ID [PNW]

Relic was designed and fabricated by industrial design students at Western Washington. The Coasters as a set. They have been designing and producing useful objects as a fundraiser since 2010. Non scratch surface protects your table surface Find these at Ideal in Bellingham, Wa

Front entrance view This is a spatial design concept design of a Nike Soccer retail space by Western Washington ID junior student Ben Dekock.   The process began with abstract form studies which were then transformed into something unique and spectacular.  Elevating the retail experience to museum of modern art. Counter and entryway on 1st level Museum-like display interior Elevated mezzanine level for additional display

Carl Ledbetter is Sr. Principal Industrial Design Manager in Microsoft Corporation’s Interactive Entertainment Business (IEB).   Carl leads Industrial Design for entertainment hardware experiences including Xbox and Kinect.  Prior to joining IEB in 2006 to design the Zune media player, Carl was part of the Windows Hardware Innovation Group chartered to lead the industrial design vision for next-generation Windows PC hardware experiences.  He also led industrial design for the Microsoft PC Hardware Business where he and his team designed desktop mice, trackballs and keyboards.  Prior to joining Microsoft, Carl held industrial design positions at Fluke Corporation and Patton Design.    Ledbetter is a recipient of numerous national and international design awards and is highly recognized for his contributions to the design community with over 100 patents to his credit.  A longstanding member of IDSA and DMI, Ledbetter graduated with a BS in ...

Curvilinear Space Analysis by Johan Axelson I'm attempting to bring some traditional form studies from Rowena Reed Kostellow's Elements of Form into the design education at Western Washington.  These studies date back to the 1940's and the development of the original industrial design curriculum.  This is a space analysis that I did as a student of Lenny Bacich at Pratt Institute.  He was a student of Rowena's and tried to teach these very difficult form abstractions to me.  Only now that I'm teaching it do I realize what they mean and why they are so valuable.  Rectilinear Space by Larisa Schulze The forms here are done by my junior ID students.  They are not computer models, they are made with paper and wire. They have very strict rules regarding the elements used and where they can be placed.  But the intent is to expand the negative volume and create a beautiful and interesting space.  But the real goal to increase the visual and ...

by Kirk Turner This year in my design class the assignment was to take the 2012 Specialized Enduro mountain bike and redesign it's colors and graphics using Adobe Illustrator.  The students started with an underlay provided by Specialized and were to recreate the frame and some key components and then add reflections and shading.  It was a one week project and these are sophomore industrial design students. by Jonathan Mayfield by Rosalee Daughtry by Mauricio Romano by Leon Wolfendale by Gary Liljebeck bicycle t-shirts, stickers, iPhone cases and other gear.

by Jeffrey Grothe by Daniel Galan by Hunter Frerich These are designs done by my students as they attempt to redesign the tape dispenser.  Sophomore ID studio 2, 2011.

Sarah Blott - IDSA Student Merit Award winner and Northwest Best in Show Sarah's chaise lounge design. Students from Western Washington University’s Industrial Design program were recently honored with the Industrial Designers Society of America Student Merit Awards in Seattle.  They presented their portfolios and were interviewed by a panel of professional designers in Seattle.  Award winners were announced at the Northwest Chapter of the IDSA at the University of Washington’s School of Art. The Northwest Chapter of the IDSA includes professional industrial designers and student designers from Western, the University of Washington and the Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Western students and their awards include: Senior Student Merit Winner:  Sarah Blott, Seattle Senior Student Best in Show:  Sarah Blott, Seattle Junior Student Merit Winner:  Anna Perrella, Bellevue Junior Student Best in Show:  Ryan Hume, Bainbridge Island Blott will ...

Lenny was my former professor of three dimensional design at Pratt Institute.  He passed away last year, and has been recently recognized with the Rowena Reed Kostellow Award.  Now that I am teaching the elements of form to my students at Western, I think of Lenny often and can still hear his words echoing in my mind. "LOOK at it.  What do you see?" "Precarious balance is like Martha Graham, the dancer, think of a dancers' pose when creating your forms." He encouraged me to go into teaching and is part of the reason why I am a design professor. Wire/Curve study by Thomas Kloucek, Western Washington Here's more about Prof. Bacich from the RRK fund: "For almost a quarter of a century, Lenny Bacich epitomized the rigor and magic of great teaching. He said: "The WHAT and HOW issues of three-dimensional design are explainable and teachable. The WHY is the challenge of teaching the course." Lenny taught courses about abstraction an...

Kodak Brownie Junior - Photo by J.A. Morris This summer has been busy with new progress on the Teague documentary and biography.  Here's a quick summary: New Alliances             Thanks to Vicki Matranga , I connected with Charlie Myers , son of C. Stowe Myers, partner at the Teague New York office.  Charlie has compiled films, audio interviews, and photographs and is offering them for us to use in the doc.  I just received a DVD of digitized 8mm film of the Teague office from 1939 to 1943.  It has great scenes of employee designers working, drawing, rendering, making models, smoking pipes and having parties.  Awesome stuff, thanks Charlie!             Gifford Jackson was a designer at the Teague office from 1954 to 64 and I was recently introduced to him through Budd Steinhilber.  He was personal friends with the Teague family.  He live...

I've posted the complete documentary, Hoima Bicycle, on Youtube. This documentary shows the process of designing a bicycle for and with Ugandan bicycle couriers, known as Boda-boda. Filmed primarily in Uganda, it shows the realities of current day East Africa, from the chaotic streets of Kampala to the inside of gritty mud-thatched homes in rural Hoima. In Uganda many residents use cheap, clunky bicycles for their primary means of transportation. Through a unique collaboration between an American designer and Ugandan couriers, a new bicycle design was conceived and a prototype was made. The designer then traveled to Uganda to meet the couriers and to have the bike tested and critiqued. Would they like it? Or is it back to the drawing board? How can you use your talents and skills to help the poor of the world? This is part 1 of 4. If you would like a DVD of the complete documentary (30 minutes) it will soon be available on Amazon.com.  I'll be posting discussion questions...

I've been teaching Adobe Illustrator to the Western Industrial Design sophomore students for six years now.  It's a powerful tool for doing design renderings.  Here's a few examples from last fall of some track bicycle frames.  The original line art is from the Teschner bicycle company.  I challenge the students to design the graphics, add reflections and shading, and play with different materials.  That way, they aren't spending time on the frame shape and can concentrate on the color and rendering.  The main Illustrator tools being used here are: the pen tool, adjusting the transparency and blending modes, stylize feather, blur, clipping masks, and lots of gradient manipulation.  These are all sophomores (2nd year students).   by Nolan Leh   by Elijah Hooper by Ryan Hume by Anna Perrela by Paul Linden

2 years ago I wrote about how industrial design will be affected by personal fabrication or desktop manufacturing.   The prediction was that due to the advancement of rapid prototyping technology that products will be manufactured in your own community  and perhaps in your own home with desktop manufacturing machines.   This is an exciting idea because it revolutionizes the traditional product development process,  which is full of waste, management overhead, shipping containers, distribution, and over production.   And it's beginning to happen today, although in a different format than expected.   Web-based companies such as Ponoko , Zazzle, CafePress , Blurb, Lulu are making this a reality.   You design something, upload it, and they display it, sell it, make it on demand, and ship it to the customer.  And you get paid for each sale.   The material limitations that we see now are really just temporary and it's only a matter of time before a company with a FDM machine and a ...

(Since some people asked for a copy, this is the speech that I gave at the IDSA Western District conference, Santa Monica, CA, April 25th, 2009.  This is the first point, the second and third will be on separate posts.) 2 questions were posed as a theme for this conference:  What must designers do to survive today?   And What can we do to thrive internationally? Here are 3 issues that I think are important right now: 1.  D esign for the BOP 2.  D esign for make-on-demand 3.  Encouraging graduate education for designers   1.      Learn how to design for people at the bottom of the pyramid A World of Unreliability One revelation to me in my brief time in Africa that really put my view of the world in a new perspective, was that nothing is reliable in an East Africans world.     Politicians are corrupt and expected to be.   Being bit by the wrong mosquito could means contracting malaria and dying a week later.   Drinking the wrong water could mean a life threatening di...