This is a true story. Descriptions of companies, clients, schools, projects, and designers may be altered and anonymized to protect the innocent.

Editor: Here we arrive at the final chapter of Good Ol' Boy's quest to attain his dream job at [Hot Design Consultancy]! There's a twist we didn't see coming. And if you missed the first, second, third or fourth part of this story, catch up first!

At the beginning of this story, I'd just graduated with a Bachelors in Industrial Design. After getting rejected from Hot Design, the consultancy where I really wanted to work, I'd then spent:

- Two years working a crappy, barely-ID job
- Two years busting my ass in grad school
- Nearly two years working for a Consumer Electronics giant under an Evil Boss—and being severely underpaid, at $35,000 a year

Now, six years after that first mess of an interview, I'd aced my second interview with Hot Design and parlayed a short freelance gig there into a full-time job offer—a Senior Designer position paying $60,000 a year. For most people, to get what you'd been chasing for six years would be good enough. But me, I've got what you call a personality flaw. I can't let some things go; I hate the feeling of people getting over on me.

So I wasn't going to just quietly quit my gig at CE Giant. I wanted my Evil Boss, the guy who'd screwed me with a salary lower than what an undergrad makes, to eat a nice shit sandwich that I would make for him.

Over the next few weeks we will be highlighting award-winning projects and ideas from this year's Core77 Design Awards 2013. We will be featuring these projects by category, so stay tuned for your favorite categories of design! For full details on the project, jury commenting and more information about the awards program, go to Core77DesignAwards.com.

Project Name: Lapka – Personal Environment Monitor
Designers: Lapka Design Team

Lapka is a tiny, beautifully designed personal environment monitor that connects to your phone to measure, collect and analyze the hidden qualities of your surroundings. Lapka's precise sensors respond to the invisible world of particles, ions, molecules and waves. You get results that are specific to where you are. On the street, at the office, inside a child's bedroom, or on an airplane: the Lapka app compares its readings to average guidelines for each individual environment. You can collect snapshots of your comfort throughout the day to create a diary or share with the world around you.

- How did you learn that you had been recognized by the jury?

We received an email from Core77.
.
- What's the latest news or development with your project?

We are going to launch sales for separate units – highly anticipated option by Lapka fans.

- What is one quick anecdote about your project?

Some people want to purchase Lapka PEM only because of design, without any idea what these devices are actually do. Which is a huge achievement, considering scientific purposes of the devices.

- What was an "a-ha" moment from this project?

To see how many people use Lapka everyday – http://map.mylapka.com÷

View the full project here.

Text & photos by Francis Bitonti Studio

See Part 1 here

The second week of Francis Bitonti's New Skins: Computational Design for Fashion workshop saw a week-long charrette at Pratt Institute's Digital Arts and Humanities Research Center. This intensive design/prototyping phase of the three-week course culminated with a presentation to a panel of critics including architect and designer Vito Acconci, mononymic fashion designer Jona from INAISCE, and representatives from MakerBot.

Leading up to the review, the students worked in four teams of three to produce their designs in a digital environment. Each team also produced prototypes of a 3D-printed textile, printed on the MakerBot Replicator 2, which is part and parcel to their proposals for their final projects. "The MakerBot gives the designers immediate feedback between the digital and the physical world," Bitonti noted. "With all the complexity we are able to generate in the digital environment, it's important to have immediate material feedback so that the students can start push the geometry towards cultivating interesting material behaviors."

The workshop is about finding the new aesthetic formal language of this new manufacturing paradigm. It was essential that the students work directly with rapid prototyping equipment. The materials are different they are built different, the students need to be working intelligently with the materials and build procedure. We are working with these materials as end use parts it's not just about replicating a form from the computer, though that is part of it—it's about cultivating new material behaviors.

The makerware software has proven to be extremely valuable in fine tuning the material output. The final design the students produce will be entirely printed on MakerBot 3D printers.

We've seen plenty of examples of feature creep over the years—an inevitable consequence, perhaps, of an increasingly saturated marketplace and a broad lack of differentiation between the majority of options in any given consumer product category. However, a new bag concept might be a rare exception: although EVENaBAG is described as "chameleon on your back," the tried-and-true Swiss Army Knife metaphor is perhaps more appropriate: several auxiliary functions are concealed in the panels of what looks like a run-of-the-mill messenger bag.

Inspired by a work hard/play hard mentality, EVENaBAG is designed to bring simplicity to your unpredictable schedule. How often have you & your friends met up after work for a concert or picnic in the park, an afternoon on the beach or an evening ballgame? What if your bag unfolded into a comfortable chair or a padded mat? How many times have you found yourself sitting on the floor by the only electrical outlet in the airport or train station wishing for some back support? What happens if there is a cancellation and you are stranded for the night? EVENaBAG has you covered as a sleeping mat.

The packable camping chair has been around for a while now, but designers Rocco Kruse and Adam Bauerband (of Berlin and Chicago, respectively) had the insight to integrate the packable fabric seating solution into a messenger bag. The mat is essentially an extension of the chair—something like a more versatile version of the previously-seen Whaletale—while it also serves as a light-duty hanging 'closet.'

wants a Sr. Designer, Women's Sportswear
in Alameda, California

Never Stop Exploring. That's what The North Face inspires and encourages athletes and enthusiasts to do. If you are constantly exploring and pushing the boundaries of your own designs, have a passion for the outdoors and love working in a fast paced environment, this Senior Designer position is for you.

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While Google may have locked down the word "Glass," in the public cognizance, for their hi-tech specs, it is Apple that's pushing the boundaries of the actual material. Years ago glass unexpectedly cropped up in their iPhones; they subsequently erected an improved Fifth Avenue glass cube; with almost no fanfare, they built two gi-normous staircase stringers out of the stuff; and Steve Jobs, shortly before his premature passing, indicated that they've "learned how to 'do' large sheets of curved glass through designing various Apple Stores around the world."

The latest in Apple's love affair with glass comes to us from Patently Apple, who uncovered an Apple patent application published last week by the EPO. It's interesting because this "fused glass process for device housings" appears to be applicable across a broad range of products:

From Canon's Mixed Reality System to Microsoft's see-through 3D display to Google Glass, the world's biggest technology companies are getting good at tricking our eyes into seeing things that aren't really there. But the missing piece in the feedback puzzle has always been the sense of touch. Videogame controllers can vibrate to simulate gunfire and racing car engines, but they require you to be physically grasping the devices.

Now, however, the folks Disney Research have created a way for those tingly little nerve endings on your skin to receive feedback. And they've done it by sculpting air.

This new haptic technology is called Aireal, and through it the gamers that it's initially aimed at can feel virtual objects, experience the sensation of touching various textures, or get kinetic feedback. All without any need to wear gloves, vests or suits. Puffs of air can be controlled in terms of varying strength and speed. So it will be capable of creating a sensation as gentle as a butterfly's wings or as strong as a baseball caught in a glove.

So how the heck does this work? The technology creates a vortex, which is a tightly held column of moving air that can travel relatively far and keep its shape and speed. (A tornado is a type of vortex.) Vortices can travel much farther than regular jets of air. In fact vortices can travel nearly five feet before accuracy drops below 80 percent. But when this traveling spinning ring of air touches something, like a person's skin, the low-pressure within the vortex collapses and this produces a force the user can feel.

Next question: How can this "force" provide haptic feedback that is perceived by the user as three-dimensional?

Aireal uses a flexible nozzle secured to a gimbal (a gimbal is a structure that allows for something to rotate in all directions on a single axis.) A 3D depth camera tracks the user and using data from various sensors this nozzle can send a vortex of air to precise locations anywhere within a three-dimensional space. Place multiple nozzles in multiple locations, and you've got your dimensional bases covered.

Model Chair

The opportunity to be surrounded by young and bright designers is never a great as in the midst of design school. The unfortunate downside is that being educated among a wealth of talent may lead to homogenous approaches to design through traditional university education. The RISD Furniture Department undergraduate class appears to have avoided that pitfall, producing some very interesting (and diverse) young designers in 2013. The work runs the gamut from the elegant compound curvatures of Laura Kishimoto's woodworking to the Playful Pop of Jamie Wolfond's approach to design for manufacturing.

So to does their fellow classmate Benjamin Kicic offer yet another approach with a selection of furniture objects that seem to only be described as politely subversive. Paying both homage to centuries of furniture design history with a dash of dry humor about the future of manufacturing, Kicic strikes a chord dealing with old forms and new materials. Oftentimes, projects that attempt to bridge the (expansive) gap between traditional making and the age of digital reproduction can fall into the 'lukewarm novelty' category, but Kicic's work makes the jump successfully. The careful blending of what should be strongly opposed design elements open up a mature conversation about the canon of design history and uncertainty of design future.

Model Chair Mock-up without Bronze Joinery

Kicic's Model Chair, in particular, was devised as an exercise in departure from the traditional approach to furniture making. Although object design is often heavy on hands-off planning and forever married to craft, Kicic inverted the process, embracing an ad-hoc approach. The chair attempts to celebrate temporary joinery (composed here of hot glue) by making it permanent through bronze casting. This dedication to diverting the 'usual' approach to construction or material is a thread that runs through much of Kicic's work, culminating recently completed BFA thesis.

Initial Joint created with Hot Glue and later cast in white bronze

With furniture, an object's value can often be determined by the way the parts are connected and how much craft and time goes into these connections. With this chair, the form was chiefly dictated by a process largely removed from craft and much more gestural. Preciousness and joint strength was returned through casting the hot glue in white bronze. My goal [with the Model Chair] was to create something that was both calculated and gestural, that played with a new way of working and thinking, a structurally sound object created with a quick and messy gesture.

Join us this Friday from 6pm - 9pm as we kick off Hand-Eye Supply's Los Angeles adventure: The Pop-Up Institute for Craft & Ingenuity! Get inky with Karis Schroeder and Sarah Wilkinson of Tabletop Made as they do live letterpress printing and peddle their lovely print work. DJ Neil Schield from Origami Vinyl will be providing tunes and Pabst Blue Ribbon will be providing social lubricants.

Friday, August. 16th
6PM - 9PM PST
Hand-Eye Supply Pop-Up Institute for Craft & Ingenuity at Space 15 Twenty
1520 North Cahuenga Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90028

Check out the schedule of events for The Pop-Up Institute for Craft & Ingenuity! Events include: Designer Open Mic Night, Platonic Speed Dating, Architect Pin-Up, Felting and Wood Workshops, Multiple Screenings + Two Parties, Two DJs and Three Live Bands.

This Wood Species series of entries comes to us from guest writer Rob Wilkey, an Atlanta-based woodworker and industrial designer whose expertise is in small home goods, furniture, and large installations.

Over the next few articles, we'll be analyzing a number of common North American wood species. This week's featured species:

Many species of walnut exist throughout the world, but the most common species in North America is Black Walnut. The tree grows abundantly across the continent, but doesn't yield as much wood as other larger species, such as oak and maple. Black Walnut's favorable working characteristics and rich color make it one of the most valued domestic lumbers. The heartwood of the tree ranges from dark tan to a deep chocolate brown, sometimes with streaks of purple and green hues. The sapwood is a very pale yellow, and can add a nice touch of contrast when incorporated in a project.

Black Walnut is semi-ring porous, with medium-sized pores throughout and larger pores at the edge of its growth rings. The wood has a low level of shrinkage when drying, and suffers very little seasonal movement. At 1000lbf Janka, the wood isn't exceptionally hard, but can stand up to a fair amount of abuse. Walnut is straight-grained and remarkably easy to work with in almost every application. The wood cuts and sands evenly, finishes nicely, glues well, and can be steam-bent with stable and predictable results.

Franklin had yet to bust out the iconic six-pack carrier when we snapped this pic while he was setting up his display at the Oregon Manifest...

Speaking of Walnut, filmmaker Tristan Stoch of Cineastas recently sent us a quick note, correctly conjecturing that we "might be interested in this latest video." After all, we were all ears when we first came across Geoffrey Franklin's story back in March 2011, and we've seen a couple newproducts from him since then. (In fact, we actually have a few of the 4-pack beer carrying cases left from our last gift guide.) As with Mike Friton, the subject of the last Cineastas video portrait we posted, he's based in Portland, Oregon, where he parlayed his interest in accessories for bicycle commuting into a full-fledged business. Walnut Studiolo's collection has organically expanded to a dozen and a half handcrafted wood-and-leather offerings and are sold in stores across the globe. Here's more on the man behind the goods:

We're loving these gorgeous, rotated-reality window displays designed by Coroflotter Marlene Mazieres. The Paris-based Mazieres, formerly a designer of visual merchandising at Christian Dior, whipped these windows up for her new employer, men's luxury brand Berluti as part of their display at Harrods.

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Why wouldn't you apply to be their newest UX Engineer? Craftsy believes in providing the best education. They believe in handmade. They also believe in you. Apply Now

Text & photos by Lance Gordon Rake / Semester

For the last two years, I've been working with John Bielenberg and HERObike, an initiative in Greensboro, Alabama, that is creating economic opportunity in the heart of the rural South by harvesting local bamboo to manufacture bicycles.

John was the reason I came to Greensboro in the first place: He had been helping HERObike produce a bamboo bicycle, taking advantage of an incredible local resource. They started making bamboo bikes using pans and jigs from the Bamboo Bike Studio. They still offer workshops where people can come to Greensboro and build their own bamboo bike in a weekend. It's a great service, but John and I were both convinced that we could design a better bamboo bike. The resulting Semester bike is unique and represents a leap forward in bamboo and bicycle frame design.

As you can see, this is not your typical "Gilligan's Island" bamboo bike! The design instead takes inspiration from the bamboo fly rod, using hexagonal composite bamboo and carbon fiber tubes along with steel lugs and stays. The resulting bike gains lateral stiffness from the steel rear triangle, but vertical vibration dampening from the composite tubes. The resulting ride is relaxed yet responsive—perfect for the city and makes a great everyday bike.

Over the next few weeks we will be highlighting award-winning projects and ideas from this year's Core77 Design Awards 2013. We will be featuring these projects by category, so stay tuned for your favorite categories of design! For full details on the project, jury commenting and more information about the awards program, go to Core77DesignAwards.com.

Project Name: FiftyThree, Inc.
Designers: FiftyThree, Inc. Design Team

Paper is the simplest and most beautiful way to create on the iPad. It allows you to express your ideas as sketches, diagrams, illustrations, notes or drawings and instantly share them across the web. Ideas begin on Paper. Our lives have become driven more and more by empty patterns of consumption. Yet we all know our most rewarding moments are those we create for ourselves. It's our calling to invent, discover, and do our best to leave this place a little better than when we arrived. We have an innate need for creativity.

- How did you learn that you had been recognized by the jury?

We heard via email.

- What's the latest news or development with your project?

We're re-envisioning the most essential creative tools to make them more natural and expressive. It's led us to reimagine how we create new colors and construct our own perceptive-based color space and redefine zoom [A Closer Look at Zoom.] so that you never lose sight of the bigger picture. All of this just works because of the design thought and engineering rigor that we put into what we do.

- What is one quick anecdote about your project?

Many of the cover letters and fan mail we receive is actually written and draw in Paper.

- What was an "a-ha" moment from this project?

The first day that I was confident leaving my moleskine at home and only using Paper was the moment we knew we'd built something great.

As we recently saw, Ford has been experimenting with ways for drivers to use real-time vehicle information. Now competitor Chevrolet is also throwing their hat into this ring with a new, configurable dashboard display in the 2014 Corvette Stingray.

For the Fast & Furious set, the Stingray's dash can display acceleration and lap timers, as well as surprisingly techie stuff like a "friction bubble" displaying cornering force and a gauge showing you how hot the tires are. (Hot tires have better grip, which is why you see F1 drivers violently zigzagging on their way to the starting line; they're trying to get some heat on.)

For drivers in less of a rush, the dash can be set to display more practical information like fuel economy, what the stereo's playing or navigational details. I think the latter one in particular is a good move, as having route guidance graphics front and center behind the steering wheel is a lot better than having to shift your gaze to the center of the entire dashboard.

There are 69 different pieces of information the system can display, divided into three main themes: Tour, aimed at commuters and long-distance driving; Sport, which provides a pared-down, classic-looking radial tachometer; and Track, which gives you the hockey-stick tach, shift lights and an enlarged gear indicator. "Each of these three themes," says Jason Stewart, General Motors interaction designer, "can also be configured so that drivers can personalize their experience in the Stingray."

Here's a video look at the system:

Over the years, Washington-based homebuilder and designer Ron Paulk has created a number of tool trailers for himself. He put all of that expertise and experience into his latest Mobile Woodshop, neatly contained—and fully functional—inside of a 1,000-cubic-foot box truck that he can drive right up to the jobsite. We posted a link to his video tour of the truck shortly after it was finished last year, and this year we're going one better: We're interviewing Paulk himself on how he designed and built it.

Here in Part 1, Ron discusses his mobile tool storage needs, the concept behind the truck, and where the designwork by necessity must start:

As a small child, I never noticed the slight grade changes in the sidewalk of my neighborhood unless a ball happened to get away from me. But once I got my first skateboard, I then became sharply aware of each incline, crest and decline for blocks around.

Similarly, as a new member of NYC's Citi Bike bikesharing program—and as someone who previously had not ridden a bicycle literally since childhood—I now see the city in a completely different way. To run an errand ten blocks away is pleasurable to do on a bike, but requires some planning and forethought; one-way streets, a car-and-truck culture, taxi fares swinging doors open and a marked dearth of bike lanes make it impossible to travel smoothly and in a straight line.

Why are cities like New York so bike-unfriendly, and what can design do to remedy this? In the following TED Talk, urban mobility expert and bicycle infrastructure specialist Mikael Colville-Andersen, the CEO of Copenhagenize Design Co., discusses how bike lanes came to be, and what they could become. (One fascinating case in point is the Netherlands, where they are installing weather sensors on bicycle traffic lights at intersections; in rainy, snowy or cold weather, the lights are then automatically gamed to give cyclists priority, so they can get out of the foul weather quicker.)

But what does it all mean?

Science has finally proven what we've suspected all along: that you, loyal reader, might just be a highly influential thought leader. According to a recently published paper [PDF] called "Coolhunting for the World's Thought Leaders," PI Karin Frick and her Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute colleague Detlef Guertler worked with MIT's Peter Gloor to determine "the thought leaders shaping current discourse on the future of business and society" based on the publications in which they're cited.

Every year, numerous lists are published about the world's largest companies, the most promising startups, the strongest consumer brands, the richest individuals, the most successful sports stars, the top chefs and the most important trends in technology. Unlike these lists of business or technology leaders and trends, the most important thought leaders and trends shaping our society have not been subjected so far to any truly systematic analysis and regular publication...

A thinker gains influence only if his or her ideas attract attention, are taken on board by others and are then discussed in depth. This not only means discussions held within an inner circle or research group but also the wider, subsequent debate with a broader public, which also includes laypeople. Today, the most important marketplace for new ideas is the Internet, where they are first presented, disseminated and most vigorously debated. If we want to gauge the actual influence thinkers possess, we therefore need to assess their status on the net and the intensity of debate in the virtual infosphere about these people and their ideas.

Lo and behold, Core77 comes in at a solid number 11, and considering that HuffPo swept the podium, we're technically in the top ten. As for the methodology, MIT Technology Review offers a nice summary of the criteria for your—and, by extension, our—quantitatively-averred influence:

Frick and co do this by starting with a hand-picked list of 100 thinkers in the fields of philosophy, sociology, economics and the hard sciences. Frick and co cross-check this list by asking 50 thought leaders to name their most important influences, a process that throws up essentially the same people.

Next, Frick and co then assume that a person is influential if their ideas are discussed on important blogs. So they put each thinker's name into a search engine and collect a list of all the most influential blogs mentioning that person.

The final step is to plug the URL of each of these blogs into the search engine to find other blogs that link back.

The most influential thinkers are those that are linked back to by other influential blogs. In other words this is a pagerank-type listing in which a thinker is deemed influential if he or she influences other influential thinkers.

wants a Director of UI Online Design
in Los Angeles, California

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As the Director of UI Online Design, you'll create world class designs in a fast paced environment and show the world just how passionate you are about creating exceptional online, entertainment experiences.

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