This weekend (thanks vimeo) I’ve been enjoying the TV series Design for Life (mentioned before) featuring design guru Phillipe Starck.
Unlike many other design reality shows that I’ve seen, Design for Life dives into the reality in design thinking. Most people outside of the design community generally perceive design as purely aesthetics which in some industries is true, but in a majority of the ones I know, aesthetics is perhaps the last 10% in design.
Design is a method, a process, a way of life, a means to adapt. One breaths every aspect in design while eating, walking around, watching people, sleeping, or typing as I am now. There is a intricate pathway in researching, understanding, inventing, presenting, developing, trying, and broadcasting before one even touches how an project finally looks. Designers want to encapsulate an experience from A to Z and not just elements of a product. One must understand how to observe and learn about a project, then have the ability to influence and push forward a direction upon these observations. Then the deep dive into sketching, communicating, collaborating, interacting, and executing several steps within design. A large understanding in manufacturing techniques, engineering, material properties, transportation limitations, cost, client definitions, brand awareness, business, marketing, users, and trends are all aspects which all designers should be knowledgeable of.
Design for Life is an entertaining glimpse into Starcks personality and philosophies while watching his team educate young individuals into their process. It would be nice to see more shows like this. Watch the 6 episodes after the jump via Vimeo…. which does not include commercials =) ( a better user experience) (more…)
I’m off to Poptech 2009: America Reimagined for the rest of the week. Follow their PopTech hub for live updates and I’m hoping like in previous years the live broadcast of all the speakers. It’ll be a chilly one this year, but I’ll be back with some updates, posts, and goodies like before.
update: Ah, yes, they are streaming it as usual here.
Gadgetoff 2009 unleashed an intense series of kabooms, zaps, chomps, and kerplurks rattling 400 attendees on the beautiful 83 acre Staten Island grounds September 25th while slinging Lenovo laptops with a trebuchet, cooking hot dogs with Telsa Coil Towers, riding jet fueled 5g merry-go-rounds, writing code drunk for autonomous cars legally, and thrashing a series of incredible lectures and demos throughout the day! Welcome to the Gadgetoff 2009 Experience: Boom!
Robots rumbled in every corner ranging from dancing tai chi robots to tiny micro toy hex bugs that jittered their way into everyone’s pockets. The gigantic mechanical Mondo Spider chomped it’s way through the lunch gardens while on lookers enjoyed delicious alcohol infused sorbet. Dean Kamen of DEKA brought his breathtaking and ingeniously engineered “luke” arm (video) and toy inventor Brian Walker tinkered with large crossbows and rockets made to launch humans 20 miles across the air! Invisible inks, toys, gadgets, art, fire, illusions, magic, and disruptive ideas scorched the island while participants roamed in excitement and curiosity!
Just as I experienced last time, Gadgetoff invited the coolest hand’s on creatives to celebrate the Smart and Useless for an unforgetful day in disruptive goodness!
My adventure brief after the jump! (lots of pictures and videos)
I’m quite familiar with the manufacturing world, but I’ve never seen a smart robot arm made for picking up pancakes for stacking! (FLexpicker). Seriously this robotic arm is quite impressive. Let’s yank this arm out and use it as a poker dealer, street trash picker, or something like a burger flipper! Keep the idea flowing with fast smart automated robots, just like the fun Robocoaster!
Philippe Starck has a reality show about design called Design For Life on the BBC… but not just design, but more importantly design thinking, observation, understanding, and how design is almost more about everything outside of what most think of design.
Thus far, I’ve enjoyed the first episode and think it’ll be a great insight into what design really is… not just aesthetics or making cool objects, but understanding a story as a whole, a process, an eco-system and a rather complex element that is widely ignored.
Chris Lefteri has some of my favorite books on materials on plastics, wood, ceramics, metals, and many others. I’m not as aware of his books series called Ingredients, but as Ingredients No.4 is released September 24th, it seems his previous ones are FREE to download! How awesome! If Ingredients is anything like his other materials books, be prepared to be floored both visually and with information about each. Download the other 3 here:
“Practicing good nutrition keeps your mind sharp, your body fit, and your life long. The same could be said for consuming media. (Seriously, knowledge is power.) When you add it all up, the average American spends roughly nine hours a day glued to some kind of screen, and like your diet, quality is as important as quantity. Here are Wired’s suggested servings for optimal media health.”
IKEA’s 2009 online catalogue uses the old typeface. (Futura)
IKEA’s 2010 online catalogue features the Verdana font.
Unbelievable! IKEA switches up their long lasting Futura font that everyone has grown to love to Verdana which though great, just quite doesn’t do the trick for me for an icon like IKEA! Outrage I say =)
Much like the whole Tropicana rebranding disaster that got rejected by consumers once it came out, I’m not sure this is a good move, though change and understanding take time… I’m sure ther was a reason for this… wait, isn’t Verdana a free font from Microsoft? I’ve had recent troubles in license agreements with font foundries.
Article:
“Thumbing through his local Swedish newspaper, Göteborg resident Mattias Akerberg found himself troubled by a full-page advertisement for Ikea. It wasn’t that the Grevbäck bookcases looked any less sturdy, or that the Bibbi Snur duvet covers were any less colorful, or even that the names given to each of the company’s 9,500 products were any less whimsical. No, what bothered Akerberg was the typeface. “I thought that something had gone terribly wrong, but when I Twittered about it, people at their ad agency told me that this was actually the new Ikea font,” he recalls. “I could hardly believe it was true.”
I love Craigslist but I’ve always wondered about their interface. Do I like it, hate it, or is it just right? As a designer I’ve always craved images, but also as a designer I love the directness in raw text. They’ve made subtle changes over the years but if they launched with a more visual design would they have been more successful, worse, or the same? What role does design actually play a part of in our society for sucess, what do people latch onto, what makes it work, and is great design about differentiating from the rest of the world?
Anyhow, I’m not sure what I’d do to improve Craiglsit since it’s just that good, besides all the spam which often becomes part of the culture.
The TED conference has transformed dramatically over the years thanks to the launching of TEDtalks which I’ve posted on several times. This past year, TED launched another brilliant event called TEDx which allows individuals to host their own local unofficial TED like events. Since March 2009 several events have taken place around the world. How awesome!
A few weeks back, I attended the TEDxBoston event which I wanted to post about, but had no videos to share. As of today, TEDx videos from around the world can be viewed and shared on the TEDx YouTube Channel as well as play lists from each location like TEDxBoston. I’ll post the TEDxBoston videos after the jump, and make sure to watch the last video with our favorite Ben Zanders conducting the Youth Orchestra of Americas.
