Hasta La Ideas

In the next movie we filmed during Dezeen Live at 100% Design, designer Asif Khan explains how soap bubbles, rubbish bins and a neighbour’s flower bed have all provided inspiration for his work.

Above: images from Asif Khan and David Knight’s blog

Khan begins by showing the first of five images, a composite of pictures including amusing signage at an east London market and a vapour trail from a u-turning plane, posted onto the blog he shares with designer and author David Knight. “It started as a place where we could post images for each other to look at,” Khan explains. ”It’s a pot where I harvest ideas from quite often.”

As an example of using his vicinity as stimulus, he describes how while struggling to come up with an idea for his 2010 residency at London’s Design Museum he used a plant growing on the route to his studio as inspiration for his Harvest furniture collection. “It was staring me in the face, this thing, so I thought why don’t I ask the lady who owns the garden if I can take a bit of this and see what we can make from it.”

Above: gypsophilia plant (left) and a table from the Harvest furniture collection

He proceeds to recount the instance he began to think of architectural applications for soap bubbles while bathing his children. “Why can’t we make a wall out of a material like this which you could sculpt? Why can’t it be a roof? What would it mean?” This lead to experiments with helium and soap to create floating cloud-like forms, as shown in his next pair of images.

Khan then shows the Coca-Cola Beatbox pavilion at the London 2012 Olympic park that he designed with Pernilla Ohrstedt, which has elements that play sounds of performing athletes recorded by music producer Mark Ronson.

Above: clouds (left) and an experiment with helium and soap bubbles (right)

He finishes by showing his design for this year’s Designers in Residence exhibition, inspired by fabrics used to keep flies away from rubbish in Tokyo. “You can see the impression that the cardboard boxes have left on the fabric; it’s got this memory. We used a fabric quite similar to this with electrical conductivity to form booths around each designer’s work.”

“I’m interested in new ways of doing things and the future of what the space around us might look like,” he concludes.

Above: a journey (left) and the Coca-Cola Beatbox pavilion at the Olympic Park (right)

Dezeen Live was a series of discussions between Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs and a number of designers and critics that took place as part of the talks programme at design exhibition 100% Design during this year’s London Design Festival.

Each of the four one-hour shows, recorded live in front of an audience, included three interviews plus music from Dezeen Music Project featuring a new act each day. Over the next few weeks we’ll be posting all the movies we filmed during the talks.

Above: netting used to keep flies from bins (left) and this year’s Designers in Residence exhibition at London’s Design Museum (right)

Movies we’ve already published from the series include talks with IDEO UK design director Tom Hulme, architect and writer Sam Jacob and designer Katrin Olina.

The music featured in this movie is a track called Snotty by Reset Robot. You can listen to more music by Reset Robot on Dezeen Music Project.

See all our stories about Asif Khan »
See all our stories about Dezeen Live »
See all our stories about London Design Festival 2012 »

The post “I’m interested in what the future might
look like” – Asif Khan at Dezeen Live appeared first on Dezeen.

Architect and writer Sam Jacob takes the audience at Dezeen Live on a rapid-fire journey from a prehistoric standing stone to the Argos catalogue and USB cigarettes in this interview filmed at 100% Design during the London Design Festival.

“Is the making of objects something that allows us to create human culture and separate ourselves from what we were previously?” asks Jacob, director of architects FAT and author of the Strange Harvest blog, after going to see the oldest human-made exhibit at the British Museum. “Could we be human without objects?”

Each speaker from Dezeen Live at 100% Design was asked to select five images to talk about and Jacob begins by showing an ancient standing stone. ”Taking something that exists and shifting it 90 degrees is an incredible expression of becoming human,” he says.

Above: an ancient standing stone

“This is the other end of the spectrum – the laminated book of dreams” Jacob explains, introducing his second image, which brings the story of object culture up to date. “I have always loved the Argos catalogue. I would love to take the contents of the British Museum out and restock it with the contents of Argos,” he muses. “We could look at ourselves and see what it is that we do and make. The Argos catalogue gives us a slice through what we are.”

Jacob’s next image is a heavily filtered Instagram photo. “Instagram tells us a lot about where we are and what we want to do with the world,” he suggests, since it combines digital technology, the internet and mobile devices. “But it’s allied with this sickly retro-nostalgia. It’s like everything is from the 1970s.”

To Jacob, Instagram is an example of how new technology often recycles the past instead of embracing the future, relying on skeuomorphs – redundant forms from earlier iterations of a product –  instead of finding new, more appropriate forms. “The idea of a futuristic future must have stopped some time around 1982″ he says.

Above: the Argos catalogue

Jacob’s next example is an electronic cigarette, which he describes as an object “on the frontier of something new”.

“They’re the struggle of an old idea through a new form of delivery,” he says.” This is an object that tries to look and feel as much like a cigarette as possible but delivers its nicotine through a completely different system.”

He adds: “They call it skeuomorphic design. You find it a lot on digital products as well, like the notepad on Apple, which has fake yellow paper, fake margins, fake lines and fake handwriting. It’s the point where you see through Apple’s supposed amazing design culture and see that actually it’s just a load of stuff thrown together.”

Above: a heavily-filtered Instagram photo

Apple’s skeuomorphic software design was brought up in an earlier conversation at 100% Design with designer Yves Behar, who declared that “Apple is a little bit behind in that area”.

Skeuomorphic design isn’t new, Jacob points out, giving the example of the earliest cars. “When the car was invented, the idea of the car didn’t exist, so it could only be thought of as a carriage without horses.”

Jacob summarises by explaining his interest in everyday contemporary objects. “My fascination with design is less to do with finding solutions and much more to do with design as a cultural activity,” he says. “I’m fascinated by things like this because I think they tell us about culture. They may be ridiculous, they may be funny, but I think they say something profound about the way we think.”

Above: an electronic cigarette

Dezeen Live was a series of discussions between Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs and a number of designers and critics that took place as part of the talks programme at design exhibition 100% Design during this year’s London Design Festival.

Each of the four one-hour shows, recorded live in front of an audience, featured three interviews plus music from Dezeen Music Project featuring a new act each day. Over the next few weeks we’ll be posting all the movies we filmed during the talks.

We’ve already published a movie from the series in which IDEO UK design director Tom Hulme encourages designers to be more entrepreneurial – watch it here.

The music featured in this movie is a track called Onwards by east London band Strong Asian Mothers. You can listen to more of their music on Dezeen Music Project.

See all our stories about Sam Jacob »
See all our stories about FAT »
See all our stories about London Design Festival 2012 »

The post “Could we be human without objects?”
– Sam Jacob at Dezeen Live appeared first on Dezeen.

British designer David Irwin has created pentagonal pendant lights that are bound together by silicon bands for design company Deadgood.

Five identical profiles made from three-millimetre-thick aluminium are held together by three black silicon bands, one at the top and two at the bottom.

All the profiles for one EXTL Light can be cut from the same bar of extruded aluminium, dissected at angles so the two styles can be made from one length.

“This highly engineered solution effectively demonstrates both the efficiency and the precision of this time-honoured industrial process,” says Deadgood.

The lights are available in two slightly different styles, one of which has a wider opening at the base than the other. The surface of the aluminium is finished in either a matt black, gold or silver anodised metal coating.

Deadgood launched the product at 100% Design in London last month.

Stories we’ve previously featured about Deadgood include a seating collection covered in textile offcuts and a lighting range made from wire.

We’ve recently written about an adjustable lamp with a magnetic concrete base and a collection of lamps with empty baskets for bases that can be filled with various heavy objects. See all our stories about lamps.

The post EXTL pendant lights by David Irwin
for Deadgood appeared first on Dezeen.

London Design Festival: we’re hosting the last in our series of live shows at 100% Design today from 2:45pm, including talks with designer Clemens Weisshaar, restaurant founder Shamil Thakrar and trend forcaster Li Edelkoort (above).

Music featured on the show will be by artists on Indian record label EarthSync, which will also be featured on Dezeen Music Project later today.

Curated to provide a mixture of insight, intelligence and sheer entertainment, the shows feature a host of bright young talents and established figures. Each day, Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs interviews leading figures from the design world, including a daily “design brain” – a leading journalist, writer or thinker who helps pinpoint key movements and trends emerging during London Design Festival.

Each Dezeen Live show also highlights emerging talent exhibiting at 100% Design and includes a live DJ playing exclusive music tracks submitted to Dezeen Music Project for the occasion.

The shows are part of the 100% Design Seminar Programme and take place in the auditorium. Each show is filmed and will be broadcast later on www.dezeen.com. See the full lineup for the week here.

Here’s some more information about today’s speakers:

Clemens Weisshaar, Kram\Weisshaar

One half of the world’s most future-focused design teams, Weisshaar has developed retail display concepts for Prada and filled Trafalgar Square with graffiti-writing robots during the London Design Festival in 2010. See all our stories about Kram\Weisshaar »

Shamil Thakrar, Dishoom

Founder of one of Dezeen’s favourite restaurants, Dishoom on St Martin’s Lane, Thakrar is currently working on designs for a new outpost in Shoreditch.

Li Edelkoort

Design brain! Edelkoort is one of the world’s foremost trend forecasters and the visionary former chair of Design Academy Eindhoven. See all our stories about Li Edelkoort »

Plus:

Spotlight on emerging 100% Designer
DJ/musical performance featuring Dezeen Music Project

The post Saturday’s speakers at Dezeen Live appeared first on Dezeen.

Developing hardware and software at the same time is design’s “new frontier”, according to industrial designer Yves Behar. Speaking to Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs at 100% Design yesterday, the industrial designer said bringing 3D designers and interface designers together was “a whole new blue ocean” adding, “Apple is actually a little bit behind in that area.” (+ audio)

“What I’ve been really interested in is, when these things get designed together, as one, really new interesting paradigms, really new interesting experiences are happening,” said Behar. “And let me say just one thing; probably it’s going to be a little bit provocative: nobody is really doing that today. Even Apple is designing their product and their software separately.”

Behar rejected the “skeumorphic” approach adopted by companies including Apple, which has led to the grainy leather-effect Calendar and wood-effect bookshelf applications in its products.

User-interface designers have typically attempted to evoke familiar real-world objects when designing digital applications such as calendars, books and diaries, arguing that this approach leads to more intuitive interfaces that users feel more comfortable with.

Behar questioned why those same companies’ hardware designers rejected the skeumorphic approach and said it was akin to getting one industrial design team to design the outside of a chair and another to design the inside.

“You could use the exact same explanation for a hardware product,” Behar said. “You could say “I don’t know what a tablet is, I’ve never used a tablet. Let’s make it look like a book. Or let’s make it look like my leather-bound notepad. Obviously they didn’t go there with the hardware so why did they go there with the software? It’s a really good question. There’s now many companies looking at it in a way that’s quite interesting and Apple actually is a little bit behind in that area.”

Behar has set up a user interface group at his San Francisco design studio Fuseproject to explore how to bring the two disciplines together. “That’s a whole new blue ocean for us as designers, it’s a new frontier,” he said.

Apple was this week named best design studio of the past 50 years at a one-off D&AD award ceremony.

Behar is one of the most feted and successful figures in Twenty-First Century design, with a portfolio of products to his name that includes the XO affordable computer for One Laptop Per Child and the Jambox portable wireless speaker for Jawbone.

Dezeen’s Marcus Fairs is also hosting Dezeen Live at 100% Design daily. Today’s show starts at 5pm in the auditorium and will feature talks from Dominic Wilcox, Asif Khan and Daniel Charny plus a DJ/musical performance featuring Dezeen Music Project.

See all our stories about Yves Behar »
See this week’s full Dezeen Live lineup »
See all our stories about the London Design Festival »

The post Developing hardware and software at the same
time is design’s “new frontier,” says Yves Behar appeared first on Dezeen.