Hasta La Ideas

Imagine coming to New York City at the age of 19, and the year is 1903. You’re a poor country boy from Indiana, and the only work you can get is as a hat-checker and a signmaker at a YMCA. But it turns out you’ve got drawing skills too, and someone notices your nicely hand-drawn signs, and next thing you know you’re illustrating clothing for mail-order catalogs.

Since you can draw clothes so well, the next logical step is to get into fashion design, but you don’t care for fashion so you go into graphic design for advertising. Soon you’ve got your own typography firm. Then you get into packaging, and by the mid-1920s you hear there’s a design scene in Europe, so you get on a boat to see what’s going on over there.

At an Italian exhibition you learn about this thing called the Bauhaus, and next you start reading books by this French guy, Le Corbusier. A year later, back in New York, you’ve added a new line to your letterhead: “Industrial Design.” No one knows what the hell that means yet, but you’ll spend the next several decades teaching them what it means. You’re in your mid-40s now, but really, your amazing career is just beginning.

Walter Dorwin Teague’s life story is as fascinating as it is largely untold, and Jason Morris aims to address both of those things. An Associate Professor of Industrial Design at Western Washington University, Morris has been busily juggling work with researching Teague’s life, partly with the help of the design firm that still bears his name–110 years after Teague hopped a train from Indiana to New York. “The Teague company gave me access to their archives that go back 80 years,” Morris explains.

Three years in the making, the as-yet untitled film will be completed this year. We’ll keep you posted.

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From the Holy Cow Department: A collector in Heidelberg, Germany spent years amassing an impressive collection of Braun-designed objects—radios, phonographs, clocks, speakers, televisions, blenders, coffeemakers, toasters, you name it—made from 1955 to 1985. And s/he is now selling the entire collection off, roughly 1,000 objects, on eBay!

In addition to Dieter-Rams-designed icons like the SK 4 “Phonosuper,” s/he’s got classics like the SK 1 designed by Artur Braun and Fritz Eichler, the Florian-Seiffert-designed KF 20 Aromamaster, the Herbert-Hirche-designed HF 1 TV set, the list goes on…and on…and on.

The good news is you’ve still got five days left to get in on this! All you’ve gotta do is pony up the cash and get your ass to Heidelberg for pickup, about 100 miles north of Stuttgart.

The bad news is, the bidding starts at €350,000. But look, man, that Bauhaus museum you’ve been meaning to start isn’t going to open its damn self.

Hit the jump to see the video that the seller kindly made… to torture us.

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Sometimes when you come home drunk, it’s all you can do to get your keys in the door. I’m guessing YouTube user Oggfaba never comes home drunk, or she would not have added this additional challenge to her house:

There’s no word on why she did it, though she did list the materials she used to build it, and even links to some of the products:

– Standard fiberglass exterior door.

– Red cedar (won’t rot, but lighter than pressure treated). Three 2x4s, ripped to 3″ to form a frame to offset the siding, mounted to the door using 3″ lag screws and fender washers (fender washers used to prevent the bolts from tearing through the fiberglass door).

– HardiPlank siding.

– Morning Industry Keypad and Remote Deadbolt.

– Ball Catch (holds the door shut without needing a turn-able doorknob).

– Richelieu 1-1/2-in x 1-1/2-in Satin Nickel Surface Cabinet Hinge (two).

– Hose bib (used as as the exterior door handle… no working plumbing connected).

– Interior doorknob is a dummy knob (used for pulling the door open but doesn’t actually latch).

My knee-jerk reaction was that posting video of a secret entrance on the internet makes it not so secret, as dozens of YouTube commenters were quick to point out. But one commenter puts us all in our place: “All of you are retards,” s/he writes. “You don’t even know where this house is located. You don’t even have the remote and I’m pretty sure that the code they used on the video was changed.”

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Simplehuman’s new stainless steel Sensor Mirror is designed for individual makeup application, featuring a circular LED illuminator that “simulates natural sunlight,” by which I assume they mean it’s daylight-rated. The 5× mirror’s light source is wireless, and interestingly they’ve designed it to be recharged via USB; perhaps the rise of YouTube makeup tutorials means more people are putting their face on next to their PC?

As for the product’s name, there’s no on/off switch—the little detector up top senses your mug and powers up. Step out of frame and it powers down. The light is reportedly “super bright,” yet will last an estimated one month between charges. And yes, the mirror’s tiltable.

Simplehuman dipped their foot in the pool by selling the Sensor Mirror online starting last month, and it quickly sold out. But it’s projected to hit store shelves this March.

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Military gear manufacturer Tactical Tailor has gone from being one guy with a sewing machine in a barracks to a 55,000-square-foot design and manufacturing operation employing hundreds of people. Everything from big-ass Sumitomo injection molding machines (with re-grinders to re-integrate the sprue, eliminating waste), Gerber cutting machines and a veritable army of seamsters and seamstresses populate the space, processing the $2.5 million of raw materials constantly on hand to fulfill the never-ending flow of orders.

In this meaty 18-minute video, Director of Sales G.W. Ayers shows us “where the sausage is made,” and points the way towards the future success of American manufacturing: Make affordable, useful and high-quality products that people need, and don’t rest on your laurels–continue to innovate and refine the product (as seen with their lightweighting Fight Light initiative).

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