As you prepare your entries for the HEINEKEN Sustainability Challenge, we thought we'd take a moment to look at one of HEINEKEN's most recent innovations in packaging design: the STR Bottle. Leveraging some of the key components of the Sustainability Challenge, the STR Bottle uses recyclable aluminum cans and pushes forth new packaging innovation in the market. Core77 had an opportunity to chat with Mark van Iterson, Sustainability Challenge Judge and Global Head of Design at Heineken, and John McGuire, Project Manager Packaging Innovation Heineken International, about the design and innovations introduced in the STR bottle. The aluminum can was introduced to high end nightclub environments around the world and the UV-sensitive ink illuminates under black lights to reveal a surprise graphic on the bottle.

Core77: HEINEKEN has a long history of innovation for both on-premise and off-premise packaging and design. How does HEINEKEN define innovation? Why is it important for your category?

Mark van Iterson (MvI): We define innovation as everything that adds value to the consumer experience. That could be packaging, but also the way we serve the beer, for example extra cold. Or merchandise items like the perfect glass or tray.

Innovation sets us apart from our competitors. Heineken is progressive and inventive, while the category is relatively traditional. In the end innovations will create added value and differentiation.

What were some of the key cultural and design considerations you were trying to address when you started work on the STR Bottle? How does the final packaging design look towards the next phase in packaging?

MvI: STR is for specific types of outlets and occasions; night, dance, top end. These outlets and its consumers are very design minded, and sensitive for the looks of things. STR bottle is a typical progressive and outspoken design statement; very stylish, minimalistic in a way, but also iconic. Subtly branded, and with a hidden surprise in the UV inks that only flair up under black-lights.

The progressive nature of the STR design could also be considered as a scout for the Heineken brand. It's exploring new territories.

New bottle holders introduced last week at HEINEKEN's "Club of the Future" in Milan

The most exciting design innovation for the STR bottle is the technique used to affix a UV-sensitive ink to the aluminum bottle. What are some of the processes behind this technique?

John McGuire (JMcG): UV or Invisible ink as it is also called, has its origins in anti-counterfeiting. The ultraviolet ink becomes visible when exposed to the black light. It's this ability look different in different light sources which we were after. Careful consideration for how the print is constructed and placed on the non-printed areas of the bottle ensure that it has the signature purple tone that is now synonymous with image of the STR bottle in bars and clubs.

MvI: The beauty of the UV inks is that it is designed as a surprise. The technology in itself was not revolutionary, this way applying it is. It creates excitement and talkability.

Burg Giebichenstein Kunsthochschule Halle is, by its own description, "one of Germany's most varied and interesting art schools. Situated at the meeting point between East and West, it has had to reinvent itself for nearly a 100 years and does so to this day." I must admit that I'm not familiar with the the past century of Burg Halle's history, but if their recent graduate exhibition in Ventura Lambrate is any indication, the school has an excellent design program.

Here's a look at several of the works in their jam-packed, two-story booth in the warehouse space on Via Massimiliano:

Julia Brümmer - Herr Holzinger

...combines firewood storage and a rack system. It provides easy access to firewood and creates space for books and much more. Through different add-ons, such as hooks, shelves, seating area or a lamp, Herr Holzinger offers various uses. Herr Holzinger can be built individually or in multiple modules side by side. Due to the variable stack height of 60 cm or 120 cm, Herr Holzinger can be built both, as a high room divider or as a lower sideboard.

Anne Rossner - LeseLIEGE

Observed many times, most people can't stay in the same reading position very long. The idea—one surface entirely made of cushions. All cushions can be moved individually to create the favored position: pushed down or pulled out. They provide support for the different arrangements, making it cuddly and comfortable.

Matthias Zänsler - Couch Flanders

Flanders is a furniture for living rooms or maybe even for the office. A furniture between chair and sofa, that can be rolled out to a couch area on the floor. The nearly three-meter long cushioned fabric is wrapped around a wooden body and then clamped to a tubular steel frame. Inspiration for this furniture was a roll of carpeted floor in a hardware store.

Oliver Reinecke - Hyde Table & Gap Chair

Hyde is a table which offers special storage. Inside its table top one can find a hidden channel, providing enough space for things which are needed at a workplace like hard drive, power supply and other office accessories. Three plates close the storage channel and create a free table surface.

The Gap Chair is composed of three components that can be arranged individually by the owner in color and material. A plastic part connects the individual parts and creates a joint that allows the attachment of additives such as a table surface or a reading light. Easy assembly, few parts and a small packing size underline the customizing concept.

Hannes Trommer - Papillon

AS if by magic, Papillon changes from a flat board into a sculptural table lamp. This is made possible by a cleverly thought-out folding mechanism that gives the lamp form and stability.

The material used is a laminated composite made of plywood and linen, with integrated LED technology and wiring. The wedge-shaped recess in the arm allows clamping of the lamp on a tabletop with no fastening elements whatsoever. Compared with conventional table lamps, Papillon features an extremely compact design for packaging and storage, as well as user-friendly setup.

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

The "Local Souvenirs" designed by Johnathan Hopp in collaboration with Sarah Auslander are some of Israel's most recognizable and widely sold design objects. The glazed earthenware replicas of important Israeli buildings include many of Tel Aviv's famous Bauhaus beauties, like the one at 28 Rosh Pina Street, designed by architect Arieh Cohen in 1935 (below).

Before Johnathan set up his studio in Yafo, where he both designs and produces his ceramic projects, he studied Industrial Design at RISD and interned at Marcel Wanders' studio in Amsterdam. His process, which has evolved significantly over the last decade, usually begins with "photographs and manipulations of photographs."

I then make some paper mock-ups and models until I feel confident enough to make a plaster, wood or plasticine model for casting. Occasionally, I have a craftsman make the model or the piece for me when I don't have the equipment or the skills necessary for the job. The model is then duplicated in a RTV silicone material and plaster molds are made of the silicone part. Ceramic slip is cast into the mold, then glaze is applied and sometimes ceramic decals are used on the glaze.

Right now Johnathan says he's interested in "the 'Properness' of design objects. As opposed to art, which is allowed—indeed expected—to be rude, ugly and inappropriate, design is expected to be sweet, pretty, polite and tasteful. In my work I enjoy prodding these boundaries and challenging these expectations." Certainly, his Local Souvenirs are very sweet, so perhaps he'll explore the rude, ugly and inappropriate next for a change of pace.

Director, Concept & Design Team
Nokia
Berlin, Germany

Nokia's Location & Commerce Applications sub-unit is seking an experienced leader to manage the Concept and Design team, a multi-disciplinary team consisting of product strategy, user research, creative copywriting and user experience design. This individual will be working closely with the Director of UX program management and the creative leads to ensure successful operation of the team. The Managing Director of the Concept and Design team will report to the Vice President, Applications in Nokia's Location & Commerce business unit, which builds and runs all consumer facing location products for Nokia and non-Nokia devices including maps.nokia.com (Web & HTML5), Nokia Drive, Nokia Maps, Nokia Public Transport and more.

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Ferdinand Alexander Porsche, better known as Butzi, passed away on April 5, 2012. While his death was widely reported, I feel that his real contributions to design were underreported. Butzi Porsche was quietly responsible for three of the most important car designs ever. This might be for purely personal reasons. My first car was one of his designs, a 1974 Porsche 914. However, I think that simply gave me a unique perspective to critique his design thinking.

Car design is a field that has always been dominated by emotional designs. From the sexy lines of a Ferrari to the brutish Hummer, it seems that comparisons to emotion and personalities are never far away in the car industry. However, Butzi Porsche's contributions in the 1960's stand away from that. He consistently avoided showy design affectations like giant wings, scopes, bursting wheels, etc., to focus on a kind of logical and very distinctive styling all his own.

Butzi Porsche was the grandson of Ferdinand Porsche, the engineering genius responsible for the VW Beetle, mid-engined pre-war Auto Union Grand Prix cars and many other incredible and creative automobiles and transport. Butzi worked at Porsche from 1957 until 1972, when the Porsche family pulled out of the day-to-day management of the company. Before that, he studied industrial design for only a year before being dismissed. It could be because his drawing skills were not up to snuff, something he made up for with his model-making ability.

After joining Porsche, Butzi was moved around the company by the design director Karl Rabe. He spent nine months in engine development before moving to the car body division. This gave him a wider vision of design's place at the company, "I was already sure what I was going to do one day. It was definitely to work with the car body in relation to the engine, and in connection with that, the design." A very modernist vision that is as fresh today as it was in the 1960's.

Car design has always been a form before function domain. Up until the 1940's, many luxury car companies didn't even make the body or interior of their cars. That was left to coachbuilders who designed the bodies and interiors around a finished frame. This resulted in beautiful sculpture that contributed nothing to the mechanical functions of the car. Even in 2011, VW's designers developed the Up concept, imagining it was a rear engine vehicle. Without changing the design, the engineers managed to change the Up to a front-engine layout. That's how little design and engineering are considered together in most auto design. As always, Porsche thinks differently.

Butzi's first projects were in the racing department. He worked with the body department to craft the very simple cigar shape of the 1962 Formula 1 car. Then, he worked in tandem on the rebodied production racer, the 356B 2000GS Carrera 2 and his first masterpiece, the 904. Working with the Stuttgart University on aerodynamic models, Porsche found that a chopped roof would reduce lift while maintaining the efficiency of their normal fastback form. Using this knowledge and sculpting the front end of his 904 prototype onto the 356 production car, Porsche created the very awkward, but fast 2000GS Carrera 2. From there, using the same design principles and a clean sheet of paper, Butzi created the sleek, purpose-built 904 race car.

The 904 prototype race car was a rushed project. Porsche retired from F1 after 1962 and wanted to make an impact in the 1963 sports car racing season. Therefore, Butzi and the racing department only had 4 months to design and build the first car. Like all great design, Butzi was forced to start with constraints. In this case, the race organizer's rules constrained the wheelbase, track or width between the tyres, overall length and width as well as certain interior dimensions. The body even needed to accept a regulation specified suitcase in its trunk. Working around these strict constraints, and with the help of an all fiber glass body, Butzi created a lithe and extremely simple body.

Even in the 1960's, race cars normally had odd projections, scopes, holes and grilles peppered over their bodies. Because the 904 had to be quickly frozen to meet the four month deadline, Butzi's sleek design had to be left unaltered by the engineers. The only openings on the 904 were a small linear opening at the front to feed brake cooling and oil coolers, two small openings behind the doors which followed the sloping roof and a grille above the engine which featured a delicate slat grille. Like the other designs that would follow, it wasn't showy. The tires were narrow and tucked into the body, the windscreen stood upright, the form minimized as much as could be. Even the hardware was delicately applied: just a button with the door pull being a recess in the fender to allow the door to be grabbed. Nothing could be added to the design without making it busy and nothing could be taken away without rendering it unsafe or slow.

The IKEA Knäppa camera with a felicitous bit of product placement

Our friends at Cool Hunting and PSFK have already let the camera out of the bag, so to speak (it literally came at the bottom of a tote), but, as the saying goes, "looks cool, but what does it actually do?" We decided to put IKEA's Knäppa camera—swag from this year's IKEA PS exhibition in Milan—to the test with an impromptu photo shoot... of the two other cameras I had on hand, a DSLR and an iPhone 4S.

So that's why IKEA only bid $999 million for Instagram...

Well, I can't say I was expecting much more than that: as with the Swedish company's furniture, the Knäppa is more or less designed to be disposable, though it barely even qualifies as an ad hoc solution for a first-time photographer—not least because the cameraphones are getting better by the day.

As my colleague astutely pointed out, "it's like one of those early cellphone cameras," which is probably true... although I don't remember it taking 6–8 seconds to take a picture on my old LG or Samsung. Forget about focus, aperture or shutter speed (even composition is tricky when the viewfinder isn't aligned with the lens): the Knäppa really just requires steady hands; inanimate subject matter is a given.

Girl Scout cookies not included

Here's the promo video, courtesy of designers Teenage Engineering, which is at once overambitious and tongue-in-cheek.

But I'm sure you really just want to see the camera itself, as shot by the trusty ol' office Canon (the leading image is iPhone 4S)—you can't deny that it's photogenic:

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.

Derrick Mead will be presenting "Designing for Repair: Things Can Be Fixed" during the second panel of the day-long event, "Working/Not Working," on Wednesday, May 2nd. See the full schedule of events here.

Critical design is a contested territory, an often-nebulous arena of thought experiments fraught with equal parts moralizing and optimism. Some designers have co-opted the mantle of critical design for self-promotional or marketing purposes, muddying the waters further. In other cases, like at The Agency of Design in London, ambitious, idealistic young designers are tackling real problems in materials, energy, and waste with fully functional prototypes. This talk will analyze the Agency of Design's three toasters—the Realist, the Pragmatist, and the Optimist—and compare and contrast them with the work of other bold-face names in product design like Yves Behar's Aesir cell phone, and Oscar Narud's Keel tables. Themes in critical design such as designing for repair, designing for failure, and designing for "cradle-to-cradle" type life cycles will be considered with a special emphasis on explaining why these issues are frequently taken up by unique critical designs, prototypes, and small-run bespoke objects but only rarely dealt with in real-world, mass produced products.

Core77: Why D-Crit? Why Now?

Derrick Mead: DCrit is a culture—its students and faculty are people interested in thinking about the world in a similar way, albeit from lots of different points of view. I love things—materiality—but am constantly asking why?, and remain skeptical of 99% of the "stuff" humanity applies its time and money and resources to producing: design, art, everything. A lot of the "design world" is wrapped up in selling the stuff, or, at the very least, dependent on the stuff's continued sales, to keep earning livings. To me DCrit is important now because it provides a platform for burgeoning critics to sharpen their knives without bias of any kind. As much as we all have our preferred subject matter, the enthusiasm and support that exists within the DCrit program for writers remaining generalists is vital to viable popular design criticism.

Broken Rochester gauge

Is the notion of 'fixability' a corollary to the current trend of DIY culture, or vice versa, and why?

I'd say it's a often bit of both, at least in the sense that I'm hoping to get people thinking about repair. At the more technical end of the spectrum—Thingiverse as opposed to Etsy—quite a lot of the DIY that gets hyped is actually rather unfortunately materials-intensive and "-insensitive," in terms of things like adhesives, or plastics. The potential exists, however, in both traditionally craft-based and tech-enabled DIY, for people to get more involved with their existing belongings, and not just keep cranking out new things, regardless of how reclaimed, or how biodegradable. I especially like hipstomp's notion of "unpretty" DIY, which lowers barriers to entry for getting your hands dirty. People think in broad terms, like, "oh, I'm not a creative type," or "I wouldn't know where to begin, with my broken toaster," but with unpretty DIY in mind, we can all start to consider ourselves fixers. The tools and information you need to tackle repairing things, from clothes to appliances, have never been more easily accessible. I'm particularly excited about physical tool- and skill-shares like The Fixers Collective, in Brooklyn, and Techshop, which is expanding eastward from California, as well as online resources like Ifixit.

Agency of Design - The Optimist Toaster

Every day, we are surrounded by ideas brought to life. The chair we sit on, the sofa we lounge on, the computer we stare at all day. These are only a fraction of the objects that first took form in the minds of designers, sketched out on paper, then formed into reality.

Designers Andrea Mancuso and Emilia Serra, friends since their days at the Royal College of Art in 2008, have collaborated once again under the Analogia Project to bring visitors to the cusp of materiality and immateriality with Analogia #003 on exhibit at Ventura Lambrate during this year's Milan Design Week.

Using variably sized Merino wool set on a grid of fishing lines, the two have recreated a sketch of home in the physical world. The exhibit is so convincing that many visitors are first stunned, Mancuso and Serra tell me. "The most common reaction is a sense of surprise, they look confused and disoriented by what they are seeing."

What the visitors see is a collection of brushstrokes somehow seemingly suspended in air. The effect is ethereal and we are forced to reconsider how the imagined makes it way to becoming real. "It represents our way of reflecting about the different way an everyday object could be seen and their relationship with the space," say the designers.

A group of third-year industrial design students at the University of Louisiana Lafayette, led by professor Ben Bush, have developed a bicycle-based aluminum can crushing machine. Called the pRecycle Machine, it will be debuted tomorrow at Louisiana's Festival International in Lafayette, as part of a local Keep Lafayette Beautiful initiative.

The pRECYCLE machine is a human-powered can-crushing machine meant to recycle aluminum cans and catch the attention of festivalgoers who have a lot of cans to throw away. It looks like an ordinary bicycle in some ways, but it actually can crush up to 900 cans every five minutes. Those interested can pedal by themselves, or let one of the students who designed the machine pedal instead. Either way, participants will be contributing to the recycling effort and a new push to cut down on the waste generated by most festivals.

...Bush said the bike is equipped with two piston-like arms that collect the cans into a giant hopper and then crush them. The bike is powered by industrial design students who plan to ride it right in the middle of Pac Sans Souci across from Recycled Cycles, a sponsor of the project. As an added bonus, festivalgoers can also go for a spin if they want.

Sadly, neither local papers, U. of L.'s website, Flickr, YouTube, or anyone seems to have a single image or video of the contraption. We know there's got to be some U. of L. ID students reading this, or Lafayette locals, so please head to the festival this weekend and shoot us something! The pRecycle Machine will be situated at the Parc Sans Souci, across from the Recycled Cycles bike shop on Vermilion Street.

It's often tricky to extract design lessons from World War II. Documentaries on the subject can quickly veer into boys-and-their-toys adulations of how fast this plane was, how tough that tank was, how many bullets this machinegun could spit out. So we were happy to see the intelligent, balanced and edifying "Blueprints of War" episode of the BBC's excellent The Genius of Design program. Although the show kicks off with sensationalist quotes like "This is a program about death and product design" and "Here's what they don't teach at art school: When nations go to war, design is in the front line," the viewer is rewarded with a comprehensive look at the state of wartime design in America, the UK, Germany and Russia, and there's enough design history meat for even a pacifist to sink their teeth into.

At one hour in length the program is too long for you to sneak into a workday, but we highly urge you to at least queue it up and steal snippets of viewing time when you can. (I viewed it in four 15-minute sittings.) You'll be rewarded with an improved understanding of international design history. For example: Consider that today, German design and manufacturing is admired the world over, and they're one of the few wealthy nations with robust design and manufacturing industries. So it's difficult to comprehend that there was a time, over a century ago, when things designed and built in Germany were considered junk. The program explains, succinctly, the Deutscher Werkbund (German Work Federation) initiative that created that transition. The examination of early German industrial design history is always tough because historians must treat with the repellency of Nazi ideology to even get at the subject matter, but the BBC does an admirable job here.

You'll also learn lots of interesting design history tidbits, like how the fearsome Tiger tank was the result of a design competition that Ferdinand Porsche lost, and how a flatpack submachine gun was produced from a British toy factory. You'll see manufacturing innovations like pre-fabricated Liberty ships, and ultrafast British bombers that needed to be constructed out of bent plywood due to a materials shortage. (That latter plane, the world's first stealth bomber as its wooden body rendered it invisible to radar, is enthused to be "the finest piece of furniture this country's ever built" by one interview subject.) You'll see the influence of Henry Ford in overseas tank factories, and the Russians' "clash in design philosophy" with the Germans vis-à-vis tank models.

There are a lot more things covered in that hour, too many to list here. But perhaps most rewardingly, you'll see, as the episode winds up in an Eames house, how Charles and Ray's furniture that we all came to know was made possible by their necessary wartime contributions.

Hit the jump to watch it in full; if you can't get to it today, bookmark it for the weekend!

We bumped into the inimitable Sebastian Errázuriz on our very first excursion in Milan, some six hours after we'd landed at Malpensa, and he was as amiable as ever, noting that he would send a few projects our way. The "Chicken Chair" is as cheeky as any of his work, a distinctly '99%' take on a dining chair (as opposed to his last project).

If the piece itself isn't enough of a statement in itself, the Brooklyn-based designer elaborates:

The Chicken Chair came as a quick thought out of the blue. I drew it in the back of a business card and showed it to my wife and friends but they all thought it was dumb. Despite their remarks I was obsessed with the little drawing of my chicken chair and continued to carry it around with me in my wallet.

I don't know why I loved the Chicken Chair. Maybe it brought me back memories as a kid in South America seeing some chickens running on the dirt in someones back yard. Maybe it reminded me of "The Fantastic Mr. Fox" by Roald Dahl.

I create furniture pieces that incorporate conceptual and sculptural themes in a functional piece. I work a lot investigating existential issues of life and death. I have used bird taxidermy in my furniture many times, but never a live one. There was something very beautiful with the idea of bringing actual life into a lifeless furniture piece. If wooden strips are commonly used in the back rest of the chair, why couldn't those same strips close out the virtual space under our legs and create a cage for a live animal to live in? In my mind it made sense, it seemed so beautiful, obvious yet simple.

It had to be a chicken—I don't know why, but a raccoon, rabbit or dog caged under a chair would be plain wrong. I guess chickens are either always running around or caged, therefore if you where to place a cage on top of them you would probably also need to sit on the chair to avoid the chicken from toppling over the chair and escaping...

Exclusive video and more after the jump...

The sophistication of Scott Langer's graphic design work belies his age. At just 22-years-old he's a graduate of Art Center College of Design, a program that traditionally attracts older students and weeds out the young and unready. During his undergad, Scott studied at The Gerrit Rietveld Academie as part of a student exchange, interned for Project Projects in New York and, during his last two semesters, freelanced for Marc Atlan Design. In the Fall he'll begin his MFA at Yale.

One of the things I most appreciate about Scott's work is that once you get past the elegant and refined composition of his books, the content is equally as considered. Instead using any old text lying around to apply graphics too (yes, this is a common student practice), Scott chooses content that informs his typographic choices. For example, both the booklet and the typeface developed for "A Code Decoded" explore how telegraphy was a precursor to the text or instant message.

"Telegraphy, as the first true global network, permitted applications such as message routing, social networks (between Morse operators - with gossip and even marriages among operators via telegraph being observed), instant messaging, cryptography and text coding, abbreviated language slang, network security experts, hackers, wire fraud, mailing lists, spamming, e-commerce, stock exchange minute-by-minute reports via ticker tape machines, and many others. The parallels between the first global network are abundant.

"I was interested in looking at how problems were solved in the telegraphic network and how those solutions could relate to the Internet. This resulted in the development of a typeface that restored Internet privacy through the use of a cryptographic code. The code is interspersed with the story of the telegraph and the Victorian Internet. As the story progresses parts of the typography are replaced with the code and by the end it is entirely in the code typeface, forcing the viewer to learn the code to understand the text."

You go into design because you want to create things, and you go into industrial design to create things that will be mass-produced. And mass production, by definition, involves factories and marketing people and finance guys and sales forces, and everyone gets a say. So you quickly learn that unless you're a design superstar, you don't really get to create things on your own terms. Unless you keep things small.

That's why I find this story so fascinating. Joel Allen was a Canada-based software developer who bottomed out financially after his company went broke in the '00s. He taught himself carpentry, and soon set his sights on building a killer treehouse. The rudiments of a design were provided by architecture student friends, and Allen subsequently set about making his dream a reality.

The story is insane on so many levels. First of all, the treehouse is illegally sited on "Crown land," or what's known as State land in the United States—government-protected forests. Secondly, Allen had to hand-carry all of the materials out to the site (and carry the construction waste back out to fulfill his goal of keeping the site as pristine as possible). Thirdly, when his construction was interrupted by helicopter traffic from the nearby Olympics, he had to partially dismantle the structure and camoflauge it to avoid detection. Fourthly, building something structurally sound—let alone level—on a tree clinging to a sharply-sloped mountainside is an engineering feat you'd expect to farm out to a firm specializing in such. Allen pulled it off largely by himself and later, with the help of a girlfriend.

Infographics are a powerful tool for communicating vast sums of information, but a far more compelling way to express data is through the unnamed combination of number-crunching, cartography and digital imaging that we first saw in Aaron Koblin's 2009 project (which we dubbed "The United States of Airplane Traffic").

Three years later we have an even more comprehensive version of this, done by Canadian anthropologist Felix Pharand. Pharand spent 13 years inputting not only every flight path on Earth, but every road and shipping route as well, using publicly available data and a home computer. The result is this astonishingly beautiful film entitled Anthropocene, presented chronologically and starting 250 years ago. Watch it full-screen:

Experienced Car Designer (Interior or Exterior)
Calty Design Research
Ann Arbor, Michigan

Calty Design Research, Toyota's North America design studio providing innovative concept and production design solutions for Toyota, Lexus and Scion vehicles, is currently seeking experienced automotive exterior and interior production designers at their growing Ann Arbor, Michigan Production design studio. The designers will create, present and develop interior and/or exterior designs for Toyota's North American models; Conduct research to support development and design concept; and Coordinate the development of 3D models.

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The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.

Celebrating it's 175th Anniversary, London's Royal College of Arts (RCA) staged the stellar show Paradise during Milan's annual design week. Over 90 students and recent graduates from the Design Products program spread out on three floors and the courtyard of a former school to, "contemplate the discovery of something or somewhere wondrous."

"Rallied by the desire for change and compelled by dissatisfaction with the present, RCA students will author their own atlases of paradise, landscaped by different paths in the quest for a better future." Wonderfully, the future is paved with process-driven material solutions of the present as exemplified by five of our favorite projects from Paradise: Polyfloss, Sea Chair, Sedimentation Ceramics, Solar Sintering and NSEPS Furniture (which we covered earlier this week). Each of these projects explore new processes to introduce a second life for the materials of today. Paradise looks pretty bright as we follow these young designers into the future.

Silo Studio's NSEPS Table Sculpture

The Polyfloss Factory is a simple enough idea: shredded plastic waste is fed through the chamber of a repurposed cotton candy machine to spin out polypropylene fibers. The "polyfloss" is then remelted to create new objects. Polyfloss gives plastics a new life through micro-manufacturing techniques and with a rainbow of color options, the material has been used to create decorative interior objects, textile-based wearables, and even headphones. The project is by Nick Paget, Emile De Visscher, Christophe Machet and Audrey Gaulard from the MA Innovation Design Engineering program.

As I noted in an earlier post about design student Stefania Nicolosi's "Benvenuto," bicycle accessories and clotheshangers are low-hanging fruit for young designers' end-of-term projects. Oliver Staiano, a BA candidate in Nottingham Trent University's Product Design program, combines the two (specifically, his passion for the former with the form of the latter) with "Cycle Hangers."

The set of three includes parts taken from the wheel, frame and handlebar consequently being the names for each of the three products. Each of them are finished with quality wood and use minimal materials. The hooks are created from spokes taken from the wheels and most parts are held together purely by the tight fit as they slot into each other.

Imagine how embedded sensors, personal digital technologies, and live data can be used to promote the goals of PlaNYC; Bloomberg's bold vision for a sustainable New York.

This is exactly what fourteen SVA Interaction Design students did throughout a 7-week Design in Public Spaces class. The course was led by Jill Nussbaum, Executive Director of Product Design at the Barbarian Group, in collaboration with PlaNYC.

Throughout January and February 2012, student groups worked through design phases including: primary research, concept development, and user journey creation. The results tackled challenging issues including community supported agriculture, landfill park conversion and urban farming.

Seedspeak
Project by: Sarah Adams, Tony Chu, Sana Rao

A service making finding and joining a CSA easy.

Investigations into food supply in the city lead to a focus towards Community-Supported Agriculture, an alternative, locally-based socio-economic model of agriculture and food distribution. Through speaking with supermarket shoppers and CSA organizers the group discovered a growing demand for locally grown produce, resulting in long CSA waiting lists.

Seedspeak is a website and interactive subway advertising campaign that makes it easy to find a CSA nearby. By aggregating & publicizing available spots, Seedspeak promotes growth of Community-Supported Agriculture as a viable local alternative when purchasing groceries.

From a design standpoint, how do you increase the information made available to the driver of a car? More and more cars are coming with built-in dashboard screens, but it's obvious that anything that takes the driver's eyes off the road is a bad idea. Audio cues provided by turn-by-turn GPS are a step in the right direction. Another non-visual method of communication, now being experimented with by a research team at Carnegie Mellon, is to use steering wheels equipped with haptic feedback mechanisms.

In conjunction with AT&T Labs, Carnegie Mellon's Human Computer Interaction Institute researchers are using mechanics more sophisticated that current iterations of the technology, which can merely vibrate:

The Cooper-Hewitt announced the winners of the National Design Awards this morning. The NDA, which is in its 13th year, typically recognizes finalists in each category, but this year Cooper-Hewitt is doing away with finalists to keep the focus solely on the work of the winners.

Out of thousands of nominees the NDA has recognized some phenomenal work this year, especially in the Corporate and Institutional Achievement category, which was awarded to Design that Matters, a "nonprofit design company that partners with social entrepreneurs to design products that address basic needs in developing countries." Some of their projects include a projector for nighttime adult literacy education in Africa, a low-cast neonatal incubator that uses spare car parts and a phototherapy device for treating newborn jaundice in Vietnam.

NeoNurture, the "Car Parts" Incubator has received a lot of attention in recent years. You might have seen it on display at Cooper-Hewitt's "Why Design Now?" exhibition as part of the National Design Triennial. It successfully addresses several needs in developing and rural countries, namely the lack of training to properly use and care for expensive medical equipment. In their research, Design that Matters found that "up to 98% of donated medical equipment in developing countries is broken within five years." They also found one hospital in rural Nepal that "hadn't changed the filters in their incubators in over five years, when filters are meant to be changed every six months."

It's not so much that the parts are expensive to replace, but that not many people know how to repair them. However, Design that Matters found that the one thing that does tend to get fixed everywhere in the world is cars, so they designed an incubator that someone who knew how to repair a car could fix just as easily.

"NeoNurture takes advantage of an abundant local resource in developing countries: car parts and the knowledge of auto technicians. This incubator leverages the existing supply chain of the auto industry and the technical understanding of local car mechanics. Among other components, it uses sealed-beam headlights as a heating element, a dashboard fan for convective heat circulation, signal lights and a door chime serve as alarms, and a motorcycle battery and car cigarette lighter provide backup power during incubator transport and power outages."