Thing Tank

I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.

2012-02-01T11:53:00.000-08:00

You know that part in the horror movie where somebody does something that more or less gives the monster a perfect opportunity to eat or dismember you? Skinny dipping alone at midnight. Making out in a graveyard. Playing hide and seek in an told abandoned warehouse. You get the idea.

I feel like I'm watching that part of the movie as robotics scientists at the University of Pennsylvania develop swarming helicopter robots. I mean what could go wrong with swarms of formation flying nano robots, right? Oh wait, I have an idea. Lets make them self replicating and give them a desire for self preservation at all costs.

Its almost as creepy as that chainsaw powered robot dog.

Peel Away!

2012-01-26T16:26:00.000-08:00

As my friends at Edison 2 like to say, the two factors that matter most for fuel economy are weight and aerodynamics. They should know, they are the makers of the worlds most efficient four passenger car, according to the Automotive X Prize.

Of course, there's another factor--going slower. It reduces the influence of aerodynamics, and as owners of very slow cars know, it reduces your blood pressure too.

That's why I was THRILLED to hear that the ridiculously small and underpowered Peel nano-sized car is going back into production! How'd you like to do your commute in this little baby!

With a top speed of 40mph and 157mpg, this throwback to a simpler (often smarter) time offers insane efficiency, weather protection and the ability to make everyone around you smile. All while you calm down already. You might as well--you'll get there when you get there.

You can watch Jeremy Clarkson drive one here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJfSS0ZXYdo

Wispr at CES

2012-01-20T17:36:00.000-08:00

The response to the Thing Tank designed Wispr portable vaporizer has been overwhelming. We were honored to be talked about in the New York Times, Wired, Gizmodo, and this in depth article in Core 77.

But we never expected to be picked as best of CES by anybody, let along the blog for the fabulous Fab.com. But we were. Read the whole story here. Oh and we were mentioned in Apartment Therapy's best of CES (though not ranked #1...maybe next time).

Not bad for a product whose only electronic part is an igniter.

Here's a video from Tech Crunch interviewing our pal Jacqueline Oglesby (Hi Jacqueline!) at the Wispr booth. Looking good.

And of course, Sequitur getting their props on Lovely Package.

Viva la Wispr.

I'm ok if you're ok. Ok, stop it.

2011-10-18T10:40:00.000-07:00

Is sexual harassment the new Turing Test? Alan Turing postulated that we can tell if machines could think by whether they act like they can think. The way his test worked was that...

... a human judge engages in a natural language conversation with a human and a machine designed to generate performance indistinguishable from that of a human being. All participants are separated from one another. If the judge cannot reliably tell the machine from the human, the machine is said to have passed the test. The test does not check the ability to give the correct answer, it checks how closely the answer resembles typical human answers. The conversation is limited to a text-only channel such as a computer keyboard andscreen so that the result is not dependent on the machine's ability to render words into audio.

Siri, Apple's new personal assistant inside the iPhone 4s wants to act like a human assistant. She doesn't just understand your words she understands your meaning. Or at least she seems to.

Wait was I just been referring to a talking box as "she"?

Jonathan Mann, of song a day fame, raises the stakes by adding inappropriateness to the mix. Jonathan professes his unrequited love to Siri who reacts with remarkable aplomb. First she tries to ignores it. Then she redirects. She restates her objection. Then she uses humor to diffuse it. In short, she acts like a smart woman who is trying to send the right signal to a harasser; "not a chance, dude, get over it."

In fact, it's Jonathan who comes off as not understanding what the hell is going on here. Score one for Siri.

Then she starts tossing around mildly obscure cultural references. Douglas Adams' answer to the meaning of life. She quotes the first artificially intelligent villain in pop culture, HAL. She's pretty funny in the face of his creepy behavior.

But eventually, when Jonathan can't catch a clue, Siri has to lay down the law. Stop. Just stop.

Seems like a pretty intelligent response to me.

Hiding in Plain Sight

2011-10-13T09:32:00.000-07:00

We're super excited that the New York Times featured the Thing Tank designed Wispr portable vaporizer in their Style section article "Legal Marijuana Sells Vaporizers."

While our client, Oglesby & Butler cannot make claims about the health effects of vaporization, Dr. Lester Grinspoon, associate professor emeritus of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School can. He said, “Vaporized marijuana is virtually free of whatever toxic properties come with burning the plant."

I just wish that the writer, Jed Lipinski, had attributed the design of the object correctly! They attributed it to Sequitur Creative, our brand/identity/packaging/web partners on the project.

But the big news here is that the Wispr is a luxury product, aimed at design savy folks. That's a response to a growing shift in people's attitudes around marijuana use. Its gone from something you need to squirrel away when you are in decent company, to an accepted part of modern life. Paper Magazine is picked up on this trend in their recent article linking the Times piece with a recent Gourmet article "Beyond Pot Brownies."

"Here we learn about pot-infused wine and beer and other delicacies inspired by 'marijuana's culinary trip from wacky weed to haute herb."

Stay tuned for more Wispr news...

Shhh...Its here

2011-10-05T12:01:00.000-07:00

The Wispr vaporizer from Oglesby & Butler is here! Thing Tank did the design of the object, and Sequitur Creative did the identity, packaging and website. Sequitur's awesome work was just honored on The Dieline, the coolest packaging website ever.

I'll be telling the whole story in an upcoming post, and there's going to be some major coverage coming up, so stay tuned!

Do we need more chairs? If they're like this, then yes.

2011-04-14T12:36:00.000-07:00

There's something about chairs. How they look and how they work are rather nakedly combined. There's nowhere to hide in a chair. Structure, support, material and gesture are all baked together.

Many designers have done their most iconic work on chairs. But most of the chairs around us are unequivocal garbage. Here is this everyday thing that we all use, and yet it's done well surprisingly infrequently--especially considering the variety that exists in the world.

The Bouroullec brothers are masters of reinterpreting archetypes in ways that transform them. Their slow chair dematerializes the Saarinen's womb lounge chair. Their steelwood rematerializes the hideous plastic patio chair with powder coated steel and ash. And now their Baguettes Chair for Magis (pics above) takes the gesture of the classic steel folding chair and creates something warm and elegant. Not exactly what the steel folding chair evokes for most.

They've taken away so much of the chair. What's left are just 4 solid wood legs, a plywood seat and back plus a secret ingredient. The magic glue comes from a clever die cast aluminum frame that is neither completely hidden or an eyesore.

While there are no truly original ideas out there, there are an infinite number of recombinations. That makes the good ones all the more rare and delightful.

Happy 50th Birthday Space Flight!

2011-04-12T09:50:00.000-07:00

I have been a space junkie from the day I could figure out what outer space was. Part of that was being lucky enough to be a little kid during the age of the Apollo flights--when space travel was a national event. Everyone stopped what they were doing and paid attention. There was a sense that we were witnessing some of the greatest achievements in human history. And we were.

Having grown up steeped in the imagery and lore of the Apollo program--I'm always amazed at how the Russians did it. There's the famous story about NASA spending $1M developing a pen that would write in space, and the Soviets brought a pencil. That sums up so many aspects of the different attitudes and approaches that the US and USSR took towards space flight. At the end of this video, somebody's marking the site of the landing with a railroad spike and an axe, for pete's sake! A far cry from getting picked up by a nuclear powered aircraft carrier.

This recent article in the New York Times Magazine really brought to light how wildly different the two worlds were. There was no countdown--just a warning that "after the one minute readiness is announced, there'll be about six minutes before you actually take off." ABOUT SIX MINUTES? Wow. Read the article to learn how Vladimir Komarov, a later cosmonaut, knew he was being sent to his death because the rocket was unsafe. Not exactly Apollo 13!

But its invaluable to remember that fear of Sputnik and Gagarin created the boom in scientific education in the United Staes, and the subsequent boom in science and technology that brought us to the future. Internet anyone?

Obama has been talking about how renewable energy could be our Apollo. Emphasis on could. Its not yet.

Complexity is not magic, its even better than magic.

2011-04-10T17:06:00.000-07:00

If you take it for the tipsy dinner party rant that it is, this is pretty awesome. I mean, part of the reason "alternative medicine" ever becomes "medicine" is because somebody opened their mind to it, and had the training and resources to study it. Science has enormous blind spots about all kinds of human experience, not to mention all of the things that we just can't imagine yet--which is a lot of stuff.

But having said that, this is pretty much on the money. It also shows that saying something warm about your wife near the end of a rant, it takes the edge off a bit.

I'd like to thanks my adorable wife, who found this video and saw something endearingly familiar in our loud mouthed but spot on, shaggy-esque protagonist. That strikes me as a good sign.

Take that flying spaghetti monster!

Ultraviolence, Coffee and Muppets

2011-04-07T08:51:00.000-07:00

I've seen many of the shorts that Jim Henson did for IBM in the middle 60s. But these spots for Wilkins Coffee are absolutely (sometimes literally) mind blowing. The message is simple. Drink Wilkins coffee or we will kill you. No quality claims. No thoughtful reasoning. Just the timeless humor of violence, told with a straight face. Genius.

A Slice of Life

2011-04-05T13:44:00.000-07:00

Source Data for Photography/12:31 from Croix Gagnon on Vimeo.

There are so many ways of seeing. This is a cool one.

Professor Whoopie Rides Again

2011-03-30T10:31:00.000-07:00

Mechanisms are exciting for their own sake. Folks like Arthur Ganson have shown us that machinations have their own mesmerizing magic built in.

But there's a special power in understanding what's going on in there. This video is a perfect example of a clear, well paced mechanical explanation that starts at the beginning and moves in traceable, gradual steps towards an increasingly complex concept. Its a perfect example of the kind of explanation Professor Whoopie, the man with all the answers drew on his 3D blackboard all those years ago.

Can iCarly or Hanah Montana explain how a rocket works? Or why a sailboat goes forward? Or how a lightbulb lights? I didn't think so

Flying like a Bird is Hard

2011-03-29T14:57:00.000-07:00

Our friends at Festo have done a lot of cool stuff. Inflatable architecture. Pneumatic muscle. But this is really incredible. Its hard to fly like a bird for lots of reasons, but mostly its power to weight. Watching Boston Dynamics' terrifyingly determined, gasoline powered dog-bot you get some idea of how much power it takes just to walk. It takes a chainsaw's worth!

But festo's bird has somehow gotten enough juice in a light weight enough package to fly. Amazing! A chain saw is a pretty lightweight power source. What's in the bird?

Bigger First Aid Kits

2011-03-28T11:24:00.000-07:00

I am beside myself in anticipation of the America's Cup racing that's coming to the bay. And seeing the first fleet of AC45s racing in New Zealand is a nice taste of the racing to come. Yeah, I bet they are "very physical." And yes, you are going to need a serious first aid kit. Not to go all NASCAR, but it will be amazing to see what happens when these things make contact at 30+ knots.

Can Data Take the Place of Hypothesis?

2011-03-22T12:17:00.000-07:00

For years, folks have been talking about the analysis of huge data sets (and by huge, I mean really, really huge) superseding our ability to hypothesize. A hypothesis to prove or disprove, that essential building block of the scientific method, is becoming less important than just knowing everything you can know about the problem.

This is the best example I have seen so far that this might be the case. Deb Roy's analysis of his son's language acquisition yielded several simultaneous findings because the data was so rich and there was just so damned much of it. Sure, you have to decide which axes to measure. But what makes massive data manipulation so interesting is you don't necessarily need to know why you're interested in those axes. Science becomes a more improvisational, reacting to the data-shapes changing right in front of you.

You still have to see the results, you just don't have to predict them quite as much.

If you build it they will ride

2010-12-08T16:26:00.000-08:00

I've been working on a bicycle project lately, and as a result, I've been thinking about and riding bikes a lot more than usual. As someone who still doesn't ride to work enough, I'm no expert. But it feels like we're close to a tipping point. I mean, San Francisco is the 6th most bike friendly city in the US. But we're not there yet. We'll be there when we have a real bike infrastructure. I'll risk my skin in the (relatively) safe (mostly) bike path route to the studio. But I won't take my kid. If we had separated, car-safe bike lanes, like they do in Holland and other civilized places, we'd be much of the way there.

But in the mean time, I had a burst of optimism when I saw this video about New York's attempt to build it so that they will come. The best part is that riding a bike is a fix for so much of what needs fixing about early 21st century urban life.

Dumb Prototypes are Brilliant

2010-09-21T15:54:00.000-07:00

Prototyping for Elmo's Monster Maker iPhone App. from IDEO on Vimeo.

Low resolution prototypes are the bomb. The quicker you can turn your ideas into something other folks can experience the better.

Here some of my old colleagues from IDEO are demoing their idea for a dancing Elmo iPhone app. This is a classic example of "puppet show" prototyping. All they did was have an idea, make an iPhone cut out and press record. Brilliant. You could have coded the whole thing and made it 5% more realistic. But it wouldn't have been more fun.

And the X Prize goes to...a gas powered car!

2010-09-16T14:33:00.000-07:00

Edison 2 X-Prize from Johnny St.Ours on Vimeo.

Electric cars have their good points. And plenty of bad ones. The conviction of many that they are a panacea for global warming is infuriating. Only 27% of the US's carbon emissions come from the transportation sector, and cars are just a portion of that. The embodied energy of batteries is HUGE. Their efficiency and energy density leaves much to be desired. Plus I'm just bothered by people who believe in silver bullet solutions to complex problems.

So it put a smile on my face when I read today that the winner of the Progressive Automotive X Prize was an aerodynamic, light weight, low power, gasoline car. Not electric. Not Hybrid. Light weight and low power are the classic formula for fuel efficient vehicles like the Nuovo Fiat 500 and Morris Mini of the 1950s. But there's a special place in my heart for the Citroen 2CV, the "umbrella on four wheels," which was designed in the 1930s, but released after WWII. The design brief was for a car that could carry 4 peasants and 220lbs of farm goods at 37mph and get 78mpg. That's right, 78mpg. In a way, its sad that we are only shooting for 100mpg, almost 80 years later. Many, Saul Griffith among them, think that its not nearly enough.

Hats off to the Edison 2 team and their 250cc wonder. Less is indeed more. As the Edison folks themselves say, "There are only two absolute virtues. The first is light weight. The second is aerodynamic drag. Everything else is a desperate compromise."

Amen.

The Wildness and Vulnerability in Me

2010-09-13T11:02:00.000-07:00

My teacher, friend and sometimes colleague Michael Barry shared this amazing mini documentary about Shinya Kimura with me. I love Shinya's post-apocalyptic junk yard aesthetic. These bikes look like they are cobbled together just enough to take their speed runs at Bonneville. They feel utterly functional, like they are predetermined by the intersection of the tools you have in your shop and the parts that are lying around. But they're really delicate aesthetic exercises in authenticity; imaginary relics of a parallel hot rod universe.

I loved the way he said "A motorcycle is more than art, its something that brings out my instincts, the wildness and vulnerability in me." He has taken the visual language of speed on a budget, and distilled out only the emotions. I'm sure these bikes are fast enough to scare you. But ultimately they are about the sounds, smells and feelings of speed, not speed itself. Wildness indeed!

Experiences Make Technology Matter

2010-09-10T14:29:00.000-07:00

I was really taken aback by the Apple Facetime commercials that have been running lately. They don't tout the technological superiority or long list of features that the iPhone 4 has. They show people connecting. Sure they are connecting because they have a bunch of cool technology. But the technology is not what matters. What matters is how people feel when they have an amazing experience.

This video about open source eye tracking technology feels much the same to me. Eye tracking technology has been around for a while now. And it is kind of cool in and of itself. But what is even cooler is to witness the experience that an artist with ALS has when he is able to create again. Its so inspiring, in fact, that people are investing their sweat equity to make it happen.

All good design is experience design.

check out the video here.

Just the most important boat of the 20th century.

2010-08-04T17:03:00.000-07:00

I'm going to Oahu next week for my sister's wedding, so I thought it might be nice to have a little Hawaiiana on the Thing Tank Blog. Also, I happened to run across this video.

Today catamarans are commonplace. The ubiquitous Hobie Cat was, at one time, the most popular sailboat in the world. But the inventor of the modern sailing catamaran did it for fun. With a background as a pilot and glider builder, he understood the lightweight construction methods of the time. But he took his cue from the polynesian designs he saw overseas during world war II.

Its absolutely incredible to see this masterpiece of engineering out joyriding. Talk about experience design!

Thanks for showing us the way, Woody.

The World's Greatest Radio Station

2010-06-17T10:05:00.000-07:00

No really. WWOZ is amazing. Its the world standard for featuring local content in a place that is the world standard for local content, New Orleans. I love WBGO for straight ahead jazz. Its New York's local jazz station. KCRW is great if you have a range of tastes to cater too, without being too least common denominator.

But I'm just going to say it. KPOO is the greatest radio station in the world. It is a beautiful cross section of the pan african diaspora, by folks who know what they're talking about. Gospel, hip hop, latin jazz, blues, funk, reggae, forgotten R&B of the 80's? KPOO's got MULTIPLE shows for each of those, and most everything in between. Don't like what you hear? Its going to be a new genre in an hour or two. Judge, Marilyn, JJ on the radio, Bobbie, Harrison, Emmit, Thomas, Noel, Irie, Pam Pam, Dave, Johnny Brooklyn, KK Baby, Francesca, Chata and Damien, you keep on doin' what you're doin'.

Until now, it was hard to play over my airtunes enabled stereos at home and in the studio. But now you can click on this link to listen to KPOO through iTunes.

What's your favorite radio station?

Red, Yellow, Orange, Green, Scraper Bikes is on the Scene

2010-06-09T08:53:00.000-07:00

Scrapertown from California is a place. on Vimeo.

The latest bike phenomenon isn't about fixed gear hipsters, carbon coveting spandex boys or rail riding street BMXers. Scraper bikes are on the scene. Born in East Oakland, scraper bikes are about self expression, community and just plain representing, on a budget.

But my favorite part about scraper bikes is the parade. There's something inclusive AND competitive about riding around in packs, showing off your scraper bikes. Its East Oakland's second line.

Sometimes Simple Solutions are Better

2010-05-26T14:55:00.000-07:00

iPad + Velcro from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.

The inevitable avalanche of iPad related cases (my wife already has two), stands, docks and everything else has begun. But as this video reminds us, sometimes you just can't beat the classics. Velcro and the iPad are the new chocolate and peanut butter.

Yup, I'm building an outrigger canoe with my 7 year old daughter.

2010-05-17T11:28:00.000-07:00

My daughter is 7, and loves to make stuff. I figured now was the time to do something ambitious but doable with her while she still wants to hang out with her Dad and play with tools. So why not build a boat.

We need a boat. I used to timeshare a boat big enough to tackle the bay, but it was hard to find enough crew with time in their busy schedule. Plus I also want to go sailing places that are mild and fun--where my daughter can learn to sail. And capsize! Boy, it'd be nice to have a boat you could paddle too. Who makes such a beast? We do, of course.

I have been following the amazing work of Gary Dierking for over 10 years. He has done as much as anyone alive to translate pacific canoes into modern materials. His canoes are human scale--you can drag them into the water yourself. Not hoists or trailers. They paddle and sail. They are swift, not by packing more sail area and righting moment than other boats, but by just being small, narrow and light.

I bought plans for his Wa'apa design. For ease of building, storage and transportation, the main hull is built in 8 foot lengths. Two ends bolted together makes a 16 footer, add a middle section, and you have a 24 foot canoe. We're building a 16 footer.

As boats go, its pretty easy to build. But I made it even easier by having all the plywood and foam parts machined. In a way, I've made it into a kit.

And look how far we got in just two weekends. And not particularly hard working weekends at that. The first one, my regular partner in crime, Jon Carver (and his dog Nigel) came to lend a hand. Last weekend, my brother, Pete, came all the way from Phoenix to play. Its been fun a blast already. And we haven't even gotten to the water.

All the plywood parts laid out.

D with two halves of the main ama. Tusky!

Sawing.

Marking.

Jon in his apron.

Weekend 1's bounty, 4 sides and 4 bulkheads.

Nigel, wondering when we are going to stop hammering!

Pete and D, hamming it up.

Yup, it looks like a boat.

A Rather Literal Turing Machine

2010-03-29T14:42:00.000-07:00

Alan Turing was a hell of a guy. He didn't quite invent the computer, but pretty close. He proved that a simple language of zeros and ones, a bunch of address locations, a writer, a reader and an eraser could calculate any computable function. The idea that the instructions to manipulate data, and the data itself could be all jumbled together as long as you kept track of the addresses are at the heart of the thing I'm typing on right now.

Back when I was a wide eyed undergraduate taking Daniel Dennett's Philosophy of Mind class, I got introduced to the idea of the Universal Turing Machine. It was a machine so powerful, it might be capable of intelligence or even consciousness. And yet it was profoundly knowable. For a Cognitive Science major, that was pretty mind blowing, since the minds we are all used to interacting with are profoundly difficult to understand. Alan even came up with a criteria for measuring artificial intelligence, the Turing Test. Oh yeah, he also pretty much won World War II, but that's another story.

It was only after reading Alan's biography that I realized just how persecuted he was for being gay. He was, in fact, found guilty, in a court of law, of being homosexual, and was chemically castrated. He took his own life two years later, at the age of 41. It was so egregious that last year Gordon Brown publicly apologized, 55 years after his tragic death.

But his story started with a roll of tape, two characters, a pen, an eraser and an eye. And it was weirdly moving for me to see the machine in person, after seeing it my minds eye all these years.

Got Thermolene?

2010-03-17T10:26:00.000-07:00

I wrote about the abject insanity, and delirious optimism of home-made rocket cars in my entry Turbines, Hot Rods and the Optimism of the Space Age. There seemed to be a lot of similarity between the engines in the different vehicles. What were those cool ribbed spheres? How the heck did they work?

And then I learned about Turbonique.

"But there is one name that stands alone at the apex of the daredevilry supply industry: the Turbonique Company of Orlando, Florida.

Though the company no longer exists, mere mention of the name "Turbonique" still inspires a shudder of awe among drag racing enthusiast, the company's principle target market.

Even in the Wild West atmosphere of 1960s drag racing, Its products represented the zenith of no-compromise, crazyass crazy.

Recall Acme, that enigmatic mail order purveyor of catapults and jet skates to cartoon coyotes? Pikers, compared to Turbonique."

Turbonique made, among other things "thrust engines"...

Turbine powered "drag axles"....

and, of course, turbine powered "liquid driven superchargers."
All of these lovely devices were powered by a rocket fuel called Thermolene. As if pushing your car with a bomb, with a nozzle on it, was not crazy enough, they made superchargers, powered by nozzle bombs that are likely to also make your engine explode. That's two great explosions for the price of one. Thermolene indeed.

But that gave me an idea. I've been thinking about how to make a hot rod for 24 Hours of Lemons. Maybe this self powered turbocharger thing might work, only without the Thermolene, thank you very much. Why couldn't we build a leaf blower powered supercharger.

Looks like I'm not the first person to have this idea.

Pattern, Paper Folding and Me.

2010-03-16T15:26:00.000-07:00

A3 Animal B from michael schoner on Vimeo.
You know what they say about hammers. They think everything is a nail. I'm not sure what that makes me, but pattern and folded paper seem to appear somewhere in most of the projects I work on. There's something visceral, almost approachable about the topology of folded paper. Add pattern, and that topology starts to take on a life of its own.

I love the feeling of simultaneous form and flatness in these masks by Neterlands architect Michael Schoner. And there's something cool about doing work that is vaguely representational with such a thorough abstraction. But then again, maybe I just see nails

24 Hours of Lemons

2010-03-16T13:15:00.000-07:00

Talk about a liability waiver. The 24 Hours of Lemons is a race for $500 cars on real racetracks. As you can see, its quite a cool mix of sillyness, shade tree engineering and actual near death experiences.

Its real racing. And like all racing, its about cheating. Do you expect us to believe that sweet MR2 cost $500? And the austin mini with something crazy under the hood? Not a chance. At first I thought the same thing about the Jag XJS that was out there, but how broken does an XJS have to be to be worthless. Perhaps that's a retorical question.

That said many of the cars you'd think would be crawlers went well. Shout outs to the blue jeep cherokee and wienermobile toyota tercel. There was some nice driving out there.

Now we just have to figure out what we should run next year. Any suggestions?

Joy Riding

2009-12-08T19:12:00.000-08:00

Joy Rides! from Chris Luomanen on Vimeo.

Here's a blast from the past. These are projects I did for my graduate thesis at Stanford.

These Joy Rides are a series of objects that create unexpected, funny, thrilling, perplexing or scary (but benign) experiences when you play with them. Centipede Board is a skateboard that you turn by leaning forwards and back, not just side to side. The Devil's Shopping Cart is an uncontrollable vehicle. The more you try to control it, the more it goes out of control. The Human Catapult is designed to build nervous anticipation without real danger. And Palindrome is a land proa--a craft that is symetrical from front to back, not side to side. So instead of tacking through the wind, you just stop, reverse the rig and take off in reverse--always sitting on the windward side. Its my 21st century walap.

I couldn't show a couple of the other projects I did, because I tested them on preschoolers. So my bouncing disc shaped teeter totter and jump powered orange juicer are still back in the archives. Damned videography agreements.

The Food Cart of Museums

2009-10-23T10:02:00.000-07:00

The SF Mobile Museum is on the prowl, people. Like the entrepreneurial foodies who insert themselves into the fabric of the city with their pop up food cart food courts, the SF Mobile Museum is taking its message directly to its audience, with no walls to keep them out or the work in. I especially like that the current exhibit Genius Loci, works about places with resonance, is doing its part to make the locations it visits a bit more resonant.

All of this public art goodness is the work of Maria Mortati, who, in addition to curating the work for the show, has installed it at the Studio for Urban Projects in SF and The Denver Community Museum, and now wherever the hell she feels like it.

I walked over to Dolores Park to check it out during Mission Open Studios, and it was a really cool scene. It was attracting a lot of attention, but it felt totally at home. Maybe this inside-out museum thing has legs. It definitely goes with red wine in a paper Coke cup.

Model Maker Gets His Due

2009-10-21T12:08:00.000-07:00

Italian designers are renowned--especially the great masters from the magical third quarter of the 20th century. Folks like Achille Castiglioni, Enzo Mari, Ettore Sottsass and Marco Zanuso were revolutionary thinkers. But to bring those thoughts to life, they needed model makers. Giovanni Sacchi helped all those guys, and more, bring those thoughts to life with his hands. Designers today have unprecedented control of surfaces and forms. With CAD, I can, all by myself, take a concept from a thought to a ready to mold database. But that way of working is missing something. Its missing guys like Mr. Sacchi. He interpreted 2D drawings into 3D objects. And his very human touch--the way he broke an edge with sandpaper or worked a form with his chisel, necessarily left the hand of the model-maker in the design. Today, the person who ends up doing the CAD for the lead designer does the model maker's job. They interpret. They figure out the detailing. They ultimately build the surfaces that will make of break the overall effect. But for all the power and precision of CAD, there's something about an object that has been touched by a hand, and considered not just virtually, but actually. That feels good. At least it feels good to me.

I love the designed-by-a-patternmaker look too. That's the look that old shop equipment has; presses and mills and lathes. Its focused without being too self conscious. But here is some of that feeling AND Castiglioni!

So here's to you Giovanni. Celebrate his contribution to the world of design through the Giovanni Sacchi Archive. And thanks to Designboom for their story on this.

Making the most of the dimensions you have.

2009-10-20T15:48:00.000-07:00

My friend Andre sent me this AMAZING link to the work of Rinus Roelofs. I've done some work with things that fold and join in unusual ways, but this stuff is absolutely amazing. He's like a three dimensional M.C. Escher--carefully constructing a tessellation of identical pieces that nest together to make a surprising whole. Part japanese carpenter, part Bucky Fuller, Rinus sees pattern in a way few people do. Quickly, get over there and check it out. In the mean time, here are a few more objects to ponder.

Recession + Foodies + Twitter = Food Cart Scene

2009-10-06T15:58:00.000-07:00

Something amazing is happening in San Francisco. And I hear its happening all over the country. People who want to make a little cash in this depressed economy are turning their passion for food into a small business. But how do you find customers? The answer is they find you. By connecting with customers through social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, food carts (mostly they're folding tables) connect with their clientele in real time. And it works. This little gathering in our neighborhood park was PACKED. And our good friend Ana Carolina (second photo from the bottom) and her Brazilian Bites cart was sold out before the crowds dispersed. Cheap, delicious, unusual, capricious food on the fly is fun! Look for Brazilian Bites (of course), but don't forget to follow Soul Cocina, the Lumpia Guys and Smitten Ice Cream (made on the spot with liquid nitrogen!).

Familiar, but not the same.

2009-09-08T14:41:00.000-07:00

I love stickback chairs. If you are using solid wood (as opposed to metal or plywood or plastic), its probably the lightest, strongest way to build a chair. And, as is so often the case, that kind of efficiency exudes elegance. That's what good modernism does--express a synergy between materials, structure, form and people.

But sometimes modernism can get a bit sterile. Too much uniformity and austerity lacks warmth. I was lucky enough to visit the Eames House a few years ago and was taken aback by two things. One, it was small! They built it on a budget, and knew how to extract the most from the grand and cozy spaces they created. But the other thing was that it was a really, really warm feeling place. Ray and Charles appreciated that synergy between materials, form and people--not a particular style. That synergy permeated everything they did, and the objects and architecture they surrounded themselves with.

This family of stickback chairs by Lina Nordquist has that sense of warmth to me. They're mismatched enough to feel different from each other--but all have their own internal logic. It feels like a family--not a clone army. I like that. Its warm.

The Tenth Dimension and How to Get There...

2009-08-19T09:07:00.000-07:00

Wow. This is the best, most visual, explanation of the 10 dimensions (eleven if you count dimension 0) that encompass Everything with a capital E. Everything (with a capital E) is all possible timelines in all possible universes--the dimension that the super strings vibrate in.

When I was in High School, my outstanding geometry teacher (and dashiki wearing, former rocket scientist) Ed Murrell recommended that we read Flatland to help us to imagine the leap from 3 to 4 dimensions, and beyond. At the same time, I was obsessed with physics in general. I had been exposed to the very fine info-comic Einstein for Beginners, which was helping me to begin a lifelong struggle to grasp the interconnectedness of time, space and probability. Then in college, I read The Fourth Dimension by Rudy Rucker. And that really blew my mind.

But I guess the lasting impression of this journey is my continuing awe at the possibility of the universe (or should I say, universes). Just as Neanderthals probably thought fire was magic, this stuff seems absolutely fantastical, especially if you are, like me, a visual and tactile thinker. But this movie really gets it right. Stick with it, you'll be glad you did.

Genius Loci

2009-08-10T10:40:00.000-07:00

My old pal Maria Mortati is an exhibit designer and curator, in addition to being just generally hilarious, sweet and brilliant. I've contributed to things she has curated before like her awesome book and Maker Faire exhibition Power of the Prototype last year and the Bay area Furniture Art Show, back in 2003. So when she asked me to contribute something for her latest show Looking for Loci, I was happy to help out. But this time, I got the whole family involved.

Let me back up a little. Looking for Loci is a show about capturing the feel of a place that is really special to you. Everyone involved created a little diorama in a box (provided by Maria) in which to capture what was special about your Loci. I managed to turn this call for entries into an enforced family art day (what could be more fun?). When I asked my daughter Dinah what place is really special to her, first she said "going to sushi". When I asked for a place that was not a restaurant, she burst forth with this fantastic and magical scenario.

If I could go anywhere I would get shrunk down really small and live in a rabbit hutch. I would ride the bunnies all day long. And at night I would sleep with my head on their fluffy tails.

My wife, Rebecca was more concise.

Its the fridge. It contains life's greatest joys.

My loci was "in my head."

Sadly, my Genius Loci is in my head, which is like a big cluttered workshop with partially finished projects lying around all over the place. I go there to relax, pick up one of those dusty projects and putter. Sometimes things get done, sometimes I just make a bigger mess. I should probably get out more.

In any case, the project was a lot of fun. And the show is going kick off its SF debut at the Studio for Urban Projects on August 28th. So check it out.

Turbines, Hot Rods and the Optimism of the Space Age

2009-07-31T10:51:00.000-07:00

Back when space suits had laces on them, the world seemed to be careening towards the future in a way that car geeks could understand. Rockets and spyplanes were all about horsepower and plexiglas bubbles. Who knew that in the 21st century, you'd be using all that space technology to tell several hundred of your closest friends that you are waiting in line for a latte.

But I digress. In the 50s and 60s cars wanted to be airplanes and airplanes wanted to be rocket ships. So why mess around with some steam age relic like a piston engine? You need a turbine, man! Indy cars had had them. Chrysler was even trying to make a passenger car with a jet engine in it (which ran on almost anything, from vegtable oil to Tequila!). So it only makes sense that regular guys would be trying to power their choppers and hydroplanes with them. If you are crazy enough to make a turbine dragster, why not make it a 3 wheeler? Or you could upholster your battery box on your to match your turbine-cycle's ridiculously long seat. Why not? You're already a certified nut job. Here are the rest of the images. Thanks Boing Boing!

Pink Pyramid Passes On

2009-07-24T12:56:00.000-07:00

It has been over 8 years since I first stepped into this freaky pink pyramid, rising from the Michigan prairie. Steelcase's Development center is one of the weirdest buildings I have ever been in. Its radial symmetry made way-finding baffling at best. Its enormous central pendulum, skimming the surface of a slick black granite fountain was a bizarre centerpiece. But best of all, the tip of the pyramid glowed pink at night, like a beacon of gay pride in the heart of western Michigan. What else could it be?

While its not exactly my favorite building, I was sad to hear that it is being closed down as part of cost cutting at Steelcase. There's a sense of capriciousness that a pink granite pyramid represents that I, for one, will miss. Goodbye pyramid.

Aviation Eye Candy

2009-07-21T14:41:00.000-07:00

If you haven't been there, you really should check out xplanes. I don't have any penetrating insights here, besides the fact that the these folks were insane! Hey, isn't that the plane that the six million dollar man crashed in the second and third picture from top?

Be sure to check out the tag "nobody died." You gotta go one way or another! Unless of course, you are Steve Austin.

Surfing into the Future

2009-07-21T11:26:00.001-07:00

Surfboards are an ancient design. Nobody knows for sure when pacific islanders first started riding logs in the waves, but it was a while ago. And the recipe has been fairly consistent. Sure there have been variations in nose and tail shape, and various fin configurations, but that basic canoe-shaped slab with convex sides that the ancient Hawaiians invented has held up pretty well.

One of the things I love about surfboards is that they are still largely made by hand, one at a time, by skilled artisan builders. These designer/builders are largely guided by their eye and guesses supported by their experience on the water. So I was really excited to see Thomas Meyerhoffer's work on designboom. (Check out this article in the NYT as well.)

Here is a guy who has worked as a designer at Porsche and Apple, taking a crack at this ancient archetype. This is a classic form as function problem, approached by someone who is clearly facile in both areas. The breakthrough of his design comes from dividing the surfing experience up into two parts; tail riding and nose riding. By redefining the problem, he can see answers that nobody (that we know of) has thought of before. And people have been working on it for a while.

Clients sometimes balk when I suggest that a naive but inquisitive outsider can often see things that established experts miss. Surfing experts know what the acceptable range of surfboard shapes are. A naive outsider can create something unique, and sometimes groundbreaking, because they don't know any better.

Here's Thomas talking about the design in his own words.

The Gift of Speed

2009-06-05T16:20:00.000-07:00

Who is the luckiest husband on earth? It is, in fact, me. For my fortieth birthday, my wife, Rebecca, gave me a 3 day driving school at Jim Russel Racing School. This is not messing around in some hopped up mustings. This one is in open wheeled, carbon fiber, full ground effects, turbocharged mitsubishi powered F3 cars. Well, they're not really F3 cars because F3 cars are not this powerful. Seriously!

A series of "life events" involving, among other things, serious bodily injury and death, kept me away from my gift for over a year. But earlier this week it came to pass. I spent 3 whole days driving this astounding beast.

I was scheduled to take the class a month ago, but the cars were getting worked on, so the school gave me and a friend a karting class, as a thank you for being patient. Karting scared the crap out of me (and my friend!). I think its the rear-only brakes that make the car go nuts when you lock them up. I thought, "good lord, the formula cars are going to be undrivable." I'm here to report, they are not undrivable. Far from it.

Not that its easy. First I had to fit my generously proportioned 6'2" frame into the thing. My shoulders were squished together. The pedals were adjusted as far out as possible, and they were close. They took out the "seat" and threw in a 1' thick foam pad. I was unable to buckle my own seatbelt, because there was no place for my elbows to go. There is a safety collar that is supposed to support your helmet in a crash--but we didn't need it because my shoulders were doing that. I was the only one who came in after each session with his helmet covered in bugs and bits of tire. It was because I was sticking out of the car about 8 inches higher than anyone else!

Then we drove. The clutch has about 1/2" of engagement, and first gear is about the same ratio as 3rd in a street car. So suffice to say, there was some stalling. Ok, a lot of stalling. The straight cut gears in the transmission do not require the clutch, just a firm hand and excellent timing. "CLACK!!!" And the motor is insane! In race trim its over 300hp. In driving school trim, its about 225hp--the same as an F3 car. Perfect for beginners!

One of the first things you discover as you drive a car that has the power to weight ratio of a Mini with a Dodge Viper motor in it is that you can spin it with the throttle. I don't mean you can overcook a corner with the throttle. I mean you can just about spin it in a straight line, at most any speed, by stomping on the gas. But even more amazing are the brakes. This thing goes from 120+ mph in the straights, down to 45 for a hairpin in a few car lengths. Don't forget those downshifts!

I used to think I knew something about driving cars fast. My Dad taught me to drive fast as a teenager. We lived in the country, so there were plenty of twisty roads to practice on. In fact, I had learned and developed all kinds of bad habits from driving cars far from their actual limits. You drive the Jim Russel car badly near its limits, and it lets you know in no uncertain terms! More specifically, I use way too much steering input, because I don't focus on my braking into the corner to set up the car. Then I manhandle it with too much gas too early in the corner. Or should I say I USED to do those things. The last 3 days have taught me more about vehicle dynamics than the last 25 years. Huge thanks to Nico and Jeff, our patient, methodical instructors. By the end of the class, I was actually pushing the car safely, with a tolerable level of fear, and deep, transcendent, indescribable feeling of joy. Driving in a street car now feels like traveling on a barge.

Because its there, I guess...

2009-05-29T11:12:00.000-07:00

Why would someone want to break the world free-diving record? Its an exercise in self abuse. But I guess that's true of so many feats humans are tempted to undertake. Riding the Tour de France, climbing Everest and sailing non-stop single-handed circumnavigations are all tough rows to hoe. But there is something about free-diving that is so immediate. You are choosing to just about kill yourself with asphyxiation. Now that's commitment!

But when I watched this, I was mesmerized by the beauty of his form and rhythm. He looks like a creature that has been molded into a super-swimmer by eons of steady evolutionary pressure, like a sea turtle or a seal.

And then when he reaches the surface--is he about to pass out? Is he partially passed out already? Look at how long it takes him to get the energy up to wave his fist in the air.

Its absolutely impossible, unless you crochet...

2009-05-01T16:08:00.000-07:00

Feminine handicraft, euclid and relativity. Who would have guessed that these things reinforce, even explain one another? I remember learning about hyperbolic geometry in high school. But I didn't really understand it. I guess I shouldn't beat myself up about it because a century was spent trying to explain how it was impossible to model.

Then in 1997 a mathematician at Cornell, Dr. Daina Taimina figured out how to model it by crochet. And it turns out that models of hyperbolic structures were everywhere, from sea slugs to lettuce leaves.

"We live in a society that completely tends to valorize symbolic forms of representation, algebraic representations, equations, codes...but through this sort of modality...plastic forms of play, people can be engaged with the most abstract, high powered, theoretical ideas. The kind of ideas that normally you have to go to university to study in higher mathematics...but you can do it through playing with material objects."

I don't know what else there is to say. Lets play.

Big Daddy Rides Again

2009-04-08T10:41:00.001-07:00

Ed "Big Daddy" Roth is my hero. He was the most outrageous, vulgar, extreme, ridiculous and unprecedented automobile designer of all time. Harley Earl was inspired by the Jet Age. Roth was all about monstrosity, in every sense of the word. He wanted to shock and maybe even scare you.

But what I always loved about Ed, was that he figured out how to make the most with what he had--and he never had much. GM made history by building the first mass production fiberglass sports car, the Corvette, in 1953. By 1957 Roth was building fiberglass cars in his paint shop in LA. He would take a chassis, pile on plaster and shave it away until it was shaped like the car he wanted to make, and take molds for the fiberglass body off of that. When he built his first bubble car, he made the plexiglas bubble in a pizza oven. He invented metalic paint by grinding up fish scales, and mixing them in. Roth was a visionary, but he only cared about craft as a means to an end. He didn't fetishize the process of building. And his cars often broke just from the wear and tear of getting them on and off the trailer on the show circuit.

The video above is a recent homage to Roth called the Atomic Punk. It has all the stylistic earmarks of a Roth classic. But it was lovingly crafted from vintage GM body parts and hand formed sheetmetal. Its not thrown together by any stretch of the imagination. It was built by someone who definitely has a fetish for craft. And I like that too.

By the way, one of Roth's masterpieces was recently discovered in Tijauna. The Orbitron featured an array of red, green and blue headlights that were focused together to create white. It was the kind of hair brained scheme that only he could turn into a car. The recently discovered Orbitron had been used as a trash bin for an adult book store, before some devoted Roth-ite snatched it up. I hope they have a friend with a pizza oven.

What ISN'T a series of tubes?

2009-04-08T10:18:00.000-07:00

I remember going with my Mom to drive through banks in the '70s where you put your checks and other paperwork in them, and yelled at the teller through an intercom. I remember in High School, my Dad used to take me clothes shopping at Seafair, the former Georgia Pacific company store in Fort Bragg, California. Seafair was a sort of department store that sold mostly western wear. While I dreaded our visits from a fashion perspective, I was always fascinated by the awesome network of pneumatic tubes that sent cash and receipts from the various departments to the gilded cage in the center of the store, where they kept track of the money.

Here's a Pecha Kucha style slide show about the history of pneumatic tubes as a communication and delivery device. In our world of instant media gratification and endless possibilities, its hard to imagine how remarkable and game changing this kind of technology must have been in the 19th century. And I love the metaphor of the "desktop" pneumatic tube technology creating pneumatic tube intranets within companies and institutions.

What were the social implications of pneumatic tube technology? Did people send each other LOL messages? Was there pneumatic spam? Did anyone get a pneumatic tube from a Nigerian prince who was happy to share his fortune if you could spot him a few bucks?

Uh, sure, I'd call that 126.

2009-03-30T15:34:00.000-07:00

Wow. That looks super fun. 126mph is the new worlds record for sailing on land. And I thought I had the only proa land sailer! And not only is theirs a proa, but it uses aerodynamic ballast! To keep it from flipping over, the heeling force of the wing is counteracted by a horizontal foil shaped strut between the main body and the outer wheel, that's generating negative lift. So as the wing is trying to tip it over, the foil shaped strut is trying to push the outer wheel into the ground.

If you watch closely while he's setting the record, the both the wing and the strut get all willowy and soft looking. He's holding it right there, in that place before it explodes. Beautiful!

Congratulations Ecotricity. And as if it needs to be said, proas rule!

I guess I have to dig up my old Palindrome videos to celebrate!

Design Education in a Nutshell

2009-03-23T16:44:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a lot about design education lately. My friend Maria and I have been working on developing a prototype-centered class. Sort of a build-to-think kind of thing. In honor of this momentous occasion, I'm posting one of my all time favorite YouTube moments (other than this), Eric's Really Good Idea. The idealism! The obfuscation! The shattered dreams! The triumph of jargon!

"I don't have time to demoralize all of you individually, so lets just say I'm thoroughly disappointed in the lot of you...now who wants pudding?"

Those were the days...

Get Your Fix On

2009-03-19T15:39:00.000-07:00

Dutch design collective Platform 21 has done something you don't see that much anymore--they wrote a manifesto. Manifestos tend to be a bit petulant, and hence have a short life span (the communist one not withstanding). But this one has legs. Maybe its because it's good old fashioned stinginess repositioned as a mentality. I love it. I especially like #2, about designing for repair. Its no secret that durability is a far more potent sustainable practice than recyclability or even being made from recyclable materials.

Herman Miller's decision to make the Eames shells out of recyclable, but also more scratchable, less luxurious feeling plastic always bothered me. When was the last time you saw a fiberglass Eames shell in the garbage? My orange rocker is on its second base and third set of rubber pucks.

Design for repairability is a huge opportunity that spans from materials and finishes to creating objects simple enough to fix. For example, the heater broke in my 1999 BMW. I had to buy a $500 computer to fix it (and its still glitchy!), and have an expert replace it. When the heater broke in my 1969 Fiat, all it needed was a $15 piece of cable and 20 minutes of my labor. Modern cars have added feature after feature, and we have paid for that in weight and complexity. To help compensate for the cost of all that bloat, the car is designed to be snapped together once with a minimum of labor, without regard for the poor bastard who has to fix it.

We need repairability to become a mentality to get over our collective preference for shiny garbage over quality and character. Myself included.

Revised Website Preview!

2009-03-19T15:27:00.001-07:00

At long last my website has been updated to include some more recent work (or at least recent work that I can talk about publicly). Thanks Ed! So I'll preview one of the goodies from the site (click on "one offs" and then "hannes bridge" for more pix.

My friend and long time guitar tech Stephen White introduced me to Roland Hannes around 2002. Roland had invented a very clever bridge for electric guitars that was revolutionary in a couple of ways. For one, the individual saddles sit right on the wood top of the guitar—not a metal plate screwed to the top of the guitar. And there are a lot of other cool, painstakingly thought out features. I hooked him up with a machinist friend of mine, who helped him get a prototype built.

Roland licensed his invention to Schaller, an instrument hardware manufacturer in Germany. And in January of 2008 I had a chance to play one of his bridges myself. I was absolutely blown away. Unplugged, the guitar had a resonant, ringing, quality that I had rarely heard in a guitar. I decided on the spot that I needed to build up a guitar around the bridge. I had been jonesing for a telecaster anyway.

The only problem was, I didn’t like the aesthetics of the anchor block of the bridge. It just didn’t look right to me. The saddles and anchor don’t speak the same design language. The saddles are boxy and the anchor in Roland's version was blobby. And there is NOTHING blobby about a telecaster. So I redesigned the anchor. The result is a bridge that looks A LOT better, and is more comfortable to play. Too bad I didn’t have a chance to redesign it before it went into production.

But at least mine looks right.

Happy Birthday Italdesign

2009-03-18T08:42:00.000-07:00

Giorgetto Giugiaro drew the 70's. Along with Marcello Gandini, he was the master of the folded paper styling that defined the cars of that era. Mr. Giugiaro drew the the original VW Golf and Lotus Esprit--two wildly different cars which are almost re-proportioned versions of the same design. And they've stayed relevant ever since with a slew of hits that include the Lancia Delta, Fiat Panda, Saab 9000, Isuzu Impulse, Subaru SVX and Alfa Brera. That's a hell of a run!

Check out this fantastic (but flash based) video voyage through Italdesign's proud history.

At least you can wiggle when you want to.

2009-02-25T14:52:00.000-08:00

I have long been a proponent of perch/sit/stand workstations. I have one here at Thing Tank World Headquarters. Mine is hacked from a drafting table, some kitchen shelf stand offs from Ikea, a piece of plywood and a perch/sit chair. The mighty Aeron Chair, and the "ergonomic" chairs that followed in its wake, told us that it would be ok to sit still for 8 hours a day, because they were so supportive. The truth is support is great when you need to rest. The rest of the time, support is a nice way to say "atrophy inducer."

Its not the position you are in, its the ability to change positions easily and frequently that makes a workstation comfortable. And nowhere is that more important than in classrooms. Teachers are always trying to find that middle ground between kids falling asleep and going nuts. Maybe increasing the width of that middle ground is the answer.

“At a stand-up desk,” Ms. Seekel said, “I’ve never seen students with their heads down, ever. It helps with being awake, if they can stand, it seems. And for me as a teacher, I can stand at their level to help them. I’m not bent over. I can’t think of one reason why a classroom teacher wouldn’t want these.”

“We just know movement is good for kids,” Ms. Bormann said. “We can measure referrals to the office, sick days, whatever it might be. Teachers are seeing positive things.”And don't even get me started on kinesthetic learning.

Here's an awesome article in the New York Times about a school in Minnesota that is implementing these desks, and the academics that are studying them. In the words of the director of Education Minnesota Foundation, a teacher's union arm;

“We’re talking about furniture here,” she said, “plain old furniture. If it’s that simple, if it turns out to have the positive impacts everyone hopes for, wouldn’t that be a wonderful thing?”

Design nerds have always thought that plain old furniture could have positive impacts. Its nice to see some regular folks joining the fold.

Thanks to my loving wife, for pointing out this article.

The Art of Explaining: World Economic Meltdown Edition

2009-02-25T09:03:00.000-08:00

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

A friend sent me this excellent visualization of the word economic meltdown. For me, this is an exercise in cognitive dissonance. On one hand, I love the way the words and pictures tell a story. The icons are awesome. The interplay of sign, motion and narrative are superb. Unfortunately what is being described is INSANELY SCARRY! But its a story that must be told.

My Dad read somewhere that when the generation that lived through the depression are all dead, we'll have another depression. I don't know if the line of causation is that straight, but there is a moment of insight in there. Its weird to think of myself, old(er) and curmudgeonly(er), scolding the youngsters about fiscal responsibility. I guess you had to be there.

Kinetic Sculpture is the International Language

2009-02-20T09:17:00.000-08:00

Its grown men playing with cardboard boxes that make a little flag do a little dance. Those grown men happen to be monks. And its so beautiful.

Making a little machine, also known as a toy, is such a basic human instinct. That's why kids dig 'em. And when are we a better version of ourselves than when we can think with an open heart, like a kid.

And yes, it did remind me of Rolf.

Here's a link to the exploratorium blog where the video lives.

And here's a link to more Cardboard Automata.

And here's a link to a modern master of the form, Arthur Ganson.

Understanding Scott McCloud

2009-02-09T16:54:00.000-08:00

In grad school we were counseled to read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It was supposed to be a groundbreaking work on design. I thought that the thinking was stale. Yes, art and science are locked in an embrace of intuition and craft. I thought that that was a given--not a revelation. What modern person with any love for either science or art was worried about them being friends?

But that prompted a conversation about what WAS the best book about design. My friend Daniel Lee told me I needed to read Understanding Comics, and I can say with certainty that it changed my life. Scott McCloud's ability to articulate the cognitive mechanisms of comics came at the same time that I was realizing that all design was about experience. So this was a powerful, emotive tool for sketching experience--both to make it clear to one's self, and to communicate it to others. But there was something even deeper in there. It was the idea that the smiley face could be anyone, but a photorealistic drawing of Prince Valiant is only ever Prince Valiant. The more ambiguous your sketch or prototype, the more universal its application. THAT was groundbreaking for me.

So anyway, I saw that Scott spoke at TED this year. Here it is.

Why Ukuleles?

2009-02-09T14:31:00.000-08:00

Here in the 21st century, regular folks can create just about any kind of media they want and send it to everyone over the internet. We tell the world that we are brushing our teeth on twitter, and we can use our telephones as a level. So what do we do? We play the ukulele in greater and greater numbers. Or maybe that's just the impression you get if you check boing boing as obsessively as I do.

There is something about the simplicity of singing along with the ukulele in an overproduced world. Its also a little silly, so you don't have as much pressure to be a virtuoso (though there are plenty). Its an instrument that is at the service of the song. And its usually a simple, pretty song, somewhere between tin pan alley and hall and oates. Unless its a Bow Wow cover.

I just think that its fascinating that this is what post modernism sounds like.

Ibex at OR

2009-02-09T13:56:00.000-08:00

So here are some pictures of the fixtures I did for Ibex Outdoor Clothing. They debuted at the Outdoor Retailer show in Salt Lake City last month. These designs reflect Ibex's core attributes of premium materials, quiet modernity and artisan quality. They were thrilled with the results, and are currently working to roll these out as a store-within-a-store for their products. The top one is a freestanding rack with shelves (which was unfortunately next to a wall in the limited space of their booth). The center one is a 3 part reconfigurable table for displaying small items. The outer tables rest on the center one to reduce the number of legs--and float on strips of self adhesive felt. I like the way a little discombobulation breaks up the straightforward form. And the units on the bottom lean against the wall--an underutilized area in outdoor retail.

The Ibex folks are fantastic clients. They know who they are. They understand design. And they are just cool folks to hang out with. Plus they taught me that there really is good sushi in salt lake city!

Everything as Watts

2009-02-04T10:01:00.000-08:00

@ Yahoo! Video

What is green? What do we do about this whole climate change thing? Where do you start? My friend Mike Lin and I were chatting about energy conservation and he recommended I check out this video. Wow.

We are inundated with marketing aimed at making us feel better about consumption, by recommending a slightly different flavor of consumption. How do you tell what will help and what is pony sugar?

MacArthur Genius Grant winner, Dr. Saul Griffith, lays it out in watts. How much power is embodied in everything you consume or otherwise fund? A lot has been said about embodied energy--but what about durability? What about time? Power is energy over time, so the embodied power in an object is the embodied energy over the useful life. Saul suggests that we should all be issued a Rolex and a Mont Blanc pen at birth and told that those are our timekeeping and writing instruments. And don't loose them! I'm serious.

Durability is the greenest quality a product can have. How can we make durable things desirable over the long term it takes to pay for them, energy wise?

Oh, sorry for the clipped video above. To see it in all of its wide screen glory, go here.

Out The Door

2009-01-20T15:00:00.001-08:00

Man, what a great day. Obama is the President (OBAMA!). Yesterday I boxed up and palletized my latest design + build project. And today it reached its destination in tact. Also, OBAMA!

They're prototype retail fixtures for my latest client, Ibex. Ibex makes stuff you might expect to be fleece, like jackets and base layers, but they're made of wool. What's remarkable is how un-wooly they feel. Its kinda silky--but still stretchy.

My studio mate Steve Barretto has been working with Ibex on their brand identity, communications and packaging. Ibex wanted to think about how they could differentiate their modern, artisnal, high quality, materialicious products with retail fixtures that would reflect those values. We had a chat about what they needed the fixtures to do, where they might work in the retail environment, who they are as a company, and soon enough I was designing fixtures for their booth at the Outdoor Retailer Winter Market in Utah.

We signed off on the project a week before the holidays, for a drop dead delivery date of January 19. There are 4 unique designs, but the total order was for 7 pieces. And it was a design + build project so even after the design is in the can, I would have to manage the vendors, do the logistics, check assemble everything, fix anything that's wrong, document the assembly for instructions, disassemble it, pack it up on a palate and write instructions. It was a tight schedule. There were some anxious moments about the sheetmetal getting done on time. But hey, now my daughter can brag that she has been to a powder coating shop (that worked on a Saturday--thanks Miguel!).

I'll have lots of pictures of them in situ at OR soon. I'm going there to go to bask in the splendor of the Ibex booth, and look for some more companies that might be ready for design help.

In the mean time. Here's a sneak preview of one of the designs. (OBAMA!)

(OBAMA!)

Rocket J. Squirrel, literally.

2009-01-20T12:45:00.000-08:00

wingsuit base jumping from Ali on Vimeo.

Its amazing how creative, curious and absolutely nuts people are. We've had parachutes for a while now. According to Wikipedia:

The first implemented parachute was created in 1595 by the Croatian inventor Faust Vrančić, who named it Homo Volans (Flying Man). Twenty years later, he implemented his design and tested the parachute by jumping from a tower in Venice in 1617

Ok, so we have been playing with parachutes for almost 400 years. And yet we are still figuring out new ways to mess around with falling. These guys are flying across cliff faces, like surfers dragging their hand in the water, deep in the curl of a wave. But the water is a lot harder in this case. I am simultaneously thrilled and terrified by the whole idea.

But my question is "why now?" The technology has existed for a while. Is it cultural? Do you need to have a certain number of base jumpers in order to develop enough rivalry for people to start getting "bored" by clearing the hard bits?

Thanks to Boing Boing for posting this.

It was spanky

2009-01-14T15:04:00.000-08:00

I took my sister Paula, her boyfriend Peter and my bother Pete out sailing on the bay on a breezy day. Actually, it was, as we say in the sailing world, spanky. It blew a steady 25-30 knots and gusts were hitting 38 measured at Angel Island, according to the wind and tides website. My brother Pete and I have been out lots of times, but Paula and Peter had not. Also, we were going out on a much lighter, fancier, faster boat than we had in the past. Also it was spanky.

I had every intention of sailing out the gate, but as we approached the big red bridge, the waves got bigger. And bigger. And then my intention changed. I decided to turn downwind, and head somewhere a little mellower. As I started turning, I eased out the mainsail, when it happened. An asshole. An asshole is where you get a little twist in a rope, and it makes a loop. Then that loop tries to go through one of the fancy pulley thingies and jams it. So this lighter, fancier, faster boat proceeds to lay down on her side, ignoring the pleas of the rudder to turn downwind. I think Paula was scared, because I was a little scared.

Eventually I unjammed the blockage and the main went out and the lighter, fancier, faster boat took off like a shot. Once we caught our breath, my brother took this video. We were surfing big swells just a moment before, but this was pretty good too.

Thanks, Pete, for having a waterproof camera and using it!

Check it out, but turn the sound down, its noisy.

Look Ma, I'm 95th out of 3481

2009-01-13T09:18:00.000-08:00

Or should I say at least 95th out of 3481. I entered the designboom/Plantronics Sound Innovation contest for two reasons. I love designboom. And Plantronics is a regular client of mine, and I thought it would be fun to win their contest too. But alas, I was merely shortlisted, along with 95 others.

My entry, shown above, is an attempt to break out of the boxes connected by wires paradigm that speakers are still stuck in. The red felt matt that connects the right and left speakers hides the wires and adds some nice materiality. I like how it hugs tabletop, while the corners resist, and reach for the sky. This is what I want under my 24" apple monitor at the studio.

Here's the link to my entry

The winner?

Kimming Yap and Yulia Saksen from singapore were the winners. I like the volume control interface--that's nicely done. I do not like its relationship to the iPod. It looks like its about to break off. Like a lot of otherwise good products, it is a nice sculpture on its own, but gets a bit lost in context. Here's the link.

Here are a couple I dug.

Janne Salovaara (ya think she's finnish?) knocked this one out of the park. I love it. It couldn't be simpler. The speakers inside the perforated sphere point out in all directions. Stereo be damned! But if you imagine these hanging like (or with) light fixtures, it works. Check out the rest of the photos here.

Timothy Rundle from New Zealand did these nice, clean revolves of the speaker icon, and then sliced a bit off so they wouldn't roll around. Love it.

Here's his entry.

So I guess 95th out of 3481 aint THAT bad. Especially when Alberto Meda is judging! Alberto is the man.

its a Walap, actually

2009-01-12T15:20:00.000-08:00

I am a proa nut. I built the first, and as far as I know only, land sailer proa. I think WAY too much about proas. And what's even weirder, is that there has been an explosion of folks who think way too much about proas around the world, thanks to the electronic interweb.

Ok, so a proa is a two hulled sailboat, kind of like a catamaran. Unlike a catamaran the hulls are not the same size--one is little and it stays on the windward side. Instead of tacking, you flip the rig around and sail off in reverse. They are just as symetrical as other boats--its just that they are symetetrical front to back, not side to side.

Sounds like a hassle (and it is) but here's the catch. Proas are faster than other boats, pound for pound. See, instead of carrying around a big heavy thing under water (a keel), like modern monohulls do, they carry a not very heavy thing next to them (the small float, or ama). When the wind hits the sails, it wants to lift the ama up, out of the water. Its like taking a broomstick and putting a small weight at the end. The further out you put that weight, the harder it pulls. Then you get to tie a rope to your weight and attach that rope to the rig--so all the pull from the rig goes straight to the weight. Pretty cool.

20th century trimarans focused on the other direction--pushing hulls down into the water, and using buoyancy to push back. Don't get me wrong, its a great plan. But as you push into the water, you create drag, and big stresses on the boat. As it powers up, the proa loses drag as the ama lifts, and it can be made pretty flimsy (=light) because of that cool rope that lifts up the ama. Its a recipe for fast.

And who wrote that recipe? Pacific Island Seafarers devised these ingenious craft thousands of years ago. Perhaps the most amazing thing (or the reason they exist at all) is the quality of the materials they had on hand--breadfruit logs and coconut husks. Seriously. Captain Cook wrote about seeing proas shooting around at 20 knots, while his ships were lucky to make 8 and effectively didn't go up wind.

So imagine my surprise when I saw a Marshallese Walap (the king of proas) bobbing away in the mouth of the Hanalei River in Kauai last summer. My first proa-nerdy thought was," hey, that's not a Hawaiian craft." I learned that she was built by Robert Po, a Hawaiian Independence activist and cultural leader type. It struck me as strange that they would not build a local traditional craft, but hey, maybe they got caught up in the whole proa fever thats sweeping the globe.

She looks to be built from Koa or some other gorgeous Hawaiian hardwood. A hell of a lot nicer than breadfruit wood, I say. Sure would love to go out on that beauty.

To learn more about Proas (and then think way too much about them) check out Michael Schacht's Proafile. Here's his awesome proa primer link.

Oh, and here's my proa land sailer, Palindrome.

Illegal Racing for the Whole Family

2009-01-12T13:25:00.000-08:00

We'd been checking it out for a few years now. Each time we'd say, "yeah, we'll make a car and run next year." But this year we did it. We built a car for the annual Bernal Heights Illegal Soap Box Derby. I've had plenty of hair brained schemes for freaky gravity racers, but I wanted to go family style--with my 6 year old daughter, Dinah. I wanted her to be able to drive, but I wanted to be able to step in in an emergency and take over. And I didn't want the instability and potential crazy handling of the old axle-with-a-bolt-in-the-middle steering. Whether operated with ropes or your feet, that can get weird fast. I remember from my own go cart that my dad and I used to take up in Tilden Park when I was a kid. And, I wanted to have a hardware store aesthetic. In my professional life, I have mocked up plenty of stuff with plywood, some 2x4s and deck screws. I love that stuff. Also, it seems like the right level of resolution for a father/daughter project. She can weld next year.

So I designed a tandem, dual stick cart--D in the front, me in the back. The front wheels are casters with little tabs on the back to lock them. I drilled some holes in the tabs and used those as steering arms, connected by an aluminum L channel. The two control sticks rotate a shaft (2x2 with holes in the ends) that runs down the centerline of the car. The shaft has a little stick poking out the bottom, that moves a pin right and left in a vertical slot in the L channel between the wheels. Simple, direct, and it works great.

My buddy Jon Carver, who is always looking for a fun project, came over for the first night of building. I finished the frame before he got there, and we got it built all the way through steering by the end of the first night. That's him going all cowboy in the second picture from the top.

Next I added seat-backs and Flintstone-style-brakes with a lot of help from Dinah (who does not like the sound of skill saws, if you were wondering). The painting was handled by D and her Mom--but the art direction was definitely D's.

So race day came and we strapped the beast to the roof of our car. But when we got to the top there were park rangers there saying that there would be no racing. A "neighbor" had complained about last year's race to an un-named city official and managed to ruffle enough feathers to get the park service to intervene this year. The officers at the bottom of the hill said that Tom Ammiano, our supervisor had tried to intervene on behalf of the racers and fans but the damage had been done. The park service could not turn a blind eye because of our "neighbor."

There were a lot of disappointed burning man types, families with hardware store projects (like us) and shop nerds that day.

We went home, defeated. But the race did end up going on somwhere else--no doubt a lot less safe than the cordoned off piece of hill in Bernal. You can read more about what happened here.

But hey, we had fun. Here's a video of D and I taking a practice run the weekend before.