Much nothing about ado

Well a little while back I posted my first post in just over a year. As I said I've been quite busy.

I've been working on a couple of toys, fun, challenging (First time I've worked on toys) tight budgets, shot deadlines. Always good to learn about new things.

I gave a work related learning workshop at Richard Lander School for the year 10 pupils studying Design Technology, resistant materials and I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed that. Those young folk really got to grips with some model making, they also had really great ideas, but perhaps most encouraging of all, they really understood how design has created many problems for our society but how design also will deliver some answers to some serious commercial, social and environmental issues.

I've been working on a long standing consumer product design project, helping James Williams of Keebunga get ever closer to bringing his waterproof car key case to market. With budgets getting tighter and funding being ever more difficult to acquire, it's been a long haul but the end is finally in sight. Just about to receive final pre-production samples and the toolmaker ran into some difficulties. Thankfully they've spotted the error, which was too high a barrel pressure on the injection moulding machine, so a couple of mould tweaks and another run this Saturday means James is on the cards for receiving samples on Tuesday 17th August. After some pressure testing with help from the very nice chaps at AP Valve in Helston, its off to do some field trials (shouldn't that be sea trials?). Some product photography from the very lovely Anj at Andrea Michele Photography, in Truro. (OK I'm biased, she's my missus), a bit of coding to the website by Jump Media, a bit of graphic design for the website layout and then let the sales begin (much nervously finger crossing).

I've been doing some SEO work on my own website and experimenting with graphic layouts, though still not happy with it, (I doubt Ill every be happy with it to be truly honest). I had most of the test re-written for me by the very excellent copymonkey company in Bude, owned by Martin Dorey, who has himself written a cracking book called 'The Campervan Cookbook' where Martin shares his insight and skill in the art of two burner hob culinary creations.

On and off I've been working on a EV (Electric Vehicular) concept with some help from the very tallentd concept artist, Phil Pendlebury of Sursurus Art. More on this at some point in the hopefully not too distant future.

Is there anything else?

Oh yes. I'm happy to report that the delivery of the first 10,000 Frontier stoves have been delivered to Shelterbox, to help those affected by some of the most terrible natural disasters in Haiti, Pakistan, Chile and others. More stoves are on the way.

On a personal note, I was particularly pleas at how well the project went. Straight from Drawings to production standard. No changes where necessary. We worked hard to produce a specification on the Frontier stove that would ensure repeatable and economical manufacture. I would like to say and give a big thank you to Matt, Jeanette and Dan of Gait International who did so much to help communicate with the manufacturer and ensure product arrived on time and to budget.

Design Council are busy bees apparently

Recently I read an article on the Design council’s website written by the CEO David Kester advocating support for design businesses to help boost the economy, as indeed we should expect of the Design council

It was a good article by and large. However I found myself agreeing more with the commentators than I did with the article itself.

This is what David had to say:-

“So what does
this mean for economic policy? It needs to say, ‘people first’. The
customer or the citizen must be at the very centre of everything we
create. Our companies and public services have to provide more choice and
better experience using the best and latest technologies.”

Well, as for giving customers what they want, I'm reminded than a once great industrialist said "If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse".

Now I'm not suggesting that all customers don't know what they want, but I am certain all customers know what they don't want. Also the same with choice is in my experience somewhat different. So many times too much choice confuses and delays decision. Mostly these pitfalls are circumvented by good design. Sadly most design is actually quite poor.

Never fear however, because given time enough, the consumer let us know what designs are bad. The article upholds Apple as some sort of bastion of all things good with design and customer service, but just look how long it took for the public to proclaim the short comings of the illustrious Apple's iPhone4.

The article also slated UK manufacturing stating

“on what should
we build our (economic) plan? What will be our bread and butter for the
next hundred years? And please don’t say manufacturing because the numbers
just don’t stack up. “

Well I’m quite staggered. Yes its true our manufacturing has declined from 25% of 50 years ago to 9% of GDP today, but those that remain are some of the very best in the world and compete well on price and much better on quality. What good is a product in a world that is sustainability aware, if the cheap import lasts but a year or the alternative at twice the money lasts five or more? Consumers are becoming increasingly aware not just of environmental sustainability, but more recently of economic sustainability. Here in the UK we are at the cutting edge of sustainable design.

And finally; to echo the sentiments of one of the commentators, Maxine Horn et.al. regarding funding for UK businesses. I am increasingly frustrated that my clients looking for some assistance find the bureaucratic and time consuming hoops they have to leap through, to finally get a refusal because they have asked for too little seems to me that the many events (media friendly parties) that are staged are more focused on protecting the organisations own funding stream than they are in helping others. One I know of has a £9m budget to help 50 businesses get funding. Yes, that’s right, they don’t actually give any funding, they only help companies get it from another source and thus far have been alarmingly ineffective at anything other than quaffing champagne.

As a QANGO we could assume that the DC is vulnerable to cuts in funding, but then I suppose it depends on who writes the reports and who they in turn know as to how vulnerable the DC really is. Personally I see it much the same as others. An expensive toothless tiger more interested in media exposure to help retain its own place in the system.

If I am wrong then the DC should put its money where its mouth is and, to quote, the Design Council’s £150,000 per year CEO, David Kester;

“That means taking some risks and backing key sectors rather than picking winners. Here one has to make a distinction between the sources of wealth and the enablers that we will depend on.”

Then how about this? Start putting funds into the bee hive and stop spending on the bee keeper

You can read the article here

Calling from a taxi

Have you ever been in the back of a taxi cab and needed to make an important call only to find you have left your mobile phone at home or your battery is flat?

Well if you happen to be in London or Birmingham city centre and you're lucky enough to hail one of the 100 O2 branded black cabs kitted out with an O2 Taxi-phone in addition to charging units compatible with most O2 phones.

Taximedia was commissioned by O2 to develop the advertising using their 'supersides' product which sees the cab beautifully painted with company branding.

Taximedia approached KeyMT one of Europe's biggest and most respected muti-media specialist to develop the hardware required to support the PR campaign.

In turn KeyMT came to Buff to design and develop the integration of the Motorola car phone electronics into the taxi interior.

With a lead time of one week and a budget of just £100 per taxi, Buff really had their work cut out and pulled out all the stops in order to meet the very tight deadline.

Buff sent a section of the cab interior trim to Arrk France to be scanned, generating point cloud data as a reference surface allowing the phone fascia to fit snugly against the trim. Whilst the Motorola electronics where reverse engineered by Buff.

A new fascia, and new keypad silicone membrane where designed to reflect the O2 logo and the back light illumination LED's where changed from green to blue to match in with O2 branding.

The 3D CAD files where sent to Arrk's UK rapid prototype facility to test out the fit and function of the proposal before silicone tooling was produced to vacuum cast the 100 fascias.

Delivered on time and on budget Buff are proud to have been associated with KeyMT and the O2 'Cab Phone'

Praying for a Mantis

If like me you've got four kids then you'll know how difficult it can be to keep track of where the TV remote has gone. Is it down the back of the sofa? Under the sofa? In the toy box? Maybe the baby has finally managed to eat the entire thing, rather than just gnawing at the edge and dribbling on it. Who knows?



Well up and coming talented industrial designer Siona Ward perhaps has the answer. Her initial Apple Mac like concept is now taking shape in the form of "Mantis" a foot operated remote control.



The design has evolved in to an advanced concept
that has realistic prospects of being manufactured and marketed is the guise shown with a bent acrylic coffee table and the remote control unit clipped over the top. Of course the unit could be engineered to be something of a universal fit to a variety off coffee table styles, thus opening up the opportunities to sell to a wider target audience.

Furthermore, with a good user interface I can see this project having advance menu driven actions that could control not only the TV, but also a plethora of consumer electronics that fill the average home.

Siona has entered her Mantis remote control coffee table for the James Dyson Award and I'm sure she would appreciate it if you readers (are there any?) would take a look and perhaps consider voting for her.

I hope this hits the shops; because if it does I'm heading straight down to the electricals store to get me one, then I don't have to hide the remote from the kids anymore, because when I do I can never remember where I put the flipping think, so I'm praying for a Mantis.

The Passing of a legend

Don't panic, this isn't an obituary for Phillipe Starke, Dick Powell or Richard Seymour. No, but the family is sad non the less, because on Monday Freddie the Hamster passed away.

So why mention that on a blog about design? Well I said Freddie was a legend (named after famed comedian Freddie Starr) and this is because not only was he a little crazy in his antics (no he didn't bite the head off a human... it was just a joke that the press got hold of, he was going to sue you know) but Freddie was a legendary design guru. Oh yes, Freddie knew a cool design when he saw it, he might not have had any RayBan's (do you know how difficult it is to get RayBan's hamster size?) but he did have a Habitrail Ovo Suite... very swish.

Now in my humble opinion (me humble? opinionated yes, but humble?) the Ovo is a fantastic combination of form and function. it is clear that the designers, engineers, marketing and research guys have put a lot of hard work into the Ovo. The clever way that the tubes use a single moulding that is mirror image across a plane normal to the split line means only one moulding is needed to make the two part assembly. The ease of assembly so the kids can take it apart to clean out the hamsters old bedding (do you seriously know any kid that looks after the family pet?) and the array of add on accessories such as a training wheel, a mini maze and a sleeping pod et.al.

However I do have to temper my enthusiasm with the knowledge of having lived with the Habitrail Ovo, the material has proven a little fragile, more especially on the large 'helmet visor' like cover of which two were broken. OK it was misuse, well, that is if you consider miss use being an 8 year old dropping it on to a linoleum floor from waist height, or Mrs Buff bumping into it with the Dyson? Personally I don't think that could be considered misuse. We industrial designers should design not only for manufacture but also for living with, and that means understanding how people use things. In the past perhaps these things didn't matter in what has been a 'throw away society', but these days of personal and corporate social responsibility to each other and the environment, do we really want to be designing product so fragile as they need replacing before even the warranty runs out?

Another gripe we had with the Habitrail Ovo has been all the little nooks and crannies that trap dirt and can't easily be cleaned out, especially the patented connecting rings which overtime jam up and become stiff to turn the locking mechanism, but also wear rapidly and fail to grip the tubes the result being the penthouse suddenly becomes a bungalow and the whole thing swings down under its own weight.

That said, the Habitrail Ovo is still a cool if a tad expensive design with only few minor flaws. Still, I think industrial designers can do better, should do better, must do better

Inspiration

As an ID professional with a leaning towards the more technical aspects of industrial design, from time to time I feel a need to refresh my creative thinking, get new ideas, open myself up to new forms. Over the years my designs have moved from rather a geometric, almost cubist style towards more organic and free flowing forms.

Whilst I recognise that I am very much a "form follows function" thinker, in order to bring more creativity into my consultancy practice, I employ various people where a client needs a more free thinking or conceptual approach.

For personal inspiration I often find I turn not to a fellow industrial designer but to artists and in particular sculptors who also work in a 3D world but at arguably a higher level of right brain thinking.

One such sculptor I often look to is my good friend Andrew Thomas whose work can be found at http://www.3dsculptor.com/ . Andy's work sometimes puzzles me, sometimes surprises me and occasionally I have a little aversion when I see a juxtaposed design such as "Reason", that I often find turns gently and slowly to admiration.

In fact I solicited Andy's advice whilst working on the Keebunga project for James Williams. Although the form of the Keebunga project was dictated by its function, some of its detailing owes a little of its aesthetics to the inspiration of Andrews "Unity" and "Hidden Depths".

So my advice to aspiring students, amateurs and seasoned professionals alike is, get down to your local museum, go to the library and borrow some books, immerse yourself in a creative world beyond supermarket shelves stacked with steam irons, jug kettles and coffee makers. If you do I guarantee it'll change the way you look at design, the way you create, you'll become better and I wager happier too.

This is how caravans should look

Over on Product Design forums, Rob Villa has produced a stunning concept of a brighter caravaning future, he says

"My design is inspired by airstreams and 50s style, highlighted by the whitewall
tyres and wheel covers, and the sleek airstream form and aluminium band and dark
windows"

The interior is modern and sophisticated with a bedroom located above the main living area created by an electrically operated pop up roof, access to this bedroom space is provided via the moveable ladder at the end of the kitchen area.

There is a comfortable sized bathroom and a clean kitchen with fold out breakfast bar area. In the main living area there is a sofa which also doubles as a bed with a second slide out mattress and stackable chairs provide more seating options. Additional space is provided via the fold down rear panel which gives a decking area which can be used as both an inside and outside space.

Having worked in the caravan industry myself I would conclude that the time is ripe for manufactureres to develop their model ranges using Rob's design as inspiration. For sure production models are bound to look somewhat different after concessions are made to manufacturing and market research but who wouldn't want to holiday in something so fantastic looking? I know I would!