The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York City will be opening a new exhibit that explores designs made for individuals and communities of the Global South. “Design For The Other 90%” runs from May 4th to September 23rd 2007.

One of the designs that will be featured is the much-discussed “Life Straw” and other products that were featured at Pop!Tech 2006.
The exhibit will focus on water, shelter, health and sanitation, education, energy and transportation.

While at the museum, you can also check out the Design Triennial where the design for the Ipuli Medical Center is featured. (See previous Pop!Tech blog entry here)

The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum
2 East 91st Street
New York , NY 10128

Architecture for Humanity has announced that they have selected a winning logo from their online design competition. They gathered 65 jurors from across the globe to select finalists from more than 800 entries. The coolest part of it all…the whole competition was conducted on Flickr. You can see the work of all the finalists online. And it’s really interesting to read visitors’ comments on each logo.

The winning entry was made by Oregon based designer Michael DiTullo with his simple design featuring a nice dimensional measurement reference.

Here were the criteria established by AFH:

Criteria

We are looking for a logo that will reflect both the mission and spirit of the organization. A good fit for us would include the following:

1. The logo should be able to be understood globally and inoffensive to all cultures.

2. A logo that is not overly representational as our work overlaps so many aspects of design i.e. Definitely no houses, no people, no people in houses and no houses in people.

3. Neither the mark nor the logotype would use the abbreviation “AFH.” there are too many organizations with abbreviations in the development and reconstruction world you end up getting lost in alphabet soup. Please use our full name, ‘Architecture for Humanity’ in the logotype.

4. The logo must be replicable for all Architecture for Humanity chapters. Therefore the logotype must accommodate everything from ‘Architecture for Humanity Roma’ to ‘Architecture for Humanity San Francisco.’ It is also suggested that entrants also explore chapter logos using both the local dialect and English. (ie. Architecture for Humanity Tokyo should be able to be read in Japanese and English)

5. The design should be able to be reversible and use both light on dark and dark on light.

6. The logo will be used for a myriad of print and online applications. It must be readable from use on silkscreened T-Shirts to dodgy fax machines in far off countries.

AFH following a growing trend in using sites like Flickr and YouTube to generate content such as Davos’ recent call for submissions. The competition, as it opens its doors to the outside design world, is wonderfully in line with its open-source architectural mission.

(Trumpet Fanfare!)

AntiBabel Album Cover by Hamilton Hughes Design

Here it is…the first ever music release from Pop!Tech. And we couldn’t be more thrilled. Pop!Tech recently brought two of our favorite performers from 2006, Yungchen Lhamo and Reggie Watts together to record “AntiBabel”.

And with the generous support of Banana Republic and Etymotic, Pop!Tech is donating 100% of the purchase price to Machik, the innovative charity directed by Pop!Tech 2006 Speaker, Losang Rabgey.That means that every dollar that you spend on this cd will go directly to building schools and supporting sustainable initiatives in rural Tibet.

So this holiday season, please consider giving a gift - to yourself, your friends, family members, and colleagues — that truly does a greater good in the world.

You can buy copies of “AntiBabel” for just $10 (plus shipping) exclusively at The Pop!Tech Store

The tracks on this album defy description so listen to these samples for a taste<:
World in Transition
Integration

Also, check out the official AntiBabel Press Release

Photos by Evan Sung