Hasta La Ideas

News: young people wanting to start a career in design should offer to work for free, according to Dick Powell, chairman of design charity D&AD.

“Offer anything, do anything,” said Powell. “Work for nothing, make tea, carry bags, and learn, learn, learn.”

Powell, who is also co-founder and CEO of leading industrial design studio Seymourpowell, made the comments in a speech to graduates at the New Designers exhibition in London earlier this month.

“Your goal may be to get a job, but your first task is to crack open the door,” he told the audience attending the preview of New Designers Part 2. “And you should stop at nothing to achieve that. Be prepared to do anything, anything at all to get into a business.”

He continued: “Offer anything, do anything, call in every contact you have, get on LinkedIn and let it take you everywhere, work for nothing, make tea, carry bags, and learn, learn, learn.”

Speaking to Dezeen after his speech, Powell said that doing an unpaid internship is “the easiest way to get a job”.

“You’ve got to invest [in yourself],” he said. “It depends on the industry. In advertising it’s normal – you don’t get paid. Other businesses will pay for lunch, travel, that kind of thing.”

Seymourpowell pays its interns, he said, but felt that the company would be able to help more young designers if it offered unpaid internships instead. “We always try to pay a basic wage but it would clearly be better for them if we took on six that are unpaid than two that are paid, but we choose to pay them.”

Unpaid internships in the creative industries have caused controversy this year, with the RIBA calling for students to report companies offering unpaid architecture internships and Tokyo architect Sou Fujimoto defending the Japanese “open desk” practice, whereby foreign staff work for nothing to gain experience.

Fujimoto provoked a furious backlash when he told Dezeen that unpaid internships are “a nice opportunity” for both employers and interns.

D&AD is a British charity working to promote and inspire best practice in design and advertising.

The organisation have launched a guide to getting into the industry, called The Creative Notebook. “People wanting to get internships should get a copy of that,” said Powell. “It’s full of advice on how to get internships.” The guide is free for D&AD student and graduate members.

Photograph by James Champion.

Here’s the full speech Dick Powell gave at New Designers:

When I graduated from the RCA, I had an unshakable, cast iron, rock-solid self-belief that I could make a difference; that I could make things better. Better for People. Better for Business. And Better too for the World. That I could make things Better by Design.

And while much has changed since, I still have that rock-solid self-belief … making things Better by Design remains my credo, my rallying cry, my philosophy.

That rock-solid self-belief was born from a combination of arrogance, ambition, passion and naivety, but there was something else too. Something which I believe, irrespective of the field of creative endeavour or the design discipline, characterises outstanding creativity and innovation. I had no fear of failure… because I had nothing to lose – no mortgage, no big costs, no family to support and, unlike most of you, no big debts. I could not have been any poorer.

And today, all of you are at the same point in your life – graduating from education and out into the real world of our creative industries, with little to lose and the prospect of a career in the Creative Industries, which are hugely important to the UK, financially, practically and culturally.

So here are 6 tips for breaking into those industries:

1. Design is fabulously rewarding. We do it because we love it. We do it because we can make a difference. And the chance to work at something you love is so much more important than just working for money. If you are motivated by the need to make money, you’re in the wrong business! If you are talented, ambitious and prepared to work hard, to go beyond expectations, you will have a rewarding and satisfying career – and money will follow.

2. Never stop learning! Your courses have been very focused around a single discipline, but our industries need designers with bandwidth: a hunger for a wide view of the world and a deep understanding of people, markets, business and technologies from which they can build a point of view. Today, you’re probably thinking you’re done with education! Wrong! For those of you who will ultimately succeed, the learning starts today!

3. Your goal may be to get a job, but your first task is to crack open the door… and you should stop at nothing to achieve that . Be prepared to do anything, anything at all to get into a business. Offer anything, do anything, call in every contact you have, get on LinkedIn and let it take you everywhere, work for nothing, make tea, carry bags and learn, learn, learn.

4. Be really really good at one thing. Be a star at one thing. Be an expert at one thing. Your courses have had to focus on equipping you as best they can to be a great all rounder – research, creativity, execution, trends, markets, and equipped with extensive knowledge of design and its practise. But that makes you all more the same than different, so it’s hard to stand out. But every business needs dedicated skills of different kinds – skills with tools, like Alias or Pro-Engineer, or skills at drawing, research, film editing, animating, budgeting, selling or whatever. Being a star at one thing can get you in, maybe not in the role you want, but at least you will be in and learning – after that, it’s up to you.

5. Scale your ambition. Of course, you’d like to work for Apple – we all would!. Don’t abandon that ambition. Just be prepared to spend time building experience and making yourself useful in a thousand ways to small companies of any kind or discipline. Which brings me around to where I started…

6. Fear of failure. In business, as in life, failure is part of learning. Every failure, every rejection letter is a process of learning and improving. And the best way to scrape yourself off the floor and get your head into the right place is to never stop designing. The golfer, Gary Player, was accosted by a journalist having just won a tournament. The journalist observed that he had been a bit lucky with one or two shots. Player responded “You know what? The more I practice, the luckier I seem to get!”. The more you use your skills, the better you become. The graduate who is out of college a year and is still hawking round the same college portfolio is doomed … For every opening you have, ahead of every interview, ahead of every letter you write or phone call you make – discipline yourself to use every second to fill your portfolio with fresh thinking, and new ideas which are tightly focused and highly relevant to the person or business you want to see. Find out what they do and do some of that. That way, you’ll pique their interest and you’ll develop the informed point of view they want to hear.

And finally, this week at New Designers is a major opportunity to make those first valuable contacts and build a network which might one day lead to a job. That’s what all this is about. Today, you join that network, an embryonic designer with a future. Welcome to our world!

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nothing” says D&AD chairman appeared first on Dezeen.

American sports brand Nike has released a stripped-down running shoe that is designed to allow athletes to feel and respond to the ground beneath them as they would in bare feet.

The Nike Free Hyperfeel is the latest shoe to feature Nike’s Flyknit technology, where the upper is knitted in one piece and fits the foot like a sock, but has a lower profile with less cushioning than previous shoes in the Flyknit range.

The rubber outsole on the bottom of the shoe is just 0.7 millimetres thick, substantial enough to provide protection from sharp objects underfoot without reducing flexibility or responsiveness.

The raised squares on the bottom of the outsole provide grip, but are also designed to act like pistons, increasing the feedback the runner gets from variations in the surface they are running on.

“We’re trying to make a shoe that is just an extension of your foot”, Tony Bignell, vice president of Nike Footwear Innovation, told Dezeen at the worldwide launch of the product in Portland, Oregon. “It’s designed to amplify what the foot is already doing.”

The combination of the knitted upper and thin sole also make the shoe very light. A size 10 weighs just 180g.

“When you talk to athletes and say: “What do you want the shoe to feel like when it’s on your foot?” Most athletes will look at you and say: “actually, I don’t want it to feel like anything,” said Bignell.

Cushioning is provided by an insole made from Lunarlon, the sports brand’s proprietary shock-absorbing foam, which slips inside the shoe.

“The Nike Free Hyperfeel is really designed for runners that are looking for a barefoot sensation but with a comfortable ride,” Bignell explained. “We’re always trying to strike a balance between protection, which is important, and also sensation.”

Here are some more details from Nike:

The Nike Free Hyperfeel is created to intuitively move with the foot. It is inspired by Nike’s “Nature Amplified” design ethos — an approach focused on the body in motion and fueled by scientific data and athlete insights.

Research insights informed the precise placement of cushioning and outsole traction for a low-profile shoe that provides padding and protection only where necessary. A drop-in Lunarlon insole with flex grooves allows the foot to have direct contact with the Lunarlon cushioning. The waffle outsole is ultra-thin, allowing the foot to get closer to the ground.

Scientists in the Nike Sport Research Lab carefully studied which areas of the foot come into contact with the ground and absorb pressure, and which areas require traction. They used pressure-mapping technology and high-speed film to analyze the foot in motion.

The result is Nike Free Hyperfeel, a shoe that mimics the intricate workings of the human foot: Lunarlon foam replicates cushioned pads under the foot. The outsole protects like hardened skin on the sole. Dynamic Flywire flexes and contracts, inspired by ligaments.

The Nike Free Hyperfeel ($175) will be at retail in the US, UK and Japan beginning 5 September.

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shoe by Nike appeared first on Dezeen.

These inflatable chairs by Chinese designers Ray Jiao and Yi Wang integrate vacuum compression systems that mould the seats to the shape of each sitter (+ movie).

The seat of each chair in the Holding-Breath collection is a detachable bag, filled with foam particles and fitted with a valve that allows air in and out.

To mould the chair, the sitter connects a hand pump to the inflated bag and uses it to exhaust some of the air.

This process also allows the foam particles to bind themselves around the sitter’s back and hips, holding the seat in place.

Storage pockets are included behind the backrest for hiding the pump and storing other items.

Air can be simply pumped back into the valves to rebuild the chair for a new sitter.

The collection includes a rocking chair, a bar stool and a sofa. Each has a wooden frame that is attached to the bag with nylon strings and plastic plugs.

Other unusual seating design we’ve featured includes a cocoon felt pod and a chair that wraps up around the sitter. See more chair design »

Here’s some more information from the designers:

The Holding-breath Chair is aimed at making a chair for every unique person. The collection includes a rocking chair, a bar stool and a sofa.

The working principle is vacuum compression for shaping. It is made up of two parts, one is the wood base which supplies different using methods, the other one is the sealing bag filled of foam particles and a air valve installed with the function of letting air in and out and keeping itself in vacuum.

They are connected by the nylon strings and plastic plugs. The using process is that when you sit on the assembled chair, exhaust the air use the air pump by hand, then the bag gets harder and harder with the shape of your back and, at last, a made-just-for-you chair comes to life.

Letting the air in is the easy way to rebuild the chair. As the shape of seating is totally decided by the users, we can explore quite numbers of using methods. The project is inspired by the research of the truth- “A part of people with autism like to be squeezed”.

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by Ray Jiao & Yi Wang appeared first on Dezeen.

News: on the eve of a major exhibition about his life, architect Richard Rogers has spoken of how architecture’s civic responsibility has been eroded in “an age of greed”.

“In my generation the idea was you’d build for the future,” Rogers told Dezeen. “We’d just had a horrible war and there was this very strong feeling that the state could be enriched by the way we played out our abilities.”

He added: “This has gone. It’s much more an age of greed. It’s much more about dog eat dog and the acceptance that it doesn’t matter what you earn, you have no duty to society.”

Rogers, founder of architects Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, spoke to Dezeen as final preparations were underway for Richard Rogers RA: Inside Out, which opens to the public at the Royal Academy in London on Thursday 18 July.

“The real title  [of the exhibition] is Ethos,” said Rogers, who celebrates his 80th birthday this month. “The idea is that we have a responsibility to society. That gives us a role as architects not just to the client but also to the passer-by and society as a whole.”

The exhibition at the RA will explore the ideas and philosophies behind Rogers’ work, exploring his social, political and cultural influences as well as the influence he has had on those spheres over a career spanning 50 years.

“On one wall [of the exhibition] it will say ‘a place for all people, all ages, all creeds, the rich and the poor’,” Rogers explains. “That was actually the first paragraph I wrote with Renzo [Piano] when we entered the Pompidou competition but it also explains the heart of the exhibition. That gave us the way of handling the Pompidou, not just as a building but as a place – which I’m much more interested in.”

Rogers and Piano, then relatively unknown, entered the competition to design the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris against 700 other entrants with a design for a radical, flexible building with its service ducts on the outside and a large public square in front of it.  The building made both their reputations when it was completed in 1977.

Rogers continues: “On another wall there will be the Hellenic oath which states ‘I will leave this city more beautiful than I entered it’. It was an oath that all citizens made and I would like to think it’s an oath we are all required to make.”

Rogers described how the social ethos of his generation led most of his contemporaries to spend time working on public projects. “I was at the Architectural Association in the 50s and then I went to Yale,” Rogers said. “Everyone I was at school with went on to work for schools departments, hospital departments, housing departments, the local county council and so on. I worked on schools. I’d say 90% of students who were at the AA with me went on to work [in the public sector].”

However he added that, in some senses, there are greater opportunities for architects today. “Britain now has very good modern architects. You could argue that no nation has better. Political interest? There’s never been much.”

“But in some ways [things are] better. If you go to the City of London, it’s pretty good. I was coming out the other day from the Design Museum on the other side of Tower Bridge and I thought I was in New York, with all the towers and lights. I’m not saying that it’s good or bad but it’s very exciting, it’s very dynamic. It’s something that was impossible before. It’s a very exciting time.”

He added: “I wouldn’t say that things are uglier, but we need to be very wary of protecting the public domain.”

Rogers won the Pritzker Prize in 2009 and was knighted in 1981 and made a lord in 1996. He has designed landmark buildings including Lloyds of London, Bordeaux Law Courts, Heathrow Terminal 5 and the Millennium Dome (now the O2 Arena).

Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners won the Stirling Prize in 2009 for their Maggie’s Centre in London. Their 225 metre Leadenhall Building is currently under construction in London.

Videos of our interview with Rogers will be published on Dezeen in the coming weeks. Richard Rogers RA: Inside Out is at the Royal Academy, Burlington Gardens, London from 18 July to 13 October 2013.

See all our stories about Richard Rogers. The photo is copyright Dezeen Limited.

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says Richard Rogers appeared first on Dezeen.

Interview: in this exclusive interview designer Tom Dixon tells us why he decided to design his first watch – and how he wanted to make it easy to read the time (+ movie).

“We’ve spent a lot of time doing lighting over the last ten years, and also more recently furniture, and now we’ve decided it’s time to also do accessories,” says Dixon, speaking in the Tom Dixon showroom at The Dock in north-west London.

“I’m trying to produce something with an expressive neutrality,” he says. “I tend to try and work out what I can strip out without losing character.”

The result is Block Watch, which features a square case stamped out of stainless steel or brass. The watch face is circular, with etched numerals and markers. The watch’s hour, minute and second hands are powered by a high-quality Swiss movement.

“I tend to try and work out what I can strip out without losing character,” says Dixon, explaining his design philosophy. “A watch has really got to be round if it’s analogue, because the hands sweep round. I wanted to make sure you could tell the time – because with all too many contemporary watches you can’t tell what time it is. And I wanted to set it in a square because the strap has to go to a square anyway.”

The watch is available in either stainless steel or rose gold (plated) with matching mesh straps, or in brass with a chunky brown leather strap.

The mesh strap is inspired by vintage TV detective Kojak, Dixon says. “It’s got this chain link bracelet, which I guess is a reference to when I was growing up – Kojak, maybe.”

He adds: “It’s just the minimal elements you need to make a watch all reduced to their bare essentials and, I hope, still expressive enough to be something you want to buy.”

Block Watch by Tom Dixon is available to preorder now on Dezeen Watch Store with free worldwide shipping. Prices start at £166.67 excluding VAT.

www.dezeenwatchstore.com

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can’t tell what time it is” – Tom Dixon appeared first on Dezeen.