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 one of several “human factors specialists” working in New York with IDEO, a design and innovation company that has five offices in the U. S. plus others in London, Munich and Shanghai.

“We focus on the relationship between the human and the designed world,” she says, where critical elements are as likely to be emotional and cultural as physical. “There’s a lot of research about the role emotions play in making up our minds.”

Fetell, a guest speaker at next month’s Better by Design CEO Summit in Auckland, says while the rational mind might consider issues like price and comfort, emotion can just draw us to something.

But emotional relationships operate on a number of different levels. Fetell talks about certain universal, primal, innate emotions, such as preferring curved to sharp shapes; we’re also hard-wired for a positive emotional reaction to the cuteness of a baby’s face, mirrored in many stuffed toys and cartoon characters.

We have certain cultural emotional responses towards, for example, numbers, colours and textures, while as individuals we all have our own memories and experiences. According to researchers, familiarity alone makes us like certain things more than others.

Fetell, who has a masters in industrial design, says all these factors “can inform the way we think of designing something.” However, this 30-year-old New Yorker is aiming for something far more complex and rewarding than simply selling more products or services; indeed, her work could, paradoxically, lead to selling less.

“Much has been said about the unhealthy culture of consumption in modern life,” Fetell writes on her web site. “I believe part of the solution lies in designing products that are emotionally satisfying in a more durable way.”

Her bottom line is about making life better. “Design is undergoing a bit of a revolution at the moment. A lot of people are trying to improve sustainability and wellbeing. They’re looking at the emotional health of the consumer, making people feel better about buying less.”

Fetell also examines the relationship between design and delight – the ways design can trigger and enhance feelings of emotional wellbeing – on her blog, Aesthetics of Joy (aestheticsofjoy.com).

“The project,” she writes, “looks at the unconscious effects of architecture, products, fashion, and art on our psyche, and suggests ways that better design might lead the way to happier, healthier, more sustainable lives.”

Fetell is no stranger to New Zealand having made several trips across the Tasman while living in Sydney for two years. Working in design and branding in Australia afforded some unexpected insights into cultural differences and the important role they can play in peoples’ perceptions.

“I loved Sydney and it felt a lot like home to me,” says Fetell. “But I also went with a lot of assumptions. For example, we speak the same language so I though I’d be able to understand everything.”

Not so, however: there were many cultural references – “tall poppy” is the first that springs to mind – that were completely foreign. Later Fetell discovered a host of similar potential pitfalls when she took a course on US and UK cultures.

In Auckland she will be talking to industry leaders about how culture can colour our expectations, influence reactions to various goods and services, and even determine the ways in which we find out what’s available.

Icebreaker is among her current clients in the U.S. “Icebreaker is very much a product of New Zealand culture. It has a quirky, Kiwi tone,” says Fetell, who will illustrate her talk by drawing on her experience helping American outdoor enthusiasts become familiar with – and feel connected to – that iconic brand.

Links: IDEO, Ingrid Fetell blog, Aesthetics of Joy

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"Business leaders find it very difficult to see into the future whereas designers live in the future,” says Dick Powell, one of the guest presenters at this week's  Better by Design’s upcoming CEO Summit in Auckland.

Powell, co-founder of London’s award-winning design and innovation company, Seymourpowell, reckons most businesses are excited about innovation but they just don’t know what to do. His solution? Find a designer.

“Designers have bandwidth to their thinking, a very broad perspective. They’re good at pulling focus, zooming in and out. And they’re very good at reconciling competing requirements, bringing everything together into a coherent vision. That’s not something most people can do.”

Those skills mean designers and innovators are better able to determine what to do and why it’s important; crucially, they can then help build belief within an organisation that this is the right thing to do.

Powell teamed up with Richard Seymour about 30 years ago and the pair formally established Seymourpowell in 1984. Today their business has 85 product designers, consultants and other staff handling a wide range of projects for clients all over the world.

Powell, 58 and making his first visit to New Zealand, says the role of design and innovation in business applies equally to multi-nationals and organisations with just a single product.

“Businesses need to differentiate their products; they’re all looking for an edge,” he says, adding that they are also becoming increasingly savvy about using innovation as an effective means of achieving their goals.

That core message has remained constant over the past 20 or 30 years, according to Powell. “Only the tools and processes have changed,” he says, referring to the use of CAD and other major advances in computing and prototyping. “We’ve honed the process and the thinking.”

Powell laid the foundations of his storied career with a diploma in art and design from Manchester Polytechnic (now Manchester Metropolitan University) followed by a masters in industrial design from London’s famed Royal College of Art.

He and two college friends later started their own company which prospered for three years before Powell branched out on his own. Not long after that he found himself sharing commercial digs with Seymour and within a couple of years the pair were in business together.

Since then Powell has become a leading figure within the British design industry. He was global design advisor to Samsung Electronics, is a member of the international advisory panel for design in Singapore, and has sat on the boards of the Design Council and the Design Business Association.

Earlier this year he was appointed chairman of London-based D&AD (Design and Art Direction). He had previously served two years as president and five on the executive of this highly-prestigious charity which he says was set up as “a vehicle to evangelise and lionise creativity.”

D&AD, which does much to promote and foster innovation among up-and-coming designers, is internationally renowned for its annual Yellow Pencil awards; to date, Seymourpowell has taken home three of these coveted prizes for outstanding creative achievement.

The company claims some of the “milestone” products of the past two decades in areas as diverse as consumer appliances, mobile phones and transportation, including cars, motorcycles, trains and planes.

More recently Powell has been part of a project that can truly be described as out of this world — concept design work for Virgin Galactic, the bid by maverick entrepreneur Richard Branson to launch commercial space flights.

But not every business has a Branson. Powell says most don’t handle change well and he’ll be reminding the industry leaders gathered in Auckland that they need to get behind the design and innovation process if it’s going to work.

He believes businesses tend to be looking for big ideas while innovation typically involves bringing together a series of smaller ideas and elements. Even so, the outcome is never certain and there are no guarantees. “It needs a degree of commitment,” says Powell. “It’s not easy.”

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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 trends in international design through its selection of well-designed products and its emphasis on quality, originality and innovation. From the first biennial in 1964 to today, BIO has presented twenty-one exhibitions surveying the state of international design.

The international jury awarded the Sky Planter the Gold Medal in the product category of the competition, saying the design by Patrick Morris is "truly revolutionary. It literally turns the plant pot upside down and makes you rethink your preconceptions about how to grow plants".

The Sky Planter will be shown in the ongoing exhibition of the shortlisted entries. Two other products to achieve golds were the Pipistrel Taurus Electro self-launching two-seat glider with retractable electric motor and Logomap and premiere posters for the City Theatre in Žilina (images below). More info here.

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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, although it's been on the market in the States for about a year, where it's licensed to Knoll and marketed as 'Generation'.

In the US Be/Generation has sold around 60,000 units.  The expectation is, as the audience in attendance at Formway's Parnell base was last night told, that Be should overtake the sales of Formway's Life chair, which has shifted somewhere in the vicinity of 500,000 units.

Be picked up a Stringer Award at the Best Design Awards in 2009. Alt Group did the identity work on the Be project and picked up a gold at the Best Awards this year. Check out some of its work here.

– Michael Barrett

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“I’ve experienced a knee injury from wakeboarding, which is common when a wakeboard hits the water at full force, with one foot coming out of the binding while the other is still attached to the board.  Current wakeboard bindings are designed to hold feet onto a board, even after a fall. This increases the chance of injuries when one or both feet cannot be freed.

“Lucid’s main difference is its release mechanism guaranteed to let go of the rider’s feet when certain pressure is applied,” says Schloemer.

The Christchurch designer says his product’s release system is also designed to make getting in and out of wet bindings much easier than current wakeboard bindings.  It can differentiate between tricks and falls by the rider’s angles, and by programming an adjuster that opens bindings easier for novices.

More information on Schloemer's winning design here.

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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 utensils, a "tabletop cooking device with which a Chinese meal can be prepared and shared, and acts as the focus of the eating and cooking experience. (240 votes)Minotaur Fire Nozzle System, a " water delivery system that provides greater control, functionality and comfort to the user when extinguishing fires irrespective of the duration of operation." (54 votes)

Blocks, a three-piece range of affordable furniture consisting of a clothes rack, dining table and coffee table. (114 votes)

The winning entry will be unveiled at a ceremony in Auckland on 22 July.  Selection is based on product design ideas that are innovative and inspire solutions to everyday problems. The James Dyson Award is open to final year tertiary students studying in the areas of design, technology or engineering, and to graduates in these areas who are in their first three years of work. David Lovegrove, the award’s head judge and member of the Designers Institute, said all entries must reflect the Dyson philosophy; demonstrating a commitment to intelligent design thinking.

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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 from the Germany-based Red Dot Institute, and an award in the Best Design Awards run by the Designers Institute of New Zealand.

The string of design awards for the innovative M8, and the number of Australasian orders, has proven that Howard Wright’s design-led approach is paying off, says Howard Wright’s chief executive officer, Bruce Moller.

“Howard Wright has always been focused on design innovation ever since the company produced the world’s first hydraulic operated medical bed back in the 1960s,” says Moller. "Since we undertook a Better By Design programme in 2005, the M8 has been the first medical bed that we’ve taken through a full design process involving more than three years of research and development with 10 prototypes.” (Studio Alexander was responsible for implementing brand strategy, identity and collateral design. Read the case study.)

With a design philosophy of “making human care easier”, what’s innovative about the M8 is that it allows for a wide range of procedures to be performed on the bed without the need to transfer the critical care patient.

A prime example is its radiolucent deck which allows X-ray and C-arm imaging capabilities without shifting the patient. Such attention to detail given to all aspects of the bed including its aesthetics, choice of materials, functionality, safety as well as comfort for all users of the bed, impressed the Australian design judges.

“Superb functionality, soft-touch surfaces and invited aesthetics are the culmination of a ground-up, human-centred approach to design,” commented the judges. “For a low production run product, the M8 intensive care bed represents the work of an exceptional company driven to lead by design.”

For Howard Wright’s research and development manager Anthony Batley, the M8 embodies Howard Wright’s simple, smart, human design approach.

“Our design process considered everyone who would come in contact with the M8 including the patient, the medical specialists, the orderlies and cleaners—even friends and family visiting the patient!” explains Batley.

An onboard rechargeable battery means the M8 can be wheeled into X-Ray and operated without having to be connected to an external power source. Once there, the M8’s unique telescopic pillars at either end of the bed, its asymmetric design and radiolucent deck mean the bed can be raised for X-ray and C-arm imaging capabilities without shifting the patient.

Using a simple keypad, its fully electric functionality means the M8 can be reconfigured to a cardiac chair, into trendelenburg or reverse trendelenburg positions, raise the lower leg or the upper body, or raise and lower the height of the bed overall.

With patient handling and lifting a key issue for medical professionals today, this means the M8 dramatically reduces the amount of manual handling for 99% of patients worldwide. This covers the shortest or smallest patients up to the largest and tallest patients at 250 kg in weight or up to 2.2 metres in height.

Moving and stabilising the M8 has also been made easier for the orderly and smoother for patient with the latest generation of Tente linea castors and a standard 5^th wheel. A central locking and braking system can be operated at either end of the bed.

A full range of accessories can also be bundled with the M8 such as IV poles, a monitor tray, and three sizes of oxygen bottle holders.

The M8’s design innovations have also been recognised with a good initial order book since it was officially launched late last year. In December, 2009, the M8 was selected as the sole provider in the Western Australian Public Health Unit’s (WAPHU) contract for critical care beds.

The WAPHU contract means Howard Wright is the sole preferred supplier for more than 170 critical care beds forecast over the next five years across the Western Australian Department of Health’s 11 main hospitals as well as regional health centres.

Howard Wright has also been named a preferred supplier with its M7 general ward bed, its M7 stretchers and examination couches, and for its PREMA Advanced III mattress.

In addition, the M8 has been ordered by Southern Cross Hospitals and the Hawkes Bay and Auckland District Health Boards.

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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 Clones and Revenge of the Sith – Men in Black, Pirates of the Caribbean, War of the Worlds, Hulk, The Nightmare Before Christmas… and more. He has just finished Mars Needs Moms, a kids science fiction film from Disney due out early next year; now he’s working on another Disney film, Yellow Submarine, a 3-D remake of the 1968 animated feature woven around Beatles music.

White phosphorous over Falluja, by Nick Bogle.

To be more specific, Bogle is working on the interior of a model submarine for that movie, which explains everything. An industrial designer by training, his expertise lies behind the scenes rather than up on the big screen.
Bogle, who was born in Howick and grew up in and around Auckland, has parlayed a design diploma from Wellington Polytechnic into an international career as a model-maker. He started in London, where he ran his own company for a while, making models for advertising agencies. Since moving to America almost 20 years ago he’s worked mostly in the film industry, creating small-scale models of people, places and other objects when it’s too expensive, difficult or dangerous to use the real thing.

Nick Bogle with comet.

But show business can also be a fickle business. Though projects may run from a few months to a year or longer, this is typically contract work with no guarantees about tomorrow. “It’s unstable, intermittent, on/off,” Bogle says.

Adding to the uncertainty has been the emergence of computer-generated imagery (CGI), software graphics programs, usually in 3-D, enabling film-makers to create on-screen special effects that previously depended on filming models. The recession is also hurting the industry. In mid-March Disney, blaming “economic realities”, announced the closure of ImageMovers Digital. The California studio, located just north of San Francisco, will be wound down by next January with the loss of 450 jobs.

This is the studio behind Yellow Submarine and though efforts are being made to cobble together a deal that would safeguard the movie’s development, Bogle has his doubts. “It doesn’t sound like we’ll finish it,” he said. The bottom line for many people working in the movie industry is that they need something else to fall back on… in this case it’s Nick Bogle Designs, a company producing high-end furniture, lighting fixtures and fiber-optic art works.

Teak table, back right, by Nick Bogle.

Bogle, 57 this year, may well have inherited that multi-talented and resourceful nature from his father who founded the University of Auckland’s electrical engineering department, originally based at Ardmore.

“Dad was very practical,” recalls Bogle. “He did everything on our car. We never had a mechanic. It was the same story for the lawnmower and everything else. He even used to sew mum’s ball gowns.”

Apart from his own penchant for making things, Bogle had few career ideas when he left Auckland Grammar School at 16. But after four or five years of trying various things, including a year of graphic design at Wellington Polytechnic, he homed in on industrial design. After graduating, he headed to England where he survived by cleaning houses until landing a job with a design company in the heart of London. He went in to show his portfolio and ask about work, was hired on the spot and started the same day.

About a year later he made a career-changing move, joining Metro Models as a model maker for some of the city’s major advertising agencies. He was trained in the use of different materials and techniques, developed new skills, such as spray painting, and enjoyed several years of model making in the “heyday before computer graphics”. By then Bogle had met his American wife Gail, who was also working in London, and once they bought a house he set up a home-based workshop and launched his own business, Don’t Panic Models.

He chose the quirky name for good reason. “You’re working in a panic industry,” he says. “Everything is always needed tomorrow. It’s high stress work.” Even on his latest project Bogle reports occasional 80-hour weeks and having to crash on mattresses at work.

The business thrived but when the UK economy tanked in the late ’80s, knocking down advertising agencies and photo studios, Bogle and his wife decided to bail out. By then they also had daughter Ava, born in 1986, who is now an actress and playwright living near Los Angeles.

They arrived in the U. S. in 1991 and settled in Mill Valley, just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, an area that Bogle recalls “looked a lot like New Zealand.” Impressive model-making credentials landed Bogle his first job in the movies working on The Nightmare Before Christmas, a film made using stop-frame animation, also called stop-motion.

In this painstaking process, models are repeatedly moved infinitesimal amounts by hand and photographed frame by frame in each new position. Running all those frames in a continuous sequence then creates the illusion of the models moving on their own.

Bogle, who worked on Nightmare for about six months, was part of a team making more than 200 foam rubber and latex figures, each about 30cm tall, reinforced with wire and even ball-and-socket joints so they could be better manipulated and hold a variety of poses.

One of Bogle’s projects was a snake, about a metre long, that had to slither out of Santa’s sack and around a Christmas tree. To help make the movement realistic, Bogle fitted magnets inside the snake and had it “move” across a metal floor. Today it still clings tenaciously to his fridge.

Next he joined Industrial Light & Magic, the award-winning special effects company founded by Star Wars creator George Lucas, then located in San Rafael, only about 15 minutes from Bogle’s house.

In 14 years contracting with ILM, Bogle has created everything from the inside of an alien’s head, boats and landscapes, to buildings that were blown up and others that were flooded. Lorne Peterson worked with him for much of that time and was impressed by the New Zealander’s range of abilities and attention to detail.

Peterson was among the first model makers at ILM, joining in 1975 to work on Star Wars. He recently retired after 33 years in the business, the highlight of which was a special effects Oscar for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. He reckons Bogle possesses a rare combination of mechanical, engineering and aesthetic skills. “Aesthetically he’s really strong,” says Peterson. “He’s definitely the person to deliver that final kiss of quality.”

About 10 years ago Bogle and his wife, an author who also works as a grant writer for a children’s museum in San Francisco, moved to the small, rather alternative, coastal community of Bolinas which has a history of attracting creative people. That’s where Bogle now designs and makes furniture, using classic woods like walnut and cherry to create armoires, tables, desks, bookcases, bar stools and other custom-made pieces that fetch between US$5,000 and US$10,000 each.

He also creates different styles of light fixtures and has begun exhibiting and selling framed artworks that combine graphics and fibre-optics: he has been using an LED to light the fine fibre strands and is now experimenting with solar energy.

Moa room chandeliers, by Nick Bogle.

Looking back over the years, Bogle has seen CGI gradually supplanting model making. “Computers are taking over a lot of the things we used to do. There’s definitely less work around now,” he says. “In the past there may have been 50 people in a model shop. We’ll never see that again.”

Still he remains optimistic and is buoyed by the successful Lord of the Rings movies in which Weta Digital used hybrid production techniques, combining computers and models. “That’s had a huge impact on our world,” Bogle says.

– Frank Nelson

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Words: Emma Fox-Derwin. Images: Well-Groomed-Fox; Koelnmesse/Lutz Sternstein.

XY+Z Suit Rack, by Well-Groomed-Fox.

After 44 hours of travel, two-and-a-half months of planning and copious amounts of excited anticipation, we stepped off the ICE train at 6:45am at the central station in the city of Cologne, Germany. In the half light of a snowy mid-January Sunday morning we were greeted by the Dom, the famed Cologne Cathedral, in all its Gothic majesty. This scene was a stark contrast to the Wellington summer we had left, only days earlier.

A few months earlier, in October 2009, myself and partner Nigel Groom, of Well-Groomed-Fox, a fledgling Wellington-based furniture, product and interior practice, were plucked from global obscurity by the German Design Council to spend 10 days in the city of Cologne, exhibiting as finalists for the Interior Innovation Award in the [D]3 contest at the imm Cologne Furniture and Interior Trends fair, as the first representatives of New Zealand in the prestigious event, with our product the XY + Z Suit Rack.Occurring annually in January at the Koelnmesse Events centre, the imm Cologne Furniture Fair is known as the original furniture and interior trends trade show, the show and surrounding events culminate to be Germany’s biggest yearly furniture and interior design event. Over the past 8 years the [D3] Design Talents section of the fair has grown into a renowned forum for young designers to exhibit their work. The [D3] section of the fair is divided into three parts; schools, professionals (not more than 5 years in practice) and the contest.

D3 exhibitors at imm Cologne.

On Monday morning we made our way to the competition judging. The judging was not dissimilar to that of a design school critique. We went around the space and spoke in turn about our projects. During the judging the diversity between the 30 finalist projects became very apparent, there were projects that focused on process, materiality, emotive experience, found object and scale. Whatever the approach they were intelligent, archetypal forms that were explored, challenged and reinvented. This was particularly evidenced by Adam Farlie’s Mourning Light, a pendant lamp designed to address the uncanny, by keeping the user concealed beneath it in the shadow, as the shade illuminates their surroundings; and Elisa Strozyk’s Wooden Carpet, a wonderfully incongruous piece that is made from wooden veneer yet maintains an uncanny fluidity when you touch it. Robin Grasby’s Homework was a beautifully resolved and crafted customisable desk system which doesn’t have a single screw fixture; Pepe Heykoop’s Brick series is a chandelier and chair that illustrates the power of the multiplicity of the found object when composed with intent. Rocking on the beach, by Studio Joon & Jung, is a heart-warming  piece that gives off the sound of ocean waves as you rock due to sand filling the chair's pipe structures. At the conclusion of the judging,  portraits and group photos were taken, and the rest of the day was left to explore the city. We passed back into the city over the Rhine via the Hohenzollern Bridge, which is whimsically adorned with lovers’ padlocks, just as in the novel/movie Ho Voglia di Te.

Remi Bouhaniche's 'Etirement'.

Brick Series designed by Pepe Heykoop.

Homework table by Robin Grasby.

Adam Fairlie's Mourning Light.

Joon & Jung's Rocking on the Beach.

That evening was the award ceremony and welcome party, hosted by the German Design Council, Design Post and H.O.M.E. Germany magazine (who was celebrating its 10th Birthday). The winners of the award in our category were Jessica Hansson with Cabinet Filled with Shadows; Julien Renault with Hand-forged Aluminum Series; and Etirement by Remi Bouhaniche. It was a fabulous event, the food was amazing and all the [D3] Designers drank the local Kolsch and danced the night away. Tuesday morning saw the fair officially open to a flood of media and producers from all over the globe. By Thursday we had managed to see more of the fair outside of the [D3] Design Talents section, including new products from Ligne Roset and Knoll, and iconic work from Cassina and Cappellini.

First prize – Hand-forged Aluminium Series by Julien Renault. "My aim was to source inspiration from the archetypal processes and techniques of forging steel and apply them to aluminium."

Each year alongside the official fair, Passagen runs throughout the city of Cologne, with parties, exhibits and events in showrooms, furniture stores, galleries, and specialised locales. One such Passagen event during this year’s furniture week was held as the Veltins Design Lounge. This was a live DJ act performed by Karim Rashid. Another Passagen highlight was an amazing exhibition by Front Design of Sweden.

The closing party on the Saturday marked the end of our week at the fair, with Flausen talks and awards for the Schools, held in the [D3] Design Talents lounge. Overall, the sheer expanse of the fair was incredible, there were so many people, pieces, brands and types of furniture from all over the world, from big names with huge spaces, to the non-branded mass-producers whose stands were so crowded they were more reminiscent of a
Hong Kong street market. In the end there were over 100,000 pieces of furniture at Cologne; a testament to how alive and well furniture design is. In my mind, the most exciting and interesting part of the fair was the D3 Design Talents exhibition, although I may be more than a little biased. The experience of imm Cologne was unforgettable, in the end this was due to the wonderful people we met; the other contestants and the event organizers – next stop Salone Satellite at Salone del Mobile.

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