product design

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:

We haven't run into pop sensation Lady Gaga this Fashion Week, but her presence has been felt (and heard) on the runways—thankfully, in subtle ways. This morning's Michael Kors collection, for example, included mod dresses with transparent plastic insets sent out to Gaga's "Poker Face," which has also appeared on catwalk soundtracks in a stirring instrumental version. For those who want a piece of Lady Gaga but can't pull off a pants-free look, design firm Ammunition has created headphones inspired by the musician's Thierry Mugler-tinged aesthetic and apparent passion for high-performance audio accessories. "Heartbeats by Lady Gaga," an offshoot of the line of headphones designed by the firm in collaboration with Dr. Dre, are earbuds adorned with squared-off metal triangles and equipped to deliver "pounding bass and incredible clarity." For $99.95, the "plush travel case" they come tucked inside better be awfully plush. "Working with Lady Gaga, we have created something that expresses her very essence and soul," said Ammunition founder and Apple alumnus Robert Brunner. No easy task, considering her poker face.

continued...

The plot thickens as the competition thins for the 2009 James Dyson Award, which challenges industrial design students (and recent graduates) from around the world to "design something that solves a problem." A panel of Dyson design engineers has narrowed the field of 200 projects to 20 semi-finalists. Representing the United States is Nicholas Riddle's Prio Paper Cast, a woven paper splint for use in disaster response. The lightweight cast packs flat for easy shipping and storage, and can be installed in minutes with no prior experience. "The inspiration behind the Prio Paper Cast project comes from our current issue with packaging, both in over-use and over-abundance," noted Riddle in his entry, which included this video. "Instead of looking at this issue in a derisive way, I identified the ubiquity of packaging materials around the globe which opens up the possibility that certain products could be created anywhere in the world, inexpensively and quickly." Now it's up to the international judging panel (Axel Enthoven, Frank Tyneski, Stephanie Watson, and Yoshiyuki Wada) and, ultimately, James Dyson himself to decide how Riddle's cast stacks up against the other semi-finalists, which include an ergonomic wheelchair brake from Ireland, a folding electrical plug from the United Kingdom, and "Khumbu," a backpack for carrying skis—from Switzerland, of course.

Previously on UnBeige:

It's not available online yet, but the latest study from the Journal of Consumer Research sounds like an interesting one. It's C. Page Moreau and Kelly B. Herd's "To Each His Own? How Comparisons to Others Influence Consumers' Evaluations of their Self-Designed Products" and the press release associated with it says it looks into how consumers enjoy rejecting professional design in favor of things of their own creation. The researchers also report that "consumers enjoy intentionally competing against professionals." So not only does the buying public like to make its own stuff, it likes to flaunt that in the face of working designers? Seems like an interesting bit of research. However, though we haven't read the study yet, we're a little concerned about its definition of "design," as the press release seems to infer that people like working purely with the aesthetics (in this case, "skins" are mentioned several times) of an object, which is certainly not the only thing "design" does in "design." Does your average Joe like researching the best types of thread to use to stitch together those shoes? Or the most usable build of that MP3 player's operating system? Sounds as though the study is really about consumers like being given the illusion of "design" by a product's creators by letting them tinker around with the base aesthetics. But, again, this is just reading into the press release. We're eager to read the full piece.