Readymade News

An Illustrated Weekly of World Design, 15 December 2009

Seth Godin has organized a new ebook called What Matters Now, the ebook has contributions from “more than seventy big thinkers, each sharing an idea for you to think about as we head into the new year. From bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert to brilliant tech thinker Kevin Kelly, from publisher Tim O'Reilly to radio host Dave Ramsey, there are some important people riffing about important ideas here. The ebook includes Tom Peters, Jackie Huba and Jason Fried, along with Gina Trapani, Bill Taylor and Alan Webber.” The ebook is free and the big idea is to get 5 million people reading it, so pass it along. Image; Thomas Hawk.

 

Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec will be attending Design Indaba 2010, the brothers have designed for top product manufacturers including Vitra, Issey Miyake, Kvadrat, Cappellini, Ligne Roset and Habitat. The Design Indaba Conference is from 24 to 26 February 2010.

Earlier this year we wrote about prosthetic designs, so this article from DesignBoom about Prodigits, which are bionic fingers for people with missing digits is very interesting. Touch Bionics is a company who produce ProDigits™, short for Prosthetic Digits, self-contained fingers that are individually powered and controlled to provide new fingers for partial hand patients, a modular system that can be adapted to suit any patient.

 

Bruce Nussbaum posted a speech he gave earlier this month at  the Design Korea 2009 International Conference, his speech “Designomics: How Design Navigates A World In Change And Creates Global Economic Growth And Prosperity” can be found here. Image via Design Thinking Blog.

An Illustrated Weekly of World Design, 03 November 2009

Tasos has written an article for the November issue of Management Today; South Africa’s leading management Journal describing Design Thinking. The title is Design for future business: thinking like a designer to solve problems and create new solutions. Here is an excerpt: "Organizations everywhere are recognizing the need to change radically in a rapidly changing world. Unfortunately many of these attempts fail because traditional management systems lack the tools to innovate in complex environments and much less so when faced with wicked problems. However, some businesses have solved this dilemma and are able to consistently innovate and grow over the long term, despite temporary setbacks during economic downcycles. These include Apple, Dell, GE, P&G, Infosys. Tata, Toyota, Amazon and ebay. What these organizations all have in common is that they have used design thinking to help guide their traditional business processes. This has allowed them to concentrate on the factors that improve competitiveness rather than doing the wrong things very well.

Design thinking can radically change organizations by embracing complexity and constraints, working collaboratively and iteratively and using expanded logic to achieve this. Inherent in this approach is the ability to see issues as part of a system, with all of its components, relationships and maintaining a view of the overall context. Design thinking also is adept at cultivating a deep understanding of customers and using this together with the factors above to create synthesis, or resolution rather than compromise. Design implies something creative but this is not some sort of art school freeform wackiness, this is creativity in its true meaning as the act of creation. In that sense, design can be thought of as the careful conception of a plan and the disciplined execution of that plan to create something new. 

In fact, design has a process as structured and rigorous as anything in business. It is a process aimed at solving problems by using our ability to create new solutions. This design process consists of several phases. Firstly, creating common understanding by analyzing data and research. Secondly, creation, where the data and insights drawn from research guide the creation of new options. Thirdly, filtering, using critical thinking to select the most promising options. Fourthly, validation, where fieldwork is done to test assumptions. Fifthly, synthesis, where options are drawn into a business model and assembled into the strategic plan. Sixthly, engineering, which develops the idea technically. And finally, implementation where the chosen solution is built in totality."

For more on design thinking and what it means for business read The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage by Roger Martin, review here and if you happen to be in New York on the 11th of November catch Bruce Nussbaum talking to Roger Martin and Tim Brown of IDEO.

An Illustrated Weekly of World Design, 06 October 2009

       

BusinessWeek compiled a comprehensive list of the world's best design programs as "companies in every industry have adopted design thinking to offer fresh insight in functions from strategy to finance. BusinessWeek selected 39 master's and MBA programs from North America, Europe, Asia, South America and Australia that significantly integrate design thinking and business. Students in these programs take classes in art, management and science, for example, and create projects in multi-disciplinary teams with students from other schools. They aim to use design for strategy rather than merely for aesthetics and may find jobs as design managers, researchers or business consultants. These 30 programs have formally established hybrid curricula." 

Venessa Wong states in the article that there are different approaches between schools that teach design thinking and that the fruits of this approach are yet to become apparent but that these graduates might just redefine the way the world does business.

William Kamkwamba has been having a great week in the US promoting his book 'The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind' which he co-authored with Bryan Mealer. When he was just 14 years old, William Kamkwamba built his family an electricity-generating windmill from spare parts, working from rough plans he found in a library book.

William is currently studying at  the African Leadership Academy and has started the Doers Club. He plans to develop a solar powered steam engine that can be used to power a water pump or windmill and a hand operated borehole drill based on a tobacco press. Support Williams work at Moving Windmills.

Helix Wind announced that they will begin testing their products in Nigeria and USA to power cell phone towers; "wind turbines are ideal ways to lower the costs of operating expenses associated with cell phone towers in remote locations. These solutions are ideal for telecom infrastructure providers worldwide dealing with cell towers that are remote or off-grid and utilize unreliable or expensive energy sources. Depending on the configuration, Helix turbines can produce enough power to pay for themselves in as little as six months." Via DesignBoom.

Lastly, Readymade is happy to announce that we are working with USA chain Anthropologie to create a new addition to our Nest decor range. Pictured above is a current product, our take on the traditional fruit bowl. This range is developed under our Fabrication Africa brand. For information on stockists have a look at www.fabaf.com.

An Illustrated Weekly of World Design, 15 September 2009

     

Hack 2 Work, 'essential tips for design professionals' from Core77 has articles like On Being T-Shaped by Tim Brown, How to Look Bigger Than You Are by Allan Chochinov and 5 Keys to Successful Design Research by Steve Portigal. Image: Ernesto Rodriguez.

Hack 2 Work has everything from how not to design a business card to dealing with clients. Well worth the read.

For students and professional designers Design Droplets has a great compilation of sketching resources including IDSketching, Coroflot and links to books and tutorial DVDs.

 

Apple launched a new version of the iPod Nano at a special event called "It's Only Rock and Roll" early in September. The new iPod Nano now has added photo and video capabilities, the quality of the video is good enough, but what really stands out is battery life and storage capacity, the 16 GB version holds up to 16 hours of video. Not bad for a device you can keep in even the smallest of pockets.

Design Thinking for Startups from Amir Khella of Fictiv is a good explanation of design thinking and how innovation fits into it. Some quotes from the presentation-design thinking is: "a mindset of combining creative and analytical thinking, and applying it to solving a problem", "it's believing the best solution is yet to be found" and  "it's being comfortable going forward in a state of uncertainty". 

The James Dyson Award is an international design award that celebrates, encourages and inspires the next generation of design engineers. Run by the James Dyson Foundation, as part of its mission to inspire young people about design engineering. The brief for the 2009 competition was put simply; design something that solves a problem.

One of the finalists was the Prio Paper Cast from American design student Nicholas Riddle. The products is a flat pack splint for disaster response that combines low-weight, ease of installation, and easy triage identification within a folding paper cast. The primary function of the paper cast is to immobilize injured limbs, in this case an arm. The problem that exists at the site of an accident or disaster is one of scarcity – of medical expertise, resources and communication.         

   

Congratulations to Clive Roux on becoming IDSA's (The Industrial Designers Society of America) new executive director on September the 14th. Clive was previously Chief Marketing Officer for Baumgartens and former design leader with internationally-renowned Philips Design. 

"With significant global experience across the design disciplines—including four years working in Africa, seven years in Europe, seven years in Asia and nine years in the US—Roux will bring both design thinking and business management skills to his new role, which will help him represent the Society both within the design world and to the business community." IDSA.

An Illustrated Weekly of World Design, 08 September 2009

Reuters reports that Tesla Motors will collaborate with executives from around the world to reinvent the car-buying experience as part of the Customer-Focused Innovation executive education program at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Tesla, a pioneer in electric vehicle manufacturing, will be featured as a week long class project to immerse participating executives in the practice of corporate innovation and "design thinking." Developed by the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford, Customer-Focused Innovation marries business school classroom models with the d-school's hands-on field research to help executives better understand customer experiences, develop deeper customer insights, diffuse customer learning throughout their organizations, and improve overall customer satisfaction.

Key features of the Stanford collaboration will have program participants conducting:

* Interviews of Tesla's key management and dealership personnel
* Observation of real car buyers at Tesla and non-Tesla dealerships
* Ideation, design, prototyping and iteration of new vehicle purchase models
* Presentation of proposed models to Tesla management

   

Nice one-pager explaining design thinking from Change by Design by Tim Brown, CEO and president of IDEO.

"This book introduces design thinking, the collaborative process by which the designer’s sensibilities and methods are employed to match people’s needs with what is technically feasible and a viable business strategy. In short, design thinking converts need into demand. It’s a human-centered approach to problem solving that helps people and organizations become more innovative and creative.

Design thinking is not just applicable to so-called creative industries or people who work in the design field. It’s an approach that has been used by organizations such as Kaiser Permanente to increase the quality of patient care by re-examining the ways that their nurses manage shift change or Kraft to rethink supply chain management. This book is for creative business leaders who seek to infuse design thinking into every level of an organization, product, or service to drive new alternatives for business and society."

The book will be launched late September.

Via DesignBoom; Jasper Morrison has opened up a shop in part of his studio in London. The shop is open daily from 11AM to 5 PM, Monday to Friday.

During the London Design Festival the shop will open its first exhibition, 'jugs, jars & pitchers' from September the 19th to the 30th.

Morrison has also done the latest Icon cover which is a handwritten note stating "design for life, not magazine covers" and initialed JM. The statement echos Morrison's thoughts on design as seen in his Manifesto #02:

'Design, which used to be almost unknown as a profession, has become a major source of pollution. Encouraged by glossy lifestyle magazines and marketing departments, it’s become a competition to make things as noticeable as possible by means of color, shape and surprise. Its historic and idealistic purpose, to serve industry and the happy consuming masses at the same time, of conceiving things easier to make and better to live with, seems to have been side-tracked. The virus has already infected the everyday environment. The need for businesses to attract attention provides the perfect carrier for the disease.

Design makes things seem special, and who wants normal if they can have special? And that’s the problem.'

A bunch of game controllers is the notepad for a book project about game controllers conducted by Nicolas Nova from liftlab/the near future laboratory and Laurent Bolli from Bread and Butter. The aim of the project is to focus and analyze "game pads" in terms of historical evolution as well as meaningful issues regarding their design. So far it has a few entries, but sure to become more interesting as time progresses.

An Illustrated Weekly World of Design, 04 August 2009

Via Today and Tomorrow; "Shukuno Rintendo is a Japanese bicycle brand. Between 1996 and 1998 they produced a special series of power assisted bicycles, 2 of them were the Fire Trick Bob and the Water Trick Bob. The Fire Trick Bob had a small turbine which produced 4.4 horsepower of thrust. The water and air tanks of the Water Trick Bob could generate enough thrust for 50 meters." The Electric Bob model is pretty cool too, almost like something from Around the World in Eighty Days. 

Cognitive Media are a very unique company, they describe themselves as visual thinkers, creating amazing drawings to communicate almost everything, these drawings are part mindmap and part comic book, and the result is a visual map that tells a story. Cognitive Media use a range of visual tools and creative techniques to help their people develop, design, understand, and communicate complex information, Andrew Park, founder of Cognitive Media says that once something is drawn on paper it becomes part of their memory and sets the visual language for that conversation.

The International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) 2009 awards are up on BusinessWeek and IDSA, although most of Apple's product line received awards, other companies like Samsung managed to get a few too. IDEO won a gold award in the Strategy category for their Human-Centered Design Toolkit and a bronze for Peek amongst others. NewDealDesign won four awards, including a gold award for the Better Place Charge Spot; a dual-outlet compact charging station for electric vehicles which is part of the Better Place system. "Better Place is developing and deploying EV driver services, systems and infrastructure. Subscribers and guests will have access to a network of charge spots, switch stations and systems which optimize the driving experience and minimize environmental impact and cost," Better Place.

Great book review from Core77; Less and More, The Design Ethos of Dieter Rams is a book cataloging an exhibit held at the Suntory Museum in Osaka, Japan. The book has beautiful product shots of products Dieter Rams is famous for while at Braun where he was chief of design from 1961 until 1995. Of the 1,272 products designed during his stay, Rams, or teams in which Rams was a member, designed 514 of them. Dieter Rams has influenced many designers, including Jonathan Ives, Jasper Morrison and Naoto Fukasawa, also see Dieter Rams' 10 Design commandments.

A design with a mix of old and new school from Charlie Pyott. Linnos is a USB record player for those who still have a vinyl collection, nice drawings and renders of this concept.

It looks like the next step in the desktop manufacturing revolution after 3D printing is rotational molding, design students Andrew Duffy, Craig Tyler and Edward Harrison from the University of Rochester have constructed a miniature rotational molding machine. The D.I.Y rotation molding machine was built to replicate the industrial process to help further understand its possibilities. It was built at no cost from scrap materials and is simply powered by a cordless drill. With the use of cold setting bio resins, hollow plastic products are created. Via DesignBoom and Core77. 

An Illustrated Weekly World of Design, 27 April 2009

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The biggest news this week is the Milan Design Week. For the best coverage of the event see reports from Core77, Dezeen and Fast Company. The Dapple light (above) is from Reiko Kaneko which has tiny mirrors inside the veneer lampshade giving a disco ball light effect.

 

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Table, Bench, Chair by Sam Hecht from Industrial Facility  for Established and Sons has different models that use a combination of an oak plank and bent beech wood frames. The range was inspired by Tokyo metro seating.

 

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Tim Brown, CEO of Ideo is releasing a book, Change by Design. "This book introduces design thinking, the collaborative process by which the designer’s sensibilities and methods are employed to match people’s needs with what is technically feasible and a viable business strategy. In short, design thinking converts need into demand" and "this book is for creative business leaders who seek to infuse design thinking into every level of an organization, product, or service to drive new alternatives for business and society." 

Prime and Earcandy are 2 new updates to the existing Jawbone design from Fuseproject. ">>Jawbone PRIME brings consumers even better audio quality, improved comfort and fresh, fun color choices. EARCANDY is a summer color burst, to bring self-expression and a smile to our line-up. The 4 colors represent great skin-tone complements and contrast, as well as personal style one cannot resist, this reinforces the basic notion that anything that the consumer wears makes a statement, and it should be designed as such...this is what we call EARCANDY. This release continues Aliph’s tradition of marrying technology and design to deliver the best Bluetooth headset on the market." Fuseproject blog.

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