Honda already came up with its Puyo, begging to be touched, featuring soft curves & soft materials. BMW’s design guru Chris Bangle takes it a step further and developed Gina (Light Visionary Model), a smooth concept car covered in stretchable fabric (on top of a metal wireframe) able to shapeshift on demand. Headlights appear in a smooth motion when needed, doors open like curtains being pulled back/draped, …

“the Gina consists of a flexible ’skin’ stretched over a metal wire structure enforced with carbon fibre. It allows the driver to change the shape of the car ‘on the fly’ - the rear spoiler can be raised, for example, while the rocker panels can effectively be bodykitted out.

It’s a similar story on the inside, where the steering wheel and instrumentation sit within the centre console and slide into position when the driver pushes the start button.”

The blob meets the car. Seamlessness, smooth morphing/shapeshifting … imagine being able to decide not only the shape of your car and change it yourself, but also its shapeshifting behavior or the characteristics (e.g. stiffness, colour, ) of the material itself. Could smart cars - as body and skin become ever more flexible in design - anticipate upon impact when a collision becomes unavoidable and shapeshift into a form optimized to minimize damage? Fascinating.

Stretchable fabric means pores, and ability to absorb. Cars are becoming more and more humans..

KEEP THE CHANGE!

To attract customers and serve new markets, Bank of America engaged IDEO to identify customer-based innovation opportunities. In response to field research that revealed certain behaviors among the target market, boomer-age women, IDEO designed the “Keep The Change” program, a service that rounds up purchases made with a Bank of America debit card to the nearest dollar, and transfers the difference to a savings account. In less than one year, Bank of America opened 700,000 new checking accounts and 1 million new savings accounts.

French campaign against AIDS

Human time. Amazing concept and production!

New design orientation for Coca Cola.

Innovation both in aesthetics and in practicality! The packaging successfully gives, literally, a cooler feeling, while it, finally, moves away from the traditional "Coke bottle" in such a "refreshing" way. Imagine a freezer full of these bottles...

iPod dating!

Innovation or "accessory" to Innovation? Nice idea, but whatever happened to "I have this cute friend I want you to meet" or even "traditional" chat rooms? Things are moving fast...

"Thinking Bigger" by Seth Godin

Intern: "So, when do you want this brochure to be ready?"

Creative Director: "Yesterday!"

"The twenty-first-century world is a crowded one - one might think there's no room left for newly founded societies. But the disorder offers plenty of elbow room. There are many handsome places that people have abandoned in despair. Beirut was a quite lovely place once; Sarajevo had a great deal to recommend it. If a group of daring global investors offered to rebuild Kabul wholesale, they'd likely be met with open arms."

("TOMOROW NOW" - Bruce Sterling)

Anything unlikely, unexplored or abandoned, can become the ground

for new economies and innovative ideas.

Garbage is abandoned, unexplored (because it is abandoned), and unlikely (because it is unexplored). Garbage compacting machines that produce energy, or another material.

"A gizmo is neither a "machine" nor a "product". It doesn't want you to accomplish any task in particular. It wants a relationship; it wants to be an intimate experience, as close to you as your eyebrow. It wants you engaged, it wants you pushing those buttons, it wants you faithful to the brand name and dependent on the service." 

("TOMORROW NOW" - Bruce Sterling)

A potential "love affair" between us and the products that we choose

to buy or consume, may be a key factor to innovation in design.

   

www.londondesignfestival.com

The London Design Festival 2008, takes place this week in the UK.

Check out the "Bottom Drawers" exhibition, by several artists/makers, which examines (in form of installations) all the stuff we collect, the values we attach to them and what they mean to us.

Lately, when it comes to launching new products and increasing

profits, CEO's and managers are seeking advisement

from designers and design agencies.

But nowadays, are all managers ready to accept and risk

on unusual creative solutions?

Apple iPhone Apps for Education

A product designed with top of the line technology, may aesthetically

be unique and thus become a household name and the object of desire

for many. But if it doesn't fulfill specific practical needs, it cannot be considered as innovative. It just becomes a trend.

Logo playground!

Many modern logos resemble well polished, playful, succulent,

cute parts of children's toys.

Most of them are successful! Anything having to do with young age, communicates freshness, new ideas and innovation, while their usual curvy, organic shape is always attractive to anyones eye!