ID [PNW]

I just found out that the documentary was selected for the Northwest Projections Independent Film Festival.  April 17th - 19th at the Pickford Cinema in Bellingham, WA! See the new trailer preview here.

Thanks to Leslie Speer, Leslie Cron and the IDSA for allowing me to share the story of the Hoima Bicycle project.  The webinar was attended by about 50 people from around the world.  And I received great suggestions on improvements and ways to continue the project. I'm currently talking with Tristan Allen who is in Uganda with the First African Bicycle Information Organization about setting up a small fabrication shop in Jinja to make some frames and assemble the bikes. Here's a further description of the design: Prototype 1.0  The first prototype design is essentially an elongated mountain bike with an integrated rack.   The front geometry has comfortable mountain bike geometry with a low stand-over height, rigid fork, and 26 inch front wheel.   The 20 inch rear wheel has been moved back, increasing its wheelbase 10 inches which allows for a more distributed load between the two wheels and provides more area for loads and passengers.   A rear rack is designed to be integrate

Here's what my industrial design students have been working on for the past 7 weeks.  If you're in Bellingham, you're welcome to come by for the presentation. Form/Function   A project by the Junior industrial design class of Westen Washington University.   See a unique design process where abstract sculptures are created without knowledge of their functional purpose.   Then they are revised and reformed to become beautiful, dynamic, and creative designs.   We turn the design rules on their head and make function follow form.   Every form element must have a purpose, and function can’t be an excuse for bad form.   Wednesday, march 18 th , 2009. 10:30am – 12:20pm Academic West Building room 302 Western Washington University Bellingham, WA

Eva Zeisel is one of my design heroes, so I was excited to find this recently posted video of her talk at the TED conference 2001.  Entitled "the Playful Search of Beauty." She's an incredibly talented designer/craftswoman.  One who has the ability to create elegant beautiful forms.  A skill that I believe many industrial designers struggle with.  Instead we focus on novelty (innovation), our abbreviated version of research, being the lackeys of marketing hacks or adding extraneous features/functionality.   Or we avoid the difficulty of creating simple beauty by complicating forms with purposeless visual elements.  I believe we should never let function be an excuse for bad form. “Pure, unadulterated beauty should be the goal of civilization.” -Rowena Reed Kostellow Do you think industrial designers have lost the value of beauty in their work?  Or is it the opposite, too much focus on form, not enough on things that matter?  Can we have both?  Is it EITHER