Happy Tuesday! Enjoy a bonus binge this week: a playlist about design. "Design giants" contains 13 talks by iconic modern designers. Hear from Philippe Starck, who asks, "Why design?" ... Stefan Sagmeister on how design helped him find happiness ... Eames Demetrios on his grandparents' legendary work ... and today's talk, Paola Antonelli, on...

For years now, Target has invited designers like Isaac Mizrahi (watch his TED Talk), Diane von Furstenberg (check out her TED playlist) and, most recently, abstract pattern-master Peter Pilotto to dream up collections. So when it came to creating the Target Design Café at TED2014, we knew it was going to be cool. The space features three enorm...

Design, says session host Chee Pearlman, can be confusing, the words often jargony and opaque. Fortunately, John Hodgman is here. John Hodgman is a expert. That's it, expert. There is nothing that follows the word, expert. And at TED2012 he takes a moment (well, three) to explain the design of three objects. He is qualified to do so because h...

Designers solve problems and bring beauty to the world. At TEDNYC Design Lab, a night of talks at TED HQ in New York City hosted by design curator Chee Pearlman with content producer Cloe Shasha, six speakers pulled back the curtain to reveal the hard work and creative process behind great design. Speakers covered a range of topics, includin...

Now we move to the world of design, with a session co-curated by Chee Pearlman and David Rockwell featuring leading practitioners from architecture, graphic design, the art world and even that less well known discipline of "expertry." Illustrations by Maira Kalman are projected onto the stage set to reflect some of the themes the speakers wi...

The theme of TEDGlobal 2012 was “Radical Openness” -- a topic that caught the eye of Design Mind magazine. The publication, from longtime TEDGlobal supporter frog, has dedicated an entire issue to the conference. Including Q&As with speakers, behind-the-scenes looks at preparations for talks and an abundance of endeavors related to talks, we...

We're thrilled to announce: TED is one of the 2013 winners of the National Design Awards, given by the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt. The National Design Awards celebrate design "as a vital humanistic tool in shaping the world" -- which is how we feel about it too. Great design, like great writing and great speaking, is a vital tool for helping ...

It’s been a few years since the TED Talks video page was last updated, but a new design begins rolling out this week. The update aims to provide a simple, straightforward viewing experience for you while surfacing other ideas worth spreading that you might also like. A few changes to highlight … More talks to watch Today there are about...

Whether we're conscious of it or not, design affects us in hundreds -- if not thousands of ways -- each day. Just think back to your morning. A designer made the decisions that went into the craftsmanship of your bed, your futon, your mattress. A designer determined the form and materials of your toothbrush, your shower, your towel -- helped c...

It’s Friday afternoon, and TED staffers are cutting and folding strips of white felt, carefully sticking the little strips into grates of chicken wire stapled to wooden frames. On the floor are five large wood panels and some metal pans filled with paint. Just a normal day at TED’s headquarters. In less than a week, we’re hosting a design salon...

It is, indeed, a monumental day here at TED Towers. We're winners! Or, as June Cohen, executive producer of TED Media, described this morning's news of our winning the 2013 National Design Award for corporate and institutional achievement: "We're thrilled!" "Design and design thinking has always been core to TED's mission. After all, it's...

Ted Kaye wrote the book, Good Flag, Bad Flag: How to Design a Great Flag, and as I shared in my TED Talk, Why city flags might be the worst-designed thing you’ve never noticed, he came up with five basic principles for designing a great flag (and almost anything else): Keep it simple, so simple a child can draw it from memory. Use meanin...

Architect Diébédo Francis Kéré (TED Talk: How to build with clay ... and community) designs with both people and sustainability in mind. Raised in Burkina Faso, though he’s now based in Berlin, Kéré is always keen to include community-oriented spaces that invite people to sit down and engage in thoughtful conversation. The central nature of ...

Camp: a home under the stars and sun. A space to dream, commune with friends, create -- and play. That’s the atmosphere TED Fellows director Tom Rielly wanted to create for this year’s TED Fellows Retreat, which took place at the Asilomar Conference Grounds in Pacific Grove, California, August 25-28. To create the look and feel for the event...

Good design isn’t just about making a great-looking colander. Good design can actually improve our lives, both individually and collectively. In the new Autodesk Gallery exhibit “Public Interest Design: Products, Places & Processes,” curators Courtney E. Martin and John Cary showcase 12 projects that were designed with the common good...

The new issue of design mind has a great Q&A with today's TEDTalks speaker, Marcel Dicke, in which he shares his first bug-eating experience: design mind: What were the first insects you ever tried? Marcel Dicke: It was dried, fried termites that Arnold van Huis brought back from Africa, where he’d been working. We were traveling by trai...

Though you may call him an artist, Carter think of himself as an industrial designer whose medium is type. When one designs a font, one deals closely with the technology that renders it, Carter explains, whether that’s a mechanical printing press or a central processing unit. “Type is something we consume in enormous quantities,” he says in hi...

If you pass a MoMA Design Store in New York City today, you’ll notice a slew of entrancing kinetic sculptures in their windows – a giant shark swimming after a lure and a cyclist powering a cardboard ferris wheel. Each of these sculptures is powered by littleBits, the Lego-like electronic toys created by TED Fellow Ayah Bdeir. LittleBits sna...

Julian Treasure watches out for the ears. In the four TED Talks he's given so far, he's offered up "5 ways to listen better" and "Sound health in 8 steps." At TED2013, we asked him: What speakers have given you the best auditory experience so far? It was nice to hear Jinsop Lee today talking about the five senses. It's liberating to start ...

Photo: James Duncan Davidson Journalist and commentator John Hockenberry takes the stage to share an incredibly personal insight into thinking smartly about design. For one thing, he says, we should think about it in terms of music. Cover versions that don't add anything to the original are creepy; cover versions that make a tune into som...

. What makes a great designer? According to IDEO founder David Kelley, who gave the TED Talks “Human-centered design” and “How to build your creative confidence,” being an incredible designer isn’t necessarily about having a great aesthetic sensibility or coming up with out-of-the-box ideas. No,  Kelley says that the key characteristic is e...

TED playlists are collections of talks around a topic, built for you in a thoughtful sequence to illuminate ideas in context. This weekend, two new playlists are available: "Design of useful things" and "Maestros, if you please ... !" Maestros, if you please ... ! These 7 extraordinary maestros bring you into the world of writing and conduct...

Great design doesn’t just look good -- it has the potential to make lives easier and to enhance the public good. Public Interest Design, the website dedicated to examining how, has created a list of 100 makers, educators, connectors, policymakers and visualizers in the U.S. who are doing incredible work at the intersection of design and serv...

Undelivered (but perfectly wrapped) promise The business case for great design has risen as Apple soared in usage and in the stock market. But as this thoughtful post on Quora illuminates, some worry that the next wave of design-y consumer products aren't delivering on that promise. "From the failure of “design-oriented” Path to the recent news...

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York is strained for cash. And so they announced last week that they would be offering advertising space on the back of MetroCards, which New Yorkers swipe (often, multiple times) to enter a train station. It’ll cost companies $25,500 to advertise on 50K cards and $450K to advertise on a million c...

By Courtney E. Martin & John Cary Pregnancy is supposed to be about life. And yet, every day, 800 women across the globe die from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. In Malawi, which has one of the worst maternal mortality rates in the world, a shocking 1 in 36 pregnant women die rather than become proud mothers. ...

As Facebook's director of product design, Margaret Gould Stewart (TED Talk: How giant websites design for you (and a billion others, too)) has to come up with designs seen by literally billions of people. No pressure. She's an old hand at this game, though, having previously worked on the digital output of those other giants, Google and YouTube....

For most of us, the job of taking care of the planet is very definitely the responsibility of Someone Else. We might have thoughts, we might have standards, we might even have a composting habit, but we more than likely hope and expect that the trained professionals have got this under control. One problem, of course, is that those who are train...

Wax-print cotton kimonos! Lacquer tribal stools! Since living in Japan, Cameroon-born artist Serge Mouangue has been creating the most fascinating aesthetic fusion. Artist and TED Fellow Serge Mouangue (TEDxConcorde talk: Le kimono africain) is used to moving fluidly among cultures. Born in Cameroon, he and his family immigrated to France when ...

Leyla Acaroglu aims to make people think about how the choices they make on a daily basis affect the environment. And she aims to make thinking about this fun. In today’s TED Talk, Acaroglu turns her attention to four bits of “environmental folklore,” like the idea that it’s more environmentally sound to opt for the paper bag over the plasti...