Design Minimalism 101

—by Richard Mandel

On this page in Designfax November 2000 we showed the winner of a design contest for an artistic power meter. Another competition from the same source has recently ended, in which participants were asked to design a computer apropos to a “global civil society,” a machine that could go anywhere, function anywhere. What you see in the photo is the VacuumPacked Computer, described as being able to derive power “from anything you can clamp it to — from solar cell to car battery, funky native power outlet, or someone rubbing their hands against a balloon….If you're running on a potato or watch battery, and it’s not a lot of power, the system merely slows down. If you attached it to an arc welder and really, there's probably too much power, it runs a lot faster. If it gets too hot, you can always submerge it in a lake or river. (It’s all vacuum-sealed and waterproof).” The DSP in this fantasy piece “should interface with computers and peripherals, no matter where they hail from….Attach it to a railroad track, chain-link fence, metal pipe, and your VacuumPacked Computer will communicate with anything else attached. Attached to a phone, and the DSP will be a modem. Have a bunch people hold hands between villages, and attach the clips to body parts on each end and you will have a local village network and a fun way to build bonds and promote unity.”

The contest winner, Allen Wong, is a pleasant fellow recently graduated from San Jose State University, majoring in industrial design after already earning a degree in architectural design from UC Berkeley. One particular class at UCB he credits with first opening his mind to designing with an eye towards environment. The idea for the computer came after an IDSA conference, where he heard Stuart Walker was speaking on speaking on products that can be produced indigenously in third-world countries, with a minimum of packaging technology. Tad Toulis, a designer at Lunar Design where Allen interned, also promoted the concept of products with disposable packaging and a recyclable technological core. That converged with a visit with his parents. Says Allen, “My parents had just gotten back from a vacation in Vancouver, and brought home some beef jerky. My mom was remarking how in Vancouver, they have a store where you can buy all sorts of jerky….upon hearing that my parents were traveling, the storekeepers were kind enough to vacuum pack her purchases right in front of her. So, about a week later, we were back in LA, trying out Canadian beef jerky, flavor preserved by the modern miracle of vacuum packing. Maybe at that point, my subconscious inventor brain stored away the idea that vacuum packing is a fairly robust packaging method, that it seals out moisture and dirt, and that it was cheap enough to be used for something as simple as beef jerky. Then after I went home, I saw and entered the Viridian design contest.”

Perhaps the marketplace needs to examine more closely these concepts of disposability. Sure, it’s environmentally sound, but it also can be applied to the rapid technology changes by making upgrades cool and trendy.