Industrial Design & User Experience
Insights on industrial design, product development and user experience from a design expert. Sources include Wired, Fast Company Design, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, Gizmodo, Tech Crunch, and Engadget. If you’d like to chat about anything you see, feel free to reach out or connect with me on LinkedIn.
Logo design is not easy. At all. You have to distill the entire essence of an organization down into something instantly identifiable, easily reproducible, appealing, eye-catching.
Jaguar’s new logo – and the associated new brand-image campaign – and look at the reactions it’s inspiring, almost none of which are positive. This is feeling like a logo disaster.
Jaguar making a radical and bold change is absolutely a good thing, don’t get me wrong. The brand has been stagnant for some time now, and in desperate need of some sort of reboot. Sure, they have a fantastic history and a legacy of truly iconic cars, but that doesn’t help them sell new cars, which I’m told carmakers enjoy doing. So the idea that Jaguar needs to make a dramatic change is something I absolutely agree with.
He brought lightweight packs to millions of students, and transformed the way they carried their textbooks to school
Mr. McCory took an existing product, a lightweight, frameless pack used for short hikes, and added a reinforced bottom, nylon zippers and other tweaks to make it campus-friendly. He decided to leave the leather swatch, originally used for lashing poles to the bag, on its back panel — someone might want to attach an umbrella, he figured. Today, the patch, though rarely used, is a signature element of the JanSport look.
Touch Screens Are Over. Even Apple Is Bringing Back Buttons.
Companies have spent nearly two decades cramming ever more functions onto tappable, swipeable displays. Now buttons, knobs, sliders and other physical controls are making a comeback in vehicles, appliances and personal electronics.
As we head into August, it seems like a good time to learn the fascinating design- and trademark litigation - history of America's most powerful frozen treat
The original rocket-shaped but confusingly named Bomb Pop was first invented in 1955 by D.S. “Doc” Abernathy and James S. Merritt, for Kansas City, Missouri's Merritt Foods. The iconic red, white, and blue stack was flavored cherry, lime, and blue raspberry. When Merritt Foods eventually shut down operations in 1991, Bomb Pop manufacturing was sold off to Iowa-based Wells Dairy/Wells Enterprises. The frozen confections are still made today in La Mars, Iowa.
To produce golf’s premier ball, Loper and his team spent countless hours working with players and iterating through hundreds of different designs.
The odd part, to the engineers, was that [none of these problems] appeared in their data. That presented them with two options. They could tell the players that they were wrong. Or they could trust the players and examine whether the problem was with their numbers.
The New York Times outs together a pretty good list of the most enduring and significant objects for living.
Six experts gathered to make a list of the most influential chairs, sofas and tables, as well as some less obvious household objects, from the past century.
After an accidental omission on the design model and a stroke of brilliance, the reborn Mini got inspiration from an unexpected source.
People are surprised to learn how designers sometimes "borrow" design elements from the world around us (we actually do it all the time...) Great story from one of the world's foremost car designers offers good advice if you get caught:
Another huge loss in the world of design... Iris was a fascinating woman, with more style in her pinky than most of us muster head to toe. Just pure class.
She came to fame in the fashion world in her 80s and 90s, and her wildly eclectic closet of clothes formed a hit exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Calling herself a “geriatric starlet,” Ms. Apfel in her 80s and 90s set trends with clamorous, irreverent ensembles: a boxy, multicolored Bill Blass jacket with tinted Hopi dancing skirt and hairy goatskin boots; a fluffy evening coat of red and green rooster feathers with suede pants slashed to the knees; a rose angora sweater set and 19th-century Chinese brocade panel skirt.
Want a top auto safety rating in the EU? Better put some buttons on that dashboard...
EU regulators are proposing new rules that would mandate the use of in order for cars to receive the top safety rating available
Form is temporary, function is permanent. The most important inventions are the ones that relate to the human condition, and they crop up over and over again.
Writing, counting, and calculation are all bound up in the same histories, peoples, and places that crop up over and over again. This shouldn’t be surprising. We’re all human, after all, and humans like to acquire information, record it, and manipulate it. That’s exactly what writing and math are for. The most important inventions are the ones that relate to the human condition, and they crop up over and over again.
Have suspected for a while that Boeing's engineering and design teams were getting an unfairly bad rap... Great article discusses why (as so often the case) it's probably Wall Street's fault. I have friends in private equity, but I try to ignore what they do...
Just a photo and a design observation today... IMO the C Pillar trim on the Kia Carnival is truly revolutionary in the world of auto design.
Just a photo and a design observation today... IMO the C Pillar trim on the Kia Carnival is truly revolutionary in the world of auto design. Like it or not, I can't think of another car with patterned, highly textured metal surfaces like this (aside from Kia's other models). If you know of other examples please comment below, thanks!
Great slideshow about two of my favorite things, old cars and branding... Highly recommended Friday read!
My annual holiday reminder that there is only one right way to install a toilet paper roll, as protected by a US patent issued just before Christmas 1891
I've always believed there are significant costs to wearing noise-canceling devices, some more obvious than others... Great to see an article that lays it all out
Polaroid's success in the digital era is a testament to its brand's proposition: The value of a Polaroid camera is authenticity. Life isn’t perfect, neither is a Polaroid picture. I'm a huge fan of modern instant cameras, highly recommend Fuji's Evo Mini for anyone thinking of dipping a toe.
Best user interface news of the year... IMO, that more people want to shift for themselves reflects a sea change in the most fundamental man / machine interface humans have ever created.
Love the way they used researched to prioritize drivers' needs in the design... Most used control? Hazard lights for frequent stops, so it has a dedicated mechanical switch (everything else is touchscreen-based.)
Brilliant idea… “Disposable Digital” camera brings old school film experience to modern picture taking (full disclosure, I enthusiastically backed this Kickstarter)
For my auto design colleagues and fellow car people… I think Dieter Rams is credited with saying “good design is just enough design”, and it’s so refreshing to see the comeback of simple, purposeful wheels. Other manufacturers take a lesson, and yes I’m looking at you Audi…