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Para la última edición del podcast de diseño Fuera De Contexto, tuve el honor de ser invitada a participar en uno de los episodios, en la que charlamos acerca de cómo los diseñadores de estrategia e innovación podemos ayudar a las empresas a preparase y enfrentar los próximos desafíos que nos presenta este mundo tan complejo y cambiante donde vivimos.
It has been already two weeks since the Design Management Institute´s conference wrapped up in Madrid, and some of you were able to follow the key thoughts discussed there through the twitter hashtag #dmimadrid. Nevertheless, I always find useful to structure my thoughts on a piece of paper (or pixels, in this case) and share them for further discussion with the 93% of the world not using Twitter.
Yet another year and Milan Design Week has finished, leaving all of us extremely tired and overwhelmed with the massive amount of design that is spread over the Salone and the city exhibitions, the Fuorisalone. One week after and tons of coffee to overcome design-caused sleep deprivation, I feel recovered enough to reflect on everything seen, experienced and photographed.
The allegory of the cave is one of the most inspiring readings to get acquainted with design semiotics. In this beautiful metaphor, Socrates discusses with his disciple Glaucon the fundamentals of perception of reality and introduces to him the concepts of archetypes. In this article, I explain how my RCA final project dealt with the same principles to improve the concept of light.
Design innovation is a creative discipline and as such, it means many things. It means thought leadership. It means knowledge, and pattern spotting. It means cross-disciplinary work. It means lateral thinking (as Edward de Bono insightfully described in his work). It means a certain mindset, the one that demands challenges and keeps asking “why not?’’ instead of just “why?’’.
Innovation is one of those buzzwords that we keep hearing constantly nowadays, and its use and (much more often) abuse can lead to misunderstandings, blurry meanings and non-effective use of its true value. In the spirit of contributing to the development and establishment of design innovation, within Philips and to the outside world, I’ve looked to the academic world to find insights on how we can understand and apply the full potential of this discipline. And what better place that one of the world’s leading universities in design, the RCA?
Recently I met up with upcoming lighting designer Adolfo Abejón to ask him his views on lighting design at Milan Design Week, during the exhibition of some of his fantastic work. Here’s my interview.
The guys at the Light Community blog have interviewed me for their new series of "Spotlight on a designer". This is a repost from the original interview which you can check here.
Very nice people, even though they misspelled my name :)
Following the success of her last exhibit, "Design and the elastic mind," MoMA design and architecture curator, Paola Antonelli, has embarked again on another magnificent thought exercise in which she demonstrates again her willingness to stir up the thought community on how design can help shape the future. "Talk to me" is a wonderful exhibition of around 200 products, gadgets, videos and games in which the relationship with people and objects is strengthened and taken to a further, deeper emotional level by means of technology.
Besides being the experimental, fun and viral place for established brands, Fuorisalone is also, and above all, the home of young, fresh and experimental designers. As I said before, Ventura Lambrate consolidated this year as the cool place to be and to be seen, taking over Tortona’s kingdom of past years. Whereas Tortona has diluted its experimental heritage by hosting more commercial, less conceptually strong propositions over the years, Ventura Lambrate has preserved and even boosted the newness, forefront, fresh feeling that sometimes is hard to find in the well-established Milan.
After three posts on the Milan Salone and Euroluce, I thought I could write a bit about the not-so-known, but yet the most exciting, part of the Milan Design Week: the Fuorisalone exhibits. Fuorisalone (meaning in Italian, “outside the Salone”) are a conglomerate of exhibitions, showrooms and installations that happen across all the city of Milan. Those exhibits are mainly organized about four main design “districts”: Zona Tortona – the most renowned and used-to-be hip place, Brera – where big brands and luxury design takes place, Porta Romana and the newest, coolest,Ventura Lambrate – with only two years in the Milan design scene it has established itself already as the must go place if you really want to know what is the newest, trendiest in design.
Milan Design Week it´s almost reaching its end, and while I am still trying to digest all the trends and inspiration accumulated during these four hectic days, I wanted to share with you some of the highlights that I could already spot at this year's Euroluce edition.
After yesterday’s late start, my first complete Day 1 of Milan Design Week. It is actually incredible how much can you fit in one day. How many photographs, how many conversations, how many beautiful objects and how many cappuccinos you can handle in less than 24 hours. Exhausted, but extremely excited, my head still buzzing thinking about all I´ve seen today.
After a whole morning of trains, planes and buses, I finally managed to get to Milan for the Design Week and Euroluce. The sun was shining and the streets were packed once again with design students dressed in black and men in suits. There was, again, this vibe in the air that can only be felt here and now.
