Object Culture
+ Follow this feed-
March 01
Don't Miss...
-
By Rain Noe - Feb 25
Ex-Sheriff Invents a Bullet-Dampening Device
It basically "hacks" the first bullet fired to render it nonlethal.
-
By Teshia Treuhaft - Feb 25
Thinking Outside the Cardboard Box: DODOcase Brings Customizable VR to the Masses
The San Francisco-based DODOcase creates a customizable version of their Cardboard VR Viewer on the heels of Google 'Cardboard.'
-
By Rain Noe - Feb 09
Anthony Bourdain's "Raw Craft" Series Launches
The chef's new web series features cast-iron IDers Borough Furnace
-
By Rain Noe - Feb 04
Harvesting Sea Salt Creates These Crazy Multicolored Ponds
When it's red, it's ready
-
By Rain Noe - Jan 28
TextBlade: The Coolest Portable Keyboard Design We've Seen Yet
Holy COW this is cool, or at least, looks it. A California-based company called WayTools has developed the TextBlade, a diminutive, minimalist keyboard that nevertheless provides the same key spacing (19mm on center) as...
-
By Rain Noe - Jan 27
Gergely Boganyi's Concert Piano Redesign
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...
-
By Rain Noe - Jan 27
Dope Dutch Ditch Machine
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...
-
By Rain Noe - Jan 21
An EDC Video Full of Surprises: This Man's Truck is a Rolling Armory
There's a reason "The Walking Dead" is set in the South; because watching a bunch of us Yankees trying to load 9mm rounds into a .45 or accidentally ejecting the magazine every time we try to turn the safety off would...
-
By Rain Noe - Jan 16
CURVED/labs' 2015 Take on the Classic Mac Design
No, it ain't real, but we'd love to see it if it were. German website CURVED/labs worked up this concept design for an anniversary edition of the original Macintosh, echoing that machine's shape while flaunting the...
-
By Rain Noe - Jan 15
Spine Optics' Forthcoming Metal Injection Molded Self-Closing Eyeglass Hinges
Italian design engineer Guido Medana has invented eyeglasses with a new type of hinge called Spine. Created through metal injection molding (although the website, perhaps erroneously, lists the definition of MIM as...
-
By Rain Noe - Jan 14
Ex-Jewelrymaker Michael Walker's Awesome Art Knives
In his 20s, Michael Walker worked as a jewelrymaker. But one day his wife gave him a copy of American Blade, a magazine for knife collectors. Walker looked through the pages and figured he'd give knifemaking a try.That...
-
By Kat Bauman - Jan 14
Measuring Without Metric...Or Imperial
How do we fathom fathoms? Often by referring back to our own bodies. It's startling to realize that the much beloved metric system and the idiosyncratic imperial only became widely adopted in the 20th century. Human...
-
By Rain Noe - Jan 13
Want to Build Your Own Corvette Engine? Here's What it Takes
As makers know, humans tend to be more engaged with objects they had a hand in building. DIY'ers are proud of their coffee tables, furniture designers get a special enjoyment out of sitting in a chair that they produced...
-
By Sam Dunne - Jan 12
Austerity!: British Journalists Reinvent Monopoly for the Modern Age
Apparently, everyone's favorite familial relationship testing board-game Monopoly was first conceived in 1903 as an educational tool by American Elizabeth Magie— the game-play intended to illustrate the negative...
-
By Rain Noe - Jan 09
LaCie Continues Tapping Top-Notch ID Talent to Make Hard Drives Sexy
LaCie's got a long history of tapping designers and design brands to create memory devices that needn't be hidden behind your monitor. (See Sam Hecht, Neil Poulton and Christofle, to name a few.) Now they've turned to...
-
By Sam Dunne - Jan 08
YOU HAVE TOO MUCH SHIT: Designer Writes Self Help Book Rallying Against Excessive Consumerism
There's sometimes an uncomfortable paradox in the condition of the industrial designer—whilst making a living with the imagineering of consumable products, we're also often amongst the most aware and troubled by...
-
By Sam Dunne - Jan 07
This Vacuum Cleaner Nozzle Might Just Save Your Life in Japan This January
In and around New Year's holidays the Japanese public traditionally make their way through vast quantities of Mochi—sticky and sweet cakes of pounded rice, eaten usually in soup, or toasted and served with sweet...
-
By Teshia Treuhaft - Jan 06
Life in Perpetual Beta: Betabook is a Whiteboard for the Digital Age
As an avid documenter, collector and all around object enthusiast, my accumulation of 'stuff' from design school and beyond would rival designers much older than myself. In notebooks alone I have managed to fill many a...
-
By Rain Noe - Jan 05
Montblanc's Approach to the Smartwatch: Move the Screen to the Other Side of the Wrist
The Apple Watch launches this year, which means we'll soon see loads of imitators and competitors. The 2015 CES is bound to be smartwatch-crazy. But one prominent watch manufacturer is taking a different tack: Offering...
-
By Rain Noe - Jan 01
BASE's Polystone (Plastic & Stone) Desktop Organizers
Plastic is convenient to produce, though not the most durable stuff in the world. To get around this, San-Francisco-based industrial designer Mark Kelley created a line of desktop organizers made from...
-
By Rain Noe - Dec 30, 2014
Awesome, Budget-Style Star Wars Trailer Re-make
Dumb Drum is the name of a group of amateur filmmakers in California. For years they've been making shot-for-shot "sweded"* versions of popular movie trailers--remember fellow filmmaker Dustin McLean doing this with...
-
By Rain Noe - Dec 30, 2014
Ghost in the Machine: Laika Cleverly Reveals Why Good Stop-Motion Animation Takes So Darn Long
Despite the Russian-sounding name, Laika is an American stop-motion animation company based in Oregon. You probably know their name from 2009's Coraline, which they produced, and earlier this year they released The...
-
By Sam Dunne - Dec 30, 2014
What's the Deal With Lux-Craft Tools?
Following their recent three-year $90-million mega-renovation, the Cooper-Hewitt has been going all out to raise the game of their recently relaunched all important museum SHOP. As part of their efforts, curator Chad...
-
By Sam Dunne - Dec 29, 2014
SmartPipe: Long Overdue Connected-Home/Quantified-Self Start-Up Satire
Purveyors of web-based procrastination-enablers Adult Swim have been treating online audiences to a series of ingenious infomercial parodies in recent months—from feature-creeping Broomshakalaka to the frankly...
-
By Rain Noe - Dec 24, 2014
How to Gift Wrap Irregularly-Shaped Objects
Last-minute shoppers: So you've mastered the one-piece-of-tape gift wrapping method, which works great with rectilinear objects. But now you've got to wrap an irregularly-shaped object, since that potted cactus was too...
-
By Rain Noe - Dec 19, 2014
This Week in Booze-Based Designs: Liquor-Loaded Shoes, a Moustache Protector and a DIY Whiskey Flight Server
The holiday season is when we start seeing some wacky promotional products, and this first one's a cake-taker. Johnnie Walker partnered up with shoemaking outfit Oliver Sweeney to produce these Leather Brogues. And yes,...
-
By Sam Dunne - Dec 19, 2014
Christmas, Handmade in China: A Photo Essay
This post includes photos and an excerpt from the photoessay Christmas, Handmade in China originally published by Make Works. Make Works is an organization based in Scotland championing local manufacturing by making it...
-
By Rain Noe - Dec 18, 2014
Core77 Obtains Exclusive Star Wars Script Explaining Millennium Falcon Design Discrepancy!
With all of the hullabaloo over the new lightsaber design, fans may have missed another important detail in the trailer for the new Star Wars movie. First off, most of us know the Millenium Falcon has a round radar...
-
By Rain Noe - Dec 18, 2014
Soaragami Aims to Be a Friendlier Version of the Knee Defender, For Your Other Mid-Limb Joint
Owners of the Knee Defender may be able to purchase a companion device next year, albeit one from a different company. Said company, Soaragami, is a start-up looking to tackle "the problem of fighting for armrests" with...
-
By Rain Noe - Dec 16, 2014
Jerry Seinfeld Nails Consumerism
It's a sad fact, but true, that most of us industrial designers know the feeling of working on something that we don't care about. I myself have worked on many projects that I felt were inferior or even unneccessary,...
-
By Sam Dunne - Dec 16, 2014
Cereal Killer Cafe: Nostalgia and Social Politics in British Hipster Breakfasts
In only the most recent food fad to hit the streets of London and national headlines, bearded twin brothers Gary and Alan Keery reportedly had the epiphany to open up a cereal cafe one hungover morning whilst craving a...
-
By Rain Noe - Dec 11, 2014
This Holiday Season, Stop Embarrassing Yourself with Your Lame Gift-Wrapping Skills and Learn This One-Piece-of-Tape Method
I have to be honest—I wasn't going to say anything to you, but now I feel I must. It's not that your gift-giving skills are bad—I know that you've faithfully perused both our 2014 Gift Guide and the...
-
By Rain Noe - Dec 05, 2014
Cool, Quaint Objects for People Who Still Use Paper
I just spotted these two unusual objects from Levenger, a Florida-based company that designs and sells their own desktop items for folks who still use actual paper. The first is this nifty, dimunitive single-sheet paper...
Login
Need an account? Register
Signup
Have an account? Login