Sure it's a little silly, but auto design powerhouses Lamborghini, BMW, Bugatti and Ferrari have all produced their own designs for espresso machines.

Wait! Before you click that link above to see the shots large (and attributed), we've blacked out labels in the photos below, in order to see: Can you guess, based on the aesthetic decisions, which coffeemakers came from which brands? (By the by, there are four brands but five coffeemakers, as one firm cranked out two of the designs you see here.)

Hit the jump to see if you were right.

Here's a nice little tidbit from Frog Design, outlining a talk Jan Chipchase delivered to the US State Department about mobile money. The talk is part of a series of discussions entitled Tech@State, part of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's "21st Century Statecraft" initative.

Here's an excerpt:

While cultural notions of privacy vary considerably, most people assume that transactions related to money -- the details of a purchase; the balance on an account, that a bill has been paid-should be kept private. And while it's certainly true for some transactions, there is a tendency to assume that privacy is necessary for *all* transactions. More research needs to be done in this space, but I'd argue that only a few key transactions need to remain truly private, and the others could flow through less private channels.

Read the full talk, slides included, here.

Here's an interesting design brief: Design a relatively small-run (8,000-unit) handheld device capable of sustaining an open flame in wind and the UK's typically inclement weather. Oh yeah, and it should also be graphically iconic and represent the hopes and dreams of a generation of athletes.

The London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (LOCOG), in partnership with the Design Council, today began the process of creating the torches for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Torch Relays. They have invited top product and industrial design, engineering and manufacturing talent to register interest in creating what will become two of the key visual icons of the London Games.

At least 8,000 Olympic Torches will be required to enable Torchbearers to carry the Olympic Flame the length and breadth of the UK during the 70 day Olympic Torch Relay.... Designing and developing the Paralympic Torch as well as lanterns, mini cauldrons and other related products for both Torch Relays are also part of the three separate briefs for design, engineering and manufacture.

LOCOG CEO Paul Deighton commented: "The creation of the torches to carry the Olympic and Paralympic Flame is a unique opportunity for London 2012 to literally shine a light on the UK's best design, engineering and manufacturing talent. We are looking for an expert team to create the torches that will be held by thousands of people that represent the very best of our nation as the UK begins its Olympic and Paralympic celebrations with the Torch Relays in the summer of 2012."

Interested parties are being urged to seek further information and details of how to apply online at www.london2012.com/business. The Design Council is also assisting designers in registering their interest with background information and guidance on the process that can be accessed at www.designcouncil.org.uk/olympictorch.

Design consultancies can register starting today, and the process will move quickly--the deadline for the first stage of completion is in two and a half weeks, on the 22nd.

I'm not crazy about their product photographer, but I like the ballsy form factor of the PiCycle electric-hybrid bike. You could say the zero-emission cycle, which runs from three to five grand, has 20/20 vision: It'll hit 20 m.p.h. and has a range of 20 miles.

Company founder Marcus Hays breaks down the philosophy of the Pi:

via monkee design

This month, we're celebrating shoe designers all over the world with our latest 1 Hour Design Challenge: Play-Doh Kicks. To get you loosened up for fall, when we all go into overdrive again, this one's fun, casual and three-dimensional. Your task is to recreate or reinterpret your favorite pair of shoes in play-doh, in one hour or less.

Cut loose and give your imagination a stretch. Maybe you'll create a miniature tribute to your favorite sneaker designer of all time. Or, honor your humble, beat up kicks by sculpting their likeness, busted soles and all.

To help us pick the best entries, we've enlisted Sneaker Freaker, the only magazine to document the international footwear craze, and Kueng Caputo, the Switzerland based designers behind the Copy series of design workshops. Woody, Sneaker Freaker's founder and editor, has generously offered the winner a lifetime subscription plus publication in the magazine's December issue. Kueng Caputo are throwing in their book Copy, a compilation of results from the workshop. And, finally, we'll be throwing in gift certificates to Hand Eye Supply, our new store for designers and makers.

This is gonna be a fun one, so start rolling out that Play-Doh.

DOORS OPEN:
Wednesday, August 4, 2010

DOORS CLOSE:
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
9 pm PST (4 am GMT)

JURY:
Woody, Editor and Founder of Sneaker Freaker
Sarah Kueng and Lovis Caputo of Kueng Caputo
The Core77 Editorial Team

CRITERIA:
Models must be made completely of play-doh, but can be tooled with anything you've got on hand, from exacto-blades to butter knives.

We'll be looking for how well you express the character of your chosen shoe, how resourceful you are in your methods, and how original you are in your interpretation.

HOW TO ENTER:
Participants must execute their design in only 1 hour, based on an honor system. To enter, upload your entries to the designated competition forum.

Please include the name of the shoe you chose to recreate, any supporting text you'd like to add, and a photographs of your model as follows: a three-quarter view, a side elevation, and an optional sole view. Remember to save high-resolution photographs of your model in case it is selected for publication in Sneaker Freaker!

To discuss the challenge and the entries, visit the 1HDC discussion forum.

PRIZE:
The Grand Prizewinner will receive a lifetime subscription to Sneaker Freaker, Copy by Kueng Caputo, a $100 gift certificate to Hand Eye Supply. Two honorable mentions will receive a $25 gift certificate to Hand Eye Supply. All of the above will be published in the Core77 Newsletter and Sneaker Freaker's December issue.

ENTER HERE

This past weekend, the Maker Faire came to Detroit for the first time! Mike Doyle brings us the best of Motor City's fabulous creations in this gallery, including the Life-size Mousetrap, hot-rodded Power Wheel racing, and lots and lots of robots.

>> view gallery

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Photo: orvalrochefort.

In his recent book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell introduced me to the idea of Mitigated Speech a linguistic term describing deferential or indirect speech inherent in communication between individuals with a perceived High Power Distance. Gladwell defines mitigated speech as "any attempt to downplay or sugarcoat the meaning of what is being said." The greater the perceived difference in social status between individuals (Power Distance), the more difficult it becomes for an individual of lower status to communicate in direct terms with the superior.

There are 6 degrees of mitigation with which we make suggestions to authority:

• Command: "Strategy X is going to be implemented."
  
• Team Obligation Statement: "We need to try strategy X."
  
• Team Suggestion: "Why don't we try strategy X?"
  
• Query: "Do you think strategy X would help us in this situation?"
  
• Preference: "Perhaps we should take a look at one of these Y alternatives."
  
• Hint: "I wonder if we could run into any roadblocks on our current course."

The term Power Distance was coined by Dutch organizational sociologist Geert Hofstede who defined it as: "the extent to which a society accepts hierarchical differences." Power Distance is determined by measuring people's attitudes in a series of questionnaires, and, not surprisingly, it turns out that different cultures have different levels of Power Distance. Some cultures have small Power Distance (e.g. Australia, Austria, Denmark). In these cultures, people tend to relate to each other more as equals, and subordinates are more comfortable challenging those in positions of power. In cultures with large Power Distance (e.g. Malaysia and Slovakia), people expect relationships to be more autocratic. Subordinates accept the power of their superiors based on their hierarchical positions. In cultures with High Power Distance it is much more difficult for subordinates to communicate in direct terms than in cultures with Low Power Distance. This can raise significant cross-cultural issues.

Gladwell illustrates the degree to which mitigated speech can be detrimental in high risk situations which require clear communication--including a number of commercial airline crashes in the late '90's. He offers an example of an airline crash investigation that showed how, because of mitigated speech, the control tower was unaware of an emergency onboard an incoming aircraft. The aircraft's co-pilot [subordinate] who was communicating with a control tower (superior) hinted at a serious problem ("we're running low on fuel") rather than being clear and direct ("We have an emergency. You need to bring us in NOW").

So, what does any of this have to do with design? If Mitigated Speech can bring down an airplane, surely it can bring down a product development program. In the ideas around mitigated speech, I see a connection to my own experiences in product development. In a studio environment like ours at Artefact, complex programs are tackled by work-teams comprised of people of different levels of experience and responsibility: junior people, senior people, principals, and directors. Counterparts in our clients' organizations and in our partners' organizations also span the range from junior to C-level. Decision making happens at all levels in both cases. Add on top of this the dynamics of a client-consultant relationship, and it's easy to see that our environment creates plenty of hierarchy and, consequently, plenty of mitigated speech.

The Service Design Network (SDN)—perhaps the biggest promoter of their growing discipline in Europe, headed by Service Design ambassador Birgit Mager—are building on the successes of last year's "Beyond Basics" conference in Madeira, Portugal with the 3rd Service Design Network Conference coming to Berlin in October, under the title "Connecting the Dots."

SDN are hell-bent on raising the profile of Service Design in the public domain. You might recall the inspiring supplement they produced for the UK broadsheet, The Guardian, earlier this year, raising the profile of Service Design in homes across the country (on Core77 here). To this year's gathering, SDN hope to attract a wide range of service-orientated companies and institutions, public services, universities and Service Design agencies from around the world.

Connecting the Dots:
Service Design Network Conference 2010, Berlin
13-14th October 2010
(SDN "Members' Day" - 15th October)

More information and registration here

Clever design by Düsseldorf designer Daniel Michel, commenting on the gradual disappearance of the light bulb (at least as we know it). In these lamps, the light pours right out of the socket, which is actually a 10-Watt High Power LED. The socket comes with interchangeable shades, though we'd probably leave it undecorated, for that bare-bulb, 90's loft look.

Photos by Merlin Baum

The Shenzhen Hashi Future Parking Equipment Co. of China has a proposal situated somewhere between Superstudio and Plug-In City: An elevated megabus/subway hybrid that slides over the traffic instead of going around it, or creating congestion itself. From the looks of the video though, this excludes trucks—they'll have to go around, as if they don't have it hard enough already.

via treehugger

Thanks, David!

Vancouver-based architect and designer Omer Arbel, who runs an eponymous design office, is having a hell of a year. His designs for the 2010 Olympics and Paralympics medals, which featured artwork by artist Corinne Hunt, won one of I.D. Magazine's last design awards before they folded;

Earlier this week, the upcoming World Architecture Festival shortlisted Arbel's 23.2 House design, based around recycled Douglas Fir beams;

And just yesterday Arbel won the biannual $10,000 Ronald J. Thom Award for Early Design Achievement, awarded by the Canadian Arts Council, for his body of work as a whole.

"Omer Arbel creates an extensive range of objects, from practical to symbolic, with wonderful playfulness. He roots his designs in concept, engages the properties of a broad palette of materials and clearly values engineering," the jury wrote. "A deep interest in both serial production and custom fabrication allows him to expand beyond the normal bounds of professional architectural practice."

Our favorite project of Arbel's is his cast resin 2.4 Chair from 2003, below.

Check out the rest of Arbel's work here.

Six finalists have been chosen in Levi Strauss' Care to Air Design Challenge, which seeks clever and eco-friendly ways to dry clothes. The competition was formed after "a lifecycle assessment of a pair of Levi's 501 jeans revealed that, on average, almost 60% of the climate impact comes during the consumer phase. Nearly 80% of that is due to the energy-intensive method chosen for drying."

Three of the finalists were chosen by Myoo Create, the crowdsourcing company collaborating on the contest, and three were chosen by Levi's. Our two faves both feature space-saving wall-mounted designs for clothing racks:

The simple Evaporation Station, by designer Jeff M., looks pleasant enough folded flat, and fans out to hang what we're guessing would be a single person's small-batch laundry load.

The Nothing is What It Seems rack, by screenname Chill, does the Evaporation Station one better by acting as a wall-mounted painting frame until it deploys. It also seems to offer a good deal more hanging area, and if we had to pick one--heck, if I could buy one--it'd be this.

Check out the rest of the finalists here.

Chances are slim you'll be able to, but see if you can guess what this is:

That's a patent-pending design called the MSA Bypass Shuttle, designed by Nadeem Haidary, that would allow construction workers rigged to safety cables to pass each other. Construction workers high up on beams will often need to string a lifeline between two I-beams and clip themselves to it, but despite this precaution, falls are still the leading cause of death in that industry; a building being erected right next to Core77's offices had just such an accident a few years ago.

Presumably the fact that workers rigged to the lifelines cannot pass each other leads some to avoid clipping into the lines altogether, as the importance of mobility and deadlines is given precedence over safety. Haidary's design uses clever geometry to enable one worker passing another to flip his shuttle 180 degrees, allowing it to pass "through" the other worker's shuttle without detaching from the line.

The project was named for and done in conjunction with a manufacturer called Mine Safety Appliances, and though Haidary often says "We" in his project description, he does not specifically mention whether he worked as part of a design team or designed the device on his own.

Writes Haidary of his general design philosophy,

I think of design as applied experimentation. To prototype ideas, build things, visit a foreign land, to be curious about everything is to set yourself up for the possibility of discovering new solutions to the world's problems. In fact, I want to be what Buckminster Fuller called a 'comprehensivist'.

Check out the rest of Naidary's stuff here.

Most will agree that good design is timeless; but how about good design advice, or does that get dated? You can be the judge now that Stanford University in partnership with Academic Earth have published a series of 12 lectures called "Principles of Product Design," put together by IDEO--way back in 2001.

Topics included are:

1. Career Development
2. Building a Personal Gratification Company
3. Follow Your Passion
4. Design is Risk-Taking
5. Hire Great People
6. The Process of Design
7. Product Development Process: Observation
8. Designing Products vs Designing Experiences
9. Design as an Iterative Process
10. Prototyping the Mouse
11. Career Advice
12. How do you pick clients?

Here's David Kelley with #6, "The Process of Design:"

It's always about this time of year that the news is suddenly full of unemployment horror stories; debt-laden graduates scrambling to find even a whiff of an opening to the world of work, in an ever-shrinking and increasingly uncertain job market. Reports of Bachelor waving twenty-somethings rummaging in bins for basic sustenance, or facing the prospect of moving back in with the parents, is enough to set the teeth of any student on edge. Employers don't exactly help matters. Professing that recent graduates are lacking in slightly mysterious sounding "soft-skills", doesn't help current students identify where they should be focusing their academic energy.

For those of you that don't follow his "Strategic Aesthetics" blog, Michael Roller of Kaleidoscope (you might remember Mr. Roller from his candid "5 Self-Promotion Dont's" - on Core77 here) has been on something of a personal mission to tackle this problem - at least for budding industrial designers. Gathering insights from a survey of 100 design employers in consultancy, corporate or academic practice across the globe (if a little biased towards North America), Roller has produced a simple and concise 17 page booklet, under the title "The Ideal (Junior) Industrial Designer", outlining what employers in the design industry look for when hiring a junior.

Senior Designer/Consultant (Interaction Design)
Philips
Singapore

This incumbent will develop design ideas from basic concepts through to fully worked out design solutions. Works with a high level of independence, according to the briefing and creative vision and direction in close co-operation with the other members of the design team and the art director / creative director. Follows the development of the design through to production. Must have the ability to work within tight deadlines and demonstrate a high degree of flexibility.

» view

The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.

Inhabitat's posted the 2nd installment of their great new series Packaging the Future, exploring a sustainable future for packaging design. This time, they test the compostability of a whole foods deli container in their own backyard.

Here's an excerpt:

It's always bothered me that deli containers, take-out boxes, and other one-time-use packages sit in landfills for thousands of years after we've used them for all of an hour, or tops, a few days. I avoid as much unnecessary packaging as I can, but it's not always possible or likely that we can bring our own reusable containers to fill, especially if we make an unanticipated trip to the grocery store or stop in for a meal on the go. Biodegradable or compostable containers seem like a great solution: they give us convenience while minimizing waste -- but do they actually work in real life?

Click through to see the results!

Starting Out is a series about designers who have recently struck out on their own. More than a string of studio visits, the series profiles talented, risk-taking professionals all around the world. We hope their anecdotes will inspire your own entrepreneurial spirit.

In our second installment, we talk with Nelly Ben Hayoun, a London-based experience designer who mixes science with theatre, fact with fantasy and is no stranger to the pages of Core77. We visited her at the Sudbury Workshops in Shoreditch (not 5 minutes from Jasper Morrison's), met some of her studiomates (we'll be hearing from them later), and got caught up on what she's all about.

Top: Nelly in her workspace. Bottom: Airspace Activism, a project that helps citizens regain control of the military airspace above their heads.

Core77: Nelly, in a few words, how would you describe what you do?

Nelly Ben Hayoun: I am interested in how we can use design in our everyday lives to make them more thrilling, creative and passionate. I design experiences.

C77: How did you first start out?

NBH: Starting out on my own is closely linked to my life as part of the studio. Olivia Decaris who I knew from the Royal College of Art , approached me about sharing a studio with 4 other ex-RCA graduates around October 2009. I remember it very well; at that time I was organizing the Super K Sonic BOOOOum show at Shunt under London Bridge. She made me visit it and I was very charmed by its location - central London and very close to so many workshops. So, literally 4 months after graduation at the RCA.

Before sharing the studio and during the interim period of finishing study, you kind of wander around looking for new challenges and places to exhibit your work. I did one more show with my RCA Design Interactions colleagues under the label Disruptive Thinking at 100% Design with Designers block during the London Design festival.

Nelly and other Sudbury Workshop designers with the broken down car of a friend.

I suppose you could say it about a lot of fields, but to me, industrial design is problem-solving. And the education involved--at least the one I had, which combined theory, a good amount of hands-on work, and very limited resources--imparted a strong sense of DIY, which is why many of us at school made a lot of the things in our dorms, apartments and studio spaces with our own hands. We always had a sense that if you couldn't find something you needed, or you found it but couldn't afford to buy it, you made one yourself.

A good case study of this type of mentality has popped up in, of all places, Fashion Wire Daily. They're running the inspiring story of Martha Davis, an industrial designer of 15 years who used her DIY mentality to reinvent her very career:

As a devoted consumer of shoes herself, Davis, whose studio is currently based in San Francisco, felt she couldn't quite find what she was looking for - a shoe that was practical, understated and unique, but not intimidatingly radical.

"I wanted to get back to making things," she said, "so I decided to give shoes a try." So she booked a trip to Italy, took a shoe design course in Milan and now two years and four collections later, Davis is making comfortable, yet highly stylish shoes that fuse traditional hand-made Italian shoemaking techniques with a distinctive modernist design and a bold color sensibility.

Writes Davis on her website, "I look at where the foot needs to be supported and where it does not, then how the materials and shapes can be arranged in an interesting way." Her shoes are now being sold on four continents, and you can take a look at her line here.