Wed, 06/01/2011 | Co.Design: business + innovation + design

June 01 2011

Infographic of the Day

Infographic Of The Day: 15 Facts About The Internet In 2015

2015. Sounds far away, doesn't it? But it's not, and we already live with a little taste of what that future will be like. How so, you ask?

Consider: The rise of mobile computing, the proliferation of social networking, and the cloudification and appification of our entire technological lives. All of which is laid out in this superb infographic video, "Digital Life: Today and Tomorrow," created by NeoLabels, with a script by Inés Leopoldo of Mitsue Venture.

JOIN, A Table Inspired By An Ancient Japanese Puzzle

If the thought of assembling a Billy bookcase fills you with dread, then we've got a table for you: Designed by Ding 3000, JOIN has three oak legs that fit together like a beginner's puzzle, no tools required. Just place the glass top on the base, and you're done. See, putting crap together can actually be fun!

Japanese Airline Taps Starchitect For Its Branding

Plenty of architects design buildings that reach for the sky. But here's a guy who's designing something that flies clear through it. Come next spring, folks booking on Peach, a new, low-cost Japanese air carrier, will board planes gussied up by Neil Denari, the L.A. starchitect behind the futuristic HL23 tower on the High Line.

Wanted: A Stepladder Worthy Of Hanging Like Art

Chairs, crates, and full-sized ladders are easy substitutes for an object like this one, which should earn it a little more scrutiny than the average kitchen-and-home tool. But we like this stepladder for making itself scarce.

Made of lightweight birch wood and only two inches deep, it practically disappears when folded, and comes with a wall-mount if you prefer it to occupy no floor space at all. If gloss black finish is too demure for your taste, check out the gloss red version, which is about as sexy as any stepladder can be.

Art Installation, Big As A Warehouse, Turns Data Into A Trippy Other World [Video]

Art Installation, Big As A Warehouse, Turns Data Into A Trippy Other World [Video]

Park Avenue Armory in Manhattan has unveiled a massive new digital-art and sonic installation by Japanese artist and composer Ryoji Ikeda. Projected onto a screen that bisects the Armory's vaulting exhibition hall, the transfinite morphs a continuous stream of scientific data into pulsing, abstract images and druggy sounds that could replace Floyd on the midnight laser-show circuit. The idea: to create a physical sense of what it's like to be subsumed by digital code.

An Interview With Olafur Eliasson, On Crossing Between Art And Architecture

An Interview With Olafur Eliasson, On Crossing Between Art And Architecture

Over the last year, Iceland has made headlines for two things -- volcanic eruptions and economic collapse -- which have understandably overshadowed the country's latest cultural accomplishment: a world-class concert and conference center designed by the Copenhagen-based firm Henning Larsen, with a luminous façade by the artist Olafur Eliasson.

Hassell’s Tasty Vision For High-Speed Train Travel [Video]

Hassell’s Tasty Vision For High-Speed Train Travel [Video]

If Australia beats Obama to a high-speed rail system, that's just going to be embarrassing. But they are discussing it down under, and Australian design firm Hassell took the initiative to draw up an idea of what the trains themselves would look like. And if their illustrations are any indication, the answer is: like Amtrak crossed with J.J. Abrams' Star Trek.

What “Tree Of Life” Teaches About Movies In the Age Of Smartphones

"Lawrence of Arabia -- there's a film where certain things in it are just not going to work on your iPhone," Jason Brush says. But what if it could? What if there were a way for filmed narrative storytelling -- aka cinema -- to somehow bend, flex, shrink, and expand to fit whatever platform or device you chose -- and still feel like an appropriate, satisfying experience?

Four Keys To Creating Products For The Lady Gaga Generation

I think Gen Y is awesome because they are dramatically shaping how we all think about design. But, I am a little biased -- I was born in 1981, which makes me Gen Y, too. In April, one of my colleagues at Smart Design and I were asked to speak as part of the IDSA:LA California State Long Beach Duncan Anderson Design Lecture series. We decided to build our talk around understanding Gen Y and how to design for them. It turned out to be to be an opportune subject due to the fact that our audience was primarily made up of design students from the generation that we were exploring.

Infographic of the Day

Infographic of the Day: Infographic: A Beautiful Cheat Sheet For Two Dozen Espresso-Based Drinks

Innovation by Design

The Amazing Judges For Our 2013 Innovation By Design Awards

From the Editor

Thanks for stopping by Fast Company’s Co.Design. If you’ve been a reader for some time, you’ll notice that we’ve just unveiled a brand-new redesign. You can read about the thought process behind it here. Our content, of course, will be the same: Our focus is on highlighting the world’s best examples of design and innovation, working in concert.

We started this site with a few simple premises in mind. First, design is a window onto the world at large, and the culture we live in.

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