Dromeas, one of the biggest home and office furniture manufacturer here in Greece, announced the "5th International Office and House Furniture Industrial Design Competition". The competition is fully organized by the company and, I can say, with a good amount of prizes.
Below you can find the competition call brochures (in english and greek) but also links to the official site. Good luck to you all!!
Designing plastic bottles, which can have wildly creative shapes, need to conform to many technical requirements and in particular a specified volume. The design process ends up being very iterative, so this tutorial shows you how to accurately calculate volumes for your design and provides some tips to speed up the iterations. AliasDesign_How to Design to Volume
Molten aluminum, magnesium or zinc alloys are injected into the water-cooled dies under high pressure. The dies open and the part is ejected. The flash is removed, usually by a trimming die, and finished.
There are two types of machines: cold chamber and hot chamber. In a cold chamber process, the molten metal is ladled into the cold chamber for each shot. There is less time exposure of the melt to the plunger walls or the plunger. This is particularly useful for metals such as Aluminum, and Copper (and its alloys) that alloy easily with Iron at the higher temperatures. Instead in a hot chamber process the pressure chamber is connected to the die cavity is immersed permanently in the molten metal. The inlet port of the pressurizing cylinder is uncovered as the plunger moves to the open (unpressurized) position. This allows a new charge of molten metal to fill the cavity and thus can fill the cavity faster than the cold chamber process. The hot chamber process is used for metals of low melting point and high fluidity such as tin, zinc, and lead that tend not to alloy easily with steel at their melt temperatures.
Process properties: Advantages:
high production, good tolerances, low part price, good surface finish.
thin walls.
Disadvantages:
limited to nonferrous metals and fairly small parts.
expensive tools, long lead time, required draft angles.
Typical Parts:
automotive parts, industrial tool and motor housings, plumbing fixtures.
MedHome's, furniture & decor fair for professionals, dates has been announced.
from official site: MEDHOME is a BRAND NEW professional furniture and décor exhibition to be held between 17 and 19 October 2009. It is the result of the coordinated efforts of the companies AG Communications and ROTA. The aim of the exhibition is to generate new data for the Greek market in the organization of furniture exhibitions, and to become the first option for exhibitors and visitors alike. The use of European standards in the setting up of the exhibition, the organization of parallel shows and the management of business meetings during the exhibition, will surely confirm that this is indeed a NEW exhibition. The exhibition will not only be visited by furniture traders, but also by decorators, architects, hoteliers, industrial designers and companies producing instore equipment. Also in fair will be attending all the works of the participants to the "ID, 1st National Furniture Competition".
latest news: The organizers has canceled the "MEDHOME" exhibit due to financial difficulties. The "ID" design competition exhibition will be held anyway, location and dates to be announced.Medhome - Exhibition for Furniture & Design (Greece)_Brochure
Even if the industrial design field is not so widely spread in the Greek territory...it seems that the graphic,interactive and advertising industry is at his best. As below commercial for child abuse reveals! Keep up the good work...
The results of the "1st Greek National Furniture Design Competition" just came out!
Reading the press communication of the organizers, a very well done .pdf fle, I stepped in a few paragraphs that just not feel right.
In their opinion
there was not an equal distribution of the participants among the competition categories, so for contest integrity sake a 1st prize where not awarded.
even if the projects had valid aesthetics, all of them had a low level grade of innovation.
all proposals has, in a technical way, construction and functional lacks that may be solved during prototype building phase.
Feeling very happy that finally we have more organized industrial design competitions here in Greece, let me expand some thoughts on those paragraphs.
First of all I think that organizers and jury job is to prize the participants and to judge them for the design proposals and not to express their thoughts and criticize the works, it is a contest and not a design review on each one. As a consequence I found it very insulting toward all designers, winning and non.
In particular
what does it mean they couldn't give the 1st prize for competition integrity? Even if there were a small number of participants per category, I think someone would deserved the first one. A question...why in the student category there was one...??
I will not talk about aesthetics. Because is well known that is in the personal opinion of of each one to judge that. "What is beautiful to me, it could be ugly to you". But as for the innovation thing...well guys, when a competition asks to design some products (beds, tables, shading system) that must be at least 50% in hardwood (a material used from "when the man walked on earth") and maintaining low costs (no high tech production methods etc.), what kind of innovations they expect? If they wanted innovation let the designer to do so. A good request would be free of restrictions with a contained cost.
construction and function lacks. one of the competition request was to send final manufacture blueprints. Yes I agree on sending manufacturable designs and some technical blueprints for better product understanding, but final and accurate ones is another thing. To me it means that I almost must build the product to be sent. As they claim the winning award will be manufactured with a company of their choice (very nice indeed) but the designer must make on his own all the arrangements (contract, payments etc, what about that?). Now what if the designer after making all the final blueprints and choosing all the in market components comes in touch with the company and finds out that they work with other machinery and other components from the ones choosed? What about costs then? Or redisigning and redrawing blueprints? What about if the company is not willing paying all that?
last but not least, the prototype. Of course some of the lacks and problems are solved in prototype phase! And, I must tell you, that other ones are discovered during this phase and sometimes more than one prototype is built. Otherwise what is the prototype all about? Of course a good thing is to prevent everything during designing phase. But every designer that came across with all production phases knows that.
Mrs. Popi Krouska (architect and artist) is organizing an exhibition called "Design 2009" and with theme the new technologies and new materials. Many designers will take part and some of theme well known too. The exhibit is open to everybody and offcourse you are all invited...well see you there! Below Invitation:
From a mail just arrived from the "Hellenic Industrial Design Secretariat" (Elliniki Grammateia Biomixanikou Sxediasmou) I was informed about a 2009 furniture competition organized by the Ag Communications and the Rota companies. Well...interesting and with a reserved section for students!! So good luck to everybody! Below full description... Diagonismos Sxediasmou Epiplou Id
I've decided to upload this topic while remembring how hard was to find some tools to learn Alias Studiotools (I don't know...I prefer to call it with its old name), back in the days when I've decided to change drawing platform without having the chance to do some courses (in Greece there isn't any) and didn't had the time to go in a foreign country. So after a very good research I recommend this self-courseflow...
First of all by this book: "Learning Design with Alias Studiotools" In it you'll find everything to learn the interface, how to set up things and teaches you how to draw products (from a table with a lamp on it to a cellular phone and a racing car) with awesome and quick techniques. So while you draw you learn the program and not just a reference on which button do what without seeing the result.The book also include a DVD with a trial version of the program and four video tutorial.
After that you must buy those two DVDs...
"Modeling Essential with Studiotools" A DVD for beginners,where you'll learn all the theoretical concepts to understand why the program does what it does (concepts that are applicable for all 3d modeling programs). After that you'll model side by side with the host a kaleidoscope learning many tricks (after all I think Gnomon Workshop are the best in the market) and render it.A tip from me is to use the workflow (on how to pick functions etc) and the UI of the book and not of the DVD...offcourse the final choice is yours. Below a preview...
"Product Design Rendering Essentials"Where finally you'll learn how to reder achieving high quality immages to present your products to your clients.Inside are explained theoretical light and materials behavior and offcourse how to setup those and cameras in theprogram. Below some snapshots...
Also there are so many free tutorials over the web from designers and design studios (thanks to all of them) but will help only if you are allready familiar with Studio (try to search for Studiotools tutorials or Aliasstudio tutorials etc). Finally the last advice is that more you'll practice, more better results you'll get.But I think you allready knew that.
Kim Katinis was born in Rome (Italy) from architects mother and father. After spending his first ten years of childhood there, he moved with his family to Athens (Greece).
There he finishes the Italian high school and in the year 2000 took the diploma in industrial design at the AKTO art and design school.
In the next nine years he worked as a junior designer for Drakoulakis s.a. and as a senior at Exhibit Smart Stands Constructions, Yalco and its subsidiaries companies Omnishop, Fest, Evans & Taylor.
In 2008 he attended with his work at the “Greek Designers Proposals” and in 2009 at the “Design 2009” team exhibitions held in Athens.
His work has been published on “MD” design magazine (Bulgaria), “Nisha” design magazine (Israel) and in various internet blogs (“Trends Updates”, “Yanko Design”, “Elite Choice” etc.).
Currently he works as a freelance product and interior designer.
Hi there... Yes, as the title says this is another design blog (the web is full of those in this days). With the exception that instead of just linking you on some cool products, I'll try to post topics that could help us (I hope) in some ways to be better designers, without spending hours and hours over the internet or just wait years to gain the proper experience in order to put our hands on some knowledge. Off course this will not exclude the fact that from times to times I'll show some products that I'll found interesting, news, competitions etc. You'll notice that I'll be referring a lot to Greece, that's because I'm living in Athens and design things are slow here, so I think that waters must be shaken. So, hope you'll like it...and enjoy!
Dromeas, one of the biggest home and office furniture manufacturer here in Greece, announced the "5th International Office and House Furniture Industrial Design Competition".
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