Hasta La Ideas

A couple of weeks ago we showed you a “Future of Screen Technology” video by TAT (The Astonishing Tribe), which seemed pie-in-the-sky amazing and almost too fantastic to be realized. But just today TAT has announced that Fujitsu Japan “will reveal a ground breaking dual screen mobile phone user interface powered by TAT’s design and technology initiatives.”

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pOver at a href=”http://www.designobserver.com”DesignObserver/a, Ken Botnick and Ira Raja have a wonderful piece on design thinking, craft, and process. You gotta read the whole thing, but here’s a nice taste:/p

pSince raw material is usually expensive, the craftsman must know how to make the most of what he’s got. This often brings to the fore his economical genius for gathering, managing and storing materials. It is only through working the material repeatedly that the craftsman becomes familiar with its properties well enough to coax it into shape. But while we see the craftsman’s contribution as his genius for forming material, we rarely give him credit for more abstract design thinking about the broad implications of his creation. /p

pOne striking example of this is found in the unstitched garments of India, the sari and lunghi. The genius of these garments is in their simplicity; rectangles that wrap the body in a variety of ways, saris and lunghis defy changes in size and body shape. Because they are not elaborately shaped as western apparel is, they are endlessly adaptable, and certain classic textiles remain in style year after year. The simplicity of the sari’s shape also gives rise to a spectacular variety in designs of the textile itself, inviting infinite elaboration of color and pattern as invented by the textile weavers, printers and dyers. The rectangle further invites adaptive reuse once it is too threadbare to be worn as a sari any longer. Across India, old saris find new lives as pillows, pouches, ropes, lightweight blankets, hammocks for babies and more. They are even used as fences in Rajasthan. Such applications would be impossible if the original design were not so ingeniously simple, so functionally pure. A new sari would hold the wind too well to be a useful fence, and if its shape were more complex, its afterlife would be limited to ragstock. The sari, therefore, in its simplicity represents a mode of design thinking grounded in adaptability, innovation and sustainability based in craft that is distinctively Indian./p

pRead entire article a href=”http://changeobserver.designobserver.com/entry.html?entry=13748″here/a./pa href=”http://www.core77.com/blog/business/required_reading_the_subtle_technology_of_indian_artisanship_16649.asp”(more…)/a
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pimg alt=”IMG_2688.JPG” src=”http://www.core77.com/blog/assets_c/2010/05/IMG_2688-thumb-468×312-4331.jpg” width=”468″ height=”312″ class=”mt-image-none” style=”” //p

pemIn this post, our second in the series a href=”http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/dogs_on_design_raleigh_pop_interviews_russell_flinchum_16110.asp”Dogs on Design/a, design critic and dog owner Sarah F. Cox met with Design Director of a href=”http://www.nytimes.com/”NYTimes.com/a, Khoi Vinh, to walk his dog while discussing the ever-changing business of design at the Times. Sarah’s dog Raleigh, was disappointed to be left at home to work on her blog, a href=”http://raleighpop.wordpress.com/”Raleigh Pop/a.br /
/em/p

pIt’s 8:15 on an April Saturday morning. A bespectacled, lanky man with black hair in jeans and a jacket trails his dog down the path from the parking lot to the central grassy area of Prospect Park in Brooklyn, NY. Every day before 9:00 am dogs are allowed off leash, and no matter the pack-leader dynamics at home, it is the time of day that dogs lead and humans follow. In this case, it is a black lab mix that is dragging the Design Director of a href=”http://www.nytimes.com/”NYTimes.com/a./p

pKhoi Vinh and his dog, Mr. President, have been together since December 2002, when Khoi brought him home from the Newark Humane Society in New Jersey. Selected because he was not barking like the other shelter dogs, even today Mr. President displays a calm self-assuredness that fits with his name, picked out prior to his adoption. The sleek all-black dog has been known to shun affection and may seem a bit haughty or self-important. But these days, his owner is appreciating that he isn’t needy; Khoi has a new human baby at home vying for his attention. At seven years old, Mr. President is often cat-like, content to sit on the couch and watch the humans. /p

pimg alt=”Picture 17.png” src=”http://www.core77.com/blog/assets_c/2010/05/Picture 17-thumb-468×308-4343.png” width=”468″ height=”308″ class=”mt-image-none” style=”” //p

pOn this early morning walk, it’s apparent that Khoi is still adjusting to the interrupted nights of new parenthood. Coupled with the demands of the job, Khoi certainly has a lot on his mind, but he doesn’t volunteer it. As his friend for over six years, design writer a href=”http://www.printmag.com/dailyheller/”Steven Heller/a told me, “Khoi is a man of no wasted words.” You might say he is efficient with them, and it is this efficiency that is needed on the job./p

pimg alt=”Picture 16.png” src=”http://www.core77.com/blog/assets_c/2010/05/Picture 16-thumb-468×309-4341.png” width=”468″ height=”309″ class=”mt-image-none” style=”” //p

pFor a man spending his days in the Renzo Piano-designed Times headquarters, time does not run on a news cycle. Unlike a paper’s art director, Khoi works on the platform of the website and its long-term enhancements. As he explains, “My job is not to design. It is to create the conditions under which good design happens,” meaning that he goes to a lot of meetings. He became Design Director in 2006, and while he began his career as a graphic designer for print, he’s been web-focused since 1998, the year he moved to New York. /pa href=”http://www.core77.com/blog/business/_dogs_on_design_at_the_dog_park_with_khoi_vinh_and_mr_president_16622.asp”(more…)/a
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div style=”align: right;”img src=”http://www.core77.com/blog/images/2010/05/0vwital01.jpg” width=”468″ height=”286″ alt=”0vwital01.jpg”//div

pVolkswagen AG has set an ambitious goal for itself: To overtake Toyota as the largest car manufacturer in the world. A HREF=”http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-05-25/volkswagen-to-buy-giugiaro-to-expand-design-team-update1-.html” According to Bloomberg/Businessweek/A, /p

blockquoteVolkswagen “needs extra design facilities to back up this expansionist drive,” Stefan Bratzel, director of the Center of Automotive at the University of Applied Sciences in Bergisch Gladbach, Germany, said today in a phone interview./blockquote

pTo serve that end, VW has just snapped up a 90% stake in Italdesign-Giugiaro, the Turin-based design house with its hands in everything from high-end automotive design to industrial design and even architecture. (Below is their concept Mustang from a few years ago.) /p

div style=”align: right;”img src=”http://www.core77.com/blog/images/2010/05/0vwital02.jpg” width=”468″ height=”716″ alt=”0vwital02.jpg”//div

pThe two companies are not strangers, as Italdesign actually designed VW’s Golf back in 1974. Nor will the merger lead to any redundancy in the design departments:/p

blockquoteVW’s design chief Walter de Silva said all of VW’s global design centers will remain open, adding that the acquisition of Italdesign-Giugiaro should foster competition between design teams./blockquote

pvia A HREF=”http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704026204575266120720295484.html?mod=WSJ_latestheadlines” the wall street journal/A and A HREF=”http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-05-25/volkswagen-to-buy-giugiaro-to-expand-design-team-update1-.html” bloomgberg / businessweek/Abr /
/pa href=”http://www.core77.com/blog/business/volkswagen_expanding_global_design_team_with_italdesign-giugiaro_acquisition_16618.asp”(more…)/a
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So much for leaving on a melancholic-but-uplifting note. Two weeks ago, we reported that the popular art/fashion event coordination group GenArt was closing its doors after 16 years in business, having been bled dry during the recession as financial partnerships fell apart. Now, thanks to a link from ArtInfo, the news comes out that the organization has yet to pay back any of the exhibition fees to the creatives who had paid for space in their upcoming, now canceled events. Although they’ve said they stopped accepting payments a while back and have promised to return all the money they took in, they’ve yet to send out any refunds and “calls and emails to organizers have not been returned.” Granted, even after the money runs out, it’s a tricky thing to shut down a whole company, and the news of their closure only hit two weeks ago, so they could have slowed down a bit as they muddle through the process, but it certainly isn’t the best way to go out.

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