology cleverly and simply with the form and use of the object. For example, in the Element task lamp (designed by Mark McKenna), the heat sink for the LED also forms the head of the lamp--it not only keeps the head (including itself) cool to the touch but also allows the user to re-orient it by hand, a mighty achievement considering that heat sinks are usually pretty unfriendly components. It should also be mentioned that this light uses a new technology developed in Korea that allows a single LED to produce a wide angle of bright light.
Diffrient World Chair, by Niels Differient (pictured above), takes advantage of recent advances in "dynamic recline technology", allowing the chair to recline using only "two frame components, the user's body weight, and the laws of physics," eliminating the need for a complex mechanism. This simplification reduces the number of components by about 75 percent, allowing for a lighter and more comfortable chair with a much more environmentally-friendly production process.
Finally, Humanair is Humanscale's first foray into the world of air purifiers, and focuses on providing very clean air (99% virus and contaminant free) to a "clean zone" around the head of deskbound workers. According to Tom Revelle, the idea has been bouncing around Humanscale for some time, but the technology that enables it is brand new. He explains below:
Be sure to check out Humanscale's website for more information.
More pics after the jump.
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A bite-sized list of what's happenin' now:
businessweek
India's Transportation Design Students
autonews
Mazda's acting head of design quits for teaching post
biz community
South Africa's Open Window school adds product design training
the detroit news
"Harnessing Detroit's design expertise" for...water?
tmt china
Design strategy could make or break product and service success in China
recreation management
University rec center wins Innovative Architecture Design Award
Now seems like a helluva time to start up a U.S. car company, but that's exactly what San Diego based V-Vehicle (VVC) is aiming to do. With a factory going up in Louisiana, the well-funded V-Vehicle hopes to "reestablish American leadership in the global automotive industry," starting off with an as-yet-unseen vehicle designed by Tom Matano, the man behind Mazda's Miata. (Matano's blurry sketches, above, are taken from a promotional video. Note the in-dash iPhone dock.)
Few other details exist about the car, although it will reportedly be either electric or a hybrid that uses an unspecified alternative fuel. Production is slated to begin in 2010.
via fox news
I'd heard that the cost of energy was falling, but this is ridiculous.
Well, ridiculous and tempting.
via ironic sans
The annual Maloof Money Cup is skateboarding's largest world championship competition, with some of the sport's largest prize money (last year's vert winner took home $75,000, a tricked-out SUV and a $10,000 watch!). This year's competition will feature over $450,000 in prizes.
An event of this magnitude requires a its own kick-ass skate park, and for both last year and this year's upcoming competition, sponsors Joe and Gavin Maloof have tapped California-based skate park designer Joe Ciaglia to work his planning magic. Designing a skatepark of this size is a unique experience, something like civil engineering turned on its head; picture the grounds of a corporate office park, multilayered and punctuated by various ramps, everything designed for maximum kinetic flow.
Working off the concept of the X Games' mega ramp...Ciaglia came up with the idea of bringing a mini mega ramp into vert competition. He tapped Pierre-Luc Gagnon, Bob Burnquist and Jake Brown to refine a setup that includes a 25-foot gap with a handrail that skaters will grind across as they sail toward a half pipe.
No images of this year's park are yet available, but the video below shows Ciaglia working on last year's design. (You needn't watch the whole thing; the design stuff starts at 00:45 and ends at roughly 2:00.)
via mercury news
The most fascinating reading I'll have all day is Metropolis' "Nelson & Company: Iconic Workplace, 1947-86" which looks at the inner workings of George Nelson's office in its heyday:
The office was straight out of Mad Men, with men in crisp white shirts and ties, and the few women in black dresses--cigarette smoke everywhere, classical music in the background, and Nelson, ever the impresario, standing in the middle of the tumult with a camera dangling from his shoulders. "Everybody worked hard and late," [graphic designer Don] Ervin says. "We were all underpaid, but it was like going to a special camp."
The article interviews designers, architects, and even the former receptionist to paint a vivid picture of not only what it was like to work there, but of Nelson's free-floating process. Michael Graves, Lucia DeRespinis, Tomoko Miho, Irving Harper and others provide colorful anecdotes explaining how Nelson's "greatest genius may have been his skill in bringing them together."
"The 20 or so designers sat together in the same long studio at three rows of desks--architects, industrial designers, graphic and interior designers," explains designer Ron Beckman. "We were aware of what each was doing. It was a very democratic arrangement that encouraged collaboration across the various disciplines...."
Read the rest of the entertainingly lengthy article here.
Cameras are not only getting smaller, they're getting tougher, with manufacturers producing ruggedized and airtight-to-dust versions for adventurers and klutzes alike. When it comes to the design of the external housings, different companies use different techniques to achieve the required protection.
Panasonic's Lumix TS1 (waterproof to about 10 feet and will withstand drops from nearly five feet) recesses the glass and buttons to keep them out of harm's way.
Canon's funky-looking D10 (waterproof to 33 feet, freezeproof down to 14 degrees Fahrenheit and will survive a four-foot drop) hacks the corners off completely, spreading out the potential points of impact.
Olympus' Stylus Tough 8000 and 1030SW (waterproof to 33 feet, freezeproof down to 14 degrees Fahrenheit, will survive a 6.6-foot drop, and crushproof up to 220 pounds) are embedded within a metal casing.
Photography reviews point out that all of these cameras take crappier photos than their wimpy non-tough counterparts, but in situations where no regular camera would last, crappier photos are better than no photos at all.
Despite the press announcement made back in April, it wasn't until yesterday that we finally spotted one of the New York Police Department's new Nissan Altima Hybrid Patrol Cars prowling the streets of downtown.
(Unfortunately the lead-footed copper was faster than our cameraphone, but click here to see some awesome captures by NYC's Flickr brigade.)
The Altima Hybrids have been assigned to areas of the city where their fuel efficiency presents the greatest economic and environmental benefit - both in precincts with a large coverage area and smaller precincts prone to heavy stop-and-go traffic.
"These new patrol cars will help fulfill the PlaNYC goal of reducing City government's carbon footprint," said Mayor Bloomberg. "Through savings in fuel, these Altimas can quickly cover their additional cost, from then they will save taxpayers money - another example of how going green is good for our environment and our pocketbooks."
...At $25,391 per vehicle, the Altima hybrids cost about $1,500 more than the conventional Impala. At 35 miles per gallon for city driving, the hybrid Altima gets double the gas mileage of the Impala, which gets only 16 miles per gallon.
Looking forwards: Yesterday Olympus announced their new E-P1 camera (top left), which uses their new Micro Four-Thirds technology to deliver an SLR-like interchangeable lens system with the compactness of a point-and-shoot body. Alas, it looks nothing like the prototype we were hoping would make it into production (top right). Nevertheless, if this camera becomes a hit, we can expect to see more small-rectangle cameras using M43 sizing.
Looking backwards: At the online Canon Camera Museum, readers can see images and copy of Canon products from 1933 up to present day, along with some of the design process. (Warning--this is recommended for the camera geek as opposed to the casual clicker, as the poorly-laid-out site is time-consuming to get through.)
A bite-sized list of what's happenin' now:
gore creative technologies worldwide
Materials: What exactly is an "oleophobic" coating?
mercury news
UCSC student engineers compete to build commercially viable projects
seeking alpha
WIRED Disruptive by Design Conference coverage
reuters
Disney Netpal: A netbook for kids
information week
iPhone OS 3.0 Coming Today At 1PM EST?
fast company
Open-source hardware: We Build the Parts, You Build the Product
List of Objects Subsumed by the Cell Phone: Camera, camcorder, calculator, computer, Walkman, wallet, newspaper, and now...pen? A new technology called "air writing" aims to use a cell phone's built-in accelerometer to enable the entire phone to be used like a pen, producing messages scrawled in mid-air.
Speed writers may still want to stick with texting for now, because air-writers currently have to pause briefly between each letter and cannot use cursive. But researchers expect an improved app that will come with better algorithms and accelerometers.
Future versions of this PhonePoint Pen app may even allow users to take a photo with their phone and write a quick note on it.
The technology, as developed by Duke University engineering student Sandip Agrawal, should be available as a downloadable app sometime in the next few months. We'll keep you posted.
via textually and live science
I've got a friend of a friend with a Samsung flatscreen roughly the size of a Volkswagen. It's so big that if you put it in my apartment, I'd have to sit next to it and watch it via a mirror on the opposite wall.
In addition to the satellite and DVD player, this guy's got his PC hooked up to it, and he can sit on the couch with a wireless keyboard and type huge documents. The mouse is a bit trickier, though; and it's presumably with this market in mind that Hillcrest Labs has made their Loop Freespace mouse, which is meant to be used in-air, like a remote control.
Interestingly enough, this product was conceived because Hillcrest Labs, which is really a software company, had a technology--motion control via in-air pointing--that they needed to wrap a physical product around, and this seemed to fit the bill.
The four-button mouse, which also features a scroll wheel, is available through Amazon.
via slippery brick
Having helped more than a few friends move in and out of non-elevator city buildings, I can tell you the worst part is always the bookcases. No staircase designer ever thought "I'll make the corners wide, so two guys can easily get a six-foot Ikea Billy down all four flights with no problem."
The Dror Benshetrit-designed bookcases for Target, for sale this month, are starting to look pretty good. They nest and stack to form a trapezoidal bookcase, and you can even invert the trapezoid, provided it has something to rest against (like another bookcase).
Check out the entire Dror for Target line here.
via notcot
At NeoCon this year, the first thing that caught our eye was Michael Savona's Okie Donkie toy, made from DuPont Corian in the Mint Ice, Glacier White, Nocturne, Mandarin and Lilac colors. The donkey comes with swappable tails, legs and heads, all magnetically attached.
We love this cute description from Michael:
The Okie Donkie is a zebra-striped donkey who is okay with things. Swap and pose his willing legs and magnetic head and tail to be who you wish or need him to be.
The Okie Donkie is part of Objects That Entertain Us, a collaboration between The School of the Art Institute of Chicago Designed Objects department and DuPont coordinated by professer Jim Termeer. The projects in the show first "ask the question of what culture sees as entertainment then explore those concepts using Corian as the primary material that connects people to experience."
Be sure to check out the double-sided corian playing cards and 3-d marble maze after the jump.
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Attention designers, inventors and P.R. people: If you're going to e-mail us press releases about your wonderful project, send some images! A picture's worth a thousand words and you're getting screwed on the exchange rate.
Most of the stuff in our in-box that has no images (or exceptionally crappy ones) goes right in the trash; but student Jesus Sanchez's innovative escalator concept is interesting enough that we'll describe it in boring old text.
A student at the School of Industrial and Aeronautical Engineering of Terrassa (ETSEIAT) of the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Sanchez conceived of an escalator that can be ridden by wheelchair users:
...when a person with impaired mobility who uses a wheelchair needs to use the escalator, he or she will press a button to make three stairs of the escalator move together vertically to form a flat platform that can accommodate the wheelchair. Once the user is on the platform with the wheelchair perfectly positioned the escalator will move until the user reaches the end. When the user leaves the escalator, the platform will convert back into three independent stairs.
Sanchez, if you're reading this, for the love of God please send us scans of your rendering boards.
Designed by a brush-using calligrapher, the Yoropen has a gooseneck kink that places the pen tip perpendicular to the paper, rather like a plotter. This arrangement apparently makes it easier to modulate the pressure and ink flow.
Another neat design twist, is, literally, a twist: the soft rubber grip is pliable enough to be twisted into a whirl for the sake of comfort, and lefties can of course twist it in the other direction.
You can also rotate the Yoropen so that the pen tip is out of the way and you can actually see what you're writing. This might not be a big deal when writing English, but comes in handy when scribing the more complicated kanji or Chinese characters.
During the DMY Festival in Berlin, Transalpino, a group of 13 German and Italian designers, spent seven days using simple tools to craft objects from waste veneer. Upon completion, each object was added to a growing mind-map that related it to its predecessors and successors, illustrating the developments in making and thinking throughout the seven day period.
From Transalpino:
The exhibition is an experiment, where the focus is not on the end product but on interaction, as well as testing and discovering the limits of designing in a public space. It doesn't just showcase finished products but also "open progress", in other words the group and the work themselves. Here, ideas and inspiration are shared, with none of the usual references to who has designed what. This theme is continued in the workshop rules: "Adopting ideas is encouraged", "Copyright-free zone" and "No mass production".
See results from this experiment/exhibition on their flickr stream.
More after the jump.
The DrinKlip is one of those "Why the heck didn't I think of that" inventions that sparks both envy and a desire to buy one. Designed for folks who don't have enough space on their desks, the DrinKlip will securely hold your glass of gin, scotch, or beer while you work (or even coffee or tea, for you Puritans). I also like the reduced chance of spill-ability inherent in the design.
The DrinKlip was designed by Kim Hyun-been, who also holds down a full-time job designing mobile phones for LG Electronics when she's not producing her own designs. Where does she find the time? According to this profile, she only sleeps four hours a day. I guess her DrinKlip is holding coffee.
While OXO products have been helping people open jars and peel carrots for years, they've recently focused their Universal Design prowess on a more prickly subject: Syringes.
Research done by biopharmaceutical company UCB showed that patients with rheumatoid arthritis have trouble administering self-injections. Seeking a solution, UCB partnered up with OXO, which identified six areas where they could make improvements (the five call-outs on the image above, plus easy-to-open packaging), and the Cimzia pre-filled syringe was born.
How different is the Cimzia from previous syringes? Extremely different; hit the jump to see an historical timeline of syringe designs.
A favorite design class assignment everywhere, the baby stroller can be a tough nut to crack. Spotted on DaddyTypes, this "Strollerbarrow" is, um, an unusual solution. See more pics and learn more about it here.
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Years ago I attended a panel discusson on green living at Cooper Union. As one professor after another extolled the virtues of solar power, renewable resources, environmental responsibility and the like, the students around me nodded rapturously, and everyone on the panel remained unchallenged.
I then realized that there's little merit in preaching to the congregation; everyone at that lecture was already on-board with these ideas, and the movement gained no new members that day. The green revolution would not start by only enlisting city-dwelling, college-educated students; the revolution would begin when blue-collar folk from the hinterlands purchased and used greener variants of the things they needed and wanted.
Well, that revolution may now be underway, with this rather surprising announcement: The La-Z-Boy chair, that American icon of sedentary leisure time, has just been awared an Innovative Green Design Award, which honors "home product designs that offer consumers the greenest materials, most sustainable methods of manufacturing, highest energy efficiencies, greatest innovations and minimal carbon footprints."
The La-Z-Boy "EcoComfort" line of chairs features soy-based foam cushions, fabric made from sustainable materials, and renewable rubber wood arms. It ain't the prettiest thing to look at, but considering the sheer amount of these chairs that will be produced and sold, well, sometimes this is how you make a difference.
A company called Purleve is producing a "hygienic door handle solution," prompted by these statistics:
When exiting a restroom,
- 30% of people don't wash their hands
- 66% don't use soap
- 84% don't wash long enough to kill germs
- 100% touch the doorknob.
Their retro-fittable doorknob re-design moves the opening mechanism to a joystick-like handle at the top that's covered in a sort of antimicrobial condom. After each use, mechanics in the doorknob automatically re-wrap the handle with a fresh one.
I can't decide if it's necessary or overkill. I also can't figure out why 84% of you are such filthy bastards!
The excellent website Good Guide, started by Dara O'Rourke (the UC Berkeley professor who first drew attention to Nike's Asian sweatshops), helps readers cut through marketing B.S. to find out what's actually in the products they buy. Click on a category under Food, Personal Care, Househould Chemicals or Toys and up pops a supply-chain analysis that shows you how green or healthy the product's ingredients actually are, beyond the often outrageous claims listed on the packaging.
The "News" section of the site occasionally has information directly pertinent to industrial designers vis-a-vis materials. Two recent examples: A link pointing out that bisphenol A (a plastic ingredient found in baby bottles, CD cases and sunglasses) can raise the risk of heart disease in women, and another highlighting the dangers of silver nanoparticles, which appear in toys, eating utensils, refrigerators, and footwear.
They've also got an iPhone app that lets you use the camera's phone to snap a product's bar code and get info on it.
Here's to hoping Good Guide expands their coverage to include consumer products like laptops, appliances and furniture.
sources: ny times, mail online, abc science
For those who've grown a little tired of pseudo-anonymous street artist Banksy, he's totally stepped it up a level with his biggest stunt to date, and ironically, it's a legitimate show in his home town at the Bristol Museum. The installation features over 100 works, more than 70 of which are brand new, and all with his usual flavor of political satire and mockery.
Kate Brindley, Director of the museum managed to keep the exhibition under wraps from upper management, the local council and most of the museum staff by pretending the build-out was part of a movie shoot. If that's not taking enough risk, she claims she never actually met with Banksy in person to work out the details, instead communicating through agents. Quite a career gamble given Bristol's love-hate relationship with the artist who started stencilling the city's walls in the early '90s.
The exhibition opened this weekend and is free to the public for the next 3 months.
Banksy Versus Bristol Museum
Bristol Museum
Queen's Road, Bristol
June 13 - August 31, 2009
Daily: 10am - 5pm
A bite-sized list of what's happenin' now:
cool hunting
Design is the Problem: The Future of Design Must be Sustainable book
ny times
Gehry Is Out as Designer of Project in Brooklyn
boston dot com
Design Industry Group of Massachusetts launches to "grow the design economy"
design taxi
Tupperware named Red Dot's Design Team Of The Year
fast company
Robert Brunner: "Apple Does Not Equal Good Design"
Of all the liquids you can buy, bottled water is the one where the package design is the most important way to distinguish the product. After all, the contents are not only boringly colorless, but they're all essentially the same stuff: two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen. Not to mention that people don't typically pore over a water purchase the way they would with, say, a jar of tomato sauce. You run into the convenience store because you're thirsty and grab whatever looks good, without really agonizing over which spring it's from.
Package Design Magazine's Bill Wynkoop takes a look at some notable package designs in the "ultra-competitive" category here.
A company called Kent Displays has developed something called Reflex Technology, whereby a thin but rugged LCD "skin" can be applied to laptops, cell phones, MP3 players, etc. and change color. Most impressively, it only requires power for the instant you change the color; after that it keeps the new shade but draws no juice.
The demo video (unembeddable, alas) must be seen, it's absolutely nutty. Click here and check out the second vid featuring the Reflex Double Layer.
The reason we think this tech could be of huge importance to ID'ers is because it transmits feedback without us having to peer into a screen. It could also serve as a much better indicator than, say, a red LED indicator dot, in that the entire object changing color is much more obvious, easier to spot, and doesn't draw any power.
Some obvious uses of this tech I'd like to see:
- I want my cell phone to start changing color, like a banana going bad, when it's running out of juice. I'd also like it to change color depending on who's calling.
- I want my doorknob to change color when it's locked.
- I want my shop vac to change color when it's full or when the filter needs to be changed.
You get the idea. Have any of your own?
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We're really digging Czech designer Jana Vankova's Inverse Light, which is now on display at the University of West Bohemia's Institute of Art and Design in Pilsen as part of an alumni exhibition. Unfortunately we weren't able to find any information about the lamp, though we did track down a link to Vankova's earlier work:
via design in central and eastern europe
What initially drew our eye to the Nica bluetooth headset is the design of the docking solution: the disc-like earpiece attaches magnetically to the top of the Desk Dock, continuing its clean, cylindrical shape.
The company that produces it, Maverick Lifestyle Corporation, has a Modernist philosophy that re-examines "commonly held assumptions to make way for new - and better - ways of doing. Modernist objects tend to be clean, sleek, and highly efficient. Apparent simplicity often masks ingenious engineering."
The product designers have also paid careful attention to ergonomics, with a larger, open-air speaker (i.e. no ear canal insert) that's more comfortable to wear for prolonged periods, and a flat overall shape that fits neatly in a pocket. "The result is a less-geeky, iconic form, and also the most comfortable headset on the market," says Maverick CEO Craig Janik.
Previously available only online, Maverick will begin selling the Nica in stores this summer.
Urban Omnibus and The Infrastructurist have teamed up to interview Robin Chase, the co-founder of Zipcar.
Robin talks about everything from founding Zipcar to her new ride-sharing project, Go Loco, to bigger visions about infrastructure, transportation and the internet. For example:
Infrastructure is destiny. Think about how we built out the national highway interstate network in the '50s. We built highways, we ripped out all the trolleys, and we didn't build any trains. We created our destiny as a car dependent nation because that's the infrastructure we built up. When we think about sprawl, we must remember that we built our houses on one-acre lots and now our choices for interaction are defined by that.
The whole thing is too long and rich to excerpt well, but be sure to read the whole thing here.
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It's all over, but we'll post it (ha ha) anyway. DEADLINE, a clever little film from SCAD senior, Bang-yao Liu. Love the soundtrack from Royksopp (they capture the sound of design, don't they).
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I was recently shocked to discover that much of my file backups from 2005, burned to DVD, had completely disappeared. Not physically, digitally. It was like a bad prank; certain discs in that clearly-labeled stack had simply gone blank, although I accessed several of those same discs in 2006 with no problems.
In an interview from a few years ago with Computerworld, IBM storage expert and physicist Kurt Gerecke asserted that "Unlike pressed original CDs, burned CDs have a relatively short life span of between two to five years.... The problem is material degradation. Optical discs commonly used for burning, such as CD-R and CD-RW, have a recording surface consisting of a layer of dye that can be modified by heat to store data. The degradation process can result in the data 'shifting' on the surface and thus becoming unreadable to the laser beam."
As I was throwing out the junked discs, it occurred to me that while the data was gone, the plastic jewelboxes would endure and sit in landfill for years. Not a very good ratio of human benefit vs. damage to the environment.
Here's to hoping that Grafikom's 100% biodegradable and recyclable jewelboxes catch on.
Instead of polystyrene, they're made from potato or tapioca starch, and have a carbon footprint that's 85-90% smaller than that of its plastic predecessor.
Urban Archaeology's wicked Linx and Dome tiles are a radical departure from those squares in your bathroom, in more ways than one. Never mind their bulbous three-dimensionality; the interlocking tiles are made from 50% recycled marble, though they reportedly have a resin-like feel to them. Also, due to their chemical makeup, these tiles can't cut it in a wet environment--they're meant to be decorative and "dry zone" use only.
via 3 rings
I have my doubts about the ergonomics of designer Martin Ballendat's neat, apostrophe-shaped L@p chair, but the eye-catching design would probably fit well in an airport or one of those cafes where the furniture's designed to be comfortable for the first 20 minutes.
Interestingly enough, you'll notice that the photo of this chair making the blog rounds (first photo below) does not quite correspond with the photo provided at the manufacturer's link (second photo below); perhaps the former is a prototype?
via like cool
Holy crow: Attendees of next week's InfoComm 09 in Orlando will get to see NEC's ridiculously huge 43" wraparound monitor, the CRV43, apparently inspired by those curved cab driver mirrors. The $8,000 beast is going on sale this July and was designed for those who use two- and three-monitor setups, as it provides all the real estate without those pesky seams.
The carefully chosen photographic angles above make it look as if the CRV43 is a flatscreen, but the orthographic views tell a different tale:
Man--how much must this thing weigh? I can imagine setting this thing up, then watching as my desk collapses and the monitor crashes through my floor and the three below me, leaving neat, crescent-shaped holes in each.
via gizmodo
I'm told that aspirin is mostly powder, because the actual active ingredient is so miniscule that it needs to be surrounded by filler caked into the shape of a pill just so you can pick the darn thing up.
We're seeing a similar sort of thing going on with the iPod Shuffle, which is so tiny and button-less (the controls being a tiny plastic blip on the headphone cable) that operating it while driving would be nigh impossible. So a company called Scosche has designed the , which chunks it out a bit and more importantly, adds large(r) control buttons, making it easier to operate while behind the wheel.
If you think about it, the Shuffle's lack of a screen probably makes it a better choice for use while driving than a regular iPod, as you won't be tempted to take your eyes off the road to scan a playlist.
via geeky gadgets
A bite-sized list of what's happenin' now:
contract magazine
Pratt Manhattan Gallery Presents Exhibition of Innovative Designs from Sweden's Biggest Design Competition
greener package
PET recycling facility opens with 40MM-pound annual capacity
industry week
Eco-Design: Compliance Goes Green
it's nice that
Interview with Sir Paul Smith on London's "Super Contemporary" show
computer world
Don't look inside Apple's black box: "Apple excels...because the company is driven by design, not by engineering."
wired
New design for business class seats gives you another reason to hate coach
Looking to study auto design in Europe, but don't want to commit to a full semester? Design house Motorcity Europe has announced an upcoming series of intensive auto design seminars to be held this July and August in Cologne, Germany:
2 seminars will be available: A Two Day Intensive Weekend Seminar and a Five Day Extended Project Workshop. The Five Day Seminar will provide participants the opportunity to develop a portfolio project supervised by professional designers. Both the seminars are available in two levels: intermediate and advanced.
The intermediate level is targeted to people working or willing to work in the automotive industry, who want to know more about the design process. It is open to students, professionals, engineers, industrial designers and to any creative or technical professionals.
The advanced level seminar is for anyone with a degree in Automotive or Industrial Design, or high level design students. It will focus on improving the portfolio and on the today automotive industry requirements for professional designers.
Guest designers will be coming in from Pininfarina, Citroen, Jaguar, and others.
For those of you who can commit for a full semester, Germany's Braunschweig University of Art (HBK) is debuting a new Master Course in Transportation Design.
The studies are divided into three phases: The first step is the concrete design of a product from the field of mobility, e.g. an automobile, a ship or a new kind of transport solution for everyday situations. The next is the phase of using innovation, i.e. the concept of a problem-solving service. It could be dealt with the optimization of assistance and information systems of mobility in rural areas.
The last phase deals with system innovation. Here the students examine the co-dependence of different transport systems and how products can be integrated into the society. Interdisciplinary problems must be solved. One example is the design of a filling station for electrical vehicles or how public pipeline systems can support goods transport.
The program starts this winter. Application deadline is August 15th.
(more...)
This isn't exactly news, but when I received the announcement from Chicago's Wright Auction House that their Mass Modern auction preview was now online, I got to thinking about how much I appreciate what they're doing over there. While their business is primarily targeted to collectors, they also make a serious effort to engage design culture in general. For example, the annual Mass Modern auction presents "moderately priced items...with the intention of introducing a younger audience to the period" (source). While some could say this is just good business practice, I would argue that it also raises awareness about the rich history of design in a younger generation, and, because of the sensitivity to pricing, makes some of this accessible to them.
More importantly, in the past two years Richard Wright seems to have embarked on a new initiative to promote contemporary design, hosting straight-to-auction-house exhibitions and events with designers like Ron Gilad (2009), Arik Levy (2008) and Martino Gamper (2008). As far as I know, there aren't many places in the States that can consistently offer a designer a space this large to work with, and, at the same time, provide such an intimate setting in which to experience it.
In addition to these special events, Wright's periodic auction previews are open to the public, which means designers from the region can waltz in and examine the details of influential objects in person, outside of the museum context. Assembled from a range of sources, these items were not necessarily purchased in the context of a scholarly collection and sometimes reveal a different side of the designers and movements we know so well.
And finally, every object from every auction has been beautifully photographed and archived here. If nothing else, this is a great resource for every designer and always worth a look.
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Art Lebedev Studio does it again, this time with their amusing Swissarmius Cutlery Holder. No, it's not really a huge Swiss Army knife--take a look from a different angle:
Another ALS design that we love is their Mus2 Cordless Mouse, which corresponds neatly with, well, take a guess. And the studio claims that despite the shape, the Mus2 actually "fits well into your hand."
via gizmodiva
Scott Collins' killer UrbanLounge chair is made from a single piece of bent plywood and looks to be stackable (though there's no mention of the latter feature, if we had two of these, it's the first thing we'd try to do). The UrbanLounge is the first in a series of forthcoming outdoor furniture from the Chicago-based designer, and while no renderings of those are yet available, you can see the rest of Collins' work on Coroflot.
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If you look at the designs of steam irons from the 1930s, you'll see they're as different from today's irons as cars are from back then and now; still recognizable as the same object, but stylistically representative of their era.
Steam iron collector Jay Raymond has published a book, Streamlined Irons, that features 300 color photos mostly of irons from the "streamlined" 1930s and '40s.
Also pictured are 30 of the very earliest electric irons made in North America, dating from 1890 to 1915. These are the rarest electric irons; many are one-of-a-kind.
The book includes four essays: a concise history of electric irons in the U.S.A, two essays on the subject of streamlining, and a fascinating history of the first entrepreneur to produce an electric iron in the United States, Charles E. Carpenter.
The book is available for sale here, and you can browse select pages here.
Talk about ambitious modelmaking: UK-based designer Pradeepan Indrakumar specializes in footwear, and while his current projects for Clarks are under wraps, his handmade shoes done for earlier school projects can be seen at Coroflot.
A bite-sized list of what's happenin' now:
mercury news
Ask an [interior design] expert: Design trends that hold up over time
financial times
Interview with Martino Gamper, "100 Chairs in 100 Days" designer
the atlantic
How to Make the United States Innovative Again
fast company
Paola Antonelli on Designing Ideas, Not Products
businessweek
Why Private Companies Are More Innovative
it business edge
Apple Continues to Drive PC Design as It Kills the PC
nyt business computing
'Franken-Products' Abound at Taiwan Computer Show
Doing laundry: You throw the dirty clothes in a washing machine. They come out, you put them in the dryer. After that, what needs ironing gets ironed. That's two big machines plugged into the wall and one little one.
UK-based industrial designer Oliver Blackwell, who has "worked on everything from agricultural machines through to luggage," has developed the WashDryIron, a drumless combination washer-dryer that reduces three tasks into one machine. "Dirty clothes go in and come out on a hanger crease free and ready to wear. It is green too, sharing water and electricity."
Unlike most of the appealing product ideas we see on the web these days, this isn't a mere concept; Blackwell claims to have built over 1,000 prototypes and has production lines ready to go in China and New Zealand, pending the resolution of the last few technological hurdles needed to "make the project commercially viable."
Another clever product design by Blackwell, due to launch in the next few months, is his Revolution Ball. The product is designed to replace spoolable extension cord systems while overcoming their largest problems--cords getting yanked out, and the difficult of reeling them in or out once things are plugged in (the added cables begin to spiral and twist).
Blackwell has been nominated a Great Briton by British Airways as part of an innovation challenge they're sponsoring.
A sculptural addition to any kitchen ceiling, the new Merkled Pot Rack is made "from salvaged steel loom ends collected from a weaving company 10 blocks from the Merkled studio in Portland, Oregon." Each steel piece is unique in form and powder-coated in blue, orange, or white. Pots, utensils and other vessels can be hung along its length.
Apple had a brilliant, NYU-ITP-worthy display up at the Moscone Center (captured by TechCrunch): a grid of 20 Cinema Display monitors loaded with icons for iPhone apps available at the app store. The cool part: Every time an app was purchased, it pulsated on-screen, leading to a pebbles-dropped-in-water effect:
The new iPhone 3G S is on the way in a couple of weeks. The differences between this generation and the last are subtle and mostly internal: More RAM and storage, faster processor, better camera with video and touchscreen manual focus, voice control, digital compass neatly linked to map app.
As the blogosphere gets flooded with (mostly repetitive) iPhone news, these are the few bits we found of the most interest:
Cult of Mac theorizes on "Why Apple Stuck With the Same iPhone Hardware Design." (Short answer: They feel the ID teams are focusing all of their efforts on the rumored-to-be-forthcoming iTablet.)
TUAW pontificates on AT&T screwing loyal iPhone 3G users with high upgrade prices. This piece (and countless others like it) seems to be stirring up the most online vitriol; expect there to soon be a rash of "oh stop whining" backlash pieces.
Gizmodo reports on the (3G) $99 iPhone, which ought to lead to a wave of carrier conversions and some serious market dominance.
Father's Day is coming up! If you're still looking around for the right gift, head over to Inhabitat's Father's Day Green Gift Guide for list of gift ideas that will make both Dad and the environment happy.
As the focus of design shifts from the production of finite goods to a practice of experimentation, ideas take precedence over products - a reflection by Paola Antonelli, senior curator of design and architecture at New York's Museum of Modern Art.
"There are myriad forms of design, many of which don't require movement of materials and artifacts; only curiosity, an internet connection, and the ability to seek, learn, and synthesize from other fields and cultures. These mutants are the future of design and the place to find them is not at big design trade fairs, but rather in interdisciplinary gatherings, pluralistic exchanges and, especially, in certain schools."
>> Read article
Photo: Kenichi Okada and Christopher Woebken's Animal Superpowers. Courtesy of the Royal College of Art
Ross Lovegrove's Hu watch will be released this September, as part of a series of Issey-Miyake-branded watches produced by Seiko.
Other watches in the Miyake line-up that have already been produced include (below) the To, by Tokujin Yoshioka, Shunji Yamanaka's Ovo, and Harri Koskinen's dual-face Vakio2.
I will never forget visiting a friend down south and remarking upon how many trophies one of his kids had in his room. "Good at sports, huh?" "Waddaya mean?" "I mean, look at all these trophies." "I don't understand, every kid has this many trophies." "Huh?" "You get a trophy for completing the season; you don't have to win." "You cannot be serious?" "Yup. Every kid has this many."
And then a week later was the first time I heard the term "trophy generation," so that was quite the timing on the meme-o-meter.
Anyway, Steven heller takes on the topic of the easy win, and of the designers who fulfill their desires in this all-too-brief piece for the Times' Moment entitled "Graphic Content | And the Trophy for the Most Generic Trophy Goes To . . ." Here's a shining facet:
(more...)While industrial designers (and design students) spend their days thinking up more beautiful and efficient ways of making almost everything, I have yet to meet a single one who cares about the state of the common trophy. (Of course there are some uncommon trophies around). Are mass-produced trophies such a lost cause that, like fast-food menus and laundry tickets, designers cannot be bothered to improve them?
It's hard not to like the "Global Use" G9 phone, which breaks out of the typical iPhone-ocity with louvered keys on the slide-out deck, a chunky dock, and minimalist, elegant on-screen graphic design.
The G9 was designed by Ichiro Iwasaki, the man behind iida, a/k/a Iwasaki Design Studio.
(As for the "Global Use" moniker, the product copy mentions that the phone can be used worldwide, though it seems that depends on which model you buy.)
We posted a video of his Tent Sofa for Campeggi from Milan Design Week, but Phillipe Malouin is already back with the Skid Row chair, commissioned by NextLevel Galerie in Paris, where he currently has a solo show. The seat of the chair is made from perforated birch balls and elastic cord and flexes to the contours of the body -- fun!
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The Y-stand may not have impressed judges enough to win last year's New York CityRacks Design Competition but 50 units are currently in production in the UK for Woking, local authority in Surrey. The bike racks will be installed throughout the town as part of National Bike Week.
Designers Andrew Lang and Harry Dobbs recently launched the Y-stand at Insite 09, at the Building Research Establishment where it was a point of focus for best practice in sustainability and the built environment.
Check out the original prototype here.
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This is one of those products I'd initially dismiss as silly when I saw them in the store; later, dealing with the tangle of cables under my desk, I'd curse myself for not buying them. Dotz Cable Identifiers are nothing more than little plastic widgets that come in different colors and with different icons. I understand that they're useful...I just hate that we need things like this!
via slippery brick
"Bigger than a smart phone, smaller than a notebook and different than a netbook." Technology companies Freescale and Qualcomm are working on a new category of mobile computing devices called smartbooks, with the former having tapped industrial design students at the Savannah College of Art & Design to mock up some concepts now on display at Taipei's Computex show.
"As the smartbook market emerges, new form factors and product categories will evolve to support and better align with user needs, and our engagement with SCAD demonstrates Freescale's intention to lead this evolution," said Glen Burchers, Consumer Segment marketing director for Freescale. "This initiative has given Freescale valuable insight into how end-users prefer to interact with smartbooks...."
Tasked with creating new models and paradigms that improve on the designs and user interfaces common to most first-generation netbook products, the participants developed a range of highly innovative, yet practical, designs optimal for leveraging the small, fanless dimensions and low-power operation of Freescale's i.MX515 processor.
Adds SCAD professor David Malouf:
(more...)I wanted to point anyone interested in the full story of this work to check out the student process book, final presentation to Freescale and concept videos all posted here.
Feel free to tell the students what you think.
And be aware that the students were tasked with a lot more than coming up with "mock ups". The work is based on substantial contextual design research and the output of design work included total eco-system design including 2 new visions for market specific operating system UIs.
Bunk beds and loft beds make me think of dorm rooms and immediately-postcollegiate studio rentals, but Italian company Tumidei Spa's modern updates on stackable sleeping surfaces are a far cry from milk-crate living.
We'd love to give you more details about the stylish set-ups, but it's a bit difficult--Tumidei's amusingly "Engrish"-esque website was apparently written in Italian and run through an early version of Google Translator:
Through a structure of tubes and aluminum moulds, all your fantastic space mounts as a game, freeing the fantasy with the use of 33 colors, 6 melamines, 8 colors of metal and 6 colors of methacrylates, constructing closets under the beds, the beds over the closets, the bureaus under the beds or over the closets...
Still, the photos of the collections on the site are still browse-worthy for design inspiration.
via blueant studio
Japan may be one of the few countries in the world where product placements will work even in an anime. NTT DoCoMo/Sharp's upcoming SH-06A phone will appear in an upcoming Evangelion movie, having been designed by director Hideaki Anno and Studio Khara, and will go on sale around release time. Also, this phone isn't some cheap movie tie-in gimmick--the thing has got a freaking 10 megapixel camera, a built-in LED flashlight and a 3.3" screen.
via sankaku complex and akihabara news
These delightful portable playsets were designed by Patrick Kim's, a new graduate of Pratt Institute. The Stacking Rhythm Band, shown at the Pratt graduate show, is a small tower that unpacks into a xylophone, a maraca, a guiro and a mallet. Similarly compact, Block City is made up of cubes, circles and cylinders that recombine into different expressions of a small city block. The components fit together for portability, but look like they include a tree, a swimming pool and a vehicle. Ingenious!
via inhabitat
A bite-sized list of what's happenin' now:
istock analyst
Proctor & Gamble's Industrial Design Initiative Reaping Results
pr web
Woman-Owned Industrial Design Firm succeeds using a Thoughtful Appeal to Female Decision-Makers
guitarworld
Ex RISD ID student finds success with Death By Audio effects pedals
manufacturing business technology
What I Learned: Mechatronic Product Development and the Talking Refrigerator
cxo today
CAE Taking Product Design to a New Level
To become a taxi driver in London is no trivial task, requiring literally years of study to pass stringent examinations. In contrast, it seems the only requirement to become a cabbie in New York City is that you are a human being. Gotham's ultra-fast, ultra-proficient taxi drivers of yore are long gone, replaced by a geographically challenged lot that often require directions and are more interested in talking on the phone than getting you to your destination swiftly.
In short, I'd rather be driven by a robot.
Petr Kubik's robotic taxi concept would fit the bill nicely: it's sort of like a huge Roomba, minus the vacuum and plus passengers (2). You'd hail one with your cell phone, then the automated taxi would whisk you off to your destination.
My only suggestion would be to actually add Roomba-like functionality to the concept--if you had fleets of these simultaneously driving people and cleaning the streets, New York would not only be cleaner, but perhaps you could retire those noisy street-cleaning trucks.
By the by, you can see more of Petr Kubik's work on Coroflot.
Today will see the opening of the Design Museum's "Super Contemporary" show, which looks at "the fearlessly progressive spirit of London's greatest creative minds, past and present:"
London thinks, designs and makes like no other city; it creates and the world follows. A magnet for mavericks and freethinkers, London has nurtured a creative community that continues to rival all other design capitals.
These creative networks have spurred each other on. This exhibition will illustrate London's pursuit of new, better and braver, across architecture, industrial design, graphics, fashion and communications alike. Endlessly pushing at the forefront of design and constantly inventing for new worlds, London's design output is continually Super Contemporary.
On display are works by Industrial Facility, Paul Smith, Ron Arad, and others.
NYC recently undertook a citywide purging of all parking meters, replacing the old coin-and-post types with a lesser number of solar-powered Muni-Meters, which can dispense chits, service more cars and are easier to maintain. The downside: The removal of the old meters means there's far less places to shackle your bike up.
Luckily NYC's Department of Transportation, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Google, and Transportation Alternatives collaborated on last year's City Racks Design Competition and chose a winning design (which we showed you here). The designs have yet to see widespread installation, but Google is reportedly leading the way by installing them at their NYC headquarters.
While the winning design seems pretty decent, I'm not sure I trust any aesthetic judgement that was signed off on by a municipal NYC body--anyone remember that taxi logo fiasco? In any case, Cool Hunting's Brian Fichtner takes a look at some other neat bicycle rack designs from around the world. We would have preferred California-based Creative Pipe's more elegant Horseshoe Rack, below.
Incidentally, Creative Pipe has literally dozens of distinctive bicycle rack designs.
Check 'em out here.
Photo: Mike Chino
San Francisco has unveiled their awesome new bus shelters, produced by a partnership between the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, transit shelter advertising and maintenance contractor Clear Channel Outdoor, and SF-based architecture firm Lundberg design. The new shelters will feature two large maps, Push-to-Talk intercoms for the visually impaired, and solar panels that will power both LED lighting and integrated Wi-Fi hotspots. This project was two years in the making and are currently undergoing final testing. An estimated 1,100 shelters will eventually go online.
In contrast, Core's hometown of New York City can't seem to get it together--last year a member of an NYC advisory committee stated that "We don't think municipal Wi-Fi will succeed." Well, it won't with that kind of attitude!
via Inhabitat
California-based Hoang Nguyen's nifty Serendipity is a portable computing and networking device. So what exactly does it do? Check out the concept video (which seems aimed at teenagers):
You can see more of Nguyen's stuff on Coroflot.
Portugal-based Bruno Fosi's expandable LED Branch Light brings Art Nouveau into the digital age. (If Fosi's name looks familiar, you may remember him as the guy who prototyped an iPhone case for the blind.) Check out more of his stuff on Coroflot.
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Once I criticised Alice Rawsthorn, design critic of the International Herald Tribune, on this blog for focusing too much on the design of physical objects.
I felt bad about it ever since, especially since Alice has over the last few years been responsible for introducing many cutting edge design concepts into the mainstream press, including social design, critical design, service design, eco-design, information visualisation, user interface design, design for public services, etc.
Her latest article -- an excellent reflection piece entitled The demise of 'Form Follows Function' -- convinced me that I need to publicly retract my previous statement, and instead praise Alice for the remarkable job she has done for the design community over the years.
Remarkable though it may be, it's extremely hard to find her contributions on the New York Times website.
Only some of Alice's articles are included on her overview page, including:
- Focusing design solutions on social problems (24 May 2009)
- Let's hear it for quiet design (17 May 2009)
- Reinventing innovation (5 April 2009)
But some of her best stories are not listed there at all (despite being on the New York Times website, albeit without their original visuals):
- Good or bad? The verdict(s) (30 January 2009)
- Creating social solutions for MS patients
- Creative solutions in tough times (28 December 2008)
- New tools to help with information overload (5 December 2008)
- What defies defining, but exists everywhere? (18 August 2008)
- Cars span the globe. So why don't they look better? (4 July 2008)
- Alice Rawsthorn: Four speakers debate the future of design (27 January 2008)
- John Maeda: Rethinking technology and the digital revolution (6 May 2007)
- Alice Rawsthorn on design for the unwealthiest 90 percent (29 April 2007)
- Humanitarian goals, tech-savvy solutions (11 March 2007)
- The digital challenge: Making easy-to-use devices (25 February 2007)
- Apple's quest to put us at ease with technology (26 November 2006)
- Style, function and the imperfect cellphone (22 October 2006)
- A new shape emerges to mark the digital age (16 July 2006)
Worse still, some of her articles seem to have disappeared altogether:
- What technology has taught us at dizzying speed (23 January 2009)
- Recessionary design: a boom time for creative energy (17 November 2008)
- In the creative world, the only constant is change (28 July 2008)
- Making life more complicated (27 March 2008)
- Helping the poor to help themselves (22 February 2008)
- Designing for democracy (7 February 2008)
- Why the overwhelming numbers of design flops? (6 April 2007)
- How sustainable is design? (28 January 2007)
Luckily, a full listing of the articles (with old International Herald Tribune links) can be found on Alice's personal site.
With so many pieces missing from the New York Times website, or very hard to find, it is no wonder that former New York Times and International Herald Tribune reporter Thomas Crampton got very upset and wrote a letter to the publisher a few weeks ago, accusing the newspaper of erasing his career -- a view seconded by Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia.
The issue has still not been fixed. Unfortunately also the design community is now suffering from this major gap created by The New York Times.
Picture: Objectified
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The Modularean Eco House boasts designer furniture, bamboo and soy-based interior finishes, floor to ceiling window panels, skylights, stormwater basins, abstract outdoor sculpture, and a big caster that it all rolls around on. Sound amazing? Well, even better--it's a dollhouse.
We've got architect David Baker and woodworker Julianna Sassaman to thank for this immensely cute and environmentally aware art object/plaything.
More pics after the jump!
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Guerilla marketing firms annoy the crap out of me, but I have to admit that Latvian firm Ninja BTL's business card would probably not get lost in the shuffle on my desk.
But a ninja product I could really use is this flash drive, which can hold up to 2GB of ninja secrets.
Not to be outdone by their sworn enemies, Samurai have retailated by designing themselves an umbrella.
They might not have thumb drives, but at least they will stay dry!
(The umbrella is actually by design duo and longtime Core contributors Bruce Tharp and Stephanie Munson.)
These are two lovely examples of indirect lighting for the floor and the wall from Singapore-based Studio JuJu, who seem to have adopted a SANAA-like sensibility toward furniture.
AT-lamps come in two heights and function as tables while lighting the surface beneath them. A series of LEDs is embedded into the wooden tabletop, which is supported by skinniest of steel legs.
Bollard and the Black Box sits facing the wall. When the touch switch/bollard is poked, it lights up, reflecting gently off an adjacent surface.
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While working in Photoshop and CAD I've always wanted physical, dedicated buttons to perform certain oft-repeated actions, but my laptop's QWERTY ain't got the space. Could this be the answer? The DX-1 Input System has 25 programmable, label-able keys you can stick anywhere on the transparent tray, which you can also slide labels under (like the transparent sheet on top of a Wacom tablet). It seems better to me than that Optimus Maximus keyboard with the LCD keys, because you can actually select the layout here and sort of tailor the ergonomics.
No mere concept, this thing is actually in production and for sale here.
Antenna Design's "sandbag lounge" couch (which we've blogged about in more detail here) is different, stylish, comfy-looking, and the last freakin' thing your boyfriend wants to see when he gets back from Iraq.
Similarly, Belgian designer Maarten De Ceulaer's neato luggage-based furniture is sure to torture the corporate road warrior, who goes from living out of a suitcase to working on top of a pile of them.
I've got a buddy who taught high school in Brooklyn. Guy would regale me with horror stories of students throwing teachers down staircases, that kind of thing. The way he described it, he sounded less like a teacher and more like a prison guard--half of the job was wrangling the kids into attendance (and taking the stairs while alert).
In contrast, a Dutch high school in Zoetermeer decided they "wanted to give students their own escape area." The result? A rooftop lounge, with "reef benches" designed by Dutch firm Remy & Veenhuizen.
Contrary to all expectations the wooden structure isn't computer generated but a result of experiments with spatial models.
By stacking their materials in a certain way the designers discovered a method that allowed the slats to move slowly while the construction as a whole still remains solid. Thus, the wooden skeletons look like organic, almost living elements, offering a warm contrast to the school building.
Even the high schools over there have better design! And a rooftop lounge at my buddy's old school? No teacher in their right mind would go near the edge.
via daily tonic
We love the messy, casual, but monumental style of Atelier van Lieshout's Liquor Master bar cabinet, made from foam, fiberglass, and metal. Liquor Master is part of a 2009 collection that uses the human form as a jumping off point for process-based, sculptural furniture. The collection includes his similarly constructed Fossil Chaise, an object reminiscent of a piece of chewed gum, but with the added luxury of a sheepskin.
These two pieces will debut at Vivid Gallery's booth at Design Miami/Basel this June, alongside new Pyrex glassware from Jamie Hayon and the giant Silver Ware sculptures Studio Job constructed for Bisazza in 2007.
Hit the jump for more images!
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Next month Asus will launch their Eee Keyboard, which looks like an ultraslim keyboard with an iPhone slapped onto it. Touted as a "nettop," the device actually contains an entire PC, with the idea being that you can carry it around and plug it into any available display.
We were curious about the potential for the Frankensteinian integrated-touchscreen interface, but as Slashgear's hands-on review shows, the device may not be ready for primetime. Skip the first two minutes of the vid, the action doesn't start until about 2:04 (and avoid watching altogether if Failblog-worthy demos pain you to see).
You can skip the first 40 filler seconds of this "Future Vision of Manufacturing" video by Microsoft, but check out the neat part from roughly 0:40 to 1:45, when they show a design team kicking ideas around using some nifty interface tools; it's Minority Report meets Objectified.
Of course, the notion that the technologies depicted here would all work seamlessly are totally suspect, as this is Microsoft we're talking about, but it's nice to dream....
What does US $3.7 million worth of industrial design look like? That's the lowest pre-sale estimate for the 101 pieces going on the block at Sotheby's "Important 20th Century Design" auction in June. (The highest estimate is $5.4 million.)
Up for grabs will be pieces by Frank Gehry, Shiro Kuramata, Jean Prouve, Gustav Stickley, Tom Sachs, and Olafur Eliasson, among others. And while objects like a Tiffany "Trumpet Creeper" lamp are expected to pull in as much as a half a mil, it's designer Joris Laarman's recent (2003) "Heatwave" radiator that's being called "one the most acclaimed designs of the decade" by James Zemaitis (Director of Sotheby's 20th Century Design Department).
Says Zemaitis, "When you juxtapose this masterwork with the Trumpet Creeper lamp by Tiffany Studios at the end of the sale, we see how industrial design is cyclical, and that nature is reestablishing itself as a decorative presence in the 21st Century."
To see the full catalogue, click here.
via art daily
Over the years there have been quite a few maps and illustrations attempting to put New York City in perspective, starting with Daniel K. Wallingford's "A New Yorker's Idea of the United States of America" in 1935 and perhaps most famously, Saul Steinberg's 1976 take on the same subject. But none have done it the way London design firm Schulze & Webb have, by warping it.
"Here and There" is Schulze & Webb's project "exploring speculative projections of dense cities. These maps of Manhattan look uptown from 3rd and 7th, and downtown from 3rd and 35th. They're intended to be seen at those same places, putting the viewer simultaneously above the city and in it where she stands, both looking down and looking forward."
Why do it this way?
"Because the ability to be in a city and to see through it is a superpower, and it's how maps should work."
At first I thought this was just a gimmick, but after looking at it more closely and thinking about it, I realize it's kinda brilliant. If they could make a virtual map like this that scaled in real time and say, put it on your iPhone or a car's GPS, I'd use it continuously. To blend simple nearby perspective with an overhead view of where you'd like to go gives a sense of distance and travel you simply can't get with a regular map. Here's to hoping this becomes a cartographic trend.
via kottke
"One day, two people, three tools" is what UK-based Stephen Meir's home office concept would need to be put together, once delivered. The idea is that you would order a number of factory-built "office slices," snap them together into your desired configuration, and you're good to go.
Today's Coroflot find is Netherlands-based Viktor Harmens, who finds uses for acrylic plastic in both photo frames and seating; and his Symm clock speaks of the symmetry of time.
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A bite-sized list of what's happenin' now:
dexigner
Brian Vogel Hired as IDSA Interim Executive Director
green right now
Sustainable Brands 09 names semi-finalists for new venture contest
la times
Green prefab firm Michelle Kaufmann Designs is closing
contract magazine
Pratt ID Department Receives the ICFF Editor's Award
managing automation
New Solid Edge Release Bulks Up on Design Tools
French designer Laurence Brabant's wonderfully off-kilter glassware is made from Pyrex, comes in a variety of sizes, shapes and colors, and must have been an absolute nightmare to photograph! (Seriously, have you ever tried photographing glass and capturing all of the contours? I think it's easier to shoot Sasquatch.)
You can see more of Brabant's work here.
via product dose
The latest biomimetic product design we've seen is a swimming aid for humans, based on the tail of a dolphin, called the Lunocet Swim Fin.
The device consists of carbon fiber hydrofoils attached to a baseplate made from aluminum and titanium. Cycling shoes strap into the baseplate, which is engineered in such a way that the motion of your legs causes the hydrofoils to pivot. The result? "The Lunocet creates lift-based propulsion so powerful it can launch a human out of the water."
Hmm...call us skeptics, but we want to see some video.
via inventor spot
Audi's auto interiors are widely considered some of the best in the biz, combining functional layouts with exceptional build quality and well-chosen materials. So how do they do it? An Autospies interview with Stefan Sielaff, Audi's chief designer, sheds some light on the process.
Q . Where do you look for ideas and inspiration?
A . I believe designers should go out of the studio, travel, go to other countries. There are traditional hot spots like Italy. We always visit the Milan furniture shows. We even go to Singapore for the fashion shows. When we look at the art markets, the Chinese and Indians are making strong statements now.
For clear and clean product design, Scandinavia is still a place to go, where we draw a lot of inspiration. From an architectural point of view, we look to the U.S., at architects like Frank Lloyd Wright. I'm a big fan of Frank Gehry.
Q . How hard is it these days to get the money you need to design good interiors with good materials?
A . I fight a lot to get what we want and what my team needs. I understand the management side. We have to earn money with our product. On the other hand, I want a nice product.
The customer is very intelligent and able to see if the company or the brand has spent a certain amount of money on the product or if it is just playing a game with the customer. Our president, (Rupert) Stadler, has a finance background but understands that if we save money on design, it hurts the company.
Read the full interview here.
Back in the days of going into stores to try things on, you could get away with not knowing your size. But now that more and more of us are buying clothing and accoutrements on the internet, there's a bunch of numbers that define us as our own uniquely-sized physical entity.
Our measurements for things like footwear, pants, and hats are easy to come by, using that foot-measuring thingy (actually called a Brannock Device, after the inventor) and a flexible tape measure for your waist and head. (Interesting tidbit--if you've ever wondered why men's hat sizes have numbers like 7 1/8 and women's hats have sizes like 22 1/2, it's because men's hats are by head diameter, while women's hats go by circumference. Go figure.)
But did you ever wonder what the metric is for getting a properly-sized pair of eyeglasses? Well, wonder no more:
It's called PD, or Pupil Distance. You can measure it with the assistance of a friend, but this is one case where we don't recommend those laser tape measures.
A neat way to play with materials: Jacky Wu Tung Chih's Rock n' Roll concept is simply a flat piece of stainless steel, intended to be of a thickness that can be easily rolled. Roll it along the long axis, and you've got a chopstick or straw; roll it along the short axis to turn into a...bracelet? Not sure I'd want to carry an eating utensil around on my wrist, but it's a cool idea nonetheless.
via tuvie
The Scope Node wireless mouse was designed by Japanese manufacturer Elecom under their philosophy of "rational design;" in this case, they were aiming to make the user feel like they're "holding a pen" rather than sliding a rock across their desk. What Elecom has done is move the ultra-sensitive laser directly under your pointer finger, rather than centering it, to make on-screen drawings more precise.
If you're lucky enough to live in Japan, you can order one here.
We designers are natural born tinkerers. Though our projects extend well beyond designing physical products, we are most at home when working with our hands. Tinkering is the ultimate problem-solution mash up mode. It's how we think.
Political philosopher turned motorcycle mechanic, Matthew Crawford, testifies to this phenomenon in a recent piece in the NYTs entitled (you guessed it) The Case for Working With Your Hands. Here's a sweet bit about iterative process and physical feedback:
The work is sometimes frustrating, but it is never irrational. And it frequently requires complex thinking.In fixing motorcycles you come up with several imagined trains of cause and effect for manifest symptoms, and you judge their likelihood before tearing anything down. This imagining relies on a mental library that you develop. An internal combustion engine can work in any number of ways, and different manufacturers have tried different approaches. Each has its own proclivities for failure. You also develop a library of sounds and smells and feels. For example, the backfire of a too-lean fuel mixture is subtly different from an ignition backfire.
Get your hands dirty and read the whole piece here.
photo: fatal Cleopatra
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From a recent New Yorker issue on Innovation, Adam Gopnik writes a lyrical piece about evolution and innovation, comparing the animal kingdom to the creative and business processes of making things. He starts off looking at the multi-bladed shaver, but the most evocative portion was about book lights, highly condensed for excerpting here:
I have tried them all, without much success...Some hang around your neck, some sit on your stomach; some clip onto the edge of the book, where they shake and waver, and some bend around the book's binding to shine creepliy on the pages. None of them quite do the trick...Failure, it seems, generates variety, too, but it is is the variety of futility, the small changes made in a lost cause. It takes the eye of God to see, in the acts of man, which are the children of delight and which the dead ends of despair.
GottaBeMobile.com, which is dedicated to news & reviews of netbooks, tablet PC's, and all things multi-touch, has a new section called Real Users that looks at "how everyday people are using mobile technology to improve how they work and communicate."
The first installment features industrial designer Scott Doty, a relatively early adopter (2005) of tablet PC's, and examines how he integrates it into his design process:
Without a doubt, it has improved my workflow. Colorizing a variety of design ideas at an early stage of the design process both helps me think through design issues myself and share early concepts with clients. I also often use the tablet to integrate photos of real materials into my sketches. This ensures that we are on the same page. Prior to using the tablet, I would more often use CAD generated computer renderings in early design discussions with clients. CAD geometry is significantly more more labor intensive. Additionally, some clients feel more reluctant to suggest changes when they see the more "polished" look of a near photo quality computer rendering. So with more feedback from clients earlier in the process, I now have a smoother overall design process.
Read the entire piece here.
A bite-sized list of what's happenin' now:
universidad autonoma de nuevo leon
Spain: Winners of the International Furniture Design Contest
inhabitat
Pratt students Design for a Dollar
art daily
Exhibition Explores the Enduring Nature of Ornament and Design in Industrial Production
twin cities dot com
Design students help design children's breathing aid
ajc
Art and Craft alive and well in American design
forbes
Super-fast product development with HPC
Computer programmer and woodworker Matthias Wandel is our kind of DIY'er--he studies problems in his own life and builds physical solutions out of his workshop, filled with machinery cobbled together from tag sales and pawnshops.
As a student, Wandel couldn't afford a camera tripod; he built a folding one out of wood. He also built furniture for himself that would easily break down flat, due to frequent moves, and snap back together with dowels. But the project of his that really caught our eye is an ingenious contraption used to move his heavy table saw around the shop. Check it out:
You can see more of Wandel's work at his website. (We came across his stuff in ToolCrib's "Ingenious Space Savers for Garage Workshops," a DIY-must-read.)
You don't have to sit through the entire two-minute video to get the idea, but German industrial designer Stefan Wallmann's position-changing Zweistil bicycle prototype is definitely worth a look. Click on the vid before it gets yanked for copyright issues, as I'm guessing Wallman didn't pony up for the Rawhide rights.
via gizmodo
When asked if Apple would ever produce netbooks, Steve Jobs was quoted as saying they didn't "know how to build a sub-$500 computer that isn't a piece of junk."
So--does Lenovo know? Their new line of IdeaPads, at the very least, don't look like pieces of junk; "High design, low price" is how eWeek describes them. Up top, their S12 starts at $449; the U350 below goes for $649, but frankly looks like it should cost more. And while it's not a netbook, their IdeaCentre C300 all-in-one machine goes for a stunningly low $449.
Says a Lenovo spokesperson of the Idea line, "they offer stylish design at prices you don't usually get stylish design for."
We're digging UK designer Adam Scott's X Sting Wish fire extinguisher concept, which features onboard LEDs to help you find your way down smoke-filled hallways. Cool form factor aside, Scott did a lot more than crank out some purty drawings--he's spec'd out production methods and what every single part is made out of.
Check out the rest of Scott's book on Coroflot.
This Construction.com video spotlighting architecture firm Howeler+Yoon is pretty standard stuff, but we were fascinated by the project they discuss in the first minute: A "spatial valve" that would allow people to pass through a space (or impede them from doing so) by changing its shape through a combination of rotation and compression. Also interesting: they had to model this one the old-fashioned way, as it was un-Rhino-able.
Check it out:
Never thought we'd see the day, but LEGO has released a line of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings, including Fallingwater and the Guggenheim, as part of their Architecture series.
With models developed in collaboration with architects, LEGO Architecture works to inspire future architects, engineers and designers as well as architecture fans around the world with the LEGO brick as a medium. Builders of all ages can now collect and construct their favorite worldwide architectural sites through these artistic replicas.
Here's to hoping the series sticks with famous Franks--we'd love to see a line of LEGO Gehry buildings that parents could purchase, find too difficult to clean, and sue over.
via prairie mod
If you look at the posture of your average sports/nature photographer, or any shooter who has to use a long lens, it becomes apparent that the form factor of SLR cameras has some ergonomic deficiencies.
The Photosniper was a riflestock camera developed by the KGB in the 1950s that would apparently give Ivan's shoulders a break while he squatted on a rooftop across from the Embassy for a few hours. Pulling the trigger snapped a photo, which probably took some mental adjustment on the part of the "shooter."
Good luck finding one these days, though California-based photographer Hin Man was lucky enough to score one--along with the User's Manual, replete with photos of a dashing spy using and cleaning the device.
While finding a Photosniper is difficult (or expensive), DIY'ing up a riflestock camera mount doesn't look too hard. (Good luck toting it around in public though!)
[photo credits: Goblirschrolf/Toolmonger, Count Zero, geocities user Vienna]
Every time Apple comes out with a new product, the market becomes flooded with the aftermarket add-ons of dozens of suppliers. Have you ever wondered how that process works, or what it's like to work in the ID department of an accessories maker?
In an article called "Before you buy: how Apple hardware is born," MacFormat magazine interviews the Director of Industrial Design and other staffers at Griffin Technology, the Nashville-based manufacturer of Apple peripherals. (Up above are mockups leading to their AirCurve iPhone acoustic speaker.) An excerpt:
George Campbell, Director of Industrial Design:
...Ideas come from a variety of sources. Most often, we find a "problem" with a technology that needs fixing, and work to find a solution to that problem. The first Griffin product, a video adaptor that allowed a PC monitor to connect to a Macintosh computer, was just this kind of solution. Another common starting point is when a product frustrates someone. Frustration is often the mother of invention. We have an organisation that allows for ideas to come from anyone – inside the company or out – and then we evaluate the idea to see if it will make a viable Griffin product.
Read the entire interview here.
The nutty Clock Clock (designed by Swedish firm humans since 1982) does less with more, using 24 (get it?) analog clocks to tell you one big "digital" time. So how the heck does it work? Watch the video:
via technabob
In its "Classics of everyday design No 61: Starship Enterprise," the Guardian's Jonathan Glancey takes a look at the revered vessel through the ages. Would be nice if the slideshow were larger, but here's a taste of the article:
This huge imaginary machine was created by Matt Jefferies, an aviation artist, set designer and pilot. Jefferies, who had wartime experience with the Flying Fortress, as well as the B-24 (Liberator) and B-25 (Mitchell) bombers, produced his definitive model--all 11 feet of it--in December 1964. This original masterpiece now hangs in the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum, Washington DC.Jefferies shaped a spaceship that was hard not be fascinated by. From the very beginning it looked right. Its great central disc, ssshhing sliding doors, its underslung engineering decks, and its massive outrigged twin engines are reminiscent of a late 1950s Harley Earl cadillac. Its interiors--ship-shape in a 60s, Nasa way--seemed convincing and exciting to those who tuned in all those light years ago.
Best of all, especially for children, was trying to guess just how big the Enterprise was. Bigger than the QE2? Bigger than the state of California? Just how many velour-clad crew members were there? And how many decks?
via Design Observer
Adventure Ecology founder David de Rothschild is getting ready for a summertime sailing trip. He'll sail from San Francisco to Sydney in the Plastiki, a rather unusual craft:
De Rothschild has built a team he calls the Smart Collective to combat inefficient design. He brought together a group of intelligent folks who had never built a boat before to design the Plastiki....
When finished, the Plastiki will be made of 12,500 2-liter plastic bottles collected by Waste Management, will weigh 9 tons, and will have a crew of six. The Plastiki will have a composting toilet, onboard renewable energy and a garden. "People are so shocked that we're going to grow food on the boat," de Rothschild mused.
So why is he doing it? The aim of the Plastiki Expedition is "to captivate, inspire and activate tomorrow's environmental thinkers and doers to take positive action for our Planet and to be smart with waste. Ultimately we hope to inspire people to rethink waste as a valuable resource."
You can follow the Plastiki Expedition here, and read Reuters coverage of it here. Lastly, here's a video describing the project:
The phenomenon of the "man cave" is as follows: Suburban American males like enclosed spaces where they can retreat to be with their power tools, muscle cars, flatscreens, et al. A recent article in the News Tribune takes a look at some proponents of the man cave, like Florida-based Charley Boss, who specializes in designing them, and mancavesite.org, a website featuring man cave forums and galleries.
The latter is littered with the inventions of industrious males, a sort of IkeaHacker for dudes, with results that come in varying degrees of taste: Barbecue grills shaped like pistols and V8 engine blocks, sofas shaped like (American) footballs, easy chairs made from a Buick seat and exhaust pipes, and several impressive "Keg-o-Rator" mods (refrigerators that have been hacked to hold beer kegs and dispense the contents from a tap).
Whether or not this is how you roll, the site's "Man-O-Vations" gallery is a rather fascinating look at the American male's inner industrial designer.
From 'Star Projects' to White Elephants: The Changing Rules for Urban Development in Spain
What were considered "star" urban projects in Spain just a short time ago have become white elephants, according to research by Gildo Seisdedos, a professor of marketing and urban strategies at Madrid's IE Business School and the director of the Urban Management Forum.
"These urban white elephants range from iconic buildings to events on a global scale," according to Seisdedos. Alarmed by the economic crisis, Seisdedos says, taxpayers in Spain are more and more critical of large-scale government-sponsored development projects and question the benefits that come from them.
There could be a political price to pay in May 2011, when the entire country participates in municipal elections. In his study, Seisdedos asks: What kind of urban policies does this new situation call for?
>> Read article
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We're simultaneously impressed by the cleverness of this iPhone app and a little sad that it's come to this in our society.
Email 'n Walk uses your iPhone's camera to show you what's right in front of you, while superimposing text boxes so you can compose e-mail and, yes, walk, without bumping into anything. Think of it as a ghetto HUD.
Next we need a version of the app with facial recognition that can superimpose people's details, so we can keep our phones pressed to our faces during all manner of interactions:
High-tech bus stops so cool they might actually entice you to take a ride will be installed next year in Florence, Italy.
The urban fixtures have been designed by a group of researchers led by Carlo Ratti, head of the Senseable City Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The EyeStop is a touch-screen bus shelter that monitors environmental conditions and real-time bus movement and also provides information and communication tools that can interact with your cell phone.
>> Read article
One non-furniture item that debuted at this year's ICFF is the ModKat. We know you're thinking "A cat litterbox--what the hell?" but we had to include it for the sheer amount of design attention lavished on this thing by designers Brett Teper and Rich Williams of ModProducts and Fulton Street Design.
First off, your cat goes in and out through the opening in the "roof." Why? Because if you place it in the corner, the cat will have to clamber across the perforated roof to depart the scene after finishing his business, meaning whatever gravel is still stuck to his feet will come off on the roof, as opposed to making that radius of grit around your ordinary litterbox.
Second, the scoop (which has an ergonomic handle and attaches the side of the box) features a little brush on the side, so you can sweep the roof clean. Loose gravel falls back down through the holes, keeping the operation tidy. Then you pop the roof off and clean the mess inside.
Third, the Ikea-bag-like liner is reusable, so you don't have to keep buying (and throwing out) those plastic liner bags.
Lastly, non-skid feet keep the thing from sliding around.
The ModKat will be available for sale later this year. Now if only these guys would come up with something that made it easier for me to pick up after my two dogs....
Use our Essential Guide to NY Design Week 2009 to find the best stuff (Mobile version for your phone too!)
View all of Core77's New York Design Week 09 coverage
Catches, latches, slides, hinges, and more: Japanese manufacturer Sugatsune specializes in making cabinets open in ways no one else can. Vertical lift doors, horizontal bi-folding doors, and their unbelievable "Multiple Motion Sliding Door System" were all designed for space-tight Japan, where swinging even a cabinet door open in the regular way can cause problems.
Their mechanisms and what they do are tricky to explain in text, so here are some video demonstrations:
Use our Essential Guide to NY Design Week 2009 to find the best stuff (Mobile version for your phone too!)
View all of Core77's New York Design Week 09 coverage
A bite-sized list of what's happenin' now:
greener design
The Many Benefits of Green Product Design
reuters
Interview with Joseph Fiskel, author of Design for Environment
fibre 2 fashion
HKPC to organize Industrial Design Symposium
abc
New gallery showcases Australian design
all africa
Nigeria: Lack of Virtual Design Bane of Industrial Development
wired autopia
Electric Cars Will Revolutionize Auto Design
Ennova Direct's forthcoming USB flash drive has a sliding, retractable cover (fairly typical) and a built-in OLED screen that reads fingerprints (not so typical). Sliding the cover open exposes not only the USB plug, but also the OLED screen.
"With USB flash drive memory capacities now reaching 64GB and higher, users are now utilizing their USB flash drives as full external backup drives, making it even more important for users to secure the large amounts of personal data they are storing on their USB flash drives," according to Peter Garrett, Executive VP of Ennova Direct.
Ennova has recently been awarded a patent for the biometric feature, although the device is not quite ready; look for it in early 2010.
William Gibson, author of Neuromancer, Pattern Recognition and other seminal cyberpunk works, has turned to design. The author's Aviator briefcase does an interesting job of drawing influecne from both the very worlds he's created in print and the real one outside our doors:
The bag is labeled "Buzz Rickson's Flight Equipment." It's produced by the Japanese faux-WWII military outfitter whose replica aviator jackets were fetishized in Pattern Recognition as one of the only pure and comforting designs in the eyes of the novel's hyper-sensitive heroine. Porter is a highly regarded Japanese maker of custom bags, in this case for the growing "William Gibson Collection," which includes jackets, gloves and shoes.
Buzz Rickson's is a real-life company that should properly exist only in the imagination of Gibson (or perhaps Jean Baudrillard, since it's a Japanese atelier producing simulacra that surpass the original).
Cool Tools writer Chris Nakashima-Brown has an extensive review of the $530 bag here.
When I was a kid a "charger" was a Dodge, not a collection of wires and black plastic. And back then, the amount of things we had plugged into the wall, you could count on two hands. Nowadays we have at least that many powerstrips, and every time we take a trip we've got to pack a crapload of chargers.
We are now a more power-efficient society than we've ever been. Our air conditioners, heaters and refrigerators all use way less juice than they used to. But unsurprisingly, all of those gains have been offset by all of the new crap we interact with and carry around, according to a study by the International Energy Agency.
But the world doesn't have to curb an insatiable appetite for ever more clever, exciting or fashionable gadgets, provided people chose the most efficient versions available, said IEA analyst Paul Waide.
"There is a way of having our cake and eating it at the same time by being much more proactive on efficiency," he said.
"We can hold total consumption at today's levels by using best available technologies, despite a dramatic growth in use."
Read all about it here.
via the ny times
Maltron's unusual and ergonomic keyboards could stand for some better photography (and a website that doesn't say "2008" on it), but quirky presentation aside, we're very curious to see how they actually function. The one-handed keyboard (shown above in both left-hand and right-hand models) can reportedly deliver 85 w.p.m. in the hands--sorry, hand--of a skilled operator.
Check 'em out (and we know, it sounds like the following is narrated by a stately, classically-trained stage actress):
"The idea was to create a...platform that could unit designers from around the world and bring us together to do what we love," says Dario Antonioni, "which is design and using our creativity to create positive change.
"I noticed that the musician community and celebrity community was doing this in different ways, but the industrial design and architecture community was not doing this." To solve this, Antonioni founded design boutique Orange22; click here to see video of Antonioni explaining how, why, and what they do.
A bite-sized list of what's happenin' now:
san antonio business journal
Alameda School for Art + Design plans fall opening
sf gate
San Francisco State University's Industrial Design Outreach Program benches the mayor
crave
Air-powered robot hands
irish times
The Holy Grail of teapot design: A non-dripping design
pr newswire
frog design Strengthens Creative Leadership With New Appointments
If I was a contestant on a version of The Price is Right that involved guessing the cost of urban objects, I would surely lose. I have no idea how much a fire hydrant, a subway turnstile or a policeman's badge costs.
Case in point: How much do you think the average New York City bus costs? I would've naively guessed about $90,000, and if you told me it was $120,000 I'd be surprised but I wouldn't question you.
But if you told me the average city bus costs over a half a million dollars, I would have thought you were dead wrong. Yet an article in The Times tells us the price of a new city bus is "just under $550,000."
MTA? WTF!
That means the freaking M42 Crosstown is worth two Lamborghini Murcielagos.
What the heck could make these buses cost so much, and what kind of role does design play in all this? Tough to say, but the Times article highlights the difference between the "pull cord" vs. "push tape" system of signalling the driver to stop. The cost of the former: $293. The latter: $1,056.
The MTA currently operates 1,336 buses, and while not all of them are new, if we multiply that by "just under"--say, $540,000--we get a cash outlay of 721 million dollars. And that's not counting gas and whatever they pay the drivers. Man--you'd almost think it would be cheaper for the city to pay for all 8 million of us to take taxis everywhere!
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Years ago I was driving down Second Avenue when a yellow cab sideswiped me pretty bad. No one was hurt, though the left side of my car was shredded. The cabbie apologized and said his company would pay for the damages; in a country and city where no one likes to take blame, the guy was clearly a foreigner.
What surprised me most was my friends' reactions--they all seemed shocked that I wasn't freaking out about the way my car looked. "I don't really care," I explained.
"But you love your car," they said.
"No no--I love driving," I said. "Big difference."
What I've found is that when people discover you like an activity, they assume you love and venerate the object associated with that activity. Cooks are expected to polish their pots; surfers are expected to wax their boards lovingly; iPhone users are supposed to buy sexy little skins for them.
But I'm biased. I'm a utilitarian, your classic I-don't-want-a-toaster-I-just-want-toast kind of guy. I don't care if my car is banged up or if my iPhone is scratched, I just want these things to work. I wouldn't have even bothered to get the car fixed if I wasn't planning to someday sell it.
So it surprises, and maybe even irritates me to see this company called SGP selling these ridiculous "gadget trim" cutouts that allow you to accessorize your gizmos.
Really, guys? Faux gold plating inside the freaking battery compartment?
I realize that there are plenty of racer boys who will spend $20,000 on a car, and another $20,000 on cosmetic accessories. I realize there are plenty of schoolgirls who can never get enough stickers and trinkets for their cell phones. I realize it, I just don't understand it. I can't map out how interacting with these accoutrements causes the pleasure center part of the brain to light up.
So I'm asking you guys--earnestly, not facetiously--can one of you explain this to me?
via gizmodo
Earlier this year we posted about Grant Howarth's entry for the 2009 RSA Design Directions "Design Against Bicycle Theft." Howarth, who took top prize, has posted more information about his winning design on Coroflot.
Howarth has also specifically addressed our assertion that the design (which we liked) would never work in Manhattan, as you'd never manage to find that kind of real estate on the sidewalk. Despite the earlier renderings, Howarth points out that it's not supposed to go on the sidewalk, but off of the curb: "The product is designed to replace a car parking space, encouraging greener modes of transport and sending a message to people that cycling IS a form of transport."
When developing new environments, designers and architects have the option to spec out flooring materials manufactured using environmentally-friendly techniques. But what to do with the billions of square feet of environmentally-unfriendly flooring that already exists?
For example, VCT (vinyl composition tile) is pretty much everywhere: Office buildings, factories, and schools like the stuff because it's cheap, durable, and easy to clean. It's also made from PVC (polyvinyl chloride), which gives off harmful dioxins when it's ultimately incinerated. And as older buildings get torn down or renovated, more than one billion pounds of VCT go into U.S. landfills every year.
Luckily, a company called Mannington Commercial Recycling has figured out a way to recycle the stuff. VCT tiles have already been made, that damage has already been done; but to dump and incinerate it would cause yet more damage to the environment, so Mannington seeks out VCT that's ready to be dumped and recycles it back into new tile, making the stuff pay off more of its debt to the environment, so to speak.
"...We have been looking for consistent waste streams to increase the amount of post-consumer content that we can use in our products, because it is the right thing to do," says John Emmons, Director of Commercial Manufacturing at Mannington. "The beauty of this type of flooring is that it can be torn up and recycled forever."
You can learn more about Mannington and their recycling initiatives here.
Hidden handles, integrated lighting, slow-closing ball-bearing drawers; designer Joël Dupras has carefully considered all of the details for the new M Collection of "modular" bathroom furniture. The line is being produced by Montreal-based bathroom furniture/fixtures manufactuere Wetstyle, whose range of downloadable catalogues is here.
via v2 press wire
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Earlier this year we posted about Ecovative Design's Greensulate material, which can be shaped into packaging material and is made from seed husks and mushrooms rather than polystyrene and petroleum. An Earth911 article takes a closer look at Greensulate's fascinating development process, devised by Ecovative principals Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre.
* Agricultural byproducts such as seed husks, which would normally be agricultural waste, are used as the building blocks. * Once the seed husks are wet, they are combined with mushroom roots, which act as a binding agent. With a conventional product like polystyrene, petroleum is used as the binder. * The seed husks serve as "food" for the mushroom and the self-assembly begins. According to Bayer, "The factory is the organism" in this highly efficient process. * Mushrooms like darkness, so no light or energy is needed until the end of the process when the material is dried out and shaped. * The "acorn" composite material can be shaped into packaging material for everything from televisions to medicine, and test installations of "greensulate," the organic insulation have already begun.
Ecovative doesn't just reuse waste as the basis of its product; the company takes it a step further up the sustainable manufacturing food chain by upcycling waste into a product that once again has value.
"We design our products with the idea that in nature there is no litter," Bayer says. "And we are setting up an infrastructure to follow this model and relieve a waste stream in the process."
Ecovative Design's website is here.
I am not at all clear on the functionality of this gizmo, but perhaps Diesel's new DZ9044 watch is more about style. The watch face is perplexingly blank; but two micro-clocks on each side of the casing provide a total of four timetelling indicators.
This particular piece of stainless steel and leather bad-assery will set you back US $365.
via dvice
Panasonic recently devised a new form factor for a floor-cleaning robot: Rather than a wheeled disc, this one crawls around on the floor like an inchworm, picking up dirt with its "super-absorbent nanofiber cloth" skin.
Called the Fukitorimushi, or "wipe-up bug," the device provides feedback by activating a Cylon-like red light when it detects dirt, so you know when it's working. Because otherwise, as you can see in this video, it's not very clear it's doing anything at all.
via pink tentacle
No matter how precise your cutlist, chances are when working with wood you're going to have plenty of leftover cut-offs. What to do with the scraps?
Most woodshops have a burn pile out back, but this unknown craftsman cleverly used his scraps to make a beautiful and rather unique wastebasket:
via toolcrib
Up above is a distinctly different Scotch tape dispenser designed by Matthew Pacione and a Post-It dispenser designed by Scott Currie, both students at the Ontario College of Art & Design. Both designs were the winners of a design competition sponsored by 3M Canada, and as part of the prize will go into actual production in 2010. Not too shabby for third-year ID students!
via torontoist
Jeff Miller's BLOOM coat rack makes clever use of the flexible nature of wood: When not in use it keeps a narrow profile, but hanging a jacket on one of the armatures causes it to bend like a tree branch, so your coats are not all up in each other's business. The eight arms all operate independently, and the whole thing rotates on a steel base.
Miller produced BLOOM for high-end Italian furnishings manufacturer Cerruti Baleri.
Jeff Miller's BLOOM coat rack makes clever use of the flexible nature of wood: When not in use it keeps a narrow profile, but hanging a jacket on one of the armatures causes it to bend like a tree branch, so your coats are not all up in each other's business. The eight arms all operate independently, and the whole thing rotates on a steel base.
Miller produced BLOOM for high-end Italian furnishings manufacturer Cerruti Baleri.
Jeff Miller's BLOOM coat rack makes clever use of the flexible nature of wood: When not in use it keeps a narrow profile, but hanging a jacket on one of the armatures causes it to bend like a tree branch, so your coats are not all up in each other's business. The eight arms all operate independently, and the whole thing rotates on a steel base.
Miller produced BLOOM for high-end Italian furnishings manufacturer Cerruti Baleri.
Billyburg-based Warp Designs' different take on the flower vase, designed by Kimberly Manne, puts the "industrial" back in industrial design. Their other work includes furniture, carpet design and drapery, and the firm specializes in small-space built-ins. Check 'em out here.
Humberto (left) & Fernando Campana (right)
Photo: Fernando Laszlo
On route to Milan last month, Core77 caught up with the Campana Brothers to get the lowdown on their latest project, the Corallo flat for Brazilian jelly shoe giant Melissa.
Our studio is very far from what people imagine. We are based in a very low-profile neighborhood, close to the historical center of São Paulo. We have two small pavilions separated by a court yard. From the outside, one will image that it is a one story warehouse, but in fact, we have a second floor, beneath the level of the street. In the front building, we have a meeting area and part of the workshops on the basement. The building on the back takes on the rest of the workshops and a small kitchen area. From this workshop we access a second floor where the offices are.
For this month, Core77 is proud to present the Melissa + Campana line through Epaulet, our trusted partner store in Brooklyn. Epaulet has amassed the largest online collection of Melissa + Campana shoes in the world - including rare and exclusive colorways. Stock is limited, so grab yours quickly! All Melissa shoes ship for free in the USA, and International shipping is available.
Original Corallo shoe prototype
Corollo shoes & packaging
View: Campana Zig Zag & Corallo shoes
Humberto (left) & Fernando Campana (right)
Photo: Fernando Laszlo
On route to Milan last month, Core77 caught up with the Campana Brothers to get the lowdown on their latest project, the Corallo flat for Brazilian jelly shoe giant Melissa.
Our studio is very far from what people imagine. We are based in a very low-profile neighborhood, close to the historical center of São Paulo. We have two small pavilions separated by a court yard. From the outside, one will image that it is a one story warehouse, but in fact, we have a second floor, beneath the level of the street. In the front building, we have a meeting area and part of the workshops on the basement. The building on the back takes on the rest of the workshops and a small kitchen area. From this workshop we access a second floor where the offices are.
For this month, Core77 is proud to present the Melissa + Campana line through Epaulet, our trusted partner store in Brooklyn. Epaulet has amassed the largest online collection of Melissa + Campana shoes in the world - including rare and exclusive colorways. Stock is limited, so grab yours quickly! All Melissa shoes ship for free in the USA, and International shipping is available.
Original Corallo shoe prototype
Corollo shoes & packaging
View: Campana Zig Zag & Corallo shoes
Humberto (left) & Fernando Campana (right)
Photo: Fernando Laszlo
On route to Milan last month, Core77 caught up with the Campana Brothers to get the lowdown on their latest project, the Corallo flat for Brazilian jelly shoe giant Melissa.
Our studio is very far from what people imagine. We are based in a very low-profile neighborhood, close to the historical center of São Paulo. We have two small pavilions separated by a court yard. From the outside, one will image that it is a one story warehouse, but in fact, we have a second floor, beneath the level of the street. In the front building, we have a meeting area and part of the workshops on the basement. The building on the back takes on the rest of the workshops and a small kitchen area. From this workshop we access a second floor where the offices are.
For this month, Core77 is proud to present the Melissa + Campana line through Epaulet, our trusted partner store in Brooklyn. Epaulet has amassed the largest online collection of Melissa + Campana shoes in the world - including rare and exclusive colorways. Stock is limited, so grab yours quickly! All Melissa shoes ship for free in the USA, and International shipping is available.
Original Corallo shoe prototype
Corollo shoes & packaging
View: Campana Zig Zag & Corallo shoes
From their Humboldt Street workshop in Brooklyn--"a hybrid between a workshop for fabrication, a laboratory for discovery and a consulting practice for design"--UMproject devised their Light Dots, an illumination system developed for a music studio that had to provide variable lighting without dimmers. The simple but elegant solution allows the user to literally turn up the lighting levels.
From their Humboldt Street workshop in Brooklyn--"a hybrid between a workshop for fabrication, a laboratory for discovery and a consulting practice for design"--UMproject devised their Light Dots, an illumination system developed for a music studio that had to provide variable lighting without dimmers. The simple but elegant solution allows the user to literally turn up the lighting levels.
From their Humboldt Street workshop in Brooklyn--"a hybrid between a workshop for fabrication, a laboratory for discovery and a consulting practice for design"--UMproject devised their Light Dots, an illumination system developed for a music studio that had to provide variable lighting without dimmers. The simple but elegant solution allows the user to literally turn up the lighting levels.
Rather than having empty building walls covered with advertising or at best with ivy, why not install the Reviwall and turn your wall into a vertical vegetable garden?
Some inspired Italians have set one up in Revigliasco, a small town near Turin, and it just looks magnificent. Check out the photo gallery on the website of La Stampa newspaper.
Clever also the name, as it is not only a Revi[gliasco] wall, but also alludes to this pleasant "revival" of urban walls.
via Torino Valley
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Bulgaria-based Ivaylo Damyanov's simple but effective rendering style leaves an impression, and we're digging how all of his wheels just kind of disappear into the pavement. Peep his full book on Coroflot.
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Bulgaria-based Ivaylo Damyanov's simple but effective rendering style leaves an impression, and we're digging how all of his wheels just kind of disappear into the pavement. Peep his full book on Coroflot.
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We get headaches just thinking about what Belgrade-based Djordje Jovanovic had to go through to produce these steam trains in 3DS Max. If computer modeling is your thing, check out Jovanovic's stuff on Coroflot.
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It's hard not to like Crave's silly and completely unscientific "Xtreme Typing Challenge," which has a tester attempt to type "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" on both an iPhone and a Netbook to see which is easier.
The catch is that the tester has to do it while riding shotgun in a Citroen C4 rally car that does 0-60 in 2.39 seconds and pulls 3G's--the gravity kind, not the network--around corners. Check it out:
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Here's a rather unusual footwear concept from a company called Skins:
[Our] innovative two-part, interchangeable footwear structures [consists] of outer collapsible "Skins" and an inner holistic orthopedic support section called the "Bone." The design allows consumers to purchase one inner section, the Bone, and numerous outer Skins, resulting in multiple style variations from the same pair of quality Bones, always with the same feel and fit no matter which Skin is being worn.
Skins' objective is to create a new attire concept that allows and encourages consumers to frequently change their footwear, while experiencing equal comfort in all designs of shoes.
The styles offered range from ballet flats and formal shoes to sneakers, skinned in leather, suede, and "exotic skins and high-tech fabrics."
"Making Fun Serious" is a exhibition showing the results of a collaboration between Yamaha and the Royal College of Art, to be held at the Futuresonic in Manchester from the 13th to the 23rd of May.
The exhibition is composed of 9 proposals that examine how a device can increase people's abilities and capabilities to turn them into a performer. Also, it explores new ways to help everyday communication within new sound dialogues and performances.
The research takes various directions, including the expansion of familiar object possibilities such as books or typewriters by finding their musical side. Another one enhances the performance quality of digital music players, while yet another is a sound device idea for public spaces.
More information can also be found on the "RCA Exhibition 2009" section of the Yamaha design web site.
"Making Fun Serious" is a exhibition showing the results of a collaboration between Yamaha and the Royal College of Art, to be held at the Futuresonic in Manchester from the 13th to the 23rd of May.
The exhibition is composed of 9 proposals that examine how a device can increase people's abilities and capabilities to turn them into a performer. Also, it explores new ways to help everyday communication within new sound dialogues and performances.
The research takes various directions, including the expansion of familiar object possibilities such as books or typewriters by finding their musical side. Another one enhances the performance quality of digital music players, while yet another is a sound device idea for public spaces.
More information can also be found on the "RCA Exhibition 2009" section of the Yamaha design web site.
Amazon is showing some Apple-like secrecy in that they won't confirm anything, but what's for sure is that they're holding an invitation-only press function this Wednesday. Reports Computer World,
[Amazon] has invited members of the press to an event on Wednesday that The New York Times, citing unnamed people, said will mark the launch of a reader like the Kindle but with a bigger screen. Amazon did not reply to a request for comment about what might be introduced at the event.
The New York Times could be one of the initial content providers to supply digital copies of its paper on the device....
The newspaper industry has been dying on the vine for a while now; could this be the device that saves them?
To clear the fields of weeds and grass at their headquarters, Google could have hired a lawn-cutting service; instead they went with a greener initiative.
...we decided to take a low-carbon approach: Instead of using noisy mowers that run on gasoline and pollute the air, we've rented some goats...
A herder brings about 200 goats and they spend roughly a week with us at Google, eating the grass and fertilizing at the same time. The goats are herded with the help of Jen, a border collie. It costs us about the same as mowing, and goats are a lot cuter to watch than lawn mowers.
What we'd like to see next: elephants spray-cleaning the windows of the Googleplex.
Carl finally found the guy who did the cool folding staircase concept that we'd seen featured on so many "awesome staircase design" roundups: It's "Curious designer" Aaron Tang, who interestingly enough refers to his design as a door, or "an element of a wall that allows passageway to another environment when opened and restricts passageway when closed." You can check out the rest of Tang's book on Coroflot.
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A contraption called the Hook and Go, "the smart cart for the urban shopper," seems like a good idea as gets rid of the "cart part, folds into a compact shape, and will hold 70 pounds of hanging bags when unfurled.
I say "seems" because although it was invented in 2007, I've yet to see one. To our readers in San Francisco, where the device was designed, is it a more common sight over there?
via cool tools
We're loving Ryan Welch's retro-futurist zeppelin concept, which he designed in Alias and produced a CNC model of. Best of all he's got photos of his entire process, from initial sketches right up to what looks to be a grueling model-finishing process, up on Coroflot.
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A bite-sized list of what's happenin' now:
metro pulse
Did a 14-Year-Old Kid Help Design the Sunsphere?
media post
Dwell Expands Web Presence
the moment
Scorecard: The National Design Awards
mercury news
Environmental Studies Academy students design 'greener' parking lot
african business
Designers in Africa: Birth of new boom industry
site
VW Design Chief defects to Mazda
the globe and mail
Three-dimensional modelling helps smaller operations go more quickly from concept to finished product
It's ironic that U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan can often not get the gear they need, while civilians on the homefront can continue improving on firearm accessory designs. A recent example of this latter matter is the X-Rest Portable Shooting Rest designed by Montie Design, a firm specializing in "industrial design, mechanical design and fuzzy front end services."
(more...)Designed to meet the needs of all shooters as well as most firearms, the easy-to-carry rest weighs less than two pounds and disassembles easily in three pieces, fitting neatly into a small carrying case. Unlike conventional bench rests, which are heavy and complex, the novel Montie Design model -- made of sturdy yet lightweight aluminum -- provides steady support for different sized long guns ranging from semi-automatic and bolt action rifles to shotguns, carbines and pistols.
...The shooting rest [is] produced in the Research Triangle Park region of North Carolina, using local manufacturers.
"The Triangle is full of not only thousands of ideas for great products, but many innovative, quality firms with talented professionals who can produce, market, and distribute those products throughout the world," Roland said. ADR Hydrocut, a Morrisville company that waterjets the parts for the portable shooting rest was instrumental in the development of the product.
According to Frank, ADR Hydrocut provided prototypes and extremely valuable input. "Having the manufacturer literally just down the street made the development process much easier and convenient. We call this approach 'Made Right Here,'" he said.
PermaFLOW is one of those "Why the heck didn't someone think of this sooner" products, and as a guy who has recently had to snake his sink line, I desperately covet one of these award-winning sink traps.
First off, the thing is transparent, so you can see where the clog is instead of staring at your sweaty, aggravated, warped reflection on a chrome trap. Second, there's a knob on the outside that turns a wiper on the inside, so you can clear clogs without having to get in there or snag that stuck piece of jewelry. And turning the knob to a particular position can also enable water to flow through the normally unusued upper part of the trap as an emergency measure.
The PermaFLOW just won Platinum at the 2009 Awards for Design Excellence, which is sponsored by Design Journal.
But you can be darn sure your plumber doesn't want you to hear about this one.
In Japan, people will wear dust masks when they have a cold, to avoid spreading their germs to others; in Taiwan, scooter-driving citizens wear them because the traffic fumes are bad. But in Mexico, people wearing them to avoid catching the Swine Flu have decided to block germs in style!
via gizmodo
Have you ever wondered how the Nielsen Company compiles their TV ratings? That's right, by giving people the fugly People Meter above to record their viewing habits.
If the set-top box looks dated, that's because it is--it dates back to 1987. Yet as simple as it looks to operate, a recently Nielsen probe found that "people [are] not pushing the buttons properly," which has been setting TV ratings off by an estimated 8%.
So while people first thought TV ratings were down because we were all on the internet, now we know ratings are down because we're too dumb to push buttons properly. Man--are advertisers sure they want to reach us?
With broadband and wireless technology becoming faster and more devices always connected to "the cloud," you could be forgiven for predicting the demise of consumer-based media storage devices; for example, once upon a time GPS mapping devices required inserting CD-ROMs loaded with data, but now something as slim as an iPhone can give you maps of virtually anywhere via the internet and Google Maps.
Yet "traditional" media is still being developed and improved. Case in point: Earlier this week, GE announced they have discovered how to fit 500 gigabytes onto a single DVD platter. The way that they do it is by making the discs several inches thick. Sorry, just kidding--for the real way they do it, check out this video:
Now the question is, what are the implications for consumer devices?
The company said it will initially focus on the commercial archival industry followed by the consumer market for its micro-holographic storage technology.
Would love to hear your thoughts on what types of devices we could use that would hold 500GB (or ultimately, 1TB) of non-web-based information.
via twice
...Superbugs, that is. The UK's Design Council recently commissioned series of medical equipment concepts, using the design itself to reduce the spread of germs--for example, by reducing a commode from 30-something parts to 11, making it much easier to disassemble and sanitize.
Other products designed under the initiative include:
- A redesigned porter's chair which is durable, comfortable, and cleverly uses design to make it easy to clean while reducing the number of obvious user 'touchpoints' where infection can be spread.
- An 'intelligent' mattress which changes colour when it becomes compromised by body fluids.
- A patient bedside system comprising bedside storage and over-bed table which eliminates hard-to-clean corners, is made of special durable, scratch-resistant materials, and is easier for patients to use unaided.
Check out the attendant Flickr pools here and here, and hit the jump to read more details about the project.
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Clemson University has cut the ribbon on their new Sonoco Institute of Packaging Design and Graphics, which runs "the only university program in the country that combines packaging science, graphic communication, materials studies, environmental science, manufacturing, marketing and consumer psychology for application to packaging methods."
As Clemson points out:
- Every product consumers around the world purchase, use and ultimately discard is designed and packaged in some way.
- Packaging is a $200-billion-plus business in the United States.
- More people work in packaging and related operations than any other business in the nation.
Learn more about the Institute, and its attendant seminars and courses, here.
CNET has the most comprehensive speculative analysis we've seen yet on Apple's allegedly forthcoming iPad, "a device that fits somewhere in between the iPhone and the MacBook." Rounding up reports from The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek and the Silicon Alley Insider, writer Tom Krazit lays out what this UMPC (Ultra Mobile PC) is thought to be--some sort of media pad--as well as why previous attempts at such a device that have failed, and what Apple can do differently to make sure this one doesn't.
Many have been hoping Apple would enter the netbook market, which they have repeatedly vowed not to; will this new device sidestep netbooks and create a successful new category? Read and decide for yourself.
