It’s not enough to make a well-designed product. The product also has to make well-designed sounds. Science Daily looks at industrial designer Elif Özcan Vieira’s PhD thesis on the subject:
The auditory experience of product users is not just “a sensory response to an acoustical stimulus.” In fact, users contribute characteristics, such as trustworthiness or a high standard of quality, to products on the basis of the sounds they produce.
I’m a huge believer in this theory; there’s not enough thought put into how we interact with objects sonically. When we were filming Chris Bangle and got to drive around the new BMW X6, I actually commented on how beautiful its fasten-your-seatbelt alarm chime was. Yes, I know those alarm chimes are supposed to be annoying in order to force you to buckle up. But can’t they be pleasantly annoying?
Speaking of sound design, I’m obsessing over Bloom, Brian Eno’s new iPhone application. [Available in the iTunes App Store.] “Part instrument, part composition and part artwork,” Bloom is a generative ambient music synthesizer (you can make pretty sounds with it). It’s addictive, and it’s especially amazing when you plug your iPhone into your stereo system and crank it up. Best four bucks I’ve spent in a while.
[Thanks to Joshua Simmons for the Science Daily story.]
Categories: Design News, Musings
There was plenty of chatter today surrounding Apple’s announcement of new MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops, which feature a one-piece body carved from a single block of solid aluminum and sport multi-touch trackpads (sort of like the iPhone). John Gruber has several items on Daring Fireball, Engadget got one dirty, and Gizmodo did a side-by-side comparison with the previous incarnations.
Apple also released a video featuring design director and Objectified cast member Jonathan Ive explaining the new design, along with some nice footage of metal gettin’ cut up. And if you chug a beer every time someone says “fit and finish”, you’ll be slightly drunk.
Categories: Design News
Sustainability isn’t just sort of a glamorous process of using recycled materials to design something that may or may not be the color green. It’s about redesigning every single aspect of a company’s process, from sourcing materials to designing to production to shipping, and then eventually designing a way for those products to be disposed of responsibly. That’s a mammoth task, so it’s no wonder that designers and manufacturers are finding it so difficult.
– Alice Rawsthorn
Categories: Quotes
Attention voters! A Helvetica fan has nominated the movie for the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Awards People’s Design Award. So please take a minute and vote, the deadline is October 21st. Yes we can (beat Design Observer)!!!
Categories: Musings
Are you in New York City, and can you speak German (and English) fluently? We’re looking for a volunteer translator for a few days this month. If you can help out, or to get more information, please email: info (at) objectifiedfilm (dot) com.
Categories: Film News
Filming people buying “democratic design” is a tough job, especially on an indie film budget. That’s why Objectified DP Luke Geissbuhler swears by DØLLI, the ingenious DIY camera dolly that we improvised last week at Ikea and gave a suitably nonsensical faux-Swedish name. I mean, c’mon, who comes up with these product names anyway? [Try the Ikea Game and see if you can decipher them.]
Needless to say, our usual “stealth” mode of observational filming went out the window with this rig. And if you think Luke looks goofy using it, you should’ve seen when he was actually standing on it operating the camera while I was pushing the cart. But we ended up getting some surprisingly nice footage out of it. The shoot threatened to veer into Jackass territory when we got all wacky on lingonberry juice and started ramming furniture displays.
Back to the edit suite,
– Gary
Categories: Film News, Production Stills
New name, new building, new identity. New York’s Museum of Arts and Design (formerly the American Craft Museum) opened its doors this week, in Brad Cloepfil’s much talked about redesign of 2 Columbus Circle. Michael Bierut of Pentagram designed the museum’s new graphic identity, above. Check out his creative process.
Categories: Design News
Design world notes:
– Sex toys from Industrial Designers
– Core77 reviews Jennifer Hudson’s book Process: 50 Product Designs from Concept to Manufacture
– BMW unveils its new 7 Series this week at the Paris Auto Show
Categories: Design News
I suppose that the story behind the evolution of a golf ball is no different from many of the other bulk items we surround ourselves with. Initially, the golf ball was built from organic materials found in the local environment (some sources mention goose feathers, others mud and tree sap), but eventually these organic materials were replaced by synthetics, so that now the ingredient list reads like something out of a controlled chemistry experiment. Ionomer resins. Ethylene copolymers. Ionically strengthened thermoplastic. All compressed and molded to create, in the words of one manufacturer, “outstanding resilience, broad hardness and stiffness range, and excellent durability” (don’t blame me if this smells faintly pornographic, blame the marketing guys down in Georgia).
Of course, this transformation of materials and construction methods is nothing new. But when I study a golf ball I find myself immersed in more whimsical questions.
Where does this golf ball come from? How is it made? What does the size of each dimple mean? Is there someone drawing out each golf ball design, painstakingly wrapping each circle around the next? Is it even possible to accurately draw a golf ball freehand? Is there any one among us that can do this? If so, what side of their brain do they rely on? Will their imaginary golf ball (the drawn one) fly straighter and truer than the ones designed and built in some mysterious flat building in Xiamen City, China? When you think of China do you think of brown dusty fields or lush tropical bush? Does it matter?
Imagine, for a moment, a cloverleaf freeway overpass with traffic regulation lights blinking on and off. Our artist, she’s the one heading to work, sitting in a line of small, tidy cars. Place yourself within the passenger seat of her clean white sedan. On her dash, a row of miniature hood ornaments. All the ornaments serve as stand-ins for cultural icons. Moving from left to right: There’s Elvis Presley in a grass skirt (obviously the figure sways as the vehicle rounds a curve or comes to a stop). Next to Elvis, Chairman Mao, whose detached and almost mournful expression often diverts the artist’s eyes from the road (she must cover him up, she thinks). Towering over Mao is NBA center Yi Jianlian (who some also call “the chairman”). The chairman leans against a guitar wielding Kurt Cobain (a roach clip appropriately appended to the end of the fretboard). Kurt looks up absently at the World Trade Center buildings (she actually got these when she visited New York back in ‘99 when everyone was still worried about how the millenium was going to affect their clocks).
So, here you are turning this golf ball over in your hands. Account for every circle. Some of them have a happy imperfection about them. Some spots seem pliable, almost mushy, while others, well, they resist your touch altogether.
– Craig Foltz
Craig Foltz is a writer and visual artist whose work has appeared in numerous journals. He lives on the slopes of a dormant volcano in Auckland, New Zealand.
Categories: Objectify Me
If you’re in New York or London, be sure to check out this weekend’s premiere of Wild Combination, Matt Wolf’s excellent new documentary about seminal avant-garde composer, singer-songwriter, cellist, and disco producer Arthur Russell. Plexifilm is hosting cinema screenings at the IFC Center in New York and the ICA London. There will be loads of special guests, after-parties, etc., on both sides of the pond this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
“This story begins, as many good ones do, with a gay man from Oskaloosa playing cello in a closet in a Buddhist seminary. It ends with a gentle and brilliant musician dying in New York long before his time. In between, the cellist, Arthur Russell, wrote orchestral music, produced disco hits, and recorded a body of solo cello-and-voice songs that fit somewhere between lullabies and art songs.” –Sasha Frere-Jones, The New Yorker
There will be more cinema screenings over the next few months, and a DVD release in November. Watch the trailer, or get on Plexifilm’s email list for details.
Categories: Musings
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