Gizmodo: designers

Don't Miss Objectified on PBS Tonight

Rosa Golijan — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:14:15 EST

We've shown you Jonathan Ive's segment in Objectified before, but the whole movie is on PBS later tonight. Check out PBS for the schedule and watch the fantastic Ives clip once more while you wait. [PBS via Michael Gartenberg]

This Woman Will Make Our Walls Breathe

Rosa Golijan — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:20:00 EST

Every single day we oooh and aahhh over the latest design concepts, but right now, let's focus on one of the minds behind such designs and smile in awe of her motivations and inspirations. Meet MIT designer, Neri Oxman.

Oxman went through medical school, but abandoned that career path for a "mishmash of design, architecture, art, and computer programming."

She works out of MIT's media lab and strives to bring about her vision of the future which consists of all objects living, breathing, and adapting as we interact with them. She imagines organic architecture designs, nanotube walls which change size, chairs that change shape as you sit, DNA-encoded clothing that grows with you. She explains that studying how human bones adjust, getting thicker when a woman is pregnant or thinner when individuals are in outer space, inspired that vision of hers.

As with many other designs that we see, Oxman's are stunning in their intricate plays with textures and materials, but to me the dreamy vision that pushes her to create them adds so much more to the way I view her works. I expect them to draw breath. Maybe we should start taking closer looks at the minds behind the eye-candy we so enjoy. Are there any objects, maybe even gadgets, that truly made you want to know how they were inspired? [Materialecology Blog via Materialecology via Esquire]

Top photo by Tom Allen

Chanel Segway is Pretty Much Inexcusable

Adam Frucci — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 11:40:00 EST

Look, I know that Segways can be used for good and not evil, but a Segway decked out with Chanel branding? Well, that just takes away any excuse you could have had for Segway ownership.

It's just your standard issue Segway, but with the Chanel logo on the front, wheel and handlebar as well as a Chanel bag on the front. There's no word on pricing for this horrible object, but you can bet it won't be cheap. Luckily, you can also bet that there will be very, very few people with the combo of lots of money and lack of taste to buy one. I hope. [Yatzer via BornRich]

$830 Goyard Netbook Sleeves Despise Humanity

Mark Wilson — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 09:00:00 EST

I'm glad that in spite of the economic apocalypse, famed French luggage maker Goyard can offer us netbook bags for only $830 (as seen in Vogue magazine.)

I could say a lot of things in response to this unequivocally ridiculous item. I could live up my male stereotype, chastising the ladies at geeksugar who would fawn over some patterned scrap of leather just because there's a zipper and designer attached. I could approach the bag from a standpoint of logic, questioning why someone would pay more just to hold a netbook than they paid for that netbook in the first place. But I'm not going to do any of those things. It's not worth my or your time or effort. Instead, I'll just say—

Fuck you, Goyard. Fuck. You. [geeksugar via bbGadgets]

That Chanel Rocket Launcher Is SO Iraq Spring 2007

Mark Wilson — Tue, 06 May 2008 13:30:00 EDT

I remember a simpler time when a man needed only a rocket launcher, a sash of bullets and a red headband to mow down countless non-Caucasians. But in artist Peter Gronquist's The Revolution will be Fabulous, he explores a more complicated world of designer weaponry—one where you don't want to be caught dead wearing a pink Gucci rifle after Labor Day. We're aware that there's a deeper political message going on here, but we'd like to take the opportunity to point out that Gizmodo only recommends adding timelessly chic black weaponry to your arsenal.
[Gallery 1988 via DVICE and Vinyl Pulse]

Motorola Firing Half its Designers at a UK Facility

Jason Chen — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 13:50:46 EDT

Say you're a company that had a hit design about three years ago and have been banking on variations of that spec ever since. What's the best way to improve your designs so that people will buy them and turn your company around? Is it firing half of them at one of your UK facilities? Actually, it probably is. What better way to loosen up entrenched ideas than to get rid of half the people responsible for them, shocking the other half into thinking up something new or face the axe as well? Motorola says in addition to laying off these 50%, it might even close the facility altogether. [The Register]