January 2012
1 post
May 2011
1 post
A spot of bother
A short while ago, Moleskine introduced a new range of products: their Reading, Writing and Travelling collections. The reaction around the blogosphere has been quite enthusiastic. Not very surprising, given that Moleskines seem to be one of those must-have accessories for anyone fancying themselves a ‘creative’. At first glance, the bags indeed look very nice, and those reversible...
March 2011
2 posts
Things and stuff
Seeing Core77’s coverage of the current Home and Housewares show is making me kinda depressed.
Now I like nice stuff. Hell, it’s my job to make nice stuff. But stuff comes at quite a cost to the world, as we all know by now. So it seems to me, that to justify the making of a new thing you have to have make a pretty compelling case that that thing is going to make the world a better...
February 2011
2 posts
October 2010
2 posts
July 2010
2 posts
A chicken and egg situation?
Almost a year into my life as a freelancer, I’ve hit some tough times.
I don’t mean financially, mind you. A lot of companies are still scared to hire people full-time, and my clients seem to be quite happy with my work and asking me for repeat projects. So I have plenty to do.
The trouble, for me, is in what I do.
Design has always been a multi-disciplinary affair, but today the...
June 2010
2 posts
The Genius of Design
The BBC’s ‘The Genius of Design’ is now up on Vimeo!
- Episode 1: “Ghosts in the Machine” - Episode 2: “Designs for Living” - Episode 3: “Blueprints for War” - Episode 4: “Better Living Through Chemistry” - Episode 5: “Objects of Desire”
An excellent series, for experienced designers and novices alike. Gotta love them...
April 2010
1 post
March 2010
2 posts
Data out the wazoo! →
blandben said:
Tableau ~ free data visualisation software ~ infographics generating going to the next level of easy (windows only)
via chartporn.org
UX + popurls = uxurls →
While undrln is a digg-style, community powered interaction design news aggregator, uxurls takes a page out of popurls’ book and simply presents a ton of feeds to browse through. There goes another 20 minutes of productive time each day…
February 2010
2 posts
Check it in
Okay, one more idea for an improved public transport chipcard. What if you want to pay the fare for your date? The current system requires everyone to check in and out individually. Those damned bureaucrats must have forgotten all about romance and good manners. And what about your luddite uncle? Or visiting friend from abroad?
Here’s an easy, one-button solution (that doesn’t affect...
January 2010
1 post
The card before the horse
Over at the usability weblog, Jasper has a nice post up about the mess that is the new Dutch public transport chipcard-system. It’s a topic of much discussion around here — a lot of people are getting pretty frustrated. And after the news that the fares are also significantly higher when using the new system, some are getting pretty angry as well. Much of the criticism is aimed at the...
December 2009
2 posts
Focus!
Since I went solo a few months ago, I’ve been having the following conversation quite a lot: “So, what do you do?” “I’m a designer.” “Oh, cool. What do you design?” “Uhm, everything?” “…” What follows is usually that I give a few examples of previous work; signage systems, an identity design, storage boxes, campaign...
September 2009
1 post
August 2009
1 post
May 2009
1 post
April 2009
1 post
February 2009
2 posts
2 tags
Of ebooks, iPods and weblogs
The web has been abuzz the last few weeks with Amazon’s release of the new Kindle 2 and – to a lesser extent – with its would be competitors like the Plastic Logic reader. In the printed press, this saturday’s The Economist asked “Is this the iPod moment?” I don’t think so. Not quite yet. Steve Jobs famously dismissed the notion of an ebook reader as hopeless because...
On reading and e-books →
John Siracusa writes in depth about why e-books aren’t working, but why they might someday soon. A good read, not in the least as a broader story about new technology adoption and product/service design.
January 2009
9 posts
Subject to stagnation
I’m currently reading Subject to Change, the book from Adaptive path. Good Reading. It doesn’t do wonders for your faith in certain politicians, though.
Here in the Netherlands, the government is seriously botching the introduction of RFID public transport passes, while the entire country hates the very idea. Our ‘old’ paper system has tons of advantages over the new...
Liquid Wood. →
“Mixing lignin with natural fibres and some natural additive produces a fibre composite that can be made into mouldings, plates or slabs on conventional plastics processing machines.”
1 tag
Beauty as a signaling strategy →
“Ordinary products are almost never beautiful. Austere products might be, but only when real effort is expended to make them that way.”
2 tags
1 tag
1 tag
Buying a vacuum cleaner should be easier
Buying a vacuum cleaner sucks. Why on Earth are there so many models? They really only do one thing and they spend most of their lives in a closet anyway. A different type of electronics store might make the process a whole lot less annoying…
I simply wanted one that’s cheap, does the job and has proven to be reliable. You know, a good one. But the store has dozens of them, and no...
ID pioneer on the brink of bankruptcy →
It’s sad to see Wedgwood, one of the founding fathers of Industrial Design, near total collapse – unable to keep up-to-date after its initial burst of innovation.
December 2008
3 posts
A Digg for design →
Recently launched social news site undrln.com is a bit heavy on the webdesign/interactive side of things, but I think it has the potential to become a cool resource for product designers as well.
1 tag
Hello world
Hey there, my name is Bob van Vliet, a recent product design graduate from the Delft University of Technology (in the Netherlands). Although I have a fun first job, it’s rather different than university of course – so I decided I need a place to write about design-related things on my mind. A blog seemed like a good idea to force some coherence and order upon otherwise random thoughts.
And...