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Design: Eloquent Ode to the Simple

It’s an oddly shaped metal box with a very odd name — the LD3 AKE Unit Load Device — and is made from a grubby-looking aluminum alloy that is often scratched or dented. If you have looked out of an airplane window while waiting for take off, you’re ...

From ALICE RAWSTHORN, The New York Times,  22 Nov 2009

Design: Mistakes in Typography Grate the Purists

Dirt. Noise. Crowds. Delays. Scary smells. Even scarier fluids swirling on the floor. There are lots of reasons to loath the New York City subway, but one very good reason to love it — Helvetica, the typeface that’s used on its signage. The latest on ...

From ALICE RAWSTHORN, The New York Times,  15 Nov 2009

Related Topics: National Lampoon, Inc.,  Matthew Carter,  Paul Barnes

Design: Nonprofit Laptops: A Dream Not Yet Over

LONDON — If you’d been told three years ago that someone was developing an educational laptop for the world’s poorest countries to buy for less than $200 each and that, by now, some one million children in 31 countries would be using them, what would ...

From ALICE RAWSTHORN, The New York Times,  8 Nov 2009

Related Topics: Nicholas Negroponte,  World Economic Forum,  Cameron Sinclair,  Microsoft Corporation,  United Nations

Design: A Distant Bauhaus Star

LONDON — Josef and Anni Albers, Herbert Bayer, Marcel Breuer, Walter Gropius, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Oskar Schlemmer. The names of the students and teachers at the Bauhaus art and design school read ...

From ALICE RAWSTHORN, The New York Times,  1 Nov 2009

Related Topics: Museum of Modern Art,  Walter Gropius,  Bayer,  Paul Klee,  Wassily Kandinsky

Design: The Electric Car and the Road Not Taken

LONDON — It’s one of the most exciting design challenges of our time. It’s a (very) rare opportunity to reinvent a ubiquitous object that is the most expensive — and, often, most emotive — thing that many people will ever buy except for their homes. It’ ...

From ALICE RAWSTHORN, The New York Times,  25 Oct 2009

Related Topics: Chevrolet,  Renault,  Daimler,  Mitsubishi,  Krispy Kreme

Design: A Life of Light and Shadow

FRANKFURT — Like many émigrés fleeing from Nazi Germany in the 1930s, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy sought refuge in various countries: the Netherlands, England and, finally, the United States. Wherever he and his family went, they took an enormous metal and ...

From ALICE RAWSTHORN, The New York Times,  18 Oct 2009

Related Topics: Walter Gropius,  Museum of Modern Art

Seeing Design as Intellectual Rather Than Just Practical

LONDON — They look like very ordinary objects. A jug. A bottle. A plate. A table. A lamp. They’re ordinary in shape and size, but there’s one odd thing about them — they seem to have been made from the same sort of metal as historic monuments. The ...

From ALICE RAWSTHORN, The New York Times,  11 Oct 2009

Related Topics: Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum,  Google Inc.

Rethinking the Shape of Everyday Life

LONDON — A few weeks ago, a friend explained to her 8-year-old son that when she was his age, you could only make phone calls from those old-fashioned telephones at home, or phone booths on the street. “He was shocked,” she said. “Then he looked at me ...

From ALICE RAWSTHORN, International Herald Tribune,  4 Oct 2009

Related Topics: Mitsubishi,  Ford Motor Company,  Chris Bangle,  BMW

Design: Rethinking the Shape of Everyday Life

LONDON — A few weeks ago, a friend explained to her 8-year-old son that when she was his age, you could only make phone calls from those old-fashioned telephones at home, or phone booths on the street. “He was shocked,” she said. “Then he looked at me ...

From ALICE RAWSTHORN, The New York Times,  4 Oct 2009

Related Topics: Mitsubishi,  Ford Motor Company,  Chris Bangle,  BMW

DESIGN: Redefining a Profession

LONDON — The bet was for $50,000. It was offered by George Washington Hill, president of the American Tobacco Company, to the designer Raymond Loewy, in 1940. The challenge was to spruce up the packaging of Lucky Strike cigarettes. Loewy accepted the ...

From ALICE RAWSTHORN, The New York Times,  27 Sep 2009

Related Topics: Kaiser Permanente,  Tim Brown,  David Kelley

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