Core77

We'd love to see the introduction of a television program about industrial design that isn't an annoying reality show, but until that day comes, we'll happily settle for National Geographic's awesome "Ultimate Factories." Check out this excerpt from their inside look at an Ikea factory, where we can see what makes the LACK table so rigid: board-on-frame technology, similar to what's inside hollow-core doors.

It's one thing to understand the technology, which is not that complicated; but it's super-cool to see it being cranked out at the factory.

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

the vineyard gazette
The Greenest Home in America

property week
Architect wins King's Cross design competition for converted gasholder

ny times regional
NYC's MetroCard gets one-word art

dna india
Nokia design manager Jonne Harju on "Dialing up intelligent design"

dexigner
For up-and-coming designers, 50 Free Registrations for the Red Dot Award Product Design 2010

design korea
Design Korea 2009 exhibition/conference opens Dec. 1

Industrial Designer Level II
Ziba Design
San Diego, California

We are looking for an Industrial Designer level II to join our San Diego, California Product Development team. This position is responsible for driving conceptual industrial design and for the hands-on design process. This position leads design teams and personally develops design solutions to meet client needs, operating from a variety of specific, and occasionally open-ended or ill-defined, parameters. The person in this position may take a lead role in facilitating the creative process, may have lead responsibility for small portions of large projects or direct responsibility for small projects.

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The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.

ID students at the Savannah College of Art & Design are currently engaged in a hands-on project with local relevance: Helping a nearby vacation destination, Tybee Island, reduce its water consumption to preserve a local aquifer. Vacationers flocking to Tybee's beaches have already found their beachside showers turned off, as the island undergoes a government-mandated reduction of water usage by 44,000 gallons a day.

To that end, SCAD students are devising systems to meet Tybee's needs using rainwater, bamboo, and even Astroturf:

Casper Krouse, a senior in industrial design, showed off a waterless sand-removal system Thursday. He and his classmates had lashed together a mat of bamboo poles wrapped intermittently with reclaimed artificial grass. "It's a passive way to clean your feet," he said.

...The students have identified methods to collect, filter and store enough rainwater to serve the showers at North Beach. Some of their ideas are tried and true, such as using the roof of the existing bathroom facility to collect rainwater. Others are new, at least to this area, such as a living filtration system that uses large planters filled with sand, gravel, peat moss and live plants to clean up gray water from sinks and showers for re-use in toilets or landscaping.

Students are due to publicly present their designs today, with Tybee City Council reviews slated for the near future. Read all about it here.

via savannah now

I love the titling of the sub-sectors of Singapore's rigidly-defined design sectors: "Placemaking" (environments design, architecture), "Objectmaking" (industrial, product, and fashion design), "Imagemaking" (graphics, visual communications and advertising design). Singapore takes design seriously, as evidenced not only by its forthcoming Singapore Design Festival, but by the fact that

The government here is supporting the design sector. For example, the Design For Enterprises initiative is a $12 million collaboration to help Singapore enterprises tap the creativity and design expertise of top designers and assist them in coming up with successful products and services.

Another initiative is the Design Capability Development Programme by the DesignSingapore Council which has earmarked $10 million to provide grants and co-funding for mentorship, overseas promotion, participation in competitions, scholarship and other capability development schemes.

This from an article in The Business Times about both the Festival and the city-state's efforts to "bring design to the forefront, emphasising the key role that it plays in contributing to the triple bottom line - where the interests of business, society and the environment come together," as Robert Tomlin, chairman of the DesignSingapore Council put it. Read all about it here.

Portugal's newest daily newspaper, i, was launched in early May and has attracted a significant amount of attention due to its rising circulation figures and innovative approach. It recently won a design award from the Society of News Design.

The Editors Weblog spoke to editor-in-chief Martim Avillez Figueiredo, managing editor for online Mónica Bello and art director Nick Mrozowski, to find out more about i's approach and the reasons behind its success.

"I is not structured like a traditional paper. The paper's team worked with media consultancy Innovation to come up with a new way to organise the product. "Our feeling was," said Figueiredo, who came on board at an early stage, moving from Diário Económico, "that people were not concerned about traditional sections any more. Traditionally, journalists have to fill a politics section even if there is nothing relevant going on in politics. We wanted to come up with something different." So the team came up with five key needs that they wanted the paper to address, with five key words."

>> Read article

(via Haddock blogs)

Imagine a future when you can learn about the origin of every product before you buy it. Would you second guess your purchase if you discovered that the bag you want was made by migrant workers in a sweatshop? US-based Baggu thinks so and they're leading the charge with an assortment of beautiful and reusable bags that are "Ethically made in China," according to the tag on each bag. Their phrasing probably seems like a smoke screen to skeptics who want to support their local economy and are dubious of Chinese imports. However, Baggu's promotion of their fair labor practices elevates the importance of knowing more about what you purchase. We hope that this kind of tag transparency, coupled with advances like Good Guide's iPhone app, continues to empower us with instant product information that will make us all more ethical consumers.

Weekly finds from the 3D world.

SolidWorks
Video Tutorial: Using Excel spreadsheets to drive 3D model creation.
Mythbusting: Do fully defined sketches really solve faster?
Cadalyst reviews SW 2010.

Alias
Tutorial: Modeling strategy and patch layout.

Rhino
Simlab's 3D PDF exporter plug-in.
Video Tutorial: Modeling a solitaire ring (jewelry).

3DS Max
Render nerd eye-candy: 3D animation phenomenon Pantural's "Shelby vs Camaro vs Jeep vs VAZ 2107 vs Helicopter" showreel (stills above) - via SolidSmack.

SpaceClaim
Some thoughts on touchscreen interfaces in CAD

HDRLightStudio
D3D's in depth review of the high-end rendering aid.

Adobe
After Acrobat 3D, what (if anything) is coming next in Adobe's foray into 3D CAD?

[photo credit: Bernard Hoffman/LIFE.com]

Life.com has a new photo gallery up curated by guest editor Mark Frauenfelder, the founder of BoingBoing, offering his insights on ID grandaddy Raymond Loewy. Called "The Man Who Designed America," the gallery features shots of good ol' Ray-Ray designing everything from Studebakers to Skylab, and making the most of his big-pimpin' lifestyle, from dune buggy driving to his macktastic and self-designed Palm Springs crib.

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

cctv
Video: Innovation adds glamour to porcelain on design contest in Beijing

eye of dubai
BoConcept's Design Your Own Cup

businessweek
Nussbaum on "How Design thinking Can Help Us Navigate Through This Time of Cascading Change"

plastics news
Samsung design chief on sustainability efforts

blackbird guitars
A Ferrari...guitar?

allworth press
Design Management Institute's latest release: "Design Thinking: Integrating Innovation, Customer Experience, and Brand Value"