Core77 Podcast

You probably know FiftyThree from their iPad sketch app, Paper. Unlike other sketch apps, which are loaded with pro features, Paper is notable for how pared down it is. By using just six brushes, a color mixing palette, and intuitive gestures, Paper gets out of the way of the sketch process and allows you to focus on getting your ideas down as effortlessly as possible.

FiftyThree has brought this same philosophy to their first hardware product, called Pencil. Pencil is a stylus designed to compliment Paper, and just like Paper, it eliminates pro features, making way for more natural feeling ones—like an eraser and probably the smartest take on a blending tool ever. Today, we have three of the industrial designers responsible for Pencil's creation: FiftyThree's Jon Harris, John Ikeda and Audrey Louchart.

When I was in high school and just starting to think about college, I knew I wanted to get into design, but wasn’t sure what that meant exactly. I liked making things and loved all of my art classes, but design wasn’t talked about much back then, which made it hard to learn about. And then, the iMac came out.

In the shadow of the iPod, iPhone, and iPad, it’s hard to remember what a big deal the iMac was, but it was a really big deal. Pretty much every computer at that point was a beige box, and then out comes Apple with this translucent, Bondi blue, space orb. The aesthetic was head turning, but it was the design of how people would use it that captured my 16-year-old attention. Plug in the keyboard and mouse, plug it into the wall, and start surfing the internet. An all-in-one, fully considered, user experience. The iMac saved Apple from bankruptcy and helped put design on the map in the late 90s. Its designers were actually featured in interviews. And those interviews ended up being my first encounter with both the term industrial design and the leader behind the iMac’s design, Jonathan Ive. From then on, I knew I was going to be an industrial designer.

I think it’s safe to say that over the last fifteen years, no design team has had more impact than Apple’s. Even once you get past the success of their products, they’ve reshaped not only how the world views design, but how the design industry views itself. For all that notoriety and impact, we actually know very little about Apple’s design team. Today we talk about Jony Ive and Apple’s Industrial Design Group with author Leander Kahney. Leander is the editor and publisher of cultofmac.com and has written three books about Apple: Cult of Mac, Cult of iPod, and Inside Steve’s Brain. His latest is called Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products.

You probably know FiftyThree from their iPad sketch app, Paper. Unlike other sketch apps, which are loaded with pro features, Paper is notable for how pared down it is. By using just six brushes, a color mixing palette, and intuitive gestures, Paper gets out of the way of the sketch process and allows you to focus on getting your ideas down as effortlessly as possible.

FiftyThree has brought this same philosophy to their first hardware product, called Pencil. Pencil is a stylus designed to compliment Paper, and just like Paper, it eliminates pro features, making way for more natural feeling ones - like an eraser and probably the smartest take on a blending tool ever.

FiftyThree has brought this same philosophy to their first hardware product, called Pencil. Pencil is a stylus designed to compliment Paper, and just like Paper, it eliminates pro features, making way for more natural feeling ones - like an eraser and probably the smartest take on a blending tool ever. Today, we have three of the industrial designers responsible for Pencil’s creation: FiftyThree’s Jon Harris, John Ikeda, and Audrey Louchart.

The past couple of weeks have seen the release of two next generation video game consoles: The PS4 and the Xbox One. I love when new consoles come out. It’s such an infrequent occurrence that every console becomes a milestone for design and technology. So I thought it would be fun to break down the game industry’s efforts, as well as try to decipher where they’re going next, with my buddy Peter Rivera-Pierola. Besides being an avid gamer and tech nerd like myself, Peter is also an industrial designer and a manager of strategic concepts at McDonald’s in Chicago.

Comic book artist Paolo Rivera has done everything from lusciously handpainted origin stories of Captain America, Hulk, Spiderman, Xmen, and Fantastic Four to helping reboot Daredevil to an untold number of covers for titles such as Wolverine and Guardians of the Galaxy. His work has a graphic, hand crafted quality that mixes elements from many genres outside of the the comic world. Best of all? He’s our guest today on Afterschool.

Brooklyn-based design firm Pensa, is helping to pioneer the movement for consultancies to bring their own projects to market. Earlier this summer they partnered with Goal Zero and AT&T to develop Street Charge, a solar powered charging station that can be easily installed in public spaces. Today I talk with two of Pensa's partners: Marco Perry and Mark Prommel, about their new project--the DIWire, a desktop wire bender that launched today on Kickstarter.

If you're reading this, then you've probably had the same dream as a lot of us: You want to make and sell your own thing. You may not even know what that thing is yet exactly, you just know you want to do it. And that can be daunting. Maybe even feel nearly impossible.

Well you're in luck, because today's guest, Rusty Meadows, is just the guy you want to talk to. Rusty is the founder of the Nearly Impossible conference, an event for people who make and sell physical products that's set to take place this November 7th and 8th in Brooklyn. The event is geared towards sharing stories about overcoming the hurdles we all face when trying to bring our ideas to life. Rusty's experience comes from his role as manager of Tattly, the designy temporary tattoo company that celebrated it's second birthday earlier this year.

No redesign affects hundreds of millions of people around the world quite like an update to an operating system. In September, Apple released a doozy: iOS 7 is one of the biggest updates in the company's history, marking the beginning of a new era for it's software and Apple itself.

Like anything that has hundreds of millions people using it, any change big or small is bound to cause controversy, but we have the perfect guest to help us sort through iOS 7. Neven Mrgan is a designer and developer at Panic. Over the past 15 or so years Panic has established itself as the premier Apple indie software developer, releasing wildly successful apps such as Audion, Transmit, Coda, and Status Board. In his spare time, Neven is also an indie game developer, with two iOS games: The Incident and most recently Blackbar, a text-based game about censorship. As you would expect, we have a lot to talk about.

Our guest today is Catherine Bailey, the co-owner and Creative Director of Heath Ceramics. We talk about her career as an industrial designer and her path to turning around a beloved American ceramic studio and manufacturer.

Our guest today is Gary Hustwit, the documentarian behind The Design Trilogy which features the films Helvetica, Objectified, and Urbanized. We talk about the trilogy and the new book he has up on Kickstarter: The Complete Interviews, featuring the full length and unedited interviews from those films.