Junior Freelance Designer
Aperture Foundation
New York, New York

Aperture Foundation is recruiting a freelance Junior Designer to assist in the design of several upcoming projects, including their 2012 60th Anniversary Benefit, a website redesign, and various promotional ephemera. The ideal candidate is comfortable multi-tasking in a busy Chelsea office. This is a fulltime, onsite, freelance position that will last for 4 months. There is a possibility for this position to continue for longer than 4 months, depending on project schedules (TBD).

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So what exactly happened when HEINEKEN asked industrial designer and pioneer of rapid prototyping Janne Kytannen to take on a 48-Hour Innovation Challenge?

Well, a lot of interesting ideas concerning reuse, recycling and new materials. Check out the video and some of Janne's ideas below:

Think Recycling! Create packaging from the competition using a simple sticker.

Think Materials! Bottles made from brewing dregs encourage consumers to help plant more vegetables, offering an interesting lifecycle opportunity!

Think you can do better? Here's your chance to make your packaging ideas a reality. Share your sustainable ideas on the future of beer packaging for a chance to win $10,000!

» By May 8th - An elevator pitch and 3 images (plus a more in-depth .pdf if you'd like)
» PROMOTE YOUR IDEAS - The more votes you get, the better your chances are to move to Phase 2!
» By May 29th - 100 participants will be chosen to participate in Phase 2, a closed innovation environment where participants will work with HEINEKEN experts on developing ideas.
» By June 2012 - one winner will be selected to win the grand prize of $10,000!

Learn more about the HEINEKEN Innovation Challenge for sustainability packaging on IdeasBrewery.com and REGISTER today!

Nike CEO Mark Parker has a more intimate connection with the design process than your average executive, as he originally signed on as a footwear designer before working his way up the ranks. At this month's NFL launch event, Core77 caught up with the man who oversees Nike's multibillion-dollar empire--and a staff of some 700 designers, not to mention the external creatives whom Nike consults with--to talk big-picture design.

In the video below, Parker describes how Nike observes and collects data from the athletes they work with and injects that into the design process; how co-founder Bill Bowerman's relentless inventorship continues to inform Nike's ethos today; how footwear continues to evolve through advances in materials science; why sustainability and impact is a big part of Nike's design process; and the importance of designers remaining connected to the world for which they design.

The coming weeks will see plenty of student exhibitions as graduating classes the world over complete their degrees and enter (or re-enter) the professional world. SVA's Design Criticism is no exception, and in two short years, the annual conference has become a highlight of the ever-growing NYC design event calendar. At once a celebration of the MFA candidates' myriad interests and the culmination of two years of coursework and research, the 2012 Conference takes the theme of "Eventually Everything," moderated by Change Observer co-editor Julie Lasky.

This year's conference is comprised of four themed panels, each introduced by keynote speakers, including media historian Stuart Ewen; Pentagram partner Michael Bierut; 2×4 founding partner Michael Rock; cultural historian Jeffrey Schnapp; and Interboro Partners principal Daniel D'Oca. Topics to be addressed include the absence of firearms in design collections, the persistence of an anti-ornament bias in architectural discourse, Main Street USA as rhetorical trope, and the need for designers to make repairable products.

The full agenda is as follows; each panel consists of brief keynote and student presentations followed by a group discussion:

Eventually Everything: The 2012 D-Crit Conference
Wednesday, May 2, 12:30-7:00 p.m.
The event is free and open to the public. Register at dcrit.eventbrite.com

Panel 1: Calculated Nostalgia Keynote Panelist: Stuart Ewen Anna Kealey, Unpacking the Pastoral Food Package: Myth-Making in Graphic Design Ann Weiser, Main Street, USA and the Power of Myth Katya Mezhibovskaya, Collection/Recollection: On the Place and Meaning of Nostalgia in Home Merchandising and the Domestic Interior

Panel 2: Working/Not Working Keynote Panelist: Daniel D'Oca Derrick Mead, Designing for Repair: Things can be Fixed Erin Routson, Towers to Town Homes: Public Housing, Policy, and Design in the US

Panel 3: Speaking Surfaces Keynote Panelist: Michael Bierut Keynote Panelist: Michael Rock Cheryl Yau, Intrinsic Expressions: Uncovering the Performativity of Figurative Typography Julia van den Hout, Patterns of Ornament: Technology and Theory in Contemporary Architectural Decoration

Panel 4: Man, Machine, Morality Keynote Panelist: Jeffrey Schnapp Amna Siddiqui, Whiz Kids: Exploring New Definitions of Touch Through Intelligent Play Tara Gupta, Honed/Toned: A Critique of Fitness Culture Barbara Eldredge, Missing the Modern Gun: Object Ethics in Collections of Design

At least a couple of those names might be familiar to longtime readers: former Design Awards intern Barbara Eldredge covered the SHOT Show for us earlier this year and we're fans of Julia van den Hout & co.'s CLOG.

Check out videos from last year's conference, "Present Tense," here. Even if you're not going to make it to check out their super nifty website to find out more about the program and the next generation of design writers, critics and curators.

In the meantime, stay tuned for a short series of previews—we were glad to have the opportunity to hear from Molly Heintz, Avinash Rajagopal and Vera Sacchetti last year—and we'll be posting Q&As with some of this year's grads shortly.

The display cases of Sept Appartements based on groundsman Hervé Liénard's DIY approach to renovation and upkeep of seven rental apartments.

What is your favorite object? The young designers from Benetton's prestigious Fabrica Institute presented this question to 15 staff members from Belgium's Grand-Hornu cultural center and museum. Translating their responses into considered one-off furniture pieces, the 15 objects were presented as one-half of the Objet Préféré/Objet Coloré exhibition at the Triennale Design Museum.

The interviews with Grand-Hornu's staff members—ranging from museum guides, administrative managers, site electricians to the museum's director—looped on a video inside the exhibition and were also accessible via transcripts laid out on newsprint. Grand-Hornu was built in the early 1800's as an industrial mining complex—today it hosts innovative design exhibitions and cultural events.

Under the art direction of French industrial designer Sam Baron, unlike typical exhibitions, individual designers and the Grand-Hornu staff members that contributed their thoughts are not identified—each piece is named solely after the object it is based on.

United Color of Benetton presents Objet Préféré
An exhibition by Fabrica and Grand-Hornu
Triennale Design Museum
Milan
On View through April 22nd

Nesting tables of Bottines pour Enfant & Crâne (Boots for Children & Skull) based on head of Grand-Hornu Images Françoise Foulon's first pair of baby shoes and the, "little skulls adorning the site's founders in the Grand-Hornu crypt." (Foulon couldn't choose which she liked more.) The tables extend to resemble steps as a reminder of Foulon's of first steps and the skull, as a memento mori, reminds her of the end.

You've all heard the trope "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" California-based BigR Audio's product twist on this is to ensure particular trees do make a sound, by making headphones out of them.

These foldable headphones from BigR have "cans" made of rosewood, which according to them has beneficial sound-dampening and acoustic properties conducive to music listening.

The company brands itself as environmentally conscious; but curiously, they offer no details of how their rosewood is harvested, while they do go into detail about their sustainable bamboo packaging, below. The idea behind the packaging is both to make it so nice that consumers won't throw it away, and to use fast-growing materials to make it out of.

Sustainability. The raw materials used to make these boxes grow faster than we consume them, which means we'll never run out. Highly renewable bamboo achieves harvestable maturity in just 5 years. Comparable wood products can take more than 60 years.

Reusability. If you've ever stored anything in an old shoe box, you've already got the idea. There's no need to dispose of a beautiful, high-quality, highly functional piece of storage décor just because the gift that came in the box has been unwrapped.

We applaud the thinking of the latter object, but would like to see more details on the raw materials for the former.

The cycling movement is looking to blossom this spring with more cyclist-friendly initiatives than ever before, and NYC is increasingly an epicenter for large-scale policy and publicity programming. After a successful first year in the five-floor Chelsea space (former home of storied art organizations such as Dia and X-Initiative), Manhattan Media is pleased to bring the New Amsterdam Bicycle Show downtown to the Skylight Soho.

Images courtesy of NY Press

It's all about the bike in New York City on the weekend of April 28 and 29 from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. at Manhattan Media's bike-tastic event, The 2012 New Amsterdam Bicycle Show: Benefiting Transportation Alternatives. In its second year, this event returns, bigger, better and "bikier" to Soho's chic and bike-friendly venue, Skylight SoHo, in Manhattan. Just as New York City embraces bicycling, improving the urban landscape with hundreds of miles of bike lanes across the boroughs, this new consumer-focused bicycle show will again feature the many nuances of bicycling—from bikes for commuting to racing, transporting and pleasure rides.

Indeed, the scope of the show is far broader than that of your average bicycle event as a something-for-everyone extravaganza of anything and everything related to bikes. Unlike major U.S. tradeshows such as NAHBS or Interbike, 'New Am' caters to everyone who has ridden a bike—past, present or future—which is to say, everyone.

Thomas of Horse Cycles with Brad of Geekhouse

The Fifth Triennale di Milano sees the entire spectrum of Italian graphic design, literally and figuratively, in Graphica Italia, which opened over the weekend and will be on exhibit through February 2013. Organized loosely into nine sections, Fabio Novembre did a brilliant job with the exhibition design, which consists of radially projecting walls organized around a demi-rotunda (it's impossible to describe without seeing it in person).

As for the show itself:

With the fifth exhibition TDM5: grafica italiana, Triennale Design Museum continues its engagement with the promotion and enhancement of Italian creativity, extending its research to an art that has always been viewed as minor or instrumental and giving it back the independent role it deserves. Graphic art is a fundamental chapter in the history of Italian design, at the very core of the visual culture of our country.

After the first exhibitions about contemporary graphic art (The New Italian Design, Spaghetti grafica and Graphic Design Worlds) organised by the museum, the decision to focus this year's event on Italian graphic art, visual communication and their history is an important step to enrich and finish off the overview and promotion of Italian design, a process in which Triennale Design Museum has been engaged in for years.

TDM5: grafica italiana is focussed on the 20th century, starting from the Futurist printing revolution, but it also embraces the tradition of the previous centuries and more recent works, showcasing a treasure-trove of gems by Italian graphic designers, in all their amazing diversity of expressions.

Indeed, the exhibition showcases nearly every graphic medium up to web—it's easy to forget that graphics were more than mere pixels—with artwork by the likes of Munari, Noorda and Vignelli (to name a few) for all variety of purpose, from corporate work to signage to political posters.

They say necessity is the mother of invention. I don't know who the father is, but I'm pretty sure he's Vietnamese. Of all the countries I've traveled through, Vietnam was where I saw the "Work with what you got" ethos most thoroughly embraced, from kids to adults.

The street children on the block where I was staying in Hanoi had no toys, but they'd scrounged up a badminton shuttlecock from somewhere. They had no rackets, so they invented a tennis-like game where they kicked it back and forth. For a net they used a moped. In Hue I stopped at a cafe that had plenty of bottled beer but no bottle openers. They passed around a piece of wood that had a single screw driven into it at a precise angle and depth so that it worked perfectly as a bottle opener. In Saigon I encountered some guys trying to get a motorbike working. They had a piston that was too small for the engine block's cylinder. They made up the difference by cutting up a Pepsi can and using the thin metal as a cylindrical shim.

That trip was in the '90s and I have no photographs of these things, but here it is 2012 and I've got access to a video to prove my thesis of Vietnamese hacktastic supremacy:

Last year Holon, a suburb of Tel Aviv, held its very first design week. Sponsored and organized by the government, it's been described to me as an underwhelming affair. This year, however, Design Museum Holon has stepped in to host what might (and indeed what ought to) go down in history as the city's first true Design Week.

The museum opened its doors only two years ago, but its been in the works for almost a decade as part of a citywide initiative to transform Holon into a hub for art, design and culture. In 2003 Ron Arad was invited by Mayor Moti Sasson and Managing Director Hana Hertsman to set the international standard with his sculptural Cor-Ten Steel banded beauty (above). The design school Holon Institute of Technology, which lies just across the street, was established over forty years ago, but Design Museum Holon is the first design museum in all of Israel, making it an obvious choice as the center of all the Design Week activities.

Unlike other design weeks that focus their efforts on a main exhibition hall filled with designer's booths and a program of talks and lectures, Design Museum Holon's Director, Alon Sapan and Galit Gaon, the Chief Curator, invited nineteen design week directors and design leaders from all over the world for what I think can be best described as design summer camp.

Every morning, after sharing a typical Israeli breakfast, the impressive lineup from Tokyo, Sofia, Berlin, Paris, Vienna, Lodz, Budapest and Belgrade were picked up from their hotel in downtown Tel Aviv and bused to Holon. There, we split up into three groups and spent the day together listening to a stream of presentations made by aspiring Israeli designers. Each designer was given seven minutes to take us through a slideshow of their work, after which it was opened up to questions and feedback.

Sure, these designers could each have taken a booth in a large exhibition hall and we could have strolled by them, stopping only to look at the things that caught our eye, but for a country that readily admits to a lack of design history, what better way to introduce the world to its very active design present than to immerse us in personal conversations with local designers? We not only gained deeper understanding of what Israeli designers have to offer, but we got an up-close-and-personal insight into the reality of what it means to design in Israel today.

I, for one, noticed a surprising lack of furniture, architecture and other large scale projects, as well very little graphic or typographic design. The overwhelming majority of what we saw focused on small goods - jewelry, home and office products and gift items. When I walked around Tel Aviv I saw a similar aesthetic - plenty of jewelry shops, no furniture stores and only one object-centered design store, called Soho.

New Duivendrecht launched its first line of products in Milan today with a diverse product range from 12 young Dutch designers. The newest manufacturer of contemporary furniture from the Netherlands, the brand was founded by Frederik Roijé and Victor le Noble and includes a mix of lighting, seating interior objects and flooring from Sjoerd Jonkers (whose Tapis Noues rug we profiled in last year's Milan coverage.)

Frederik Roijé, Dish of Desire

Sharing a space in Tortona, co-founder Frederik Roijé showcased a new collection of personal work. I loved the "Dish of Desire," a multi-course dining experience for our avian friends. Employing real plates tiered with cedarwood, the bird feeders created beautiful layers in the large cavernous space. Also of note are the organic sconces created in collaboration with Janne Kyttanen's Freedom of Creation. The 3D printed plastic lighting fixtures continue with the theme of a visual feast, reminding me of the gill-like underside of mushrooms.

New Duivendrecht and Frederik Roijé
Tortona Design District
via Novi 5, Milan
Through April 22nd

(See more products from New Duivendrecht after the jump)

CAD Sculptor/Digital 3D Modeler
Apple Inc.
Cupertino, California

The Apple Industrial Design team is looking for a CAD sculptor/Digital 3D modeler to create high quality CAD models used in the industrial design process and development of new products. The CAD sculptor is responsible for interpreting and defining the design intent of the industrial designer using Alias software while working with mechanical engineering, manufacturing and tooling requirements. 3D CAD data is used to develop product concepts, detailed appearance models, and renderings as well as production level surfaces used for engineering and tooling.

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The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.

Tri Bike Rack

A senior in the Industrial Design program at the Rhode Island School of Design, Brett Newman hails from Salt Lake City, Utah. Newman's passions for biking, skiing and making are evident throughout his work—whether it is designing a pair of sustainable skis with friend Patrick O'Sullivan, or creating the Tri Bike Rack.

Sustainable Skis

Nest Canisters

Since the age of ten, Newman loved drawing and would spend the majority of his time designing numerous iterations on soccer shoes and athletic equipment. Drawing soccer shoes was his dream job long before he knew of Industrial Design as a viable career path. His focus has changed a lot since then, but the primary principles of Industrial Design (problem solving, getting your hands dirty, and designing for a real purpose) are still a huge motivation in his work.

Below are two of his projects, the Tri Bike Rack and Ready to Reassemble.

Tri Bike Rack

Commercial and residential bike display systems have different and specific requirements, but the goal for the Tri Bike Rack was to create one system that could seamlessly function in both environments. For the bike shop setting, Tri offers a modular solution that can easily display the bike in any of the three most popular orientations; floor mounted, dropouts, or by the top tube. For those who desire a solution in the home, Tri is made from high quality materials and pays as much attention to style and detail as the bikes that it stores.

Hey Bay Area! Mark your calendars because Maker Faire is touching down in your town in less than a month! For two days, the festival will be showcasing fun, creative, DIY projects from makers around the world.

Pickup your tickets before May 9th for earlybird pricing and don't forget to pop by and say hello to our sister store at the Hand-Eye Supply booth!

There are three ways to get involved with this year's Maker Faire Bay Area:

• Although the deadline has passed for this year's Bay Area entries, you can enter your project and Maker Faire will consider it as a last-minute addition.


• Maker Faire has a new program for people that would like to volunteer their time and make an invaluable contribution to the success of Maker Faire. Get behind-the-scenes experience, and help make the Show happen! Learn more here.


• Plan to come as an attendee, enjoy the show and support the Maker movement by purchasing your tickets early (at an Earlybird Discount Rate!)

MAKER FAIRE BAY AREA 2012
May 19 - 20
San Mateo Event Center
San Mateo, CA

And if you miss the Bay Area Maker Faire, no worries...the WORLD MAKER FAIRE is happening in New York City this September!

I'm not sure if I'd be showing my age if I admit that the Kickstarter video for Spectracles" came as a complete surprise to me—I clicked through the link in the e-mail by co-founder Tom Berry mostly because of the mesmerizing GIF (linked below), thinking that the dual-lens concept was intended as a twist on sunglasses, safety eyewear or even bifocals... So let's just say that the video heavily suggests the novelty potential of the Coolbeams' first product:

The design takes advantage of the symmetrical teardrop shape of each individual lens, where the gear mechanism rotates them into mirror images of themselves (the result looks more or less the same as traditional clip-on shades). See the .gif—too large to embed at nearly 4MB—here.

No gigawatts required!

Berry and fellow Stanford product design student Will Atwood have surpassed their modest Kickstarter goal of $3,000, so you have just under three weeks to become one of the first lucky nu-ravers to get your hands on a pair of sweet new specs for the summer.

Once you get to work, where do you put your bag? Most of you probably don't want to sacrifice the desk space and leave it on the floor. Those of you who have your own office can hang it on the back of the door, or leave it on that credenza the cubicle dwellers lack and stare enviously at. Still others may hang it off the back of their chairs.

A Michigan-based company called Workiture, however, thinks there ought to be a dedicated piece of bag-holding furniture and has designed a line of such in both steel and plywood models.

Join us Tonight at Hand-Eye Supply, in lovely downtown Portland, Oregon, as fine metalworker Joe Diemer leads us in an examination of the beguiling history and material facts of Stainless Steel!

Stainless steel is now 100 years old, and has many industrial accomplishments under its belt due to its strength, beauty, and stainlessness. Yet it remains an elusive medium to many artisans because of perceived challenges (such as the cost and skill of TIG welding). This is a shame since it pairs so well with glass, wood, and textiles - and is truly beautiful on its own.

Many of these challenges have simple but hard to find answers, and I will share what I have found. We'll look at simpler pre-WW2 welding methods, discuss local suppliers, and have a demo on electropolishing: a fast method of polishing involving electricity running through acid. There will also be trivia prizes of my household wire goods.

Not in the greater Portland area? No problem! Join us live on our broadcast channel - the show begins at 6pm Pacific.

To whet your appetite peep Joe Diemer's Handmade Birdcages

Dennis Parren's CMYK Lamp

Tucked in a corner of the basement of Spazio Rossana Orlandi's magical exhibition space, we found Dennis Parren's Colourful Mysteries of Light. The two lighting fixtures, a wall light and a pendant lamp, projected a mysterious rainbow of colors that the Eindhoven graduate explained is, "designed not to be understood but to show that light is the only rightful owner of colour."

We wrote about Parren's CMYK lamp last year during Dutch Design Week but were excited to see his new RGB pendant lamp casting a constellation of red, green and blue stars on the ceiling.

It's been a while since we last checked in with the Tiny House movement and we're happy to see it's still going strong. To refresh your memory, Tiny Houses—as little as 89 square feet—are designed by company founder Jay Shafer to reduce your carbon footprint to its absolute minimum.

The latest development is Tiny - A Story About Living Small, a film documenting Christopher Smith's conversion from ordinary life into Tiny House living. Smith is a bit unusual in that he's young (just 30) and has no building experience, yet purchased five acres in Colorado and is determined to build his own home with his bare hands. (Check the video preview after the jump.)

Clockwise from top right: The Cugino.IT has magnets to hold the streamers in place; the "Bubo" lamp can be set on either of two feet with mirrors on them, such that the lamp can be upright or more horizontal; the "Topoluce" light is suspended by its 'ears'

Designer Roberto Giacomucci takes the notion of "small things design" refer not to the physical size of his work but to those details that matter most in the interest of simple, straightforward universal design. Yet his focus on usability is complemented by his willingness to experiment with form and material. Taken together, Giacomucci creates unpretentious design objects that are both beautiful and inviting.

The "Expander" iPod/iPhone dock

The "NBA" bookshelf is a personal favorite

"The Little Designer" is currently on exhibit at the Triennale di Milano through April 22. From the website:

More than an anthology, this exhibition wants to explain the effort, the mistakes, the surprise, the delusion and the satisfaction you feel while creating and trying to bring to life something which still does not exist. They are some little steps that permit to develop a thought and to have those visions without which it would not be possible the change.

The exhibition starts from a fixed point in my way of designing: the simplicity, the simplicity meant as essential, immediate and plainness, as a design which does not need names, but thoughts...

Marco Ferreri has been called to curate the exhibition because of his multisectorial experience and his ability of distinguish the concrete from the noise. The coherence, the constancy and the ethic of his work, make him an authoritative designer, able to reject the fashion and to prefer the real life with critical consciousness, typical of the today best Italian design.

"Fly Fly" teabag holders

"Zoowood" toys are set on rounded bases so they can rock back and forth