Posted by
core jr | 23 May 2013
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In less than a month, Julia Davids will earn her Bachelor of Science in Engineering degree from Stanford University's prestigious Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, a.k.a. d.school. To mark the occasion, she's publishing an e-book about her undergraduate experience—this is an exclusive excerpt of the second chapter.
Imagine you attend one of my design classes in Stanford's d.school at Building 550. Many of the structural elements of the building have been left exposed so that it has the feel of a partially renovated garage: cement floors, bare walls. Strange furniture is scattered about the floor; tour guides are known to explain that decorators chose "deliberately uncomfortable" seats to encourage activity. A smattering of professors and students have questioned the use of foam squares or wood blocks as chairs, but the seats remain.
You enter a classroom on the second floor, where 30 or so students populate gray plastic chairs. The room—in fact, the entire building—embodies the principle that furniture mixing is proportionally related to idea mixing. Utility pipes unabashedly expose themselves to you. You take a seat on one of the chairs, but your table scoots away from you because it is on casters. The rock music fades and class is underway.
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As we saw with NEMO Equipment's gear, clever design can enable air to play a significant structural role with camping gear. In NEMO's case, that air is provided by a pump.
Portland-based inventor Ryan Frayne is also experimenting with air, but he's zeroed in on a particular element of the user experience: How to get the air into the product. To that end, Frayne has focused on designing a special valve, and the results are pretty impressive. Frayne's Windcatcher design amplifies your exhalation, using physics I don't understand to multiply your air volume by a factor of 10 or 15—with the added benefit that you don't even have to put your mouth on the thing. Observe:
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Statistically speaking, most of us only use crowbars when we're about to be arrested for Menacing, but if you've ever had to do light demo around the house you know how handy they can be. Someone actually stole my crowbar a couple of years ago, and I never bought a replacement since I haven't recently needed to pry anything open or dispense street justice.
Maybe it's just as well that I've held off, as a new crowbar may be hitting the market at the end of this summer. And, usefully, it also happens to be a hammer. And a 1/2-inch socket wrench, and a couple of other things. I'm normally skeptical of multi-tools, but the Cole-Bar Hammer, which is currently up on Kickstarter, look pretty promising:
I know what you're thinking: How well would that central joint hold up when the tool is extended into a full-length crowbar?
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Posted by
Ray | 8 May 2013
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Looks cool...
When I used to work for an artist who specialized in photorealistic portraiture, I remember watching the assistants use a projector to draft the preliminary pencilwork for his medium-to-large scale (30”×40”+) paintings. Since we were working with digital compositions, it was a simple matter of lining up the image with the canvas or archival paper, then painstakingly tracing the photograph and background onto it.
Now that software has democratized and simplified the tools of creating images, I imagine this is a common practice in artists' studios. But what about drawing from real life? Most everyone has seen or at least heard of camera obscura, but it turns out there's a somewhat more, um, obscure tool that draftsmen of yore had at their disposal.
Pablo Garcia and Golan Levin (Art Professors at SAIC and CMU, respectively) note that "long before Google Glass... there was the Camera Lucida." The device is a "prism on a stick," a portable lens-like device that is affixed to a drawing surface, allowing the user to accurately reproduce an image before them by hand.
We have designed the NeoLucida: the first portable camera lucida to be manufactured in nearly a century—and the lowest-cost commercial camera lucida ever designed. We want to make this remarkable device widely available to students, artists, architects, and anyone who loves to draw from life. But to be clear: our NeoLucida is not just a product, but a provocation. In manufacturing a camera lucida for the 21st century, our aim is to stimulate interest in media archaeology—the tightly interconnected history of visual culture and imaging technologies.
According to the well-illustrated history page on the Neolucida website, the device was invented by Sir William Hyde Wollaston in 1807, though the Wikipedia article suggests that it was actually developed by Johannes Kepler, whose dioptrice dates back to 1611, nearly two centuries prior.
Selections from Pablo Garcia's personal collection of vintage camera lucidas
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Posted by
core jr | 2 May 2013
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Comments (1)
It's not quite design, but seeing as Evangelia Koutsovoulou of Daphnis and Chloe is one of our esteemed jury members for the Food Design category of this year's Core77 Design Awards, let's just say it's a chance to get to know her a little better. (Our awards team is busy reviewing the entries and preparing to send them to the jury teams at the moment; we'll be announcing the live broadcast schedule shortly.)
The video, illustrated by Oscar Bolton Green, is a winsome example of visual storytelling—in fact, both the art direction for the company and the Kickstarter campaign are superbly well-executed
Koutsovoulou has five days to make about 3,800 quid to distribute her delicious herbs—check out the Kickstarter project here.
Posted by
Ray | 25 Apr 2013
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Love 'em or hate 'em, there's no denying that Nooka has pioneered a design language unto itself. Founder Matthew Waldman and his team have successfully reinvigorated a familiar form factor with novel UI elements to essentially remix the wristwatch for the digital age and beyond. But if his latest venture seems like a radical departure, it's worth noting that it's not the first time he's explored eco-conscious design: back in 2010, they unveiled a packaging design that can be reused as tupperware.
Indeed, Waldman cites Nooka's experimental packaging—as well as their 2012 Dieline Award winner—in the Kickstarter pitch for his latest venture. We can only imagine that the concept behind his new product, Pothra (rhymes with Godzilla's sometime nemesis), was a virtuous cycle of coffee-fueled ideation about what to with the coffee grounds. (There must be a joke about a watched pot never boiling, but your humble editor happens to be a bit overcaffeinated to focus on punning at the moment.)
It's definitely food for thought (or rather, food waste for thought), though I'm curious as to whether there are other benefits or disadvantages to using coffee grounds They're certainly a staple of household compost systems, but I imagine the resin precludes the possibility that the raw materials might be converted into fertilizer. Conversely, they note that they're looking to use biodegradable resin, which raises questions about the lifespan of the product.
Detail - each Pothra is unique, depending on the roast of the beans
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Six years ago, industrial designer Sam Pearce was sitting in an airport when "I saw a mother pushing her child in a buggy," he writes. "The front wheel hit a slight kerb [sic] and the child jolted forward because of the impact. It happened several times in the time I was waiting there." He then did what many ID'ers do, which is to find the nearest piece of paper and sketch out a potential solution. What he drew in his notebook was this:
A simple idea for a wheel with built-in suspension.
Two years later, while off-road cycling, he remembered the sketch and began thinking if a suspension system like that could be built into a bike wheel. Now, many years of tinkering later, what Pearce has come up with is this:
It's called the Loopwheel, and its system of "tangential suspension"—essentially leaf springs folded back in on themselves—are not only workable, but they provide a gentler ride over sharp obstacles due to physics:
For now, Pearce is focusing on developing Loopwheels for smaller bikes, because the design "[allows] suspension where suspension can't normally fit," as with a folding bike design.
Last month Pearce debuted his creation at the UK's Bespoked Bicycle show. Response was tremendous, and he's now seeking Kickstarter funding to get the Loopwheel into proper production; up until now he's been making them as one-offs in his shop.
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Posted by
core jr | 18 Apr 2013
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Shel Kimen loves a good story, and hers is a tale of a grassroots effort to support a creative community in their time of need. She dreamt up Detroit Collision Works, a multipurpose boutique hotel, co-working space and venue for all-around awesomeness, in Summer of 2011, and they're hoping to Kickstart a prototype of a converted shipping container in time for Flower Day in the country's longest running farmer's market—exactly one month out, on May 18. With just 36 hours to go to raise $11,000 for First Container, Kimen was kind enough to take the time to tell us why we should care.
Awesome needs a place to be.
As people are all too eager to tell you, Detroit has some problems, with the economy, crime, and fractured communities. So when I was thinking about a move to Detroit after 14 years in New York City, I knew that whatever I was going to do had to address some real needs. Coming from the design world, I know that making a good product means understanding, intimately, the people that are going to use it. So the first thing I started doing when I got to Detroit was talk to people. Lots of them.
It started with a hotel. Amazingly, there was not a modern, boutique hotel in all of Detroit! Yet creative people from all over the world visit to work on design an innovation projects—for the auto industry, for bio-tech, for the city (we are an urban planners dream thesis), and to perform at or attend one of our legendary music festivals that combined bring in half a million people annually. Those are creative travelers!
So, ok, we need a cool hotel.
But a cool hotel isn't enough. We need a place for coming together, with our immediate communities, as a city, and inclusive of the many people who visit us. We need a place to accelerate the growth of our communities.
Collision Works is a creative space needed by the people living in Detroit now and the people coming to visit us. It's an artful 36-room boutique hotel, co-working facility, and public event space that uses storytelling to connect and engage travelers and locals alike. Our whole lives are stories—truth and fiction, history and imagination. Stories connect us, help us learn, and catalyze personal and community growth.
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Posted by
Ray | 8 Apr 2013
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When it comes to blog submissions, bike-related projects are probably second to only mobile device accessories here, and a fair share of these ever-trending products happen to be Kickstarter projects. The BikeSpike is easily one of the more worthwhile ones we've seen lately, and with less than 24 hours to raise the last $10K of their $150,000 funding goal, we'll keep it short and sweet: "The BikeSpike is backed by the world's smallest GPS chipset with a built-in antenna, an on-board accelerometer, and a connection to a global cellular network." The cheeky spot illustrates its anti-theft functionality:
The reference to the Allstate commercials is duly noted, and if the pricing seems a little steep, I suppose you should think of it as an insurance policy: at $7/month, it comes in at less than an AppleCare protection plan... assuming you value your bicycle as much as your laptop or phone. (Although my renter's insurance covers my bike and laptop from theft for about $13/month, the $500 deductible means the bike should be worth substantially more than that for it to be worth it.)
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Posted by
Ray | 5 Apr 2013
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It seems like just yesterday I was commenting on the seasonal influx of urban cyclists riding both for business and for pleasure. Oh wait, it was just yesterday that I mused on the topic du jour (or of the week, as it were), and apparently I'm not the only one: local framebuilder Thomas Callahan is stepping up to the task of supplying savvy Brooklynites with handcrafted bicycles at a reasonable price.
Photo by Michael Rubenstein
I've known Callahan of Horse Cycles for a couple years now, ever since he hosted the afterparty for the first annual New Amsterdam Bicycle Show; his booth at last year's show was a standout (no word on whether the show is returning this year). I've made a point of peeking into his shop in South Williamsburg from time to time since then, and it seems like he's always juggling a constellation of new projects alongside his bread and butter of building beautiful bicycles.
For the past few decades, a custom bicycle was the sort of luxury that only a select subset of cyclists would even consider, and most modern-day commuters are still content to stick with off-the-shelf offerings from industry giants (no pun intended). But with a growing market for discerning riders looking to upgrade to something a little nicer, Callahan hopes to meet them halfway with a line of Made-in-Brooklyn production bicycles. Where Detroit's Shinola has the deep-ish pockets to put some marketing muscle behind their launch, Callahan's turned to good, old-fashioned crowdsourcing to launch the Urban Tour Project:
We had the chance to interview the sometime artist and jack-of-all-trades on the occasion of the Kickstarter campaign:
Core77: What inspired you to launch the Urban Tour project? I imagine you've seen increased demand for touring/townie bicycles?
Thomas Callahan: Yes, I have seen an increase in the demand for touring bikes and townies—or just a bike that is versatile. More people are riding more of the year. They're looking for something they can run fenders on and racks, both for touring or just the commute into the city. The train ride into the city from Brooklyn is getting crazy and I think people realize they can actually enjoy their morning commute on a bicycle and often reduce their commute time [in the process].
Also, a lot of people want a single bike that they can commute and also tour on. Obviously, people log more miles on the commuting side, but to have something that can handle the occasional tour is great. The bike is set up specifically for this—the geometry is a little more snappy that your average touring frame to give you the performance you need in an urban environment.
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At a press event yesterday, I was given press materials on the rubber USB bracelet that's becoming de rigueur. Apple's supposedly coming out with an iWatch. And a Hong-Kong-based company called Aeglo has designed a stylus that turns into a slap bracelet (see below). The wrist, it seems, is becoming the Manhattan real estate of tech devices.
It's easy to see why: The wrist is easily accessible and has long been the prime body location to wear technology, as pioneered by the wristwatch in the 1920s. In more recent decades headphones, earbuds and bluetooth earpieces have moved tech onto our domes, and if Google Glass goes mainstream, wearable tech will make the leap to our faces. If throat mics catch on, necks will be covered too.
While we've seen concepts for technology-embedded clothing, we're not confident that catch-all solution is going to catch on, outside of a few niche markets like iPod-controlling snowboard jackets. No, we suspect the wearable technology market will rise in fragments: An iWatch on your wrist, Google Glasses on your face, a Bluetooth bud in your ear, a throat mic on your neck. (While there are arm-mounted bands to hold iPod Nanos for runners, we can't see that one going mainstream either, as the bands are meant to be worn on bare arms or skintight athletic gear.)
At one point in time, humans had to grind their own coffee beans, boil water, combine the ingredients and filter out the grounds in order to get a cup of joe. Our limited imaginations of the time assumed that one day a robot, like The Jetsons' Rosie the Robot, would do all of that stuff for us in the future. Instead manufacturers developed a bunch of discrete objects: Coffee grinding machines, coffeemakers, packages of disposable paper filters we'd buy by the hundred. In this analogy we think the idea of computer-embedded clothing is the Rosie the Robot fantasy, and that things like the iWatch and bluetooth headsets are the separate objects that we'll still buy piecemeal and coordinate with each other.
Our question to you guys is, where else on the body do you see wearable technology migrating to, in a mainstream way? And which body part, if any, do you think various manufacturers will most compete for space on?
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Posted by
Ray | 27 Mar 2013
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Fun fact: the term "kick-start" comes from vintage motorcycles, for which the rider had to kick a ratcheting lever in order to start the engine. According to Wikipedia, "Kick start mechanisms were almost universally a part of motorcycle engines before the mid-1970s, and were phased out of production over the next twenty years or so as electric starters became standard equipment." Skip ahead another decade and the term has been revived as a shorthand for crowdfunding.
Of course, Uncharted Play's "Soccket" has more in common with the electric starter than the mechanical one. It has more or less the same specs as a standard soccer ball (and is intended to be used as such), but it also features an internal mechanism to capture the kinetic energy generated by kicking it around.
The SOCCKET is a durable, energy-harnessing soccer ball. Using Uncharted Play's patent pending technology, the pendulum-like mechanism inside the SOCCKET captures the kinetic energy generated during normal play, and stores it in the ball for later use as an off-grid power source. Just 30 minutes of play can power a simple LED lamp for 3 hours.
It's certainly a clever solution for developing countries, a high-low-tech gadget that hits a sweet spot for feasible social impact—the New York-based team has spent over three years working with NGOs to perfect the project—but I can't help but wonder about its efficiency. I know that hub dynamos, for example, require a bit of extra legwork (pun intended) on the part of cyclists, and pedal-powered generators may not be a practical solution (at least for the time being).
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Mas Design's simple, elegantly-designed Bauhaus Series of carabiner keychains, all created from a single piece of titanium, are pretty darned sweet. They're also a Kickstarter hit: With over a month left in the pledging process, the carabiners have gathered 1,400 backers, whose combined 58 large well exceeded the original $10,000 goal.
The man behind Los Angeles-based Mas Design is Sunny Inkavesvaanit, who unsurprisingly reveals that something so simple-looking took a long time to perfect: "This collection precipitated from the revision of over 500 designs that were drawn, tested and minimized. The design is deceptively simple, but quite difficult to conceive," writes Inkavesvaanit. "I had nightmares about carabiners for two weeks."
The pitch video is hype-free, simply showing you the object in the context you would actually be using it:
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Posted by
Ray | 26 Mar 2013
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Photos by Mark Cocksedge
I won't pretend to be an expert in the ever-expanding category of bluetooth audio, but I understand the appeal: After decades of being tethered to all variety of boxy, clunky or otherwise cumbersome hardware, technology has liberated us from those proverbially Gordian tangles of cables, if not the speakers themselves. Although we have more or less consummated the portability of playback devices, speaker cones and circuitry are confined to bulky cabinets, and—cheap computer speakers notwithstanding—require a separate amplifier to translate signals into noise (so to speak).
Which is precisely why I was interested to see that Paul Cocksedge's latest project, called the Vamp, not only offers wireless audio but a built-in 4–9-watt single-channel amp as well, all in a lemon-sized, USB-rechargeable device—effectively refurbishing any serviceable old speaker into a quasi-portable jamblaster.
And while I'm generally skeptical about such devices—in my experience, you might get some combination connectivity, audio fidelity, battery life and/or durability, but not all of the above—I have enough random old speakers around the house to make the Vamp a practical home audio solution.
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Posted by
Ray | 20 Mar 2013
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An architect and environmental designer by training, it should come that Jerome Daksiewicz's visual sensibility tends towards cleanly presented schematics. Under the moniker Nomo Design, the Chicago-based jack-of-all-trades offers everything from interiors to advertising to photography; he also had a hand in a noteworthy bicycle light project last year. (Regarding Sparse, he notes that the team is "making a few final revisions to the lights but we should be cutting tools in the next week or so (just slightly behind our original schedule).")
His latest Kickstarter venture is rather less ambitious than a new product launch... which, as Daksiewicz notes, means it will ship in time for Father's Day. Disappointed with the quality of extant golf-related artwork, he's designed a series of Golf Course serigraphs (a fancy word for screenprints) for the discerning fan.
I want to create a series of prints to celebrate the world's top golf courses but in a simple way that still captures the unique character of each course and is at home in any interior. I'm starting with the hosts of the 2013 Major Championships, Golf Magazine's #1 Course in the World - Pine Valley and one of the top US public-access courses in Pebble Beach.
I can't even come close to pretending I know enough about golf to offer any insight into the accuracy or appeal of the prints, but the imagery strikes me as conceptually compelling as abstracted topography.
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Posted by
Teshia Treuhaft | 15 Mar 2013
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One of the greatest accomplishments for a young designer is to bring their first product to market. For many designers right out of school, it can take years to see a project put into production and is often a learning process in itself. We are happy to report that one of our featured and favorite Coroflot projects is taking the next step.
We first featured Michael Roopenian's Engrain Keyboard prototype on Coroflot in 2011 when it was his Master's Thesis project at the Pratt Institute. At the time, the project was simply a thoughtful response to incorporating natural tactility into a user interface. Roopenian used a combination of traditional woodworking, sandblasting and lasercutting to produce and prototype. While the project was nice for school, it wasn't immediately scalable for production.
The original 2011 prototype
Two years later, Roopenian looks to produce the keyboard for production with new packaging, updated materials list and, of course, a good ol' fashioned Kickstarter campaign. After spending six months of development, the production version of the Engrain Keyboard emerged in sassafras with a Danish Oil finish (the original prototype was pine), complete with a sleek packaging design.
We caught up with Michael to hear about the new developments, scaling up production and lessons learned.
Core77: What are some of the major design developments since the 2011 version?
Michael Roopenian: The biggest development was the switch from using Pine wood to Sassafras. As you can imagine, the soft pine also just doesn't hold up like a hardwood. Sassafras, when sandblasted, provided a more toned-back texture with similar properties, and ended up being a good compromise between tactility and true keyboard functionality. From the beginning, I knew I had a concept that people were interested in, but bringing it to reality was all about finding the right balance.
The other major developments revolved around the system of installation, which uses the off-cut wood as a mounting bracket. This simple method of installation was another key to really making it a viable product that anyone could buy and install flawlessly themselves.
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Posted by
core jr | 12 Mar 2013
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Text and Images by Max Gunawan
Lumio is a lamp that unfolds from a book. Simply open the cover to turn it on, the further you open the cover the brighter it gets. Sounds very simple, yet the design process was nothing but.
The journey started about eight months ago when I joined TechShop SF. I came in with the ambitious idea of creating a modular house with built-in furniture that you can fold flat to fit into your car. It's the same basic concept of a lunchbox: different parts of a meal packaged in a portable container. Except that it's a home-in-a-box that you can carry around and pop open easily.
My vision was to build a modular home for the modern nomad with all of the conveniences we are accustomed to. It didn't quite turn out the way I envisioned it, but through that design exploration, I ended up with a modified version of the same design concept, on a much smaller scale.
What does a foldable house have to do with Lumio? Although they share the same underlying design principles of a folding structure, physically they are nothing alike. Lumio was created out of necessity because I didn't have the resources to build a working prototype for the folding house. I had to adapt my idea and scale it down into something more manageable.
I had these paper models and sketches of the folding house in my Moleskine sketchbook. It dawned on me one day that a book would be a great way to package this idea of a collapsible light fixture: it's compact, it has a visceral connection with the idea of a book as a "source of illumination," and it has that unexpected element of surprise.
We always think that innovation happens when you have all the freedom and tools you need. In my case, it came together out of limitation. I was able to make the best use out of what I have.
Photo of Moleskine study model
I arrived at the concept for Lumio around September 2012. My first prototype was cobbled together out of folded paper inserted into the cover of my hardcover sketchbook. It was rough, but it was a good starting point as a proof-of-concept.
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Posted by
Teshia Treuhaft | 20 Feb 2013
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New Yorkers take their sidewalks seriously: With over 12,000 miles of sidewalk in the city, there is a lot to care about. So who wouldn't like the idea of making one of the most used urban features just a bit nicer? The recently funded Kickstarter project Softwalks makes small design tweaks to drab New York sidewalks, transforming them into fully-fledged public spaces. At launch, the Softwalks 'kit' consists of four parts; seat, counter, planter and light reflector, all directly attachable to preexisting scaffolding using an adjustable clamp system. The team is also developing an additional screen, bench and game board to expand the kit.
Designing for existing urban structures isn't exactly a new idea; projects like Michael Karowitz's paraSITE immediately come to mind. Still, urban planning is a big job, so why not start small? By designing for scaffolding that covers many of New York's sidewalks—technically known as 'sidewalk sheds' to protect pedestrians from debris—the project has the potential to make a pop-up park practically anywhere. Considering that New York City currently has approximately 189 miles of sidewalk sheds, it shouldn't be a problem finding a sidewalk in need of sprucing.
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After gaining good blog traction, the Orp bicycle horn (which we wrote up here) recently surpassed its Kickstarter target of $90,000, and is on the way to 100 large. We're following it up here not only to inform you of the funding success, but to illustrate how well Kickstarter can be wielded by a veteran industrial designer with a popular product idea.
Tory Orzeck and his team have continued updating the Orp's project page, showing the process shots we love to see, along with updated renderings and diagrams that provide the quiet assurance that these guys know what they're doing. We dug seeing things like what appears to be a 3D-printed mold used to cast silicone models for testing, and copious shots of them working out the kinks of their "engineering mule."
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Posted by
Ray | 25 Jan 2013
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I don't know how accurately it measures creative output, but the Sharpener Jar is definitely a practical alternative to the underground artisanal pencil sharpening movement. So it should come as no surprise that designer, entrepreneur, teacher and sometime Core-toonist / Sketch-notetaker Craighton Berman (a.k.a. Fueled by Coffee) has nearly quadrupled his $2,500 Kickstarter goal in just four days.
Every day professional "creatives" spend their waking hours sketching, writing, doodling, brainstorming, drawing, and scribbling on paper—hoping that their next amazing idea will eventually appear. This process fuels a unique angst in the modern-day artist; they spend most of their time merely thinking about what to make with nothing physical to show other than a pile of sketches. Can you get credit for creative effort without showing an end product? How is your boss going to know that you spent most of the day working and not just surfing Tumblr? How can you prove to your clients that your rates are justified despite the absence of actual finished work? Can creative output really be measured?
As in the Dux Inkwell sharpener, an extant glass vessel takes on a new purpose as a reservoir for pencil shavings, underscoring the ritualistic appeal of paring down a stick of wood and graphite.
On the other hand, unlike the Cuppow, Berman has opted to include the jar (and lid and threaded ring) with the sharpener, which surely adds a bit of unnecessary shipping/packaging expense to the product. Hence, the $39 pricetag for a single Sharpener Jar—assuming that the 32 remaining "first editions" at $34 will sell out shortly. (Still, it could be worse: $210 worse.)
We'd love to see these letterform pencils IRL...
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Portland-based industrial designer Tory Orzeck has careers at both GE Plastics and Nike under his belt. He also founded his own ID firm, Fuse, which has done projects for the likes of Herman Miller and Gerber. But for his latest project, Orp, Orzeck is turning to Kickstarter to create a safety device for cyclists.
In 2007, a young cyclist and art student was killed in Orzeck's home base of Portland. She was in the blind spot of a cement truck, stopped at a red light. As the light turned green and both began to move, the truck made a right turn, towards the cyclist, who was crushed and killed.
That got Orzeck thinking about the problem of bicyclists' relative invisibility on the road, and what he could design to solve that. But thinking outside of the box, he realized increasing visibility was only part of the solution; he ought to incorporate sound—loud, high-decibel sound—to alert a motorist to a cyclist's presence in the event of an emergency.
Here's Orzeck himself explaining his resultant design solution, the Orp:
At press time the Orp had clocked $38,000 out of a $90,000 target, with 27 days left to pledge. Get in on it here.
Posted by
Ray | 14 Jan 2013
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I must admit that the startup Designed by m mostly struck me for its cheeky take on Apple's brand identity, appropriating the design cues (including the font Myriad Pro) with a wink and a nod for their website and, to a lesser extent, Kickstarter campaign. In any case, the AL13 aluminum iPhone bumper is a go, handily doubling its $20,000 goal in a week, and it doesn't take an aerospace engineer to see why: it's sleek, lightweight, easy to install and, above all, thinner than its competitors in the bumper category.
Of course, if the AL13 isn't minimal enough for you, we covered a couple of ultraminimal cases about a month ago. Although Alex Karp didn't reach his funding goal via Kickstarter, the campaign apparently received enough publicity to attract outside investors, who have offered to bankroll Bummpies. mod-3, on the other hand, has surpassed their goal for the Radius case by over 50% as of press time, with five days to go.
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Posted by
Ray | 11 Jan 2013
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Comments (13)
Say what you want about IDEO, but no one can deny that some brilliant folks roam their open-plan workspaces, including Dave Vondle and Jerry O'Leary. The longtime colleagues at the firm's Chicago office have just launched a side project under the name Central Standard Timing on the occasion of CES 2013, handily surpassing their $200,000 crowdfunding goal for "The World's Thinnest Watch" in a day and a half.
Indeed, the CST-01 comes in at a svelte 0.8mm, and, at 12 grams, "weighs less than five pennies"—the first 500, which sold out in a matter of hours, were available for $99, or about 54.5 lbs worth of pennies. The internal electronics are laminated into the flexible stainless steel band, which accommodates a scant 0.5mm of componentry in its 'face,' "[showcasing] the most innovative qualities of E Ink's SURF segmented displays; ultra-thinness, readability, ruggedness, flexibility, and low power."
Vondle and O'Leary have also wisely chosen to forgo hardware buttons: Users set the time through the charging stand, which is a beautiful object in itself. Of course, considering that it will only take ten minutes to charge the CST-01 for a month of use, the buoy-shapped base might end up in a drawer for most of the wristwatch's 15 year lifetime (our two cents: maybe it could double as a coffee tamper?).
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Posted by
Ray | 9 Jan 2013
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Comments (2)
In my experience, the strain of road rage that afflicts cyclists is entirely unlike that of motorists: easy though it may be to satirize or dismiss our sense of self-righteousness, the underlying truth is that cars are still king, and regular riders learn to grow a thick skin when it comes to sharing the road, where they are quite literally marginalized (on streets without bike lanes). Between the legal system's troubling aversion to holding drivers responsible for their (at times fatal) actions and the countless close calls that happen every day, entrepreneurial cyclists are increasingly taking matters into their own hands.
We've seen plenty of illumination and visibility solutions in the past, but Boston-based research engineer Jonathan Lansey saw an opportunity to fill a metaphorical blind spot for urban cyclists. Thus, the successfully Kickstarted LOUD Bicycle Horn affords cyclists a nonvisual cue on par with those of automobiles:
As usual, I have a few thoughts on the project... but first, here's Lansey in his own words:
About a year and a half ago a friend was hit by a car that was making a left hand turn. The driver was distracted by a loud radio and didn't hear my friend screaming. She was lucky, and wasn't injured very seriously, but I thought that we shouldn't have to rely on luck when faced with life-threatening situations. Drivers recognize car horns and react really well to them so it just makes a lot of sense to have a car horn fit for bicycles.
The horn has both a high note and a low note which together makes it sound exactly like a car. Its easy to install and security bolts make it difficult to steal. The battery pack is small and light, but so powerful that a single charge will keep you honking for one to two months. The trigger snaps on to either handlebar and honking does not interfere with steering or braking.
A protoype
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Posted by
Ray | 4 Jan 2013
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Comments (8)
As the founder of Timbuk2, Rob Honeycutt spent over a decade and a half in the messenger bag industry, before selling the company to move on to his next venture. The former bicycle messenger has since turned his attention to the 21st Century (/First World) problem of cable management for the earbud-tethered masses. Not content to incorporate low-tech clips into zipper pulls and buttons, he recently launched a Kickstarter campaign for his most ambitious solution to date. Known as the Elroy (the logo refers to the Jetsons character's helmet), it's essentially a customizable Bluetooth remote that attacks the problem at its source: the cord itself.
The clip-on device is roughly the size of a lighter, featuring a customizable the front panel—the ten options at launch range from faux snakeskin to a meme-y gray tabby—which belies its touch functionality: tap to answer a call, swipe for volume, etc. A complementary pair of earbuds has a short cord; magnets on the sides of the Elroy hold the 'buds in place when not in use.
While I must admit I didn't know that Timbuk2 was a pioneer of the personal customization trend (circa the mid-90's), I agree that portable music players and smartphones are an obvious market for personal expression via accessories. Similarly, I didn't realize that Honeycutt was a champion of American manufacturing:
At Timbuk2 [where I applied mass customization], I was able to take orders for mass customized product online and ship product, usually within 24 hours. I've run manufacturing in the US in an industry with products requiring high labor content. I've worked with both domestic manufacturing and off-shore manufacturing across a wide variety of products...
I personally spent well over 10,000 hours doing actual line production at Timbuk2. I understand on a personal and visceral level what production workers face on a daily basis. I know how to transform what has the potential to be a meaningless drudgery into a meaningful and engaging work experience.
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The paltry few bucks I spent on this magnetic knife rack, from a local restaurant supply store, was well worth it. Having my most commonly-used machine repair tools easily identified, easily accessible, and most importantly wall-mounted above the workbench that can get out-of-control cluttered with machine parts, is a vast improvement over hunting and digging.
Chicago-based product design firm MESH (formerly known as TT Design Labs) wants to do the same for your everyday carry and/or desktop items.
Their JustMount is a little round-edged magnetic box that mounts to your wall and holds whatever's got metal in it. For your phone, there's a little buy-in required—you'd need to pick up their TidyTilt magnetized case if you want to hang your iPhone—but for anything else that's got metal in it, you might find the JustMount handy for keeping things off of cluttered horizontal surfaces.
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