Deconstructing Product Design in the NY Times

Bialetti Moka ExpressThe NYTimes Magazine blog ran a story on the origins and ubiquity of the Bialetti Moka Express, with its humble roots in an earlier era of economic austerity:

Like those of us who have limited our trips to Starbucks since the start of the current recession, the Italians of the early 1930s were easing up on their trips to the cafe. The Moka Express, a stovetop espresso machine that was meant for the home, provided both an affordable espresso and a beautiful object to make it in.

Included was our account of Alfonso Bialetti’s process of inspiration — watching his wife do the laundry. Read the Times story…

Deconstructing Product Design Free from Schipul

Book contributor Jonti Bolles works with the web marketing firm Schipul, and they’re giving away a free copy of Deconstructing Product Design in November:

Our very own Search Engine Marketing Team Manager, Jonti Bolles, is a former professor of Architecture and we can testify that this gal loves her design… so much so that she was tapped to offer her expert design commentary in the recently published Deconstructing Product Design book by Will Lidwell and Gerry Manacsa.

Want a copy? Tell us what product you can’t live without and what about it’s design has made it integral to your life.

Go to the Schipul blog for your chance for a free copy…

Deconstructing Product Design Lands on 10-18-09

Deconstructing Product Design front cover

We received the authors’ copies of Deconstructing Product Design recently, and the books’ contributors should have their copies as well. It’s good to see it bound and printed, and we’re quite happy with the final product. Rockport did an excellent job with the book’s production and printing.

Amazon reports that the book will be available on October 18. The “Look Inside” feature is now enabled, too, so you can get a preview of the contents.

[Update: As of October 16, the book is in stock at Amazon]

Find Deconstructing Product Design on Amazon

front cover of Deconstructing Product Design, in print

Deconstructing Product Design: Interior Pages

The Contributors

We have added a contributors’ page featuring the 38 thinkers and doers whose words will be featured in the print edition of the book. With expertise ranging from design and architecture to music, firearms, and iBots, their commentary adds insight and wide-ranging perspective on the products discussed in DPD.

Kimberly Elam, On Product Design

Just added to the DPD web site — Principal Contributor Kimberly Elam writes on the nature of product design:

It’s fascinating how some products become parts of the fabric of living and the collective subconscious long after they have disappeared. The silhouette of the rotary dial telephone still communicates the idea of a telephone to teens who have never dialed a phone that was corded to a wall outlet. Similarly, few teens have ever had a Coke in a glass iconic bottle, yet the familiar shape of the bottle still resonates…

Read the complete essay

Layout and Scatter Proofs

We received another batch of proofs from the publisher early this week, so we now have a complete set of fairly high-fidelity, full-scale pages in hand along with scatter proofs of all the product art. It’s exciting to leaf through the pages, the closest thing to real that we’ve seen yet. I was pleased to see that some of the more demanding product pieces — with complex renders, tricky colors, or intensive image processing — successfully made the jump to the printed page. The proof of the recently-completed cover, with a new spine and back cover designed with DPD contributor Jill Butler, looked good wrapped around a studio copy of Universal Principles of Design, which shares the same trim size.