Core77

"Depending on how you see it, social software is either all the rage or so 2008. You know the stuff: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Foursquare.... There's no talking about the web these days without it—that's for sure—but social software tools are quickly becoming an integral part of the way we run our day-to-day lives..."

This October, Eindhoven presented the 8th edition of Dutch Design Week. In typical Dutch style, visitors were given insight into the entire development process from concept to product. Brit Leissler was on site, selecting the best work from the Eindhoven Design Academy graduation show, the Designhuis, the former Philips complex Strijp-S, and more.

The 2009 edition of the Coroflot Salary Survey saw a significant jump in the number of respondents: over 5000 this time, with significant showings by all eight of the fields surveyed. Taken together these indicate a sea change in the nature of Coroflot's community, from a niche group of product designers to a pan-disciplinary collection of creatives..

"In Guyana we met and collaborated with factory workers and indigenous artisan weavers from the Wai Wai tribe. For over 8 hours each day we steamed, bent, cut, sanded and wove alongside the men and women of Liana Cane. At each step of the way, our designs were also shaped by the material constraints and constant direction of the skilled workers, whose knowledge of this process greatly surpassed our own..."

"Instead of laying waste to products with screwdrivers and crowbars, a wide range of occasionally famous, sometimes beautiful and frequently innovative products are subjected to the verbal barbs and jabs of unexpectedly-funny designers and engineers."

The latest 1 Hour Design Challenge, The Future of Digital Reading was based on Portigal Consulting's Reading Ahead initiative—recent research around books, reading, behavior, and technology. It was a tough one to jury, but the Grand Prize was awarded to Hot Studio's SuperFlyer 5000.

Prague Design Days 2009, or Designblok, is the 11th edition of Prague's major annual design event anchored at the Holesovice area. The event took place between the 6th and 11th of October. This year's theme was "Spring" and demonstrated a sense of revival, new beauty and new life.

"We are a collaborative species. No single perspective could possibly cover every aspect of an issue, but together through the collage of our collective experience we wage war on the challenges of our reality...At every level of complexity an individual's best efforts could never compare to the magnitude of the seemingly intelligent behavior of the swarm..."

"Good creative hiring is all about flexibility and relationships—this was the core of the message gleaned from Wednesday's long-anticipated Coroflot Creative Confab at the Autodesk Gallery in San Francisco. The panel discussion at the heart of the 160-attendee event was easily the most boisterous and impassioned of the Confab's four-city tour so far, with panelists Emily Delmont (Google Creative Lab), Steve Johnson (LinkedIn), Kate Gilman (24 Seven) and John Foster (IDEO) bouncing around opinions on networking, creative skill sets, and employee engagement with dizzying speed..."

"It's hard to simplify the inherent dynamism of an electronic device—no matter how elaborate the margin doodle; it often confuses more than clarifies. And how could it not? Electronic devices are alive and interactive. They gather information about their environment or user, process values, and respond accordingly. Even the most well-intentioned sketch quickly reaches the limitations of the medium..."

"In hindsight, having only started Project H about 7 months prior to signing the book contract, embarking on such a huge project was probably a little bit premature, but it gave me the avenue to more deeply explore some of Project H's values and ambitions, and to do so in a way that would hopefully inspire and motivate other product designers to stop talking about doing good, and to take action with some helpful tools..."

The third installment of the acclaimed Coroflot Creative Employment Confab will take place in San Francsico on October 21st. The event will revolve around a panel discussion between guests John Foster of IDEO, Kate Gilman of 24 Seven, Inc., and Steve Johnson of LinkedIn. Afterwards, get to know your fellow SF creatives at the reception that follows. Bonus: this round of the Creative Confab will feature optional morning workshops, led by experts on both sides of the hiring equation.

Over the past few years, the London Design Festival has successfully put itself on the map of international annual design events. This year, Earl's Court housed Designersblock in addition to the annual 100% Design tradeshow. On the east side of the city, Tent London hosted a digital event for the first time this year, while Tom Dixon curated events at The Dock, a new site on London's west side that housed a great number of pop-up stores and new work from both established and emerging designers. Brit Leissler was on-site and shares images from all of these and more.

"About halfway through Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation, Tim Brown repeats Tom Peter's much cited comment that "the MFA is the new MBA." In doing so, however, he doesn't fully endorse the sentiment. Instead Brown observes that the dynamic skills required in business share as much in common with the creativity required for a design practice as they do with the critical thinking required for the MBA...The crux of what Brown is getting at is what McKinsey & Company referred to as the "T-Shaped" person, where the vertical axis represents the depth of the skill set that forms their core competency. Valuable design thinkers, however, "cross the T," holding not only deep familiarity with their core role, but also a disposition for collaboration across enterprises..."

Returning for their second year, gadget blog Gizmodo presented over 60 devices in New York including a collection of vintage electronics, a giant 3D Etch-a-Sketch, a live band ArcAttack performing with home-made tesla coils, many hands-on interactive demos and the crowd favorite - an automatic pancake making machine.

We're conducting our annual Coroflot Designer Salary Survey for the 9th year running! After you give us some survey love, take a few moments to browse the rich pool of data you've helped us build over the years. Compare what you make with your kindred in other regions, fields, and work environments; look at salary trends over the past decade; see which fields are growing and find out which ones are truly taking off.

Filled with hundreds of tips, tricks, lifehacks and advice for practicing designers, Hack2Work covers everything from office politics to office snacks, from essential books to essential software, and from intellectual property and design research to design conferences, working with the press, sustainable practice, and creative hiring.

Core77 has teamed up with Portigal Consulting and 826 Valencia to challenge you to design the Future of Digital Reading...in 90 minutes! What will reading look like as it continues to evolve, going digital (and beyond)? In 5 or 10 years, will we still be holding paper squares in our hands when we read? Will we be back to stone tablets? Will we still be using our eyes? Core77 challenges you to create a rich future digital reading experience based on the research findings by Portigal Consulting's Reading Ahead project.

The third installment of the acclaimed Coroflot Creative Employment Confab will take place in San Francsico on October 21st. The event will revolve around a panel discussion between guests John Foster of IDEO, Kate Gilman of 24 Seven, Inc., and Steve Johnson of LinkedIn. Afterwards, get to know your fellow SF creatives at the reception that follows. Bonus: this round of the Creative Confab will feature optional morning workshops, led by experts on both sides of the hiring equation.

The results of last month's One Hour Design Challenge are in! Congratulations to Thedinomeister for hitting it all: good quality, good quantity and just loose enough to have been done in an hour. Congratulations also to honorable mentions to Blaster, Mikeserafin, Bennybtl and Sergiomora. View the winners and discuss all the submissions (from digger trucks to handbags) in the forum.

"While not exactly summer beach reading, Hartmut Esslinger's new book on Design Strategy, A Fine Line crams as many ideas, themes and disparate story arcs into its 180 pages as a Dan Brown novel. For the first few chapters Esslinger follows the tried and true business book methodology of using real world examples to illustrate lessons in leadership and strategy. For the last three chapters, he begins to apply the design lessons he learned in the corporate world to what he terms "industrial-colonial capitalism" -- the problems of the modern age caused in part by the last century of design strategy...."

Eurobike, the world's leading tradeshow for the bike industry, took place between September 2nd and 5th in Friedrichschafen, Germany. This year, electric bicycles, or e-bikes, were an especially hot topic, appearing en masse alongside the usual lightweight parts, bike gear, and pimped-out accessories. Aart van Bezooyen went trekking onsite, returing with a giant gallery of bike shots... and maybe the BMX trick or two.

The inaugural Maker Faire Africa invited makers and entrepreneurs from around the globe to celebrate and showcase African ingenuity on an international stage. Nathan Cooke traveled all the way to Accra, Ghana to witness this, discovering work by makers and artisans from as far as Liberia, Malawi and Uganda. See homemade cassava grinders, water purifiers, irrigators, off-the-grid refrigerators, plastic fashion, and more in this (especially) exciting Core77 gallery!

We're conducting our annual Coroflot Designer Salary Survey for the 9th year running! After you give us some survey love, take a few moments to browse the rich pool of data you've helped us build over the years. Compare what you make with your kindred in other regions, fields, and work environments; look at salary trends over the past decade; see which fields are growing and find out which ones are truly taking off.

The New York International Gift Fair, the premier gift and home accessories market in the U.S., takes place in New York City every August, with over 2,900 exhibitors and 30,000 buyers traipsing through the Javits Center to see the latest and greatest. Veanne Cao joined them in search of the best tabletop objects, housewares, and accessories for the Core77 galleries.

"The collapse of the US auto industry stands as one of the national tragedies of this generation, but it also provides boundless opportunities for ironic reflection when looking through a book like Heimann and Patton's Classic Cars. The first time we opened their book of historic auto ads, it revealed a blue '67 Olds Toronodo, complete with a matador against a red background, framed against the caption, "After you've walked off with all the honors, what do you do for an encore?" Regrettably we've found out. The copy on the back of this coffee table books contrasts the Stone Age and the Bronze Age with the 20th Century -- The Automobile Age..."

The results are in for the Nidecker Core77 Snowboard Design Competition! Designers from around the world were invited to create the next generation of snowboard graphics for Nidecker's famed snowboards, and the response was overwhelming. Over 3,000 designs came in from all corners of the globe, and we are thrilled to present the winners. Paul McDermid took Grand Prize, followed by five finalists: Artur Tchoukanov, Kai Dame, Hendy Musa, Tom Gregory, and Christopher DeLorenzo. We've got a huge gallery of all the winners, semi-finalists and notables up at the site, so check out the winners and then dive deep into the gallery. There are some truly amazing designs in there!

"While collectives look inward, focused on their own ambitions and sensibilities, these groups look outward, attempting to build a lasting infrastructure for young American designers, capable of outliving changes in personnel and design culture. This change in outlook indicates two things: first, there is a structural gap in the design industry that demands filling, and, second, design collectives are ceasing to function as a satisfactory solution to this problem..."

of June, themed as "Mediterranean Design between Present and Future." In addition to major exhibitions and cultural events, a showroom circuit extended the fair into Istanbul's design shops and galleries, which were invited to compete for "Best Installation". Esin Arsan was on site all weekend and shares her photos with us in the Core77 Galleries.

"We began to understand better their perception of technology and how productivity and play very much intertwine. They are very electronically social and don't distinguish between electronic friends and physical friends, but rather through physical proximity. This means they know where the people they communicate with are, and, whether the relationships were purely virtual, purely physical or somewhere in between, it is the geographic distance that seemed most meaningful to them..."

"Bauhaus City, get on site!" says the international summer school organized by the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, celebrating its 90th birthday this year. Creative folks from all over the world were invited to experience the famous Bauhaus buildings firsthand, while reimagining the future of Bauhaus City through hands-on workshops. Aart van Bezooyen shares his experience as a participant of this intensive weeklong summer school in the Core77 galleries!

"Anyone who thinks that minimalist or clean product design begins and ends with Jonathan Ive would be well served to check out the latest exhibit on Dieter Rams. Unfortunately, the exhibit in question was already held at the Suntory Museum in Osaka, Japan, but the contents of the retrospective have also been catalogued in a book, Less and More available in limited numbers through the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. Rather than working for Braun, Rams was Braun..."

Run to the closest printer or copier, grab a small stack of copier paper, and show us some ideation love. Yup, it's as simple as that—create the most number of ideation sketches in as many angles, forms, and scribbles of a single subject of your choice. If you love shoes, sketch 'em. If you're feelin' it for cars, we want to see those. If you're into cellphones, gadgets, gizmos, fashion, or accessories, have at it! We've all seen these ideation pages populating your Coroflot portfolios; now's your chance to prepare a stunning array live with the kitchen timer set to 60 minutes!

Core77 proudly introduces a limited edition bicycle—named the "Dutch Master"—celebrating New York bike culture and a heritage of local manufacturing. The Dutch Master is based on the beloved Worksman cruiser frame—a workhorse foundation used throughout the New York delivery community, and manufactured in Queens, New York for over 110 years. Core77 customized the frame, fitting it out with a carefully curated set of components, each with its own story.

"Summoned by phone, your ATNMBL arrives. You enter from the curb side through an electric glass sliding door into a standing-height entryway. Upon entering, you are presented with a simple question: "Where can I take you?" There is no steering wheel, brake pedal or drivers seat...."

NeoCon, a trade show revolving around commercial interiors, happens every year at the Merchandise Mart in Chicago, one of the world's largest indoor commercial spaces. In addition to the showroom mainstays like Herman Miller, Knoll, Bernhardt, and Steelcase, two floors of temporary exhibition space are filled with the latest products for the interior contract industry. This year, we also visited four offsite events: Making Modern at The School of the Art Institute, The Promise of this Moment, Object Society, and the annual Guerrilla Truck Show.

"We have been operating under the assumption that the primary challenge is to convince businesses to focus on fulfilling user needs with higher quality products, with more meaningful experiences. But what if the 'users' themselves are the problem? What if users represent not a coherent set of needs but a messy mix of desires and influences? What, ultimately, is the role of the designer in sorting through these desires to determine which should drive our design decisions? And what frameworks, other than intuition, should we use to make these judgments?"

The MD&M East expo (Medical Design and Manufacturing) is an annual exhibition of medical devices and product manufacturers, and is the world's second largest medical OEM event (next to MD&M West). MD&M runs concurrently with ATX (the automation technology expo), which features the latest in automated manufacturing technologies.

Bread & Butter Berlin (BBB) takes place at the historic Tempelhof Airport in Berlin, a special venue for the international fashion scene to meet up and showcase their latest collections. From hangars full of fashion we captured highlights such as G-Star's Fashion Show, Italian craftsmen designing jeans at the LABORATORIO, and live events at the Luna Park.

After reviewing Sketchbooks: The Hidden Art of Designers, Illustrators and Creatives just a few weeks ago, it seemed premature to cover another one so soon, but any drawing teacher would concur: you can never do enough sketching. Sketchbook: Conceptual Drawings from the World's Most Influential Designers, by Timothy O'Donnell, covers similar material in a slightly different manner. While Brereton's book caught artists and ad execs at their most candid, O'Donnell documents primarily illustrators and designers doing real projects. Thus the art throughout is more precise, a little tighter and far less kooky. While this bodes well for the pencil chops of designers as a whole, it also means that looking at some of these sketchbooks is totally demoralizing.

There are only a few days left to enter the Nidecker Snowboard Competition, produced by Nidecker Snowboards in partnership with Core77. The Grand Prize winner will receive $2500 and be included in the Nidecker 2010/11 line, so be sure to enter by July 12th.

New York Design Week was busier than expected this year, with plenty to see at both the International Contemporary Furniture Fair and off-site events throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn. The local design presence was especially strong, represented by exhibits like Indisposed, McMasterpieces, Model Citizens NYC, NY Local, Purpose & Worth, and The Future Perfect Editions. Check out our massive gallery of over 400 images of the best from ICFF, satellite shows, parties and more!

Check out the winners of our Wave Sport Kayak Hull Trip-Tych Competition! The Grand Prize winner received $2500, and the Top 5 designs will be displayed at the Outdoor Retailer Summer Market Show in Salt Lake City in July 2009, in addition to getting a kayak with their own design.

The Portland edition of the Coroflot Creative Confab took place on June 11th, a networking and knowledge-sharing afternoon for creative recruiters and professionals. The event ran for three hours, featuring ample opportunity for networking with local creative professionals and recruiters and centering on an engaging panel discussion with some of Portland's top designers and design recruiters, including: Kirk James of Cinco Design, Nick Oakley of Intel, Beth Sasseen of Nike, and Chelsea Vandiver of Ziba Design.

We're putting the final touches on our limited-edition Dutch Master bicycle, the ultimate blend of street and cruiser riding. Designed and hand-built in New York, It will hit the pavement soon, so we can't give too much away yet - but rest assured, this will be one super smooth summer ride!

"The bottom line is that designers need to see and understand the economy before they can grapple with how to organize their own work. Unfortunately most discussions of sustainable design gloss over the workings of the economy. Designers alone can't bring about a steady state economy, but we can begin to use the economy for sustainable ends, rather than letting the economy use us solely for economic growth..."

"Martin Bone is one of us. The opening pages of his collaboration with Kara Johnson, I Miss My Pencil, include fetishistic shots of everyday objects like kitchen knives and attache cases that the authors know and love. In the short blurbs of text that accompany the beautiful product shots, Johnson explains a part of the product lifecycle that designers too often ignore. Recounting the effect of a ding on her experience as a car owner, she explains, "My previously flawless car now registered a dent above the back rear wheel. But my love did not waver. In fact, perhaps surprisingly, it grew: I love my car even more now with this little dent," that now serves to remind her of a weekend snowboarding..."

"Though it may often seem like the industrial designer's job is to create a "black box" around circuit boards, the ability to take the complex nature of data and translate it into meaningful form is more important than ever before. More than mere shells for electronic components, they play a totemic role in the home and act as the threshold for rich, emotionally-laden content and timely personal communication..."

"Peter Opsvik, a Norwegian designer, has been working on improving the human working posture for over forty years, with a single-mindedness that makes his whole career look like one extended project. Rethinking Sitting showcases Opsvik's career with a variety of chairs that make Bill Stumpf's Aeron seem downright anachronistic..."

Milan Design Week was a sprawling extravaganza this year, with many thriving clusters. The Fairgrounds and off-site events provided endless venues for exhibiting design, and the streets of the Zona Tortona and beyond were bustling with clanking glasses, great Italian food, and a vibrant scene of artists and designers. In addition to the furniture, this year saw a ton of sculpture, art performances, environmental discourse, and great music.

Check out Core77's Essential Guide to this year's New York Design Week, featuring the best exhibitions, events, and parties from the ICFF on out to Brooklyn, from the Meatpacking district, Soho, Tribecca, and Chelsea, to Midtown, the Flatiron, East Village & LES. Check the page often for updates, and don't forget to print out a set for your bag. Want it on your phone? We've got that too!

Wave Sport has partnered with Core77, inviting designers around the world to create a new generation of boat graphics for their Fuse 56 river running / freestyle kayak. The Top 5 designs will be displayed at the Outdoor Retailer Summer Market Show in Salt Lake City in July 2009, and will receive a kayak with their own design. Download the templates, work your graphic magic, and enter to win!

"In keeping with hospital protocol, every time we crossed from one ward to another, we paused at the double doors and carefully washed our hands. (I washed my hands fourteen times that day.) Although the nurses were adamant about hand washing, we watched them roll IV poles from one ward to the next with no authorization or cleaning regimen. IV poles were a potential source of cross-ward infections..."

The results are in! The latest 1 Hour Design Challenge: Business Card Hacks brought out some serious 3D creativity from the participants, and produced some utilitarian, ornamental, and just plain whimsical business card hacks. Huge thanks to our sponsors on this challenge: UPrinting and to our guest judge Gino Orlandi. The Top 5 Winners will each receive 1000 free business cards, courtesy of UPrinting.

Coming off the smash success of their Illustrated Fieldguide for Designers on the Home and Housewares Show in Chicago last month, Lunchbreath and Fueledbycoffee will be contributing design cartoons to Core77 on a regular basis, taking aim and providing insight into the wide world of design.

"In the title and throughout this article, I've used the phrase 'market research' versus 'design research' for two reasons: First, 'Design research,' a term invented by the design community, is not recognized or known outside of this group; the term recognized by other individuals in business (and as an established profession) is 'market research.' I'm using this term then, as I believe it has more universal appeal and understanding. Second, when the design community refers to 'design research,' traditional methods such as focus groups and surveys are often dismissed, where more emerging methods like ethnographic research and listening labs get all the ink (or pixels). I'd like to help balance that out..."

On route to Milan last month, we caught up with the Campana Brothers to get the lowdown on their latest project for Brazilian jelly shoe giant Melissa. Exclusively for the month of May, we're happy to offer readers the chance to get your hands on the Campana Zig Zag and Campana Corallo shoes through our trusted partner store Epaulet. Located just across the bridge in Brooklyn, not only do they carry the largest choice of colors online, they're also offering free shipping for orders in the US.

"Midway through Richard Brereton's Sketchbooks: The Hidden Art of Designers, Illustrators and Creatives, commercial artist and graphic designer Ed Fella confides, 'in 1976 an artist friend gave me a sketchbook, saying 'Even though you're a designer, you think like an artist and should keep a sketchbook.' Well, even if you happen to be a designer and you don't think like an artist, we at Core77 still think you should carry a sketchbook..."

"It should be clear by now what I mean by design is the problem. Design that is about appearance, or margins, or offerings and market segments, and not about real people--their needs, abilities, desires, emotions, and so on--that's the design that is the problem. The design that is about systems solutions, intent, appropriate and knowledgeable integration of people, planet, and profit, and the design that, above all, cares about customers as people and not merely consumers--that's the design that can lead to healthy, sustainable solutions..."

We're thrilled to announce the winners of the "Shoot Your Inspiration" photo contest, held in conjunction with the 2099 Braun Prize. We had a tremendous turn out, with more than 2,400 photos submitted from around the world. Thanks to everyone who participated!
Grand Prize:
Kids at Play, by Jayashankar - India
Runners up:
The Survivor, by Szabo Balazs -Hungary
Family Love, by Hadi Sattari - United States
Boston, by Felipe Caralho - Brazil
People's Choice Award:
Condor de los Andes, by Cesar David Martinez Rodriguez, Colombia

Aart van Bezooyen visited the PICTOPIA festival, the world's first ever large-scale presentation and celebration of "reduced and abstract character design and art." Running until May 3rd, Berlin is transformed into a character biotope and a meeting point for an international scene of designers, artists, producers and an interested public. Mickey Mouse, meet your worst nightmare!

Filled with insanely pragmatic advice, persuasive argument, and impassioned calls for action, Design is the Problem: The Future of Design Must Be Sustainable is essential reading for all designers, design students, business people, business students, innovation specialists, and advocates of all stripes. Core77's Allan Chochinov sat down with Nathan to chat about the book, the challenges ahead, the culture of business, and the amazing opportunities for designers right now.

Every year, tens of thousands of people mob the International Housewares Show in Chicago, touring through the latest, greatest, and sometimes-lamest homestuff as far as the eye can see. This year, Core77 sent Lisa Smith and Caroline Linder to shoot the show, putting together a huge gallery of what's next to show up in a store (or home!) near you.

And that's not all: Lunchbreath and Fueledbycoffee walked the show for Core77, preparing an illustrated "Fieldguide" for designers and housewares fans, and rendering (literally) their experiences and insights in cartoon form.

"Designers are truly at the center of this paradigm change. While these are scary times, this is also an opportunity for us to focus on what is real. Any designer focused on producing useless doodads to be made in China, hawked to geriatric couch surfers on QVC, financed with second lien mortgages, denominated in a rapidly devaluing currency, propped up by the government of the underpaid Chinese workers who built it, should be rightly terrified..."

"Objectified is a very affectionate film--toward its cast, its subject, and indeed the entire enterprise of design. It's not a sociological study, but, as in Hustwit's previous blockbuster, the movie surfaces its arguments through the eyes (and mouths) of famous designers and critics. Helvetica-style, we watch everyone from Jonathan Ive to Hella Jongerius discuss their unique brand, their point of view (and points of departure)--personalities blazing and hearts on sleeves..."

"For a graphic designer or a product designer interested in applique, New Skateboard Graphics is an eyeful. In the foreword, Michael Leon explains the realities of the modern sales environment where the consumer tends to observe the boards with the bottom graphics visible at a distance on a wall or in miniature in a catalog. Hardisty follows up with a short essay on the two-way connection between the branding of the company and the aesthetics of the riders, but from there it's all about the graphics..."

In Darwinian fashion, we cross-pollinated these central forms to create hybridized form statements. The result is the beginning of a kind of Periodical Chart of Forms that can be parsed for their associated Meanings. Like the Periodic Table of the Elements, this system holds ample opportunity for mixing proportions, creating alloys, and adding impurities. We propose that this visual paradigm has room to house all the things that have been, and the things yet to be.

It was a roller-coaster ride of a panel discussion at the Live Greener Gadgets Design Competition Judging at the close of Friday's Greener Gadgets Conference in New York City. After an overview of some of the notable entries, the judges--Jeff Kapec of Tanaka Kapec Design Group, Jill Fehrenbacher of Inhabitat, and Saul Griffith of Makani Power--toured the audience through 13 of their favorite projects before deliberating to get things down to the Top 3. Find out who the semi-finalists were, and who took home the prize!

We were thrilled to unpack the finished Longboards last week, delivered from Ponoko and Bustin Boards, our two completely awesome sponsors of last month's 1 Hour Design Challenge: Laser-cut Grip Tape Inlay for a Longboard. The challenge was to create graphic explorations for the "top" of the board (graphics are typically screen printed on the bottom), utilizing the laser-cutting precision of Ponoko, and applied to the beautiful boards of Bustin. As you'll recall, the winners of 1 Hour Design Competition were "Day of the Dead" designed by delaojoser, "Freedom" designed by leebaz, and "Muse 2" designed by b_fuzz, and the prize was to receive their design...laser cut and applied to a complimentary board! But not before we got 'em and photographed them for your viewing pleasure.

Strictly for hard-core fans, we're releasing the official Core77 raised silver ID nameplate, the perfect way to customize pretty much any gadget you own (especially laptops). Backed with 3M's 300LSE high strength laminating adhesive, you'll want to position this one right the first time - there's definitely no second chances! Highly detailed with crisp edges, our metal nameplates are finished with a mirror chrome textured surface guaranteed to catch light from almost any angle.

Transversale 2009 is a wide range of objects and installations by artists, designers, craftsmen, and students exploring the boundaries where art meets design and design meets art.

Companies would never send their ideas off to market without determining what materials they were to be made of or what color. It follows that Industry should commit this same attention to how their ideas move. The animation of products is at least as important an aesthetic factor as form, color, or material.

There's no reason why every finished design can't be built from a cornucopia of failures, so much so that perhaps the very nomenclature of failure needs to be reconsidered. Perhaps we designers have already subliminally assimilated this lesson. After all, most people I know don't call it failure, we call it process. For me, success and failure are the same things, just on a different timeline.

The annual New York Toy Fair, located at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City, drew over 20,000 attendees this year. Visitors took the isles to check out over 100,000 products, and Core77 was there to bring the hottest ones right to your desktop.

Looking at the actual work contained within, I couldn't help but notice that stereotypes about the feminine aesthetic seemed to apply more broadly to the client than the designer, which strongly indicates that the capacity of a designer to produce good work for a client has little to do with gender.

More subdued than previous years in regard to presentation spectacle, the 2009 North American International Auto Show focused on product, especially high efficiency and electric vehicles.

"My goal is to get designers thinking more about writing the way writers do--as a tool, a craft, and yes, an art in its own right--rather than a necessary chore. Your training as a designer will influence your writing, and your work at turning ideas into narratives will influence your design, and who knows, that might not be a bad thing..."

The Cologne International Design Festival consists of two main (unfortunately competing rather than collaborating) events: The IMM Furniture Show and the Passagen - a show program with a great number of exhibitions in the main fair as well as galleries, show rooms, bars and shops across the city.

"You have these beautiful forms or really interesting functionality that are then stuck with an ugly UI or in a black plastic box. One of the amazing things about the launch of the iPhone was that the commercials focused almost entirely on the UI, which I'd never seen elsewhere..."

The response to this year's Greener Gadgets Design Competition was phenomenal. Check out the gallery of the Top 50 Semi-Finalists and vote for your favorite greener gadget!

George asks why such a fundamental aspect of our designed lives remains on the margins of polite conversation. After all, she points out, Le Corbusier called the toilet "one of the most beautiful objects industry has ever invented."

The results are in! The latest 1 Hour Design Challenge: Laser-cut Grip Tape Inlay for a Longboard brought the largest number of entries in the history of the 1HDC, with participants uploading an incredible array of grip tape graphic designs. Huge thanks to our sponsors on this challenge: Ponoko and Bustin Boards.

Amazon's publicity blurb for The L.A. Earthquake Sourcebook bills it as "the coolest earthquake preparedness-book ever published," which I imagine to be true, but I also can't think of much competition...

"Without a compelling, indeed, taxonomic, way of organizing design activity, we are selling ourselves short; we not only have difficulty understanding the profession ourselves, but also in communicating to the world our potency, range, and potential impact..."

"Buying behaviour and decision-making criteria imply that those in the lower income strata--particularly in the developing world--are not 'consumers' but in fact extremely careful 'money managers' for whom an expense is often an investment whose return must be maximized..."

Since May 2005, the Buchstabenmuseum (German: Museum of Letters) organization has been rescuing typographic icons of our time. Today, the Buchstabenmuseum preserves an immense collection of historical letters from all over Berlin and beyond.

"Clearly, there's something about using human detritus that's uniquely resistant to industrialization, and work like Splan's seems more suited to the Gugenhiem than to the Cooper-Hewitt, but it still provides a valuable commentary on human society (e.g. Why does a skin negligee seem utterly unmanufacturable, when we've already done such a marvelous job industrializing the skinning of cows, lizards and some small furry mammals?)..."

The Museum of Arts and Design inaugurated its new home at Columbus Circle with Second Lives: Remixing the Ordinary, a special thematic exhibition featuring 51 contemporary artists from 17 countries who transform discarded, commonplace, or valueless objects into extraordinary works of art.

"The concept of 'needsfinding' seems unique to our consumer culture. True needs like air, sleep or hunger announce themselves with neurochemical fury, tearing animals away from what they think they should be doing and dragging them into the immediacy of their body. So when we industrial designers talk about the customer's undiscovered needs and how our products can address them, we should admit to ourselves that needsfinding, as we know it, is an oxymoron..."

2008 was an incredible year for us at Core77. Design event coverage, competitions, blog posts, articles, Drive-by Videos, interviews, galleries, 1 Hour Design Challenges, FlotSpottings, book reviews, discussion boards, portfolio highlights...there's just too much to take stock of. But in the spirit of somehow wrapping our heads around it all, we present a selection of some of our all-time favorite items from the world of Core77 2008. We hope you enjoy this look back, and we join you in looking forward to another great year ahead.

We've just unleashed our 3rd Annual Ultimate Holiday Gift Guide: 77 Design Gifts Under $77, featuring items that span high- and low-tech, craft, books, philanthropy, DIY, fashion, food, utility, and some just plain fun. Check out the Core77 exclusives, and get shopping!

Check out all of Core77's Tokyo coverage from Tokyo's Design Week: 'Tokyo Designer's Week' anchored by the 100% Design show, and 'Designtide Tokyo'.

"The reason this project has taken so long to get to this point has nothing to do with lead times, or production capacity, or scope change like most other delayed product development cycles. Delays in the developing world can come from much more unpredictable circumstances..."

The developed world has a strong responsibility in sharing knowledge, resources, responsible behaviour and know-how with emerging countries. But our track record isn't that good. Our "We know best, follow us" attitude has left indelible scars on society and the planet. How can the West avoid making the same mistakes again? How will emerging underdeveloped countries avoid making them too?...

"I don't quite know whether to be dismayed that rebel art forms like graffiti or skateboarding have been co-opted by corporate America, or thrilled that antiestablishment icons are finally getting their dues. The work in Art & Sole provides a microcosm of fashion through which to gaze upon consumer trends, and I'm sure product design will follow. It's tough to know who's stolen who's thunder or whether Basquiat would be happy to see his work on the side of a Reebok..."

The 15th edition of the Euromold fair took place in Frankfurt at the start of December, covering the product development process from the first idea to final finishing. This year we take a closer look at new materials and technologies, research projects, and the works of upcoming designers.

"Saint-Etienne celebrates this year the 10th anniversary of its International Design Biennial in the context of economical instability and systemic global challenges. Design is on the cutting edge of social and cultural change and cities, regions and stakeholders take their positions, but designers hesitate before pushing the boundaries of their industry serving discipline..."

"There isn't really a place for industrial designers at NASA. Here the engineers are considered the designers, and the team has only been able to exist under the guise of human factors, a quantifiable soft science that is acknowledged as necessary..."

"Embracing the word 'ugly'--so readily identified with everything popular design claims to have been a reaction against--seems a logical choice if we are to create a vision for the practice of design freed from the restrictions and prejudices of its past..."

DESIGNERSOPEN 2008 is one of the biggest design events in the east of Germany. During three days in Leipzig, we captured the power of a young design generation during a creative fight club, design exhibitions, historical art fair, and downtown specials.

The fourth annual Design Philadelphia covered the city of brotherly love with exhibitions, gallery openings, lectures, contests, and work from many talented local designers.

"Desire: The Shape of Things to Come, by Gestalten Press is visually interesting on every page. The oddly framed and somewhat flat front cover's picture of simple wooden furniture and gaudy gold tableware is by no means representative of the elegant furniture designs contained within..."

"Desire: The Shape of Things to Come, by Gestalten Press is visually interesting on every page. The oddly framed and somewhat flat front cover's picture of simple wooden furniture and gaudy gold tableware is by no means representative of the elegant furniture designs contained within..."

The results are in and we are proud to announce the winners of the latest Core77 1 Hour Design Challenge: Voting Booth! There was a wonderful selection of entries in this round, and the lead up to November 4th provided some nice design fuel.

"When it comes to social-impact messaging, the key advice is don't be drab; make it intriguing and make it look as fabulous as the new beer commercial. Generate mileage by utilizing the same attention-grabbing strategies you would for a consumer-based product..."

Now in its sixth year, The London Design Festival offers a great array of creative events, attracting everyone from consumers and professionals to students and all those with a keen interest in design. Check out the diverse range of talents, from established innovators to rising stars.

FreeDesigndom 2008 is the first edition of a new annual design and fashion event in the Netherlands, with four-week program of festivals, exhibitions and symposiums including Experimenta Design, Hacking IKEA, Sustainable Design Collective and Red Light Fashion in the heart of Amsterdam.

"Branding agencies are just as good candidates for performing product design explorations as design firms at this point, and there's probably enough work for both of them. Clients seeking to hire a consultant, though, would be well advised to decide whether they're looking to innovate, or simply to extend. There's a difference..."

"Lately, design conferences have begun to feel less like intellectual retreats and more like conspicuous consumption. Albeit with excellent catering..."

"... Combined with the existentially accusatory title, it certainly succeeds in demanding audience participation, but it's a book, not a graphic design experiment, and for it to matter to the audience, it needs to keep the reader's attention too."

"Bicycle" is the title of a 100-day event (Jun.22 - Oct.5) full of activities and lectures anchored by a central exhibition at the Designhuis in Eindhoven. The exhibition provides a great overview on the variety of two-wheelers designed for sports, transport, or just showing off. There are over 18 million bicycles in the Netherlands, check out some of the best in this gallery!

"A presentation of 20 trends does not add up to a view of the future. Many trends contradict each other, and choices have to be made. For example, the shift towards ethical (premium) consumerism and the economic crunch are not compatible; something has got to give..."

Every year, 300 particiants from around the world live and work for one week with 25 renowned designers, architects and artists at the Domaine de Boisbuchet, an extensive park-like estate in the South of France. Check out the gallery of workshops with Cul de Sac, Maarten Baas,, Fabio Novembre, David Trubridge and more!

"Since the first use of tools to achieve goals, design has been born as a response to problems and needs. Sadly, since we now live in a thoroughly designed world, many of our problems are themselves secondary consequences of prior acts of design."

"The roles of designers, product development specialists, and marketers should never have been as segmented and will never be again. Participation is the key to innovation..."

From the 14th - 20th of July, the greatest display of military, commercial and private aircrafts on the planet gathered in Hampshire, UK, for a glimpse at the future of our skies.

"Nostalgia is a tricky thing. Do we really miss what we miss, or do we just like missing it?...Design has been going retro for years now as the recasting bug has swept the ID world, and everything's fair game, from turn-of-the-century hunting-lodge chic to baroque ornamentation. But enough is enough."

"Ceramics and Sound" brings together the works of artists and designers who have been working at the European Ceramic Workcenter. The exhibition is on show at the Neues Kunstforum in Cologne (July 12 - August 9) and showcases sound installations, ceramic sculptures, experiments and prototypes.

This month we asked Core readers to design the next greatest cycling shoe. We even got Bill Cass to join the judging crew. He works for Nike designing cycling shoes for guys like Mark Cavendish and Lance Armstrong. The results should make any pro proud. Look 'em over here. 1st place: Garmin-Chipotle American team, by fede21us, 2nd: Classic International Bike Shoe, by beartoe, 3rd: Padilla Shoe, by cpvt1987

"Looking at the world through such a lens makes one thing clear: Despite our mansions and our roadways, our designer jeans and our iPhones, human beings have made very little. Instead we've transmuted stored energy into temporary value in exchange for long-term waste. All of the growth that our politicians seek to perpetuate is not growth at all."

"If Fuller saw himself as a verb it may be because his life was dominated more by activity than artifact. He truly found himself in his presentations and lectures, from his first talks to a handful of people in Greenwich Village salons to the vast college audiences he drew in his old age. His real skills were "synergistic," all right, but it was the synergy of networking, propaganda and performance."

Custom details, tailpipes and tattoos! More than 75,000 bikers attended one of the biggest Harley Davidson events in Hamburg from June 20-22. Be sure to check out this gallery of rock n' roll of design.

From June 26-28, the likes of Richard Hutten, Michael Young and Patrick Jouin joined creative directors Tobias Wong and Aric Chen in the Shanghai Exhibition Center to showcase design in one of the fastest developing parts of the world.

"In any problem this large and complex, there are no easy answers, and Bottlemania should leave most readers with as many questions as answers. I would also hope, however, that readers realize that the problems it poses are far more universal than just fixating on Nestle's Poland Spring, Coke's Dasani, or Pepsi's Aquafina....Perhaps this summer a few of us should give reality a page-turning try." Review by Robert Blinn

Iron Man has had the design world convulsing with what can only be called a grand maul geek-out.

"The Sky is Not the Limit" at the Berlin Design Festival, a five day event (May 21- 25) produced by DMY Berlin.

Leadership is a slippery topic these days: there are more books on Amazon attempting to define the mojo of leadership than that other holy grail, innovation.

The pit-stop between Milan and Art Basel, New York Design Week 2008 nontheless presented a hearty collection of the best the Design World has to offer.

Review by Robert Blinn

Review by Robert Blinn

Checkout out Core's fresh picks from this year's Salone Internazionale del Mobile.

Troika is a multi-disciplinary art and design studio based in London, founded in 2003.

The San Mateo County Fairgrounds were packed with everything from Arts n' Crafts to Science n' Technology.

We need the design world (particularly industrial design) to stop talking big and start doing good.

Nokia has over 300 designers worldwide, and ships over 1.2 million products everyday.

This four day event in The Netherlands (April 23-26) showcases the latest materials for architecture and design.

April Fool's or something far more serious? How the design world gets punk'd every single day.

Review by Robert Blinn

Manferdini interprets traditional Italian lacemaking techniques in a dramatic canopy that drapes across the SCI-Arc Gallery in downtown LA.

Andy Polaine talks to Jason in his London studio about his roots in architecture, and much more!

Review by Robert Blinn

See how tattoo professionals pick the right tools and processes, turning their hand sketches into everlasting body art

"Competitive advantage is not based in the acquisition of knowledge, but the application of that knowledge."

Review by Robert Blinn

"Design has a social function and its true purpose is to improve people's lives." By Niti Bhan and Dave Tait

A billion-dollar industry gives us a sneak peek