Enzo Mari on Film: Artek's Short Documentary of Autoprogettazione

September 2, 2010, 7:34 am

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"Cheap, high quality, long lasting." These are the words that Enzo Mari bluntly lists as main goals for his Autoprogettazione project. That, in addition to, "If someone tried to build something, they would learn something" are the simple maxims that summarize the seemingly simple results of this far-sighted project, originally conceived in 1974 and now being revived through production of Mari's Sedia 1 chair by Artek.

In celebration of their 75th anniversary, Artek has partnered with Mari to 'produce' the Sedia 1 chair, meaning they are selling a kit that includes a stack of wood (pre-cut pine boards), nails, and blueprints for the chair. Along with the project, Artek released a lovely little documentary, "Enzo Mari for Artek: Homage to Autoprogettazione," which debuted at the Triennale in Milan in April, and was shown at an event at the Conran Shop in NYC last Wednesday. The film allows Mari himself to tell the story of the project. Alternately smoking a cigar and getting down to business building a Sedia 1 himself, the 78-y.o. working designer recounts why he started the project, and why he is thrilled (in that low-key straight-faced Mari way) that Artek chose to produce the Sedia 1 now.

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My Ford Touch Driver Interface: An Interview with Iain Roberts and Gary Braddock

September 2, 2010, 7:46 am

≫ Next: Full Circle's two-part dish brush gets a handle on the waste problem

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Guest post by Russell Maschmeyer.

On the final afternoon of Adaptive Path's UX Week, Iain Roberts (Partner and Co-Leader of IDEO Chicago) presented his team's remarkable work on My Ford Touch, Ford's new driver interface platform. I sat down with Iain and Gary Braddock (Ford's Chief Interior Designer) earlier that morning to discuss their research, prototyping, and production process and got a sneak peak at Gary's Lincoln prototype.

My Ford Touch is rolling out into vehicles next year, beginning with the 2011 Lincoln MKX and subsequently the entire Lincoln line, followed shortly by the Ford and Mercury lines. It's the most comprehensive update to driver interfaces the market has seen since the automatic transmission. The partnership between IDEO and Ford was aimed a producing a stronger connected platform for Ford drivers--to re-think the driver interface experience from the ground up. The results are pretty compelling.

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Full Circle's two-part dish brush gets a handle on the waste problem

September 2, 2010, 8:20 am

≫ Next: It's Official: Rama Chorpash to direct Parson's Product Design Program

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Hammer 1.0 was a rock. Hammer 2.0 was a rock attached to a piece of wood, and the caveman that came up with that one must have been pretty pleased; he was the first ergonomicist.

Today we have tons of tools featuring a handle of one material and a head made of another, but there's an ecological problem with this design: The two things can wear out at different rates. In my lifetime I've thrown away scores of toothbrushes because the bristles were spent, but I've never thrown one away because the handle wore out.

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It's Official: Rama Chorpash to direct Parson's Product Design Program

September 2, 2010, 8:28 am

≫ Next: Fripp Design: The medium is the message (even when the medium is a shipping pallet)

≪ Previous: Full Circle's two-part dish brush gets a handle on the waste problem

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After an eight month international search, Core-fave Rama Chorpash was selected to join Parsons The New School for Design School of Constructed Environments (SCE). He'll be taking a tenure track position as Associate Professor of Product Design, and as the Director of Product Design. As Director, he will be charged to help create an integrated academic vision for SCE, including the MFA in Product Design and other new programs. And though he'll surely have his hands full, Rama will still be running his Rama Chorpash Design consultancy.

You'll recall Rama's star turn in our Design, Wit, and the Creative Act event (we miss you Tobi!), and you can read more about Rama in this Nice NYTimes article on Rama from 2006 here.

Congrats Rama!

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Fripp Design: The medium is the message (even when the medium is a shipping pallet)

September 2, 2010, 8:29 am

≫ Next: Las Vegas carpets offensively designed to keep your eyes off the floor?

≪ Previous: It's Official: Rama Chorpash to direct Parson's Product Design Program

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This is pretty nuts-and-bolts ID, but I believe we're looking here at an early, primitive version of a design that we'll see more refined versions of in the future. The Pallet Sign, by U.K.-based Fripp Design & Research, is a simple series of clips that cover the sides of shipping pallets and provide a surface for signage, angled upwards so standing consumers can read them. Why?

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Las Vegas carpets offensively designed to keep your eyes off the floor?

September 2, 2010, 8:41 am

≫ Next: TokyoFlash design competition for unusual timepieces

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These days there are high-end hotels in Las Vegas that will sell you new versions of the luxurious sheets, pillows, and even toiletries that they stock their rooms with. But the casinos on their ground floors are a different story; no one wants to furnish their house with the gaudy trappings surrounding a roulette table.

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TokyoFlash design competition for unusual timepieces

September 2, 2010, 9:13 am

≫ Next: London Design Festival Preview: Trays from Around the World at the Jasper Morrison Shop

≪ Previous: Las Vegas carpets offensively designed to keep your eyes off the floor?

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TokyoFlash, that manufacturer of eye-catching, bizarrely-complicated timepieces, is seeking new watch design concepts through their Design Challenge. The language is murky as to whether or not winning submissions will see actual production, but the entries are coming in hard and fast all the same.

Think you can out-weird these guys? Enter the competition here, or peruse the incoming entries here.

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London Design Festival Preview: Trays from Around the World at the Jasper Morrison Shop

September 2, 2010, 9:30 am

≫ Next: PACT + Creative Growth's New Underwear Collection

≪ Previous: TokyoFlash design competition for unusual timepieces

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This year at the London Design Festival, the Shop at Jasper Morrison's studio, full of super normal household objects, will display a selection of trays from around the world— a selected few are pictured above. Morrison will also launch three new products of his own, The Country Trainer, designed for Camper; a telephone for Punkt, and a platinum grey ceramic R5.5 chronograph for Rado.

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PACT + Creative Growth's New Underwear Collection

September 2, 2010, 10:20 am

≫ Next: One month left to enter the Buckminster Fuller Design Challenge

≪ Previous: London Design Festival Preview: Trays from Around the World at the Jasper Morrison Shop

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We love the new collection released bye eco-friendly undies line PACT in partnership with the Creative Growth, a contemporary art center in Oakland that "focuses on unlocking the creativity of adults artists with developmental disabilities."

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One month left to enter the Buckminster Fuller Design Challenge

September 2, 2010, 10:42 am

≫ Next: Ovale: Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec's New Tableware for Alessi

≪ Previous: PACT + Creative Growth's New Underwear Collection

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You've got one month left to enter this year's Buckminster Fuller Design Challenge, witha monster prize of $100,000 each year for "comprehensive solutions that radically advance human well-being and ecosystem health."

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Ovale: Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec's New Tableware for Alessi

September 2, 2010, 2:27 pm

≫ Next: Continuum and PepsiCo Announce Innovation Fellowship Program

≪ Previous: One month left to enter the Buckminster Fuller Design Challenge

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Guest post by Phil Patton.

Surprisingly self-effacing among the high profile wit and higher profile designers of Alessi, the new Ovale line of tableware from Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec may sum up the current design zeitgeist.

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Continuum and PepsiCo Announce Innovation Fellowship Program

September 2, 2010, 3:02 pm

≫ Next: Open for Branding Week 6: We Heard You!

≪ Previous: Ovale: Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec's New Tableware for Alessi

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This fall, you could be one of six clever individuals working side-by-side with 24 top PepsiCo leaders, helping them rethink and work through key business challenges. The company has partnered with Continuum to help them run an eight-session fellowship problem where they will bring in innovative, interdisciplinary thinkers to work on small teams with Continuum coaches to tackle real-world design challenges, moving through the process from user-research to rapid prototyping.

The first session will begin on October 15th and continue for eight consecutive weeks. In addition to the an opportunity to participate in the workshops, the six selected applicants will receive a $4,000 dollar stipend. Sessions will be held in New York City, Purchase, NY (PepsiCo HQ), and Continuum's Boston office.

You must apply before September 15th. For an application and guidelines, email innovationfellows (at) pepsico (dot) com.

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Open for Branding Week 6: We Heard You!

September 2, 2010, 3:25 pm

≫ Next: Mobile-building interaction in Linz

≪ Previous: Continuum and PepsiCo Announce Innovation Fellowship Program

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Continuum continues their series Open for Branding, where they are sharing, from start to finish, their latest branding project for the new, nomadic Design Museum Boston.

Wow. Last week, we posted our Design Museum Boston branding concepts for feedback, and more than 1700 people checked out our survey and 274 completed it. The greatest part: everyone aligned--Continuum, Design Museum Boston, and you—on which directions were the strongest.

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Mobile-building interaction in Linz

September 3, 2010, 3:03 am

≫ Next: I.D. Magazine Annual Design Review Party

≪ Previous: Open for Branding Week 6: We Heard You!

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Alexander Wiethoff of the Department for Informatics at LMU Munich (and a former Experientia intern - disclosure) has developed with the Univeristy of Saarbrücken a mobile device application that enables a radically new form of interaction with buildings that will be shown Sunday and Monday at Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria.

"By combining a recently developed mobile software application with the multimedia facade of the ARS Electronica building [...] we developed two prototypes: in the first application, users can paint interactively on the building using touch input on the mobile device. In a second application, users are able to solve a jigsaw puzzle displayed on the facade."

via LIFT and Alexander Wiethoff

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I.D. Magazine Annual Design Review Party

September 3, 2010, 7:31 am

≫ Next: Charles Pyott's designs spin records and wheels in new ways

≪ Previous: Mobile-building interaction in Linz

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ID Magazine may have shut its doors this past year , but, as promised, the Annual Design Review stayed put, celebrating the best of design with its 2010 awards at the AIGA center in New York.

Nicely packed for a Wednesday evening in NYC, the festivities showcased a variety of work from product to packaging in the minimalist showroom design of Manuel Miranda and Jiwon Lee. The duo's basic kraft paper-and-masking-tape-covered-pedestal installation reminded us of the simple solutions many winning designs captured (faves that put a smile on our face were Homebase's Grow Your Own gardening product, the concept Coat Check chair and the Meyerhoffer Surfboard). While the back wall display of some 60 I.D. covers served as visual epitaph to one of the most followed design publications from the last 50 years, the products in the room reminded us that though the printed page might be gone, but the conversation still continues.

You can see the whole lot of winners here.

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Charles Pyott's designs spin records and wheels in new ways

September 3, 2010, 7:44 am

≫ Next: Helping people in making their homes more energy efficient

≪ Previous: I.D. Magazine Annual Design Review Party

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L.A.-based designer Charles Pyott's been getting lots of blog love lately for his portable Linos record player concept, above; another lesser-known project of his worth checking out is the DAWS (Dynamically Augmenting Wheel System, below).

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Helping people in making their homes more energy efficient

September 3, 2010, 7:51 am

≫ Next: Studiobility debuts new products at today's Maison et Objet show in Paris

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The Design Council has recently run a design workship with the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) to look at how to encourage the adoption of home insulation and other low-carbon home modifications.

A joint proposal How can we help people make their homes more energy efficient? (pdf) shows how user-centred design research has helped DECC understand how consumers feel about installing cavity wall insulation or lagging their loft and it shows that people feel disengaged with the overarching environmental issues.

>> Read article

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Studiobility debuts new products at today's Maison et Objet show in Paris

September 3, 2010, 8:02 am

≫ Next: This innovative house design is great for Shimane, Japan. It would never fly in Brooklyn

≪ Previous: Helping people in making their homes more energy efficient

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Studiobility, the Icelandic design studio headed up by Gudrun Lilja, has launched a new partially-eponymous brand: Bility. Today at the Maison et Object design show in Paris, Lilja will take the wraps off of new Bility items like this Heklad Stal shelf made from polycoated steel:

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This innovative house design is great for Shimane, Japan. It would never fly in Brooklyn

September 3, 2010, 8:57 am

≫ Next: Videos of home-computing-in-the-future concepts

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If you live in Brooklyn, the bane of your peaceful residential existence (or the source of your entertainment, depending on your disposition) is noisy teenagers hanging out on the stoop. So here we present The Last House I'd Ever Build in Brooklyn: Y+M Design Office's Stairs House.

The entire house, as you can see, is basically one gigantic stoop. Very cool for a beachside family property in Japan, not so cool when you live in Bushwick and would have to spend every evening chasing guys named Re-Re, Bombs-a-Poppin and Tommy Karate off of your goddamn roof while threatening to call cops that, let's face it, have better things to do.

Hit the jump for more shots.

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Videos of home-computing-in-the-future concepts

September 3, 2010, 9:17 am

≫ Next: London Design Festival 2010 Preview: Three New Design Districts

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Here's a couple of interesting videos done by Austin-based design studio Zoticus Design, displaying computing-of-the-future concepts that demonstrate client Freescale's networking prowess. In the second video, I dig the way the woman sends info to her tablet around 1:15; the first video is otherwise the more interesting one, but I kept thinking "Why in God's name is that little girl wearing so much makeup?"

Freescale - Consumer from Zoticus Design on Vimeo.

Freescale - Industrial from Zoticus Design on Vimeo.

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