Dangerous Design

courtesy of h2.org

   Off all of the design trends that look idiotic in perspective, the rise in popularity of oversized SUVs like the Hummer seems to rank pretty high on the list. Riding a wave of low oil prices and consumer partiality to spacious cabins, higher ride height, and supposed safety SUVs sold like hot cakes during the 90's to the early 2000's.  However the benefits of the vehicles were eventually outweighed by the rising costs of fuel, a positive development in the end, for SUVs designed more for indulgence rather than genuine function are an example of irresponsible design that has no place in society.
    Though the dangers of the SUV were probably not the intention of the automakers who capitalized on their popularity, profit margins were: automakers could make more money selling an SUV than a compact car. First designed for a niche market, they quickly caught on in popularity. Before the recession hit,  consumers were more likely to indulge, and were convinced that these vehicles were designed for safety and security. However times have changed and society' attitudes have changed
    Though many features of the design were very pleasing to consumers, one can't ignore the fact that most people didn't need such a monstrosity to maintain a comfortable living, and that the perceived "safety"  of the design was an illusion, of all the SUVs, the Hummer had the highest rollover rate and number of drivers killed. Simply put, you are much more likely to be killed if you get in a an accident with an SUV. Many consumers are under the illusion that being in the biggest vehicle in a car accident protects you more. They couldn't be more wrong: the higher masses of SUvs make it harder to stop the car; this increased difficulty in maneuvering the vehicle makes it harder to avoid accidents and increases the number of fatal accidents.         Another huge flaw in the design of the SUV is that its design exempts it from being put through the standard safety regulations: being built on a truck frame makes it a truck, and trucks don't have to go through safety tests because they are supposed to handle like trucks: rigid designs that are unsafe because unlike smaller vehicles they don't have skeletons with build-in crumple zones. Giving consumers a product that handles like trucks that were originally meant for those in a trade or truck drivers is irresponsible and dangerous to society. The dangerous design of SUVs creates a car with more blind spots, poor braking because of increased size and momentum, and a higher likelihood of rollover because of its height. Its huge size makes average drivers overconfident despite the fact that most people don't know how to drive a truck.
    Then there's their dismally low mileage of 10-14 mpg, which should be an outrage if you're only driving to the store for some milk, not bumping over rough terrain or through deep snow. Unless you live in such an environment SUVs are socially useless, and essentially waste huge amounts of fuel and emit a lot of carbon into the atmosphere. Fortunately, rising gas prices and changing attitudes made these vehicles less attractive to consumers and their popularity decreased.
    The many design factors that make it a dangerous car on the road, emit excessive amounts of excessive greenhouse gases and fulfill a superficial need make this design irresponsible and dangerous to society; fortunately, society and the times have changed, and more and more these monstrosities are becoming irrelevant, doomed as no more than a brief fad in history.

http://www.lilith-ezine.com/articles/automotive/SUVs-Are-Dangerous.html

Utopian Design

photos courtesy of cnn.com

    For thousands of years, mankind has designed objects to fit our utopian vision of mastering nature. A landmark moment in the history of design occurred on October 26, 2010, when the Three Gorges Dam, the world's biggest dam became filled to capacity, nearly reaching it full generating capacity of  84.7 billion kilowatt hours. A mega project that took decades to become realized, the design of the dam has now fulfilled its utopian functions of navigation, power generation, flood control, and water diversion.
    Flood control was one of the most important needs this structure addresses: until its construction the Yangtze River Region had experienced some of the worst floods ever recorded, a periodic catastrophe that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and destroyed millions of acres of farmland over the last century. The construction of this dam ensures more stability for its millions of residents and fertile acres of farmland.
    Now that the dam is storing water, behind its massive miles long walls, this water can be diverted to the more arid north, reducing the threat of drought and famine and increasing their capacity to grow crops.
    Another utopian benefit of the dam is the dozens of shipping locks and lifts on the dam designed to increase shipping safety. Before, the frequent floods made navigating the Yangtze river was too dangerous. Now navigation and transport of goods along the Yangtze river is increasing,cutting transportation cost and rejuvenating the economy.
    One of the biggest benefits of its design is the massive amounts of power it generates, reducing China's greenhouse gas emissions, which are the biggest in the world, and allowing China to depend less on burning coal and fossil fuels and more on hydro power.
    All these benefits were the intended functions of the design of the dam seem to have been realized, a design that is truly utopian in that it aims to improve life for Chinese society as a whole. However a significant number of consequences such as the displacement of millions of people to make way for it, the destruction of many cultural and geological relics, the potential for landslides, a potential threat to nation security, and a potential for catastrophic consequences if the dam should break is unavoidable. Though this beautiful, powerful design aims to be utopian, drawbacks are inevitable. In a way, all design connects back to the human desire to change our environment to fit our utopian vision, and one must to decide whether the benefits of our designs outweigh their costs before society has to pay for them.

http://articles.cnn.com/2010-10-26/world/china.three.gorges.dam_1_three-gorges-dam-state-media-worst-floods?_s=PM:WORLD

How Color Transforms Design

photo courtesy of style.com

      This Fritz Hansen Series 7 kitchen chair's strongest asset is no doubt is the beautiful shade of apple green that gives it an air of sophistication and down to earth homeyness. The chair itself is very simple, a very recognizable modern form: a single piece of heavy plastic supported by chrome legs,  a curved seat and back and rounded edges making it a very organic form, with an added function of being lightweight and stackable.  However this is not a mere mass-produced plastic chair from IKEA. On this modern chair is printed an old fashioned Toile de Jouy print from the 1800's, recognizable by its picturesque illustrations of landscapes and figures. However rather than being printed in traditional Toile de Jouy colors of red blue or black, this print is reinterpreted in a shade of green only made available by modern technology. This juxtaposition makes the overall design more aesthetically pleasing and fits in with our modern lifestyle.
    The green has many elements that make it aesthetically pleasing. This cheery but not piercing shade of green is likely to connect to people associations of "earthiness" and "homeyness" with green. It is also not only limited to one hue: the print is represented in many difference tints and shades of green, from the darkest apple green to a practically transparent, almost yellow shade of green. This gives the color palette variety, and makes the print look more 3D. The fact that the print designs are varied, and don't uniformly cover the entire surface and leave white patches between them emphasize the print more than if the chair had been covered in a busy uniform pattern. The most concentrated shade of the green is purposefully placed on the backrest of the chair, the part the viewer will immediately see when first looking at the chair. The lightest shades of the green are located on the seat of the chair, with a very faint fade of green between the two light and darker areas giving it unity.
    Without this specific shade of green, the design of the chair would not have the same effect. If the print had been printed in the traditional black or blue there would have been too harsh of a juxtaposition between the modern form of the chair and the old-fashioned designs. By making the color of the print a more modern pigment, m.ore unity is created between these elements of the chair 
    The simple sophisticated modern design of the chair itself and the color of apple green juxtaposed with a homey old fashioned print make a chic yet homely design that is likely to fit in with many different home interiors, whether they be modern, old-fashioned, or a little bit of both, bridging the gap between old and new and reinterpreting classic designs to fit society's modern needs.

Ergonomic Elements: Buddy Beds

Called “The Rolls Royce of Dogbeds” by Dog World Magazine, Buddy Beds Dog Beds are the pinnacle of luxury in dog bedding. For those willing to spare no expense on their precious pooch, orthopedic Buddy Beds are a must have, providing perfect joint support for man’s best friend. Though most don’t think dropping $250 on a dog bed is justified, those whose beloved pets have benefitted from these orthopedic beds will say that these beds are unparalleled in performance and quality and are a worthy, lasting investment rather than an excessive purchase. A Buddy Bed is a far more thought-out and complex product than a mere dog bed, many ergonomic elements making Buddy Beds a leader in Dog Bed excellence.
    One of their first priorities is safety. Buddy Beds are made of a Certified Non-Toxic Memory Foam, unlike other imitators who use a cheaper foam that may contain harmful chemicals or exude harmful gases. It is a more expensive foam, but that itself ensures the highest level of safety, and their standards have not decreased during this recession. The only products Buddy Beds makes is these dog beds, for they are focused solely on the quality of this award-winning product. Their memory foam comes from the same Bureau Veritas–approved factory that makes products for babies, ensuring the same safety and security we offer our babies for our dogs as well.
   Comfort is a given with these miracle beds. Memory foam gives canines perfect join support, contouring to their every curve. Where generic dog beds create pressure points that cut off circulation where there is no support, Buddy Beds take this discomfort away. Memory foam also reacts to the dog’s body temperature and weight to conform at every angle, becoming softer or firmer where needed. These orthopedic beds also provide comfort for dogs suffering from arthritis hip dyslexia, taking away the pain: the support from the memory foam making it easier for older dogs to get up from bed after sleep.
    Ease of use makes these beds a great investment. They are so simple and straightforward a product that they integrate well into your household. Other dog beds lose their shape, become smelly and full of holes, but these beds are long lasting and easy to care for. Buddy Beds are composed of two pads of memory foam put together with a piece of support foam in between, a waterproof liner, and an outer covering. Their fabric liner makes care easy, protecting the memory foam from liquids, stains, and odors and are anti-bacterial and hypoallergenic. The removable outside covering is durable and machine washable.
    Performance is something Buddy Beds are known for, for their durable design lasts longer than a regular dog bed, which has to be replaced at least once a year. These beds last a lifetime, and never have to be replaced. Awarded the Animal Wellness Seal of Approval by the Animal Wellness Group and rave reviews from dogs and owners puts Buddy Beds ahead of the pack for orthopedic dog beds. They use the highest performing, highest quality 5lb memory foam that never loses its memory over time because it is the densest available. This high quality foam provides more comfort and takes away pain in older dogs, providing complete support, with the supporting foam in the middle layer of the bed preventing the dog from sinking into the foam and hitting the floor, and creating pressure points. This critical, yet expensive step of adding an extra layer makes sure the foam beds function properly.
     Buddy Beds are simple in design on the outside, rounded rectangular blocks in different colors in that come in attractive colors palettes like Colorado Mountain, Beach Blues, or Evergreen Forest. In the Colorado Mountain palette one side is burgundy, while the other is a dark rich brown, giving the customer the choice of color to pick from. Orange or black piping lines the edges. They are rich but understated colors, fitting for a design that is designed so well one doesn’t even notice it was designed. It isn’t tacky like many other dogs beds in garish colors or in the shape of doghouses or dog bones.    One could say it gives your dog some dignity.
  All these elements bring dignity back to the idea of the luxury dog bed. Compared to velvet-covered and gold-leaf decorated Louis XIV imitation four poster beds for privileged pooches, simplicity and high performance are valued above all else, the ergonomic elements in these beds executed to a tee. Buddy Beds are proven to have genuine benefits for dogs who need them the most, and are shown by many reports in reviews to be adored by the dogs that sleep on them.
  It looks like we’ve come a long way from the days of Fido sleeping in the doghouse or on the rug in front of fireplace, and those who can afford them and are willing to pay the extra expense are really getting a great design that is genuinely beneficial for their pet. Though most dogs will probably survive without one, one can’t deny the benefits of it and should seriously consider it if cost is not a problem. Long ago, dogs were wolves, sleeping in the wilderness with no memory foam on which to lay their head. Since then, they’re evolved, some bred to fit into trendy purses. Whether this change indicates that dogs who have evolved alongside humans require human-like comforts, and better design to suit this change is in the eye of the beholder/owner.

Good Design: Makeup Tutorials

     Watching one of Michelle Phan’s makeup tutorials is like looking through a window into a perfect world, where mascara never runs, and foundation never makes anyone look like an oompa-loompa with caked-on makeup. It is no accident then that this YouTube beauty guru is the most subscribed to female on YouTube and the first female to reach 1 million subscribers, for out of the dozens of other self-professed beauty gurus on YouTube she has come out on top, due to her amazing skill, creativity and ability to design makeup looks and video formats that communicate clearly to viewers
    Her videos are like candy, with tutorials like “Seductive Vampire,” “Lady Gaga Pokerface Look,” “Romantic Valentine’s Day Look” and “Makeup For Glasses” one can’t help but keep clicking on the next one. And the next one. You could find a tutorial for any occasion on her YouTube channel, her soothing voice guiding you calmly through the steps to making yourself look beautiful.
    It’s not that she’s just a talented makeup artist and good at designing new makeup looks, it’s also the way her videos are edited that make them so much easier to watch. Her style of video is very slick, professional and edited, with a certain minimalism that includes plain backdrops that reduce distraction, subtitles during and between each step to break down and simplify the process, showing and naming each product clearly up close to the screen, calming electronic/pop/ambient music playing in the background, and a close up point of view with good quality video. Her videos start with a few colorful graphics, then a brief glimpse of what the end result looks like to spark curiosity; however the most important element of her videos is that she uses voiceover, rather than commenting on each step in real time while creating the look on herself.
    This choice in editing is superior to other makeup gurus’ videos that speak instructions to the viewer while putting on makeup. Her style is much more pared down and simple, so that the viewer sees her go through the steps calmly, and confidently, with no facial expressions and getting right to the point. She goes through the exact process you would also go through whilst creating a beautiful makeup look. In this way, she is presenting herself as a blank slate the viewers can project themselves onto rather than allowing moving lips and her individuality to interfere in the viewer’s concentration as they try to create the look themselves.
It is very important that her vides have such a soothing effect because when someone is trying to create a show-stopping makeup look, they want it to be perfect and are likely to be stressing about it on some level.
    All these elements in her videos have helped her become the top YouTube guru, that success leading to her being featured in countless magazines and landing her a makeup deal with the cosmetics giant Lancôme to create videos using their products.
    Phan has taken advantage of today’s technology and social media that makes the tools of design available to everyone, using her Mac computer to shoot and edit her videos, working well within the limitations of the medium of film, combining words and images to make her message clearer, and in a way using her body as a billboard on which to deliver her message to her audience. Phan’s skillful design of her videos democratizes knowledge not previously available to regular people other than professional makeup artists, teaching thousands of women the skills to make themselves feel more beautiful in an age where the amount of information about design on the Internet is becoming more available to millions of people worldwide.

Words and Images: Cartoonist Kevin Kallaugher

   A small exhibit in the San Francisco Cartoon Museum showed a small but spectacular collection of Kevin Kallaugher's political cartoons, known for their stinging wit, exaggerated style, and uncanny knack for being able to bring together the many absurdities of world events and make smart, articulate sense of them. An award-winning cartoonist, he has worked for many news sources in the U.K. and the United States and is the resident cartoonist for the The Economist. His range is wide, from magazine covers, to cartoon strips, to one panel illustrations, and short animated videos. In all of these forms, words and images work together to create an instant visual message that is concise, attention-grabbing and immediately obvious. He doesn't often use use long lines of dialogue, merely labeling caricatures and forms, or using short lines of dialogue in his sequential cartoons. His spare use of words with a short title or label merely serve as a starting off point for the viewer, who is allowed to bring their own associations to that political figure or country.
     In the "What's Wrong With America's Right" cover for The Economist, he uses words to label characters and forms, which are replacing the iconic image of the tea party in Alice in Wonderland with the rise of the Tea Party movement in the United States. The parallels between the tea party in the mad world of Wonderland, and the Tea Party in the chaotic political landscape of America create a very loaded meaning in this illustration, and its no accident that both parties share the same name and spelling. The title words are very subjective in relation to the image, which is also very subjective; however the title takes the message of the image and puts it into precise words so that word and image are both intertwined.
      The lack of words in the rest of the illustration directs more focus to the exaggerated images, to which the viewer will have a stronger response. The unflattering exaggerated features and representations of Sarah Palin, Obama, Fox News, and the Republican Party express perfectly all our negative associations with these figures. Through exaggeration, he is able to articulate our fears and associations. With limited use of words, the viewer is more engaged with the image in that they aren't being dictated to, with more room for individual interpretation.
    Kallaugher's skills in visual communication are nearly unparalleled in how well his marriage of word and image is suited to the act of looking in this attention deficit world: catching our attention immediately and articulately summing up our anxieties and the face of a changing world in cartoons, he is one of the most important voices of today in helping us make sense of our ever more complicated world.

Cindy Ferrera Interview: The Shift of Design

Cindy Ferrara, pattern maker and production manager, in her office on Broadway.

Interview in New York Time Blog: http://runway.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/05/behind-the-scenes-the-product-specialist/

 In this blog on the New York Times website, Cathy Horyn interviews Cindy Ferrera, a pattern-maker and production manager in the garment industry who has seen the changes between eras of of the fashion industry: the shift of technical skills to overseas manufacturers, and the breaking up of the design process in a society that values convenience and speed above all else. She describes the time when garments were designed and crafted in the Garment district in NYC, and then when China started making them. When production was exported to China, our design process met their assembly-line mentality and history of origami in clothing, and clothes became less about dimension and fitting the body, and more about presentation on the sales floor:
    "The Chinese were unbelievable at presentation of the product. It may look like a pancake but it sparkles!"
     We are not only seeing a change in how manufacturers produce clothing, but how we perceive them, the increase of products with stretch making it unnecessary for consumers to know what good fit and quality is anymore.
    In China is a voracious drive to be the best, the most competitive and an extremely disciplined worth ethic, for example, "A buyer can sit over here and take a photograph of something and then say to someone in China, “This is doing well, give me 15 versions of this.” The buyer can shoot the image and they have these very elaborate systems where they can get the pattern off the image. They can program the machine to knit it and then have a sample in two days."
    Here we see a shift from designing the whole way through to just design and marketing the product, as Ferrera describes: "They have the know-how. What we are going to become is the sellers. It’s our marketing, our Web sites, our warehousing."
    Now that we are focusing more on the marketing,  "we spend most of our time untying communication knots and much less time focusing on the product. There’s more and more attention paid to how to pack the carton—for efficiency, "
    The garment industry seems to focus first and foremost on the last step of the design process: surface, and how it will look on the sales floor, and less on the actual product. Not only do they skip to the last step, but the whole process is broken up, with no one designer overseeing every step along the way, and the knowledge of each step in the hands of different people. It is less important for the designer to understand other steps like medium, structure, concept, and craft after decide what product they want,
    During this shift in industry, it wasn't only manufacturers that went overseas, but knowledge. What does this exportation of knowledge mean for us? What can we expect when we give all control over the construction of a garment to only certain parties? This can't only be happening in the garment industry; with many manufacturers going overseas, knowledge of craft in design must be going too. There is a possibility that we could be giving the reins of innovation to foreign manufacturers, with the risk that with since they have all the knowledge and technology, they too could start designing the end product instead of just producing it. Designers should have an intimate understanding of the whole design process, from drawing board to materials to assembly line, to shipping and marketing and presentation, so that we don't also export disposable products and control over our designs.

Image courtesy of nytimes.com