An Illustrated Weekly of World Design, 31 August 2010

Last weekend marked the second Maker Faire Africa, this time held in Nairobi. The breadth and inventiveness of the event can be seen in the MFA blog here.  Steve Daniels states that “the event connects artisans in an attempt to move the continent into a grassroots industrial era." A lot of the exhibits are a cross between sophisticated technology and DIY solutions to communicate the idea and it’s relevance in Africa and hopefully the rest of the world. Image: Maker Faire Africa on Flickr. 

MIT’s Technology review has published their 2010 list of the world's top innovators under the age of 35: TR35. The list includes technologists and scientists, all under the age of 35 whose work is changing the world through advances in medicine, computing, communications, electronics, nanotechnology and more. The 2010 Humanitarian of the Year, David Kobia is one of the founders of Ushahidi, an open source project which allows users to crowdsource crisis information which was first deployed after the 2007 Kenyan elections went pear shaped. Other interesting people on the list include Aaron Dollar’s plastic robotic hands, Rikin Gandhi from who uses locally produced video to educate farmers and Indrani Medhi from Microsoft Research India who is developing interfaces for illiterate people. Image: Technology Review. 

Apple will have a ‘special event’ tomorrow, most likely launching a new iPod similar in design to the iPhone4. But for all you industrial designers, other news is more interesting, from Cult of Mac, Apple has or will soon have "the most advanced manufacturing machine on the planet," a prototype injection molding machine designed to accommodate Liquidmetal. While this may seem small fry to the countless innovations made by Apple, the possibilities of injection moulded metal are endless, the above image is a part that would normally got tough cutting, drilling, threading, milling and deburring. Although the technology has been used before in watches and phone casings, Apple takes its cues from Dieter Rams when it comes to pushing the material envelope, so we hope that this new toy will prove inspirational for new designs. Via Core77. 

“Good design is a creative process involving the disciplined execution of a meticulous plan to produce something that precisely fits its intended purpose. No more, no less.” From our latest article, Design defined, we explore good design and design qualities. There are a number of articles already up and we hope to add more in the near future, comments welcome. 

Lodox has continuously innovated their technology over the years to become a market leader in fast and reliable digital radiography which has won them another award. 'Following a recent analysis of the medical imaging devices market, Frost & Sullivan presented Lodox Systems (Pty) Ltd with the “2010 South African Medical Imaging Product Quality Leadership Award”.  Statscan, Lodox’s digital x-ray product, stunned the market with its ability to produce clear, diagnostic, whole-body x-ray pictures in just 13 seconds.' PR Newswire. Disclaimer, Lodox is a client of Terrestrial.