Category Archives: Product Design

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. Share/Save
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Caus­ing a Disruption

March 26th, 2010
Two Kiwi design­ers are play­ing on the big stage in the US. Words: Frank Nelson The job title of “Dis­rupter” on Josh Handy’s busi­ness card is per­haps the first indic­a­tion of the edgy, slightly irrev­er­ent nature of some com­pan­ies – and some design­ers – in Cali­for­nia. “It’s about hav­ing a dis­rupt­ive product,” explains Handy, a New Zea­l­and indus­trial designer now firmly [...]
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Alex­an­der Loter­sz­tain at UFL

February 26th, 2010
Two days ago, UFL in Auck­land brought across three inter­na­tional guest speak­ers: Argentina-born designer Alex­an­der Loter­sz­tain, from Derlot, was one. He shared his thoughts on, amongst other things, sus­tain­ab­il­ity, ‘mono-materiality and why design­ers have a respons­ib­il­ity to help poorer countries. For starters, Loter­sz­tain ticks the first box to which all ser­i­ous design­ers should aspire – like Kon­stantin Grcic, [...]
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Bikes: A Fol­low Up

January 27th, 2010
Port­able Bikes The two-page spread on bikes in ProDesign issue 104 was par­tic­u­larly well received. Unfor­tu­nately we couldn’t include all the bikes in the spread that we had ori­gin­ally planned, so here’s a small gal­lery of fold­ing or port­able bikes. Joey Ruiter’s re-imagining of the bike at left prob­ably gen­er­ated the most com­ments, so I’ve added a couple [...]
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Cover Story: Issue 104

January 26th, 2010
The Penny Drops Will this buzzy bike, one of TIME Magazine’s 50 Best inven­tions of 2009, become a Kiwi icon? Words Michael Smythe. From ProDesign issue 104, with addi­tional images. It’s unlikely that a focus group ever said, “Bring back the penny farth­ing!” But it’s that flash of recog­ni­tion that puts instant smiles on turned heads when a Yike [...]
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