It turns out that Moore spent August in Moscow as an artist-in-residence, creating a series of 15 new canvas, as well as three public murals and 17 public sculptures (pictured above and below).
Now, he's turned us on to his latest project, Core Deco, his foray into product design. Although the project dates back to spring of this year, this week saw the launch of the first line of objects, each a natural extension of his signature "vectorfunk" design aesthetic:
After many years and countless projects working as a graphic designer, illustrator, and fine artist... The next logical step for Matt was to branch out towards functional design and create products that have as much gravity in their purpose as they do in their visual appeal. Carpe diem.
Collaboration is at the heart of each of our products. Working with friends is the most exciting and rewarding part of the process. We are truly blessed to have such an amazing group of creative professionals in our circles. Master woodcrafter Erik Flanagan handles the furniture manufacturing. Screen printer Dominic D'Alessio is in charge of bringing graphics to life on various surfaces. Jeff Griecci is our point man for videos. And there's a long list of collaborators we are currently working with for future offerings.
Insofar as the designs largely speak for themselves, there's not much to say—or dislike—about Moore's minimal aesthetic. It's not so much a departure as a sort of evolution, from two dimensions to three, the purely formal adapted for function. Detailed photography and teaser videos after the jump...
Since their founding in 1938, Knoll has used innovative design to create compelling work environments and products that inspire and endure. Building on history, research and experience, Knoll has become the definitive source when it comes to the latest developments in the contemporary workplace.
In this round of The Secret to Your Success, with the idea of evolution in mind, we took a look at how creative professionals build on their experiences to achieve success. Many of you mentioned education, hard work, collaboration. But, a few of you also focused on the importance of making mistakes, tweaking, reiterating.
As designers, we know how important this is. Whether self engineered or just the stuff that happens, it's clear that failure isn't the opposite of success, it's just a step along the way.
@Sedanimal Disappointment is just a 14 letter word for adjusting.
@thestarry_night Remember that for every failure, you are one step closer to success. Never give up!
@jake_frey ALWAYS jot down that little thought, concept or idea because you WILL forget it later.
@therealsamwize Don't be afraid to fail. Just be sure you don't.
@is_firps You can't succeed if you don't even try! Putting yourself out there may be scary, but necessary.
But, our favorite tweet this week comes from Brian Cherbak (who actually had a few insights about failure—hope he just didn't have a bad week).
@cherbabm Life is an accumulation of your actions, not just the actions. Don't be discouraged because one thing didn't go well.
Brian is an engineering student in his senior year at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute Indiana. He's currently on co-op working as a Battery Engineering Intern at Tesla Motors. Cool!
Thanks for the insight, Brian and enjoy your new Generation chair from Knoll. And, remember—if if at first you don't succeed...well...you know.
Our next and final winner will be selected November 1!
It started on Facebook, then quickly went viral: This photograph of India at night, shot from space and composited by NASA, has been widely described as portraying the subcontinent during Diwali. The Diwali festival or "festival of lights" is an important Hindu holiday; the name stems from Deepavali or "row of lamps."
The photo is an overlay of shots highlighting India's burgeoning population over several years. The white lights were the only illumination visible before 1992. The blue lights appeared in 1992. The green lights in 1998. And the red lights appeared in 2003.
What's not clear is that the explanation claims the white lights "were the only illumination visible before 1992" and that the colored lights appeared in subsequent years. If this photograph is to highlight population growth, doesn't it make sense that perhaps NASA changed the color of the new lights appearing in '92, '98 and '03 to provide overlays as a visual marker of growth?
If this photo is what the viralists originally claimed, it implies that different regions of India coordinated with one another to celebrate Diwali with dedicated colors for their regions. And it doesn't explain why Myanmar, which as far as I know does not celebrate the festival, is off to the right with a bunch of red lights.
I'm not familiar enough with Diwali and how it is celebrated in India to determine if this makes sense. Anyone with more experience care to sound off?
The Autodesk Sustainability Workshop is a free and vast online resource that aims to teach sustainability strategies, from micro to macro. The simple, easily-digestible series of strategy videos, tutorials and case studies can help students, educators, designers, engineers and architects not only learn about sustainability, but how to directly apply it.
Core77 asked 5 students to take it for a test spin, investigating the workshop and using Autodesk software to incorporate what they'd learned in a re-design of a commonplace object. We start with California-based Erin Fong (California College of the Arts, BFA in Industrial Design, May 2011) and her update to the DSLR.
Core77: Erin, tell us about yourself.
Erin Fong: I am 24 and I was born in Oakland, but am currently living in Castro Valley. I love to travel, find new experiences, and read—classic literature, historical fiction and even rereading some favorite childhood books. I also like running, that's when I get a lot of my design thinking done.
What made you decide to study industrial design?
I grew up in a family that encouraged creativity and was exposed to the arts at a very young age. I always loved hands-on projects and received my first glue gun in elementary school. I felt like the glue gun allowed me to create almost anything, and that was my introduction to creating 3D objects. I've carried that interest with me and always feel the urge to make products work better to my own lifestyle.
What areas of industrial design are you interested in focusing on?
My natural tendencies have been toward consumer products and electronics, but I am always open to learning and experiencing different things.
Tell us about your project.
My goal is to challenge the form of the SLR camera. From my experience and from watching other people take pictures, there are so many different ways people position themselves in order to get the perfect picture: Lying on the ground, standing on top of chairs, crouching behind a tree, etc. Depending on the environment and situation, the demands on a photographer are different. However, the form of the camera has always remained the same: a static box. As a result, I wanted to try to create a new form that allowed users to gain a better grip on the camera when they're shooting from any angle. In addition, I wanted to make it friendly for both right and left-handed users because especially when using only one hand to hold the camera, people prefer to use their dominant hand, but when the shutter button is only on one side, some people are forced to use their non-dominant hand, making it more difficult to get the picture they want.
I also wanted to make the flow of taking pictures more seamless. Currently, a lot of the camera buttons are located on the back of the camera, so when making adjustments to the camera settings, sometimes people have to take the camera away from their face and look at the camera. By moving the buttons to the front of the camera handle where it is easily accessible to the fingers, I wanted it to be like a musical instrument—just like how a pianist can create a variety of beautiful music without looking down at the keys, I wanted photographers to have an uninterrupted time focusing on the picture they're taking without have to take their eyes off of the subject to look at the camera buttons.
From a sustainability viewpoint, DSLR cameras have a pretty good lifetime, but what do you do when it's obsolete? Another idea I'm going after is how to recycle and reuse a good portion of the camera body immediately after the actual camera stops working or becomes replaced by better models. Therefore, the key change I made to the original design was eliminating one of the camera handles, because simply having one handle maintains my original intent of making the camera friendly for both left and right handed users (as well as the single-handed function). Now the single handle breaks into a tripod. As a result, when the camera fails to take pictures, the camera handle/tripod can be removed from the rest of the camera body and be reused, maintaining its function as a tripod for other cameras without having to be collected and going through the recycling process.
I knew the camera project would be a good challenge for me, and I wanted to prompt an interesting way of thinking about sustainability.
The last time we wrote about Dana Krieger's work was when he was with Teague, working on projects like the Pulse bike and a set of Bucky-Fuller-inspired headphones; now the industrial designer is at branding/product design/strategy firm Astro Studios in San Francisco, and his latest project is rethinking the watch. The name of Astro's new watch brand, MINUS 8, is a reference to the West Coast's time zone, officially known as Coordinated Universal Time Standard -8.
"Watches attract designers like moths to the flame, so we couldn't resist taking our own approach to this ages-old design problem," writes Krieger. "We invented the MINUS 8 brand, consisting of products which reference the unique time and place of West Coast culture."
The recently-completed project is so new that at press time it wasn't yet on Astro Studios' website. Hit the jump to see more drool-worthy shots and a project explanation from Krieger.
Much of what compelled me to write this post was driven by feeling that lingered after watching Drive earlier this week.
The Atlantic's Christopher Orr captured this perfectly:
"Drive reminded me what it can be like—what it ought to be, but so infrequently is, like—to go out to the movies. I was buzzing when I left the theater. I'm buzzing still."
The other mitigating factor was the film's jarring use of the hot pink Mistral in its posters and title sequence. While I have heard a few people lament the randomness of the choice, it (and its color) couldn't have been a better fit.
Like the now famous satin scorpion jacket* Gosling's character dons throughout the film, Drive is built as a balance of retro-chic and a modern tale of existentialism. The film mirrors so much of our pop (and design) culture banking on nostalgic remix. Director Nicholas Winding Refn weaves together the art-house qualities of Tarantino or David Lynch coupled with the charisma and style of Bullitt's McQueen and Eastwood's classic quiet machismo. These vintage inspirations are coupled with more recent flashes of Grand-Theft-Auto-esque gore and intensity while costumes and aesthetics seem to be pulled straight from this autumn's hippest lookbooks.
Tom Gottelier is an English designer arrived at his current post in Sri Lanka via Holland, though he's returning to the country of his education for Dutch Design Week, which is currently running through October 30, to exhibit two pieces from 2010: the "Melt-Me" table and "Candle Castles."
The former is perhaps the more ambitious of the two projects: it's a dining table that's been coated with a layer of paraffin wax. "By placing hot items on the surface or simply by using the table you will start to leave marks upon it. The table serves as a visual repository for the events that happen on it. Watch as the table starts to record your usage of it."
It's a literal take on the notion of "well-worn grooves," which make for a more elegant residue than unsightly coffee-rings. But the real mind-melting trick lies in a sort of induced amnesia:
If you ever feel that the memories that the table now retains in the form of burns and scratches are no longer memories you wish to keep you can simple plug the table into the mains electricity and watch as the tables internal heating system repairs the damage, leaving you with what looks like a pristine plastic table.
It's a fascinating project, akin to Droog's "Slow Glow" Lamp, though I'd imagine that eventually crumbs and other solid detritus would become embedded in the wax, leaving behind rather unseemly traces that may not be so easily erased. (Update: The designer notes that it can be cleaned like an ordinary tabletop and that crumbs can be "scratched out." Thanks, Tom.)
You've seen light paintings before, but probably not as intricately done as these. Photographer Brian Matthew Hart and accomplice Dena Pickering spent a single night in a dark attic producing this "Illinois 4" series of drawings, which each took between six and twelve minutes to capture.
We recently had the opportunity to attend Valencia Design Week and were witness to the beautiful landscape and a certain quality of light that illuminates this region of Spain. Madrid-based designers Cutu and Eva of Stone Designs pay homage to the Spanish passion (their words, not ours) towards light during Tokyo Design Week with Spainalight, an exhibition of 117 objects at the Spanish Embassy in Tokyo. Tokyo Design Week kicks off this weekend with events scattered around the city in addition to the two major fairs: Tokyo Designer's Week and DesignTide Tokyo.
Tomás Alonso, Apple Table and Bottle Light
Stone Design explains the inspiration behind the theme of the show:
The Spanish have always been known for several qualities, the strong use of colour, masterful and shameless at the same time, uncensored passion that print their works or in their own way of showing the contrasts of a country that has been a melting pot of cultures and in which its geographical position has given a privileged place in history...The light in Spain has made us sociable, restless and has allowed us to see things from an optimistic view overcoming our most difficult moments in history. Our light, that complicit Mediterranean light, complicit in our short nights and the enemy of sadness, is what we want to articulate in the mounting of exhibitions, appearing through these works with an architectural character, like spots on an orange, so intense that it can be troublesome at times, but makes clear the strength with which light influences our creations.
Antoni Arola for Santacole, Blanco White.
As an introduction to the Spainalight, the Embassy commissioned a documentary about the influence of light, "in the process of creation for Spanish creatives." Three Spanish artists from the world of architecture (Antonio Jiménez Torrecillas), industrial design (Joan Gaspar) and fine art (Daniel Canogar) representing three Spanish cities were interviewed about their work and the way that light is used as a starting point for various projects. Check the documentary after the jump (a nice Friday film, at full length it's about 45 minutes) or see the full exhibition during Tokyo Design Week.
Embassy of Spain, Tokyo
1-3-29 Roppongi Minato-ku
Tokyo 106-0032
Garmin is dedicated to creating navigation and communication devices that can enrich our customers' lives. They're seeking a graphic designer who will create icons, fonts, screen design, graphical theme and other digital artwork for Garmin products and Garmin application software.
Industrial designer Ken Goldman recently sent us pictures of "Spark," a pair of his-and-hers rings that can be struck to literally spark a flame. The flint is cut from a commercially-available flint from "one of the popular suppliers": if struck on "any sharp surface, it will shed sparks—with the right tinder, it will start a fire." The steel is good candidate, though Goldman admits that it would work better if it were even sharper.
Both are set in a sterling silver ring for handy access, not to mention potentially combustible symbolism... it's definitely a huge improvement on those cheesy 'broken heart' charms.
I'm not sure if the rings would function as a firestarter when the lucky couple is actually wearing them... though if they're particularly well-cut, I could see the pound becoming a potentially dangerous form of greeting.
He's currently seeking a manufacturer for the set of rings, among various other designs. In the meantime, I'd suggest that he comes up with some more eye-catching product shots... or better yet, a video of the rings in action...
It sounds like a bad idea—I think I'd either end up with splinters or fall down a staircase and impale myself—but I have to admit there's an allure to a wooden necktie.
David and Chris are two guys from San Francisco who started up wooden tie company Wood Thumb. And they make them out of reclaimed lumber, so it's conceivable you could have a necktie made out of a railroad tie. They come in two sizes, and either will run you 34 bucks. I just wish the bottoms weren't so pointy.
With All Hallows' Eve just two days away, it's the perfect time to highlight some of the more abominable or otherwise horror-related work that we've come across over the last couple months.
desigNYC's 2012 call for nonprofit projects and pro bono design talent is open!
This season, desigNYC will focus on supporting projects that connect communities, improve neighborhoods and strengthen their social fabric. From better housing and public places, to communication systems and knowledge networks, we will leverage all kinds of multidisciplinary design solutions to address issues around community, sustainability, health, vitality and economic renewal.
Do you know of any nonprofits that can benefit from pro bono design service?
Are you interested in volunteering design services or recommending desigNYC to other professional designers in your network?
If so, please direct them to visit the "Get Involved" section of desigNYC's website and complete a submission form by our November 10 deadline. The next round of selected project collaborations will be announced in mid-December with project work to begin in January 2012. For more information about desigNYC visit designyc.org
With a name as idealistic and tenacious as ideacious, it better be good: besides containing every vowel, "ideacious" is a new crowdfunding platform that sounds something like Kickstarter meets Quirky. They've added a handful of mechanics to the age-old equation of 'inventor + buyer(s) = product,' offering a more structured e-commerce ecosystem than, say, Kickstarter by focusing on products instead of projects. And like Quirky, ideacious came about in response to the traditional product design and development process:
The founder of ideacious, Joshua Brassé, is a professional product designer. For him, it was never an issue to find new ideas; ideas are everywhere. The issue was trying to bring the idea to fruition. Too many times he went up against the same obstacles: funding, sourcing, protection, legal and safety considerations, plus a number of other hurdles. Often these issues were too large and the idea was thrown into the black void of 'later.'
... so he came up with was a community-based venue that determines demand before supply—an option for anyone with an idea. And he called it ideacious.
Just as the arithmetic of the transaction is intended to create value for both parties, the Toronto-based company caters to two distinct audiences:
As a buyer you can shop like you would at any other store, or you can buy products before they're made. When you do that you not only do your part to bring awesome products into being, you could also make some coin along the way.
As a creator you've got a full-service network at your fingertips to help get your idea to market. Plus, you'll pre-sell all your products before you manufacture the whole lot.
We're particularly curious about ideacious's offerings to the latter half: fees for development, consulting and use of their platform&mdash a "network," as they call it—start at $100. "You don't have to be a designer, a patent lawyer, or have any special connections to have the chance to bring an idea to market; whatever your skill set, our service network will pick up where you leave off."
The creator retains creative control and the rights to his or her work.
Alternately, ideacious introduces a product to target audience—insofar as the site attracts a self-selecting group of forward-looking buyers—a step or two before actual production, where would-be customers actually become investors.
[When you preorder a product,] you'll also get a percentage of future sales, as specified by the seller, on every production run after the initial one for the next 10 years. And all you had to do was flex your shopping muscle.
The first person to preorder a product will get the highest percentage of future sales. The second person will get the second most, and so on down the line...
Putting $5 down saves you a spot in line. Once that product has enough buyers to go forward with manufacturing, you will confirm your order and pay the remaining balance. If you change your mind you can transfer your full $5 to another product. If you back out completely and don't want to transfer your money, you will be charged a $1 processing fee and get $4 back.
The added incentive of equity raises interesting questions about the economics of crowdfunding as a DIY, especially during lean times. As for the answers, only time will tell: Ideacious is still in Beta, so its potential still remains to be seen...
Amidst a flutter of black-clad designers, the Prince of Denmark and the sounds of a 4-piece live jazz band, there was much to celebrate at the grand opening of the Carl Hansen & Son New York City Showroom. The Danish Fusion event showcased Carl Hansen & Son seating and tables, lighting by Pandul, silver collectibles and table objects from Georg Jensen and Kvadrat Soft Cells acoustic textiles on display. But the most interesting happening at the showroom was going on behind the scenes. Danish craftsmen from Carl Hansen & Son were busy hand-weaving the seat of the iconic Wishbone chair, designed by Hans Wegner and in uninterrupted production since 1950.
The Wishbone chair, which is produced in Denmark using steambent wood, has over 100 production steps all carried out by hand. In the video below, we see the process of hand-weaving the seat using 120 meters of paper cord. The dinging in the background is from a craftsman demonstrating the precision and work that goes into hand-hammered silver.
The PorscheBerry is here. In an effort to reclaim lost marketshare, Research in Motion has hearteningly sought to invest in design, tapping Porsche Design to develop their new P'9981 smartphone in the latter company's striking, signature style.
The question is, will it be enough to get RIM back on the map?
In the '90s, when all cell phones did was make phone calls, I was living in Japan. Several times I'd gone cell phone shopping with friends in Tokyo and the selection was staggering. The only thing to distinguish one phone from another was its physical design as the features were all largely the same—the most complicated thing you'd need to do was retrieve voicemail, and if I remember correctly, my phone only held three messages at a time so there wasn't a lot of futzing to be done.
The new MFA Products of Design program at SVA will hold it's first Information Session/ Open House next Saturday, November 5th. Chaired by Core77's Allan Chochinov, participants will have the opportunity to meet over 20 faculty (including Bill Moggridge, Julie Lasky, Ingrid Fetell, Steven Heller and a host of others), chat with other prospective students, eat some great food and get a solid preview of the curriculum. Here are the details:
Please join us for our inaugural Information Session. The MFA in Products of Design is an immersive, two-year graduate program that prepares exceptional practitioners across various disciplines for leadership in the shifting terrain of design. We educate heads, hearts and hands to reinvent systems and catalyze positive change through the business of making.
Students gain fluency in the three fields crucial to the future of design: Making—from the handmade to digital fabrication; Structures—business, research, systems, strategy, user experience and interaction; and Narratives—including video storytelling, history and point of view. Through project-based work that engages emerging science and materials, social cooperation and public life, students develop the skills and fluency to create positive consequence. They emerge with the confidence, experience and professional networks to fill senior positions at top design firms and progressive organizations, to create ingenious enterprises of their own, and to become lifelong advocates for the power of design.
Check out all the goings on at the department goings on at the site.
RSVP for the Open House/Information Session event here.
Also don't forget to check out the faculty video profiles that have been going live this past week, including faculty members Helen Walters, Andrew Dent, Sigi Moeslinger, John Zapolski, and Ayse Birsel. A brief compilation video is below:
The BBC World News has launched a great interactive piece in anticipation of the world's 7 billionth person, whose birth we will celebrate this coming Monday, October 31st. Enter in your birth date and the program will tell you, of the people alive that day, what number person you were on the day you were born and where you placed on the larger scale of recorded human history. Of course, like the United Nations Population Fund's 7 billionth person projection, it is impossible to actually count each individual on the earth and all of this is based on extrapolation and not fact, but it's a great bit of fun.
More fun facts from the population counter? Qatar is the fastest growing country with 514+ births per day. Moldova is the fastest shrinking country. Every hour there is 15,347 births on earth. You can drill down to find out details of birth and death rates for your own country. Life expectancy around the world ranges from 45.9 (Central African Republic) to 82.7 (Japan).
Who knew population statistics could be so much fun.
Sebastian Herkner for ABR, Bell Table
Tomás Alonso, Apple Table and Bottle Light
Antoni Arola for Santacole, Blanco White.
Patricia Urquiola for Ganrugs, Mangas
