This is a question my dad, Read Viemeister, and his teachers at Pratt, Rowena Reed, Donald Dohner, and Gordon Lippincott, were trying to answer way back in the 1940s!

In the spring of 1943 Donald Dohner, chair of the industrial design department at Pratt Institute, proposed to Charlie Whitney of Whitney Publications that he add an industrial design section in his magazine Interiors. Dohner asked his student, Budd Steinhilber to design the first cover of Interiors premiering the new Industrial Design section. Budd used a photograph of his brother Norman playing the role of a designer with T-square and triangle. Almost every issue after that Dohner contributed a section on industrial design and the illustrations were invariable either by my dad or Budd, since, according to Dohner, "they were by far the best renderers in the class--they could make a drawing that just sang."

After Donher died, Whitney asked Gordon Lippincott if he'd like to be the industrial design editor of Interiors magazine. The industrial design supplement touted the new profession and discussed issues facing the nation after the end of the war: How could the new military inventions be transformed for civilian use? How can designers lead consumer demand? And, "What is Industrial Design?" Each issue focused on a different material: steel, rubber, plastic, etc. At his company, Lippincott and Margulies, corporate identity leadership was based on marketing the value of the new industrial design profession to the public using their first hires: Read and Budd.

In 1947, when Whitney decided to drop the I.D. section, my dad and Budd convinced Whitney to copyright the name "Industrial Design." Smart idea, since in 1954 it was reborn as I.D. Magazine. Dad had a complete collection of every issue of I.D. and was a friend of all the editors, including the first "official" editor Jane Thompson. Writer Ralph Caplan was one of the distinguished editors in the '60s: he was also on the board of the International Design Conference at Aspen, worked for Herman Miller, and in 1982 he wrote the book, By Design; Why There are No Locks on the Bathroom Doors in the Hotel Louis XIV and other Object Lessons. George Finley edited it during the '70s.

By 1978, I.D. had made its way from a section inside Interiors to a stand-alone publication published by the Billboard Group but they still promoted it like a trade journal. Since the audience of product designers was limited to about 5,000 in America, the strategy was rather weak. Along came Jim Fulton to the rescue. Jim was a graduate of Pratt and the last partner of Raymond Loewy's company before it closed. He carried on a successful practice in the deco McGraw Hill building on 42nd Street. He was a sailor and a member of the New York Yacht Club (then home of the Americas Cup) and was a trustee of Pratt. He rounded up a few designers to help buy I.D., including my dad. He wanted to spread the responsibility and the cost of ownership. In 1979 he hired Randy McAusland to take over as publisher and he hired a young, smart, Brown alumnus named Steven Holt as editor. Steven and I became friends--we worked on some design projects like the famous "Pool Chair with Wave Seat."

As furniture movements like Memphis and more scientific processes and theories were changing the industrial design world, the team tried to build a broader base that included more international reports and pieces on critical theory. They put out the word that I.D. stood for "International Design." Steven left to reorganize the product design department of the Parsons School of Design with Constantin Boym and when Annetta Hannah took over after Steven, the magazine was still teetered on the edge of economic realities. Once again, a hero emerged from the industrial design field when the Cogan family, owners of the Knoll furniture company, offered to buy the magazine from Jim and his group in 1992. They felt that the Cogans might be valuable friends who could invigorate the periodical--they also owned Art in America. Chee Pearlman, who was hired years earlier by Steven, became the editor.

While Wired was transforming the digital world, I.D's redesign was beginning to reach a broader audience, too. But when the Cogans eventually sold the magazine to Farmers & Writers Publications--what a combination!--they moved the staff out to their headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio, draining its edge. Finally they allowed it to move back to New York and hired a cool young staff which made a comeback under the editorship of Julie Lasky. It was the combination of digital media's economic advantage and the impending economic crisis that helped F&W decide to pull I.D.'s plug.

I.D. is like the industrial design profession: Misnamed and under-valued. But both were trying to make the world better by focusing on the usefulness of real stuff. I don't know what return my dad got for his investment--other than the set of bound editions--but his reward was supporting a platform for explaining to a new audience what industrial design is! The profession evolved dramatically over those 70 years and I.D. was there to chronicle and criticize. Maybe now I.D. could stand for "interdisciplinary," because the world could use a multidisciplinary voice to help us in the even more dramatic future!

Read Tucker Viemeister's blog What's Cookin'?
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Tucker Viemeister leads the Lab at Rockwell Group, an interactive technology design group combining digital interaction design, modeling, and prototyping for hotels and restaurants, casinos, packaging, and products. The LAB seeks to blur the line between the physical and virtual, exploring and experimenting with interactive digital technology in objects, environments, and stories. Tucker also co-founded the collaborative Studio Red with David Rockwell that was dedicated to innovation for Coca-Cola. Since joining Rockwell Group in 2004, Tucker has been instrumental in the design and development of JetBlue's Marketplace at the JFK International Airport, "Hall of Fragments," an installation that opened the Corderie dell'Arsenale at the 2008 Venice Biennale, a "living wall" for the lobby of the Sheraton Toronto, the traveling Red Lounge for Coca-Cola, and CityCenter in Las Vegas.

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Topics: Design, What's Cookin'?, Rockwell Group, Tucker Viemeister, , Design, Visual Arts, Donald Dohner, Charlie Whitney, Gordon Lippincott

A question that has intrigued me time and again. What is industrial design and how does it fit in with design, if at all?

When I was a hiccupping boy, my mother would fetch the back-door key, pull my collar away from my neck, and slip the cold metal down my back. At the time, I took this to be a normal medical—or maternal—procedure. Only later did I wonder if the cure worked merely by creating a diversion, or whether, perhaps, there was some more clinical explanation, whether one sense could directly affect another.

When I was a twenty-year-old, impossibly in love with a married woman who had no notion of my attachment and desire, I developed a skin condition whose name I no longer remember. My body turned scarlet from wrist to ankle, first itching beyond the power of calamine lotion, then lightly flaking, then fully peeling, until I had shed myself like some transmuting reptile. Bits of me fell into my shirt and trousers, into the bedclothes, onto the carpet. The only parts that didn’t burn and peel were my face, my hands and feet, and my groin. I didn’t ask the doctor why this was the case, and I never told the woman of my love.

When I divorced, my doctor friend, Ben, had me show him my hands. I asked if modern medicine was going back to palmistry, as well as to leeches; and, if so, whether astrology and magnetism and the theory of humors could be far behind. He replied that he could tell from the color of my hands and fingertips that I was drinking too much.

Later, wondering if I had been duped into cutting down, I asked him if he had been joking, or guessing. He turned my hands palm uppermost, nodded in approval, and said that he would now look out for unattached female medics who might not find me too repugnant.

The first time I met her was at a party of Ben’s; she had brought her mother. Have you watched mothers and daughters at parties together, and tried to work out who is taking care of whom? The daughter giving Mum a bit of an outing, Mum watching for the sort of men her daughter attracts? Or both at the same time? Even if they’re playing at best friends, there’s often an extra flicker of formality in the relationship. Disapproval either goes unexpressed or is exaggerated, with a roll of the eye and a theatrical moue and a “She never takes any notice of me, anyway.”

We were standing there, in a tight circle with a fourth person my memory has blanked out. She was opposite me, and her mother was on my left. I was trying to be myself, whatever that might be, and at the same time trying to make that self acceptable, if not actually pleasing. Pleasing to her mother, that is; I wasn’t bold enough to try to please her directly—at least, not in company. I can’t remember what we talked about, but it seemed to be going O.K.; perhaps the forgotten fourth helped. What I do remember was this: she had her right arm down by her side, and when she caught me looking in her general direction she inconspicuously made the smoking gesture—you know, the first two fingers extended and slightly parted, the other fingers and the thumb bent away out of sight. I thought, A doctor who smokes, that’s a good sign. While the conversation continued, I got out my packet of Marlboro Lights, and without looking—my activity, too, was at waist level—extracted a single cigarette, returned the pack to my pocket, took the cigarette by the filter tip, passed it around her mother’s back, and felt it being taken from my fingers. Noting a slight pause on her part, I went back to my pocket, took out a book of matches, held it by the striking end, felt it being taken from my fingers, watched her light up, exhale, close the book of matches, then pass it back behind her mother. I received it, delicately, by the same end as I had given it out.

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I should add that it was perfectly obvious to her mother what we were doing. But she didn’t say anything, sigh, give a prim glance, or rebuke me for being a drug peddler. I instantly liked her for this, assuming that she approved of the complicity between me and her daughter. She could, I suppose, have been deliberately holding back for strategic reasons. But I didn’t care, or, rather, didn’t think to care, preferring to assume approval. But this isn’t what I was trying to tell you. The point wasn’t about her mum. The point was those three moments when an object passed from one set of fingertips to another.

That was the nearest I got to her that evening, and for weeks to come.

Have you ever played that game where you sit in a circle and close your eyes, or are blindfolded, and have to guess what an object is just from the feel of it? And then you pass it on and the next person has to guess? Or you keep your guesses to yourselves until you’ve all made up your minds, and then announce them at the same time?

Ben claims that once, when he played it, a mozzarella cheese was passed around and three people guessed that it was a breast implant. That may just be medical students for you, but there’s something about closing your eyes that makes you more vulnerable, or drives your imagination to the gothic—especially if the object being passed is soft and squishy. In all the times I’ve played the game, the most successful mystery item, the one guaranteed to freak somebody out, was a peeled lychee.

Once in a while you read some real good fiction. New Yorker is the best. Hope you all enjoy it as well....

More than Keyser Söze or the Bogeyman or Mac's comparatively jovial "pinwheel of death," PC users have lived in fear of the dreaded Blue Screen of Death. That's the moment when white text appears on a deep indigo screen signaling a fatal error that has occurred, and the PC in question is officially kaput. But now PC users have another nightmare to contend with: The Black Screen of Death. You go to turn on your computer and then--BAM!--utter silence and a jet-black screen. What could be more frightening?

But according to PC World the error, which has reportedly dogged Microsoft operating systems from Windows 3.1x to the just released Windows 7, is actually nowhere near as deadly as the horror-inducing Blue Screen of Death. The blue screen often means your computer has gone to a better place. But the Black Screen essentially reduces your computer catatonic after you turn it on. Not dead, but barely breathing.

At first it was reported that the Black Screen was caused by the latest security updates offered by Microsoft early last month, but the company has denied this charge. Instead, Microsoft believes that the problem is caused by vicious malware like Daonol (not nearly as scary sounding as Black Screen of Death but a real threat nevertheless). However, no one seems to be sure. A Microsoft spokesman told the BBC, that it has identified "at least 10 different scenarios which might cause" the dreaded BSOD. So at least one thing is for sure: the Black Screen of Death is real and has been around for years (there's even a Wiki page on the mysterious computer disease.)

While Microsoft is still investigating the causes of the problem--and how to fix it--for now the firm recommends reloading Windows if all else fails. Warning to distraught PC users: This may or may not work.

This all sounds like about as much fun as The Road. Can't wait to see what the producers of those "Mac vs. PC" commercials do with this.

[Via MSNBC.com, BBC]

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Topics: Innovation, microsoft, Black Screen of Death, Blue Screen of Death, joseph-tirella, Microsoft Corporation, Computer Technology, Science and Technology, Technology, Computer Hardware and Peripherals

I am superexcited about the next wave of Mac/PC ads beating the butterknuckles of Win7

Wonders of marketing

After Stanford, now schools like MIT, LSE are talking about design thinking. Will Harvard catchup?

Makes me want to do a lot of things.

Some really cool ways to think about mundane things.

hilar!