Hasta La Ideas

While Robbie de Villiers and Jeremy Dooley want to design the typeface Chatype to celebrate everything that the growing community of Chattanooga, Tennessee has to offer, I’m supporting them on Kickstarter simply because they’ve created a beautiful font. Not that I don’t like Chattanooga, a city that “boasts a burgeoning design community, a music scene that’s playing some fierce catch-up, and a culture of entrepreneurship that’s gaining national attention,” but I’m more interested in de Villiers and Dooley’s goal to create a city-wide visual identity based on the European city model.

“We want Chattanooga to be the poster child for municipal branding in America,” de Villiers and Dooley say. “Many European cities commission a custom typeface and use it to set themselves apart. If you’ve ever traveled abroad, you’ve noticed how signage in different regions seems to really pop – because it’s unique and communicates something new on that route. In America, a similar movement is beginning. Chattanooga can spark the typographic revolution!”

Chatype has until March 1st to reach its very reasonable $10,000 goal. If the idea of home-grown visual identity is important to you, consider supporting de Villiers and Dooley.

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Portland, OR-based design studio New isn’t, um, new to the portable audio game: their portfolio includes work for the likes of Logitech and UltimateEars, among other high-profile clients. However, the “Zooka” bluetooth speaker marks Patrick Triato & co.’s first foray into the exciting (and, at times, lucrative) world of Kickstarted product design.

The “Zooka” is specifically designed for the iPad, which dictates its size (it attaches to the tablet lengthwise) and shape: the ellipsoid tube or ‘bar’ of speaker has a slot where, again, it can be attached to an Apple device (viewed from the side, it looks like a slightly squished Pac-Man). The speakers themselves—a solid five times louder than the iPad’s tinny onboard drivers—are located on either end of the bar, which has an additional cutaway at dead center to accommodate a MacBook Pro without blocking the iSight camera.

Instead of imitating Apple’s sleek aluminum aesthetic, New has wisely opted to use medical-grade silicone for “Zooka.” The soft-touch exterior offers both superior durability and ergonomics, while its minimalist, monochromatic form factor complements the glass+metal of the devices themselves.

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By Hannes Grobe (Own work) via Wikimedia Commons

Is crowdfunding right for your project?

From my introductory essay, you can already get the sense that I’m pro-crowdfunding. But let’s be honest with ourselves, in an ideal world where everyone has access to easy, no-strings attached money, no one would look for outside funding. Just like seeking out loans or investors, there are pros and cons to crowdfunding your project. Here are the two big questions you should ask yourself prior to committing.

1) Do I have the time to make this commitment?

If you are funded, do you have the flexibility in your schedule, or at the very least, the willingness to forgo sleep for the several months it will take to get your project done in a timely matter? Once you get funded, you are on the hook to produce. Your Backers aren’t just backing your idea, they’re backing you—financially and emotionally. There really is a bond that Backers feel towards the projects they support and they want nothing but success for you and your idea. Real delays and setbacks can be tolerated, but you harm that trust by stopping because you get too busy or lose interest. Moreover, you risk not only damaging your reputation, but you give your Backers a reason to think twice before supporting other crowdfunding projects.

I suppose the real question to ask yourself is, “Do I believe in this idea so strongly that I am compelled to see it through, no matter what?” If the answer is yes, then…

2) Do I want to develop this publicly?

Developing something out in the open for people who have already pre-ordered your idea is THE major difference between a traditional product development process and one done through Crowdfunding. It’s not for everyone or every project.

Let’s start by thinking about the process of how things get made. Take this fairly typical, over-simplified development process timeline. Many design consultancies have some of variation of this on their websites, minus the dollar signs.

Click for larger image.

A chart like this looks fairly innocuous until you start thinking of the pain points in the process. I have highlighted those in red. For designers, the easy stuff is in the blue region. You have an idea, then you do some sketches and a 3D rendering. But any fool can have an idea and 3D rendering. At some point you pass the rubicon of moving from a concept to proving that your concept works. It’s that process of turning nothing into something that’s the real trick. If we’re truly honest with ourselves…

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I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner—after all, the Paper of Record has been reporting on the perhaps inevitable confluence of fashion and the rise of cycling (don’t call it a trend) for the past couple years, including a particularly telling September 2009 article entitled “Whose Bike Are You Wearing?” In other words, as much as couture has picked up on the growing popularity of biking, we’ve seen far less of the opposite.

Enter Carson Leh’s beautifully brogued bicycle saddles, which have far more in common with handmade dress shoes than, say, a $20,000 Hublot × BMC. Rather, they hearken back to the signature details of oxfords and derbys, a logical intersection of Leh’s obsession with vintage footwear and his passion for cycling. Alden Seats is the result, and his inaugural collection of saddles features wingtip-worthy patterns and faux-quilting for a specific contingent of style-conscious cyclists. (As a member of that target audience, I was interested to learn that the now-ornamental perforations originally served as a drainage system for leather shoes intended for wet terrain.)

Like Melbourne’s Busyman Bicycles, Leh started out by refurbishing existing saddles with custom patterns. Thus, Alden seats are a “line of ready-to-ride leather covered seats that maintain and improve the same hand made quality and style of my current custom seats.”

There will be three seat shapes to start, with four leather colors and nine distinct designs. Styles will include a retro road and track seat, a Dutch-style comfort seat and a slim Pivotal style BMX and MTB seat. These three styles cover the main markets of cycling. Alden would primarily be centered around the rapidly growing community of cyclists purchasing lightweight Dutch-style city bikes and custom bike builders of road and track bikes.

Video after the click…

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I wish the device was a tad smaller, but I love the idea of being able to automatically retract and store whatever cables I want. The Hub is a round aluminum housing containing a spring mechanism; wrap your cable inside, close it up, hit the button, and your cable woes go away. The push-button action looks pretty awesome:

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