Stuck at O’Hare? Check Out the Top Dog Posters

Once you pass through security, Chicago’s O’Hare International Terminal has little to offer. A few vending machines and a barren mile or so of concourses stretching in either direction. You can walk, or you can sleep. I chose to walk.

After trekking the north concourse, I headed south, where posters began to bloom on the walls. These were not your beach-and-palm-tree images. They were colorful, whimsical works of art announcing a concert in Mexico City or promoting peace or literacy in the U.S.

Apparently, in 2008, Chicago had held its first International Biennial Poster Competition (CIBP), which had attracted an amazingly large and diverse number of entries from around the world. Winners had been exhibited in the Daley Bicentennial Park in downtown Chicago.

I was looking at the afterglow—“Top Dogs: Works of the 11 Jurors of the CIPB”—and these jurors themselves comprised a star-studded roster of artists from Japan, Mexico, France, Israel, and Canada.

And there, among the best work of some of the best graphic artists in the world, was a 1978 poster by John Massey for Herman Miller’s Eames Aluminum Group Soft Pad Chairs.

“Design luminary” John Massey had been the Top Dogs’ top dog—the head juror for the competition. This poster, as sophisticated and understated in black and white as the furniture it was promoting, seemed like a tip of the hat from one grand master of design to another.

You just never know what you’ll find hanging around in an airport during a long layover.

The Science of Sitting

Recently, the Associated Press distributed an article about how “sitting too much could be deadly.” A number of regional newspapers, including my hometown Chicago Tribune picked it up. As a furniture industry veteran and seating researcher for the better part of two decades, it was too broad—and dire—a statement for my personal comfort.

In helping designers like Bill Stumpf and Jeff Weber to develop Herman Miller products—from stacking chairs, such as Caper, to high-performance work chairs, such as Embody—I’ve learned that sitting, comfort, and health are not so cut-and-dried.

In the 1990s I began using pressure map technology, which visualizes what the seat and sitter interface looks like—and how it changes depending on seat construction and the posture of the sitter. These changes translate to comfort or discomfort for the user.

More recently, in the course of our Embody chair development, I commissioned researchers at both the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and Milwaukee’s Marquette University, who measured the amount of oxygen in the blood flowing to and from subjects’ lower extremities and heart rate–key health measures. It turns out, both improved when users sat in the Embody chair, versus other chairs, doing the same seated tasks in both.

So, it’s not a simple question of sitting down or standing up—but where and how you’re sitting.

In His Own Words: Charles Eames

A compact little book called 100 Quotes by Charles Eames is full of insights from the designer that apply not only to life behind the drawing board, but beyond it as well. Some examples:

#2: Eventually everything connects—people, ideas, objects…the quality of the connections is the key to quality per se.”

#20: “We’ve always been aware of not…attempting to solve the problem of how people should sit, but rather accepting the way people do sit …and operating within that framework.”

#40: “We worked very hard at…enjoying ourselves. We didn’t let anything interfere with what we were doing—our hard work. That in itself was a great pleasure.”

#53: “The role of the designer is that of a very good, thoughtful host anticipating the needs of his guests.”

#69: “Among the great and elegant design exceptions is a toy produced this year that has swept the country. What is it? A small bouncing ball—the Superball.”

#91: “Art resides in the quality of doing; process is not magic.”

Each quote is in seven languages: English, Complex Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Hindi, Brazilian, Portuguese, and Spanish. The book, published by Eames Office, includes some of Eames’ favorite quotes from others, too. Might make a nice gift for yourself or someone you know who’s an Eames’ devotee.

Can Good Design Help Save the World? 500 Colored Pencils Might Help

Photo via: Social Designer

Kristin at Novità Communications in Brooklyn asked design writers like me to “spread the word to the creative community” about a very cool competition from Felissimo and Social Designer. Here’s the design brief:

You create a one-minute video that shows or tells the story of something you believe is worth waiting for, or, from experience, something you had to wait for that was worth it in the end. The winner gets $500, plus a set of 500 Colored Pencils from Felissimo.

Deadline is March 16, so it’s time to get focused.

Felissimo is a subscription-based clothing and household goods company that believes good design promotes happiness and well-being, adding value to everyday life. Sounds a lot like Herman Miller. Says Felissimo: “We hope that our efforts will demonstrate our awareness of the power of design and our responsibility to take good design and use it to design good.”

When you order the 500 Colored Pencils, every month you receive a box of 25 new colors, from Drizzly Afternoon to Lobster Bisque, until you have a full, rich rainbow to draw from. For every 100 boxes of pencils sold, Felissimo donates a set to a UNESCO arts education program for underprivileged kids.

Felissimo created Social Designer, an online platform for customers, consumers, and designers to meet and participate in design for the greater good. It also helps promote meaningful causes by developing high-visibility design competitions for corporations and nonprofits.

A New Wave in Architecture

Aqua Tower, with its wavy exterior and Lake Michigan views, is open now in Chicago’s Lakeshore East community. For a fascinating perspective on the 82-story apartment/condo/office tower, and a profile of the architect, Jeanne Gang, of Studio Gang Architects, check out The New Yorker (Feb. 1, 2010 edition).

Aqua Tower is getting a wave of good reviews for many reasons, but its most obvious attribute is the undulating cantilevered balconies, which change slightly from floor to floor, forming a curvaceous façade that also shades apartments and protects the building and balcony sitters when Chicago’s hawk talks (that’s Chicagoan for “oooh, it’s so windy”). No two balconies are alike. There’s also a big rooftop garden. And LEED certification is being pursued.

Condos range from about $300,000 to $2 million; rents start around $1,500 per month.

Says The New Yorker, “It reclaims the notion that thrilling and beautiful form can still emerge out of the realm of the practical.” And it calls Gang an “anti-diva” for the building’s lack of conceit.
 
Some critics and bloggers complain, though, that the balconies are gimmicky ornaments disguising a traditional box structure. Indeed, The New Yorker notes Aqua is “an ordinary glass condo tower” turned into something exciting. What do you think? Let us know.

Photos via: Studio Gang Architects

Herman Miller Case Study Library: Learning How the World Works Today

Did you know that a huge problem for hospitals right now is in med dispensing rooms–nurses giving the wrong drugs to patients, often as a result of poor working conditions, such as cramped, inefficiently designed spaces?

Or that college classrooms are being looked at in entirely new ways because of how technology influences learning in high school these days?

I learned about both of those issues–and a lot of other interesting things, too–by working on Herman Miller case studies. Case studies are short summaries about a particular challenge a customer was having and how furniture and/or design solved the problem.

I find these solutions to be quite fascinating. For example, there is a company in Vermont that turns giant truck trailers into fully-equipped, high-tech mobile health care units, where doctors perform everything from surgeries to eye exams. They’re shipped all over the world to meet a variety of needs–from hospitals requiring temporary operating rooms to war zones and disaster areas.

If you’re a designer, you should check it out. It will help you keep up with what’s going on in the world – and keep learning. After all, isn’t that what libraries are for?

Seven Questions for Industrial Designer Tom Newhouse

Tom Newhouse walks the environmental talk. From the earth-bermed, passive solar house and studio that he designed and built in 1978 to his recreational choices (kayaking, hiking, and snowshoeing—“all human-powered activities”), Tom has lived his ethos despite the shifting winds of fad and cultural consciousness. Sustainability is part of the “Four Corners Philosophy” of design from which he operates. According to Tom, products should be: aesthetically pleasing, sustainable, ergnomic, and cost-effective. Tom works primarily in the areas of home and office furniture, kitchens, and lighting. His most recent design for Herman Miller was the Flute personal light.

Here are seven questions for Tom Newhouse:
Read more

Chicago Athenaeum Names Good Design Winners

Two lighting products designed by Yves Béhar—the Twist LED task light and the Ardea personal light—were on the winners’ list of the 2009 Good Design awards, sponsored by the Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design and the European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.

Founded in 1950 by Eero Saarinen, Charles and Ray Eames, and Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., the Good Design award criteria are based on function and aesthetics, with a contemporary emphasis for environmental concerns and green design. Categories include: electronics, medical equipment, transportation, furniture, textiles, energy systems, kitchen/appliances, floor covering, household products, and lighting.

Despite the economic downturn, the 2009 Good Design program was “the strongest program ever with the largest-ever amount of corporate participation and the best and most substantial design awarded,” according to Christian K. Narkiewicz-Laine, president of the Chicago Athenaeum and curator of the awards. “This might be the beginning that signals the start that corporations and designers are changing their direction toward more sustainable and cost-effective design and less the use of flash and extravagance and a new understanding that the global market for consumer products is highly competitive and that only the strong will survive.”

On Exhibit: Design Real

On exhibit at London’s Serpentine Gallery through February 7, Design Real highlights objects that have made a significant impact on our lives, providing new perspectives from which to look at the material world.

Curated by German product designer Konstantin Grcic of Konstantin Grcic Industrial Design (KGID), Design Real focuses on “real” items conceived in the last decade: mass-produced products that have a practical function in everyday life—from furniture and household products to technical and industrial innovations. For example, click on “Office Chair” and you’ll see Herman Miller’s Aeron chair.

According to Grcic, what interests him about industrial design is “how these things are made, in what material, and how this has affected their language and their quality. Some objects are very technically-driven; the function really determines the object. Other objects have much more of a signature or an authorship; you see the handwriting of the designer who made it and that’s what makes it so special.”

Sustainable Solutions: What Inspires You?

Poking around Metropolis Magazine’s website, reading about past winners of their Next Generation® Design Competition is not only interesting, it’s downright inspirational. Perhaps one of their stories will motivate you to enter the contest yourself. Better hurry, though. Entries are due January 29, 2010.

The 2008 victor, for example, San Francisco architect and teacher, Eric Olsen, based his prize-winning concept–a means of carrying and purifying water at the same time–on the saguaro cactus he observed as a boy growing up in the Nevada desert. Taking his cue from the cacti’s “pleats,” which is where they store water, he devised a lightweight, portable water tote that can be worn almost like a shawl by individuals, say, working in fields, while solar heat and ultraviolet radiation purify the water.

Called the Solar Water Disinfecting Tarpaulin, it’s quite an incredible invention and a potentially important one, too, considering that the lack of access to clean water is a major health problem for more than a billion people on our planet.

As one of the contest judges, architect Lance Hosey of William McDonough + Partners, said about Olsen’s project, “What’s brilliant…is that instead of making a better bucket, he reduced the challenge to its essence: how to get safe water.”

The Next Generation annual contest focuses on finding sustainable solutions that address today’s energy or environmental challenges, a cause that parallels Herman Miller’s environmental advocacy.

What do the winners get? A prize of $10,000, which they can put toward the development of their idea. What a great way to reward (and fund) people to stretch their minds, use their imaginations, and create innovative solutions for the real environmental problems we’re facing around the world. Good idea, no? Next year at this time you could be one of them.