The furniture pieces you see here all look quite old, but in fact, they're brand new. They're all made by Furniture from the Barn, a Pennsylvania-based outfit that gets their raw material, as their name implies, from no-longer-used barns.

The family-run business works with a local Amish concern that takes down dilapidated 18th-Century barns in the Pennsylvania and Maryland areas. The raw wood is transported back to Furniture From the Barn's workshop, where it's dried over a period of months, cleaned, and turned into rustic furniture pieces. And rather than using commercial finishes, FFTB makes their own paint out of organic materials (pigment, limes, and curdled milk, believe it or not).

Pieces are produced by hand, combining the talents of owner Kelly Lee Kelly, her furniture craftsman father "Pop George" and her master carpenter husband, Michael.

Beyond the satisfaction of recycling otherwise doomed wood and not having to cut down new trees, Furniture From the Barn has a raw material that's of higher quality. "Old-growth pine was harvested in the 1800s, when it was already 150 to 200 years old," Kelly told The Washington Examiner. "It's much harder than today's pine. The boards are wider, and no pesticides or chemical fertilizers were used in those days."

Here's a couple of videos providing a brief look at what they do:

There's next to no information on this thing and the image quality sucks, but I had to write this up because I've never seen a furniture piece like this before. It combines an old-school toolbox with an older design I'd seen for a knock-down sawhorse, to collectively create a "portable field trunk."

It was designed and built by husband-and-wife team Scott and Ene Osteraas-Constable, who collectively go by the moniker Wowhaus. The California-based couple work on projects spanning art, architecture, environmental design and furniture, and all they say is that this piece was "created to support Wowhaus site-specific projects and expeditions."

Have you ever seen an NYC sidewalk trinket vendor in the process of setting up shop, with their crappy folding card tables and barbell-weight tie-downs? Something like this looks like it would be a vast improvement. I love how the leg brackets double as carry-handles, and how the legs can tuck into the bottom when removed. The top presumably has some kind of locking clasp to keep it shut during transport. I'm guessing the tent is to keep inclement weather off of the thing, but for a sidewalk vendor dashing off to use the john, it could also help keep goods safe from casual snatching as long as a fellow vendor was keeping an eye out.

Senior Designer
Nixon
Encinitas, California

The Senior Designer must be highly organized, able to work efficiently on multiple projects in a tight deadline oriented environment and follow through with details of all projects from concept to completion. Reporting to the Studio Manager, this position will be responsible for creating award winning concept driven design for Nixon under the Art Director's creative guidance. A thorough understanding of graphic design, acute sensitivity to typography, strong understanding of contemporary design trends and adherence to Nixon's brand ID standards are paramount to success in this position.

If your place was burning down, what would you grab? I'd leave the most expensive thing I own, my computer, since my data's in the cloud and a laptop can be replaced. Instead I'd go for the old, impossible-to-purchase-today books, and I'd presumably burn to death while frantically trying to carry the stack.

I'd much prefer it if all my books were scanned and living inside a single iPad, but even Google's massive book-scanning project is probably not going to get around to the obscure tomes I have in mind. Google knows that, too. So to fulfill their mission of getting every book on this Earth into digital form, they've pulled a clever move: They've released a detailed design document for how to build a DIY book scanner, hoping to spread scanning tasks out to the masses, with no strings attached (i.e. you needn't then submit your scans back to Google). Presumably their hope is that once scanning becomes widespread, the legal issues will work themselves out later, and the world will by then have a massive library of user-scanned book files to draw on, with sharing specifics TBD.

We've seen DIY book scanning projects before, but they all require manual page-turning--a real time sink. Google's plan features a vacuum-powered page-turning design for a more set-it-and-forget-it scanning experience. (I'm hoping some clever contributor designs something where you can just plug in a Dyson.)

The full design document for Google's "Linear Book Scanner Design" is available as a PDF here. It contains helpful facts, like "Aluminum is not the best material for surfaces, as it leaves a small amount of residue on pages. We suggest stainless steel instead;" has areas where an industrial designer could be of assistance, as in "Many panels shown as separate pieces could instead be made out of a single sheet of metal bent into shape, to avoid seams;" and even fancifully proposes a future version of the machine, that would be super-long to scan many books at once:

Sears Employee: "I'm pretty sure they don't make that...and if they do, we don't sell 'em."

I previously wrote about gunsmithing/hollow-ground screwdriver bits here, and in the two years since, my ever-growing collection has served me well in my machine repair hobby. But a few months ago, as I diversified into larger industrial sewing machines, I began encountering huge screws I had no bits for. (If you have old woodworking machinery, factory machines or similar, you may have encountered the same thing when trying to repair or adjust them.) These screws had heads a half-inch or more in diameter, with slots in odd widths like 0.087"; the largest Brownells bit available is too small by half, in both dimensions.

Googling "Large hollow-ground screwdriver bits" yielded no results. Burning shoe leather didn't pay off either--three local hardware store clerks, two people in the Craftsman section of the local Sears and even a local gunsmith all had no idea where I could find extra-large hollow-ground bits. But finally an old-school mechanic in an online forum turned me on to what I was looking for: They're called "drag link sockets."

A "drag link" is an outdated piece of steering linkage found on utility vehicles like trucks and jeeps. And it's held on with a big-ass machine screw. "Drag link sockets" are therefore just huge hollow-ground bits with a female end that accepts the square drive of a socket wrench, to get the drag links off.

Once I had the appropriate term to Google, I found they're still made and sold by a lot of different manufacturers. Including, of course...Sears Craftsman. Anyways I've titled this post so that the next poor bastard replicating my initial search will find the answer right away.

Artist: lunchbreath
More: View all cartoons

For industries involving physical things, square edges are good. They make furniture parts easier to join, I-beams easier to connect and shipping containers easier to load and stack.

But once you load a shipping container onto a truck and send it down the highway, square becomes bad. Wind resistance doesn't want to let you slice through the air so easily, and makes you pay with crappy fuel economy. Truck manufacturers have therefore taken steps to streamline the front end of their vehicles, adding curvy cowlings and wave-like fairings. The rear of the truck, however, provides more of a design challenge.

A California-based company called ATDynamics has therefore designed the TrailerTail, a box-kite-looking assembly of panels that can be permanently installed on your average shipping container in about an hour. Once in place, the panels passively reduce aerodynamic drag behind the vehicle, increasing fuel efficiency by more than 6% in the process. That's not a trivial figure: Spread across the U.S. big-rig trucking industry, that's a savings of 1.6 billion gallons of diesel per year, not to mention 14 million tons less of CO2 emissions.

In order to hit that target, ATDynamics just has to see widespread uptake. Convincing fleet owners shouldn't be too hard: Each TrailerTail costs $2,200, and pays for itself in fuel savings in under a year. After that it's pure extra profit, and maintenance is minimal to nil.

You're probably wondering if they interfere with loading and unloading, negating their fuel efficiency savings with decreased productivity. They don't, due to their clever origami-like design. Check it out:

What I really wanted for Christmas was a drill press. Being able to drill a hole that's dead-nuts perpendicular to your material is a crucial DIY skill, and one that I can manage most of the time by eyeballing my power drill—but I tend to screw it up when it really counts (i.e. on the last, or most crucial, hole of a project).

In an effort to solve this I wasted my money on the Rockler bushing-based drill guide above, which has way too much slop to be accurate, and the other two get crappy reviews, so I won't be ordering either. But until I can afford the money and space for a drill press, I'll just have to make do.

One of the problems with eyeballing a hand drill is that you can only see the bit from one angle. I just came across this Instructable designed to solve that problem:

Pretty freaking brilliant, I say! Much easier to eyeball if four drill bits are parallel than to guess if just one is crooked. You can probably figure out how to make this on your own, but the full Instructable is here.

If you have yet to settle on a New Year's Resolution, how about this: Eat more pizza in 2013. I mean, let's face it, everyone loves pizza. (Hell, one of my friends even got a pizza tattoo on her arm... to match her friend's pizza tattoo.) Or maybe I'm craving pizza since Turntable Lab's latest newsletter turned up in my inbox, featuring a brand new deluxe reissue of the Fat Boys self-titled 1984 debut album.

Once a sensation of 1980s culture The Fat Boys were early ambassadors of rap music. Buff Love's beatbox set the tone for their hard beats and hilarious lyrics. Their subject matter ran that gamut from over-eating to comic book characters and girls. With their innate sense of humor they rightfully earned the title The Clown Princes of Rap. It's awesome to see The Fat Boys career given its proper due with this more than appropriate pizza box reissue. Includes Pizza Picture disc vinyl housed in its very own Pizza Box, 8-1/2" x 11" 20 page booklet and a download card for bonus material and interviews. Recommended for hip hop heads and avid vinyl collectors.

I've been a fan of pizza for as long as I can remember, but the Fat Boys were a little bit before my time. A history lesson via YouTube:

They sure don't make 'em like they used to.

Jokes aside, I've been interested to see that purchasing new releases on vinyl typically entitles the buyer to an mp3 download of the album so would-be cratediggers can enjoy their record collection on the go. As such, it seems that labels are reviving the longtime industry practice of adding value to physical products through limited-edition packaging. (Conversely, I've also heard that there has been a shift towards making album art more 'scalable,' so it remains legible or at otherwise distinctive at small sizes for display.)

Industrial Designer
DCI / Decor Craft Inc.
Providence, Rhode Island

DCI is looking for an industrial designer with a minimum of two years of professional experience, who is passionate about design and wants to create unique and fun products. In addition to an excellent sense of product design, candidates should have a strong sense of graphic design and must be capable of assisting with a variety of projects, including packaging layout and other graphic design projects. This is a fast-paced, high volume environment that requires the ability to effectively deliver timely, customized design solutions within our house brands and key accounts.

Here we go again: the nCycle is the first of what will hopefully be many new bicycle designs that will validate our measured optimism about electric bicycles in 2013. Designers Skyrill and Marin Myftiu are kicking off the new year with a new approach to bicycle design:

The vast majority of current e-bikes are still 100+ year old designs converted somehow to electric, and you can tell it just by looking at them; to most people they still are almost the same, odd mix of tubes and wires and the extra electric hardware adds up in quite a clumsy way... Our lifestyles and needs have dramatically changed since the late 19th century and these structures today are unnecessarily complicated and [do not offer] the extra functionality required in our digital age.

The result is a novel proposal for a bicycle frame that is constructed from a pair of side panels, which conceal a battery, storage compartment and an optional folding mechanism, as well as integrated safety and security features. Thus, the nCycle is intended to represent an electric conveyance that is "cheaper, sturdier, more flexible, easier to build and maintain."

Aside from cell phones and tablets, we've seen touchscreens integrated into voting machines, vending machines and musical devices. Perceptive Pixel's Jeff Han integrated one into an industrial designer's dream set-up and Adam Benton proposed this desk I'd kill for. But if you look at the physical properties of a proper touchscreen--it's a flat surface that we can use for communications, and the "buttons" disappear when we don't need them—perhaps its true killer app is in restaurants.

At least, that's what Korean electronics company Moneual is hoping, with the rumored forthcoming release of their touchscreen cafe table. With a touchscreen integrated into a table, restaurants could do away with paper menus, instead displaying dish descriptions and photos on demand. Diners would never have to flag a waiter down. And with the NFC technology that Moneual will reportedly integrate into the table, you could pay the bill without having to wait for the check. You'd still need a runner to dole out the chow and a busboy to clean up afterwards, but as a former waiter myself, I'd wholeheartedly vote for an object that made the waiter obsolete.

The rumor mill says Moneual will pull the wraps off of the table at this year's CES, where it just so happens Core77 will be. We'll keep you posted if we come across it.

The Industrial Designers Society of America's annual awards program has been open for exactly a month now, but designers still have over seven weeks to prepare and submit their entries. This marks the 33rd year of the International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA), which celebrate the practice across several categories—products, sustainability, interaction design, packaging, strategy, research and concepts—and "for the fourth year, The Henry Ford in Dearborn, MI, will house the winners in its permanent collection."

A jury of independent design experts will use the following criteria in selecting winning designs:

· Innovation: design, experience, manufacturing
· Benefit to the user: performance, comfort, safety, ease of use, usability, user interface, ergonomics, universal function and access, quality of life, affordability
· Responsibility: benefit to society, environment, culture and economy
· Benefit to the client: profitability, increased sales, brand reputation, employee morale
· Visual appeal and appropriate aesthetics
· Design research category insights: usability, emotional factors, unmet needs, testing rigor and reliability
· Design strategy category: internal factors and methods, strategic value and implementation

Find all of the information at http://IDSA.org/IDEA, including the full rules and list of categories; check out last year's winners here.

When it comes to kitchenware with a sense of humor, Qualy Design is something like Alessi, except they're based in Thailand. Their take on seasoning shakers is something like a spice jar mixed with a snow globe: Clear domes contain whatever spice you load them up with, surrounding a small model of an animal or plant. Invert it and the spice evacuates through a hole in the top.

I do wish that they had a greater variety of plant models more specifically matched to particular spices; loading the cactus model up with mesquite is a no-brainer, but I can't think of a spice evocative of a polar bear. If you've got a MakerBot (or another personal 3D printer of choice), of course, you could probably 3D print your own inserts.

Frumpy Chairs, "Poly" and "Mary-Kate" (left to right)

Toronto born and raised, Jamie Wolfond is currently a senior at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island. We first profiled his Extraterrestrial Seating earlier this November and are excited to share his newest endeavor in seating design. A proponent of big messes, loud noises, and hard work, Wolfond epitomizes that in his latest project, which is no exception.

Frumpy Chairs are one-of-a-kind plastic seating, where the experimental process behind each piece results in a series of totally individual chairs, none alike. With Frumpy Chairs, Wolfond brings together the seemingly disparate worlds of 'hand-crafted' and 'plastic-molded' to create completely unique plastic chairs.

The entire Frumpy Chair Series

The chairs are made from plastic regrind, which are chunks of failed injection-molded parts that would otherwise go to waste. Sourcing the material from factories throughout the country, Wolfond was able to get over 350 pounds of regrind donated for the project.

"Apeman"

Had to LOL when I saw this Mini Cinema for iPhone. We've seen non-powered sound amplifiers for iDevices before, that essentially use seashell properties to magnify the acoustics. But here someone's come up with a rectangular magnifying glass that makes your iPhone look (in theory, anyway) like an iPad.

The manufacturer claims the $68 device "is of exquisite craftwork" and enhances the experience of both watching movies and playing games, though it's not clear how you'd play a touchscreen game with the screen magnifier in place. You can rotate the device to watch movies in landscape view, which we'd imagine would be the preferred method, but of course you'd have to keep your head in a fixed position to enjoy the magnification.

The potential usability flaws aside, this thing did get me wondering: Do you reckon it's possible to work out the viewing angle issues, and create large-screen TVs with smaller sources magnified by a big-ass lens? Or would the manufacturing hassles preclude any cost savings?

Interaction Designer
LUNAR
San Francisco, California

LUNAR is looking for an experienced mid-level Interaction Designer with a passion for conceptual thinking and strong storytelling skills, who loves to motivate and inspire colleagues and clients through user-centered design techniques. He or she will work closely with the User Experience, as well as Engineering and Industrial Design teams, to craft conceptual models and workflows for a wide variety of physical and digital projects, and then carry the project through with delightful and beautiful deliverables.

via American Thinker

From NPR via Mashable: "As many had expected he would, the president did sign the fiscal cliff agreement with an autopen. The bill was back in Washington, D.C., while Obama was in Hawaii on vacation. So, it was signed by an autopen machine that produces a copy of the president's signature." Beltway commentators have questioned the, er, Constitutionality of his vicarious inscription, but Obama's autograph-by-proxy apparently passes muster, obviating the need to send a physical document par avion. The issue first came up back in June 2011, when CBS published a side-by-side comparison of the two signatures (on an earlier bill) for armchair graphologists:

This time around, Mashable has posted a short promo video of the Autopen of Interest.

Legality aside, I was particularly interested to see that the "Signature" in the logo for Automated Signature Technology is in none other than Mistral, which triggered an uncanny allusion to a very different implementation of the same font. As Willem Van Lancker noted in his in amateur review of the film (from a design perspective), the typeface was recently featured in the logo of Nicholas Winding Refn's noirish 2011 thriller Drive.

via Mikie Daniel

Besides anagrams and pizza, I also have a keen interest in digital fabrication and maps. "Below the Boat" is a new company that combines the latter two: besides lakes, the site also offers laser-cut visualizations of bodies of water from archipelagos and bays to shorelines and sounds.

Starting with a bathymetric chart (the underwater equivalent of a topographic map), the contours are laser-cut into sheets of Baltic birch and glued together to create a powerful visual depth. Select layers are hand-colored blue so it's easy to discern land from water, major byways are etched into the land, the whole thing's framed in a custom, solid-wood frame and protected seamlessly with a sheet of durable, ultra-transparent Plexiglas.

The result is stunning. It lifts the surface of the water back like a veil, exposing the often-overlooked, under-explored, awe-inspiring world that lies below. To those familiar with the floor of the ocean or the bed of a lake, it's a beautiful reminder of the deep channels, sharp drop-offs, and mountainous landscapes that are hidden from normal view. To the uninitiated, it's wonderfully eye-opening; as though the world suddenly took on a fourth dimension.

Below the Boat is the brainchild of Robbie and Kara Johnson, a husband-wife duo from Bellingham, WA, who came across one of the charts while traveling in Michigan and set out to bring the digitally-fabricated artwork to the masses via webshop.

As you can see, the results are absolutely amazing—etched in memory, as it were—and I daresay that even the most hydrophobic landlubber can appreciate the beauty of bathymetry in burned in baltic birch by laserbeam.

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.