Phonograph
The phonograph is a device for the mechanical recording and reproduction of sound. In its forms, it is called a gramophone or, since the 1940s, a record player; the sound vibration waveforms are recorded as corresponding physical deviations of a spiral groove engraved, incised, or impressed into the surface of a rotating cylinder or disc, called a "record". To recreate the sound, the surface is rotated while a playback stylus traces the groove and is therefore vibrated by it faintly reproducing the recorded sound. In early acoustic phonographs, the stylus vibrated a diaphragm which produced sound waves which were coupled to the open air through a flaring horn, or directly to the listener's ears through stethoscope-type earphones; the phonograph was invented in 1877 by Thomas Edison. While other inventors had produced devices that could record sounds, Edison's phonograph was the first to be able to reproduce the recorded sound, his phonograph recorded sound onto a tinfoil sheet wrapped around a rotating cylinder.
A stylus responding to sound vibrations produced an down or hill-and-dale groove in the foil. Alexander Graham Bell's Volta Laboratory made several improvements in the 1880s and introduced the graphophone, including the use of wax-coated cardboard cylinders and a cutting stylus that moved from side to side in a zigzag groove around the record. In the 1890s, Emile Berliner initiated the transition from phonograph cylinders to flat discs with a spiral groove running from the periphery to near the center, coining the term gramophone for disc record players, predominantly used in many languages. Improvements through the years included modifications to the turntable and its drive system, the stylus or needle, the sound and equalization systems; the disc phonograph record was the dominant audio recording format throughout most of the 20th century. In the 1980s, phonograph use on a standard record player declined due to the rise of the cassette tape, compact disc, other digital recording formats. However, records are still a favorite format for some audiophiles, DJs and turntablists, have undergone a revival in the 2010s.
The original recordings of musicians, which may have been recorded on tape or digital methods, are sometimes re-issued on vinyl. Usage of terminology is not uniform across the English-speaking world. In more modern usage, the playback device is called a "turntable", "record player", or "record changer"; when used in conjunction with a mixer as part of a DJ setup, turntables are colloquially called "decks". In electric phonographs, the motions of the stylus are converted into an analogous electrical signal by a transducer converted back into sound by a loudspeaker; the term phonograph was derived from the Greek words φωνή and γραφή. The similar related terms gramophone and graphophone have similar root meanings; the roots were familiar from existing 19th-century words such as photograph and telephone. The new term may have been influenced by the existing words phonographic and phonography, which referred to a system of phonetic shorthand. Arguably, any device used to record sound or reproduce recorded sound could be called a type of "phonograph", but in common practice the word has come to mean historic technologies of sound recording, involving audio-frequency modulations of a physical trace or groove.
In the late-19th and early-20th centuries, "Phonograph", "Gramophone", "Graphophone", "Zonophone", the like were still brand names specific to various makers of sometimes different machines. "Talking machine" had earlier been used to refer to complicated devices which produced a crude imitation of speech, by simulating the workings of the vocal cords and lips – a potential source of confusion both and now. In British English, "gramophone" may refer to any sound-reproducing machine using disc records, which were introduced and popularized in the UK by the Gramophone Company. "gramophone" was a proprietary trademark of that company and any use of the name by competing makers of disc records was vigorously prosecuted in the courts, but in 1910 an English court decision decreed that it had become a generic term. The term "phonograph" was restricted to machines that used cylinder records. "Gramophone" referred to a wind-up machine. After the introduction of the softer vinyl records, 33 1⁄3-rpm LPs and 45-rpm "single" or two-song records, EPs, the common name became "record player" or "turntable".
The home record player was part of a system that included a radio and might play audiotape cassettes. From about 1960, such a system began to be described as a "hi-fi" or a "stereo". In American English, "phonograph", properly specific to machines made by Edison, was sometimes used in a generic sense as early as the 1890s to include cylinder
Design Museum
The Design Museum is a museum in Kensington, which covers product, graphic and architectural design. The museum operates as a registered charity, all funds generated by ticket sales aid the museum in curating new exhibitions. Entrance is free to the museum's permanent collection display, "Designer Maker User". In 2018 the museum won the European Museum of the Year Award. Deyan Sudjic succeeded Alice Rawsthorn as Director of the Design Museum in 2006. In 2016 Alice Black was appointed Co-Director; the museum was founded in 1989 by Sir Terence Conran. It was located by the River Thames near Tower Bridge, relocated to Kensington; the museum was housed in a former 1940s banana warehouse on the south bank of the River Thames in the Shad Thames area in SE1 London. The conversion of this warehouse altered it beyond recognition, to resemble a building in the International Modernist style of the 1930s; this was funded by many companies and benefactors. The museum was principally designed by the Conran group, with exhibitions over two floors, a “Design Museum Tank” exhibition space out by the waterfront.
A large scale sculpture titled Head of Invention by Sir Eduardo Paolozzi was installed in the area between the museum and the Thames. In June 2011, Sir Terence Conran donated £17.5 million to enable the Museum to move in 2016 from the warehouse to a larger site which housed the Commonwealth Institute in west London. This landmark from the 1960s, a Grade II* listed building that had stood vacant for over a decade, was developed by a design team led by John Pawson who made the building fit for a 21st-century museum, whilst at the same time retaining its spatial qualities; the Design Museum opened in its Kensington location on 24 November 2016. The move gave the museum three times more space than in its previous location at Shad Thames, with the new Swarovski Foundation Centre for Learning, 202-seat Bakala Auditorium and a dedicated gallery to display its permanent collection, accessible free of charge; the move brought the museum into Kensington's cultural quarter, joining the Royal College of Art and Albert Museum, Science Museum, Natural History Museum and Serpentine Gallery.
The top-floor space under the museum roof houses a permanent display, Designer Maker User, with key objects from the museum’s collection. It is the only one in the UK devoted to contemporary design and architecture. A restaurant, members’ lounge, residency studio and an events and gallery space are located on the top floor. On the first floor, a design and architecture reference library is a resource for students, educators and designers, it will include archive material relating to the history of the museum. The Swarovski Foundation Centre for Learning is a suite of learning facilities including a Design Studio, Creative Workshop, two seminar rooms and a Common Room; the Design Museum offices and main reception, a meeting room and a film studio are located on the first floor. On the ground floor, the largest gallery in the new Design Museum showcases a programme of temporary exhibitions. Accessible from both Kensington High Street and Holland Park, the atrium welcomes visitors and acts as an events space.
A main staircase from the atrium gives access to all floors and offers views to the first and second floors and the hyperbolic paraboloid roof. A double-height space spanning the two lower levels, Gallery Two hosts a programme of temporary exhibitions dedicated to architecture, furniture and graphic design; the Bakala Auditorium seats 202 people and provide a purpose-designed space for a programme of talks, seminars and public and private events throughout the year. The basement accommodates a collections store, exhibition preparation spaces and a locker area for visitors; the Design Museum ran the £25,000 Designer of the Year award from 2003 to 2006. In 2007 the new Director discontinued the Designer of the Year scheme, in 2008 introduced the Designs of the Year award. Brit Insurance sponsored the awards from 2003 until 2011. 2004 Daniel Brown 2005 Hilary Cottam 2006 Jamie Hewlett 2009 Duarte Ferreira Designs produced over the previous twelve months worldwide are eligible. A number of internationally respected design experts are invited to nominate up to five projects each, falling into the seven categories of Architecture, Graphics, Product and Fashion.
Since 2015 there have been six categories: architecture, graphics, digital and transport. Beazley Insurance came on board as exhibition sponsor in 2016. 2008 The'One Laptop Per Child' project, designed by Yves Béhar for Fuseproject 2009 Barack Obama poster designed by Shepard Fairey 2010 Folding Plug designed by Min-Kyu Choi 2011 Plumen 001 lightbulb, designed by Samuel Wilkinson and Hulger 2012 The London 2012 Olympic Torch, designed by BarberOsgerby 2013 The website "GOV. UK", designed by the Government Digital Service 2014 The Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku, Azerbaijan designed by architect Zaha Hadid 2015 Human-organs-on-Chips designed by Donald Ingber and Dan Dongeun Huh 2016 Better Shelter by Johan Karlsson, Dennis Kanter, Christian Gustafsson, John van Leer, Tim de Haas, Nicolò Barlera, the IKEA Foundation and UNHCR 2017 The National Museum of African American History and Culture, designed by Adjaye Associates, The Freelon Group, Davis Brody Bond, SmithGroupJJR for the Smithsonian Institution The Designers in Residence programme at the Design Museum is a core part of the museum's activity, exists to provide emerging designers, across any discipline, with time and space away from their regular environment to reflect and consider new ways of developing their practice.
2010 - Theme
Raymond Loewy
Raymond Loewy was a Franco–American industrial designer who achieved fame for the magnitude of his design efforts across a variety of industries. He was recognized for this by Time magazine and featured on its cover on October 31, 1949, he spent most of his professional career in the United States, becoming a naturalized citizen in 1938. Among his designs were the Shell, Exxon, TWA and the former BP logos, the Greyhound Scenicruiser bus, Coca-Cola vending machines, the Lucky Strike package, Coldspot refrigerators, the Studebaker Avanti and Champion, the Air Force One livery, he was involved with numerous railroad designs, including the Pennsylvania Railroad GG1 and S-1 locomotives, the color scheme and Eagle motif for the first streamliners of the Missouri Pacific Railroad and a number of lesser known color scheme and car interior designs for other railroads. His career spanned seven decades; the press referred to Raymond Loewy as The Man Who Shaped America, The Father of Streamlining and The Father of Industrial Design.
Loewy was born in Paris in 1893, the son of Maximilian Loewy, a Jewish journalist from Austria, a French mother, Marie Labalme. Loewy distinguished himself early with the design of a successful model aircraft, which won the Gordon Bennett Cup for model airplanes in 1908. By the following year, he had commercial sales of the plane, named the Ayrel. Loewy served in the French army during World War I, attaining the rank of captain, he received the Croix de guerre. After the war he moved to New York, where he arrived in September 1919. In Loewy's early years in the United States, he lived in New York and found work as a window designer for department stores, including Macy's, Wanamaker's and Saks in addition to working as a fashion illustrator for Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. In 1929 he received his first industrial-design commission to contemporize the appearance of a duplicating machine by Gestetner. Further commissions followed, including work for Westinghouse, the Hupp Motor Company, styling the Coldspot refrigerator for Sears-Roebuck.
It was this product. He opened a London office in the mid-1930s. In 1937, Loewy established a relationship with the Pennsylvania Railroad, his most notable designs for the firm involved some of their passenger locomotives, he designed a streamlined shroud for K4s Pacific #3768 to haul the newly redesigned 1938 Broadway Limited. He followed by styling the experimental S1 locomotive, as well as the T1 class. At the Pennsylvania Railroad's request, he restyled Baldwin's diesels with a distinctive "sharknose" reminiscent of the T1. While he did not design the famous GG1 electric locomotive, he improved its appearance with welded rather than riveted construction, he added a pinstripe paint scheme to highlight its smooth contours. In addition to locomotive design, Loewy's studios provided many designs for the Pennsylvania Railroad, including stations, passenger-car interiors, advertising materials. By 1949, Loewy employed 143 designers and draftsmen, his business partners were A. Baker Barnhart, William Snaith, John Breen.
Loewy had a fruitful relationship with American car maker Studebaker. Studebaker first retained Loewy and Associates and Helen Dryden as design consultants in 1936 and in 1939 Loewy began work with the principal designer Virgil Exner, their designs first began appearing with the late-1930s Studebakers. Loewy designed a new logo to replace the "turning wheel", the Studebaker trademark since 1912. During World War II, American government restrictions on in-house design departments at Ford, General Motors, Chrysler prevented official work on civilian automobiles; because Loewy's firm was independent of the fourth-largest automobile producer in America, no such restrictions applied. This permitted Studebaker to launch the first all-new postwar automobile in 1947, two years ahead of the "Big Three." His team developed an advanced design featuring clean rearward lines. The Loewy staff, headed by Exner created the Starlight body, which featured a rear-window system that wrapped 180° around the rear seat.
In addition to the iconic bullet-nosed Studebakers of 1950 and 1951, the team created the 1953 Studebaker line, highlighted by the Starliner and Starlight coupes. The Starlight has ranked as one of the best-designed cars of the 1950s in lists compiled since by Collectible Automobile and Driver, Motor Trend. The'53 Starliner, recognized today as "one of the most beautiful cars made", was radical in appearance, as radical in its way as the 1934 Airflow. However, it was beset by production problems. To brand the new line, Loewy contemporized Studebaker's logo again by applying the "Lazy S" element, his final commission of the 1950s for Studebaker was the transformation of the Starlight and Starliner coupes into the Hawk series for the 1956 model year. The photo to the right shows a Starliner hardtop, which does not have the "C" pillar. In the spring of 1961, Studebaker's new president, Sherwood Egbert, recalled Loewy to design the Avanti. Egbert hired him to help energize Studebaker's soon-to-be-released line of 1963 passenger cars to attract younger buyers.
Despite the short 40-day schedule allowed to produce a finished design and scale model, Loewy agreed to take the job. He recruited a team consisting of experienced designers, including former Loewy employees John Ebstein; the team worked in a hous
Slide projector
A slide projector is an opto-mechanical device for showing photographic slides. 35 mm slide projectors, direct descendants of the larger-format magic lantern, first came into widespread use during the 1950s as a form of occasional home entertainment. Reversal film was much in use, supplied slides snapped during vacations and at family events. Slide projectors were widely used in educational and other institutional settings. Photographic film slides and projectors have been replaced by image files on digital storage media shown on a projection screen by using a video projector or displayed on a large-screen video monitor. A continuous-slide lantern was patented in 1881, it included a dissolving-view apparatus. A projector has four main elements: electric incandescent light bulb or other light source reflector and "condensing" lens to direct the light to the slide slide holder focusing lensA flat piece of heat-absorbing glass is placed in the light path between the condensing lens and the slide, to avoid damaging the latter.
This glass absorbs infrared. Light passes through the transparent slide and lens, the resulting image is enlarged and projected onto a perpendicular flat screen so the audience can view its reflection. Alternatively, the image may be projected onto a translucent "rear projection" screen used for continuous automatic display for close viewing; this form of projection avoids the audience interrupting the light stream by casting their shadows on the projection or by bumping into the projector. Straight-tray slide projectors Round-tray slide projectors Stack-loader slide projectors Slide cube projectors Dual slide projectors Single slide projectors Dissolve projectors Viewer slide projectors Stereo slide projectors project two slides with different polarizations, making slides appear as three-dimensional to viewers wearing polarizing glasses Medium-format slide projectors Large-format slide projectors for use on stages, at large events, or for architectural and advertising installations where high light output is needed.
Overhead projectors List of known manufacturers of slide projectors: Agfa Gevaert, Germany → Reflecta Bauer, Germany → Bosch. Martin, Germany. Slide projectors get smarter all the time. Popular Mechanics. Retrieved 2011-10-22
Kickstarter
Kickstarter is an American public-benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity and merchandising. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative projects to life". Kickstarter has received more than $4 billion in pledges from 15.5 million backers to fund 257,000 creative projects, such as films, stage shows, journalism, video games and food-related projects. People who back Kickstarter projects are offered tangible rewards or experiences in exchange for their pledges; this model traces its roots to subscription model of arts patronage, where artists would go directly to their audiences to fund their work. Kickstarter launched on April 28, 2009, by Perry Chen, Yancey Strickler, Charles Adler; the New York Times called Kickstarter "the people's NEA". Time named it one of the "Best Inventions of 2010" and "Best Websites of 2011". Kickstarter raised $10 million funding from backers including NYC-based venture firm Union Square Ventures and angel investors such as Jack Dorsey, Zach Klein and Caterina Fake.
The company is based in Brooklyn. Andy Baio served as the site's CTO until November 2010. Lance Ivy has been Lead Developer since the website launched. On February 14, 2013, Kickstarter released; the app was aimed at users who create and back projects and was the first time Kickstarter had an official mobile presence. On October 31, 2012, Kickstarter opened projects based in the United Kingdom, followed by projects based in Canada on September 9, 2013, Australia and New Zealand on November 13, 2013, the Netherlands on April 28, 2014, Ireland and Sweden on September 15, 2014, Germany on April 28, 2015, France and Spain on May 19, 2015, Belgium, Italy and Switzerland on June 16, 2015, Singapore and Hong Kong on August 30, 2016, Mexico on November 15, 2016 and Japan on September 12, 2017. In July 2017, Strickler announced his resignation. Kickstarter is one of a number of crowdfunding platforms for gathering money from the public, which circumvents traditional avenues of investment. Project creators choose a minimum funding goal.
If the goal is not met by the deadline, no funds are collected. The kickstarter platform is open to backers from anywhere in the world and to creators from many countries, including the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, The Netherlands, Ireland, Sweden, France, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg and Mexico. Kickstarter applies a 5% fee on the total amount of the funds raised, their payments processor applies an additional 3–5% fee. Unlike many forums for fundraising or investment, Kickstarter claims no ownership over the projects and the work they produce; the web pages of projects launched on the site are permanently archived and accessible to the public. After funding is completed and uploaded media cannot be edited or removed from the site. There is no guarantee that people who post projects on Kickstarter will deliver on their projects, use the money to implement their projects, or that the completed projects will meet backers' expectations. Kickstarter advises backers to use their own judgment on supporting a project.
They warn project leaders that they could be liable for legal damages from backers for failure to deliver on promises. Projects might fail after a successful fundraising campaign when creators underestimate the total costs required or technical difficulties to be overcome. Asked what made Kickstarter different from other crowdfunding platforms, co-founder Perry Chen said: "I wonder if people know what the definition of crowdfunding is. Or, if there’s an agreed upon definition of what it is. We haven’t supported the use of the term because it can provoke more confusion. In our case, we focus on a middle ground between commerce. People are offering cool stuff and experiences in exchange for the support of their ideas. People are creating these mini-economies around their project ideas. So, you aren’t coming to the site to get something for nothing. We focus on creative projects—music, technology, design and publishing—and within the category of crowdfunding of the arts, we are ten times the size of all of the others combined."
On June 21, 2012, Kickstarter began publishing statistics on its projects. As of February 13, 2015, there were 207,135 launched projects, with a success rate of 40%; the total amount pledged was $1,523,718,656. The business grew in its early years. In 2010 Kickstarter had $27,638,318 pledged; the corresponding figures for 2011 were 11,836 funded projects and $99,344,381 pledged. On February 9, 2012, Kickstarter hit a number of milestones. A dock made for the iPhone designed by Casey Hopkins became the first Kickstarter project to exceed one million dollars in pledges. A few hours a new adventure game project started by computer game developers, Double Fine Productions, reached the same figure, having been launched less than 24 hours earlier, finished with over $3 million pledged; this was the first time Kickstarter raised over a million dollars in pledges in a single day. On August 30, 2014, the "Coolest Cooler", an icebox created by Ryan Grepper, became the most funded Kickstarter project in history, with US$13.28 million in funding, breaking the record held by the Pebble smart watch.
In July 2012, Wharton professor Ethan Mollick and Jeanne Pi conducted research
London Design Festival
London Design Festival is a citywide design event that takes place over nine days every September. Conceived by Sir John Sorrell and Ben Evans in 2003, the concept was to create an annual event to promote the city’s creativity, drawing in the country's thinkers, practitioners and educators to a deliver a diverse celebration of design. London Design Festival's vision is to celebrate and promote London as the design capital of the world; the Festival is made up of over 400 events and exhibitions staged by over 300 partner organisations across the design spectrum and from around the world. The Festival commissions and curates its own programme of Landmark Projects, Projects at the V&A, Special Commissions throughout the city; the 17th edition of the Festival will take place from 14-22 September 2019. Festival audiences are significant, with an estimated direct audience of over 580,000 people from over 75 countries in 2018. An additional passer-by audience of nearly 1 million people had the opportunity to see the five Landmark Projects.
Over 2,000 international design businesses took part in the 2018 London Design Festival including exhibitors at five Design Destinations: 100% Design, Decorex International, Focus/18, London Design Fair. In 2018, eleven Design Districts participated in the Festival - Bankside, Clerkenwell, Marylebone, Pimlico Road, Regent St & St James's, Shoreditch and West Kensington - offering a programme of events, talks and tours. Four Design Routes joined including Brixton, Kings Cross, Mare Street and Paddington Central; the V&A Museum is the official residency and hub of the Festival, with 2018 seeing the celebration of 10 years in partnership together. Since 2009 the Victoria & Albert Museum has acted as the central Hub location for the London Design Festival. In 2018, London Design Festival helped drive a total of 161,250 visits to the V&A over the Festival period with 22% of those surveyed saying they had never visited the museum before and were driven there by the Festival. For the nine days of the Festival, visitors to the V&A each year explore a range of special displays and installations throughout the museum, complemented by an extensive programme of events, keynotes, daily tours, workshops.
In 2018 Global Design Forum drew 50 speakers from 13 countries, 2,800 visitors. Celebrating eleven years with the V&A as the official London Design Festival hub in 2019, this unique collaboration sees iconic spaces within the Museum transformed each year by an extraordinary collection of specially-commissioned installations and displays by international contemporary designers. Since 2007, London Design Festival has been commissioning leading designers and architects to create installations in London’s public spaces during the Festival. Locations for these installations have included Trafalgar Square, the Southbank Centre, the V&A, Somerset House, Covent Garden, St Paul's Cathedral and Greenwich Peninsula. 2007: "Urban Nebula", Zaha Hadid. Each year a Jury composed of established designers, industry commentators and previous winners choose recipients of The London Design Medals across four categories. Winners are chosen from a wide range of design disciplines and awards for their exceptional contribution to their field.
The London Design Medal categories include: London Design Medal Design Innovation Medal Emerging Talent Medal Lifetime Achievement Medal“While there are no shortage of design awards, we wanted to do it differently: not just a big dinner that everyone has to buy tables for,” says Festival Director Ben Evans. “So we took the Nobel Prize route – there’s no shortlist, just a winner. So that means there’s no losers either.”The London Design Medal is designed each year by jewellery designer Hannah Martin. The medals feature the Cockney Sparrow, in flight. Previous winners are Neri Oxman, Hussein Chalayan, Grace Wales Bonner, Eva Jiricna, Es Devlin, Paul Priestman, Margaret Calvert, Julian Melchiorr
