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Auto Design Studios Go Hollywood

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This year's Los Angeles Auto Show Design Challenge is one of the more fun design competitions we've seen in a while. Tasked with designing "Hollywood's Hottest New Movie Car," major auto studios are vying for the prize by not only designing a car, but by coming up with a theoretically feature-worthy story to go along with it.

Honda has gone futuristic-meets-Western with their IH (Intelligent Horse) concept, intended to inhabit a moviescape called High Noon—no relation to the original—that follows themes of the post-apocalyptic variety:

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Honda takes us hundreds of years into the future to a world disrupted by the impact of a gigantic comet. The resulting heat and drought have wiped out technology, infrastructure and life as we know it, making it imperative for the few remaining survivors to recover faster than any human generation before. The few scientists have created a vehicle that serves as a companion and protector in the inhospitable and lonely environment. Their inspiration—the legend and material remains of an ancient creature called the horse.
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Design Tide Tokyo 2011: "Hands and Hand" by Proof of Guild

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What do you get when a jewelry and flower designer come together? The answer: Proof of Guild. The Nagoya based duo Minoru & Keiko Takeuchi were at Design Tide Tokyo exhibiting their "Hands and Hand" vase for the first time.

Founded in 2002, Proof of Guild has been cranking out eclectic animal-inspired accessories and ceramics including a clever Giraffe sugar bowl and Penguin salt & pepper shakers. Proof of Guild believes in creating artisan products with a philosophy of traditional handmade craft over mass production.

Like many of the pieces showing at Design Tide Tokyo 2011, "Hands and Hand" is multifunctional, however rather than set that function in stone (yes stone!) themselves, Proof of Guild want you to exercise a little of your own creativity and put it to use as you see fit. Aside from the more typical vase or jewelry holder arrangement on show was a neat desktop option complete with a cute little lampshade—an easy winner!

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"Hands & Hand" can work well as a cluster—it's slim profile lends itself well to be strewn along a bookshelf or countertop creating an interesting visual statement in itself or fill-as-you please with objects of your desire.

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Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center is seeking a Design Research & Development Specialist in New York, New York

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Design Research & Development Specialist
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

New York, New York

The Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, located in New York City, is looking for a Design Research and Development Specialist to continue to build design leadership into the interdisciplinary team of Strategic Planning and Innovation. The candidate would have a strong personal interest in working in the health care field with a demonstrated ability to lead empathetic design research and development methodologies creatively through client based projects.

The Design Research and Development Specialist is responsible for directing innovation projects from inception through to idea prototyping in a health care environment, facilitating multidisciplinary project teams through co-creation, and communicating the value of the work internally among project sponsors through insightful documentation and decision making tools.

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Design Tide Tokyo 2011: Seeds for Earthquake Relief

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After the great Tohoku earthquake on March 11th, large quantities of vegetable seeds were left unsold due to environmental issues regarding farmlands or the simple decline of sales.

"Seeds" is a project in which a group of five volunteers from various design-related fields have created stylish packaging and established a marketing campaign to recirculate the unsold seeds on the market. Utilizing their skills and knowledge in editing, manufacturing, and the distribution process, Hirofumi Akimoto, Daisuke Kiyono, Yui Takada, Kentaro Tamai and Tomoshige Fukaura took the opportunity to propose new, organic designs for promoting the seeds.

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Through the use of a Google Maps tracker for showing the planting locations of the seeds, the project also aims to reconstruct the relationships between the consumers and the suffering farms. Profits will be donated to the affected farms hoping that this will accelerate reconstruction. From a one hand to another, from a person to another- from these activities, stronger relationships will sprout like flowers.

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The seeds sourced for the project came from the village of Ten'ei, in the Iwase district of Fukushima, Japan, before the nuclear incident on 3.11, and thus have not been exposed to any radiation. The village of Ten'ei currently has a population of around 8,000. However, according to some of the designers, the town has consistently been facing a gradual population decline due to migration to the cities of 10 people per month. Following the March 11th disaster, the population decline has become much more rapid.

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Paul Caporn: An Artist on the Level

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It should be easy for anyone installing, or viewing, these artworks of Paul Caporn's to see if they are hung crooked. Australia-based artist Caporn removed the key ingredient from hundreds of bubble levels and incorporated them into his Level Composition Series, which went on exhibit last year at Turner Galleries, one of Perth's largest.

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This one, in particular, perfectly captures how I felt when trying to install a series of touching floor-mounted cabinets in my crooked-ass New York apartment:

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via collabcubed

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Fabien Dumas' Satellite-like Ceiling Light for Marset

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We've been a fan of French designer Fabien Dumas—a.k.a. Too Many Designers (a riff on 2 Many DJs?)—since back in 2004, when we highlighted the "Light au Lait" wall sconce. He resurfaced a few years back with a couple other clever lighting designs, and now he's back with yet another: the "TamTam" ceiling lamp for Marset of Barcelona.

It's a juicy bunch of grapes, Nick Mason's drums from Pink Floyd, the constellation of Perseus... There are so many examples that could be used to describe TamTam, a new perception in the world of lamps, which extols repetitiveness by focusing on the archetypal lampshade: a number of light sources pointed in different directions, geometrically arranged to invoke a feeling of organized chaos.

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Or, conceptually, it's the inverse of Thomas Feichtner's überminimal statement piece, the "One Crystal Chandelier." Just as the Viennese designer reduced the chandelier to a single element, Dumas' "TamTam" has engendered triplets or quintuplets (it's available with either three or five satellite shades).

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Building a Successful Furniture Business: Hellman-Chang, Part 6 - Growing Despite the Recession

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Here in Part 6 of the Hellman-Chang story we wrap up their history. When the recession began a few years ago, Dan and Eric were running a fledgling firm out of a co-op; they not only weathered the storm but grew through it, emerging with a nationwide showroom presence, a global client base of high-end clients and their own production facility, which they're currently planning to double in size.

In the next and final entry we'll look at Hellman-Chang's design work and company philosophy, but before we can get there we'll see the final steps Dan and Eric needed to take to get to where they are today.

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So it's 2008, you're now in the A. Rudin showrooms, and sales are starting to pick up.
Dan: Orders started coming in from all around the country. We started to grow tremendously.

What types of customers were you getting?
Eric: Once you're in the showrooms we were in, you're set in a position where it's high end residential and high end hospitality. Our first order at the New York showroom was from the Rockwell Group for the Setai Hotel, the new one out in San Diego.

Dan: The Rockwell Group is known as the pinnacle of interior design/architecture firms, they do a lot of boutique hotels.

Eric: And they designed the Oscars, you know? So the Rockwell Group being the first Hellman-Chang client at the showroom was like, "Whoa, that's great."

Dan: It was really good for building that credibility with A. Rudin, and they were very happy with us from early on.

Got it. And what else starts happening for you guys in 2008?
Eric: Because we were doing so well the showroom requested we expand our presence, so we did a refresh. At our second ICFF we introduced some new pieces and did a new booklet, going from 32 pages to 64 pages, so we had about double the size of our line.

Dan: The sales were going well enough that we hired three full-time furniture builders and made more product. After the ICFF that year—where we got more press—and the showrooms' request for more furniture for the showroom floor, we roughly doubled our presence in size, going from eight pieces to maybe fifteen or twenty.

So that expansion you guys had hungered for upon first seeing the showrooms was starting to happen.
Eric: Right. We were starting to expand within the showrooms, to eventually move up to being their number two line by the end of the year.

I imagine at this point you guys are no longer producing everything from a 5x10 spot in the co-op?
Dan: We were still in the co-op but had expanded.

Eric: In the co-op there was initially ten or twelve artisans and craftsman, of which we were one small unit. And as people would leave, we would take their space. Then somebody else would leave and we'd scoop up their space too. So we started out in 50 square feet, and by the time we were done there we had 1,000 square feet of bench space.

Given that your production was starting to ramp up, was that enough room?
Eric: It was tough. We were all building together and taking phone calls at the same time from designers, so I'd be on the phone trying to quote prices and there would be a saw going off right next me. It wasn't the most professional environment.

Dan: We were on top of each other. We just kept on growing, and while we're on the phone or writing emails, routers are creating saw dust ten feet away. But we still didn't have the resources yet to start our own studio.

Eric: And we could tell the other tenants were getting really annoyed with us.

Dan: Yeah, we were hogging the machines.

Eric: We eventually decided to open up this studio that we're in now [Ed: The interview took place in Hellman-Chang's 8,000-square-foot facility, which will shortly double in size, more on that later] and that was very much based on needing to control our own space and have more room to be able to spread out. And we wanted to delineate the different spaces, office space, bench space, machine room space.

But before we could do that—back in 2008, despite us growing so much, that was also right when the market crashed. That was an...interesting experience. There was this sense of doom and gloom all over the industry, showroom salespeople were freaking out, interior designers were freaking out.

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Hot One Inch Action Returns to Hand-Eye Supply - Submit Artwork Now!

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After an absolute blast at Hot One Inch Action's summer show at Hand-Eye Supply, we couldn't be more pleased to announce their return to our Portland store on December 1st. What's more, they are accepting submissions now until Nov. 16th, so submit your tiny art work for the show at their website.

For those of you who missed it the first time—Conceived by Jim Hoehnle and Chris Bentzen in 2004, Hot One Inch Action is the original, one-night only show of button art and social interaction from Vancouver, BC.

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Hot One Inch Action reproduces the tiny art of 50 local artists on one inch buttons. At the show, we sell mixed packs of 5 buttons for $5. If you want a specific button, you'll either have to take a chance and buy more mixed packs of random buttons OR trade with the other people at the event.

With none of the pretentiousness of a regular art show, everyone interacts out of necessity—"I want that button!"—and the evening becomes a relaxed and fun event for people of all-ages.

Hot One Inch Action is now accepting artist submissions for all of its 2011 shows (Seattle, WA, Vancouver, BC, and Portland, OR). It's free to submit and chosen artists receive 20 free copies of their button. Each show highlights and showcases local artists from their respective cities, all Portland artists, designers, photographers and button enthusiasts are encouraged to submit! The submission deadline for the Portland show is Wednesday November 16 at 12pm (noon).

Thursday, Dec. 1st
Admission is free. Mixed packs of 5 buttons are $5.
6PM - 9PM PST
Hand-Eye Supply
23 NW 4th Ave
Portland, OR, 97209
RSVP on Facebook

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Winterhouse Second Symposium on Design Education and Social Change

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In October 2010, the Winterhouse Institute brought together 13 representatives of undergraduate or graduate institutions who taught social design in isolated courses or built programs around this area for a special symposium on design education and social change. The goal was to share insights, strategies and concerns about a discipline that has experienced dramatic growth in recent years, yet remains, in its teaching, research and community-oriented practices, inchoate if not chaotic. It was agreed that the first symposium's participants formed the kernel of a valuable network, and that any subsequent meeting should increase the number of attendees while drilling down on several dominant themes.

Ten months later, the Winterhouse Second Symposium on Design Education and Social Change was convened. This symposium's 28 participants included seven members from the charter event; the chairs of two new graduate programs in social design; the co-founder of an international NGO; a leader of K-12 design education; an emeritus dean of architecture who is building a consortium of international design schools focused on social urbanism; two administrators of grant programs for design and social change projects; key educators at institutions or programs that had not been represented at the first symposium; a design journalist specializing in business innovation; and the headmaster, dean of faculty and summer portals director at the Hotchkiss School.

The themes that carried over from the previous event and served as a springboard for conversation were:


  • Charting new academic social-design programs and initiatives

  • Forming partnerships between educational institutions, foundations and NGOs

  • Establishing metrics for the efficacy of social design programs

  • Navigating educational requirements and goals while contributing to social welfare

  • Exploiting media platforms for disseminating information about social design

  • Defining social design

  • Outlining opportunities for meeting and collaboration

  • New ideas and proposals for collective action

Read the full report at Change Observer!

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Flotspotting: Raul Gonzalez Podesta's Retina-Bending Renderings

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Raul Gonzalez Podesta of Buenos Aires, Argentina, has been working for design consultancy Design Plus since 2005, completing both a Bachelor's and Masters in Industrial Design though apparently it's taken him as much time to discover our sister portfolio site, Coroflot.

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Of course, we're more than happy to have him: Raul's got mad software skills, from Rhino+Vray to Solidworks and Creative Suite. The results are as nice as any consumer product renderings that I've seen, and if some of the designs are almost overrefined, they're always impeccably executed.

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Made By Hand's "The Knife Maker"

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If this Made By Hand mini-documentary was only about a guy making knives it would be interesting; but Cut Brooklyn founder Joel Bukiewicz's story has a lot more to offer. Without revealing any direct spoilers, Bukiewicz initially worked in one creative field, burnt out, and discovered he had a pressing need to make things. Not pretty things, useful things. As time went by, he discovered a creative community of like-minded individuals in Brooklyn and eventually mastered the art of making knives by hand. And as one of just a handful of handmade knife manufacturers in this country, his business has taken off.

Give it a watch, you'll be glad you did:

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Mikal Hameed's Found Item Remixes: "Eames Hotrod Boombox" & Rebaroque Exhibition Next Week, Plus Exclusive Q&A

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Mikal Hameed is a Brooklyn-based artist and designer who is constantly finding new corners of America's creative culture to explore. After starting out in music and theater, he shifted his efforts to visual arts and production design, all of which inform his latest efforts as a craftsman and maker.

As a designer (Mikal) and artist (M11X), he calls on us to forget our individualized nature and relationship with our headphones and demands that we start to share our music as it was meant to be: unplugged from our ears and free. M11X's manifesto blends the iconic image of the boombox and alters the platform to which music is brought to the masses. Mikal's personal relationship to the early '80s and boomboxes creates a strong foundation from which he explores through collaboration with traditional art mediums.

"By toying with the power of music and endless design possibilities, I can bring beats, rhythm, and life into paintings, furniture, and mixed media sculpture." M11X

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I recently came across his "Eames Hotrod Boombox"—a refurbished and reimagined Eames lounge chair—at Brooklyn's Dijital Fix and I was fascinated by the notion of "remixing" an iconic design object, especially since it incorporated another vintage reference point in the turntable. Meanwhile, the allusion to the boombox is itself a reference to mixing and sampling music, and it so happens that the "Eames Hotrod Boombox" was featured as the album art for a compilation album called Verve Remixed 4. Although the project dates back to 2008, the video is certainly worth a minute of your time; New York-based readers can see it in person at Dijital Fix in Williamsburg, just a couple short blocks from the Bedford Avenue stop on the L.

After a short round of e-mail tag with David Auerbach of Dijital Fix, I managed to get in touch with Mikal for a quick Q&A in anticipation of his forthcoming exhibition, "Rebaroque," which is set to open in New York next week.

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Good Weather App: Kickstart a More Useful Forecast with "Dark Sky"

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Adam Grossman and Jack Turner are a couple of "mild-mannered web / mobile developers" based in Troy, New York, who collaborate as Jackadam. If their Kickstarter pitch is any indication, their choice of adjectives is appropriate:

Their Kickstarter project, "Dark Sky," is a new kind of weather app that promises military-grade accuracy in mobile meteorology:

Using your precise location, it tells you when it will precipitate and for how long. For example: It might tell you that it will start raining in 8 minutes, with the rain lasting for 15 minutes followed by a 25 minute break.

How is it possible predict the weather down to the minute? What's the catch?

Well, the catch is that it only works over a short period of time: a half hour to an hour in the future. But, as it turns out, this timespan is crucially important. Our lives are filled with short-term outdoor activities: Traveling to and from work, walking the dog, lunch with friends, outdoor sports, etc.

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It's a great example of identifying a neglected space for innovation and then, well, innovating. Given that the weather has some kind of bearing on nearly every decision that one makes—at least to the extent that one must leave his or her home—I think that the limited timeframe makes perfect sense. It's obviously nice to know what the weather will be like over the weekend—sunny with highs in the 50s, for those of you in New York—it seems far more practical to know what it's like (at risk of snide suggestions to look out the window) right now. It's like the Twitter of weather forecasts.

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They've also devoted a bit of energy to improving Doppler radar animations in the interest of a more intuitive data visualization for storm systems.

Doppler radar stations only take new images every five to ten minutes, so instead of a smooth animation you're presented with a slideshow of a handful of still images. This makes it hard to get a sense of where the storms are coming from and where they're headed.

Using the same techniques we've developed for predicting rain, we can show you what the storm looks like in between the individual radar snapshots. We replace the jerky slideshow with a beautifully smooth interactive animation. And it's not just pretty... it's easier for your brain to process and understand a smoothly flowing video than a series of images that jump from point to point. Check out the video above for a comparison!

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Design Tide Tokyo 2011: "Suzumo Chochin" Lanterns by Mic Itaya

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Artist and Illustrator Mic Itaya became famously became excited by the connections between rock music, art and design from a young age, after Imelda Marcos, the former First Lady of the Philippines, praised his drawing of a rabbit during a visit to elementary schools across Japan.

That was his inspiration to become a freelance illustrator, and he was instrumental in the creation of the sound and visual magazine called "TRA," launched in 1982. Following that, Itaya was deeply involved in the success story of Japanese retail giant UNIQLO as visual art director for shop development.

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Following a series of carved, etched and tinted mirror works that expanded on his playful and sensitive illustrations during the '00s, Mic Itaya eventually turned his interest towards traditional Japanese arts and crafts. It was from this period that he designed and began producing the innovative "Suzumo Lanterns," based on traditional washi paper-making, and "Suifu" lantern-making techniques from his hometown, Suifu, Ibaragi. They are produced with a traditionally-made thin but strong Washi paper, designed so that a warm light can filter through.

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Although the designs are influenced by tradition, the lights themselves—their construction, design and features—are thoroughly modern. Replacing the flame of a candle are some high-performance LED lights, set for natural-light luminosity and to create a flickering effect in order to evoke traditional lanterns. Rather than a switch, many of these lanterns are equipped with a sound sensor for turning them off and on.

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The low voltage yet bright LEDs last up to 10 hours on a single set of AAs

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For the Lotus Root design of the base, Itaya explained that one of the original designs for the lantern used a clear plastic base. However, since the look of the plastic didn't match with the traditional design of the lantern, Suzumo Chochin's design team worked on various designs to convey an essence of traditional, yet modern design. The soft patterned light of the lotus, in an organic radiating design, comes across as soothing, and provides plenty of light whether it is hung on a stand or carried as a torch.

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Wiring 1.0 released

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Wiring is an open source electronics prototyping platform composed of a programming environment (IDE), an electronics prototyping board, documentation thoughtfully created with designers and artists in mind and a community where experts, intermediate and beginners from around the world share ideas, knowledge and their collective experience.

And version 1.0 has just been released.

If you don't know Wiring, know that it is very closely related to the evolution of Arduino and Processing. It started with the great thesis work from Hernando Barragán at Interaction Design Institute Ivrea (Italy) many years ago (where also Arduino and Processing were developed).

When Hernando created Wiring in 2003, his goal was to create a platform which was easy to use, both in hardware and software, but it was only for a limited amount of hardware. In Wiring 1.0, this vision has been expanded to make the Wiring Framework easily portable to a lot more hardware and to unite the programming of different brands of microcontrollers.

It now enables an easy way for thousands of students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists, and even engineers to share code and ideas despite using different hardware.

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New Balance Athletic Shoe, Inc. is seeking a Design Lead, Training & Tennis, in Lawrence, Massachusetts

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Design Lead, Training & Tennis
New Balance Athletic Shoe, Inc.

Lawrence, Massachusetts

New Balance Athletic Shoe, Inc., is seeking a Design Lead, Training and Tennis, who will direct, inspire, and manage the Tennis and Training Design team to develop new, creative ideas and designs. He or she will be responsible for planning future product design relevance, communicating a clear vision, and implementing strategies that drive long-term success and the achievement of New Balance goals. The Design Lead will guide the conceptualization and illustration of product within the footwear segment, incorporating fresh and contemporary ideas, as well as partnering with the Development and Product Management teams to ensure the execution of product milestones. Through research, he or she will indentify unmet consumer needs in creating a new classification of footwear and then translate market input into innovative designs using industry-leading tools. This role will lead the team to effective problem solving and sustainable improvements while working cross-functionally to improve the product development process.

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Why Mount Six Cell Phones on a Bicycle's Handlebars? Here's Why

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Now that cameras have become smaller and cheaper, it makes sense that cadres of creatives would begin using arrays of them to achieve previously unavailable effects. Recently we've seen Jonas Pfeil's amazing throwable panoramic ball camera and the 30 GoPro rig whipped up by Time-Slice and Rip Curl.

The latest innovation we've seen on this front comes from Joergen Geerds, Dan Finkler and Mark Sevenoff. The trio rigged up six Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo cell phones to Sevenoff's bike, orienting the cameras to capture a panoramic ride through Slickrock Trail in the Moab Desert. Software was used to blend the seams, and the result is a 360 video that the viewer can interact with, navigating through the moving picture at will.

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The part that interested us most as ID'ers was seeing the camera bracket they developed. Since there was no off-the-shelf mount for fastening six Experia Neos to a set of bicycle handlebars, they designed their own and RP'd it up.

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Below is the "Making of" vid, and you can click here to watch the 360 video.

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Two Different Takes on Designing the Shopping Experience: Apple's In-Store Pick Up vs. Adidas' Virtual Footwear Wall

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Designing the shopping experience is a large challenge that we're excited to watch the progress of, since nobody knows what it will really turn out to be. Recently Apple and Adidas have both proposed and are now beginning to advance new shopping experience designs that make very different bets on how consumers want to shop.

Apple's Reserve and Pick Up program—whereby you order online, then pick up the object in-store—isn't a new concept, with other retailers having gotten behind this much earlier; but I seize on it because Apple has a good track record for accurately providing experiences many people want to have. Their particular approach, particularly if BGR's assertion is accurate that you skip lines when you show up and pay with an iOS device, is predicated on minimizing time spent in the store. It presupposes the consumer researches precisely what they want to purchase online, doing all of their shopping calculations from their own computer. The store simply serves as a fulfillment point for that particular transaction.

Adidas is taking a different tack with their adiVerse Virtual Footwear Wall, a trial unit of which has recently been installed in an Adidas shop in London. The system consists of a large multitouch display that requires customers physically come into the store and play around with the thing. It's predicated on the decision-making process taking place in-store, and in that way maximizes in-store time. Seeing the video of it below, I think it's neat but am not 100% sold; in particular, having to start the transaction on one screen and then switch to a tablet seems a little clunky to me.

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Interview with RISD president John Maeda (VIDEO)

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Last week John Maeda, President of the Rhode Island School of Design and author of The Laws of Simplicity visited the frog San Francisco studio. John presented to a group of RISD alumni and frogs about how the school is responding and influencing the world around it, and updated us on an initiative he is spearheading called "STEM to STEAM". STEM represents a movement to refocus education in the United States on the specific fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. STEM to STEAM seeks to add Art to that formula, something I entirely agree on. The problems that will challenge us in the decades to come will not be the same as yesterday. Creativity is not a silver bullet, but coupling it with our more traditional focus on left brain learning will surely yield new results.

Before the presentation, I sat down with John in our studio library and we talked about what he is passionate about, as well as trading a few RISD stories. There are several RISD alum at frog spread throughout the world including Executive Creative Director Nick de la Mare (MID'95), and Creative Director Jonas Damon (BFA'93 ID). I myself am an alum (BFA'98 ID). Check out the video, which is a bit of a sneak peak into the type of content that will be covered in Designmind's upcoming "Passion" issue, and please, support STEM to STEAM! [Ed Note: For more info about STEM, read Andy Polaine's column from September's Design Education issue.]

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Design Fancy: Trace Hurns

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Trained as an architect, Trace Hurns spent most of his career doing graphic design and branding throughout the greater Chicago area. He was known for his often misguided optimism and for his love of baseball and food. Originally from Texas, he moved to Chicago after getting married to an antiques dealer. He started freelancing at age 24 and almost immediately got a job with the Strikewell Bat Company. At first he was doing logos, but eventually came up with an idea for a new type of super premium baseball bat. He called them "First Love Bats." The idea was to have infants hug the bats long before they ever hugged their mothers. They would bond with the bat over their first two months. The bats would be filled with luck and positive energy and then sold for over five thousand dollars each. Many of the best hitters in the 1970's used these bats claiming that they felt a sort of pure joy when they used them.

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The bats put Hurns on the map, but also burdened both himself and the Strikewell Bat Company with a heap of lawsuits. Strikewell didn't make it and Hurns had to enroll in empathy counseling every Sunday for three years.

Several years later, in 1980, Hurns got a job with a local pizza restaurant. The place was failing and they couldn't afford much. Working with what they had, Trace developed the Brotherhood pie. Each one of these pies would only get one pepperoni, forcing the people that ordered the pie to make a decision over who gets the special piece. The restaurant was able to charge the same price for brotherhood pies as it did for full pepperoni pizzas. It was a success for them, but an emotional failure for Hurns.

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He named them Brotherhood pies because he thought that people would be generous and the decision would bring people together. In reality, they became known as "conflict pizzas" and divided more families, ended more relationships, and destroyed more friendships than any other pizza in history. This was good for business in a perverse way but it took a huge toll on Trace's emotional health. He was never the same. The pizzas are now sold frozen.

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To make matters worse, he was facing more lawsuits from the work he did for Fras-Oil. He worked on the graphic design for their motor oil jug, coining the phrase "Fras-Oil, clean enough to eat". This didn't sit well with almost anyone other than, amazingly, the people at Fras-Oil. Hurns even took it a step further by convincing them that they should also produce olive oil with the Fras-Oil brand name right on the bottle. They followed his advice and ran print ads in major magazines across the Midwest. It was very hard for Hurns to find work after this.

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