Industrial design and product design magazine

Diet Coke redesign gets the Diamond

belinda stening — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 23:07:29 +0000

Turner Duckworth took home the Best of Show Diamond Pentaward this year for their minimal redesign for Diet Coke.

The redesign is a smart play on the key typographic elements of the brand – the letters D and K, and the union and unique cropping of these 2 iconic letters.

The design carries through the new identity to the outer packs, point of sale equipment and advertising campaigns.

The redesign of the Diet Coke can was first introduced by Coca-Cola as a limited edition in 2011.

The design of the can, the outer packs, the advertising collateral and the brand marketing were so popular with consumers, that since early September 2012, Coca-Cola has decided to use the new design on a permanent basis.

Along with their Diamond Pentaward win, Turner Duckworth also won a Gold Pentaward for their design of the whiter Coca-Cola can supporting the World Wildlife Fund campaign, to protect the threatened polar bear and its Arctic home.

The iconic red Coca-Cola can was turned white in celebration of the polar bear, highlighted by the iconic Coca-Cola script printed in red.

Coca-Cola committed up to US$3 million towards the WWF’s polar bear conservation fund.

NOOK e-reader for Barnes & Noble

belinda stening — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 23:59:56 +0000

Barnes & Noble have released their new 7 and 9-inch NOOK HD e-readers, designed by Ammunition, the product, identity, and interaction design group based in the US.

The NOOK HD is the latest in a series of tablet e-readers Ammunition and Barnes & Nobel have collaborated on over the past 3 years.

The new lightweight high definition tablets have smooth rounded edges and are designed to be slim enough and easily held with one hand while reading.

“From the beginning, we knew design would be key to breaking into the e-reader market. With Barnes & Noble’s long history of providing customers with an array of reading and entertainment content, we believed they could lead the market in terms of user experience and design,” says Robert Brunner, founder of Ammunition and the creative lead for NOOK.

“From our very first NOOK we designed with Ammunition, our aim has been to build the most elegant, highest quality reading products on the market,” says William Lynch, CEO of Barnes & Noble. “Our latest NOOK tablets are great examples of the kind of intuitive, ergonomic designs that have helped make them so highly rated with our customers.”

“Our experience in developing dedicated e-readers has served us greatly,” explains Brunner. “Working with Barnes & Noble, our emphasis has always been around making the product feel great for users to hold and use for hours at a time. This experience has sharpened our focus on size, weight, balance and form, and the new NOOK tablets are the latest and best examples of our expertise in this area.”

Barnes & Noble operate 689 bookstores, 667 college book stores in 50 states of the USA. They feature more than 3 million titles in their NOOK Bookstore alone.

Barnes & Noble customers can purchase digital books and content on a wide range of platforms, including NOOK devices and on popular mobile and computing devices using free NOOK apps.

“When it comes to the idea of design in the tablet space, most companies seem to think the world ends with a rectangular piece of glass with rounded corners,” says Brunner.

Brunner says there are many more opportunities for creative expression in terms of form, detail and construction.

Curve in What’s Hot on Newsstand

belinda stening — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 01:49:53 +0000

Great news! Curve for iPad® is featuring in the What’s Hot section in iTunes Newsstand’s Business and Investment category section.

Out of 295 publications in the Business and Investing category, Curve has been selected to appear in the curated What’s Hot section consisting of only 24 titles.

To experience Curve for iPad, and to interact with Curve editorial content, go to Newsstand on your iPad and download Curve to view the sample edition, or purchase the first Curve for iPad edition.

It’s a great new way to read and experience Curve editorial, with extra content, image galleries and video. Take a look!

Futuro home revisited in Finland

belinda stening — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 00:45:53 +0000

Futuro house was launched in 1968 and made international headlines.

historical image of the Futuro supplied by Wee Gee Museum, Finland

Unfortunately, the Futuro, was considered too peculiar and, ultimately, too expensive to break into the mass market. Then, with the oil crisis of 1973 tripling the price of plastic, all hopes for the future of Futuro were dashed and the project was abandoned.

Less than a hundred Futuro houses were built during the late 60s and early 70s. Now there are approximately 45 Futuro homes left in the world.

The first ever mass-produced Futuro house (no. 001) has been fully restored after more than four decades of being exposed to the elements.

From 1968 to 2011, the first Futuro house was owned by Matti Kuusla and located in Hirvensalmi, Finland.

plan interior drawing for the Futuro by architect Matti Suuronen

Last year, the WeeGee Exhibition Centre in Espoo Finland acquired Futuro house and meticulously restored, giving it a new lease on life, not only as a 1960s space-age icon but also as a work of art gaining exposure in the international art world.

assembling the restored Futuro - photography by Ari Karttunen

The architecture offers a rare insight into the experimental design of the late 60s and reflects the optimism of the space-age era.

Completely furnished, the house could lodge up to eight people, with six beds plus one double bed-seat. At four metres tall and eight metres in diameter, it is deceptively spacious inside with a total floor space of 25 squares.

The interior is polyester (white, light-blue, yellow or red) and, along with a kitchen, bathroom and toilet, it also features a central fireplace and barbeque.

Elliptical in form, with a retractable airplane-hatch entryway and encircled by 20 egg-shaped windows, the structure looks like a retro flying saucer that’s flown straight out of The Jetsons.

Yet it’s a plastic, prefabricated1960s house, designed by Finnish architect Matti Suuronen to be a transportable, mass-replicated home.

Made entirely out of reinforced plastic, which was a new, lightweight and inexpensive material in the 60s, Suuronen’s aim had been to create an easily movable home – originally conceived as a ski cabin or holiday home – that could be mass-produced and positioned in any environment, and that, he said, would be “quick to heat and easy to construct in rough terrain”.

So lightweight, at 4000 kilograms, it could be lifted by helicopter, and the goal was that the low cost of the materials would mean it would be cheap enough to provide housing around the world.

Futuro was on exhibition in the WeeGee Exhibition Centre forecourt in September this year.

The curator, Marko Home has produced a book in collaboration with photographer Mike Taanila as a comprehensive record and history of the Futuro.

The book titled, Futuro, Tomorrow’s House from Yesterday is available on Amazon.

The Futuro story is covered in Curve Issue 40, Curve subscribers can read the story in the print and Curve for iPad edition. For subscription details please click here

Plagiarius Competition calling for entries

belinda stening — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 23:34:40 +0000

A chance to highlight plagiarism of design

Museum Plagiarius in Solingen, Germany

Designers and companies wanting to highlight plagiarism of their products are invited to send in their original products and any offending counterfeits when they apply for the 37th Plagiarius competition.

Since 1977 the negative Plagiarius award has been increasing awareness of design and product imitations worldwide. The registration deadline for this year’s awards is 30 November.

The Action Plagiarius grants negative awards for the Plagiarius competition at Ambiente in Germany, the world’s largest international consumer goods trade fair during an international press conference.

The awards are given to manufacturers and distributors the jury find are guilty of making or selling design imitations. In this very public award program, the Plagiarius competition works to inform the public, industry, politicians and consumers about the damage caused by fakes and plagiarisms.

Dyson Air Multiplier bladeless fan and copy - image supplied by Action Plagiarius

Past award winners and imitators have withdrawn remaining stock, and signed cease and desist letters or revealed their suppliers.

AC Schnitzer wheel and copy - image supplied by Action Plagiarius

The Plagiarius award ceremony is held on the first day of Ambiente on 15 February , 2013.

All entries are exhibited in the first week of Ambiente and are then on permanent display in the Museum Plagiarius in Solingen, Germany.