Design Revolution Road Show

Perhaps one of the more light-hearted (but still genius) designs in the exhibition is Marti Guixe’s “Football Tape,” a simple roll of tape printed with a traditional soccer ball pattern. For those of us who may not have access to the nicest leather soccer balls, a strip of tape and some balled up newspapers, magazine pages, or even plastic bags will suffice. Marti Guixe’s design is distributed by Magis, and is featured in the book under the Play section. The simplicity of the idea is phenomenal, transforming whatever flotsam or jetsam you have around the house into a pick-up game in the yard.

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One of our wall-mounted products in the exhibition is Yves Behar’s design for a new condom dispenser for the New York Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Asked by the city to redesign the city’s free condom distribution project, Yves’ firm fuseproject embarked on a multi-scale rebranding and product design campaign. The final product, NYC Condom, is a suite of beautifully designed offerings, from the dispensers which can be found all over the city in bars, bodegas, and restaurants, to the condom wrapper, and font selection, which is derived from a mid-century typeface commonly used on Manhattan signage. Since the dispensers have been put up around town, condom distribution has gone up nearly tenfold. We know you’re wondering if we’ll be giving out the condoms on the road- YES, in limited quantities (we only have a few hundred). Read more about the NYC Condom project via the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

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In developing nations, where over half the population requires corrective lenses but often do not have the money to purchase them, Oxford Physics Professor Joshua Silver has a viable solution. Adaptive Eyecare glasses are a liquid-filled alternative whose prescription can be altered at the time of fitting simply by adjusting the amount of injected liquid into the flexible membrane lens. By injecting more or less liquid using the attached syringes, the lenses become more convex (a stronger prescription) or concave (a weaker prescription). The patient, at the time of fitting, simply alters the amount of injected liquid while wearing the glasses, until they can see perfectly. The syringes are then removed, the lenses sealed, and the glasses are ready to wear. Each pair currently sells for just under $20 USD, though Joshua Silver, who is now director of the non-profit Centre for Vision in the Developing World at the University of Oxford, hopes to soon offer them for under $5. Check out the Adaptive Eyecare glasses and 39 other fascinating products and devices we’ll be showcasing in our exhibition.

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The heart of the Design Revolution Road Show is the exhibition, which will be installed in the Airstream trailer. Forty products will be shown, each of which is featured in the book Design Revolution, and representative of a great design solution for life improvement. The products range from do-it-yourself appropriate technologies in the developing world like a recipe for clay water filters cooked over a cow-dung fire to compact blood glucose monitors you can buy at your local pharmacy. Eight categories of products (Water, Well-Being, Energy, Education, Play, Food, Mobility, and Enterprise) represent a compendium of evidence that makes the case for design thinking that results in TOOLS that enable, rather than just more stuff. View the Exhibition page to see all 40 products that we’ll be showing!