perusing the suppliers of the laptop i write these posts on, i came across a supplier to lenovo (as well as acer, dell, fujitsu, motorola, nec, samsung, and siemens) that was investigated by the hong kong students and scholars against corporate misbehavior for labor violations. their report on factories in shenzhen single out one taiwanese-owned […]
Category Archives: product design
costly disposables
greenpeace is at it again, after successfully bullying apple for its environmental carelessness by ranking it as the worst PC manufacturer in terms of environmental impact (march ’07) and motivating job’s new recycling program, a new greenpeace study reveals the presence of (banned) brominated fire retardants in the iphone – which is leading the state […]
Also posted in energy, marketing, possessed products
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stop&chop
i’ve been posting for a long time about open design, or the free dissemination of design knowledge. ponoko is a site that allows you to share designs for furniture cut out of sheet material like the plywood pepe baby’s chair (above). on the one hand, paying $120 for a tiny plywood chair seems expensive, on […]
Also posted in customization, fabrication, futurecraft, open objects, possessed products
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snug-fab
mass customization is only slowly gaining ground in industries such as automobiles, and usually only with cosmetic choices like the color of seats. a number of shoe manufacturers have interfaces for customers to select colors and styles, but use standard forms that compromise fit. unfortunately not all countries have craftspeople cabable of custom shoe-making, in […]
Also posted in 3d, fabrication, futurecraft, marketing
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light prophet
if art can predict culture, then design foreshadows technology – the ingo maurer retrospective at the cooper-hewitt is an astonishing exhibit. time and time again the genius better know for winged bulbs impresses with his use of technology for design. he was among the first to use low-voltage halogens hung from uninsulated cables suspended wall-to-wall […]
Also posted in futurecraft, soft/glowing
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patronizing design
apple fans seem to enjoy design that limits choices, requires new skills and costs a lot. but my problem with apple isn’t just because they are unabashedly unfriendly to the environment. the most significant things you can do to reduce environmental impact are to allow for easy upgrades, repair and to encourage long product life […]
Also posted in conviviality, marketing
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paperCAD
papercraft is the most versatile personal fabrication system: all you need is a printer, scissors and glue. now there’s a CAD for papercraft called pepakura that unfolds any three-dimensional model, adds the tabs and prepares the pattern to be printed on an A4 sheet of paper. Using tyvek or felt you can even make durable, […]
Also posted in customization, fabrication, futurecraft
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collaborative creation
i found peter b. meyer’s episodes of collective invention inspiring because he shows that in cases where technology has no clear application, sharing ideas is more valuable than keeping them secret. he bases this conclusion on some pretty weighty case studies: the invention of desktop computers, the spread of the bessemer steel process, and the […]
Also posted in blogogracy, conviviality, futurecraft, marketing, open objects
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