Category Archives: Product Design

Inter­brand wins with Snowberry

April 21st, 2010
New Zealand-based brand and design com­pany Inter­brand has been awar­ded Sil­ver in the Bath, Beauty and Health cat­egory at the pres­ti­gi­ous Dieline Awards for their world class pack­age design.
Also posted in Packaging | Tagged , | Leave a comment

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 [...]
Also posted in Packaging | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

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, [...]
Also posted in Furniture | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

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 [...]
Posted in Product Design | Tagged | Leave a comment

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 [...]
Posted in Product Design | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Product Design: Fink by Fletcher Systems

November 6th, 2009
A New Slant Des­pite it's quite un-Nordic name, Fink is a chair that seems to live up the essence of Scand­inavian mod­ern design prin­ciples. It's sur­feit of style is a dir­ect response to the sim­pli­city of the concept, the choice of mater­i­als and the qual­ity of con­struc­tion. It's a chair that looks well bal­anced and firm on its feet. There's [...]
Also posted in Furniture | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Product design: Be by Formway

October 15th, 2009
Here's another one from the archives (ProDesign, issue 101). Formway picked up last year's product design Stringer Award for Hum, it's desk system. Formway's back at the BeST Awards this year with Be, a new task chair, which has already picked up a fair number of awards, including a Gold Award at The Best of NeoCon competition in the States. Here's the story:
Posted in Product Design | Tagged | Leave a comment

Toast­ing Our Own

September 22nd, 2009
Browning bread, controversies and copies, a New Zealand history. By Michael Smythe.
Also posted in Kiwi Nuggets | 1 Comment