The-Lefthander

How can we start thinking about sustainability as intrinsic part of good design, instead of an addendum?

How can we embrace the potential impact of our craft to design new services, shape organizational behavior, and enable policy change, not just churn out artifacts?

How can we assume accountability for what our designs influence, and not just the design itself?

These are the questions many of us have been asking constantly—and answering with only with limited success—for years. I am reminded of the confusion designers have around this topic each time I publicly speak about sustainability—the first comment from the audience during Q+A is always the same: "Tell us what to do!" We are a profession who spends our entire lives generating new ideas, challenging the status quo, and building glorious concepts from nothing, yet remarkably we are paralyzed when confronted with the issue of how to meaningfully engage in the most important issue of our time.

One of the best ways we can advance our mission to practice sustainable design is to make sure the next generation of designers will graduate with a value system that reflects the new realities of our profession.

This is the challenge the Designers Accord sought to address when it started 3 years ago. The concept was simple: if designers, educators, and business leaders could openly share knowledge and experience about sustainability, we would collectively (and more quickly) build our intelligence around these issues, and then generate more innovative and world-changing ideas.

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If design and technology conferences were cities, which cities would they be?

We might imagine South by Southwest Interactive to be a sprawling and disjointed metropolis that has developed organically, like Bangkok. The various CHI conferences or SIGGRAPH would be meticulously clean and orderly, perhaps akin to Singapore. And TED might be closer to a utopian ideal that appears temporarily before vanishing again, making you wonder if it was really there in the first place, like an Atlantis, a Shangri-La or a Camelot. Surrounding these major centres of activity are smaller conferences that spring up from time to time, that start as intimate gatherings of like minded individuals that might eventually grow to be as well-trafficked and dispersed as those more established conurbations.

On August 20th, San Francisco boutique product design company Kicker Studio held such an event: its inaugural Device Design Day (D3), at the San Francisco Children's Museum. This follows in the footsteps of design firms hosting their own conferences, which is something that tends to work well—it helps to articulate what a company does that is different from its competitors, as well as demonstrating a willingness to share knowledge and learnings with the wider community. It'd be nice if some of the more established design firms deigned to do something similar.

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Design students Ramon Coronado (Graphic Design) and Diane Jie Wei (Product Design) interview a family in the Campamento San José outside Santiago, Chile, as part of field research for the Safe Agua studio. Lead Faculty: Liliana Becerra (Product Design), Penny Herscovitch and Dan Gottlieb (Environmental Design).

Core 77: Why does design for social impact belong in design schools?

Mariana Amatullo: Design for social impact is undoubtedly a piece of an art and design education that is exploding with enormous force across the top institutions around the country and internationally. What's exciting to see is that it's positioning design at the center of the global issues affecting us today. It's a space that's inviting collaboration with other disciplines outside of the art and design world, disciplines like: science, business, engineering, and policy, to name just a few. This is great for design, and beyond that—it's also great for the world. There's a potential for solving some of the big problems that confront us because designers have the ability to seek opportunities and see solutions where others can't. It's part of their education and training, a training that pushes them to search for meaningful ideas that can become actionable.)

C77: How is Art Center, where you head up Designmatters, incorporating design for social impact into its curriculum?

MA: This September, Art Center is launching a Designmatters Concentration in art and design for social impact. For us, it's a great chance to educate artists and designers to think about becoming involved in local, national and global issues right at the strategic and leadership levels, the beginning of the life-cycle so to speak of an issue, instead of coming at it at the end to simply style or package a cause. For our students, it's a great chance to connect academic practices to design-based explorations of real world issues. They have the opportunity to step into this space while still a student; at the same time, they're also asked to step up in the way they look at, confront, research and address real world issues.

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Dupont has a history of working with artist's and designers to find new ways to extend the materials they produce, like Corian. This time they work with artist-cum-architect Vito Acconci, who's built a large scale installation for the lobby of the Bronx Museum of Arts. The Corian has been manipulated and sculpted to resemble fabric, falling and twisting in thin profiles to create seats, shelves, a table, and more. As visitors pass through the installation, they trigger sensors that activate projections, a subtle show of shadows and light.

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This post is part of the Inspiration series, made possible by Veer.com.

For our last inspiration post, we talked about the power of randomness to shape the creative process, whether supplied by user error or by keeping the additional marks and line used to construct a sketch. As we actually practiced what we preached, sketching in unforgiving ballpoint on bouncy subways, we found ourselves wishing for the Ctrl+Z we'd maligned just a month prior. Still, in our last post, we observed that "loose sketches and unfinished models allow the brain to fill in the blank," and nowhere was that clearer than in the subway, where our rough and light initial sketches almost invariably looked better than the finished product.

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We're sure there is a giant overlap between the 14 million people that have seen Yosemite Bear's Double Rainbow Video and Donald Judd fans worldwide. If you're included in this set, you'll appreciate this video mash-up as much as we did, by VJ Peter Rand. It couldn't be simpler: the Double Rainbow audio is superimposed onto a gallery walkthrough of late works by Judd. When was the last time art made you feel like this? Or a mash-up?

Thanks, Thom!

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UK-based designer Jared Thompson has taken the time to exhaustively go through YouTube and compile a list of ID videos ranging from SolidWorks and AutoCAD tutorials to Photoshop rendering demos and RP manufacturing vids. There are a couple of fluff ID-fanboy videos sprinkled throughout, but for the most part, Thompson's efforts yield hours' worth of helpful ID info--there are scores of videos. Check it out here.

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Dean Kamen, Lego, children, and biomedical engineering are not an intuitive mix of elements, but they're all part of the FIRST Lego League Body Forward Challenge.

Inventor Kamen's FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) organization is sponsoring the challenge--now in its eleventh year--in more than 50 countries, aimed at the 9- to 14-year-old set. "Every FIRST LEGO League Challenge...has helped children discover how imagination and creativity combined with science and technology can solve real-world problems," says Kamen.

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Track bike aficionados, feast your eyes on the ultimate Fixie. Made from wood and iron, this front-drive bike from 1870 weighed a ton and probably provided a ride marginally more comfortable than being thrown down a staircase.

The bike was spotted on the Virtual Museum website of the BC 150 Applied Arts Project, which documents 150 years worth of objects made in British Columbia, from 1858 to 2008. Although the site is poorly laid out--there are no thumbnails or "Next/Previous" buttons, so you must laboriously click through a series of numerical links with no hint of what's behind them--there are countless examples of early design, from package designs for canned fish to beer bottles to early sidewalks and more.

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UK-based Industrial Design Consultancy "regularly [fields] calls from inventors bristling with new inventions and ideas." And no matter how diverse the inventions are, there's a commonality to getting something mass produced that requires a sort of FAQ to help would-be designers out.

IDC has put just such a guide together and made it freely available here.

The process [inventors] must go through and the challenges they have are often very similar. How do you know when the time is right to take the plunge and invest in developing a concept into a commercial product? What are the first safe steps to protecting your idea and how do you go about it? To make the product development journey smoother, our team has put together the IDC Inventors Guide. With an introduction to research and development, the patenting process, confidentiality agreements and costs, as well as advice about seeking outside investment, licensing and marketing, the Inventor's Guide will help you plan and assess how to profit from your idea. (more...)

From coins to keys to gewgaws, we dig LaCie's multiple takes on the flash drive for their sheer variety of forms and amount of thought they've put into the devices. The coins in particular make the perfect currency metaphor for data, with the numerical capacity indicated on its face, and we love the way the interface emerges from the housing:

Then they've got this little 69-ish DataShare device, which cleverly recycles your old SD cards:

Each side uses an SD card inserted into its slot as its storage, and it's broken into two halves--distinctly different red and white--so you can keep your personal data on one, and public data on the other.

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The Ars Electronica Center is the second main location of Ars Electronica 2010. This so called "Museum of the Future" can't be missed due to its striking architecture. The center along the Donau river showcases new technologies to its visitors in order to create insights and learn more about how technology affects our everyday lives.

In front of the Deep Space room, people can't wait to meet with ASIMO, Honda's state of the art humanoid robot who is making its Austrian debut this weekend. Especially the lucky visitors which have been chosen to "play" with ASIMO on stage.

Lots of flashlights when ASIMO says "Hi". Even though the developers say ASIMO has no gender, most people consider him as a him as a little boy (being 130 centimeters tall). After introducing Honda's robot history, a short dance and kicking a soccer ball ASIMO needs to leave the stage for a power refill.

More ASIMO after the jump.

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[photo credit: Evan R. Wexler]

Of all the possible reasons a pair of Brits visiting NYC could get arrested, illegally building a huge, mythical wooden bird-monster overlooking a Brooklyn street has got to be the most interesting.

UK-based artists operating under the noms de guerre Jimmy Bumble and Leonard White built the Brooklyn Griffin, a nine-foot sculpture made from shipping pallets and skateboards, atop an industrial building on Brooklyn's Billyburg-Bushwick border (without permission); the infuriated building manager subsequently had the pair arrested and the sculpture smashed to bits.

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Thanks to both Jeffrey Stephenson and you, our Core77 readership! Back in July we posted some shots-in-progress of Stephenson's Mid-Century Modern PC tower design, seeking your input on some of his design queries; just this morning he's e-mailed us shots of the finished product. Looks pretty sweet, and he's even integrated dual cooling fans into the bottom of the housing.

Hit the jump to read some of Stephenson's thoughts on the project, or check out more shots on Stephenson's website.

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Check out the Marketplace at D-Build.org, a sort of Etsy for designers and consumers interested in reclaimed materials. In the Products section they sell finished products like Arbor & Taylor's Lincoln series of furniture (above), all made from reclaimed lumber; those looking to do their own projects should check out the Materials section, where you can buy random hunks of old floor beams, planks, boards, framing, and even entire ripped-out walls. Design something up, build it, and sell it; do it right and you'll make your money back, and then some.

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YOU ARE HERE is one of the most important signs at this year's Ars Electronica Festival. The former tobacco factory is a great event venue but due to the big amount of spaces, stairways and events it's easy to get lost. So far, we didn't see any breadcrumb trails but visitors need to keep track not to miss out one of the many highlights.

One of this year's highlights is ROBOT-ISM, an exhibition with selected content from the yearly Japan Media Arts Festival. If you love animations such as Fujiyama vs. Knight Cobra and know what "Gundam" means then this is the place to be.

At the Pixelspaces Conference Anthony Dunne (Head of the Design Interactions Department at the RCA) lectures about the robots from the Technological Dreams Series and questions which roles robots will have in our lives and which kind of (distant? intimate?) relationships could develop between man and machine.

See more robots after the jump.

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Several signs are needed to guide all visitors towards the main entrance of the Tabakfabrik Linz, a former tobacco processing plant which is the main event area for this year's Ars Electronica Festival.

Arriving at the main square we walk into a performance by soft bodies who are using the central square as their stage, or better playground, to interact with their audience. This nude performer needed nothing more than a single rock to capture the attention of dozens of visitors.

The Cyberarts exhibition is where we find Zimoun's sound installation. The Swiss artist created a structure of 216 dc-motors rotating wires that all together surprise our ears with unusual and complex sounds. Hard to explain but great to hear.

See more photos after the jump.

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Helmut Smit is our new favorite artist/designer, even if FLAMMA was the only project he'd ever done (it isn't, by the way, and they are all stellar). This brilliant Ikea Hack "harks back to one of humanity's basic needs: making fire." As Ikea does not sell matches or lighters, Smits has taken cues from the wartime necessity of burning furniture to keep warm, and created a fire from an Ikea rope, hanger, wine rack, egg cup, napkins, and floral embellishments.

The video above is worth every minute, not to mention a good lesson in building fires, an art lost on most of us.

Visit Smit's site here.

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Oscar Magnus Narud's Keel collection: tables in rough wood and iron.

Running from September 15th through November 14th, Make-Me is an upcoming exhibition at Moss that brings together a set of artists and designers producing what Moss has coined "Butch-Craft." Maybe there is no better way to describe this than the words they use themselves: "a cerebral yet virile narrative applied to rough work crafted in wood, iron, steel, marble, rush, paint, boiled leather, clay, baked agricultural waste, plant-life, gypsum drywall, and blood, sweat and tears."

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Honda R&D
Automotive Designer
Torrance, CA

You will work independently on the development of original designs or adaptations requiring very specialized design skills and abilities. The Designer employs the best combination of preliminary information and contributing data to develop final designs (2D/3D) and basic concepts; selects technique best suited to represent project including graphics and technology; conducts product research to determine styling trends and consumer preferences; produces sketches, renderings and computer graphic illustrations, ideas and materials for presentation and helps develop strong brand specific ideas for building identity.

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The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.

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