Moto has picked up on a rather interesting trend from CES that didn't get a lot of comprehensive coverage: The emergence of alternate materials for familiar objects. Here's Chris Porter, MOTO's Director Supply Chain & Logistics:

In today's crowded marketplace, device-makers should realize that using standard materials in standard ways won't help them stand out. It takes extra investment in supply chain logistics, tooling, and unusual manufacturing processes to create products that seem truly unique. Yet when done right, the extra money spent on materials can become the key differentiator that makes a product successful.

With that in mind, Chris Porter, MOTO's Director of Supply Chain, explored the floor at CES 2010 to pick out a few products and trends that reflect how manufacturers are using materials to deliver strategic differentiation.

Porter looks at rubberized laptops for schools, plastic laptops made partially from recycled CDs and DVDs, bamboo headphones and keyboards and more. Click here to read the piece, and check out our own CES gallery here.

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I guess when you're rich, you can really go green: UK soccer star Gary Neville is building an 8-million-pound eco house in the Bolton countryside, designed by London's Make Architects, and to say the house will have a green roof is an understatement--the entire structure blends into a gently rolling hill, like a really expensive Hobbit house.

Neville's got a reputation as a green, so it's unsurprising that in addition to the earth-based insulation, he'lll have solar panels and a wind turbine to generate juice. And that little car you see in the driveway? Probably a Prius, as that's what Neville's been known to drive.

via treehugger

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A bite-sized list of what's happenin' now:

ny times
Asking design stores: What sells, and what doesn't?

design addict
M2L Genuine Design Competition against knockoffs

news brunei
South Korean Government To Allocate 100 Billion Won for Industrial Design by 2012

autodesk
New Alias Sketch preview available

art net
The Bauhaus in History
poli design
Education: Giugiaro Architettura offering a Masters in Industrial Design for Architecture

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We've just launched our newest 1 Hour Design Challenge, this time in response to the earthquake relief efforts in Haiti. You've got the usual 60-minutes to design an innovative emergency shelter—Core77 will donate $500 in the winner's name to Architecture for Humanity's Haiti Earthquake Support Program. More details follow:

THEME:
1 Hour Design Challenge: Emergency Shelters

DOORS OPEN:
January 27, 2010
9 PM PST (4PM GMT)

DOORS CLOSE:
February 28, 2010
9 PM PST (4PM GMT)

BRIEF:
Pop-up shelters have been a favorite exploration of designers for a
long time, and in light of the earthquake in Haiti and the necessity
of creating short-term emergency shelters, this 1 Hour Design
Challenge invites designers to create innovative and appropriate
pop-up shelter solutions. Your designs may be specific to Haiti or
generalized to address emergency shelter needs across various
contexts. We're looking for simple, effective and appropriate design
interventions.

HOW TO ENTER:
Upload your images to the discussion board and provide a short text
description. (3-sentence MAXIMUM.) You can use sketches, renderings,
storyboards, cartoons, stick figures, or diagrams to explain your
design.

TIME LIMIT:
In the spirit of all 1 Hour Design Challenges, the work you post must be original for this competition and be completed in 1 hour maximum.

CRITERIA:
Judging will be based on inventiveness, utility and appropriateness.

PRIZE:
Core77 will donate $500 to Architecture For Humanity's Haiti Earthquake Support Program in the name of the winner."

ENTER NOW!

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Alice Twemlow's got one articulate (and hysterical) essay up on Design Observer today, springboarded by Amazon product reviews and then off to some serious scholarly glory. Here's a quick taste:

In some ways, the work of NA Cat Lover and Brian Govern represents, not a deviation from the true path of design criticism but, rather, a logical extension of a democratizing impulse that has always been at its core. Ever since the late 1940's and early 1950's when design criticism emerged as a genre in its own right alongside the industrial design profession, many design critics have said that one of their main goals is to enable their readers to perform their own criticism.

Read the whole thing here.

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The stage at Yerba Buena ain't even cold yet, but we're already seeing the first iPad accessories (though to be fair, this is really just the fastest re-badge): The Pogo Sketch and Pogo Stylus from Ten One Design, which promises you greater control than you can get with your idjit digit. Will also come in handy if you're one of those freaks with super-long fingernails. Anyways, I'm curious to see the difference with finger-vs.-stylus once I get my hands on that Brushes app they demo'd at the talk.

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It's getting close to this year's IxDA Interaction Design Conference, and it's shaping up to be barn-burner. The conference is sold-out, and with the addition of the international student competition, pre-conference workshops by an all-star roster including Indi Young, Dan Saffer, and Steve Portigal, and an art exhibition exploring the concept of interaction ("What is interaction about? Behavior? Response? Is it Conscious? Deliberate?) there will certainly be something for everyone in attendance.

While not billing itself so far as an "unconference," the organizers are quick to point out that instead of a hotel, IxDA10 takes place in a theater, a restaurant, a pharmacy, a library, a public square, and a blacksmith's quarters. And the latest addition to the program are walking tours of historic savannah during the Friday and Saturday lunch hours. Yes!

Friday lunchtime: This explores Savannah's founding, history, architecture, and unique city plan through visits to several of the city's beautiful squares, monuments, and key buildings. Led by E.G. Daves Rossell, Professor of Department of Architectural History.

Saturday lunchtime: This tour focuses on the celebrated Savannah urban plan and the civic, religious and residential architecture and monuments that give the city its distinctive character. The tour will focus on Bull Street, the historic spine of the downtown area. Led by Robin B. Williams, Ph.D. Chair, Department of Architectural History.

Coroflot will be sponsoring the Recruiting Fair, and don't forget that Core77's Allan Chochinov will be doing a presentation on Saturday at 12 in the Theatre entitled Girls and Women: Object Lessons in the Primacy of Interaction. Be sure to check that out...you know...before you head out on the walking tour!

All info at the IxDA10 site.
Photo: Dave Malouf

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Gautier Pelegrin and Vincent Taiani are the designers behind Noon Studio, a London- and Avignon-based design office championing "honest materials, simplicity of execution, forward thinking and spatial awareness."

Hitting on all points are their suh-weet Jar Lamps, made from oak turned on a lathe. The lid can be grasped and rotated, acting as a dimmer switch:

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While browsing the website of imm Cologne 2010 d3 nominee David des Moutis (selected for his furniture), I came across his XAV vases, pictured here.

Each vase is made of three parts that can be recombined to accomodate different groupings of flowers. Though they appear just slightly ramshackle and off-kilter, the pieces rely on precise fitting at their junctures. According to des Moutis, who worked with a master glass blower on this project, this unites a highly precise process with a "random" one, presumably coming from the unpredictable nature of blown glass.

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A bit on the cutesy side, but we're still digging Damjan Stankovic's USBee flash drive design, which won first prize in the Serbian "MS Industrial USB" design competition.

The waist is fully flexible, providing the body some protection from accidental bumps; the cap snaps onto the rear cooling grooves for safekeeping; and the unique shape is meant to be easily located by touch when reaching into a gadget-filled bag.

via design east

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