Hasta La Ideas

Early in my career I was introduced to the phrase “real designers ship,” which I took to mean “until you get something in production, you don’t know nothing kid.” To a point, it is correct. The actual up-front design process of research, insight identification, concept generation, iteration and refinement is relatively small compared to the full journey of product development. Until you go on that journey several times, it is difficult to understand how many opportunities there are for the original intent to get watered down or lost all together. Conversely, those moments are also opportunities to reevaluate and make the design better. Design doesn’t stop until the product is on its way to retail. Which is why real designers ship.

To honor that journey and those who have shepherded their products through to production, there is an awesome topic over in the Core77 discussion forums called simply “Newly Released Work,” where designers have been posting their latest production pieces. Check it out, and give your comrades a pat on the back or two. If you have gone through it, you know it isn’t easy.

Products clockwise from top left: Skora Running Shoes by Richard Kuchinsky, Thule iPhone case by Ryan Mather, Motorola DS4800 Series 2D Scanner by Mike Kaminsky, Roku 3 by Anson Cheung, Turnstone Buoy by Ricky Biddle, and Shur-line Deck Pad by Jim Kershaw

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Watch out, Google Glass, there’s an Intel-powered bracelet on the horizon, and it will be designed in collaboration with Opening Ceremony (founders Carol Lim and Humberto Leon are pictured at right) and make its retail debut at Barneys New York. The in-the-works “smart bracelet” is part of a broader wearable technology initiative announced by Intel at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which runs through Friday in Las Vegas.

In addition to the product partnership, the company outlined its plan to work with the Council of Fashion Designers of America “to create a community for technology developers and fashion designers to network, match-make, cultivate, and exchange ideas on wearable technology.” The alliance will connect the CFDA’s 400 members with hardware and software developers. “The collaborations we announced today will merge the expertise of two very distinct disciplines of technology and fashion, essential in realizing the vision of prolific adoption of wearable technology,” said Intel’s Ayse Ildeniz in a statement. “Intel’s aim is to initiate sustainable, long-term cooperation between the technology and fashion worlds beginning with today’s announcements.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Your Sunday is about to get a lot less visually stimulating: Arem Duplessis has decided to leave his post as design director of The New York Times Magazine [muffled sobbing]. Come February, he’ll begin his new position as a creative director at Apple, where he’ll lend his creative genius to the internal marketing team. Word of the move follows the recent announcement that Facebook has tapped Apple advertising veteran Scott Trattner to serve as its executive creative director. We asked Duplessis a few questions as he prepares to relocate to the promised land of Cupertino.

Why is it the right time for you to make this move?
I’ve been at The New York Times Magazine for almost ten years. I have worked with some of the smartest people on the planet and it’s been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. I feel very fortunate to have been able to experience such a great gig. With that said, it’s time for a new chapter and a new challenge.

What will you miss most about working at The New York Times Magazine?
Without question the people. I have made so many great friends over the years and I will miss them dearly.

Bonus question: What’s the best gift you received this holiday season?
Hearing my son proclaim “THIS IS THE BEST CHRISTMAS EVER!” No way to beat that, right?

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

While landfill is generating electricity for their Fort Wayne and Orion plants, General Motors has a very different plan for their massive Renaissance Center office complex in Detroit: Stop adding to landfill altogether.

To give you an idea of what a massive undertaking this is, the GM Renaissance Center is a 5.5-million-square-foot facility (including offices, restaurants, a shopping center and a skyscraper Marriot Hotel) that literally has its own freaking zip code. Some 15,000 people traipse through it daily, and they presumably drink coffee, unwrap sandwiches and print documents like the rest of us. Furthermore 3,000 of those daily inhabitants are visitors from the general public, whose behavior cannot be rigidly enforced as it can with employees and tenants.

To get a handle on the problem, over two years ago GM began doing what we once did as art students: dumpster diving. By physically sifting through trash, GM learned what exactly was being thrown out, then began cataloguing everything and figuring out how all of it—every single last piece—could be diverted from landfill. Part of it is educating people as to what can be recycled and where they should put it; part of it is amassing and effectively distributing containers throughout the complex; not to mention collecting and emptying those containers, then processing the contents.

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This is the second part of Hipstomp’s reporting from the inaugural Autodesk CAVE Conference, which took place in conjunction with their annual Autodesk University event last week in Las Vegas. See Part One here.

Following Tibbits’ talk, the entirety of the CAVE conference attendees filed into a ballroom at The Venetian to see a rare presentation from the legendary Syd Mead. (Mead will typically not travel in December to give presentations, but he relented for CAVE, a testament to the conference’s attractiveness.) At 80 years of age, Mead has the killer combination of a lifetime’s worth of experience and an irreverent, devil-may-care veteran status that allows him to say whatever the hell he wants; I won’t name the Hollywood stars or clients he skewered in passing asides, but I will say his stories were funny.

More importantly, we were treated to a narrated slideshow of Syd Mead images projected onto a gi-normous screen so that we could see every detail, every dot of gouache. And of course there was Mead himself to explain the thinking behind the vehicles and sets of Blade Runner, how he’s managed to “future-proof” his concepts—making futuristic sketches from the 1960s still appear futuristic today—and showing us the sketches (and exact drawing) that got him the job on Elysium.

Syd Mead artwork, courtesy of BravinLee Gallery

It was during Mead’s presentation that CAVE started to come full circle for me, and I began to see the light. Mead was discussing one of his more technical renderings for Honda, and as he went in-depth, explaining the drawing’s composition, content and framing, it echoed what Louis Gonzales was discussing that morning. Gonzales is a storyboard artist and Mead an industrial designer, so the terminology and context was a little different; but the principles they were discussing were precisely the same. Whether you are Gonzales, Robertson, Gaiman, Tibbits or Mead, you are creating something and attempting to convey ideas to others. The brilliance of CAVE is to get all of these creative bodies into the same space, and to allow us attendees to connect those dots.

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