Hasta La Ideas

Good design is innovative.
Good design makes a product useful.
Good design is aesthetic.
Good design makes a product understandable.
Good design is unobtrusive.
Good design is honest.
Good design is long-lasting.
Good design is thorough down to the last detail.
Good design is environmentally friendly.
Good design is as little design as possible.

In support of As Little Design As Possible: The Work of Dieter Rams, Core77 and Phaidon are hosting a design contest to celebrate Rams’ work and design principles.

Add your sketch to the Core77 Dieter Rams product timeline which will be exhibited at the Phaidon Flagship store in New York City for a chance to win a copy of the new book.

All entries are due by August 8th. Download the contest rules and official entry form here. PIck your favorite work by Rams from our selection and sumbit your black and white sketch to mail[at]core77.com for our product timeline!

Core77 and Phaidon present…
Good Design is Long Lasting
August 10-24, 2011
Phaidon Store
83 Wooster
New York City

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Fund an app that will bring the Twin Towers back to life

The destruction of the World Trade Center towers was indisputably a massive loss for every American. For lifelong New Yorkers, however, something else was lost. The beauty that the twin towers added to the New York skyline is irreplaceable, and the sight of the buildings provided the background for many fond memories—not to mention a beacon for orientation upon emerging from a foreign subway stop. 110 Stories is an iPhone app concept by Brian August that will use augmented reality to place the Twin Towers back in to view.

The app, currently in the process of being funded through crowd-sourcing on Kickstarter, would consist of three steps: orient, augment, comment. The app will guide users to the appropriate direction to view the phantom towers, then superimpose a ghost image of the towers upon the real one, creating a conglomerate image. Users will then be able to include their personal story regarding the moment on multiple social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter as well as the app’s own site.

Brian August’s vision does not stop with the app, however. The lover of iconic imagery has a Phase Two of the project in mind: an installation that would consist of identical benches placed in prime viewing spots all over the city as a physical manifestation of the app, reminding all who visit there of the majesty that was the Twin Towers.

Australian skincare brand Aesop have launched in New York with a kiosk at Grand Central that’s made from over 1000 copies of the New York Times.

The newspapers were stacked, torn and bound in a wooden frame then topped with sheets of powder-coated aluminium.

The kiosk is Aesop’s first venture into the American market and was designed by Brooklyn architect Jeremy Barbour of Tacklebox.

Aesop are gaining quite a reputation for unusual material choices in their stores – see their branches in Paris, Tokyo and Singapore in our earlier stories.

Here are some more inventive uses for old newspapers.

Photographs are by Juliana Sohn.

Here are some more details from Aesop:

Aesop has been a purveyor of exceptional skin, hair and body products since 1987. The Melbourne company recently opened their first US store inside New York’s Grand Central Terminal. The kiosk, designed by Aesop Director Dennis Paphitis and NY-based architect Jeremy Barbour of Tacklebox, is located in the Graybar passage and offers a selection of Aesop’s line of products. To celebrate this opening, Aesop has created in collaboration with Dia a Jet Set kit that is sold exclusively at the kiosk.

The kiosk was built out of 1,000+ old recycled NY Times newspapers and power coated aluminum which provides the surface on which the products sit. The kiosk is meant to serve as Aesop’s handshake to NY and NY commuters as it is the first retail endeavor on the continent. The handshake is a symbol of both the an introduction to the brand as well as the use Aesop makes of hand demonstrations which are used to introduce Aesop to new customers. The kiosk was intended as a place for information, as well as a place of familiarity, hence the use of the NY Times which is part of the commuters’ daily routine.

Aesop has attracted a loyal following from its beginning for its commitment to high-quality product ingredients, a sophisticated aesthetic, and intelligent communication with its customers. This irreverent company will also open stores in August in Nolita and University Place.

Graybar Passage
Grand Central Terminal
New York, NY 10017

See also:

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Aesop Saint-Honoré by March Studio	Aesop store by March Studio	Aesop at Merci by March Studio

We’ve made a few changes to Dezeen which hopefully will make it easier for people to navigate the site and find what they want, without detracting from the clarity and simplicity of our layout. 

The first change is that it’s now much easier to navigate from www.dezeen.com – which we’ve renamed Dezeen Magazine – to our other sites, via the links that appear to the left of the logo. Dezeen Screen, our video site, already shares this navigation while Dezeen Jobs will be updated soon. Dezeen Wire – our newswire service – is due to come on stream soon, with a site of its own and an enhanced daily news service.

The biggest change to Dezeen Magazine is visible in the right-hand column. First, we have divided our content up into the three most popular areas – architecture, interiors and design – and each now has its own easy-to-remember URL:

www.dezeen.com/architecture
www.dezeen.com/interiors
www.dezeen.com/design

As Dezeen continues to grow these will become sites in their own right, with www.dezeen.com serving as the entry point to all our content streams.

Further down the right-hand column we’ve introduced an enhanced navigation structure, providing more links to categories under the architecture, design and interiors headings plus also providing links through to Dezeen Screen, Dezeen Jobs and our watch store.

We’ve tidied up a few other areas of the site and introduced a number of other improvements. The changes are part of a major recoding of the site that should make it faster and easier to browse Dezeen’s family of sites while also providing a platform for some exciting growth plans we have lined up for the near future.

We are still debugging the site so please let us know if you spot anything that doesn’t work properly, and let us know what you think!

Love from Dezeen

PS: yesterday was our best ever traffic day with 97,751 unique visits. Thanks to all our readers!

What’s the best possible way to get people worked into an angry froth? Easy. Just combine one part religion and one part World Trade Center site and sit back and watch it lather itself. As you might have read, in quieter, more peaceful times, a steel T-beam found in the wreckage after September 11th that had been preserved and placed in St. Peter’s church because it resembled a cross, was quietly being lowered into the soon-to-open and already extremely popular National September 11th Memorial and Museum. After that everything went south. A group called American Atheists have called for its removal, filing a lawsuit (pdf) that argues that “government enshrinement of the cross was an impermissible mingling of church and state” and that they “not allow the many Christians who died get preferential representation over the many non-Christians who suffered the same fate.” This, of course, is the sort of thing that outrages the sorts of people who get outraged about such things. Chief among the critics of the critics has been the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), who has vowed to help fight off the lawsuit by “preparing a critical amicus brief to be filed in support of the Cross memorial.” As the Village Voice reports, the ACLJ was founded by Pat Robertson and was also “one of the groups who tried to block the Islamic center in downtown New York.” Hearing reference to that lengthy screaming match from last year, and now knowing who is already involved in the argument, you’re no doubt thinking, “Oh no. How long is this fight going to last?” which is exactly the same question we have. Our advice: settle in and get comfortable.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.