Nosigner's Magnetic Pearls become Transforming Jewelry

October 29, 2010, 9:56 am

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Though craft revivalism and artisanal practice is all the rage these days, Japan-based Nosigner has taken it somewhere else, working with HK, who has access to the knowledge base of the craftsmen who first produced artificial pearls in Izumi, to create magnetic ones.

They function similarly to Buckyballs, except they're not like ball bearings at all, but milky and delicate, for ears, fingers and wrists. We love this project because instead of worrying about so-called "authenticity," it investigates an imitative industrial process as an artisanal one in a very genuine, smart way.

The great thing is, you don't have to know the story behind the project to appreciate it—it's rich enough in material and formal subtleties to stand alone, sublimely.

Showing this weekend at Design Tide Tokyo.

More shots after the jump.

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Carnegie Mellon design students propose a new IDSA website

October 29, 2010, 10:24 am

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IDSA.org redesign: a digital short by CMU IDSA from Julius Tarng on Vimeo.

I like to define design as "Design is the ability to see nothing is as it should be, coupled with the desire and aptitude to do something about it." In a complete personification of that spirit of optimistic rebellion, Carnegie Mellon University students held a collaborative design session to redesign the IDSA website. Julius Tarng, of the student chapter was one of the session's facilitators, "14 of us met in a room, threw the website up on the projector, and critiqued the design of the IDSA website. We then came up with a new navigation flow that we felt better organized the content, and drew up wireframes to explain our designs. Then, we created Photoshop mockups" .

The IDSA launched their current website in June of 2010. While many of us picked and prodded at it in the discussion forums, these students actually did something about it. Watch the video to get an overview, and click here to see higher resolution images of the mockups.

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New York Art Book Fair Coming Up Next Weekend

October 29, 2010, 10:52 am

≫ Next: Core77 Gallery: Vienna Design Week

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If you're in NYC, keep your calendar open on the weekend of November 5th-7th for the New York Art Book Fair, presented by Printed Matter and hosted by MoMA PS1 in Long Island City for the fifth time. Not just a place to see the newest in art books, but also to explore the future of publishing, libraries, distribution and more. Don't miss the Triple Canopy panel, entitled Print and Demand #2, with participants John Goggin, Jiminie Ha, and Rob Giampietro.

See you there!

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Core77 Gallery: Vienna Design Week

October 29, 2010, 11:14 am

≫ Next: Back To The Futures - Looking Back at Corporate Futures

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The Vienna Design Week is an annual design festival thattakes place in various locations of the Austrian capital. Organised and curated by Neigungsgruppe Design, Vienna became a design platform with an emphasis on "international but local," with a number of exhibitions, talks and workshops by designers and artists from Central and Eastern Europe. Core77 contributor Jess Charlesworth took a whirlwind tour earlier this month—you may have noticed her series of follow-up posts here. Peep this gallery for an even more on-the scenes look.

>> view gallery

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Back To The Futures - Looking Back at Corporate Futures

October 29, 2010, 11:40 am

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A range of products as envisioned by technology corporations such as Philips, AT&T and Apple

Chris Woebken, a designer based in Brooklyn, will be screening 'Back To The Futures' as part of the 'Between-Between' exhibition at Studio Between, a design studio set up by a group of graphic designers in London. The exhibition will showcase 12 young designers and design studios from around the world and opens on Saturday, October 30th and runs until the 4th of November.

The film reel amalgamates corporate future visions created during the 80s and 90s by various Silicon Valley tech giants such as Apple, Motorola, Philips, AT&T and Pacific Bell. Chris, in collaboration with Natalie Jeremijenko at XClinic, originally found the clips on YouTube, then dubbed them together, back and forth, onto a Back To The Future VHS rental tape, producing an even noisier aesthetic and soundtrack. Nice touch. This is a 'found' artifact that reflects on how corporations from the 80s used their R&D time to try and communicate their future ideas for 2010.

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The Smart Grid Consumer Collaborative and frog design lead Energy ThinkIn

October 29, 2010, 12:46 pm

≫ Next: Two Year Old Robocop says Happy Halloween

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The Smart Grid Consumer Collaborative (SGCC) conducts consumer research on how people are using power and collaborates with energy leaders to create industry best practices using their findings. This week, Jesse Berst, Executive Director of the SGCC held a frog design ThinkIn workshop to create a symbol and a brand for the energy conscious consumer that can be communicated simply and socially, ultimately leading to positive behavior change.The session's broad participant list included Steve Hauser, VP of Grid integration at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Allison Arieff, writer for the New York Times, GOOD and former editor of Dwell, Danny Kennedy, founder of Sungevity, Swati Joshi of GE, and Brian Sager, founder of Nanosolar.

David Merkoski, Executive Creative Director at frog, lead 50+ participants through a morning of unconventional lateral thinking exercises. These provoked the groups out of their typical working habits and solution spaces to trigger new concepts and ideas. The groups I participated in worked through everything from doorbells that double as displays for smart meters, to a role playing game called "Kill Pluggy" where players try to kill an energy vampire with solar power. The day ended with a debate on the day's findings and a pitch back session of five ideas that were selected for further development. My personal take-away is that changing how we create and use energy is not a single issue, but instead a multitude of intertwined problems that may require a quiver full of targeted solutions residing under a single unifying brand shield. Check out the ThinkIn site to see lots of pics, more details on the exercises and sessions, and learn more about the participants.

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Two Year Old Robocop says Happy Halloween

October 29, 2010, 2:01 pm

≫ Next: Monster post: Crap I've Built - Banquettes (poor man's couches)

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Easily weighing in as a top Halloween costume this year is Young Robocop. Pretty awesome! "The helmet is an old bike helmet that didn't really fit him anymore, so I ripped out all the padding inside and glued on a piece of plastic I cut out from an old bucket to make the front visor part. The circles on the sides were orange-juice-container lids. The chest piece is made out of an empty laundry-detergent bottle and the back is made from milk jugs. The arms and legs are cobbled together out of 64-oz Trader Joe juice containers. I made the boots by gluing a bunch of plastic crap to his old rain boots. Then I painted everything metallic gray", notes Jim, the suites maker and Young Robocop's Dad.

Check out Sweet Juniper to see lots more pictures of Young Robo running around Detroit and posing with the Police! I smell sequel. Thanks to Tao and Lucas for the tip.

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Monster post: Crap I've Built - Banquettes (poor man's couches)

October 29, 2010, 2:49 pm

≫ Next: CraftedSystems: Xanthe Matychak Interviews Aurelie Tu

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I refer to some of the things I've built as "crap" because a) It's often built from leftover materials, b) I'm more concerned with utility than a high level of finish, and c) Not knowing what to do, I often make it up as I go along. Here I'll walk you through how I built some banquettes.

Pornographers ruined my couch. I had a nice big couch in the photography rental studio that I run, and I unwittingly rented the studio out to a porno film crew, and they ruined the couch in exactly the disgusting way you'd think they would. I tried cleaning it but eventually sent the couch back from whence it came, Craigslist.

Now couch-less, I needed to provide my studio clients with a comfortable seating surface, but had very little money. I also had a bunch of building materials left behind by a legitimate film crew who constructed a fake elevator interior in the studio for a shoot. So I decided to use what I could scrounge to build a banquette, or actually, two of them. An industrial design grad should be able to build what they need, even if they don't know how to, no?

Here I'll show you what I've done, including all the mistakes I made and things I wish I'd known beforehand, in case you want to attempt similar.

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CraftedSystems: Xanthe Matychak Interviews Aurelie Tu

November 3, 2010, 9:43 pm

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Top: A lineup of products from CraftedSystems. Bottom: Producing the work at a local YWCA.

Designer Aurelie Tu, formerly the head of women's product at NikeVision, Timing and Technology, has left the comfort of the mega firm to found her own modern craft studio, CraftedSystems, a line of housewares made from modular pieces of felt—floor and table coverings, vessels, lights, and more. All of the pieces combine geometry with the unique 2D and 3D qualities of felt to deliver remarkable forms. But more amazing than the products themselves is the innovative production-line of Tu's business. Instead of outsourcing production of her products overseas, she teamed up with the YWCA women's shelter in Portland, OR to engage women-in-transition with skills development and the healing work of craft.

I caught up with Aurelie to chat a bit about the founding of her business.

Xanthe Matychak: What inspired you to start your own business and what were your desires going in?

Aurelie Tu: Throughout my professional life, I've often thought of starting a business. Being able to build a company that embodies values and concepts that you embrace is liberating, and can present different levels of fulfillment than simply having a job.

A lot of things inspired the thought of creating CraftedSystems, including design, sustainability and social consciousness.

It was inspired by the desire to: create a company which uses design to benefit others; create a lab which fuels materials experimentation and innovation; create a new method of delivering product via alternative labor sources; and blend high tech design methodology/practices and low tech/handcraft.

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fuseproject's new Jambox portable speaker

November 4, 2010, 9:52 am

≫ Next: Waterloop - For water, by water and about water

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fuseproject has been busy. Hot on the heels of the Sayl chair they've rolled out the comes-in-four-flavors Jambox, a tiny and wireless portable speaker, for Jawbone. Despite its diminutive size, the Jambox--which can also be used for conference calls--cranks out up to 85 decibels and contains "sophisticated audio drivers" and a "moving-wall passive bass radiator" to keep the sound rich. And best of all there's no wires and dock that you need to tote around.

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Waterloop - For water, by water and about water

November 4, 2010, 9:54 am

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Vissen (Fish), a textile print as part of Maarten Kolk & Guus Kusters' Waterloop series

Maarten Kolk & Guus Kusters, two designers based in the Netherlands, worked with the Audax Textielmuseum Tilburg to create a range of textile products focusing on the valuable resource of water and its use in the textile industry.

As a starting point to their research, Kolk and Kusters visited Iceland to photograph its natural wonders of glaciers, geysers, waterfalls and fjords and used this imagery to create a range of printed table cloths, tea towels and rugs entitled the "Waterloop" (Flow of water) series.

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The Wehrmachtkanister, a/k/a Jerrycan: Astonishingly good industrial design from the 1930s

November 4, 2010, 10:48 am

≫ Next: Be Linen: A Short Documentary about the European Linen and Hemp Industry

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While the Allies of World War II certainly had the moral high ground over the Axis, it's almost embarassing to see how far the former was behind the latter in terms of industrial design. A good case in point is the object that today is known as the Jerrycan. ("Jerry" being Allied slang for "German." The can was originally called Wehrmachtkanister.)

Armies need fuel, among other fluids, and when war broke out in 1939 the Brits (and later Americans) were toting fuel in flimsy, flat-sided pressed steel containers like this:

The flat sides were all individually welded together at the edges--labor-intensive--and the decidedly un-ergonomic sharp-edged handle was a single piece of bent steel. You needed a wrench to attach and remove the cap, a funnel to fill the container and a spout to empty it. The containers held four Imperial gallons and tended to leak at the corners, where the welds would fail, and the containers became colloquially known as "flimsies."

In contrast, the Germans had fuel cans that looked and performed like they should be in the freaking MoMA.

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Be Linen: A Short Documentary about the European Linen and Hemp Industry

November 4, 2010, 11:51 am

≫ Next: Holy cow: DIY product designers behind the Glif use Kickstarter to raise 70 large in three days

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French filmmaker Benoit Millot sent us a short film he made on behalf ot the CELC Masters of Linen, supporting the Linen and Hemp Industry in Europe. Watch as the film travels from linen and flax fields in Northern France to combing factories in Normandy and spinning centers in Belgium, illustrating how the plants are transformed into versatile materials suitable for use in many industries. Fifteen minutes long and beautiful the entire way through.

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Holy cow: DIY product designers behind the Glif use Kickstarter to raise 70 large in three days

November 4, 2010, 1:03 pm

≫ Next: Inside the San Francisco Fire Department's ladder shop

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The Economist has a great piece up looking at the product development story of the Glif, a simple kickstand that attaches to an iPhone and doubles as a tripod mount. What didn't seem simple was getting the thing made: Tooling the mold would require $10,000.

So last month New-York-based Glif designers Tom Gerhardt and Dan Provost, the latter of whom works for frogdesign, turned to online funding platform Kickstarter to raise the cash. "We thought it would take weeks [to raise the cash], and a lot of effort," said Gerhardt. But in three days they had $70,000.

The Glif project, needless to say, is well under way, with the assistance of short-run injection molding firm Protomold. Read the full story here.

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Inside the San Francisco Fire Department's ladder shop

November 5, 2010, 6:56 am

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Sharp-eyed residents of San Francisco may notice something unusual about their city's emergency services: The ladders on all of the fire trucks are made of wood, not metal. Why? In a city with low-hanging power lines, non-electricity-conducting wood is a safer choice than metal.

This awesome video by Ask Media Productions takes a look inside the the SFFD's ladder shop, where they repair and build ladders up to fifty feet in length out of Douglas Fir. The resultant ladders can weigh up to 350 pounds (which actually makes them more stable in a crosswind) and are built to last for more than a lifetime: The oldest ladder the SFFD has in service is from 1918, making the 92-year-old object older than anyone in the department. And to say they are carefully constructed is an understatement, as the raw wood must spend fifteen years in the shop, acclimating to the local humidity, before they are deemed worthy raw material.

Inside the Ladder Shop at the San Francisco Fire Department from AdamKaplan on Vimeo.

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Coroflot 2010 Designer Salary Survey: Compare your Earnings!

November 5, 2010, 8:00 am

≫ Next: What Raw-Edges designed for just themselves: The unique Book Case

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10 years running, Coroflot launches its annual Designer Salary Survey today featuring real-time results. Take the survey and compare your earnings against others in the industry. Has a slowly growing economy shown improvements in the creative design fields? Find out now, and don't forget to share this with your colleagues too!

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What Raw-Edges designed for just themselves: The unique Book Case

November 5, 2010, 8:16 am

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Sight Unseen's Jill Singer recently talked to Shay Alkalay, the London-based designer and one half of design firm Raw-Edges (along with partner Yael Mer); you'll recognize their Pivot wall cabinet, above, from 2008. Singer was lucky enough to see a piece that Alkalay and Mer created not for the public, but for their own apartment: The unusual Book Case, below, which suspends the books from wooden slats that double as removeable bookmarks. The spines of the books then become a tabletop.

The piece [was inspired] by a recent trip to Ikea to buy a wardrobe, during which the two became keenly aware of the waste involved in producing most large pieces of furniture. "At Ikea, you have to buy the doors, the shelves, the sides, the back panel," says Alkalay. "But really all you're going to use are the shelves." For clothes, the two conceded, you wouldn't really want your mess on view. But people love to show off their books.

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Tom Dixon is seeking a Customer Service Representative in NYC

November 5, 2010, 8:53 am

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Customer Service Representative
Tom Dixon
New York City

The appropriate candidate will be numerate, results focused, with a commercial mind & sales motivated. Specific sales/marketing/logistics experience would be helpful but not essential. Sensitivity towards design is preferable. They will have the ability to work with minimal instruction & the confidence to develop new ways of working. They will also have the ability to understand the technical aspects of a product & the finer points of product quality. Computer literacy with significant experience of Excel is required.

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The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.

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The Dutch Invertuals Transform Medieval Oak Wood into New Design Projects

November 5, 2010, 10:39 am

≫ Next: Objects in the Rearview Mirror are Closer Than They Appear

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Top: 600 year old oak timber. Bottom: Julien Carretero's Matchsticks.

This year, the group of designers behind the loose collective Dutch Invertuals had the opportunity to work with a magnificent material: Oak wood that dates back to Medieval Times, forming the foundation to the EIndhoven city entrance over 600 years ago, and excavated only recently.

Each individual studio has conducted their own experiments and research, "translating the value and symbolism of the wood into contemporary design project," focusing especially on ideas bout time and the oak's unique material properties. They exhibited their findings together at a show entitled Matter of Time during Dutch Design Week.

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Objects in the Rearview Mirror are Closer Than They Appear

November 5, 2010, 11:01 am

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A maquette of the exhibition, top, one of the temporary exhibition houses within the city, pictured bottom

This curious title for a temporary exhibition was set up during the Dutch Design Week by a group of graduates and student designers from the Design Academy Eindhoven.

Objects in the Rearview Mirror are Closer Than They Appear exhibits a range of works each in their own Jurgen-Bey like cabinets or cubby holes within a city of other dwellings set inside an old warehouse.

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