Hasta La Ideas

The winners of The 4th Bin Design Competition are in! Congratulations to the winners and runners up, and be sure to check out more pics and full-on descriptions at the site. To get you started though, here’s a quick taste (yup, there were 3 2nd-place winners; judges couldn’t make themselves rank ’em!):

BINS

1st Place
“Expand Recycling”
Springtime
Amsterdam, The Netherlands

2nd Place Winner
Smart Design
Colin Kelly
Carolina Krupinska
Alistair Bramley
NYC, USA

2nd Place Winner
“e-Bin”
Studio Bagherian
London, UK

2nd Place Winner
“Private E-Waste Bin”
ampm studios
Derry, New Hampshire, USA

LOGOS

1st Place Winner
Two Twelve
New York, New York, USA

2nd Place Winner
Kevin Elliot James
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

(more…)

SEE is a network of eleven European partners sharing knowledge and experience on how design can be integrated into regional and national policies to boost innovation, entrepreneurship, sustainability and social and economic development.

Their first bulletin is now online. Make sure to check out their article on the future EU innovation policy which gives an excellent update on what the European Union is doing to stimulate design and user-driven innovation.

(more…)

We just got back from doing a two week immersion into the hindi speaking heartland of India, Kanpur, home of the Indian Institute of Technology who boasts Infosys founder Narayanan Moorthy as alumnus. And boy were Finns worthy of national media attention! This was very unexpected since most of the time, when attempting to explain the research and why we needed to interview you on mass communication, primary education and packaging or take photographs in your shop, school or neighbourhood, we had to start by explaining what Finland was. Yes, Virginia, its an honest to god real country right up north where Santa Claus lives, somewhere near Lake Inari I believe.

My colleague, pictured in the Lucknow edition of The Times of India, September 14th 2009 shown up above, found himself agreeing that this center of the informal ragpicking industry in North India would make a great tourist spot. Poor chap, he’s not fully Finndian yet, already able manage the national media which has simply exploded and evolved middle India over the past decade.

One of the easiest ways to introduce and give context to Finland, I found, was to start by saying, You know Nokia? And people would nod. Now why did I need to do it this way and not simply describe it as part of the Nordic countries in Europe, bordering Russia? Well, primarily because we coudn’t assume education, particularly geography, among our target user groups, so we had to start with what they knew, in this case, in India, Nokia with over 70% penetration in a market that size. You do the math, except interestingly enough, not a single member of the BoP told us they thought it was Japanese but two members of the very ToP certainly did. I wonder if that has something positive to say to us?

Anyway, then I’d say, okay, where we are from is where Nokia is from, but we’re not working for Nokia. We’re, um, actually on an academic project, rented by the Helsinki School of Economics on a project they’re conducting for the forest industry. Finland’s very own Detroit, at a similar place and with similar challenges to what the US automotive industry was facing back before it imploded so quietyly and so graciously. Now maybe we’ll get sustianable transportation solutions.

But I digress. Anyway, other than the challenges of contextualizing Finland, the trip was an eye opener in many many ways albeit it did manage to inform me that my early thoughts and insights on the BoP consumer and their design preferences were right on the button. Good to get that validation from two different continents, it helps with comparative context and knowledge.

Since it seems this letter didn’t really have a big point to make, I’ll wrap it up now and write again later.

(more…)

A quick heads-up that the new Designers Accord website just launched, with new features, easy links to facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, and a “What’s your greatest sustainability challenge?” box for you to fill in. (Hoping they add in a “How many adopters does it take to screw in a lightbulb?” box!)

(more…)

The other day I noticed a flurry of excitement in the lobby of the Design Factory and asked Pirjo, our coordinator, what was up? Apparently some big things, not only was the rector of Aalto University due to arrive but so were Dr Peter Zec (of the Red Dot Design awards fame) and Ms. Dilki DeSilva both from the ICSID – they were on an evaluatory visit of Helsinki, since the city is now a finalist for the title of World Design Capital 2012.

To be honest, I was concerned after I heard this. Should Helsinki even try for this title in the first place? Did it need it? I mean you don’t hear of San Francisco or Milan even applying for these things, so why should Helsinki? Sure, its not the first city you think of when you say design, but imho, being design savvy comes in individual flavours.

I mean San Francisco is a different city from Milan, but we don’t think twice when lumping them together as creative hotbeds. Each has its own particular culture and flavour, and as I am discovering here, Helsinki has its own. Its very understated, just as the Finns tend to be, and goes less for the style and pizzazz aspect of design. Here, in the city, I find design thinking embodied in many subtle ways, just take the silhouettes in the street signs for example:

The figures come across as human rather than simply the usual featureless stick figures. There’s just something about them, like the man’s shoulders for example in this zebra crossing sign. Or the seating in some of the city’s trams – instead of being exactly aligned side by side, they’re offset just enough to provide your with a sense of sitting in your own space instead of squashed up against a stranger.

True, sometimes it can be overdone, as someone mentioned to me the other day. We were all at the terrace of a cafe on Kauppatori and one of guys came back from the mens room grumbling about things being overdesigned. Why, we asked him? Well, after you’ve washed your hands and you start looking for the towel in the usual places you find a tiny sign telling you the towels are under the mirror ;p Yeah, well you can take a tendency to pay attention to details a tad too far but you really can’t complain when things work so well.

Anyway, I could be wrong, but as far as I’m concerned, if Helsinki ended up as the World Design Capital, it’d only be the icing on the cake for me but I’m sure everyone will be thrilled, in their inimitable Finnish way. What do you think?

(more…)