The design of subway stations generally sucks, with a few global exceptions. The Line 11 platform at the Arts et Metier metro stop, in Paris, is the most beautiful subway station I've ever been in. These are two shots I took of it in 2005.

The steampunk-style station had been redesigned that way in 1994 by Francois Schuiten, and though the photos may not convey it well, the copper lining the walls gives the space a warm glow you don't often find underground.

It's that warm unearthly light that makes Arts et Metier beautiful, at least to me. But I'd settle for earthly light, or anything besides fluorescent bulbs, to pretty up a station. The winning entry in a recent design competition in Tel Aviv, for instance, shows us what a subway could look like if lit by the sun.

In a rather cheeky gesture to celebrate Her Royal Majesty's Diamond Jubilee, a creative team at the London office of Leo Burnett is pleased to present a Pantone palette in the form of Queen Elizabeth II, dressed in a full spectrum of vibrant hues, "from the Primrose Yellow she wore at Will and Kate's wedding in April 2011 to the tasteful Lilac Snow outfit she wore last year during a visit to Northumberland." Noting that the past six decades have seen the queen regnant bedecked in "a full spectrum perfectly colour-coordinated ensembles," Will Thacker and Blake Waters have created a "bespoke, limited-edition, numbered colour guide."

Designed to capture and commemorate some of the Queen's most memorable colour choices since her coronation—featuring PANTONE Colour references and citing the date and location that determined her outfit colour choice.

Waters shared the (possibly apocryphal) tale of their inspiration:

It was a balmy Wednesday when Will Thacker and Blake Waters were enjoying their afternoon tea in the grounds of Buckingham Palace, at another Royal Garden Party.

Doubling up on the finest cucumber sandwiches, they found it hard not to notice another splendid block colour outfit worn by her Maj'.

After much debating and a couple more Earl Greys, the pair decided to celebrate her success at wearing one colour so gracefully.

More information is available here, including color notes such as:

PANTONE 13-4411 Crystal Blue "Blue is a colour staple in the Queen's wardrobe. It's a colour that communicates constancy and it is also symbolic of her devotion to the British people. Blues traditionally have calming properties and she is often seen wearing them during difficult times. Blue is also seen as de-stressing so it's no surprise she was sporting a serene blue to a Royal Garden Party in 2010.

UI Designer (Rapid Prototyping)
Intel Corporation
Beaverton, Oregon

Intel Corporation is seeking a User Interface Designer who will work closely with an interdisciplinary team of social scientists, business and technology experts to rapidly prototype product and service concepts. Using a UX methodology, these interdisciplinary teams collaborate with health domain experts and external collaborators (hospitals, clinics, gov't entities, industry, etc.), to understand new ways of using technology for health, to generate requirements and to express those requirements in prototypes. Key areas of focus include coordinated primary care, age friendly cities and personalized medicine, with a focus on driving cross-platform (embedded, phone, tablet, ultrabook, server) requirements.

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Photography by Perrin Drumm & Glen Jackson Taylor for Core77

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If none of the experts will heed my warnings and we're going to continue messing around with robotics, I want guys like Arthur Wait designing them. Engineer and amateur chef Wait recently won Grand Prize at Microsoft's Robotics @ Home Competition with his SmartTripod design, which provides a handy way to record demos, tutorials and Instructable-type videos without a cameraman.

I'm a fan of Wait's robot because it's designed to be subservient, and unlike those maniacs at the Ishikawa Oku Lab he has not chosen to give it lightning-fast reflexes to make it athletically superior to humans. Also, it seems like it would be pretty easy to knock over in case it went rogue. And it's clearly useful. Have a look:

I wish every aspiring roboticist would follow Wait's example. The tenets are easy to memorize: 1) The robot must be useful, and 2) We must be able to easily defeat the robot in hand-to-hand combat.

It's the moment you've all been waiting for. Our second annual Core77 Design Awards has been better than ever! Since launching the Core77 Design Awards program last year, we've had an incredible outpouring of support from all corners of the design community and we couldn't be more delighted at the huge amount of participation this year. With that being said, there's more excitement to come! Set your alarms because beginning July 8, we will be broadcasting LIVE over 9 days from eight countries with our distinguished judges announcing the winners for our 17 categories.

CORE77 DESIGN AWARDS LIVE BROADCAST SCHEDULE
July 8-16, 2012
9 Days. 17 Categories. Eight Countries. 74 Jurors. Live!!

Recognizing excellence in all areas of design enterprise, the Core77 Design Awards celebrates the richness of the design profession and its practitioners. We present 17 categories of entry, providing designers a unique opportunity to communicate the intent, rigor and passion behind their efforts. From client work to self-initiated projects, entrepreneurial to pro-bono engagements, we embrace a wide diversity of design enterprise: commercial, cultural, social, environmental or discursive. We welcome projects in all these spheres and honor the time, effort and quality of the endeavors, no matter their provenance.

Drumroll please... And here is the broadcast schedule for the second annual Core77 Design Awards.

**Please Note: All times and dates are based on Eastern Time.

After 25 years of exhibitions, The San Francisco Art Deco Show has merged with The Arts & Crafts Show to create the SF Modernism 20th Century Design Show. Essentially, the show displays furniture, products, and apparel that span the Mission to Modern eras. A great place to do a little first hand design history field trip.

This year the show is presenting a special exhibition of the work of Raymond Loewy. Loewy's career spanned 7 decades and was far ranging, from corporate identity to streamlined trains. Objects on display will include original design sketches, textiles, china, and other objects designed by Loewy.

If you are in SF this weekend, check it out.

WHEN and WHERE?

June 9th & 10th 2012
10am-6pm (Sat)
11am-5pm (Sun)

Concourse Exhibition Center
8th & Brannan St.
San Francisco, CA
ADMISSION $10

From time to time we post word of notable design competitions, where all it takes is a designer with a good idea and skills that can net them thousands in prize money. But what we've got here today is something like a super-competition, with a lot more money at stake (millions), broader requirements than just design skills, and a much higher barrier to entry.

The U.S. Government's Advanced Manufacturing Jobs and Innovation Accelerator Challenge is a US $26 million initiative to boost regional economies. If the competition's name doesn't tip you off, let us spell it out: This being the U.S. Gov we're talking about, the Challenge will be a fiendishly complicated course to navigate involving tons of paperwork and an alphabet soup of organizations you'd have to deal with. You can't apply as an individual, but must be part of a nonprofit, institution of higher learning or a business entity. But there's $2.3 million in it for every winning project, and by virtue of the fact that this involves manufacturing, it means designers can be players.

What the Challenge is hoping to set up is not on the scale of individual products, like a Kickstarter or Quirky project; they're trying to get clusters going, those interconnected networks of different types of firms that spells out, long-term, more jobs. Here's a more specific description:

Clusters are made up of industries, and build on a region's traditional strengths and assets. Because every region has a unique competitive advantage that is built on unique regional assets, the existing and emerging clusters present often differs from community to community.

For example, one region with strong university and research centers may leverage their technical expertise in composite materials to support the regional composites cluster by helping support supply chains and providing technical expertise on how to advance existing composite materials while another region that has a strong transportation and manufacturing sector may focus on leveraging their university and community colleges to advance the automotive and aerospace companies in the region.

The bottom line: If you've got an idea for a cluster, and are part of an organization that you think could successfully navigate the bureaucracy required to get your project off of the ground, dive in here.

Emily Pilloton of Project H Design, one of the most influential design education endeavors in America, announced today that their high school design/build program Studio H is leaving its roots in Bertie County, North Carolina for the REALM Charter School in Berkeley, CA. The move comes as a surprise given Project H's three years of extraordinary success in an extremely underprivileged community. We've covered Project H here on Core77 numerous times since its inception, including their very first (Anti)Manifesto and their Design Revolution Road Show. Project H was also a runner-up in last year's Core77 Design Awards.

Studio H brings design into the classroom and students out into their community to effect change. Students gain proficiency in the design thinking process, 2D rendering techniques, 3D prototyping, and fabrication and communication skills. Projects have included a farmers' market, farm stands, and chicken coops. The quality and sophistication of design that comes out of Studio H is really quite astonishing.

The move, like many things, comes out of school administration politics and a need for a larger funding commitment. REALM Charter School, however, will provide stability for Studio H and will work to provide a more expansive integration of the program into the school. The entire situation is bittersweet, as the future generations of Bertie County students will lose access to truly remarkable designers and education innovators, yet Studio H will continue in a more welcoming environment. One can only hope that the skills, confidence, and passion that Emily Pilloton and Matthew Miller instilled in their students will live on in the community. Read Emily Pilloton's full letter here.

Alite Designs is a San-Francisco-based outdoor goods retailer whose goal is to "design things that make you wonder why you're still inside." In addition to carrying items like the Vapur and the Glif, they design and product their own decidedly quirky products:

I prize my hard-won skill, from all the bridal showers I worked in my restaurant days, to cut a cake perfectly in half. But the guys at the Sauber Formula One racing team have vivisected a decidedly more complicated object: One of their F1 cars, which reportedly took them two years to slice. (It also may have taken that long because they were not able to find a driver also willing to be cut in half.)

In the following video they show you just how tightly all of the various components are stuffed in there, and go over some design/engineering tricks like placing horizontal baffles in the fuel tank. (If the fluids slosh around too much during high-G maneuvers, it will throw off the vehicle's balance; the baffles work with gravity to keep the weight down low.) It's a bit frustrating that there is no long, lingering shot that lets you really study the cutaway, but it's one of those things where we'd rather see a little than nothing at all.

There's a subway running under my apartment, so I'd have to do some testing before I could commit to owning the L shelving system. Other than that, I admire designer Juan Pablo Quintero's brilliant idea of using a single tabbed-and-slotted shape to create an infinitely scalable bookshelf, no tools required.

"L" is a modular shelving system based on a unique piece. Like fish scales, the modules are superimposed one after the other to generate a useful surface slightly inclined to prevent books from falling. This system allows for increased storage capacity by adding new modules.

Assembled according to the taste of each user. Easy assembly using no screws or fasteners, almost as if it were a game. It is delivered disassembled.

I suppose that fully laden, gravity would do to keep the shelves in place, even under mild vibration.

Lecturer - Interdisciplinary Digital Design Communication
Victoria University of Wellington
Wellington, New Zealand

The Architecture program at the Victoria University of Wellington is seeking a Lecturer/Sr. Lecturer to deliver interdisciplinary design studios and communications subjects in the Bachelor of Architectural Studies, which includes programs in Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Interior Architecture. As well as undergraduate teaching, the successful applicant will also be expected to lead a research stream within the Masters programs. This provides the opportunity to work with students in the context of a 12-month design thesis.

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Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) is pushing the design envelope with their new Master of Arts in Sustainable Design—an interdisciplinary, studio design-oriented degree that is also offered completely online. The Designers Accord talks to Program Coordinator (and biomimicry education leader) Cindy Gilbert about the inspiration for the program and how MCAD plans to shape the next generation of global creative problem-solvers.

Designers Accord: MCAD has a long history of leadership in sustainable design. What prompted the creation of this program at this particular moment in time?

Cindy Gilbert: MCAD's Sustainable Design Online (SDO) program grew out of a public sustainable design lecture series and film series that continues today, both hosted by MCAD in 2000, long before it was hip to be green! Our new MA in Sustainable Design is a result of the natural evolution of a successful professional certificate program that has been offered at MCAD since 2004. It was also shaped by the Designers Accord Design Education Summit and the toolkit that the attendees co-authored.

When I came on board in 2010, I conducted candid interviews with every instructor, student, staff and alumni of the certificate program that I could reach to determine the program's greatest challenges and opportunities. A resounding outcome of the feedback was that a multidisciplinary, graduate-level degree was required to provide students with the appropriate credentials and experiential framework to become effective global change agents. The time is ripe for change and MCAD has the online learning tools to magnify the reach and sustainability expertise to continue to lead the charge.

Designers Accord: You mentioned the Designers Accord Education Summit as helping to shape the new Masters program. At that event in October 2009, you participated as one of several facilitators of the group of 100 design educators from different institutions and countries talking about the future of design education. What insights in particular contributed to the creation of the program created at MCAD?

CG: The DA Education Summit was immediately influential to me and my work. I applied many of the comments that I heard from the group to the development of an educator's training program at The Biomimicry Institute (where I worked at the time) and I also met two founders of MCAD's SDO program at that event who would become my greatest supporters when I joined the MCAD team a year later.

We have used the DA Education Toolkit to guide the creation of MCAD's new MA in many ways and at different levels. 1) Course level: the "Creating a Common Language"—one of 8 topics in the toolkit—helped to frame our Introduction to Sustainable Design course curricula. 2) Program level: the topics "Designing a Sustainability Curriculum," "Updating Existing Design Programs," and "Measuring Success" were particularly helpful in bringing consciousness to respecting the work that has preceded us. My biggest task then, and today, is to listen. 3) Institutional level: "Creating a Common Language" has been an invaluable reference point for my work at the institutional level. Gaining traction for a novel and untraditional program has been the most challenging part about the process. Remembering that the program, like everything, is part of a system helps to foster sustainable relationships. Transparency and patience are critical factors for success.

We've documented the work of our friends at Hellman-Chang as exhaustively as any studio, but it's worth revisiting their work on the occasion of ICFF, where Daniel and Eric debuted several new pieces.

"Avery" Chair

The "Anora" lamp marks Hellman-Chang's first foray into lighting.

"Parker" dining table

If the centerpiece was the new "Parker" dining table, the live workshop was the main attraction. One of their studio assistants invited passersby to try their hand at carving the legs of their iconic "Z side table."

Reporting by Temenouzhka Zaharieva. Images by Dimitar Dimitrov.

The exhibition The Light and Time presents recycled design objects created by students from the Interior Design BA program and the Spatial Design MA program at the New Bulgarian University.

Students have given existing items a second life by converting them into unusual lighting fixtures, clocks, a shelf and a hanger from a skateboard, etc. These are objects that have been found somewhere and through recycling have been placed in a new, unusual context. The students work in the field of conceptual design and explain their work as related to the Dada, Fluxus and neoconceptual movements. They see their works as part of the context of "crisis" and the modern trends in design. For them creation of objects without industrial production is the way to express their understanding of green design. The exhibition opened yesterday at the Art Alley Gallery, Sofia, as part of the 4th Sofia Design Week.

The Light and Time
Art Alley Gallery
51A Gladston Street
Sofia, Bulgaria
Now through June 8th

Design by Lilia Gateva

Design by Nikolay Stoyanov

To what extent do our environments render us assymetrical, and what role does design play? Sometimes we have to sit along the wall of a movie theater or the window seat of a cramped plane, temporarily making body parts sore on one side. But we only suffer those maladies for a matter of hours. The guy above has been driving a delivery truck for nearly 30 years, and by the condition of his face you can tell whether he was driving it in the United States or the United Kingdom.

Since being posted in the New England Journal of Medicine, the shocking photo has been making the blog rounds as an example of what they're calling "photoaging," or the clearly negative effects of prolonged sunlight exposure. With all of the truck drivers in the United States alone, I'm surprised we don't see more of this. But it does make you wonder if designers of vehicles meant to be driven for long stretches, as a career, ought take into consideration that more sunlight is coming in on one side. I doubt anything can be done for this man's face, but surely future generations of truckers deserve some sort of well-designed protection from assymetrical UV exposure.

In case you missed it, the American Design Club put on a great show under the banner Raw + Unfiltered during ICFF. Our photo editors captured our faves in the NY Design Week Photo Gallery but now we've got a great look at the behind the scenes!

Meet the five managing members of AmDC, check out great insight from participating designers (we were particularly psyched about Fort Standard's bronze candelabra's cast from the sprues at 1:11). Interviews with Kiel Mead, Bec Brittain, Henry Julier, Fort Standard, Annie Lennon, Sam Cochran and more. (Warning...gratuitous plug at the end of the video.)

What the heck is this thing? Read on

Here's an example of how a nuts-and-bolts industrial design firm—one that you've probably never heard of—can integrate with other businesses to achieve fantastic, if quiet, financial success designing products that most consumers have never heard of or seen.

The design firm in question is the 62-person Design Concepts, based in Madison, Wisconsin. Design Concepts was contracted by Diversey, a company in the decidedly unsexy business of keeping factories clean. Diversey noticed that the tracks of their clients' air conveyors—overhead systems used for moving bottles across the factory floor—were absurdly difficult to clean out. The process requires workers get up on ladders and scrub down every inch of the conveyor's internal track using rags and a spray bottle.

Diversey turned to Design Concepts, who then developed the ZipClean robot you see above. It increases the cleaning speed by a factor of 200, meaning less downtime for the production line, and obviates the need for workers to get up on ladders (a process that traditionally comes with a percentage of accidents and injuries). Check out how it works:

Those who move frequently know: The best place to get sturdy cardboard boxes for free is at a liquor store. Booze comes by the case, and if the boxes are strong enough to hold 24 bottles of Jack, they're strong enough to hold your crap. Plus liquor stores have more of these boxes than they know what to do with, and they're happy to have a dozen less boxes to break down and bale up for recycling.

Speaking of recycling, sending tattered boxes to the recycler is the best thing for them. But for boxes that still have plenty of life in them, recycling them can actually be wasteful. By subjecting them to the energy-intensive recycling process you take them out of the world before they've fulfilled their full utility.

A company called UsedCardboardBoxes.com realizes this, and has formed an entire business around getting boxes to those who need them: