Let's celebrate! This Thursday, Dec. 6th in lovely Portland, Oregon Core77's retail store Hand-Eye Supply is throwing a party to celebrate our creative collaborations during 2012 and mark the arrival of the first edition of our Quarterly Look Book - "Selections for Winter 2012".

Guest bartender Alexia Paulsen will be mixing cocktails from New Deal Distillery, we'll eat tasty treats from Pacific Pie Co. and DJ Dickel will be spinning 78's spanning the first half of the 20th century and leather crafters Red Clouds Collective will set up a leather key chain making station.

Join us as we toast our new publication, our collaborators: Red Clouds Collective, Mary Kate McDevitt, Man vs. InkandPINO, and our customers with tasty beverages and food!

RSVP on Facebook!

Hand-Eye Supply Quarterly Party

Thursday, Dec. 6th

6PM - 9PM PST
Hand-Eye Supply
23 NW 4th Ave
Portland, OR, 97209

We first sawAnirudha Surabhi's "Kranium" bicycle helmet shortly after he presented his graduation project at the Royal College of Art. Two years and £20,000 (courtesy of a James Dyson grant) later, the "Kranium" will finally be available to savvy cyclists in Europe.

Surabhi, who goes by Ani for short, essentially designed the helmet from scratch: "the revolutionary Kranium liner is based on the corrugated structure found in the woodpecker and it is this structure, which provides the right amount of crumple zone to absorb impact energy."

Expanded polystyrene (EPS) helmets are proven to protect your head only 20% of the time. The Kranium liner has proven to absorb 3 times the amount of impact energy during collision. At the same time, it is 15% lighter than Polystyrene helmets. EPS helmets are made from petroleum based products where are the Kranium liner is made from recycled paper. They have been tested at several test labs across the globe, including TUV in Germany and HPE in the UK. They have been developed for mass production and will be available in the market in December 2012.

As Ani explains in the must-see video (below), the project originated in his final year at the Royal College of Art, when he had the misfortune of falling off his bike and cracking the helmet which he was wearing at the time. The rest, as they say, is history:

Having suffered minor concussions, I decided to take this as a design challenge and create the safest helmet on the planet. Looking into nature, the woodpecker is one of the only animal which experiences the same kind of impact on a regular basis. In fact, it strikes the tree ten times a second and closes its eyes every time so that they don't pop out, which means a monumental amount of energy that goes through its head.

Director of Marketing
The Museum of Sex
New York, New York

The Museum of Sex is seeking a Marketing Director, who will play a significant role in our creative team. He/she wants to breed great ideas and take us there. We are growing and committed to building an all-star company. Like all good lovers, our team members are creative, ambitious and passionate. With a structure that is more salon-like than corporate, we seek someone who thrives in a creative, intense, and entrepreneurial setting.

Click for full-sized image. Download the full poster here.

With 13 offices spread across the world, the designers, strategists and technologists that make up the world of frog have a unique global perspective on trends that effect business, culture and innovation. For the second year in a row, frog has leveraged this global footprint by asking 20 of their own people, "to take a look to the future. The near future that is." Compiled for your end-of-year contemplation are reflections on the technology trends that will affect all of us in 2013. These technologies are, "highly feasible, commercially viable, and are bubbling up to the surface of the global zeitgeist."

Interesting insights:
» The Dawn of Robotic Handicraft (and the artisanal handset arrives) - Jonas Damon, Creative Director, New York
» Faces Become Interfaces - Jan Chipchase, ECD of Global Insights, San Francsico
» Data Ecology Becomes More Diverse - Scott Nazarian, Creative Director, Seattle
» The Experience Economy Comes of Age - Kalle Buschmann, Senior Interaction Designer, Munich

You can see the full presentation here.

At Core77, we've shared our own reflections on many of these trends. What are some of the technology trends that you're seeing in your field? What are you most excited to see in 2013?

During the 2012 Design Ethos DO-ference, nearly 100 designers, design students and design experts in social innovation teamed with community members of an economically-depressed area of Savannah through a choreographed sequence of asset-focused workshops. Each workshop group engaged in a participatory design process for three days, with an eye toward generating concrete deliverables and strategies for realistic implementation. Six design experts were invited to participate in the workshops, then to offer their observations on the process: the below essay is Cameron Tonkinwise's contribution.

Take and Give

Every act of creation involves destruction. To build a chair, you must kill a tree, or two.

An ethical designer believes that what he or she has created is worth more than what was therein destroyed. Presumably the chair is more beautiful than the tree, or provides respite to people more important than cute, furry nesting creatures, or at the least, gets used for longer than it took the tree to grow the wood.

A truly responsible designer will realize that it is not enough to merely make a piece of good design and hope that it gets used long enough and well enough to justify the resources consumed to make it. A truly responsible designer will do more to ensure that that happens: marketing the designed chair to communicate its value; providing instructions about use and care and maintenance; perhaps providing repair or return-to-maker services. In this way, whatever destruction was necessary for the creation of such an artifact is more than recompensed by the ongoing valuable services afforded by that artifact.

Econferences

The economy of destruction and creation in relation to conferences has always irked me. Conferences are immaterial events—exchanges of knowledge and networking—but they have huge material footprints. Attendees must emit tons of climate changing gases to get to these events, where they are accommodated and fed and beveraged, and invariably given a pile of crap in never-to-be-used-again conference-specific dysfunctional satchels. Conferences can go green, serving up local produce to delegates, ensuring that all way-finding is on recycled material, etc, but in the end these will only ever amount to tinkering with the vast material destruction required to convene people together.

And yet we all acknowledge that valuable experiences are afforded by conferences—meetings and learnings that seem still impossible in any kind of virtual context no matter how thickly bandwidthed its multimodal media. In this case, the task is not just to minimize the ecoimpact of conferences, but to maximize their value, to make sure that all those carbon miles are more than mitigated by the productivity of the conferencing experience.

Recently there's been a spate of innovations in conferences, blurring the line between conferences, courses, tourism and television: from TED to Dark Mountain. A very interesting innovation was the 2012 Design Ethos Conference hosted by the Savannah College of Art and Design. The principal organizer, Scott Boylston, made the classic design innovator's move: if I am going to get a large number of incredibly interesting designers, design thinkers and design students together, shouldn't all that intellectual capital be used to accomplish something beyond exchange amongst itself? Given that all those human resources will be co-located at one time, couldn't they be thrown at some local problems needing social innovation? Wouldn't that make up for the ecoimpacts of bringing all those people together—not just for the world, in that it would be a better distribution of the value generated from those resources; but also for the participants themselves, who would now not only get from this conference meeting and learning, but also the experience of making, of making contributions to situations of much-need?

So the Design Ethos Conference was also a DO-ference, with participants working on a series of initiatives in the inner city Savannah neighborhood of Waters Avenue. And indeed it was incredibly valuable, to the local community by all reports, and to the conference participants, from what I saw and heard. Apart from what the DO-ference accomplished, the resource destruction involved in the gathering were also accounted for by the exemplar that this innovative way of conferencing set. Having seen how productive a conference can be, all other conferences now seem to me heavily on the ecodebt side of the ledger.

But the DO-ference was no easy undertaking. There are 3 lessons that can be learned about what is in involved in trying to make a Conference on Social Design more valuable than the ecoimpacts involved.

Billed as "the gear we like and how it works," Wired's month-long pop-up exhibition has been a perennial holiday destination in NYC for as long as we've published our own Ultimate Gift Guide. Entitled "What's Inside," the curated 'experience' is not a direct retail proposition—littleBits starter kits are the only thing that can be purchased on site—but it's tightly integrated with their online store, featuring nearly double the amount of products in their gift guide (including most of their 85 wishlist picks this year).

OtterBox's special 'exploded view' display of an iPhone

It also happens to be just up the block from Core HQ this year, and even though lower Broadway can seem like an outdoor shopping mall at times, it's more manageable than Times Square, where they'd set up shop last year. It's well worth a visit if you happen to be in the neighborhood, visiting another noteworthy Pop-Up Shop.

The prominently-displayed Faraday Porteur wasn't available for a test ride when I stopped by, but it's one of the few items that is visible from the street. Given the openness of the front third of the space, I was surprised to find densely packed shelves and display cases upon walking in; so too is the lower level packed with goodies (I'd overlooked several products my first time around; even Store Manager Noah Norman had trouble keeping track of where each and every item was located).

THEME:
Design Santa a New Sleigh

DOORS OPEN:
Thursday, December 6, 2012

DOORS CLOSE:
Friday December 21, 2012

BRIEF:
Santa needs a new sleigh. He's been driving his old jalopy pulled by reign deer. Surely it's time for Santa to get a new ride, and who better than the Core77 Community to bring the initial concepts to the table for discussion.

JURY:
Discussion forum moderators.

CRITERIA:
Designs will be judged purely on subjective opinion of the judge(s). Minimum entry will be 1 8.5" x 11" page of thumbnail sketches, and 1 8.5" x 11" rendering of the final design. The 1HDC is about your rapid visualization skills in conjunction with a fun topic. Good composition, line weight and rapid concept development will weigh heavily in the final design.

HOW TO ENTER:
Participants must execute their design in only one hour, based on an honor system. Remember, you're posting to a pile of peers who know what is possible to be done in an hour. To enter, upload your entries to the designated competition forum.

To discuss the challenge and the entries, visit the 1HDC discussion forum.

PRIZE:
Bragging Rights and front page Core77 blog post recognition.

When building our shopping list for the Ultimate Gift Guide we often confronted the exacting standards of the Studio Snob—a character who likes to keep the world well-arranged and well-known. This set—four pencils made from recycled paper, a small stack of penguin sticky notes, wooden pencil sharpener, gummy eraser and a few facts about the environmental plight of our small tuxedoed friends—is not for the Studio Snob, but rather a young, proto-designer version, a character bent on exploring while staying put.

Eco-Bridge Penguin Stationery
Available at Core77's Hand-Eye Supply
$14.00

Designer Richard Clarkson's brings a highly detail-oriented approach to his consistently well-executed work, whether it's crafty, comfy or concept-y. As the inaugural term of SVA's Products of Design program draws to a close, Clarkson is going out with a bang with "The Cloud," a "semi-immersive lightning experience [that] introduces a new discourse for what a nightlight could be." The gauzy exterior—made from hypoallergenic fiberfill felted to an armature—of the miniature cumulus conceals its internal electronics, including lighting elements and a speaker, which are activated by controls on the Cloud's base.

In his own words:

Advances in physical computing and interaction design hardware over recent years have created a new breed of smartobjects, which are gaining more and more traction in the design world. These smartobjects have the potential to be far more interactive and immersive than ever before. And what is exciting is that it's becoming increasingly easier and cheaper to become a part of this new kind of making, with DIY and hacker community initiatives such as Maker Faire, Instrutactables and numerous others. This project aims to capture the essence of this kind of designing—where ideas and process are shared for others to use and expand upon.

The animated gif can't quite steal the thunder of the video (after the jump)...

King of the Kitchen

Habitat: Kitchen/Laboratory

Plumage: Close-toed shoes, Non-Ironic Apron, Toque Optional

Attributes: Ceramic Knives, Dutch Ovens in Multiple Sizes, Fancy Doo-Dads, an iPad full of Molecular Gastronomy Recipes.

Description: Catering to a different kind of consumer, the King of the Kitchen provides nourishment for the mind, body and soul. This designer extends his craft to the hearth, where prototyping is encouraged, and the right use of materials and strong presentation are the keys to success. After all, everything tastes better when it's served with a side of design.

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).

Hand-Eye Supply enthusiastically announces our very first Quarterly Look Book - "Selections for Winter 2012", Art Directed and Photographed by Christine Taylor and Designed by Lyndsey Lee Denyer, showcasing workwear pieces from Pointer Brand's Special Make line paired with a few select pieces from the Hand-Eye Supply store.

Hand-Eye Supply's look book series will be released four times annually and feature some of our favorite maker personalities from Portland, OR. For our Winter 2012 book, Evan Kinkel of New Deal Distillery kindly offered to model our wares in their facility. New Deal Distillery provides high quality, craft-distilled spirits, inspired by the DIY spirit of Portland. Their artisanal vodkas are made locally in small batches with Bull Run (Portland's Reservoir) water and natural and organic ingredients, sourced locally whenever possible.

To celebrate 100 years of manufacturing durable, high quality workwear in the USA, the L.C. King Manufacturing Company has created the Pointer Brand Special Make Line - unique and small production runs inspired by their customers. Each piece is hand-sewn in Bristol, Tennessee as it has been since 1913.

Since Hand-Eye Supply has opened it's doors we've championed Pointer Brand for its heritage appeal and stalwart character. When we learned they'd be developing a new small run line tastefully tailored to contemporary tastes it was only natural for us to make the Pointer Brand Special Make line the center piece of our shoot.

New Deal Distillery provides high quality, craft-distilled spirits, inspired by the DIY spirit of Portland. All of our artisan vodkas are made locally in small batches with Bull Run water and natural and organic ingredients, sourced locally whenever possible.

If you're in PDX stop by Hand-Eye Supply tonight, Thursday Dec. 6th and party with us to mark the arrival of the first edition of our Hand-Eye Supply Quarterly and celebrate our creative collaborations during 2012. The party will feature delicious food from Pacific Pie Co. and beverages from New Deal Distillery; and complimentary copies of the Quarterly for our guests.

RSVP on Facebook!

Images and text courtesy of Sparse

With just a few days left in the Kickstarter campaign, Colin Owen, Jerome Daksiewicz and Remy Labesque's Sparse bicycle light has readily surpassed its funding goal by 30%. The product certainly merits the support of urban cyclists the world over: the clever anti-theft mechanism and sleek aesthetic mark welcome innovations in the densely-packed bicycle light category, a practical safety device in a stylish package. While we do hope to spread the word about the crowdfunding campaign in this eleventh hour, we were also curious about where they're going from here. Sparse obliged with a short history of the company.

Rage. Questions. Biking.

We sat down two years ago to work on some unspecified "bicycle project." After the requisite round of takeout and beer, we brought out the sketches. The first drawing on the table depicted a samurai sword tucked in a handlebar. The second was some sort of bomb that would release spiders, nerve gas or something even worse, locked and loaded inside a seatpost. We laughed. The designer didn't. He was angry.

Remy had just had his second Brooks saddle stolen. Brooks, for the uninitiated, are nice: real English leather crafted by tweedy elves or Mr. Brooks' great great grandson or something (check the mythology here). More importantly, the leather span of the saddle breaks in to your body—and your body, very sensitive parts of your body, to it. Poor Remy. He had logged the hours and miles and probably no small amount of salve. He had the perfect saddles (for him). Now that effort was for naught. He didn't have the object. The earned comfort was forever gone. Could he even start over after such a tragedy?

Once the initial teasing subsided, the real discussion began. What's the difference between the long weekend rides and our daily grind to and from work and around the city? What parts of that urban commute are really frustrating? What's out there that is just excellent for this urban routine? Why is it good? What objects associated with urban biking grow in value and emotional connection? Why? Why is all of the functional safety stuff so ugly? Why is every high-end bike product optimized for efficiency in racing? Who is it that's riding? What are the opportunities here?

Design Intern (Coalesse)
Steelcase, Inc.
San Francisco, California

Coalesse is seeking a design intern who will focus on interior design. He or she will perform basic design and technical tasks for Coalesse environments worldwide, preferrably using Sketchup to visualize and communicate in 3D. Additionally, the intern will be responsible for keeping the resource library up to date with samples and assisting with vendor relationships.

Interaction designer Ed Lea's visual metaphor for web products made rounds earlier this year, but it's definitely worth checking out if you haven't seen it yet. Thankfully, unlike cereal, digital products persist even after consumption...

Early iterations of LED-based task lamps welded the bulky armature of a spring loaded swing arm with an airy plane of illuminating diodes. Compared to the fragile bulk of an incandescent, the form factor of the arm rarely did the new technology justice.

Consequently when we first saw the loose and spindly form of the Harvey lamp by David Oxley, we were intrigued. The product specifications state that the featherweight arm comes it at just 0.3 kilos. (that's about 10 ounces to a Yank), making the five pound base seem like a ton, though I'm sure he's done the maths on the balance.

More interesting to us is the promise of a novel joint technology allowing full freedom of movement using magnets. Perhaps when supporting that little weight, you no longer need springs. Unfortunately, the schematics didn't show a cross section of the joint, so those details weren't illuminated. At 99 quid ($159), we were happy to Kickstart the project, just to receive a lamp and find out.

One of our favorite kitchen activities is drinking, so when we were selecting items for Core77's Hand-Eye Holidays Gift Guide, finding a proper kitchen beverage container was high on our list. Luckily, we came across these brightly colored and classic tumblers from Falcon Enamelware, who have been in the business of fusing heavy-gauge steel with porcelain enamel since 1920. Their durability and relative affordability has earned them their status as an iconic piece of British kitchenware.

The properties of the enamel make it extremely durable and chemical resistant, so it's perfect for those sorts of beverages that burn the throat a bit on the way down, if you know what I mean. They may chip if dropped but they'll never break, so if your hands get clumsy and you drop them, the only thing that you'll lose is your drink.

Falcon Enamelware Tumblers
Available at Core77's Hand-Eye Supply
$7.50

Over in our forums, our all-volunteer team of moderators are always looking for prolific, community-minded forum posters to join the team to help keep the discussions going. Today we are adding Taylor Welden [Ed. Note: whose work has been featured on Core] to our crew.

Taylor is an experienced Industrial Designer who operates his eponymous design firm in downtown Austin, TX. He's originally from Hershey, PA where he developed a fascination with the manufacturing equipment and processes used at the local Hershey Chocolate Factory where his mother worked for 30+ years. After earning his BFA of Industrial Design at the Savannah College of Art and Design, he founded Taylor Welden Industrial Design, a firm which provides advanced design services towards challenging projects for large corporate clients and start-up entrepreneurs around the world. Since then, he's worked with factories in China, The Philippines, Israel and several across the United States.

Taylor has a passion for the eclectic, such as old Swedish automobiles, competitive facial hair events, exotic rare fowl breeds, handmade Japanese textiles, steel bicycles, and Cobra buckles. He provides his softgoods ID expertise in his roles as Core77 Contributor, Wordsmith, and Gear Sleuth for Carryology, a web publication dedicated to "exploring better ways to carry." Additionally, he's a team member at Huckberry, building new brand partnerships and creating blog content. He's won a few design awards, but hates to boast.

We are honored to have him as a part of the team!

YEAGO: Notable Entry Award for 'Outstanding Project' for Core77's Light Objects Competition; 2006.

Last chance to enter your portfolio and win a scholarship to the iPensole Footwear Academy! Coroflot is teaming up with Pensole Footwear Design Academy to offer five students a unique opportunity to be part of a footwear design masterclass. Learn about color theory, construction, materials, storytelling and biomechanics in a "learn by doing" environment. REGISTER BEFORE DECEMBER 15th!!

This year, PENSOLE has partnered with the Two Ten Footwear Foundation and FN Platform tradeshow at MAGIC to award scholarships to their footwear design class to 210 lucky students. The programs will begin in January 2013 for a 3-week online class and a 4-week masterclass at PENSOLE HQ in Portland, Oregon. Students and schools are encouraged to apply for either program. But most exciting, work from the program will be showcased at the FN Platform footwear tradeshow in Las Vegas, February 19-22, 2013.

Core77 sends a monthly newsletter with our favorite news stories, job listings, Coroflot portfolios and Discussion Forum topics of the Month! Subscribe Today!

This year has been the quickest one in recent memory, and we could hardly believe it when we realized it was already time to compile our annual Ultimate Gift Guide. We've taken a slightly different approach this time around, as the holiday wishlist is organized according to a taxonomy of seven known 'Designer Phenotypes.' 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).

In other news, we're also pleased to announce the winners of the Design for (Your) Product Lifetime student challenge, as well as the opening of the 2013 Core77 Design Awards with a brand new website. Plus, don't miss our latest photo gallery, featuring the very best of Tokyo Design Week 2012.

Flotspotting

Samuel Bernier, Montreal, Canada

Rachel Lopdrup, Orlando, Florida

Luke Jenkins, San Diego, California

Robb Leef, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Samuel Jones, London, United Kingdom

» Check out our full
December Newsletter here

As any graphic designer surely knows, the Internet is home to at least as many bad (or non-) infographics as it is a source for clearly-articulated, visually-compelling ones. This twofold criteria is the subject of Chad Hagen's "Nonsensical Infographics": they're certainly a treat for the eye... but the mind, not so much. Rather, as the title of the series suggests, the vibrant geometries are intended to be metacommentary on the opacity of these purportedly digestible graphics.

The science of infographics is an interesting beast. Infographics' level of success is always based on how much and how well they communicate their data—the classic form follows function. In this series, I reversed these roles—form is king and dictates what the infographic communicates. Welcome to the world of fictional visual information.

In other words, these infographics convey information about infographics themselves: inscrutable though they may be, they are often more beautiful for it. Thus, despite its aesthetic affinity with the work of, say, Andrew Kuo, Hagen's work probably has more in common with Tatiana Plakhova's data visualizations, which express the same sentiment through radically different execution.