Another take on the "desk with a gutter" is the My Writing Desk, from Lithuanian design couple Inesa Malafej and Arunas Sukarevicius. I love the form of this one, with its bent plywood wings, and the more modernist worksurface that's pure form-follows-function—the rectilinear shape accommodates two drawers.

Function follows form, too: Because the corners are negative space, cut out of necessity for the steam-bending, you've got a handy notch to both hang a bag and route cables.

Malafej and Sukarevicious, by the way, run their Design Studio Etc.Etc. out of Copenhagen.

If they're reading this—and I hope they're not because they're too busy trying to get this table into production—I have something to say to the duo: English is presumably a second or third language for you, but are you familiar with the phrase "Shut up and take my money?"

Thanks Jason!

Books Design, Food & Wine
American Express Publishing
New York, New York

Food & Wine magazine is looking for a talented, highly organized and detail-oriented designer to lead the design and production of four annual cookbooks. This is a great opportunity to join an accomplished, passionate staff of designers and editors in producing beautiful Food & Wine-brand books. Candidates for this position must be proactive self starters who can work well both independently and collaboratively. The ideal candidate is enthusiastic about book design and will contribute clever ideas and beautiful typography to their books.

I'm not quite sure that I buy this--I'd like to see some crash test footage or research data--but the American Automobile Association is claiming that the 10-and-2 steering wheel position ought be discarded. Modern technology, they claim, has made this ergonomic staple unnecessary due to power steering, and unsafe due to airbags.

The reason I say I'm not buying it: Given that airbags deploy from the center of the steering wheel, and your hands are on the periphery even at 10-and-2, wouldn't your arms still be blown outwards? How does a hand on the rim of the steering wheel make its way into the trajectory of the airbag?

For his Masters Thesis in Packaging Design at Pratt Institute, Aaron Mickelson created a series of eco-friendly packages that are designed to be consumed with the products they hold such that no waste remains. Per his description of the Disappearing Package:

Every year, we throw away a ton of packaging waste (actually, over 70 million tons). It makes up the single largest percentage of trash in our landfills (beating out industrial waste, electronics, food... everything). Figures released by the EPA indicate this problem is getting worse every year.

As a package designer (and grad student—meaning I know everything and can solve every problem, naturally), I was concerned about where this trend is going. Of course, many talented designers working in the field have made great efforts over the past few years to reduce the amount of packaging that goes onto a product. However, for my Masters Thesis, I asked the question: Can we eliminate that waste entirely?

To that end, Mickelson has come up with five potential solutions that either incorporate water-soluble materials and/or printing directly on products as hypothetical but largely feasible alternatives to superfluous paper and plastic packaging. "I realize each presents its own manufacturing or distribution challenge; however, each also presents opportunities available to package designers right now."

As in Diane Leclair Bisson's Edible Containers, the packaging is generally designed to be consumed with its contents, leaving nary a trace of excess.

Hit the jump to see his solutions for GLAD garbage bags, Twinings teabags and Nivea soap...

This is it, folks—this weekend's your LAST CHANCE to put the finishing touches on your brilliant, useful, touching and stunning Windows Phone app design and submit it to our App to the Future design challenge! Entries must be in and uploaded by 11:59pm EST this Sunday, February 10 to be eligible to win, so don't wait until the last minute. If you're looking for a bit more inspiration, check out the previous Lightning Design Review Sessions or step up your game by watching the Windows Phone Design Bootcamp 201 videos.

Winners will receive a Microsoft Surface and Windows Phone device as well as being featured in "Amp Up Your App" on Channel 9 and getting a direct consultation from the Windows Phone Design team and write-ups on Core77. All finalists will receive a 1-year free subscription to the Dev Center and any finalists and their developers who complete and launch their apps in the Windows Phone Store can also win a Windows Phone.

Our team and jurors are eager to start plowing through the already impressive stack of entries to select 50 finalists and then narrow those down to five winners. The winners and finalists will be announced in early March on Core77 and the App to the Future site. That's also when we'll announce the deadline to have your apps launched in the Windows Phone Store for finalists who want to win the notable Windows Phone prizes, and we'll provide some extra resources to help you make that happen.

So best of luck to all you daring app designers—we can't wait to see your plans for the future!

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

February is usually a quiet month here at Core77 HQ but it just means that we're ramping up for a busy Spring! This month, we have dispatches from Seoul, Korea and CES 2013 in Las Vegas for two different views on what's happening in the world of product design now.

And while you might be enjoying a quiet month at work, take the opportunity to ready your best work for the Core77 Design Awards! With a little over a month to submit, we are looking forward to seeing your work. So don't delay—we are now accepting projects launched anytime between January 1, 2012 through March 31, 2013. Begin preparing your entry today.

The past month was also the occasion for reflecting on Ten Things Every Designer Should Do at Least Once in His or Her Career, as well as the inaugural HarvardxDesign Conference. In case you missed it, our ever-insightful correspondent Dave Seliger's event coverage was a must-read as the first month of 2013 drew to a close.

Flotspotting

Russell Sims, Grosse Ile, Michigan

Veronica De La Rosa, Emeryville, California

Eric Harvey, Seattle, Washington

Elie Ahovi, Chicago, Illinois

Wayne Haag, Sydney, Australia

» Check out our full
February Newsletter here

Here in the American northeast we've got a bit of a storm on, with six to twelve inches of snow projected to fall on Core77 HQ. That sounds like a lot of snow, until you put it in perspective by looking at the Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route, which connects the Japanese municipalities of Tateyama and Omachi.

Based on the description of his latest project, it's safe to assume that Paolo de Giusti is sick of all of the newfangled concept bikes that seem to be all the rage these days. Whether they're design competition entries or simply eye-catching renderings, the Italian art director simply isn't impressed. But beyond hoarding vintage Campy components like your average retrogrouch (not that there's anything wrong with that), he proposes yet another variation of the concept bike:

It is not a folding bike, nor is it an electric- or battery-powered bike. It is not iOS-ready. You can't plug your music/phone/camera into it. This is the XXXVI DG—quite simply, this is a bicycle. Two wheels. Two pedals. One Seat. Inspired by bicycles for bicycle lovers, combining traditional elements and components in an unconventional yet innovative way. The frame takes its shape from a simple desire for asymmetric aesthetics, while at the same time providing a stable cave-like covering for the wheels and preserving the bicycle's ergonomic features.

Its name, of course, refers to the diameter of its wheels: "The 36” wheels are, themselves, blasts from the past, having been commonplace many years ago for their uniquely smooth, relaxed and sturdy rolling, perfect for the everyday cruiser."

Of course, a particularly jaded cycling enthusiast might cite Cannondale's "Lefty" single-bladed fork and similarly experimental asymmetric frames as precedents to de Giusti's XXXVI DG. But in fairness to the designer, the highly unorthodox bicycle merits consideration beyond its overlapping frame and fork: from the undersized chainring—presumably to compensate for the placement of the single chainstay—to the angled line of the top tube, the XXXVI DG would likely make for an unconventional ride... to say nothing of actually building the thing.

See additional zoomable views over on the Coroflot project page for XXXVI DG.

So you've got a 3D printer. What do you do with all of your 1-, 2- and 3.0's that you had to print out before perfecting your desired gewgaw? Those rolls of ABS filament you used to make them are affordable, but not cheap.

Thanks to German programmer and inventor Marcus Thymark, you may soon be able to grind your old projects up and re-extrude them into fresh filament, ready for another go-round.

Thymark's invention is called the FilaMaker, which is topped with a hand-driven mini-grinder that crunches your plastic into bits, which are then melted and extruded by the rest of the machine. Unless more design progress is made, the grinding looks to be a bit of a messy process. (You needn't watch this whole video—it's painfully shaky and nearly ten minutes long—so just scan to get the idea.)

The bad news is the FilaMaker's not ready yet; Thymark's still working on the melter and extruder. But the good news is, he's opted to go open-source on it. You can stay abreast of developments here.

Interior Designer
Steelcase Inc.
Grand Rapids, Michigan

The Steelcase Design team is looking for a talented senior level interior designer who is passionate about furniture, technology and the evolving nature of work is impacting space. Steelcase Design is a highly collaborative, multi-disciplinary studio that is responsible for innovative products, showrooms, and employee work environments.

You may not know his name, but you know his work. John E. Karlin, who passed away in late January, essentially invented the touch-tone keypad. We take that ubiquitous input device for granted—it's on everything from cell phones to alarm systems to microwave ovens—but there was a time when that interface didn't exist, and no one knew what the "correct" design for quickly inputting numbers ought to be.

An industrial psychologist, Karlin was working for Bell Labs (AT&T's R&D department) in the 1940s when he convinced them to start a dedicated human factors department. By 1951 he himself was the director of Human Factors Engineering. In the late 1950s they sought a faster alternative to rotary dialing, and Karlin and his group developed the configuration we know so well today.

During the process they examined different options, of course. Aren't you glad we didn't wind up with this?

You might think Karlin simply took the calculator keypad and placed the smaller numbers up top. Nope—take a look at what calculators looked like at the time:

The American northeast is still digging out from Friday's blizzard. Core77 HQ and the rest of NYC got off relatively easy, with just under a foot of snow. Up in New England, Coroflot HQ was buried in the two-foot range, and Massachusetts got walloped with closer to three.

While our Yankee snow removal techniques are not as involved as Japan's Tateyama-Kurobe Alpine Route, New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority at least has some pretty bad-ass machinery. The MTA's job is to keep the tracks clear, and they use this thing for the outdoor subway lines:

That's a jet-powered snowblower, which sweeps, grinds and launches the snow up to 200 feet away, where it becomes someone else's problem. But for clearing the Metro-North rails, which run proper trains up and out of the city, the MTA uses this beast:

That's one of three jet-powered snow meltersthe MTA's recently tuned up. While they move along the tracks via a conventional diesel motor, it's a powerful turbine engine designed for aircraft that does the melting.

The engines produce exhaust that's 600 degrees Fahrenheit, which virtually vaporizes snow. "If the jets do the job right, all you see is steam coming off the steel," said Peter Hall, Foreman of the Maintenance of Way Equipment Shop in North White Plains. "They produce 2,500 pounds of thrust, which makes them very good at getting under heavy, wet slush, ice and crusty snow."

NB: Product rendering by Su Chew Lee—not an Apple product or concept

This past weekend saw a tantalizing glimmer of Apple news as major news outlets substantiated rumors of new developments regarding an iWatch. Citing reports of new innovations by Corning Glass, hiring trends and anonymous sources from within Apple and Foxconn, The Atlantic Wire notes that "The iWatch [would] compete with existing wearable devices like the Nike Fuel Band or the Pebble smartwatch." Reporting for the New York Times Bits Blog, Nick Bilton's sanguine prognostication concludes with a survey of extant wearable technologies, including Quantified Self accessories as well as Google's Project Glass. "Investors would most likely embrace an iWatch, with some already saying that wearable computing could replace the smartphone over the next decade."

Meanwhile, longtime Apple designer Bruce Tognazzini offers his discursive but interesting two cents on his former employer's foray into wearable technology, predicting that the device has the potential to be as revolutionary as the iPod or iPhone. His account depicts the iWatch as Apple's voice-controlled, NFC-enabled gamechanger, facilitating user authentication and mobile payments. (Tog also speculates about more utopian features such as real-time geolocation feedback based on pressure sensors—"the more sensors, the better.")

His account is certainly worth reading, but I can't help but think that most (if not all) of the "Most Useful Apps" that our esteemed forum members posted in a recent board discussion—an admittedly informal and somewhat biased sample—require a fully-featured device, either in terms of interface or the hardware itself.

Ewan Spence of Forbes.com is also skeptical of such a product, noting that it is nothing more than an update to the sixth generation Nano + third party watchband, as in Scott Wilson's now-iconic TikTok.

Yet the collective uncertainty about the device—measured optimism at best—only underscores the fact that the smartwatch has largely been conceived as an extension or variation of existing devices. Tog, for his part, imagines a host of unforeseen applications and behaviors... anyone else care to venture a guess?

Years ago, while studying ID at Pratt I had the pleasure of taking a sculpture class taught by the master crafstman Toshio Odate. It was in his class that I first used a block plane, and I was all wide-eyed at the gossamer shavings that came out of it.

I was reminded of this as I came across this video from the William Ng Woodworking School in California, where they offer a class where you make your own plane. (The video is not a tutorial but an unnarrated look at what you'd be doing in the class.)

For those on the West Coast, the three-day class will run you $385 plus another $75 for materials.

In an earlier interview we did with Otherlab's Saul Griffith, he discussed the importance of creators fabricating their own tools. While he was referring specifically to modern-day digital fabrication, his point was something that woodworkers have understood for centuries. "Using a finely tuned wooden hand plane you make yourself," reads the hand plane course description, "is probably one of woodworking's ultimate experiences."

When I grew up in the '70s, all of New York City had the same area code; I could call from Queens to Manhattan, or vice versa, without having to dial "212" first. When "718" was finally assigned to the outerboroughs, there was a sort of bizarre pride that people took in having a "212" area code, which we from the outerboroughs of course thought was silly.

Interestingly enough, the number sequence "212" wasn't chosen randomly, but was a direct result of the design of the input device of the time: The rotary dial.

Touch-tone phones may have debuted in the early '60s due to John E. Karlin, but I grew up in a house that used rotary phones all the way into the '80s. It was only after we got our first touch-tone phone that I realized how slow the dial was—numbers with an 9 or 0 in them seemed to take forever, and maybe one out of ten times you'd screw the dialing up and have to start over. But "212" was always easy to dial.

As you can guess, when the North American Numbering Plan of the 1940s went about assigning area codes, "212" was assigned to New York City because it was a center of business, and businesspeople are by definition busy, and "212" is the fastest possible area code to dial; due to the way the switching equipment worked, the first and third digits could not be a "1," and the second digit had to be a "1" or a "0." So "212," at a total of five clicks on the dial, was the fastest.

Of course, after the addition of "718," it was only us in the outerboroughs that enjoyed the speed of "212"—you Manhattanites had to wait for the "7" and "8" to go all the way around the dial. Suckers!

Tristan Stoch of Portland, Oregon-based video production company Cineastas recently sent us his latest work, a profile of shoe design veteran Mike Friton. A former track and field athlete with over 30 years of work at Nike to his name, Friton established himself with some of the earliest performance footwear to come from the Beaverton brand, and he continues to innovate as a freelance designer, renowned for his ultraminimal running shoe designs. (His design philosophy is echoed in his web presence: he has no portfolio to speak of, though a quick search turned up a 2011 review of a shoe for Soft Star, noting that Friton was also the brains behind the original Nike Free.)

Besides designing and crafting shoes—Friton is "responsible for many elements of athletic footwear that people wear today"—he's also picked up weaving and paper sculpting in his effort to "explore the fringes of his field." Check it out:

Prompted by the photo above of yet another type of snow-clearing train, this one in Alaska, I wanted to find video of the various types of snowblowing trains in action. Armed with these monster circular blades--it kind of looks like the tunneling machines we looked at last year—a train like this can clear snow in one pass when the level is manageable, i.e. less than half the height of the train:

But once the snow reaches a certain height and/or density, the snowblowing train has to go at it jackhammer-style:

Industrial Designer
Zero Motorcycles
Scotts Valley, California

Zero Motorcycles is seeking an Industrial Designer to support the Director of Industrial Design in the refinement of current products and the development of future products. He or she will execute ideation & visualization of designs to a high level of craftsmanship using a variety of hands-on and virtual 2D and 3D mediums, as well as tracking general and specific cultural, consumer, and industry trends for use as objective guidance for future designs. The designer will also: Assist in and/or conduct ergonomic studies including the construction and specification of test platforms and test implementation; Collaborate with engineers throughout the design of a variety of motorcycle components; and support the development of graphic elements and accessories

Industrial design isn't the only field suffering from a dearth of women; the engineering sciences have the same problem. So it's interesting to see that Etsy, through concerted effort, has increased the numbers of their female engineering staff more than four times over.

Before you get too excited—First Line Capital's headline of "How Etsy Grew their Number of Female Engineers by Almost 500% in One Year" might skew your expectations—that simply means they went from four to eighteen female engineers. But the effort is still laudable, particularly since few people in charge seem capable (if they're even truly interested) in solving issues of workplace gender inequality, and here we have a concrete example of how to go about it.

In this nearly 20-minute talk, Etsy CTO Kellan Elliott-McCrea discusses specifically how they enacted the increase—and isn't shy about revealing the failure of the initial foray, which led to a female decline.

My favorite point of Elliot-McCrea's is the bit about "more data." Forums are fine for airing feelings or bringing up individual tales, but it is a comprehensive and data-driven structural analysis of the problem, undertaken by many different people working together, that can yield true results.

Also fascinating: His "Zero or 2+" female statistic, which I wish we could hear more about.

What do you think—is it possible for there to be an ID equivalent to the Hacker School? And if so, which firm or organization do you think would be well-placed to enact one?

We are proud of the Internet-i-ness of our Design Awards Program: it's inclusive - 17 Categories, including the newest areas of creative practice; it's personal - entrants are encouraged to present their projects via video; it's international - with jury teams around the globe; and it breaks down communication barriers - results are announced live by the jury teams themselves.

When it came time to get all this across in the form of a printed promotional poster it was the genius of the guys at Zut Alors! to break it apart into the essential vernacular of the Internet—info-nuggets—and then mix in metaphor, discovery and some of those zany/beautiful moments that define the practice of design. The end artifact manages to merge form, subject and function, and does so with panache:

- Supple, its paper is CLASSIC CREST® Text SOLAR WHITE Supple Finish 100lb - from @neenahpaper
- Vivid, only 2 Colors: Black and PANTONE 802 - a NEON green that is irreproducible by today's computer display technologies
- Physical, 24 inches by 36 inches large and hails from Rhode Island

This is the last chance to get it—for free at least :)—and all you need to do is sign yourself up at our awards site. If, in true Internet fashion, you show your love for it/us/design by tweeting the hell out of our design awards program we'll get you a special limited-edition non-folded one!