Little signals
Little signals is a series of interaction experiments and thought starters on how we can foster new behaviours and relationships with our technology.
As digital technology matures, humans will require subtle background signals rather than the constant pings and alerts from our devices.
The detergent brand Tide has embraced digital technology to offer a personalised clothes cleaning service in your area. Tide is asking consumers and business-owners to request new locations via a microsite. The locations will include drop-box lockers inside high-rise apartment buildings, offices and retail locations such as supermarkets, vans parked on student campuses and 24-hour stand-alone stores. Customers can pre-pay for laundry through an app, drop it off in the lockers and receive a notification when it is ready for pick-up.
As explored in our macrotrend Connected Living, Tide are embracing digital applications, e-commerce and geolocation to offer consumers ultra convenience.
University of Brighton
BA (Hons) 3D Design + Craft
Pearce's project 'Boundaries of Control' uses a simple piece of equipment to hand blow waste plastic, celebrating the untamed and animated properties which we rarely see in everyday mass produced products. From this process, he has created a range of lighting sculptures that encourages to think about our use of plastic and the potential of what we throw away.
Crayola Beauty has teamed up with Asos to create is a new vegan, a cruelty-free make up line aimed at 20-somethings.
The collection uses Crayolas playful heritage. The majority of the products come in a stick formula similar to brands like Nudestix, Milk Makeup, and Nars, who all stock easy-to-use chubby pencil-inspired cosmetics.
Among the products are:
95 total shades.
24 shades of stick foundation.
five palettes (three eye, one face, and one color changing lipstick).
cheek crayons.
mascaras.
makeup brushes.
Sony's latest research project was exhibited at Milan 2018. Sony suggests a move away from our current phone dependency to a more poetic interaction which engage our senses.
Smart sensors gathered information from visitors’ actions to deliver a variety of awe-inspiring surprises. These included a virtual butterfly flying away as a vase was moved across the table, and a wall projection of a flower opening upon a person’s approach.
Moving lights, changing surfaces, colourful wall projections and haptic feedback provided a glimpse of future interiors in which humans and furniture seamlessly and intuitively interact.
Future personal care is an area that Schwarzkopf have been giving thought to with the launch of Professional's SalonLab showcased at CES 2018.
The SalonLab Customizer dynamically formulates and produces a customized hair care product for each client right in the salon based on the gathered data - at the simple touch of a button.
MIT's Self-Assembly Lab has demonstrated its rapid liquid printing process at this year's Design Miami fair, using it to create products in front of visitors.
Envisioning a future whereby digital technology has superseded analogue cooking, Marjorie Artieres visualises the domestic kitchen in 2024 where 3D printers are commonplace. 3D printing food has provided perfect nutrition, no waste and issues surrounding food shortages, but with it has come uniformly shaped, processed & diagnostically perfect pods of food that has removed the pleasure and rituals of cooking.
Her Note by Note project offers a laboratory style tool kit for creating and recapturing the heritage of analogue cooking that has been lost with the rise of the digital kitchen.
Unlike cooking today, her future kitchen proposal has no recipes, instead Note by Note uses experimental and innovative cooking to create a new repertoire of flavours, textures and colours.
Artieres's project is as a provocation to technologists to re think the future of cooking with passion and taste rather than just necessity.
http://vimeo.com/98531837
The brilliant Daan Rooesgarde who has already brought us light up highways, glowing trees as replacement for street lamps and anti smog parks in Beijing has unveiled his latest project - a luxury ring that is a bi product of his fight against urban pollution. Still in its design phase, the ring will be a metal band housing a clear central stone that will house smog particles that have been extracted from Beijing city air in the smog parks themselves. The black dust, which is made up mostly of carbon soot from coal will symbolise a cubic kilometer of smog that each ring has cleared from the skies.
In addition he wants to develop a higher end version whereby he presses the dirty air particles and turns them into a valuable stone that resembles a diamond.
Playing with notions of luxury and tackling an issue head on this project is both poetic and practical.
Pushing the boundaries of experience with smell and taste shows no sign of abating. The latest project to explore this subject is Molecule-R, who specialise in molecular gastronomy. Their product Aromafork is designed to elevate and enhance the eating experience via smell and taste combined. Based on the fact that most of what we taste is actually triggered by our sense of smell, the fork uses blotting paper that the user can infuse with a chosen scent to include bubble gum and wasabi. The fork adds the experience of taste through the added scent.
Citing it as a 'culinary revolution' the fork is ready to pre order now.
Continuing the theme around future synthetic cosmetics and beauty care, Lucy Mcrae has released her latest film in collaboration with Nowness exploring her swallowable parfum concept. Similarly to Amy Congdon the relationship between synthetic biology and cosmetics is a growing area of exploration for designers and scientist. As Lucy describes in her accompanying interview , “We are living in an era of no rules; technology is corrupting nature’s ballot, forcing us to redefine our bodies’ limitations and boundaries,” Lucy believes that in the not too distant future we will be eating our cosmetics to enhance our skin luminosity, colour and scent.
Speculative designer Amy Congdon considers a future where biotechnology will give designers a new set of materials and tools to work with. Believing that future materials will be grown from cells she suggests a range of jewellery that is grown from our bones, skin and cartilage. Envisioning a future 2082 her ‘Bio Nouveau’ collection replaces cosmetic surgery with tissue engineered disposable biological atelier pieces. In order to care for these semi living body adornments she has created a fictional range of body care products that include Graft Moisturiser & tone, SynSkin treatment and Graft Aftercare and Bioskin glue.
We love the work of Studio Fludd and their alchemic approach to design so were delighted by their latest project 'Poor Tools' exploring up-cycling, materiality and a touch of humour. Invited by the art collective How We Dwell ,they spent a week in November on an almost deserted island in front of Venice, Italy.
Whilst there they worked with the materials to be found on the island and the small kit of tools left for them. Collecting natural and artificial findings on the island (including rubbish) they created a series of objects that tell a narrative about the wildly chaotic environment that is the island with wild goats wandering around contrasted witt the new offices and hotel being built there.
They created a wunderkammer housing their engaging and delightful objects and tools which tell a story in their own right.
There have been a few projects exploring the rituals of beauty and exploring the narratives of alchemy and process and here is the latest from materials alchemist Sarah Linda Forrer. A recent graduate from Design Academy Eindhoven, Sarah explores materials, experience and 'atmospheres'. As part of her graduation project she has designed a series of mystical skin care tools that are inspired by the ancient Egyptians belief that beauty was a sign of holiness.
Fascinated by the idea that cosmetics could be used beyond aesthetic purposes, but to include magical and ritualistic experiences, Sarah has explored exciting materiality and design outcomes.
Her collection of skin care tools are almost future soft fossils exploring texture and tactility. She has for example mixed patterned hard wood from the Alpine river with bubbles of rubber as a cleansing tool and Alabaster stone as a spoon to mix oils and powders.
Known for changing the face of 3D printing when they unveiled their virtual potter/ 3D printed ceramic project at Milan Design week in 2010, Studio Unfold's latest project continues that journey with a series of 3D printed ceramic tools that dilute and diffuse perfume. Researching how ceramics both store and release perfume each 'tool' has been designed to explore the alchemy of scent and material as well as focusing on the importance of experiencing the delights of scent.
Designed in collaboration with Barnabé Fillion who is behind the perfume brand The Peddler their pipette, flask and funnel 'tools' offer new ways of experiencing scent.
With a trend in soaps returning to the humble bar away from the more recently favoured liquid pump, Baxter of California take the experience one step further with their three part collection of Vitamin Cleansing Soaps that feature an updated formula. Including ingredients like aloe and seaweed they have also added vitamins A and E and a colourful and tactile stripe that is made from a hydrating glycerin. Not only beautiful to look at they tantalise with their aroma as they are available in enticing scents and flavours of bergamont and pear, Italian lime and pomegranate as well as flora and cassis.
Shown as part of the Dutch Invertuals exhibition at Dutch Design week which explored how contemporary designers could update craft, these beautiful ceramics by Kirstie Van Noort are made by building up coloured layers that are then CNC milled to reveal the imperfect beauty of hand craft.
Continuing his quest for quiet relaxation in our busy urban environments, Harm Rensink's latest project shown during Dutch Design Week in an old church explores bathing in warm earth that covers the user. Taking inspiration from the Japanese thermal sand baths the firmness and the warmth of the sand stimulates the senses and enlightens the mind and in the words of Harm 'Leads you into a new reality'.
Exploring materials, form and process, Maxim Velčovský's snow vases are on show at Mint as part of their Cabinets of Curiosity exhibition - one of the not to be missed locations during London Design Festival. Describing the technique as "lost-snow casting" and created over three winters from 2010-2012 using different snow from different locations, each vase is made from moulding snow into which plaster was then poured.
As the plaster hardened and gave off heat, its warmth melted the snow resulting in unique shapes and textures.
