First, there was the likes of Studio Neat, Craighton Berman, and Don Lehman; then came Scott Wilson, Pebble, and Yves Béhar. Fast forward a few years, and products are among the most successful crowdfunded projects of all time — albeit not without the proverbial “risks and challenges” that a new company might encounter along the way.
Just as hardware startups have taken to crowdfunding as a means of getting directly into the hands of consumers, so too have designers and firms found clients among the entrepreneurs and engineers. Map Project Office, or Map for short, are Core77 favs — so much so that we invited Director of Design Jon Marshall to serve as jury captain for the Consumer Products category of our awards program this year. (Map was founded in 2012 — the very year that Pebble and Ouya set still-standing records for the most successful Kickstarter campaigns of all time — by Marshall and his longtime colleagues Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby.)
With six successfully crowdfunded products to its name, the agency offered a behind-the-scenes look at its work for its Kickstarted clients during London Design Festival 2016. Set in a gallery space in Shoreditch, the Map Shop offered a glimpse of the journey from proposal to product. Of the six projects on view, four have made it into the hands of backers; the other two were “sneak peeks” of soon-to-launch campaigns.
We’ve previously featured the Beeline bicycle compass and Hackaball, but the Kano computer kit and BleepBleeps Suzy Snooze baby monitor are equally noteworthy. Each of the four case studies highlighted one aspect of Map’s process — storytelling, collaboration, iterative modelmaking, and manufacturing — but all six projects were presented with 1:1 models, form studies, and multimedia. Slightly different backdrops indicated the two forthcoming projects: Brizi, an air-quality monitor for infants and toddlers, and the Ding smart doorbell.
Kano
Ding
Brizi
From prototypes and mock-ups, knolled as needed, to laptops playing videos on loop, the vignettes nicely illustrated how Map — and industrial designers in general — give shape to ideas. While the sneak previews offered a taste of what’s on the horizon, it was the clear presentation that made the Map Shop a highlight of LDF2016. Check out images of the exhibition below (the captions link directly to each company’s website).
We usually think of sawdust as a long-term hazard to our lungs. But accumulated in large amounts, as in a woodshop or a furniture factory, sawdust carries the short-term risk of explosion. Watch this video of firefighters attempting to quell a smoking dust hopper when the unexpected happens:
That was at a furniture factory in Abbotsford, British Columbia. Wondering how that happened? According to The Abbotsford News, “Flames took hold in a hopper storing dust at a furniture manufacturer…. According to witnesses, crews were dousing the hopper when it was opened. Dust spilled forth and instantly ignited.”
When copious amounts of fine sawdust come into contact with oxygen, and there’s a heat source or spark nearby, the results can be disastrous. A single mini-explosion can have a domino effect, with the shockwave dispersing yet more dust that causes a second explosion, then a third, and so on. To help you understand how these explosions occur and what you can do to prevent them, we tracked down the following video, which explains:
Bloggers have changed the fashion industry, gaining influence and altering the way style filters down through consumers. A thoughtful new piece from Quartz addresses recent slights from both fashion industry editors and the luxury retailer Neiman Marcus……
Chaque couleur véhicule des sensations et des sentiments qui lui sont propres. Parmi elles, le bleu est souvent associé à la sagesse, au calme ou à la rêverie. Le photographe François Peyranne a très visiblement une passion pour cette couleur, comme le montre sa série photo ALL I NEED IS BLUE, dans laquelle les tons bleutés se succèdent la plupart du temps dans une ambiance aquatique ou montagneuse. Des clichés tantôt aériens, tantôt pris au niveau du sol, qui donnent envie de profiter du soleil et des vacances quelques temps encore.
The Corian Casual shower tray has been conceived for more relaxed environments and is available in eight dimensions, while the Corian Delight bath is available in three models; oval freestanding, rectangular with top and oval with top.
There are also three types of Corian Delight bathtubs, including an oval freestanding version
“Combining these baths and shower trays with DuPont Corian cladding, wet walls and surfaces, interior designers, industry professionals and dealers can create bathroom solutions to meet a wide variety of demands in terms of style and functionality,” said DuPont.
The second option is a rectangular bath with top
Corian, a solid surface material, is used by architects and designers in commercial projects including office buildings, schools and hospitals, as well as in the home.
The third version is oval with a top
Further details about the latest range can be found on the DuPont Corian website.
As his giant thumbs-up sculpture Really Good is unveiled in Trafalgar Square, David Shrigley explains how his work straddles art, graphics and cartoons (+ interview + slideshow).
His crude and distinctive hand drawings, which make funny and often dark comments on everyday life, have been turned into T-shirts, crockery, stationery and even political posters.
Functional items such as these are usually the preserve of designers but Shrigley brushed off the observation.
“I don’t see myself as a designer necessarily,” he told Dezeen. “I think art and design are two different things. Design is about form and art is more about ideas. Not all art, but as a rule.”
With his sculpture of a huge hand with a bizarrely elongated thumb unveiled today on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, he spoke to Dezeen about about his work.
The project to design a large-scale piece for the empty stone plinth in the square is one of the UK’s most prestigious public art commissions and has previously been filled by world-class artists including Marc Quinn and Antony Gormley.
Shrigley told Dezeen that didn’t expect to be given the commission and as a result his proposal was “a bit ridiculous”.
“My explanation was written from the point of view of some kind of crazy political, policy statement, which said that if you say everything is good then it will act as some self-fulfilling prophecy and make London, the UK, the world a better place by doing that,” Shrigley said.
Shrigley – who has been vocally anti-Brexit – acknowledged there was a danger that this 10-metre-high gesture of approval could be misinterpreted and appropriated.
“I have jokingly said when I’ve spoken to journalists about it recently that it means whatever you want it to mean, but it doesn’t mean that; everything except an endorsement of Brexit, or right-wing political ideas,” he said.
Shrigley, 48, was born in Macclesfield, studied at Glasgow School of Art, and now lives and works in Brighton. He was awarded the prestigious Turner Prize in 2013.
“I have made illustrations in the past and my drawings could be considered to be cartoons,” said Shrigley. “But then cartoonists don’t generally get the Fourth Plinth commission.”
Read the edited transcript from our interview with David Shrigley below:
Olivia Mull: Tell me about the ideas behind your Really Good Fourth Plinth sculpture and how it came about.
David Shrigley: The commissioning process came about about four years ago. They ask a group of artists to submit a paper proposal and a drawing. At the time I submitted mine, I didn’t anticipate that I would actually be given the commission. So with that in mind, my proposal was a bit ridiculous.
I had made a few drawings of hands with really long thumbs – one drawing in particular that says “everything is good”. It got used on T-shirts and greeting cards. I kind of like that idea, and I guess it’s stupid, that a thumbs-up is a universal gesture of approval, and therefore if the thumb is a bit bigger, it must be an even greater approval.
My explanation for the proposal was written from the point of view of some kind of crazy political, policy statement, which said that if you say everything is good then it will act as some self-fulfilling prophecy and make London, the UK, the world a better place by doing that.
Olivia Mull: Are you worried about how this message will be appropriated or interpreted post-Brexit?
David Shrigley: Obviously it’s a ridiculous statement because if the provision of public art improves society demonstrably, then there would be a ministry for public art and the government would spend a lot more money than they do.
But having been given the commission, I suddenly had to stand by that statement somehow, and I oddly believe that to some extent. I thought about the fact that, as an artist, you have to believe that your work makes the world a better place on some level – even if the content matter is quite dark or very critical of society. I feel that way about my work. So in that sense the work is both ironic and sincere at the same time.
So with Brexit and things being a bit of a mess at the moment, I suppose the other side of that coin is that it’s an endorsement. It could be seen as an endorsement for things that are already happening i.e. Brexit. I don’t think you have to delve very far into my social media output to realise that I was very much against leaving the EU.
Olivia Mull: How do you think Brexit will effect the creative industries in the UK?
David Shrigley: It’s very difficult to know what will happen but my main objection to leaving the EU was that the motivation behind it is about an aspiration that I don’t approve of, while the EU itself represents one that I do approve of, i.e. cooperation between nations and the fact we are better together in sharing common goals.
To me, the fact that the EU is very inefficient at actually doing that isn’t a good enough reason to be leaving it. I think that motivation and the rejection of that kind of aspiration doesn’t bode well for the arts.
Earlier this month, Shrigley also unveiled a giant sculpture of a shopping list in New York’s Central Park
David Shrigley: How do you feel about putting a massive thumbs-up alongside the previous commissions, which have been mostly serious?
David Shrigley: Hans Haacke’s piece [Gift Horse, a horse skeleton that occupied the Fourth Plinth prior to Shirgley’s piece] was commissioned at the same time as mine and I was very aware that he’d written a press release himself about his own work. He had tied it all up and there wasn’t really any room for misunderstanding what the piece meant.
But with mine, everything is not tied up at all. I was acutely aware that there’s room for it to mean something completely different. The nature of the statements I make is that they’re ambiguous, deliberately ambiguous; they exist between metaphorical and literal statement. That’s my terrain I suppose as an artist.
And the danger of things being misinterpreted is part of the excitement of making a public art. I have jokingly said when I’ve spoken to journalists about it recently that it means whatever you want it to mean, but it doesn’t mean that; everything except an endorsement of Brexit, or right-wing political ideas.
Olivia Mull: Would you be hurt if it was interpreted like that?
David Shrigley: I say that ironically because I’m not in control of that, and whilst there is a blurb to be read near the piece, people tend not read it and just see the piece for what it really is.
Trafalgar Square is – more than any other space in London even, and certainly in the country – a space that is frequented by everybody in the world at some point. It’s impossible to anticipate how people from here, there and everywhere will view it. I think that’s the nature of public art and the Fourth Plinth and what makes it a really exciting opportunity.
Obviously that is perhaps a problem for Hans Haacke but it isn’t for me, I kind of embrace the idea. For me the work is a proposal. I think that’s very much how I go about making artwork, in that the meaning and the resonance they have comes together after the work is made and displayed. I don’t always have a lot of concrete expectations as to what will happen.
Shrigley has made several smaller bronze sculptures including this pointing hand
Olivia Mull: Would you design a giant landmark like Anthony Gormley’s Angel of the North next?
David Shrigley: I guess it would be nice to do something like that but I don’t necessarily feel that the piece in Trafalgar Square or the piece that I made in New York qualifies me to do that. Because whilst this is a huge statement, and it has a huge presence, it is only there for a year and a half, and then there will be another artwork, which will function very differently.
In that sense, Gormley’s Angel of the North has to address and accept a very different set of problems. What is great about it is that very quickly people stop seeing it as an artwork and they see it as a landmark.
It represents a place and something very different that Gormley stopped being in control of a long time ago. It will still be there a long after Gormley, you and I are gone probably. That’s very exciting.
Olivia Mull: I’ve heard you described in very different ways – as a graphic designer, an artist, an illustrator and a cartoonist. How do you define yourself and does it matter?
David Shrigley: No, I don’t think it really matters that much. I think if you want a more municipal overarching title for what I do, artist is probably the more accurate one, even though I have made illustrations in the past and my drawings could be considered to be cartoons.
I think illustrator is perhaps a more difficult definition in that illustration its something quite specific. An illustration illustrates an idea, brief or text. But cartoonist is certainly fine. But then cartoonists don’t generally get the Fourth Plinth commission.
Shrigley is best known for his crude and distinctive hand drawings, which make funny and often dark comments on everyday life
Olivia Mull: You have designed a collection for Tiger, the LondonIsOpen poster and even a mascot for a football team. How do you feel about creating things that are more traditionally the preserve of designers?
David Shrigley: I see everything as a project and an exercise if you like. You’re given a brief and you respond to that. So the LondonIsOpen poster for example is a piece of illustration. Because I’ve been working with the GLA for the Fourth Plinth project, they just asked me if I’d like to participate.
But I didn’t quite realise they would take my thing that I did in an afternoon and it would be splashed all over the shop. I was quite taken aback by that but obviously very pleased – I don’t necessarily think it’s something that I’m particularly good at.
But I don’t see myself as a designer necessarily. I plough a certain furrow within graphic communication, which is about crude drawings with text and some slippage between image and texts, and that’s the thing that I’m interested in. And also about certain attitude toward drawing and making images, which is informed more by Marcel Duchamp than by the greats of graphic design.
Olivia Mull: Do you think you are most often defined as an artist because your work is very funny and it is about ideas, whereas design tends to be very serious and functional?
David Shrigley: I wouldn’t say that. I think art and design are two different things. Design is about form and art is more about ideas. Not all art, but as a rule. Designers are interested in the form of things and the way form can be used to convey a message or to fill a certain purpose, whereas artists are generating the idea in the first place and then figuring out how to convey them.
I think it’s better to have designers designing stuff than artists. I think that all the stuff that I designed is alright. I like the crockery that I designed in Sketch, but I don’t necessarily want to eat my dinner off it. I think there’s nicer stuff out there that designers have made.
I went to art school and a lot of my friends gravitated towards design whereas I felt, maybe more arrogantly, like I had something to say that people needed to listen to. I’m not quite sure what it was and still not quite sure what it is, but I still want to say it anyway.
When I do book signings, I’m very aware that there are people who don’t see the work as fine art, but that’s great. I’m happy it can be seen through a different lens by different people. I think also that the more exposure I have as a creative person to different disciplines, the better it is.
I’m happy in the world of fine art, because you can kind of do whatever you like, whereas you can’t in the world of design as there’s always a client saying they don’t like something you’ve done. I guess I have the same attitude I did at art school. I don’t really think about why someone asks me to do something, I just say yes. And I always feel like it’s their responsibility for having asked me if I do it badly.
Olivia Mull: What are your favourite and least favourite projects you’ve been asked to do?
David Shrigley: I think you learn something from every project. Hopefully the thing you learn is not just that you don’t ever want to do that again, although I have learnt that from doing certain things.
I’ve done some community public-based projects which end up being really bureaucratic and very diluted by having to collaborate with people who don’t really like art. And conversely the best things I’ve done are where you collaborate with people who do like art or who do something creatively that you can’t do.
For example, I made a record recently with [Scottish musician] Malcom Middleton, where I wrote a lot of lyrics and recorded actors speaking my words and Malcom added the musical element. That was great because Malcom is a great musician who does something that I can’t do. I’m not sure I do something that he necessarily can’t but I do have my own take on it.
David Shrigley: I’m one of those kids who was quite happy as a child to be left alone with a pencil and a piece of paper, and I would occupy myself. I liked making sculptures out of cardboard boxes from Tesco.
I liked art at school and figured that was the thing I really wanted to do. I studied at Glasgow School of Art, hung around in Glasgow when I left and lived in Glasgow for 27 years. Then I moved to Brighton last year.
I think the interesting thing about my career is that I didn’t think it was possible to ever have a career as an artist. Not because I wasn’t good enough, but because I didn’t actually realise that that was permissible or that there was any such occupation. I thought that I would have to do something else, but was pleasantly surprised that I didn’t.
Olivia Mull: Why do you think that you have been successful as an artist?
David Shrigley: Good luck I suppose. Being in the right place at the right time, doing a certain thing that occupies a certain space that people respond to. I know a lot of artists of my generation who haven’t really had much success who I think are hugely talented.
I never intended to be the graphic artist that I am. When I left art school I didn’t have a studio or any resources. I could make drawings at home in my shared apartment and then I started publishing books as a means to disseminate what I did in the days prior to the internet.
Noor Tagouri, a reporter for Newsy, has made history as the first woman to wear a hijab in Playboy.
While there’s absolutely nothing racy about Tagouri’s photo, she has received some backlash. Here’s just a sample, from The Independent:
“I don’t see what there is to celebrate when a hijabi woman—member of an already maligned part of society—makes the ‘revolutionary’ choice to join forces with a sexist establishment that has debased other women by reducing them to sexual objects for generations.”
Despite this strong take, the majority of reactions we’ve seen have been supportive.
On a sunny day in Los Angeles, Blue Bottle founder James Freeman sits at a table near a window in his bustling, light-filled cafe. Following up on an intriguing invitation to drink coffee together, we sit down and he pulls out a box of white packets……
You’re probably already familiar with what riders look like on a recumbent bicycle, lazily leaning back, but if the Bird of Prey bike takes off you’ll soon see them in an entirely new position: semi-prone. In other words, this bicycle has its riders leaning all the way forward, legs stretched out the back, as if flying through the air, with their hips and elbows fully supported through leather pads. A creation of California-based architect John Aldridge, it’s been in the works since 1991 but only now hitting the production line. Aside from looking a little bizarre, the position is said to have its advantages, such as increased agility through a lower center of gravity, an improved aerodynamic profile, and increased power production:Due to the Bird of Prey’s ergonomic layout, riders are reportedly easily able to turn its big 60-tooth rear chainring (linked to a 36/11 cassette), producing more torque than would be possible than with a smaller ring. They’re also able to spin like crazy when climbing hills, with their legs fully extended.It is not cheap! It costs a whopping $8,500…(Read…)
Based on a stranger-than-fiction true story, King Cobra is a deliciously dark, twisted plunge into the behind-the-scenes world of the pornography industry. It’s 2006, YouTube is in its infancy, and internet porn is still behind a paywall. Taking the stage name Brent Corrigan, a fresh-faced, wannabe adult video performer (Garrett Clayton) is molded into a star by Stephen (Christian Slater), a closeted gay porn mogul who runs the skin flick empire Cobra Video from his seemingly ordinary suburban home. But as Brent’s rise and demands for more money put him at odds with his boss, he also attracts the attention of a rival producer (James Franco) and his unstable lover (Keegan Allen) who will stop at nothing to squash Cobra Video and steal its number one star. Co-starring Alicia Silverstone and Molly Ringwald, King Cobra is part delirious, tabloid-shocker satire, part American tragedy.Opening in theaters and VOD October 21stDirected by: Justin KellyStarring: James Franco, Christian Slater, Molly Ringwald, Alicia Silverstone, Keegan Allen, & Garrett Clayton..(Read…)
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Kano
Ding
Brizi
Brizi
Noor Tagouri, a reporter for Newsy, has made history as the first woman to wear a hijab in Playboy.
