Take some time today to enjoy our archive of the Designing Women Series, Core77's look at the achievements of lesser-known and under-appreciated female design pioneers.
Here industrial designer Eric Strebel shows you how to build your own spray booth out of foamcore. "The unit is very light, that makes it easier to build and potentially move around your shop if you don't have a permanent home for it," Strebel writes. He uses a nifty trick
Watching rust get blasted off of metal is always satisfying. It must be even more satisfying to do it, particularly when you're using a self-made sandblaster. DIY'er Adam Fleisch figured out how to make one for under six bucks, using an airgun and a soda bottle, and the darn thing
In the last entry we saw a builder create a tabletop the wrong way. By not obeying the rules of wood movement, the builder has doomed the tabletop to failure. The rule that the builder ought have followed is a simple one: Design for boards to expand and contract along
This story is part three of MakerBot's series of design studies, exploring iterative design and the relationship between designers and their tools. So far we've explored form development with the bike saddle and reverse engineering with the drone rebuild—now it's time to push into something a bit more futuristic.
Following this Urban Design Observation post, some Core77 readers have asked for a series on how to design for wood movement. I'll start here with some design basics. (And if you want to back up and understand the science behind why wood moves, check out this series on wood movement
This took me a second to figure out what they were doing, but when I finally understood it, I went "Holy crap:" I don't pretend to understand the black geometric magic behind this trick, and I realize that knowing how to do this will save me from neither zombies nor
You've probably taken something apart just to see how it works. Maybe you fixed it, maybe you marveled at the ingenuity of the design, but something about it was fascinating.
I'll always prefer working with wood over metal and plastic, because wood is such a forgiving material. Inevitably when you're working with the stuff, you're going to screw up, usually when you've run out of stock and are on a tight deadline. Here Marc Spagnuolo, a/k/a the Wood Whisperer, shows
Bikes are amazing machines. They're simple yet complex; a perfect symbol for the intersection of form and function. For over a century, that beauty has drawn the attention of designers and engineers looking to leave their mark on the bicycle's legacy. I'm one of those designers teetering on the edge
Unless you have experience with traditional boatbuilding or making traditional Japanese sake cups, you may not realize you can join two pieces of wood together--with no glue or sealant--in such a way as to make the joint watertight. Here master woodworker Frank Klausz reveals the trick taught to him by
Weekly Maker’s Roundup is a weekly list of our favorite builds, tips and tricks for makers. Ranging from classic to novel, practical to outrageous, these projects represent what making is all about—problem solving and having fun.
Weekly Maker’s Roundup is a weekly list of our favorite builds, tips and tricks for makers. Ranging from classic to novel, practical to outrageous, these projects represent what making is all about—problem solving and having fun.
Artist Cam Bergerman counts archery and leatherworking among his hobbies. Having learned how to craft leather handle wraps the traditional way, with stitching, he decided to experiment a bit: I had an idea a while back for a way to join a seam in leather without anything but the leather
Weekly Maker’s Roundup is a weekly list of our favorite builds, tips and tricks for makers. Ranging from classic to novel, practical to outrageous, these projects represent what making is all about—problem solving and having fun.
When it comes to modular, portable tool storage, it's hard to beat the Systainers designed by German company Tanos. They come in five sizes and can be linked together for easy transport. While Systainers can be purchased separately at places like Woodcraft, Tool Nut and Amazon, Festool products all come
Tell me if you've been in this situation: 1. You need to put holes in a very long workpiece using your drill press. 2. You find clamping the piece to the bed impractical or impossible. 3. You decide that rigging up proper-height outfeed support is too time-consuming.
Nowadays the Museum of Modern Art, aka MoMA, is well known for a rarified take on expensive modern art. I try to go visit MoMA several times a year (natives and savvy tourists know when the $25 admission fee is waived) and often feel frustrated by the insularity and smug
Making things can be time-consuming, and if you're recording your entire process on video, your camera can start to heat up as the minutes tick past. Industrial designer Eric Strebel found his Lumix GF7 getting so hot that it would shut itself off. Strebel's solution: Harvest an aluminum heat
Canadian inventor Ben Gulak conceived of the DTV shredder, the unusual vehicle you see here, while he was still a teenager. His motivation was practical: “It doesn’t make sense to have to buy an expensive snowmobile that you can ride for three months of the year and an ATV
Weekly Maker’s Roundup is a weekly list of our favorite builds, tips and tricks for makers. Ranging from classic to novel, practical to outrageous, these projects represent what making is all about—problem solving and having fun.
Tired of seeing the Nike swoosh in the same place, over and over? Tired of seeing logos on sneakers in general? Nike's now giving you the option to place your own or opt-out entirely with their recently released Gakou Flyknit. In all honesty, the design of the sneaker itself isn't all that revolutionary—by this point, we've all grown accustomed to sock-like shoes being worn everywhere from the gym to the office.
We know many of you have access to top-notch rendering programs and/or fast manual rendering skills, but sometimes you just need to bang something out quickly in Photoshop. In that instance it might be handy to have, say, a bunch of metal styles you can apply to type. SpoonGraphics has
I get a lot of questions about hand tools. When you get past the "should I buy this or that" or "what should I get first" questions and get down to the usage questions where a woodworker is struggling with a tool or getting uncertain results, invariably they can all
If you're making something for yourself and casting it in resin, you can probably live with the inevitable air bubbles that appear in the object. But if you're an industrial designer prototyping something a client's going to see, bubbles are a no-no. That's why professional prototypers like Eric Strebel use
I came across this interesting series of videos in Ikea's archives. Called the "Square Meter Challenge," Ikea's designers were tasked with using Ikea products to create livable, functional, comfortable space in some seriously tiny footprints. They start off with on-screen drawings explaining the concept behind each space, then show you
Over the past few weeks, we've been fielding questions from our Core77 audience for a favorite YouTube maker of ours, Ben Uyeda of HomeMade Modern. Founded in 2013, Uyeda has managed to build up a collection of videos showing anyone how to make simple yet elegant DIY projects. In the
Children who visit The Warther Museum in Dover, Ohio each get a special gift on their way out: A working pair of wooden pliers, carved from a single block of basswood. The gift is appropriate since the museum houses the work of Ernest "Mooney" Warther, an American master woodcarver.
For those of you that still use physical calendars, maybe you like having a dozen photos of hapless kittens or shirtless firemen cycling through the months. But a subset of you might prefer a single grid that will serve for the entire year and that doesn't have any pages to
Combination squares come in very handy in the shop. But the thing I hate is that I'll often set the depth, then need to leave it at that setting for various stages in a project, and I basically can't use the square for anything else in the meanwhile. For that
Every product starts as an aspirational vision for how the finished result should look, feel, and function in the consumer's hands. However, the design process to transform ideas into mass manufacturable products is a road paved by technical reality and practical compromise. Mitigating risk before investing in mass manufacturing is
Ben Uyeda has made a splash on Youtube with his HomeMade Modern video series, managing to turn perceptions of DIY from a novice craft practice into a pastime for the design-minded that should be taken seriously. A former architect, he's one of the masters in the DIY video community when
Here in Part 2 of this series, pro industrial designer Eric Strebel shows you how to go beyond flat/straight shapes when working with FoamCore. Follow Strebel's tips to get a variety of different radii while keeping your piece clean-looking and professional:
Create a Core77 Account
Already have an account? Sign In
By creating a Core77 account you confirm that you accept the Terms of Use
Please enter your email and we will send an email to reset your password.