May 31
Housing Pilon by Bevk Perović Arhitekti
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Slovenian practice Bevk Perović Arhitekti have completed a residential project in an abandoned quarry in Ljubljana, Slovenia. (more…)
May 31
What to Wear: Meeting His Parents!
Posted in: Uncategorized  | You’ve been with your guy for a while, and things are getting serious. His parents are coming to visit. He wants you to meet them. Try not to panic. You’re charming! Guy knows that you’ll wow them. Now, to decide what to wear! A few recommendations: wear something flattering, but not revealing. Don’t show too much cleavage or too much leg, but hey, work your assets all the same. Choose a classic style like Calvin Klein’s Laser Cut Ruffle Shirtdress. Something that will flatter your curves, but also says, hey I’m a good girl and I would make a great mother to your grandkids. If you’ve got a killer dress already, I recommend one pop of interest and color with your jewelry. Wearing something like Kenneth Jay Lane’s Garden Cuff is great because if all else fails, it’s a conversation piece. Check out my slideshow for lots of options to meet his parents! |
May 31
ilmia – handcrafted sneakers
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For individualist do not want to wear mass-produced. People who know what they want. Handmade in Germany. Swiss Design. Full leather. The ilmia logo i..
May 31
Grad Gifts For Girls!
Posted in: Uncategorized  | Congratulations! The high school crap is finally over– and it’s bittersweet. .There’s a parting of ways for a lot of you, an uncertainty about what you’re getting yourself into after a routine or home-style living, and definitely a sense of relief that you won’t have to carry around a hall pass again. Hats off to you, though, as we commemorate your maturity in personality and knowledge! These accomplishments certainly shouldn’t go without notice. A graduation gift should be something that inspires. Sure, any big electronic is going to be appreciated by the ‘rents, but a gift that goes past the expected can give the giftee a hopeful wish for the future. Something to help them pursue their dreams, or even just remind them of what a special gem they are in this big world are a great way to show your loved ones how proud of them you are. As for those of you who’ve just tossed your high school hats, these gifts are great for holding on to the memories you already cherish, as well as help you make more memories to last you the rest of your lives! |
May 31
Utility exhibition stand by Studio Toogood for Tom Dixon
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Milan 09: London stylist Faye Toogood designed the exhibition stand for British designer Tom Dixon in Zona Tortona in Milan last month. (more…)
May 30
Atoms For Bits: Designing physical embodiments for virtual content
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“Hello, Dave.” The LaCie 5big Network hard drive has a HAL-like presence
Embracing compression
After moving into a teeny New York studio and going through the psychically exhausting task of purging possessions, I found myself frozen in the middle of the room holding the dictionary in my hands, quickly coming to terms with an inevitable fact: it had to go. Many people gasp at the notion of doing away with books (clothes, yes, electronics, of course, but books—never!) but lets face it, dictionaries (aside from a few luscious grand, old tomes) don’t age well. They aren’t made for casual browsing, they don’t reflect the dynamic nature of language, and they take up a lot of precious shelf space. I hesitated to admit it, but I knew I could manage just fine with an iPhone app or another online lexicon that pulled data from the mighty digital “cloud.” Out it went. While I was at it, I wondered what other space saving digital conversions I could make. Could I compress all my CDs to MP3? Could I invest in one of many advertised services for digitizing every last one of my photographs? Where would it end? These thoughts then led me to the line of questioning that keeps designers up at night: “What would life be like in an object-less home?” “What physical artifacts would be spared cloud absorption?” and the grand daddy of all questions, “With more and more of our artifacts being replaced by digital files, when do physical objects matter, and why?”
Though it may often seem like the industrial designer’s job is to create a “black box” around circuit boards, the ability to take the complex nature of data and translate it into meaningful form is more important than ever before.
May 30
Letters are fun!
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This morning I had some fun hand-setting some vintage letters to be used in one of the magazine’s upcoming articles. We’re still accepting submissions for The Lost Art of The End: click here for more details.
May 30
The Context of ‘Low Product’: How designers can help articulate a new social language, by Ann Thorpe
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Enter the city car, knitfitti and the floating swimming pool
Will “no product” become the new brand? John Hockenberry provocatively suggests that given the global economic crisis, “no product” is now plausible. But how plausible given our society organized around economic growth? I’m talking here about consumerism as both the primary purpose of growth, and its principal driver—the high product context.
Reliance on continuous growth makes the economy unstable (it must grow or it collapses) as well as unsustainable (it strives for infinite growth on finite planetary resources). Tim Jackson provides a very accessible overview of this situation in his great new report, Prosperity without Growth?, in which he also proposes an alternative—a steady state economy. Enter the “low product” context. Enter the Nomadic Prayer Space, knitfitti and the floating swimming pool. Before getting to the examples and the implications for design of a steady state economy, let’s explore “growth” a bit more.
Mounting evidence suggests that efficiency gains are outrun by new consumption. For example, my fuel-efficient car, far from cutting down on overall fuel use, provides savings that finance an extra holiday flight. And my personal electronics are “greener” but I have many more of them.
May 30
In praise of Alice Rawsthorn
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Once I criticised Alice Rawsthorn, design critic of the International Herald Tribune, on this blog for focusing too much on the design of physical objects.
I felt bad about it ever since, especially since Alice has over the last few years been responsible for introducing many cutting edge design concepts into the mainstream press, including social design, critical design, service design, eco-design, information visualisation, user interface design, design for public services, etc.
Her latest article — an excellent reflection piece entitled The demise of ‘Form Follows Function’ — convinced me that I need to publicly retract my previous statement, and instead praise Alice for the remarkable job she has done for the design community over the years.
Remarkable though it may be, it’s extremely hard to find her contributions on the New York Times website.
Only some of Alice’s articles are included on her overview page, including:
– Focusing design solutions on social problems (24 May 2009)
– Let’s hear it for quiet design (17 May 2009)
– Reinventing innovation (5 April 2009)
But some of her best stories are not listed there at all (despite being on the New York Times website, albeit without their original visuals):
– Good or bad? The verdict(s) (30 January 2009)
– Creating social solutions for MS patients
– Creative solutions in tough times (28 December 2008)
– New tools to help with information overload (5 December 2008)
– What defies defining, but exists everywhere? (18 August 2008)
– Cars span the globe. So why don’t they look better? (4 July 2008)
– Alice Rawsthorn: Four speakers debate the future of design (27 January 2008)
– John Maeda: Rethinking technology and the digital revolution (6 May 2007)
– Alice Rawsthorn on design for the unwealthiest 90 percent (29 April 2007)
– Humanitarian goals, tech-savvy solutions (11 March 2007)
– The digital challenge: Making easy-to-use devices (25 February 2007)
– Apple’s quest to put us at ease with technology (26 November 2006)
– Style, function and the imperfect cellphone (22 October 2006)
– A new shape emerges to mark the digital age (16 July 2006)
Worse still, some of her articles seem to have disappeared altogether:
– What technology has taught us at dizzying speed (23 January 2009)
– Recessionary design: a boom time for creative energy (17 November 2008)
– In the creative world, the only constant is change (28 July 2008)
– Making life more complicated (27 March 2008)
– Helping the poor to help themselves (22 February 2008)
– Designing for democracy (7 February 2008)
– Why the overwhelming numbers of design flops? (6 April 2007)
– How sustainable is design? (28 January 2007)
Luckily, a full listing of the articles (with old International Herald Tribune links) can be found on Alice’s personal site.
With so many pieces missing from the New York Times website, or very hard to find, it is no wonder that former New York Times and International Herald Tribune reporter Thomas Crampton got very upset and wrote a letter to the publisher a few weeks ago, accusing the newspaper of erasing his career — a view seconded by Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia.
The issue has still not been fixed. Unfortunately also the design community is now suffering from this major gap created by The New York Times.
Picture: Objectified
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