You don’t usually see much creativity in the design of rain gutters and downspouts. They all pretty much look the same to me (when the bums in the alley aren’t stealing them for scrap metal). But here’s a cool design that adds a touch of whimsy to the bottom of a downspout, taking the deluge of water that pours out and turning it into a little storm of its own.
I don’t really know much about it, other than that it’s awesome, was designed by Russian industrial designer Дмитрий Куляев, and probably isn’t going to be a product you can buy time soon – unless we can convince Art Lebedev studio to produce them. It seems like the type of thing that would be right up their alley, and they’re practically neighbors with the Russian designer anyhow. Here, I’ll even give them a Lebedev-esque name for it: Nimbostratus.
[via Meninos]
In case you haven't noticed, we've gotten multiple opportunities to talk shop with Samsung executives over the past couple days. After we finished grilling the R&D team on higher-res displays, we sat down with the designers behind the latest Series 9 Ultrabooks, and they surprised us by whipping out a late-stage prototype -- aka, a glimpse at what these laptops might have been, were it not for a little extra hemming and hawing and at least one executive veto. You know what they say: a picture tells a thousand words, and we've got quite a few embedded below for your viewing pleasure. If you're obsessed with minutiae like the keyboard backlighting color, however, follow past the break for more on all those rejected design ideas, and feel free to let us know in the comments which ones you would've preferred.
Continue reading Visualized: What the new Samsung Series 9 could have looked like
Visualized: What the new Samsung Series 9 could have looked like originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 17 May 2012 11:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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HP's spent the afternoon here in Shanghai to share some details about its latest products and strategy, and to our delight, there was one session dedicated to "Style Meets Function," during which Vice President of Industrial Design Stacy Wolff talked about his design philosophy and design goals for the current market. Most notably, we learned that some of HP's latest laptop designs were based on the work of its research centers from 11 different cities, and the company isn't afraid of admitting that it used consultants for an outside perspective as well.
Despite Stacy's upbeat presentation and interesting stats (apparently these days men have a boring color preference, from first to fourth favorite: black, gray, blue and white), the inevitable question popped up: One lady expressed her concern that the brand-spanking-new Envy Spectre XT reminded her of the MacBook Air a lot, so she wondered if HP's ever worried that Apple might sue.
Stacy kept his initial reply pretty brief:
"I would go back to the TC1000 [Tablet PC] from about 10 years, and that's a tablet. I think if you look at the new Spectre XT, there are similarities in a way, not due to Apple but due to the way technologies developed. Apple may like to think that they own silver, but they don't. In no way did HP try to mimic Apple. In life there are a lot of similarities."
As always, we wanted more from the horse's mouth, so we grabbed hold of Stacy right after the session and had a little chat over this topic -- you can see the full and surprisingly candid interview after the break.
HP on laptop design similarities with Apple's: it's a struggle as we drive to simplicity originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 09 May 2012 09:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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