Readymade News

An Illustrated Weekly of World Design, 22 December 2009

 

Our good friends and collaborators at Mutopo together with Toby Daniels, have launched Betacup. The goal of Betacup is to reduce paper cup consumption through the Social Product Development to find a more convenient alternative to the reusable coffee mug. Americans currently use 58 billion paper coffee cups a year, most of which are not recycled and end up in landfills. The challenge will launch in 2010, currently Betacup is looking to raise $20,000 before the 31st of December in prize money to attract designers to participate in the project through Kickstarter. Image via Brynn Marie Evans.

The media landscape has changed dramatically this year, the latest print magazine casualty is ID Magazine, a veteran of design publications. But to fill the gap there is a new device category emerging; dedicated digital magazine readers. Wired and Sports Illustrated have shown concepts before, the latest is Mag+, a concept from Bonnier R&D the research unit of Bonnier publisher of Popular Science. Bonnier invited the designers from BERG London on a corporate collaborative research project into the experience of reading magazines on handheld digital devices. “The purpose of publishing this concept video is first and foremost to spark a discussion around the digital reading experience in general, and digital reading platforms in particular” Bonnier R&D. Images via Engadget.  

 

December the 15th marked Oscar Niemeyer’s 102nd birthday, for Brazils most famous architect it was just another day at the office. See more examples of the architects work here. 

 

 

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, 09 December 2009

SpaceShipTwo was unveiled on Monday in the Mojave Desert by Sir Richard Branson and Burt Rutan. SpaceShipTwo will begin short flights into space with passengers in 2011. Book your tickets here. Image; Ned RocknRoll

 

Indian innovation is in the news again with Tata announcing a hybrid Nano and the Tata Swach; a new low-cost water purifier, aimed at lower-income households in rural areas.The Tata purifier is less than one metre tall, and does not need running water or electricity to work. Plans are to roll out in India first then Africa. 

 

For all you trainspotters out there who also have a thing for exotic subway architecture, DesignBoom has a great article with images from Stockholm’s Tunnelbana, Munich’s U-Bahn and others. Have a look at the the Carmelit too, an uphill subway system in HaifImage. Image; flickr. 

 

In other news: for those of you interested in attending the 2010 Design Indaba in Cape Town South Africa, this Friday is the last day to get your early bird tickets. Next year sees the the inaugural B2B trade exhibition, which “gives companies servicing the design, advertising and marketing industries the unique opportunity to interact directly with their target audience in an environment designed to inspire. Creative industry suppliers and collaborators will not want to miss this opportunity to personally connect and network with such a high-potential customer base.” 

Lastly, we are looking forward to collaborating on exciting projects with Brianna Sylver, President at Sylver Consulting.  Tasos met Brianna in Chicago last week, where Brianna is a specialist in market research, a leader in innovation strategy and teaches at the Institute of Design, IIT.