Readymade News

An Illustrated Weekly World of Design, 28 July 2009

Nick Veasey photographs normal objects; trucks, cars, buses, even underwear, but they are not the usual images, he X-rays these objects, often taking months to compile a single image, such as a Boeing 777. The process involves taking objects apart, X-raying individual parts, even cutting cars in half and creating a collage. At TEDGlobal, Nick explained that he uses a cadaver for most of the shots that need people because of the high levels of radiation generated, he even wears a device that measures the amount of radiation he's been exposed to. Currently he is busy working on an image of a classic Mini Cooper. 

Via Business Week; Caterpillar has produced the D7E Hybrid tractor (bulldozer) which is 30% more fuel efficient than conventional diesel models. Over the course of ten years Caterpillar involved customers in the development process which improved the design and allowed users to compare the hybrid with other models during testing on locations throughout Europe and North America. 

The Landrover S1 mobile phone is for all those serious adventure types who need a phone to match their vehicle. The phone is impervious to dust, dirt, shocks, drops, is completely waterproof to a depth of one meter for up to 30 minutes, can take up to 400 kgs of pressure and comes with a three year unconditional guarantee. Via Designboom.

 

Diane Steverlynck has designed the beautifully simple Tight Stool. 'Tight stool is a wooden puzzle of legs and a seat kept together with a coloured thread. This stool is inspired by the elementary binding system people use in everyday life to place together loose elements and form, change or fix objects. The thread is essential to the construction of the stool, it's the structural binding element, but it indirectly brings a decorative note that refers to the tradition of trimming. With a simple element as a rope, individual elements stick together to make a seat. The only thing required is some strength.' Diane Steverlynck. Via Ponoko.  

PSFK interviewed Karim Rashid discussing his Doride lamp design and other topics. Some words of wisdom from the design superstar; 'Design is about shaping the future, about contemporary needs, desires, technologies, materials, and new social behaviors. Design is about revisiting and evolving our culture and physical landscape. Innovation is inseparable from design. It is not about trends, it is not about problem solving, it is not about just ‘form’ or just ‘function’ – design is the tool of progress and evolving our experiential aesthetic world. Everything needs to be designed from our airplane interiors to our shampoo bottles to our money – from our everyday household items to our mobile phones, from light switches to our urban landscapes. We need to beautify this planet in every aspect, in every corner of the earth. Today especially, design must prove its’ worth and address the inhuman built environment to give us elevated, more pleasurable, more qualitative, aesthetic humanized seamless conditions. Design must evolve us – and create a beautification and betterment for society. In that respect design is needed more than ever!  We should focus on how we can make our world more beautiful, more sustainable, more functional, more fluid.'

 

Eight finalists have been chosen for the 2009 Open Architecture Challenge: Classroom, the finalists submitted designs ranging from an outdoor classroom for children in inner-city Chicago, learning spaces for the children of salt pan workers in India, safe spaces for youth in Bogota, Colombia, a bamboo classroom in the Himalayan mountains. 

An Illustrated Weekly World of Design, 21 July 2009

     

This past week has seen some monumental anniversaries, the 20th of July marked the 40th anniversary of the first lunar landing and Nelson Mandela celebrated his 91st birthday on the 18th, which is now also Mandela Day.

Today is the start of TED Global held in Oxford, UK. See the program here, speakers include William Kamkwamba, Tim Brown, Ross Lovegrove, Michael Pritchard, Stephen Fry, Mathieu Lehanneur and Stefan Sagmeister.

Recently there has been some great new sites that document design thinking, service design and design methods, the Design Councils Design Methods was one of the first, Ideo has their Method Cards, Arup has Drivers of Change, cards which can be used for developing business strategy, brainstorming and education. But newer sites such as Generic Work Process and especially Service Design Tools are useful for all design disciplines and should prove to be popular for a long time.

Dezeen has a nice post on a Ryan Sorrel's clamp table, a set of legs which are literally clamped to any board making a table.

FADA has an Information Session on the 31st of July. Prospective students can attend a general presentation on the programs offered and meet the lecturers and tour the state-of-the-art facilities. More FADA related news; Nii Commey Botchway is giving a lecture on what he learned from the Citymove Interdesign event held earlier this year in Sweden. The talk will be held at the Department of Graphic Design, FADA at 12:00 this Friday the 24th of July.

Ending off on a spectacular combination of art meets life, the Dark Knight biker outfit, but what will your biker buddies think?

An Illustrated Weekly World of Design, 14 July 2009

The Micro Factory is a 'project centered around designing domestic manufacturing machinery. The project allows people to make their own products at home easily as well as share their own designs. By focusing on concepts of open-source design and the principles of reusing materials around the home, Micro Factory looks to use design to develop new manufacturing methods which benefit society as a whole.' Dae Kyung Ahn. Dae Kyung is a student at the Royal College of Art in London.

 

This is a relatively big step in desktop fabrication, because of the novel approach of the system. The actual machine which cuts the material is the MOW, a domestic manufacturing machine, which can cut cardboard, polypropylene and thin solid wood up to 3mm,it uses any table and is data is sent to the MOW via Bluetooth either by a phone or computer. See how it works here. HT-Niti Bhan.

 

On the topic of CNC based designs, the 'breakplane' table by Andy Kem. Andy is exhibiting at Re:View Contemporary Gallery in Detroit. Via Core77, image via Mushrie.

Audi commissioned designer Gerry Judah to create a sculpture for the Goodwood Festival of Speed in the UK, the result is a fantastic 32 meter-high sculpture that has an R8 at one end and a 1937 Auto Union Streamliner at the other. Via Dezeen and Fast Company.

Audi also recently tasked German design students at Joanneum University, in Graz, to create a sailboat using the car company's design motifs. The aim was to create a "brand beyond the car" whose styling cues could ultimately filter back into the cars themselves. Here's the design created by 25-year old Mark Klug. Mark says 'I wanted my design to be clear and direct, but also luxurious and sporty. It was really enjoyable incorporating Audi’s design hallmarks into a yacht.' Via Tuvie.

   

More sweeping designs, this time from the infamous Zaha Hadid, who has completed a transportable structure for the Manchester Art Gallery to specifically house performances of solo Bach. The design is both fluid and intimate, incorporating a steel structure with a fabric membrane using a palette of black and white. See more photographs of the structure from Duncan Elliot, Daz Tazer and Wojtek Gurak. Via Dezeen.

Design Indaba would hereby like to invite all Design Indaba Expo exhibitors to submit concepts for the new Free Range. 'Free Range aims to open the world of design to a market not normally catered for by professional designers. Pitched at offering affordable designer products to anyone and everyone, Free Range can bring a touch of creativity into every South African home.' Requirements are;

• Functional: Useful, practical products that can be used in everyday life.
• Affordable: Wholesale value should not exceed R100 to Design Indaba.
• Exclusive: Design Indaba requires a two-year period of exclusivity to the product.
• Made in SA: Designed and produced in South Africa.

Submissions for Free Range have to be in before the 31st of July. See the current range here.

                                                                                                                                                  

An Illustrated Weekly World of Design, 07 July 2009

 

Often good design uses the bare minimum to achieve great solutions. Matthias Ries has developed the Bottleclip, a simple reworked bottle cap that attaches to a bicycle frame allowing most bottled drinks to be taken for that leisurely ride. We also like this design because it is a similar to one of our ideas, the Safer Paraffin Cap. Via designboom (and have a look at their amazing article on bamboo scaffolding).

More clever stuff, this time from Royal College of Art graduate Min-Kyu Choi, who has designed a folding version of the standard UK electrical plug. The solution seeks to address the problem of the large size of a standard UK plug, see how it works here. 'When people carry laptops with U.K plugs in a bag, it always causes problems such as tearing paper, scratching laptop surfaces and, sometimes, it breaks other stuff. The main problem is the UK standard 3-pin plug is not considered in the process of designing for mobility. Min-Kyu Choi has also designed a USB charger version and Multi Flat Plug, which allows three devices to share power from one plug that takes up more or less the same amount of space as a standard plug.' Dezeen.

Good interview at Product Design Hub with Mikael Lugnegård an industrial designer who prefers to be a called a concept artist. Here is some advice from Mikael; 'practice is without a doubt the key when it comes to this kind of craftsmanship. But I have found one other personal quality that is just as important. Passion!! You really need to love this stuff otherwise you won´t have the endurance to develop your skills, have the energy to experiment, spend long hours on intricate renderings etc etc. Passion is KEY. Sure practice is essential, but if you lack the "internal fire", the passion, your work will never be as charismatic as it really could be. It´s very easy to see if people love what they´re doing by just looking at their work. Just look at Slatan and Ronaldo, they love football and we love to watch them play. It´s the same thing with design. We love to watch passionate designers at work.' Read more on how to be the best designer in the world from Brian Ling writing for Yanko Design. 

Another interview worth reading, this time between Design Droplets' Raph Goldsworthy and Ralf Beuker discussing design and business, design management and strategic design. Ralf has some good slides from on flickr, the one above is Design Strategy, download the full size here.

We mentioned WikID last week, a wiki based site that documents design tools, methods and techniques, now the Design Council UK has launched Methodbank, an open source collection of design methods.