wants a UI Designer
in San Francisco, CA

Scribd, the world's largest online library, needs you to bring your passion for features, functionality, and pixel-perfect creations to their team as their new UI Designer.

In this role, you'll work closely with their Lead Visual Designer to create new web and mobile products, as well as improve existing ones. You'll thrive in their collaboration based environment, see your influence materialize across all products in their flat organizational structure, and enjoy some very nice perks... such as playing with go-karts and quadricopters after chowing free catered meals from local restaurants.

Sounds pretty sweet, right? Click through below to find out more.

Apply Now

I understand that robots and drones are going to play a big role in our future lives, but why are the more advanced ones always so creepy?

A Swiss outfit known as the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems, or LIS, has created a drone that can map and navigate unknown spaces. In theory, this could be quite useful for, say, taking stock of the interior of a collapsed structure. The AirBurr, as it's called, flies around the space crashing into things, like a fly or mosquito, and then uses those collisions to mark where the obstructions are:

(Is it just me, or does that narrator need to clear his throat for the entire video?)

Not to be outdone in the freak factor department, robo-overlords Boston Dynamics have tricked out their BigDog robot so that the thing can now hurl cinderblocks, presumably as a means of expressing rage:

It will get worse before it gets better. Gizmag is reporting that Italian Institute of Technology researchers are toying with the idea of a quadripedal robot kitted out with a pair of arms to provide a measure of manual dexterity. I'm interpreting that to mean they are creating a robot centaur, which I just don't think is a good idea. Let's look at a non-robotic centaur:

Now picture him made out of metal and imbued with powerful emotions, and ask yourself, do you want to fight that thing? Yeah, I didn't think so.

Hit the jump to see more of what's in store for our futures.

Reporting by Colin Murphy

The Massachusetts College of Art and Design and Wentworth Institute of Technology have something no other schools have: two different Industrial Design programs literally across the street from each other. This proximity inspired a unique design competition that would showcase each school's respective talents. 16 Hours to Glory was a design challenge issued to the students of the schools by a panel of outside judges made up of local professionals. Matt Blunt and Mike McDuffee of 11, Dave Fustino of Bose, Michael Miller of Radius and Evan Hutker of The First Years collaborated to create a brief that would both inspire the students and be feasible in a 16 hour timeframe. Hence, "Room to Improve."

The brief was framed around Boston's well known history of being a college town. One thing that all college students have in common is the experience—both good and bad—of living in a dorm room. The brief:

And as college students, one of the things you all have in common is that you've lived in a dorm at one point or another. You know what it's like to share your space with someone you may or may not like. You know the space limitations, the frustrations revolving around storage and food preparation.

You also know that dorm rooms can be fun places, a tiny party in a box. Dorm rooms are your living rooms, your bedrooms, your studios, your kitchens, and where you entertain ourselves.

The challenge you are issued today is based around a 'standard' dorm room. It could be on any college campus in city. What you have been tasked with is making the experience of living in a dorm room better.

More than 35 students from three schools rose to the challenge, spending the entire day Saturday working in small teams researching, brainstorming, designing and finalizing their solution. The music was blaring, the pens were flying, the paper piling deep. Many of the teams ventured out to their respective campuses to conduct in-person interviews or ask students about their dorm room experience. As the hours wore on, the 14 teams buckled down to finish by midnight—a tight deadline, but everyone made it!

Here's an amazing feat of ad-hoc modelmaking and creative resourcefulness: Filmmaker/animator Dustin McLean and his crew decided they'd reproduce the trailer for Iron Man 3, shot-for-shot, preserving visual fidelity without using any special effects. First off, let's look at the original trailer:

Now ask yourself, how would you reproduce some of those scenes—the exploding gallery of suits, the building crashing into the ocean, the underwater footage—using commonly-available goods? Let's look at how McLean and co. pulled it off, entirely in-camera, without dipping into the CG well. (And you have to love how they reproduced the soundtrack.)

It's even more impressive when you view the trailers side by side:

By Jan Chipchase

There are projects.

The ones that shape, mould and refine our methods, allow us to iterate on how we think about what we do—the operational things that help us get stuff done better, faster, smoother.

And then there are those projects.

Those projects shape us and our team, they expand our world view, open minds to new ways of thinking, bring our short existence into sharp focus—they remind us that our time on this planet is too fleeting to devote to things that are no sooner done, than forgotten.

Those projects make us question our beliefs, our career goals, who we work for, who we work with (and who we want to work with), and where we want to devote our energies for the next few years.

It's those projects that rapidly evaporate any tolerance for bullshit.

They remind us of what we've let drift, and provide a rough hand to steer us back on track.

They are the essence of a life well-lived.

Everyone has their own criteria for what makes one of "those projects." For me, they often include heart-in-mouth, will-we-or-won't-we-make-it moments where the cost of failure is absolute, where fear stalks and somewhere along the line hearts leap, and tears are shed. They generate experiences that can't be unlearned and are in no danger of being forgotten.

Do you want to live?

Prove it.

Photo: A short experiment in priming a large group for an otherwise socially unacceptable behaviour, taken in a higher risk environment.

About Jan Chipchase
Jan Chipchase, an executive creative director for global innovation firm frog, is an expert on applying human-centered insights to the design process. He is the author of Hidden in Plain Sight: How to Create Extraordinary Products for Tomorrow's Customers, which will be released on April 16, 2013.

This project was co-funded by the IMTFI and frog.

For those of you with woodburning stoves—I know at least some of you have them, either in your house or heating your shop—the Ecofan is a clever, energy-free way to help circulate the heat. You place the Ecofan on top of your stove, and as the stove heats up, the blades begin to turn, distributing the hot air into the rest of the room. The hotter your stove gets, the faster the blades spin, up to a maximum volumetric flow of 150 cubic feet per minute.

The Canadian manufacturer, Ontario-based Caframo, claims the better circulation means you'll have to burn less wood to keep the place warm. And unlike a conventional blower, the Ecofan is completely silent.

Now for the big quesiton—how the heck does it work? While there are several reviews by North Americans on YouTube, we'll let this British guy explain it to you because Brits generally sound smarter. (Except when they're burning our White House down.)

The Saji Chair - Ash veneer and mild steel

Sitting in the emergency room after sustaining a somewhat minor chisel wound to her forearm, Laura Kishimoto calmly taught those around her to fold origami parabolas. The injury was a small price to pay in fabricating her latest design, Saji Chair, a marvel of geometry not far off from the parabolas she was creating that night.

A senior in the Department of Furniture Design at the Rhode Island School of Design, Kishimoto often looks to geometry for inspiration, an influence that is evident throughout her work. President of the Origami Club in high school, half-Japanese Kishimoto has been toying with the limits of paper to create new forms from a young age.

Close up of Leaf Chair, made from craft paper, epoxy resin, expanding foam, mild steel

Star Weaving, wooden dowels and elastic bands

"Geometry is both a tool and a crutch in my design process," says Kishimoto. "I find it impossible to create an original idea without some foundation to build upon. Geometry is very useful in this respect since it is an established system of rules, easily broken down into logical patterns. Its abundance in the natural world also irretrievably links to our subconscious conception of beauty."

Working in the determined system of mathematics, Kishimoto tries to break that sense of predictability to maintain an element of intrigue. By adapting a more intuitive process, she strives to create unique forms in each piece that departs from the expected to arrive at unparalleled results.

Below are three of her projects, the Yumi Chair, Tessellation Cabinet, and Nautilus.

Expanding on the success of their DrawerStore Cutlery tray, British kitchenware designers Joseph Joseph are venturing into new corners of the kitchen with a new line of drawer organizers previewed at the International Home + Housewares Show to help contain and arrange the miscellany. The expandable organizers fit drawers sizes from 13.5" up to 21".

The DrawerStore Organizer includes stackable modular trays and a variety of differently sized compartments to keep your bits and bobs in order. The DrawerStore Stowaway organizes your kitchen essentials with compartments for grocery bags, rolls of aluminum foil and cling wrap.

Along with the drawer organizers, Joseph Joseph continues expanding their thoughtful, design-driven kitchen line with a number of safety innovations. The Mezzaluna, a traditional chopping utensil for preparing herbs, gets a modern update with pivoting handles that fold into a blade guard for safe storage.

The Duo magnetic cheese knife set's handles clip together securely—protecting both the blades and fingers when stored in the drawer.

In the Foundation year of art school, before we freshmen were allowed to choose specific courses of study like Industrial Design, Graphic Design, Illustration etc., they had us all make pinhole cameras. The point was to teach us not only how to build the cameras, but to respect the deliberateness of the image capturing and image developing process. We spent patient hours in that darkroom, and the memory of watching a grey film sheet in a chemical bath slowwwwwly turn into your image was kind of magical, for lack of a less dorky word. I'm convinced those types of moments drove many to major in Photography.

That magic has largely gone away with the advent of digital photography, and the casual rapidity with which it's produced; every time you Instagram your entree with an iPhone, a fairy dies.

Austrian photographer Kurt Hoerbst is bringing a measure of deliberateness back to his own photography, digital though it may be. "Magic" isn't the right word to describe Hoerbst's approach, as it's more about science. What Hoerbst does is take super-slow body scans with a DSLR rigged up to a track, capturing every minute detail on his human subjects' bodies, which are lying on the floor. He then captures up to 20 scans, compositing them into ultra-detailed representations of that person.

Hoerbst first developed this process in 2005 "to produce high-definition monochrome images of landscape details in which every mote of dust and blade of grass are recognizable," he told Ars Electronica. "Over the course of this project, it occurred to me that it would also be interesting to use this scanning process on human beings as a way to work with human surfaces." In the future he hopes to zero in on particular groups of people to scan—"for instance, scientists or athletes."

For many of you, landing an auto design gig would be the end-all be-all. But imagine having that job, with all of its demands, and still having enough creativity left over to do your own art on the side.

Craig Metros is a Ford designer from Detroit, now transferred to Australia. In his new home base of Melbourne, Metros has rented a garage-studio with five other guys, and in his off hours, creates art (primarly car-based, you can check his pieces out here) and works on machines. Watch the video below and decide which of his lives you envy more.

wants a Freelance Digital Designer
in New York, New York

HBO is looking for a specific type of freelance Digital Designer....

"You know what option+command+C does in InDesign. You silently critique the design of your Metro Card. You don't read without first identifying the font. And you no longer remember how to operate a mouse that isn't shaped like a pen."

If you nodded yes to all those qualifications, and you can produce a high volume of images within a daily production environment and digital workflow while maintaining brand consistency, you're the specific type of freelance Digital Designer they want.

Apply Now

simplehuman, best known for their wastebins and innovative, design-driven kitchen and bathroom accessories, are entering into the beauty category with the tru-lux Sensor Mirror. The free-standing magnification mirror features a full-spectrum LED light ring that mimics sunlight with a color rendering index (CRI) of 90. An embedded sensor at the top of the mirror automatically lights up when you step in front of it. At 5x magnification boasts of a "precise curvature for distortion-free optics," providing great detail while allowing users to see their entire face.

The mirror is adjustable—tilting back fully—with a telescoping stem. The stainless steel base houses a USB port to recharge the mirror and maintain a cordless, clutter-free environment. simplehuman boasts that the mirror can retain a charge for up to a month with normal use.

The same rechargeable USB ports are being applied to their wildly popular sensor pumps—the newest models are stainless steel and feature a hinged cap for refilling liquid soap.

Are the Home button's days numbered?

Apple notoriously applies for tons of patents, very few of which will make it into actual products. This one is interesting from a UI perspective.

You could argue either way, but let's say it's an ergonomic necessity to have an easy-to-locate Home button, as now exists on the iPhone. That button cuts into screen real estate. Is there a way for Apple to get rid of it, growing the screen, while still somehow offering the Home button's functionality?

The answer may lie in a patent Apple has secured involving the measuring of electrical capacitance of the body of a product. As an example, if this were incorporated in an all-screen iPhone, the user could simply squeeze the phone's housing as a means of input. That doesn't mean the body of the phone itself would have to deform; it just means that the phone's body would register the change in capacitance coming from a squeeze, and would turn that into some sort of command. Software would sort out whether the squeeze was purposeful or accidental.

Apple Insider is speculating that the technology mentioned in the patent, which was granted several years ago, may pop up in the forthcoming iWatch.

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

There's just under TWO WEEKS LEFT to enter the Core77 Design Awards! You have until March 15th to ready your best work from the past year and enter into any of our 17 categories honoring design excellence!

We are proud to announce the full line-up of our jury teams heading up this year's Core77 Design Awards program. Hand-picked by our previously-announced Jury Captains, the jury teams hail from New York City, San Francisco, London, Paris, Milan, Cape Town, Mexico City and Shanghai, to name just a few of the judging locations. This year's jurors represent a broad range of expertise, perspective and experience—these 70+ jurors share our commitment to recognizing superlative work.

» Enter your best work today!

In other news, we'd like to congratulate the winners of our second Windows Phone App design competition, App to the Future. We asked designers to change the future by designing an app that would help us create, connect or simply impress our future selves. You answered the call with hundreds of amazing and inspiring submissions from scrapbooks and font managers, trip trackers or convoy road managers, to diaries that don't broadcast your every thought or will even seal them up for the future. Check out the five winners and 50 finalists.

And last but not least, we're pleased to present a few stories that might just inspire you to enter: first up, we recently launched our ongoing series on the History of Braun Design, and we're pleased to have Oliver Grabes, Head of Design at Braun, on board as the Jury Captain for the Consumer Products category this year. Plus, Jan Chipchase, Mark Rolston and Cara Silver of frog present an exclusive series of field notes from their ethnographic research in the developing world.

Flotspotting

Amornwat Osodprasit, Singapore

Adam Fairless, La Jolla, California

Dana Ramler, Vancover, Canada

Paolo De Giusti, Olevano Romano, Italy

Thomas Larsen Røed, Oslo, Norway

» Check out our full
March Newsletter here

While the Oeben Mechanical Desk conceals all of its machinery inside its form, designer Joe Paine's equally beautiful Mechanical Bureau proudly wears its gears on its sleeve. The now-you-see-it, now-you-don't worksurface is operated by a crank attached to gears and a rack and pinion system, inspired by 19th- and 20th-Century farm equipment. Check out how smooth it looks in action:

Jo'burg-based Paine's creation recently made an appearance at Design Indaba, where it was a Finalist for Most Beautiful Object in South Africa 2013.

I can't say we were expecting any major breakthroughs from DCI at the International Home + Housewares Show last weekend, but we're always happy to catch up with founder Roni Kabessa, who was happy to show us a select few of the dozens of new goodies on the occasion of the company's 15th anniversay. As with last year, the Providence, RI-based company exhibited a full gamut of products from practical to playful. Our favorites included the Talk Dock, a riff on reappropriating the traditional telephone receiver as a smartphone accessory. DCI's version has two 1/8” audio jacks for maximum compatibility (there's no built-in dock, but there's a slot for a cable)

The broad range of novelty items for the kitchen and office also includes several beverage-related products—here, Roni walks us through the Talk Dock, as well as the Flavor Infusion Cup, Babushka Tea Infuser, Rock and Brew Tea Infuser, drinKooliez, Sandwich Box and Bright Idea LED Light. Check it out:

Thingking, a Cape Town-based design/build studio was honored this week with the 2013 Most Creative Stand Award at Design Indaba Expo. Their Twitter-activated Rube Goldberg machine served as a backdrop for their minimal objects.

Simple Trestles

Thingking is Lyall Sprong and Marc Nicolson's "designer-maker consultancy." Based in Cape Town's design district of Woodstock, the three-year-old company does a range of client work ranging from interior/exhibition to interactive products (check out their Lipton Vending Machine, "the world's first floating vending machine.) We wrote about Thingking's converted Gypsy Caravan buildout for The Soft Machine, an ice cream truck that debuted at Design Indaba last year.

At this year's Expo, they showed a small range of their design objects—I particularly loved their Pot Plant Stands, freestanding or wall-mounted powdercoated steel frames that are designed to support potted plants as singles or in series. Their nesting plywood Nominal boxes, represent the duo's design ethos. They work with common materials, creating objects that, "are designed by the people that choose them. Undefined, non-precious, archetypal frameworks."

Nominal Boxes

Guest post by Richard Green of Plan

With European car sales in decline, it should come as no surprise that many manufacturers are increasingly focused on growth in China and the US. Couple this with the fact that many brands now opt for CES as a showcase for their latest connected car technologies, and this year's Geneva Motor Show was never going to be the showstopper of old.

To save you the trip, we've pulled together our highlights from the show—a selection of some of the finest design executions and some food for thought on an industry going through some massive changes.

The Crass Italian Super-cars
The mass drooling over this year's pin-ups—the Ferrari LaFerrari and Lamborghini's eccentric Venero—is perhaps an indication of what is wrong with the car industry. Testosterone prevails and with price tags of €1.3m for the LaFerrari and €3.12m for the Venero, it's also clear to see that the global recession is having little impact on high-end luxury purchases—if anything it's spurring on ever more ostentatious forms. Lamborghini no longer even seem concerned with aesthetic coherence, a frenzy of hard facets being 'complemented' by confused looking softer forms. Ferrari's counterpart, although slightly more refined, is plain awkward looking, a common result when attempting to flex F1 credentials too literally on consumer cars.

Mixed Fortunes for British Luxury Brands
Over at Aston Martin, the Rapide seems to have lost a little of it's predecessors' understated elegance. The deeper, more aggressive face gives the car a burly presence that you might not usually associate with the brand, but it is a measure that will surely increase its appeal in China, a key market for the brand if it is to survive in the future. At a cool £250k, Rolls-Royce's Wraith Coupe had what was probably the most sophisticated interior on display. With a nod to modern boating materials, the 'Canadel' wood options are named after the South France cove where company founder Sir Henry Royce and team spent time developing their wares in the 1910s—nice story and nice execution.

Last and perhaps least, Bentley looked every bit a manufacturer in transition while new studio boss Luc Donckerwolke begins his task of reinventing the brand. The new Flying Spur looked unconvincing from many angles, though especially the rear—a duller and more slab-sided take on Maserati's distinctive derrière. It was hard to pinpoint exactly, but it just seemed to be lacking character—something Donckerwolke brought to Lamborghini in spades. Let's hope he can do the same with Bentley moving forward.

A Spanish company called Tecnalia has developed a new type of fabric that can be made to go from soft to hard and back again. Called VarStiff, the material's default state is soft, like regular fabric; but attaching a vacuum to an embedded valve and sucking all of the air out turns the material rigid, "[achieving] hardness equivalent to that of a conventional plastic." To get it soft again, re-introduce air.

Early target applications are medical, with plans to incorporate VarStiff into an easily-applied, easily-removable cast. But the industrial designer in you has got to be wondering: Could the surface be treated with something that could withstand molten plastic, so that we could use it as a mold? I also wonder if it could be used in some kind of clamping capacity in a shop, providing temporary stiffness around hard-to-join, irregularly-shaped parts.

I'd also like to see just how stiff it can be made. If it could be used to create furniture, shipping and moving it would be a lot easier. And imagine a skateboard that you could roll up and toss into a backpack; two trucks connected to a flexible bag takes up a heckuva lot space than an entire deck. Then again, you might have to carry a Dustbuster around to activate the thing.

Anyways here's a video—Spanish language only—providing a teaser look at the stuff:

wants a Product Designer
in Brooklyn, New York

To the folks at Art and Cook, cooking is more than just heating up food: it's an intricate act-art form and craft; a pursuit of the senses and of the intellect-as delicately balanced as the spices in a fine dish. They take this stuff seriously and are looking for a product designer who is innovative enough to expand their brand into a new set of categories.

Are you this innovative product designer?

If so, you'll have a degree in product engineering, be proficient in Adobe Photoshop CS3, Adobe Illustrator CS3, Graphite and SolidWorks 2008, and a strong knowledge of manufacturing materials, such as stainless steel, corrugate, melamine and other plastics consistent with infant and food safety standards.

Apply Now