Kickstarter the new well of design talents

EXHIBITION_The 7^th edition of Design of the year 2014 opens today at the Design Museum in London.

“There are certain things that stand out this year, one is that many projects are funded by kickstarters from crowd founding, from the Bradley time piece, a watch for blind people, to Works that work magazine. It means perhaps more niche projects.

We have a lot of FRAC projects this year, FRAC Centre le Turbolence and FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais, this shows that where there is public funding you often get projects that competition led sometimes and you have really high quality” the Design Museum curator Gemma Curtain told me “Then the notion of sustainability is something that in the past was a good idea but not necessary integrated into the design and now becomes an essential part. An example is Clever Caps, a Brazilian project. It is a very clever idea on the notion that the plastic cap on your bottle is going to be thrown away, why not mould and shape it like Lego? You can use it and keep them. It's a fun simple idea and sustainable.”

I look around to decide how to fill in my vote sheet, and among the more than 70 pieces I selected 5 runners up.

No more scratches on my car.
Jean-Marie Massaud with his ME.WE car has solved one of my biggest problems, the scratches on the car door when I try to park, upholstering the structure externally with expanded polypropylene panels. But it's not the only winning element, it's also super sustainable, using electric powered wheels, and a bamboo interior.

ME.WE: FORWARD-THINKING CAR - Designed by Massaud & Toyota

Play and Plan, playing with Lego to plan my week.
Vitamins design shares their way to organized the schedule in their office, creating a structure where every row is a month, every column is a day of the week and every person in the studio has a figurine. Each project is associated to a brick colour.
The calendar is made entirely of Lego, but when you take a photo of it with a smartphone, all of the events and timings are synchronized to your Google calendar.

Lego Calendar from Vitamins on Vimeo.

LEGO CALENDAR - Designed by Adrian Westaway, Clara Gaggero, Duncan Fitzsimons, Simon Emberton

Simple as sustainability should be.
Finally essential architecture. Form follows function, or more precisely follows needs.
Makoko Floating School is a prototype built for the historic water community of Makoko, Nigeria. The school takes an innovative, cheap and sustainable approach to address the community’s specific social and physical needs.

MAKOKO FLOATING SCHOOL, NIGERIA - Designed by NLÉ, Makoko Community Building Team

Kickstart consultant, nowadays everybody needs the contact of a good one.
First tip “It's all about the story. It's not about the money, you have to tell the right story”
Sidekick Creatives is a collective set up to support individuals and companies to realise their crowdfunding campaigns. Sidekick Creatives collaborates with fellow designers, artists and makers by offering them the necessary tools and expertise required to successfully fund their projects.

SIDEKICK CREATIVES - CROWDFUNDING GREAT ART & DESIGN - Designed by Oscar Lhermitte, Philipp Figueroa, Yoav Reches, Arne Zacher, Molly Anderson, Tommaso Lanza

I want to learn chinese...and now I can
Chineasy’s aim is to bridge the gap between the East and the West. The system is built on a building block methodology which allows students to learn a small number of commonly occurring characters, which can then be combined to create more complex compounds and couplets. These illustrated and animated characters aim to provide both a memorable interpretation of Chinese and also a glimpse into the culture behind the language.

CHINEASY - Created by ShaoLan Hsueh with Illustrations by Noma Bar