Viktor Schreckengost who died last year at the grand age of 101, was regarded by some as the father of industrial design. Every adult in America has ridden in, ridden on, drunk out of, stored their things in, eaten off of, been costumed in, etc… and there is no going past his gorgeous pedal cars. Some of his work can also be seen online at The Cleveland Museum of Art.
posted on Apr 28, 2008 - View this thread

iPod Coffee Table created by a Toronto design student
posted on May 24, 2005 - View this thread

Utopian Christians, despisers of all ornament, in some rough sense protomodernists, the eighteenth- and nineteeth-century millenarian cult known disparagingly as the Shakers has had an impact on the history of design far in excess of its size. (At most, there were only ever a few thousand, and it's easy to understand why, given their emphasis on "perfection" to the point of celibacy.) Key to the Shaker world view was the perfectability of the material world - its purgation of all decoration, artifice and frippery - as an act of worship. This ethos of design, summarized in these theses toward the improvement of the domestic environment, has gifted us with a legacy of highly esteemed craft objects. None has been more celebrated than that canny apotheosis of domestic utility, the Shaker rail, which survives here in a particularly nice contemporary interpretation. If only half the artifacts we're currently offered were as thoughtfully designed...
posted on Sep 29, 2004 - View this thread

An overview of Athens' branded olympic experience. Considering how many brand geeks we've got, I thought this link to a style overview from the Athens Olympic Committee would be of some interest.
posted on Aug 12, 2004 - View this thread

"Don't just do good design; do some good." An initiative to promote socially-responsible projects as initiated within the design community, in small and large scales. And on a tangent, activism has certainly come a long way since Lennon.
posted on Jun 2, 2004 - View this thread

The dial in the base comes to you!. The Ericofon.
posted on Apr 16, 2004 - View this thread

If you ever want your home to look like you're a super spy that lives in a 1960s supercomputer center, Lensvelt has the pefect thing for you: monolithic filing cabinets that look like mainframes. How cool would it be to have a living room that looked like this, or an office that was this clean? [via mocolo]
posted on Apr 7, 2004 - View this thread

The Vos Pas is an apartment that it's owner has lit entirely with LEDs. More here.
posted on Jan 10, 2004 - View this thread

Lick Me, I'm A Mackintosh. One columnist's ode/rant re: Apple's design ethos.
posted on Oct 1, 2003 - View this thread

100 years of design.
posted on Sep 12, 2003 - View this thread

Web sites protest by going black. A little over 100 web sites have bandied together to go black on this international day of protest. Some with interesting art, some with personal notes and others with strong words. Are there other web protests going on that you've heard of? Links?
posted on Feb 15, 2003 - View this thread

Urinal Interface Design. Our aim is to keep this place clean. Your aim will help. [via guuui]
posted on Jan 18, 2003 - View this thread

The Index of American Design The National Gallery of Art is showing some amazing watercolors commissioned by the Works Progress Administration between 1935 and 1942 to document a uniquely American cultural heritage of primarily traditional folk art (and employ out-of-work artists). I thought the textile reproductions were particularly stunning in their detailed exactitude (rendering the thread count!) and really put to shame the so-called trompe l'oeil paintings in the east gallery :D
posted on Dec 4, 2002 - View this thread

Celebrities killed graphic design. The sad and discouraging decline of magazine covers. With before and after pics. You have been warmed.
posted on Sep 20, 2002 - View this thread

99.9% of Websites Are Obsolete An excerpt from an upcoming book by Mr. Zeldman in which he continues to argue the practice of standards compliance - "Held up as a Holy Grail of professional development practice, backward compatibility sounds good in theory. But the cost is too high and the practice has always been based on a lie." I enjoy his writing but he seems to be repeating himself as usual. Still, it is a good argument: where do we focus our priorities for future development - pure standards compliant CSS models, backwards compatibility, or somewhere in between? I know this has been discussed before but thought it postworthy due to the new book and all.
posted on Sep 6, 2002 - View this thread

Bom is some sort of project management company, but I'm more impressed by their whiz-bang cool design on their site. Kinda like the HabboHotel, Eboy (their town), and k10k aesthetic taken corporate.
posted on Jul 9, 2002 - View this thread

I don't know about you, but I won't feel truly secure until the Office of Homeland Security has its own logo. The White House is still just using the presidential seal: boring. The Patent Office's entry has a nice retro feel to it, but some might find it too menacing. The USDA's is maybe a bit too subject-specific. What do you think: should we keep it simple, or go with something a little more strongly stated? What sort of design would make you feel secure?
posted on Jun 25, 2002 - View this thread

2002 British Design and Art Direction Awards dunno when they came out, but there's some pretty cool stuff on there! definately check out the music videos :)
posted on Jun 10, 2002 - View this thread

What constitutes a catchy flag design? This site has assigned a letter grade to the flags of the world, with points taken off for bad color combos, trite slogans, and other flag faux pas. Which flags do you find eye-catching, and which are more appropriate as tea towels?
posted on Mar 4, 2002 - View this thread

And speaking of unnecessary design groups, the Queer Design Alliance proposes to educate the masses and show that "gay art" does not equate to erotic art, and that "we are your neighbors, babysitters..." etc. So?
[more inside]
posted on Jan 26, 2002 - View this thread

The biggest web design myth is that screen graphics should be 72dpi. Sorry if this counts as a self-link (it's a long discussion that I sparked on a forum devoted to a vector graphics app called Xara), but I thought it might interest designers & programmers here.
posted on Dec 10, 2001 - View this thread

The Table PC: promising 'new' form factor or marketing tripe? It's not a new idea. Both the Grid and Vadem's Clio did this a long time ago. I wonder will Microsoft's rallying of major hardware manufacturers (Sony, Toshiba, Fujitsu, etc.) be able to turn this form factor into an affordable and practical product.
posted on Oct 31, 2001 - View this thread

Transmission - this is the best (storming use of bog standard - works in Netscape - javascript) site I've seen in ages (via Shift via Play with the Machine) (warning: I'm no web designer, so you trendy people in black out there are free to tell me this is tired old cliche).
posted on Aug 21, 2001 - View this thread

The construction of Memphis area Apple Store held-up by sign ordinance prohibiting the display of food products on signage. Sweet Gods of Commerce: What would Orange Julius do?! [via MacNN]
posted on Aug 4, 2001 - View this thread

B&O goes virtual : Beoplayer 1.0 is a Windows application that sits on your desktop and, like everything Bang, works in a sleek, elegant, unintuitive manner (until you learn what the icons and doodads do, then you can show it off for all your friends). Guaranteed you've never seen a music player like this one.
posted on Jul 31, 2001 - View this thread

Clippings is the GPL-ed code behind IHT's news-clip feature, which has been discussed on MetaFilter before. This is very cool code and I think any site with many front page links could benefit from it. Serendipitously found at smokinggun, which is not the smoking gun.
posted on Jul 31, 2001 - View this thread

Blogger Template Design Winners are up. Finally.
posted on Jul 18, 2001 - View this thread

“Nobody needs information architects anymore” “His problem, he figures, is simple: Nobody needs information architects anymore. The entire discipline was overly specialized, a hologram created by temporarily explosive demand for Web-site design, which vanished last year.” (Link sometimes worked and sometimes did not over the course of ten trials in three browsers. ROBMagazine.com → Table of contents → “Crash Test Dummies” will get you there.)
posted on Jun 4, 2001 - View this thread

Warning: useless Flash, animated GIFs, slow loading, annoying, buzzing, warped up piece of work. [Requires Flash and Pepto Bismol to view.] Even though this is a site for a radio station, I figured something was amiss when I was scared to click past the splash page...
posted on Mar 26, 2001 - View this thread

The Web Page from Hell. Be sure to look at the client list.
posted on Mar 1, 2001 - View this thread

Grrrlz R the future of computerz! A suprisingly warm-hearted and atypically unguyish analysis of the “ridiculous” new iMac colours and what they represent for future computer use. If Apple blew it by not letting teenage boys play games, are they smart to make iMacs attractive to sensitive, design-focused people (including grrrlz) as so-called digital hubs? Or will the boyz shoot ’em up on Wintel while the grrrlz rip boy-band MP3s on groovy iMacs? (My claim: Bondi blue remains the bestest iMac shade ever. Discuss.)
posted on Feb 27, 2001 - View this thread

the SPLEEN , one of the first sites about art & design, is still up and running. I remember linking to Piotr's site six years ago; at the time I had seen nothing like it.
posted on Feb 2, 2001 - View this thread

I’m not sure whether design is dead or kinky, but Kiiroi is back and looks hott for spring.
posted on Jan 26, 2001 - View this thread

This by far is the all-time worst use of flash ever. Boring, long, and utterly unimportant. It blows -- the competition away!
posted on Jan 10, 2001 - View this thread

Let Jesus bring light into your life. No, I mean, literally. Mary, too.

Or just get a tree and be done with it.
posted on Dec 22, 2000 - View this thread

ConceptPC @ Intel - pretty much interesting...response from PCs to iMac-mania?....gimme a MagicBean!! (flash required)
posted on Dec 16, 2000 - View this thread

Chicago to enlist graphic designers for friendlier ballots. [free reg may be req'd] There's been a bunch of discussion about the usability problems with various voting systems, notably punch-card ballots. Chicago didn't have anything as dramatic as a "butterfly" prexy ballot or two pages' worth of candidates, but we still had close to 120,000 discards from 2.1 million votes -- and when compared with jurisdictions using other systems, there's little evidence to suggest that voters are skipping the presidential ballot. That's just how bad manual punch card technology is. Even if we can't get rid of them just yet, at least we can make sure they aren't confusing. Did I just post the twenty-sixth link on Metafilter today? GO AWAY. METAFILTER IS FULL. :)
posted on Nov 29, 2000 - View this thread

Steal a design, win an award. Sumerset Custom Houseboats won several awards in the 2000 Inc. Magazine Web Awards 2000, including the top prize in the General Excellence category. According to a company press release, the site was chosen for its "simple, functional, yet elegant design". The only problem is, they stole the design from IBM's site.
posted on Nov 22, 2000 - View this thread

Did anybody else notice that? Speaking on behalf of .com design interns everywhere, there's really no incentive to try and come up with hot graphics - ours is a thankless job. However, there's still no excuse to be completely lame.
posted on Nov 15, 2000 - View this thread

Win Stuff! DynaGirl is having a Design-A-Ballot contest. One printed form and one electronic form will win $75 worth of 'swag'
posted on Nov 10, 2000 - View this thread

10.am redesigns...but forgets to use the spell checker.
posted on Nov 2, 2000 - View this thread

Is it just me? Or does Mark's new design "element" just seem a tad phallic? I hope it's not just me.
posted on Aug 25, 2000 - View this thread

Web art is more than just pictures - take this cool site for instance, with its strange sounds and flash movies. What I really like about this one, as well as eneri.net is the the emotional aspect, which is very rare on the net. Especially, I recommend you to check out the "contagion" link.
posted on Aug 20, 2000 - View this thread

Ok, here comes the firestorm. Joel on Software has some very good things to say -- though, like most user-interface-design mavens, I think about 50% of the time that he hasn't comprehended what the problem really is... but in this piece, he's wrong.
posted on Aug 7, 2000 - View this thread

Submethod gets a facelift. Creepy, but nice as always.
posted on Aug 2, 2000 - View this thread

wow. balthaser has a new concept...forget jakob nielsen, THIS could be the end of web design as we know it!
posted on Jul 28, 2000 - View this thread

Arrgghh! Yuck! I guess orange is the new white.

Wrong Way! Go Back!
posted on Jul 24, 2000 - View this thread

Roger Black on Design. MacAddict put up an interview with Roger Black from their August 2000 issue. There are a couple of interesting points as in his take on transitioning from print to web:

"I think that the main thing is pretty much to work as you would in print design. A good designer always focuses on the reader or the customer, the viewer, whatever the end-user is. You just have to do that on the Net the same way you do in print.... I do not believe that the technological hurdles are that big. It doesn't seem to me that big of a deal.... Most of the stuff we do on the Web is not particularly difficult. Almost anybody, particularly anybody under thirty growing up in our society has enough technological culture to work with it. Don't get scared. It’s not that big of a deal."

posted on Jul 20, 2000 - View this thread

Laurel Mountain Technologies, Inc.
Is this really what "web design" is coming to these days?

Try Phenom Tek or Circle Graphics.
posted on Jul 19, 2000 - View this thread

Farstar International is probably one of the best examples of bad Wed design ever, but obviously that's not the guy's bag. Apparently his bag is collecting really awesome pictures of galaxies and stars and other such spacey things. The shots aren't big enough for wallpapering, but might be neat source material for designy people. (The link isn't showing up in the preview, but here it is: http://www.cliffr.com/galaxies/banner.htm)
posted on May 13, 2000 - View this thread

Does this design trend remind anyone else of Autechre album cover art circa 1997? See also [ dform ], [ ngin ], and the mother of them all [ vir2l ].
posted on May 2, 2000 - View this thread

If the Roger Black rant thread has aroused your curiosity, you may want to check out Michael Wolff's profile of Black that ran in New York magazine last fall. It covers the print world more than the web, but it explains the (quite real) Roger Black mystique in greater detal.
posted on Apr 25, 2000 - View this thread

Everything old is new again. I ranted on this a little in my blog, but here is the crux: why does something that looks like a Commodore 8-bit demo program earn respect as a good web design? The font is even a direct lift of the 64's built-in font. I find it kind of funny that we're trying to duplicate stuff that was done well over a decade ago, but because it's on the web, it's good design.
posted on Apr 20, 2000 - View this thread

Seperated at birth? Is it just me, or could Jeffrey Zeldman and Todd Purgason pass for twins? Be sure to check out the rest of Design is Kinky....it rocks.
posted on Apr 19, 2000 - View this thread

Why tab based interfaces suck This site finally fell into interface hell. Originally they used tabs as navigation and still are now... BUT it doesn't work... Watch... every ecommerce company that copied its interface will also fall into the same interface hell... The others include ebags.com, urbanfetch and more....
posted on Apr 8, 2000 - View this thread

ID Magazine released a new issue that highlights 40 designers that are under 30 years of age. Most are doing cutting-edge, cool things, but one person stands out: Krysta Morlan. She won a nationwide invention award for a air cooling system for body casts. She's also invented a killer water-bike that lets the physically disabled exercise in a pool. You know what's even more amazing than her innovative designs? She's only 16 years old, still in high school, and builds these things to help her overcome her cerebral palsy.
posted on Jan 13, 2000 - View this thread

What will future interfaces look like? Steven Johnson, the author of Interface Culture, asked this question of a few presumably knowing souls. There are some interesting points regarding the interaction, rather than the interface in this oh-too-short article.
posted on Nov 14, 1999 - View this thread

I found this site linked from a mom-n-pop design shop's awards page. Not only has this company stolen the Point Survey's 5% graphic, they're also using the old C|net background. Very original.
posted on Jul 19, 1999 - View this thread