Hasta La Ideas

Use an Apple ad to carry home your Macintoshes! How about a Pepsi ad that holds your six-pack of Diet Coke? Sound too good to be true? A clever die-cut is the secret behind this collapsible, no-stitch bag made from large-format billboards that were once part of Chiat/Day’s media buy. It kind of closes the loop for advertising, too: You see an ad for something, you buy it, you curse yourself for being seduced into buying it, but the ad eventually helps you carry it home.

>> Buy from Charles and Marie
>> See 76 more righteous gift ideas the Core77 Ultimate Gift Guide

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Ok, ok. We know that tote bags for charity is a bit of a tired topic, but the ones over at Part Of It are truly awesome! Each bag is designed by an up and coming artist or graphic designer, benefitting the charity of his or her choice. Pictured above is Mark Owens’ “Inherit the Wind” design, benefiting the American Wind Energy Association. T-shirts available, too!

>> Buy from Part Of It
>> See 76 more righteous gift ideas the Core77 Ultimate Gift Guide

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Even though I’ve been practicing interaction design for most of my career, it is my industrial design experience that has enabled me to straddle the worlds of both hardware and software. Over the years I’ve seen interaction design thrive while the industrial design profession has gone into decline. I think we need to challenge the practice of industrial design. We need to adopt new behaviors to make the discipline healthy again.

At its core, industrial design has been about creating objects of desire. For nearly a century we’ve reinforced this understanding by celebrating the superficial beauty of the industrial designed artifact and forgetting the human context in which that artifact lives. Too often designers ignore how people interact with products over time, the cultural relevance of the artifacts they create, and the social and environmental consequences of their design decisions. We’ve allowed this malady to infect our schools and seduce our customers. The problem is pervasive. We need to do more than attach new words to our definition of industrial design. We need to redefine what industrial design means.

The impetus for change is not new. Industrial designers had the opportunity to examine their role the first time an empty shampoo bottle was thrown into the trash destined for the landfill. Or the first time an arthritic hand was unable to open a refrigerator door. Or the first time a camera failed to capture a fleeting emotion on film. While the physical object is essential in each of these situations, it is the larger experience with these products that is most meaningful to the people who use them.

The good news is that many industrial designers already embrace the ideas described here. Even though the situation demands a change to the discipline, the industrial designer is well-suited to serve the demands of this new age. The time has come for industrial designers to redefine their profession. Here are ten ways to make that happen.

1. Design beautiful experiences, not beautiful artifacts
History is littered with beautiful objects that are culturally offensive, socially anemic, environmentally irresponsible, useless, or unusable. Consider all of the contexts of the artifact that you create: How is the product used over time? Where does it live? Who uses it? How does it fulfill the practical needs of the person using it? And consider all of the meanings behind the artifact: What are the emotional, cultural, social, and environmental impacts of the product? The physical artifact will be trivial without considering these larger contexts and meanings; indeed, they are what define the experience. Think beyond the object and consider all of these contexts of use. Apply a design process that helps you learn about these contexts and experiences. Work toward an experience-oriented solution instead of an object-based result.

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Fake Dior shoes, purses made of frogs, USB-Sticks that look like fruits, cheap rocks made of plastic…welcome to the world of design mistakes from the “Bad Taste Exhibition” at the Museum of Things in Berlin. 100 years ago, Gustav E. Pazaurek started a so called “Cabinet of Bad Taste” featuring the worst of the worst items ever made. The Museum of Things recently decided to give new life to Pazaurek’s historical and extremely complex efforts in documenting material mistakes, design mistakes, decorative mistakes and pure kitsch. Aart van Bezooyen brings us this great (and terrible!) gallery of over a century of bad taste!

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Today is the deadline if you want to throw your hat into the ring (midnight tonight EST). Here’s the pitch:

Love to read Core77? Wanna write for us? Core77 is looking for bloggers who are obsessive but critical design hounds, quick with the pen and diligent about what they offer to our community. You need to be able to write with wit and authority, passion and humility. You need to know what’s going on before everyone else does, and be able to make connections between people, artifacts and culture that are insightful and inspiring. If this sounds like you, read on for more details.

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