One year has passed and again it's time for the Milan furniture fair - Salone del Mobile 2005, one of the most important design events of the year.
From Wendsday 13 to Monday 18 Milan will have the most dense concentration of designers in the world (placing a some bombs there would result in a much uglier world for sure :-).
We are very curious what new trends will be shown and what new designers and companys are coming up.
See 'ya in Milan!

24 cubic meters of fresh ideas at:

Abitare il tempo

Aliantedizioni will participate for the first time at the Fiera di Verona Exibition
from 16 to 20 September, Hall 6 Stand C-11, (10,00 - 18,00).

http://www.aliantedizioni.it
info@aliantedizioni.it

If you like cool videos then you have to take a look at the website of the french artist collective PLEIX! They are best known for the "PLAID - itsu" music video but their other works are also amazing.
Sadly they haven't updated their site for a while...
If you like to know more about them there is an interesting interview over at Pixelsurgeon...

Tom's Hardware Guide is running an interesting article about a new keyboard concept for cellphones developed by the american Chicago Logic.
Their theory is that beeing used to computers qwerty-keyboard layouts, users can type much quicker and would therefore write more SMS.
If this assumption is true must be seen in real life usage...

What causes more headscratching is this sentence: "I you use the right shape, the right elevation and the right activation pressure, it is very easy to sue."

The Kunsthaus Graz not only has a very well design website but houses in one of the most innovative modern buildings. Actually it seems like an alien vessel landed between the houses of Graz...
The award winning "BIX-facade", designed by the german design agency realities united for sure is an eye catcher too. Each of the 930 ring-shaped florecent lights distributed over the facades surface is a single pixel of a huge grayscale display that can show continously changing informations.

Finally, Koolhaas Seattle Library has opened its doors to the public. More here.

An interesting interview on icon magazine about the actual situation in design education.
Read it here.

"These are some of the opinions aired at a round table discussion hosted recently by icon and Nesta – the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts. The purpose of the discussion was to hear the views of design professionals who scoured last summer’s degree shows, talent spotting for Nesta’s Graduate Pioneer Programme. We expected a bit of moaning about the quality of some of the work they saw, but we didn’t expect such widespread criticism of the education system and the triviality of contemporary design."

The future is close to nature!
Sony with Toppan Printing, have developed a Blu-ray Disc based on a paper substrate which promises to be more environmentally friendly and secure when destroyed than traditional discs, they say.
"Oil is a limited resource but paper can be recycled," says Taro Takamine, a spokesperson for Sony in Tokyo. "One of the initial advantages of the paper disc will be a decrease in the amount of raw material needed to produce a disc."

Cool! This revolutionary product is guaranteed to enhance the transfer of computer data through the air. It works at the speed of light and even penetrates lead walls. YES, SURE. Me gonna buy that, me wifi slow-slow, me buys spray cheap and Windows compatible!!!
Oh, my...

Four italian cities will host the meetings for Material and Design, organized by studio Demetra in cooperation with the Ottagono magazine and Matech from Padova.
The meetings, supprted by ADI and others, will take place starting from May through Sept. in Stra (May 4), Bologna (May 13), Napoli (june 11) and Ancona (Sept 23). Aldo Cibic, Alessandro Mendini, Makio Hasuike and Marc Sadler will participate.
The initiative starts from the growing interest on innovative materials for interior and exterior design and the subsequent uses for designers.

The sponsors are: Alcan Alluminio (alluminium), Bellotti (wood), Omnidecor (glass), Refin Ceramiche(ceramic), Atoglas (acrylic panels) and Sikkens.

Bussiness Week is running a nice feature on design consulting firm IDEO and about the power of design in general.

This is another collection of sustainable cardboard design. The authors are young designers from the Design department of the University of Duisburg-Essen.
It seems that this kind of thinking is returning to get more popular.
Probably there is some hope fore mankind...

In Rome in the house of architecture, there is an interersting exposition about sustainable design with cardboard by known authors like Frank O. Gehry and others, but also young designers from the Department of Architecture "Ludovico Quaroni" of "La Sapienza" University of Rome.

ROME, 20-30 MAY (closure: sunday 30, 13.00)
CASA DELL’ARCHITETTURA - ACQUARIO ROMANO
Piazza Manfredo Fanti 47 – 00185 Roma

This website of the Kunsthaus Graz , made by viennies design agency Lichtwitz is a really good example of very well made webdesign.
Simple appearence and excellent usability!
This shows that you don't need flashy grafics to do a stylish site, just good typo and layout work... in other words: design! The content must be in the foreground.
In this case it's an image taken from the Sol LeWitt Exibition open till May 30.

Thom Mayne of Morphosis design for a 2012 Olympic Village in Queens.
In 1972 Thom Mayne founded the firm Morphosis to develop an architecture that would eschew bounds of traditional forms and materials;
that would counter the limiting dualism of modern and postmodern.
At Morphosis, their method has always been highly intuitive and reflexive. They understand their arena of operation to be one marked by contradiction, conflict, change, and dynamism.
And to that end they are interested in producing work that contributes to the conversation, that adds yet another strain to what some may hear as the cacophony of modern life.

Had they invented this ingenious security system for sawing machines before, a lot of fingers could have been saved... It seems that distracted capenters now can get away with small cut and a mild shock instead of loosing something precious.
I always had a lot of respect (if not fear) of this machines but now they appear a little less scary!

Although it seems that the Olympic Summer Games 2012 will not be in Leipzig, i must say that I really like their logo (made by Netherlands oldest design agency Total Identity)! Simple but very efficient... You get the idea instantly.
I wonder what they will do with it now...
Probably it will end in some grafic design manual...

Check these out.

Some early works of the young Casey hosted by the evergreen MIT servers.

His website.

And this origami tutorial (but as I found out, the real problem with origami and "normal" people is patience, not difficulty).

'nough.

Hitachi has announced to double their production of hard disk drives like the 1-inch, 4-gigabyte disk drives that are found in the iPod Mini.
US customers now have to wait up to 6 weeks before getting thier device, while customes in europe have to be pacient until summer to get their hands on one of this extremely well designed mp3 players.

Good ideas in a highly distinctive design. To the ones who appreciate well done videos:

www.psyop.tv

with some reserves...