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Archive for February, 2011

Chris Burns Has Left the Building

14 Feb

People-oriented design

This is my third attempt at writing a farewell for my friend and colleague Chris Burns, and I just can’t get my words right. How is it possible to sum up a relationship with a person I’ve never met, spoken to for an hour on Skype but chatted with on AIM for innumerable hours? Come Monday 14th February 2011, Chris will no longer be writing for Yanko Design. I guess it’s harder for me to let go of him because he had become an integral part of my life. He’s been around to help me through my mistakes and cheered me on when I scored a winning writeup.

He’s been the dependable co-worker for me in ways that no one will ever know. Oh Chris! Why do you have to leave? There is a saying that Change is Inevitable and it’s always for the good. The silver lining is that Chris is leaving for a good cause, the cause of self-growth. So while I’ll miss his eccentric-humor style of writing and super-sexy image editing, I’ll be comforted by the knowledge that he’s moved on for the greater good.

So long my friend CB, I’ll miss our middle-of-the-night AIM chats, talk about pet dogs, rabbits and cats! But most of I’ll miss your charming smile that beams out of your hairy face! Hahaha! Got you on that!

 

Invisible Chair

14 Feb

People-oriented design

Ben Alun-Jones’ latest work is an attempt at the impossible: invisibility. ‘There is something of an ideology in chair design,’ he explains, ‘that really what you want to sit on is nothing – like you’re supported by air. That’s how I began creating a chair that, in a way, wasn’t there. A structure made out of light.’ The ‘Affinity Chair’ is unlikely to win any prizes for comfort, but it pulls off an impressive vanishing act.

Plastic acrylic sheet and one-way mirror film are used to create a structure that reflects and merges with its surroundings. The chair not only responds to and camouflages itself to match its environment, it also interacts directly with the sitter: sensors activate pulsing LEDs hidden within its frame that quicken like a heart beat as it is approached. The effect is eerie: as the chair is lit from within, its reflective surfaces becomes transparent and all its edges are illuminated. The chair’s disappearance is an attempt at escape; yet this strangely animate object remains rooted to the spot, it’s vanishing body revealing a further hidden space within.

Alun-Jones’ explains his work as using technology itself as an artistic medium to challenge existing perceptions. His materials are unconventional – LEDs, ultrasonic sensors, custom-built and programmed circuit boards. The result is new, challenging, and anything but robotic.

The Affinity Chair will feature at the Royal College of Art Interim Show (Wed 2nd – Mon 7th Feb) as well as appearing at V&A Connects with… ARTS THREAD (Tues 25th Jan) and the V&A Digital Festival (Sat 5th March), both at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

Materials:
Acrylic, Mirror Film, LED, Ultrasonic sensor, Custom Electronics and Code

Photography : Luke Bennett

Designer: Ben Alun-Jones

 

My Banana Keeper

14 Feb

People-oriented design

The ChiquiSafe is a banana keeper because we all know how easily the fruit gets bruised. The innovative packaging idea came from David Dos Santos of REMORK studio for Chiquita Europe. I have seen similar products but personally feel this design is truer to my aesthetic. It’s flexible, durable and dishwasher safe. Can’t wait to get mine.

Designer: David Dos Santos for REMORK DesignStudio

 

What a Face!

14 Feb

People-oriented design

The Orbo is a series of watches with unusual dials. The series includes the Temp, the Date and the Stop, all of which have orbiting digital displays mounted ontop of the regular analogue dial. The secondary displays feature temperature or date depending upon the model. However the Stop is a Chronograph and features a cluster of secondary displays. Overall the effect is quite cute enough to warrant production.

Designer: Zach Weiss

 

The Deceptive Stool

14 Feb

People-oriented design

The Harun is a stool that’s not meant for your butt! Meaning its an air purifier plus humidifier that camouflages itself like furniture. Its features include a 4-liter water tank, four humidifying filters, six-step filter process and the ability to filter out odor, fine dust, yellow dust, viruses, allergies, and VOCs. Essentially its one of those equipments meant for large rooms and you don’t want to spoil their looks with obvious looking purifiers. The neat, sophisticated option!

Designers: Sang Keun Sim & Kyowon L&C Design Team

 

Touchscreen Interface Water

14 Feb

People-oriented design

Designed first and foremost to appear in the image of the place where the sky meets the sea, the place where the sun rises, and from whens life comes. On the top of this device, to the right and left of the nozzle in the center, are the touchscreen controls for the release and control of the water this stopper is meant to work with. This is an electrically powered, digitally controlled, and works without any visible moving parts. This is Sunrise Faucet – completely lovely.

Designer: Stefano Ollino of DORO Design with Solex Co for Renshui

 

Wood Confined to Seat

14 Feb

People-oriented design

Let me show you a rather unique way of thinking about furniture. The following is an ongoing furniture series by designer Inon Retting. This amazingly talented fellow is part of a group of Israeli designers that share a design studio by the name of DesignGroup. In this project / series, Retting decides to flip furniture design inside-out. Instead of creating legs then placing the seat on top of them for a stool, Retting places the stool’s seat inside of the material that makes up the support. Oddness!

The process used to create these unique sculptural seats is Vacuum Forming, that being essentially getting plastic so hot that it bends and forms to whatever shape is inside of it, meanwhile using a vacuum to pull down the plastic so it can form itself around the shape it will take. In the example shown in the video below, Retting and partners create a couple of stools whose heads are inside the bottom of the plastic form of the stool, thus adding structure and thus creating a bit of furniture like no other, none other, absolutely unique in this world of industrial design.

What do you think? Does the form hold up after the wildness of the process has expired? Will this stool be a pathway to a whole new world of furniture forming?

Designer: Inon Retting

 

Love Light Affair

14 Feb

People-oriented design

The following is a project that encapsulates the position of Venus, a lamp made in the image of her femininity, displaying both finesse and beauty as it sets the room alight with it’s inner glow. The intensity of this glow is adjustable with a simple switch that slides up and down for more or less light. At its lowest, this lamp provides a lovely nightlight for late darkness runs for water. At its brightest, Teardrop Lamp provides enough light for a reading light for the smallest text.

If you’ll take a closer look at these lamps, you’ll see that they’d be appropriate for basically any room, acting as sculptures as they work their electric magic to bring light to your life. They’re modeled after a famous Venus sculpture, so they’ve got one fantastic source for inspired beauty. It’s not the display of artwork that you’ve got here, it’s the display of light, and what a display it is!

Designer: Dragos Iliescu

 

Some Serious Yachtness

14 Feb

People-oriented design

I’ll never be able to afford a yacht but I can dream and it would probably look something like the X-SYM 125 by S-MOVE Design. This spectacular naval beast looks quite jaunty, dress from bow to stern in black. The striking asymmetrical design and unique curves emote movement even at rest. It’s pretty compact, which I love, and the glowing perimeter lighting is a nice touch. I want to be captain. I want this yacht.

Designer: S-MOVE DESIGN

 

Marginal Notes Inspires Design

14 Feb

People-oriented design

One morning, Note Design Studio scribbles in the margins of old sketches and notes. They were just random ideas, visual brainstorms in passing to help illustrate key ideas but never saw the light of day. They fell in love with these scribbles and embraced their odd proportions, diverse materials and lack of clever functions. Some were left for later but others were pushed further, into the physical world. In the end it became an exhibition called what else, MARGINAL NOTES.

DUESPHERE – S, M, L lamp In the deep green moss of the forest there are certain families of tiny fungi. They peek up, out from the dark, humid undergrowth like small candles. The double spheres represents what is hidden under ground and what is visible above.

HIGH TIDE/LOW TIDE – shelves The tidal range is the vertical difference between the high tide and the succeeding low tide. Tides are the rise and fall of sea levels caused by the gravitational forces exerted by the Moon and the Sun and the rotation of the Earth. The shelves in these two floating pieces of furniture mark the tidal ranges of the Strait of Magellan, the calmer Pacific versus the more dramatic Atlantic.

OBJECTS Among prototypes and sketches we also developed some half–time forms; early seeds that influenced later objects. These not yet functionally defined forms acted as catalysts throughout the process.

BOOP – sofa, chair and lounge chair 1. boop: The mystery of the boop shall never be revealed. But when saying “Boop” you must poke a random person on the nose. 2. boop: To poke an animal or something cute on the nose.

TOMORROW ISLAND/YESTERDAY ISLAND – lamps The Diomede Islands are located in the middle of the Bering Strait between Alaska and Siberia, and their awkward man-made separation inspired us. The islands are sometimes called Tomorrow Island (Big Diomede, Russian territory) and Yesterday Island (Little Diomede, U.S. territory) because the time difference between them is 20 hours, but the distance only three kilometers. SIBLING – table Just like sister and brother this table and table grew up together. Their genetic and physical closeness is marked by a strong bond of colour and material. They sprung from the same root but ended up quite different.

TEMBO – high table and stool Tembo is Swahili for elephant. When elephants walk, they always have at least one foot on the ground. They don’t run. Because of their straight legs and large pad-like feet elephants can stand for very long periods of time without getting tired. Just like our table and stool.

Designer: Note Design Studio