IDFuel, the Industrial Design Weblog

Bionics: Abandon Perfection

10/08/05

As designers, we can sometimes be seduced by the idea that we are working toward some kind of singular perfection. Like the prototypical artist who is never satisfied with a painting, we can feel like just one more little adjustment will make our design perfect. Even worse, because of this, we can feel like there is no value in creating something in a field which is already well populated with designs. The natural world knows this is a fallacy. Need proof? The infinitely variable mushroom has it.
100805_mush_main

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Bionics: Branching is Beefy

08/01/05

If there's one thing that you learn after 4 billion years of futzing around it's how to get strength with minimum materials. We designers have the opportunities to use carbon fiber, plastics, metals, and all sorts of other great materials, and often, meticulous minimization of cost is not so important. But in the animal kingdom, where every gram of calcium carbonate that goes into your shell or bones had to be hunted down, chewed up, and digested at great expense, you learn some tricks in using it. Most of these involve branching.
080105_stressmain

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Bionics: Energy Efficiency, Nature-Style

07/19/05

With peak oil looking more and more real, and gas prices climbing higher, designers, politicians, and people everywhere are looking for ways to maximize energy usage. There is one organization who has been wrestling with this issue for the length of it's existence. Like so many other things, before cars, before cities, before humans, nature was fighting to fit as many animals and plants into as small a space as possible. And now that we get to plan how products fit into our energy and market spaces, we can take some cues from her.
071905__efficient

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Bionics: Don't Get Stuck On Symmetry

06/08/05

As humans, we get really wrapped up in symmetry. Rorchock blots that reveal your inner child, endlessly tessellating fish, and buildings covered in geometric tile; You could call it an obsession. While there are good reasons for loving symmetry, the truth is that there are lots of reasons to go asymmetrical. In this case, as always, nature beats us to the punch, so we may as well see what she's got.
060705_bookmatched

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Bionics: Carapace Revisited

05/09/05

Last week, we were loving ourselves some hard-shelled animals: Crabs, Beetles, you name it. Interestingly, in the past few days, we have begun to see more and more great hard-shelled products popping up too. We thought it would be cool to look at some of these great imitators of our thick-skinned animal neighbors.
050805_pininfarinamain

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Bionics: Carapace in Yo' Face

04/29/05

God, we can't get over how funny that title is. Anyway, yesterday, there was such an overload of spiritual inspiration that we figured you could use a little visual inspiration to round out your week. We also realize that lots of things in design have hard outer shells -- indeed, designers often refer to "making a shell" or "skinning a product". So, in the true spirit of Odds and Ends, we're bringing together some of the best hard outer shells from the natural world. Get a load of these carapaces
042805_insectmain

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Bionics: Stressed to Impress

04/26/05

There is a huge difference between most human designs, and most animal designs. On average, given a situation which a human product wasn't designed for, it fails, or at least performs very poorly. On the other hand, given a high-stress situation, animals generally do not fail -- life would never have made it this far if it were that fragile. Instead, many natural systems have subroutines designed for the event of a high-stress situation. Adding similar systems to our designs can not only make for more robust products, but also better functionality in general.
042505_respondmain

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Bionics: Abandon Perfection

10/08/05

Bionics: Branching is Beefy

08/01/05

Bionics: Energy Efficiency, Nature-Style

07/19/05

Bionics: Don't Get Stuck On Symmetry

06/08/05

Bionics: Carapace Revisited

05/09/05

Bionics: Carapace in Yo' Face

04/29/05

Bionics: Stressed to Impress

04/26/05

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