Product Design: MIT Designed Scooter

I can see scooters growing in acceptance as cities continue to draw people as the place to live and work. This electric scooter features the ability to fold in-half.

It also incorporates the motor within the wheels housing and only consist of 150 parts.

MIT News

Article: USA Change the Name

According to Paula Scher, one of the world's leading graphic designers and principle at Pentagram (NY), "The US needs to overhaul its image, brand promise, name and messaging, and change the meaning and emphasis of some of its symbols."


Monocle Article

Video Interview with Paula Scher

Film: Pentagram the Firm

Amazon: Designs for Digital Reading

The online book seller Amazon has introduced a product called Kindle, which is their answer to the question: How should a digital book look and function?.

NYTimes Article

Government News Article

Information Week Article

Cnet Article

Will it Replace the Book?

Logo Design: Political Logo's Evaluated

One way to know that the country is moving towards a Presidential election year is the number of political charged graphic pieces being created. Campaign logo's are evaluated in this New York Time slide show.

NYTimes Article
Obama Branding

Obama's Gotham Typeface

Typography as Statement

Here is another graphic piece created to express a point of view in a light of the coming election cycle.

I thought that these posters created for the Democratic party by Rich Silverstein were great examples of 'type' being used to make a statement.

Huffington Post Article

More Added

Design Contest: Truck Tarp

For those interested a different kind of design contest, Freitag is solicating entries for its truck tarp graphics ideas.

Contest Rules

Freitag Home Page

New Product: "Y" Water

Yves Bher, industrial designer, has really pushed beyond the traditional limits of a product designer by addressing a non-tradtional design problem. In this case he brings a concept to life that could aid in changing childrens attitudes towards water as a beverage.

Here is a product, organic water, aimed at children as a healthy alternative to sugar laiden soft drinks. The cleaver container packaging that also functions as a toy, thus promoting reuse verses disposal.

Business Week Article

Fuse Project's Website/Case Study

Design and the War Effort?

Dr. Elizabeth Tunstall entertains the question: “How should the design community respond if the U.S. Army asked us to join teams to do “service design” projects in Afghanistan?” What if Uncle Sam wants our design thinking?

Elizabeth (Dori) Tunstall is a leader in field of Design Anthropology. She is an Associate Professor of Design Anthropology in the School of Art and Design and Associate Director of the City Design Center at University of Illinois at Chicago.

Design Observer

Design Planning: The New Frontier

What does it take to improve the cell phone? The IPhone is a step in the right direction, but it is a cool product constrained by an antiquated business model. So consumers are ready for telcom companies to improve their offerings to better serve their needs, or at least this consumer is.

The rumor is that Google is working on a phone that could be a game changer because of the business model that would that would be designed to circumvent the limiting forces (i.e. the major league players like Verizon, AT&T and Microsoft. The current markert leaders are comfortable an unwilling to shift their businesses to provide consumers the benefits (i.e. freedom of choice) that can be offered if the will was there.You my remember this was the position take by the music industry during the age of Napster when consumer express their desire to have a better way to get, share, purchase,experience music to which Apple responded with iTunes and the iPod.

The article below describes the path Andy Rubin has taken to now be in a position to lead Google and consumers along the path to the future of mobile computing/communicating. His plans to bring the next generation of smart phones to the market not only considers the product and the technology but more importantly in this hyper competitive space the business model.

Design and the Google Phone

Chicago Tribune Article