Welcome to the Wood Recycling enterprise formally at Circus Street and now moving next door as FIELD in part of the old barracks site. They are looking to work with entrepreneurial, socially minded product designers – you can find out more at http://fieldbtn.com/
A big thank you to the just graduated final years who voted the course as 100 % in the National Student Satisfaction survey. Cool!
Well done to Amber Deforand for also getting Pillow Play project into the design press with a nicely honest and open interview – http://www.dezeen.com/2015/07/09/pillow-play-sex-toys-modular-vibrator-amber-defroand-brighton-university/
Ex-undergraduate, and now PhD student, Maddy Conaghan and I talked at the National Road Safety Conference 2014 at the Grand Hotel in Brighton this afternoon. Great conference – lively and lots of atmosphere. Lots of interest in Maddy’s work around driver cognitive overload too.
It was great to see old friends in Romania again last week, attending the Conference for Sustainable Energy at the impressive new RESREC research building. Some great speakers too, around the bias of market systems away from renewables towards fossil fuels, the development of chemical dies for photosynthetic solar power, and the design of products using recycled mix polymers. Hopefully our talk on LCA work in low energy furniture was of interest too. We have two exchange places for some lucky students to go and study in beautiful Brasov for 1 semester. Richard.
What a venue (main picture thanks to Danny Hope –http://dannyhope.co.uk), what an event! This month’s UX event in the Hotel du Vin here in Brighton was a pearler! Tim Minor was kind enough to invite Dr Eddy Elton, Cathy Grundy and myself to give a series of talks surrounding the use of Human Factors in Product Design. Eddy gave a great comparison between UX and HF, and how HF has been used to develop successful products. Cathy presented some of her recent research into using interaction principles to help understand how perception mechanisms can be used to develop usable artefacts. I on the other hand, discussed some current challenges with 3D printing, and gave an overview of the present state of bicycle design from a human factors perspective. The event went down a treat, with a full house under a glamorous chandelier made of wine glasses – and some lovely beer in the bar afterwards. It’s always great to present in these kinds of events, where you get to meet a range of people from varied backgrounds who are all enthusiastic. The conversations moved from human factors and the overlaps with UX, to spacial awareness and the links between creative thinking, sketching, physics, psychology. It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening (for me anyway), and it was great to see so many of our own students (both undergraduate and postgraduate) there too. Many thanks to Tim and Danny and all the UX crew for such a professional, stimulating evening. For a full breakdown of the event, and with videos of the talks coming soon, visit: http://lanyrd.com/2014/ux-human-factors-and-ergonomics/. There’s also the upcoming UX conference in Brighton, and student tickets are only £50! http://lanyrd.com/2014/uxbri/
Well done to last years graduates, and its good to see Sam Young’s smart alarm ad Nik Hannay’s US football helmet getting so much press attention. It also good to some great employment statistics coming through and to hear of the great jobs many of you are getting in to.
Over the summer, we’ve seen Cockcroft building transformed into a glass and steel edifice, more makerbots arriving, and new PhD students arriving including welcomes to Zainab, Bahar and our own Madeleine Connaghan. Their research projects will be looking at improving the design process, designing to reduce skin cancer and user experience design.
Now we are finally back into a new academic year and kicking off again with our process driven course format. More staff videos so lots of interesting times in the tv studio and working with the new Adobe CC software. Hopefully more blogs and updates to come . . .
The Design Museum, London, has announced the seven category winners of the 2014 Designs of the Year competition. This annual prestigious event celebrates the best design talent and innovation from a unique range of fields and now that the winners of each category have been announced they will be judged against each other to decide which earns the outcome of Design of the Year.
The seven winners were taken from the categories of Architecture, Digital, Fashion, Furniture, Graphic, Product and Transport design and included designs from a global audience. Here are the category winners (pictures) alongside the designs they were pitted against:
ARCHITECTURE
Winner: HEYDAR ALIYEV CENTER, BAKU, AZERBAIJAN
Façade For Paul Smith, Albemarle Street, Mayfair, London
Frac Centre – Les Turbulences, Orléans
Frac Nord-pas De Calais, Dunkerque
La Tallera Siqueiros, Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico
Makoko Floating School, Nigeria
Mont De Marsan Mediatheque
Museo Jumex, Mexico City
Newhall Be, Harlow, Essex
Praça Das Artes Performing Arts Centre, São Paulo
St Moritz Church, Augsburg, Germany, Interior Renovation
The New Crematorium At The Woodland Cemetery, Stockholm
DIGITAL
Winner: PEEK (PORTABLE EYE EXAMINATION KIT)
Aerosee
Citymapper
Generations
Hello Lamp Post
Lego Calendar
Metro Trains – Dumb Ways To Die
Oculus Rift
Public Lab Foldable Mini-spectrometer
Sidekick Creatives – Crowdfunding Great Art & Design
Touch Board: Interactivity Everywhere
FASHION
Winner: PRADA S/S14
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PcMUngg39Y]
Christian Dior S/s13
Das Collection
Rick Owens S/s14 Show Presentation
The Hinterland Of Ronaldo Fraga
‘totemic’ Collection By Sadie Williams
Tracey Neuls Bike Geek
FURNITURE
Winner: PRO CHAIR FAMILY
Bodleian Library Chair
Iro
New Interior For United Nations North Delegates’ Lounge (new York)
Ripple, An Ultra Light Timber Table
‘simple’ Exhibition At Projectb Gallery, Milan
GRAPHICS
Winner: DRONE SHADOWS
A Magazine Curated By Stephen Jones
Artdirectorsclub: Art Directors Annual 91
Building Stories
Castledown Primary School Type Family
Chineasy
Creation And Realisation Of The Visual Identity And The Signage System Of The Frac Provence-alpes-côte-d’azur
Escuyer Undergarment Brand Identity
Grand-central
M To M Of M/m (paris)
Serpentine Galleries Identity
The Gourmand – A Food And Culture Journal
Whitney Museum Identity
Works That Work, A Magazine Of Unexpected Creativity
PRODUCT
Winner: THE SEABOARD GRAND
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hP-Tzq3hFgQ]
75 Watt
Abc Syringe: A Behaviour Changing Syringe
Alba Collection Of Vases
Chair 4 Life
Clever Caps
Fairphone
Formlabs Form 1high-resolution Desktop 3d Printer
Gopro Hero 3+ Black
Luffa Lab
Lunaire
Nest Protect: Smoke + Carbon Monoxide Alarm
Pet Lamp
Phonebloks
Plume Mudguard
Risk Centre
Silk Pavilion
String Lights
The Alchemist’s Dressing Table
The Bradley Timepiece
TRANSPORT
Winner: XL1 CAR
Obree Electric Bike
Ifmove Bicycle
Me.we: Forward-thinking Car
Single Seat Aircraft
Th category winners and the other 69 nominees are currently on show at the Design Museum in the Designs of the Year 2014 Exhibition and they will be viewable until 25 August this year. The overall winner of Design of the Year 2014 will be announced on 30 June.
For more information on the Designs of the Year Exhibition visit the Design Museum website HERE and for full details about all nominees and category winners click HERE
Sorry that we haven’t been talking much lately, it’s been very, very busy. Des, Eddy, Cathy, Steven and a sprinkling of students are currently all down in Southampton presenting at the Ergonomics & Human Factors Cconference (http://www.ehf2014.org.uk/), Mark is working on some interesting developments for his PhD, and I’m just back from reviewing product design courses at two other Universities for the IED.
Our own course changes seem to be working well although we’ll have a full review at the end of the year. It’s easy though to see that our 4 new maker bots have been particularly helpful, and good to have our Designer in Residence Hamish on hand to help out as well.
After the Easter break we have a few more teaching weeks then will start our exhibition series. First year work is viewable by the public on Wed 14th, 2nd years on Wed 21st, and final years on 30th and 31st May in the Basement rooms (Friday 16.00 to 22.00 and Saturday 10.00 to 18.00, http://www.thebasement.uk.com/venue_home.html). Some final years will be then up at New Designers as usual from 2nd to 5th July.
Thanks to all of those who have been keeping in touch with us – some really great stuff going on out there. I hope that we’ll be able to catch up with some of you at these events.
Given the number of motorbike accidents and injuries, isn’t it strange how little has changed in the way of rider safety? Thanks to Keith Baldock and Brighton and Hove City Council for highlighting the particular issues around smaller, commuter bikes, and well done to Product Design students Louisa, Chloe and Oliver for their pitch today proposing an innovative design solution around perspective.
