Coverage sponsored by the IHA

Get a tour of Bodum's new line of electronic kitchen appliances with Thomas Perez, President of Bodum USA. We get a closer look at the eBodum collection including the new Bistro pour-over drip coffee maker and vacuum jug, Bistro blender and a preview of the Bodum stand mixer that is small enough to tuck away on your countertop. All of the appliances in the eBodum line come in four standard colors: black, red, lime green and off white.

Is it time to rebrand Design Thinking? Bill Moggridge's salon for the Cooper-Hewitt has always been a place for lively conversation on a range of interesting topics from a tribute to Eva Zeissel to how design can offer solutions in an urban metropolis. Bill and the guests at his Design Talk last Thursday night passionately discussed the relevance, efficacy and even the branding of Design Thinking. Panel members included Helen Walters, a design journalist and Core77 columnist, Fiona Morrisson, the former Director, Brand & Advertising for Jet Blue and Beth Viner, an Associate Partner at IDEO, all of whom had different kinds of opinions of and experience with Design Thinking based on their backgrounds. Walters was the most outspoken of the bunch, but this isn't the first time she's been vocal on the subject. In a piece she wrote for Fast Co. Design called "Design Thinking Isn't a Miracle Cure, but Here's How It Helps," she questions the reliability of the term 'Design Thinking.'

Little Big Details helps designers catalog the many UI details they encounter.

As designers, we all realize that the most intuitive user interface often requires the most work. But as users, we always appreciate a thoughtful UI touch that makes that smartphone or laptop that much easier to use. And some UI decisions, like the fact that you can tap the clock on the iPhone to scroll up to the top immediately, act like "Easter eggs" until one day you discover them by accident or someone tells you.

Which is why I was happy to stumble across Little Big Details, a blog that lists out those little UI details that, well, turn out to be much bigger when you stop to think about it. And that serves as good design fodder for your work.

Apple serves as regular fodder, of course. The slide to unlock feature for all the notifications was new to me, but it should have been obvious, given the icon placement (Brye Kobayashi's proposal for the new lock screen, via our discussion boards was met with mixed opinions). But others are less obvious, like the fact that Google Calendar places a subtle arrow on an event that continues to next week, or that Twitter only displays the "http" part a link when you highlight it for copy and pasting.

It's easy to join and submit a detail, and judging by the number of via notes, Little Big Details has become quite an active community. It's a great Tumblr or Twitter account to follow, and maybe it will help you train your eye as well as you navigate all the varoius interfaces online. It certainly has for me.

If you are a female reader of Core77, please stop reading this post. This one is just for our male readers. Kindly skip to the next entry, thanks.

Okay, fellow guys, check this out: I want to talk about women's purses. I know we don't understand these objects well, but let's get our heads together and go over some basics.

First of all, they are all bigger on the inside than they are on the outside. They operate on some kind of wormhole principle, so they can hold more things than seems physically possible. With that kind of real estate in there, I'm surprised more women don't shoplift.

Secondly, we know they carry an absurdly broad range of items in there. A purse is nothing like our wallets, where only flat things go. Women can carry a cell phone, a second cell phone for work, credit cards, keys, change, beauty products, a makeup kit, pepperspray, eyeglasses, sunglasses, contact lenses and solution, pens and paper, chewing gum, energy bars, medicine, a hairbrush, a book, a magazine, and those products they don't show you in those commercials where women are riding on horseback and playing soccer and stuff. It's totally insane.

Thirdly, recognize that as males we don't have any equivalent catch-all personal luggage product. That's partially because we don't have to carry some of those things—we use our fingers instead of hairbrushes and our fists instead of pepperspray—and partially because we distribute the other things among our many pockets.

Anyway, here's what I want to tell you about women's purses that will surprise you: It is a mess in there. It's total chaos. You know how after your girlfriend moves in, all of a sudden it's not fine for you to stack that Costco-sized sack of new toilet paper rolls on top of the tank anymore? How she insists that it should neatly go into some designated place so that your bathroom doesn't look like a janitor's closet, and then to make a point about how messy your apartment is she purposely hides your remote during a playoff game? Well that neatness philosophy does not carry over into women's purses.

If you look inside one you'll see the design is horrible. Because there is no design. It's like one big compartment with maybe a zipper here and there that opens up to reveal a space just big enough to support the stitching that's holding the zipper in place. But otherwise everything is just thrown in there. It looks like a collapsed mineshaft filled with things, some of which are pink.

Anyways I realized this after stumbling across this post on "Jeri's Organizing & Decluttering News," a blog dedicated to decluttering, written by a professional organizer. She talks about this product called "purse organizers," which are like ammunition bandoliers except they go inside a purse and hold women's stuff. Neat little compartments to hold everything. They come in a lot of pretty colors even though they go inside the purse where you really can't see them. That makes sense, right? And leaving extra toilet paper inside a bathroom, where you're actually going to use it, just doesn't make any sense at all, right?

Well, I hope we've all learned a little something here. And now back to our regular programming.

It's not rocket science—nor is it the first acoustic iPhone speaker we've seen, though it might just be the smallest—just dedication to the craft, a decent work ethic and commitment to quality: we're pleased to report that the upstarts at Kinetic Custom Machine has reached its funding goal for its first Kickstarter project, "Sonastand," as of last Thursday afternoon. Like many All-American entrepreneurial stories we're hearing these days, it's a timely tale of a couple young fellas, Colin Chu and Bob Wimbrow, with a dream and a CNC machine.

Colin found a worthy counterpart in Bob when they were juniors in high school whose hobbies included building model rocket cars and modding paintball guns—"thinking back on it, we played with fire quite frequently—with vague dreams of making stuff for a living. They went their separate ways after high school (I'm picturing something like the last scene of Superbad): Bob completed his B.S. in Physics at UC Riverside, Bob ended up on the East Coast, working in the solar industry, while Colin put his International Studies degree to use as an English teacher in Japan, where "he became increasingly fascinated by the fact that every person I observed working was doing it to the best of their abilities."

Their disparate paths led them back to California, where they finally had the means to fulfill their longtime dream of owning a CNC machine. To hear Bob tell it, I can't help but think that a bench-top lathe might have put me on a completely different path myself:

My first exposure to metalworking was in high school working for Blume Engineering where I worked with a (Prazi D6000) bench-top lathe. I was blown away by the process of metal cutting, the forces involved, and the accuracy/beauty of the result. I've had a thing for these machines and what they can do ever since. Being a computer guy from a very young age, the idea of combining the accuracy of these machines with computer numeric control (CNC) blew my mind. What a potent combination!

The "Sonastand" is not only their first Kickstarter project but the "first product from [their] long list of ideas," and it will be available through the de facto venue for DIY product design these days for another month or so. Colin notes that they could have used Don Lehman's advice regarding shipping when they launched their project, adding his own take on the Crowdfunding Revolution, the topic du jour:

One thing that I enjoy is cutting out investors and middlemen. For sure there is a lot of benefit to investors, but at least in our case, we don't want to have to report back to our investors and update them on how much profit we are making. I've told potential investors that "it's our company, our ideas, our products, and we would like to keep it that way", and Kickstarter helps with that. I feel like the hardest thing to do as a new company is to raise capital and Kickstarter allows that to be possible. The market decides what is worthy.

Our two cents, more CNC porn and the full story (from Colin) after the jump:

Coverage sponsored by the IHA

The 2012 International Home + Housewares Show saw the IHA's 19th Annual Student Design Competition, which remains as competitive ever: the 10 jury members reviewed over 200 entries from 21 design schools, selecting a total of six winners and awarding a total of $10,000 in prize money.

First place winners Samuel Chen and Mariel Z. Piña received $2,500 each, as well as all-expenses paid trips to Chicago for the IHHS2012, for the "Cyclone" fire extinguisher and Ambros" colander/grater, respectively. Both designers were happy to share their stories with us:

See all of the 2012 winners and runners-up here, and be sure to check out our coverage of last year's winners too

Tonight, Core77 is excited to present Michael Davis-Yates to the Hand-Eye Supply Curiosity Club hosted at the Hand-Eye Supply store in Portland, OR. Come early and check out our space or check in with us online for the live broadcast!

Michael Davis-Yates: Leaptronic Audio - "This is How We Do It, Now..."
Tuesday, Mar. 20th
6PM PST
Hand-Eye Supply
23 NW 4th Ave
Portland, OR, 97209

Michael Davis-Yates has been building speakers for himself and friends for the better part of a decade, in the summer of 2010 the brand LEAP was born as a way to present his designs to the rest of the world, and provide enthusiasm for audio gear in a yet undetermined niche. In the last two years LEAP has created products such as boom-boxes, hi-fi speaker systems, and audio oddities such as singing mirrors.

When the joy of creating an awesome thing turns into the dream of creating a marketable product things can get a little hairy for the uninitiated. Michael's talk will focus on the daily struggle a non-manufacturing maker is faced with in the process of moving from concept to production.

Previously there has been no miscegenation in the world of constructive toys. Legos fit with other Legos, Tinkertoys go with Tinkertoys and K'Nex connect with K'Nex. But now two organizations, the Free Art and Technology Lab (the crew behind SML, among other projects) and Sy-Lab, have teamed up to release the Free Universal Construction Kit. Before I go any further,

1. Don't acronymize that and say it in front of your kids.
2. Speaking of acronyms, let's see if the editor lets the title of this blog post stand. (Ed. Note: Yes Editor Approves.)

The Free Universal Construction Kit is a collection of 80 different adapters that you can download, print with your Makerbot, and use to connect toys from ten different manufacturers.

Here's an illustration of the problem:

And here's the solution, complete with Toy Commercial Guy Voice-Over:

We get an exclusive look at Dash, a bright and beautiful new kitchenware line that debuted at the International Home + Housewares Show. Learn more about some of the innovative finishes and design considerations taken with Dash (we love the combination mini fryer and fondue pot) from Evan Dash, CEO of Dash and the larger distribution and design company Storebound. We also get a closer look at the engineering innovations in the newest Maytag Iron, which brought Storebound a Global Innovation Award for Product Design, complete with a removable water tank.

Every few weeks I get a request for information about the classic frog FZ750 concept designed by our founder Hartmut Esslinger in 1985. The frog FZ was a bit of a superstar, appearing on the cover of various magazines including Cycle World in the United States and Motorad in Germany. In 1990 it appeared on the cover of Businessweek with Esslinger. Hartmut was the only living designer thus honored since Raymond Loewy in 1934. I always felt the frog FZ, sometimes called "The Rana," was special for a few reasons. Being designed in 1985, just three years after frog entered into its contract with Apple and opened the California studio, it was the personification of the hopes, dreams, and ambitions of frog at that time. It also influenced the generation of mortorbikes that followed. The Honda Hurricane was so influenced by the frog FZ that Honda offered one to Hartmut as a gift!

After having a prominent place in our client area for the last twenty five years, we prepared the frog FZ to enter the permant collection of the SFMOMA this month. There it will be on display as the iconic part of design history it is. As part of the restoration and preparation process, we spoke with Hartmut to document the entire story on how the FZ came to be. Read the following for the full scoop:

"Fresh Guacamole," a stop-motion short produced by PES for Showtime's SHORT Stories, hit the web a few weeks back (it's not so fresh, in a manner of speaking), but it definitely put a smile on my face when I saw it for the first time the other day:

The real genius lies in the details: 'peeling' the old, worn baseball/onion to reveal a pristine one underneath the outer skin; the little 'squish' of the golf ball/lime...

It's the sequel to the similar-but-worth-watching-nonetheless short "Western Spaghetti," after the jump:

This is the third post in a series of short interviews with renowned writers about the field of Writing & Commentary, a new category in the Core77 Design Awards. Here we speak to Alexandra Lange , a critic, journalist, author and architectural historian. As well as teaching architecture criticism at SVA, Alexandra regularly contributes to Design Observer and has written for The Architect's Newspaper, Icon, Metropolis, New York Magazine and The New York Times.

How important or valuable is it to honor design writing and criticism with an awards program?

Alexandra Lange: It's very important. A) Everyone loves to win an award. B) anything that helps attract attention to our small field, and to the best writing in that small field, is valuable.

Which qualities do you most appreciate in writing about design and architecture and what kinds of writing do you hope will surface from this call for entries?

I've always appreciated clarity—why be coy?—and lately I find myself drawn to description. How you move through a space, how it looks, how it feels, the details that give it personality. You can pack a lot of criticism into what seems like a walking tour, including a walking tour of an app. I also hope the entries reflect the breadth of what design criticism can be about, and how intertwined design is with more obvious popular culture.

Name two writers, perhaps one historical and one contemporary, that you are influenced or challenged by.

Well, one of them is on the jury: Michael Sorkin. When I first read "Exquisite Corpse," the collection of his Village Voice reviews, I was blown away by how funny and how strident they were. I appreciate their energy, their pragmatism, and all the good lessons about real buildings along the way. Historically I feel challenged by Reyner Banham, for many of the same reasons. I love the diversity of his topics, and again, the humor. I would like to be thought of as funny, but that's a tough row for both critics and women.

Tell us about a publication that features writing about visual culture, design, or architecture, that you're enjoying reading right now.

I have to admit, the only publication I read really regularly all the way through is The New Yorker. And its writing on design usually makes my blood boil. Judith Thurman's piece in the recent Style issue, on Prada and Schiaparelli, was terrific, and I think the concept she discusses of "Ugly Chic" has applicability far beyond fashion. Two years ago I wrote a proposal for a book on bad taste in design called "Ugly," but no one liked it.

Visit the Writing & Commentary on the C77DA site to learn more about the category and jury. Entries for the Core77 Design Awards close April 10. Core77 recognizes that many design writers work freelance and if you feel you qualify for special consideration pricing for your entry, contact us at awards@core77.com and let us know.

I'm sure that while Keith Haring was covertly 'tagging' a subway station with his characteristic thick, black-outlined figures, he never ever thought those same forms would be mass produced and sold in a gift shop one day, but Keith Haring - Pattern Wall Tiles are officially for sale.

Now, no comments here about the commodification of art. I actually think this artist-inspired product is one of the least obnoxious of the bunch (I wince every time I see a Monet umbrella in the rain) because it actually makes sense as an extension of what Haring was doing in the first place. It's not like this image was just screened on a bunch of tote bags and plopped in a shop—not that there's necessarily anything wrong with that, it's just not the most original idea. Which is also not to say I think wall tiles should be made available for every popular artist now so people can enjoy their affordable "Picasso" at home.

The Haring wall tiles measure 2' x 4' and come two to a pack for $50. They're made of self-adhesive fabric (and they're non-toxic, no PVC or phthalates) so you can position them yourself in any pattern you like. They're shown here against a living room wall, but since they adhere to any smooth surface why not get a little more creative with your positioning. I think they'd look great along a curved wall, or cut them up into smaller pieces for wall in-sets.

If you want to show your Keith Haring love but this just isn't for you, the Brooklyn Museum gift shop has some nifty options beyond the exhibition catalog, like the Wood Baby Rocker and Wood Baby Pull Toy. Or just go see the retrospective; It runs through July 8, 2012.

Jewelry Designer
Tiffany & Co.
New York, New York

Tiffany & Co. is seeking a Jewelry Designer work as part of a team to develop precious metal and stone jewelry concepts and designs based on company direction and independent creation. The Designer will be responsible for creating sketches, 3-D CAD files and 2-D technical art consistent with standards. The Designer will prepare designs for archiving and comply with other operating procedures.

» view

The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.

Coverage sponsored by the IHA

As our International Home + Housewares 2012 coverage winds down, we're pleased to present a full photo gallery of some of notable objects and items from that whirlwind weekend in Chicago. From promising upstarts such as Rush3 LLC to DCI's investment in jumpstarting design students' careers, McCormick Place saw thousands of products over the course of the show, from March 10–13, which was extended an extra day by popular demand. Although we could have attempted to present the overwhelming abundance of products, we've opted to stick to an even hundred of our favorite images from the show.

Some of the trends we spotted included alternatives to ice cubes, home carbonation solutions and silicone storage solutions. Meanwhile, our friends at Bodum, Alessi and first-time exhibitors Dyson were happy to show us their latest offerings, many of which debuted at the IHHS 2012.

Our gallery, of course, features everything from award-winning student projects to major players in the housewares category and everything in between, so check it out for yourself:

» View Gallery

Look at any car rendering and you'll see the tires get the least attention. The treads are hidden by fancy fenders, and the thin black ellipses offering the barest suggestion of rubber are there only to provide an outline for a flashy rim design. Yet tires require design too, and Japanese manufacturer Falken has come up with a breakthrough by mucking around with them on the materials level.

Falken has struck upon a blend of silica/polymer/rubber to create a new compound that doesn't heat up as much, during rolling, as the conventional stuff. This means less rolling resistance and improved mileage. The properties of the material also cause it to provide a larger point of contact with the asphalt than a same-sized tire made of conventional material, which means Falken's offers better grip.

The designers have also redesigned the tread pattern to better evacuate water when driving in the rain, and added their "Special Eyes" feature to the treads: See those little dots in the pattern? As the tire wears away, the dots turn from round to square, letting you know it's time to rotate them. Eventually the square disappears altogether, meaning it's time for a new set.

The tire, called the ZIEX ZE914, is scheduled to be launched in Europe this Spring. They're mum on North American plans, with Falken's U.S./Canada website offering no mention of the tire, but more details on the tire are here.

Strategy is the roadmap to success, says Lorraine Justice our Jury Captain for Strategy and Research. She's the Dean of the College of Imaging Arts and Sciences at Rochester Institute of Technology and spent six years directing the School of Design at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She tells us why she picked her jury members and what the future holds for this very integral and growing area of design practice.

Core77: Tell us a bit about your jury and why you chose these individuals.

Lorraine Justice: I chose these individuals because of their extensive personal knowledge of design research and strategy, as well as their experience with education and industry. It was also important to gender balance the committee as we don't often do this with our juries. Tim Fletcher has a wealth of experience with his many years in product design across several industries. He is also adept at manufacturing and international relations. Katherine Bennett has been teaching research and strategy at Art Center for years and I consider her one of the top scholars and practitioners in this area. Katherine also has significant work experience with some of the top people in the design field before joining Art Center. Don Carr also has practice and education experience and has taken the design process to a new level. He has turned out many successfully trained designers who are now making an impact in the field. In addition to their professional practice and education positions, they are individuals who have the kind of integrity we want to see in the field of design. I respect their work and ethics.

Why is it important to recognize this strategy and research in a design awards program?

Strategy and research in the design process often go hand in hand and can make or break a design product, service or experience. There are now countless instances where design research has allowed significant breakthroughs in the conceptual and evaluative stages of the design process. Strategy is key as well. Does the strategy support or alter the brand? Is it sound and insightful? Strategy gives us a roadmap for success and is integral to the design process as well.

What kinds of people or projects do you imagine entering your category?

I think corporations doing strategy and research for their new or existing projects could enter and share their insights. Small startups could also explain their strategy and research as well. I believe there are excellent firms just doing design research. Company strategy is difficult to pin down sometimes because of the team work and evolution of the design process, but sometimes one emerges that is clearly one to champion.

What qualities will you be considering when evaluating each entry?

We will be looking for robust answers to the questions along with supporting evidence. We will want to see what their implementation process was in relation to the strategy. In other words, having a good strategy is not enough. We might want to see how it would be implemented. For the research aspects, we will look at the fit of the research methods to the information gleaned, and then how that information was used. Research methods and processes are often designed to fit the question at hand, and so each situation will be different.

Where do you see the future of this field heading?

I believe more strategy and research is in the future. Strategy is required because the success of products is required. I see a huge increase internationally in the area of design research. As we start to sell to other parts of the world, we will want to understand those cultures and design for them. Also, research helps us to learn about the need for potential new products and so precious new concepts can emerge during the inquiry phase. Smart companies will reap the rewards of design research.

Visit the Strategy and Research category of the Core77 Design Awards and enter your best projects from 2011 by April 10.

The gods of panel discussions must be working overtime for me this month. I've been to an inordinate number of them, some good, some not so good and none as great as Phaidon's "Viewing Art in the 21st Century: Experience, Screen and Page." It was meant to take up the case for Phaidon's The Art Museum, a "monumental," "colossal tome" that gives door-stopper a new meaning. I have some personal gripes with the book's claim to be "an imaginary museum created and curated...[with] the finest art collection ever assembled." I don't take issue with the art that was chosen—you can't go wrong with a sweeping view of everything from "Byzantine mosaics through Benin bronzes to the abstractions of Brice Marden." The "Mona Lisa" is in there too, of course, prompting one panelist to wonder if anyone still gets inspired by it anymore. Rather, I question the premise of the book itself. Isn't any art book a curated experience, one that can be said to act like an art museum without walls? I suppose, then, that the main difference here is that this book is massive, making it more museum-like than Phaidon's other art offerings? I'm not sure, but woe be the UPS delivery man who had to unload these at the store.

This wasn't addressed by the panel members—Cecilia Dean of Visionaire, Alexander GIlkes of Paddle8, Anne Pasternak of Creative Time and writer Glenn O'Brien, moderated by art critic and curator Carlo McCormick (who let us in on his secret to never feeling overwhelmed or stressed out by museums: smoke pot beforehand). What did follow was a lively hour-long discussion about whether print, as a medium, can stand in for the experience of viewing art in person. Dean made the case for the computer screen as a kind of light box, providing a better viewing experience in some instances, but for certain forms, like video or installation art, there simply is no substitute for an immersive physical space. Imagine racing down Carsten Holler's slide at The New Museum—in a book. That's not to say that if you can't see a work in person you might as well not see it at all. People who don't live near the works they want to see should still be able to access them in some form, and that's where books and the Internet—especially sites like Art.sy—play such a huge role.

The conversation got a bit heated when the topic of curation came up. O'Brien quipped that nowadays everyone thinks they're a curator simply because they can choose things, like collecting their favorite images on Pinterest or Tumblr. While I agree that the term 'curator' is tossed around ad nauseam right now (ushering in a fresh crop of self-promoting model/dj/curators), I highly doubt my fellow Pinteresters would call their boards of cupcakes and shoe obsessions an attempt at curation. Dean pointed out that, at least as far as the Internet goes, there's just too much stuff and we need people to filter that experience for us. Pasternak agreed, adding that anyone can try to play curator online, but there's always room for an informed voice. For more discussion on what curation means today, see m ss ng p eces' new video for Percolate, featuring today's up-and-coming Internet curators.

Grad students at the Interactive Telecommunications Program—ITP for short—at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts have produced far more amazing projects than we could possibly cover in these pages, not least because many of the projects deal in pixels themselves. Alumni aside (full disclosure: one of them landed here in our very offices), we do the best we can to cover their student shows.

Just about a year ago, NYU announced the first extension program of the storied department with one of the inaugural programs at NYU Shanghai, the "first American university with independent legal status approved by the Ministry of Education."

ITP's Shanghai program will offer a unique opportunity for an incoming class of 32 graduate students to explore the imaginative uses of technology in one of the world's most exciting and quickly changing cities.

ITP's facilities will be located in downtown Shanghai. In addition to classrooms the site will feature a workshop for physical prototyping: a machine shop, firmware programming stations, electronics prototyping tools, and digital fabrication. An equipment room giving students access to digital photography, video, and audio equipment will also be on site.

ITP Shanghai has the same degree requirements as its 20+ year-old sister (or parent?) program, and courses will be taught in English.

Interested? Find out more at the Open House tomorrow night, Friday, March 30 at 7PM, at the original ITP, 721 Broadway, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10003.

Already sold? Start your application here.