DesignBytes

To help reduce the global impact of the 600 billion disposable cups sold each year, Starbucks and McDonald’s are launching a three-year project to build a better cup: one that’s both fully recyclable and compostable.

MIT researchers have debuted a tool that automatically generates products–and analyzes them in detail–on your behalf.

After a number of years as senior director, Oliver Seil, IDSA, assumed the helm of the design group, where he harnesses Belkin's considerable resources to execute projects that while adhering to Belkin's motto of "People inspired."

Tonal CEO and founder teamed up with Dan Harden, IDSA, the CEO and principal designer at Whipsaw, to take his engine and turn it into a compact exercise machine that wouldn’t be out of place in the home.

Designers can’t simply make digital products easier to use. They have to think about what’s in the best interests of the user.

An ex-Apple employee is releasing a new book that details Apple’s design process from the inside, retelling his own anecdotes of working on the iPhone and iPad, demoing to Steve Jobs and more.

IBM’s growing security-focused creative unit is comprised of UX specialists, industrial designers, content writers, motion animators, illustrators, developers, and user researchers.

To keep passengers safe and chilled out, a lot goes into designing airline seats—including selecting the right color.

You are not holding just a red plastic party cup, you are holding a story, a lineage, a tragedy and a comforting cultural signifier of communal togetherness. You are holding a lesson in the pros and cons of ubiquity, and a model of clean design.

Read the employment growth rates, what skills are trending, and where in the US industrial designers work.

Over the years, some have noticed a minor turf battle for rights to the title of “designer.”

A recap of the second Square One conference (SQ1CON), hosted by nonprofit Advanced Design Sketching and created by Chicago design educator Hector Silva, IDSA.

Lisa Yong offers these words of advice to other young women looking to succeed in traditionally male-dominated fields.

This may sound like a generational battle but there is more to it. These debates encourage humility. You don’t find unity in what great designers love and hate as far as design tools. There is no “best” design method and no “best” design tool.

“If I hadn’t been involved in IDSA and going to the district conferences and events like that, I can’t say that I would be on the path that I am on now. It is part College and part me that took the initiative to be involved,” said ClayVon Lowe, IDSA.

The design field can be competitive and demanding, but it's a great career path for anyone truly passionate about art.

Apple and Samsung just ended their epic seven-year legal patent infringement fight.

An MIT startup reimagines the bra as a heart monitor—and aims to fill the data gap for women’s heart disease.

For Tucker Viemeister, FIDSA, there’s never been a separation between the making side of design and the social side. “It all boils down to how people treat each other,” he tells SYPartners in Episode 3 of this podcast series.

Advanced Design Sketching (ADS) is getting ready to host their second SQ1CON in Chicago this July 13 and 14 after a successful inaugural event last year. Hector Silva, IDSA tells the story of how ADS and SQ1CON came to be.

Haworth’s Fern Chair—an IDEA 2017 Bronze winner—is the result of an intensive five-year collaboration between Berlin-based industrial design studio ITO Design and the company’s design studio in Holland, MI.

For fun, an industrial designer gave US bills a redesign, starting with the material: Polymer.

Residential + commercial = resimercial, or interior design for commercial spaces that embrace the qualities of the home. It’s a trend that’s poised to change the industry for designers and manufacturers alike.

Design plagiarism is often intentional–but can just as frequently be accidental. And no wonder: Searching for similar logos and marks is nearly impossible in the warren of databases of American trademarks, much less in any other country.