NY Design Week 2013: The Underground Furniture Scene at Noho Next

May 19, 2013, 5:45 pm

≫ Next: NY Design Week 2013: Sight Unseen Presents the Underground Design Scene at Noho Next

≪ Previous: Fabrican't Hardly Wait: Manel Torres' Long Road to Commercializing Spray-On Fabric

Now in its fourth year, Noho Design District has taken on a few different permutations over the years, encompassing various pop-up exhibitions from a tiny Japanese butcher shop to a four-story lumber company headquarters (which happen to be on the same block, no less), reflecting both the changes within the neighborhood and the landscape of American design as a whole. Once again, our friends Jill Singer and Monica Khemsurov of Sight Unseen have masterminded a neighborhood-wide celebration of young and emerging designers. In addition to partnering with several co-conspirators such as Future Perfect and American Design Club, they've also curated the flagship Noho Next group exhibition, featuring 13 handpicked studios that comprise a showcase of design talent.

The exhibition took place over the weekend at Subculture, the event space in the basement of the 45 Bleecker Street Theater, which hosted Tom Dixon's London Underground exhibition last year. (I don't know if I'm dating myself with the reference, but I remember going to the Crosby Connection sandwich shop when they occupied the cafe a few years back...). Although it happens to be closing as I write this, hopefully our documentation can serve as future reference.

Misha Kahn, Brooklyn, NY

Misha Kahn

Misha Kahn × Chris Wolston

(more...)

↧

NY Design Week 2013: Sight Unseen Presents the Underground Design Scene at Noho Next

May 20, 2013, 5:45 pm

≫ Next: Make Digital UX History at Hewlett-Packard in Palo Alto, California

≪ Previous: NY Design Week 2013: The Underground Furniture Scene at Noho Next

Misha Kahn, Brooklyn, NY

Misha Kahn

Misha Kahn × Chris Wolston

(more...)

↧

Make Digital UX History at Hewlett-Packard in Palo Alto, California

May 21, 2013, 5:00 am

≫ Next: Sketchnotes of IIT Institute of Design Strategy Conference 2013, by Stefani Bachetti

≪ Previous: NY Design Week 2013: Sight Unseen Presents the Underground Design Scene at Noho Next

wants a Jr. Interaction Designer
in Palo Alto, California

You know how to translate complex business needs into well-organized, persuasive, and delightful web experiences, and Hewlett-Packard is about to re-invent the industry. Are you ready to drive that change?

As the Junior Interaction Designer, you will design a world-class HP digital ecosystem tying the HP web presence, mobile, and social together into effective marketing and communication. Bring your thought leadership skills, your passionate advocacy for the customer-user, and your desire to become an essential member of a smart, nimble team.

Apply Now

(more...)

↧

Sketchnotes of IIT Institute of Design Strategy Conference 2013, by Stefani Bachetti

May 21, 2013, 7:00 am

≫ Next: NY Design Week 2013: Introducing INTRO NY

≪ Previous: Make Digital UX History at Hewlett-Packard in Palo Alto, California

Reporting by Stefani Bachetti

The IIT Institute of Design held its annual Strategy Conference last week in downtown Chicago, a two-day event full of inspiring and interesting talks about using design thinking and innovation to solve complex issues. Socially conscious innovation was a common topic this year, from improving agricultural techniques in Africa to enabling University of Chicago students and professionals to collaboratively tackle major problems in healthcare, as well as revitalizing abandoned lands in Detroit with a community development and agriculture program.

Check out the sketchnotes below summarizing the ideas behind this year's event. You'll find synopses on speakers like Carl Bass with Autodesk, Catherine Casserly of Creative Commons, Stepan Pachikov, founder of Evernote, Bruce Nussbaum and Barry Schwartz from Swarthmore College, among others.

Click to view full-size images.

Carl Bass, President and CEO, Autodesk

Mark Tebbe, Operating Executive, Lake Capital / Stepan Pachikov, Founder, Evernote

Amory Lovins, Cofounder and Chief Scientist, Rocky Mountain Institute / Kim Erwin, Assistant Professor, IIT Institute of Design

(more...)

↧

NY Design Week 2013: Introducing INTRO NY

May 21, 2013, 9:11 am

≫ Next: NY Design Week 2013: Introducing Intro NY

≪ Previous: Sketchnotes of IIT Institute of Design Strategy Conference 2013, by Stefani Bachetti

Design agency smallpond looked to go big time for the inaugural NYCxDesign festival, entering the fray with the support of London's Designjunction. The new INTRO NY show was modest in the best way possible, a showcase of smaller, mostly non-NYC design brands in a well-lit, street-level space in the heart of Little Italy (there was audible din from a parade two blocks over when I visited on Saturday morning).

If on-site retail—a curated neo-utility pop-up shop—and refreshments seem to be par for the course at design shows these days, the backyard pop-up cafe was a nice touch (though I imagine it was rained out on Sunday).

In addition to furnishing the patio, San Francisco's Council made a strong showing with products new and old. They've brought a handful of young designers into the fold since the brand debuted at ICFF in 2007, including Chad Wright, who was happy to discuss the "Twig" chair that he designed for the brand.

The "Periodic" table by One & Co. was displayed front and center

The new "Index" series by Jonah Takagi for Council; Wright's "Twig" chair at right

The "Divis" dining table by Mike and Maaike

(more...)

↧

NY Design Week 2013: Introducing Intro NY

May 21, 2013, 9:30 am

≫ Next: To Advance Micro-Living Designs, Have Design Students Live in Tiny, Unfurnished Spaces. Yea or Nay?

≪ Previous: NY Design Week 2013: Introducing INTRO NY

The "Periodic" table by One & Co. was displayed front and center
(more...)

↧

To Advance Micro-Living Designs, Have Design Students Live in Tiny, Unfurnished Spaces. Yea or Nay?

May 21, 2013, 11:00 am

≫ Next: Quora's David Cole Settles the Apple Logo / Golden Ratio Issue Once and For All

≪ Previous: NY Design Week 2013: Introducing Intro NY

You've heard the expression that [American] football is a game of inches. So, increasingly, is living in Manhattan.

This video of Luke Clark Tyler's apartment (captured by Kirsten Dirksen's Fair Companies) has racked up nearly two million hits, and for good reason: Tyler downsized from his previous 96-square-foot palace to shoehorn his life into a 78-square-foot studio. But what really makes this video distinct from other "tiny living" vids we've seen, and what should be of interest to the Core77 reader, is that Tyler is a trained architect who can design, build and install his own things, like his sideways Murphy Bed.

Also observe the little details, like how he's using eyehooks as toothbrush- and razor-holders and how the bottle-stays on his shelves are just wooden dowels held in place by two carefully-placed sheetrock screws on either side.

This is giving us a potentially cruel idea for design education—but before we get to that, watch the vid:

(more...)

↧

Quora's David Cole Settles the Apple Logo / Golden Ratio Issue Once and For All

May 21, 2013, 2:16 pm

≫ Next: One, Two, Three

≪ Previous: To Advance Micro-Living Designs, Have Design Students Live in Tiny, Unfurnished Spaces. Yea or Nay?

While I understand the appeal of the golden ratio as a rational approach to aesthetics most people would probably agree that it's impossible to reduce beauty to a series of numeric relationships. Yet the myth persists, and it should come as no surprise that these putatively ideal proportions might hypothetically inform graphic design as well—after all, the very premise of digital software is to allow us to create vector images with mathematically unerring accuracy.

And of all the countless logos that we see on a daily basis, Apple's ideogrammatic fruit is a leading candidate for a hypothetically golden (or hypothetically rational, as it were) logomark. Fed up with the conjecture, Quora's David Cole recently decided to investigate.

We won't ruin it for you, but it's a fascinating read. (Pseudo-spoiler alert, Cole ultimately cites Helvetica as a canonical case of optical appeal over geometry: "...real visual rhythm is hurt by precision. This fact is where we get the saying in design: if it looks right, it is right."

Somewhat related (or at least obliquely relevant) if you're into this sort of thing: recent Art Center grad Andrew Kim reports from his meeting with the one and only Dieter Rams.

Hat-tip to Jayna Wallace

(more...)

↧

One, Two, Three

May 21, 2013, 3:28 pm

≫ Next: Thinking Outside the Build Platform: MATAERIAL's 'Anti-Gravity Object Modeling' 3D Printer

≪ Previous: Quora's David Cole Settles the Apple Logo / Golden Ratio Issue Once and For All

Hello Design Fans - Here is a wide image to kick off our new jumbo-tron Core77 format. Math is important, make it work for you, stay in school. Check, check. Keep your head down. Just a taste for now. - Edit: For those of you who are interested, the image is from Pratt's 1967 yearbook - a fair spell before Core77 was there - but still a favorite - Math: it's fundamental. Found here- p.s. if you have one of these we would love to buy it from you. Edit 2, : "The Fibonacci Sequence/ Reservoir Dogs Poster You Never Knew You Needed" Until Now.(more...)

↧

Thinking Outside the Build Platform: MATAERIAL's 'Anti-Gravity Object Modeling' 3D Printer

May 22, 2013, 1:00 am

≫ Next: Carve Out Your Own Niche with Goodbaby in Boston, Massachusetts

≪ Previous: One, Two, Three

Earlier this year, we came across the 3Doodler, a pen that allows the user to sketch far beyond the bounds a material substrate, namely paper. (Boston's WobbleWorks had more than quadrupled their $30,000 funding goal when we posted about the product at launch; by the time the campaign wrapped up a month later, they'd raised a whopping $2.3m)

Led by Petr Novikov and Saša Jokić, a team of researchers from the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) and Joris Laarman Studio in Amsterdam have developed a new, patent-pending additive manufacturing technology, known as MATAERIAL. (Pun lover though I may be, it took me a moment to get the name.) The machine is essentially an articulating arm that can create three-dimensional objects on any surface, independently of a build platform.

By using innovative extrusion technology we are now able to neutralize the effect of gravity during the course of the printing process. This method gives us a flexibility to create truly natural objects by making 3D curves instead of 2D layers. Unlike 2D layers that are ignorant to the structure of the object, the 3D curves can follow exact stress lines of a custom shape. Finally, our new out of the box printing method can help manufacture structures of almost any size and shape.

(more...)

↧

Carve Out Your Own Niche with Goodbaby in Boston, Massachusetts

May 22, 2013, 5:00 am

≫ Next: A Boatload of Trouble? America's Other Hidden Oil Reserves: Shipwrecks

≪ Previous: Thinking Outside the Build Platform: MATAERIAL's 'Anti-Gravity Object Modeling' 3D Printer

wants a Product Designer
in Boston, Massachusetts

Goodbaby, the #1 juvenile products manufacturer in the World, servicing customer brands throughout North America, Europe, and Asia, wants you to contribute contribute to their process with your own personality and unique skill set.

You'll be working in an open studio in Boston's South End with a relaxed atmosphere and a multidisciplinary environment where people are expected to take ownership of their projects with minimal management. You'll need to bring 5-7 years professional experience, preferably with experience in juvenile or automotive products and a great, easy going attitude and personality.

Apply Now

(more...)

↧

A Boatload of Trouble? America's Other Hidden Oil Reserves: Shipwrecks

May 22, 2013, 7:00 am

≫ Next: NY Design Week 2013: Let There Be Light - Lighting at ICFF

≪ Previous: Carve Out Your Own Niche with Goodbaby in Boston, Massachusetts

This is crazy—see those yellow dots on the map? Those are the locations of some 20,000 known shipwrecks off the coast of America, all mapped by the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration as part of their Remediation of Underwater Legacy Environmental Threats (RULET) project. Many of those yellow dots are older sailing ships or coal-fired vessels, and it's no big deal if those sit on the bottom of the ocean; others, however, are World-War-II-era oil tankers torpedoed by the freaking Nazis.

Those tankers, and some other non-wartime wrecks carrying large volumes of oil, are a problem. It's only a matter of time before corrosion starts to release thousands of tons of oil from those ships into the ocean. Some 87 wrecks have been added to a national risk assessment report, with 36 of them deemed "high priority for a Worst Case Discharge." And these are just the boats that NOAA knows about; they estimate "it is likely that local knowledge will bring forward other vessels that [also] meet the criteria...."

If these ships start to leak, it is not just the poor Gulf states that dealt with the Deepwater Horizon disaster that will be affected:

The majority of the 36 higher risk wrecks identified in RULET are located off the North Carolina and Florida coasts. They reflect the intensity of World War II casualties in the Battle of the Atlantic. For the 6 Most Probable Discharge (10%) scenario, the high priority wrecks are located off of New England and Florida.

As this report was just released two days ago, any potential solutions have yet to surface.

(more...)

↧

NY Design Week 2013: Let There Be Light - Lighting at ICFF

May 22, 2013, 9:22 am

≫ Next: Quirky's Prop Power Rugged: An Extension Cord with a Snake-like Grip

≪ Previous: A Boatload of Trouble? America's Other Hidden Oil Reserves: Shipwrecks

Rich Brilliant Willing's "Monocle" wall sconce

Although the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center is notorious for its rather unflattering industrial lighting fixtures, many of the exhibitors at the ICFF happen to design lamps and lighting for the appreciably more intimate settings of the home or office, where (thankfully) we spend most of our time. Here's a selection of some of our favs, including several new offerings from our friends at Rich Brilliant Willing, Brendan Ravenhill and Patrick Townsend.

The Gala Chandelier comes in a variety of configurations

(more...)

↧

Quirky's Prop Power Rugged: An Extension Cord with a Snake-like Grip

May 22, 2013, 11:30 am

≫ Next: NY Design Week 2013: Field and Various Projects Present 'Here & There' in Noho Design District

≪ Previous: NY Design Week 2013: Let There Be Light - Lighting at ICFF

Those with dedicated workshops of their own design have the luxury of placing their own power outlets. Bur for DIY'ers making do in mixed-use spaces, or tradespeople on jobsites, the chaos that is extension cords is a built-in part of any project: You need to keep the tool connection out of the sawdust pile, and arrange the cords in such a way that you and others won't trip over them.

(more...)

↧

NY Design Week 2013: Field and Various Projects Present 'Here & There' in Noho Design District

May 22, 2013, 1:30 pm

≫ Next: Designs for Better Boozing: The Chillsner

≪ Previous: Quirky's Prop Power Rugged: An Extension Cord with a Snake-like Grip

We've seen plenty of excellent work by Washington, D.C.-based Jonah Takagi here and there at various exhibitions and venues over the years, but we finally crossed paths during NY Design Week at a pop-up shop/exhibition for his new-ish retail venture Field. Although he launched the company with childhood friend Daniel Thomas last year, Here & There marked first major event in New York, a collaboration between the D.C.-and-Chicago-based brand and NYC's Various Projects, who stock some of the carefully curated goods at their flagship store in the Lower East Side, Project No. 8.

Billed simply as "an exhibition featuring an array of artists and designers invited to create objects on the theme of travel," the exhibition was a highlight of this year's design festivities.

Posters by Timothy Colmant

(more...)

↧

Designs for Better Boozing: The Chillsner

May 22, 2013, 4:00 pm

≫ Next: NY Design Week 2013: 'Home in the Woods' Celebrates Swedish Modern and New Nordic Design

≪ Previous: NY Design Week 2013: Field and Various Projects Present 'Here & There' in Noho Design District

Summer's nearly upon us, and we here at Core77 will shortly spend a weekend at a cabin rental where we can sit outside and drink nice, frosty beer in between spirited bouts of wrestling. But there's a design problem: While we can wrestle out in the woods as good as we can in the office, having cold beer outside means hauling up a cooler, keeping that cooler well-stocked with ice, and downing the beer faster than we'd like so it doesn't go warm—and that accelerated boozing sometimes impacts the wrestling results. There's gotta be a better way!

(more...)

↧

NY Design Week 2013: 'Home in the Woods' Celebrates Swedish Modern and New Nordic Design

May 23, 2013, 1:00 am

≫ Next: Take on the Bold and Ambitions Undertakings that Define Hulu in Seattle, Washington

≪ Previous: Designs for Better Boozing: The Chillsner

StokkeAustad - "The Woods"; Image courtesy of Maria Larsson / Home in the Woods

It's always nice to be pleasantly surprised by a serendipitous visit to a strong exhibition, especially during a week when there happen to be dozens of events to visit. (With the launch of NYCxDesign, New York's annual design week was as supersaturated as ever, what with the ICFF expanding into Javits North and Wanted Design nearly overflowing with exhibitors.) As with Field and Various Projects' Here & There, an unassuming exhibition was well worth the visit, and even though most of last weekend exhibitions have been broken down, packed and shipped by now, Home in the Woods will remain on view at 29 Mercer St in Soho (albeit by appointment only).

However, unlike Jonah Takagi's effort, Maria Larsson's exhibition is brimming with New Nordic and Swedish Modern quality, including vintage pieces by Bruno Mathsson and Sven Markelius along with works of art and design. As the sole organizer of the exhibition, Larsson readily admits that her role went far beyond simply curating the exhibition: an architect by training, she oversaw the buildout of the gallery space, as well as the PR and marketing.

Vintage table and chairs by Bruno Mathsson; leather goods by Tigerklo; stool by Lith Lith Lundin

(more...)

↧

Take on the Bold and Ambitions Undertakings that Define Hulu in Seattle, Washington

May 23, 2013, 5:00 am

≫ Next: Just What Do They Teach You at Stanford, Anyway? Exclusive Excerpt of 'Crane for Creativity,' Julia Davids' E-Book on Her d.school Education

≪ Previous: NY Design Week 2013: 'Home in the Woods' Celebrates Swedish Modern and New Nordic Design

wants a Senior UX Designer
in Seattle, Washington

If you're an interaction designer with strong organizational skills who does not believe in the conventional constraints of print vs. web vs. video and thrives on variety and challenge, Hulu wants you to be their next Senior UX Designer.

The ideal candidate combines a world-class design sensibility and skills; a desire to make a huge impact in the new and rapidly growing online distribution channel for premium video and a passion for working in a fast-paced, chaotic environment with intense, demanding, but fun-loving co-workers.

Does that sound like you? Apply Now

(more...)

↧

Just What Do They Teach You at Stanford, Anyway? Exclusive Excerpt of 'Crane for Creativity,' Julia Davids' E-Book on Her d.school Education

May 23, 2013, 7:00 am

≫ Next: NY Design Week 2013: SVA Products of Design's ALSO! Project Offers a New Perspective on WantedDesign

≪ Previous: Take on the Bold and Ambitions Undertakings that Define Hulu in Seattle, Washington

In less than a month, Julia Davids will earn her Bachelor of Science in Engineering degree from Stanford University's prestigious Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, a.k.a. d.school. To mark the occasion, she's publishing an e-book about her undergraduate experience—this is an exclusive excerpt of the second chapter.

Imagine you attend one of my design classes in Stanford's d.school at Building 550. Many of the structural elements of the building have been left exposed so that it has the feel of a partially renovated garage: cement floors, bare walls. Strange furniture is scattered about the floor; tour guides are known to explain that decorators chose "deliberately uncomfortable" seats to encourage activity. A smattering of professors and students have questioned the use of foam squares or wood blocks as chairs, but the seats remain.

You enter a classroom on the second floor, where 30 or so students populate gray plastic chairs. The room—in fact, the entire building—embodies the principle that furniture mixing is proportionally related to idea mixing. Utility pipes unabashedly expose themselves to you. You take a seat on one of the chairs, but your table scoots away from you because it is on casters. The rock music fades and class is underway.

(more...)

↧

NY Design Week 2013: SVA Products of Design's ALSO! Project Offers a New Perspective on WantedDesign

May 23, 2013, 9:30 am

≫ Next: Corporate HQ Superdesigns, Part 3: Amazon Changes HQ Plans for Something More Designey

≪ Previous: Just What Do They Teach You at Stanford, Anyway? Exclusive Excerpt of 'Crane for Creativity,' Julia Davids' E-Book on Her d.school Education

All photos by Kathryn McElroy

It's been quite a year for the MFA candidates in the School of Visual Arts' Products of Design program, not least because the first-year students are also the first ever students in the fledgling program. This past weekend, the first half of their graduate studies culminated with ALSO!, a winsome design intervention at WantedDesign, which the tight-knit cohort of 16 students realized in the three weeks leading up to NY Design Week. They'd originally developed the concept for Sinclair Smith's five-week Design Performance studio intensive, and the NYCxDesign festival (which wrapped up just two days ago) was a felicitous opportunity for them to put their studies into practice.

Through a roving set of mobile interventions, visitors to the show participate in an unfolding narrative around celebration, sustainability, digital mediation, storytelling and scale, each expanding the conversation around design beyond form, function and materiality.

Broadly speaking, each of the six stations (two wearable, three carts and a single immobile station) offered a different perspective on not only the work on view at WantedDesign but also one's fellow attendees and the venue itself. From the uniforms—white short-sleeve button-down (with the logo emblazoned across the back), dark denim, white plimsols and orange socks—to the seamlessly constructed equipment, which remain as the tangible artifacts of the experience, the students crafted a thoughtfully executed body of work.

(more...)

↧

Latest Images