Hasta La Ideas

It can’t be easy to condense ten years’ worth of design into a single series of awards, but that’s what the IDSA and Teague have collaborated to do. The duo have just announced their Design of the Decade award winners, honoring ID’ers across a variety of categories stretching from 2001 to today.

Above is the Gold winner in the Consumer category, Target’s ClearRx medicine bottle from 2005, designed to make it easier for the elderly to identify and access their pills. And while the expected categories of “[Best] Solution to a Consumer Problem” and “Most Profitable Solution to a Business Problem” feature prominently in the DoD Awards, there’s plenty of weightier categories like “[Best] Solution to a Developing World Social Problem,” “Best Sustainable Design Solution” and “Most Responsible Design Solution.” Check ’em all out here.

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In Decembers past, we’ve told you about the Usonian gingerbread house classes offered by the Price Tower Arts Center, housed in Frank Lloyd Wright‘s “prairie skyscraper.” This year the Bartlesville, Oklahoma institution switched things up with something much more ornate than Wright’s pared-down dwellings for “common people.” On Saturday, the Price Tower offered amateur gingerbread architects the opportunity to make an edible cathedral under the guidance of pastry artist Sandy McLelland. The change of style was in honor of the current exhibition, “William Schickel: Spirit Made Manifest,” on view through January 9. And Oklahomans needn’t worry if they missed out on the icing action at the Price Tower. Tomorrow pastry architects Omar Galban and Steven Reasor will unveil a trio of elaborate gingerbread structures at Inverness Village, a retirement community in Tulsa. The duo devoted more than 120 hours to the holiday spread, which includes a three-foot-tall gingerbread replica of the Sistine Chapel—complete with powdered sugar versions of Michelangelo‘s ceiling paintings and a lighted floor made of sugar. Those interested in licking the famous frescoes or preserving them for eternity under a festive coat of shellac can bid away: all of the gingerbread creations will be auctioned, with the proceeds going to charity.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Andy Cruz and Rick Roat from House Industries were in town today to present their Holiday Pop-Up Show at Partners & Spade with live screen printing by Awesome Dudes. It’s no secret we’re huge fans, our logo uses their blaktur typeface designed by Ken Barber, and Ken if you’re reading, there’s Core77 t-shirt headed your way!

Unfortunately this was just a one day event. If you’re in LA next weekend you can catch the show at Heath Ceramics opening December 11th, and for the folks in Portland, we carry a selection of House Industries wares at Hand-Eye Supply. It was hard to resist the opportunity to pick up a custom screen printed t-shirt—I ended up getting 3 made—and can highly recommend the Awesome Dudes if you’re looking for a good short run t-shirt printer.

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Core77’s Hand-Eye Curiosity Club is coming to New York next week with special guest Zach Lieberman presenting new work, and works in progress at the Dunderdon store on December 9th.

Zach Lieberman is a Brooklyn-based interactive artist, hacker and researcher. His installations and performance use custom hardware and open source software to create new playful modes of expression — and always with an element of surprise! Drawing is central theme running through his work, his projects use various means to capture interaction with the body, eyes or voice, and it’s this intersection of gesture, physical interaction and computation that he’s most passionate about.

Many Core readers will be familiar with Zach’s work on the EyeWriter project, a low-cost, open source eye-tracking system originally made for legendary LA graffiti writer Tony Quan, aka TEMPTONE who was diagnosed with ALS in 2003. And the iQ Font for Toyota, Zach collaborated with typographers Pierre & Damiena and pro racer Stef van Campenhoudt to make a typeface from tracking the movements of a car.

Zach is the co-founder of openframeworks, a c++ library for creative coding, he’s one of the developers behind rhonda, a 3D drawing tool, and it’s musical sister project sonic wire sculptor. His work has been exhibited around the world including Ars Electronica, Futuresonic, CeBIT, and the Offf Festival, and he’s a professor at Parsons teaching classes in animation and audiovisual expression in code.

Join us next Thursday to watch Zach perform and demo new works including a sneak peak at version 2.0 of EyeWriter, soon to be released. Special thanks to our good friends Dunderdon for hosting the event and our drinks sponsor Sixpoint!

Core77’s Hand-Eye Curiosity Club
Thursday, December 9th, 7 – 10pm
Presentation: 7:30
Dunderdon
25 Howard St
New York NY, 10013
RSVP: curiosityclub.eventbrite.com

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