I was browsing the Core77 website, and came across coverage of the New York Toy Fair. I couldn’t believe how much rubbish was on display. We have to start questioning ourselves as designers and as consumers ‘Is this the kind of thing we want our children playing with?’ In an age of mass consumption and with a rampant throw away culture it seems crazy to familiarise children at an early age with cheap, throw away products.

An interesting talk by Philip Stark; somebody who’s designs I’d never had much sympathy with before. The main crux of the talk is humanity’s continuing evolution, and how design can play a part in that.

This man makes a lot of sense. He is pragmatic, and straight talking, which is a breath of fresh air in the world of design.

I was browsing the website for the upcoming Objectified film, and came across a link to the Muji Design Award 03. This year’s theme was Found, “from nature; knowledge from those that came before us; from one’s own unique culture.” I’ve never seen a design competition where the entrants respond so well to the brief, by making products that display the correct qualities, whilst maintaining the purity of the Muji design aesthetic.

The winner was the “straw straw”, literally a drinking straw made out of straw. It seems so blatantly obvious, but this is part of its charm. Straw is the perfect material in many ways, particularly from an environmental standpoint, but in an age of mass production where plastics are convenient and abundant, this traditional material has been neglected.

Two of the judges were Naoto Fukasawa and Jasper Morrison, who are proponents of ‘Supernormal‘ design, where a product doesn’t rely on aesthetic flourishes to justify it’s design credentials, but rather it is the synthesis of materials, human needs and simplicity which determines its value. On all of these counts, the straw straw is a triumph.

NESTA is a ‘non departmental public body’ which seeks to promote innovation in the UK. Whilst it is funded by the UK Government, it operates at arms length, and hence it can be quite critical of current policy, and it tends to paint a stark and informative picture of the UK economy. It publishes papers on a regular basis, covering a broad spectrum of industry sectors. I’ve blogged about their publications before, and here are another two that I find particularly fascinating:

UK Video Game Development
Changing Nature of Early VC Funding in the UK

I’ve been paying even more attention than usual to game and character design of late, because I’m working on a game of my own: Project Utopia (see previous post).

One thing that I stumbled upon was MA.C. I’d never heard of it before, even though I’ve been a fan of model making (particularly Games Workshop stuff) for a long time. Let me just say that these are some of the best models you will ever see!

Here is a great fan site: maschinenkrueger.com

Be sure to check out the packaging design as well, because it is also top knotch:

Sadly, it isn’t widely available in the UK, so pictures will have to suffice. But rest assured, there’s a vibrant modelling community who’ve documented their builds, and a lot of these can be found on Flikr or the aforementioned sites.

This point has been touched upon by many design commentators, but it’s worth reiterating here, purely because it makes a lot of sense, and helps to frame the social responsibilities and importance of designers.

If something is well designed, then it will have an enduring appeal, which should encourage its long term use. If you like it’s the antithesis of throw away products, which can be highly environmentally damaging, if only because of their high volume.

So it isn’t strictly necessary to design with the typical environmentally friendly materials to make an environmentally friendly design. If something is designed for enduring appeal, and not to satiate some passing fad, then it will inherently be environmentally friendly.

Apple have the led the way somewhat with the new Macbook, which has a chassis which is milled from a single block of aluminium. Not only is it aesthetically pleasing, but at the end of its life (which is likely to be much longer than the average PC) it is easily recyclable. And of course, fewer parts means less energy consumed in its production.

But this still isn’t enough. If design such as this isn’t affordable to the vast majority, then it can’t hope to make any significant contributions to reductions in environmentally damaging waste. Hopefully these good practices will filter through to more mass market manufacturers. Their products may be less throw-away, but this doesn’t mean that they’ll sell less. A well designed product is more likely to see robust sales for a longer period of time, which maximises their return on investment.

It makes economic and environmental sense, so why isn’t everyone doing it? Well I think that things are beginnning to change, and consumer preferences will soon veer away from throw away products. This would be a fantastic victory for design, and the environment, because what ever way you look at it, the two are very closely twinned in this day and age.

Brief History of Motorbike Design

Here is a very interesting, and well executed video about Dieter Rams, the iconic designer for Braun, the electrical goods manufacturer:

Dieter Rams, designer – Cold War Modern from Victoria & Albert Museum on Vimeo.

It is very difficult to ignore his influence on design, and perhaps the best measure of his enduring relevance is just how modern his work still looks, even though some of it is almost half a century old.

This article contains some of the ‘power questions’ which I ask myself when seeking to create a new product, or innovate around an existing one. A sizeable portion of the content comes from the Killer Innovations podcast by Phil McKinney. For anyone looking for more content on the area of innovation, these podcasts should be your first port of call, mainly because they are so informative, and based on real life experience. They’re also free to download, and fairly regular (every week or so). A blog accompanies the show, and I think that there’s a Facebook group too.