Latest news with #IndustrialDesign
CBC
3 days ago
- Business
- CBC
This tiny phone booth solves big office problems
Industrial Designers Nick Kazakoff and Brendan Gallagher design phone booths — but without phones in them. Their Loop Phone Booth, featured in this episode of CBC On Design, now streaming on CBC Gem and YouTube, tackles the new challenges of our workspaces and creates a space for calls that is comfortable, private and quiet for the age of cell phones, video calls and remote work. "As people are returning to the office," Kazakoff says, "everyone became accustomed to being at home and having their own private space that was quiet. And then you go back to the office and it's noisy and loud." "It's ironic that as phone booths are disappearing from the street, they're being brought into office spaces. The product category completely evolved. Our booths don't even have phones in them, but they're called phone booths because it's something that people recognize as a place where you go to take a call." When a local Edmonton company approached Kazakoff and Gallagher and their company OneTwoSix Design to design an office pod, the designers brought their rigorous process of research, design and iteration to the problem. "The first version, the acoustics were terrible. We kind of built like a plywood box and put a glass door on it with a gasket and thought we had solved the problem,' says Kazakoff. "With any product design project the first prototype is not going to be the best designed one, but we used that as a jumping board to create iterations to ever-improve the product," Gallagher adds. Isolating the booth from sound turned out to be a trickier problem than simply sealing the door. Sound requires a medium to travel through, most commonly air. If you block air, you block most sound. But if you block air into and out of a booth, the human being inside the booth won't be able to breathe. Kazakoff explains: "With sound obviously the material choices on the surfaces for absorption is really important. How you construct the walls is key and critical but more import than that is how do you design a ventilation system that traps sound but still allows air to flow through. We created baffles within the ventilation system that help block and absorb sound." "To stop sound from going through a ventilation duct, you basically need to create a path that is almost an S bend, so the air can flow around those corners," Gallagher adds. "The sound is going to hit baffles along the way and bounce back." In such a small and constrained space, comfort for the human inside is also a crucial consideration. "[In] an enclosed space there's a concern for people who suffer from claustrophobia, so we try to implement as much open space as we can, have glass panels on either side to allow light in, to allow people to feel they're outside of the booth while they're using it." Making a practical object for the real world and real people is key for Kazakoff. "It's really function to create form. So the angled sides of the booth are designed to make it comfortable. The size of it is designed so that it can be assembled in one piece and go through an elevator." "As far as the finish choices, I mean, we're living in Canada. One of the great things about that is the proximity to sourcing hardwood veneer which in a lot of other places is one incredibly expensive and two not as good quality, so it allowed us to differentiate the product by having this hardware exterior which is nice because it makes every single booth unique because every piece of wood is unique." Sustainability also is a key consideration for the Loop Phone Booth and all of OneTwoSix's products. "Sustainability has always been really important to myself and to Brendan as designers. In today's day and age to be an industrial designer it's almost part of your moral obligation," says Kazakoff, For the Loop Phone Booth, this includes diverting material from landfill or recycling. In addition to refurbishing old booths that are no longer needed to use again, offcut waste material from the production of the booths is used in other OneTwoSix products such as discard pieces of wood panels and upholstery in a lounge chair. "There was enough of these offcuts and offset material that we said we could actually produce and design something using these and it's less of recycling and more of up cycling," says Kazakoff. Find out more about OneTwoSix and the Loop Phone Booth including their journey to manufacturing it themselves in this episode of CBC On Design, now streaming on CBC Gem and YouTube. New series CBC On Design explores the evolution of an idea and the path it takes to becoming a item in your everyday life — but that journey is rarely a straight line. Between the initial concept and finished object lie sketches, prototypes, material experiments, user testing, manufacturing puzzles, and countless hidden steps.
Associated Press
4 days ago
- Business
- Associated Press
A' International Mindfulness and Meditation Products Design Awards Call for Entries
A' Design Award & Competition Announces Call for Entries for A' International Mindfulness and Meditation Products Design Awards COMO, CO, ITALY, August 18, 2025 / / -- Today, A' Design Award & Competition has released its call for entries to A' International Mindfulness and Meditation Products Design Awards. The A' Mindfulness and Meditation Products Design Awards are open for entries by Mindfulness Product Designers, Meditation Product Manufacturers, Wellness Brands, Yoga Equipment Designers, Industrial Design Studios, Aromatherapy Specialists, Sound Therapy Experts, Textile Designers, Holistic Health Consultants, Interior Designers with Focus on Wellness Spaces, Biofeedback Device Designers, Neuropsychologists, Cognitive Behavioral Therapists, Mindfulness App Developers, Mindfulness Retreat Organizers, Mindfulness Products Innovation, Consultancy, Research and Development Companies worldwide. Designs that were created within the last 10 years are eligible for participation. The A' International Mindfulness and Meditation Products Design Awards is a two-phase competition. The first phase of the competition is completely free, Mindfulness Product Designers, Meditation Product Manufacturers, Wellness Brands, Yoga Equipment Designers, Industrial Design Studios, Aromatherapy Specialists, Sound Therapy Experts, Textile Designers, Holistic Health Consultants, Interior Designers with Focus on Wellness Spaces, Biofeedback Device Designers, Neuropsychologists, Cognitive Behavioral Therapists, Mindfulness App Developers, Mindfulness Retreat Organizers, Mindfulness Products Innovation, Consultancy, Research and Development Companies can register at A' Design Awards to submit a work for the Mindfulness Products Awards, and get a preliminary score for their work. Projects that pass the preliminaries can proceed with nomination, however it shall be noted in advance that there is a nominal fee for nominating entries for Mindfulness Products Awards consideration. Mindfulness Products Awards Timeline & Eligibility Deadline for entries to A' Mindfulness and Meditation Products Design Awards is on September 30, 2025. Results of the A' Mindfulness and Meditation Products Design Awards will be announced on May 1, 2026. Professional-edition laureates of the A' Mindfulness and Meditation Products Design Awards will be granted the highly coveted A' Design Prize which contains a series of PR, marketing and publicity tools to celebrate the status of winning the Mindfulness Products Awards. The following are some example projects that could be submitted to A' Mindfulness and Meditation Products Design Awards : Meditation Cushions, Yoga Mats, Mindfulness Journals, Aromatherapy Diffusers, Singing Bowls, Mindfulness Bracelets, Guided Meditation Headsets, Zen Gardens and More. Mindfulness Products Awards Sub-categories and their descriptions are available at for Good Mindfulness Products Design The A' Design Prize for A' Mindfulness and Meditation Products Design Awards includes: Design Excellence Certificate, Lifetime license to use the A' Mindfulness and Meditation Products Design Awards Winner Logo, Yearbook of Best Designs, Exhibitions of Awarded Works in Italy, Exclusive Design Award Trophy, Exclusive Invitation to Take Part in the A' Design Awards' Gala-Night – La Notte Premio A', Translation of Awarded Works into Foreign Languages, Entry to Prime Clubs, as well as inclusion in World Design Rankings, Designer Rankings, Mindfulness Products Design Classifications and Design Legends platforms. In addition the laureates of the A' International Mindfulness and Meditation Products Design Awards will also get an exclusive interview which will be published at Designer Interviews website as well as included in the Press Kits. Award winners will also get a press release prepared to announce their victory. For the winners of A' Mindfulness and Meditation Products Design Awards , a very inclusive press kit will be prepared which contains the exclusive interview with the designer, the press release for award announcement in addition to design images, photographs of the designer, logo of the designer and the client, dozens of high-resolution photos and images for added exposure including a portfolio that contains previews of other designs projects by the designer. The Press Kits prepared for the winners of the A' International Mindfulness and Meditation Products Design Awards will be distributed to thousands of press members who have gained press accreditation from A' Design Awards. Furthermore there are already dozens of press partners who have confirmed in advance to publish a selection of the best projects among award winners. Both the Press Kit preparation and distribution service as well as the A' Design Prize are given free of charge to the Mindfulness Products Awards laureates as a gift to celebrate their success of winning the A' Mindfulness and Meditation Products Design Awards. Mindfulness Products Design Awards Entry & Winners Press Members and design enthusiasts are invited to visit to see past winners of the A' International Mindfulness and Meditation Products Design Awards. • Additional Details could be found at • Registrations could be made at About Mindfulness Products Awards The A' Design Award & Competition has been established to promote and recognize the best design works in all countries and in all creative disciplines. The primary aim of the A' Design Award & Competition is to create a global awareness and understanding for good design practices and principles by promoting the best designs in all countries and in all design disciplines. The ultimate aim of the A' Design Awards is to push designers, companies and brands worldwide to create superior products and projects that benefit society. To learn more about the A' Design Awards and the A' International Mindfulness and Meditation Products Design Awards please visit Julie Thomas A' DESIGN AWARD & COMPETITION SRL + +39 031 4491953 email us here Legal Disclaimer: EIN Presswire provides this news content 'as is' without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above.
Associated Press
05-08-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
A' International Watch Design Awards Call for Entries
A' Design Award & Competition Announces Call for Entries for A' International Watch Design Awards COMO, CO, ITALY, August 5, 2025 / / -- Today, A' Design Award & Competition has released its call for entries to A' International Watch Design Awards. The A' Watch Design Awards are open for entries by Watch Designers, Luxury Goods Manufacturers, Industrial Designers, Product Designers, Fashion Designers, Jewelry Designers, Mechanical Engineers, Micro-Mechanical Experts, Brand Strategists, Marketing Firms, Watch Brands, Watch Manufacturers, Material Science Specialists, Horology Experts, Design Consultants, Watch Innovation, Consultancy, Research and Development Companies worldwide. Designs that were created within the last 10 years are eligible for participation. The A' International Watch Design Awards is a two-phase competition. The first phase of the competition is completely free, Watch Designers, Luxury Goods Manufacturers, Industrial Designers, Product Designers, Fashion Designers, Jewelry Designers, Mechanical Engineers, Micro-Mechanical Experts, Brand Strategists, Marketing Firms, Watch Brands, Watch Manufacturers, Material Science Specialists, Horology Experts, Design Consultants, Watch Innovation, Consultancy, Research and Development Companies can register at A' Design Awards to submit a work for the Watch Awards, and get a preliminary score for their work. Projects that pass the preliminaries can proceed with nomination, however it shall be noted in advance that there is a nominal fee for nominating entries for Watch Awards consideration. Watch Awards Timeline & Eligibility Deadline for entries to A' Watch Design Awards is on September 30, 2025. Results of the A' Watch Design Awards will be announced on May 1, 2026. Professional-edition laureates of the A' Watch Design Awards will be granted the highly coveted A' Design Prize which contains a series of PR, marketing and publicity tools to celebrate the status of winning the Watch Awards. The following are some example projects that could be submitted to A' Watch Design Awards : Chronographs, Dive Watches, Dress Watches, Quartz Watches, Automatic Watches, Smartwatches, Luxury Watches, Sports Watches and More. Watch Awards Sub-categories and their descriptions are available at Prize for Good Watch Design The A' Design Prize for A' Watch Design Awards includes: Design Excellence Certificate, Lifetime license to use the A' Watch Design Awards Winner Logo, Yearbook of Best Designs, Exhibitions of Awarded Works in Italy, Exclusive Design Award Trophy, Exclusive Invitation to Take Part in the A' Design Awards' Gala-Night – La Notte Premio A', Translation of Awarded Works into Foreign Languages, Entry to Prime Clubs, as well as inclusion in World Design Rankings, Designer Rankings, Watch Design Classifications and Design Legends platforms. In addition the laureates of the A' International Watch Design Awards will also get an exclusive interview which will be published at Designer Interviews website as well as included in the Press Kits. Award winners will also get a press release prepared to announce their victory. For the winners of A' Watch Design Awards , a very inclusive press kit will be prepared which contains the exclusive interview with the designer, the press release for award announcement in addition to design images, photographs of the designer, logo of the designer and the client, dozens of high-resolution photos and images for added exposure including a portfolio that contains previews of other designs projects by the designer. The Press Kits prepared for the winners of the A' International Watch Design Awards will be distributed to thousands of press members who have gained press accreditation from A' Design Awards. Furthermore there are already dozens of press partners who have confirmed in advance to publish a selection of the best projects among award winners. Both the Press Kit preparation and distribution service as well as the A' Design Prize are given free of charge to the Watch Awards laureates as a gift to celebrate their success of winning the A' Watch Design Awards. Watch Design Awards Entry & Winners Press Members and design enthusiasts are invited to visit to see past winners of the A' International Watch Design Awards. • Additional Details could be found at • Registrations could be made at About Watch Awards The A' Design Award & Competition has been established to promote and recognize the best design works in all countries and in all creative disciplines. The primary aim of the A' Design Award & Competition is to create a global awareness and understanding for good design practices and principles by promoting the best designs in all countries and in all design disciplines. The ultimate aim of the A' Design Awards is to push designers, companies and brands worldwide to create superior products and projects that benefit society. To learn more about the A' Design Awards and the A' International Watch Design Awards please visit Julie Thomas A' Design Award & Competiton SRL + +39 031 4491953 email us here Legal Disclaimer: EIN Presswire provides this news content 'as is' without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above.
San Francisco Chronicle
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
‘Fashion as art': Ayesha Curry stuns in custom GapStudio dress at SFMOMA Art Bash
The hottest couple at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's Art Bash fundraiser brought a golden lustre to the evening. Restaurant and lifestyle entrepreneur Ayesha Curry attended the institution's annual fundraiser gala on Wednesday, April 23, wearing a custom gold Zac Posen for GapStudio dress on the arm of the designer. Posen is Gap Inc.'s vice president and creative director as well as a new board member at the museum, which has a long association with Gap's founding Fisher family. (Robert J. Fisher is chairman of the board and SFMOMA has a long term loan of the family's storied art collection.) Curry's husband, Golden State Warrior point guard Stephen Curry, was in Houston playing the Rockets (the team lost 109-94) while Posen's fiance, dancer and choreographer Harrison Ball, was on the East Coast for the premiere of his latest ballet 'New Ancient Strings"at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. 'It's gold denim for our golden girl, and who doesn't love a 'Flashdance' cut?' Posen joked of the off-the shoulder dress, which was cinched with a gold-coated denim corset. 'It's coming (to GapStudio) in T-shirt dresses in a few months.' The new GapStudio collection made its debut online and in stores in April with elevated versions of brand signatures like denim and belted trench coats. Celebrities like actors Anne Hathaway and Timothee Chalamet have also debuted looks from the new line, further adding to the star power Gap has been amassing since Posen joined the brand in February 2024. Curry revealed that it was her first time visiting SFMOMA, but said that seeing the museum had long been on her 'bucket list.' 'I was speaking to my sister and my husband around the kitchen table and brought that up, then a couple weeks later I got invited to this and said, 'It's a sign! '' Curry told the Chronicle. 'I'm really happy to be here. It's my first time, but it won't be my last.' Curry completed the look with a pair of western-inspired boots and noted that she appreciated the versatility of Posen's design. 'You can dress it up and wear it to an event like this, you can elevate it, or you can dress it down,' said Curry. 'That's truly San Francisco style.' For Posen, whose father Stephen Arnold Posen is an artist in New York, joining the museum board feels like a full circle moment. 'Early in my career there was an exhibition on glamour here that I had a piece in, made of hay and straw from my 'Sargasso' collection,' said Posen, recalling 2004's 'Glamour Fashion, Industrial Design, Architecture' at SFMOMA. 'I was an intern for many years as a teenager at the Met Museum Costume Institute. That intersection between art and fashion can be a real crowd draw, but it can also build amazing storytelling,' he went on. 'I grew up in museums, they changed my life.' The designer teased that he's currently working on 'a top secret project' with SFMOMA. Could it be the museum's first full fashion exhibition in 42 years? SFMOMA Director Christopher Bedford noted that the Issey Miyake celebration 'Bodyworks' in 1983 was the last time fashion was given a starring role at the museum but that a few pieces had shown up in recent exhibitions like 'Get in the Game: Sports, Art and Culture' in 2024. 'I'm really interested in the idea of fashion as art,' Bedford told the Chronicle.
Telegraph
23-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Remember your first mobile phone? Prepare for a nostalgic rush
Like many early 50-somethings, my very first mobile phone was a Nokia. It was a 5110, to be exact: a model that with its dinky aerial retained a touch of the walkie-talkie about it. I acquired it in mid-1999 on the eve of a new job as an editor on the website for the bookseller Waterstones. The millennium loomed, the internet was still new and exciting, and the site marked the company's tentative steps into what was then – laughably – called e-commerce. The buzz phrase at the time was 'bricks and clicks' (a retail strategy of both physical and online stores) – and a brick-ish mobile phone was deemed an essential accessory for the cutting edge of cyberspace. The chasm between that innocent time of dial-up modems and SMS messaging and our smartphone-enabled, social-media-dominated era was brought home to me recently by a new website hosted by Aalto University, in Finland, showcasing the complete archives of the manufacturer of that first mobile: Nokia. It seems almost impossible now, but Nokia phones were once omnipresent. The company, which began life with a hydropowered wood-pulp paper mill on the rapids near Tampere, in southern Finland, in the 1860s, had by 2001 become a mobile-phone giant, with a 40 per cent share of the global handset market. Nokia's signature ringtone, based on Gran Vals, a 1902 piece for classical guitar by the Spanish romantic composer Francisco Tárrega, was so ubiquitous that older readers may recall that the comic prankster Dom Joly built a television career on a sketch from Trigger Happy TV in which he bellowed 'I'm on the train' (or in the cinema, or the jungle, or wherever he was) into a suitcase-sized handset that emitted its trilling notes. Today, answering a telephone call seems positively quaint, especially to a younger generation. Speaking to people seems practically the last thing anyone does with their phones. So the Nokia archive serves as a portal back to the lost world of the late 1990s and early 2000s, when mobiles were dumb (and dumber), but we felt smarter with them. The archive contains everything from back-of-a-fag-packet sketches of truly bonkers concepts that never saw the light of day – a fan-shaped phone anyone? A phone tie? – to glossy publicity material for handsets that sold in their multi-millions, as well as press releases, internal marketing plans and design briefs. It is an astonishing resource that design students, cultural historians and corporate leaders fearful of hubris can browse at their leisure. An 'Industrial Design and Styling Strategy' from 1996 (the year the 8110, the phone featured in The Matrix, launched) includes a photograph of a Nokia beside a folded newspaper, and a mood board of phones aimed at teenagers is juxtaposed with a Fila watch and a pocket calculator. It led me to smile about the subsequent fate of newsprint, watches, calculators and countless other gadgets supplanted by smartphones. Elsewhere, a bullet-point document about phones for children that lists 'safety' and 'child locator' as offering 'unique market opportunities' strikes a rather queasy note, given the current concerns about the ill effects of smartphones on school-age kids. The design links between Nokia's phones and the trends of the period – from mountain bikes and G-Shock watches to Oakley sunglasses – jump out at you. The inventive play between eggshell-shaped cycle helmets, for instance, and the curved, clam-like casing of some phones is laid bare. Nokia's pre-millennial 'Vision '99' project, an almost free-jazz, think-the-impossible initiative to come up with the next generation of mobiles, led to the creation of one of the company's best-loved phones: the 3210. An ergonomic handset with interchangeable fascia, allowing users to personalise their phones, the 3210 was a revelation when it landed in 1999. It dispensed with an aerial, making it pocketable, and came with predictive and proto-emoji image texting, and the addictive, Pac-Man-like game Snake. Arguably, this is where doomscrolling began. Preliminary sketches go further, with phones cased to look like dinosaur bones ('Lost World'), flowers, clowns and lime-green Roswell-style aliens. Most disturbing of all is the 'Pooh the Borg' phone, a horrifying mix of A A Milne and H R Giger that thankfully never left the drawing board. It's startling how ahead of the game Nokia's designers were. Artist's drawings for wearable devices, including wristwatch and bangle phones, appear as early as 1995. The company produced its first smartphone, 'The Communicator', just a year later, and in 2002 it was among the first to offer camera phones with decent resolution. The Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto supplied the ringtone for the top-of-the-range Nokia 8800 in 2005. That year also saw Nokia unveil a trio of phones (the 7360, 7370 and 7380) aimed at the fashion crowd, finished with real-leather trim, gem-like buttons and floral patterning. Their look – part-bling, part-Glastonbury Festival henna tattoos – exemplifies the gaudy excesses of the mid-Noughties as perfectly as a bottomless prosecco brunch. In 2006, with confidence still riding high, the new Nokia N93, which sported a digital video camera, was promoted with a short film shot on the phone by Gary Oldman. Entitled Donut, it comprised two-and-a-half minutes of pixelated footage of a ring-shaped shadow dancing on the surface of a Hollywood swimming pool. There were no Oscar nominations. Within months, Apple unleashed its iPhone and nothing would ever be the same again. Ironically, perhaps, it's plain that Nokia had always looked to Apple and other electronics companies for inspiration: Nokia's breakout car phone, the Talkman, offered from the mid-1980s, was self-confessedly modelled after the Sony Walkman and went on sale shortly after Apple's Macintosh computer, in August 1984. The archive includes a 1999 study on trends, where Apple is praised for creating 'a whole new hi-tech style'. As the birthplace and training ground of Alvar Aalto, the Nordic modernist architect who, with his wife Aino, designed the Paimio sanatorium chair in 1932 for a tuberculosis hospital – it remains in production to this day – Finland was already established as a centre for forward-thinking, functional design. Nokia inherited Aalto's legacy of design excellence and carried it into the digital era. Yet Frank Nuovo, Nokia's head of design from the mid-1990s to 2005, was a native of Monterey, California, who had taught at the Pasadena College of Design. His stateside team was based in Calabasas, while the company's development wing was up the West Coast in Mountain View, in Silicon Valley, less than 10 miles from Apple's headquarters at Cupertino. Like Apple with the iMac's star designer Jony Ive, Nokia's design team employed a Briton, Royal College of Art graduate Alastair Curtis. However, in contrast to the notoriously difficult-to-repair-and-recycle iPhone, it's striking to find that a commitment to 'eco-efficiency' and 'working with recyclers' was already among the briefs for Nokia phones in 2005. Nokia very nearly beat Apple to a smartwatch, too. Its Moonraker phone-watch was due for release in 2014, only to be pulled at the last minute. Soon after, the company's entire mobile division was sold to Microsoft, who offloaded it again two years later. Happily, Gen X-ers seeking to reclaim their misdialled youth, or anyone looking for a digital detox, can still buy something close to a classic Nokia 3210. Current models are fitted with a camera and are available in three overknowingly retro colours: Scuba Blue, Grunge Grey – and, fittingly, Y2K Gold.
