Here is some information about a conference that is completely organized by students of Brown and RISD. Tell me how it was if you have the chance to get there.

A Better World by Design is a three-day internationally acclaimed conference in Providence, RI that connects students, professionals, and individuals from a variety of disciplines in order to build a global community of socially conscious and passionate innovators. Presenters share engaging stories, workshops teach creative skills, and discussions reframe perspectives. A Better World by Design is an immersive experience, one that deepens our understanding of the power of design, technology, and enterprise to reshape our communities and sustain our environment.

Panels include topics like Arts + Design Organizations for Social Change, Ethics in Design, Future Urban Transport, Urban Arts and Activism etc. There are workshops with subjects like DIY Biology, Waste for Life or Designing Social Media. And of course there is a lot of opportunity to get into contact with others at the several “social events”.

Design Boost is a highly interesting platform that “envisions a holistic approach as a condition for sustainable design”. To fulfil this target the platform’s idea builds upon sharing knowledge by publishing media (magazines, books and videos), organizing events (talks, shows), building a community and offering consulting services.

Here is a documentation video of the last Design Boost event “Made in [Arnhem]” with an interesting, yet effective way to document an event by structuring the video with questions around the different themes: How can design understand cultures? How transform a commodity to an experience? Do we need another chair? How do me mind the gap? What comes after IKEA?

Now I cannot say that the answers are really satisfying nor are they new. For example I think it seems clear that “there are too many things we don’t need” and that it is “better to design better quality”. “When all parents are designers, that would leave to a better world” – that also needs more explanation.

Most interesting for me was the questions “What comes after IKEA?”. The answer was that after consumers became makers they now should become designers, said Tim Vermeulen. An interesting topic that needs much more work and debate I think.

Either it is the wrong questions that are asked or just some difficulty in the designers’ world that does not allow to bring up new ideas. Maybe it was just too short to put it in a single video document. Still the basic concept of Design Boost seems appealing to me as it consequently gathers designers and urges them to sit together and talk about problems and probably even solutions. It is for sure no coincident that the Scandinavians, the Swedes in this case, cultivate this kind of collaborative and sense-making approach.

There could not have been a better place for this panel discussion: Galeria Kaufhof held this event not in its headquarters a short walk away but in its Cologne warehouse amidst the things that matter: products.

Discussion topic was “Universal Design” and accordingly “how attractive products for all generations can be”. A lively discussion took place that add times tried to define the empty term “Universal Design”. For Prof. Martin Topel, professor at the University of Wuppertal and owner of the design agency Squareone in Düsseldorf / Germany, the expression is just a rehashing of old ideas:

“In general the principles that lie behind the idea of Universal Design were already defined by Dieter Rams in his 10 design principles* years ago.”

It seems obvious that the subject grows in importance now as the baby-boomers with reliable spendings due to safe earnings and pensions from the golden times have a high potential in spending money in goods. So retailers get more and more attracted to the idea of “Universal Design”.

Galeria Kaufhof, one of Europe’s biggest warehouse companies, has a special focus on demographic shift: in May 2009 together with six other companies, Kaufhof signed the “Berlin Declaration” where they commit themselves to actively participate in framing a society that will decline and age in the next years. In presenting the exhibition “Universal Design – Designing Our Future” that is initiated by the International Design Center Berlin the retailer underlines its ambitions once again.

Claudia Reinery, member of the executive board, with high experience in discovering and fulfilling customer’s needs seemed to be open-minded for good ideas in the field of Universal Design. Probably the right contact person for experimental projects. More than that it is important that a company of the size of Galeria Kaufhof sends the right and particularly powerful signals to the manufacturers.

*Here’s again Dieter Rams’ 10 Design Principles:
Good design is innovative.
Good design makes a product useful.
Good design is aesthetic.
Good design makes a product understandable.
Good design is unobtrusive.
Good design is honest.
Good design is long-lasting.
Good design is thorough down to the last detail.
Good design is environmentally friendly.
Good design is as little design as possible.

Waste is design flaw says Kate Krebs of the National Recycling Coalition

After the launch in 2008 greengaged returns to the London Design Festival with a full week of world-class events designed to help the design industry tackle the big issues around sustainable design. Hosted by the Design Council, with five brilliant guest curators, greengaged promises to inspire us all and challenge the design industry as a whole to create positive change.

All greengaged events are free and each lasts for a whole day with lunch included. Details about program and registration can be found on the greengaged website.

Who ever is interested in design in its experimental aspects and does not have many plans for the next week should try to catch a flight to Lisbon, where tomorrow the EXD’09 starts off with the opening week. The wider subject is “time” – “focusing primarily on the flows and mechanisms of acceleration and fragmentation”, as the organizers put it. The opening week offers a wide mix of events: talks, conferences, exhibitions and of course space for meeting and partying in warm Portuguese nights.

Memorial Torch with Afterlife Cell / © Auger-Loizeau

Interesting people will show up in the first week: e. g. Paola Antonelli, curator from the New York MoMA, will host an open talk about new forms of design. There will be more handcrafty designers and legends like Konstantin Grcic and Giulio Cappellini and also very experimental creatives like James Auger from the Royal College of Arts who will be talking about the exhibition “Lapse in Time” he is participating in. For programme details, the EXD’09 site will try to enlighten you.

If you cannot leave your base straight away, but still want to visit experimentadesign this year – don’t worry: The event goes from September 9th till November 8th.

Motto Berlin is hosting the event “Unter dem Motto – One Day Self Publishing Fair”, organized in occasion of a weekend dedicated to art publications in Berlin. On Saturday, September 5th, 60 publishers coming from 18 countries, selected by Nieves, Rollo Press and Motto, will fill the spaces of Motto bookshop and Chert gallery with their productions.

This one-day event presents an eclectic mix offering a careful overview on the importance and constant growth of autonomous publishing nowadays, from home-printed zines to publications by renowned institutions. 40+ booths will give the oportunity to the audience to meet the publishers and browse titles in a friendly athmosphere.

“Unter dem Motto” is organized in parallel of the presentation of the newly acquired exhibition KIOSK – Modes of multiplication on Thursday, September the 3rd, at Kunstbibliothek Berlin and the Art Books fair Miss Read, organized by KW Institute for Contemporary Art, from September 4th to 6th.

Airmail is an exhibition with new objects dealing with the idea of weight, or rather the absence of it, in design. Lightness has been often used to measure progress in society (e.g. aircrafts or architectural structures.), and its relation with mobility is as old as mankind. A relation that recently is leading to mobile devices where the convergence of functions suggest that we could, one day, have function without matter. Probably as a reaction to that, there is being an increase in the production of heavily crafted objects and the revival of pattern and decoration.

Between this progress-based idea of doing more with less, and the heavily handcrafted pieces “Airmail” finds its place. “Airmail” features experiments, interpretations, and developments on the idea of lightness in its broader meaning. Can an object be designed by weight? Does the fact of removing the brand of and object makes it culturally lighter? What If the same object was to be sold on two different weights, which one would you choose? Can an object perform the same with less material? Can we really do more with less?

The proposals will show a rather unusual combination of approaches and processes with projects ranging from jewellery to lighting and a varied use of production techniques, from printed textiles or ceramics, to sand casting and electroplating. Curated and designed by Parallel Projects, upon invitation from Goodd gallery/shop in Glasgow, Airmail will feature a group of young designers and cutting edge proposals, within a commercial setting. On show till June, 28th.

An antidote to the glamorous pictures in celebrity magazines – that is how Erik Mark Sandberg sees his illustrations or paintings. Today it is really hard to go beyond aesthetic boundaries as there are practically no limits. But I think the “Hairy Children” pictures are really disturbing.

Those can be seen at Johanssen Gallery in Berlin from 10th July to 30th August, 2009.

Futuresonic 2009 and the Social Technologies Summit will take place 13-16
May 2009, featuring world premieres of astonishing artworks, an explosive
city-wide music programme, and visionary thinkers from around the world. The
festival has four strands – Art, Music, Ideas and EVNTS – and occupies the
orbits of art, performance, music, design and digital culture. Now in its 14th
year, Futuresonic is the UK’s leading festival for digital culture, and this
year was nominated for the prestigious Lever Arts Prize. An urban festival
experience, it is anticipated that over 50,000 festival visitors will engage
with 300 artists and 100 events across 30 venues.

ROGER has been invited to join MOOH – The Magazine of Omotesando Hills Library. From March to 5th to 14th a temporary magazine library will be set up in the Omotesando Hills building complex in Tokyo, that was designed by Tadao Ando. The library project is a collaboration between Yasushi Fujimoto (CAP Co. Ltd. / Rocket Gallery), David Guarino (Art Director at A Zillion Ideas Co. Ltd.) and the Omotesando Hills building.

ROGER is flattered of course to be even known in Japan. We wish the producers luck and success for the exhibition and will of course send some issues of ROGER to be exhibited in the exhibition.