IDEO just completed 24 hours of prototyping in public from Tokyo to San Francisco. We've effectively pulled a global all-nighter. It's left me with the hollow feeling one has after last call, followed by the rush of adrenaline to press on and watch the sunrise. Paul's initial comments were right. It is terrifying to be vulnerable in such a way. Would we have interesting ideas or fall flat under pressure? Would we come across as curious or as self-important? Would the technology work?

Handwringing be damned. The Global Make-a-Thon turned out to be a delightful exploration of personality and meaning. It affirmed our roots in a graphic identity that celebrates personal, community, and collective expression. It taught us about ourselves, what we value, and what we should do next.

Immediately after the Make-a-Thon, a group of 20 designers* from around the globe convened in San Francisco to discuss the concepts on the "UnThemes." The designs are rendered at every degree of fidelity and run the gamut from advanced to bizarre, from systems to illustrations. As we waded through the ideas together, patterns emerged.

First, we LOVE the squares. Nearly every idea submitted used them and with varied expression. The squares became windows to the world, small frames highlighting details, building blocks, sculptural cubes, stamps, video game sprites, and even architecture. These expressions feel like an inevitable build. Rand designed our first logo as a combinatorial geometric frieze of squares. Bierut refined this into a flexible graphic system of marks, typography, and color. Now through this experiment we are seeing hints of our next major evolution: a living platform that is adaptable, reconfigurable, locally nuanced, and contextually aware.

This is most clear when looking at the designs from each studio. The character of the designers and the context of each culture shine brightly. Look at the paper screens from Tokyo, the personal portraits from Mumbai, the experimentation in Boston, or the symbolism from New York. Each of us feels this identity is ours and that's the beauty of it. It's a simple design that becomes a vessel to fill. Even more interesting, it is expression that invites questions and builds rapport. This was a shift we were seeking from the outset. We want to move from an emphasis on declarative expression to a more inclusive identity, to create a bridge between us and our collaborators.

Okay, does anyone want to guess how artist Bradley Hart made these portraits? Any clue what those pixels are, arranged in that neat hexagonal pattern you've clearly seen before?

Even if you puzzle out that Hart can buy some of the raw materials for his work at the UPS store, you'll probably not guess how he added the color. Hit the jump to see.

A couple months ago, I posted about "Curious Rituals," a research project by a team of designers at the Art Center College of Design, which I discovered on Hyperallergic. In his post, editor Kyle Chayka also drew a connection to another project concerning touchscreen gestures IRL, "Multi-Touch Gestures" by Gabriele Meldaikyte, who is currently working towards her Master's in Product Design at RCA.

Where Richard Clarkson's "Rotary Smartphone" concept incorporated an outdated dialing concept into a contemporary mobile phone, Meldaikyte explores interaction design by effectively inverts this approach to achieve an equally thought-provoking result. The five objects are somehow intuitive and opaque (despite their transparent components) at the same time, transcribing the supposedly 'natural' gestures to mechanical media.

There are five multi-touch gestures forming the language we use between our fingers and iPhone screens. This is the way we communicate, navigate and give commands to our iPhones.

Nowadays, finger gestures like tap / scroll / flick / swipe / pinch are considered to be 'signatures' of the Apple iPhone. I believe that in ten years or so these gestures will completely change. Therefore, my aim is to perpetuate them so they become accessible for future generations.

I have translated this interface language of communication into 3D objects which mimic every multi-touch gesture. My project is an interactive experience, where visitors can play, learn and be part of the exhibition.

Remember Ron Paulk's Mobile Super Workshop? The Washington-based builder crammed a highly functional production shop into the back of a box truck, exhibiting the kind of clever design thinking that only comes from a lifetime of building things.

Paulk, of course, is not alone in his mobile woodworking needs; across the country in Connecticut, Brian P. Way has his own woodshop-on-wheels. Way is the founder of Precision Woodworking LLC, a high-end millwork shop, and he opened his "Lean Truck" to a camera crew at the JLC (Journal of Light Construction) Live exhibit in Providence last weekend.

I'll never tire of seeing how makers solve problems using design. A truck is one of the more fascinating vessels for a shop in that things have to be designed 1.) for easy access and removal, 2.) so that they don't roll around in transit, and 3.) to fit within tight space constraints. Everything from Way's pull-out drill press table, to the extendable material support arms, to the portable-drill-holding rails, to that clever little diamond-plate lip he added so one person could load the table saw, all speak of careful thought and high efficiency.

Paulk and Way are both builders, but too often, I feel, guys like this don't get credit for their design skills. I'd love to see what these two would do if, say, entered in a competition to design one of Manhattan's tiny apartments. The interviewer nails it when he assesses Way's overall scheme and says "Nobody should complain about not having enough room."

Just in time for spring, the previously-announcedMakerhaus has opened its doors to the Seattle maker community. The 10,000 square foot facility for makers offers a comprehensive selection of essential fabricating tools including rapid prototyping equipment such as a CNC Router, 3D Printer and laser cutter, wellstocked wood working and metal shops, industrial sewing machines and the requisite workspaces and computer labs. While the doors opened on January 1st, the official opening party was February 28th, and it was rocking! Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn even stopped by to check out the facility.

The occasion also marked the debut of the Hand-Eye Supply merchandise counter at Makerhaus, a selection of supplies from our Portland store's cornucopia of tools for makers and designers alike.

We spotted Jeff Skierka's "Mixtape Table," as seen on Core77!

Party pics and more...

Fun fact: the term "kick-start" comes from vintage motorcycles, for which the rider had to kick a ratcheting lever in order to start the engine. According to Wikipedia, "Kick start mechanisms were almost universally a part of motorcycle engines before the mid-1970s, and were phased out of production over the next twenty years or so as electric starters became standard equipment." Skip ahead another decade and the term has been revived as a shorthand for crowdfunding.

Of course, Uncharted Play's "Soccket" has more in common with the electric starter than the mechanical one. It has more or less the same specs as a standard soccer ball (and is intended to be used as such), but it also features an internal mechanism to capture the kinetic energy generated by kicking it around.

The SOCCKET is a durable, energy-harnessing soccer ball. Using Uncharted Play's patent pending technology, the pendulum-like mechanism inside the SOCCKET captures the kinetic energy generated during normal play, and stores it in the ball for later use as an off-grid power source. Just 30 minutes of play can power a simple LED lamp for 3 hours.

It's certainly a clever solution for developing countries, a high-low-tech gadget that hits a sweet spot for feasible social impact—the New York-based team has spent over three years working with NGOs to perfect the project—but I can't help but wonder about its efficiency. I know that hub dynamos, for example, require a bit of extra legwork (pun intended) on the part of cyclists, and pedal-powered generators may not be a practical solution (at least for the time being).

This week we're happy to welcome F+W Media back into the Coroflot Design Employment Network. We launched our newest partner job board a few days ago, servicing both the HOW and Print Magazine web sites.

F+W is a great fit for our partner network. Matching the range of creative career opportunities found throughout the Coroflot network with F+W's audience of practicing design professionals makes perfect sense.

This is the first partner job board to benefit from a big technology upgrade on a number of fronts, and we'll be announcing several new partners in the coming weeks.

If you haven't looked for a new job recently, there's no better time to start than right now! Check out the HOW Job Board, and while you're there take a look through some of the other career resources they've got.

wants a Design & New Media Fellow
in Minneapolis, Minnesota

This year marks a shift in the scope of Walker Art Center's long-running Design Fellowship, which has been expanded to include New Media. This means that fellows will have not only a strong background in visual design but experience in interaction design and front-end development as well.

In addition to print projects such as exhibition identities and collateral materials, this year's fellow will be focusing on select projects such as design updates to the Walker website, online publishing initiatives and the institution's first e-publishing project.

Designers from the world over are encouraged to apply to this highly competitive fellowship by the May 5 deadline.

Apply Now

By Michael Williams

I opened the email to read "Congratulations", informing me I had been accepted as one of the students in the first online Pensole class. To say I was thrilled is an understatement—I had known about Pensole for a while and was just itching to get myself into one of the classes. I happily accepted and knew it would be a great opportunity to further my goal of becoming a professional footwear designer.

For the online class—Pensole's first—we were all spread out across the globe, different countries and time zones. During the first meeting, it was interesting to see others just waking up when I was ending my day. Some of them were waking up in the middle of the night just to be in the live meetings. This made it very clear we were all pretty passionate about designing footwear and quickly established camaraderie. We all had to start with a brief of what kind of footwear we wanted to design, but D'Wayne informed us that in order to grow as designers, we had to design out of our "comfort zone."

I figured the best way for me to do that was to design a pair of women's platform heels. Of course, the object wasn't to just design another shoe but to design a shoe that served a purpose. We all had to develop design briefs and really developed who we were designing for and what problems we were solving. Once our briefs were completed, the ideas seemed to flow from everyone's thoughts through our pencils, brought to life in pages of sketches. With guidance from D'Wayne and our fellow classmates, we refined our designs over and over again to end up with one solid direction. Our last class session was great—seeing everyone's final designs rendered really ended the class sessions on a positive vibe.

What promises to be a fascinating discussion about life as an industrial designer is currently taking root on the Core77 Boards. The original poster, presumably a student on the verge of making a crucial decision, started out with a vague (and impossibly broad) query on whether industrial design is a financially lucrative profession. In our members' efforts to answer, the topic is beginning to veer towards the quality of an industrial designer's life.

We would need to identify some parameters in order to ballpark your average ID'er's quality of life. As mentioned before, industrial design is an impossibly broad field, since you can loosely define it as designing anything produced from a factory (and these days, even that is changing). Our readers work everything from plastic widgets to automobiles, appliances to furniture, environments to user interfaces. Some are one-man or -woman studios, others work in consultancies, still others at large corporations.

So what are the commonalities? For one thing, because we often design things that will be produced by machines whose cost far exceeds our own means, we're often at the mercy of others with larger pockets or a firmer hand on the pursestrings. Which is to say, we are not in positions of absolute power, generally speaking. (Kickstarter and low-cost RP are changing this somewhat, but I believe the impact is fractional.)

Secondly, we work in a fairly obscure profession; when a child talks occupations they want to be a firefighter, a doctor or a police officer when they grow up, not the junior designer on staff at a structural package design firm responsible for low-cost cleaning solution bottles targeted at the Latin American market. Because most people don't understand what we do and why it's necessary, there is a degree of skepticism and don't-get-it-ness that the lesser-established among us are used to dealing with, from engineers who don't take our profession seriously to marketers who feel our primary task is to change the CAD model into a color of their choosing. For every famous Behar, Starck and Rashid that have earned the power of sway, there are thousands of us who understand we will continually deal with conflict and opposition. To an industrial designer, it's not a strange sensation to design some cool feature—then instantly start thinking about how you're going to justify and defend it to others involved in the process.

Here's a production methods mystery, albeit one we think will soon be solved by one of you.

On the Discussion Boards, a Core77 reader asked how a hot water bottle is made. A couple of votes came in for slush molding, which is like rotational molding without the spinning; the mold heats up, vulcanizing whatever part of the liquid rubber inside comes into contact with it, and leaving the stuff in the middle, well, slushy. You then pour the slush out and you've got your hollow bottle.

However: How the heck is this threaded insert added?

Then, like the rubber, the plot thickens: Our trusty Board Moderator LMO submitted this photo of that very bottle being produced by B.F. Goodrich in 1939:

Looks like it isn't slush molding at all. And if we zoom in on the photo, we can see the frying-pan-shaped mandrel that forms the negative space of the bottle inside the mold:

Which beg the questions: How the heck does the worker get the mandrel out of there?

Is it actually possible the bottle has that much flex? What about the threaded insert? And most importantly, how did Sean Penn travel back in time to work in a B.F. Goodrich factory?

Due to our deep readership, we know it's just a matter of time before someone with direct experience sounds off on how this is all accomplished (except for the Sean Penn time machine part). In the meantime, you may be wondering—where did this awesome and high-quality image of a 1939 manufacturing facility come from, and are there more like it? Stay tuned.

Last Thursday we debuted our Spring Quarterly 2013 Catalog for Hand-Eye Supply, featuring tools and workwear we've selected for their fine use in Spring landscaping and gardening excursions. Starring Lauren Hall-Behrens, the landscape designer at Lilyvilla Gardens and a series of video gifs, we're excited to get started grooming our greenery. Here are a few highlights from the catalog that are new to us in the store, we thought we'd share them with you.

Using only the best quality stainless and high-carbon steel blanks hot forged by hand, each component of Sheffield made Ernest Wright & Son scissors is individually tempered, hardened and oil quenched. This gives the blade its needed hardness and prepares it for grinding, while the loop or "bow" is left softer for later fine adjustment. The blades are hand-ground and polished, before being assembled by official "putter-togetherers"—a position highly respected within the company for the level of skill and experience required. While Lauren likes to use them for shaping up her shrubbery, they make a brilliant pair of all around scissors, and properly cared for could last a lifetime.

Ernest Wright & Son "General Cutting Out Scissors"
Available at Core77's Hand-Eye Supply - $45.00

Give it a chance and this cool and calculating object could put half of your garden tools out of work. The ultimate dirt-fighter, Hori Hori knives have been employed by savvy gardeners and gatherers for generations. Japanese in origin, Hori Hori is an onomonopia meaning "dig dig", calling on the sound of dirty work getting done.

Nisaku Stainless Steel Hori Hori Knife
Available at Core77's Hand-Eye Supply - $35.00

The otherwise-useless skill I've picked up from working in a photography studio: Untangling and elbow-winding a kinked extension cord. It's a pain in the neck to do, but after each and every shoot I have to go about the room collecting and organizing them.

Which is why this RoboReel Power Cord System is looking good to me. When I first saw it, my kneejerk reaction was "That's ridiculous and bulky, who would want that?" but quickly came to realize how much time I'd save in the studio alone. For those in shop and garage environments it's bound to be even more useful and, with the ceiling mount, out of the way. And I dig the built-in safety features you'll see in the demo vid:

P.S. For those of you using compressor-driven tools, the company is working on an Air Reel variant; for those of you with lawns, their Water Hose Reel can be rigged up for hoses and sprinklers.

A Dallas-based vintage enthusiast named David (no last name available) runs Remarkably Retro, a Tumblr page loaded up with images of vintage products, advertisements and photographs. And it isn't just a reblogging operation: In addition to scouring the web, David painstakingly scans old books and magazines, which is why we find images on his site that we've never seen elsewhere. Remarkably Retro is the source of that fantastic B.F. Goodrich manufacturing photo from 1939, presumably scanned from a Life Magazine or similar from the time period.

In addition to enjoying the interior design, product design and lifestyle photos from the '40s, '50s and '60s, the car designers among you will have a field day with David's curation of old car ads.

Note: The Latin script versions of Chinese names contained in this article are for illustrative purposes only and are not intended to be accurate Pinyin (the official Latin script version of Chinese characters.

It is not a novel observation to say that names, whether they belong to people or to brands, are important, but in China they assume an even greater level of significance than they do in the West. Amazingly, this is sometimes overlooked by companies moving into the Chinese market, sometimes to their cost.

In China, names always mean something descriptive. Take popular girl's name 丽娟 (pronounced Li Juan) for example. Its popularity stems not just from its agreeable sound, but also because it means 'beautiful and gracious.' Brand names are no different: to succeed they must not only sound appealing but provide some kind of suggestion as to what the product or service is offering the consumer.

A foreign company looking to launch their brand in China must overcome several challenges before settling on a suitable name. Insisting on using a Western one implies a lack of respect for the local market as much as it misses the opportunity to communicate something 'on brand' to consumers unfamiliar with the name.

That is quite apart from the fact that anything written in Latin characters will be illegible to many people.

Instead, a name needs to be found that does at least some (but preferably all) of the following:

1.) It can be written using Chinese characters
2.) The chosen characters result in a name that sounds enough like the original as to be convincing
3.) The characters sound pleasing in and of themselves
4.) The characters mean something appropriate to the brand, either an expression of the values of the brand or the performance of the product or service.

I first became aware of these layers of subtlety when I was learning to introduce Priestmangoode in Chinese. The name 'Priestmangoode' is a combination of the family names of two of our directors and, as such, doesn't actually mean anything. We needed a version of our name that could be written in Chinese, and eventually settled on 普睿谷. Pronounced 'Pu Rae Gu,' it sounds enough like our original name to be convincing and can be translated as: 普 - universal, popular; 睿 - wise, astute; 谷 - valley. Whilst this may not immediately appear to be a perfect match for a product and transport design consultancy, each word does reflect a value of our brand. We believe that good design should be universal and available to all. Our experience of designing products and services all over the world over many years means we offer design solutions sensible to their environment. As for the translation of 谷 to valley, this actually means 'a place where treasure can be found.' Not unlike Silicon Valley.

When deciding upon a Chinese brand name, it is possible to take one of several approaches. The simplest of these is to identify a straight phonetic translation that means nothing. Cadillac, for example, are known in China as 凯迪拉克 (Ka Di La Ke), which sounds spot-on, but has no meaning: an approach that would only work for an already well-known brand.

Another solution is to choose a name that means something but bears no relation to the pronunciation of the original name. It would be hard to argue that 佳能 (Jia Neng) has much in common with Canon, or that 路虎 (Lu Hu) really does sound like Land Rover. But they do mean largely brand-appropriate things: 'Good and Capable' for Canon and 'Tiger on the Road' for Land Rover.

However, the strongest examples are those where all four criteria are satisfied, and there is an almost poetic symmetry to some of them. Coca-Cola, for instance, known as 可口可乐 (Ke Kou Ke Le), works on every level by also meaning 'delicious and joyful.' Even with tens of thousands of Chinese characters to choose from, that is either very lucky or very clever.

Subway, the high-street sandwich chain, have also been successful. 赛百味 (pronounced Sai Bai Wei) means 'better than a hundred other tastes.' Whilst off-road vehicle manufacturer Hummer are 悍马 (Han Ma) or 'Tough and Strong Horse.'

wants a Model Maker & Prototyper
in Redmond

Do you love making appearance models and working prototypes? The Surface team at Microsoft is looking for a model maker / prototyper to join their team and help create the next generation of interactive devices for their platforms.

The job calls for someone who can do it all—from traditional methods of casting and finishing to 3D Printing using Pro/E. If you're the kind who prefers the shop to the office then this is your call!

Apply Now

Photo by ElectroSpark

As we saw in Chevy's old-vs.-new crash test, older doesn't always mean safer, depending on the variables in a car crash; but looking at photos like the one above, it's hard to deny that we really used to overbuild things. The A- and B-pillars on that '69 Catalina don't look all that thick, but as you can see, they didn't crumple.

The photo is from ElectroSpark Studios, run by a Florida-based designer who's made it his mission to "[Bring] you photos and ephemera liberated from the attics, garages and closets of America's mid-century vacationers," as he writes. "Most photos are from original Kodachromes for which I have a particular fondness of." His Flickr photoset called Vintage Transportation is a pretty awesome browse—while it's got plenty of cars in it like Remarkably Retro, he's also got trains, planes and boats.

Photos by ElectroSpark

Speaking of planes, the Pontiac photo above reminded me of something else I'd seen:

That there is an astonishing reminder that America used to make ridiculously tough products: During combat in 1943, this B-17 Flying Fortress suffered a mid-air collision with a German Messerschmitt over Tunisia. The left horizontal stabilizer was completely ripped off, and as you can see, the fuselage itself was nearly torn in two. Take a closer look:

The mid-air photo was taken by a U.S. airman in a neighboring plane, who had seen the damaged plane start to go down... and then come back up, and fly level. He probably couldn't believe his eyes. Despite the damage, the pilot flew the plane 300-something miles back to base in Algeria and landed it safely.

Recently, I did a Google search for the Saab Sonnett III to post an image into the Core77 discussion boards (we were discussing V4 engines). On Google's image search, I noticed a really well-done presentation sketch for a modified Sonnett. Intrigued, I clicked to visit the page and found myself on a blog with some 70-odd presentation sketches for cars, hot rods, engines, suspensions, car interiors and other vehicular concepts, all of equally excellent execution.

I immediately wanted to share this treasure trove of design inspiration with everyone I knew, but thought that I'd contact the blog owner first: Jack Ashcraft in Southern California.

After a career in the USAF, Ashcraft owned a Saab-Fiat-Citroën dealer and also raced Saabs and Fiats in hillclimbs and autocrosses in California. That kind of serious automotive addiction led him to study transportation and industrial design at Art Center. After graduating in 1976, he stayed in California and designed aftermarket parts, kit cars and aircraft and consulting for some major auto makers. On the side, Ashcraft continued to stoke his passion for Saabs by restoring them and dealing in parts for vintage Saabs. Today, he's semi-retired, but keeps himself busy with restoration projects, his own Fiat hot rod project and reconditioning distributors and vintage speedometers.

This brings us to his sketch blog. All the time, he had been amassing sketches of all kinds of dream projects. A couple of years ago, one of his sons decided to start scanning the sketchbooks and share them with the Internet leading to this very unique collection.

Recently, I did a Google search for the Saab Sonnett III to post an image into the Core77 discussion boards (we were discussing V4 engines). On Google's image search, I noticed a really well-done presentation sketch for a modified Sonnett. Intrigued, I clicked to visit the page and found myself on a blog with some 70-odd presentation sketches for cars, hot rods, engines, suspensions, car interiors and other vehicular concepts, all of equally excellent execution.

I immediately wanted to share this treasure trove of design inspiration with everyone I knew, but thought that I'd contact the blog owner first: Jack Ashcraft in Southern California.

After a career in the USAF, Ashcraft owned a Saab-Fiat-Citroën dealer and also raced Saabs and Fiats in hillclimbs and autocrosses in California. That kind of serious automotive addiction led him to study transportation and industrial design at Art Center. After graduating in 1976, he stayed in California and designed aftermarket parts, kit cars and aircraft and consulting for some major auto makers. On the side, Ashcraft continued to stoke his passion for Saabs by restoring them and dealing in parts for vintage Saabs. Today, he's semi-retired, but keeps himself busy with restoration projects, his own Fiat hot rod project and reconditioning distributors and vintage speedometers.

This brings us to his sketch blog. All the time, he had been amassing sketches of all kinds of dream projects. A couple of years ago, one of his sons decided to start scanning the sketchbooks and share them with the Internet leading to this very unique collection.

When American manufacturing jobs move overseas, the factory workers and machines don't go with them. Which means there are now a lot of very powerful machines popping up on eBay and Craigslist, for far less than the original owners paid for them. Likewise, the people originally trained to use these machines still walk among us, their heads filled with no-longer-tapped knowledge.

That's why Pennsylvania-based Ken Krout, a one-man manufacturing shop of miniature figurines and structures for gaming enthusiasts, was able to set up an injection molding shop in what looks to be his basement. Krout picked up a used Arburg press built in 1973 for the bargain price of $500—basically the value of the machine to a scrap metal dealer. He then muscled the 2,800-pound beast into his shop with an engine lift and figured out how to hack together enough attendant machinery to injection mold his own parts.

While Krout uses self-made molds milled from aluminum bar stock on a pair of CNC mills, he solicited a little help to get the press running. "I had a guy come out and explain [the functions of the buttons on the press], and I wrote on there with a Sharpie what they do," Krout explains. "There are so many people with knowledge and skills that are out of work because of all the outsourcing... they'd be more than happy to share the knowledge with you."

In this video Krout explains, in pretty good detail, what he needed to get up and running and how he did it all "in about a year." I love this guy's can-do attitude.