T-shirt Ferrari

Article link: T-shirt Ferrari

This video and article is nothing sort of amazing! It shows a group of people from a London PUMA working together to recreate a Ferrari out of shirts and jeans. The people who designed/built the car were from Gregory Bonner Hale, a design and ad company based in London.

This Just Inbox: A vase that mimics a Polaroid

This Just Inbox: A vase that mimics a Polaroid

This article is about a vase that hangs from a clothespin. It was designed by Jung Hwa Jin, from South Korea, and the case is designed to look like a polaroid picture, with a lamp lighting it at the top.

I thought this was a great idea, especially since those Polariod pictures are officially dead. I do find it a little weird that it just hangs there, but I guess this is really just intended for design, and not actually for avid green thumbs.

Article link: And the Winners Are…

This article is about the City Racks Design competition, where competitors are asked to design a new type of bike rack for NYC. Shown on the right is the winner of the competition, designed by Ian Mahaffy and Maarten De Greeve.

I also liked this one:


Designed by RSVP Studios, this is the co-winner of the indoor competition. I can't wait to go into the city and see this in a building!

Things to ask before you redo your website

Article link: Things to ask before you redo your website

This article has a list of questions to ask yourself when thinking about redesigning your website.

When I was younger and in middle school, I was very naive and made an HTML document for myself and made my own website. It was hosted at Geocities, a tool of Yahoo that is no longer available. But while I was making this website, I had no real direction, and when I took my page down, even though I knew I've always wanted to go into web design, I couldn't bring myself to create another website for myself. But looking at this list that Seth Godin posted, I feel inspired to try again. Hopefully, by asking and answering these questions for myself, I can pick myself back up.

5 Keys to Successful Design Research

Article link: 5 Keys to Successful Design Research

This article outlines five things you should do to correctly do design research.

I just read it because I thought it was interesting, and because we research things in class all the time, and I think I take for granted what should really go into research.

Ken Leung Interview

Article link: Ken Leung Interview

This article is an interview with Ken Leung, a London based freelance designer and former art director of Monacle magazine (based in in the UK).

I always find interviews with successful designers interesting because you learn a little about them before they started, and after they became popular.

This Just Inbox: Scott Wilson's Polar Bear

Article link: This Just Inbox: Scott Wilson's Polar Bear

This article is about a sculpture called Umka done by Scott Wilson for Humanscale's 9th annual Faces in the Wild auction. Apparently, "umka" is the word for "polar bear" in Chukchi, and it fits perfectly, as this is a minimalist sculpture of a polar bear.

I just love it, because it's so beautiful, and the best part is your mind automatically goes to "polar bear" without even knowing the name of the sculpture. I love that it's made of aluminum instead of something just white, because I think the reflective quality of the sculpture gives it that "oomph" that a white sculpture wouldn't have.

Leyio Sharing Device

Article link: Leyio Sharing Device

This article is about a little handheld device that uses UWB technology and can transfer information from one device to another. UWB stands for Ultra-wideband, which is:

a radio technology with which short or medium-range communications can be made with low power consumption. UWB has notably been utilised in radar, tracking and precision locating. Since UWB operates at a very low energy, it causes less interference than other radio-network solutions and is a strong contender for becoming the preferred technology for the wireless home and office.

I just remember someone in the class talking about how he wishes that flash drives could just be hooked up through bluetooth, so when I saw this, that's what immediately thought of. I think this is a great idea, I want one!

Animation explaining how they erect cranes (and how they erect themselves)

Article link: Animation explaining how they erect cranes (and how they erect themselves)

The video and the article I found it in basically shows you how a company called San Marco Cranes erect their cranes, and how the cranes are designed to be able to get taller, so that they can build skyscrapers.

I thought this was a very interesting and insightful video. I had never really thought about cranes and construction in terms of designed, but clearly, someone very clever designed cranes so that they can be assembled on site (as opposed to assembled elsewhere and transported to construction site, which would be such a hassle) and that they can grow as the building grows. Amazing. And the animation is also amazing! It was very easy to understand, and it wasn't necessary for a narrator to tell us what was happening.

PacM chair, reviving the old Pacman maze game

Article Link: PacM chair, reviving the old Pacman maze game

This article is about a chair that is based off the old Pac Man video games.

I love this because I loved Pac Man! And I still do! This is so brilliant. I want them to do a Ms. Pac Man and add a bow or something. Maybe ghost pillows? Anyway, amazing.

Word Research

Original word (English)	Portuguese (Brazil)	Chinese (China)	Czech (Czech Republic)
Clean	limpo	干净 (gān jìng)	nevinný
Light	luz	僄 (piào)	zábavný
Safe	seguro	泰 (tài)	opatrný
Satisfied	satisfeito	愜惬 (qiè)	uspokojený
Protection	proteção	庥 (xiū)	ochrana

Words I came up with:
Luzatai
Liviji (Croatian for "Livy" a Roman historian)
Takosa (name)
Lupiza (name)
Uzimo (name?)
Progapa ("program is" in Indonesian)
Bataina (last name)

Picture Research

Brazil






China







Czech

Article link: Paul Rand Video

This video features Paul Rand talking, and beautiful, interesting animation going on around, behind, in front, and between him. I just thought it was very inspirational.

Sneak peek at Joseph Joseph's new line of kitchenware

Article link: Sneak peek at Joseph Joseph's new line of kitchenware

This article is about a kitchenware company called Joseph Joseph, and their new line of products.

My first thought is that everything just looked really cool. They have this futuristic look to it, while at the same time still modern looking, since everything is not silver and hard like most future things seem to be. My second thought was that they looked really useful without being too gimmick-y or cheesy. They look perfect!

Indian sitting style chair design

Article link: Indian sitting style chair design

This article is about a chair design from a design student from the Indian Institute of Technology, who made a chair that is more suited for people from India.

I'm not going to lie: this chair is brilliant. I hate sitting the "normal" way in a chair, and always find myself with a foot propped up, or I'm sitting cross-legged or etc, and it's always difficult for me. Plus, it just looks great.

Chinese Design

Original article: China's Design Crisis
Article with additional comments: A Chinese Designer Speaks Out on Chinese Design

In Bruce Nussbaum's original article, he wrote that design firms working in China are hiring designers from Western cultures or from Korea, instead of designers from China, because designers trained in China are "below standard." Bruce writes:

"[Y]oung designers want to get things done quickly, without much regard for getting it just right. It’s a quick-quick attitude. As for innovating, reframing problems and seeing products and services with fresh eyes, Chinese designers are not nearly there."

In the follow up article, Bruce writes that a designer from China, Lucy, commented on his previous article, writing that it wasn't really the designers fault; that it was the society in China that made it difficult for young designers to not do something quickly. She writes:

"The clients, mostly domestic brands and manufacturers, are not seeing the difference between a “right” and “not so right” design yet. The fact that some of them are hiring design firms to design anything original is a big step forward, when copying a cell phone to save the time, money, and trouble (in testing the tools and market, etc. as we all know) is not exactly illegal in China."

To me, that's like saying "toh-may-toh"/"toh-mah-toh" - Whether it's the schools, the designers or the society, it's still the fact that China, as a whole, is behind in the design industry. It's a scary thought that the most populated country in the world is behind in design.

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