Hasta La Ideas

Zombies: We’ve read books on how to kill them, seen movies with every possible breed of undead enemy and created series of television shows depicting the toll that the zombie apocalpyse can take on our fragile human bonds (I’m look at you, Walking Dead). But have you ever really seen—or thought about—all of the supplies a proper Zombie raid survival would take? (The scenes from Zombieland, involving Woody Harrelson and a trunk full of guns/blunt objects, don’t count.) But Donal O’Keeffe, a UK-based motion designer at ITN, has done the research for you and put together a series of Zombie Survival Vehicles. Created with Cinema 4D’s Physical Renderer, O’Keeffe was inspired by his interest for highly detailed cross-section 3D designs.

I wanted to create naratives and characters within the details. I wanted to create a series of renders that people could spend hours looking at, to see something new with every fresh viewing. Each one was rendered and created for large format printing. Plus I felt the concept of protection from the outside world and our attempt to cling onto some form of reality was fascinating. These themes lead me to the zombie survival vehicles. Match this with me being a huge George Romero fan and you can the see where the concept spawned.

The tiny contents inside the vehicles were modeled and textured by the designer, aside from a few of the more complex items (i.e. guns), which he purchased. Most of the actual cars were also modeled by O’Keeffe.

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Model Chair

The opportunity to be surrounded by young and bright designers is never a great as in the midst of design school. The unfortunate downside is that being educated among a wealth of talent may lead to homogenous approaches to design through traditional university education. The RISD Furniture Department undergraduate class appears to have avoided that pitfall, producing some very interesting (and diverse) young designers in 2013. The work runs the gamut from the elegant compound curvatures of Laura Kishimoto’s woodworking to the Playful Pop of Jamie Wolfond’s approach to design for manufacturing.

So to does their fellow classmate Benjamin Kicic offer yet another approach with a selection of furniture objects that seem to only be described as politely subversive. Paying both homage to centuries of furniture design history with a dash of dry humor about the future of manufacturing, Kicic strikes a chord dealing with old forms and new materials. Oftentimes, projects that attempt to bridge the (expansive) gap between traditional making and the age of digital reproduction can fall into the ‘lukewarm novelty’ category, but Kicic’s work makes the jump successfully. The careful blending of what should be strongly opposed design elements open up a mature conversation about the canon of design history and uncertainty of design future.

Model Chair Mock-up without Bronze Joinery

Kicic’s Model Chair, in particular, was devised as an exercise in departure from the traditional approach to furniture making. Although object design is often heavy on hands-off planning and forever married to craft, Kicic inverted the process, embracing an ad-hoc approach. The chair attempts to celebrate temporary joinery (composed here of hot glue) by making it permanent through bronze casting. This dedication to diverting the ‘usual’ approach to construction or material is a thread that runs through much of Kicic’s work, culminating recently completed BFA thesis.

Initial Joint created with Hot Glue and later cast in white bronze

With furniture, an object’s value can often be determined by the way the parts are connected and how much craft and time goes into these connections. With this chair, the form was chiefly dictated by a process largely removed from craft and much more gestural. Preciousness and joint strength was returned through casting the hot glue in white bronze. My goal [with the Model Chair] was to create something that was both calculated and gestural, that played with a new way of working and thinking, a structurally sound object created with a quick and messy gesture.

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Love ’em or hate ’em, the Miami Heat prevailed over the San Antonio Spurs to take their second straight NBA Championship last night. The seven-game series is already being hailed as an instant classic as the remarkably even matchup made for a thoroughly entertaining clash between Gregg Popovich’s squad of longtime contenders and Eric Spoelstra’s dominant team, who had the best record in the regular season.

Over on our sister portfolio site Coroflot, London-based illustrator Alexis Marcou recently posted a series of wall graphics for New York City’s House of Hoops, a basketball-centric Nike outpost in Harlem—just in time for last night’s victory. In addition to Lebron James (pictured here, obviously), the series includes his Heat teammate Dwyane Wade, as well as perennial All-Stars Kobe Bryant, Chris Paul, Amar’e Stoudemire and more (though the Spurs stars Tim Duncan and Tony Parker are conspicuously absent)—check out the rest here.

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For his final year project at the Dublin Institute of Technology, Henry Daly decided to develop a new typology for an off-road recreational vehicle. The Exo is essentially a forward-facing recumbent electric three-wheeler, in which the operator lays prone in a torpedo-like position, as in skeleton or Cresta sledding.

Exo is an electric off-road vehicle for recreational use on dirt, sand and gravel. The aim of the project is to merge man and machine providing a deeply immersive driving experience. The vehicle leans during cornering connecting body motion to vehicle motion and allows a higher maximum cornering speed. The birdcage frame is fabricated from aluminium tubing. Power comes from a 10kW DC brushless motor run from a Lithium-Ion battery pack. The project was completed as a final year project in Dublin Institute of Technology.

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By Herald Ureña, College for Creative Studies ’13

I chose the name LOHOCLA, backwards for Alcohol, for this project in order to suggest that my new design inherits the past by incorporating it into a modern object. It is a redesign of the growler, a reusable vessel to carry beer from the pub or store to your home, commonly used in the USA but also used in Australia and Canada.

I investigated the history of the growler and based a new design on the product’s forms from the past so the reinterpretation has an aspect of ‘design memory.’ Growlers in USA circa 1800’s we actually repurposed metal buckets. During the 50’s and 60’s people would reuse packaging and food containers as growlers, including waxed cardboard containers and plastic storage products. Half-gallon jugs became popular in the 80’s, though those glass jugs were also re-purposed (apple) cider or moonshine jugs. The design of the growler shifted to closed containers once refrigeration became standard in American homes.

It was important to me that the redesign of the growler keep an aesthetic of other preexisting objects in some way. The overall shape still looks like the cider jug but I have created a handle that is reminiscent of the bucket handles from the 1800’s, as well as the look of a common pitcher.

Function

I investigated ergonomics from the point of view of the common user, bartender, waiters, user trends, consumption habits at home, in restaurants, and pubs. I then decided to ensure that the shape of this growler could also be used as a decanter / pitcher as well, so it can be used for serving in a pub if the user decides to stay. This growler is smaller in size, contrary to high American consumption habits. Existing designs are notoriously difficult to clean; thus, I made the top wider to facilitate this process, as well as for pouring. To reduce the material used on the cap, the cap now screws on to the inside of the glass wall and is also hollow to reduce weight. I added texture to the bottom of the growler so that the bartender can grip it and fill it up easier. There is also a bubble marking system on the outer surface of the glass, marking every half pint and indicating exactly how much to fill the jug with an extruded line on the surface of the jug. It is intended to be filled very close to the top, near the lid, in order to reduce airspace in the growler so the beer stays fresher.

Although some growlers are now being made out of aluminum, people complain about not being able to see the beer, particularly when someone is serving them from a growler. The interior of the growler has a helix that circulates the beer as it is being poured to keep it circulating and equally fresh throughout the drinking experience—the user will not get the bitter butt of the beer that is sometimes discarded altogether. That large inner helix clearly is the driving differentiating element applied.

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