One of the reasons you'll want to attend the annual Autodesk University is because of the quality of science-dropping speakers they attract. This year Because We Can's Jeff McGrew gave a lecture on "The Five Myths of Digital Fabrication." We weren't allowed to simply broadcast it, of course—the sessions are the privilege of AU attendees—but we asked him to give us a teaser:

Jeff McGrew and Jillian Northrup, the founders of design-build firm Because We Can, are not academics or theorists; they're practicing architect-designer-builders and devout CNC users with the experience that comes from seven years of cranking out projects. They've also gleaned wisdom from interacting with friends and colleagues in parallel or adjacent fields, providing them with in-the-know information. Prior to McGrew's AU 2012 lecture on "The Five Myths of Digital Fabrication," we asked him to explain how the knowledge is won:

Because We Can at Autodesk University 2012:
» Super-fast CNC'd Gaming Tables
» Myths of Digital Fabrication
» Gathering CNC Knowledge

Take what you know about concrete: It's heavy, it's hard, it's cold. Now throw all of that out the window and take a gander at Dustin Faddis' Contribute Pen, which is made from engineered concrete blended into his own proprietary recipe.

Contribute has a very balanced feel. You will find it surprisingly light as it weighs 1.6 oz when housing the Signo-DX [a gel ink cartridge manufactured by Uni-ball]. Although smooth and polished, the concrete grips your hand, but feels soft. If you've touched a highly polished piece of marble, this would be a similar feel. Contribute takes on the ambient room temperature and will warm with your touch.

Pen enthusiast Faddis has not only tweaked his concrete blend, but developed a proprietary manufacturing technique. While there's understandably no video of his secret sauce, there is a neat clip showing how the cap closes:

Neodymium magnets embedded within the concrete enable that trick. And when the pen runs dry, you can insert refills from several different manufacturers (Cross, Pentel, Pilot, Uni-ball) by unscrewing the back cap.

Korean designer Jeong Yong is pleased to present his latest project, "a table calendar composed with three differently-sized rings." Simply called "ONE," the series of rings represents the date with indicators on each ring: one for the month, one for the day of the month and one for the day of the week.

The rings are held together by magnets such that the intersection point of the three rings indicates today's date.

Your cell phone knows where you are through triangulation. A Hungary-based company called Leonar3Do has taken that principle and applied it to a 3D mouse: by integrating several antennae into the form factor, a reading device can determine, with pinpoint accuracy, exactly where the mouse is in space. Have a look:

Seasoned logophiles ought to know the answer to the common crossword clue, "Golfer Ernie," without thinking twice, but here's a hint for everyone else: it's three letters long, and sounds like the 12th letter of the alphabet.

Of course, it's more likely that Slovenian architecture student Luka Locicnik was inspired by his own initials than the South African PGA fixture. Whatever the case, the LLSTOL is a remarkably versatile pair of identical, interlocking letterforms that can be arranged to make a chair, a table, a shelf, or any number of seating and storage surfaces. While "its basic use is as a lounge chair, it can be transformed into other furniture types very easily and without complex details or metal components, [ideal for] students and young families with small apartments."

Regarding the material, the website notes:

Laminated molded plywood is an excellent material for designing furniture as it is sustainable and has strong compressive and tensile characteristics. We want to use only natural and sustainable materials with as little environmental impact as possible. Slovenia is one of few countries with very high percentage of forests—over 60% of land is forest. For the LLSTOL we are using quality beech wood which is also the most common type of wood in the country, so LLSTOL is made entirely of wood and finished with quality matte lacquer.

Head of User Experience Design, Amazon Digital Music
Amazon
San Francisco, California

Love Music? Amazon is seeking a bold, forward-thinking Head of User Experience Design to lead a high-performing team of Interaction Designers and Visual Designers in the journey to shape how consumers access and experience Amazon's MP3 Store and Digital Music Cloud Player offerings across web, mobile, tablet and desktop offerings.

Most of the recent buzz around 3D printers has been of the consumer variety, but of course it's companies like Objet that have the seriously bad-ass machines. At the Autodesk University 2012 Exhibition Hall, the company showed off their Objet 1000, which boasts multi-material printing and lays it down at an absurdly tight layer height of just 16 microns. Check out what they can make:

It is always empowering to see projects overcome the limitations of the human body. It's one of the reasons why we love super heroes, or watching people skydive from outerspace. In a similar fashion, perhaps more entertaining is Daniel Love's mannequin figurine products. Just as a concept rendering now, these fully articulated, gold plated figures are human size scaled lamps.

Imagine the classic movable mannequin on a whole new form and style. The classical lamp has evolved much over the past several years. As much as it has evolved very few lamps let your imagination run wild. Every joint is fully articulated and at the users control. With so much control of the form what will ensue? The results may be controversial, provoking or elegant. Finished in gold plating for a touch of exquisiteness.

The provocative leg lamp from A Christmas Story has grown up and now is a golden vixen. As Daniel mentions in the product description, the positioning of the figure becomes a statement. For the evening's dinner party a sexy or sensible position for the lamp may be the newlyweds dilemma for the night.

And we're back...from the future. App to the Future that is. Core77 and Windows Phone have teamed up once again to challenge people around the world to design an app for Windows Phone 8!

Design an app that helps you create, connect or delight your future self. Although our contest opens up December 13th, you can REGISTER NOW and get an ideas warmup and a jump on the competition by watching the Design Boot Camp video series.

Through Design Boot Camp you can learn from former Windows Phone Design Integration Lead Jared Potter about Windows Phone philosophy, inspiration and the visuals that comprise the Windows Phone design language. Ready your ideas for our special Lighting Design Reviews where you can receive valuable feedback from experienced Windows Phone 8 interface designers before submitting an entry. Take a look at our five winners from last year's Fast Track to the Mobile App productivity design challenge to get inspired.

Now you can change the future...with our App to the Future Design Challenge. REGISTER TODAY!

Way back at AU 2009, Zebra Imaging's holographic prints blew us (and you, judging by the hit counts) away. Here in 2012 they're using Autodesk's 123D Catch to capture footage for their jaw-dropping technology, like the nutty 3D family portrait you'll see in this video:

Workshop Workhorse

Habitat: Garages, Basements, Workshops

Plumage: Goggles, Gloves, Steel-toed Boots

Attributes: Sawdust Residue, Grease Smudges, Powerful Forearms

Description: Most comfortable in safety goggles and a shop apron, the Workshop Workhorse lives for the singe of soldered metals and the redolent crunch of wood shavings underfoot. From doodads to high design, there's no telling what might emerge from her workshop's depths. Find the perfect tool to lend a hand in her next project.

For our eighth annual Ultimate Gift Guide, Core77's crack editors have identified a taxonomy of seven known 'Designer Phenotypes' who might be on your shopping list. From Designer Dandy to Studio Snob, Homebound Hobbit to Workshop Workhorse, we have something for the discerning gift giver and recipient alike.

In addition to our beloved online Gift Guide, we're also pleased to announce that we've partnered with Blu Dot in New York City and our sister store Hand Eye Supply in Portland, OR, to open bicoastal Holiday Pop-Up Shops for your shopping convenience. Stop by before December 24th to check out the product in person and pick up a poster featuring all seven designer phenotypes, illustrated by Core-toonist Tony Ruth, a.k.a. lunchbreath (while supplies last).

As you start making your adventure wishlist for 2013, audio brand BOOM are fueling the fire with a sneak peek of their newest product, the Urchin. BOOM is an audio line from the folks behind Polk Audio targeted at an active consumer who expects their products to keep up with their lifestyle. With the release of the Urchin, they've created a bluetooth speaker that falls in a category BOOM has identified as "R4A certified" or ready for anything. Their internal classification means it is IPX level 4 water resistant (5 minutes of direct spray with a hose), shock tested (50 drops at 10 feet) and dust sealed.

With a colorful removable silicone skin in 10 different hues, this little speaker is made to match any situation. The Urchin also ships with suction cub, custom designed carabiner and adhesive mounts in the box, so it really is R4A—beach sand, shower wall, back pack, or adhered to a dorm room window. The cuddly shape is defined by anti-sonic diffraction geometry producing clearer sound at louder levels than some boxier options on the market.

Above, the Urchin ships with a custom milled aluminum carabiner, suction cup mount and adhesive stamp.

Core77 and Hand-Eye Supply would like to kick off our holiday promotions in style, so we'll lead with our newest retail collaboration with esteemed bow tie crafters PINO: The Portland Craftsman Bow Tie.

Hewn from workwear-grade Mt. Vernon Mills Pointer Brand 100% cotton brown duck fabric, bound with heavy duty green stitching and fortified with solid brass snaps in the rear, it certainly deserves the title of World's Toughest Bow Tie, or (if you're so inclined) the ultimate BRO TIE. It's like the mutant offspring of Carhartt and Brooks Brothers, working equally well whether you are painting the town or painting some trim.

Portland Craftsman Bowtie: the World's Toughest! - Available now for $75.00 (including free shipping in the USA) at Core77's Hand-Eye Supply!

More photos after the jump!

Henry Hargreaves is a photographer who made his way to Brooklyn via his home country of New Zealand, but he's dabbles in Duchampian diversions in art and design as well, such as "Deep Fried Gadgets," a series of photos of the very same. He's back with a similarly conceptual project called "Game Over!":

Taking games from my childhood I wanted to strip away the color making the games themselves useless but draw the views attention to how beautiful and sculptural the forms themselves actually are.

Of course, Hargreaves hasn't quite stripped away the color, as each composition is a study of monochromatic boards and pieces set on backgrounds of the same pastel color. Besides the fact that each of the games is instantly recognizable, I was also interested to see how a lack of color cues hinders or altogether obviates gameplay. Connect Four becomes an abstracted distribution curve; the jigsaw puzzle is demands superhuman sensitivity to infinitesimal variations in size and shape.

Mr. Potatohead, on the other hand, becomes a sculptural version of the unmistakable toy, a work of Pop Art to the Minimalist mini-sculpture of the Rubik's Cube, which is unsolvable precisely because it is unscramble-able.

Back in the '90s, Ted Hall was a professor of neuroscience at Duke University. As a hobby he built boats out of plywood in his barn, but found cutting the shapes he needed using conventional tools was tedious. Hall then looked into a CNC cutter, but the going rate at the time—$40,000—put him off. Following that he figured out how to build his own CNC machine for far less, and went on to found ShopBot Tools to share his creations with the market.

That was in 1996. Today ShopBot sells a multitude of affordable CNC routers and even a five-axis number, as well as a variety of accessories and production aids. (If you recall from a video we shot at last year's AU, it was ShopBot machinery that allowed the design-build firm Because We Can to launch.) We caught up with Hall at this year's AU, where he was displaying ShopBot's most affordable model (and one you can definitely fit in your shop, no matter how crowded), the ShopBot Desktop. Check it out:

Congratulations to the winners of the Design for (Your) Product Lifetime Student Challenge presented by Autodesk!

Building on Autodesk's improving product lifetime resources on the Sustainability Workshop, in this challenge Core77, Autodesk and iFixit asked students to design a smart product that is smarter environmentally; a product that can be repaired and will stand the test of time, even if some of its components need to be replaced. Sustainability and repairability are important considerations for designers at all career levels. But, by the record number of entries for this challenge, it's apparent that these issues are paramount with young designers as they face the future with increasing needs and decreasing natural resources. Out of the more than 200 entries, judges selected a terrific representation of winners in First, Second and Third place as well as some honorable mentions.

For First Place, judges selected two entries. The Easy Access Computer Monitor designed by Gabriel Nicasio, Praneeth Pulusani and John Zakrzewski from Rochester Institute of Technology and a Repairable Microwave designed by Marshall Jamshidi from Savannah College of Art and Design.

"The Easy Access Computer Monitor offers a cost benefit to users as well as an environmental benefit in terms of reducing the number of whole monitors which are thrown away rather than repaired," said Dan Lockton, design researcher and creator of the Design with Intent Toolkit and a challenge judge. " In increasing users' confidence in repairing their own products, it could also have further benefits as time goes on. I can also imagine that in many workplace IT contexts, being able to replace backlights easily would have cost benefits."

Commenting on the Repairable Microwave, judge, Kyle Wiens, Co-Founder and CEO of ifixit remarked, "This idea makes me say 'This is so obvious, why has no one done this?' That's the hallmark of a good design. They combined it with a technical innovation that could dramatically increase safety of repair and increase reliability. That's what great designers do—solve lifecycle problems in intuitive ways that make people's lives better."

Click for full-sized image!

Second Place went to Rocio Garcia Ramos and Bernat Lozano Rabella from Elisava Escola Superior de Disseny de Barcelona for a Smarter Phone with removable parts, a customizable interior and endless exterior combinations that play with colors for housing, buttons and structure. Judges were impressed with the compelling concept and attention to lifecycle as well as the elegant unfolding structure.

Click for full-sized image!

And, with a solid concept, using simple materials, and considering durability, ease of use and emotional connection, David Ngene from Rhode Island School of Design took home Third Place for his Able Modular Headphones.

Click for full-sized image!

Honorable Mentions (Click for Full-Sized Images after the jump):

For the past ten years Randy Johnson has been Editor-in-Chief of American Woodworker magazine. Johnson, a longtime furniture builder who previously ran his own furniture business, is also a huge fan of CNC; so it's no surprise that as of last week, he came on board with ShopBot Tools as their Director of Education. Johnson was on hand at this year's AU to man his new post.

With his extensive experience in woodworking, furniture building and CNC, there's simply no better man to ask about what a ShopBot can do for a furniture designer. So we did:

Redesigning the toaster is a canonical exercise for fledgling designers, but despite the hundreds of thousands of toaster concepts that are surely generated by industrial design students in bread-eating countries the world over, the humble appliance remains the subject of unparalleled scrutiny. (The irony, of course, is that sliced bread is so often cited as the last 'greatest' thing... or perhaps it has become a platitude precisely because toasters are so irascible.)

That didn't deter Basheer Tome of GeorgiaTech, whose Fall 2012 project "Hue" is, as far as I know, the first toaster that detects the actual color of the toast in order to meet the user's toastiness preferences. Noting that "even the best toasters are inconsistent and unpredictable," Tome set out to solve the problem once and for all, identifying certain universal issues with toasters:

-Unpredictable on First Use: The majority of toasters measure toast based on time yet with zero standards or consistency between brands, models, and toasters, how do you know... the right setting on the first attempt?

-Inconsistent Results Every Time: With dozens of variable factors such as type of bread, climate, and more, time becomes an incalculable measurement and each attempt to toast a slice of bread a gamble requiring users to anxiously hover over their device.

- Filled with Stopgap Features: Top selling toasters include features like "bagel," "frozen," and "lift and look" but all of these simply act as band-aids to cover up the root of the problem: toasters are blind to their contents and their users don't trust them.

Thus, Tome took it upon himself to correct the error of the toaster's ways: where once it was blind, now it can see. "Hue harnesses the power of an array of color sensors via a simple interface in order to intuitively and smartly toast bread to that perfect shade of golden brown."

What you see is what you get. Hue has the ability to see color the way you do so toast is browned to precisely the color you've set regardless of variations in time, climate, or more. Toasting only stops once the sensors hit their mark.

Hue adapts with no extra settings. Because bread only caramelizes once it reaches around 340°F, it doesn't begin browning until it has completely thawed and heated back up and the sugars begin breaking down.

As the founder and principal of SONIC, Klaus Rosburg develops consumer electronics and structural packaging, but he's also been known to combine these two specialties in one-off lamps from readymade and discarded objects. (He's previously crafted a chandelier from coathangers and a pendant lamp from clothespins, among other bespoke objects.)

After collecting packaging seven years' worth of packaging from his wife Cindy's contact lenses, he'd finally amassed enough of them to make his latest work, named after the Latin for jellyfish:

Visiting the current LIGHT show at the Museum of Natural History in NY and you might have seen the jellyfish with fluorescent molecule, the green fluorescent protein, or GFP. Touch these jellies, and they flash green light.

Fascinated by the glow and weightlessness, the Brooklyn-based designer drilled, arranged and connected, disconnected and rearranged hundred of the cases to capture the look and mystery of these sea creatures. 500 rivets and a few blisters later, the chains of cases were transformed into Cnidaria, Creature of Light.