Hasta La Ideas

Dramatic innovations from students around the world help shape the future of supercar design

Ferrari invited us to their headquarters in Maranello, Italy to see the work of the seven finalists in their year-long World Design Contest.

The contest tasked the students with devising a concept car design with the brief to reduce fuel consumption and the car’s overall weight in order to increase driving pleasure. The teams used Autodesk’s Alias industrial design software, completing concepts first in renderings before generating 3D models. Each team displayed three different designs.

Beating out 299 schools and taking home first place was the Transportation Design team at Seoul’s Hongik University, who developed a “hyper efficient” two seat Ferrari. Dubbed Eternità, the carbon-fiber super barchetta features a layered carbon powertrain, physical flywheel energy storage system, superconductive motor and a hydrogen generator.

Inspired by wind, second place winner (from Torino’s Istituto Europeo di Design school) Samir Sadikhov’s Xezri concept positioned the wing of the car horizontally on the roof, which raises to cool the engine down when the car exceeds 200km/h. (pictured above) The third place winners from the Royal College of Art Vehicle Design Department created a racing car designed for the frozen riviera, called Cavallo Bianco. The turbo-charged four-cylinder engine runs on bio-ethanol to generate electrical power, which gives it “maximum grip in icy conditions.”

An impressive array of student work and the potential future of Ferrari design, see more images from the World Design Contest in our gallery.

All images by Evan Orensten

From Thonet to Pinanfarina, the evolution of deskside seating

Of all the far-reaching implications of the information age, technical innovations in office chair design define an era that could be named the desk-bound age. Here to put the contemporary mesh panels and lumbar supports in context, “A Taxonomy of Office Chairs” surveys the evolution of the workplace staple, beginning with the start of the Industrial Revolution. Amassed by design consultant Jonathan Olivares, the book details over 130 office chairs, classified by their distinguishing features. Chapters include “Headrest,” “Seat-Stem Joinery” and other thrilling topics, breaking down the design into components to show its chronological progression with over 400 technical drawings and a catalog of color photos.

To better define the broad topic Olivares created one stipulation—the chair’s design must have introduced at least one novel featuret. Funded by Knoll, Olivares researched his subject by meeting with designers, manufacturers and furniture experts and archivists, who lent not only technical information, but also insight on the cultural impact the office chair has had on work itself.

But his meticulousness didn’t end there. Olivares collected, inspected, compared and contrasted over 2,000 chairs, using scientific methodology. Toward the end of his search he was able to take advantage of Google Patents, which—though still in its infancy—helped him locate two chairs from the 1800s that “only exist in their patent applications.”

Other standouts include chairs by Charles and Ray Eames, the Bouroullec brothers, Richard Sapper, Mario Bellini (who claims the three greatest moments in office chair history are the Industrial Revolution, his 1984 Persona chair and 2005 Headline chair), Frank Lloyd Wright and many more highly-revered designers and architects.

“A Taxonomy of Office Chairs” is available online from Phaidon and Amazon.

London’s book-obsessed design studio shares their top six rare reads

As their name implies, London design firm Bibliothèque take an avid interest in books. The creative trio recently outlined how their obsession with printed matter informs their practice at the Design Indaba conference, explaining “it’s easy to cherry-pick inspiration in the digital era; we are pre-digital collectors with a fascination in the communication of images.”

Their bibliophile ways have clearly paid off with a host of successful projects in the Bibliothèque portfolio. In 2009 the group recreated part of Dieter Rams’ living room as part of their design for the “Less is More” retrospective at the London Design Museum, as well as a massive exhibition at the Barbican showcasing the work of Le Corbusier (casting a hybrid Barbican-Corbusier-inspired typeface in concrete to create the identity). The consultancy also art directed and designed the 2010 D&AD Awards ceremony and dinner, where their clever Yes or No concept included a “typographic expression of the number of rejections proportional to the acceptances” in a video installation. (See more examples of their work in the gallery below.

For a little insight into how Bibliothèque keeps up their book-oriented process without it being too “mentally exhausting,” we asked them to share a few of their favorite rare finds and special editions (housed on two shelves kindly donated by Vitsoe), because as they put it, “you can’t design in a vacuum”—or perhaps more to the point, “extra dedication always shows.”

Dieter Rams: Less But Better

Starting with Dieter Rams’ now well-known “Ten Principles of Good Design,” this out-of-print title covers 40 years of his product design at Braun as well as works for Vitsoe. The 1995 book culminates in a chapter about the design of Dieter’s home, which of course he designed with the same rigor as all of his works.

Kieler Woche: History of a Design Contest

As big fans of publisher Lars Müller, Bibliothéque cites the editorial, design and overall production level of History of a Design Contest as a shining example of the imprint’s quality. Documenting the annual poster competition held to promote the Kieler Woche regatta in Kiel, Germany, the book illustrates all the winning posters (as well some runners-up) and, with works by Wim Crouwel, Alan Fletcher, Josef Müller-Brockman and Odermatt + Tissi, reads like a who’s who of graphic design.

Design: Vignelli

This volume, a document of the works of influential New York studio Vignelli Associates since the early 1960s, presents the studio’s multidisciplinary approach to corporate identity, publishing, calendars, retail packaging, way finding, exhibitions, furniture and interiors. Few other monographs give a sense of a true total design approach with works that stand the test of time—many Vignelli designs are still in use, looking as fresh and relevant as the day they were created.

Siegfried Odermatt & Rosmarie Tissi: Graphic Design

Odermatt and Tissi have been producing outstanding work in the loft of a century-old house in Zürich’s old quarter since 1968 (without the help of assistants) and their masterful use of composition, type and image make this book a constant source of inspiration. Chapters with direct titles such as “Work for various clients 1947—1992” and “Trademarks/Logotypes and Examples from advertising campaigns, 1957—1972” show examples of the duo’s output, peppered with insights into design practice from other eminent practitioners. Paul Rand weighs in with “Some thoughts on the subject of trademarks and symbols” and Dr. Willy Rotzler’s “The concrete charm of abstract posters” rounds it out.

Typography Today

Conceived and designed by designer and typographer Helmut Schmid, this title, full of fantastic examples of typography as a craft, is derived from a special issue of Japanese design magazine Idea. Republished as a book in 1981, it introduced select works of 88 designers from 15 countries, tracing the course of modern typography from pioneers such as Lissitzky, Tschichold and Zwart to celebrated works of Wolfgang Weingart, Wim Crouwel and Kohei Sugiura. The “new, expanded, edition” that came out in 2003 includes more contemporary works to help continue the story.

Ulm Design: The Morality of Objects

During its brief existence from 1955 to 1968, the Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm exerted an influence that no one could have predicted from its small size or improbable location. Originally conceived as a successor to the Bauhaus, the school quickly abandoned that model and set out to explore the unchartered territory of designing for mass production. Under the direction of Max Bill, Tomàs Maldonado and Otl Aicher the school became and extraordinary laboratory of design and a center of talent. More than 40 years after its closing, Ulm is still considered the most important European school of design since the Bauhaus.

Bibliothèque calls “the influence of Ulm and the works detailed within The Morality of Objects…a big influence on our work, ethos and approach to design.”

See examples of Bibliothèque’s outstanding work in the gallery.

Get crafty with a new book by San Francisco’s leading lady of printmaking

Founder of San Francisco, CA design studio Yellow Owl Workshop, crafty woman Christine Schmidt knows her print-making. Her new book, “Print Workshop: Hand Printing Techniques and Truly Original Projects,” embodies her icon status as a hand-printer while offering artistic recipes for other creative-minded souls.

The book, billed as a tool for “low budgets and high expectations,” offers a variety of printing guides that are a serious attraction to someone who has spent years secretly fantasizing about printing subversive t-shirts in his basement, like me. From relief to sun printing, Schmidt covers a range of fun and creative tasks that can be tackled in a weekend or drawn out into long-term projects.

While the range of projects is impressive, the real beauty of the book is its comprehensive nature. Each section begins with a description of the specific tools necessary for each topic, followed by straightforward directions on execution. Schmidt offers an immense amount of details for all the different categories, and the utility of having a single-source of tried-and-true design at your fingertips is invaluable.

Schmidt’s language is casually encouraging, and in true DIY spirit every paragraph makes you feel more confident in your ability to complete the task at hand. While the book won’t tell you how to rubber stamp the Mona Lisa, it’s an excellent launching pad for imaginative minds.

As a bonus the last 15 pages are a collection of templates from the Yellow Owl Workshop that you can use for inspiration. The book comes out 28 December 2010 but can be pre-ordered from Amazon or directly from Crown Publishing.

Craft photos by Thomas J. Story for Sunset Magazine

Defining the pigments of the imagination for almost 50 years, Pantone sets industry standards in color. Its matching systems and guides are essential in graphic arts, industrial design, fashion, cosmetics—when finding, referencing or producing the precise hue, tint or shade is critical.

Keeping to its tradition of innovative solutions, the Carlstadt, NJ-based company today launches The Plus Series. A complementary video, “360˚ Color: A Peek Inside Pantone on the Release of The Plus Series,” (made by CH filmmakers
Gregory Mitnick and Ami Kealoha) offers a behind-the-scenes look into the system’s development and products with the folks at Pantone and notable designers, including Swissmiss founder Tina Roth Eisenberg, RISD President John Maeda, and Doug Jaeger, President of the Art Director’s Club. The short, along with the new look and feel of Pantone, comes from the creative minds of the multidisciplinary
Base, who worked with Pantone to come up with a fresh identity, framing the new plus series within “a context that references the classic Pantone Chip.”

After continually adding sections to its book, Pantone reorganized the chromatic families to fluidly relate to each other. It also introduces 224 brand-new colors and three on-trend categories: pastels, neons and metallics. For those who prefer to go paperless, Pantone digitized its fan decks with its Color Manager software.