Hasta La Ideas

It’s always good practice to note the moment when a cutting-edge design issue makes its way in to a mainstream business magazine. The online, laser-cut-on-demand service, Ponoko.com, is on the cover of Inc. this month.

Here’s a taste from the feature:

One day, [David ten Have] believes, perhaps 50 years from now, [laser-cutters] like this will be inexpensive enough to be in every home and will be capable of making almost anything. Buying a physical product – a cell phone, for instance – will be as easy as buying an MP3 on iTunes. Products won’t be shipped in containers; they will be downloaded as digital design files and then printed on our desks while we sip our morning coffee. Not only will this be exceedingly convenient, but ten Have says that it will reorder the global economy, green the planet, and unleash an unprecedented wave of creativity as regular people design their own stuff.

Designers, are you buying it? Comment away.

(more…)

Gotta love this: In this culturally-appropriate animated video, Google Japan wordlessly explains to local citizens how they take pains to anonymize those picked up on Google Street View cameras.

thanks gina!

(more…)

At the very start of the year, the still fairly new head of the Smithsonian, Wayne Clough, put a lock down on spending at the famed institution, stopping almost all new hiring and ceasing all raises and bonuses. Just a couple of months later, he was back at it, extending hours at the more popular museums and offering up new ideas to keep the money from drying up (sadly, he can’t take credit for The Smithsonian Collection line of department store furniture). But as we’ve been constantly reading since about this time last year, things aren’t easy for museums at the moment and so another cost-cutting measure at the Smithsonian has come to light. Modern Art Notes was slipped an e-mail sent from Alison McNally, Under Secretary for Finance and Administration, to all the Institution’s employees explaining that they would be offering voluntary buyout packages for “an amount equal to an employee’s calculated severance pay entitlement or $25,000, whichever is less” and decided upon between this past Monday and November 30th. So it looks like some more trimming is in store. But as for how many employees decided to take the leap, we’ll have to wait and see.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Cardboard bar stool

In our latest project, Feuerwear invited notorious Berlin street artist “El Bocho”. The result are 30 wearable unique pieces of (street)art.