A recent design which I tend to find spread out across the web is the illacrimo theme for WordPress from designdisease.Over the years they released a whole slew of equally beautiful and revolutionary designs including the design for the nice-to-look-at livespy.com. I don’t know if this is true, but I think designdisease invented the content/navbar/ad layout order of columns.

Update:

Another studio I’d like to add is silverorange, known for their fruitful relationship with mozilla org and their sleek intranet suite and open-source releases.

If you are into art-deco typefaces, you might have come across Hill House, a richly decorated font based on the original handwriting of architect/designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Designer Jon Hicks of UK design studio hicksdesign, which he runs together with his wife Leigh Hicks, is a jack of many design trades and signs,  in their typical team-effort way, responsible for such logos as the Firefox/ Thunderbird logos and many more - following their style of graphic, nearly comic logos.

Furthermore and just for the record, we can add some of the usual suspects: In contemporary webdesign, everyone who follows A List Apart knows that we need to add Doug Bowman of stopdesign, the guy who redesigned blogger and did the default blogger themes which are now ubiquitious.

Being an expert in CSS, Jeffrey Zeldman of Happy Cog, also by his blog, regularly makes quite an impact on the scene. For today, he closes our list.

On recent magazine photo, an oversized LED alarm clock catched my eye. (you are looking at a photo.) A bit of research online brought me to various images of the clock, but as it seems, all sources originally shipping it had taken it out of their stock.

While not getting a source for that particular clock, as a side effect, I found quite a few interesting alarm clocks. Bedzine has assembled a good list of products, and puremodern’s selection isn’t bad as well, same for notcot. In most cases you can find the same stuff on amazon.

Other intersting designs include pixelbreaker’s polarclock, the revealing text clock by Christiaan Postma or Will Vanden Vos’s Bomba.

By the way: as it seems the original idea (including a how to guide) is from here, with the last.fm guys being just early adopters…

IDEO

IDEO is the prototype of the design firm. The company’s history of design concepts and innovations reads like a brainstorm protocol of greatest products. It is likely that you encountered IDEO’s designs during your daily chores, it’s absolutely inevitable in case you have ever touched a computer. The company’s fame can be traced back to their first scoop: the invention of the computer mouse. Although the concept is rooted in a Stanford research project, the claim is that the design by IDEO for Apple’s Lisa was the first “production mouse”. The mouse is also the link to the company’s history: David Kelley, owner of David Kelley Design, was professor at Stanford. In 1991 his company and two other shops, ID Two (founded/owned by Bill Moggridge), and Matrix Product Design (founded/owned by Mike Nuttall), merged to form the new company IDEO. If you look at IDEO’s “cube” logo today, you can find the ID and the Matrix in it.

Since the mouse days, a number of well known products came out of IDEO: the Palm V, the (2nd) Microsoft Mouse or WD’s My Passport drives. An interesting fact is that furniture manufacturer Steelcase holds a majority stake in the company. This relationship, although loose (Steelcase operates IDEO as an independent unit), has also lead to Steelcase’s Leap Chair, the answer to Herman Miller’s Aeron.

Besides the actual products, IDEO has managed to become well-known for it’s design principles, design methods. Similar to what became known as the BCG-Matrix, Boston Consulting’s tool to analyze businesses, is IDEO’s designing in 4 steps: Observation, Brainstorming, Prototyping, Implementation. This mantra has found its way into numerous books celebrating IDEO’s unique design culture:

• The Ten Faces of Innovation: IDEO’s Strategies for Defeating the Devil’s Advocate and Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization
• The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America’s Leading Design Firm
• Designing Interactions
• The IDEO Eyes Open line of Travel Guides: New York, London
• and many more

Wired Magazine in the past had quite a number of specials about IDEO, one of them portrays the idea to explore new ways of the old fashioned calling card. The New ID is an interesting look into the firms workings and how systematic brainstoming and competing concepts finally lead to a satisfying result.

frog design

frog design inc. [website] (note the all lowercase naming frog design, formerly frogdesign) has its roots in Germany. Founded in 1969 by industrial designer Hartmut Esslinger along with fellows Andreas Haug and Georg Spreng as Esslinger Design. During its first years the shop moved a couple of times in Germany and finally jumped abroad to Palo Alto, California where the headquaters reside until today.

Their break-through was in 1969, when Esslinger won the deal to design the Wega television sets. An important style element he used on that job was a rectangular matrix of round holes, used as loudspeaker covers and such, with varying sizes to give the impression of a gradient. In 1975, the Sony Corporation bought WEGA, which was back then already famous for its elegant design by Esslinger. In fact, the Sony management liked the WEGA design so much that the dot-matrix-style design was adopted as the 80 “It’s a Sony” logo some of you might remember.

Also in the 70s, the studio began to venture into industrial design for computers. Over lesser known jobs, among them for Computertechnik Müller and Diehl Data Systems, frog finally got the chance to design for Apple. The result was the Apple IIc and a number of accessory devices. Interesting about the Apple job is that frog introduced the white case design for Apple, an attribute Apple has largely expanded since then.

The strong affiliation with the computer industry was surely one of the main arguments that lead to the move to Silicon Valley. The focus on computer design fostered and frog designed Sun’s SPARCstations in 1986 and the rule-breaking NeXTcube the following year. With the dawn of the new century, frog was an established company, what lead to Flextronics, a manufacturing services supplier, taking an equity stake in the company. This again resulted in frog becoming a part of KKR, an investment firm that took over Flextronics and renamed it Aricent. So today, like IDEO, frog is a design-subdivision (although an independent one) of a huge corporate group.

Another similarity with IDEO is frog’s trend to turn away from classic industrial design towards a more philosophical approach, becoming a “strategic-creative consultancy”, thus the move to emphasize its principles (”Discover, Design, Deliver“).

Some reading:

• Hartmut Esslinger & Frogdesign (DesignMonographien)
• Frogart: Images and Objects

By the way: “frog” is an acronym for “Federal Republik of Germany”.

And: frog design was the first career step of many of todays design hotshots, among them were Tylor Garland, Steven Skov Holt, Herbie Pfeifer and Paul Montgomery, Jon Guerra, Gadi Amit, Tucker Viemeister and Yves Béhar - who brings us to the next design company.

Fuseproject

Fuseproject is Yves Béhar. The San Francisco based design firm, was founded by Béhar in 1999 - this fact alone explains why they haven’t reached the universal fame of bigger shops like IDEO or frog. Nevertheless, this last decade has been a successful one. To date, Fuseproject has managed to win over 50 prestigious awards. And- Fuseproject is industrial design. Much more like IDEO or frog, Fuseproject focuses on singularly designing objects, while IDEO’s approach is a more conceptual philosophical one. Béhar’s outfit believes in the improvement of objects as a vehicle to convey a client’s image to intensify the brand experience. Logically, this philosophy is reflected in the company’s motto “dedicated to the emotional experience of brands through storytelling”.

As Yves Béhar is the driving force behind Fuseproject, many of the company’s milestone concepts were actually designed by him personally. Among them is an innovative (but admittedly ugly) Bluetooth headset (the Jawbone, buy), Birkenstock’s Crocs fork “Birkies” and a part installation/part product chandelier Voyage for Swarovski (followed by the consumer version Morpheus). But the singular project that actually lead to Béhar’s new designer stardom is OLPC’s XO laptop. Since 2005 Béhar helms the device’s design as chief industrial designer. He was selected as result of a pitch, where his concept won over the Media Lab MIT jury. The interesting green and white laptop case of Béhar’s XO features a 50% thicker plastic shell that is also the carrying case, complete with a handle, a sealed rubber keyboard, movable rubber Wi-Fi antennas and a reversible display to function as a tablet PC.

Some related reading:

• Yves Behar Fuseproject: Design Series 2 (Sfmoma Design Series, 2)
• Yves Behar: Fuseproject (Design Focus)
• Yves Behar+Fuseproject Commerce/Concept

Remember: this is just meant as a stub, feel free to comment and add your thoughts about who should join the mentioned companies on the list. A few ideas who would qualify can be found on Wikipedia’s list of US design firms.

From dutch Home & Garden supplier Feelgood comes a fresh design for your patio and the final answer to most traditional balcony planters. The German designer Michael Hilgers, who has also developed a banister mounted lamp, created a pot (originally called Steckling) that can be mounted on top of the railing as two seperate compartments cling to the balustrade from both sides.
Links

Michael Hilger’s design label rephorm

The Foot In the Door doorstop is available in black and red from Amazon and numerous other retailers for about US$ 9. Small money for such a cool item that will surely get your next party started. And a great gift for any bachelor seeking to add a bit of femininity to his pad as well as for any It-Girl seeking the latest in quirky home goodies.

Also, have a look at the similar concept of Wizard of Oz Wicked Witch of the East Legs Door Stop from Westland or the Cheese Wedge, just to discover even more great doorstopper designs…

Their classic product is the “Garden Master” chair. This behemoth made of Aluminium and Plastic is heavy, bulky, a pain to store away but is more comfortable than any other deck chair, wooden or monobloc. Now the sad news: they stopped manufacturing it. Your best bet is to grab one from eBay, preferably from Europe, as thousands of these must be lurking around in German Schrebergardens and European backyards.

As the Kettler chairs already have the reputation of being the classic and sturdy choice for seating outdoors, the names - as on every successful product - have kept up with time: Trento, Riva, Strato, Venezia, Roma. These names seem to be a closer match for our modern wellness obsessed world. Still, quality is unsurpassed.

Let’s have a look at the current line of products: The Kettler Venezia is an allround chair, having a lower back and somewhat resebling the looks of a director’s chair. Despite it’s basic look, it inherits the family qualities of rigidness and comfort.

The Kettler Classic and Excelsior represent the modern face of Kettler chairs. The seat and the back is made out of a mesh fabric, stretched inside an Aluminium frame (see the Herman Miller Aeron chair for a similar design). These nonfolding(!) chairs score in terms of lightness, while they literally lose ground on the storage side.

Finally, there is the Roma and its sibling, the Kettler Tiffany , a high-back outdoor chair which is the current successors of the original Garden Master line of designs. They are available in classic white, black or blue and are sporting the same unagitated boring looks that decent seating seems to require. Add a few chair cushions and you can doze away for hours, listening to music, reading a book or watching the birds. The Kettler will always be good companion for many years to come.

Coda

It might be, these chairs aren’t candidates for MoMA, but they serve a daily use, and do it well - all over the world. I thought it was about time to take my hat off to such an icon of contemporary suburban life.

And, if the toddler is around, grab one of those Kettler Kettrikes to complete your outdoor ensemble.

The Aeron is the result of a collaboration between Don Chadwick and Bill Stumpf. Chadwick, with a background in innovative materials and molding processes was surely the driving force between many of the clever material decisions on the project. While Stumpf, an expert for ergonomics and a restless researcher in the field of improving environments and the way we sit, contributed to the overall design of the chair.

The final product is a very well built and in fact heavy chair, that combines an overall appearance of robustness with the lightness of the the semi-transparent mesh-material called Pellicle which is used on the seat and the back. Rounded edges, the trademark stretch and shape of the seat shell in a kind of forward-tilted Tulip form make the chair resemble bionic forms and help sell the furniture’s claim to be orthopedic, ergonomically correct and in some way different than other, cheap and simple office chairs. The hefty price tag did the rest on letting the Aeron stand apart and made it the symbol of entrepreneurial dynamic and success.

While from today’s perspective the design of the Aeron does appear like a scoop, the actual product history is one of evolution, predecessors and design optimizations. Since the 1970s, office furniture manufacturer and supplier Herman Miller was doing research in the field of office ergonomics and work seating. Building on a history of ties within the industrial design scene throughout the 1950s, 60s and 70s, HM hired Don Chadwick and Bill Stumpf in the 70s to rethink traditional designs. Their first product was the “Ergon”, a still traditional looking office chair but with clever tweak on the seat that supported and corrected the hip, pelvis and spine position - a twist that many of today’s office chairs have adopted. The Ergon is still available today as the Ergon 3.

That was 1970-1976. Bill Stumpf first was assistant manager of HM’s research division from 1970 to 1974. After that Stumpf formed a practice in Winona, Minnesota. In 1977, Don Chadwick, who previously was freelancer for HM, joined the outfit which became Chadwick, Stumpf & Associates and gave their successful past collaborations a corporate blanket.

Back to work, the next evolution in the process of refining the results was a chair titled the “Equa” presented in 1984. In its essence the Equa combined the ergonomics of the Ergon with a new back that was mounted on a flexible dual-beam construction. When you look at the current reincarnation of the Equa, the Equa 2, the similarities between this earlier model and the Aeron become obvious. A bit of interesting trivia is that the Equa was also available with a rocking chair base that made a forward tilt possible which is common for computer or desk based tasks and working positions.

The commitment for Herman Miller continued. An example of non-chair developments, was the also in 1984 introduced office system “Ethospace”, developed by Bill Stumpf and Jack Kelley.

Finally, in 1994, Herman Miller presented the Aeron chair, a radical redesign of the Ergon and Equa principles. Equipped with the breathable (and officially trademarked) polyester fabric Pellicle©, adjustable lumbal support (Lumbar©), natural tilt kinematics and the option to choose between 3 sizes to fit the users body size, the chair further complies with ergonomic, functional, anthropometric and to top it all ecological standards. A reasonable employer just had no other chance than buying this office workhorse to perfectly nurture workers.

Now, let’s raise the curtain for the nineties, the era of the dot-com bubble. Among the goals of the IT companies of that time, besides inventing the mainstream internet and earning some money on the way, was the strong urge to impress investors. The weapon of choice, back then and today, is investing in hip environments and, of course, expensive attributes of power. And the throne of the new economy was the Aeron.

Soon it was everywhere: offices, hipster agencys, web firms, board rooms and most important in films, music videos, and tv commercials. The type of multi media presence only the Apple-brewn iPod cross-promotion hype can top.

Now, a few years later, year 8 after the bubble and after many workers used the chair to actually roll out their belongings onto the parking-lot of a bankrupt company, the hype around the Aeron has cooled down. What is left is an actually quite comfortable chair still true to its design principles and a trooper in terms of robustness. Admitted, there are many alternatives today, HÅG continues to produce equally ergonomic chairs, and many others, like Vitra and Steelcase with its LeanChair, have joined the bio bandwagon.

But let’s be honest: no other chair can beat the unique feeling of owning a piece of modern dot com history. So, unlock the backrest, swing back and enjoy an issue of Fast Company.

Coda
Among the numerous awards given to the design, the chair gained a place in the New York Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection, Attendees’ Choice Award from the National Ergonomics Conference and Exposition and among many more “Designs of the Decade” Gold Winner in “Office Furniture” from the Industrial Designers Society of America & Business Week magazine.

If you enjoyed this post, why don’t you buy an Aeron now and donate a few bucks this way. Of course, if you don’t already own one…