surprise the designer

Cincinnati has organized an initiative to recognize innovators and innovations connected to the greater Cincinnati area. It's an effort to show the world how great we are, how smart we are, and... how innovative we are. It's free to enter, and the prizes are big ($1000 for students.) As far as I can tell, judges will make the final decision on who wins, but there is also a popular vote. Why not vote for me? Check it out here . UPDATE: As a Cincinnati Innovates participant, I have been invited (and have accepted) to participate in a weekend-long event called InOneWeekend . Entrepreneurs, open source developers, and designers come together for three days to concoct and start a business. Only 100 out of 300 applicants have been accepted. I am very excited to participate. You can check out the event at their website here . Also wanted to draw your attention here . My friend Katie is set to open a store in Over the Rhine (downtown Cincinnati) at the end of next month. Cin...

Tomorrow is the biggest crit -to-date for our chair studio. We are presenting full-scale models of our chair concepts. I managed to fabricate my new idea with some success and also re-rendered it. I am interested and nervous and excited to hear what my professor has to say about this idea because he hasn't seen it yet- at all. The past few days have been full of trips to home depot and lots of time spent in the shop. I love building big things like this by hand- it is repetitive and methodological and makes sense to me. Plus, I can figure things out better when I can hold them in my hands. I fully blame Larry at Fisher-Price for this. During my most formative time as a designer he instructed me to go to the shop when designing anything, and to this day that has stuck with me. Any thoughts/ideas/feedback on the chair idea?

Last week we had another due date for our design communications class. This time we had to present three refined families of products. As a reminder, my group (" danse ") is designing furniture (coffee table/ credenza/ book shelf) Our group also redefined our target consumer and made a new, spruced up image board. Our target consumer is a young, recently college graduated male who is living in an urban environment and has money to spend. Here are my furniture families: bent wood: classic and elegant cement composite (lightweight) plus wood: contrast of materials, something different huge, bicycle-inspired casters: iconic and super- convenient for navigating around studio apartments

For my 100 th post, I would like to draw your attention to the national marrow donor program . It is a cause near and dear to my heart, especially today. Joining the national marrow donor program database is free and it could (you could) very possibly save someones life. Lots of people rely on this database to find a donor for a bone marrow transplant. The best donors are men in their early 20s, but almost anyone can join. Please consider signing up today.

Some 'synthesis' happened in the car today... I came up with this new chair concept, just in time to make a full-scale model. It's basically two stacks of slats with pivot points at the ends. This provides an opportunity for many different seating configurations... any thoughts? Planning to flesh this out a lot more over the next few days...

Recently my prof Mike Roller ( http://www.michaelroller.com/ ) posted about his favorite design objects, and why they are his favorite. It seemed like a good design exercise to pick favorites and then explain why, so I am going to post mine one-by-one. First up? Camper shoes. Camper is a Spanish shoe company. Each season they release a line of shoes to their retail stores and department stores. They are very difficult to find in the U.S., but very easy to find in Europe, and especially Spain (In big Spanish cities Camper stores are almost as popular as Starbucks in big US cities.) The shoes are expensive. high quality, stylish, and ...cute. The brand has a very cute, charming personality. Even though the inventory in all of the Camper stores is the same, each retail environment is distinctly different- and all are distinctly creative. Their website is also always engaging. The whole brand draws you in and makes you want to be part of their culture. Their slogan- "imagi...

Today is the day to have our final chair direction, and I am lucky enough to have two. Well, one is the one I will construct and the other will be my back-up. Which one is your favorite? Be sure to click on the images to see them full-size...

I think one of the shortcomings of the industrial design program at UC is the total lack of cool packaging assignments. We do a bowling ball box and a powertool package in the second year, and after that it is sort of do-as-you-please. No one asks us (or forces us) to see the potential in packaging (the package sells the product...) so we mostly think of packaging as boring corrugated boxes. That being said, I think there is tremendous potential for innovation in packaging, and that really comes into play when you are selling the package as much (if not more than) the product. Two great examples are 1 liter water (as well as other bottled water like voss ) and stride gum . For all of these products, the package sets them apart from the competition and is often the biggest selling point. For more on innovative and wildly creative packaging, take a look at www.thedieline.com

LiveSTRONG Originally uploaded by _ joshuaBENTLEY I have been helping my dad set up a blog, and it goes live today . I would encourage you to check it out...he has a big, challenging adventure ahead of him, and his plan is to document it along the way. Plus, I am an official contributor over at his blog, so you may see the occasional update from me, too.

Today is my mom's birthday! My parents are super duper important to me- they are my friends and mentors and all that other corny (but sincere) sort of stuff. I put together this sort of digital collage for mom and had a lot of fun going through loads of old photos. *In the illustrator version the numbers at the top don't go over the photos, but the clipping mask did not save well as a jpg...

Last night I went to see Food, Inc . with a few friends. In many ways it was a horrific, but very educational movie. I would encourage everyone to go check it out because I believe it covers information that everyone needs to know. The basic gist, though (for anyone who doesn't have the time or money to sit down at a movie for two hours) is that all of our 'industrial food' is owned and run by a handful of very wealthy, very powerful companies. They are taking the nature out of natural things (like the animals that we eat), and engineering mass produced alternatives that save time and money. You will never see a better testament as to why we should all eat local and support farmers who are still doing things the old fashioned way. The issue of food is pressing, and surpasses politics on many levels (as animals we need to eat, and we should probably be eating good things.) There are lots of books out there on the subject. I have heard that The Omnivore's Dilemma ...

During my time at Aspen medical products I acted as their (first and only) environmental coordinator. They covered half the cost of me to go to an excellent workshop at UCLA on green business, and I wrote a sort of proposal about how they could be more green. I think its a little ironic that the girl from Ohio (me) was telling the California hippies how to be more sustainable. I just came across the presentation that I made (but never had the opportunity to present) when I returned from the conference. You can see the full pdf here . There is information specific to Aspen, but also a number of valuable resources that just about anyone could use.

By this point I have established the basic idea of my chair, but am working on refining the form and concept. It's a tete a tete (head to head) sort of thing where two people can sit face to face without being directly across from each other. It is meant to accentuate the kind of tension between 'personal' space and 'social' space. Last week I made a lot of little physical models, and this is my first very rough stab at a CAD model. This week I will continue developing the 3D model and investigate more materials.

For better or for worse I have always been one to take photos in the bathroom. Don't get the wrong idea, though- I just think that bathroom fixtures and layouts say a lot about culture and people. This photo is from the bathroom in Penn Station. I am impressed both with the unique design of the towel dispenser and the really proper use of an icon to explain the design. I have heard people say that you shouldn't touch handles (on the door, towel dispenser, sink, etc.) after you wash your hands. I think that is a little silly because once you don't touch anything in the bathroom, you will go shake hands or touch some other surface and still wind up all germified . Yet, here is a design that tailors itself to the germophobes by offering a handle meant for your...elbow. I guess it is better to have a germy elbow than a germy hand, but who knows... (!)

A lot of my time this week was spent working on our design communications project. My group of three is developing a line of furniture. We have named ourselves 'danse' (I made a quick logo, below) and are focusing on a coffee table, credenza, and book shelf. Here is the logo, one of six brand boards from our competitive analysis, my updated image board, and two of my photoshopped sketches. I am hoping that this project will coordinate nicely with my chair in my portfolio...

Flip Video Originally uploaded by Cisco Pics Cords add chaos to my life. Between my phone, ipod, computer, camera, printer, scanner, desk light, pencil sharpener, and extension cord(!) I probably have enough cord to reach from my house to school...and back. Not only do they clutter my desk, but I like in a sort of constant fear that I will lose one of these cords and it can be hard to remember which cord belongs to what device (and what cord belongs to an old, no longer in use device.) So one of my in-the-shower epiphanies this morning was that the plug- or the USB- should actually be in the device. Then I realized its already been done with the Flip video. The Flip video is a compact digital video recorder that is cheaply made but has one endearing quality- its USB connection flips out of the body of the camera. Its that feature that has made the flip a best-seller. How long until everyone follows the flip's lead (or is it already totally patented)? I, for one, would carry ...

In my opinion, TED talks are often unexceptional and a little boring. I think this is rooted in what we are trying to learn about design communications - it is one thing to have a skill set, and another thing to be able to talk about it. Most of the people at TED are not great about talking about it. The video and audio files are still valuable, though, because they give an inside look at the people responsible for a number of stunning accomplishments . They let us, the lowly public, catch a glimpse of people who are innovators, people who are extraordinarily wealthy, and people who are leading our society today. That being said, this talk about the Eames is a good one for anyone interested in design to watch. It has some little-seen footage and touches on the design process. I especially love the photos of prototypes- it makes Charles and Ray seem more real and less like super-human design geniuses. (small disclaimer: I saw this posted on core77 this morning... I don't l...

The chair project requires a rapid progression from ideation to developing a single, chosen concept. We are to the point where we are making small models to understand the 3D forms and narrowing our focus onto one or two ideas. I am aiming to have my direction by the end of the week... (photos: Little People hanging out on my chair models in studio; me making things...as close to my flow state as I have been lately)

While we were in Europe, we had many exchanges with people who didn't speak English (or, you could say, they had experiences with us- people who don't speak Spanish, Italian, Czech, Polish, German, Croatian, etc.). For some silly reason, I didn't really anticipate looking directly at someone who is trying to tell me something and not being able to understand anything they say. I didn't fathom what it feels like to walk down the street and not be able to read any of the menu boards outside restaurants. I especially did not predict that navigation would be so challenging because we couldn't even pronounce street names. Of course, we often found ways around the language barrier. Hand gestures and little drawings can go a long way. There were a few times when we left an exchange flabbergasted and confused- especially when the other person knew a little English, or we knew a little of their language, but not enough. The whole point, though, is how important icons,...

In our design communications class we are developing a brand from start to finish. Right now we are at the start part, and putting together competitive analysis and image boards to start shaping our brand identity. Here is my image board...what do you think? This sort of thing is new to me, so feedback is welcome and appreciated.

I just posted my portfolio on coroflot . You can see it here . I think that I could spend some more time making the page layouts ideal for coroflot , but this is a start...sort of a teaser. I will probably put more up here soon.

VR working! Originally uploaded by temporary_diversion Yesterday I got frustrated with the wireless connection at our house. It was being really flaky, kicking me off the internet and refusing to let me back on. So, in a huff, I went upstairs, got a pen, and held down the reset button. I held it down for five long seconds. Then, the network was gone. Our little wireless network called 'bunny' was nowhere to be found. I had taken a bad situation and made it worse. Shoot. Almost two hours later, after trying to trouble shoot, emailing my landlord, and eventually calling our service provider, the problem was fixed. The moral of this story? Listen to your products. Or, maybe more so, when you are designing keep in mind that people are dumb. The reset button on the router is one of those little things you have to stick a pen in. It is supposed to be hard to get to. I should have seem that as a warning, but didn't, and consequently lost a couple hours of my night. Th...