Hasta La Ideas

Coca-Cola has launched a new green initiative called the Give it Back rack, a POP display made from recycled Coke packaging. The idea behind the cardboard shelving unit is that retailers are asked to return them to Coca-Cola at the end of their useful life, at which point they’re recycled.

If we look past the marketing spin—all POP displays made from cardboard packaging are recycleable, so that’s not new—what we do see and like is that Coke has chosen to design the units with areas of exposed cardboard, including unfinished edges, drawing attention to the humble material itself. We applaud this decision because it is somewhat risky; it can either be perceived as cheap and shoddy or, we hope, will lead the viewer to conclude that if corrugated cardboard is good enough for a corporate giant like Coke, it has perfect validity as a structural material.

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I can get behind any professional group that has “Don’t be a dick” as one of their three rules, as the three-city Product Design Guild does. The invitation-only group was founded by Xianhang Zhang, Brian Gupton & Enrique Allen, a “social interaction designer,” product manager and venture capitalist, respectively, and operates out of San Francisco, New York and (coming soon) Austin.

The purpose of the Product Design Guild is to create “a place where you can brainstorm ideas, receive informed critique, learn new techniques and all the other activities that are only possible in a group environment,” and the emphasis is less on shit-shooting and more on actual doing. According to an article in All Things Digital,

“There were lots of meetups for designers, where people get together to network or talk about design, but we wanted a place where people would come to do work,” Zhang said. “From the beginning that was a rule-you had to bring work to do, so it’s really popular with very busy people, who also tend to be in demand.”

After the jump is a video featuring attendee impressions from a Bay Area PDG meeting, and the ATD article features a video interview with Zhang where he discusses, among other things, how they handle the confidentiality problem (part of not being a dick). Check out the latter video here.

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Apparently, in the current economic climate, short lived are the days of growth in the architecture industry. After months of staying relatively flat, but still, thankfully, above the 50 mark (anything 50 or above indicates a general uptick in business), the AIA‘s monthly Architecture Billings Index has been released and it has dropped nearly three full points, down to 47.6, meaning the burdens of the economy are still very much affecting the business of building. However, Reuters reports that the cause might not just be the economy, but might also have “included unusual factors, like the threat of a U.S.government shutdown and destructive storms,” which are just the sorts of things that can spook people enough to move the needle down in an already flailing market. Here’s a bit from the AIA’s resident numbers man:

“The majority of firms are reporting at least one stalled project in-house because of the continued difficulty in obtaining financing,” said AIA Chief Economist Kermit Baker. “That issue continues to be the main roadblock to recovery, and is unlikely to be resolved in the immediate future.”

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As thousands of design school graduates accept their diplomas, stopping briefly to scrutinize the font choices before returning them to their leatherette holders, they will meet a “design economy” that is on the upswing. Today AIGA released a quarterly update of its Design Leaders Confidence Index, and while down from the all-time high recorded in January, the 300 design leaders surveyed remain optimistic about the general economy, the design business, and the prospects for both. According to AIGA, the majority of respondents were confident the state of the economy as a whole—and of the design economy in particular—would be moderately better in the next six months. Fewer than nine percent of design leaders surveyed felt that the design economy was worse today than six months ago, and fewer than six percent felt that conditions would be worse six months in the future. Meanwhile, as design firms find themselves juggling more projects with smaller budgets, hiring is still pretty slow. Nearly two out of five design leaders surveyed by AIGA felt the chances of hiring additional staff were better than in January, while 13 percent thought they were worse. Half of corporate CEOs reported plans to hire additional staff in the next six months, so recent grads, keep an eye on the job board.

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We’ve known that New York’s American Folk Art Museum has been struggling financially since last summer, when it was reported that the museum was “unable to make upcoming payments on a $32 million bond it borrowed from the City’s Trust for Capital Resources.” At the time, they said the troubles stemmed from opening an expensive new building in the same decade as when the bottom fell out of the economy, which led to plummeting attendance numbers and fewer endowments (an issue that has plagued the whole industry now for years). Adding to the uncertainty, it was announced last week that the museum’s director, Maria Ann Conelli, would be stepping down as of July to return to academia. Though they’ll still have to hunt for her replacement, the financial issues now seem solved. In a release by the museum earlier this week, they’ve announced that the Museum of Modern Art has agreed to buy the American Folk Art Museum’s building. After the sale is complete, they will be moving to a smaller space in Lincoln Square. However, given that their future home is “only 5,000 square feet, one-sixth the size of the building it is selling,” it’s likely a given that a portion of its current staff will be laid off (this also helps possibly explain Conelli’s exit). As for how this will affect the financial weight they’ve been carrying, the NY Times reports, “Neither museum would say what MoMA was paying for the building, but the folk art museum’s president, Laura Parsons, said it was enough to retire the museum’s debt.” It’s expected that the MoMA will use the new space, and the vacant lot that separates the two, for future expansion plans. For a bit of history on the Folk Museum’s troubles, and how this deal came to pass, we recommend reading ArtInfo‘s great report.

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