It’s impossible to deny the importance of artist George Condo; with his engaging, visceral work spanning three decades across drawing, printmaking, painting and sculpture. His first solo exhibitions took place in the emerging bustle of New…
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Doing your own sewing repairs can save you some money and you’ll always be able to leave the house looking neat and tidy. You don’t need to be a seamstress or tailor or need a bunch of expensive equipment. This list outlines basic essentials. If you have some talent or training in sewing you may want to invest in more tools, but these are the minimal items necessary for most DIY repairs. If you prefer, you can buy a sewing kit that contains all of the basics. I would rather build my own kit, as I prefer left-handed scissors and I like to select my own colours of thread.
Scissors
Invest in quality scissors to be used only for sewing. I recommend two pairs: Dressmakers shears with 8″ (200mm) blades for cutting fabric and embroidery scissors that have blades about 3″ or 4″ (90mm) long for precision cutting and trimming. If you’re left-handed, buy left-handed shears. It will make sewing tasks much easier.
Using sewing scissors for paper and plastic will quickly dull the blades making it difficult to cut fabric. Use a marker or label to indicate that these scissors are to be used for sewing only.
Needles and Pins
Purchase a variety of needles in a one-at-a-time dispensing pack. You’ll have the needles you need and they’ll be organised too!
Pins should be straight and sharp with colourful heads that do not melt if you iron over them. Store the pins in a small plastic box or in a pincushion. Magnetised pin holders are handy for picking pins up from the floor but they do not protect your fingers from getting stabbed.
Safety pins, in a variety of sizes can be used for pinning things together that you may not have time to sew. They can also be used to help feed elastic or cord through waistbands and cuffs. You can hook them together into a long strand to keep them organized if you don’t have a storage container.
Thread
Purchase quality poly-cotton blend thread in a variety of colours that match the majority of your clothing. You should also buy an olive drab colour because it can be used on almost any dark material (blues, blacks, browns). There is a reason the army calls this colour “camouflage!” Good quality thread should have a smooth finish; fuzzy thread will tend to get caught while sewing and break easily if pulled too hard.
Seam Ripper
This is a tool with a sharp point, a blunt point and a sharp blade in the middle. If you stitch something in the wrong place, use a seam ripper to cut the stitches without cutting the fabric. It can also be used to remove buttons that are half hanging off and for cutting thread in areas that scissors won’t reach.
Measuring Tape
You should have a flexible measuring tape at least 150cm (60″) long with imperial measurements on one side and metric on the other. Fabric tape measures stretch slightly with heavy use so if yours is older, you may wish to replace it so that you have accurate measurements.
Iron, Ironing Board
Ironing removes the wrinkles and seams and presses folds neat and sharp making fabrics easier to sew. If you don’t have the space to store a full-sized ironing board, invest in an ironing pad. Also use a pressing cloth when ironing delicate items that might be damaged or those that have a special surface such as sequins or glitter. There is no need to purchase a special store bought pressing cloth, a lightweight cotton or linen dishtowel will do as long as it is clean, stain-free, and white as colours and stains may transfer to your fabric.
Hem Tape
Fusible hem tape is used with an iron to quickly hem skirts and pants. It is ideal if you don’t have matching thread available or if you’re in a hurry. Be careful when you iron as you might scorch delicate fabrics. It may lose its adhesiveness after multiple washings so stitching can reinforce it.
Buttons
Keep a variety of buttons handy in assorted colours and sizes to match the majority of your clothing. Keep them in a small, divided, plastic container with a tight fitting lid. Often the clothes you purchase will come with little packet of extra buttons so this little container is a great place to store those extra buttons.
Lighter
It never fails that in the rush to school and work in the morning, someone has a nylon backpack strap or shoelace that is unravelling. A quick flick of the lighter will melt the ends of synthetic straps so they won’t unravel. And if someone misplaces the lighter used for the birthday candles, you’ve always got a spare one in your sewing kit.
Container
Sewing tools need to be cared for just like any other tools. Keep them free from dirt and do not drop them. Store your sewing tools in a plastic bin or decorative basket. It can be plain or fancy, with or without handles. It should however, have a sturdy latch.
Let Unclutterer help you get your home or office organized. Subscribe to our helpful product shipments from Quarterly today.
As people get more and more used to paying for small transactions with credit cards, one group in particular seems to be losing out—baristas. At least that’s what Ryder Kessler noticed in 2008 while using plastic at a favorite coffee shop with a noticeably empty tip jar. A (miserable) barista explained that the rise of credit card payments had meant the decline of cash tips. “That struck me as a huge problem for everyone involved,” Kessler says. “The employees were working just as hard and making less money, the store was losing out on incentives for good service, and customers like me who liked the convenience of paying with plastic had no way to tip. I thought that the simplicity of a cash tip jar—just drop your dollar bill in—should have a credit card equivalent. That’s how the idea for DipJar was born.”
DipJar is exactly what it sounds like, a small aluminum jar with a built-in credit card reader that deducts one dollar per swipe. But realizing the simple device has taken several years. After graduating from Columbia University with a master’s in English, Kessler let the idea for DipJar germinate in the back of his mind for a few years as he took jobs at start-ups and gleaned knowledge in how to build companies and ship products. Only then did he set about bringing his idea to production. Skimming websites, Kessler found the portfolio of Simon Enever, an industrial designer based in New York whose work matched the mental image Kessler had for the product. [Ed. Note: We’ve covered Enever’s work before, most recently in an in-depth case study about designing a better toothbrush.] Together, they worked through various ideas for the design until they felt confident putting it into production.
The design evolution, from sketch to the first-generation unit now being tested in the field.
Design and motion studio ManvsMachine has deconstructed Nike’s iconic Air Max shoe for a new campaign promoting the Air Max 90 range.
ManvsMachine was asked to design a campaign showcasing the individual features of each shoe in the new Air Max collection, which is the first to combine Nike’s Air, Lunar and Flyknit technologies.
Using Cinema 4D animation software, V-Ray rendering and a distinctive “fractured-flow” edit style, the studio created a series of CG films in which various features of the shoes have been abstracted and animated, showcasing a range of textures and the most recognisable design elements of the Air Max:
“The films are full CG, and the production process was handled in-house in our Shoreditch studio, from creating accurate 3D models of the shoes and wrapping them in photographed textures, to designing, building and animating sculptural elements and environments…once underway, this process took about three months,” explains studio founder Mike Alderson.
ManvsMachine also worked on in-store graphics with retail design agency Hotel Creative, creating a series of 3D printed sculptures and a simple graphic system to illustrate the different features of each trainer:
“The sculptures were all 3D printed and sprayed in London [sizes range from 305mm to 800mm]. We created the objects in Cinema4D and handed them over to…Hotel Creative, who integrated them into the retail design,” explains Alderson.
Films will be used online, in-store and in outdoor advertising, and the installations and graphics are being rolled out in stores nationwide.
It’s another slick campaign from ManvsMachine, who created a charming animation last year to promote Nike’s Re-Use a Shoe initiative, in which worn out Nike trainers are ground down into a new material that can be used to make surfaces for playing courts, tracks and fields.
L’entrepreneuse et auteur ShaoLan Hsueh, basée à Londres, a écrit le livre « Chineasy » qui permet d’apprendre de manière ludique les 20,000 signes chinois à partir d’illustrations de la signification du mot. Les illustrations sont colorées et le signe est formé avec des traits noirs. Quelques mots à découvrir dans la suite.
Door.
Moon.
Friends.
Mountain.
Wave.
Drop.
Woman.
Adultery.
Cadbury has released a new spot in its Free The Joy campaign, which replaces the brand’s long-running Joyville series of ads. CR talks to Cadbury and ad agency Fallon about the new marketing direction.
The new ad is a sweet little number that shows a father and daughter engaging in some quirky dancing while they eat their Dairy Milk Egg ‘n’ Spoon snack. It follows another recent, boogie-tastic spot that sees a man performing some excellent chair dancing when placed on hold during a phone call. Both new ads are shown below, with the Boogie spot shown in a new 90 second version, which is released today.
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The new ads reveal a subtle new direction for the brand, replacing the Joyville tag which had been running since 2012. The Free The Joy line aims to emphasise the simple pleasure that the chocolate brings to those who eat it, and will be used across all the products in the Dairy Milk range. “Our new campaign is an evolution of Joyville,” says Matthew Williams, marketing activation director at Mondelez, which owns Cadbury. “We’re focusing more on our chocolate and the way it triggers joy for the consumer, and less on the way it is made or delivered.”
Accompanying the Egg ‘n’ Spoon ad is a ‘how to’ film (shown below), which teaches viewers how to perform their own version of the dance in the ad. Cadbury has had success in the past with audiences creating their own interpretations of its ads (this was particularly the case with the Eyebrows ad, which sparked a raft of amateur versions posted to YouTube), and it would appear that the brand is actively encouraging a similar response here. “Interaction is very important,” agrees Fallon ECD Santiago Lucero. “It is vital to embrace the fact that consumers have a thirst for a deeper engagement with brands and we need, where appropriate, to create communications that feed that. The ‘how to’ films we’ve developed for Egg ‘n’ Spoon are just the beginning – we are exploring a lot of ideas that will help us have a better and stronger relationship with our audience.”
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Both Williams and Lucero are keeping schtum about what’s coming up next in the campaign, though reveal that there are some digital and experiential projects in the pipeline. “This is one of the great things about our new platform – it works beautifully in any media,” says Lucero. “It’s simply about finding new, spontaneous, creative ways to release joy, and of course digital will be one of those ways.”
La quinta serie del teschio in porcellana di Limoges di NooN e K.Olin Tribu verrà decorato con varie farfalle applicate a mano dall’artista. Ne verranno prodotti solo 50 esemplari. Presto in vendita su Atom Plastic.
L’edizione della JIRO Belt per il Giro d’Italia 2014 è ovviamente rosa e usa un copertoncino Vittoria. La trovate in pre-ordine qui.
Interview: when designer Isabelle Olsson joined the secret Google X lab in 2011, Google Glass looked like a cross between a scuba mask and a cellphone. In this exclusive interview, Olsson tells Dezeen how she turned the clunky prototype into something “beautiful and comfortable”.
“When I first joined I had no idea what I was going to work on,” she said, speaking via a Google Hangout video link from New York. “Then I walked into a room full of engineers wearing a prototype of the glasses. These were very crude 3D-printed frames with a cellphone battery strapped to the legs. They weighed about 200 grams.”
She was given her first brief, which was “to make this beautiful and comfortable”.
“My initial goal was: how do we make this incredibly light? I set up three design principles; if you have something that is very complex you need to stick to some principles. The first was lightness, the second was simplicity and the third scalability”.
Despite the technology available to her at Google, Olsson took a fairly traditional approach to refining the design of Glass, which is a computer that is worn like a pair of glasses and features a tiny optical display mounted in front of one eye.
“We would first start by sketching by hand,” she said. “Then we would draw in Illustrator or a 2D programme. Then we would laser-cut these shapes in paper.”
“After many iterations the team would start to make models in a harder material, like plastic. And then we got into laser-cutting metals. So it was an intricate, long, back-and-forth process.”
This painstaking, craft-led approach was essential when designing something that will be worn on the face, Olsson believes.
“A 0.2mm height difference makes a complete difference to the way they look on your face,” she said. “What looks good on the computer doesn’t necessarily translate, especially with something that goes on your face. So as soon as you have an idea you need to prototype it. The next stage is about trying it on a couple of people too because something like this needs to fit a wide range of people.”
Olssen grew up in Sweden and studied fine arts and industrial design at Lund University. She later worked for industrial design studio Fuseproject in San Francisco, where she worked on products including Samsung televisions, the Nook Color ebook reader and VerBien, a range of free spectacles developed for children in Mexico.
She now leads a team of less than ten designers at Google X, including “graphic designers, space and interior designers, design strategists and industrial designers but also people who work in the fashion industry”.
She says: “The funny thing is almost nobody on the design team has a technology background, which is very unusual for a tech company. But the great thing about that is that it keeps us grounded and keeps us thinking about it from a lifestyle product standpoint.”
With Glass, she was keen to ensure the product was as adaptable and accessible as possible, to ensure it could reach a wide range of potential users. “From the very beginning we designed Glass to be modular and to evolve over time,” she said.
This week saw the launch of a range of spectacles and sunglasses that can be used with the existing high-tech Glass product, which clips on the side of the frames. The expanded range of products helps shift what started as a tech product into a lifestyle accessory.
“We’re finally at the beginning point of letting people wear what they want to wear,” Olsson said. “The frames are accessories so you detach the really expensive and complex technology from the style part: you can have a couple of different frames and you don’t need to get another Glass device.”
Images are courtesy of Google.
Here’s an edited transcript of the interview:
James Pallister: Can you start by telling me a little bit about how you started designing Google Glass?
Isabelle Olsson: Two and a half years ago I had a very simple, concise brief, and it was to make this [prototype of Google Glass] beautiful and comfortable. When I first joined I had no idea what I was going to work on. I just knew I was joining Google X and working on something new and exciting.
Then I walked into a room full of engineers wearing a prototype of the glasses. These were [very crude] 3D-printed frames with a cell-phone battery strapped to the legs. They weighed about 200 grams.
James Pallister: What were your initial design intentions?
Isabelle Olsson: My initial goal was: “how do we make this incredibly light?”. I set up three design principles; if you have something that is very complex you need to stick to some principles. The first was lightness, the second was simplicity and the third scalability.
The first thing that made me nervous was not how are we going to make this technology work but how are we going to be able to make this work for people; how are we going to make people want to wear the glasses? The first thing that came to mind is that when you walk into a glasses store you see hundreds of styles.
From the very beginning we designed this to be modular and be able to evolve over time. So in this version that you have probably seen already, there is this tiny little screw here and that is actually meant to be screwed off and then you can remove this frame and attach different kinds of frames.
James Pallister: You’re launching new prescription frames and sunglasses which fit the Google Glass you launched in 2013?
Isabelle Olsson: Yes. What is really exciting is that this is our first collection of new frames. The frames are accessories so you detach the really expensive and complex technology from the style part: you can have a couple of different frames and you don’t need to get another glass device. So we’re finally at the beginning point of letting people wear what they want to wear.
James Pallister: How many people were on the team who refined the clunky prototype into what we see today?
Isabelle Olsson: The team started off very, very small: it was like a little science project. As we started to transition it into something that you could actually wear we have grown the team. Our design team is still really small. So in the design team I can count them on my 10 fingers.
James Pallister: What kind of people do you have on your team?
Isabelle Olsson: I really believe in having a mixed team: graphic designers, space and interior designers, design strategists and industrial designers but also people who work in the fashion industry. The funny thing is almost nobody on the design team has a technology background, which is very unusual for a tech company. But the great thing about that is that it keeps us grounded and keeps us thinking about it from a lifestyle product standpoint.
James Pallister: Is that one of the strengths of the team, that you are not too obsessed the technology?
Isabelle Olsson: There’s often the view that designers and engineers have to fight; that there should always be a constant battle. I don’t believe that. I think that view belongs in the 1990s.
James Pallister: Are the glasses manufactured by Google?
Isabelle Olsson: They are made in Japan. They are made out beautiful titanium that is extremely lightweight and durable.
James Pallister: With the spectacles and sunglasses, how did you choose which styles to develop?
There actually aren’t that many styles out there, so we looked at the most popular styles and condensed then into these really iconic simplified versions of them. Bold for example is great for people that would normally prefer kind of a chunky, square style. Curve, which I’m wearing, is perhaps a little more fashion-forward. And Split is for those who like almost rimless glasses or ones which are lighter on your face. Then Thin is this very classic traditional simple style that doesn’t really stand out.
James Pallister: Had you ever designed glasses before?
Isabelle Olsson: I have designed glasses and jewellery. So it wasn’t completely new but we did spend a long time refining these. We wanted the shape to be absolutely perfect. A 0.2mm height difference makes a complete difference to the way it looks on your face. Prototyping was absolutely crucial. We also cut paper and used laser cutting and used 3D printing.
James Pallister: Could you explain the design process?
Isabelle Olsson: We would first start with sketching by hand. And then Illustrator or a 2D programme, then we would laser-cut these shapes in paper and do many alterations [iterations?]. Then we would go into a harder material, like a plastic.
Once we have the icons, then we got it into 3D. And then 3D print that. Then we got into laser-cutting metals. So it is a long, intricate, back-and-forth process.
James Pallister: So it was quite a manual process? It wasn’t so much using models and computers?
Isabelle Olsson: Yes. What looks good on the computer doesn’t necessarily translate, especially with something that goes on your face. So as soon as you have an idea, you need to prototype it to see what is broken about it. You can then see what looks weird. It can be completely off – too big or too nerdy and you look crazy! It can be a case of a couple of millimetres.
The next stage is about trying it on a couple of people too because something like this needs to fit a wide range of people. That is what I think is most exciting is that everyone on our team uses Glass. We gave them prototypes early on. It was interesting to get feedback from them and it was also valuable for me to see people walking around with them everyday.
James Pallister: What do people pay to get the device?
Isabelle Olsson: So the Explorer edition [the version of Glass released last year] is now $1500 then this new prescription glasses accessory is going to be $225.
James Pallister: Did you have to build different software to cope with the curvature of the lens?
Isabelle Olsson: No, it just works for the regular device. What’s great about it is that our existing Explorers can buy the accessory, which is just the frame part, and then attach it to their device.
James Pallister: How long do you think it will be before wearing Google Glass becomes a normal, everyday thing? Five years? Ten years?
Isabelle Olsson: Much sooner than 10 years I would say. The technology keeps on evolving. That’s the critical part about the Explorer programme [the early adopters who have been given access to Glass], to get people out in the world using Glass in their daily lives. Once more people have it, people are going to get used to it faster.
Even with the original edition or the base frame, after half an hour people say that they forget they are wearing it. When you put it on, it is so lightweight; you can personally forget that you are wearing it. Then it is about other people around you getting used to it. It takes maybe three times that amount for that to happen.
James Pallister: Have you heard of any unexpected uses of Glass?
Isabelle Olsson: I mean personally I was hoping for these cases so when anything comes up I am more excited than surprised. The artistic use of it appeals to me as a designer, when people use it to make cool stop-motion videos or in other arts projects. But also there is this firefighter who developed this special app so he can see the floorplan of a building, so it could help save lives. The more people I see using it, the more exciting it gets and the more diverse it becomes.
James Pallister: Some people are predicting that wearable technology is just a stepping stone towards cyborg technology, where the information is fed directly into the brain. What do you think of that notion?
Isabelle Olsson: I think the team and myself are more interested in what we can do today and in the next couple of years, because that is going to have an impact and be really amazing. You can speculate about the future but somehow it never ends up being what you thought it would be anyway. When you see old futuristic movies, it is kind of laughable.
James Pallister: It seems that we are getting closer and closer to a situation where we can record every situation. Does that ever worry you from a privacy viewpoint?
Isabelle Olsson: I think with any new technology you need to develop an etiquette to using it. When phones started having cameras on them people freaked out about it.
Part of the Explorer programme is that we want to hear how Glass is working and when it is useful and in what instances do you use it. We are also interested in the social side, how people react when you are wearing it. What are peoples concerns, fears, issues and hopes for it.
We hope that Glass will help people to interact with the world around them, really quickly process information and move on to the conversation they were having.
James Pallister: What do you think is the next stage for Glass?
Isabelle Olsson: Tight now we are definitely focused on slowly growing the Explorer programme, making sure that people get these frames in their hands – or on their faces should we say. We are really excited about that and obviously we are working on prioritising feedback and also creating next generation products that I can’t talk about!
James Pallister: Are there any types of technology that you think Glass will feed into in the future?
Isabelle Olsson: I think a lot of things. It is hard for us to speculate without revealing things but the focus is to make technology a more natural part of you and I think any type of services that does that. Glass is going to feed that.
The post Google Glass was designed through “sketching
by hand” says lead designer appeared first on Dezeen.
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