Product design student Thomas Vu's Lunch Box concept features a dry-erase surface for doting moms and creative kids to scribble on. The box itself is designed with flat sides, so you can throw the thing on a scanner to save Junior's masterpiece.

I like the idea and think it would be great for kids, but looking at it, I also deeply wish I had a toolbox like this. When building something I'm constantly scribbling calculations and cut measurements on nearby pieces of wood, scribbles I will later have to erase by sanding; if I had a more rugged version of Vu's box, problem solved.

Check out the rest of Vu's book on Coroflot.

Critical design duo Dunne and Raby have made their contribution to the show in St Etienne this year by displaying some of their most recent "design fictions"; a collection of arresting design proposals that transport the mind to an alternate, perhaps future, world in which products and technology are used very differently.

Seeking to demonstrate the philosphical and aesthetic potential of design freed from market conditions, the works on show explore the possible and probable rather than just the "preferable". The three projects displayed reveal a distinctly dystopian edge: "Designs for an Overpopulated Planet" (pictured above), for example, exploring how "Foragers" of the future might gather and artifically digest plant matter in a food scarce world.

Battling, as ever, with the question of how best to present their conceptual narratives, the pair have used this exhibition to experiment: layering up their alternate worlds by juxtaposing objects and large-scale images with sculptural text—the communicae of a mysterious, future (and of course fictional) "Humanity Defense Group", through the lens of which the fictions are explored.

A delegation set up to improve Finland's international reputation today published its findings with suggestions that the country profile itself as a problem-solver focused on functionality, nature and education.

Finland, the report states, offers the world "functionality and sustainable solutions in the form of both products and services as well as a functioning society, [...] its ability to negotiate so that the world can be a better place to live, [...] clean water and food and related expertise, [... and] better education and teachers."

Roope Mokka of Demos Finland, the think tank that compiled the ideas of the delegation, and prepared and wrote the report, said:

"Our approach, as far as I know, has been unique. We all know that even as countries evoke emotions and bring into mind things just like brands, they are not brands. Instead of a pure marketing operation this became a way of developing and safeguarding the country's most valuable strengths - education, nature and functionality. Instead of a slogan we came up with a mission: Finland Solves Wicked Problems.

We decided to refrain from seeing this as a branding exercise, with campaigns, videos, posters, Finland-events and brand-guides. Instead we asked three questions what in is both strong in Finland and will sustain to be valuable in the future globally? What do we need to do in Finland to support those strengths? What do we need to do internationally to realize this value?

It became a very Finnish brand. We came up with dozens of concrete and sustainable projects that can be deployed to make our strengths visible and increase the value Finland internationally."

The 365 page report also lays out 34 tasks for different players: ministries, companies, local governments and organizations, as well as private individuals.

Although it is sometimes quite an amusing read for non-Finns with sentences such as "Finland is already the best country in the world" (according to Newsweek apparently), "If Finland did not exist, it would have to be invented," and "Finns are a dynamic people with their own particular kind of madness," it is also an exceptionally serious piece of work that builds on Finland's many unique design strengths.

Downloads:
> Full report
> Report Summary
> Objectives of the branding work
> 1. Finland - it works
> 2. Drink Finland
> 3. Finland gives you a lesson
> 4. Current state of Finland's brand

Early media reports: Helsinki Times | ISRIA | The Swedish Wire | YLE

(Report also available in Finnish and Swedish)

In the spirit of surviving the festivus season on a budget this year, we're calling on the Core77 Design Community to create the most inspiring, unexpected and fun cardboard ornaments and accessories for the home.

Whether your entry is high-end or kitsch, functional or decorative, the only constraint is that it's made entirely from cardboard and can be replicated using home tools.

The Challenge
Your idea can be anything — a simple hanging ornament, life-size animals, thematic tableware, modular tree systems — even a ceremonial yurt. All construction techniques are welcome from an origami, pop-up, no-fasteners approach to objects that use rivets, glue guns and tape. You're free to use new or old cardboard, and entries that incorporate clever folding, joining and are resourceful in their material use will be favored.

Deadline: December 15th, 2010
The Community Challenge platform is collaborative, we encourage you to share your ideas early, comment on the work of others and help evolve everyone's designs right up until the deadline. Bonus points for people who share their instructions!

Prizes
The top five entries will be selected entirely by the community and each winner will receive a $100 Hand-Eye Supply gift certificate.

Get Started!

It's got nothing to do with design, directly, but everything to do with inspiration: National Geographic's Photography Contest 2010 has entries up for public voting, and the photos do not disappoint. Within the three categories of People, Places and Nature are astonishing shots of everything from thunderstorms in Montana to Himalayan monasteries to the long-exposure flight patterns of moths.

For a condensed version check out Boston.com's faves, or look at the full galleries here. Shutterbugs still have time to enter--the contest ends in five days, and submitting an entry is just 15 bucks.

Sure it's a bit hillbilly, but I like the idea of the MasterVision Cap Light, which gives you hands-free illumination without having to strap on a headlamp. Choose between three or five LED lights. If you're the type that's never not got a cap on, you'll find clipping one of these to the bill is as easy as popping the top on a can of Schlitz. Plus it'll only run you like five bucks and change.

NASA and Goodyear have been awarded a 2010 R&D 100 Award for their airless mesh tire design, intended to be used on moon vehicles. The extreme cold--and heat, in the sunny spots--of the moon plays havoc with rubber's properties, and solar radiation rapidly degrades rubber, so NASA and Goodyear came up with a tire made from 800 interwoven load-bearing springs.

"This tire is extremely durable and extremely energy efficient," noted Jim Benzing, Goodyear's lead innovator on the project. "The spring design contours to the surface on which it's driven to provide traction. But all of the energy used to deform the tire is returned when the springs rebound. It doesn't generate heat like a normal tire.

According to [NASA researcher Vivake] Asnani, the Spring Tire does not have a "single point failure mode. What that means," he said, "is that a hard impact that might cause a pneumatic tire to puncture and deflate would only damage one of the 800 load bearing springs. Along with having this ultra-redundant characteristic, the tire has a combination of overall stiffness yet flexibility that allows off-road vehicles to travel fast over rough terrain with relatively little motion being transferred to the vehicle."

Many architecture and ID offices will still have flat file cabinets, the unwieldy steel boxes you see above designed to hold large-sized draftings. My old design job had a room full of these things, holding drawings up to 48" in length, and I always hated trying to extract a drawing near the bottom of a drawer. You practically had to yank that drawing out like a tablecloth with the place settings on top, without damaging or crumpling the vellum, and the stacks of wrinkle-edged drawings in the flat files testified to the difficulty of this. And when it came to putting back a drawing that belonged on the bottom, forget about it--you had to unload the entire drawer first.

Time and again I thought, There has to be a better way! There is, and I've finally found it, though it's not doing me a damn bit of good now that I no longer work there. Regardless, I present to you the EasiFile:

Looking at it, it seems the EasiFile a lot less space-efficient than traditional flat files, but the manufacturer claims one cabinet will hold the drawings of three flat file cabinets. Presumably the dead airspace in the drawers of a flat file cabinet is removed by the EasiFile's ability to tightly stack drawings with no space in between.

The Kardex Megamat Vertical Carousel is designed to take advantage of interior airspace to give you more room for storage. It's kind of like a high-tech version of a library ladder, but instead of the user having to go up and down, Kardex's system brings each individual shelf down to the user's height by means of a vertically rotating carousel.

In this University of Richmond video, you can see the system as adapted for an office environment to store paper files. The benefits, in addition to increased storage, are improved ergonomics, efficiency, and even security, as one door locks up a shit-ton of files. (Fast-forward to 1:04, the entire beginning of the vid is filler.)

This second video, by Kardex themselves, gives a more complete overview of the system and its features:

Stay tuned for Cool storage designs part 3, featuring a hyper-industrial riff on the vertical storage idea.

Germany company SSI Schaefer has a huge, Matrix-style take on carousel storage. The Schaefer Carousel System uses three monster vertical carousels that, despite their name, rotate horizontally; automated shuttles zoom up and down the vertical axis to retrieve one of the 3,417 bins stored in the system. Operators can be offsite--sitting in a call center office, for example--and send the instructions via computer, to the tune of 700 storage operations per hour.

I have no idea why this explanatory video features a club-music soundtrack, but scoring incongruity aside, the system is pretty neat:

North-Carolina-based StorageMotion Inc. makes a host of storage systems designed for the home. (Though specifically aimed at the wheelchair-bound, I think the systems would also be fantastic for little people.)

Their Clothing Carousel is similar to the vertical carousel systems we wrote about earlier, but it goes inside a closet and is designed to hold four to six clothes rods, and rotate them into an accessible position:

The SM AutoPantry takes the vertical carousel and adapts it for the kitchen:

Wheelchair-bound folk may not need the ceiling height of, say, a six-foot standing person, and that overhead space can be used for storage with SM's Ceiling Cabinet with Shelf Lift:

And finally, whether wheelchair-bound or not, little or tall, any woman is bound to love the SM ShoeSelect:

Traditionally what designers lack in knowledge, they make up for in craft skills. Whether it be sketching, modeling, detailing or rendering, designers take an inordinate amount of pride in honing key techniques over many years. Unfortunately many of these very skills have limited use in the new design domains. (Core 77 columnist Kevin McCullagh.)

I am forced to read a lot of crap. As a reviewer of submissions to design journals and conferences, as a juror of design contests, and as a mentor and advisor to design students and faculty, I read outrageous claims made by designers who have little understanding of the complexity of the problems they are attempting to solve or of the standards of evidence required to make claims. Oftentimes the crap comes from brilliant and talented people, with good ideas and wonderful instantiations of physical products, concepts, or simulations. The crap is in the claims.

In the early days of industrial design, the work was primarily focused upon physical products. Today, however, designers work on organizational structure and social problems, on interaction, service, and experience design. Many problems involve complex social and political issues. As a result, designers have become applied behavioral scientists, but they are woefully undereducated for the task. Designers often fail to understand the complexity of the issues and the depth of knowledge already known. They claim that fresh eyes can produce novel solutions, but then they wonder why these solutions are seldom implemented, or if implemented, why they fail. Fresh eyes can indeed produce insightful results, but the eyes must also be educated and knowledgeable. Designers often lack the requisite understanding. Design schools do not train students about these complex issues, about the interlocking complexities of human and social behavior, about the behavioral sciences, technology, and business. There is little or no training in science, the scientific method, and experimental design.

Gotta love Japanese advertising. For telecom giant NTT DoCoMo's new Android phone, the Galaxy S by Samsung, you'd expect a commercial spot to address the phone's technological advantages. Or its call quality. Or price. Or anything telephonic in nature. But nope, instead DoCoMo's "Walk With You" campaign shows you just who's walking with you when you buy a Galaxy S:

Donald Norman concludes his recent piece for core77 by saying "But beware: We must not lose the wonderful, delightful components of design. The artistic side of design is critical: to provides [sic] objects, interactions and services that delight as well as inform, that are joyful. Designers do need to know more about science and engineering, but without becoming scientists or engineers. We must not lose the special talents of designers to make our lives more pleasurable." What he might not realize is that we are already losing that creative bent. Our desire to speak the languages of marketing, engineering, and rigorous research have left us neglecting our native tongue, design.

I argue that many young men and women are magnetically pulled toward physical (industrial) design because they have a creative passion to reshape the things around them. We live in an age of magnificent and wonderfully magical experiences. Physical design has a talismanic relationship to those experiences and must fulfill the promise or run the risk of seeming anemic.

We must remember that design is not an academic act and this reminded me of three artists at the polar opposite of much of design thought leadership, but who did much to influence physical design: Umberto Boccioni, Constantin Brancusi, and Isamu Noguchi.

Boccioni (1882-1916) was an artist, sculptor, and a futurist theoretician. Along with F.T. Martinetti he shaped the Futurist manifestos which were ground breaking in their acceptance, celebration, and exaltation of modern life. Working before WWI at the peak of the industrial revolution, the Futurists were fascinated with the new speed of the world around them. They sought to represent what they called Dynamism in their work as exemplified in Boccioni's famed "Unique Forms of Continuity in Space", 1913 (above), capturing movement, emotion, meaning and essence in form. Boccioni, as with many of the Futurists, died young during WWI, but their work and ideas went on to influence the future generations they anticipated. See also the architecture of Antonio Sant'Elia which hauntingly predicts the century of architecture that followed his death.

That is not a Philippe Starck tooth brush, it is "Bird in Space" by Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957). From a pure form standpoint, few artists have influenced as many famous designers of the physical world as Brancusi. His fascination with getting form right lead to more than 30 variations of "Bird in Space" done over a 20 year period, mostly in marble or bronze. Of his own work he said, "There are those idiots who define my work as abstract; yet what they call abstract is what is most realistic. What is real is not the appearance, but the idea, the essence of things."

Of the three, only Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988) played with mass produced product, from the famous Noguchi Table to tea cups and radios. The magic is in the pure and beautiful forms of his sculpture. Though only briefly an apprentice of Brancusi, a similar sensitivity and resolution to form can be felt. Be sure to check out the Noguchi Museum on Long Island if you are able. Noguchi's work spanned a wide breadth from the design of the gardens in the IBM headquarters in Armonk, NY commissioned by Elliot Noyes to the chrome plated portrait of his good friend Buckminster Fuller.

Their long relationship, both as a friendship and a collaborative force, is a case study examining the power of art combined with science examined in Shoji Sadao's book, "Buckminster Fuller and Isamu Noguchi: Best of Friends". Their individual depth is a reminder that breadth is important, but not at the sacrifice of being able to do something really really well! Or as Brancusi said it, "Work like a slave; command like a king; create like a god."

Ellen Dissanayake, author of book "Homo Aestheticus" put it well, "each one of us should feel permission and justification for taking the trouble to live our life with care and thought for its quality rather than being helplessly caught up in the reductive and alienating pragmatic imperatives of consumer and efficiency-oriented and "entertain-me" society." As designers, we need to be at the forefront of that effort.

To paraphrase Steve Jobs, a central problem with multitouch as a desktop user interface is that we need to work with our hands on the horizontal (think of the keyboard, mouse, or tablet on your desk) and view on the vertical (the monitor in front of you). Jobs indicated that Apple testing showed users' arms would become fatigued from constantly reaching out to touch a vertical monitor.

Well, check out Media Computing Group's BendDesk concept, a wicked touch display that curves like a halfpipe:

I have problems believing something this bulky will become the dominant solution, but I think it's a neat and important step in the development of desktop multitouch. And as CNET's Ed Moyer suggests, I'd love to be able to modify Photoshop docs with my hands, then flick the finished image up onto the vertical part of the screen to examine.

via engadget

While looking for a place to buy raw leather online for a project I'm working on, I came across Acorn Bags, an anonymous husband-and-wife team who handmake classic-looking saddlebags for bicycles. While they don't sell raw leather, they do sell hand-cut punched leather straps for DIY'ers; but for those looking for finished product, they've got some good ones to offer as well. Check out their currently-sold-out Medium Saddlebag, up top, with expandable collar; I'm also a fan of their also-freaking-sold-out Roll Bag, below, for spare tubes and tools, and which can be stacked atop other bags.

See the rest of Acorn Bags' lineup here. But be warned if you're doing your Xmas shopping, their site is currently better for inspiration and not commerce--Question #2 on their F.A.Q. list is "Why are you always out of stock?" (Short answer: "It's just the two of us!")

For one week only, you can get your very own piece of polar ice to keep in your freezer at home. Dutch artists Coralie Vogelaar and Teun Castelein have traveled to the Arctic circle to pick up a large piece of Greendlandic ice and shattered it into a thousand pieces for the world to share.

This weekend, MyPolarIce opened at Museum Square in Amsterdam and pieces of ice are being sold for 24.95 euros until December 6. Their goal: "To sell the pieces to people throughout the country that cherish and preserve it. To let the ice hibernate in the freezer compartment of their refrigerator for better times to come."

Each piece comes inside a 9-inch transparent capsule inside an expanded polystyrene container (both designed and branded very nicely), which can keep the ice from melting for about three hours. "Come get your relic from the last ice age, come get your piece of history and bring the heated discussion home," says their video.

While we commend MyPolarIce for their innovative global warming awareness campaign with a business-model twist, we're not yet lining up (or making a reservation to book a piece of ice, as you can also do on their website). Our eyebrows are slightly raised at the smell of gimmick, because it has surely happened before.

via Pop-Up City

Designer, Graphic Design
simplehuman
Torrance, CA

Our California office is looking for an experienced graphic designer with strengths in developing packaging, marketing collateral and on-line communication. Candidates should have 3 to 5 years of experience, supported by strong visualization skills, comfort working in multidisciplinary teams and excellent communication and internal "client" facing skills. The ideal candidate will have an extremely keen eye for detail, and the ability to create flawless production ready art-work. Flexibility in-dealing with shifting priorities and looming deadlines is a pre-requisite.

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The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.

Exploring a new city is great, crappy tourist maps are not. Not only do they stubbornly refuse to return to their original folded form but, consequently, fall to pieces in minutes. God help you if it rains.

Emanuele Pizzolorusso could well irradicate map-induced rage from major tourist destinations with his "Crumpled City" maps. No need to fold these waterproof beauties— just screw them up and shove them in their little bag. How liberating.

Bespoke Innovations is a San-Francisco-based firm founded by industrial designer Scott Summit and orthopedic surgeon/engineer Dr. Kenneth Trauner. Bespoke is using rapid prototyping to make a product with surprisingly little competition in the marketplace: Personalized prosthetics that not only work well, but look freaking cool.

"A current prosthetic is an amazing piece of engineering and research, but it's half of the equation," says Summit, featured in the NY Times video on rapid prototyping below. "A person is about form and shape and beauty and sensuality. That won't be reached by an assemblage of off-the-shelf mechanical parts."

Stepping in to fill the void, Bespoke makes kick-ass prosthetics using RP. If a person is missing just one leg, Bespoke can scan the other, mirror it in CAD, and crank out a counterpart; further production methods can then be applied to the prosthetic, like chrome-plating and/or wrapping it in leather that's been etched with tattoo-like patterns. The end result becomes something that the user would be proud to leave visible, rather than hide underneath pant legs.

Hit the jump to read Bespoke's well-reasoned mission statement.