Designers of the Invisible Bike Helmet Describe Their Revolutionary Product in Short Documentary

in Design | November 13th, 2013

It’s been all over the news recent­ly: two Swedish design stu­dents, Anna Haupt and Terese Alstin, have cre­at­ed what they call an “invis­i­ble bike hel­met.” This descrip­tion is a lit­tle mis­lead­ing. The Hövd­ing, as it’s been brand­ed, is not invis­i­ble so much as it’s con­tained, in a puffy, high tech col­lar, as an airbag that deploys upon impact and pro­tects the wear­er from the typ­i­cal head trau­ma cyclists suf­fer in acci­dents.

Work­ing with a head trau­ma spe­cial­ist and stag­ing acci­dents to col­lect move­ment pat­terns, Haupt and Alstin defi­ant­ly took on what they saw as a male-dom­i­nat­ed design estab­lish­ment. “Easy,” they say, “it only took us sev­en years.” They raised ten mil­lion dol­lars and pushed for­ward with a cer­tain amount of Scan­di­na­vian brava­do. The short doc above opens with a few quotes from the pair. “We’re going to save the world,” they tell us, “it’s chick­en to be a real­ist.” Upon see­ing their design, they say, a pro­fes­sor remarked (in Eng­lish), “I have to sit down… you’re going to be mil­lion­aires.”

Haupt and Alstin’s bom­bast is seduc­tive, but the prod­uct may not live up to the hype quite yet. As Tech Crunch report­ed last year, “Hövd­ing costs $600 and only works once. There’s also been some com­plaints about the design and an ear­ly ver­sion had trou­ble with the zip­per.” Nonethe­less, it’s still an amaz­ing inven­tion that will only improve with future real world test­ing. At present, it could save the lives of those well-heeled cyclists who can’t stand to wear clunky, tra­di­tion­al bike hel­mets. In Europe, at least, where the hel­met is cur­rent­ly for sale and safe­ty approved.

The video above was made by direc­tor Fredrik Gert­ton, who has suc­cess­ful­ly Kick­start­ed an advo­ca­cy film he calls Bikes Vs. Cars that seems well worth a look for those con­cerned about the future of urban trans­porta­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sci­ence Behind the Bike: Four Videos from the Open Uni­ver­si­ty on the Eve of the Tour de France

Brus­sels Express: The Per­ils of Cycling in Europe’s Most Con­gest­ed City

David Byrne: From Talk­ing Heads Front­man to Lead­ing Urban Cyclist

The Physics of the Bike

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Vintage Film Shows How the Oxford English Dictionary Was Made in 1925

in Books, Design, History | November 1st, 2013

There was lots of mon­ey to be made at the end of the 19th cen­tu­ry and Dud­ley Dock­er made his share of it. He was what they called a “baron of indus­try” at a time when man­u­fac­tur­ing was explod­ing in Britain. Dock­er made his for­tune in paint, motor­cy­cles, arms man­u­fac­tur­ing, rail­ways, and bank­ing. He was an indus­tri­al boost­er, act­ing as one of the three major financiers behind Ernest Shackleton’s Trans-Antarc­tic Expe­di­tion. In 1916, he found­ed a major asso­ci­a­tion of British indus­try to pro­mote busi­ness inter­ests.

A charm­ing result of that work is a recent­ly dig­i­tized film made in 1925 to demon­strate the work inside Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press. For book arts lovers, this is a fas­ci­nat­ing peek into the ear­ly days of mech­a­nized print­ing.

Above we watch a work­er use a mould to make lead type, hun­dreds of them, by pour­ing the molten lead in at the top, mak­ing a quick upward motion and releas­ing the quick­ly dried type. A sep­a­rate team of work­ers then sets up mono­type com­pos­ing machines, and we watch as men demon­strate their use.

The film fol­lows the process of print­ing a run of Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nar­ies. Books were bound by gen­der-divid­ed teams: A room of women labored in the “girls” bindery sec­tion while men bound books in their own sep­a­rate room. We see the sewing, cut­ting and the fas­ci­nat­ing process of gild­ing the page edges.

In our dig­i­tal age, the old ana­log process­es take on a new, deep­er sig­nif­i­cance. This film presents a ter­rif­ic 18-minute tuto­r­i­al on one of the great­est achieve­ments of the mod­ern age: print­ing mass quan­ti­ties of bound books.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mak­ing of a Stein­way Grand Piano, From Start to Fin­ish

How Walt Dis­ney Car­toons Are Made (1939)

Spike Jonze Presents a Stop Motion Film for Book Lovers

The His­to­ry of the Eng­lish Lan­guage in Ten Ani­mat­ed Min­utes

Kate Rix writes about edu­ca­tion and dig­i­tal media. Fol­low her on Twit­ter.

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“Glory to the Conquerors of the Universe!”: Propaganda Posters from the Soviet Space Race (1958–1963)

in Art, Design, History | August 28th, 2013

conquer space

Walk­ing around L.A. just yes­ter­day, I noticed new ban­ners embla­zoned with illus­tra­tions tout­ing sub­way sta­tions now under con­struc­tion. In bold, bright col­ors, they deliv­er clear, ambi­tious imagery of a bright future ahead: ded­i­cat­ed builders, focused stu­dents, noble work­ing com­muters, surg­ing trains. Why, I thought, those look a bit like Sovi­et pro­pa­gan­da! I had no polit­i­cal com­par­isons in mind, only aes­thet­ic ones, and this Retro­naut post shows off many per­fect exam­ples of the Cold War-era Russ­ian posters the Los Ange­les Metro’s brought to my mind. They cap­ture the imag­i­na­tion by exud­ing even more intense sci­en­tif­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal, edu­ca­tion­al, and social opti­mism — and doing so in even more visu­al detail — than I’d remem­bered.

And boy, speak­ing of ambi­tion: “From student’s mod­els to space­ships!” “To the Sun! To the stars!” “Glo­ry to the con­querors of the uni­verse!” Chil­dren inclined to accept these glo­ri­ous slo­gans and the rap­tur­ous imagery they accom­pa­ny could not pos­si­bly fail to believe that, thor­ough­ly edu­cat­ed by their coun­try, their gen­er­a­tion would go on to ush­er in a new galaxy-span­ning order of peace, pros­per­i­ty, and social­ism. Yet we in the rest of the world now know of the bore­dom, cyn­i­cism, and oppres­sion that attend­ed many Sovi­et cit­i­zens’ every­day lives. A Cold War-spe­cial­ist col­lege his­to­ry pro­fes­sor of mine liked to tell a sto­ry about a trip to Moscow he took in the six­ties, on which he kept see­ing ado­les­cents with noth­ing more pro­duc­tive to do than open­ly chug­ging vod­ka on street cor­ners.  Yet, see­ing posters like these, you sim­ply want to believe, just like I want to believe in the exten­sion of Los Ange­les’ sub­way — which, at times, seems about as plau­si­ble as the con­quer­ing of out­er space.

“From student’s mod­els to space­ships!”

Soviet-Space-Propaganda-Posters-3

“Glo­ry to the work­ers of Sovi­et sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy!”

Soviet-Space-Propaganda-Posters-9

“I am hap­py — this is my work join­ing the work of my repub­lic”

Soviet-Space-Propaganda-Posters-14

“In the 20th cen­tu­ry the rock­ets race to the stars”

Soviet-Space-Propaganda-Posters-15
Vis­it Retro­naut for many more space pro­pa­gan­da posters from the Sovi­et era.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“First Orbit”: Cel­e­brat­ing 50th Anniver­sary of Yuri Gagaran’s Space Flight

How the CIA Secret­ly Fund­ed Abstract Expres­sion­ism Dur­ing the Cold War

How to Spot a Com­mu­nist Using Lit­er­ary Crit­i­cism: A 1955 Man­u­al from the U.S. Mil­i­tary

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Now I Know My LSD ABCs: A Trippy Animation of the Alphabet

in Animation, Creativity, Design, English Language, Music | July 29th, 2013

Many inter­ests have spurred cre­ative alpha­bet col­lec­tions: New York City. Geek­dom. Food snob­bery. Child­hood calami­ty. And now?

Actu­al­ly, LSD ABC, defies neat cat­e­go­riza­tion. Beyond the fact that they’re both spelled out using let­ters, what could Dim Sum pos­si­bly have in com­mon with VHS? Not much pri­or serv­ing as inspi­ra­tional prompts for graph­ic design­ers Lau­rent & Françoise (oth­er­wise known as Lau­ra Sicouri and Kadavre Exquis). Now they’re 1/13th of a delight­ful­ly twist­ed ani­mat­ed whole, one of those dead­line-free pet projects that goes on to spawn a lim­it­ed edi­tion vinyl album.

The duo is prone to fetishiz­ing the anachro­nis­tic tech­nolo­gies of the recent past, in a man­ner slight­ly more ele­gant than come­di­ans Tim Hei­deck­er and Eric Ware­heim. They toss in a foot sim­i­lar to the one Ter­ry Gilliam used to such effect on Mon­ty Python. H and S are sub­ject­ed to the sort of indig­ni­ties Wile E. Coy­ote used to suf­fer at the hands of the Road Run­ner. It’s all tied togeth­er with AT&T Lab’s decid­ed­ly unnat­ur­al-sound­ing Nat­ur­al Voice text-to-speech nar­ra­tion.

While it’s dif­fi­cult to pick a favorite from such a mind bend­ing array, I’m going to have to go with P…for Pet Piano, natch. You?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch All of Ter­ry Gilliam’s Mon­ty Python Ani­ma­tions in a Row

Bauhaus, Mod­ernism & Oth­er Design Move­ments Explained by New Ani­mat­ed Video Series

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is stymied by the lack of Ys on cer­tain Euro­pean key­boards. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Better Living Through Buckminster Fuller’s Utopian Designs: Revisit the Dymaxion Car, House, and Map

in Design, Technology | July 16th, 2013

To those who haven’t delved deeply into his con­sid­er­able body of work, twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry archi­tect, inven­tor, and futur­ist Buck­min­ster Fuller seems to have left behind a sin­gle last­ing con­tri­bu­tion to the built envi­ron­ment: the geo­des­ic dome. This I remem­ber when­ev­er I pass by the Cin­era­ma Dome on Sun­set Boule­vard, a famous movie the­ater built accord­ing to Fuller’s sphere-inten­sive archi­tec­tur­al prin­ci­ples. But the fact that you don’t see many oth­er geo­des­ic domes these days — you nev­er did see many, I sup­pose — belies the abun­dant fruits of Fuller’s imag­i­na­tion and know-how. Vig­i­lant­ly mind­ful of human­i­ty’s poten­tial for a bet­ter tomor­row, he also designed a suite of seem­ing­ly Utopi­an, sur­pris­ing­ly inno­v­a­tive, and ulti­mate­ly unpop­u­lar tools for bet­ter liv­ing. He brand­ed them with a port­man­teau of dynam­ic, max­i­mum, and ten­sion: “Dymax­ion” came to stand, or at least Fuller seemed to want it to stand, for unceas­ing ded­i­ca­tion to improv­ing our pat­terns of life.

To that end, he con­ceived of the Dymax­ion House, or “Dymax­ion Dwelling Machine,” a cheap­ly mass-pro­ducible, nat­u­ral­ly heat­ed and cooled, near­ly main­te­nance-free, eas­i­ly mod­i­fi­able, and, of course, round hous­ing solu­tion. The sat­is­fied res­i­dent of Fuller’s future would dri­ve to and from his Dymax­ion House, along with ten pas­sen­gers, in his aero­dy­nam­ic Dymax­ion Car, capa­ble of reach­ing 90 miles per hour at 30 miles to the gal­lon. And no mat­ter where he drove, he could find his way with the Dymax­ion Map (also known as the “Fuller Pro­jec­tion map”), the only flat whole-earth map with no visu­al dis­tor­tions in its rep­re­sen­ta­tion of what Fuller called Space­ship Earth. You can see the Dymax­ion Car in action, and hear Fuller talk about its devel­op­ment, in the video just above. A 1946 news­reel tour of the Dymax­ion House appears at the top of the post. If you now find your­self eager to live accord­ing to Buck­min­ster Fuller’s ideals, try keep­ing his ultra-detailed form of a diary, the Dymax­ion Chronofile, or tak­ing his peri­od­ic 30 minute Dymax­ion naps. I know I’d like to get a Dymax­ion bath­room installed.

Dynamaxion_1933

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Every­thing I Know: 42 Hours of Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Vision­ary Lec­tures Free Online (1975)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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A Beer Bottle Gets Turned Into a 19th Century Edison Cylinder and Plays Fine Music

in Design, Music | June 20th, 2013

The long and cozy rela­tion­ship between alco­hol and music is well-documented—in song. Did George Jones ever sing about any­thing else?

But until now there’s nev­er been so lit­er­al a part­ner­ship as the one between Beck’s beer and the New Zealand pop band Ghost Wave.

This spring, the band won a con­test at the heart of Beck’s adver­tis­ing cam­paign, “Music Inspires Art.” The prize: a Ghost Wave label on beer bot­tles through­out New Zealand. Last month came a sec­ond prize. In the spir­it of Thomas Edison’s famous record­ing cylin­ders, Beck’s pro­duced an old-school record­ing of a Ghost Wave track direct­ly onto a green glass bot­tle.

The audio qual­i­ty is sur­pris­ing­ly good. You’ve prob­a­bly heard the crack­ly record­ings of Tchaikovsky’s voice record­ed on an ear­ly Edi­son cylin­der. You may have even heard the (much more recent) sin­gle that Suzanne Vega pro­duced in cylin­der for­mat.

For the beer-bot­tle record­ing, Beck’s enlist­ed the help of Auck­land-based spe­cial effects firm Gyros Con­struc­tivists to build an indus­tri­al strength record-cut­ting lathe. The tech­nol­o­gy used for ear­li­er cylin­ders didn’t work because the Ghost Wave track, like most mod­ern music, fea­tures so much bass that the cut­ting tool kept hop­ping out of the groove. The Gyros lathe used a hard dri­ve record­ing head to cut into the glass.

The bot­tle track ulti­mate­ly played on a reverse-engi­neered cylin­der play­er, made with mod­ern mate­ri­als and fine-tuned with soft­ware to remove motor hum.

Edi­son invent­ed the phono­graph cylin­der in 1877. In an ear­ly record­ing, he cap­tured his own voice recit­ing a children’s nurs­ery rhyme. Edison’s ini­tial pro­to­type used tin­foil wrapped around a hand-cranked cylin­der, but that proved to be too del­i­cate for every­day use. He changed the mate­r­i­al to wax, which also wore out after repeat­ed use, and even­tu­al­ly replaced that with plas­tic cel­lu­loid.

Now what would George Jones have said about that?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Thomas Edi­son Recites “Mary Had a Lit­tle Lamb” in Ear­ly Voice Record­ing

Thomas Edison’s 1889 Record­ing of Otto von Bis­mar­ck‎ Dis­cov­ered

Tchaikovsky’s Voice Cap­tured on an Edi­son Cylin­der (1890)

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Vis­it her web­site, , and fol­low her on Twit­ter, @mskaterix.

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Bauhaus, Modernism & Other Design Movements Explained by New Animated Video Series

in Architecture, Art, Design | June 5th, 2013

UK’s Open Uni­ver­si­ty has devel­oped a fun way to mar­ket their design cours­es: a series of six short ani­ma­tions called “Design in a Nut­shell” that briefly sur­vey impor­tant move­ments in the arts and architecture—from the late-nine­teenth cen­tu­ry Goth­ic Revival to late-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry Post­mo­d­er­mism. While the for­mer looked far into the past, seek­ing to pre­serve tra­di­tion, the lat­ter looked every­where, glee­ful­ly dis­man­tling, recy­cling, and recom­bin­ing frag­ment­ed and irrecov­er­able his­to­ries.

Between the two extremes, three inter-relat­ed post-WWI move­ments sought to make peace with the indus­tri­al present and design for a har­mo­nious future. The first one fea­tured, the Bauhaus move­ment (above)—founded in Weimar, Ger­many by Wal­ter Gropius in 1919—integrated the fine arts and indus­tri­al design into one school. Famous teach­ers includ­ed artists Paul Klee and Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky. Bauhaus designs per­me­ate the larg­er move­ment known as Mod­ernism.

The ani­ma­tion above gives us the briefest gist of Mod­ernism, a sweep­ing umbrel­la term for a host of rad­i­cal ‑isms in the arts, lit­er­a­ture, design, and architecture—impressionism, cubism, fau­vism, futur­ism, bru­tal­ism, sur­re­al­ism…. Euro­pean and Amer­i­can artists turned their back on the old-world past after the mass slaugh­ter of World War One. Not all Mod­ernists found solace in the break­down of the old order. Writ­ers like T.S. Eliot found much rea­son to despair. But design­ers like Eero Saari­nen and the hus­band and wife team Charles and Ray Eames embraced indus­tri­al tech­niques and mass pro­duc­tion to cre­ate for­ward-look­ing, min­i­mal­ist fur­ni­ture and build­ings that still define the way we live now.

The episode above, “Amer­i­can Indus­tri­al Design,” describes how indus­tri­al design­ers made inno­v­a­tive use of new mate­ri­als and pro­duc­tion meth­ods to cre­ate sleek, stream­lined prod­ucts that rein­vig­o­rat­ed the Amer­i­can mar­ket in the midst of the Great Depres­sion. Design­ers like Nor­man Bel Ged­des cre­at­ed a futur­is­tic land­scape that inspired faith in tech­no­log­i­cal progress, even as much of the coun­try still lived on strug­gling farms.

Bel Ged­des’ most notable achieve­ment was his design of the “Futu­ra­ma” ride (which gave the ani­mat­ed show its name) at the 1939–40 World’s Fair. Part of the Gen­er­al Motors exhib­it, “Futu­ra­ma” whisked rid­ers past detailed minia­tures of “the world of tomor­row.” The opti­mism of some Mod­ernist design­ers would be shat­tered by the tech­no­log­i­cal hor­rors of World War Two. But for a few brief decades, the future looked entire­ly man­age­able with the right designs, tech­niques, mate­ri­als, and savvy mar­ket­ing.

You can find all six videos appear­ing in the Design in a Nut­shell series on YouTube.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The ABC of Archi­tects: An Ani­mat­ed Flip­book of Famous Archi­tects and Their Best-Known Build­ings

Charles & Ray Eames’ Icon­ic Film Pow­ers of Ten (1977) and the Less­er-Known Pro­to­type from 1968

Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky Caught in the Act of Cre­ation, 1926

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Punk Meets High Fashion in Metropolitan Museum of Art Exhibition PUNK: Chaos to Couture

in Art, Design, Museums, Music | May 30th, 2013

What­ev­er else British punk rock gave pop cul­ture, it was always a rev­o­lu­tion in fash­ion, engi­neered by Sex Pis­tols sven­gali Mal­colm McLaren and his part­ner, design­er Vivi­enne West­wood. The two pio­neered punk’s S&M‑inspired look from their Chelsea bou­tique, SEX, a one­time record shop that mor­phed into the epi­cen­ter of Lon­don street fash­ion. McLaren passed away in 2010, but his for­mer part­ner West­wood is still designing—only now her work is haute cou­ture nos­tal­gia, its shock­ing sneer at uptight British cul­ture a muse­um piece. Her lat­est col­lec­tion, Chaos, revis­its many of the icon­ic designs of the mid-sev­en­ties made famous by the Sex Pis­tols, such as the “tits square” and “cow­boy square” t‑shirts and the ubiq­ui­tous safe­ty pin.

The name of Westwood’s retro lat­est work is reflect­ed in a cur­rent exhi­bi­tion at the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art called PUNK: Chaos to Cou­ture, which began May 9th and runs until August 14th. In the video above, cura­tor Andrew Bolton dis­cuss­es the exhibition’s stag­ing of low and high cul­ture crossover. In the press mate­ri­als, Bolton is frank about the con­tra­dic­to­ry aims of punk and high fash­ion:

Since its ori­gins, punk has had an incen­di­ary influ­ence on fash­ion… Although punk’s democ­ra­cy stands in oppo­si­tion to fashion’s autoc­ra­cy, design­ers con­tin­ue to appro­pri­ate punk’s aes­thet­ic vocab­u­lary to cap­ture its youth­ful rebel­lious­ness and aggres­sive force­ful­ness.

This is not the first time Bolton has appro­pri­at­ed punk fash­ion for high art or worked with Vivi­enne West­wood. In 2006, Bolton curat­ed a Met exhib­it called Anglo­Ma­nia (cat­a­log here), which drew its name and inspi­ra­tion from anoth­er of Westwood’s col­lec­tions.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sex Pis­tols Front­man John­ny Rot­ten Weighs In On Lady Gaga, Paul McCart­ney, Madon­na & Katy Per­ry

Mal­colm McLaren: The Quest for Authen­tic Cre­ativ­i­ty

The His­to­ry of Punk Rock

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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