Newsweek Features frog design’s Concepts for “Resurrecting the Republican Brand”

Frog design was asked by Newsweek magazine to provide ideas and design direction for “resurrecting the Republican brand,” featured the (December 29) print issue.

Before the Levees Break: A Plan to Save the Netherlands

On a late fall afternoon on the western edge of the Netherlands, coastal engineer Marcel Stive stands atop a 40-foot dune. He stares out beyond the posse of wet-suit-clad surfers wading into the breakers of the North Sea. Where the surfers see inviting waves, Stive sees dry land—and a distant storm.

Modular Robot Concept Design Digs In

A new robot concept is raising the hopes of the building industry that the high-tech future will be populated with smart excavating robots that will easily replace the high-cost of insurance-needing human contractors.

Barcelona opens a design center

Spain’s Dhub is officially open.

Is IDEO still king of innovation?

As the playing field for design management becomes more crowded, does IDEO still have an advantage?

Ford's Green Plan to Drive Sales

Promising a slew of new green vehicles, the troubled Detroit automaker is turning to top design firms to make those cars innovative and appealing.

How Apple Could Survive Without Steve Jobs

This isn't a question. It's a suggestion.

2008 Design Company of the Year: Nike

In 2008, Nike Design was about heritage, pioneering technology and an entirely new way to build shoes, proving that--even in design--some things are better with age.

Applying "design thinking" to, um, design

Lessons from the development process of Google's Chrome.

Google's Mayer: Staying Innovative In a Downturn

The mantra that's been flooding the Googleplex this year? 'Scarcity brings clarity,' explains Marissa Mayer, Google Vice-President.

24 Fantastic Future Wonders of Green Design

The ‘green movement’ has swept the world and architecture is at the forefront of the new industrial revolution - buildings being by far the biggest energy-sappers in the world.

Five Questions

A short video talking about design thinking.

Ripple

Great concept designs never fade away, they always remain alive in the memory of designers and the Nokia Aeon is definitely one of them.

Supervision

Supervision is the personal financial assistant you wish you had. The electronic budget diary scans receipts, charts money coming in/out, talks to your bank, and gives you monthly expense details so you can balance your finances more effectively - or for most people, at all. The display doubles as a touchscreen and comes with a stylus so you can manage your monies the old fashioned way too.

Alan Kay: A powerful idea about teaching ideas

What's design got to do with it?

The film 'What's design got to do with it?' shows how a selection of Danish companies have successfully used different design disciplines and design strategies. The video shows that the concept of ’Danish Design’ is changing and undergoing a very interesting development these years.

The Ideas Exchange

To reach customers better some firms have taken the idea of a focus group to its logical extreme and created huge online communities.

d.NEWS

Blog covering the happenings at the Institute of Design at Stanford.

Green Appliances and Kitchens

As the Consumer Marketing Manager of Sub-Zero and Wolf, Christopher Parr knows what people want in their kitchens, and knows what it takes for a fridge to be green.

Sucking Waste Out of Sight, Out of Mind

Here is an infrastructure investment America should consider: an Envac waste disposal system. Instead of filling our streets with garbage bags and waiting for trucks to pick them up, many European cities (they invest in infrastructure that isn't for cars there) are trying out these clever underground vacuum systems.

Simple Is Not As Simple As It Seems

An article in the New York Times says customers are being more attracted to "simple" products:

And, as it turns out, the buyers of consumer electronics could very well have been a leading economic indicator. Over the last year, they chose to buy two inexpensive and simple products, the Wii and the Flip, over competing gadgets bristling with more features.

Larry Burns: Reinventing the car

General Motors veep Larry Burns previews cool next-gen car design: sleek, customizable (and computer-enhanced) vehicles that run clean on hydrogen -- and pump energy back into the electrical grid when they're idle.

What makes a 'User Experience expert'?

So what is the added value that a user experience expert brings?

Robert Brunner

Before Jonathan Ive, there was Robert Brunner, the designer behind Apple's original, iconic PowerBook. Brunner, now has a new product-design studio, Ammunition, worked with Amazon.com's Lab126 unit, also staffed with Apple veterans, to design the Kindle e-book reader

Apple Store - Glass Staircases

A unique and eye-catching feature of Apple's high-profile stores is the glass staircase, intended to attract visitors to visit the second (or even third) floor, which most retail shoppers avoid. Besides the visually interesting design, the stairways and their accompanying glass bridges are engineering and architectural marvels, and made possibly by recent advances in glass technology that allows its use in more demanding applications.

Six Design Lessons From the Apple Store

Here are a few design ideas and lessons, to learn from the Apple Store.

20 Cool Interaction Design Concepts

Here are twenty interaction design concepts, both 2D and 3D concepts. Every interaction designer out there should have a look at these concepts to get inspired!

21 Simple But Impressive Corporate Web Designs Of Top Brands

If you want to come up with some creative web design ideas or just need to motivate and inspire yourself, browse these 21 simple but impressive corporate web designs of top brands.

IDEO Labs

Welcome to IDEO Labs workshop, playroom, garage, and launch pad. This is a place where they show bits of what they’re working on, talk about prototyping, and share their excitement over the tools that help them create.

Social Innovation

How can we unleash and leverage the power of the global design community on some of the world’s most intractable problems? Find out here.

Speed bumps that won't flatten your tires

Designers Jae-yun Kim & Jong-Su Lee say it’s time to move on! No more of this silly giant bumps in the road when we could advance!

Liquid Mongoose adds Picasa to its repertoire

Liquid Mongoose, the purveyors of the do-it-yourself DVD and music CD sleeves has put out a new version of its bookmarklet that supports Picasa Web albums.

The visual thinking weblog

Visualization can be a very powerful tool. Even simple images have the power to be provocative, insightful, challenging, and even funny

Feeling Muji

Satoshi Yasui is the kind of designer who can riff on any product--including socks. Not just any socks, but comfy ones with a 90-degree heel, knit for a perfect fit by Czech grandmothers, that he and his 15-member design team at Muji transformed into one of the Japanese retailer's roughly 7,000 products.

A green city blooms in the desert

Abu Dhabi, which reckons the world will wean itself from fossil fuels, is building a city that runs on solar power, recycles all waste, and bans cars. How will it work?

10 Futuristic Concept Laptop Designs

Technology grows too fast and to keep ourselves synchronized with the modern trends, we must take into account every progress whether that may be of past or of the future.

Compiled below is a list of the most futuristic concept laptop designs, some of which have won achievement awards while the rest are just too cool to know about.

10 Top Social News Sites Ranked by Design

Digg, Reddit, Mixx, Slashdot, and so on. They are all great social news and media websites, but how do they rank in terms of how easy they are on the eyes?

Creative and Unsual Bike Designs

Collection of creative and unusual bicycle designs from around the world.

Mobile Optimized Websites, More Harm Than Good?

Many websites automatically redirect iPhones to mobile versions of their sites. Many of these sites often deliver limited content, wasting space, and eliminate zooming.

2008 Masters of Design

A Dutch superstar, an unyielding architect, a force for good, a style soothsayer, a digital visionary and 71 perfect products. That’s what you’ll find here in our fifth annual report on the intersection of business and design.