All, an unconventional retrospective of artist Maurizio Cattelan opened at the Guggenheim in New York on November 4, and with it, appropriately, the museum released its first mobile application to support the exhibition. Although a little late to the app game (with Google, galleries, and other museums paving the way), the Guggenheim Cattelan application succeeds in providing such wonderful supplementary and background information on the show, it perfectly bolsters the impact of its presentation.

Cattelan, an Italian sculptor, is known for his cheeky, subversive work, which ranges greatly in form and material. He is still alive, and only 51, but with All, he is choosing to retire from making art, marking the Guggenheim installation as the end of his career. As with much of his work, he chose to go out in rare form, undermining art world conventions. Within Frank Lloyd Wright's spiraling museum, nearly all (128 pieces) of Cattelan's body of work is displayed in the center void, each piece hanging from wires at varying heights. When shown individually, much of his sculpture is dependent on the surrounding environment that it inhabits. Here, every object has been removed from context, floating in mid-air, surrounded by unrelated works in time, category, or subject matter.

Works include a wax figure of Cattelan hanging by a Joseph Beuys felt suit jacket from a coatrack; a Picasso-as-mascot giant papier-machéd head worn by an actor for an exhibition at MoMA; several cutely curled-up, sleeping, taxidermied dogs; and a flattened Pinnochio figure, first shown stuck to the Guggenheim's floor in the rotunda in which it now hangs.

This cacophony of Cattelan's work requires some help to get through, and the Guggenheim has done well by pulling in the abilities of the Ipad and Android to bring it all together. Hosted by the cult filmmaker John Waters, it both sets and supports a similar tone to Cattelan's work—playful, subversive, and seemingly tossed together, yet obviously very considered. Waters introduces the app from a formal living room setting in a two-minute bit, and further in, also provides brief phrases and statements (3-20 seconds) about each of the works.

American auto marque Chevrolet has survived to see its 100th birthday this year, unlike sister brand Pontiac's fate, which we commemorated with a photo retrospective. To celebrate Chevy's longevity, designer Christian Annyas has posted the image series "Chevrolet Speedometer Design: Design evolution from 1941 to 2011" on his typography blog.

Digging through the cleanly-presented stack of images, you might be surprised to see which typefaces and arrangements came from which era. But you won't be surprised to see the graphic design travesty that is the 2011 speedometer:

Jangwon Park and Sangwoo Park have come up with an innovative new accessory for mobile phones. As Jangwon puts it, in today's busy society, we have constantly have our phones by our side—whatever happened to spending time with pets? The concept behind Mobile Tail is to give our phones a personality, to add a tail to both personalize, and give a sense of heart to our "constant companion."

The design is basic with a curved piece of silicone growing into a suction cup that is simple and quick to attach to the back of any mobile phone. Mobile Tail is made of flexible liquid silicone rubber (LSR)—a non-reactive, non-toxic, high-purity material that has just the right amount of resistance to offer enough support to hold the phone up at optimum viewing angles.

Unlike fixed, hard-plastic solutions, the Mobile Tail is innovative for its malleability: the silicon has enough give so you can simply push the phone gently to knock it from the portrait viewing position to the landscape position and back again, without the need to lift up the phone.

The tail can either be left sticking straight out or stuck in the earphone jack of the phone. This gives it some extra strength, and adds to the rolling effect when gently pushing the set into different positions. The Mobile Tail can be easily attached, removed and reattached to mobile devices in any position with its suction cap.

Jangwon also explained that the the "packaging is very cute. It's been designed to look like there is a small animal kept inside." With the original batch, there were four colors produced to match with Apple iPods, but now a few new ones have been added as well. Because of the versatility of the suction design, the Mobile Tail is compatible with Samsung, Nokia, RIM, and any maker's phones. Thanks to the use of more refined fabrication methods, Mobile Tail has no mold lines, to the effect that it is uniformly smooth... not to mention quite enjoyable to play with.

Images and Reporting by Hayden Martis

Founded by Japanese wooden furniture manufacturer laugh, see-saw is a range of everyday day objects from designers Ryohei Yoshiyuki, PANTALOON and Atsushi Suzuki with an emphasis on the relationship between people and products.

A table, chair, stand and series of trays round out this nicely balanced collection of objects, best described as playful, light, efficient and functional.

I was instantly engaged with the "knotted" table, designed by Ryohei Yoshiyuki. Well-proportioned, visually light and dare I say almost IKEA-like in it's simple construction. It wasn't until my second look at see-saw's exhibit and a good chat with the designers, was I informed that the seemingly random inlaid spots of color were, in fact, covering big knots in the grain...duh!

knotted table by Ryohei Yoshiyuki

Made from Japanese Cedar, or Sugi, it's natural defects ensure each and every table is a unique and individual object. Purists can object to "covering" natures blemishes, however the spotty additions create a beautiful and playful dimension which would have otherwise been lost had Yoshiyuki kept things clean and minimal. Selected Melamine tones were soft and complimented the natural wood grain color nicely.

The E-Volo Multicopter, which made its first human-piloted test flight just a few days ago, has a brilliant design that paradoxically seems complex but is in fact more simple than current helicopter designs. At first, having sixteen rotor blades seems needlessly complicated, but that's where the brilliance comes in: Each is powered by a motor with one range of motion and one job, which is to rotate in place. A traditional helicopter's large rotor spins but also needs to pitch in order to move the craft in a particular direction; that adds a degree of mechanical complexity and an extra potential failure point.

The E-Volo, on the other hand, can pitch by varying the speeds of its various rotors to create differing degrees of lift. Software and onboard computers translate the pilot's motion of the joystick into the required adjustments, vastly simplifying demands on the pilot. Indeed the controls look less like a fighter jock's cockpit and more like the controls to Ms. Pac Man.

I find the E-Volo's overall design particularly clever because it rethinks the helicopter completely, relying on the innovations of our time—software and computers—to enable a level of mechanical simplicity that should theoretically make maintenance (and learning to fly the thing) relatively easy. After all, we've been using and repairing simple electric motors that drive a single rotating shaft in everything from fans to sewing machines for roughly a century.

Full-Time Graphic Design Faculty
The Maryland Institute College of Art
Baltimore, Maryland

The Graphic Design Department of Maryland Institute College of Art invites applications for a full-time position with a multi-year renewable contract in a non-tenure institution. The graphic designer and educator will bring exceptional visual and critical abilities to a vibrant graphic design department at an art school nationally known for its dedication to teaching excellence, a rigorous liberal arts curriculum, and the importance of the fine arts and design.

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The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.

Are droughts a thing of the past? This year's $14,000 James Dyson Award prize winner Edward Linacre created the Airdrop with the hopes of creating a solution for agriculture in arid regions. Airdrop is a low cost, self powered, and easy to install solution that came about when Linacre was considering the ramifications of Australia's worst drought in a century. The mechanism harvests water from even the driest air.

Inspired by principles of biomimicry, Linacre studied the Namib beetle an ingenious species which lives in one of the driest places on earth. With half an inch of rain per year, the beetle can only survive by consuming the dew it collects on the hydrophilic skin of its back in the early mornings.

Airdrop borrows this concept, working on the principle that even the driest air contains water molecules which can be extracted by lowering the air's temperature to the point of condensation. It pumps air through a network of underground pipes, to cool it to the point at which the water condenses. Delivering water directly to the roots of plants.

Edward's research suggests that 11.5 millilitres of water can be harvested from every cubic meter of air in the driest of deserts. Further iterations of his design will increase the yield of Airdrop. The prize money will go towards testing and an additional $14,000 will be awarded to Linacre's alma mater, Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne.

The Core77 Design Awards is back and better than ever! Our second annual celebration of design excellence, enterprise and intent is just around the corner so keep us in mind as you finish and file your projects completed in 2011. The call for entries opens on January 17th, 2012 with an earlybird discount that saves 20% on your entry fee!

This year, we've added wonderful new categories: Food Design for your edible objects and food systems, Writing and Commentary for criticism and journalism about designed objects, spaces, and processes, and we've split last year's Product Design category into Consumer Products and Equipment.

The Core77 Design Awards is an innovative and celebratory platform for engaging with the design community as well as prospective clients. Our distributed jury teams are composed of design leaders from around the globe so stay tuned for announcements of this year's Jury Captains and Jury Teams. Award winners will receive great exposure here and through our network, a spot in our awards publication and, of course, the sweet C77DA trophy that acknowledges collaboration.

So mark January 17, 2012 in your calendars! Ready your projects from 2011, and be a part of the most amazing and inclusive celebration of design. Visit the Awards site for the full 17-category menu!

Eligible submissions must have been launched, published or completed in 2011 and must have been produced (aka real), unless you're entering into the Speculative category or entering in a Student field.

This is the first post in a year-long series, Apocalypse 2012, where our favorite futurists, resiliency and disaster experts examine the role of design to help you prepare for...the end?

It's a pretty fascinating time to witness the demise of the most powerful and rich nation in the history of the world. All doom and gloom aside, for those of us who fancy ourselves drive-by-ethnographers, it's good people watching. What's more, it's predictable and rhythmic, as events occur and pundits pundit and protesters protest, all to the steady beat of mass production. There's no need for unnecessary anticipation, as we can easily guess when the next occupier will be tear-gassed, or when the next presidential hopeful will make an audacious and racist remark; we're pretty much guaranteed a rhetorical and canned response from our administration, followed by news of a pop star acting drunk and disorderly. It repeats so frequently, and with such a blanded regularity, that nothing is unbelievable, nothing too grotesque. An electric fence to keep the immigrants out? Of course that's what a presidential candidate would propose. New functionality to see what pornographic videos your friends are watching, right now? Of course that's what Facebook is building. This is the tongue-in-cheek fallout the feeds the Daily Show, only it isn't really very funny, because it's real, and you can't turn it off.

It's perhaps obvious to point out that the world we live in is interconnected, yet the simple statement is at the crux of our downward digression: our political system is intertwined with economics, intellectual property is connected to technology, design is at the heart of consumption and marketing feeds the beast. It's a system, and so our critique of it should be systemic, and so too should be our strategies for change. But most of us can't think of systems, because they are too big of which to think. We witness items, or people, or unique instances, and we critique and celebrate those, because they are tractable. To denounce Michele Bachmann as insane is misleadingly simple, but to rationalize her rise to power is harder, because it requires empathizing with her supporters, understanding her world view, acknowledging the role she's played in a political machine, examining her relationship-through-policy with large companies, teasing out the relationship between these companies and religious entities, and holding all of that in your head while asking yourself, "Did she really just say that 'there isn't even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas'?" Seven plus or minus two, and our brain quite literally can't make sense of the world around us.

To maintain any resemblance of happiness, the skill most of us will require in the post-apocalyptic, post-United States industrial block is sensemaking, the ability to synthesize large quantities of often incomplete or conflicting information—and we must direct that skill squarely at the humanization of technology. In the history of economic prosperity and advancement, there have been only a select few armed this magic ability: us. The "creative class", those with—god help us—"creative quotient", have learned this skill largely through on-the-job training. And then, we've focused our efforts on producing things no one needs and marketing these things to people who literally aren't equipped with the education, the confidence or the discerning ability to judge.

Wealth inequality, from my perspective, is not the point of clash between the 1% and the other 99% (although, like in any system, money is intertwined in just about everything). The clash is about the ability to understand systems—to make sense of complexity—and then, when possible, to wield or manage these systems to our collective advantage. The political process is not separate from banking, lobbying, manufacturing, educating, importing, exporting, fighting or praying—and neither is the process of design. To say "we're part of a global economy" is to trivialize the complexities of the man-made world. We're part of a global technological system, and everything —including, thanks to companies like Monsanto, nature—is now a part of it. The power currency of the next era is sensemaking through systems thinking, and the occupiers are starting to realize that they don't have any money to spend in this new economy.

Italian designer Fabio Servolo's latest project is a concept lamp that makes conservation as easy as flipping a light switch... or something to that effect:

Drip is a table lamp that looks like and works like a tap. If fact to turn it on, you "turn on" the tap, rather than switching it on like usual. This action embodies the meaning of Drip.

This makes a 'short circuit' between two different everyday actions, turning on a tap and switching on a light; it triggers the feeling of flowing energy, in this case electricity, which is used up.

Curiously enough, I initially wasn't sure if it was intended to suggest that a leaky faucet can be as wasteful as a lamp or vice versa; it turns out that it's the latter:

No one would ever leave a tap on for hours. However, it often happens that we leave a light on for a long period of time, even when it's not entirely necessary, like going from one room to another. It's necessary to raise people's awareness about wasting energy at home as it's something which could be easily avoided.

In other words, "trying to understand the flow of water is certainly easier to measure than electricity. This 'shift' aims at changing our perception of this concept."

"Drip" is made of salvaged, recyclable industrial materials—namely, brass piping—that have been cleaned, modified for functionality and coated with a stainless steel varnish. The LED diode is enclosed in a translucent plexiglass bulb—or rather, a drop—to "allow the light to diffuse better."

From the You've-Gotta-Be-Kidding-Me department: Kouichi Okamoto built this entire chair out of aluminum wire and...nothing else. The whole thing is made from aluminum wire with no fasteners at all, it holds itself together like a chain-link fence. Even more impressive, this is the sum total of tools he used to build it:

Pair o' pliers and a jig. Crikey.

Called the Composition Chair, it took six months to build.

A solicitation on the streets of Chinatown to buy a tiny ziplock bag of goodies? Twenty years ago we would have been thrown in the hoosegow. But this offer is on the up and up, for not only is it First Thursday in our Art-filled 'hood, and not only is it a rare beautiful winter day, but tonight we are hosting Hot One Inch Action at Hand-Eye Supply—where you buy, keep or trade the tiniest of local art limited editions. So instead of heading home later, come on down to Chinatown and score!

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.

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

For those of you who were awaiting the soundless video, it's been fixed. Enjoy!

One of the great things about Autodesk University is the extremely talented speakers and presenters they consistently attract. While we can't tease the entire lineup yet--we're still working out some clearance issues--we're pleased to kick off our AU 2011 interview series with Spencer Nugent, the industrial designer behind IDsketching.com, Sketch-a-Day.com and the design consultancy Studio Tminus.

Sketchmaster Nugent was on hand at the conference to provide classes in Design Sketching, as well as to man a Wacom in the AU Creative Studio space to field SketchBook Pro questions. Here he talks to Core77 about the conference, gives us the brief rundown on starting up the sketch sites, provides some sketching tips for our readers, and sounds off on Paper vs. Digital.

While Dane Whitehurst has a pretty decent dayjob as the Creative Director of Burgopak, a packaging design company, the London-based designer has also been known to dabble in "Products for the Modern Thinker" on the side.

The things that interest, bother, upset, delight and define my outlook on the world are what drive my personal work. Each project has a message, some obvious, some more subtle but all exist as a means to provoke thought and discussion.

He recently reached out to us about his most recent design, the "iPeace," which is easily Whitehurst's most utilitarian design: a pair of earplugs with a carrying case. "iPeace allows you to carry a set of earplugs wherever you go, and by significantly reducing background noise will help those hectic moments to be that much more... peaceful."

As someone who can't bear to be on the train or plane sans iPod+earbuds, I appreciate the sentiment, but I still feel that the iPeace doesn't quite fit the bill as a necessity for the "modern thinker." I personally carry a Bullet (bike valve adapter), and I can see how a flashlight would be handy, but I can't imagine there's a huge market—of modern thinkers or otherwise—for everyday-carry earplugs.

Nevertheless, Whitehurst's website invites at least a little bit of "what's-behind-door-#2" exploration for a curious visitor, and I was pleased to discover that his other concepts are truer to their target audience. The "Martyr," above, is a playful take on a nightlight:

The Martyr is an energy saving fundamentalist. He wrestles tirelessly with the uncomfortable notion that in order to fulfill his ultimate cause in life; to save as much energy as possible he must extinguish his own light by pulling himself out of his socket.

His other designs venture further afield from practical application towards clever conceptual designs: the "Cliffhanger" mug lies somewhere between quotidian houseware and speculative object. It's a "seat-of-the-pants workout for the domestic thrill-seeker," a set of mugs that are characterized by "climbing holds instead of handles to provide a more challenging way to enjoy a cup of tea."

Our friends at Palo Alto's Lunar are always up to something, and they're happy to share their insights. Their most recent video presents the inspiration behind their forthcoming "SANDBOX" table design.

As Senior Industrial Design Alex Rochat relates in the video clip, it all started with an encounter with sand that's used for shell molding. From his initial experiments, he arrived at a series of distinct, vaguely organic surface patterns that were the basis of a form study and, ultimately, an article of furniture.

From soup to nuts in under three minutes...

Junya Hirokawa
Editor, Nikkei Design Magazine

As they've done in the past, the 2011 Design Tide Tokyo event hosted a number of extension venues exhibiting creative work across the city. Among these, one in particular that caught my attention for its uniqueness and earnest probe around an established notion of material consumption was Yu Yamada's (SHOP).

(SHOP) was run from 11/2/2011 – 11/13/2011, at the Aoyama Gallery "Raum 1F." Yamada plans to increase the items for sale and move to different locations. The one pictured here is Yu Yamada.

Yamada is a Tokyo-based retail buyer through his company, Method. True to its name, everything on display is for sale at (SHOP). The items that Yamada has collected at (SHOP) are not design products borne out of demand from the market or consumers. Rather, these objects are the pure, uninhibited work of their creators, who run the gamut from designers to architects. Taken together, the items comprise a highly unique and personal lineup that simply can't be found anywhere else. Furthermore, these items are not merely for sale on consignment—they are items that Yamada has purchased in full, which should give you an idea of his commitment to his selections.

As a retail buyer, Yamada's job is to focus on "what will sell." However, with (SHOP), he can take certain liberties in the interest of eclecticism: "I'm not bound by factors like the creator's personality or the features and cost of the product that are normally important when making buying decisions. Instead, I select things that I believe are genuinely desired by the soul." On most other days, Yamada works as a retail buyer for various items in major Japanese department stores such as Parco and Seibu, serves as a director for Design Tide Tokyo, and is a representative for Nooka Japan.

All the items at (SHOP) are far from a necessity for everyday life, as they are the type of things that somebody would only buy unless they really loved it. What Yamada is aiming at with (SHOP) is the "pure" act of buying: purchasing something because you truly desire it. On the other hand, it's also interesting to see how your perspective of the items he's picked changes if you imagine that you could buy any and all of them.

Check out some of the rare and wonderful objects after the jump:

Fish and Chips have been part of New Zealand culture for many years and is known as a dish icon of the nation. Whatever the origin, New Zealanders chomp their way through about seven million servings of chips a week, or about 120,000 tons a year. Fish and chips shops are established on every street and have become part of the New Zealand lifestyle.

So reads the introduction to designer Casey Ng's description of the BoxBag, a packaging concept that promises to deliver a better user experience—not to mention savory satisfaction—to the Fish and Chips fanatic. He's modified the existing packaging 'design,' one that itself informs consumer behavior, to complete a feedback loop:

The tradition of this dish lies in the process of unraveling the newspaper packaging into a open dish to share between friends and family and eating in an outdoor location... Traditionally, the Fish and Chips packaging is a two-step wrapping process of plain white newsprint and then newspaper. The packaging is cheap, [easily] wrapped and unwrapped, with minimal preparation but provides sufficient insulation and soak up the excess grease.

To hear our own Core77 Design Awards Director (and New Zealand native) Jacqui Khiu tell it, the tried-and-true tradition is part and parcel of the New Zealand fish and chips experience. The piping hot deliciousness is invariably bundled in two layers of paper to be ritualistically unwrapped and enjoyed.

Enter the BoxBag:

The BoxBag is a combination design between a paper bag and a carton incorporating all of the traditional fish and chips packaging factors, [updated for] the modern-day consumer. The process of this design uses one sheet of plain newsprint to wrap the Fish and Chips and is then placed into this BoxBag, providing insulation and freshness. The packaging is purposely designed taller than a typical paper bag, encouraging the consumer to rip the bag open. Once the packaging is ripped, it will reveal the custom designed newspaper on the inside. Each article in the newspaper introduces the best of New Zealand landscapes, providing anecdote and information to the consumer whilst eating.

The BoxBag is also designed with consumers who like eating on the go in mind. The tab located at the back, linking to a decorative perforation, circulates around the BoxBag. This aesthetic and functional perforated line allows the consumer to rip around the whole packaging and turning it into an open carton. This method not only provides convenience to the consumer but also encourages the ripping tradition of Fish and Chips,

The cardboard bottom serves as an elegant update to the prosaic brown paper bag, providing insulation and an inexpensive container to boot. Moreover, "the packaging is flat-packed prior to being used" and the newsprint top portion functions as a regular paper bag, which can be folded, rolled or torn for convenience.

IDEO.org Fellow
IDEO.org
San Francisco, California

IDEO.org is a new non-profit that brings design solutions to poverty-focused problem solvers around the world. The IDEO.org Fellowship Program enables future global leaders from the design, business, and social sectors to spend one year working with experienced IDEO designers to address poverty-related challenges using the tools of human-centered design. Over a 12-month period, Fellows will deliver solutions for non-profits, social enterprises, and foundations on an array of topics, such as: agriculture, gender equity, financial services, health, water, and sanitation.

Fellowships are based in California. Frequent travel in the field is required. The application process is highly competitive and open to applicants from around the world; preference is given to innovators with work experience in the developing world and/or with low-income communities. Candidates should have an openness to other cultures and lifestyles and will be expected to be self-reliant and thrive in a start-up environment.

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The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.

It's that time of year again! While we certainly hope to have all of your gift-giving needs (and wants) covered with our own perennial Ultimate Gift Guide, we're impressed with what our fellow web publishers have come up with this time around. Here's a quick survey of what we've seen; feel free to post other notables in the comments, or send them to blogs [at] core77.com for review—we'll add anything worth sharing... except, of course, an apocalypse-themed gift guide for the End of Year or End of Days.

Coolhunting - Coolhunting's Gift Guide is great for killing time, something like a black hole of cool(hunted) gadgets, gizmos, gear and all-around awesome things.

Gizmodo - The tech-centric blog just kicked off their series of wish lists with 10 "Bountiful Gifts for the Urban Farmer." The editors promise a new guide every day for the rest of the month, so check back for more.

GOOD - GOOD's gift guide, which went live this morning, is organized by activity: Live, Work, Wear, Play and Go. The items themselves—10 in each category—range from playful to practical, but, in keeping with GOOD's mission, they're always thoughtful.

Inhabitat - Inhabitat demonstrates an intimate knowledge of their readership with their Green Holiday Gift Guide, which is "chock full of over 200 green, eco-friendly and organic gifts sure to please everyone on your list, from parents to babies, from gadget geeks to green thumbs."

2011 has been a hard year. Global Revolution! Natural disasters! Bankruptcy! What's next? We're not hedging bets for 2012 just yet, but in case things don't turn out the way you'd expected, we've got you covered. Core77's Ultimate Gift Guide has everything you need to get through these hard times and survive through the... end times?

Today's pick is from Allan Chochinov: Allan Chochinov is the editor in chief of Core77 and Chair of the new MFA in Products of Design graduate program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

In hard times, extend your ground beef with this little trick. That pound of Grade A can go the extra mile when making lasagna, tacos or sloppy joes. P.S. It's cracked red wheat in disguise!

See the full gift guide HERE.

A special Thank You to this year's Gift Guide sponsor: Felt & Wire Shop offering a selection of curated paper goods direct from designers.