Hinoki Kogei x Peter Marigold collaboration

Japan, like Italy, has a long tradition of highly-skilled craftsmen and specialty manufacturers. On trend with the larger design community, Japanese designers and manufacturers are working hand-in-hand to elevate public consciousness about the techniques and artistry indigenous to their native crafts. One organization that is doing just this is Japan Creative. Following last year's tsunami disasters, the organization was founded to, "1) rediscover at a fundamental level in the modern world the distinguished aestehetics and tradition-oriented skills of the Japanese, and 2) create and present ideas and products from a new perspective."

Last week in Milan, the first exhibition of Japan Creative was held showcasing prototypes for six specialty product collaborations: Oigen x Jasper Morrison, Hinoki Kogei x Peter Marigold, Pioneer x Paul Cocksedge, Mihoya Glass x Yeongkyu Yoo, Koubei-gama x Inga Sempé and Dome Carbon Magic x Nacho Carbonell. The exhibition, Simple Vision, emphazies the aesthetics that Japanese design is known for: simple, space-efficient and multifunctional, while examining the possibilities found at the intersection of contemporary design and traditional craft. Check out Japan Creative's website for more beautiful process photography from the designers' visits with the manufacturers.

We wrote about the 160-year-old Oigen Foundary's beautiful and functional cast iron cookware last month at the International Home + Housewares Show. Morrison, who is known for his highly functional designs for everyday objects, created a beautiful collection of cast iron cookware that feels both modern and timeless. I especially like the stove-to-oven pot and lid with an integrated wooden serving tray that holds the lid for elegant tabletop presentation.

Dome Carbon Magic creates lightweight and structurally stable carbon fiber developed for high performing racing cars. Their collaboration with avant-garde design darling Nacho Carbonell, created a beautiful seating collection that, "emits a sound using the resilient properties of carbon fiber."

I'm not sure at what point I realized that the Salone (my first time visiting Milan) and its ever-expanding universe of satellite shows would include way more awesome stuff than anyone could possibly expect to see in a weeks' time—probably during day two, if I had to guess—but suffice it to say that this might be the best problem that a design writer could have.

Case in point, Tuttobene's " The New Glint of Things," a group exhibition in Milan's Tortona District, was jam-packed with blog-worthy work by over two dozen designers.

'The New Glint of Things / De Glans der Dingen' refers back to the title of a 1983 publication on design, in which the glint of the moment was found within specific products and design objects. In Tuttobene's 2012 Milan presentation, design, once again, forms the glint in which solutions and alternative prospects can be discovered. The exhibition, therefore, creates a historial link between two moments of crisis, whilst emphasizing the distinctive power of design.

Within the exhibition, all the individual designs stem from innovative concepts which are based on newly-found combinations of materials and techniques. Hence, the collection of works provides a primarily positive notion and hones in on the numerous possibilites that design can offer in the current turbulent time.

"Stack" by Skrivo

"Courtesy Table" by Marleen Jansen

"Courtesy Table" by Marleen Jansen

"Concrete Textile Furniture" by Doreen Westphal

"Composition Light" by Miya Kondo

"Twisted" by Erwin Zwiers

"Twisted" by Erwin Zwiers

Rianne Koens's previously-seen "Oturakast"

"Knappe Buttons" by Tjimkjede Boer

"À la Recherche" by Atelier Schelling & Borsboom

Best of HDW takes a closer look at some of the most exciting projects featured in Design Museum Holon's "Designers Plus Ten" exhibition.

Adital Ela founded her studio, S-Sense Design, after getting her Master's in Sustainable Design from Design Academy Eindhoven. She was a 2010 TED Fellow and consults the Israeli Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor in sustainability—none of which she told the design panel when she made her presentation during Holon Design Week.

Instead she focused on her work, like "WindyLight," a street light that's powered with wind energy. Each "WindyLight" looks like a cluster of pinwheels made of LED lights that can be illuminated with even very small gusts of wind. She also made "Waterfull," a water collector and filter than operates on a completely passive system.

Senior Visual Designer
Sears
Chicago, Illinois

The User Experience and Creative Group of Sears is looking for a senior Web designer/graphic designer to join their team. The ideal candidate is a highly independent self-starter with at least 2–3 years of experience and a great sense of humor. The User Experience and Creative Group is made up of a motivated group of close-knit professionals, including developers, information architects, Web designers and other creative types who work hard every day to provide an intuitive and innovative experience for the customer.

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The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.

David Berman was the keynote speaker for the first night of Design Ethos, and spoke to the importance of accountability in design and the ethics required to be a designer. A Canadian communication designer and author of the book, Do Good, Berman is also a Fellow, and the Ethics Chair of the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada, and President of the first elected board of the Association of Registered Graphic Designers of Ontario.

Core77: How did you first get involved in working on the Code of Ethics for designers?

David Berman: When I first got out of school, I started my own design studio, which was very much about typography. I was completely immersed in typographic design—I could create these wonderful perfect little worlds of columns of type with hanging punctuation and column rules and just the right type. and ignored the messy world outside. So, I was pretty happy. I had this radical feminist girlfriend at the time and we got into a debate one night about the role of the designer in society. She was blaming a lot on designers. She was talking about objectification of women, environmental impacts, and all that. Mostly it was about women. And I said, 'You're crazy. I mean, I buy into feminism but I do not think that I am responsible for all of that.' But I was wrong. She convinced me that it designers were responsible for the images they propagated. I decided that I had to do something about it.

I wrote up this manifesto to have a national Code of Ethics about how designers need to take responsibility for their portrayal of women and the environment and took it to my first ever meeting of my local chapter of the Graphic Designers of Canada,. It was the annual general meeting and so mostly boring and at the very end, they asked, 'Is there any other business?' I put up my hand and said, 'Yes, I have this manifesto for designers!'

Then this debate starts happening, back and forth. One person said, 'That makes no sense! We just follow orders from the clients,' and then his wife and business partner stands up and just says, 'Actually, I've always been a little annoyed by the way we just do this stuff.' The woman in charge of the chapter, Mary Ann Maruska, pulled me aside and said, 'Are you serious about this?' I was. She told me, 'In order to do this, this isn't something we do at the local level. We do it at the national level.'

It took twelve years, but I became president of the chapter and then became a part of the national executive and I led the development of a new Code of Ethics. We wrote the code to include all of this stuff on feminism, environmentalism, messaging culture, and we had a national committee.

David Berman's book, Do Good.

In addition to the Code of Ethics, you've been a huge mover in the certification of designers in Canada. How did that develop?

There was another movement going on at the time—the idea of certifying our profession, the idea that graphic design should be recognized just like any other certified profession: lawyers, doctors, engineers, nurses. And we achieved that in Ontario: the only place in the Americas where graphic design is a certified profession.

Are you seeing this movement develop in the States?

I've spoken several times in the US about the idea of certification of graphic designers. The response is cold: "No! Anyone can design! Don't tell me who can design! Don't regulate my industry!' To me, that's very limited thinking. Certification doesn't stop anyone from designing I'm thinking, you're professionals. You should be recognized as professionals, committed to a protected minimum standard.

What does that standard look like?

If you want to be a lawyer, registered nurse, engineer or a doctor, you go to school, intern, work with experience professionals, pass an exam, and then earn a certificate eventually they give you a certificate and say, 'Here. You're a doctor. Everyone can trust that you have committed to a minimum standard of knowledge, ethics, and procedures.'

We designers have as much power as any of those professions. We could argue we have more power over what is going on in the world than many of other professions that are certified. We've been remiss to recognize that power.

When you certify a profession, it means you say, okay, the schools have a curriculum, which they've developed in concert with the professional organizations to make sure the people coming out of the school have what they need; you have formal examinations, which in Ontario has four parts. Only one quarter of it is about design knowledge (do you know what RGB is versus CMYK). Another quarter of it is how do you run a professional practice. Another quarter on ethics So, for example, that when you promise to deliver a project, you'll still deliver it even if you realize it will not be profitable for you.

Artist: lunchbreath
More: View all cartoons

Trauma shears (top photo) are those angled scissors that emergency personnel use to cut through material to extricate someone or expose an injury for treatment. I first saw them during my ambulance days and while I was amazed that they could sever seatbelts with ease, I remember being surprised at how flimsy they were; they had plastic handles and were lighter than I expected. On the design front they had a few elements differentiating them from regular scissors: They were stubby, sharply angled, the interior sides of the blades had little lines cut into them, and there was a kind of flange at the point that would ride flat along someone's skin if you were cutting off a pant leg or similar.

I never once used them in the field—design school and ID ultimately proved a stronger draw than wearing a blue jacket and doing CPR—but apparently, trauma shears suck. "They are imprecise and made of cheap, shoddy materials with a blade that dulls quickly," says New-Mexico-based ER doctor Scott Forman. "People just throw them away."

Years ago Forman set out to design a better pair of trauma shears. With titanium-nitrate coated blades and a carabiner integrated into the handle, Forman's design proved popular with local EMTs, and soon Forman had started a company, applied for a patent and cranked out over 1,000 pairs.

In anticipation of the upcoming 2012 D-Crit Conference, "Eventually Everything," Core77 is pleased to have the opportunity to explore the breadth of SVA's design criticism MFA program through a series of Q&As with a few members of the graduating class.

Anna Kealey will be presenting "Unpacking the Pastoral Food Package: Myth-Making in Graphic Design" during the first panel of the day-long event, "Calculated Nostalgia," on Wednesday, May 2nd. See the full schedule of events here.

The expanding market of health- and environmentally-conscious consumers has intensified processed food companies' focus on visuals and verbiage that equate their products to fresh, healthy, unprocessed foods. Designers working with food clients are expected to maintain myths about food production and the healthy attributes of processed foods. Packaging design attempts to add a level of emotional resonance to products, ideally connecting consumers to a natural environment and tradition through agrarian imagery far removed from the reality of a boxed, processed package taken from the supermarket shelf. An enormous range of packaging designs overwhelms and confuses the consumer. Together they create a landscape of fictitious imagery that is disconnected from the realities of food production today and perpetuates a lack of understanding about food. This presentation dissects the visual and verbal cues on food packaging-from the seemingly obvious to the far more abstract-and illustrates how they are used to create myths about food.

Core77: Why D-Crit? Why now?

Anna Kealey: Communication is so visual now. I think the success of platforms like Instagram and Pinterest are indicative of our desire to communicate with quick pictorial snapshots almost in place of words. These new mediums coupled with already existing ones means our environment is increasingly saturated with images and designed artifacts. D-Crit gave me a broad range of skills to evaluate this material and what it says of our culture. The rate of change in design, especially in the digital realm, is so fast. The course's contemporary-focus equipped me to evaluate current design phenomena as they're happening.

How has your background in visual communication informed your interest in food packaging? Do you think a naïve (i.e. untrained) approach to the design of food packaging would be an advantage or disadvantage for your research?

I worked briefly for a food magazine in Ireland and learned quickly of the intentionality behind every aspect of food design—from the sprig of rosemary that appears casually strewn on the plate to the vintage photographic filters used to add a nostalgic haze. It's there whether you realize it or not.

My background meant I was constantly critiquing my own work and the work of my colleagues, which helped me develop a keen critical eye. It gave me the ability to dissect the packaging into its basic design components, which allowed me to analyze each design decision and its motivations. Where my experience was probably most useful was when I was interviewing designers because I could speak their language and understand their process.

However, I could see how a graphic design background could prove to be a hindrance. I am very immersed in the world of design and many of my dearest friends work in the field. I have tremendous respect for the work designers do. However, my thesis deeply evaluated, and often criticized, the basic aesthetic decisions that designers make everyday. This is important to what I do, and what I believe, which is that visual material and seemingly innocent design decisions do have ethical consequences. Nobody really enjoys being critiqued. So in a way, being an untrained outsider could have afforded me some distance. Thankfully I was aware of this conflict as I begun my research so early on I accepted that what I wrote will not please everybody.

Here's a couple of odd twists on American housing. First we have U.S. Governors choosing not to sleep in the lavish mansions provided for them by the state. On the opposite end of the spectrum we have handyman Allan Hill, who has elected to live in the world's largest abandoned factory.

The Packard Automotive Plant in Detroit opened in 1907, and until it shut down in 1958, it was considered one of the more advanced car factories in the world. The 3.5-million-square-foot structure is now a junk-filled ruin, and you'd be surprised to learn a human being lives inside, legally and all by himself. Here's Hill's story:

The short doc is part of filmmakers Ben Wu and David Usui's "This Must Be the Place," a series of shorts exploring the idea of what constitutes a "home."

Unfortunately, this was not what their booth in Milan looked like...

Lausanne-based design studio Big Game was founded by Grégoire Jeanmonod, Elric Petit and Augustin Scott de Martinville in 2004. Seeing as they're Swiss, Belgian and French, respectively, I can only imagine that one of those countries was the obvious choice for the site of their studio; the products themselves are produced throughout Europe and Asia.

While there was nothing particularly remarkable about the wares they brought to SaloneSatellite, it is precisely the understated elegance of the work that is Big Game's strong suit. In fact, the "Spot" compact lamp (below), which can be hung as an overhead light or inverted as a table lamp, might be regarded as a literal take on the notion of a 'satellite.'

"Spot" lamp

"Bold" upholstered chair (Moustache, France)

"Bote" floating toy, produced by Materia (Portugal)

"Pen" USB memory stick, produced by Praxis (Hong Kong)

For an average drawer like me, touchscreen styluses are not there yet. Super-skilled artists can of course draw with anything, including their pointer finger, but the spongy styluses I've tried just don't provide anything like realistic tactile feedback relative to the on-screen brush type.

The Sensu stylus may change that. A successfully Kickstarted project ($65,823 pulled in, and they were shooting for just $7,500!), the Sensu features a synthetic brush hair tip on one end and an eraser-like rubber nib on the other.

On-screen at least, the brush looks as if it will provide that much-craved-for tactility, and we dig that the protective cap can be used to lengthen the otherwise pocket-sized device, providing both bristle protection and proper ergonomics.

The Sensu will be available for sale in May for $34.95.

Hit the jump for a longer vid of a single painting, start to finish.

The minimalist aesthetic that all but defines functional design is typically associated with the likes of Scandinavia and Japan, yet the design language has become global to the extent that designers from across the globe have adopted those high standards for quality as their own. Thus, Anne Boenisch and Steffen Schellenberger explore a universal approach to understated yet beautiful design as much as the legacy of, say, their fellow countryman Dieter Rams.

In fact, the duo repped their hometown with a felicitous bit of wall text, lest the fairground crowds mistake their work for that of designers from further afield. Schellenberger's "3^rdqualityfirst" wall clock highlights aberrations in a smooth porcelain surface—usually regarded as unwanted defects—by recasting the markings as a clock.

Nevertheless, I must admit that Boenisch's "Motion" stool was the piece that initially caught my eye. Like Christian Kayser's "Synkraft Stool," which we saw at Tuttobene's "The New Glint of Things," the form vaguely resembles an African drum, with its thin stainless steel struts.

Where Kayser's frame suggested a spiral, Boenisch's seat looks a bit more the Eames' "Eiffel" chair legs. Therein lies the rub: the "Motion" stool can be flattened into a modernist flower with a two-handed tug to the midsection of the frame—Boenisch likened it to an exercise apparatus. (The side table of the same name is simply a proportionally larger version; not pictured here.)

The design has an uncanny affinity to Boenisch's "Karat" lamp, made from folded aluminum sheets. In addition to the warm glow that emanates from the bottom of the shade—enhanced by its gold-anodized interior—light also limns each vertex, shining through acrylic plates at each edge.

Best of HDW takes a closer look at some of the most exciting projects featured in Design Museum Holon's "Designers Plus Ten" exhibition.

Sahar Batsry was one of few designers featured in the Designers Plus Ten exhibition who also made a presentation to the design panel during Holon Design Week. He was all smiles as he took us through a slideshow of his impressive portfolio, joking that all his designs are prototypes because no one wants to make them. That's a bit self-deprecating, especially since his Full Moon Chair was the only object from an exhibition that includes 41 other designers that was selected to adorn the entrance to Designers Plus Ten.

Once you round the corner, Sahar is again the first designer you meet. His exhibition space includes three projects—a Treenorah from earlier in his career and two more recent pieces, Chair X+1 and Faucet X+1. The Treenorah, which we blogged about on Core77 five years ago, acknowledges that many modern families are both Christian and Jewish, and the green, tree-shaped menorah gives them a way to celebrate both Christmas and Hanukkah.

"Hand made-high tech," is a great framework for thinking about Silo's approach to product design. The graduating RCA duo comprised of Attua Aparicio and Oscar Wanless work with industrial materials and processes and adapt them to a more craft approach.

At the RCA student show hosted in Ventura Lambrate, Silo exhibited a collection of vivid new creations utilizing hand-sewn fabric molds filled with raw polystyrene granuales. The process, developed by the duo, they've coined NSEPS—not so expanded polystyrene. The result is a highly graphic, lightweight and structurally stable collection of furniture, lighting, interior objects and personal accessories.

Nominated for a 2012 Design of the Year Award from London's Design Museum, we expect to see a lot more from Silo Studio in year's to come. We learn more about NSEPS and the process from Aparicio and Wanless in the Core77 exclusive after the jump.

Production Artist
Easton-Bell Sports
Scotts Valley, California

Easton-Bell Sports is seeking a Production Artist who will create or make changes to all types of packaging and marketing-department collateral for print with minimal supervision. This position will work on multiple projects to meet deadlines. These projects require understanding of layout, type and color, and being able to follow and understand style guides and directions from Art Directors and Designers. This position reports to the Art Director.

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The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.

Hopefully, by now you've seen the video clip of "Alive Inside," the documentary capturing the wondrous results of elderly nursing home patients being re-introduced to the music of their youth. We've done a little more digging and found that Daniel Cohen, the man who initiated bringing mp3 players into nursing homes and thus sparked filmmaker Michael Rossato-Bennet into making the documentary, is in need of more music players.

"There's a huge need for iPod donations at many public and private nursing homes, where the interest from patients who miss their favorite music is far greater than the arrival of donated iPods to our collection centers," writes Music & Memory, Cohen's organization dedicated to improving the quality of life for the elderly through music.

If you have an old iPod that's gathering dust, consider donating it to Music & Memory. The organization checks out—Cohen is the actual guy the documentary crew followed around for a year—so you can be sure your old iPod will go to good use. "We'll accept old, new, used, and even broken or damaged iPod players that our volunteer team can check and repair if possible for use in one of our centers," says Music & Memory. "Our residents don't mind a few case scratches or decals."

Click here for info on how to donate.

Don't Egg them on

With Joseph Joseph's recent victory against a Chinese knock-off manufacturer, good progress had been made in the fight against design piracy. In Scandinavia, however, a more complicated issue is unfolding.

A Swedish company called Designers Revolt, a self-described distributor of "modern classic designer furniture," has a very "99%"-esque pitch: "We believe that the designers behind all the wonderful pieces of furniture [we distribute] would turn in their graves at the exclusivity their designs have achieved due to the artificially inflated prices charged by licensed manufacturers," says their mission statement. Expanding on that, they write:

Who would not want to own an Arne Jacobsen designed Egg Chair? Or better still a set... However, few could ever consider this when the price is comparable to the cost of a new car. The suggested price from Fritz Hansen for a leather Egg Chair is at least 9,000 Euros, meaning a group of four would set you back over 36,000 Euros!

So, why is the price so high? The reason is simply a lack of competition and this is not only the case with the iconic Egg chair, it's the same with most classical designer furniture. In much of Europe furniture designs are classed as works of art, which means they have copyright protection for 75 years after the artist's death.

Furniture producers holding copyrights for these designs therefore have a monopoly and can control prices, keeping them inflated and only within reach of the wealthy few. People who love designer furniture are forced to buy from producers protected by these far-reaching copyright laws and have to pay an inflated price, the 'high street price'.

That last paragraph dashes any hope that Designers Revolt is a licensed manufacturer that is going to legally offer the furniture at a lower price. Turns out, they distributes knock-offs. So how do they get away with it? As a Finnish business newspaper explains, they capitalize on a copyright loophole having to do with different laws in the UK and the EU:

In Britain the intellectual property protection expires after 25 years, whereas, for example in Finland the protection lasts for another 70 years after the originator's death. Hence in Britain furniture designs for example by Alvar Aalto, Eero Saarinen, and Eero Aarnio are no longer copyright protected.

According to the vendors' interpretation, an item that has been legally imported into Britain can then be moved to another country inside the EU, even if the direct importing of copied furniture—for example from China to Finland—would be illegal. The companies themselves do not have operations in Finland. Technically the purchaser of a product—the end-customer—is also its importer.

The legality of this is obviously being called into question, and the same newspaper article linked to above says that Finland's design sector "is striking back" against Designers Revolt; however, they're vague on the specific legal action being pursued. We'll keep you abreast of developments.

The problem with wind turbines as an energy source are those darn towers and enormous blades. No one likes living under them, with people complaining that the stroboscopic effect of continuously sliced sunlight gives them headaches. Thus wind farms have to be tucked away in remote locations, which means trucking the construction supplies out to those remote locations to build them in the first place. And the construction isn't easy: The sites are of course chosen for their persistently strong winds, a crane operator's nightmare.

Altaeros Energies, a company developed out of MIT research, has been working on a rather brilliant solution: A floating wind turbine. By placing the blade inside a tethered, massive balloon, you can float the thing up to high altitudes (where the winds are five times stronger than what you get at the top of a tower), no construction necessary. And neighbors aren't likely to complain about a balloon 1,000 feet in the sky.

Sounds crazy and undoable, doesn't it? That's probably why Altaeros has just released a video showing their system in action:

Article by Curt McNamara, courtesy of MCAD

Suddenly Bucky is everywhere. The Buckminster Fuller Challenge, a show at the Whitney, books evaluating his work, and an overview in Wired. What is going on?

The time is ripe for his ideas. Sustainable design was a new concept when he started in the 1930's, and even by the 1970's it was part of the creative edge rather than the mainstream. Bucky famously said that he worked 50 years ahead of his time. In that way he didn't experience a reaction against changing the present.

We live in a reputation economy
If the time is right, what are we to make of him and his work?
Are we ready for mass-produced recyclable housing?
Can we really design to ensure success for everyone?
What are the deep principles underlying his designs?

Student work by Vinit Jain

Why Bucky?
There are his designs, commitment to integrity, life-long goal of success for all humanity, universal principles, and the realization that Universe is endlessly regenerative. His designs include high efficiency cars, low flow showerheads, and houses with high performance. He emphasized that "Only Integrity Is Going To Count" and saw what the world is realizing now: we live in a reputation economy.

Bucky taught that universal or generalized principles are true everywhere and every-when. They include not just the laws of physics but also the laws of relationships, and how the Universe consists of both physical and metaphysical.