I may not always understand them, like when they reportedly refused to license their designs to be used in racing videogames, but the other things they do – the field work, so to speak – has my attention. And now they’ve gotten more of it.

The Vinyl Pulse website is reporting that the folks at Scion (probably working again with viral marketers from The Rebel Organization, Inc.) are enlisting urban artists to not just provide artwork for their 3rd installment of the Installation Art Tour as in their previous installments, but this time to provide artwork created on canvases of model Scions (shown above). From Vinyl Pulse’s post (Link):

This time around invited urban artists will be creating on very special canvases — 3 foot Scion tC replica cars produced by none other than Wheaty Wheat Studios. The show will make several stops around the country ending in LA at Scion’s permanent gallery.

What industrial designer doesn’t love the look of CNC’d yellow foam? How cool is that?

The only question I have is: what are all those other companies out there waiting for?

{Image sources: Vinyl Pulse and Scion}

Having read posts on the Core77 design forum by American designers and having spoken with clients in the U.S. who echo their thoughts, BusinessWeek columnist Roger Martin has penned something I’ll be sending their way in the future instead of trying by myself to convince them that the West doesn’t own the ability to innovate (which so many of them seem to believe). From his entry (Link):

There is a romantic notion in North American business that its future lies in design and innovation, while India and China will be the home of less skilled, lower-paying operations churning out the products and services the U.S. comes up with.

and

These globally oriented outfits are not entrusting all creativity, design, and innovation to “first world” opponents while they huddle over their workstations. True, they have staggering cost advantages over traditional competitors. But that doesn’t mean they are incapable of design and innovation. (Their North American rivals just wish they were.)

To be sure, there are some serious challenges facing both countries, but to make assumptions about what they can and cannot do would be like … well … U.S. automakers in the 1970’s claiming loudly that the Japanese will never make a car to rival an American product (my own regular example, but also used by Mr. Martin). Here’s something else I keep telling them which you’ll see in the article:

Assuming that capabilities are static and advantages are permanent is a mistake.

And last but not least, here’s something you’ll hear plenty of industrial designers say (though I don’t know how many other business-types say it; in practice it certainly seems as if too many have never entertained this thought):

If North American businesses genuinely want to ward off Indian and Chinese rivals, they’d better start by rejecting the notion of an apparent trade-off between low cost on one hand and design and innovation on the other.

In my opinion the real question now is: does the West really want to hear all this? Between the above-the-law CEO’s with their over-inflated, golden-parachute egos, and the productivity-worn laborers who can barely enjoy life after all their unpaid overtime, I fear this message will in large part go unheeded. The CEO’s think they’re too good and the workforce just doesn’t care anymore. This may not end well.

I’d asked some of the designers over on the Core77 forums if they wanted some exposure, unfortunately the response was less than pathetic. It’s actually a bit odd. So many designers claim to want exposure, but when it’s offered – no strings attached – they clam up. Except for two of them that is.

One of those designers is Nate Lynch, a consulting designer working out of Florida (Link). As it turns out, while writing this post I discovered Nate consulted on a Motorola product that garnered some attention at CES. The above image is the SD7500 Series 5.8GHz Digital Expandable Cordless Phone System and it took away a CES Innovations 2006 Award in the “telephones” category. I can’t imagine how many telephone entries there were, so getting recognition in this category is pretty cool. Now maybe Nate will stop by and give us a little background on what makes this particular system special.

I’ll be posting the second person’s work Friday (which was originally going to be the day I did a weekly showcase). It’s fun stuff so stop in if you have time.

{Image Copyright © 2005 Motorola}

Hey everyone, welcome AdAge to the podcasting age. And for their first “Why It Matters” audio show they discuss the recent Consumer Electronics Show in which AdAge host Hoag Levins interviews… *drumroll please*… the editor of Advertising Age, Scott Donaton! You can find a link to the streaming media over on AdAge (Link – free registration required).

Okay, so maybe interviewing themselves is kinda hokey, but Donaton does make some excellent points. From the very beginning where he claims, “this year CES became the centerpiece of the convergence movement… we’re moving from a focus on what a technology is and how it works to what it enables you do to” to responding to questions covering a few different areas of interest, their inaugural piece gets a thumbs up from me (although I suspect he isn’t thinking much about the possibilities of virtual world content beyond “entertainment value”; but then again, plenty of designers don’t either). Anyway, it’s a short audio segment that’s worth listening to from a few different perspectives… because convergence does that sort of thing y’know.

Watching Second Life developer Linden Lab handle community relations is like watching a wildly schizophrenic parent raise a child. One minute they’re cuddling their offspring and the next they’re chaining them to the bed. The truth is, LL’s community relations aren’t broken – they would have to have something to break first, and there’s little indication they have any guidelines in place to break. Why else would they expend so much effort attempting to promote a creator-friendly environment – going so far as to institute both an in-world currency exchange and point-to-point teleportation in apparent attempts to prime the content creation engine – but do such a horrendous job working with them directly on high-visibility projects? If they had a real set of worthwhile guidelines in place, these issues wouldn’t arise… again and again and again.

If you’ve read my previous entry on the Second Life/Wells Fargo Stage Coach Island advergame meltdown (Link), you have some background. If you need additional clarification, Clickable Culture has parsed much of that same information and posted something that might help (Link). But in the end, all you really need to know is that there are too many creators asking questions and bluntly saying that they’re now hesitant to work with Linden Lab on any future endeavors. That’s not good.

In any event, I’m here now to post the next official(?) Linden comment on this mess (the best we have for now). From Reuben Linden:

OK, here goes with some clarifications:

1. 30 sims were purchased by Linden lab by Swivel Media on behalf of Wells Fargo for the purposes of the BETA project.
2. Bedazzle was hired by Swivel to create the content for Stagecoach Island
3. Approximately 20 vendors created clothing, attractions, etc. for the island.
4. Shortly before launch, we all realized that a single group would need to take ownership of the vendor items in order make the process of maintaining/modifying the build possible
5. Linden Lab, acting on behalf of Swivel, negotiated “buyouts” of the content to compensate the vendors for the right to use their content for the BETA period. These vendors were also promised the $L for any sales that resulted during the BETA period (this has not yet been paid and is a very small # due to limited participation)
6. When Swivel Media ported the content to ActiveWorlds, they confused Cubey’s content with content created by Bedazzled. I believe Cubey and Swivel and working out a resolution to this now.

I’ve already pointed out one questionable line item on the forum. And I see some other things said here that don’t really answer some questions that need attention. How anyone believes Linden Lab will open source the SL client when they can’t handle transparency at this level is beyond me.