Hasta La Ideas

Jonathan Ota and Ethan Frier are the brain and brawn behind Project Aura, a lighting system for the wheels of your bicycle. What once started as a design school experiment is now a product. They are finishing development of the prototype and are currently looking for another company to partner with to produce and distribute Project Aura.

Part 1 // Part 2

A Conversation between Jonathan Ota and Ethan Frier

Jonathan Ota: Remember when we first received that SURG check? What was it, $865 for something that we didn’t even understand what we were doing?

Ethan Frier: Yeah, I mostly remember being shocked that we actually got the check, and thinking how much money it was. That was the first time I had ever really thought about how development and funding we really tied together, and being excited to actually get to develop this project with that funding. Neither of us really had the money to buy the equipment and supplies we needed for the prototype, so without that funding we never would have been able to even start this.

That was also the point when I started to recognize how much of an idealistic bubble schoolwork was—presenting renderings and mock-ups. When we actually tried to build a working prototype, we were forced to answer to the technical, physical and economic constraints of the real world.

JO: Ha, I think that has been a trend of the project—us applying for money, then winning it and not know what to do with it. I remember thinking, “I think we just conned our school into giving us free money.” The physical prototyping was definitely the hardest part of the project, given how ignorant I, for one, was about that thing called electricity and LEDs and stuff like that. In the beginning, it was very much a technical and design exploration, though presently it’s interesting how the focus on pure technical development has become just a part of the bigger strategy of trying to run a successful business.

EF: How did you feel after the Core77 wrote about the project, and the upshot of that? I remember feeling like I somehow cheated, that we didn’t really deserve it in a way.

JO: I did feel like a bit of a cheat, because it didn’t feel intentional. I remember thinking that getting anything published on Core was the pinnacle of every industrial design student’s dream and the stamp of success on a school project, but to deal with the feedback and comments from hundreds of people? It was absurd! I couldn’t believe it and I was immediately overwhelmed. Plus, I also thought I cheated because the video looked good—too good—when in fact the prototype was just barely functional. (moral of the story: learn how to make good videos).

It was only after this Internet “success” that I thought we could do something more with Aura—it proved that there was some sort of demand for it. Except, here I was, just a 19-year-old kid with a cool video, a half-functional proof-of-concept and nary a clue of what to do next.

(more…)

Jonathan Ota and Ethan Frier are the brain and brawn behind Project Aura, a lighting system for the wheels of your bicycle. What once started as a design school experiment is now a product. They are finishing development of the prototype and are currently looking for another company to partner with to produce and distribute Project Aura.

Project Aura illuminates the wheels of your bicycle, increases your visual presence on the road and better communicates to drivers your presence and behavior. But it is more than just a beautiful bicycle light, it is a platform for drivers to better understand bicyclists. By illuminating the wheels, drivers are immediately aware that a bicycle in the road is, in fact, a bicycle, a human-powered vehicle with two wheels… no two ways about it. It’s also smarter than your average bike light, conveying speed by changing color and automatically turning on and off based on ambient light and bicycle motion.

Freshman year at Carnegie Mellon, in the midst of a particularly difficult point in one of the first ever studio projects, a professor told us that design was like birthing a baby. “It’s messy, painful, and takes hours upon hours of emotional and physical labor. But in the and you have a beautiful thing which you have created from nothing and brought into the world.”

In a way, the birth of Project Aura was an accident, an unplanned pregnancy, if you will. It was our sophomore year of college, things get crazy, you know, and before we knew it we found ourselves with this little beautiful accident. It wasn’t the actual product that was an accident—we worked tirelessly for months in addition to our regular studio and course conceiving the prototype. But its success was very much an accident.

(more…)

A website called Plastic Bag Ban Report documents that trend (encompassing paper bags, too) with a grinding regularity. Last month, L.A.’s City Council voted “No store shall provide a plastic or paper single-use carryout bag to a customer.” This month, Santa Fe got plastic bags banned and attached a fee to paper bags. Now Laredo, Texas and Vail, Colorado are mulling over similar policies.

Just yesterday, an interesting development in recycling—one that you’re bound to have mixed feelings about—as brought to our attention. As more individual businesses and municipalities are starting to ban both paper and plastic bags, or impose fees to discourage their use, it’s pissing off a certain group of people. No, not consumers. Recyclers.

The Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, or ISRI, yesterday fired a blast out of their e-mail gun stating “Policymakers are banning bags and creating fees without considering the real impact on recycling, and the recycling industry… Rather than bans and fees that take away jobs and increase costs to consumers, policy makers should take advantage of the great economic and environmental opportunities associated with responsibly recycling these bags.” They followed this up with some surprising statistics:

(more…)

Who says print is dead? The world’s appetite for Moleskine jotters remains unquenched, Paperless Post is doing a brisk business in tangible notes as well as e-pistles, and over in Europe, IKEA is piloting a vast array of affordably-priced papergoods (the “VÄXTGLÄDJE” notebooks are described as “handmade by a skilled craftsman”). Now online digital printer MOO, the company that brought you Sagmeister & Walsh’s continuum of flattering to insulting business cards, is expanding its Luxe family of products to encompass “premium business stationery,” including customizable (and ultra-sturdy) notecards, postcards, and minicards. “Here at MOO we want to make beautiful design more affordable and accessible,” said Richard Moross, MOO founder and CEO, in a statement issued Tuesday. “With Luxe notecards we’re re-booting stationery, the original high-impact communications tool, by using new technology to make super-high quality print available to our customers for a fraction of the cost.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Ingvar Kamprad put the “IK” in IKEA (the “E” and the “A” are for Elmtaryd, the family farm where he was born, and a neighboring village, Agunnaryd), but he left Sweden in 1973 to escape the hefty taxes and settled in Switzerland. Now the 87-year-old IKEA founder, whose fortune is estimated at $51.7 billion (that’s enough to buy more than 8 million Billy bookcases), is coming home. “To move back to Sweden brings me closer to my family and my old friends,” Kamprad said in a statement. The country’s tax laws have softened since his departure, according to the Wall Street Journal. A wealth tax has been abolished and income taxes have been lowered. Kamprad recently stepped down from the board of IKEA’s parent company, Inter IKEA Group, which is now chaired by one of his three sons.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.