We live in an age of shitty product design and no customer support. Stuff breaks because it’s poorly made, and then you have no recourse but to throw it into the trash, because it’s unrepairable. …
Design Impact Scholarship Offered for MBA Equivalent for Designers
Business executives seeking to level up can enroll in an MBA program, but there’s no equivalent for industrial designers. Future London Academy, a UK-based executive education organization, aims to change that. They’re offering an Executive …
Charlie: A Revolutionary Induction Range with a Built-In Battery
In America, the phrase “Now we’re cooking with gas” was slang for “Now we’re really operating efficiently.” It originated as a marketing slogan in the 1930s, created by the American Gas Association to push newfangled …
Video Game Mixes Cleaning Movement with Horror Genre to Sell Consumer Products
Now that video games rival TV shows and movies as entertainment, so too has product placement crept into them. The in-game ads have been suitably gamer-targeted: Monster energy drinks, Subway sandwiches and Cup Noodles have …
Sculptural House Numbers by Dutch Artist Reinoud Oudshoorn
In 2008 the Olympian Quarter, a new 900-unit residential neighborhood, was under construction in Amsterdam. Seeking something special to distinguish the neighborhood, the Amsterdam Foundation for the Arts commissioned Dutch artist Reinoud Oudshoorn to create …
Six N. Five’s Startling “Umbral,” an Art Piece Where the Real and Virtual Intersect
Here’s a rock sitting on what appears to be a mirror. In fact, beneath the mirrored glass is an LED panel. Called Umbral, the art piece was created by Barcelona-based artist Six N. Five, a/k/a …
Experimental Hook-and-Loop Attachment System for Walls and Floors
This ReCon Project, developed at Austria’s Graz University of Technology (TU Graz), proposes a hook-and-loop fastening system for wall surfaces. While a true hook-and-loop arrangement (like that used in Velcro) isn’t possible with rigid surfaces, …
What are you waiting for?
If you’ve already entered your work in awards like Red Dot, iF Awards, Core77 Design Awards, or IDSA, don’t let those entries sit in your outbox—submit them to the DIA Awards now! You’ve already done …
Eloi Goulhot’s Mallet-Based Walnut Cracker
Walnuts are extraordinarily tough nuts to crack. Here in the ‘States, we used to do it with a lever-based contraption… …but in France, they simply used a mallet. French product designer Eloi Goulhot recently built …
A Low-Cost, Quickly-Deliverable Modular Signage System
This signage system was designed for Taiwan’s National Kaohsiung Normal University (NKNU) by Hand Heart Design, a Taiwanese design studio. The brief was tough: The school asked for a wayfinding system that could be delivered …