Why the hell not? leaving aside the patent thing for a second (and let’s face it, if someone’s going to steal your idea, they’re going to steal it, change it by 10% and re-patent it anyway no matter what measures you have in place), a lot of the things that people come up with for the 1HDC could well be made and help people, particularly the emergency shelters one that’s been done recently. We should all aspire to create something amazing and potentially life-changing instead of drawing cars or yet another pair of bloody sneakers.
So, how about some hardcore topics that focus on functionality over form and are going to make people really think. Like:
Sustainability
Solar-power (or the uses thereof)
Sustainable power generation
Water purification
Alternative uses for landfill items
Using technology to be sustainable
Crash helmets (cycling, motorbike riding etc)
Wheelchairs
Small form factor first aid kits
And to keep the sneaker and car drawing lot happy, how about interspersing the hard stuff with the fun stuff where it really is form over function:
Rock climbing holds
Hats with uses (sensible or otherwise)
Those where it’s about both:
Sledges/toboggans
Snowboard boots/bindings/boards (or skis)
Travel coffee mugs that don’t leak or break when you drop them!
Motorbikes
New environmentally friendly methods of transport
Future appliances
Awesome and totally unnecessary guns
Boats - yacht and/or speedboats
And you can go totally off the wall with weirdness too:
Steampunk technology (look it up on wikipedia if you don’t know what it is)
Unicycles (Soooooooooooo hard, how do you reinvent something that’s a seat, a pair of peddles and one wheel???)
Things that look like one thing but actually do something else entirely
I think that’s about it. I’m interested in people’s comments, I’ve been lurking here for ages and don’t sketch but do design and build. Furniture, buildings and interiors mostly (I’m good with my hands and on Sketchup) but I’m itching to enter some of the 1HDCs and just need to figure out how to sketch all the ideas I have.