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If you ever thought $8,100 was a bit steep for a trash can, think again. That was the winning bid today on eBay  for Michael Aram’s Golden Pear Vipp bin.

Along with an esteemed group of other designers, artists, architects and visual luminaries, Aram’s reincarnated Vipp was created to raise funds for DIFFA (Design Industries Foundation Fighting Aids).

To celebrate their 70th anniversary, Danish design company Vipp hosted “Can It,” a charity auction in conjunction with DWR (Design Within Reach) and DIFFA. Thirty five renowned designers—including Calvin Klein, David Rockwell, David Stark, Oscar de la Renta, Shelly Sabel and Yoko Ono—were enlisted to make the classic Vipp bin their own. The fancied-up receptacles were out for public viewing and bidding at DWR in NYC from October 15th through 28th, and a handful were auctioned off on eBay.

Founded in 1984, DIFFA works with professionals in all fields of design and visual arts to raise funds for the direct care of people living with HIV/AIDS and to support preventative education for those at risk.

All proceeds from Vipp and DWR’s October 28th auction will be donated to DIFFA.  

Image from DWR.

Halloween’s around the corner, so why not add a touch of ghoulishness or inject a bit of the supernatural into your designs (even if only for a laugh)?

Mix it up with this collection of 40 Halloween resources from indeziner. From totally innocuous, Halloween-inspired textures to playful twists on social media icons, this collection is sure to give you a few ideas (or at least provide a few minutes of well-earned distraction).

I think the Halloween Twitter icon (from TNerd.com) is my favorite, with the RSS bat (from Design Bliss) a close second.

Go on, indulge in a few minutes of Halloween-hedonism.

Typographer and illustrator Jessica Hische delivers a new hand-crafted decorative initial cap five days weekly. For noncommercial use on websites or blogs, these Daily Drop Caps are just the thing to add a touch of refinement or a dash of panache to your online musings.

With an abundance of real-time search engines, content aggregators, alerting services and more, there are plenty of ways (dare I say almost too many?!) to make sure that you never miss a beat.

Trendwatching’s October newsletter highlights a sampling of real-time information providers—and of course more are cropping up constantly. Here’s just a sprinkling from that list, or check out the entire thing for yourself (scroll down to “Dipping in, real-time”) to see the newest ways to get connected. 

• Almost.at. An online application that aggregates news from sites such as Twitter, Flickr, Youtube in real-time. The site then allows viewers to tag messages from users who appear to be actually witnessing an event, and that user's future posts will be given prominence in search results.
  
• Google latitude. Allows users to share their current location with their Google contacts via their browser or mobile device.
  
• Happn.in. Collects and aggregates the most popular phrases used on Twitter within 20 miles of major cities around the world.   
  
• Picfog is a real-time image search engine that monitors tweets for image links and then provides continually updated thumbnails of the latest pictures; these can also be searched by category, keyword, user or location.
  
• Socialseek. Through an aggregation of data from keywords, the application analyses news sites, blogs, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, and more, to give an overarching and geographically segmented perspective of consumer sentiment. See also Viralheat and Peoplebrowsr.
  
• Topsy. A search engine that indexes results based on the frequency that they are mentioned in real-time, also taking into account the influence of the people that are talking about them.
  
• Twitvid. A service that allows users to post videos to Twitter by creating a dedicated URL that will be included in their posts.
  
• Yahoo’s Friends on Fire. A Facebook application that allows users to share their location with their friends, posting updates and invitations directly onto a map. It is powered by Yahoo!’s Fire Eagle location-based social service.

Like social networking for marketers or web 2.0 for interactive gurus, sustainability is the buzzword constantly heard resounding through the halls of design. Though designers seem to overwhelmingly agree on the importance of sustainability (87% according to AIGA), many point out the lack of a framework for integrating sustainability into all the daily aspects of design.

To remedy the need for a collection of theories, actionable steps and cultural links for designers to work with, the AIGA Center for Sustainable Design rolled out The Living Principles for Design at the Make/Think: AIGA Design Conference in Memphis on Friday, October 9th.    

To put it in their own words: “Created by the AIGA Center for Sustainable Design (CFSD), The Living Principles for Design were born out of the design profession's need for an aspirational and actionable framework that provides designers and their clients with a common understanding of the core facets of sustainability and enables them to take action. Its ongoing development is dependent on the contributions of the design community at large.”

Viewing design as a powerful catalyst for change on a local and global scale, The Living Principles for Design recognize the link between environmental protection, social equity, economic health and cultural vitality and provide a foundation to guide (and inspire) intentional, benevolent action through design. 

Learn about The Living Principles, check out the framework and contemplate the interactive genealogy. (And, of course, let us know your thoughts. . . as the creators of the principles state, this is an evolutionary shift that will continue to take shape; we’d love to hear your ideas, reactions, thoughts and even questions. . . ).

Springwise, the spotters of emerging global ideas and trends, recently reported on how the internet is reaching people in remote areas while also shifting how the internet is used (hint: no computer, no screen).

Question Box, which launched in Uganda, brings offline communities online with a solar-powered intercom box. Users are connected to an operator sitting in front of a computer who searches the web to answer the user’s question and relays information back.

The Question Box connects communities without electricity; plus, as Springwise notes, it’s a powerful way to transcend literacy barriers.

I can’t help but think about how else the usability paradigm can be shifted to make technology more accessible to more people. See any other good ideas out there? 

How often does empathy factor into your business strategy? How frequently do you withhold any judgment of new ideas? How often do you build prototypes or storyboards to really let a concept speak for itself? How many ideas in your business truly grow from the ground up?

If you’ve adopted design thinking as a paradigm to generate and implement new ideas within your business, you’d be spending a lot of time on all of the above.

In a previous post, Design Thinking and Innovation, I shared the characteristics of design thinking as a way for businesses to cultivate more ideas and become more nimble in the climate of an economic downturn. Some of the main tenets of a design thinking mindset include:

• Redefining the problem or challenge
• Using observation to diagnose problems
• Thinking broadly, not just deeply
• Looking from the point of view of the end-user (empathy)
• Prototyping
• Allowing an incubation period for ideas
• Continually reexamining the problem and the implemented solutions (and modifying those solutions as necessary)

A recent article on BNET highlights more ways “to supercharge your business” by embracing design thinking (whether or not design is your forte, or even your industry).

Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO (the design firm founded by David Kelley, who coined “design thinking” as a term and a methodology), discusses how design thinking emerges from a culture of experimentation, ideation and open-mindedness. And no matter what the product, service or business model, Brown advocates a user-centered approach and an egalitarian exchange of ideas within the workplace.

Check out the interview with Brown, Need to Supercharge Your Business? Think Like a Designer.