Contract furnishings provider, Hightower received multiple awards at NeoCon 2021, including IIDA's 'Best Small Showroom' (under 4,000 sf) and 'Best of Competition' for its newly designed Chicago showroom.
Humanscale welcomes Elizabeth Margles to its Marketing Division in the role of Chief Marketing Officer. Margles comes to Humanscale with twenty years of experience in design, fashion and retail and a background in public relations and advertising.
The exclusive relationship with Kontrol's BioCloud® Technology will provide real-time detection of airborne pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2 to help make workplaces safer as organizations return to the office.
“Do I want to be honest but broke, or do I want to prostitute myself and be loaded?” In 1961, Bernard Benson, a British aviation designer, articulated one of his generation’s core dilemmas: selling out.
Recently, global design and strategy firm frog hosted an Ask Me Anything (AMA) centered on product design and spoke openly about tips and tricks that all aspiring designers should be thinking about when they approach a new project. Held by Inbal Etgar, a creative director out of San Francisco, and Francois Nguyen, a creative director out of New York, the conversation explored the skills that would make a designer successful and the design traps he/she should avoid.
As graphic design hubs go, we tend to think of big cities like New York or countries like Germany. But Western Michigan? Not really. However, a new digital archive is giving the region the spotlight it deserves.
“West Michigan was a hub of graphic design activity because of the paper industry, the educational programs at Western Michigan University and now Ferris State University, and also the corporations here that supported design and realized what effect it could have on business,” Barbara Loveland, cofounder of the Graphic Design Archive of West Michigan, tells Co.Design. [Graphic design] raised itself to a level of excellence because of the demand.”
Tom Strong’s 50-year obsession with the German electronics brand Braun began innocently enough. Soon after he got married, his wife purchased a few household appliances designed by Dieter Rams for Braun. As the years went on, Strong, a graphic designer, became more fascinated with them and became a full-fledged collector. Eventually, he accumulated over 250 classic Braun products, many of which are now on view in an NYCxDesign-related exhibition at Vitsœ’s New York showroom.
The airline industry is undergoing drastic change, heralded both by the economy and new advancements in technology. And with very small profit margins, airlines are always looking for ways to save money.
Created by design duo Iratzoki Lizaso for Alki, the Egon Collection of furniture consists of a sofa system, coffee tables, and poufs perfect for any type of lounge space. While each has their own distinct look, the three different designs are made to work together seamlessly for ultimate relaxation. Each piece is stripped of extraneous adornment to keep their silhouettes simplified and fairly minimalist, while still remaining aesthetically pleasing for all the modern design lovers out there.
Starting June 17, the Cranbrook Art Museum in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., will host “Alexander Girard: A Designer’s Universe”—the U.S. debut of a traveling exhibit of Girard’s work that includes furniture, textiles, graphics, architecture, sculptures, and drawings. Pieces from his collection of folk art—from which he drew inspiration—will also be on view. The exhibit is organized by the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany, where it was on view last fall.
This week, the National Endowment for the Arts released a report on the importance of industrial design to the United States’ economic health. While it covers everything from Apple’s influence to a crash course in UX design principles, the report ultimately drives home one main point: Industrial designers can be a serious financial boon.
Madrid-based ENORME Studio was inspired by the work of German machinery manufacturer Carl Schlickeysen, who developed the first machine made to produce bricks by extrusion. Using a similar idea, they developed the SCHLICKEYSEN modular furniture system that consists of modular metal supports and curved, brick-like ceramic forms that fit within them. The components can be configured to create picnic tables, benches, or even grandstands for elevated seating.
Design thinking, as it was conceived 15 years ago, has outlived its usefulness. Enter systems thinking.
Two honors for achievements in product design and innovation were recently awarded to Humanscale. Offering the highest quality LED lighting with smart settings for control and conservation, Humanscale’s Infinity is a 2017 Red Dot winner for Product Design. The task performance light was chosen as one of the top products of the year, excelling in criteria including innovation, formal quality, functionality and ecological compatibility.
The hand of Philippe Starck is immediately recognizable in the design of Generic Chair, a new program of seating with a functional and simple design that represents the “generic ideotypes” of chairs designed for public spaces. Generic C – where C stands for ‘cafe’ – has been designed for bars, restaurants and leisure spaces: places where the function plays the most important role even before any form or possible aesthetic interpretation. Generic C is available in white, black, sage-green, rust, grey and yellow.
Already from afar, onlookers on a brno housing estate in the Czech Republic can spot an all-black pavilion with an unusual and abstract looking envelope. On closer inspection, the low-rise volume is actually made up of a façade using many individual seats that have been angled and fixed directly onto the structure. This distinctive pavilion is a project where a former showroom for cars has been reinterpreted as a showroom and office for a furniture company.
Now the dust has settled on the fair for another year, some of the most striking observations from the world's biggest and most important design gathering relate to what wasn't there, rather than what was. With key brands absent, politics off the agenda and China barely mentioned, the week offers a somewhat outmoded view of what design means today.
However most fairgoers seemed blissfully unconcerned by this, mindlessly instagramming everything in sight and calling out ever-shallower trends based on the flimsiest of evidence.
At a time when more traditional businesses are scrambling to adopt the efficiencies of leaner startups, help is on the way. WeWork is currently in the research phase of a new initiative through which it will revamp companies’ offices for them, remaking them in WeWork’s image and arming them with office-management technology and a cultural attaché.
Saying that British technology company Dyson Ltd. is committed to research and development could be the understatement of the century. The company spends $8.8 million every week on R&D for new products. It operates a campus in the United Kingdom where 1,500 of its engineers and scientists work on future technology. There, they ably demonstrate the company’s capabilities as a cross-category provider.
Tables branch out of this eight-person sofa, designed by Swedish studio Front to offer a relaxed breakout space in bustling offices.
Front created the furniture – which was on show at Milan design week – as an experiment for Swedish brand Offecct. It is meant to inhabit the middle of a room, and function as both seating and a temporary workstation.
Swedish furniture company Blå Station has launched an armchair by Stone Designs that has an extra compartment to keep restaurants, bars and hotel lobbies free of clutter.The idea for the chair – which was presented at Milan design week – came about when Stone Designs founders Eva Prego and Cutu Mazuelos stayed at a busy ski resort.
With people's goggles, helmets and backpacks piled up on tables and in the lobby, the pair – who set the studio up in Madrid in 1995 – decided to create furniture that could reclaim the space.
Minimalism has held a tight grip on the modern design industry for the past decade. We embraced the Apple aesthetic, extolled the logic of Helvetica, and worshiped at the church of Dieter Rams. It served its purpose, most recently, as a correctional to the excesses of the 1990s. But lately, as dispatches from Milan Design Week have shown, asceticism has given way to audacity.
With several years of successful collaborations with Artifort under his belt, designer Khodi Feiz continues the tradition with new releases for 2017. The pieces debuted with Artifort at Salone del Mobile, the perfect launchpad for new work.
