product design

We've seen celebrities "design" piles upon piles of clothing, shoes, and anything else they can get their grubby little celebrity hands on. But now singer/songwriter Taylor Swift can lay claim to being the first to get into the lucrative greeting card market (those cards with people like Sigourney Weaver telling you to have a happy birthday are just photo licensing deals, we're pretty sure). The American Greeting Cards Corporation has announced that Swift will be writing and designing her own line for them, offering ways for people to say the things they want to say to their loved ones the only way they know how: through a three dollar piece of paper with the singer's head printed on it. Here's a bit of fluff:

During a visit to American Greetings' Brooklyn headquarters last month, Taylor came up with some "fantastic" concepts, said Kelly Ricker, executive director of product development.

..."She does the same thing that we do at American Greetings - connecting people with life experiences - but she does it with her music and her guitar," he said.

The heck with it. We're officially back on the license plate wagon again. After receiving some truly well-thought, highly-informative comments in yesterday's post about New York's new plate designs (we didn't know some of those four letter word combinations even existed!), and with other plate news available, why not give the people what they want? While Montana and New York might be heading in the right direction by returning to simple, clean plates, apparently South Carolina had been going in the opposite direction, or at least trying to. A district judge in the former has just shot down the request to release a new Christian-specific plate, its layout featuring a stained glass window, a cross, and the words "I Believe" underneath the license numbers. A very similar plate, and an even more overt one, had recently been proposed and rejected in Florida. The judges in both instances claimed that the designs were too close for comfort when it came to separation of church and state issues. Supporters have cried foul, claiming this to be a freedom of speech issue, which we learned in previous posts, is a serious issue when it comes to license plate design (see? we told you how connected we are now to this world o' plates). Of course, we'll just assume that everyone has responded very calmly to the judge's decision and no one is going to spend lots of money fighting the rejection.

New York apparently doesn't like it when you call another state "the greatest in the Union" as we recently had about Montana after they'd decided to return to simple, clutter-less license plates, much to our great joy. But now, just two weeks later, New York has hoped on board this return to civilized, decent automobile identification with the release of their new plate design, set to hit the roads next year. And although the state would certainly never have been considered the worst in the nation, we love that they've decided to even abandon their one offense, that little strip up top with all that skyline and Niagara Falls business. Instead, it's solid gold, solid navy, and a teeny tiny outline right there in the middle. What else do you need? And thus, we say that there are now two states who have redeemed themselves. Your move now, other 48.

Staying in school for a big longer, and for a far more upbeat post, we turn to one of Archinect's terrific School Blog Project contributors, Mark Faulkner, who is studying at Cooper Union and reporting on his experiences as a student. His most recent post talks about his interest in Crocs, those shoe-like objects that nearly everyone seemed to be wearing these past couple of summers. Faulkner's interest isn't of the "Can you believe adults, people who have the right to vote and drive automobiles, are appearing in public wearing these things?" variety, which has long been our very-base reaction to them. Instead, he delves a little deeper, and therein lies the interesting, as he talks about Crocs' design blurring social constructions and how he's "been using them as a window of interpretation into our culture and how they relate to our floor surfaces and spaces":

The continual adaptability of public/private spaces and floor surfaces requires an equally responsive piece of footwear. Crocs are a symbol for our leisure culture and a symbol of adolescent adults. What is the nature of our current public spaces when we are allowed to and can wear Crocs in them? Crocs are the free plan of footwear. They free the barriers of the floor surface; sand to water to hospital, to home, to kitchen, to 5th Ave. No other shoe can achieve such a diversity of surfaces. They democratize footwear and break gender barriers.

Granted, the company may soon be out of business, and seem most certainly to have reached critical mass a while ago, but we have to hand it to Faulkner for looking at how such a piece of design can (did?) transform how society operates, albeit perhaps on micro-levels. Also, he chops one in half and photographs its innards, which is awesome.

We've already done one post about silly conservative crackpottery this week and we know it's fairly passe anymore to point out the focused agenda of Fox News, but sometimes we just can't resist. What forces our hands to type these very words is this story on Fox's website: "Cross-Like T-Shirt Design at Penn State University Sparks Controversy." It's about a limited-edition t-shirt put together by the university for an upcoming game, the design of which features a vertical line crossed by the name of the school at chest level, making it look like a bit of Christian iconography. It wasn't intended to be religious and it functions with the university's established branding, but the story latches on to the six people who have complained to the school about all of this. From there, they talk to university staff, the designer, and students of a variety of faiths, seemingly trying to dig out some juicy quotes about this "controversy," as described in the piece's title. The problem is that no one seems to have much of an issue with it, at times even seeming to call out Fox's attempt at making this non-issue story bigger than it is:

Nick Mangus, a senior majoring in East Asian studies, described the controversy as "ridiculous" and said images of crosses can be seen virtually anywhere, even in "tiles on the floor."

"Honestly, I think it's basically people just trying to stir up controversy over something that's ridiculous," Mangus said. "If you don't want to buy it, don't buy it. It's that simple. You don't have to try and force everyone else to change their ways because you think it's offensive."

We're all for raising a ruckus when lines have been crossed, almost always when it involves one group trying to force the other into following its beliefs. But there's just no "controversy" here. This isn't a case of trying to silence Christians, despite what the headline wants to hook you with from the start. Instead, it's just a bunch of quotes that don't add up to much more than "Why are we talking about this?" For further reading, here are some more thoughts on the whole matter from a local Penn State blog.

Earlier this year, while Shepard Fairey was racking up the design award wins with his now-controversial Obama print, lingering in the background of nearly all of them, notably at the Brit Insurance Design Awards and the Design Museum Awards, was Singgih Kartono, who had created the Magno Radio. Unfortunately, while he picked up audience-favorite wins and made it on to such a wide net of shortlists, we didn't really know much about the Magno other than it was one of the most attractive things we'd ever laid our eyes on. But as luck would have it, just as it was slipping into the nether regions of our brain, the good people at Core77 found this great piece about Kartono and his process designing the radio. It's an incredible story, given the amount of effort he poured into the project, spending the last two decades working on getting it just right, largely in attempting to keep its production local and sustainable, despite growing demand. Well worth your time if you remember swooning over it as much as we had back in those chilly days back in February and March.

As you likely know, over these past couple of years UnBeige has become perhaps the best source for license plate-related news. How this happened, we're still not sure. But it is so and as such, we must continue. This time around, we head west, to Montana, whose very wise government officials have just unveiled their newly-redesigned plates and we have to say that we're just ecstatic about them. The state has apparently decided to nix those multi-color, web-site listing travesties every state in the union started rolling out roughly a decade ago, and instead will be returning to their roots, when men were men, women were women, and license plates were wonderfully simple and to the point. The new design has an outline of the state, the plate number, and that's about it. Even the colors were "picked from plates of the past." So to Montana, we stand and offer hearty applause. We hope you'll do the same, so that all 49 other states will start making similar returns to decency.

Philippe Starck is a busy, busy designer. He has an ongoing reality show where some of the contestants don't really like working with him, special issues of magazines to design and edit, and mega-yachts to make green. So when something so trivial and annoying happens like running out of storage space on his computer, he needs a quick and easy solution. Such as it is, as Starck has returned to working with LaCie in designing external hard drives. If you follow the thrilling world of hard drive aesthetics (and why wouldn't you?), you'll recognize that the company has a long history of working with famous designers for special releases, including Porsche Design, Karim Rashid, Neil Poulton, and even Starck himself, back 15 years ago when the company was still in its infancy. So now that he's done another one, we're assuming he'll be getting a coupon good for another 15 years of free hard drives, whenever he wants them. Smart thinking, Starck. Real smart.

In a more interesting chapter of the "it will be happening for the rest of eternity" battle over creators and copiers, Coach has decided to go after Target over the design of handbags the discount retailer is selling, claiming their design to be too similar to ones they had launched more than a year ago. As such, Coach has taken Target to court over the matter, the second time they've done this in three years, the last being over the same handbag/intellectual property issue. Interesting, considering Target's continued involvement in landing big name designers to put together less-costly lines for them. But with the number of vendors they work with, one has to guess that a bad copycat apple is bound to slip through at times. Or at least that's what Target would really like you to believe, judging from this quote the AP received:

"We are currently looking into this situation and working with our vendor partner," said Jana O'Leary, a Target spokeswoman said in an e-mail response to a query from The Associated Press. "It always has been -- and continues to be -- Target's policy to respect the intellectual property rights of others."

Fresh from a successful foray into jewelry with Artecnica, Dutch-born designer Tord Boontje has teamed with HP on an ultraportable laptop imprinted with his distinctive lacy layers. The HP Mini Laptop by Studio Tord Boontje is crafted using three-dimensional surface printing technology that makes it appear as if Boontje's signature skeins of silhouetted flora and fauna are embedded in the sleek white case, which measures approximately seven inches long by ten inches wide. The featured creatures include 30 endangered species—here a polar bear, there a blue whale—in a shout-out to eco-friendliness (the laptop boasts an energy-efficient screen as well as packaging and manuals made from 100% recycled materials). To complete the package, Boontje has created a special desktop theme, icons, and wallpapers. The laptop goes on sale late next month for $399.

Previously on UnBeige: