Hasta La Ideas

If there’s one thing that’ll kill the creative process quicker than a computer crash with no Time Machine backup handy, it’s a lack of understanding and communication when creating a new product in a collaborative environment. Our friends at IDSA have teamed up with Loughborough Design School to create a simple way to keep us all on the same page during the New Product Development (NPD) process. If you’ve been to a previous IDSA conference, you may remember their token informational fold-out iD cards (not to be confused with these). The cards break down the names, descriptions and images for 32 different design representations in four different groups—sketches, drawings, models and prototypes. The cards share what the representation stands for in terms of use and the information it provides.

The new app that consolidates the cards and information in one convenient, color-coded resource, taking the mystery out of unknown terminology with straightforward appeal to all levels and genres of design, making it easy for for teams to work together cohesively. Check out the video overview of the app and its features:

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Dezeen promotion: past winners of the New Design Britain awards will show a retrospective of their products at this year’s May Design Series in London.

New Design Britain celebrates young design talent in the UK and awards designers each year in a range of categories.

Previously held at the Interiors UK trade event in Birmingham, the New Design Britain initiative is relocating to London’s May Design Series from 2015.

To celebrate this move, previous alumni will exhibit their winning products along with new designs at a dedicated section of the fair.

Designers including James Harrison, Rob Scarlett, Daniel Schofield, Alex Macmaster, Limahl Asmall, Jason Heap, Jennifer Jones and Henoc Maketo will all show how they have progressed since picking up the prize.

The May Design Series will take place at the ExCeL exhibition centre in London from 18 to 20 May 2014.

For more information about the event visit the May Design Series website. Find out more about New Design Britain here and register to attend here.

Here’s some more details sent to us by the organisers:

Join us for the re-launch at May Design series 2014, and a celebration of young British design talent! New Design Britain is back with a revitalised ethos, bringing talented new designers to the forefront of the international design industry. Every year young designers enter with their newest and most inspiring products and eager ambition to display their unique take on the market – perfect for visitors looking to network and meet the freshest design talent in the industry.

The move to London has given New Design Britain the opportunity to become bigger and better than ever before, bringing with it the chance for an exciting new re-launch!

With the first new edition of New Design Britain planned for May 2015, we’ll be using this year’s show to re-launch the awards, and will be bringing with us a selection of New Design Britain alumni, each with their own success story to tell. Past New Design Britain award winners to see at the show will include James Harrison, Rob Scarlett, Daniel Schofield, Alex Macmaster, Limahl Asmall, Jason Heap, Jennifer Jones, and Henoc Maketo.

Every winning product from these past winners will be at the show, as well as fresh new work from each designer – a real opportunity to see the positive effects New Design Britain has had on these young designers’ lives and careers.

Join the New Design Britain alumni on stand Monday 19 May find out more about the 2015 edition of the awards.

www.maydesignseries.com

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exhibit at May Design Series appeared first on Dezeen.

Above: by Akseli Valmunen of Lahti University of Applied Sciences

As part of its Future Creatives scheme, Nokia is working with students around the world to create wallpaper imagery for its phones

The pictures are pre-loaded onto a variety of Nokia devices as ‘lock-screen’ images. Students are paid €500 per image used while the college faculty receives a payment of €2500 to be spent ‘in pursuit of photographic excellence’.

The scheme, which started just over a year ago, is run by Nokia Design’s head of visual content David Harrigan and his London-based team. Previously, Harrigan explains, the lock-screen images on the company’s phones came from a variety of sources, licenced in a variety of ways, some of which were also used by the brand’s competitors.

By Sanni Siira, Lahti

Commissioning original imagery from students, shot using its phones, Harrigan explains, enables the company to “build up a bespoke range of images that we have complete clarity over” (Nokia buys the rights to the ‘digital entity’ of each image to use on all its devices while students retain their copyright and are identified in the file name of each picture). The images are specifically shot to show off the phones’ technical abilities and can also be tailored to local demands. So, for example, if a service provider in China would prefer local imagery to be installed on its phones, Harrigan will be able to provide that or, if such imagery doesn’t exist as yet, will commission it via the network of university partners his team is building up.

By Sarah Jun, SVA

Nokia piloted the idea with students from Arts University Bournemouth and LCC but has now run the scheme with Lahti University of Applied Sciences in Finland, SVA in New York, China Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing and, most recently, Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town.

Nokia works with 20 students in each location. “All participate in a week long intensive content creation process. Each student is loaned a Nokia Lumia 1020 for the duration of the project,” Harrigan explains. “We provide a creative brief that we share in an initial three hour workshop at the beginning of the project. Each student then has one week to shoot images for us as defined by our brief and references. During the week we have a series of workshops at the University to work ‘one on one’ with the students, giving them advice on the direction of the imagery that they have captured and the direction that they are heading. My team is also on hand to advise on the features of the device and answer any technical queries.

By Leng Wen, China Central Academy of Fine Arts

“At the end of the week there is a final large sharing workshop, where we again meet with the students, review their images and then wind up the project. Once the images have been edited back here in the London design studio and all stakeholders have been consulted we then decide upon which images will be selected for use within our Nokia devices.

For each of the images we accept we pay a standard fee of €500 per image with no limit on how many images may be chosen from each individual student. The university receives a donation towards the faculty of €2500 to use as they wish.”

By Denis Twerenbold, China Central Academy of Fine Arts

Harrigan is about to run what he calls Chapter Two of the project. In May, three students – one student each from New York, Beijing and Lahti – will come to London for a briefing before flying off to either Iceland, the Western Isles or Barcelona on assignment, armed with the latest Nokia phone. Nokia will be looking to buy €10,000 worth of images in total from the three of them.

Next, the project will extend beyond photography to textile design and animation. The Nokia team is working with students at the RCA to create physical textile designs which will be used as textural backgrounds on the phones. The animation students may either work in partnership with textile students to create moving image pieces together or create something on their own. Again, both students and faculties will be paid for their contributions.

More on Future Creatives here

Zhang Chao, China Central Academy of Fine Arts

News: Richard Branson has today revealed new architectural designs from Virgin, including a New York skyscraper shaped like a bunch of balloons, a Sydney tower with the form of a space shuttle and a moon hotel that looks like tubular bells.

The projects come under the banner Virgin Buildings, a new strand of Branson’s empire aimed at “capturing iconic Virgin moments in a new generation of ultra-green skyscrapers”. The series also includes a plane-shaped building for London and a Cape Town structure resembling a kite.

“We’ve been lucky at Virgin to have done some pretty extraordinary things, whether its the music business, trains, planes or even spaceships, but I think this project perhaps caps them all,” said Branson.

According to Branson, each building will feature huge rainwater-harvesting facilities, living walls that can be used for growing food and moving walls that can adapt to suit different rooms and functions.

Describing the plane-shaped London tower, he explained: “This building is going to be the best looking building in the city but it also has the best unique features.”

“One of the very unique features about this building is that it can turn or the floor can turn in order to face the sun, to either generate energy from the sun or to heat a particular floor or heat the whole building.”

Not content with launching the project in every continent, Branson also wants to take the technology to the moon and open a space hotel.

“We’re looking at being the first company in the world to have a building on the moon, and we thought, if we’re going to do it lets try and pay for it by making it a hotel, and of course a pretty good-looking hotel,” he said.

Professor and television personality Brian Cox has applauded the ingenuity of the project. “The physics of creating rotating buildings in dense metropolises should not be underestimated, and efforts to source more of our primary energy from the sun –and put sustainable hotels on the moon – should be applauded.”

Asked about the timing of the announcement a Virgin representative told Dezeen “there are no coincidences at Virgin”.

The announcement follows the news earlier today that two companies have proposed bread-shaped skyscrapers for the City of London.

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Milan 2014: a three-metre-long sofa created by Peugeot Design Lab splices together a piece of volcanic stone and carbon fibre to create a mix of the old and new (+ slideshow).

The design arm of the French car manufacturer mined a single block of volcanic stone from the Auvergne region in France. The material is known for its ability to filter water and was created by volcanic eruption 11,000 years ago.

The team worked with stone cutters who created a flat surface to allow the other half of the sofa to be connected. A seat section was then carefully chiseled out of the stone and polished to a shiny finish, in contrast to the rough, dulled edges of the surrounding rock.

The latitude and longitude coordinates marking the origin of the stone have been chiselled into the material.

“The Onyx sofa is an illustration of a new concept that we intend to explore,” said Cathal Loughnane, the head of Peugeot Design Lab.

“Unique pieces of furniture, made to measure, to suit the choice, origin and personality of the customer, but which always respects a common idea.”

The Carbon Fibre section makes up the larger proportion of the sofa. The material was wrapped around a wooden frame before being attached to the stone. This section also has the coordinates of where the piece was made engraved onto the surface. The whole process took 70 days to complete.

“By means of a sharp straight cut, this contrast is powerful, voluntary and assumed in the way we look at the materials and how they are used,” said Gilles Vidal, Peugeot’s styling director.

According to the team, the sofa weighs more than 400 kilograms and is available in other materials.

Onyx will be showcased alongside seven other sculptures in Milan next week. The series will include lamps, shelves, armchairs and tables and contain a mix of materials including quartz crystal and aluminium, black palm and basalt.

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together in Onyx sofa by Peugeot Design Lab appeared first on Dezeen.