design as exchange
Design values in globalism – the vitality of return and exchange Here is my commentary on the design exhibition currently running at Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam [Link]. My previous commentaries – [Link] [Link] Design Column #4 The circle is round ‘The World is Deglobalizing at Breakneck Speed’ – so read the title of a [...]
designing for difference? Chris Bangle at Revs
Chris Bangle, car designer, was at the Stanford Revs Program this evening. He’s a superb speaker and came with some great stories, on the back of his notorious leadership of the BMW design team, about how cars might begin again to look more distinctive, when so many today look so bland, just the same as [...]
What is (of our) human making?
I have joined the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam as part of a new exhibition program. This extraordinary museum [Link] holds the largest collection of contemporary art in the Netherlands. Experiments in temporary and often provocative exhibitions, rather than permanent displays of the collection, are the museum’s specialty, and it runs over twenty a [...]
Bill Moggridge, and the museum as design studio
Bill Moggridge has died. With his warmth and sense of humor he embodied the human in human-centered design. Bill in class at Stanford, before he went off to direct Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum – click on images to enlarge The obituaries give the details of Bill’s extraordinary contribution to industrial design. With Bernie [...]
home-made Europe: the DIY geniuses shaking up design
Justin McGuirk in the Guardian today [Link] highlights a new book [Link] on challenges to industrial design: The objects we buy are supposed to tell us something about who we are. But they don’t tell us half as much as the objects we make, as even a quick flick through Home-Made Europe: Contemporary Folk Artifacts [...]
crowds of makers
Maker Faire, San Mateo – [Link] – and see the 2011 Economist article – [Link] 50,00 people and more attending the latest gathering of geeks, amateur designers, hobbyists, hackers, aspiring inventors, tinkerers, incipient entrepreneurs, electronics experimenters, steampunk enthusiasts, new-age techno-dreamers. Giraffe robots, poetry on a Remington, Arduino contollers, ship models, Makerbot contraptions, customized jeans, zombie [...]