this nifty little 7-piece chart of command – ments for designers has been making the rounds lately.
I especially like numbers 5, 6 and 7. But when I look at it I can’t help but be reminded of another list with 10 bullet points that, like their creator, are simple and streamlined. I’m talking about Deiter Ram’s “Ten Principles for Good Design.” No good designer ever really forgets them, but if you haven’t checked in with Dieter in a while it’s worth a refresher. Like his products, his principles will, no doubt, stand the test of time. [ Ten Principles for Good Design ]
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four years ago, designer guari nanda answered the call of over-sleepers everywhere with clocky, the two-wheeled alarm clock that runs away from you to get you out of bed.
In the last few years she’s made some improvements, and released Tocky at the recent New York International Gift Fair. Tocky doesn’t run away as much as it rolls. It’s completely spherical with three little rubber legs to stabilize it on your nightstand. It also has changeable skins, a touchscreen and the ability to record messages and mp3 so you can wake up to your favorite song or a prerecorded reminder that you have a 9am meeting. Of course, piece of mind comes with a price tag. You can get your very own Tocky at Nanda’s site for $79.
designer: guari nanda
producer: nanda
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the last person I saw use a nutcracker was clark griswald in national lampoon’s christmas vacation.
That was 21 years ago. You know why? The nutcracker, as we know it, is hard to use. It requires you to strain your wrists, hurt your hands, and for what? A lousy nut? Bottom line: it’s a failed design. That’s why they sell shelled nuts at the supermarket. But for the nut enthusiast, there’s hope.
Designer Tan Jun Yuan’s nutcracker prototype applies the principle of gravity. You drop a weight down a tube that crushes the nut at the bottom. It has one thing in common with all good design: it’s so deceptively simple you wonder why no one ever thought of it before. Now you can have your nut and eat it too. (We’ll keep you posted when it’s available to consumers.)
designer: tan jun yuan
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the time has come to start thinking about pens like plastic bottles.
Buy one and refill it; Don’t keep chucking out the disposable variety. The plastic your pen is made of is just as harmful for the environment as the plastic bottles we’ve been weened off of in recent years.
Of course, not all pens are refillable. The solution is the DBA 98 Pen. It’s produced at a wind-powered facility, uses potato-based packaging, non-toxic ink and compostable plastic. All that adds up to a 98% biodegradable pen. Pick up a 3-pack for $9.
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it’s an age-old problem. you want your cookie. you want your milk.
But what happens when you get the two together? Oftentimes the cookie proves too big for the cup, forcing you to dip small pieces of cookie-edge or else breaking the whole thing in two, thereby ruining your dunking experience. It may not be the most pressing problem waiting to be addressed by good design, but studio ENTLO.1A has a clever solution with Taca, a cup with a hollow handle that makes room for even the widest of baked desserts.
The design studio has equally cute remedies for other common domestic annoyances. Highlights in their line of functional dinnerware include a bowl that slants down slightly towards you, making it easier to get that last spoonful of soup. And for the wandering notetaker, the hooked pencil Lapiz will ensure that a handy writing utensil is never far from hand.
designer: entresuelo 1a
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bmw chose europe’s largest bike race, vattenfall cyclassics, held in hamburg, germany this past weekend, to debut their two latest models: the alize and the diablo.
above: diablo
above: alize
As you may have guessed, those aren’t cars, but high-performance bikes cooked up in a collaboration between BMW Group subsidiary DesignworksUSA and sporting equipment manufacturer NeilPryde. As NeilPryde is best known for their windsurfing gear, it’s a departure of form for both sides.
above: monocoque frameset
Bike geeks who can’t muster the $3,950 – $5,400 price tag will definitely want to check out the behind the scenes look of the design process, which includes innovations in aerodynamics like the optimized profile and extended Kamm tail design. For the Diablo, the team developed an “exoskeleton design of continuous carbon fibers fully integrated into the monocoque front triangle…resulting in a frameset that has been optimized for its unique material characteristics.”
designers: designworksusa
producers: neilpryde
Resources:
vattenfall cyclassics
“behind the scenes look:”
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(Images are from the cooper hewitt national design awards)
above: Tupperware Flatout! from frog design, one of three winners for Product Design
above: Stephen Doyle, winner for Communication Design
above: Lisa Strausfeld’s One Laptop per Child
With the National Design Awards in the recent past and London Design Week in the near future, competition is at the forefront of the design world. A little friendly competition never hurt anyone, but in a recent piece at Core77, Apple VP Don Norman argues that design contests are flat out bad for design.
The position he takes is this: Because jurors often have to rate designs based on drawings, photographs and videos accompanied by text instead of the physical product (either because it hasn’t been made yet or, in the case of something like a car or bed, it’s physically impractical). “As a result,” Norman says, “jurors cannot experience them in use, they can’t watch the intended audience use them, they can’t assess how well they provide for graceful interaction, what pleasure or pain they provide, what benefits they provide. “If design contests reward styling alone and ignore the most important, but hardest parts: interaction, experience, truly meeting needs, and even economic success, they “perpetuate the myth that industrial design is primarily about style and that brilliant styling leads to success in the marketplace. Both statements are false.”
He suggests that all entries should be accompanied by an “evaluation performed by an independent testing group that evaluates its functionality, usability, durability, and market impact,” and that judges be made familiar with the constraints and expectations of each category and be required to serve on a panel for more several years. “I recommend rolling three-year terms, with 1/3 of the jurors appointed each year. Each jurors would have one year to learn the ropes, one year to practice what had been learned, and a final year both to practice and to mentor newer jurors. ”
Resources:
cooper hewitt national design awards
core77
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in a response to london’s annual design festival, now in its 9th year, and to the “25 years of cultural deep freeze, the anti-design festival will attempt to unlock creative fires and ideas, exploring spaces hitherto deemed out-of-bounds by a purely commercial criteria.” So says founder Neville Brody, who takes the Anti in Anti-Design seriously. “The Anti Design Festival is anti-everything. The Anti Design Festival is anti-nothing. While the ADF is not against design, there is also a need for change. We are not anti-design as much as we are anti-everything.”
If you have any doubts just check out the event website. The ADF logo includes the London Design Festival’s logo – with a big X through it. The front page also does things with kerning and font size any design teacher would shake their finger at. Of course, that’s the point. ADF is not only a chance to play with design without the imposition of clients, bosses or market restrictions, but it’s a chance for your work to rub shoulders with contributors like Jonathan Barnbrook, Stuart Semple and Stefan Sagmeister. It’s nonprofit (i.e. no prize money); If that’s a problem, ADF probably isn’t for you.
ADF takes place in Shoreditch, London from 18-26 September (the last week of The London Design Festival).
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