Hasta La Ideas

Are you kidding me?

Heading over this morning to the high-end shopping strip of West Broadway, where every store seems to have huge windows, we see what’s in the photo above. I have a hard time believing a few lousy strips of blue painter’s tape can hold a window together. In fact meteorologist Chris Landsea, who is the Science and Operations Officer at the National Hurricane Center, writes “[taping windows] is a waste of effort, time, and tape. It offers little strength to the glass and NO protection against flying debris.”

While I think whomever did the blue tape job was wasting their time, I think Landsea might be misguided—not in his stating of what tape won’t do, but in his understanding of why people tape their windows. I’d always assumed people taped their windows—with sturdier duct or gaffer’s tape, that is—in an effort to keep the glass itself from disintegrating into shard-like projectiles upon shattering. I never understood it to make the glass stronger or somehow serve as a protective net from flying debris impacting the glass.

That being said, I still suspect tape doesn’t work at all; the paragraph above is my interpretation of what window-tapers think they’re accomplishing.

So the question is, how did window-taping start? Clever marketing from 3M or a local retailer? Interestingly enough, the taping of windows was done by the Brits in World War II as part of ARP (Air Raid Precautions) measures during the German bombing Blitz. As you can see from the images below, the taping was rather more thorough than the half-assery pictured up top.

Explains a gent named Peter Johnson writing on a UK website about life in the 1900s,

[During the Blitz] each house was given some rolls of gummed brown sticky paper about 3 inches wide. These were for sticking to the inside of all the windows from corner to corner in a diagonal pattern to prevent shards of glass from flying into the rooms in a bomb blast.

What no one mentions, however, was whether this actually worked.

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We all owe Bill Moggridge more than we think we do. In fact, anyone who uses a laptop has Bill to thank for being the first person to design one, blowing minds when he brought portability to computer hardware for GRiD Systems in 1982. It was Moggridge’s idea to create a display that closed over the keyboard. At the time it retailed for $8,150, a selling price that kept it from becoming commonplace in most homes, but didn’t deter NASA, who used it in every Space Shuttle mission from 1983 to 1997.

Moggridge later founded IDEO with David Kelley and Mike Nuttal in Palo Alto, California, a design practice that was groundbreaking in its human-centric approach. “He really saw that we would get ideas from understanding people,” said Kelley. Moggridge put empathizing with people at the forefront of his design process, and even brought psychologists into IDEO to help further that understanding – all before he tackled the design of the product or system itself.

Moggridge left IDEO in 2010 to accept the role of Director of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, a move that might also be considered groundbreaking as Moggridge was the first museum director without a museum background. There, Moggridge made a huge effort to make design accessible to visitors and his educational initiatives brought design into elementary and middle schools in New York City. The fantastic Bill’s Design Talks series were always free for students to attend, and his ultimate goal was to make design a viable career choice for children to consider once they reached high school.

On Thursday, November 1, 2012 join Tim Brown, John Maeda, Bruce Nussbaum and Ellen Lupton in conversation with Helen Walters at Symphony Space as they discuss the monumental career and life’s work Moggridge has left behind.

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The second Seattle Designers Accord Town Hall was held October 11th at Carbon Design Group’s studio. The event was organized by Carbon, Modern Species and AIGA Seattle. The theme of the night was “Are We There Yet?” reflecting the seemingly endless journey of designers striving to produce sustainable results for willing clients. The evening kicked off with refreshments and networking, and then moved on to the main events. Linda Wagner, of Carbon, and Gage Mitchell, of both Modern Species and AIGA Seattle, shared the emcee duties. Four speakers delivered short presentations to address the topic from their perspective (industrial design, graphic design, architecture, or business), before continuing the conversation in breakout sessions.

Ashley Arhart
Creative Director of Consumer Experience at Hornall Anderson
Ashley gets props for bringing, well, props. Her message for the evening was that sustainable design is only successful if the consumer likes it. Case in point was the incredibly noisy Sun Chips bag. Compostable, yes, but hearing it in person drove home the problem—nobody wants to broadcast that they’re snacking. Ashley went on to ruffle every print designer in attendance by declaring the book is dead… as an object of information, but alive as an object of desire. To bring this home, she used the example of Wantful, a company that allows you to create a beautiful personalized book filled with a curated selection of gifts from which a recipient can pick. By blending digital and print, Wantful delivers a richer, more meaningful experience. And meaningful experiences are vital because, the success of a product is determined by how it connects with people. (Ashley also wrote up a great detailed post about her breakout session which you can find here.)

Kirk Myers
Corporate Social Responsibility Manager at REI
Kirk’s job is to design business systems that provide sustainable outcomes. One of REI’s greatest successes in this endeavor came from partnering with other outdoor apparel manufacturers like Patagonia and Timberland to create the HIGG Index, which measurers the impact of their products. By working together, these companies were able to give their vendors an assessment tool and a very large incentive to use it. Kirk pointed out that the true focus of any company is whether or not a customer will buy a product. A sustainable product isn’t sustainable at all if it doesn’t sell. Method is a company that gets this in spades. They aren’t successful because they create sustainable products. They’re successful because they create better products with a combination of design, functionality, and affordability that makes them stand out. Sustainable products must be better all around.

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We wouldn’t be mad if you called us bookworms. At Core77, we proudly review books as part of our mission to be a great resource for practicing designers. So we were excited to see that our friends at Designers & Books put together a great program for the first Designers & Books Fair happening in New York at the end of this month.

The Book Fair will be a great starting point for amping up your fall reading list—35 US and European book publishers and booksellers will display and sell the newest titles for fall as well as offering important backlist titles. There will also be rare and out-of-print book dealers; demonstrations of book arts, including calligraphy, letterpress printing, bookbinding and book signings. Besides the exhibition, the Book Fair also includes 17 programs with designers in conversation.

Some of the conversations we’re looking most forward to attending include Bikes and Books (with builders, retailers and book designers), Chinese Design Culture Now (with Core77 Design Awards 2012 Jury Captain Lorraine Justice), Karim Rashid in Conversation with Debbie Millman and How To Get Published in the World of Design Books (with Core77 Design Awards 2011 Jury Captain Steven Heller).

Designers & Books Fair
October 26-28, 2012
FIT New York

We have a special offer for Core77 readers! Tell us in the comments what book has had the greatest influence on you and your design practice and you can win a free set of passes to the program of your choice!

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We had a blast at Portland’s inaugural Mini Maker Faire at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. Like the bigger events in Detroit, the Bay Area and the coming world Maker Faire in NY, the Mini Maker Faire hosts an eclectic mix of makers, diy’ers, crafters, engineers, designers and essentially anyone else with something to show and tell.

Portland, OR’s maker community runs deep and strong so despite the “mini” status there was maximum maker satisfaction. There was the expected gamut of 3D and laser printers madly pumping out bits and bobs hither and thither, other highlights included Fractal Copper tables, The Handlebar (a human powered mobile bar), dorkbot’s Bee Hive enthusiasts and a magnificent trebuchet that hurled pumpkins and watermelons every half hour.

Hand-Eye Supply was out in full force with our brand new mobile bike hand painted by the talented illustrator and hand letterist Mary Kate McDevitt. While the bike tooled around MMF, the Hand-Eye Supply Curiosity Club set up an informational table with some artifacts from some of our past speakers: Blacksmith Lyle Poulin, Perfume Maker and Artist Julia Barbee, Stainless Steel Birdcage Fabricator Joe Diemer, Telmark Skier and Designer Mark Tieszen and Illustrator and Letterpress firm KeeganMeegan & Co.

Special thanks to Julia Barbee and Lyle Poulin for hanging out with us at the Curiosity Club booth, the OMSI team and all the makers who came out to make a fabulous inaugural Portland Mini-Maker Faire. We can’t wait for next year!

Will Lolcama spreads the word about the Curiosity Club.

Simran Gleason’s fractal copper coffee table is based off the Hilbert space-filling curve.

Simran demonstrates his braising techniques.

Portland’s Alter Egos Society develops their own superheros and costumes to raise money for homeless youth.

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