Global Issues in Design

Can you buy your way to a greener life? Probably not, but there's no shortage of products that promise to reduce your carbon footprint and generally make your life more environmentally friendly. In a recurring series, I'll be trying out some of the more creative goods out there - and deciding whether they're worth paying for.

The Emoji Art & Design Show surveys the spread of emoji through popular culture with an art exhibition and Emoji Pop-Up Market. WHY AN EMOJI ART & DESIGN SHOW? In today's visually oriented culture, which increasingly communicates through images rather than text, emoji comprise a kind of "visual vernacular," a language that conveys humor, ambiguity and personality as well as meaning.

Today, courtesy of System magazine, BoF exclusively brings you a creative manifesto written by Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons, one of the fashion industry's most revolutionary, but reticent designers.

Tom and David Kelley of the award-winning Palo Alto-based global design firm IDEO have been helping private and public sector organizations innovate, grow and bring to market new ideas for 35 years; projects include Apple's first computer mouse and a stand-up toothpaste dispenser for Procter & Gamble. In the Kelleys'...

Humans have had such a dramatic impact on the planet that we've changed geological history. Future scientists will be able to find humanity's distinctive chemical signature written into the rocky record of Earth's crust. That signature marks the beginning of the Anthropocene, or the new human age.

The New York Post reported this week on Elliott Sailors, a female model who chopped off her hair in September 2012 and started presenting as a man in photo shoots. Though Sailors gives no indication of identifying as anything other than a woman-to the contrary, she peppered one interview with...

The high-design, low-cost boutique hotel is now an established phenomenon, thanks to properties like the Philippe Starck-designed Mama Shelter mini-chain in France, NYC's Jane, Singapore's Wanderlust or Berlin's Michelberger.

Keep Your Eyes on the Enterprise View all... Change happens in IT whether you want it to or not. But even with all the talk of the "post-PC" era and the rise of the horrifically named "bring your own device" hype, change has happened in a patchwork.

A vintage car parked on First Street NW in Truxton Circle. The image was taken... (Nathaniel Grann/For The...) In an old shoebox, I have a Polaroid of my beagle and me, taken in Lower Manhattan about a decade ago.

When the Bank of America Tower opened in 2010, the press praised it as one of the world's "most environmentally responsible high-rise office building[s]." It wasn't just the waterless urinals, daylight dimming controls, and rainwater harvesting.

The Architects' Journal recently published an article pitting five competing views of teaching sustainability against one another. The opinions come from a range of backgrounds, including engineers, tutors and landscape architects, and discuss how architecture students should be taught to design in a sustainable way - or if they should be taught this at all.

When I assign the exams after teaching Sustainable Design at Ryerson University School of Interior Design, one question is always What is sustainable design? or What is Sustainability? I keep hoping that one day, one of my students will finally explain it to me because I haven't figured it out.

Jesse Finkelstein has created an online "one-stop-shop" for designers that facilitates production, with a little help from investors large and small Fashion design schools teach their students how to sketch a design, drape or tailor a piece of clothing, sew it together, and, eventually, create a coherent collection.

NEW YORK, United States - As the prices of 3D printers continue to drop, savvy consumers are already making their own do-it-yourself counterfeits at home. In a video posted at 3dprinter.net, one even takes off the sunglasses he is wearing and shows how to make a 3D copy in a few easy steps.

How did a groundbreaking group show on contemporary Islam happen in rural New England? It all started with a simple conversation. Megan Whilden, Director of Cultural Development for the City of Pittsfield, was interviewing me for a summer position in her Office through the Berkshire Hills Internship Program.