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Sensory Impact likes objects, people who design objects and people
who like people who design objects.
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12/30/2004
Name: Ventilux
Company: Next
Price: 250 Euro
Material: Pu foam / Aluminium
Size: Height 90-160 cm
A while ago we covered a “soft fan” that was safer because it did away with the metal or plastic blades. The only problem was that it was a prototype, so if you ever wanted to get a hold of one, you won’t find anything better than the Ventilux which uses soft foam instead of say, cloth.
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Design within Reach, the must lust furniture store, just announced the results to their annual 2004 Holiday Champagne Chair contest. Every year the store invites people to submit chair designs made out of champagne corks. fun fun.
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In the next few days, we’ll be changing hosts, so if the site goes offline for a while, you’ll know why. Moved.
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New York Times reports that companies are increasingly outsourcing design work much the same way as other are exporting labor:
“Lots of manufacturers are sounding that note these days. And that has given rise to a whole new industry, dedicated to designing products and parts for companies that once considered every aspect of the process as sacrosanct.
This is not because companies are trying to tap foreign sources of cheap labor. The new design firms are not in India or China, but in New York, California – all over the United States. But their clients have the same overall goal as those that ship jobs to Bangalore: to churn out products – even ones that look much like the competition’s – at high speed and low cost.”
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12/29/2004
Now that everybody and their uncle can launch their own clothing line courtesy of Cafepress and a copy of Photoshop*, Its always refreshing to see some neat new low key apparel like the three below, which were designed and produced under the Thorsten Van Elten label:
Have you ever stretched your tee over your head? I know I have and I suspect so did El Ultimo, the designer. After all, where else could he have found the inspiration for his revolution tee.
Speaking of revolution, if someone ever created a Hamas inspired clothing line, this would be it. Of course, it would probably happen in the year 3000 when peace finally descends on the Middle East, and Che’s iconic face’s becomes more exposed (if it isn’t already) than the FCUK moniker.
Electric Wig decides to create a shirt for the domestically challenged – the shirt is stitched in such a way that it can be folded perfectly, hence the perfectly folded shirt. A great gift for perfectionists to give to their inferior friends and family.
I’ve seen t-shirts like these before where you could write your message or fill in the blank with a marker, so it isn’t exactly original, but the thought bubbles are a nice touch.
*Pre-emptive asterik: No offense to the designers behind these tees. I didn’t mean that their work is an amateur effort
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Question: Let’s say you’re a prominent manufacturer like Bang & Olufsen who wants to get into the mp3 player market, except everyone else that jumped the bandwagon can’t seem to overcome the sensory pleasure of using an iPod. What do you do?
Answer: Partner up with a luxury kingmaker, that’s what you do, and that’s what they did with Louis Vuitton.
A one night-stand later, we get the new BeoSound 2 Mp3 player – Solid stainless steel player, wrapped in Louis Vuitton leather with one touch controls for a mere £325. (The Louis Vuitton cover actually brings the price to £450 – How about that)
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Not that I know anyone who would need to keep a set of cufflinks in case of an emergency otherwise they’d spasm, but if you are one, Touch of Ginger has something for you – a credit card sized, paper-thin piece of etched steel to keep in your wallet and should you need a pair of cufflinks, then break them out, twist-fold and voila.
And if cufflinks isn’t your cup of tea, Ginger’s got Ice Scrapers, Key fobs, Hazard markers, Mirrors, Toothpicks, Spanner, Shot Dice, Shirt accessories and more – All of them, credit card sized, paper thin, easy to fit in a wallet, not that it matter if you want to slide in all of them.
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Scifi writer Cory Doctorow points out Hugh Macleod’s “How to Be Creative” book that’s available online for free:
“His How to Be Creative is a meditation on creativity, individualism and commercialism, and it’s full of pithy, clear, no-nonsense advice. Now Hugh has expanded the piece into a short book, which is online in its entirety. He’s found an agent and the agent is shopping the book—I’d certainly buy a copy!
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Name: Veritas (Latin word for Truth)
Designer: Eva Abinger
Company:Simplicitas
Size: 95*62*0.8 mm
Weight: 37 gr
Other: Stainless Steel, Leather-case included
For the superstitious among you, comes the Veritas (Latin for truth). An unbreakable mirror that will ensure that you will never have to risk seven years of bad luck.
What’s the secret? Well, it’s actually made of stainless steel which has been polished into a reflecting surface, hence the unbreakable mirror.
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A private initiative is monitoring mobile phones with international roaming to trace the location of any stranded survivors of the Tsunami disaster:
“There were 10,252 international roaming phones working on Sri Lankan networks at the time of the tragedy,” Chris Dharmakirti, who is heading the Tidal Wave Rescue Centre said. “We sent everyone an sms and got responses from 2,321.
He said 5,983 roaming phones had gone dead since the disaster while 4,269 phones had been used to make at least one call after the tragedy.
“Whenever anyone used the phone, we could track where the person was and restrict our search to affected areas of the country.”
“Last night we had a response from a British tourist and based on tracking his call we were able to locate a total of 36 stranded Britons,” Dharmakirti said. “Four of them were critically wounded, but we managed to get to them to safety.”
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12/27/2004
Name: Wing
Feature: Upholstery is made by open cell visco-elastic foam developed by NASA and used ina ll space crafts since the 70s. the foam adapts to your body shape and temperature leaving you in cosmic comfort.
Designers: Michael Malmborg / Joans Wannfors
Company: LYX
LYX, which happens to mean luxury in Swedish, is a new company that hopes to lead the second generation of contemporary scandinavian design with their new collection of “neoluxury” furniture. Designed by Swedish designers Micheal Malmborg I/IDSA and Joans Wannfors / DBSD, the pieces are handmade. To view the rest of the collection, click on more.
Name: Zig Zag
Feature: zig zag chair with no beginning and no end. Serpent inspired lounge chair.
Designers: Michael Malmborg / Joans Wannfors
Company: LYX
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The New Scientist is reporting about an flexible plastic image scanner thats only a little bigger than a credit-card:
“The idea is that you will plug the scanner into a mobile phone which will both provide power for it and act as its display and storage medium. And because it is flexible, it will let you copy just about anything, even if it is on a curved surface such as an open book or the label on a wine bottle.
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12/24/2004
Ask Kaden Harris what he does for a living and he will tell you that he builds antiques from a parallel universe, and when he says antiques, he doesn’t mean old pots and clocks that sit all pretty on your shelf, but fully functional miniature Rebuchets, Guillotine and Catapults that you could use to raise hell by chopping off fingers of those who did you wrong or catapulting nuts at your secretary. Just the perfect medieval office toy, I tell you.
Never satisfied with just drive-by surfing, we cornered Mr. Harris and badgered him with questions:
Sensory: I really want to know how you first got into this. I’m sure you didn’t wake up one day and decided to sell miniature Guillotines.
Harris: Dunno how I ended up doing this. I’ve done a lot of different day jobs over the years; from cooking sewage (don’t ask) to corporate graphic design, but the end of each day would have me back doing the 2 passions: “Figgerin’ Out How Stuff Works”, and “Buildin’ Stuff”. I have built an unholy amount of stuff over the years, no shit. Once you get around the physics of the mechanisms, the form factors reflect, I guess, a post millennial mutation of the Victorian ‘Gentleman Inventor’.
Now, marketing the siege engine miniatures as executive rewards was pretty much a no brainer: If you’d just been named Salesman of the Year”, what would you rather receive as a commemorative trophy: a soapstone carving of a hooded ptarmigan (with an engraved brass plaque), or a fully functional hanging counterweight trebuchet that’ll fire chunks of sweaty cheddar all the way into the cube farm (also with an engraved brass plaque)?
No-Brainer.
AND, I get to do R&D on all kinds of wiggy stuff for new product lines. I have the coolest job ever!
Sensory: And do these models really work? Could I use them?
Harris: Yeah, the stuff all works, with varying degrees of impressiveness. The trebuchets are gravity powered, and there’s limitations as to how much mass you can stuff into the weight boxes. I market the trebs as being ‘coin operated’...park one on the corner of your desk and toss your pocket change into the weight box…by the end of the month you’ll have accumulated enough weight to toss a grape 30 or 40 feet provided you’ve taken the time to performance tune the piece.
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Metroplis Magazine recently interviewed Terence Conran about his new book, Design for Designers, which he co-wrote with Max Fraser:
“In Designers on Design, you highlight the “globalness” of design; in fact, you ask designers if their work is representative of their country. Why did you decide that was an important question to ask?
Terence Conran: Well, we once did an exhibition in the Design Museum called “National Characteristics,” and most of the designers there who answered said, “Oh no, we’re not worried about the national characteristics.” And yet I think, personally, it’s one of the most important things that happens in the world—that you can tell the nationality of a designer. I hate to think of a world where everything is global. To be able to recognize a national characteristic is very important, although none of the designers put it in on purpose. But it comes through, their genes show up.
Max Fraser: At the moment, I think it’s a dangerous idea, the globalness in the industry, because it doesn’t allow any niches to really mature and simmer, because things are picked up instantly and regurgitated.
I was really hoping that when I was interviewing designers for the book, a lot more would say, “Yes—national design characteristics are important to me, very important.” But very often the response was, “No—this is a global business, with global products. (continued)”
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12/23/2004
Algorithimic Artists have been around for sometime now, but this is the first bit of algorithimic corporate art I’ve come across – Uk based design group, Tomato, developed an interactive logotype system for Sony that allows its customers to affect their brand ID. Participants get to input a word into a sytem via an interactive kiosk (They have discontinued this) or the internet. The word is then transformed into a 1.5 second 3D animation that is attached on to the end of Sony TV spots in Japan.
Each advertisement is thus unique and contains something unpredictable and unplanned, although I’m not sure how the different motions, behaviours work out.
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