Clemson University has cut the ribbon on their new Sonoco Institute of Packaging Design and Graphics, which runs "the only university program in the country that combines packaging science, graphic communication, materials studies, environmental science, manufacturing, marketing and consumer psychology for application to packaging methods."
As Clemson points out:
- Every product consumers around the world purchase, use and ultimately discard is designed and packaged in some way.
- Packaging is a $200-billion-plus business in the United States.
- More people work in packaging and related operations than any other business in the nation.
Learn more about the Institute, and its attendant seminars and courses, .
CNET has the most comprehensive speculative analysis we've seen yet on , "a device that fits somewhere in between the iPhone and the MacBook." Rounding up reports from The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek and the Silicon Alley Insider, writer Tom Krazit lays out what this UMPC (Ultra Mobile PC) is thought to be--some sort of media pad--as well as why previous attempts at such a device that have failed, and what Apple can do differently to make sure this one doesn't.
Many have been hoping Apple would enter the netbook market, which they have repeatedly vowed not to; will this new device sidestep netbooks and create a successful new category? for yourself.
"As an industrial designer, I work to briefs, but in the case of my limited-edition works I have no boudaries, so I can create my own parameters. I can let my imagination run free and express my enthusiasm for materials, processes and techniques--but on my terms." --Marc Newson
"I've taken full advantage of the market changing to do exactly what I was before, but in a slightly more attractive way. I'm using it as somewhere I can experiment rather than trying to make everything work from a commerce view." --Tom Dixon
"[I'm not interested in] just making stupid things for the money... I'm trying to push the boundaries of my profession, and my profession is making functional pieces for a market. I'm trying to come up with new ideas for this machinery, to search for a new grammar in my field." --Hella Jongerius
These are all quotes from Sophie Lovell's new book, :
Limited Edition is the new phenomenon in furniture design. The demand for unique pieces is steadily increasing. With prototypes, one-offs and limited product lines, designers are making furniture objects outside of, and parallel to, the industrial manufacturing system. Furniture prototypes have always been an element of the industrial design process, but now they are being brought from the workshops and presented to the public as embodiments of one of the most exciting creative fields of our age. In the global village with its standardized commodities, exclusive one-offs with an artisanal flavor are turning into coveted objects. The limited furniture series so manage to satisfy the collector’s appetite with objects where the boundary between furniture and art dissolve.
Limited Edition follows this new direction in furniture design and uncovers its background in meticulous investigative essays based on the author’s ongoing interviews with key designers, gallerists, auctioneers and manufacturers. With a rich selection of images it presents the very best from this new area as well as new and behind the scenes images from some of its leading protagonists.
There's a great project going on at GOOD where designers post "before" and "after" pictures of redesigned urban streets. Check out lots of submissions .
We were excited to meet up with Core77 contributor Bruce Tharp in Milan, where he and his wife Stephanie Munsen (together as ), created an exhibition at the . Inspired by a selection of philosophers, the work is smart, smart, smart.
In an effort to tap a new market, comfortable footwear company Crocs has designed the , a series of sandals meant to aid athletes with post-race recovery.
The collection is built with Crocs' core ergonomic design elements and features a nano-silver technology called Croslite Ag, a proprietary material with an anti-bacterial and anti-fungal silver additive. [The Prepairs Collection] Reduces peak pressure by up to 50% and reduces peak muscular effort by up to 24.6%.
So, is it all a bunch of hooey, or will these kicks in fact "enhance your recovery?"
Any athletes with any experience with these care to sound off?
Led by faculty members John Takamura and Dosun Shin, students at Arizona State U.'s College of Design have come up with a "transgenerational toilet design concept" called Go With the Flo. The unusual-looking loo won the Breaking the Rules Silver Award at the Northwest Design Invitational, meeting five "outstanding design" criteria: "Appropriate aesthetics, design innovation, ecological responsibility and market and user benefits."
So what does it do, exactly?
The Flo toilet is an ergonomic, sustainable design concept for baby boomers that functions like a squat toilet. Designers maintain that using the Flo toilet is akin to yoga - by building and strengthening abdominal and back muscles. Only one-half to one gallon of water is used for flushing and The Flo reuses water from hand washing. To flush water from the tanks to the toilet, the Flo employs an electromagnetic ball valve. Go With the Flo also is free of mechanical parts. The toilet is fully self-sustaining and independent of electric power.
Julie Lasky, in full floral splendor on DesignObserver today. Here's the start:
When the Italian design gallerist Rossana Orlandi serves sit-down dinner for ninety during the International Furniture Fair in Milan, she doesn't mess around. Her table stretches the length of a baronial hall that would make Beowulf feel comfortable. Running down the middle of the table is a trail of raw vegetables: fat leeks, juicy radishes, rotund red cabbages and bushy branches of rosemary. Guests forage for foie gras and antipasto tucked under the leaves, and some even munch on the centerpiece. These are resourceful times, green times, surprising times, Orlandi's table reminds us. Our dull, bovine economy can yet make room for the occasional spot of indulgence. I spoon ham-and-potato salad from a little clamshell near my plate and look across the table at the reassuring sight of the Dutch designer Marcel Wanders. He's wearing pearls.
Lot's more big boys in there too. Read the whole thing .
В мире много вещей которых у тебя нет и врядли когда-нибудь будут, но увидеть их было бы интересно. Возможно мы поможем заинтересовать тебя настолько, что ты прыгнешь выше головы и сможешь ими обладать.Не бойся быть смелым, просто представь себе, каково это...
