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View the full design job hereHow do you change an industry standard? You start small, case by case. Or, you create a tool that can do that for you, capable of evaluating many cases at a time, which is the route the Toy Association and Disney decided to take. Disney developed their own internal packaging tool years ago, debuting the tool's first product with the release of a Moana doll in packaging that could be simply separated for recycling. Using Disney's expertise through a partnership, the Toy Association developed a packaging design tool to improve the environmental performance of toy packaging in ways that are measurable, visible, and optimized for both on-shelf and e-commerce performance.
"Most packages are currently not optimized for sustainability or the consumer experience," says Toy Association's Sr. Vice President of Technical Affairs, Alan Kaufman. Citing many elements of e-commerce, in-store retail consumers, and the decades-long war between parents and thick, dangerous plastic packaging—known as "Wrapper Rage" and the "Christmas Morning Effect"—it's clear that toys, traditionally packaged for shelf presence, though increasingly sold online, must be packaged more sustainably to meet consumer demands.
Disney's user flow for their Smart Packaging Initiative Scoring System patent.
Disney's system flow for their Smart Packaging Initiative Scoring System patent.
Designed as a tool for companies to create packaging solutions that lower production costs and limit environmental damage, the SmartPackaging Initiative Design Tool encourages designers to continue to deliver their products to all consumers safely and effectively—without destroying the planet.
The platform allows Toy Association members to input data regarding product type, packaging dimensions, and material information. After reviewing the "design for environment" answers, the tool assesses all information and measures the design's carbon footprint, material health, design efficiency, and recyclability.
Each design receives a score, composed of three categories: 60% Responsible Sourcing, 30% Design for Recycling, and 10% Resource Optimization. Users are able to compare how they rank with the industry norm for similar products and packaging. As more members utilize the tool, the database will grow. "The nice thing about the tool is that it not only enables you to find out what the impact is of your particular packaging choices, it also allows you to do 'what if?' exercises," says Kaufman. "You can create multiple designs and compare them, allowing designers and manufacturers the information as they decide which design to pursue."
Until now, many small design teams struggled to obtain resources that measure sustainability on their own. With most Toy Association members being small or medium enterprises, "Providing the tool for the industry at large was something that we felt would benefit all the industry, but particularly our small and medium-sized members who do not have the bandwidth to do these calculations on their own," says Kaufman.
The tool allows users to compare designs within each of their projects, assisting them in choosing the most sustainable packaging option for each particular product.
The tool also provides specific suggestions for how to improve scores. For instance, increasing the certified, recycled, or bio-content of materials will improve the Responsibly Sourcing portion of the weighted score. Design choices that optimize material recovery in recycling systems and simple designs that use fewer materials increase the Design for Recycling score. To increase Resource Optimization, users can reduce the master carton size through nesting.
While the Smart Packaging Initiative Design Tool is currently only available to Toy Association members, the Association is striving to open the tool to non-members in the near future. In the meantime, the Toy Association plans to add the Sustainable Apparel Coalition to its forces with Disney, aiming to combine material libraries and regularly update their tool as new material innovations and recycling processes develop, growing the platform in a way that could be beneficial to packaging across all industries.
Karl Lagerfeld is a very particular man. I bet you think he lives in a house. Wrong. He lives in two houses that are side-by-side, separated by a distance of 2.5 meters. One house is for him to sleep and draw in. The other house is where he eats his meals and receives his guests.
View the full content hereThis is a story about Jonathan Ward's obsessive approach to industrial design.
If you're an industrial designer, you'll recognize some parts of his process, and perhaps be envious of the parts you don't. If you're not an industrial designer, this story will show you how an experience or series of thoughts can be translated, through hard work and over time, into an extraordinary physical product.
It's the 1920s, and an audacious American businessman named E.L. Cord wants to make the best cars in the world. And he wants to make them in America.
This is an absurd idea; everyone knows the best automobiles come from Europe and have names like Rolls-Royce, Mercedes-Benz, Hispano-Suiza. Cord's car doesn't even have a hyphen. It's going to be called the Duesenberg. That's the name of the Indianapolis-based carmaking firm run by brothers Fred and Augie Duesenberg, a pair of brilliant engineers who happen to be crap businessmen. Cord buys their failing firm, then tasks them with fulfilling his best-car-in-the-world mandate, backed with his money.
The resultant vehicle is unveiled at the 1928 New York Car Show (without a body; at the time it was typical to purchase a car of this class without one, so that you could have it added by the bespoke coachmaker of your choice). Once the public finally sees complete Model Js, the car is revealed to be a socks-knocker.
1928 Duesenberg Model J
"There wasn't a single part of this twenty-foot-long vehicle," Jalopnik would later write, "that didn't look like it was sculpted by Michelangelo." Fast, beautiful, elegant, stylish, expensive, the Duesenberg Model J puts Europe on blast. We can almost guarantee that at least one European auto designer had a cigarette fall out of his mouth when he saw the newspaper photos.
1928 Duesenberg Model J
"They were truly such a significant automobile when they were new," Duesenberg historian Randy Ema told The Robb Report. "Nothing else was comparable as far as power, speed and road ability." America had their non-hyphenate supercar.
1928 Duesenberg Model JAmerica also had the Great Depression. In the years following the car's launch, Cord's empire--he owned some 150 companies, besides Duesenberg--took a hit, and never bounced back. By 1937, both Cord and Duesenberg were kaput.
Left behind as a legacy:
1) The American phrase "it's a doozy," meaning extraordinary, splendid, stylish, outstanding.
1935 Duesenberg Model SJ
2) Several hundred surviving cars, including units of the Model SJ (above), a supercharged version of the Model J. A handful of these cars, preserved and restored, would appear decades later at a certain classic auto show in Pebble Beach.
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It's the 1990s, and design aficionado Jonathan Ward is prowling the grounds at the Concours d'Elegance for their Dawn Patrol. The cars roll onto the grounds at dawn. As the sun comes over the horizon, Canon and Nikon lenses rise to cover attendees' eyeballs. At this point in time, the Dawn Patrol is still a relatively uncrowded event where those willing to brave the hour can gawk and photograph the cars absent a mob.
There are shutterbugs standing back and shooting long; they want the poster shot of the entire car. Not Ward, who is right up on the metal. "I was never one to do wide shots of a complete vehicle," he says. "I'm on the cloisonné, I'm on the bumblebee hinge, the typeface, the dashboard."
Ward, drawn to details, is compulsively amassing them in a photo archive, which we'll get to in a minute. Of all the cars--or car details, more accurately--that he shoots that morning, one of them lodges in his brain. It's on a Duesenberg SJ that he comes across, and the dashboard features what will come to be one of his "all time favorite gauges ever:"
"It had what was called the drum style gauge and it's just a magical design."
To explain, a typical American gauge of that era featured an indicator needle that rotated around a dial:
Typical dial gauge
The Duesenberg featured a different design found on Rolls-Royces of the era. The indicator was a static line bisecting a rectangular window and did not move. Instead, the numbers moved. Digits were printed around the sides of a short, drum-like cylinder--hence the name--and this drum rotated in place behind the window, revealing the relevant number.
Drum-style gauge in a Duesenberg dashboard
Did it provide any performance advantage? No.
Was it cool? Yes.
Was it easier to manufacture, or more reliable, than a regular dial? No: "I've since learned," Ward says, "apparently they were horribly unreliable and usually removed and refit with the more conventional-style gauge."
I ask him why on Earth, then, would Duesenberg incorporate such a thing?
"To show that they had that capability," Ward explains. "They wanted to create the Rolls-Royce of America." The Duesenberg gauge's design intent was pure, but it exceeded the engineering capabilities of the era.
The gauge stuck in Ward's head, where it had plenty of company. At the time Ward was cooking up a plan to start TLC, a company that would grow into America's leading service center for the classic Toyota Land Cruiser. A decade after that he'd start Icon 4x4, the audacious design-build firm that established his name in the world of rugged-but-elegant custom automobiles. Running both of those companies would take a lot of mental energy. But not enough to make him forget the gauge.
"The first things I remember sketching as a kid were watches and cars."
As a child Ward was fascinated by the little machines his father and grandfather wore on their wrists, and he wanted to see more of them. "I'd go digging around in my dad's and my grandfather's attics, pulling out old watches they'd had in high school, and finding broken ones they'd left in junk drawers. They had a lot of great Deco stuff, watches from the '30s and '40s."
Ward pored over the faces, the little letters and numbers, the movements, studying the transitions between surfaces. Even at that early age, "I really appreciated the minute details and the design consideration that went into them," he recounts.
By the time an adult Ward attended the Pebble Beach event where he encountered the Duesenberg SJ, he'd amassed his own collection of watches. I ask him which he was wearing at the time, and he can't remember. "It might've been an Omega Moon Watch Speedmaster, a World War I trench watch, a 1937 Packard Salesman Award watch that was pocketwatch modified," he says, thinking. "I probably had 40 watches at the time."
To be in love with watches as a child, and to then get to purchase many coveted watches as an adult, sounds like it would be very satisfying. But Ward suffers from what we'll call the Designer's Curse.
Cars and watches intersect not only in the Passion part of Ward's brain, but also in the world of branded retail. Ward, a stickler for detail, finds that latter intersection often sloppily executed. "So many of the modern car-brand/watch-brand collaboratives are so shallow," Ward says. He objects to the practice of merely taking "the leather from the interior, and a badge or a similar typeface and slapping it on there. Come on, man--the potential is so much deeper than that. It's not just the leather, but the hardware on the car, the radiator cap, the hinges, there's so many things that represent the DNA of that vehicle. And as a consumer I've always yearned to see that integrated well."
This dissatisfaction extends beyond watches that are car-inspired. When Ward finds a lack of design in areas where heavy attention should be paid, it drives him nuts. "Even a Ressence--which is one of my favorite modern watch brands--there's zero consistency on typeface. For example, look at the numeral one on the back, look at the numeral one on this outer wheel, look at the numeral one on that inner wheel--they have nothing to do with each other.
"That kills me. Or take a Rolex: The typeface, the font on the date has nothing to do with anything else. You'll find six-, even seven-digit watches where that level of consideration in the design was never achieved. No one ever thought it through or cared."
The Designer's Curse is a two-part hex. The first part is that your senses are constantly scanning the world around you for errors in physical design. The second part is having to accept, via experience with manufacturing, that sometimes those errors have to be lived with. "You know and I know, [those flaws exist because] the watchmakers are dealing with an established network of suppliers who already have that widget with a generic type face already on the shelf."
Ward can't escape the first part of the curse. But it's his life mission to beat the second. "To get your design as perfect as you'd like it, you have to push back with that supplier, you have to wait longer, you have to pay more."
Given his background and skillset, it seems obvious that Ward would eventually put his money where his wrist is. "As a watch collector and lifelong watch geek, I've always looked at different ones and thought, 'I would make a killer watch.'"
Where should the inspiration come from? Do you start from scratch? Take one of your favorite watches and merely correct its flaws? For Ward the answer emerged from his car show photo archive. "About seven years ago I finally decided I really need to sort that image collection, which had gotten absurd--15,000 images or so.
"I broke it into categories for badges, grills, hinges, gauges, et cetera. And every time I'd see another exceptional vintage car, the design continuity of the gauges and how they relate to the rest of the vehicle, especially on early stuff, was always fascinating to me."
Thus we arrive at the drum gauges on the SJ Duesenberg. Rolls-Royce had them, Cadillac as well--why was it Duesenberg's that attracted Ward? "The presence of the Duesey drew me in," he says. "The aspirations of the brand and the design details of the SJ were magnetic."
While a drum gauge is a mechanically unlikely feature for a watch, Ward was smitten with that display method, which only reveals the currently relevant number. This has precedent in the watch world: "Jumping hour" watches reveal the hour in one window, a single digit at a time, with minutes shown in another. "I started to obsess," Ward says, "on that concept of a jump-hour based on the Duesenberg."
A design had begun brewing.
To work out their ideas, some designers sketch. Others manipulate modeling materials. To some extent, the physical act of translating an idea in your brain into physical lines of graphite on paper, or armature wire on a workbench, provides a measure of relief.
Ward's sketchbook of choice is between his ears, so he can't leave it in the studio nor limit its hours of operation. "With any design idea I have, there's a period in time where it's like my version of a sheep jumping fences," he says. "I'll have a 3D model crafted in my odd brain and as I'm falling asleep, I'm altering chamfers or scaling or adding details, building out the model."
For Ward, this process is enough--until it's not. "It advances to an obsessive, out-of-my-control compulsion. There's some next level where it starts to be--not incapacitating, but to a point where I'm going to lose my remaining sanity if I can't get this out of my head. I need to see it done. I need to see it made."
Relief came in the form of a guy from a CAD company. "So as I had this mythical model growing in my head, we had developed a new friendship with the team at Autodesk," Ward says. They offered to send a tutor down. Through Icon, Ward already had a staff of CAD-whiz engineers who could race circles around him; but he "wanted to be able to at least comprehensively illustrate my intentions with a design before I introduce it to my engineers," so took the company up on it.
The tutor arrived, expecting they'd tackle automotive projects. Instead Ward saw an opportunity to cure his insomnia. "I sat down with this tutor once a week for eight months, and all of the work was based around the watch," he says.
A CAD file, once you pop it open, is a representation of a limitless space. But within that space, one designs objects that are defined by limits and constraints. "It's an interesting kind of struggle," Ward says. "Take one of my favorite designers, Raymond Loewy. I've noticed that if he was doing something for himself, meaning no constraints, it failed. If he was entertaining the manufacturing or budgetary restrictions or other factors imposed by the client, and working with a client's design director, with all of those constraints, his work was phenomenal. We need boundaries and borders to help us focus in on the core elements that need to be addressed.
"One of the neatest opportunities to me about watch design is all the constraints," says Ward. "The legibility, the math, the symmetry, the geometry of it, the size of the movements, and on and on. Those are exciting to me--they give you so many cool opportunities to take something further."
I ask Ward for an example; he's got three chambered. "You can go all the way down to the transition of a crystal to a case. When you study almost any watch, there's no flow to that. But the manufacturing capabilities of today, you can mandate one radius for the top surface of a crystal and a different radius for the lower inside surface of that crystal.
"You can do a special coating, or say 'I like that coating on this side, but I'd have better refraction if we did a double anti-reflective coating on the inside.
"Then there's branding, which often involves another typeface fuck up. The brand typeface in relation to all the other places that words and letters are used, there's often no consistency. And some watches have beautiful, super sanitary, clean design and then they just drop the big-ass logo on it--it's like "Oh, come on."
As smart as CAD programs are, they can't tell you when a design is "finished." For most designers, your boss or client dictates that. For Ward, after eight months of CAD, "shit started getting serious. We printed a bunch of prototypes. I kept tweaking them, then realized: 'This is good to go. I can actually make it.'"
Hoping to create the watch as a bad-ass one-off for himself, Ward attended the Baselworld Watch and Jewellery Show in Switzerland. "I talked to Svend Andersen and a couple makers, showing them parts of my design that would dovetail with their movements, breaking out ISO's to get some loose quotes. The prices were out of my league, so it was not going to happen."
On his way out of the show, something fell out of the sky and landed on Ward's head. That something was the peculiar arithmetic of industrial design, where you can't afford to make one of something, but you can afford to make fifty. With the development costs spread across multiple hypothetical buyers, what was impossible now merely becomes a pain in the ass.
"I got to thinking: I'm fascinated with industrial design. I'd like, long-term, to see Icon get into other aspects of ID. The brand came from both my love for automotive design, and my idea of how things could be engineered that I wasn't seeing done out there. So it seemed like an opportunity to take the same organic approach and do the watch.
"I came back, talked to my wife--who's Icon's COO--about it. And then we just went for it."
Modeling a complex object in CAD can feel like running a marathon; then you get into manufacturing, which feels like climbing a mountain. "Once I had those CAD files done, I thought it was gonna be easy, like 'Let's go.' And then it took another year and a half, almost two years to get it through and ready for production," Ward recounts. "But most of it being my own fault.
"To me, the original purity of vision of the design intent must be established first. Then you have to go through the maze of addressing all those constraints and rules, which in the case of this project, I understood seven out of ten going in. The other three were 'Oh shit' moments that popped up on the road to creating it with our engineering partner in Switzerland. Those are the challenges where you think you've got it all lined up, then you find out 'The shank needs to be here, and for it to be here where you've put it, affects this other thing,' et cetera."
Another issue was the geography of the manufacturing. "I'm all into reviving the industrial American tradition," says Ward, "and I wanted to make the watch in the U.S., with all of the details just the way I wanted them done. But I found there's hardly any supplier network in the U.S. The way the crystal needed to be made, had to be in Switzerland. The way I wanted the dial made, it had to be in Switzerland.
"The complication that is required for the mechanical movement to do what I wanted to do, did not exist in the U.S. I would've had massive time and development cost to develop it. But that movement exists in Switzerland; in fact it's the exact movement used in watches that are double to quadruple the price point of the Duesey. It's proven, it's off the shelf, the engineering's already paid for."
I ask Ward what other off-the-shelf components exist in the watch. "The movement is off-the-shelf--that's it. The buckle, the tang, the crown, the case, the crystal, even the band--as a leather craft hobbyist, I designed the prototype band and sent it to Italy as the sample. I drove them crazy spec'ing out the exact finish, cut lines, creasing, skiving, every little thing, which was unbelievably rewarding. And stupid, for a run of 50 watches."
"Price-point-wise for me," Ward says, "the development costs were absurd."
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This is the last post of Steven M. Johnson's long-running feature,Bizarre Inventions. He may be reached at jnevets@Mac.com or jnevets108@gmail.com.
Why PepsiCo? PepsiCo products are enjoyed by consumers one billion times a day in more than 200 countries and territories around the world. PepsiCo generated more than $66 billion in net revenue in 2014, driven by a complementary food and beverage portfolio that includes Frito-Lay, Gatorade, Pepsi-Cola, Quaker and
View the full design job here
Vincross's Hexa robot delighted—and in some cases creeped out—the internet. It scales rugged terrain and squeezes through tight spaces thanks to a camera and distance sensor, six algorithmically coordinated legs, and an AI "brain."
Vincross was impressed with how creative backers got programming Hexa—MIND KIT expands the possibilities.
Backers could use it to find sunny spots for their plants, survey construction areas, rock strollers, entertain pets, and hunt ghosts—and they didn't need a ton of robotics experience to get started. "For most people, robotics was inaccessible," says Vincross CEO Tianqi Sun. "Lowering the barrier to entry, like what Apple did with XCode and iOS development, made Hexa a great starting point for software developers or researchers to transform their algorithms into real-world reinforcement learning, computer vision, and more."
But the Kickstarter campaign for Hexa also taught the team that they might have been too single-minded with their original design. "A multi-legged robot is practical," says Sun. "We believe this type of design represents the robots of the future. But this is just a single form factor, and we're open to seeing how our backers might imagine new ways of solving dexterity and maneuverability problems."
That's why the team has launched a new Kickstarter campaign showing off prototypes of the MIND KIT, a modular set of hardware that connects Hexa's AI with mix-and-match caterpillar tracks, wheels, and robotic arms—plus a USB Type-C port on the sensor board can connect to other accessories.
MIND KIT makes new adventures in robotics possible.
"Our users were looking for something more modular that they could build on top of our robotics operating system, MIND OS," says Vincross COO Andy Xu. "[With MIND KIT] we've made it easy to assemble the hardware components by simply snapping together accessories, including a wheel, sensors, batteries, LiDAR, and other modules onto the main CPU-like puzzle pieces. MIND KIT is also hackable; it has 54 programmable pins, offering a great deal of flexibility."
MIND KIT robots programmed to play soccer.
They also wanted to offer a more accessible and educational tool, Xu explains. "We ran a Harris Poll in the U.S. and found that 90 percent of Americans believe learning about robotics will 'future-proof' their professions, but just 5 percent of Americans have worked with a robotics program. So it's timely for us to launch MIND KIT. "
Once users get acclimated to the MIND KIT, it can do much more than Hexa. "We like to think of MIND KIT as the brains of Hexa, which we've separated out so that developers or makers can do more with modular hardware. So previous Hexa owners, who are used to developing on MIND OS, can continue to do so with MIND KIT," Xu says.
"MIND KIT hardware essentially offers a lot of room for creativity and flexibility in building your own robot," Sun says.
MIND KIT is live on Kickstarter through March 21, 2019.
We recently had the exciting opportunity to tour Reebok's 220,000 square foot headquarters located at the Boston, Massachusetts Seaport. Designed by Gensler, the massive headquarters was created with the goal of combining Reebok's previously spread out teams and creating a more updated brand identity. The Reebok team gave us a behind the scenes look at their new facilities, including their design studio, CrossFit gym, and archive.
A major point of emphasis on the tour was the lack of assigned desks. Employees are encouraged to store their belongings in lockers so they are able to move freely around the office throughout the day. This allows room for better understanding across all areas of the brand, hinting back to a time in the company's history where many departments were separated.
2,000 square feet of archive space on the 5th floor is dedicated to teaching employees and visitors about the brand's rich history. There is a full archive room along with a large display area where archivists can display their favorite pulls from the collection. Enjoy this gallery of our own personal photos mixed with a few professional ones from Gensler!
A crowdfunding platform doesn't have to exist exclusively for grandiose projects that require tens of thousands of dollars in order to be realized. No one is in bigger favor of smaller projects taking to crowdfunding than designer Oscar Lhermitte, proven most recently in his latest project, a simple corkscrew launched in the form of a "Quickstarter". Lhermitte coined the Quickstarter movement himself in conjunction with Kickstarter in an effort to encourage designers and creatives to launch something, well, just for fun.
The aim of his latest project remains true to the intent of a Quickstarter in that it is a simple design fix for the often overcomplicated corkscrew. As written on Lhermitte's campaign page, "this product comes from a frustration of not being able to find [a corkscrew] that is simple in its design while at the same time functional. There are all sorts of corkscrews available online and they come in all shapes, sizes, materials, finishes and qualities. To my surprise, finding a simple one that just does the job is surprisingly difficult." In an attempt to correct the unavailability of simplicity on the market, Lhermitte launched a two-week Quickstarter to fund his idea.
In case you aren't familiar with the format, a Quickstarter has just a few rules and is open to any designer interested in trying out an idea. The criteria are as follows:
- Designing, prototyping and manufacturing should not take longer than 3 months.
- The campaign should be under 20 days.
- The funding goal has to be below £1,000 (~$1,300).
- The reward has to be offered under £20 ($26.42).
- The video has to be shot in 1 day.
Lhermitte's corkscrew certainly fits the bill and looks easy, right? But then again, Lhermitte makes it look easy as he is a master of the Quickstarter game. So we asked him: What are your top tips for people who are interested in doing their own Quickstarter campaign? Here's what he told us:
"A Quickstarter is by definition small, so it's a great place to test a small idea or manufacture a small product that will not cost a lot and that does not have large Minimum Order Quantities. Keep the more ambitious ones for a proper campaign."
"If it's a product, keep it small in size too. The shipping can be a killer. Especially if it becomes more expensive than the product itself."
"The video is always very important and actually the sound quality tends to be more important than the video quality. Film with an smart phone and record the sound with an external mic."
Share your campaign with others before launching. Even for the small campaigns, you are too close to it to see the obvious mistakes.
"Have some context in your photos and video. It's always helpful and nice to see hands or a body next to the your project, it gives a sense of reality and an idea of scale."
Happy quickstarting!
Lhermitte is not only a crowdfunding expert, he is also this year's jury captain of the new Core77 Design Awards Crowdfunding category! Do you have a crowdfunding project that was successfully met its funding goal in 2018? Submit it for consideration here.
In Part 1 of this story, we covered how Jonathan Ward's Duesey project came about and how he executed it. Ward tackled the design both as an industrial means of self-expression, and to correct what he saw as unconscionable design lapses in other objects in the category. Here in Part 2, Ward walks us through the design details of the finished product, revealing both his signature attention to detail and the extreme lengths he'll go to for the sake of holistic, aesthetic satisfaction (see: Packaging). Folks, this is what thorough design attention looks like, and the lessons learned here could be applied to virtually anything within the realm of industrial design.
In the previous installment, Ward discussed the importance of the purity of design intent. Inspiration is required here, and the Duesenberg SJ, an early supercar designed during America's Roaring Twenties, was a marvel of engineering and design that provided Ward with plenty of fodder. "I geeked out on the car's details--the way the hardware attaches, the fenders to the body, that's represented in the shape of the watch. The radiator cap inspired the radius and the shaping of the case."
"I designed my own rotor, the perlage, the machine-turned finish, everything."
"I struggled with this initially, but ended up laser centering ICON into the backside of the crystal. So if you're face-on on the watch, you usually don't see it…."
"…unless you have an odd angle of incoming light; then it shows up but is subtle, it doesn't interrupt, doesn't disturb the aesthetic flow."
"The face is natural Onyx stone, laser cut, EDM'd, then hand polished."
"I spent many hours on the crown. I find often they may look great, but suffer ergonomically. Alternately, they can be good ergonomically but bland by design. I spent many hours designing and refining this crown to strike the proper balance. It's known as a "squashed onion," it's a popular style from the 1920s and '30s."
"The band is Italian calf leather, and stitchless; there's no visual interruption for the pricking stitches. It's all super detailed, skived, hand-formed and heat-creased around the edges."
"We used two different grades of titanium. A key client and friend is allergic to the more popular titanium used; it's a rare allergy but it exists. So it's T2 and T5 titanium. T5 is WAY harder to machine. The T2 used for the polish section gets a much higher quality polish to it than other varying alloys of titanium."
"The silica finish you see below is traditionally never used on a classic-style watch, but I think it gives it a neat tweak. Technically that finish is considered self-healing because of the finishing manner, which I think is kind of bullshit. Though it does hide shit more."
Earlier Ward mentioned that the project took much longer than anticipated, and that he was largely to blame. Here he explains why. "In a storage attic here at the shop, I've got tons of different watch boxes. Almost regardless of the watch's price point, sometimes it's a cardboard box. A five digit watch and it comes in this cheesy generic box with a stamped gold foil logo. Lined with the 'hyde' of the elusive Nauga beast. Just no consideration.
"Or it's something like a Patek, with gorgeous handcrafted inlaid hardwood, but it's…a box. It's that big"--here he uses his hands to trace the size of a chessboard--"for one watch, and once you take the watch out, it's useless. What are you going to do with it? It's a boat anchor.
"So I geeked out on the case, and that turned into a shit show. I went through three different suppliers until I could get what I was envisioning, done right."
Here's what Ward came up with:
"We found a piano finisher in Austria who could do the true black lacquer on hardwood to the spec that we wanted…"
"…and then design these blind elbow hinges and the laser cut stainless perimeter.
"The box was fun to do. The idea was, I wanted it to remain relevant and to maintain its utility. So initially it's a presentation box, and your watch is "Ta-da…."
"….But then you remove the ta-da tray and it's a five-pillow watch box."
"So it has value daily and keeps the brand in front of the client's face. And then hopefully, as I continue to develop and release more watches, it inspires him to fill up the rest with ours."
"$250,000 watches don't have this level of consideration in the packaging."
"And then we did that spun pewter lizard that we use on Icon vehicles' horn buttons. He's inlaid on the top deck of it."
Another opportunity to take things all the way came in the form of the owner's documents.
"I developed my own typeface for the watch, and it's consistent everywhere on the watch," Ward explains. "So I realized, shit, if I've gone that far, that font's got to be on all the care-and-feeding instructions in the watch box. And if I'm going to do that, the outdated press-printing and blind foiling and all that is a super cool lost art. So then I found a supplier who still does it that way."
"I find that with a lot of watch packaging, with the typeface and art direction, there's just no consideration. Or you buy a high-end watch and it'll have directions for shit that isn't on the model you bought, that kind of stuff. So this isn't anything crazy, it's just a personal welcome letter to each client and the ownership docs, but it's really thought through."
"The owner card is the same as the ID cards, which are military placards, that we use for marking Icon's production models. So I took the same thing and just changed out the art."
"The headings are the same font that was designed for the watch. I changed the body text for legibility and differentiation, but the kerning and everything's fucked with. I love this font, it came out really cool. It was such a fun project."
Ward produced just 50 Dueseys. Watch 01/50 is on his wrist. A further 37 were sold. 39/50 thru 50/50 are waiting patiently in those cases, and Ward can't wait for them to go: "I already have the two next designs locked and loaded, but my wife [Jamie, Icon's COO] is far more prudent than I, so she won't let me start on the next one until the remaining 12 are sold. But I'm chomping at the bit."
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The 2019 Core77 Design Awards Regular Deadline has finally arrived! The good news? You have a few more hours to work on your entry and get it before that happens.
View the full content hereFrom motor skills to empathy to reading and writing, it's clear that children learn through play, and if they aren't interested in the toys they're playing with, then they aren't learning. To keep children interested in playing—and adults interested in buying—toy companies must design toys that reflect the world children currently live in. In today's world, we have become phone-reliant and more inclusive (Debatable, but baby steps are still steps.), and coding has become a top recruited skill among employers. These three cultural observations are what many companies exhibiting at the 2019 Toy Fair in NYC seemed to work from when designing for the future of play.
The Toy Association highlighted their favorite "innovative" trends as unboxing, compound material play, throwback items, food play, aspirational play, and licensed entertainment toys, but we've selected our own innovative categories that we feel truly encapsulate what the future of play will look like in 2019 and beyond:
In the past, digital products were transformed into physical ones—think video game characters turned into action figures, and movie plots turned into plastic playsets. This year, there is a industry-wide transformation of physical products entering digital worlds—touching everyone from LEGO to K'NEX to Hatchimals.
Photo Credit: LEGO
Available in August, LEGOHidden Side sets combine physical construction with augmented reality—what Lego calls "fluidplay." Assemble the kit, pull up the kit's app, and point a smartphone or tablet camera to see the hidden creatures lurking in the set. The situation then flows into a video game as players are challenged to eliminate the augmented reality monsters.
Photo Credit: POPSUGAR
While Hatchimals already has the Hatchtopia app, beginning in Fall 2019, the Hatchtopia Life Plush Collectibles release brings the plushies online with experiences unique to each product. Each Hatchimal will come with an accompanying code, allowing kids to unlock more play options in a format that sounds reminiscent of the early 2000s Webkinz.
Photo Credit: K'NEX
Pursuing "STEAMagination inspired play," K'NEX is known for its crazy build-kits for massive motorized creations. In 2018, K'nex released some of its legendary Thrill Rides kits with new VR capabilities. Wearing the included cardboard "goggles" and VR Ride It! app, users can "ride" the roller coaster they just built from a first-person, 3D perspective. Without the goggles, the app displays a 2D perspective of the already-built roller coaster and allows players to design their own digital rides featuring K'NEX elements and settings.
Photo Credit: Toy Association
While not technically a toy, Magic Wheelchair's creations are are customized costumes for each wheelchair-bound child the organization serves. Though each costume costs roughly $1,500, Magic Wheelchair provides them at no-cost to the family. Catering to these children's wildest dreams—from pirate ships to Batmobiles to spaceships, and everything in between—the costumes are an exercise in extreme building. This year, the Toy Association partnered with Magic Wheelchair to reveal a purple princess carriage costume for one very lucky little girl. With each striving to bring play and imagination to children of all abilities, hopefully this is the first of many partnerships between the two organizations.
Photo Credit: Barbie
Barbie's 60th anniversary campaign might not sound like a big deal, but believe me—as someone who once owned close to one hundred Barbie dolls—it is. Acknowledging the "Dream Gap"—the self-limiting beliefs girls develop starting at age five that they can't do or be anything they dream—Barbie has launched an initiative that helps girls not only imagine everything they can be, but actually see it. Committed to releasing ten role model dolls inspired by real women each year, Barbie released twenty from eighteen countries, of all walks of life, and of varied skin tones, for their anniversary. In addition to the role model line and continued release of dolls that reflect diverse ethnicities, body-types, and abilities, Barbie's new career dolls—featuring careers in politics, engineering, medical, communications, athletics, and other fields—help children imagine a world of professional possibilities. Now with Barbie, seeing is believing.
Photo Credit: Barbie
While introducing coding to children at a young age isn't a new concept, most coding toys are screen-dependent, and for children who are reading-age or older. Learning Resources's Coding Critters and Fisher-Price's Code-a-Pillar Twist each aim to introduce preschoolers to coding basics without the use of screens.
Scheduled for a Summer 2019 release, Learning Resources's Coding Critters introduce preschoolers to STEM concepts. Featuring an interactive storybook and creatures with accompanying challenges, the kit helps parents teach their youngsters early coding concepts.
Three years after the debut of the original Code-a-Pillar, whose body segments could be rearranged to introduce children to sequencing, the Code-a-Pillar Twist made its debut at the 2019 Toy Fair. Instead of featuring configurable segments like the original, the Twist is one piece. To code the sequence, users simply twist the dials on each body segment to set a series of moves that the critter then follows. Claiming 1,000 possible code combinations and at half the price of the original, the Code-a-Pillar is expected to be a hit when it releases in Fall 2019.
More 2019 Toy Fair coverage:
The Toy Association and Disney's Internal Packaging Tool Aims to Reduce Environmental Damage
In design school, we're taught that our greatest struggles will be design-based: Find the form. Improve the function. Source the best materials. Figure out the manufacturability.
But spend a few years working in industrial design, and you'll often find those aren't the greatest struggles at all. Your greatest challenge is named Dennis and he's an uncooperative engineer. Or Nancy in Marketing, Greg from Accounting, Susan in Operations, The Client. A lot of times it seems like designers are the only ones who give a damn, and each week we have to fight a Nancy-faced Voltron of other corporate interests into making even the tiniest concession that we might know what we're doing. That design might actually make a difference. That the customer might actually be wiling to pay more for a kick-ass product.
Those endless internal struggles sap energy, harden the heart and can have us psychologically retreating from work, seeking creative fulfillment within private hobbies instead. So anytime we encounter a designer who manages to sidestep those problems entirely, retaining full commitment to the work, we're intensely curious as to what that's like, and how their situation came to be.
In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, we saw that Icon's Jonathan Ward is indeed occupied with pure design struggles, absent Voltron's interference. Here we find out how and why. We also asked Ward about other areas of product design he'd like to see Icon branch into.
Jonathan Ward: I'm an idiot. And I'm self-financed. I have no investors. I have no board. I have to answer to my key team here. And sometimes that creates some strife, to be honest.
I started the company with a somewhat irrational focus on wanting to do something different and more considered and evolved and better engineered than I saw in the entire segment of my industry. In the beginning that was sort of easy, and that audacious spirit was manageable. As the scale of our brand gets larger and larger, that ups the ante on shit like that. But thus far, that's been a founding mandate that I protect like a lunatic.
We have tenets, ten questions that anything we're going to get into must hold up against. To the extent that the answer must be "Fuck yeah" or "No." It can't be just "yeah," it's gotta be a match.
The prototype that's in development here, [the still-secret addition to our vehicle line] that you've seen and we've spoken of--what I'm investing in time, money and key technicians to get there, is almost becoming irrational. But I just have such a grip on it--it would be so revolutionary and exceptional and evolutionary that, to a fault, I'm going to see it through. It is what it is.
Yeah, like with this watch, I could have had theoretical goals of price point and I'd love it to be like $3,500 or whatever. But in the end, the price point of all my projects and products is an aftereffect of what it costs to create it. Without the sacrifices. Without the accounting departments saying no, without pushback from Wall Street or any of those constraints that most companies of scale--the big boys, not guys our size--have.
And it's become an amazing freedom. It could be what kills me in the end, if I keep pissing money into all these crazy development projects, but it's what drives me. Most importantly, it's what keeps me hyper crazy passionate about what I'm doing. Just having the freedom to do that. I mean, I'd be fired by any OEM on the planet for sure. I'm probably thoroughly unemployable.
Oh, shit: Architecture, audio, home goods, and especially furniture--I see massive opportunities with some of the heritage brands in that space. And in many cases I feel like what they're making today is watered down, a function of VC and numbers-only brand management over the decades, and it's a shame compared to what's in their own design archive from the past.
[Ward thumps his hand on the large metal conference table we're sitting at.]
This table's from the '40s. All of my furniture in all the offices are vintage McKinney and Steelcase, and you've just seen that crazy chair [earlier Ward showed me his recently-acquired aluminum-and-molded-foam Knoll lounge chair designed by Bruce Hannah and Andrew Morrison in 1971]. That right there is something I'd love to do.
Or revisit the original Tanker Desk: Build them out of aluminum; offer all sorts of fun surface technologies and coatings and finishes; make them adaptive and acknowledging of modern desk needs for charging and computer drop-down so we can interface with them--all the shit that's relevant today, with the quality and aesthetic of vintage in a lighter weight, modern, shippable form. I mean, try to ship a vintage fucking Steelcase. So to take modern constraints and apply a vintage aesthetic to that, would tickle me pink. I love that shit.
Other areas: I don't have this skillset, but I certainly have opinions when it comes to apparel. We're currently doing some prototype leather jackets with Horween and Black Bear and I love that. Is it going to go anywhere? I don't know; I might end up with one overpriced, cool, kick-ass prototype jacket, and that might be enough. Or is it going to keep me up at night? Is it going it force itself into going to the next level and continuing to be developed, force itself into being expanded upon as much possible? I don't know.
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We don't know either, but we'll be watching.
You can follow Ward's work on Instagram and Icon's website.
Brought to you by MAKO Design + Invent, North America's leading design firm for taking your product idea from a sketch on a napkin to store shelves. Download Mako's Invention Guide for free here.
Navigating the world of crowdfunding can be overwhelming, to put it lightly. Which projects are worth backing? Where's the filter to weed out the hundreds of useless smart devices? To make the process less frustrating, we scour the various online crowdfunding platforms to put together a weekly roundup of our favorite campaigns for your viewing (and spending!) pleasure. Go ahead, free your disposable income:
Pantyhose are cheap for a reason: slip into a new pair in the morning and you'll likely have a hole somewhere by the end of the day. Sheertex pantyhose are made of the same fibers as bulletproof vests and are virtually indestructible. Their updated design features a control top and comes in three nude shades.
Parents looking to cut back on screen time should give TIMIO a go. The portable audio player uses magnetic disks that kids can easily swap out themselves for hours of happy listening. The curated content ranges from nursery rhymes to vocabulary lessons, so it can appeal to babies, toddlers, and beyond. The multilingual platform is available in English, Spanish, French, German and Dutch, with more languages under development.
Sleek, modern upgrades of classic mid-century watch design never get old. Topo, the latest from Danish brand Bulbul, is made of the best and most resilient components available: Italian leather, Japanese-made movements and a steel mesh band produced in Pforzheim, Germany.
Oregon turned 160 earlier this year and to celebrate 84 East partnered with the iconic Pendleton Woolen Mills to create "the most Oregon gift ever"—a wool-cotton blend blanket that proudly bears the state seal and will keep Oregonians cozy and warm for generations to come.
Do you need help designing, developing, patenting, manufacturing, and/or selling YOUR product idea? MAKO Design + Invent is a one-stop-shop specifically for inventors / startups / small businesses. Click HERE for a free confidential product consultation.
2019 seems to be the year of taking actionable steps towards reducing single-use plastic, and reusable to-go containers and multi-purpose utensil sets are a useful and impactful way to start doing so in your everyday life. On that note, Anvil Studios and UCO Ware have created the Bamboo 5-piece set, a non-plastic meal and utensil meal kit made of 90% natural materials:
While many of UCO Ware's products are focused on camping and outdoor activities, for this challenge, they enlisted Anvil Studios to design containers that were functional in settings off-campsite. "The solutions needed to be truly useful and not make compromises for either of its intended uses; outdoor and cafeteria (the collection should be just as comfortable in an REI as it is at your office)," says Treasure Hinds, cofounder of Anvil Studios.
One of their core objectives was to redesign the Spork, the ubiquitous, yet oftentimes unuseful tool that isn't quite a spoon and isn't quite a fork. By designing the Switch Spork Utensil set with connecting ends, Anvil has created transportable, compact utensils without compromising function. A tether holds everything in place, making sure that the lid doesn't fall off and the utensils don't get lost in the depths of your bag.
Specifically designed as an eco-friendly offering, innovative solutions and material exploration were key to the project's objectives. Anvil Studios worked to include new, interesting, and exciting ways to mix various materials. They landed on the a renewable pulped bamboo as the main material, which consists of finely crushed bamboo that is mixed with starch and resin as the binder. Creating new materials out of renewable ingredients is going to become more and more common over the next few years, and we're excited to see one of such materials be applied to the Spork (of all things).
Without resorting to Google, how many 20th-century female industrial designers can you name? We're hoping that most of our readers have no trouble thinking of Ray Eames, Florence Knoll, Eileen Gray, Charlotte Perriand, Eva Zeisel and perhaps a few others. But we're guessing that very few of you came up with more than six or seven names total. Not that we did a lot better ourselves—the unfortunate truth is that women designers' contributions to the field just haven't gotten much exposure and celebration over the years.
View the full content hereAt first, it's peculiar to see adults, usually in corporate attire, modeling and demonstrating children's toys, playing. But at this (mostly) kid-free event, business is play and play is business. A trade-only convention and the largest toy fair in the Western Hemisphere, New York City's Toy Fair is an exclusive gathering of over 30,000 attendees to view the 150,000 products marketed by 1,000 exhibitors. Filling all 447,000 net square ft of space in the city's massive Javits Center, the Toy Fair attracts international brands, designers, and inventors hoping to get their products picked up by US retailers, distributors, importers, wholesalers, and sales representatives.
While major brands like Mattel, Melissa & Doug, Ty, HABA, Lego, and the like, are the first brands visitors notice due to their enormous booths, it's incredible to see them alongside so many smaller brands, all with the same goal: to get their products noticed. In a sea full of thousands, it's hard to stand out. From drawing robots and augmented reality toys to tools for designers to new twists on classic ideas, the Toy Fair has a lot to offer. Check out the gallery to see our selection of 2019 toys and brands that caught our attention—a difficult feat in what felt like the world's largest toy store.
Fill the Lippa with your favorite tea leaves and let it float in your cup. When your tea is ready, just lift Lippa from your cup and turn it upside down on the table. Lippa catches the drips. When you want a second brew, just re-fill your cup with hot water and re-insert the tea infuser. No more wasted leaves and tea bags.
Without resorting to Google, how many 20th-century female industrial designers can you name? We're hoping that most of our readers have no trouble thinking of Ray Eames, Florence Knoll, Eileen Gray, Charlotte Perriand, Eva Zeisel and perhaps a few others. But we're guessing that very few of you came up with more than six or seven names total. Not that we did a lot better ourselves—the unfortunate truth is that women designers' contributions to the field just haven't gotten much exposure and cele
View the full content hereAt YETI, we believe that time spent outdoors matters more than ever and our gear can make that time extraordinary. When you work here, you’ll have the opportunity to create exceptional, meaningful work and problem solve with innovative team members by your side. Together, you’ll help our customers get the
View the full design job here
"I find that with a lot of watch packaging, with the typeface and art direction, there's just no consideration. Or you buy a high-end watch and it'll have directions for shit that isn't on the model you bought, that kind of stuff. So this isn't anything crazy, it's just a personal welcome letter to each client and the ownership docs, but it's really thought through."
"The headings are the same font that was designed for the watch. I changed the body text for legibility and differentiation, but the kerning and everything's fucked with. I love this font, it came out really cool. It was such a fun project."
