Design studio Order order has developed a poster that visualizes exactly when the sun rises and sets each day, throughout the year. The graph consists of two axes, the vertical shows hours and minutes, the horizontal displays days. By following the axes you can, for example, see that the sun set at 8.30 PM on June the 20th in New York, summer solstice. Because times differ depending on where you are located, each poster is derived from data for a particular location.
Year after year, our Core77 Design Awards program sees a number of projects take home awards coming from San Francisco design teams, which is why we wanted to pay a visit to honor their work in the 2019 awards! On Thursday, June 20th, we had a blast celebrating the 2019 honorees at Bolt, a VC firm for software and hardware products and workspace based out of the SoMa neighborhood in San Francisco.
There were snacks, tasty drinks, a button making station so guests could make their own personalized buttons, and plenty of great company at the party! All of this was done to honor the best design work of 2019 featured in the Core77 awards program. We hope bringing our wonderful readers and honorees together under one roof helps our design community make new connections and, hopefully, bring even more great designs into the world together. Thanks to everyone who attended, and until next year!
Check out all of the 2019 Core77 Design Awards honorees here
Photos by Mariah Tiffany
When designing furniture, the outward form of the piece is important, but equally important is how I exploit the wood to do things that are surprising or occasionally alarming.
I use the word "exploit" deliberately. Though "exploitation" has a fairly negative meaning in today's lexicon, it is the correct term. In many ways I seek to take full advantage of the wood, perhaps even treat it unfairly to get what I want.
What do I want? Well, in this column I'm going to discuss how I fool the wood into acting like timber from the 18th century (which we can't get anymore), or to become impossibly strong, even when shaved down to extremely thin cross sections.
Exploiting the wood (or any material) requires an intimacy with the stuff that goes beyond most textbooks. And as a designer, I can never know too much about my materials. After working with wood for decades I still think I have a lot to learn. And with steel – the other material I work with a lot in toolmaking – I still consider myself a kindergartner.
My graduate work in wood began with an 18th-century French treatise (aptly) titled "De l'exploitation des bois" by M. Duhamel du Monceau (1700-1781). His 1764 book was perhaps the first Western book exclusively about wood as a material.
I've translated several sections of it during the last decade, but even if you can't read French, the drawings are enough to make your brain churn. In this book, Duhamel explores how wood can be manipulated to make objects such as shoes, frames for saddles or basketry.
M. Duhamel was keen on looking for the shapes he needed in the living forest.
Most shocking, for me at least, is the section where Duhamel demonstrates how to use the natural shape of the living tree to create a curved (and crazy strong) component for a wooden warship, for example. Since then I've learned of ancient cultures that actually trained trees in the forest to grow into particular shapes that they required for a chair, a horse collar or a plate rack. Exploitation indeed – poor trees thought they could avoid being harvested by growing into an undesirable shape. Sorry trees.?
Axel Erlandson was one of the 20th century's great exploiters of trees and grew them to suit his sculptural needs.
Let's dive into some examples that show why you should become intimate with wood (or steel or carbon fiber or…). All three examples begin with a typical design problem. And the solution requires science, trickery and perhaps a little cruelty.
The first problem goes back to 2005 when I was researching ancient French workbenches. After translating another 18th-century French book (A.J. Roubo's "l'Art du menuisier" or "The Art of the Woodworker"), I wanted to build a workbench that had the same characteristics as the benches discussed in Roubo's work.
The workbench shown here is a classic design. The problem is the timber required to build it isn't available anymore. What to do? Get out the scientific charts.
"The top is made of a plank or table of 5–6 thumbs (inches) thickness by 20–22 thumbs in width. For its length, that varies from 6 to 12 feet, but the normal length is 9 feet. This bench is of elm or beech wood but more commonly the latter, which is very solid and of a tighter/denser grain than the other."
— With All the Precision Possible" (Lost Art Press), a translation of sections of A.J. Roubo
So, you need a plank of elm or beech that is about 6" thick, 20" wide and 9' long. If you go to the lumberyard and ask for this, you will be laughed at. Modern sawmills rarely cut stock thicker than 3" or 4" thick. Why? It's mostly economics. Almost all sawmills dry their wood in a heated kiln, and thick material is difficult to dry without the boards self-destructing. Before drying kilns became common in the late 19th century, wood was air-dried, a process that might take years instead of days.
Bottom line: Most modern woodworkers won't be able to easily find a dry plank of wood in those dimensions without immense difficulty or cost. Instead of giving up, I tried to get inside Roubo's head. Was there another way to build this bench without first building a time machine?
Why would Roubo insist on wood that was 5" or 6" thick? (Modern workbenches are less than 3" thick.) My guess was that it was for two reasons: the mass and the stiffness that thick material provides.
Mass is desirable in a workbench – it prevents the bench from skittering around as you work on it. Stiffness is also important. If the top flexes (even the tiniest bit) handplaning a board becomes almost impossible.
Why would Roubo specify elm or beech as the woods for a bench? Neither is a fine furniture wood by traditional standards. Beech is the red oak of the European continent – it is plentiful, cheap and is used for lots of utilitarian objects. Elm is used in some furniture, though it is difficult to work. That was a clue – neither wood is particularly valuable to the fine furniture maker.
Both woods are quite heavy and dense (they are similar in weight to North America's hard maple). That was the second clue. Also, neither species has a lot of open pores. This is a minor point, but open-pored woods such as oak and ash could collect dust and metal filings. Closed-pore woods offer a much smoother surface.
My first Roubo workbench, built using Southern yellow pine, has the same mechanical properties as the bench from the 1700s thanks to a knowledge of wood's properties.
So, I decided to look for a wood that was heavy (about half the weight of water, in terms of specific gravity), inexpensive, widely available, stiff, not particularly desirable as a furniture wood and had closed pores. While there were several contenders, the yellow pines – longleaf pine, loblolly pine and shortleaf pine – turned out to be dead ringers for a Roubo-style workbench.
These particular species of softwoods happen to be a perfect workbench wood. They are heavy, cheap, stiff, common and have no real pores. The only problem is you can't find them in 6"-thick slabs. My solution? Buy 2 x12s, rip them in half and glue them face-to-face, effectively creating a 6"-thick slab.
This worked brilliantly. With yellow pine – readily available from any home center – I could build a 300 lb. workbench for about $250. Plus, it had all the mechanical characteristics of an 18th-century bench. Instead of having to wait a decade for a slab to dry out (or pay through the wazoo for someone to do it for me), I exploited the wood's mechanical properties (thanks to the "Wood Handbook" from the U.S. Forest Products Laboratory) to get what I wanted – quick and cheap, too.
Laminating the top using a species that mimicked ancient beech created a benchtop I couldn't buy for love or money.
The only thing it lacked was that it didn't look like an 18th-century bench because of all the glue lines. With a workbench, appearance isn't terribly important, but with a dining table, it's critical. And that leads us to our next puzzle: really wide boards.
One of the big differences between modern and ancient work is the width of the boards used in the show surfaces, such as the top of a dining table. Thanks to the bounty of the forests in the New World, furniture makers in the 17th through the 19th centuries were able to use boards that were 30" wide – or wider. That meant that a tabletop could be a single wide board, which is visually stunning.
Modern tables – especially mass-market ones – have tabletops made up from narrow boards that are glued together edge-to-edge. Sometimes the individual boards are only 2" or 3" wide. Unless you paint a tabletop such as this – or stain it into dark oblivion – it looks like crap.
Today if you want a single wide board for a top, you have to pay for it. Really wide boards can cost three to five times as much as narrow boards of the same species – if you can even find them for sale. This problem has vexed me for a long time. My solution relied on visual trickery and a firm knowledge of the structure of the wood.
In essence, the trick is to glue up several boards to make a wide top but to camouflage the joints so they are invisible. Some of the camouflage tricks were obvious:
Use boards cut from the same tree so their color and texture are consistent.
Pay attention to the annular rings. Boards have two broad faces. One face usually faced the bark of the tree (called the "bark face") while the other face usually faced the center of the tree (called the "heart face"). These surfaces reflect light differently. (It has to do with the way light bounces off the interior or exterior surfaces of the wood's cells.) Bottom line, all the boards for the show surface of the tabletop should be either heart-face boards or bark-face boards. Not a mix.
Most wide boards have grain lines that look like arrows running down the center (what woodworkers call "cathedral grain") with straight grain lines running down the edges of the board. The trick to making a board look wider is to glue on boards that have similar grain patterns.
The third trick is the trickiest. Lots of woodworkers take a wide board and position it in the middle of the top. Then they glue on boards that feature only straight grain lines to the center board. This fools the eye into thinking the top is one wide board.
But it really doesn't.
What most woodworkers forget is that trees trunks are cone shaped. They taper toward the top of the tree, so the straight grain lines taper as well. So, to really fool the eye, all the boards in the tabletop have to taper so that the grain lines are parallel and continuous.
Here's how I fool the wood into looking like a massive single board (something you can't easily buy). Follow the grain lines closely and you can fool most people.
So instead of gluing up a bunch of rectangles edge-to-edge, you need to glue up a bunch of odd and tapering polygons. Then, after the polygons are glued up, you cut the resulting mass into a perfect rectangular tabletop. It's more work. And there's more waste. But the result is worth $1,000 (or $10,000, depending on the checkbook of the customer).
The exploitation? Instead of allowing a tree to live to be 150 years old before being harvested to be a one-board tabletop, I can get what I want by using a 40-year-old tree instead. And I don't have to pay an exorbitant price for the 150-year-old tree.
Gluing up a top as described above is designed to fool the eye of the customer. Sometimes you need to fool the wood itself to get the job done.
One of the reasons old chairs survive centuries is the wood. On many high-quality old chairs, the wood was cleaved – or rived – from the tree instead of being sawn. This cleaving process ensures that the wood fibers in the stick are continuous from one end of the stick to the other. These continuous fibers make the stick incredibly difficult to snap, even when crazy thin.
The spindles in this chair taper to almost 1/4". That's alarmingly thin and these would snap easily if I hadn't sawn them in a special way.
Sawn stock, on the other hand, is traditionally weaker because it doesn't have these continuous fibers. So, spindles, legs and other sawn components fracture with ease, especially when thin.
Splitting (or cleaving) your wood ensures the fibers run from end to end. But not all species split easily. And only certain trees grew straight enough for this operation.
Cleaving your stock has disadvantages. You need to get your wood from the forest (or from a tree service). It's still wet when you begin working it. And you have to dry it yourself, which can take patience.
When I started making chairs for money my goal was to find wood that had the same continuous fibers as cleaved stock, but to do it with sawn wood that I could buy at my city's local lumberyard.
Take a close look at the grain lines on the edges of these boards. In the top one the slanted grain would make a weak spindle (yet many factory chairs are made from this stuff). On the board below the grain is arrow straight, which makes it a candidate for a chair spindle.
The trick turned out to be to fool my sawn lumber into behaving like it was cleaved. I did this by opening my eyes to how I bought wood at the lumberyard. When most people buy wood at the yard they look at the wide faces of the boards for knots and beautiful figure. Instead, I also examine the edges of the boards for grain lines that run straight all the way up and down the board. Those straight grain lines indicate that the fibers are nearly continuous through the thickness of the board.
Here you can see how I marked out a spindle in a board. By following the grain on the edge and the face of the board, I can create an incredibly strong piece of wood.
With the fibers continuous through the thickness, I can then saw out my chair parts from the wide face of the board by marking out my parts so they follow the grain there. And bingo, I have old-school parts that are incredibly strong. Like cleaved material but without all the work.
Now if you're smart, you probably aren't buying my contention that I'm "exploiting" the poor defenseless wood. And you'd be right. While you could look at these tricks as exploitation, I prefer to look at them as ways to conserve a precious raw material via a deep understanding of the wood's mechanical properties.
So, to build a workbench, I substitute quickly grown plantation softwood for massive old-growth timbers. To make a wide tabletop, I avoid using the biggest trees, which are more suitable for veneer when they reach the end of their lives. And to make strong chair parts, I use materials that are easily obtained locally instead of traveling deep into the forest and making an environmental mess of things there.
Truthfully, "exploitation" sounds a little more Fellini-esque and naughty. A lot less like an environmental film strip from Mr. Peel's 8th-grade science class. And when you're a boring old woodworker who talks to his materials, you take all the excitement you can get.
Legerdemain aside, the design lesson stands: A deep understanding of your materials gives you superpowers over designers who don't.
Christopher Schwarz is the editor at Lost Art Press and one of the founders of Crucible Tool. He works from a restored 1896 German barroom in Covington, Ky. You can see his furniture at christophermschwarz.com.
Lifetime Brands is searching all the kitchen cabinets for an industrial designer to help create kitchenware products based on market research and retail strategies. Evolve concept designs through a systematic process of drawing, model making, testing and analysis and work on a variety of projects simultaneously from concept to final design. Candidates must be familiar with standard concepts, practices, and procedures within the field.
See the full job details or check out all design jobs at Coroflot.
Elon Musk has started teasing the forthcoming Tesla pickup truck, saying that it will feature a "Blade-Runner-like," "pretty sci-fi" design that "doesn't look like a truck," while boasting some serious capabilities. "The goal is to be a better truck than a [Ford] F-150 in terms of truck-like functionality and be a better sports car than a standard [Porsche] 911," he said about a month ago. "That's the aspiration."
We don't know exactly what the Tesla truck will look like (Musk is expected to make a more formal reveal of his plans later this summer), but we can assume it will take many years before it actually hits the market. For some, that's nowhere near soon enough. To make a car that better suits her lifestyle and work, Youtuber and self-proclaimed "queen of shitty robots" Simone Giertz took her Tesla Model 3 and turned it into an outright pickup truck, which she calls Truckla.
"I really want an electric pickup truck, and more specifically, I really want a Tesla pickup truck," says Giertz in the opening scene of the video below. "But I don't have time to wait for that! I need to haul lumber and dead bodies right now. I'm just going to have to make my own...it's the only sane option," she continues. "Elon Musk: this is me challenging you to make the world's first, functional Tesla pickup truck...I have an angle grinder and a welder and I'm not afraid to use them."
Giertz prepared for the task for over a year with a team of mechanics and makers: Marcos Ramirez, Richard Benoit of Rich Rebuilds—known for modifying Teslas—and Laura Kampf. She prefaces the experiment by saying it's either going to be "the smartest or the most stupid thing I'm ever going to do," but the results are pretty impressive. Check out the (sometimes explicit) video of the entire process below:
And don't miss the accompanying ad for "the truck the world didn't know it was waiting for."
We recently had the chance to visit ArtCenter in Pasadena on occasion of their 2019 grad show. Housed in the Pasadena Convention Center, the college of art and design had a wide array of projects on display from each of their creative majors, ranging from fine art to transportation. Many students complete internships during their time at ArtCenter, and work resulting from these internships was often on display mixed in with ArtCenter projects. We walked the entire show, observing it through an industrial design lens, and came up with a list of projects we were most excited to learn about. So, let's take a virtual walk through some exciting student work:
Night Loo is a reusable personal urinal designed for women living in refugee camps to use in their own shelters at night when the threat of rape makes going to communal latrines too dangerous. This version of the urinal is a redesign of designer Anna Meddaugh's original version back in 2017 (which won a student notable award in the 2018 Core77 Design Awards).
"Prior to urinating and rinsing herself, the user tosses in a small pre-portioned pod of super-absorbent polymer (SAP) encased in dissolving PVA film, which absorbs the liquid and accompanying odor in less than 60 seconds, preserving the comfort of all inhabitants within her shelter," explains Meddaugh. "In the morning when it is safer to go out, she can carry the Night Loo to the latrines to empty the powder and can brush or rinse out any residue before returning to her shelter for use again that night."
Expert Raid was 14 week project where students were tasked with rebranding infamous pest control brand—in New York at least—Raid. By simplifying the information on the package and by making it more graphically sophisticated (i.e. less creepy and bug-oriented), designer Eunseo Cho designed a product system where consumers can quickly identify the product they need on store shelves.
This project by Shu Ou envisions what food on our dinner table will look (and smell) like in 2025 by addressing three major roadblocks to our current food system: climate impact, industrialized farming, and globalized food logistics. At the grad show, Ou had three products on display along with a farming system that she was developing:
Perfecto Grapes: a container of completely flawless grapes that represent our limited selection of food source and the idea that we will have to engineer the flavor and appearance of everything we consume.
Precision Meal Bar: As we unlock the potential of genome engineering to a wider audience (currently the technology is managed by very few big companies), Ou predicts that we will begin to have more customized meal options available to us, including personalized meal bars for each day of the week.
Nostalgia Snack: In the next two decades, multiple crops will have a hard time to growing, such as peaches, kiwis, and almonds. Ou sees a future in which we use technology to recreate the flavors of produce we currently love and harnessing them into snack bars—the taste of the extinct foods will become nostalgic.
"What if the technology that we live with could allow us to live beyond our physical selves, connecting us more deeply to our survivors and future generations?" asks designer Margaux Reynolds.
Reynold's project Port.al (the ".al" stands for afterlife) is jewelry that explores this deeply relevant question. Port.al is a digital information system that captures the wearer's logistical and emotional assets while being worn. After the user passes away, AI acts as a digital medium to their loved ones, preserving the wearer's legacy. Reynolds designed both an operating system that interacts with the wearer throughout their daily life and a platform that interacts with the wearer's loved ones after they're gone.
Incog-neat-o is a modular replacement automotive interior and exterior system for sedans. It's becoming more common to see people living out of their cars, whether they were displaced from their homes or prefer to save on rent in expensive areas. A few key features include a folding front seat that turns into a full bed and solar panels on the roof. The system is purposefully designed to look like the original sedan interior to avoid harassment and judgement from police or passerby, hence the name, 'Incog-neat-o'.
Designers Sejin Beag and Gabe Rustia envision Discover, their 360-degree camera drone, as a lens into another part of the world by allowing people to visit remote places virtually. The tripod-inspired design allows users to experience elevation, make side to side movements, or hover in place. As the user explores other parts of the world via Discover, a built-in artificial intelligent tour guide guides you along the way. Discover is able to both fly in the air and swim underwater, allowing endless exploration possibilities.
After a very unfortunate accident where his grandfather passed away after falling during a hike, Ted Kim was motivated to develop a safety companion for hikers with project partner Yujin Park. Lumati is a helium filled, hands-free companion that attaches to the hiders backpack and gently floats above them as they embark on their journey. The device aids in safety by lighting up the user's surrounding, creating loud noise through built-in speakers in moments where the user needs to be found and automatically reporting to 911 if the user becomes unconscious (you can turn it off via phone when you meditate or take a break).
POC DNA is a mountain biking-specific shoe that uses data driven design in the design process vis consumer input. Texture mapping identifies worn areas that need more reinforcement per individual shoe, and outsole grip is customized based on each individual's wear patterns. Once a shoe is worn out, the owner brings it back into the store to be scanned, which collects useful data for the next round of the design process.
During his time at ArtCenter, Henry Song also had the unique opportunity to help Sean Wotherspoon visualize his Nike 97/1 Air Max model, which was later chosen by the public to be released. The model was wildly popular and became one of the most sought after sneaker releases of the year.
While part of the team at INDUSTRY (during his studies at ArtCenter), J Gabe Rustia and his team we were tasked with realizing the designs selected to be put into production by Nike's 2018 On Air program—creating additional assets, storytelling methods and more detailed renderings of each contestant's concept. "I am fortunate and honored to have played a role in this team project," says Rustia. "The most rewarding part was seeing/hearing the reactions of the contestants as we collaborated with them to refine the visual renderings of their designs. Those spontaneous moments are what we [as designers] strive for."
As part of a 14-week partnership between ArtCenter and HP Inc., students were tasked with building human, holistic, and essential computing experiences from a strategy-focused perspective. As part of this program, designer Asli Akdemir created cosmos, a portable computer that allows creative professionals to collaborate and express themselves creatively without as many boundaries as existing platforms. cosmos makes any surface interactive, allowing creative professionals to ideate, store, and access information in the cloud no matter where they are.
Design Army (known for their boundary-pushing work with clients including Honk Kong Ballet, Pepsi, W Hotels and more) is seeking a talented motion designer specializing in 3D motion graphics using Cinema4D. Candidates should have a creative eye for composition, color, and design. Experience with dynamic animation and/or Vray and Octane experience a plus!
See the full job details or check out all design jobs at Coroflot.
'Cheer Project' is a research into pine needles in which the abundant and unwanted material is developed into a 100% bio-based and biodegradable composite material.
The entire process of production was designed to be practiced as a sustainable craft to help generate income in the rural areas of Himachal. It has been an experiment to understand the root of a local material and its potential and possibilities in an ever-increasing demand for alternatives for the production of sustainable objects.
Just in time for the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing later this month, a fully-restored Apollo Mission Control Center has opened its doors to the public, who will get to experience the space just as it was on July 20, 1969.
View of activity at the flight director's console in the Mission Operations Control Room in the Mission Control Center, Building 30, on the first day of the Apollo 10 lunar orbit mission. (Photo credit: NASA)
View of the Mission Operations Control Room in the Mission Control Center during the Apollo 11 lunar landing. The television monitor shows astronauts Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin E. Aldrin Jr. on the surface of the moon. (Photo credit: NASA)
The Mission Control Center was considered the heart of NASA during the early days of space exploration. After witnessing the Gemini, Apollo, and Shuttle eras it was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1985, but time and tours eventually took their toll. Even though partial repair work took place over the years, a full restoration project began in July 2017 as a joint initiative by the nonprofit Space Center Houston, the city of Webster, and NASA Johnson Space Center. The scope of work included the Mission Operations Control Room (MOCR), the Visitor Viewing Room, Simulation Control Room and the Summary Display Projection Room (also called the "bat cave").
25 Apollo flight controllers were interviewed about their memories to make sure the restoration captured the unmistakable energy of the historic room. The team was also aided by photographs, existing artifacts, including all the seats, which were all restored, and original samples of wallpaper and carpet that were found beneath more contemporary layers.
The flight control consoles feature illuminated buttons and screens displaying data from the Apollo 11 mission. Paperwork, coffee mugs, and ashtrays are strewn around, while old coats hang from period-authentic coat racks. The intention is to have the room feel "alive" and make visitors feel like they've entered Mission Control exactly like it was the day of the moon landing, with even the clocks matching the time of day and CBS footage playing video of Neil Armstrong's first steps.
"By restoring the Apollo Mission Control Center, NASA is preserving the rich history of a remarkable achievement in human spaceflight," said Restoration Project Manager Jim Thornton in a statement. "This will not only help share our history with visitors from around the world, but also remind our current employees who are planning missions to send humans back to the Moon and then further to Mars, that anything is possible and we are standing on the shoulders of giants."
Exhibitions get noticeably fewer in the summer months, so it's especially exciting to find one that's worth an extended viewing. That's the case with R & Company's newly opened retrospective show, dedicated to Greta Magnusson Grossman's career in California. A range of rare designs and drawings illuminate how the designer combined her Scandinavian sensibilities with the SoCal spirit she encountered to create a fresh take on modernism.
The Swedish émigré and designer moved to San Francisco with her husband in 1940 and soon after settled in Los Angeles, where she embarked on a second design career in a new country. Within a year of her arrival, Grossman had set-up a design studio on Rodeo Drive that successfully spanned across disciplines. She began by designing furniture for dozens of brands as well as custom lighting and furnishings for a mix of manufacturers and A-list private clients. Later, she leveraged her success and casually-luxurious style to launch an architecture career, eventually designing at least 14 homes in Los Angeles alone.
Grossman's home office in Los Angeles, circa 1957. Photograph by John Hartley, courtesy the Greta Grossman Archives, R & Company, New York
"In 1941 there would have been very little Scandinavian design that had been introduced to the American public," says R & Company co-founder Evan Snyderman, also noting that Grossman "designed with a professional woman such as herself in mind." In fact, many of her private clients—Greta Garbo among them—were single, professional women, a demographic that not many designers were going after.
"As a woman and émigré in the American design field, Grossman was a fiercely independent pioneer and master navigator of many design collaborations, professional relationships, and running her own business in a milieu that has been traditionally male-dominated and fraught with gender disparity," explains R & Company's Director of Archives and Publications, Michelle Jackson-Beckett. "In Modern Makes Sense, we continue to tell her incredible story and uncover new inspiration from her work and archive."
Notable works on view include furniture from the "62 Series," a collection of lighting for Ralph O. Smith, a rare chaise longue designed for Sherman Bertram, a unique and inventive asymmetrical coffee table, and a series of dining chairs that were included in the Museum of Modern Art's "Good Design" exhibition in 1952. Since the gallery is the main repository for Grossman's estate, curators were able to draw on and include a wide range of project records, professional and personal papers, drawings, photographs, and other ephemera that shed light on Grossman's career.
Find out more about her "glorious Swedish-Californian mash-up" in our Designing Women profile (and keep an eye out because we'll be reviving the series later this summer!)
"Greta Magnusson Grossman: Modern Makes Sense" will be on view at R&Company's 64 White Street gallery through 22 August 2019.
Poppin is searching for a Director of Development for its new high growth product category —Poppinpod—an all inclusive approach to privacy, sound mitigation and sub-enclosure within the office. Drawing on a long experience managing the development of architectural interior products, the right candidate will be responsible for overseeing the specification, fabrication, and testing protocols associated with all products in the line, to continuously improve their cost, schedule, performance and aes
See the full job details or check out all design jobs at Coroflot.
Having moved out to the countryside, I'd been away from Manhattan for some time, but had to fly back for a wake two weeks ago. Upon reaching SoHo, my old neighborhood, I saw the same dismaying behavior that made it easy for me to leave New York: Everyone walking around and staring into their phones. People in cafes staring into their phones. Drivers in traffic staring into their phones. People walking dogs and staring into their phones.
Jonathan Ive is one of the few industrial designers who has changed human behavior on a worldwide scale. By working in concert with Steve Jobs to develop the first iPhone, he unwittingly helped usher in the age of the addictive glass rectangle. Can either he or Jobs be blamed? Of course not. Their goal was to accomplish an amazing technological feat encapsulated in an object with great UX. They could not have foreseen that their object would be misused en masse, any more than the inventors of broadcast television technology could have foreseen couch potatoes, or the inventors of butter could have foreseen the morbidly obese.
"If you design a car," one of my design professors once told us, "someone will use it to rob a bank." Maybe that's a facile take on a designer's responsibility, but it's the one I'm taking for the purpose of this article.
My point is that Ive wields fantastic power as a designer, and I think that while the iPhone has yielded socially detrimental results, Ive's fanatical focus on UX could be used to fix a lot of important things in this world that are in desperate need. Now that he's left Apple, here's my fanciful list of what I'd love to see him tackle next.
Libraries
I don't mean that I want to see Ive design one library. I'd like to see him redo the entire library system as a community gathering point, and make going there every bit as addictive as an iPhone. You could go there to find information and locate it easily. Information would be presented comprehensively and in multiple media; for instance, if I went there to research timber framing, I'd find books, blueprints, images, interactive 3D holographic models, videos of people explaining the various joints, lists of companies that build timber frames, the availability of nearby schools that teach the craft, VR visits to famous timber frame structures around the world. Assistance would be a combination of human (for the personal touch) and AI (to execute the drudgery).
The information, the knowledge would be presented in such an enticing way that one could head to the library out of sheer boredom, yet would invariably stumble across something productive that interested them and engaged them.
Air Travel
I'm not talking about Ive designing just an airplane interior--I'm talking about the entire thing.
Current air travel is a collection of separate, shitty experiences. Transportation to the airport, through traffic. Parking the car, if taking your own. The check-in procedure, when online check-in is unavailable. The security line, which is often slowed by several passengers who appear to be flying for the first time and/or cannot follow instructions. The overpriced, underquality food at the terminal. The waiting at the gates, with scant explanation provided for delays, nor accurate predictions for actual times. The inefficient boarding process, where the first on attempt to monopolize as much storage space as possible to the detriment of those boarding later. The discomfort of the actual flight. Baggage retrieval. Last-mile transportation to your ultimate destination.
Could all of this be made into a seamless, or at least seam-minimal, experience? For Economy class, no less? How much of this complicated process could be managed by intelligent design?
A System of Complete Situational Awareness
I'm sure this would be hijacked by the military, but here on our farm, my wife and I have a need for a comprehensive monitoring and communication system that covers a large area containing occasional danger.
We have five dogs and roughly 200 free-range birds (chickens, ducks, geese, guinea fowl, etc.). Occasionally one of the dogs escapes, makes it to a neighboring farm and starts tearing through their garbage. Occasionally a bird goes missing, and only days later do we find the bloody feathers indicating a fox attack occurred on some far-flung region of the property. Deadly copperhead snakes occasionally find their way into the garden. Armed hunters accidentally stray onto our property at night. And the biggest problem of all is that my wife and I often need to contact each other, but with 42 acres of land, are often far apart from each other and have no way to communicate (there's no cell service out here).
What we'd like, is to be able to look at a screen and see exactly where each of our animals are. We'd like to be able to see snakes, foxes, coyotes and other predators appear as blinking red shapes. We want to know why an unknown, uninvited vehicle has ominously appeared at the end of the driveway and is making its way towards our house. If there's a thunderstorm we can't see that's near the power substation and we're likely to experience a blackout, we want to know. We want to be alerted when men with rifles are traipsing through our woods. If I'm on the riding mower wearing noise-canceling headphones, or running a chainsaw in the back pasture, I want my wife to be able to press a button and I can instantly hear her.
All of this would obviously require a system of sensors, cameras and lines of communication. And, almost forgot, it would need to run off of a renewable energy source--solar, wind--not because we're green, but because our area is prone to blackouts.
I am desperate to see how a designer like Ive, who strives to turn complexity into simplicity, would tackle this.
The Healthcare/Health Insurance System
Maintaining your personal health should be, at least in selfish America, the most important thing you do. Yet the people and institutions that care for our health are part of the most opaque, expensive, confusing and nonsensical system many of us deal with.
There's no good system for choosing a physician. There's no pricing transparency. There's no telling if a doctor prescribes a particular medication because he or she profits from it. There's no telling what you'll be charged for.
The policies are confusing, the choices bewildering. There is a lot of information that needs to be conveyed, and healthcare providers present most of it poorly.
I would love to see Ive wrangle all of this complexity into a simple series of experiences. I don't doubt that the task is probably impossible--but I bet people said the same thing about the first iPhone.
A Subway System
Something that happens in New York: You take the subway to an unfamiliar stop; you exit to the street at one of multiple exits; you find yourself on the wrong side of the street than you'd intended to wind up. This seems to happen a lot when it's raining, and you're forced to wait at a crosswalk and soak up water, then you later learn there was an exit much closer to your destination.
On top of basic signage and orientation needs, the subway is another area where there's a lot of extant real-time information, but very little of it makes its way to the end user in a timely fashion. On my last trip back, a helpful friend texted me that an express train I needed to take to meet up with him had been diverted to the local line, meaning I could grab it at a nearby station rather than one further away. This was convenient for me, and I never would have known about it had the friend not texted me.
In the station itself I encountered a family of five tourists, one of them pregnant, another with a toddler. They were having difficulty working the turnstile and I had to intervene to get them all through. Once the express train arrived, they boarded it with me--not realizing it wasn't the local train they needed until after the doors had closed. I had to work out the transfer for them and ensure they got off at the correct stop to execute it.
How many times a day does that happen, simply because information is not being conveyed? Shouldn't "I want to get from Point A to Point B," within a system where all of the information for how to accomplish that exists, be an incredibly simple experience?
And, of course, I'd like to ride in a subway car that was itself designed by Ive.
______
I know that all of these things are pipe dreams; Ive's success has made him fabulously wealthy, and at that level of life I doubt he's exposed to these kinds of plebian UX hassles. But man, I'd love to see the difference his level of attention to detail could make with any of these.
As we usher in the Fourth of July long weekend, we're also approaching the end of another *important* event in the Core77-sphere—the Core77 Design Awards Community Choice Prize Competition!
The Community Choice competition gives our audience the opportunity to be involved in the decision making process of the Core77 Design Awards. To vote, simply find the page of your favorite project and click the "Vote for this project" in the yellow box to the top right! Each project can only be voted on once per person.
At the end of the Community Choice voting period, 20 Community Choice titles will be awarded: 19 Category Winners, the projects that receive the most votes in their respective category, and 1 Grand Prize Winner, the project that receives the most votes overall.
All winning projects will receive extensive promotion throughout the Core77 network, but the Community Choice Grand Prize Winner will also be gifted one free ticket to the 2019 Core77 Conference**, to be held October 4th in New York City.
For the Fourth of July weekend, add onto your to do list to grill, chill, and send your vote for best design awards project of the year to us! You have until Monday, July 8th to get it done.
**The Community Choice Grand Prize does not include airfare & accommodations
Here's a dose of nostalgia for you: 40 years ago Sony launched sales of the beloved Walkman TPS-L2, forever changing how we listen to and experience music. To mark the anniversary, Sony has opened an exhibit in Tokyo celebrating the Walkman's iconic history and how the device became a defining accessory of modern life.
It was Sony co-founder Masaru Ibuka who rather inadvertently inspired the Walkman when he requested an easy-to-carry device that would let him listen to operas on long flights. Sony's tape recorder division got to work and adapted their Pressman—a recording device for journalists—to suit the task.
50,000 units of the TPS-L2 sold within the first two months of its release on July 1, 1979. By the time the Walkman made it's U.S. debut in 1980, the cassette was well on its way to overtaking vinyl and by 1983, cassettes were officially the best-selling format. As the market grew and competing consumer electronics companies released their own portable tape players, the Walkman stood out with iconic design features and brand recognition, allowing Sony to hold on to 50% of market share for a decade. With over 80 Walkman models developed before 1990, Sony sold 385 million units before the device was officially dethroned by Apple's iPod.
Beyond these impressive numbers, the Walkman also left an indelible mark on culture. From adding fuel to the "exercise craze of the 80s" to spawning the sociological term "the Walkman effect"—coined by Japanese professor Shuhei Hosokawa to describe how it fundamentally changed the way we interact with the outside world—the device is only out-dated in terms of technology.
Taking place at Ginza Sony Park, the centerpiece of the exhibition is a 20-foot-long "Walkman Wall" with 230 different types, so viewers can immediately grasp its evolution. The exhibition will also feature stories from over 40 "artists, creators, and celebrities" about their personal experiences with the Walkman and a rotating exhibition of customized devices. Outside, an eight-foot-tall sculpture of the WM-F5 model greets visitors and will make it impossible for you to miss the venue.
"Walkman in the Park" will be on view through September 1, 2019
JMP Creative (clients include Mattel, Hasbro, etc.) is seeking a full-time Toy Product Designer with the experience, attributes and vision to create awesome toy ideas and brings concepts to life through various stages of development. JMP Creative offers a unique and refreshing culture and have the latest and greatest tools and technologies at their disposal. If you're a toy designer looking for something new, we recommend giving this a try.
See the full job details or check out all design jobs at Coroflot.
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:
We already showed you a watch that tells time twice, now here's a watch that...almost doesn't tell time at all. Frosted glass gives this minimal, poetic timepiece a blurred effect, so you'll have to take "a moment of pause and intention" to make out the exact time.
An innovative yet simple doorstopper that has us rethinking the design opportunities in this overlooked product. (Apparently, the company behind the campaign tests potential hires by having them design a doorstopper!)
The tiny Humbird uses bone conduction technology to turn any hollow object into a speaker. Different surfaces generate different sound effects—placing it on an empty box will highlight mid-bass tones while glass surfaces bring out high frequencies, for example—so you can experiment and tap into a whole new world of sound.
Temperature control is a key factor in fermentation that can make a huge difference in the final result. Homebrewers who have had to resort to expensive or imprecise techniques can now rejoice: the Stasis chiller employs the same glycol chilling technology used by professional breweries but comes in a compact, all-in-one system that takes all the guesswork out of the process.
The Layover is a travel blanket you'll want to have on your next trip. It's extremely packable, spill-proof and water-resistant yet soft and plush, and comes with insulated leg pockets.
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.
Are you passionate about toys? Would you like to explore the endless world of children’s imagination and creativity with LEGO® Bricks? Do you want to shape the play experiences of children all over the world? Well, here is your chance! Turn ideas into toys We
See the full job details or check out all design jobs at Coroflot.
The inspiration to design the Reverse Sunclock Multifunctional Wall Lamp emanates from the desire to match two inseparable concepts - time and light. The marriage of those into an object that resembles a clock yet exists as a wall lamp initially sprung from the observation of sun clocks. Shadow and light unite and produce the notion of time. In this case the game between light and shadow applied onto a reverse sun clock half fiberglass half brass gives birth to a hybrid product, a ying yang existence of time and light.
"The difficulty of getting in and out of this thing is well worth the tradeoff of owning furniture that pays homage to scorpions."
"As an architect, I like to have control. With staircases, it's always bothered me that my clients could choose which foot to place on which step. With this design, I am able to dictate which steps I want you to use your right foot on, and which are for your left foot. You use these the way I decide you use them."
"I was going for maximum footprint, minimal usable storage space."
"I didn't have enough time to finish the project, but I can sell this one 'in the room'--I've already got a bullshit speech prepared about 'the majesty of trees,' et cetera."
"Sure, the hangers are a little pointy at both ends, but I think consumers will be delighted that you can take all of the clothes off of them and assemble them into a perfect cylinder to impress visitors. I estimate the average user will do this at least once a week."
"I'll never run out of toilet paper again."
"Three things I like: Relaxing, reading, and spilling spare change onto my potted plants."
"When dining, I like to have a white cylinder of light blocking my visibility of the person across from me. I also love this thing because after my guests leave and I close it up, the room is dominated by a hulking white pod."
"What's the big deal? Just wash your hands after you use it, you puss. This is a space-saving design."
"You told me the bike lane needed drainage, but you weren't specific about how bicycle tires work. So I don't think this is my fault."
