Category Archives: Product Design

The Human Factor

November 2nd, 2010
In our second pro­file on a vis­it­ing Bet­ter by Design CEO Sum­mit speaker, US-based Frank Nel­son talks to Ingrid Fetell, "Human Factors Spe­cial­ist" at IDEO in New York. Ingrid Fetell views the world through an unusual lens, try­ing to under­stand the dif­fer­ent factors that affect the way in which people inter­act with the objects – and spaces – around them. She’s [...]
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Out of this World

November 1st, 2010
Dick Pow­ell, vis­it­ing New Zea­l­and for this week's Bet­ter by Design CEO Sum­mit, is chair­man of the D&AD and design dir­ector at product design con­sultancy Sey­mour­pow­ell. Pow­ell recently spoke with Frank Nel­son about busi­ness innov­a­tion, going galactic with Richard Bran­son, and just what makes design­ers so import­ant. (From ProDesign 109, with addi­tional images.) "Busi­ness lead­ers [...]
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Bio 22 Gold for Sky Planter

October 28th, 2010
New Zea­l­and product design recog­nised at Bien­nial of Indus­trial Design. It's a long way to Slov­e­nia, but it was worth the trip for the Sky Planter inver­ted plant pot — one of three products to pick up a gold medal at BIO 22. The Bien­nial of Indus­trial Design (known also by its Slov­ene acronym BIO) for forty-five years been present­ing con­tem­por­ary [...]
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Be Here Now

October 13th, 2010
Bring­ing flexy back – Form­way launches 'Be' into New Zea­l­and market. OK, Ok, enough bad musical puns. It was a while ago now that we first broke the news of Formway's latest office product offer­ing – Be – with this story on the rather innov­at­ive design of the new chair. Be, designed at Formway's Lower Hutt stu­dio, is finally avail­able in New Zea­l­and, [...]
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Wake­board Bind­ing Wins Dyson

July 23rd, 2010
Julian Schloe­mer, a 23 year old indus­trial design gradu­ate from Mas­sey Uni­ver­sity, last night picked up the James Dyson Award for emer­ging product design. His inven­tion, Lucid, aims to reduce the incid­ence of wake­board­ing injur­ies, which are on ACC’s list of top ten adven­ture sport claims in New Zealand. “I’ve exper­i­enced a knee injury from wake­board­ing, which is [...]
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Gal­lery: Kat­rin Sonnleitner

July 13th, 2010
While we're on the build up to Semi-Permanent, it's worth men­tion­ing the works of Ger­man fur­niture designer Kat­rin Sonnleit­ner. They are, you'd have to agree, quite some­thing else — a clever mix­ture of humour with light fancy — and worthy of a gal­lery spot in their own right. I'll spare you Sonnleitner's bio­graphy (you can read that here); let's just enjoy [...]
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Dyson Final­ists Announced

July 13th, 2010
Final­ists for the New Zea­l­and round of the Dyson Awards have been announced and you can check them out online. Look­ing at the pop­ular­ity of the items online is always inter­est­ing exer­cise. As a point of interest, here are the three products that have proved most pop­u­lar with read­ers thus far: Mul­ti­cul­tural din­ing exper­i­ence — Port­able hot pot com­bined with [...]
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She'll Be Right, M8

June 11th, 2010
Howard Wright wins top Aus­tralian Inter­na­tional Design Award with M8 med­ical bed. Howard Wright’s M8 crit­ical care med­ical bed has won its fourth design award by win­ning the top award at the Aus­tralian Inter­na­tional Design Awards on Fri­day, June 4. To date, the M8 has also won the pres­ti­gi­ous inter­na­tional iF design award, a Red Dot design award [...]
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Behind the Scenes

May 31st, 2010
Frank Nel­son talks to United States-based New Zeal­ander Nick Bogle, a movie stu­dio model maker turned fur­niture designer. Though you may not be able to place Nick Bogle’s name or the face, the New Zealander’s career cred­its read like those of a Hol­ly­wood A-lister. He’s worked on the Star Wars pre­quel tri­logy – The Phantom Men­ace, Attack of the [...]
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Cologne Diary

April 28th, 2010
An exhibitor's report from the [D]3 at imm Cologne. Words: Emma Fox-Derwin. Images: Well-Groomed-Fox; Koelnmesse/Lutz Sternstein.
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