Website Redesign: IDEO

One of the worlds leading design consultancy's launched its redesigned website after more than a half-dozen years. Do take a moment to see what they are up to and how they do it.

IDEO.com

IDEO: Design for Social Impact

Typography Websites

The coming week bring with it a new semester in which I will return to teaching a course in Typography.

The following links are a resource to demonstrate and better define what type design involves.

I Love Typography Site

A List Other Sites

Automotive Design: Ford GT

Recently I had a chance opportunity to whip around downtown Detroit in a Ford GT, a 500 hp high-end muscle car, with its designer Carmilo Pardo. I would say "thrilling" is a word that best describes the experience of riding side-saddle in a supercar.

Video Interview

Carmilo's Website

Ford GT Website

Fashion Design: "The Sneaker Freaks"

There is a fascinating underground world, at least it is to this baby boomer less than hip person, the sneaker design/entrepreneurial culture.

I recently saw a news piece on the demand and design of one of a kind limited edition sneakers, shops that sale them and customers that fuel this booming business. So forgive me for being late to the party and less than fashionably dressed.

I can say that I had noticed the number of colorful and coordinated outfits on city streets, but that was as far as I thought about it. But, it appears to be one more example of the hip-hop generation's aesthetic being expressed and its power to finance new businesses who cater to this market.


Jeff Staple Interview

Staple Design

Jeff Staple's Blog Site

New Nikes by ?uestlove

International Design: Plus Minus Zero

I long for the opportunity to visit Japan just to see the quality and range of products available. I have a belief that the products are of exceptional quality and styling.

Plus Minus Zero is an example of the design consciousness around product design I believe I would find in Japan. The TV's in the 1st collection are so very cool.

Their Collections

Product Design: The Machine that will Strenghten Starbucks

Like the Dyson vacuum, the Clover (a commercial single serving coffee machine) was developed by a product designer who applied his skills to improving an existing device and in-turn moves an entire industry forward.

How it works: The Clover looks like just another countertop coffee machine. But peek under the hood and you'll find an innovative brewing system. Here's how it works: 1. A barista selects dose, water temperature, and steep time. 2. A piston pulls down the filter platform while freshly ground coffee is poured into the chamber. 3. Hot water flows into the chamber. 4. The barista briskly stirs the grounds with a whisk, and the water and beans steep for several seconds. 5.The piston rises, creating a vacuum that separates the brew from the grounds, then lowers, forcing the joe out of a nozzle below. 6. The piston rises to the surface again, pushing up a disc of grounds, which are squeegeed away. (wired magazine 2008)

Wired Article

NY Times Article

Fashion Observation: What User Research Isn't

We have visited this topic before, but in light of a recent posting on ethnographic research, this video from the NY Times is a fitting example of how one observer, though untrained, seeks to understand and find meaning in the dropping waist lines of young men.

The point here is that user research isn't simply an untrained observers opinion, but a structured approach to uncovering the deep seated meaning behind people's thoughts and actions, as it relates to the products they purchase and how they use them.

NYTimes Video

Design Research: Video Primer

Here is a really great introduction to the basics user research presented by students at the Institute of Design at Illinois Institute of Technology. The techniques of getting people to talk are discussed and demonstrated in a first rate video production.



Getting People to Talk: An Ethnography & Interviewing Primer from Gabe & Kristy on Vimeo.

2008 IDSA/BusinessWeek Design Excellence Awards

The expanding influence of design is clearly evident in resources below. The greatest expansion has been in the support and understanding coming from the business community. Design seems to be finding its way into the business mind set especially for those in the tech industries where innovation is a common buzz word.



Awards

BW's Videos, Podcasts and Articles

Typography: Font Play the Video

This staged video of a play on typefaces as people is admittedly corny but it does offer a view of the variety of fonts available to designers.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Does America Need a National Agency to Create Innovation Policy?

I remember how surprised I was to find out, in a Design Policy class (2002), that America was the only industrialized nation without a government led, formal institution or stated policy around design. Other countries like Japan and China had very formal approaches to ensuring that their national resources were all directed at addressing the opportunities that technological innovation would offer, by crafting policy that included refocusing its entire educational system K thru University.

The report sighted below presents a case for a government led initiative for America.

"In the last decade, an increasing number of economists have come to conclude that innovation—the creation and adoption of new products, services and business models—is the key to improved standards of living. The United States has led the world in innovation since World War II, and it continues to have many strengths, including entrepreneurial culture and expertise, a strong science base, healthy technology companies, protection of intellectual property, robust financial markets, relatively good working relationships between business and universities, and leadership in constructing and managing complex technology-based processes and organizations."

Industry Week Article

The Information Technology and Innovation Report

Obama's Technology Policy View

UK's Design Council Strategic Plan

Postal Stamp: Charles and Ray Eames

The USPS has released a sheet of 16 Eames inspired stamps.

This design couple known most for their furniture, also created textiles, graphics, film, exhibits, architecture and more.

USPS Site

Architectual Record

NYTimes Article

Design as Business Strategy: Method's Household Products

From its start Method embraced the power of design by hiring designer Kahrim Rashard to design its original packaging.

The organization has continued to produce ecologically friendly household cleaning potions in innovative and distinctive packages.


Methods Website

Interview with Method Designer: Danny Alexander

Design Honored at the White House

The Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum honoree's for 2008 were acknowledged at a White House ceremony with Laura Brush officiating.

Industrial Design pioneer, Chuck Harrison was awarded with the 2008 Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions which includes 30 years at Sears, Roebuck and Company where he was responsible for shaping hundreds of American made household products, though he is most recognized for his redesign of the Veiw-Master.

Unfortunately, one of the take aways for me was recognizing that the Head Quarters for the nation was not as finely appointed as I would expect. It appears this is yet another design opportunity waiting for an answer. And so, my humble recommendation as a designer is that the White House should incorporate consciously some of the great design pieces created and produced in the U.S. over the last century.

Washington Post Article

Cooper Hewitt Slideshow

A Life's Design

What Laura Said...

Product Design: Personal Climate Control Device

The furniture manufacturer and design leader, Herman Miller, has extended its business strategy to include consumer products that focus on the users personal space within the work place.

The C2 climate controller joins the Babble noise cancel device, both designed to offer the consumer personal control over their environments.

Video

C2 Product Page

DesignExhibtion: PreFab Dwellings at MoMA

I am looking forwarding to making a trip to NYC to take in this exhibition and Design for the Elastic Mind. Both are looking at the direction design is moving and its potential of shift our thinking.

Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling

NYTimes Article

NYTimes Article

The Parking Problem in Search for a Solution

San Francisco has taken a bold step to provide citizens a way of locating available parking by employing available wireless sensor technology to its curb sides. This represents one part of the proposal I offered in my graduate thesis project- theLINC Parking System(2003).

The real opportunity to address the issue of managing the physical space within cities will be found in a systematic solution that is linked to a boarder definition of public space. Cities most at the same time search for solutions to managing their virtual (digital) spaces as they continue to rethink their approach to managing the physical parking spaces. In doing so, municipalities will be able to truly discover and provide for their citizens a sustainable solution that offers access, control and new revenues to fund the upkeep of public spaces.

NYTimes Article

Streetline, The Company

RFID Technology

Reflections on the Creative Process: Ira Glass

I found this series of three Youtube videos inspiring to know that it is a time consuming and difficult process to find and master your creative voice but it is a beautiful thing once it is formed.

Ira Glass is an award winning radio personality/ journalist and force behind public radio program,This American Life.

A List of 30 Books for Product Designers

This list is not meant to be exhaustive, I know I would add "The history of Industrial Design" by John Heskett.

The List - Design Sojourn Blog

The Meaning of Modern?

The article linked below discusses the often misunderstood meaning of Modern as it relates to the aesthetic movement that took hold in America in the 1950's.

Washington Post Article

Mies Exhibitions'

Wikipedia

Professional Design Organization: IDSA

I am at a point where I can better appreciate the value a professional design organization like the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA). My past experience with the organization led me to view it as irrelevant for its failure to address the issues facing design and designers, admittedly this was my humble opinion.

But recent changes in the organization give me new hope that it will live up to its potential to serve as a positive force in the promotion of design.

But with a talented new executive director I have a renewed hope that the organization's potential will be realized.

IDSA'S Homepage

2008 Conference

Frank Tyneski Podcast

Book: Emerging Technologies and Housing Prototypes

New materials offer designers new avenues to explore and provide opportunity to add interest if not functional charcteristics to a design solution. This book looks to explain some of the opportunities that technology is currently offering design professionals.

Book Review

Chicago: A Great City and Creative Hub

My second home and "the best run city in the nation", which is my personal opinion of my old stomping grounds - Chicago; is now making the best of list more often.

Fast Company Article

Buisness Week Article

Design History: R. Buckminster Fuller

Richard Buckminster Fuller can not be easily defined as a designer per se but he was a visionary that tried to link the future, science with the now through the architecture and products he proposed like the dymaxion car.

NYTimes Slide Show

NYTimes Article

Whitney Exhibition

New Yorker Profile

What is Package Design?

I will be looking into the elements of good package design in preparation for teaching a class on the subject in the fall. There are many influences involved in the package solutions we see daily.


Who is responsible for the package design:does it fall under the marketing umbrella,what role do graphic designers play; or does the manufacturing process determine the package type?

Examples of Package Design

More Examples

New Magazine: Apartmento

The spaces we live in are rarely as perfect as the slick styling found in the pages of the glossy publications like dwell or architectual digest, apartmento's plans to profile real spaces.

Apartmento

Reality TV Show for Designers

Phillip Starck is looking for young product designers in the UK to participate in a new TV show.


Design Week Article

Reality Show for Designers

Application

Auto Design: Why Beemers are Beautiful

I will hopefully own a BMW one day because I love what Chris Bangle, BMW's design director, has done to refine the form language as well as the technological advancements that is extending the tradition of BMW's as the ultimate driving machine.

Bangle has codified the driving (pun intended) philosophy that hold within it a vision of the future of auto design.

"Successful design arouses desire. In order to achieve this, it is more crucial than ever before that car manufacturers create the conditions that allow customers to establish a close relationship with their cars. Therefore, designers seek ways to promote and intensify people's identification with their car that reach beyond pure aesthetics. In the premium segment in particular, customers demand cars that stir emotions and allow them to express their individuality. BMW Group Design has set another deepened objective for designing new cars that moves today's consumers and their demand for enhanced utility and more versatility to the top of their agenda. An innovative concept introduced by BMW Group Design prepares the ground for this new approach: the GINA (Geometry and Functions In "N" Adaptions) principle grants more freedom for car design. It allows the creation of products with a design and functional range that express individuality and meet the wide variety of requirements of those who are using them."


--Auto Channel

BMW's Design Philosophy

Wired Article

Design and the 2008 Primary Campgain

It is nice to see how literate America is becoming on the role design plays in our lives.

The following media reports take a looked at design and political messages.

Video:ABC News Report

Business Week Article

Design Critic: Alice Rawsthorn

Alice Rawsthorn writes a weekly column on design for the International Herald Tribune.

She has access to a design world that can lend to general insights and identifying trends but you can decide if she is mining any new ground.

What is Good Design?

Package Design: The Bar Code

I really like the visual quality of barcodes, if I were to consider getting a tattoo it would make use of the same graphic elements (e.g. lines using positive and negative space maybe with an eye readable pharse underneath).

This tracking tool has become a fundamental component of all packages, providing essentail information to allow effiecent business processing of all kinds.

History of the Bar Code

More History

How it Works

Product Design: Puma's Bike for Urban Environs

I came across this bike in downtown Washington DC and thought it was unique. In the city where space is a premium this collapsible solution offers a few real advantages, like storage within a home closet. It also addresses another issue - traveling with a bike. It would be so much more convenient to store this inside the trunk of my car on my next trip to NYC.

It comes in an 8 or single speed version for about $800.

Puma Online

Design History/ Exhibition: Shaping the Future

The National Building Museum here in DC has a wonderful exhibition on the work of Eero Saarinen (b.1910-1961) called "Shaping the Future" running through August 2008.

Eero's work was part of the maturing modern aesthetic that explored new materials, technology and processes that ultimately soften the hard edges of modernism with the inclusion of organic forms. Major corporate projects like the IBM training, General Motors Tech Center, Gateway Arch of St. Louis, JFK and Dulles airline terminals etc. he captured the an optimistic postwar American cultural identity.

Shaping the Future

Design Policy: United Nations Report

The first report produced by the UN to seek understanding of the class of economic assets defined by images, sounds, text and symbols.

Creative Economy Report 2008

Design Thinking: Tim Brown of IDEO

IDEO, a leading product development firm, founder writes about design thinking in the Harvard Business Review (June 2008).

"The design process is best described metaphorically as a system of spaces rather than a predefined series of orderly steps. The spaces demarcate different sorts of related activities that together form the continuum of innovation. Design thinking can feel chaotic to those experiencing it for the first time. But over the life of a project participants come to see—as they did at Kaiser—that the process makes sense and achieves results, even though its architecture differs from the linear, milestone-based processes typical of other kinds of business activities."

Article :Design Thinking

Design Writer: Allison Arieff

Allison Arieff is a contributing writer on design with the New York Times, the former editor and chief of the architecture magazine dwell, which still remains as one of the four magazine subscriptions I maintain.

She is also the editor of several books on art and culture, including Airstream: A History of the Land Yacht, Hatch Show Print: The History of a Great American Poster Shop and Pre Fab.

Book:Pre Fab

Design Opportunity: Improving the Airline Experience

Anyone that travels by plane knows that the experience has become less pleasurable with each passing year, with few exceptions. It can be predicted that the latest fuel cost increases will be felt by negatively by consumers as airlines cut more services.

Virgin Air and to a lesser extent Jet Blue have used design in planning its business and ensuring a reasonably comfortable experience is maintained.

Article: Fear of Flying

Time Magazine: Design 100 for 2008

Annually, Time scours the planet to pull together their list of what's happening in Design.

Design in it broadest sense continues to be covered within the pages of an expanding number of publications that compile similar lists including The New Times, Fast Company and BusinessWeek.

The Time's List

Progressive Architecture in China

The New Yorker magazine's architect critic, Paul Goldberg describes two of China's new structures built for the 2008 Beijing Olympics as the most innovative on the planet.

"At least two of the buildings on the Olympic Green—the National Stadium, by the Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, and the National Aquatics Center, by the Australian firm PTW Architects—are as innovative as any architecture on the planet, marvels of imagination and engineering that few countries would have the nerve or the money to attempt. The Chinese, right now, have plenty of both. These buildings, some of the most advanced in the world, are made possible partly by the presence of huge numbers of low-paid migrant workers."

Audio Review by Paul Goldberger

NYTimes Article

New Yorker Review

Slide Show

Structure and Images of the National Swimming Center

NPR Article/Audio

The ArchitectIntreviewed

Video Game Design/ Business Strategy

The success of Nintendo's Wii gaming system has been a demonstration of user centered product design. Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft introduced updates to their gaming systems in the summer of 2006. Both Sony's Playstation and Microsoft's Xbox redesign emphasized high end technological advancements in picture quality for the hardcore gamers; whereas Nintendo focused on interactive features (i.e. bowling, tennis..) that made gaming more accessible to families.

The market place has decided that Nintendo's strategy is a winner based on consumer demand and sales figures. This summer Nintendo extends their brand into the fitness arena with the introduction of Wii Fit software and balancing board.

Time Article

USA Today Article

The Designer

NY Times Article

Video Review of Wii Fit

Design History: The Brannock Foot-Measuring Device

There is something very appealing about the industrial quality of this classic tool used to measure one's shoe size.

It may just be my fond memories of shopping for back to school clothing and shoes in my youth.

More History

The Growth of a Young Designer: Garth Roberts

After winning the best new furniture piece of 2006 by Elle Decoration France for his table - RAW (pictured below), Garth Roberts has been busy shuttling between continents establishing himself as a hard working designer looking to make a lasting impact on the world.



Metropolis Interview

Threelayercake Interview

National Design Musuem 2008 Awards

It was nice to see a friend and mentor, Charles Harrison, receive recognition for his contributions to the profession of industrial design by being honored with the 2008 Lifetime Achievement Award.

Cooper Hewitt 2008 Awards

Chicago Sun Times Article

MoMA 's Design Curator Explains Her Latest Exhibition

Paola Antonelli shares her view of the role of design and its potential to aid our acceptance of technological innovations, science and the future. She is truly a design thinker, and clearly articulates where the designer fits within society.

Slide Show of: Design and The Elastic Mind

A Better Fly Swatter

Mexican born, product designer José Rodrigo de la O Campos brings his cultural knowledge to bear when designing an attractive solution for eliminating flies.

"The use of a plastic bag full of water hanging from the ceilling of several taco kiosks on the streets, is a traditional way to scare flies away in Mexico. The refraction of the water, amplifies the colors and movements for the sensible eyes of a fly reflected on this sphere, scaring it away."



José Rodrigo de la O Campos web site

Milan's Furniture Fair

I didn't get to attend the world largest furniture design show, but a friend (Keith Parker) did so I am still waiting for his first-person account of the show.

Video Review

And so until then, the reviews provided by the press will have to do.

"The dominant theme at the fair might best be described as survivalist: in piece after piece, designers explored how they can help us (and themselves) navigate the perils of contemporary life — in particular, the big problems of recession, environmental crisis and design’s neurosis about its role in a saturated consumer culture."

NYTimes Review


"...every so often a new chair comes along that confounds the cynics by proving its worth. The latest contender is the MYTO, a plastic chair, which is strong, comfortable, light, stackable, compact and comes in a coolly angular shape that is made from a single piece of plastic using (eco-responsibly, of course) the minimum material possible. In short, it's just about everything a new chair should be."

MYTO Chair

Design Director for NYTimes.com: Khoi Vinh

I've noticed some graphic elements like the colorful illustrations (see below) that run along side some of the feature articles that appear to be the handy work of a design professional. I wonder is it Mr. Vinh's?

"As design director, Mr. Vinh leads a group of 11 visual designers, information architects and design technologists in continually improving and extending the user experience at NYTimes.com. Mr. Vinh also writes and lectures extensively about design and technology, and serves on the national board of directors for AIGA, the professional association for design."


NYTimes Profile

Khoi Vinh Website

Student Design Competition: AIGA -DC

The local (DC) chapter of the professional graphic design organization AIGA is sponsoring its first design competition for student in the metro area.


Competition Details

AIGA-DC Website

Design Problem: How to Accomodate the New Oddly Shaped Toothbrush?

Well this very question followed me through graduate school.

My first design assignment during my foundation year (2001) brought the issue of storing toothbrushes to light. My early solution focused on protecting toothbrushes from contamination.

But, it was two years later that I returned to the opportunity to refine my solution to also address the changing needs of consumers by focusing on the varying shapes of brushes as well as the increasing variety of interior configurations.
(see prototypes below)

NYTimes Article

Fashion in Context

I came across this photo on a fashion blog site (see below) and thought that it reflected how fashion can work in concert with the environment within which exists. In this case the connections are obvious.

Here the graftti scribed walls of NYC are juxtaposed to the cool posture and stare a young man dressed in a hoodie and baggy faded jeans capturing the young urban aesthetic oh so well.

Fashion Blog