If there's a vehicle style that might've gone extinct by now, you'd think it'd be the pick-up truck. While the open-bed form factor is a boon to contractors hauling lumber, ranchers unloading fence posts and repairpersons craning machine tools into the bed, Mike Mueller, author of 1999's The American Pickup Truck, reported that less than 15% of pick-up truck owners actually use them for such work-related purposes.

Yet the pick-up form factor has not only persisted, but thrived. Year after year Ford's F-150 is consistently the best-selling automobile of any sort in America. And now, in a move some might find surprising, Mercedes has announced that they're releasing a pick-up truck next year.

The Mercedes X-Class, as it's called, is going to come in two flavors, both of which have titles and descriptions reminiscent of a J. Peterman catalog. The first, for instance, is called the "Stylish Explorer:"

Stylish interior with a high level of operating and display comfort. The interior of the Concept X-CLASS stylish explorer is an equally emotional and stylish statement – characterized by an intriguing contrast of warm and cool colors, as well as by high-quality materials. The world of colors and materials translates the Mercedes-Benz design philosophy of sensual purity. The sensual touch and feel of the brown, very natural nubuck leather on the seats provides a cosy feel. This warm color, which is also found on the dashboard, is combined with cool white nappa leather. The trim made of open-pore smoked oak contrasts with the brushed and polished aluminium trim elements. The world of modern luxury is realized in a highly stylish fashion.

The modern flair is further boosted by round air vents, the free-standing high-resolution central display as well as the central controller and multifunctional touchpad. Similar to a smartphone, all telematics functions can be controlled with the touchpad by using gestures or by entering letters and characters. Mercedes-Benz thus introduces the most modern control and display concept in the segment of mid-size pickups. At the same time, the characteristics and functionalities typical in the pickup segment have been retained, such as the handbrake in the centre console.

The second variant is called the "Powerful Adventurer:"

Concept X-CLASS powerful adventurer: the redefinition of toughness. Complementing the Concept X-CLASS stylish explorer, the second concept car focuses on the classic traits of a pickup. The Concept X-CLASS powerful adventurer with a lemonax metallic paint finish stages toughness, durability, and off-road capability. As a result, it impressively underscores the fact that the future Mercedes-Benz pickup will combine comfort and style with the basic virtues of this vehicle category.

The Concept X-CLASS powerful adventurer towers above it all with a height of 1.90 meters. Large tires of size 35x11.50, the huge ground clearance, and the athletic design instill respect even at first glance. The brand's hallmark SUV radiator grille with two louvres, front and rear underride guard, wing claddings, and matte carbon wheel arches additionally underscore the superior off-road aesthetics. An electric winch at the front and a metal hook at the rear are further indications of the toughness and power of the future pickup.

With its progressive design the concept car exudes independence and thirst for adventure in their purest forms. This feel continues in the interior. Matte carbon elements in the exterior and interior, metallic brushed surfaces, and a bold color scheme lend the vehicle a sense of power. The lemonax metallic exterior paint finish is perfectly tailored to the interior color highlights. The color and material concept underscores the outdoor look with glossy black nappa leather and the use of carbon-style black embossed leather surfaces. To ensure the seats provide lateral support in all handling situations and in any terrain, the seat side bolsters are trimmed with black leather that offers extremely good grip and has a pleasantly soft touch and feel.

Is it me, or do "Stylish Explorer" and "Powerful Adventurer" sound like the titles they give you after you take a personality test?

In any case, the trucks will be out in 2017—but not in America. Instead they're targeting, at least initially, Australia, Europe, Latin America and South Africa. At first I figured this was because they didn't want to compete with America's well-entrenched domestic pick-up manufacturers, but it seems that's not the case, as they're not even targeting current pick-up owners. Instead, says Head of Mercedes-Benz Vans division Volker Mornhinweg, the goal is to "appeal to new customers who have not considered owning a pick-up before."

From French furniture brand Boulon Blanc (literally, "white bolt") comes this clever table, which can change height in an instant:

As you saw in the video, the table's got over 300 parts, and the mechanically-sophisticated object isn't cheap (a little over $700). That notwithstanding, it has handily smashed its Kickstarter goal, with $86,353 in pledges at press time on a $33,000 goal, and there's still 26 days left in the campaign.

What a difference. Hawaiian shirts to work? Definitely more comfortable than a business suit. And that'll be your dress code at Trader Joe's. Say goodbye to the same old, same old. Say hello to Trader Joe's. Your favorite neighborhood grocery store, born in Southern California and now operating over 455 stores across the United States.

As Australia's smuggest bike brand, Knog has provided us with heavily designed and moderately innovative bike lights for over a decade. Earlier this year the not at all tiny and not at all new brand took to Kickstarter to launch the Oi bell, one of their first non-light products. The waters tested fine, and now they're throwing themselves back into the crowdfunding pool behind Pwr, a whole suite of new bike adjacent products based around one cool central idea.

Pwr is a modular accessory system based on a single battery. The battery is a 3200 mAh power bank, which fits two different bike headlights—300 and 800 lumen respectively—a 100 lumen camping lantern/flashlight, a 300 lumen headlamp (same parts as the headlight), and a portable Bluetooth speaker. It also functions as a traditional power bank, even while mounted on your bike. This opens up a host of uses, from keeping your Garmin from draining on a long ride to refueling a GoPro on the trail. 

The headlight bodies are tough aluminum, the lights have a pretty reasonable and they're ostensibly waterproof. The heads can be programmed with custom flash options via USB. 

Mmm charge-y

The other products feel very pared down, compared with the more tried and true lighting features, but they all seem legitimately useful. The lantern is compact if a bit flimsy, and the headlamp looks like an unwieldy strap-on, but assuming it's more ergonomic than it looks, it could be fine. 

The biggest plus for me is the Bluetooth speaker, which has a nice mobile size and shape and comes with a bike mount (aka a side door into my heart) for groovy riding. 

The mounting hardware is honestly where they got me. Other lighting companies have used modular rechargeable batteries for ages—Cygolight and Niterider in particular have been doing it since before USB showed up on laptops. Given the advances in affordable power banking, adapting the principle to a range of outdoor gear is a step that outdoor brands should be more on top of by now. So, I'll give them points for doing the damn thing, but the light brackets are where it shows me that they mean it. 

The headlight bracket gives a multiple options for mounting over and under the handlebar, which is great for nerd-ass riders who use computers, folks with small bars, and bikes with tricky cable routing. The attachment itself looks incredibly clean and minimal, though I wish there was more close up footage of it. The "gimble shim" they refer to a couple times allows more accurate directing of the headlight when it's mounted on a curved part of a bar. This is a very good idea for any lights with rigid/unarticulated mounts.

SOELEGANT!

All in all, it's a pretty solid range of products surrounding a totally reasonable idea. Given that the well-established company has reached almost half their goal in just a couple days, I'm willing to bet they make it easily. Hopefully the guiding principle does too.

Any favorite elements? Quibbles?

Whether you were a party ghoul all weekend, had to ferry around sugar addled kiddos or wore yourself out from Scroogily ignoring the best holiday on the planet, you're probably tired this week. Don't fall prey to the leftover candy! Take some tips from machine master, Joseph Herscher, on how to catch exactly the right amount of nap.

Joseph, who has been inventing helpful machines since he was 5, demonstrates a great way to catch refreshing Zs—even at work! For more of innovative and confusing machines check out his YouTube channel.

I read something recently that stopped me in my tracks—as conveyed by a number of statistics, having a kid is one of the worst things that could ever happen to you. According to the Washington Post, happiness levels of recently divorced or widowed individuals are still on average quantifiably higher than someone who just had their first child. One potential culprit preventing parental bliss? Lack of a good night's rest due to a crying baby. As Dr. Harvey Karp, founder of the parent-focused company Happiest Baby, writes, "studies show when you're getting six hours of sleep a night or less, you're the equivalent of drunk"—yikes.

Thanks to some help from artificial intelligence, good news for parents may be on the immediate horizon with the launch of SNOO: Happiest Baby's robotic baby cradle co-created by Dr. Karp and designer Yves Behar.

The cradle incorporates the same motions Karp has taught parents for over 20 years to help lull babies to sleep (his now famous "5S Technique") and is meant to act as an extension of the parent, assisting restless babies if all they need is a bit of calming stimuli. There are two key elements to SNOO's formula: motion and sound. Perhaps contrary to common presumptions, babies actually prefer a bit of noise when falling asleep. According to Karp, noises in the womb tend to be louder than a vacuum cleaner, so when the baby begins crying the cradle activates a loud whooshing sound akin to those in the uterus. Secondly, SNOO will activate a light jiggle motion, meant to remind babies of the constant motions in utero. This combination of the two results in an effect almost irresistible to babies, putting them in a calm trance.

A unique and effective element of this cradle is its sensitivity to the intensity of a baby's cry. Embedded inside the mesh of SNOO are microphones and speakers programmed to listen to the sounds within the cradle. "The microphones can make a difference between lightly fussing, crying or a strong cry," says Behar. Very cleverly, SNOO will react to these audio cues, moving differently and emitting different levels of sound depending on how much the baby is crying—adjusting almost like a human would.

If this product is any indication then yes, robots may be responsible in the future for a percent of child-rearing—and to some this may sound alarming. When imagining a robot caretaker, you might picture a creepy human-like figure rocking a baby in its menacing metal arms. Behar sees this as a faulty vision of artificial intelligence in the future, noting that when he first started telling people about the project they "would have this vision immediately of some white plastic human-like figure walking around with your baby. I think that we should design [robots] to have the type of human qualities that are important to us and the furnitures and the objects that we live with, not some technology that looks overwhelming and possibly that we have a hard time relating to."

To prove that the future doesn't have to be as scary as it seems, Happiest Baby went through an enormous amount of testing to ensure that the cradle was not only effective, but also even safer than a conventional bassinet. For one, they tackled the issue of keeping babies on their back, which SNOO hopes to resolve with its safe swaddling system. "Swaddles are something you're taught at the hospital on how to wrap your baby before they go to sleep. They come apart, they get undone. It takes a bit of technique," Behar, a father himself, says while adding that an activity like swaddling is not necessarily going to be done perfectly at three in the morning. His design attaches to the SNOO quickly easily, and the cradle is designed not to move unless the swaddle is properly attached. This functionality guarantees a consistent swaddle every single time that keeps babies secure amongst the cradle motions while also comforting the baby (and while to many adults the swaddle may seem constricting, the design actually confines to a baby's preference for a tight space similar to the womb).

A final form sketch for SNOO

Material was a large concern throughout the design process because the bed had to be designed not only for comfort, but also safety and movement. For one, the material had to help avoid gaps in the cradle as the mechanics inside create motion. Mesh seemed to be a wise material for this application as Behar mentions: "the mesh distorts as the mattress goes left to right, back in forth. That distortion was key in figuring out the structure that would never have any gap exposed...and to keep the baby safely inside." Conveniently, using mesh for the surrounding structure also gives visibility to the parent so they don't have to get up to see how the baby is doing.

Despite their obsessive amount of safety testing, any parent out there may still be lingering with questions and concerns—and this was the ultimate design challenge during the creation of SNOO. As it seems, the biggest obstacle designers face within the future-gazing arena of artificial intelligence doesn't have as much to do with the technology as much as it does creating something that feels welcoming and human-centered. Behar stresses that "the product has to live in a home, it has to be a beautiful object, and it has to reassure."

The lesson I take away after my conversation with Behar is that it feels very apparent as designers move into the realm of artificial intelligence that they must be thinking critically while also challenging their ideas of what robots of the future should look like. A product like SNOO cannot afford to feel as overly technical as AI often appears in cliched sci-fi or Hollywood depictions. "I think the psychological nature of design is absolutely critical there in order for us to deliver the objects that we really want to adapt into our lives," he emphasizes, "I think if we don't do that, these technologies will be quickly rejected."

Mersiv is a concept designed to revolutionize the way in which we learn languages. Using sights and sounds around it, Mersiv tailors personalized micro language lessons—mimicking the way that we learn languages as infants—by exposing users to a new language within the context of their own lives. Self generating, with both passive and interactive modes, the user is effortlessly immersed in their chosen language, with options to increase the immersion and skill levels in the Mersiv app.

Leaning into our tendency toward nostalgia and love for vintage goods, we're happy to add Hand-Eye Glass Mugs and Bowls to our selection. The mugs and bowls will likely remind you of something you first laid eyes on in your grandmother's kitchen, at a sweet flea market or diner, or perhaps only in your 60s-kitchen-inspired dreams.

We love the look and unique finish of these—each poured by hand, moulded with cast iron, and heated to 2000 degrees Fahrenheit.

Bowls sold as a set - 8.75, 7, 5.5 inches.

We worked with a small American company to bring these beauties into the store. As soon as we saw the finished product, we fell in love...and back in time. The bowls and mugs are certainly reminiscent of a items from the past, and they're definitely referential to the glass kitchenware made by FireKing. 

Items made by FireKing—and other manufacturers of glass kitchenware—sell for a pretty penny online and in thrift stores. We wanted to feature new bowls and mugs and offer them at a reasonable price. 

Because the bowls and mugs are all made by real humans—hardworking American ones—every item is unique. Each object has its own distinct lines and waves. They feel good in hand, look great on the counter, inspire old memories and offer a vessel to fill with new ones. 

Grab a single mug for $18.00.
Swoop up a mug set for $35.00.
And before they go, get a 3-piece bowl set for just $65.00.

Thanks to Stumptown Coffee Roasters at the Ace Hotel for testing out the new mugs. 

Last week included a number of different tech announcements, one being the release of Microsoft's new Surface Studio computer with a highly adjustable interactive screen, as well as a nifty new wireless knob that brings an interesting ID twist to the overall design:

Core77-er, gmay3able, brought up the innovation last week in our discussion boards and got people talking about their thoughts on its promised features. Our audience's reception of the product was varied: 

"Pretty sick. That base must be a solid chunk of steel billet in order to keep the screen in place! I like the chrome support arms too...The knob doesn't feel like it families well with the mouse. Like many of the peripheral buttons on a Wacom I feel like I'd be trying to find uses for the knob, but I suppose since the screen itself doesn't rotate you need some way to rotate the image." - slippyfish

"I wonder who the intended users are for this and how big those markets are. I wouldn't think the portion of designers who would adopt this (10%?) could solely sustain a business case for a product of this magnitude. Don't forget most designers, whether at a firm or a corporation, have most of their hardware decisions made for them...Other than all of what I just said, it is pretty cool. Just doesn't fit my work flow." - yo

"I love the knob idea. It reminds me of Alias marking menus, but in a physical sense. When I've used a Wacom, I felt that getting the arm-to-hardware angle that I want was harder than it needed to be. This makes it look easy...Having said all that, yes, we have to wait for some reviews to know if MS sweat the details...and that is where the devil lives!" - Mr-914

"A coworker of mine, and long time Mac user, blurted out after watching the video 'That's it. I'm in. That's the machine I've been waiting for.'" - NURB

Give us your thoughts: is the Microsoft Surface Studio a hit or total miss? Share your thoughts in the comments section below or on the original discussion board feed! 

This is the most beautiful design for a minimalist watch I've ever seen:

It's designed by ID professor, Simon Williamson, he of the fantastical concept vehicle designs.

It's called the ASIG - nohero/nosky Concentric D., and as far as we can tell it's a concept and not in production.

In some of the renderings, the hands appear to be lined with luminescent strips:

In others, they appear to be tiny LEDs.

The concept looks fantastic in every finish Williamson has conceived of.

If the professor were to find a manufacturer and Kickstart these, I'm guessing they'd go in a hurry.

If you're unfamiliar with traditional printmaking chances are good you'll have never seen Smash Printing, the closest thing to 'extreme printmaking' I can imagine. To execute this kind of print you prepare a physical woodblock, linocut or etched plate up to a multiple feet wide, ink it up, get your paper prepped on top, and then just drive a steam roller over it. 

As delicate as block cutting and type-setting processes usually are, this intense method still produces nicely thanks to the even amount of pressure. The practice is used around the country, often in conjunction with (and sometimes referred to as) a Wayzgoose. The concept of the Wayzgoose is far older than diesel machinery, dating back to a practice among early printers of the Middle Ages. It was a festive occasion hosted by a master printer for his staff to celebrate the end of summer, use up old material, and take a welcomed break from usual labors. 

In a modern context, a Wayzgoose is most often a creative summit and party combined, with printing artists coming from all around a region to share work, network, and drink. (Though hopefully once they're off the roller.) 

As with many DIY creative practices, the oddball idea of steamroller printing is generally attributed to a couple places most starting in the early '00s. Chief among the popularizers is the Tacoma Wayzgoose. The Tacoma Wayzgoose started in 2004, as a collaboration between King's Books and letterpress printer Jessica Spring, and the first few years were small and quirky events. The appeal was particularly niche since letterpress and analog printing hadn't seen the visibility and revival in appreciation they're heading towards today. The steamroller arrived a few years in, brainstormed as a fun way to make the quiet and creative profession a little more flashy and a lot more social.

Since then the technique has taken off at other printing events from coast to coast and beyond. The prints themselves can be enormous, beautiful, detailed, and bold, but seasoned printers recommend using blocks you're ready to retire. The work produced might be strong, but in a strength competition with a steamroller... the steamroller usually wins.

This might be the fastest we've ever seen anything get Kickstarted. Just 35 minutes after going live SPUD, the Spontaneous Pop-Up Display with a 24-inch screen, hit its $33,000 goal. In scarcely 24 hours it's already over $130,000 pledges and climbing.

In the pitch video, you get a much better look at the system than in the sneak peek we showed you on Monday:

Here are some of the details we've been waiting for:

The screen isn't glass, but a crack- and chip-proof vinyl composite that is wrinkle-resistant. The rear projection onto the screen reportedly "promises ultra-sharp images," and the developers report that it does not require a dim environment to be used in.

Should the device crack $250,000 in funding (which it surely will, given that there's still 44 days left in the campaign), the battery will be upgraded to last for a maximum of 10 hours rather than 6.

SPUD is expected to retail for $499; early-bird pledges at a reduced $349 price are all gone, but at press time there were still some $399 early-birds available. Shipping is scheduled for June of next year.

Here's the closest thing they've got to a real-world demo:

This thing looks pretty amazing. Never mind the entertainment applications; this thing would be a boon to designers who are traveling with a laptop and unexpectedly need to attend to CAD emergencies.

Burton was the first snowboard company to make women's specific outerwear. As the Senior Outerwear & Apparel Designer for Women's & Girl’s Softgoods you will be carrying that torch, by crafting best in class, look and feel for the women's & girl’s technical outerwear line & alternative outdoor apparel line. To do that your experience will need to include at least four years of professional apparel design, a strong portfolio that showcases your skills in outerwear/sportswear/streetwear design, plus print and pattern design.

Here's a brilliant way to create something new out of something old, from British designer/builder Rupert Herring. Herring took an old, staid dining table from the 1930s and broke it down into its constituent parts:

He then cut the oak tabletop into strips, and rearranged and relaminated them together to form a rectangle.

I love how the original curved perimeter of the table shows up as irregular gaps in the surface.

Also note the legs. He's essentially turned them inside out, facing the rectilinear parts outwards while the original curved exterior now faces inwards.

He calls the finished product "From Dining to Coffee."

Writes Herring,

I work with reclaimed wood, partly because its physical properties and patina can be ideal for a durable outdoor piece, but also because it seems somehow wonderful to bestow new life to a material that has already acquired associations of meaning throughout its history.

This past spring, theParallel Times exhibition featured the talented students in the School of the Visual Arts' MFA in Products of Design. The results of their Product Futuring class, led by faculty member, Sinclair Smith, were on display as part of the 2016 NYCxDesign Global Design Celebration.

The MFA in Products of Design embraces discursive design. Under the guidance of department chair, Allan Chochinov, students are asked in their first semester to think quickly and deeply in order to imagine design alternatives that transcend typical commercially-focused, user-centered design. Right from the start, discursive design becomes part of their vocabulary and gets added to their toolboxes. Throughout the two-year program, students are pressed to consider broad possibilities for how they want to contribute to our material culture, and how discursive goals might work in combination with commercial, responsible, and experimental projects. These questions are deliberately reinforced through subsequent courses, such as the fourth semester thesis course, Product Futuring, with its unique approach to the relationship between the now and the then.

The Parallel Times exhibit was comprised of the twenty graduating students' utopic and dystopia class projects. With discursive design–especially as speculative design and design fiction–particular futures are presented to an audience that is asked to imagine that they are citizens and users in these scenarios. Following this model, Smith's students first thought about future social and material practices and then, inspired by the Yes Men, created newspaper-from-the-future stories. Further, they devised product offerings that addressed these future conditions, describing them through advertisements within the same newspaper.

Natsuki Hayashi's thesis explores the contemporary design of assisted suicide. Utilizing design to reimagine the way we die, Hayashi pushes the boundaries of the legal, moral, and emotionally appropriate ways to end life. Passage, a final cocktail kit, consists of cup, mixing spoon, and tray, and introduces ritual into the preparation of one's final drink. It's made of raw wood to resemble the taste of the specific medicine used to end life, and to highlight its temporality as a food-safe vessel. The form of the tray dictates the placement for capsules, opened and un-opened. The cup base is rounded, necessitating mindful behavior around its impermanence. /natsukihayashi.com/

While interesting enough, Smith's clever twist was to have students refract backwards in time from these future artifacts to create "critical products for the here-and-now," that act as "original specimens." Students were asked to create products for the users of today that would, in a somewhat probable chain of events, lead to their advertised future products. This asks students to have a better sense of certain consequences and a more engaged timeline—their speculating is broader and more grounded.

Through this process, students create a vital and informed bridge, which is often missing with design fiction and speculative approaches. The audience's natural interest in today gets piqued with provocative physical artifacts, but these are also linked to deeper questions of tomorrow. This is a great model that not only serves students better, but also their audiences.

Take a look at some more of the students' work and excerpts of a discussion between Smith and Chochinov:

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

ALLAN CHOCHINOV (AC): Speculative design has been such a cathartic tool for designers, providing a kind of all-access pass for their musings on the future and (hopefully) putting design "in harm's way." But how do you see its current role in education?

SINCLAIR SMITH (SS): I see the role of speculative design as a key to exploring the consequences of design. One of the central frames at Products of Design is around design consequences. Product designs create product consequences. We see the process of exploring extrapolated, speculative futures as deeply inspiring and provocative (and of course Dunne and Raby's Speculative Everything is a key component of the class reading!) We celebrate the value of an idea or artifact that exists as a provocation—a conversation starter to get us asking the hard questions about where we want to go as a society and as a species. But while these provocations are essential components in the makeup of design, we also know that design is defined at its root by pragmatism. It is this utilitarian pragmatism that separates design from art.

Eden Lew's thesis, Masterminds, explores the binary relationship between crime and design, and aims to reward misbehavior. Compelled to use subversive design to expand her voice and boast her opinions, Lew created products and services that reveal everyone's inner badass. Keyhole Gigantico, is a lock-picking puzzle box piggy bank that teaches kids lock picking and analog skills at a young age: skills representative of a dying generation of criminal master­minds, armed with the power to unlock the physical world. Lew stresses the importance of understanding the mechanics of everyday objects early on — before becoming sucked into the digital world of intangible objects. /edenlew.com/

AC: Well, it's also a political act.

SS: Design is absolutely a political act—and that goes hand-in-hand with the provocation. So I feel a moral imperative to ultimately educate for and deliver a compelling set of ideas or artifacts that actively address problems as much as they draw attention to them.

Marianna Mezhibovskaya's thesis aims to shift negative public perception, and create
engagement with the currently and formerly incarcerated, through compassionate products and services designed to reduce crime and recidivism. Chronicle is a contraband voice recorder disguised as a radio designed for use in prisons. Referencing the electronics sold in prisons — which are transparent to prevent illegal paraphernalia from being smuggled into prisons — Chronicle is meant to be smuggled into correctional facilities as a tool for self-expression and covert recording of abusive correctional officers. In a dehumanizing criminal justice system, Chronicle uses design to subvert legal boundaries and create empowerment.
/mariannamezhibovskaya.com/

AC: I'm sympathetic for sure. I've always felt that the refrain "design's job is to ask the right questions" was insufficient and a little bit disingenuous. Though, for the record I do love the questions that design asks.

SS: So do I! Design and designers need troublemakers. Look, Statler & Waldorf—those two old men heckling from up in the box on The Muppet Show—are nothing if not critical designers. And we need them in the big picture. But they are not the whole show. So in this course, we take a pragmatic approach to speculative futures and use them as beacons. Our students take their conclusions drawn from the research that underpins the central arguments of their theses and ask the question: "If we draw this out to its natural conclusion, what will be the state of our world in fifty years?" Thus are born the newspaper front pages, with their back page product advertisements, as well as the handheld accessory products from those respective future organizations. And we move through this process quickly: from extrapolated vision to newspaper to speculative artifact in two weeks.

AC: And in your opinion, was there a happy ending?

SS: I believe there is a happy ending. It's the arrival of a more critical and insightful design process. Speculative futures are visions of product consequences. They are the consequences of today's product design. So as the final exercise in our program's curriculum, we flip the script: We ask students how the product consequences of tomorrow can lead us toward better product designs of today.

Panisa Khunprasert's thesis, Hereafter, explores bereavement in a contemporary society that habituates silence with respect to death and grief. It uses design to create products and services that externalize grief in an empowering and beautiful way. The thesis does not seek solutions or ways to find closure, but fosters the acceptance of death and grief as they are a natural part of life and the price we pay for love. Allusion is a wall-mounted altar that physicalizes the different stages and methods of grieving. Users are invited to store physical items—representative of the deceased to establish individualized symbolic rituals for their passed loved ones.
/panisakhunprasert.com/

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Discursive design is a creative practice with intellectual goals. Designers strive to get others to reflect and engage in substantive sociocultural discourse in hopes of impacting individual, and perhaps collective, thinking. This demands an audience-centered approach, which is somewhat distinct from the usual user-centered approach; the intent is to communicate beyond, but also through, product utility. This asks more from designers and their educators. Novel approaches, such as Smith's, can increase the odds of audience reflection by leveraging the now and the then, the real and the imagined, and the physical and the intellectual.

But it is also important to look more broadly at where discursive design is today. Design schools' inclusion of discursive approaches, and even emphasis as with programs like Products of Design, marks an important and deliberate expansion of design's current role. This is mostly a change in quantity over quality, however, since there is certainly over a half-century of precedence for "radical design" and other provocative, conceptual work. Now, with what we claim is a sufficient community of discursive practitioners and educators, they need to focus on raising their game. In addition to design-specific methodological improvements—thinking innovatively like Smith—designers also need to draw upon the expertise, approaches, and knowledge of other disciplines.

Academic fields like cultural studies have significant traditions centered upon cultural criticism and social change; they look at the explicit and implicit forces and systems that influence the constantly evolving construction of everyday social life. There are definite parallels and much that design can learn from them.

If discursive design seeks better processes and outcomes, it should be engaging with and considering the same types of cultural studies approaches that involve feminist theory, Marxism, post-colonialism, political economy, critical theory, critical race theory, literary theory, and many others. Educators should be helping students to think through and frame their work in these terms to have better chances of achieving their bold and laudable discursive goals. Indeed the opportunity before us is to continue with novel approaches like Parallel Times and also begin to think about the parallel academic and intellectual spaces that can lead to substantive reflection, discourse, and even design's impact on social thought and practice.

This month, Jimmy engages in "an experiment in design and fashion," creating the form factor of a wooden tool tote with unusual materials: steel rod and leather. He explains why in the video and, as always, shows you tons of fabrication and efficiency tips:

Re-designed for a shop and maker environment, Milder Office Inc.'s Maker Series offers a robust reboot of the Milder Furniture System and includes butcher block tables, mobile pedestals, tool carts, and oversized mobile storage partitions. The work tables boast a 1.5" thick maple butcher block top that can take all the abuse, as well as the love, from clamps, to fabric patterns and laptops. The tables can be easily moved or ganged to support a variety of studio and classroom activities.

Take a look at this image from G. A. Siddon's 1833 The Cabinet Maker's Guide:

It's an interesting book (mostly about finishing) that we'll someday reprint, but that's not the reason for this post. Please notice three details:

1. Two of the workers are wearing paper hats:

2. The workbench has a continuous double-screw vise running along the front:

3. The handsaw is open-handled:

Number 2 might be of interest, as workbenches are a popular topic on the web these days, and this is another form of the English-style workbench.

Number 3 might be of interest because while the book is from 1833, the engraving is probably ten or more years older than that, and the image reflects the transition from the early open-handle handsaw design of the 18th century to the more familiar closed handled handsaws of the 19th century.

Both 2 and 3 are worth writing about in the future... but here I just want to focus on 1 and talk about hats!

The folded paper hats that these men are wearing are pretty typical head coverings for workmen in the 19th and later centuries. They might have worn them earlier, but certainly the introduction of mass produced paper in the 19th century made them cheap and disposable. In the newspaper industry, pressmen were known to wear them until recently. In Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, the carpenter walking on the beach is wearing a paper hat  courtesy of John Tenniel, the illustrator. Interestingly the hats here, in Alice, and in a couple of other sources I know of have big, wide sides. I don't know if that's a reflection of paper size at the time, a vocational thing where carpenters wore bigger hats than printers, or if it is just random.

This illustration is one of the few contemporary illustrations that show the hat. There are bunches of ways of making them—here is a link to step-by-step instructions.

The reason that everyone in the 19th Century covered their hair was that people didn't wash very frequently—no running water, poor-quality soap, and the complications of taking a bath when neither the shower nor the bathroom had been invented gave everyone an incentive to try to keep their hair clean. For a gentleman, a regular hat would work fine, but for anyone working in a shop with dust and grime everywhere, a disposable head covering was far more useful. Hence the paper hat. Even today, they can be a simple way of protecting your hair from dust and paint.

Are you interested in the book, should we reprint it? Or are you interested in the hats, shall we start making them?

By the bye, the book's full title is The Cabinet Maker's Guide or Rules and Instructions in the Art of Varnishing, Dying, Staining, Japanning, Polishing, Lackering, and Beautifying Wood, Ivory, Tortoiseshell, & Metal with Observations on Their Management and Application. That title is so long that it wouldn't fit onto one of those hats, not even the big ones.

Here's a dream commission for a music-loving furniture designer: Create a chair whose sole purpose is to be sat in while listening to music.

To complement the launch of SUB, their new subwoofer, stereo manufacturer Sonos commissioned Danish handmade furniture workshop, KBH Københavns Møbelsnedkeri, with the assignment. KBH came up with a Nordic-influenced design that, in the words of designer Kim Dolva, "kind of surrounds you. We wanted to make it as comfortable as possible so you can sit for hours and hours and enjoy music. It's about shutting down and just listening."

The SUB, which can also be used flat on its back in addition to the way it's shown in the photos, fits neatly beneath the KBH chair in its supine orientation.

Sonos chose KBH specifically for their love of music. "KBH's awesome design credentials speak for themselves," the company writes. "But it was the fact that they're music lovers with passion that spills over to their craft that appealed to us the most."

When I was in design school, we ID students had little interaction with the other departments. Few of us ever visited the Architecture department, where the students all reportedly behaved like Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now. But it might've been nice to have some creative crossover.

SCAD is a design school that does foster creative crossovers, creating multidisciplinary projects that harness the school's various departments to create things greater than the sum of their parts. A recent course at their Collaborative Learning Center, for instance, involved students from multiple programs: Animation, Costume Design, Dramatic Writing, Film & Television, Motion Media Design, Sound Design, Themed Entertainment Design, Production Design, and Visual Effects, all collaborating on a single massive project.

That project was "Say it with Music," a virtual reality film that debuted at this year's Savannah Film Festival. Take a look behind the scenes and see what these students cooked up:

I like how they shot it all in one take, like Scorcese dong the club entry scene from GoodFellas. The project looks like it was a lot of fun—even if, it appears, there weren't any ID students involved. Speaking of which, current ID students at SCAD or elsewhere: 

Does your school have collaborative interdepartmental projects? And if not, do you have any ideas for what those could be, and what departments they'd involve?