The IDSA provides a suite of readings on ecodesign, including this 2003 survey on the ecological performance of electronic products (pdf), in which a survey of product designers sought to reveal the mechanisms for indluencing sustainable design in consumer electronics. This bar chart struck my eye because it represents exactly what needs to change in […]
Category Archives: possessed products
designers = form-givers
Also posted in energy, environment, fabrication, marketing, materials, product design, supply chain
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holes in the wall
The Art Institute of Chicago houses a unique collection of meticulously fabricated miniature rooms, the so-called Thorne Miniature Rooms, to depict period interior spaces from the 18th, 19th and early 20th Centuries in the US, Europe, China and Japan. The 68 models a remarkably detailed at the scale of one inch to one foot (or […]
Also posted in architecture, art
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opportunity carbon cost
Another beautiful product (soon to be released) from KithKin‘s “Some Rights Reserved” open-source design collection is Matthew Appleton’s “Afterlife” poster – it builds on the growing trend of product dissections for good by depicting the relative geometric footprint of a printer’s many parts as compared to a pencil. The project claims to show how complex […]
Also posted in 2d, energy, environment, materials, product design, traceability
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tragic toys
Healthy Toys keeps track of the deadliest children’s products on the market – in terms of lead, cadmium, arsenic, mercury, bromine, and antimony (in parts per million). You can check out the ratings of your children’s belongings, ask for toys to be evaluated, or use the site to shop for less-toxic options. Good luck!
collaborative conscience
Yesterday I had the pleasure of meeting Clay Ward, founder of thoughtandmemory.org, an on-line resource for tracking supply chains and developing user-generated ratings of companies based on social and environmental performance. The site is built off a hefty back-end where anyone can contribute reviews of companies big and small, and the reviews get ranked by […]
Also posted in blogogracy, marketing, open objects, product design, supply chain, traceability
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sad toy story
It’s a rainy first day of Spring here in Boston, a good time to watch Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior’s video on working conditions in the Hung Hing factory in Shenzhen.
Also posted in blogogracy, fabrication, marketing, traceability
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breastware
there is an urban legend that the champagne ‘coupe’ (above right) was modeled on marie antoinette‘s breast, however the idea of breast-shaped dishware is not without support: in the queen’s dairy at rambouillet was a ceramic tea service which included four milk cups (of course) rumored to be modeled on her breasts (above left). unfortunately […]
Also posted in customization, marketing, product design, soft/glowing
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super-traceability
in its pursuit of lightning-fast food delivery domino’s has introduced a web-based pizza tracking tool that details the progress of your pie on its half-hour journey to your house. as we continue to expect the ever-finer granularity of traceability for products, is this the direction to push it? maybe instead of this relatively useless innovation […]
Also posted in food, marketing, traceability
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