2012-05-25 09:45:21 // Design Daily Team
// The Idealog Blog
| 1 comment
Modern packaging often leaves something to be desired. Much like that last inch of toothpaste in the tube, squeezy condiment bottles insist on retaining sweet, sweet globs of sauce in a sticky layer that just won't budge.
2012-05-14 13:09:45 // Josh Martin
// The Idealog Blog
| 12 comments
An Auckland graduate’s novel approach to New Zealand’s ailing bee population and pollination rates could see more buzzing added to the urban rumble.
2012-04-12 15:12:44 // Design Daily Team
// The Idealog Blog
| 1 comment
It's only been on crowdfunding site Kickstarter for a day but already The Cassatchel has attracted more than $1000 from 11 different backers and has been picked to feature on the staff picks landing page.
2012-04-03 12:00:43 // Design Daily Team
// The Idealog Blog
Tetra Pak is on track to release smart milk cartons that will change colour after being out of the fridge for too long.
2012-03-20 15:56:26 // Design Daily Team
// The Idealog Blog
The Pompidou Centre in Paris has picked up three large works from David Trubridge's Icarus installation for its permanent collection – a major coup for one of our very own designers.
2012-03-12 09:59:07 // Design Daily Team
// The Idealog Blog
Last year Andrew Capener designed a rather lovely Scrabble set with a sleek walnut board and assorted fonts on the tiles with the goal of exciting people about typography. He succeeded.
2012-03-09 14:49:32 // Design Daily Team
// The Idealog Blog
| 1 comment
We rather like these solid oak Faber stools – they're elegant, simple and most definitely something we could see finding a place at home or being used in a favourite funky cafe.
2012-03-02 12:23:12 // Idealog
// Idealog #38: now
| 2 comments
Jandals. They're like sporks. How? Both words, dear reader, are what etymologists know as 'blends' – they combine elements from two existing words to create a new one. In the case of the spork, the progenitors were spoon, and fork. As for the jandal: Japanese sandal, of course.
2012-02-16 16:50:39 // Design Daily Team
// The Idealog Blog
| 1 comment
Skypak is showing airline trolleys some love and giving them a second life on the ground.
2012-02-10 16:01:57 // Design Daily Team
// The Idealog Blog
It may not be the biggest of consumer markets, but Nike has come up with a shoe designed specifically to shod prosthetic limbs, or at least those made by major manufacturer Ossur.
2012-02-09 17:14:47 // Design Daily Team
// The Idealog Blog
2012 registrations for the long-running James Dyson Award open today, with both fame and fortune part of the dangling carrot.
2012-02-03 17:53:29 // Design Daily Team
// The Idealog Blog
Those with a sweet tooth might do best to avoid the Q-Pot phone, which is more than likely to elicit hunger pangs every time you pull it out.
2012-02-01 13:44:57 // Design Daily Team
// The Idealog Blog
Versatility, when it comes to furniture, is a good thing by most standards. And the REK coffee table definitely qualifies, with its sleek expandable design.
2012-01-12 15:42:02 // Siobhan Leathley
// The Idealog Blog
| 2 comments
Classic vinyl record sales are booming, so it’s no surprise the radically-designed Wand Unipivot Tonearm is getting attention all around the world.
2012-01-10 16:13:56 // Design Daily Team
// The Idealog Blog
Perhaps you're a renter constrained by plain white walls and a strict lease, or a keen (re)decorator easily bored. Whatever your motivation, adhesive wall graphics are a nifty way to add a personal touch to a room without causing any long-term damage to walls or other surfaces.
2011-12-13 14:40:42 // Design Daily Team
// The Idealog Blog
| 4 comments
Seasoned travellers know that every square centimetre of space in their packs is precious. There's no room for bulk and no room for extras in their luggage – and shoes are the worst offenders.
2011-11-21 15:58:04 // Esther Goh
// The Idealog Blog
| 3 comments
Every year Otago Polytechnic Product Design School and Port Chalmers Design Store owners Becs Wilson and Sarah Wood join forces to create a real-life, pressure-boiler situation for students, forcing them to come up with a product idea, design, manufacture and brand it – all in just 10 weeks. Oh, and the product has to be in store for under $80.
2011-09-26 12:43:51 // Design Daily Team
// The Idealog Blog
From pop-up toasters to peerless film production, an exhibition featuring all aspects of Kiwi design is hitting Wellington later this month.
2011-09-01 13:17:31 // Design Daily Team
// The Idealog Blog
| 32 comments
If you want a comprehensive read on New Zealand’s very ample product and industrial design history, Michael Smythe’s New Zealand by Design: A History of New Zealand Product Design, reviewed here by Aimee Carruthers, is a great place to start. but you don’t have to settle for just a review because we’re giving you the chance to win a copy of Smythe’s book for yourself. We’ve got one copy to give away each week until the end of October.
2011-07-05 09:00:00 // Idealog
// The Idealog Blog
Kiwi designer Helen Andreae has come up with a prototype for a mechanised toy designed to teach autistic children positive play behaviours.
2011-07-04 18:42:17 // Design Daily Team
Air New Zealand's long-haul redesign, a springless trampoline and a more efficient sheep drencher have scored at the prestigious International Design Excellence Awards.
2011-02-08 12:03:58 // Design Daily Team
// The Idealog Blog
It’s time to get your award hat on with entry into the 2011 Australian International Design Awards now open. Designers, manufacturers and distributors of professionally designed products and services available on the Australian market are eligible to enter the 2011 program and be in the running for Australia’s top design award. In fact, it was a Kiwi who took out last year’s top nod. New Plymouth-based manufacturer Howard Wright’s M8 Intensive Care bed took out the Australian International Design Award of the Year.
2010-11-25 11:28:46 // Deirdre Robert
// The Idealog Blog
ngrid Fetell is a human factors specialist at design and innovation consulting firm IDEO. In a nutshell, her job is to bring human-centred thinking to design challenges in a wide range of industries. She’s big on design and delight—in other words, how design can create positive emotion. We caught up with her on her recent visit to Enzed as part of the NZTE Better By Design CEO summit, where she spoke to the audience about factoring culture into the design process. She tells us why she’s drawn to design as a change agent and shares her favourite Kiwi designs.
2010-11-08 12:28:42 // Design Daily Team
// The Idealog Blog
| 1 comment
Take the creative juices of a design industry veteran and add a splash of modern rock, and what do you get? ‘MAKE SOMETHING’—a creative, genre-defining mash-up, which creeps beyond regular commercial boundaries.
2010-10-11 10:35:46 // Design Daily Team
// The Idealog Blog
All things plastic fantastic were honoured on Friday as part of the 2010 Plastics Industry Biennial Design Awards, held at the Ellerslie Convention Centre in Auckland. This year’s awards attracted 37 entries and on the night—13 Bronze, 11 Silver, 9 Gold, and the Overall Supreme Award were dished out.
2010-09-23 14:10:56 // Deirdre Robert
// The Idealog Blog
Sustainability is not a passing fashion. That’s one of the key messages in the ample new book by Brazilian designer Dalacio Reis, 'Product Design in the Sustainable Era'. But sustainable design isn’t just about creating products with minimal impact on the environment. As this book demonstrates with over 100 innovative and award-winning projects from over 20 countries, sustainable design can look mighty impressive and sophisticated.
2010-09-10 13:51:43 // Design Daily Team
// The Idealog Blog
AUT’s inaugural three-day design challenge recently wrapped up and saw teams armed with not much more than $100 and basic prototyping materials (and some steely determination). Their challenge was to create the missing element for a baby incubator, recently designed by Ray Avery's independent development agency Medicine Mondiale, for use in developing countries. Watch as the challenge unfolds.
2010-09-01 12:49:48 // Design Daily Team
// The Idealog Blog
The recycling bin may no longer be the sole destination for your plastic bottles thanks to this enlightening concept by designers Lie Zhong-Fa, Lee Sang-Bong & Ji Jung-Ah. The + (Plus) Conjunctive Flash Light doubles as a regular torch AND a lamp for illuminating your campsite, or as the designers suggest, your living room.
2010-08-31 10:27:45 // Design Daily Team
// The Idealog Blog
Ever wondered what a city operating entirely on artificial intelligence would look like? Richard Hardy, a Bartlett School of Architecture graduate, created this stunning Transcendant City movie as a reaction to a society that is currently not responding effectively to environmental dangers. “Transcendence” in this case refers to a point when artificial intelligence has reached or surpassed that of the human.
2010-08-31 09:24:28 // Design Daily Team
// The Idealog Blog
Finding plastic a little boring, designer Leva Kaleja opted for a more delicate paper approach in creating these “bride” pendant, table and floor lamps.
2010-08-26 11:22:15 // Design Daily Team
// The Idealog Blog
Tribu Design is a website that, as it name might suggest, pays tribute to the best in furniture and product design — with a twist. Rather than settling for the hippest and smartest contemporary design, the site allows you to search as far back as the 1800s, where you can stumble across designs such as Graham Bell’s solid wood Gallows phone from 1876, or Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s chair from 1897.
2010-08-26 09:55:50 // Design Daily Team
// The Idealog Blog
| 1 comment
One Kiwi company has fared particularly well at the recent red dot awards, which honour top design trendsetters from around the world, across a broad range of cartegories. Auckland based multidisciplinary design company, Alt Group, swept up seven ‘red dot: communication design’ awards. The red dot awards, which are judged by a panel of 15 of the world’s foremost design experts, recognise the best in product design, communication design, and design concepts from around the globe.
2010-08-25 16:56:25 // Design Daily Team
// The Idealog Blog
Here’s a couple of newfangled product designs for your discerning pleasure - the Dandelion Stool by Design K and Ta-Rae lamps by Design Virus.
2010-08-23 17:36:11 // Design Daily Team
// The Idealog Blog
Come late September, the Guinness enthusiasts among you will notice something different next time you order the famed deep brown beverage from your local pub. But don’t worry, it’s not the taste that’s been altered — just the design of the pint glass it’s served in.
2010-08-18 10:09:45 // Design Daily Team
// The Idealog Blog
Here are some stunning and unusual objects for you to feast your eyes over, and if you dig deep enough into your pockets (they’d have to be pretty deep mind you), you could own a piece for yourself. The new range of limited edition Fornasetti objects by Bitossi have touched down in Enzed and were conceived by Barnaba Fornasetti, the son of Milanese painter, sculptor, interior decorator and engraver of books - Piero Fornasetti.
2010-08-06 15:34:58 // Deirdre Robert
// The Idealog Blog
While it may pain some people to think of precious vinyl being cut up, there’s always a healthy distribution of Cliff Richard (insert bad taste artist here) records buried in someone’s garage that could be put to better use, like these wall clocks crafted by Pavel Sidorenko, in his series Re Vinyl.
2010-08-03 09:24:41 // Deirdre Robert
// The Idealog Blog
| 2 comments
These may look like ordinary wallets, but think again. Researchers at MIT have come up with an inventive approach to help combat your shopping itch. Called Proverbial Wallets, each wallet is fitted with a subtle device that interacts with you every time you feel the urge to splurge.
2010-07-28 17:32:14 // Design Daily Team
// The Idealog Blog
This week we profile Katrin Sonnleitner, a product designer’s whose work has been exhibited worldwide. Her work is known for dealing with the relationship between human and object, as well as crossing borders between art and design.
2010-07-28 12:17:07 // Deirdre Robert
// The Idealog Blog
| 1 comment
Ordinarily, wrapping your bike around a pole wouldn’t be a highly sought after result. But for 21-year-old designer Kevin Scott, that’s exactly the result he was hoping for. His nifty bendable bike is designed to tie securely around a lamppost and be locked safely, without the use of a lock or chain. Handy.
2010-07-26 16:15:20 // Design Daily Team
// The Idealog Blog
Here’s a novel approach to parking your car when space is at a premium. Cardok is an automated parking solution that doubles your parking space and provides more security than a locked garage.
2010-07-20 11:48:01 // Design Daily Team
// The Idealog Blog
In this video, German industrial designer Dieter Rams (central to the design behind the Braun brand), shares his crafty insights on everything from record player design to the trusty shaver.
2010-06-30 10:40:34 // Design Daily Team
// The Idealog Blog
New Zealand might not yet have the Amazon Kindle e-reader, but hopefully Whitcoulls' substitute, the Kobo, will fit these Moleskine covers.
2010-06-22 21:53:11 // The Editors
// Idealog #28: gear
| 1 comment
Why should grown-ups have all the fun? Boutique company Kingswood Skis is pioneering a range of fat kids' skis. No, not skis for fat kids, but fat skis for ordinary kids.
