““Every year, global design and merchandising company Felissimo produces a series of charitable plates that traditionally feature the illustrations of present-day icons. This year, as part of Felissimo’s mission to promote better design for the greater good, the company extended the project to designers across the globe by hosting Happiness: The Tribute 21 Plate Challenge on DESIGN 21: Social Design Network. Felissimo is now proud to unveil its selection of winning plates, whose designs communicate a wish, inspiration or message for children and future generations about seeking happiness in harmony with our surroundings. A portion of the proceeds from plate sales will benefit the UNESCO/Tribute 21 DREAM Center Fund, which provides arts programs to children in post-conflict regions.
Giving designers a chance to share their work with the world, DESIGN 21 posted all submissions for the Tribute 21 Plate Challenge to the competition site. After reviewing 732 entries, based on originality, relevance, aesthetics, and ranking in an online public voting poll, representatives at Felissimo headquarters in Japan have chosen seven winners. According to DESIGN 21 Founder Haruko Smith, “Whether symbolic, literal or euphoric, all of the designs represent hope for a better future.”
The “Reminiscent Innocence” plate by U.S. designer Jody Boyce was selected as the “Most Popular” design as well as a DESIGN 21 “Judges’ Pick.” According to Boyce, “My goal was to try to capture those feelings we all felt as children; the innocent, naïve and green ideas we had about the world before we were thrown into it head first.”
The other six top designs chosen as “Judges’ Picks” include: Giorgio Cattano (Netherlands) for “Happy Forest”; Eugene Gu (China) for “TRUELOVE”; Arlene Birt (U.S.) for “Water Cycle: For Life”; Jeong Seok Oh (South Korea) for “Public Bath”; Alexandre Esteves Neves (Brazil) for “Soap Bubbles of Happiness”; and nen (Spain) for “How to be happy without.” Honorable mentions were also given to Ji Yeon Yoo (South Korea) for “The Blooming Happiness” and Bonnie Jordan (U.S.) for “Happy Harmony.”
Pretty cool idea for a bookshelf by furniture design guru Ron Arad. A bookshelf shaped like the United States with each state having their own space. So now when someone asks me where a specific book is, I can say it’s somewhere between Kansas and California. Ha, not for sale, but I’m sure someone can make one pretty easily.
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)
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.
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.”
Thought: Whoever taught us wine taste better in a glass container over plastic, paper, or styrofoam container? Did we learn, or just observe and accept the norm? Do we drive our own opinions, or just accept the norm?
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.
I’m off to San Francisco for a Weekend Wedding, so I’m posting my weekend links a bit early. If ya’ll have any must see, eat, go to events in SF this week, please let me know.
“Every year, global design and merchandising company Felissimo produces a series of charitable plates that traditionally feature the illustrations of present-day icons. This year, as part of Felissimo’s mission to promote better design for the greater good, the company extended the project to designers across the globe by hosting Happiness: The Tribute 21 Plate Challenge on DESIGN 21: Social Design Network. Felissimo is now proud to unveil its selection of winning plates, whose designs communicate a wish, inspiration or message for children and future generations about seeking happiness in harmony with our surroundings. A portion of the proceeds from plate sales will benefit the UNESCO/Tribute 21 DREAM Center Fund, which provides arts programs to children in post-conflict regions.
