The Federal Government Goes Digital

“I want us to ask ourselves every day, how are we using technology to make a real difference in people’s lives.” – President Barack Obama

Presidential Memorandum Digital Government Strategy Document Press Release: Census Releases Its First Mobile App GSA Digital Services Innovation Center Opens

MicroSoft's New Logo

The Seattle based software company has refresh its logo for the first time in 25 years. Its waving flag and Helvetic typeface has replaced by a more static colorful square and a softer typeface, Segoe.

Microsoft's New Look

Design Legend: George Nelson

George Nelson was one of the founding designers of American modernism.

Creating a Design Driven Company

Challenge: Bill Gates Looks to Redesign the Tiolet

Gates Foundation: Inventing a Toilet for the 21st Century

A Better Ketchup Container

If you've stopped by a fast food establishment recently you my have experience a new way to place ketchup on your fries. Heinz "Dip and Squeeze" packet offers users the choice to squeeze or dip their fries.

Article: Dip and Squeeze Patent Lawsuit

Sustainable and Customizable iPad Case

I looked into available iPad cases and concluded that the offering came up short and so I have yet to purchase a case. The Papernomad case may just change that. Their simple solution really strike me as very fitting contrast to the device. A paper case for the device that is in many ways replacing the printed page.

Papernomad.com

Product Design: Digital Master Lock

Wow! Who would have thought one of the iconic mechanical devices would move to a digital interface.

Article: A Padlock with a Digital User Interface

How Unique Must a Design be to Get a Patent?

A new frontier in patent history is being battled in the courts as Apple defends its patents for the designs for the iPhone and iPad. NPR Artilce: Samsung Fight Among Many in Apple's Patent NyTimes Article: Apple-Samsung Trial Highlights

Apples Wins a Billion Dollar Verdit: What Does it Mean?

Infographic that Help End Slavery

The drawing became a key visual weapon in the 18th- and 19th-century fight against slavery, information design that changes minds.

Fast Company Article

Architect Frank Gehry – Part 1

Architect Frank Gehry – Part 1

Architect Frank Gehry – Part 2

Architect Frank Gehry – Part 2

Consumer Product: Omega Juicer

When a product addresses the issues around its use from ease of use, performing it function well, its construction and choice of materials to ease of clean-up it should be applauded. In this case the Omega fruit and vegetable juice fills the bill.

Omega's Website A Guide to Storing Fruits and Vegetables

Audio: The Digital Democracy of Sound

Digital technology has changed how we find, make and listen to music. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation investigates in an eight part series how electricity change the way we experience music. The Wire Episode 8

Automobile Design: Renault's Twizy Win Design Award

The vehicles of the future are appearing more often as the variety of electric cars finds its place among high end and low end offerings.

NYTimes Article

History of the Olympic Logo

The internationally recognized five interconnected rings signifying the unity of humankind, according to Baron Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympics, a French aristocrat who designed the symbol for the 20th anniversary of the Games.

NYTimes Article: Who Made the Olympic Rings? More History of the Rings

Bill's Design Talks: Scott Wilson

Scott Wilson has had a string of successes in his career most recently the Nano wrist watch (TikTok) that rocked the Kickstarter funding site and winner of the 2012 Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt National Design Award winner for Product Design. . Scott sat down with Bill Moggridge as part of his design talk series.

Scott Wilson Talk Metropolis Interview with Scott Wilson

Technology Policy Reports

The federal government is hard at work considering the future. To know what's next checkout the many reports online associated with the Big Data Initiative.

  The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP)—in concert with several Federal departments and agencies—created the Big Data Research and Development Initiative to:


 White House Site

• Advance state-of-the-art core technologies needed to collect, store, preserve, manage, analyze, and share huge quantities of data. 
• Harness these technologies to accelerate the pace of discovery in science and engineering, strengthen our national security, and transform teaching and learning; and 
• Expand the workforce needed to develop and use Big Data technologies.

Today’s initiative responds to recommendations by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, which last year concluded that the Federal Government is under-investing in technologies related to Big Data. In response, OSTP launched a Senior Steering Group on Big Data to coordinate and expand the Government’s investments in this critical area.

Student Designs a Running Shoe

The Royal College of Art student, Luc Fusaro, designed what he believes is the lightest sprint shoe yet.



Video Link

Bad Design Does Exist

Adidas' Jeremy Scott x adidas Roundhouse Mid "Handcuffs", or the "shackle" sneaker fails on a number of levels.

Whatever reference that can be ascribed to shackles is not a positive one and with that alone should have cause the designer and the Adidas to pause. But at $350 is beyond rationale to try and sale  cheaply made footwear.

Fashion design as I have stated many times is a fickle (more subjective) business and stands apart in my mind from the other design disciplines.
Maybe this would be better received as high art, but design I think not.

Visual Commmunication: The Infographic

A handy guide to use in the purchase of your fruits and vegetables, unfortunately this graphic is focused on the planting seasons of the western United States. But the organization of the information makes it easy to digest.

 More infographics follow link: Visualization News

Pepsi Adds a Chief of Design Officer

Pepsi is following Coke in adding a senior manager for Design. Mauro Porcini, 3M's longtime design guru, as its first chief design officer.Mr. Porcini will be charged with creating a culture of design at PepsiCo as well as globally managing design for a variety of key food and beverage brands. His reach will extend from package design to advertising, industrial design and digital experiences. He will report to Brad Jakeman, global beverage group president.

In conclusion, more corporation are finding that design can add value and can add a competitive advantage.

AD Age Article: Pepsi Adds Chief Design Officer Role

Designer: Jonathan Ive Interview

How does a person rise to become the most influential designer of his generation? Working for Apple under Steve Jobs has allowed the talented designer Jonathan Ive to become one of the icons of this eras design leaders.

Apples-design-genius-is-British-to-the-core

Interview: Simplicity isn't simple

Product Development: Google's Project Glass

Fast Company Article: Inside Project Glass

Video: How It Works

Wearable computing is being looked into by other tech titan's as well. NYTimes Article on Wearable Computing

Design Strategy: Samsung’s design chief, Sunghan Kim

Kim grasps the complexity of the digital ecosystem in which designer must navigate, he calls it a platform economy.

Each ecosystem partner is jostling to maximize the value it can capture along the customer journey. Not only are many of their platform stakeholders also competitors, some that don’t pose threats today might become forces to be reckoned with tomorrow. Even platform owners have to walk a fine line: They have to open their product enough to attract partners and profit while ensuring that they retain control. This multisided market of buyers and sellers of hardware, software, service, distribution, and advertising then needs to be re-created for new areas for innovation.

Fast Company Article: Ecosystems Rule Over Products Now...

Google Moves into Hardware

With the purchase of the California based product design firm Mike & Maaike and the recent acquisition Google appears to be strengthening its position in the mobile device space.

Businessweek Article: Google is Now a Hardware Company

Wired Article: Goolge Finally Closes $12.5B Takeover...

Fashion Design: The State of Men's Undergarments

Behold the Frigo No. 1, as the new design is called, the first underwear with an interior mesh pouch that is suspended from elastic straps, so it can be adjusted to fit different characteristics of the male anatomy. It’s sort of like a bra with one cup. Also, the waistband and leg holes are bonded to resist bunching, and laser-cut vents placed along the lower back allow for aeration.

NYTimes Article: Victor's Secret

Book: 100 Ideas that Changed Graphic Design

The prolific design writer Steven Heller with design critic Veronique Vienne comes 100 Ideas that Changed Graphic Design -- a thoughtfully curated inventory of abstract concepts that defined and shaped the art and craft of graphic design, each illustrated with exemplary images and historical context.

Teaching design thinking and mentoring high school students

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Marty Linder’s long-running iDo program that pairs San Francisco State University students with Bay Area high school students to imbue the latter school’s curriculum with healthy doses of design thinking and design practice.

Jefferson Award Winner: Martin Linder

The winners of the National Design Awards 2012 were just announced, and the list contains many interesting people.

Cooper Hewitt Web Page

Book Design: Water Matters

The decision to use information graphics to tell the story of water conservation makes the subject approachable in way that just maybe more people will learn and practice better water usage.
Eddie Opara's New Work

Mogul as Designer: Brookland Nets Logo

It is increasing common that a entertainer moves into "designing" (aka putting their stamp of approval) on something. This time the hip-hop mogul and part owner of the Brookland Nets basketball team is reported as the designer of the team's new logo.

The new Nets logos have a vintage feel to them and are clear in identifying the place, team and sport it is intended to represent. The element of not is the colors, black and white, making the Nets the only basketball if not sport team with this particular color scheme.

Washington Post Article: Brookland Nets to don black and white

Design Student: Jonathan Mak Long

The design student, Jonathan Mak Long, a then-19 year old graphic design student at Hong Kong Polytechnic University , whose tribute to Steve Jobs struck a cord was asked to work on a Ad project Sharing Happiness campaign for Coke.

ADAge Article:Student Creates Coke Image

The Wristwatch, Seeks to become Relevant Again

If your above a certain age you might have noticed that a wristwatch is less of a necessity for keeping track of time. Our ever present personal electronic devices have become our defacto time tracker. So what is to become of the traditional wristwatch? A few companies have begun to explore how to make the wristwatch useful in new ways and have received financial support through the idea promotion site of Kickstarter.

NY Times Article: The Wristwatch Looks for a New Use

AIGA Webinar on Data Visualization

Callie Neylan leads a great discussion on Designing with Data with Angela Shen-Hsieh is a partner at GroupVisual.io, a design consultancy specializing in data visualization and data-driven software user interfaces and Jared Waxman is the group manager for online optimization and analytics for Adobe.

Webinar: Design + Data = Power

Herman Miller Collection

The standard for modern American furniture design has been established and continues to be maintained by the Michigan based company Herman Miller.

The Herman Miller Collection includes familiar and well-loved pieces from the company's early collaborations with the giants of 20th design, many reintroduced after decades or freshly reinterpreted with new materials and manufacturing technologies. Names like Eames, Nelson, Noguchi, Girard, Bennett, and Burdick are a foundation for the program.

Rooted in Herman Miller's archives of timeless classics, the Collection takes its cues from George Nelson, Herman Miller's Director of Design from 1945 - 1972, who, in the Herman Miller 1952 catalog, wrote of the importance of continuing the creation of a permanent collection "designed to meet fully the requirements for modern living."

Herman Miller Collection

Communication Design: Data Visualization

The Google sponsored challenge to show where our tax dollars go Grand Prize Winner was:

Where Did my Tax Dollars Go?


A more dynamic example of data visualization is the interactive timeline representing the 2011 uprisings in the Middle East.

Arab Spring Timeline

Competition to Redesign parts of the National Mall

The National Mall has been loved to death. It is our country’s most visited national park, with more than 25 million annual visitors and 3,000 annual permitted events. This 700-acre park was not built to withstand this level of use and has not received adequate resources to be restored and maintained to a level befitting its role as an irreplaceable piece of our American fabric.

This is a welcomed opportunity to improve what I have heard described as the nation's living room, the national mall has been allowed to languish over the years. Now the is an effort to improve the functional and aesthetic qualities of the land making up the space connecting the institutions of our government, museums and open spaces.

Trust for the National Mall

Auto Design: Ferdinand Porsche (1935-2012)

Ferdinand Porsche the designer of the iconic 911 sport car introduced in 1963.





“Design must be functional and functionality must be translated into visual aesthetics, without any reliance on gimmicks that have to be explained,” he said.

NYTimes Bio
Tribune Bio

A Folding Bike

Tern Folding Bicycles are catching the eye of industry insiders because of its rapid growth and solid product.

Tern Website

Manufacturing in America

Herman Miller continues to churn out furniture products from its Michigan plants that are competitive with other brands. How do they do it?

Product Design: PBS Off Book Series

PBS Website

Design Synthesis: A Video Lesson

Interaction designer Jon Kolko explain his understanding of Design Synsthesis and where it exist.



His book: Exposing the Magic of Design

Exhibition: MOMA Century of the Child: Growing by Design, 1900–2000

MoMA’s ambitious survey of 20th century design for children is the first large-scale overview of the modernist preoccupation with children and childhood as a paradigm for progressive design thinking.

The exhibition will bring together areas underrepresented in design history and often considered separately, including school architecture, clothing, playgrounds, toys and games, children’s hospitals and safety equipment, nurseries, furniture, and books.

The exhibition, on view at MoMA from July 29 to November 5, 2012

Furniture Design Meets the Future

Can furniture designers meet the needs of users who's technology dependent lifestyles offer an opportunity to provide a different type of solution for home office and entertainment spaces.

As paper is used less is there still a need for desk with multiple drawers?

NYTimes Article: Furniture Design Adapts to Technology

Design Talk: Robert Wong - Google Lab

The power of a company like Google is demonstrate in this discussion.



Video: Robert Wong

Online Book: Wicked Problems

Wick Problems: Problems Worth Solving

This book was started with the intent of changing design and social entrepreneurship education. As these disciplines converge, it becomes evident that existing pedagogy doesn't support either students or practicioners attempting to design for impact. This text is a reaction to that convergence, and will ideally be used by various students, educators, and practicioners:

One audience is professors and educators of design, who are challenged with reinventing their educational curriculum in the face of a changing world. For them, this book should act as both a starting point for curriculum development and a justification for why this development is necessary—it should answer the question "what should design and social entrepreneurship education look like?"

Austin Center for Design exists to transform society through design and design education. This transformation occurs through the development of design knowledge directed towards all forms of social and humanitarian problems.

Austin Center for Design

Auto Design: Ed Welburn

General Motors VP of Global Design discusses his discovery of design and shares career advice.

Film: Design the New Business

This student produced film looks at the new world of business and how the integration of design is central to success.

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The worldwide release will be online on March 6th 2012.
Movie Site

Smithsonian's Museum of African American History and Culture Breaks Ground

The national museum of African American History will soon become a part of the national mall. The ground is being broken today that will produce a building opening in 2015 to celebrate and educate the history of African American's.

Article: Philip Freelon Lead Architect

Layout of the African American History Museum

Slideshow of Concept Images

Design History: Norma Merrick Sklarek

Norma Merrick Sklarek, the first African American woman in the country to become a licensed architect (1954) died recently.


Obituary Los Angeles Times