By Core Jr - Jul 27 New

Convenient Desk Accessories That Will Make Your Life Easier

Soup up your workflow with these 9 office items and apps

A selection of items that will enhance your work experience rather than further clutter your desk space.

By Shannon Rogers - Jul 27 New

Hand Tool School #40: Do You Need a Shoulder Plane?

I did, then I didn't. Here's why

I have some shoulder planes made by modern makers. I have a vintage Stanley model too. I bought them early on in my conversion to hand tools because it seemed that all the pundits of the time were telling me I needed to have one. They got used--but rarely

By Rain Noe - Jul 27 New

Incredible Time Lapse of a Gargantuan Cruise Ship Being Built from Scratch

Watch the 300-meter-long AIDAprima come together like Lego

With a staggering 18 passenger decks, an onboard artificial beach, a "lazy river" ride and the world's longest cruise ship waterslide, the 3,300-passenger AIDAprima is the flagship of AIDA Cruises (a subsidiary of Carnival). The AIDAprima was constructed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries at their Koyagi shipyards in Nagasaki, and

By Rain Noe - Jul 27 New

Three Fantastic Designs for Transforming Tables

…presented with truly horrible videos

Our most successful video of all time, with some 17-million-plus views, is of the transforming furniture at Resource Furniture's Manhattan showroom. Being seven years old the resolution is terrible, which we realize, but we at least showed the furniture doing its thing with minimal fluff and fuss. Here are three

By Rain Noe - Jul 27 New

Facebook Messenger and Other Apps are Listening to You Through Your Phone. Here's How to Turn the Microphone Off

Bet you didn't know the mic is set to "on" by default

A Core77 staffer recently recounted how she had been talking about a particular product with a friend. Not Googling it, just discussing it verbally. In subsequent days she noticed ads popping up on her feed for that particular product. Coincidence? As it turns out, if you have the Facebook Messenger

By Steven Johnson - Jul 26

Steven M. Johnson's Bizarre Invention #341: Men's Sani-Glasses for Camping

Steven M. Johnson's "Patent Depending" series of inventions range from social commentary to plain ol' bizarre, and they always give us a laugh. So we've contracted him to let us publish one every week.

By Joel Moskowitz - Jul 26

Tools & Craft #57: "Cheap - The High Cost of Discount Culture"

Whatever happened to middle-ground?

I am too darned depressed to write a cheerful blog today. My wife got a copy of Ellen Ruppel Shell's book "Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture" from the library for me to read and well so far it's a real downer. We all know about the drive for

By Rain Noe - Jul 26

Four New Objects We Didn't Expect to See From Ikea

The new designs are moody and, dare we say it, stylish

Ikea's getting ready to release their 2018 catalog. While it won't be available until August, we got a look at a pre-release version, and went through it to see if anything jumped out at us. We found the new furniture offerings to be standard fare, but there are four new

By David Frane - Jul 26

The Baseball as Folk Art

You don't have to like the sport to love what George Sosnak did with baseballs.

Umpire George Sosnak was good at his chosen profession but he was better as a folk artist, chronicling the history of the sport by inking highly detailed drawings and text onto baseballs. George Sosnak (courtesy Chrysler Museum of Art)Baseball people knew and valued his art during his lifetime and

By Rain Noe - Jul 26

The Humanscale Reference Series is Being Re-released--at an Affordable Price!

Niels Diffrient's human factors bible has been resurrected on Kickstarter

In our popular post "Reference: Common Dimensions, Angles and Heights for Seating Designers," I lamented that one of the human factors bibles of the 20th Century is no longer available. Niels Diffrient's set of Humanscale books, which contain some 60,000 human factors data points, went out of print in 1981.

By Rain Noe - Jul 25

Porsche's Production Process: Assembling the 911 Turbo S Exclusive Series

The $250,000-plus car is largely put together by hand

This is some fantastically up-close footage of a Porsche 911 Turbo S Exclusive Series being assembled. The quarter-of-a-million-dollar car is assembled largely by hand with machine assistance, and it's fun watching the various parts come together, and seeing anal touches like the testing guy checking the hood tolerance with a

By David Frane - Jul 25

Hacking a Miter Saw Stand

Here's how to turn any manufactured stand into a mobile work station.

Brian Way is a cabinet and millwork installer in Connecticut who specializes in commercial projects. The work is frequently spread out over large areas—as it was on the hospital project that inspired him to hack his miter saw stand. The crew was installing trim in long corridors and faced the

By Rain Noe - Jul 25

Furniture Knockoffs are Now a $1.4 Trillion Industry

Here's what's going on with design piracy these days, and how you can help fight it

Quartz has got a great article up called "There's a trillion-dollar global black market for fake 'designer' chairs." Anyone interested in the problem of design piracy, and how to combat it, should give it a full read. (Kartell, Herman Miller, Fritz Hansen, Knoll, Carl Hansen & Søn / Graphic

By Core Jr - Jul 25

This Door Knob Design Challenge is Awesome

How do you communicate 'push' or 'pull' functionality without text?

We're always thrilled to see, for one, how active the Core77 discussion boards can get and secondly, how creative and insightful some of the conversations going on can truly be. There are also always great sketches and challenges to get inspiration from, which is precisely what arose a couple weeks

By Rain Noe - Jul 25

Lenovo Shows Off Folding Tablet Prototype

Flexible LEDs are coming, and here's how they'd work

We all know flexible LED screens are possible, and that someone will eventually come out with a folding smartphone/tablet. The question is, who? Apple? The newly-resurgent, design-focused Microsoft? Judging by the video below, it looks like it may be none other than Lenovo. Take a look at the prototype they

By Rain Noe - Jul 24

These Ingenious 2,500-Year-Old Chinese Wood Joints Make Buildings Earthquake-Proof

They're called "dougong" and they connect with just friction and gravity

Over thousands of years, the building science of timber framing developed independently in both Northern Europe and China. But one big difference between the regions is that China, by virtue of its size and geological traits, is prone to devastating earthquakes. Ancient Chinese builders thus needed a way to create

By Fictiv Inc. - Jul 24

How to Reduce 3D Printing Costs by Cutting Your 3D Model

We receive a lot of questions about how to reduce the cost of 3D printing. One of the best ways to do this is to ensure your model fits on a smaller build bed to ensure the fastest build time on the cheapest machine available to produce your part. In

By Rain Noe - Jul 24

We Continue Lightening "Game of Thrones" Shots So You Can See What's Going On

Uncovering the unseen work of production designer Deborah Riley and her team

[Mild spoilers ahead.] We've once again gone through last night's "Game of Thrones," lightening shots to catch invisible details. The show is broadcast to be so visually dark that it's often impossible to see what's happening on-screen. As an example, when Euron Greyjoy's ship finally shows up, what I

By Rain Noe - Jul 24

A Vending Machine for Luxury Cars

This company's also got some good wraparound videos for sketch reference

We've seen "car vending machines" before in the U.S. and China, but now a dealership in moneyed Singapore has one-upped both of them. Autobahn Motors, which sells Porsches, Bentleys, Ferraris, Mercedeses, Lamborghinis, McLarens, etc., stores their inventory in this rather ostentatious automated structure: "We needed to meet our requirement

By Rain Noe - Jul 24

The Unlikely Tools Used to Manufacture Jeans: A Dremel, Sandpaper, Rocks, Shotgun Pellets

Increasing labor costs to help destroy the product seems ridiculous

We modern-day consumers have inconsistent aesthetic choices that affect certain factory lines in odd ways. For instance, we want our cars, smartphones and appliances to look brand new, but a subset of us want our jeans and furniture to look old and beat-up. This latter preference has resulted in some

By David Frane - Jul 24

Urushi Ratchet Handles

Incredibly beautiful and insanely expensive.

Looking for a gift for the tool user who has everything—and I mean everything—how about an Urushi Ratchet Handle? For a mere $2,000-$4,000 you can get one of the handful of these things made each year. Urushi is obtained from the sap of the lacquer tree and is so central

By Mid Century Mobler - Jul 21

Mid Century Modern Find of the Week: Danish Modern Hallway Chest in Mahogany

This small Danish Modern mid century cupboard Measures 27.5" wide x 15.5" deep x 28" tall. This piece features two teak sliding doors which open to two bays- one with an adjustable shelf. The mahogany case is mounted on tall base with a canted bookshelf. The model