So the New York design week hit town again on what was a gorgeous Spring weekend (which kept the crowds at the ICFF manageable). Many other sites will be giving comprehensive overviews so I thought I’d just mention a couple of things which stood out for me.

First up was the Beautiful hand-crafted tea canisters from Kaikado. The simplicity and quality of craftsmanship of these were superb. I wasn’t aware of the company before but here’s a link to their website.

Next, I know it’s not new – in fact in won a Red Dot award in 2011, but this was the first time I’d seen the X-Plus table by Shi Xiaioxi in person and it’s a lot more poetic and approachable than the photo’s I’d previously seen would have led me to believe. Great work for a young designer.

Finally, on the subject of young designers, the collaboration between Alessi and Cranbrook students which is on show at the Alessi showroom on Greene Street was very interesting. To me the work by Adam Shirley was a standout.

Prime Studio’s packaging design for the Squish Housewares line is featured on the Brand packaging website today. Fab.

So we just learned that unfortunately we didn’t win the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award this year. The award for Product Design went to Scott Wilson of Minimal – Congratulations to him and the team there and all the other winners.

In the taxi on the way to JFK early yesterday morning ready to go for a meeting in Buffalo I looked over and saw the Space Shuttle Enterprise sitting on the tarmac on top of a 747. Unfortunately I was too slow to whip out my iphone and I didn’t get a decent shot on the way back either so I had to purloin this photo by Kate Hinds from the Transportation Nation website.

I recently received an email from Kristina Funck, a talented designer based in Oregon, which caught my eye. Her and her husband, Matthew, decided to go on a 2 month road trip across America visiting Design studios to try to find an inspirational place to work. They’ve been documenting their travels on a website www.road-to-work.com which makes for an entertaining and inspiring read (as well as sporting some great photography). I was scheduled to meet with Kristina later this week when they hit New York and I was very much looking forward to meeting them in person and discussing the trip. Sadly, for me but not Kristina, they never made it this far having been snapped up for a position in Chicago (not sure by who).

This is such a great story of a positive, can-do attitude and I encourage you to check out their site.

After yesterday’s rather gloomy post about inventors/entrepreneurs and the struggle to launch a new product I thought I should share a story of success (and a lot of perseverance).

Way back in 1999 Prime Studio was contacted by an inventor called Philip Eu who had an idea for a new cat feeder. Philip’s own cats led to his epiphany and design idea. I’ll let Philip describe it himself….

“In 1999 I had a ‘day’ job with long and irregular working hours, and two cherished cats, Mikey and Sparky that no matter what time I got home from work, had eaten their dinner and were happy to see me. Life was good. Cats were happy, so I was happy. Then came the news, that Mikey had life threatening health issues, and I got strict Veterinarian instructions to only feed him a special medicated diet for the rest of his life. His special diet could not be shared with his brother Sparky. I could no longer leave food out, if I was going to be working late, and most nights I had to work late. After a few months of twice daily supervised meals, and with the help of friends and family for the night time feeding, I thought that there had to be a better way! I searched everywhere only to discover that I was already using the only solution available: supervised or separated feedings. So one day, while I was waiting yet again for a delayed flight back home, I sketched out some ideas, and by the time I landed, I had a working drawing. I now knew what our babies at home needed; now I just needed to figure out how to make the thing work.”

That’s where we came in.We worked with Philip to develop the initial concepts for a product which would allow access to the food for only one specific cat wearing a Smart ID tag or collar. We investigated possible technologies, sketched ideas and built and tested prototypes (with my own cats at the time). The project went all the way to hand-off of detailed drawings when, as often happens, life butted in. Philip moved to Hong Kong, started a new family etc.etc..

Then last year, out of the blue, I got a call from him to say the project had been resurrected and he was in initial tooling phases. Of course there were some tweaks along the way because of advances in technology, specifically the RFID used for detection of the cats and unlocking the door but in essence it’s pretty similar to the deisgn we developed over 10 years ago. Now the product called “GateFeeder” has just launched and it’s starting to generate quite a bit of buzz.

So a story of how someone with a strong vision, amazing perseverance and, of course, a great initial design can make it all come true. We wish him the best of luck.

His latest email was about misguided and un-informed entrepreneurs and marketeers who contact his company regarding new projects (which of course they all believe are the next BIG THING). Running a design consultancy for over 14 years now I’ve met my fair share of these people and even worked with a few of them (more about that in a future post). It seems like Jack got fed up with spending time discussing their ideas and concepts ultimately to walk away because ultimately the project was doomed to fail. So he put together a 10 point checklist to ‘pre-qualify’ potential clients and even he admits it’s brutal. I’ve reproduced the checklist below after the jump (I’m sure Jack won’t mind – after all this is free PR).  If a potential client doesn’t get a passing grade then the conversation goes no further – tough love indeed. I encourage you to read the article in full to see his reasoning.

1. What is a UPC?
2. Have you ever sold a new product before?
3. How much can you sell this item for?
4. Do you know how to develop a sales channel?
5. Do you have/know what CAD files are (no, your pencil sketches won’t do)?
6. What are soft tools, hard tools, NRE and a Bill of Materials (BOM)?
7. Are you prepared to spend tens of thousands of dollars to get to the cusp of commercialization (with no guarantee of commercial sales)?
8. Did you know that you’ll have to prepay the supplier (at least for the first order)?
9. How will you fulfill future orders?
10. Is all of this news to you?

It may seem harsh but his argument is that he’s doing these people a favor in the long run by telling them to go away and do their homework upfront and not taking their cash. Of course, entrepreneurs and new inventions are the lifeblood of the product design industry so you’ve got to take your hat off to Jack for his no-nonsense attitude.

A hearty Prime Studio welcome to Paloma, our new intern from Chile, who’s spending a month with us this Spring.