Hasta La Ideas

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emClick to enlarge/a/em/p

pOur most popular Core-toon illustration, ema href=”http://store.core77.com/product/killer-jellyfish-poster”The Dreaded Killer Jellyfish of Graphic Design Favors/a/em is now available as a poster! A limited-edition of 150 prints have been silk screened by the Post Family printers in Chicago on French Smart White paper, and Individually numbered and initialed by the artist emlunchbreath/em. The print is 18″ x 24″ (45.7cm x 61cm) and ships in a super tough reusable metal-capped tube./p

pAvailable now for just $20 (plus shipping), it’s the perfect “note-to-self” for next time you’re even contemplating another quick design favor for a friend — or thank you gift if you are indeed emthat friend!/em/p

pa href=”http://store.core77.com/product/killer-jellyfish-poster”Buy Now!/a/p

pbr /
img src=”http://s3files.core77.com/blog/images/2010/03/killer_jellyfish_poster_02.jpg” width=”468″ height=”350″ alt=”killer_jellyfish_poster_02.jpg”//p

pimg src=”http://s3files.core77.com/blog/images/2010/03/killer_jellyfish_poster_03.jpg” width=”468″ height=”350″ alt=”killer_jellyfish_poster_03.jpg”//pa href=”http://www.core77.com/blog/featured_items/core-toons_poster_the_dreaded_killer_jellyfish_of_graphic_design_favors_now_available_16149.asp”(more…)/a
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pstronga href=”http://www.coroflot.com/public/job_details.asp?job_id=25561referral=C77blogpost”Industrial Designer/abrTrek Bicycle Corporation/strongbr /Waterloo, Wisconsin/p

pWork within our product development teams to provide direction for dozens of bicycle products. Responsibilities include the following: define aspects of form, geometry, aesthetics, mechanical parameters; meeting defined criteria for product features, cost, manufacturability, and schedule; effectively communicate concepts, developmental work, and finalized design solutions; conduct rider research, concept planning, design refinement and production support /p

pa href=”http://www.coroflot.com/public/job_details.asp?job_id=25561referral=C77blogpost”raquo; view/a/p

pemThe best design jobs and portfolios hang out at a href=”http://coroflot.com”Coroflot/a./em/p
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pstrongFeatured Forum Topic of the Day:/strong a href=”http://boards.core77.com/viewtopic.php?f=5t=20919″2010 IDSA NE conf…/a br /
by PackageID in a href=”http://boards.core77.com/viewforum.php?f=5″general design discussion/a/p

blockquote
I was just doing some snooping around and looking at where and when the next NE IDSA conference is going to be held…not only is it being held in a city with no design firm, Union NJ, but it is being shared with another conference, the schedule has been drummed down and there are no studio visits./blockquote

p a href=”http://boards.core77.com/viewtopic.php?f=5t=20919″read and reply/a/pa href=”http://www.core77.com/blog/featured_items/core77_forum_topic_2010_idsa_ne_conf__16106.asp”(more…)/a
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div style=”align: right;”img src=”http://s3files.core77.com/blog/images/2010/03/hickslca-tropicana.jpg” width=”468″ height=”354″ alt=”hickslca-tropicana.jpg”//div

pYou might guess that the carbon footprint from a carton of orange juice is largely due to packaging, transportation and disposal, but the findings from a recent a href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/business/22pepsi.html”PepsiCo study/a may surprise you. When the entire life cycle of orange juice was included, growing the oranges turned out to contribute the most to the carbon footprintmdash;mainly due to the production and application of nitrogen based fertilizers./p

pIt’s important for designers to recognize the impact made in every phase of a product’s life cycle. In this case, shifting agricultural practices may result in the most significant emission reductions, but designers are far from powerless to make improvements. The same study states that packaging and distribution represented 37% of the carbon footprint. With that in mind, how could a designer accurately test new scenarios to create an orange juice distribution strategy that has fewer impacts on the environment? How would he or she know if a plastic bottle is better than a gable-top carton or not? How do concentrated juice products size up? /p

div class=”article_quote”Every stage in the product’s life cycle has potential impacts on the environment; LCA gives designers the ability to make informed decisions to reduce those impacts./div

pThese types of questions are challenging because of the complexity of real world factors; the formulation of appropriate answers requires powerful analyses, databases and tools. Fortunately, within the last year, applying life cycle thinking has come within the reach of any designer. We now have the tools to help us assess the life cycle environmental impacts of our designs before they are produced and to improve upon products that already exist. This gives us insight into the orange juice delivery problem, at least for a start./p

pbr /
bLife Cycle Assessment/bbr /
In brief, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a way to quantify the human and environmental impacts of products from raw material extraction, manufacturing, transportation, use, maintenance, recycling and end-of-life. Every stage in the product’s life cycle has potential impacts on the environment; LCA gives designers the ability to make informed decisions to reduce those impacts. For an in-depth background on LCA, the United Nations Environment Program’s Life Cycle Initiative provides a a href=”http://lcinitiative.unep.fr/”training kit/a./p

pAs LCA continues to evolve, so too do its key issues. To gain a better understanding of these, I interviewed consultants in the life cycle field and asked them to share stories from their work. The resulting case studies follow; after that, I’ll introduce several tools designers can use to systematically assess the environmental impacts of their products./pa href=”http://www.core77.com/blog/featured_items/life_cycle_thinking_key_issues_and_indispensable_tools_by_lloyd_hicks__16082.asp”(more…)/a
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pimg alt=”portigal_rnd_1.jpg” src=”http://s3files.core77.com/blog/images/portigal_rnd_1.jpg” width=”468″ height=”238″ class=”mt-image-none” style=”” //p

pemWonder what the conversation is like at someone else’s shop? Ever wanted to go backstage at a design firm? We asked Steve Portigal, Julie Norvaisas, and Dan Soltzberg of a href=”Portigal Consulting”Portigal Consulting/a to sit down and share what they’re talking about. Here’s their open mike/chin-wag/theory slam./em/p

pbDan:/b I envisioned sitting down here to have this conversation and trying to figure out what we’re really talking about. So I pulled this statement out of some notes Steve wrote the other day: “The Analog Human; The Digital Machine.” I thought that was really provocative, so I wanted to start by asking you to say a little more about this idea?/p

pbSteve:/b I feel like there’s this tension that goes on in business and especially in marketing, this conceit that we can take humansmdash;you know, messy, irrational, organicmdash;and somehow cut them open and figure out the binary, rational, predictable, money-making algorithms that determine what they do. You see all this harnessing of science, you know, whether it’s neuro-this or lie detector-that or psychotherapy-this that gets used in the service of, not helping people, but helping marketers crack the nut of what people want, where is the desire center in the brain. You know, that we can learn things about people in a way that is “true”mdash;that is predictable and true, and will determine consumption patterns. I find the idea that we should be able to do that just fascinating, because that’s not the world of people that we live in as people, so why as marketers or designers or producers do we think that we should turn people into things that they really aren’t?/p

div class=”article_quote”It’s easy to harsh on science, but I guess that I’d rather harsh on marketing and the way that they try to corral science to do their work for them./div

pbJulie:/b There’s another aspect of that that I find really fascinating too: that you’re just talking about it in this dichotomy like there’s “us,” and then there’s “people.” Well, we’re people, right? We’re people trying to understand people and trying to create these scientific methods of doing it is justmdash;I think you’re absolutely rightmdash;a conceit, and we often kind of remove ourselves from the situation. And I think empathy is a much more powerful tool than science in that case./p

pbSteve:/b It’s easy to harsh on science, but I guess that I’d rather harsh on marketing and the way that they try to corral science to do their work for them. Because every time you see how scientists talk, they actually evince much more empathy and they seem to be a population that has more sensitivity to the human condition, despite the fact that they workmdash;you know, we think of people with Bunsen burners and spreadsheets./p

div class=”article_quote”It’s like the opposite of the Scientific Method: you’ve created this paradigm where it’s impossiblemdash;you reject any information that’s new because it doesn’t fit the framework of the information you already have. /div

pbDan:/b That’s interesting, because that kind of takes me back to what you said about “money-making algorithms,” and I wonder if there’s something about the purity of science as just an act ofmdash;an attempt at discoverymdash;without that kind of consumption-based function that allows it to be more pure./p

div style=”align: right;”img src=”http://s3files.core77.com/blog/images/2010/03/portigalconsulting-biodome.jpg” width=”468″ height=”302″ alt=”portigalconsulting-biodome.jpg”//div

pemBiosphere 2/em/p

pbSteve:/b There was something we were talking about the other day. Some friends took a tour of a href=”http://www.b2science.org/”Biosphere 2/a. And I guess the story of the tour was that the guides were quick to point out that it wasn’t a “failed” experiment. And of course if you know the scientific method, there aren’t failed experimentsmdash;you have a hypothesis and you either accept or reject that hypothesis. And that’s so different from marketing languagemdash;you know, “oh we put people in there and we didn’t know there were going to be cockroaches, they didn’t know this was going to happen.” Well scientifically, that’s just discovery. And I think scientists are maybe more grounded in sort of pure discovery, and that as a consumption culture we keep framing those things as “failed experiments.”/pa href=”http://www.core77.com/blog/featured_items/core77_wiretap_portigal_consulting_talk_about_the_analog_human_and_the_digital_machine_16075.asp”(more…)/a
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