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Bill Moggridge: What is Design?

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A big question, and Bill Moggridge, the director of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and our newest columnist, breaks it open in this lecture at the Smithsonian Design Institute, delivered to K-12 educators from around the country. He recaps the National Design Awards and gives many examples of good design, but also, to round out his definition, many examples of bad as well.

Watch above for his quick crash course, touching on many aspects of our vast discipline.

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Maker Faire Detroit: Scott Klinker's Spaceframe Installation

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At the Maker Faire Detroit this last weekend, Scott Klinker , the Designer-in-Residence at Cranbrook Academy of Art, performed a series of installations of Spaceframe, his "20-piece large-scale construction toy for kids of all ages." Watch the video above to see just how large-scale this might be.

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The form factor of mirrorless DSLR cameras will result in better documentation of an important social sphere: Bar Life

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Of all the social photographs now populating the web, the ones shot inside bars or nightclubs are typically of the crappy flash variety, forever immortalizing your friends as ghastly white-skinned party ghosts. The reason has something to do with the physical design of cameras: SLRs with low-light lenses are bulky beasts that few people will always carry around, while many of us will frequently have a cell phone or point-and-shoot tucked away in a purse or pocket, and those tiny-lensed devices require flash.

I believe that will change due to mirrorless DSLR cameras, also called SLDs (Single Lense Digitals) growing in popularity.

Seeing is believing, and I'm now sold on the image quality of SLDs. A buddy of mine recently began toting around a Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF1 with a 20mm/f1.7 lens, and I'm highly impressed at how well the fairly compact camera shoots in low light, perfect for documenting bar life:

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[image credit: Tony Ho Loke]

I'm also excited that the camera can essentially grow or remain the same in size depending on what accessories you want to slap onto it, giving you the option of how much you want to carry. For example, check out how Sony's ID department has been busy tricking out their NEX-series cameras. (There's an interview with their NEX design department here, but unfortunately it's not yet been translated from Japanese into English, and Google Translator is not yet up to the task.)

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Hit the jump for a few more shots, and prepare yourself for a future filled with better photographic representations of the good times had in dimly-lit bars. I know it's not exactly the French Revolution, but at some point we'll all be crusty old people and those freakin' Facebook galleries will be all we have!

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Pictures From Last Night's Core77 Party in Portland

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Thanks to everyone who came out to our party last night at Bar XV in Portland! We were thrilled to host the attendees of this year's IDSA National Conference and a whole bunch more PDX designers, fans and friends. Cheers!

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Design competition: Sustainable cosmetic brushes

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I hate to admit it, but every time I have a DIY job that requires paint or stain, I buy a crapload of these disposable foam brushes above rather than use the few bristle brushes I own. Cleaning bristle brushes properly requires loads of mineral spirits and running the tap for what feels like 10 minutes per brush. I'm not sure which is worse for the environment.

A category of brush that I'm totally unfamiliar with is cosmetic brushes: I have no idea how long they last, how you clean them, or what exactly you use them to apply, though I'm guessing it's a variety of powders and creams. Anyways for you makeup-wearing ID'ers, cosmetic brush manufacturer Anisa International is holding a Sustainable Cosmetic Brush Design Contest.

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The contest is open to anyone with a new and original design or idea to create and design an innovative cosmetic brush utilizing more sustainable materials. The winner will be awarded $2,500, international recognition and a trip to New York City for the unveiling during the HBA tradeshow in New York City in September, as well as the opportunity to see their product manufactured.

...Applicants are required to submit drawings and/or a product prototype to be judged on several key points, including: use of sustainable materials, innovation/originality, design aesthetics, marketability, cost to produce, and the overall product life cycle.

The contest closes on August 30th, and be sure not to miss the deadline because there won't be any...makeup. (Sorry.)

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Simple but unusual bookcases by Faktura Designs

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It's hard to make a bookcase interesting, but I'm digging NYC-based Faktura Designs' efforts with their Scala (above), V (below) and Twig (bottom) bookcases.

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I'm not totally sold on the 45-degree-angle thing--the book I want will invariably be underneath 20 of its brothers and sisters--but I appreciate their experimental aesthetic, and the way that the edges of the shelves themselves act as bookends in the Scala, my fave of the bunch.

Faktura also makes a variety of tables, you can check 'em out here.

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Webb deVlam is seeking a Junior Industrial Designer in Chicago

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Junior Designer
Webb deVlam

Chicago, IL

Seeking an industrial designer who is passionate about brand building and packaging with great sketching ability and some Solidworks experience with a desire to learn more. Two years experience ideal. Webb deVlam core competencies are centered on Discovery, Innovation and Design for fast moving consumer packaged goods. We have consumer insights expertise, Branding and Graphics, and Industrial Design combined to provide seamless brand strategy, and equity building design for our clients.

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The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.

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Swap your Shop: Travel exchange for creative professionals

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Travel the world without taking vacation time or quitting your job? Though I have to admit that I'm lucky enough to be posting from Taiwan and not New York or Chicago, this is a pipe dream for most. SwapYourShop believes it doesnt' have to be—telecommuting is a common challenge, and being creatively influenced by new experiences through cultural immersion could be a great thing for business, not to mention the connections you might make.

To help creative professionals all over the world get some new perspective on life and their business, the Swap Your Shop team have just launched a beta site where office space and home space can be traded for extensive amounts of time. Last week, they started their first swap ever, between Jose L. Poyatos Puig from Velncia and Andrew Zarick from Brooklyn. You can follow their experiences at the SwapYourShop blog to see if this might be for you.

Oh, and if you're 100% game for a swap, but not sure about your employers, you'll be glad to know that SYS has put together a strong case for you. Send the boss here.

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Design of the Decade competition: Which design has had ten years' worth of the most influence?

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Talk about pressure: The IDSA is collaborating with Fast Company and The Henry Ford organization to hold the Design of the Decade competition, which will crown one product put on sale between January 1, 2001 and December 31st, 2009 with the titular prize. To choose the best object designed and produced in that ten-year span, the organizations have put together a super-jury including Ayse Birsel, Chris Bangle, ID Pres Sohrab Vossoughi, Herman Miller CEO Brian Walker and others.

"As an awards program, the Design of the Decade competition is special," said IDSA CEO Clive Roux, "because it recognizes the social impact that design has on our society as well as the significant and growing influence that design has on business. In deepening our focus and widening our aperture to span a decade, we provide the jurors with a sufficiently long period of time to better evaluate and more fully appreciate the longer term impact of design."

For those who'd like to speculate on who the winner might be, check out Good/Alissa Walker's "The Decade in Design" roundup from December of 2009.

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JPDA's East Village Studio: Making small space livable and beautiful

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Of the moves I've helped friends with, the worst are probably the ones to the East Village, a Manhattan neighborhood of often elevator-free six- and even seven-storey walk-ups. Trying to maneuver a couch up the impossibly narrow staircases one level at a time is like trying to solve a very heavy Rubik's cube. And once all the furniture's up there, the resident has another difficult task ahead of them: Trying to shoehorn all their stuff into the famously narrow and tiny apartments.

In short, the East Village is a prime location to flex those design muscles and come up with brilliant ways to make small spaces livable, yet we haven't seen many bloggable examples of this--until now: Check out this studio apartment done up by Brooklyn-based architecture and branding firm Jordan Parnass Digital Architecture, a/k/a JPDA.

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The East Village Studio renovation addresses the client's desire for multi-purpose living space. While the footprint of the apartment is minimal, meticulously detailed millwork conceals extensive amounts of storage and shelving; thereby maximizing floor space. The aesthetic is clean and concise, while providing the warmth of a home and functional desires of the client.
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If you look closely at the photos you'll see tons of intelligent details, like the treads on the staircase drawers that have grooves routed into them for grip, and the slightly reflective material on the wall unit in the living room, a subtle way of making the room feel twice as big without relying on the gaudy wall-o'-mirrors trick.

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Check out more shots of the space at the link above.

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How engineers solve things: Cable isolators

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I found these doodads kind of interesting: They're an engineering solution to the industrial problem of how to securely mount something heavy and vibration-prone, like a generator, to something else in such a way that the former doesn't shake the bejeezus out of the latter and rip free of its moorings.

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Called Rope Isolators or Cable Isolators, they come in circular and linear variants and are designed to be corrosion-free, no-maintenance, no-lubricant-required devices.

Admittedly these are more of an engineered object than a designed object, but I'm digging their industrial-octopus aesthetic and am posting them here in the hopes one of you will incorporate them into some type of furniture design.

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NeilPryde and BMW Group Designworks USA bikes to debut this week

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Starting this month, road bike fanatics will be able to order the Alize and/or the Diablo, two high-performance bikes designed through a collaboration between BMW Group DesignworksUSA and sporting equipment manufacturer NeilPryde. Both will make their public debut later this week at the Vattenfall Cyclassics, a European bicycle race being held in Hamburg, Germany; consumers will start seeing the bikes by mid-September.

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Hit the jump to see a few more shots and read the bike-geek-speak about what makes these frames different.

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Tomas Nilsson interprets Little Red Riding Hood through info graphics

Mattel is seeking a Sr. Designer in El Segundo, California

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Senior Designer
Mattel

El Segundo, CA

Mattel is seeking a Senior Level Designer to join its Boys Action Play Design Team. This individual will design, create, and deliver product lines for the Coolest Entertainment properties including Pre-Historic Pets (the most technical electronic pets on the market), DCU collector figures (award-winning collector series), upcoming animated and movie properties such as Green Lantern and Batman, and Cartoon Network's all new show, Generator Rex. Opportunities exist to brainstorm on other Action Play properties including Disney/Pixar, WWE and Max Steel!

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MetaMirror: Notion's vision for the (near) future of TV

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In an answer to the ongoing debate about whether next generation television will be powered by the internet or existing television infrastructure, Irish design studio Notion have proposed MetaMirror, a vision of living room media that combines broadcasting technologies with the power of metadata, streamed via the internet to smart, handheld devices and superimposed over the existing image. Developments in IPTV, the ubiquity capacitative touch sensitivity, and advancements in smart object recognition are cited as driving technologies.

The context photo above, depicting a very familiar scene of screens upon screens, convinced us that this idea (or a version of it) is not so far fetched at all. Notion has indulged this behavior, creating a television viewing platform that is both broadcast-only and highly interactive, without really sacrificing the properties of either.

Concisely:

The product is a software platform which runs on a secondary device of the users choice, displaying this contextual content over a mirror of the television broadcast. By bringing together live television, real-time contextual information and an intuitive user interface, Meta Mirror is positioned to update television from uni-directional broadcast to two-way interaction.

To illustrate, they've mocked up three tv-watching scenarios: sports, lifestyle programs and music videos, which we've excerpted below.

Sports (pictured top):

For sports the main screen is dedicated to the game/match in question. Real time statistics of the game, together with twitter updates and other scores of the viewers choice are all overlayed on the device running MetaMirror. In addition, new forms of online betting / merchandising / purchasing are enabled.
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Chicago's newest design magazine: Design Bureau

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Guest post by Lynn Lim.

Hot on the heels of the launch of the Midwest edition of the Architect's Newspaper is Design Bureau, a new, bi-monthly publication from Alarm Press centered on design of all types: product, graphic, interactive, architecture, fashion, and more. From the looks of it, the editors are interested in content that promote interdisciplinary discussions centered on design while giving special care to the look, feel, and weight of the physical volume. Think lots of color, beautifully textured and substantial paper, and non-obtrusive advertising. Content is divided into four sections: "Informer," "Design Thinking," "Features, and "Extras." Casting its net far and wide (the first issue spotlights Russian Skateboard Fashion), Design Bureau also covers the spectrum of established to truly up-and-coming: each "Extras" section features a "For Hire" page spotlighting new, young designers fresh into the industry. To keep readers updated in between issues, the publication also distributes a bi-weekly newsletter, The Intelligencer.

After the jump, a few shots from their end-of-July launch party.

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Cook anywhere with Kueng Caputo's Improkitchen cart

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The improkitchen is an "improvisationplatform" designed by Kueng Caputo for choreographers and dancers Eva Maria K&uumlpfer and Stefanie Grubenmann for use in their dinner parties, where improvisation is a built into the process.

For example, during the opening ceremony of Zurich's theatrical season, the kitchen was rolled throughout the city, during which a chef prepared dinner, which was served at the Rote Fabrik Theater, it's final stop.

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The improkitchen sessions will continue throughout the year at the Fabriktheater Zurich. For the designers, this project "is a kitchen, and is also the same time a stage design."

We like it because it takes a stand against all the overwrought, polished counter, empty cabinet, super modernist kitchen designs depicted in so many magazines. Instead, the improkitchen celebrates cooking for what it is: cluttered, fast-paced and creative, where a quick-wit, resourcefulness, and experience trumps polished appliances any day.

More shots follow.

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Touchscreens go mainstream for Tokyo vending machines

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The idea of touchscreen vending machines has been kicking around since the CES in 2009. You might remember the impressive display from the collaboration between Samsung and Coca Cola (on YouTube here) with their highly interactive 46-inch LCD slapped onto the front of their new machine. Safe to say, however, this hi-tech solution for simple cold beverage vending has, as yet, failed to take off.

All that could be about to change. It appears that vending machines of the touchscreen variety could be set to go mainstream in the gizmo-mad megalopolis of Tokyo, if the new machine of local vender aCure, installed today in Shinagawa Station, is anything to go by. Vending machines and touchscreens are coincidentally, perhaps, the two favourite things of the Japanese, so it was only a matter of time really.

We stumbled upon a growing crowd surrounding the newly installed contraption. It was causing quite a stir as, one-by-one, bashful salarymen plucked up the courage to go and put the machine through its paces for the benefit of the gawking crowds. Unfortunately, we weren't afforded much time with the machine, what with frought station staff shooing us apologetically along—the rush hour torrent fast approaching—but we did manage to grab a few snaps.

Amongst all the excitement we couldn't help but spare a thought for the thousands of (heaven forfend!) analogue venders, that are now, what with technology adoption rates in Japan, surely not long for this world.

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more pics of Tokyo's new toy after the jump

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Now that's what we call built-in storage: Atelier Tekuto's amazing Cell Brick house

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Yesterday we'd have said it'd be tough to top the JPDA East Village Studio for creative small-space living, but today we came across Atelier Tekuto's Cell Brick house in Tokyo.

The chief innovation here by Atelier Tekuto (a/k/a Yasuhiro Yamashita Architecture Studio) was to build the entire two-storey house out of steel boxes that are stagger-stacked, and each blank space between boxes is occupied by a window. Because the boxes are open-ended--think of the milk-crate dorm partitions you built in college--the interior of each exterior wall becomes a series of cubby-holes, providing a massive amount of storage and obviating the need for cabinets, closets and certain types of furniture.

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Interestingly enough, while it sounds like a construction technique like this could be simply erected on-site Lego-style, Yamashita decided (for the sake of precision) to make them off-site in pre-fab, truck-sized units and then haul them to the site:

In order to pile up the boxes, detailed planning took place over the design, structure, and construction. At the same time, from the very beginning, cost and precision of building frame were crucial topics in the process. At first, we planned to assemble each boxes on site but the precision of construction, cost and time became problematic. And eventually, we decided to unitize boxes and fuse them with high-tension bolts previously at factory. The size of unit is decided to respond to the size of truck.

While this is the first we'd heard of the Cell Brick house, it was actually erected in 2004. You can read more about it here.

via inhabitat

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Innovative cycle designs from Peter Varga

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You could say Peter Varga's brain works in cycles, as the Slovakia-based designer has been rethinking pedal-powered vehicles since his design-school days.

His Citycle concept is a hubless update to the cyclo, the trike format widely used in Vietnam, and it garnered Varga 8th place in 2006's International Bicycle Design Competition;

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Varga's Masters Degree project from 2007 folds up in about two seconds and won him a Slovak National Prize for Design;

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His most recent project, the Oneybike, resembles a velocipede when folded up, then unfurls in seconds to form a recumbent fixie. It won a Merit Prize in the 2009 International Bicycle Design Competition.

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Check out more of Varga's stuff (under the name Petov Design) here.

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