Hasta La Ideas

Nike CEO Mark Parker has a more intimate connection with the design process than your average executive, as he originally signed on as a footwear designer before working his way up the ranks. At this month’s NFL launch event, Core77 caught up with the man who oversees Nike’s multibillion-dollar empire–and a staff of some 700 designers, not to mention the external creatives whom Nike consults with–to talk big-picture design.

In the video below, Parker describes how Nike observes and collects data from the athletes they work with and injects that into the design process; how co-founder Bill Bowerman’s relentless inventorship continues to inform Nike’s ethos today; how footwear continues to evolve through advances in materials science; why sustainability and impact is a big part of Nike’s design process; and the importance of designers remaining connected to the world for which they design.

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While China’s art scene continues to make record sales, and big names like Ai Weiwei, Cai Guoqiang and Yue Mingfen are starting to roll easily off Westerners’ tongues, Chinese design remains comparatively in the shadows. At best, it’s regarded as a culturally-distinct (but not quite mature) creative discipline; at worst, it’s a punchline about cheap knockoffs. Still, Chinese design is gaining traction: a couple weeks ago, the 2012 Pritzker Prize award went to Hanghzou-based architect and green design advocate Wang Shu, a major milestone towards introducing Chinese creativity to the outside world, beyond the usual art practices.

One of the primary obstacles is that Chinese design can often be difficult to locate. Take a stroll through the French Quarter in Shanghai, or the peek through some of the design studios in Beijing’s hutongs, and you’ll locate a few here and there. Aside from organized events like Beijing Design Week, it can be difficult to get a broader sense of trends in the Chinese design sphere. Indeed, a furniture designer friend of mine has a studio in a village on the outskirts of Beijing.

Which is why, when living in Beijing, I was thrilled to hear about Design China, a new web site and blog that actively tracks trends and issues in contemporary Chinese design. Spearheaded by Zara Arshad, a British designer currently based in Beijing, Design China aims to provide a rare, organized look at China’s contemporary design scene.

Ms. Arshad provides a unique overview through her own design practice. Critically, she served on the Organising Committee for the popular Beijing Design Week 2011, a landmark event that currently provides the best look into Chinese design trends. Further, she’s contributed to a number of exciting projects in China, including Teach For China, The Library Project, Greening the Beige and, most recently, Beijing’s first dedicated design space, Liang Dian Design Center.

Fashion designs by Dooling Jiang. All images courtesy Design China.

It’s through this broad work experience that Ms. Arhad has witnessed Chinese design. While I’ve discussed these issues many times with her over drinks in Beijing, I finally had a chance to sit down with her (on Skype) recently to talk through them more formally.

Core77: Where did the idea for Design China come from?

Zara Arshad: I had been discussing something like this for a really long time. The first time was whilst I was working on the Organizing Committee for Xin: Icograda World Design Congress 2009. This was in the latter half of my first year in Beijing, and I was frustrated at not being able to access design information in one place. It was mostly through colleagues (who were heavily involved at Central Academy of Fine Arts) that would inform me about events and exhibitions. It was all mostly via word of mouth.

Core77: I definitely felt that when I first moved to Beijing in early 2011. The art scene was quite well organized, but it was still difficult to find unified information about design. What spurred you to actually make the site?

The impetus came last year when I was taking care of the Beijing Design Week international media group. We were discussing Chinese designers and the BJDW program at the time, and some of the journalists highlighted their interest in seeing work specifically from Chinese designers. However, much of our 2011 program was a mix of both international and Chinese design. The former was, perhaps, slightly more prominent.

During an informal chat with some of the international media group, one journalist commented, "I don’t know if there are any good Chinese graphic designers." I just happened to mention a few of my friends that fit the slot, to which he replied: "You have all this information in your head. You need to put it somewhere so that we can go and find out all these things." Sitting in a room with people who were experts in their field, and who were telling me there was finally a demand for something like this, caused me to conceive Design China.

I’m surprised there are so few blogs dedicated to contemporary Chinese design. I have actually found a couple of design blogs since, such as CreativeHunt and EightSix. They are both good websites, but I feel that I just have different experiences and information to offer. For example, I’m not just reporting about individuals groups and projects but also about events and observations. I’m trying to really expand on the design debate and look at how design can facilitate positive change within the community and how that’s happening in China.

The interior at Liang Dian Design Center, Beijing’s first space dedicated solely to contemporary design.

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Yves Béhar and entrepreneur Assaf Wand are pleased to announce a new venture called Sabi, a forthcoming line of “lifestyle and welllness products designed to transform life’s small tasks into moments of joy.” The first collection of products captures the essence of this design philosophy: “Vitality” is a line of accessories for medication and pill management.

Inspiration to create Sabi first struck Wand when his wife, then pregnant with their first son, went shopping for a case for her prenatal vitamins and supplements, and couldn’t find anything on the market that was both easy to use and aesthetically appealing. Wand realized there was a need not just for a more attractive way to store pills, but a more organized way to keep vitamins and medications on hand.

Wand turned to the Swiss-born, San Francisco-based designer to turn his vision into a thoughtfully-designed reality: “to create products that infuse the tasks and rituals of daily life with a sense of delight, while also inspiring users to appreciate life’s little moments.” Béhar, in turn, recognized the need and the challenges immediately:

As a designer and entrepreneur, I have long had a simple question no one has been able to answer: why is there no functional brand that speaks to the boomers while taking care of their everyday needs? With such a large demographic of people in their 60’s and older, it is not only a missed business opportunity, but also an insult that products with low quality and lesser design are still the norm.

Thus, the principle of Universal Design—”the actual executions needed to assess all users needs throughout the design process, especially populations that have special needs”—was the starting point for Béhar and his team at fuseproject. From there, they determined that the “line of products—from weeklong pill storage to convenient on the go solutions—cover wide ranging needs, instead of just a singular solutions.”

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The Interwebosphere has been abuzz with news about the very device that may be spell—or rather, print—its unmaking: earlier this week, London-based design consultancy Berg unveiled their latest innovation, the Little Printer. The desktop device is roughly the size of a cube of Post-It notes, configured to produce a receipt-sized analogue for a newspaper featuring personalized content culled from the otherwise never-ending newsfeeds that all but define the Information Age.

Little Printer lives in your front room and scours the Web on your behalf, assembling the content you care about into designed deliveries a couple of times a day. You configure Little Printer from your phone, and there’s some great content to choose from—it’s what Little Printer delivers that makes it really special.

In other words, Berg has taken the burgeoning, buzzword-y, possibly made-up notion of ‘content curation’ to the next level with the Little Printer, which produces a personalized physical document—at once one-of-a-kind and patently disposable—on a twice-daily publishing schedule. The excellent video is set to hit a million views (with your help) within a week of going live:

Of course, the real—in every sense of the word—appeal of the Little Printer lies in the tactility of its output, which transmogrifies two-finger scrolling into a good old-fashioned scroll, of sorts, an escrow in the original sense. It’s not so much that we’ve been desensitized by touchscreens; rather, we’re accustomed to them, and the effect of seeing content that is commonly presented under glass (literally) writ small is charming, if not altogether refreshing. Hence, Berg’s characterization of the Little Printer as “more like a family member or a colleague than a tool.”

Before you ask, it’s scheduled to launch in 2012; more on the tech and an exclusive Q&A with Berg Principal Matt Webb after the jump…

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American pottery manufacturer Heath Ceramics has had their kilns burning for more than half a century, employing craftsmen at their Sausalito, California factory to produce tableware and tile. In recent years, Heath has been creating focused, hand-crafted collaborations with a carefully curated list of designers and artists including Christina Kim (Dosa), Roy McMakin and chef Alice Waters. “Our collaborations are inspiring for those of us working on design at Heath, as well as the artists and designers with whom we collaborate,” explains Creative Director Cathy Bailey. “They are true collaborations where we all are learning something new and opening our minds to different possibilities in our work. They are also inspiring on many different levels, from new techniques to new perspectives offered by the artists and designers we’re working with to create and craft on an entirely new level.”

The newest edition to their artist roster is the Los Angeles-based illustrator and graphic designer Geoff McFetridge. Best known for his abstract, hand wrought line illustrations that depict everything from land- and cityscapes, fantastical creatures to crowds of people, McFetridge’s work has been featured on products from Nike, Pepsi, Stüsy, Burton, Patagonia and in Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are and Adaptation. The collaboration with Heath is McFetridge’s first foray into the medium of clay, although not his first work for interiors—he creates graphics for his wallpaper and fabric company Pottok prints. This collaboration marks a first for Heath Ceramics as well, “the first type of collaboration that is very graphical and where the artist is doing the illustration himself.”

A natural extension of a long friendship between McFetridge and Heath LA Studio Director and potter Adam Silverman, the resulting collection was a true conversation between brand and artist. Bailey shared that the process, “was a deeper level of collaboration… Adam worked with Geoff on the general concepts. We then all worked together to figure out what a good merger would be—how Geoff’s work and shapes would translate to clay. We also had to take into account how a piece is made (slip cast or jiggered for example) and whether or not it was appropriate to paint on or carve into the surface and even if we needed to consider throwing a new shape of pot. What was so gratifying about this collaboration was the exploration of technique and process.”

This exploration resulted in a complete custom-painted dinnerware set, hand-carved vases and hand-carved teapot and cup sets for the collection, My Head Disappears When My Hands Are Thinking.

We sat down with Geoff to learn more about his illustrations and carvings for Heath—read on for more info about coin-hunting, yoga-skateboarders in leotards and making art for the masses. If you’re in Los Angeles, you can see the pieces for yourself—the show opens tomorrow.

My Head Disappears When My Hands Are Thinking
Heath Los Angeles
7525 Beverly Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA
Through December 31st, 2011

Core77: Can you share a bit about your approach to this collaboration? Why did you choose the specific characters and drawings for Heath?

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