Jennifer Siegal
Scott Wilson
Masters of DesignIn 1998, Scott Wilson, then 29, took on an American icon--the Swingline stapler--and gave it a makeover. Before long, the new designs were racking up awards and shaking up a flatlining product category. Then there was Wilson's Presto watch, one of his first projects as a creative director for
"Wilson can't help being bold," says Paola Antonelli, a curator of architecture and design at MoMA. For instance, rather than simply "taking a men's watch, shrinking it down, and coloring it pink," Wilson says the Presto considered its female target audience from the beginning, resulting in a slick C-shaped bracelet. Then there was iBelieve, a crucifix-shaped lanyard for an iPod Shuffle that Antonelli considers "one of the most brilliant syntheses of what we spoiled-yet-idealistic consumers want from an object: coolness, symbolism, meaning, satire, elegance, and superfluity, all in one gesture." Wilson says he aims for balance in his designs--between function and aesthetics, the needs of consumers and brands, and an object's emotional and rational resonance. It's a methodology he also brings to his sidelines, which include Ooba, a new line of modern children's furniture, and MNML (formerly MOD), an alias through which he has created seating for Rem Koolhaas's Seattle Central Library. And now, based at Motorola in Chicago, Wilson will be working to integrate Bluetooth and other mobile technologies into, say,
Visitors to the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University these days will be confronted with a cluster of four white stools. They don't look like much, but sit on one and an embedded camera will scatter your image across the white floor. Repeat that for four people, and the result is a mediated social encounter--with a whiff of surveillance--courtesy of Masamichi Udagawa and Sigi Moeslinger of New York's Antenna Design. Antenna is the new savant of interactive design; they render complex information transparent and intuitive. "Their work is dedicated to cultivating the social life of the city and humanizing our relationship to technology--inquiries they conduct with great elegance and intelligence," says Susan Yelavich, who as co-curator gave the firm pride of place at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum's 2003 National Design Triennial. But Antenna's impact extends far outside the gallery: the redesigned data terminals at financial-news giant Bloomberg LP; the self-service kiosks for
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