Hasta La Ideas

This is the first of a multi-part look at lightweight backpacking and the designers who love it.

Ultralight is a challenging niche within both the outdoor community and the outdoor industry. Ultralight users are often out on the trail or mountain for weeks on end, and ultralight designers have to get them there and back. To learn about the passions and problem-solving involved, I spoke with Mike St. Pierre, founder of Hyperlite Mountain Gear, makers of award-winning ultralight packs and tents.

C77: What inspires you to create new designs?

Mike: Honestly? My own personal interest level in an outdoor activity. I started out making packs for backpacking and through-hiking because I was doing a lot of that, then I got into climbing, so I made packs for climbers. Then I got into backcountry skiing—so that’s probably one of the next products. New designs come from personal interest and from customers requesting products for niches where they want to go lighter.

How do you determine desired weight and work towards it?

We don’t set out with that goal in mind. Weight is important, but I’ve never been looking to be the lightest guy out there. The weight is a byproduct of the design philosophy: strip away and provide the basics of what you need. A lot of companies build bags that have a multitude of attachment points, bags for doing all kind things—one bag fits all. We don’t look at it that way, it’s good to be specific. Rock climbing? Climbing bag. Ice hiking? Ice hiking pack.

How do developments in high-tech materials impact your line of products and new designs?

When I found out about cuben fiber it was a no brainer. It’s truly waterproof, the strongest material in the world, it’s non woven. All the other fabrics out there are coated fabrics. Instead you’ve got something that won’t leak, weighs less… It’s the best. So we’re always searching for the newest modern materials. More minimalist designs mean more high tech materials. Marrying the two is how we reduce the weight. Stick with what works, but sometimes you find something exciting that can spark a whole new line.

I had a heavy hand in the development of a lot of fabrics that we use. We’re doing our own production here in Maine—when we started no one was willing or had knowledge of the adhesives and bonding techniques involved. I shopped it around, and decided there was no way to do it unless we build out manufacturing ourselves. Our cuben fiber with laminated woven fabrics, those are products fabrics I had my two cents in with our developers. I constantly find things I like somewhere, and find a way to get it laminated or incorporated in the manufacture of the cuben.

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Photos by Talia Herman

If you’re an industrial designer looking to work in the tech sector, Google is probably pretty low on your list of prospective employers—if it’s on there at all. The company employs plenty of UX designers, interaction designers, motion designers, and others who shape how Google users interface with its many digital tools. But Google doesn’t really make stuff, and ambitious designer-makers are much more likely to set their sights on Apple, IDEO, frog, or any number of other high-profile companies that do.

That may be about to change. Recently, Google invited Core77 to visit its Mountain View, California, campus and meet some of the design talent behind Google X, the semi-secret “moonshot factory” that has in recent years been designing quite a bit of actual stuff, some of which you’ve no doubt heard about by now. X was founded in January 2010 to continue work on Google’s self-driving car initiative, and to start developing other similarly futuristic projects. The next to be unveiled was Google Glass, the much-publicized wearable computer that is expected to reach consumers sometime this year. After that, X launched (quite literally) Project Loon, an attempt to provide Internet service to rural and remote areas via balloons floating in the stratosphere; it conducted a pilot test in New Zealand last June. X also recently acquired Makani Power, which develops airborne wind turbines that could be used to harvest high-altitude wind energy, bringing its total number of public projects to four.

But what’s interesting for the design community is not just that Google X is doing some traditional industrial design in the service of realizing outrageously big ideas, but that it’s integrating I.D. with a variety of other disciplines in a particularly rigorous fashion, creating an ideal-sounding nexus of design thinking, user research and fabrication. And it is actively seeking new talent who can help flesh out its multidisciplinary approach.

“We’re looking for unicorns,” says Mitchell Heinrich, one of the four X-ers I met in Mountain View about a month ago. Heinrich founded and runs his own group within X called the Design Kitchen, which acts as X’s in-house fabrication department but is also deeply involved in generating (and killing) new ideas. And what he means by “unicorns” is designers who have the rare ability to excel in both of those roles—as he puts it, “people who have the ability to have the inspiration, the thought, the design, and then are able to carry that out to something that actually works and looks like what they want it to look like.”

That may not sound like such a fantastically rare combination of skills, but Heinrich insists that finding people who can do this kind of soup-to-nuts design—come up with brilliant ideas and then actually make them, while also working extremely fast—has been difficult. In other words, the Kitchen has high standards. “I like to think of it as more like a Chez Panisse than an Applebee’s,” he says.

The Googleplex in early December

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“The meaning of life is that it has to be lived.” How true! And full marks for guessing the author of this quote – Bruce Lee. Known as the most influential martial-arts artists of all time, Lee was single-handedly responsible for breaking the stereotype of Asians in Hollywood movies. Commemorating his 73rd birthday today, the visionaries in the art of magic and cardistry, Dan and Dave, are out with a dedicated Bruce Lee Playing Cards Deck. All the cards feature an inspiring Bruce Lee quote, except for the Aces.

Besides the use of captivating colors for the deck, I love the fact that Dan and Dave have used different philosophical quotes from Bruce Lee’s teachings on each card. Infusing a deeper meaning to them, the Aces are void of any comment, symbolizing a free mind.

Bruce Lee Enterprises along with magicians Dan and Dave honor the masters’ legacy and contribute to his foundation. Here’s a trivia that I suppose every die-hard Bruce Lee fan would know: he was born 73 years ago, on both the hour and year of the dragon.

The Chinese dragon design on the backs of the cards celebrates his birth and the iconic tracksuit he wore in ‘Game of Death’ inspires the faces of the cards. They feature a black stripe running through them, “like water”.

The unique monogram that brings Bruce Lee and Dan and Dave Buck together as one, unifying their art forms under the teachings of Jeet Kune Do, and Bruce Lee’s philosophy of using no way as way and having no limitation as limitation, is by far the most delightful part of this deck. In one direction, the symbol reads BL, flip it over and DB is seen, as if by magic. Clever!

Early in the year we featured Dan and Dave’s collaboration with Stranger & Stranger for the Ultimate Deck, and this year we are proud to feature their new Bruce Lee playing cards. Just like their Ultimate Deck, lots of thought when into these, both in concept and execution. In our opinion, they couldn’t more beautifully pay tribute to Bruce Lee.

Like water, playing cards can flow or they can crash. “Be like water.”

Designers: Dan and Dave [ Buy it Here ]

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(Bruce Lee And His Cards was originally posted on Yanko Design)

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3. Business Cards of the Future

Last week, we took a look at the story behind the bespoke baton that Glasgow’s 4c Design, Ltd., created for the XX Commonwealth Games in 2014. The baton was unveiled at a special ceremony on October 9, the occasion for remarks from Prince Imran of Malaysia (President of the CGF), Lord Smith of Kelvin (Chair of the 2014 Games) and of course Her Royal Majesty Queen Elizabeth II herself.

The BBC’s Mark Beaumont filed his latest report, from Sri Lanka, yesterday afternoon; the Baton is about halfway through it’s tour of Southeast Asia and will be in Australia by Halloween (view the full 70-country, 288-day route here).

We’re pleased to present a series of exclusive photos documenting the making-of the baton, courtesy of 4c Design.

Testing ithe durability of the handle.

The “Birdmouthing” join comes from 1,000+ years of shipbuilding tradition

The form was 3D-printed with Direct Metal Laser Sintering, but the rough titanium requires quite a bit of manual polishing…

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Images courtesy of IDEO

If a recent segment on 60 Minutes is any indication, IDEO’s David Kelley is among the design superstars who have crossed over into mainstream recognition. David and his brother Tom, also a partner at the leading innovation consultancy, are pleased to present a new book, Creative Confidence, to prove that deep down (or perhaps not so deep) inside, “each and every one of us is creative.” We had a chance to catch up with the Kelley Bros. to chat about their latest page-turner and how each of us can tap into our own creative potential.

Earlier this year, Bruce Nussbaum published a book called Creative Intelligence. To what degree is this premise—that anyone can be creative—a new trend, and why do you think that is? Or alternately, if the idea has been in the ether for some time, why now?

While creativity is timeless, trends like Maker culture open up new opportunities to unleash creativity. Our great friend and IDEO cofounder Bill Moggridge strongly believed that most people were vastly more creative and capable than they knew. We agree, and we’re glad more people around the world are starting to agree, too.

We define creative confidence as the natural human ability to come up with breakthrough ideas and the courage to act on them. Since everyone was creative at some point in their lives (consider kindergarten), the challenge for us is more about unlocking creative potential than generating it from scratch.

Both in David’s work at the d.school and in IDEO’s collaborative work with client teams, we’ve witnessed many personal transformations when people who do not self-identify as “creative” get exposed to design thinking methods—and then surprise themselves with just how creative they really are. We’ve seen over and over that when people experience a series of small successes, they gradually gain confidence in their own ability to generate creative ideas and act on them. Creative confidence, what eminent psychologist Albert Bandura would call “self-efficacy,” comes down to a belief system about your own ability to have positive impact in the world.

Creative confidence is like a muscle—it can be strengthened and nurtured through effort and practice. In our experience, the best way to do that is through action, one step at a time.

The anecdote about Akshay and Ankit [engineers who end up in a d.school class] definitely rings true: We often hear from engineers who realize they’d rather be designers but don’t know where to start. Do you have any advice for them?

If you’re an engineer, then you’re a problem solver. The way to move in the design direction is to move from pure problem-solving to need-finding. That’s the empathy part of it. So instead of just doing your normal job, look for ways to reframe the problem that you’re working on, ways it might be solved in a different or a better way. Complete the task you were asked to do and then do it again in a more creative way using design thinking tools. Present both directions to the boss.

What you need is a bias toward action, to jump out into the world. Engineers tend to shy away from the messiness of the human part. So if you’re working on a new cell phone, instead of just considering the circuits or the software, go out and watch people use cell phones. Watch people use cell phones in extreme situations. Watch unusual phone use, and watch regular phone use. Ask people questions about it. Ask people to draw their cell phones. Do whatever it takes to get deep into understanding what’s meaningful to people about cell phones, rather than just working on the technology.

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