Hasta La Ideas

Two of of the seven 2013 Time 100 covers, which feature portraits by Mark Seliger.

Today Time revealed its annual selection of the 100 most influential people in the world, and while we remain suspicious of any list that includes both Christina Aguilera and Elena Kagan, it’s difficult not to enjoy the logistical wonder that is the Time 100 issue. On newsstands tomorrow, the massive editorial effort commissions a diverse group of notable figures—many of them Time 100 alumna—to write a paragraph or two about the chosen influencers. And so this year we get Richard “I know a thing or two about building spaceships” Branson on SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk, Claire Danes‘s clear-eyed look at the uniquely vanity-free and shameless Lena Dunham, and Michael Bloomberg‘s cliché-ridden paen to Jay-Z, who emerges as a 21st century Gatsby that gets the girl–she also made the Time 100–and the American Dream.

Art and design stars that made it onto this year’s Time 100 include Apple’s Jony Ive, Michael Kors, who joins the likes of Uniqlo honcho Tadashi Yanai and Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg in the “Titans” category; artist Ed Ruscha, who Richard Lacayo likens here to “a SoCal Magritte;” 2012 Pritzker laureate Wang Shu; and Jenna Lyons, executive creative director of J. Crew. “She has made fashion relatable,” writes fashion designer Prabal Gurung of Lyons. “Being fashionable doesn’t mean being trendy; it means having a sense of style. Jenna has made J. Crew more than a brand or a company–it’s a philosophy that believes in style.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Speaking of Sharpies, what do they have in common with these products?

All of those brands—Sharpie, Irwin Tools, Dymo, Calphalon, Rubbermaid, Rubbermaid Commercial Products and Graco, not to mention Goody, Waterman, Lenox, Paper-Mate, Parker, Aprica and more—are all owned by Newell Rubbermaid, which owns 40 brands in total. And having that much product diversity may be good news to those of you ID students set to graduate in 2014, and willing to move to Michigan: Newell Rubbermaid has announced they’re consolidating 15 industrial design teams into one massive one, to be located at their first global design center.

The Newell Rubbermaid Design Center, located in Western Michigan University’s Business Technology and Research Park, will employ 100 industrial and graphic designers under a single roof, with salaries reportedly in the $70,000 to $90,000 range. The $4 million, 40,000-square-foot facility is slated to open in early 2014, and while a number of those jobs will go to relocated designers currently employed by the sub-brand, there’s surely going to be job vacancies from those who didn’t want to move. And if things go well, the facility has space to expand by a factor of four. Here’s some more info from the press release:

“Great design and creativity is the difference between a standard product and one that is beautiful in every way—and drives consumer preference,” said Chuck Jones, Newell Rubbermaid’s Chief Design and Research & Development Officer. “Our new Design Center will be a best-in-class facility that enables us to attract the best international design talent to work on a wonderful portfolio of leading brands. Our brand studios and immersion labs will foster growth ideas as designers collaborate with marketing and R&D on great innovation…

The [facility] has been carefully planned to foster creativity and maximize the sharing of ideas and technologies among the company’s brands. A large, open studio space will provide the ideal environment for designers to collaborate using advanced software tools. Immersion labs for the company’s priority business segments will enable design and marketing teams to evaluate product prototypes and imagine the possibilities of future product roadmaps. The company is investing in new talent with specialist design skills to work alongside the existing industrial and graphic design teams.

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This week we’re happy to welcome F+W Media back into the Coroflot Design Employment Network. We launched our newest partner job board a few days ago, servicing both the HOW and Print Magazine web sites.

F+W is a great fit for our partner network. Matching the range of creative career opportunities found throughout the Coroflot network with F+W’s audience of practicing design professionals makes perfect sense.

This is the first partner job board to benefit from a big technology upgrade on a number of fronts, and we’ll be announcing several new partners in the coming weeks.

If you haven’t looked for a new job recently, there’s no better time to start than right now! Check out the HOW Job Board, and while you’re there take a look through some of the other career resources they’ve got.

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The design-minded datacrunchers over at Coroflot recently released their redesigned and better-than-ever Design Salary Guide, now a rolling (and free!) tool that reports results in real-time. They’ve followed it up with an executive summary of sorts that is tailor-made for designers–in a word, infographics. Check out the just-published “Creative Employment Snapshot” for a visual presentation of the current state of employment in design, creative, and interaction fields–including current and potential earnings. There’s even a PDF version to print out and slip onto your boss’s desk.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

A judge has nixed the NYC “soda ban”–due to take effect Tuesday, it would have banned 16-ounce containers of sugary drinks that have more than 25 calories per ounce–but an appeal is in the works, and Mayor Bloomberg isn’t the only one looking to change the way we look at fizzy beverages. SodaStream is shaking up the market with its DIY take (slogan: “If you love the bubbles, set them free”). Founded in 1903 with the introduction of “an apparatus for aerating liquids,” the Israel-based company recently teamed up with Yves Behar and his team at Fuseproject to design the Source, a sleek home soda maker. “The design of Source was a process of elimination,” says Behar, who also worked on the packaging, naming, and graphic design of the compostable soda pods. Yaron Kopel, SodaStream’s chief innovation and design officer, made time during his recent trip to NYC to answer our questions about soda, the Fuseproject collaboration, and what’s next for the company.

First things first, what is your favorite beverage?
SodaStream Ginger Ale.

How do you describe SodaStream to someone who is unfamiliar with it?
SodaStream allows you to make carbonated water–which can become cola, fizzy juice, you name it–from home, in an instant. We have become so accustomed to the everyday consumption of bottled soda that its impact has been rendered mostly invisible. From an environmental perspective, when we consume and toss out plastic soda bottles, we’re doing damage. That plastic ends up forgotten, in landfills, in oceans. With SodaStream, consumers can enjoy their bubbles without any environmental impact. In essence, SodaStream takes what was once a passive, environmentally damaging practice–purchasing and enjoying soda–and has made it simple, active and environmentally sound.

What led you to seek out Yves Behar/Fuseproject, and what did you ask them to do?
Yves is among the finest industrial designers in the world. He is an innovator in sustainable design. Yves was tasked with reducing complexity and waste and creating a simple and beautiful object for the kitchen that keeps with 21st Century values. The result is SodaStream Source. Realizing that world-class design is a prerequisite to securing space on the countertop, SodaStream Source combines outstanding design with best-in-class engineering to improve functionality and ease-of-use. Its refined mechanics make the entire top surface responsive to touch. A new Snap-Lock mechanism makes the process quick, easy and intuitive, while an LED display provides instant visual feedback on the level of carbonation.

How was the process of working with Yves?
Yves and I worked together 24/7 for nine months to bring Source to fruition. It was a collaborative process. We shared a similar vision and joint desire to reduce and refine the user experience. Nothing about Yves’ work is redundant–every design attribute has a purpose. The finished product is a beautifully pared back design delivering the luxury of sparkling water, sodas, and bubbly beverages in one iconic minimal piece for the modern kitchen.
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.