Happy 10th Bday iPhone

The most influential product of the last decade was introduced by Apple ten years ago today.

Wired Article: iPhone Turns 10

American Politics Hits the Fashion Runway

The Italian fashion house of Dolce and Gabana has generated controversy for their embrace of political positions.

GQ Article: Raury Protest Fashion Design House

Magazine Cover Design

The New Yorker magazine riffs on a classic film to draw a parallel with the current political administration.

Article

Charlie Chaplin's film Modern Times one of the last silent movies depicts a protagonist who constantly undermines himself by not grasping the mechanisms that frames his environment.

Obama Library Center Plans Revealed

This is the first look at the plans in the works for the 44st President's library. It is described as transformational for the south side of Chicago neighborhood where it will be located.

Up and Coming Designers: Virgil Abloh and Dozie Kanu

A creative voice that you may not know, Virgil Abloh...
video link



Off White website: Off White

What will be the moniker that will be assigned to this era of design where an urban aesthetic is formalized into a language embraced by the "high society" taste makers?


Virgil talks about his retail store and collaborations with Levis..



Virgil discusses his design inspirations and philosophy:




Another Up and Coming Designer - Dozie Kanu

Matrixx the Movie: A Metaphor for the Virtual World of the 21st Century

The decision to know the truth, the blue pill or the red pill...



Is what you think is real, real or a construct of your imagination...



The Matrix is the system...

Design Ethics -Tristan Harris

Design in the digital era is focused on attracting the human mind and holding its attention, this manipulation of people is the goal of many social media companies.

Tristan Harris points out that this is not in the best interest of the user, but the advertisers.

Tristan Harris website

Art is NOT Design but There is a Connection

The highest price paid for the work of an American artist happened last week when Jean Micheal Basquiat's untitled painting sold for $110 million. Two other artist, Picasso and Andy Warhol 20th century artist captured and defined here times.

Picasso reflected the birth of Modernism, Warhol mirrored the Post-Modern era's break with the past, and Basquiat's aesthetic expresses the graffiti/hip hop/urban inspired aesthetic of the 21st century.

Music that Shaped Basquit

Basquiat Breaks Record...

Basquait Sells for $110 Million

Book: A Quick Kiling in Art

A Look at Tax Forms on Tax Day

Unfortunately, many U.S. government agency's forms can benefit from a design update.

Article: Why Are American's Tax Forms Still so Poorly Designed

Movies to Watch on Netflix Designers Should Watch

The Art of Design Movie Trailer




Co Design Article: Movie's List

Design's Next Opportunity: Solving Real Life Challenges

Will Design solve some of this generations greatest challenges?

Book - By the People: Designing a Better America

By the People: Designing a Better America

The Institute of Design Selects a New Dean

Dennis Weil (MDes 2001), the newly selected dean of the Institute of Design (ID) at the Illinois Institute of Technology, has embarked on a five city listening tour soliciting feedback from alumni on the future direction of the school.

During his stop in NYC, alumni living on the east coast met at Doblin to share their thoughts on design and ID's future.

Website: Institute of Design

Hair and Beard Trimmers Updated

What does it mean when you pay three times the price for a new product but what it delivers is an experience valued less than another lower priced competitor?

It means a customer experience that translates into disappointment. The newly introduced Bevel Trimmer is the product that has left this consumer underwhelmed.

As a designer I would say the product comes up short to provide the most important element for a premium priced product, the feeling of quality in the way the trimmer sounds and feels when in use.

When products are sold as premium I expect to feel the weight of a solidly built piece of equipment.

In contrast, The Andis BLACKOUT trimmer is classic piece of a tried and true product that delivers where it counts with its update. At half the price, this solidly made smooth running trimmer with power to spare.

An Update on the Ceiling Fan

It is great to see product designers continue to improve the items we use in function and aesthetics.

Article:The Modern Fan Company - Brazilian designer Guto Indio da Costa Edition

A Welcomed Alternative to the Smart Phone

The time has arrived to look back to the value of the simple mobile phone to fill a new need created by the ubiquitous up scale phones and the disappearing land line phones.

The Wisdom of Nokia's Dumbphone

Internationally Renown Stararchitect Zara Hadid

Hadid rose to become one of the world’s most famous architects with her brand of mathematically inspired curving buildings. She died aged 65 after suffering suspected heart failure while on holiday in Miami following an earlier bout of bronchitis.

Video: Architect Zaha Hadid

A More Versatile Wheel Chair

There is certainly opportunity to improve on the traditional wheel chair, the Zeen is designed to help people sit, stand, and walk without assistance.

Article: Hybird Wheel Chair

Fashion Design: Pharrell Williams Presents his 1st Line with G-Star

Another musician make a big move into the fashion business, Pharrell follows other artist working with major fashion houses to carry their creativity and brand to apparel. Part owner of G-Star as of February 2016 Mr. Williams has the potential to reshape the aesthetic of the company.

Hyperbeat Article: Pharrell Presents his First Collection

Urban Park Design is a Powerful Way to Improve the Quality of Life and Economies of Cities When Done Well

Washington DC has a unique opportunity to develop one of the few open parcels of land, 190 acres, into a useable space for its residents. Will the needs of the community be met or sacrifice for interest of profits.

Landscape Architect Thomas Woltz

Four Parks that are Making Cities More Beautiful

Article: The High Line Effect

2016 Co-Design Innovation Design Awards

There were only 15 winners anointed in the entire competition. Each of those projects represents what's best about design today: big ideas, meticulously thought-out details, and a clear viewpoint about how we live now—and how it could be better. We hope that you'll dig in and be inspired.

Co-Design Innovation Awards

Architecture: A Unique History of a People Reflected in a Building

The unveiling of the newest Smithsonian museum will be celebrated this week with a series of events including a ribbon cutting by President Barka Obama. 

The building rises — bronze and "brooding," in the words of architect David Adjaye — floating in a sea of white marble and limestone on the sprawling National Mall in Washington, D.C.

The mission of the National Museum of African American History and Culture — set to open to the public next week after a 100-year journey into existence — is to tell the story of America through the lens of black history and culture.

That mission is reflected in the exhibits and encapsulated in a Langston Hughes quote featured inside the museum: "I, too, am America."

It's also reflected in the location and design of the building itself.

The decision to eschew the light-colored materials of the other "palaces of culture" on the Mall is one element of this narrative — and it also matched the philosophy of Lonnie Bunch III, the museum's founding director.

"He really embraced and really loved this idea of a dark presence on the Mall," Adjaye recalled. "In a way, the museum for him is about the way in which the African-American community is absolutely integral to understanding the American identity but somehow has been always in the back room. So this is a kind of coming to the front, sitting on the front lawn, with all the other monuments."

The museum doesn't try to hide or blend into the classical forms and perpendicular lines that surround it. It wears with pride an exterior that celebrates both Africa and America.

Take its striking silhouette — a triple inverted pyramid form, each tier angled up and out. The shape mimics that of the crowns atop the figures of the caryatids, or carved pillars, of the Yoruba, an African people with origins in Benin and Nigeria. It's an easily recognizable form from African art — akin to a Corinthian column in Western art — that denotes "very sacred, special and commemorative spaces."

"It is really a way of trying to speak to the narrative of where the African-American community originates from," Adjaye says.

Article: Mission of African-American Museum..

NY times:The National Museum of African American History...

Article: How Davis Adjaye Told The Story of the African American Experience

Architect David Adjaye's Associates Website

A Virtual Tour of the Museum

David Adjaye on designing a Museum that Speaks a Different Language

Fashion Design: Is It Design or Something Else?

New York's 2016 fall fashion week is wrapping up, which raise a nagging question for me...Is this version of Fashion Design...Design?

In considering the shows of Tom Ford and Kanye West put in to perspective what fashion design presented is really about.

"Though the results were not in any way alike, they shared a similar guiding principle: It’s not enough for any designer just to offer clothes anymore. Now it’s all about the experience.

But here’s the thing about experiences: Some of them are good, and some of them are bad. And while they can create an exciting aura around clothes, making the garments seem even more relevant and desirable, they can also cast a pall."

NYTimes Articles: Glam vs Sham..

Logo Design: Why So Many Wordless Logos?

Making logo's simple is thought to enhance their appeal.

Some marketers believe that debranding can make global brands appear “less corporate” and “more personal” to consumers. Nameless logos can evoke more personal and immediate reactions—which is important in a media environment with plenty of possible distractions and diversions.

Article: Why are so many of today's logos wordless

President Obama Announces White House Frontiers Conference

The White House will host the first-ever White House Frontiers Conference in Pittsburgh, PA to explore the future of innovation in America and around the world, this October 13th.

Frontier Conference Details

The President will serve as guest editor for Wired magazine November issue.

The President Wired Magazine's Guest Editor

The Future of Fashion Design

The fashion industry has been slow to design for special populations. MIT students have step into the gap to consider how to include different sizes, persons with different abilities and older people an how fashion design could be more inclusive.

Fast Company Article: Fashion for Everyone

Modernist American Architecture in Pictures

Lake Shore Drive Apartments by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Chicago, Illinois, 1963

Guardian Article: Machines for Living

Design in Election Season

Its that season again for political posturing and selling of candidates, design can help...

Article: The Real Impact of Campaign Design

Article: Buttons Design for Hillary

Does Urban Design Perpetuate Racial Inequality?

"For decades, planners slashed through neighborhoods in the name of urban renewal and slum clearance, underwritten by federal funding from the Housing Act of 1949 and the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, displacing residents using tactics like eminent domain and condemnation laws.

As a result, much of our highway system courses through black neighborhoods(which helps explain why they've often become spaces of civil protest). "This method fails," wrote grassroots urbanist Jane Jacobs in the Death and Life of Great American Cities, one of the most influential planning books ever written. "At best it merely shifts slums from here to there, adding its own tincture of extra hardship and disruption. At worst, it destroys neighborhoods where constructive and improving communities exist and where the situation calls for encouragement rather than destruction."

Fast Company Article: How Urban Design Perpetuates...

Architectural History: Le Corbusier Work Honored

The Architectural Work of Le Corbusier, an Outstanding Contribution to the Modern Movement (Argentina, Belgium, France, Germany, India, Japan, Switzerland)—Chosen from the work of Le Corbusier, the 17 sites comprising this transnational serial property are spread over seven countries and are a testimonial to the invention of a new architectural language that made a break with the past. They were built over a period of a half-century, in the course of what Le Corbusier described as “patient research”. The Complexe du Capitole in Chandigarh (India), the National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo (Japan), the House of Dr Curutchet in La Plata (Argentina) and the Unité d’habitation in Marseille (France) reflect the solutions that the Modern Movement sought to apply during the 20^th century to the challenges of inventing new architectural techniques to respond to the needs of society. These masterpieces of creative genius also attest to the internationalization of architectural practice across the planet. 

--UNESCO

NYTimes Article

Cleveland Redesign's its Public Square

The new design brings together what was four squares intersected at its center by two roadways, into a more harmonious space by eliminating one of the roadways and adding pedestrian pathways to improve the flow around and across the plaza.

Wired Article: Cleveland's New Park...

Product Design: Walker and Company Updates the Clipper

Tristan Walker is a man doing something I once thought about doing producing a shaver/clipper suited for the challenges of people with curly hair a means to get a close shave without bumps.

This summer his young startup has introduced clippers to its product line.

Tristan Walker Bio

Walker and Company: Bevel Trimmer

We’ve re-engineered an essential grooming tool, creating the most advanced device for trimming and shaping coarse or curly hair. Informed by exhaustive research into what Master Barbers and our customers alike wanted, Bevel Trimmer is another way we’re delivering on our promise to make health and beauty simple for people of color.

Suggested Books Every Designer Should Read

Top rated design programs were asked to provide recommendations for books that designers should read, if not at least know about them.

Fast Company Article: Books Designer Should Read

Article: 10 New Design Books 2016

NYC's 21st Century Park Design

New York City has again demonstrated that it understands that public spaces can be made both functional and attractive through design.

Article: NYC's Governors Park

Article: NY's Clever New Park

75 Years of Blue Note Graphics

The jazz music label is known for its pioneering iconic album covers featuring the kings of the golden age of jazz and bold layouts.

Guardian Article: 75 years of Blue Note Album Art

What Might be Design Jobs of the Future?

A list of 18 future Design jobs has been compiled my members of a few leading design organizations/

Fast Company Article" The Most Important Design Jobs of the Future

AIGA Archives: 50 Books/ 50 Covers

A collection of covers teach and can inspire.

Design Observers Covers 2011 to 2015

AIGA Design Archives of Covers

Architecture: The Obama Library

The firm select to design the Presidential Library for Barak Obama is the husband and wife team of Tod Williams and Billie Tsien.

 The Work of TWBT

Home Decor in an Age of Uncertainty

The article below considers the question why Ikea is useful and continues to be a popular choice for home furnishing.

Guarian Article: The Real Reason You Still Shop at Ikea...

Public Lecture by Design Historian - Alison Clarke

Dr. Alison J. Clarke is Professor of Design History and Theory, at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and Director of the Papanek Foundation. She holds a Masters in Design History from the Royal College of Art and Victoria and Albert Museum, and a doctorate in social anthropology from University College London. She is the author of Design Anthropology: Object Culture in the 21st Century and appears as a design expert for the BBC television series Home and The Genius of Design. She is currently completing a monograph for MIT Press on Victor Papanek and design activism.


Designer for the Real World? A Public Lecture by Alison J Clarke from MICA Social Design on Vimeo.

Fashion Rebels: Innovating and Changing the Industry

Alessandro Michele of Gucci and Demna Gvasalia of Balenciaga and Vetements are making  clothes that capture the zeitgeist.

NYTimes Magazine Article

Guardian Article

NYTimes Article: Vetements Brings its Brand of Disruption to Couture

In Tribute to a Cultural Icon - Muhammad Ali

Today America lost the Greatest Athlete of the 20th Century Muhammad Ali.

Apple New Retail Aesthetic and Approach

Fifteen years after open its retails stores Apple is updating their stores aesthetic and customer experience.

Video: of San Francisco's New Apple Store

Article: What was the Greatest Era for Innovation?

The progress of society has been happening for awhile though many think that the last 25 years is the greatest time for innovations.

NYTimes Article: What was the Greatest Era for Innovation