By Rain Noe - Dec 10 New

Pioneering Industrial Designer Charles Harrison Passes Away

"As an industrial designer especially, your audience is neither history nor fame...."

When I was in design school, one of the professors was telling the class about different production methods, and how imagination could be used to adapt those methods to create new, useful things. The example he gave us was with blow molding, which was used to create plastic bottles. He

By Core Jr - Dec 10 New

Beyond Industrial Design: Apply to SVA's MFA in Products of Design

One month to application deadline, January 15!

The deadline for applying to SVA's MFA in Products of Design program is just one month away on January 15th, so if you're interested in grad school, you'll want to give this a hard look. Chaired by Core77's Allan Chochinov, the program sits at "the sweet spot between design thinking

By Rain Noe - Dec 10 New

Here's What Happens When You Let the Engineers Do Everything

The Origibot2 Telepresence Robot Platform with Gripper probably didn't have any industrial designers on staff

Engineers would say that you can't let us designers run unchecked, otherwise everything would be touchy-feely and impossible to make. I get that. But by the same token, when you leave the engineers in charge, you get super creepy machines like this: Look, I'm not denying the thing might be

By Rain Noe - Dec 10 New

Tons of Architecture & Design Images (and Other Categories) Now Free to Download from the Library of Congress

Your tax dollars paid for these stock images, you might as well use 'em

Disappointed by Congress? Forget those losers and check out the Library of Congress. Because these archive-happy nerds have millions of items in their collection from creative industries--"books, newspapers, manuscripts, prints and photos, maps, musical scores, films, sound recordings and more"--and have made tons of them available to download, for free,

By Core Jr - Dec 07

Core77's Ultimate Gift Guide for Designers: Week 2 Winners

This holiday, share your Ultimate Gift Guide with Core77 for a chance to gift yourself some fun prizes. We're on the lookout for your favorite 5 holiday gift ideas and will reward the best gift guides with awesome rewards, including gift certificates and designer-approved products. It gets better—one Editor's pick

By Zach Andrews - Dec 07

Ciszak Dalmas Designs Colorful, Affordable Bookends for TORTUGA Living

Which book do you place at the end of a row on your bookshelf? Regardless of which, our favorite books, our paper friends, need bookends. And for those Italo-meets-Madrileño design-loving bookworms on budgets, new design brand TORTUGA Living presents these colorful little partners: Dumbo Bookends, designed by Ciszak Dalmas. Two

By Emily Engle - Dec 07

Sang Hoon Kim Uses Materials & Processes From His Family's Foam Factory to Create Colorful Furniture

The collection is currently on view at DesignMiami

This year, we've watched the foam-as-furniture trend emerge and develop at shows during Milan Design Week and NYCxDesign. The use of foam blocks is intriguing from an artistic choice standpoint, but within the white hallways lined with brightly colored furniture at this year's DesignMiami lied something even more intriguing—a furniture

By Rain Noe - Dec 07

Walmarts are Now Being Cleaned by Autonomous Robots

They don't take sick days, don't require health insurance and tend not to ask for raises

Now out of the city, I do miss writing those Urban Design Observation posts. Down here in farmland I thought about writing a rural variant, but haven't been able to get it to work yet. That's because I'm rarely off-farm, and when I am, only see things like this aisle-capping

By Rain Noe - Dec 07

Tom Cruise PSA Highlights a Common UI Design Problem

Also: Explaining why shower controls, car controls and HVAC controls aren't standardized--and one way to fix that

This week the Twittersphere witnessed an unusual PSA: Actor Tom Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie, taking a break on the set of "Top Gun: Maverick," urging you to turn video interpolation off on your television set. What does this have to do with UI? Everything, but first a little background

By Rain Noe - Dec 07

Hilarious: Daily Show's Ronny Chieng Gets to the Bottom of Bill Gates' Reinvented Toilet Project

"Why is one of the richest men in the world carrying a jar of his own shit?"

Aside from Japanese manufacturer Toto, toilet design is an area that gets little attention. To us in developed nations, toilets are something we take for granted, and a subset of us that are wealthy can buy fancy ones with heated seats and guided spray nozzles for arse cleaning. For people

By Core Jr - Dec 06

Sponsored Post: Currently Crowdfunding: A Photoshop Picture Frame, A Bike that Grows with Your Kid and More

The most notable campaigns of the week

Navigating the world of crowdfunding can be overwhelming, to put it lightly. Which projects are worth backing? Where's the filter to weed out the hundreds of useless smart devices? To make the process less frustrating, we scour the various online crowdfunding platforms to put together a weekly roundup of our favorite campaigns for your viewing (and spending!) pleasure. Go ahead, free your disposable income:

By Rain Noe - Dec 06

How to Make DIY Sketchbooks Using an Acrylic Pour Technique

Industrial designer Eric Strebel recently got his hands on a vintage Wire-O Punch for spiral bindings. Using that and an acrylic pour technique, he shows you how to make custom sketchbook covers with a trippy effect:

By Rain Noe - Dec 06

How a Non-Architect Built the World's Largest Dome in the 1400s

A goldsmith wins a design competition. Modern-day experts still can't figure it out

Here's a great example of how learning to create or fix things can be translated across multiple design genres. The city of Florence, Italy began erecting their massive cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore, in 1296. The construction work started and stopped multiple times because building things took forever, and

By Rain Noe - Dec 06

How to Refinish & Repair Mid Century and Other Vintage Furniture for Profit and Edification

Dashner Design & Restoration has documented their numerous step-by-step fixes

Whether you're an industrial designer, an ID student or a homeowner with a less-than-perfect house, learning how things are put together is of paramount importance. One way to learn this is by taking things apart. Disassembling something, then successfully reassembling it, will sear construction methods into your brain in a

By Steven Johnson - Dec 05

Steven M. Johnson's Bizarre Invention #124: The Vanity Cycle

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 - Dec 05

Tools & Craft #118: I Think Better on Paper - My Return to Fountain Pens

This entry will be a little different than the others

I've switched back to fountain pens. I used to use them all the time, stopped, but recently I went back to them. I think the reason might be that like using hand tools in the workshop, there is a feeling of a direct connection with what I am doing, and it's less

By Rain Noe - Dec 05

Timothy Wilmots, Designer/Builder of That Incredible Transforming Shop Cart, is Quitting Furniture Making

He's going into a different...field

Well, this just stinks. Furniture designer/builder Timothy Wilmots is the guy who invented the incredible transforming shop cart we looked at last year. He maintains a YouTube channel in which he reveals both his creations and his workshop efficiency tips. Shortly after posting the videos on the shop

By Rain Noe - Dec 05

Tech Overkill: Knocking On a Refrigerator to Make It Temporarily Transparent

Can't see? Go LCD

I keep telling myself: Drama is relative. If I experience a setback at work, that doesn't compare to a coal miner's bad day at work. When my car is giving me trouble, at least I have a car to give me trouble and I don't have to hitchhike. And while

By Rain Noe - Dec 05

Space Saving for Urban Living: Ori's Mechanized, Collapsible Walk-In Closet and Disappearing Bed

Sadly, a safety feature prevents you from "accidentally" smushing your annoying roommate

Remember Ori, the mechanized transforming apartment system designed in a collaboration between Yves Béhar and MIT Media Lab? It caused a stir (okay, a design blog stir) when the concept debuted in 2016, and we gave them a Core77 Design Award in 2017. But selling an entire apartment system is

By Rain Noe - Dec 04

Now Available on Xometry: HP Multi Jet Fusion Technology

The on-demand manufacturing platform now offers instant quotes on production-grade custom parts made with HP Multi Jet Fusion technology

Earlier we wrote up Xometry, the online, on-demand manufacturing platform that gives industrial designers instant quotes. With an existing network of producers equipped with machines that can do Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), Stereolithography (SLA), Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM), Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS), and PolyJet, they've got digital fabrication pretty

By Rain Noe - Dec 04

NVIDIA Has Trained AI to Create Entire Virtual Worlds

Conditional generative neural networks can replace, among other things, digital set designers

With a background in industrial design, a good portfolio and some luck, you could land a job as a digital set designer for Hollywood. Their job involves, among other things, rendering cityscapes through which green-screened actors might run, fly or have car chases. But while the actors won't be replaced

By Rain Noe - Dec 04

Thoughts on Consumerism, Farm Life and the Design of Can Openers

Plus: "Free" metal containers, fastener organization and cleaning feces to save money

Moving from New York City to a remote farm has taught me a lot about consumerism. For the previous 20 years I lived in SoHo. Anything I might want--food, coffee, clothes, kitchen goods, consumer products, electronics, tools, hardware, raw materials from wood to upholstery foam to plastics--from any brand

By Kickstarter Design & Tech - Dec 04

Still Confused about Cryptocurrency? This Tactile Toy Has You Covered

Pigzbe is the "piggy wallet" that gets the whole family up to speed on digital money.

"Most young children first encounter digital money in video games, where they can acquire coins to spend at will in the game environment," Filippo Yacob says. "There's no real accountability; there's no real learning. So they associate digital money with money that isn't real." But Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies

By Rain Noe - Dec 03

Flotspotting: Leslie Montes' Minimalist Kumiki Furniture Collection

A winning combination: Minimalist aesthetics, fastener-free knockdown design, honest use of materials

Two furniture trends we've been seeing: 1) Mid-century modern knockoffs, 2) Upstart designers attempting to make things that are different, just for the sake of being different. So it's a breath of fresh air to see industrial designer Leslie Montes' back-to-basics Kumiki furniture collection. Here's why we

By Core77 Design Awards - Dec 03

I'm a Student. Should I Submit My Work to Design Awards?

Here are a few reasons why you might want to consider it.

As a student, it can be difficult to convince yourself to invest money in something related to your professional career such as an awards program, let alone investing in a turkey sandwich for lunch. Though it may seem difficult to envision what applying to something like an awards program gets

By Rain Noe - Dec 03

Clever Contraption Makes Your Washing Machine Vibration-Free and Silent

Elmac's affordable add-on uses anti-earthquake technology to eliminate a domestic hassle

Here's a fun bit of infrastructural engineering adapted to a humble domestic application. While your home doesn't generate the seismic activity that civil engineers worry about, there is one culprit that vibrates and makes a racket: Your washing machine. Few among us have the inclination to monitor and rebalance laundry

By Rain Noe - Dec 03

How to Make a Concrete Firepit With a 3D Printer

Ben Uyeda casts just three repeating shapes

There's something charming about creating your own fire pit or fire ring with pre-cut blocks or natural stone: But if you're interested in something more designey, Ben Uyeda shows you how to create your own shapes by injecting some digital fabrication into the process. Uyeda CADs up his desired forms