For anyone who remembers the U2 tour back in … what? … 1980, that blog headline will bring back memories. Yet now seems like a good time to appropriate it.

Since the middle of last year I’ve been aware of a pseudo-virtual tribute band called “U2 in SL” (I believe I read that they changed their name somewhere along the line and added “in SL” to avoid confusion). I’ve not bothered blogging about it because, to be honest, I just didn’t feel like it. However, what’s nice about having a new set of eyes inside Second Life – in the person of Ilya Vedrashko of the Brands In Games blog – is that what’s old is new again.

It now appears that a recent post over on Brands In Games (Link) has gotten some attention as it’s been picked up by Clickable Culture (Link) , Warcry (Link), Make: (Link) and no doubt others as well. I’m not especially interested in doing anything more than pointing this out, so I’ll leave it at that and only say that I’ll update this post with links as I find them.

{Update 1: some additional links. Hollywood2020 (Link) and GameSetWatch (Link) }

I happened across a Top Five blog list yesterday on some big MSM site. On that list was design*sponge and next to it was, iirc, some simple description like “a blog about design”. I’d heard of it. Probably even surfed through once or twice. But now of course I had to surf over to find out what was so special.

Having spent some time looking over the blog, I honestly don’t see much about the side of “design” that those within the ID community often claim is implicit in their work: innovation, creative thinking, invention, problem-solving. What I do see are lots of aesthetics; “surfacey” design as Gerald Hirshberg once described it to me.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice stuff. But as far as I’m concerned it’s mostly only aesthetics. The blog could just as easily have been called “style*sponge” from my point of view (and this is only my point of view). But it’s design*sponge.

More interesting is what I read on the “About” page (Link):

design*sponge is a website dedicated to home and product design.
…
Only one month after its launch, Design*Sponge was featured on the cover of the New York Times’ House and Garden section,The … {snip – long list here} … Magazine’s Blog.

All this attention over what appears to me to be a blog documenting “design” as mostly stuff that looks nice. Is it any wonder that Industrial Designers are seen by the masses and by most corporations as people who only provide product styling? How many threads are over on Core77 asking what an Industrial Designer really does; or what the difference is between an Industrial Designer and a Product Designer? The confusion is everywhere. Especially when people start trying to use terminology between cultures. Industrial design in Asia is not necessarily defined the same as industrial design in the West. As a result there can be significant disconnects when working together.

Perhaps it’s time that the profession spin off a different label for those Industrial Designers who do more than just provide style. I’m not saying style isn’t important – I’m on record claiming that it is. But right now for many of us, industrial design is something much more. It’s about developing solutions within the constraints imposed by manufacturing; incorporating as much style as possible without impacting other “design” issues (ergonomics, material limitations, molding issues, aso) and sometimes compromising style – often reluctantly – to meet the legitimate needs of the business (e.g. chasing crazy development deadlines to meet customer mod sets, or developing a product to use a specific manufacturing process in order to maximize business assets… like idle blow-molding machines, or seasonally-used rotomolding equipment).

In addition, more Industrial Designers are involved in product engineering than ever before; especially those of us who are dual-degreed. Where once CAD was limited to specialists, increasingly Industrial Designers must have the ability to use a full-fledged CAD application to even get a job interview. Yet that part of “design” isn’t being communicated on sites like design*sponge. In fact, even veteran Industrial Designers often downplay that part of the designer’s job … but to emphasize something even further from “style”: thinking processes; creativity, innovation (that last word has gotten lots of press recently).

Something is wrong. And as far as I’m concerned, the job description “Industrial Designer” should be put to rest. There may not be much use for it in the future anyway. We may as well make the break now.

–

{Update: 27 September 2009

It’s taken a while, but the rest of the Industrial Design community seems to be finally seeing what I saw when I wrote this entry. Phillipe Stark said it not too long ago (though I don’t think most people fully understood his meaning), but now frogdesign’s Jon Kolko is saying it (Link):

Design has outgrown “Industrial Design”, and a professional organization [IDSA] cannot exist only in the form of self-maintenance.

What took everyone so long to acknowledge what’s been evident for years? Who knows.}

For those of you unaware, eBay recently made a significant change to their service: they now allow the sale of downloadable product. If you’re a band, you can sell your music. If you’re a programmer, you could sell your code. If you’re an architect, you might sell plan files to build a home.

When eBay made this announcement, I was curious and waiting to see how it would be used. The service has only been in effect for about two months now, but here’s one indication of where things might be headed (Link):

This auction is for all 5 complete sets of building plans that have been used to build these homes.
Download 3 Page Sample House Plan Here 260 KB File
Download Full Sample House Plan Here 1.4MB File
View slides of Plan#62

12-1500 Sq ft Main Floor on each house
optional Basements
Garages on all plans
3+ bedrooms – 3+ Baths
–
This is what you will get from winning this Auction:

The PDF file download locations emailed to you which contain

11+ pages of House drawings details and specs for each house

more than 55 pages total in PDF Formats

+After payment Immediate access by email to download the PDF files for instant review

Cabinet Details, Section Views, Elevations, Foundation Plans,

Stair Details and Electrical Details Framing Plans

Roof Layouts and Details

Please see our other auctions if you want the DWG files for modification or if you want us to print and ship the plans to you

Also Complete Materials Lists

Winning auction bid? Three dollars and twenty-five cents.

For about the past week or so I’ve been reading (and often re-reading) entries on both the WorldChanging.com site (Link) and on the TED blog (Link). TED – which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design – is a conference held each February in Monterey, California which brings together a diverse, elite crowd to basically share ideas and information. I don’t know about previous years, but last year the conference took a decidedly humanitarian slant after U2 singer Bono won one of three TEDprizes and made his “wish”… to be granted by those in attendence (you can learn more about that on the TED website – Link).

This year I suspect there will be continued emphasis on social issues. Rightly so. And one person who will doubtlessly be helping to inform attendees will be WorldChanging’s Jamais Cascio. I don’t know of anyone currently more vocal than he about the potentially positive role technology can play in correcting some of the planet’s most pressing issues.

Because the things on which I am working – or hoping to work – are closely related to a number of things being discussed both on the WorldChanging site and at the TED conference, I’ve been checking the TEDblog for updates. Here are some bits I enjoyed reading taken from the blog (I’ll forego the “blockquote” tag this time):

– “Creativity is now as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status”. — Ken Robinson

– “The battleground is moving from the physical to the ideological.”—Warfare expert Jim Crupi

– “It’s extremely important to design from within the community.” —MIT inventor Amy Smith, explaining her philosophy on developing tools for third world countries

– “One of the tragic aspects of human-right abuses is that they’re too easily forgotten or denied; but it appears that if there are cameras around, they tend to happen less.” —Peter Gabriel

– “I don’t know if a film can change the world, but I believe it has the ability to take you across borders, into another world, and maybe that has the ability to transform”. —TEDPrize winner and documentary filmmaker Jehane Noujaim

Let me briefly explain why I focused on the above quotes:

– I’m in complete agreement with Ken Robinson.
– I’d extend Jim Crupi’s comment to say this: Business is moving beyond the physicality of things to the exchange of ideas.
– Being familiar with Amy Smith’s work I understand her point, but I’d reframe her comment and flip it on it’s head by saying: As designers we need to realize that we’re all a part of a global community, and that the bigger issue is understanding community hierarchies and interdependencies. If I design a product for the first world which does not consider the impact on the third world (where it is often fabricated in our increasingly global economy), then I do harm to the greater global community. There is no conflict between the idea of designing within a small community to meet its needs while designing for a global community; we’re all part of the same system.
– I like Peter Gabriel’s comment because in essence it’s the meatspace version of online reputation systems. The potential for behavior modification simply by introducing the possibility of destroyed anonymity is profound.
– With regard to Jehane Noujaim, I wonder the same thing – hope the same thing – of virtual world interfaces.

It’s been a long time since I’ve surfed through the Wooster Collective website. I happened by yesterday and found that image… and others. Amazing stuff. Visit the blog for more polaroids (Link). And if you enjoy those pieces, created by Os Gemeos, check out the Lost Art website (Link).