The Bloggomist: Design in the Blood
Design Opinion

This past weekend I was home – at least at one of them. Not quite the 24-odd-hour trek to get me to Australia, the journey from Chicago to Detroit is by comparison a pretty easy one. Having studied at design school in Detroit meant that the most intense 4 years of my life were spent in one of the country’s most desolate cities. Like Los Angeles there is both a sense of emptiness and activity in the metro area that is in a constant state of flux. Like LA also at times it feels like a city anchored by its unique and marvelous architectural center, and at other times unsettlingly dispersed. →

The Bloggomist: Design in the Blood
Design Opinion

I’ll admit it doesn’t happen too often, but today I’m speechless. I usually have to look far and wide for examples of dubious design that should be punishable in a court of law…or at least punishable by ridicule and a loss of face. Sometimes I can pull a good example from a mental checklist of past observations, but not often does a multi-faceted specimen of frivolity fall on my lap so neatly, confirming all along that the realm of celebrity design has reached its peak of pointlessness. In this situation however, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

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The Bloggomist: Design in the Blood
Design Opinion

We live in a branded world. It’s a phenomenon that is both glaringly obvious yet completely unnoticeable at the same time. A good brand experience can command lifetime loyalty, whereas a bad experience can do quite the opposite. If a company puts all its weight behind their brand image and something goes wrong, however trivial, they have much further to fall in the court of public opinion than a low-key competitor.
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The Bloggomist: Design in the Blood
Design Opinion

Without a doubt, the Segway is a milestone in engineering. Yet all that is for nought, because you can’t help but look a complete tool when riding one. It’s this niche market that we’ve become obsessed with; it’s not a bicycle, it’s not a scooter, it’s not a unicycle or a skateboard…it’s a new type of transportation with an ‘intuitive’ mode of operation that requires batteries, motors and gyroscopes to function. A modern marvel yet at the same time utterly pointless. →

The Bloggomist: Design in the Blood
Design Opinion

Last week I used the MacBook Pro as an example of greenwashing with a spoonful of sugar,  so while on the subject I just couldn’t move on without discussing the current king of the eco-castle.

Right now I’m thinking of a car company. In 1973 they became the first automobile manufacturer in the world to introduce an environmental officer. They plan to reduce resource consumption and manufacturing emissions by 30% →

The Bloggomist: Design in the Blood
Technology Opinion

Following recent consumer throwdowns such as Black Friday (where people are willing to kick a puppy to get a $10 toaster), Christmas and last week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (a fittingly glitzy locale), I thought it a good time to question the misconceptions, or lack of um…conceptions…in regards to “green” electronics. →

The Bloggomist: Design in the Blood
Design Opinion

Born of violence and bloodshed in the Congo and at the cost of human rights, tantalum, like other mined minerals such as cassiterite, are the blood diamonds of the technological age. If you’ve never heard of tantalum don’t be alarmed just yet. It, like many other “magical” materials, are refined into the clandestine cocktail of components that allow our hi-tech devices to do what they do. However, you may want to reconsider what “hi-tech” really means. →

The Bloggomist: Design in the Blood
Design Opinion

If there’s anything that makes my blood boil, it is frivolity under the guise of good design. In my last post, I briefly mentioned the vacuousness of famous product designers such as Philippe Starck and Karim Rashid – they are certainly among my favorite to take shots at because they have the ability to design whatever they want and push it into the market with no questions asked. This is almost every designer’s dream; no focus groups, no restrictions, and no hard-sell to get a product onto the shelves. →

The Bloggomist: Design in the Blood
Design Opinion

Styles tend to not only separate people — because they have their own doctrines and then the doctrine became the gospel truth that you cannot change. But if you do not have a style, if you just say: Well, here I am as a human being, how can I express myself totally and completely? Now, that way you won’t create a style, because style is a crystallization. That way, it’s a process of continuing growth. →

The Bloggomist: Design in the Blood
Technology Opinion

To suggest that design should become more open and transparent isn’t to say that it should be an exclusively communal effort. Things run afoul with too many cooks in the kitchen, no matter what the industry. Even from within a company opinions from people with more power than sense can easily derail a good design process, and as a designer it can be surprisingly hard to maintain creative license. →