Joanna Berzowska was one of the first personalities I got to know at the begin of my wearable technology dedication. She is one of the pioneers in the wearable electronic space, creating insightful and highly innovative technologies and designs over the past seven years.

Joanna founded XS Labs in 2002, in her first year at Concordia University, positioning XS Lab as a design research studio with focus on innovation in electronic textiles and reactive garments.

At the center of research at XS Labs is the development of enabling technologies, methods and materials in the form of soft electronic circuits and composite fibers — as well as the exploration of the expressive potential of soft reactive structures.

To list down all the innovative, inspirational work Joanna and her XS Lab team has made over these past seven year would result in a very long blog posting but fortunately, Joanna did this work very nicely in form of gorgeous looking and highly informative catalog in PDF format titled ‘XS Labs – Seven years of design research and experimentation in electronic textiles and reactive garments’.

This link directs you directly to the Catalog.

This 70 page catalog is a must read for wearable technologists and is certainly a great enrichment for students supporting their research studies in field of wearable technology.

Get the catalog – load it on your tablet and have it at your fingertips wherever you go.

Congratulation to Joanna and the XS Lab team for sharing seven years of amazing work.

Since the day Sabine Seymour published the wearable technology book ‘Fashionable Technology‘ I have been waiting for follow up on the success with another book.

Two years of waiting are soon over as Amazon accepts pre-orders for her second book titled: Functional Aesthetics: Visions in Fashionable Technology. The accompanying Website is also ready to be populated once the book is released.

The book will reveal some of the work Sabine has done lately, work about projects between the poles of fashion, design, technology, and sciences.

Just by scanning the chapter headlines like ‘Body Sculpture’, ‘Scientific Couture’, ‘Material Explorations’ or ‘Woven Interface’, to name a few makes me carving to get my hands on this book.

Functional Aesthetics includes also the latest information around wearable technologies including publications, inspirations and DIY resources.

I am eagerly awaiting my copy of Functional Aesthetics: Visions in Fashionable Technology on Sept. 29th (the official release date) and dive deep into the 250 pages full with her observations, inspirations and analysis of  wearable technologies.

After my reading you will find a book review here at this very place that is fully dedicated to wearable technologies.

Riccardo over at Plug-and-Wear send me a book tip which I am more than glad to share: Metamorfosi / Metamorphosis by Elisabetta Cianfanelli and Stoffel Kuenen from the University of Florence, Department of Industrial and Fashion Design.

The book promises a high quality reading content around the metamorphosis, the transformation of the relationship between the industry and the consumers.

We are experience this transition from the traditional passive consumerism where people accepted what was served by the industry to an active involvement of consumers wishes, needs and expectations.

Collaboration between industry and universities, commerce and research combined with the tools and materials that current technologies provide offer higher degree of individualization of the end products.

This book uses the Italian fashion system as an example, an industry full of traditions yet full of opportunities offered by technological advancements in the textile sector.

Metamorfosi / Metamorphosis (the book is in dual language, Italian and English) presents a wide range of the latest interactive fashion designs in which a sensible, subtle application of state-of-the-art technologies extend the functional, expressive and communicative properties of fashion, resulting in metamorphic fashion.

Stoffel Kuenen studied Industrial Design Engineering at the Technical University of Delft. He graduated with a Masters’ title Industrial Design Engineering in 2002 on a wearable, tangible social interaction product, in a project largely carried out in the Affective Computing group at the MIT MediaLab in Boston.

Elisabetta Cianfanelli is a graduate in Industrial Design at the Faculty of Architecture, Florence.

Photos of some pages of this book with first impressions from Syuzi can be found on her Website Fashioning Technology.

You can order your copy via this link for € 25,60 (around $32.-)

I will follow up with a complete book review once I get my hands on ‘Metamorfosi / Metamorphosis‘

talk2myShirt fan Enrico send us a book tip, the first wearable electronic related book of 2010, with the title ‘IndossaME: design and the wearable electronics‘ by author Marita Canina.

Design with wearable electronic technologies requires competences normally outside the usual knowledge area of a fashion designer: not only the body ergonomic, but also biomedical and electronic as well as the psychological aspects confront designer with perceived limits, limits which can be turned into advantages once the understanding of the different technological aspects are understood.

The book is targeted towards designers and extensively analyzes the apparent knowledge gaps. Thanks to the contribution of different experts the book tries to address the specific areas involved, presenting the biomedical, electronics and psychological states of art.

The second part of ‘IndossaME: design and the wearable electronics’ demonstrates the theoretical first part of the book on various projects in which the authors and some students have been involved.

I am curious about ‘IndossaME: design and the wearable electronics’ not least as I am a big admirer of Italian aesthetic and the love for details which lead to outstanding design objects ‘Made in Italy’.

‘IndossaME: design and the wearable electronics’ is written in Italian, a language I am not very familiar with but I guess I will need to find a way to overcome the language barrier to make sure I can catch the essence of this highly interesting book.

Wearable electronic designer and crafter just got a new, fabulous source of information and inspiration from Open Softwear and it’s authors Tony Olsson, David Gaetano, Jonas Odhner, Samson Wiklund.

Open Softwear is a book about Arduino boards, conductive fabric, resistive thread, soft buttons, LEDs, and other things specifically targeted towards wearable electronic prototyping.

The eBook centeres around the Arduino platform covering both the ‘standard’ Arduino and the LilyPad Arduino. It is split into three parts covering in the first section the basics of hardware, software and the use of the Arduino IDE (Integrated Development Environment). Part two give examples of using eTextile materials and the Arduino to make first cool projects involving LEDs, Piezo speaker and my favorite, the Digital and analog zipper.

The third part is dedicated to show how to write programs for the Arduino platform. This all might sound very technical for fashion/clothing designer but don’t be afraid, it is easy explained and covers just as much as is needed for wearable electronic and not for building an new space station.

The book is in a Beta version right now but has already over 100 pages full of highly interesting material. The authors are looking towards the eTextile community to read this beta version and report back whatever seems is missing or needs to be corrected.

The team is looking for pictures of projects similar to the examples in the book. If you have made any and want to contribute, contact Open Softwear under info [at] softwear.cc, or leave a comment on their site.

Open Softwear – the book is open source and can be downloaded freely via this link (PDF file) or via the Open Softwear website.

[via: Fashioning Technology]

During my visit to the TechTextil I met Hanne-Louise Johannesen, co-founder of Diffus, a Denmark based design company with the mission of ‘diffusing traditional thinking as well as materials in order to create the unforeseen‘ in e-textile applications.

Very interesting to me is the project of the Interactive Sample Book (ISB) designed by Diffus with support from project partners to create a number of interactive textiles, presented in the ISB in a similar way as the sample books of wallpapers one can take home from the shop and choose from.

In other words, it is a kind of display material, which in a simple manner can illustrate how different techniques and smart materials work.

The book will function as an inspirational tool for designers, students, cultural institutions and companies that wish to start working with some of the possibilities that are within interactive textiles.

5 interactive textile concept samples have been developed so far which are based around sensors (pressure, sound, strain and light sensors) and actuators (Shape memory alloys, light emitting diodes, electroluminescent materials, photovoltaic cells, optical fibers, thermo chromatic and photo chromatic inks).

The Interactive Sample Book is made of 5 textile pages that all demonstrate a particular aesthetics and interactive functionality. The 5 pages are as different from each other as possible, and show something extreme in relation to the used technology.

The completition date of the ISB is not set yet as only two of the five samples are finished so far but once it is ready for use we will inform you.

The wait is over, Diana Eng invites to her book launch party with Haute Tech fashion show tomorrow, March 19, in NYC.

Fashion Geek: Clothes Accessories Tech is shipping now, get your copy and indulge into the many projects the content table of the book lists like ‘Get-the-Message Bag’, ‘Light-up Petal Purse’, ‘Headphone Hoodie’, ‘Lightning Bug Costume’ and more.

Diana Eng belongs to a new generation tech fashion designer who combines technology, math and science with design. She got into the public spotlight with her participation in Project Runway Season 2.

Since then she dedicates part of her time/creativity to explore technology for fashion designer and surprises with beautiful designs that keep always a practical touch to it, one could say: ‘ready-to-wear interactive fashion’.

Her close relation to the crafting community (she is also contributor to Craft: magazine) might have been her motivation to share the experience and tips with the e-textile crafting community.

As teaser for what we can expect to find in Diana’s Fashion Geek book she has posted a video how to make a light up shoe which is described in the book. The video shows only how four light animated shoes will look like in action.

An exiting reading weekend is ahead of me as UPS tells me my copy will arrive ‘within the next 2 days’. Stay tuned for a review of Fashion Geek: Clothes Accessories Tech here on talk2myShirt.

While ordering my copy of Switch Craft: Battery-Powered Crafts to Make and Sewby Alison Lewis which started shipping two days ago I stumbled upon two other upcoming books from Diana Eng due to be launched in the first quarter of 2009.

The first one is TechStyle: Create Wired Wearables and Geeky Gear in cooperation with Natalie Zee Drieu who is running the blog Coquette will launch in January and the second book by Diana Eng is Fashion Geek: Clothes Accessories Tech

Diana Eng first made headlines with the creation of the Inflatable Dress she created together with Emily Albinski. Diana gained even more popularity with her participation in the fashion reality television show “Project Runway”.

Her creativity and fashion style that blends math, science, and technology brought her up to the sixth round before her futuristic design was a bit too much for the jury.

She now works on these two books to share her experience and to inspire others in the field of wearable electronic.

In TechStyle: Create Wired Wearables and Geeky Gear Diana starts with a lesson on how to be creative and ends with instructions for programming a microchip. Diana leads readers step by step to discovering fashion and technology through the story of her own experiences exploring the two subjects.

The book has an interactive design, containing projects in each chapter that allow readers to experience the discover for themselves.

In her second book, Fashion Geek: Clothes Accessories Tech, she pioneers an emerging generation of tech savvy women crafters (or would-be crafters) who demand stylish yet practical designs that are chemically charged.

Diana describes and shows ways on how to make out of simple, girly items such as a hoodies or scarfs must-have techno-accessories through step-by-step directions.

Until Diana’s books become available I will have plenty of time to read and study Alison’s book Switch Craft which should arrive tomorrow. Look forward for my review of Switch Craft next week here on talk2myShirt.

Technology and crafting is a fast growing field judging on the many workshops and books that have been or will be released soon, helping all the ‘smart crafters’ to get started and inspired.

The latest addition to our wearable electronic library comes from Syuzi Pakchyan: Fashioning Technology: A DIY Intro to Smart Crafting

Written for a broad audience, this book demonstrates how to blend sewing and assembly techniques with traditional electronics to assemble simple circuits using conductive thread, solder joints for snaps, and switches for buttons. With the sewing machine as a viable substitute for the soldering iron, you can craft a new generation of objects that are interactive, quirky, and fashion-conscious.

In Fashioning Technology, you’ll find a reference section that breaks down the materials, components, and tools with clear, concise explanations and photos, a wide range of projects, including electronic accessories, interactive plush toys, and color-changing blinds, all using diverse crafting techniques. For seasoned crafter interested in incorporating simple electronics into their own projects will find inspirational material as well as unconventional ways to create novel projects.

Syuzi Pakchyan is a user experience designer and tinkerer working and residing in Los Angeles. She received her MFA in Media Design from the Art Center College of Design. Her MFA thesis titled “SparkLab” investigates the intersection between culture, technology and craft. She is currently working as a freelance Media and Interaction Design Consultant and teaches robotics classes to children.

A selection for Syuzi Pakchyan’s creative projects can be found on her site SparkLab. My personal favorite is her Wearable Light, a leather cuff with LEDs embedded inside. The Velcro functions as a switch so the bracelet only illuminates when it is in active use. The detailed instruction for building the Wearable Light can be found here.

Fashioning Technology: A DIY Intro to Smart Crafting should be in every library of wearable electronic designer and crafter who are interested in merging technology with clothing and fashion accessories.

ALISON LEWIS the producer and host of SWITCH, an online blog that showcases technology as modern, crafty, fun, and fashionable is working on a book called ‘Switch Craft – Battery-Powered Crafts to Make and Sew‘ due to be on sale on October 28, 2008.

Alison has worked as an electronic textile designer at DuPont and as a strategist for the Samsung Welcome Experience. Her design work has been featured around the world at venues such as the Gwangju Design Biennial in Korea and the MIT Seamless Fashion Show, as well as on France’s Arte’ TV, CNET, and in Wired magazine. She can also be found teaching Fashion Technology at Parsons School of Design.

As an electronic crafter, Alison is the host of the technology makeover show My Home 2.0, with the goal to encourage regular folks to embrace technology and incorporate it into their everyday lives. An electronic craft can be as simple as adding tiny LED’s to an existing piece of clothing to give it flair, or it can be as complex as sewing iPod speakers in to a beach bag so you can enjoy your music in the sun.

As Alison states on her page by momspace.com: ‘Today, crafters are pushing the boundaries more than ever with electronics as prices of materials fall, and how-to recipes flow freely on the Internet.’

Switch Craft promises to be a highly interesting reading and a source of inspiration especially for wearable electronic crafters and DIY enthusiasts. Pre-order your copy of Switch Craft for example by Amazon or many other online book stores.