Posted by
Hand-Eye Supply | 27 Jan 2015
Every once in a while at Hand-Eye we decide to make a really kickass deal - a deal WE'RE excited about. To celebrate the latest addition to the Hand-Eye line, we're bringing back the Spectacular Apron Combo. Through Feb. 5th you can pick up one of our brand new USA Made Work Aprons and a pair of classy retro Aviator Safety Specs (a HES NOS exclusive) for just $42. These are some of the most basic and badass workshop staples you can find, and we're super excited to share. Grab it while you can!
If you hear voices in your head, that's bad. If you hear piano music in your head, that's not so bad, particularly if you're a professional pianist. Yet Gergely Bogányi still found it disturbing, because the sonorous quality of the music in his brain exceeded the sound a piano can actually produce. "[I] was intrigued to find out how I could make a difference," Bogányi writes. "How could I bridge the gap between the 'miraculous' sound in my head and that of the sound I was hearing?"
If it was a question of tuning, we can assume his long-suffering piano tuner might've found the solution. "[I] spent countless hours with my professional piano tuner, who travelled the world with me. Trying to find that consistent, quality sound in every piano. It was always so difficult with each concert hall having such different conditions that affected the piano. Dryness, dust, humidity were always a factor. Could we find a way to keep this quality consistent?"
Bogányi decided he'd have to custom design a piano, both inside and out, to get the sound he wanted. He assembled a team of designers, engineers, craftsmen and music technicians, and ten years and 8,000 team-hours later, they'd produced the Bogányi Piano you see here, which the pianist claims can produce "the clearest, boldest, [most] premium sound quality possible."
While it contains the wood and iron you'd find in an ordinary piano, the Bogányi has a proprietary carbon fiber soundboard design that is reportedly weatherproof, i.e. remains unaffected by humidity or dryness. The exterior is unusual in that it stands on just two legs, "to allow an additional bottom passage for the sound to reach the audience." (I'm not much of a classical music lover, but to you concerto-goers, does that third leg in the back really muck up the sound that much?
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Met Life Stadium
America is crazy about at least two things: Sports, and segregating the rich and the poor. When you combine these two passions inside of a sports stadium, you get luxury boxes.
Great American Ballpark
Luxury boxes, a/k/a skyboxes, executive suites or hospitality suites, are the earthbound, sports-watching version of First Class. Well beyond the financial reach of your average American family, they are the domain of the rich and the corporate, requiring leasing that can run into the millions of dollars. Wealthy folks use them to entertain and corporations lend them out to certain individuals as perks of corporate friendship. This can sometimes lead to resentment from the masses.
"Bad news, Brian, someone keyed your Lamborghini in the parking lot again."
Luxury box denizens get designated parking spots and private entrances away from the huddled masses. They can often reach their suites via private elevators or private staircases:
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Posted by
Coroflot | 27 Jan 2015
Since 1980, the Industrial Designers Society of America has set out every year to find designers and designs that epitomize quality across design mediums and platforms. The annual International Design Excellence Awards competition is underway so don't miss your chance to enter!
The regular deadline is February 16th, but your last chance to enter is February 23rd. Winners of this award enjoy immediate benefits including pride, self-satisfaction and bragging rights, as well as some longer-term perks, like a stronger professional reputation and increased career opportunities. Find more information about how and when to enter here. Good luck!
Posted by
Sam Dunne | 27 Jan 2015
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'The Wrist Report' is the semi-serious, bi-somethingly bulletin from the frontier of forearm fashion and functionality.
Even earlier this month at CES it was clear that the wearables frenzy had lost some of its vigor since last year (presumedly as manufacturers try to make good on some of their overblown concept promises). Of the news that there was, it seemed that technology on the wrist was being met with much more modesty by manufacturers—Withings going simpler and cheaper with their brand activity tracker in traditional timepiece form and Swiss watchmaker Montblanc making tentative steps into the world of wearable tech by strapping a tiny OLED screen to the underside of the wrist (yeh, it looked as good as it sounds).
Fast-forward only a couple of weeks and it seems that some new entrants into the forearm function/fashion fanfare are doing away with the tech altogether. In remarkable concurrence with Debbie Chachra's article in The Atlantic critiquing the hero worship of 'makers', Portland multi-tool manufacturer and Core77 fav Leatherman is gearing up to launch a multi-tool that straps (rather proudly) around the wrist. Introducing Thread.
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Those that live in blackout-prone areas don't keep their flashlights in the back of a drawer. Instead it's in some easily-accessible place, so they don't have to fumble around looking for it when the lights go out.
UK-based lighting manufacturer iViTi reckons they've solved this with their LED iViTi ON, a lightbulb they'll begin manufacturing next month. It's simple and clever: It's got your standard Edison screw base and roughly the same form factor as a standard lightbulb, along with an internal battery that stores juice. So when the power goes out and the bulb stops receiving wired electricity, it switches over to the battery to provide an extra three hours of light.
Another consumer they should target: Deadbeats who don't pay their electricity bills on time.
In my high school days, the threat of moving earth for a living was meant to keep us in line. "If you don't hit the books, you'll be digging ditches," the teachers warned.
Digging ditches might suck, but what they didn't tell us was that mowing ditches would be awesome. Because then you'd get to work machines like this beastly Claas Xerion 3300 VC Octopus Ditch Bank Mower.
"How ya like me now, Mr. Peterson?"
Operated by Holland-based agricultural contracting firm Hack Harvest, this Dutch ditch monster boasts four mowing booms built from machinery firm Herder's Grenadier tool-carrying arms. And judging by the video, this thing's no cinch to drive, as the operator must set up all four booms independently:
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Posted by
Coroflot | 27 Jan 2015
Uniting engineering, design and business to cross train students to become elite innovators... enhancing the innovation process and generating impact... The Integrated Innovation Institute at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) welcomes applications for a combined faculty member and assistant program manager for its Master of Integrated Innovation for Products and Services (MII-PS) degree soon to launch in Brooklyn New York. This administrative and special faculty teaching appointment will start in fall 2015 as part of CMU's new Integrative Media Program (IMP) at the Steiner Studio in Brooklyn.
They are looking for a talented and enthusiastic person who can help them realize their vision to extend their valued MII-PS degree into New York. Check out all the qualifications and contributions on the next page and Apply Now.
Looking at Dino Ignacio's work made me start thinking about fantasy-based UI design. The first time I really became aware of motion graphics cooking up digital UI's was probably way back during Minority Report or one of the Matrix movies. Being over ten years ago, you can see how primitive it looks now:
It's obvious the operator isn't really doing anything, unless there's some value to aimlessly moving an on-screen tile back and forth. But the first time I saw it, it was fairly mind-blowing, monochromatic though it was.
Fast-forward to today and sci-fi movie UI is nothing short of jawdropping.
In the theatre we see it flash across the screen in too-short instances that never give us the time to appreciate them. But thankfully the motion graphics houses that create them turn them into "sizzle reels" readily found on YouTube and Vimeo, where we can freeze-frame them and pore over them at will. Here's Territory Studio's stunningly beautiful Guardians of the Galaxy interfaces:
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One more from mathematical madman maker John Edmark, this one on the furniture front. Practical? No; but his Four-Legged Chair has to be the most creative two-person bench I've ever seen:
Six simple pieces of wood. But you just know that if a design student came up with this and presented it at crit, their accompanying thesis would weigh more than the piece itself and be filled with heavy-handed metaphors: "We ARE our furniture," "We SUPPORT each other," "We INTERACT with furniture when we truly FACE each other," et cetera.
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