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Jeffrey Stephenson's Architectural Art Deco Computer Tower


Think You're Good a Telling the Difference Between a Rendering and a Photo?

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Everything you see above is fake, i.e. a rendering. And they're all for sale. They're images from CG Trader, an online 3D model store where designers can post their virtual models for sale to consumers. The interesting thing about them is their business model: With the traditional ID royalty model you would receive a tiny royalty percentage on say, a chair produced by a major manufacturer, but these guys pay out well over 90% after the math is done. Their pricing model allows the seller to take in 100% of their sale price, then pay a small fee (from $2 to $50, depending on your sale price) to essentially re-stock your model for sale, as if it were finite, physical merchandise going back onto a store shelf.

Whether or not you're looking to buy or sell a 3D model, they've posted a sort of visual quiz to test what a bunch of you pride yourself on: The ability to distinguish a rendering from a photograph. How good do you think you are? Which of the following came out of a camera lens, and which from a mouse?

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Think You're Good at Telling the Difference Between a Rendering and a Photo?

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cg-trader-01.jpg

Everything you see above is fake, i.e. a rendering. And they're all for sale. They're images from CG Trader, an online 3D model store where designers can post their virtual models for sale to consumers. The interesting thing about them is their business model: With the traditional ID royalty model you would receive a tiny royalty percentage on say, a chair produced by a major manufacturer, but these guys pay out well over 90% after the math is done. Their pricing model allows the seller to take in 100% of their sale price, then pay a small fee (from $2 to $50, depending on your sale price) to essentially re-stock your model for sale, as if it were finite, physical merchandise going back onto a store shelf.

Whether or not you're looking to buy or sell a 3D model, they've posted a sort of visual quiz to test what a bunch of you pride yourself on: The ability to distinguish a rendering from a photograph. How good do you think you are? Which of the following came out of a camera lens, and which from a mouse?

cg-trader-02.jpg

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Calling All Kickass Senior UX Designers. Blizzard Wants You on Their Team.

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Work for Blizzard!



wants a Sr. UX Designer
in Irvine, California

Blizzard is looking for a couple of kickass UX designers who are oozing with curiosity but can still fit their heads in the door. If you have the right stuff, you'll be creating and supporting solutions for their gamers mostly for Blizzard.com and Battle.net sites, which are currently in six regions and are supported in a ton of different languages.

This opportunity will favor people who can think globally and have an entrepreneurial spirit. If you have a serious passion for user-centered design, Apply Now.

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Q&A with Industrial Designer Chris Cheung, Executive Host of Autodesk's Upcoming CAVE Conference

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Autodesk's Chris Cheung is one of the key people responsible for bringing you SketchBook Pro, which was pretty much a gamechanger for ID sketching. Now, together with Autodesk's Media & Entertainment manager Shawn Hendriks, he's providing another new experience for designers: The upcoming CAVE Conference, aimed at "artists, designers and storytellers," and boasting speakers like Syd Mead, rendering god Scott Robertson, Pixar Art Director Jay Shuster and Monty Python's John Cleese. Where else are you going to hear people like this speaking at the same event?

We caught up with Chris for a little background on who he is, what he does, and on what you'll find at the CAVE, which is scheduled on the front end of this year's Autodesk University (held every December in Las Vegas).

Core77: What is your work background?
Chris Cheung: I graduated with a degree in Industrial Design and this is how I originally got into software. After graduating, I was really interested in 3D modeling and visualization, so I invested in taking courses to learn Alias. That was a huge pivot in my career that lead me to taking a job with Alias. It was crazy because suddenly I was working in cutting-edge high tech creating design solutions for product, automotive and entertainment professionals. This was actually my first practical experience where it became apparent how significant the overlap is across creative domains, in respect to creativity, technically and emotionally.

What's your official title at Autodesk?
I'm a Product Line Manager, so I am responsible for driving product initiatives for SketchBook Pro and other projects related to digital art tools.

And what are some of the things that you do for your job that aren't obvious from the title?
It's actually a pretty good title, meaning, since I am managing a piece of the business, I can get my grubby little fingers on many aspects of our products. I like to think of a 'product' in a broad sense, so I tend to think a lot about tangential aspects to users' experiences or even things that drive their perception. In this manner, things like communities, collaborating on adjacent projects, and events become important extensions for me.

What was your involvement with SketchBook Pro?
Even though I've only been the actual Product Manager for SketchBook for the last 5 years, I have a deeper history with the drawing tech that pre-dated the introduction of SketchBook in 2000 with the first introduction of the tablet PC. The original technology was created years before and only worked on IRIX workstations. Drawing and sketching digitally has always been an important component, so it was among the things I worked on in tandem with 3D tools. Back in the day, it was a big deal to get a stroke to draw fast enough so that it gave an authentic experience to a traditional designer. It is kind of funny now, especially after getting that same engine working on the iPhone and Android smartphones in 2009. I feel pretty lucky to have been part of these evolutionary milestones in the technology of an activity that I've always loved since being a kid: DRAWING!

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Core77 Design Awards 2013 Honorees: Educational Initiatives

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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.


Professional Notable

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  • Project Name: ThinkLab
  • Designers: KBL Studio / Brandway

Thinklab, unveiled in January 2012, is an institution-level experimental learning environment, kit of structured creative thinking tools, and technology-rich platform for participatory, interdisciplinary and/or community-engaged learning in education. It was created both to host design courses and university-community learning initiatives as well as to serve as a model for future learning spaces in higher education. The lab is currently exploring, using and integrating the following types of media tools: video conferencing; interactive conference table, wall and multi-touch presentation surfaces; mind-mapping and collaborative brainstorming tools; systems modeling software; assessment tools; diagramming, mapping and visual modeling tools; programming and (Kinect) development tools.


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

With regard to our interests in the conflictual aspects of collaboration (see answer to "a-ha" question below), the notifying email came in the midst of one of our most conflictual days ever. Too many collaborations. Too many positions. Not enough Thinklab spaces to go around.

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

Based on the work we have completed with Thinklab, we were invited to conceptualize and design a next-generation architectural design studio at Syracuse University, underwritten by Steve Einhorn, FAIA, CEO of Stardog consulting and founder and former CEO of Einhorn Yaffe Prescott Architects. Phase one of the studio will be opening in September 2013, updating a classic academic design studio into a highly flexible, collaborative, and digitally interactive design environment.

- What is one quick anecdote about your project?

Taking 81mg of aspirin a day helps the heart.

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

Early in the development of Thinklab, in prototyping its first laboratory environment, it became immediately clear to us how profound was the impact of articulating conflict (visually, aurally, or otherwise) as a central part of collaborative work. Individuals come to a collaboration with their own future expectations, personal legacies, and local perspectives.

Aha!

In discovering the significance of this temporal knowledge—the legacies, past projects, history of conversations, evolving conflicts, and changing contributions within a large collaborative conversation—we discovered an important capacity for our archive. The idea of strategically and richly archiving all contributions to a collaboration was born.

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The Return of the Hand-Eye Bandana: Now in an Array of Colors

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The bandana dream team is back! Hand-Eye Supply x Man v. Ink x Mary Kate McDevitt have reissued this ever popular HES classic with a new selection of vibrant colors - Yellow, Green, Black & Celadon. Each bandana is hand-dyed by Fred DiMeglio of Man vs. Ink and then discharge printed with Mary Kate McDevitt's brilliant typographic illustration that adorns the Hand-Eye Supply official cargo bike.

All colors available now from Hand-Eye Supply for $20.

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Wearables for the Modern Nomad by Justin Gargasz

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The natural inclination to escape from the fast pace and constant visual stimulus that is city life is a pretty common response for any human (and particularly any New Yorker). When the skyscrapers and constant car horns get to be too much, why not steal away to a personal oasis? Better yet, carry that oasis with you at all times... in your own jacket. If you do happen to be seeking escape on a moment's notice, the recent design projects of Justin Gargasz will jettison you out into the wild—or at least the nearest park.

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It appears we are destined to be a generation of new-age nomads as a result of technology, constant career changes and unprecedented mobility. Is a constant search for how best to return to nature an inevitable side effect of modern life? Maybe, maybe not... but enough people cringe at the idea of life in the big city that need to escape is a viable design problem.

When we first encountered Gargasz's wearable tent structures in 2009, it was an interesting concept placed somewhere between the blurred realms of fashion, furniture and architecture. At the time, he was fresh out of design school and we were impressed with the Boston-based designer's first 'modern cocoon,' named Vessel. Four years later, Gargasz has spun the project into a full-fledged line of nomadic structures that can just easily be warn on a chilly day in the city as a hiking trip out west. His designs are created not only to shelter the wearer physically but as a play on the need to escape psychologically from a world filled with distractions.

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IDSA International Conference 2013: Sketchnotes from Craighton Berman

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This past weekend was the occasion for the annual IDSA International Conference, the premier professional development and networking event for Industrial Designers practicing in the States... and, as Conference Chair Paul Hatch noted, increasingly from abroad as well. The ever-self-deprecating Founder of Teams Design MC'd the lecture sessions, as noted sketchnote-taker Craighton Berman busily filled several posterboards with his pithy yet expressive doodles. "It's been while since I have been to an industrial design-specific conference," he writes on his blog, "So it was interesting to step back into the industry conversation."

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Friday morning started with Brooklyn-based Ben Hopson—who we'd recommended for gainful employment some years ago—who has established a niche in what he calls "kinetic design," which has traditionally been the domain of engineers (as opposed to designers, who define the formal language but not necessarily the moving parts). Leading with the example of the highly articulated output paper tray of a Canon printer, Hopson demonstrated how a designer might approach the problem precisely by applying his or her sketching skills in three dimensions in order to "make sure they look like how they move and move like how they look."

Origami is certainly a reference point, but the kinetic experiments (which Hopson teaches at Pratt) perhaps better construed as three-dimensional pop-up books. "Today, we are beginning to gesture at our artifacts," he noted. "And they will eventually begin to gesture at us." [Ed note: Hopson has also explored the topic at length in an essay here on Core.]

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Bike Cult Show Builder Profile: Rick Jones of Road Runners Bicycles

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IsaacSchell-RickJones-COMP.jpgPortrait by Isaac Schell / Additional images courtesy of Rick Jones

We've devoted a fair number of pages and pixels to that singular design object known as the bicycle, and whether you're a leisure rider or all-weather commuter, weekend warrior or retrogrouch, there's no denying the functional elegance of the human-powered conveyance. Thus, when Harry Schwartzman reached out to us about lending our support to the inaugural Bike Cult Show, a celebration of the beautiful machine and a local-ish community of individuals dedicated to building them, we were happy to support the cause.

Bike Cult Show: Save the Date· Ezra Caldwell· Johnny Coast· Thomas Callahan· Rick Jones


As a specific manifestation of the burgeoning maker movement, the craft of building a bicycle by hand has seen a resurgence in recent years, in tandem (yeah, yeah) with the increasing popularity of cycling in major metropolitan areas. Although the Brooklyn bicycle builder community is a relatively new phenomenon—Johnny Coast is an elder statesman at a decade in the game—cycling aficionados have long regarded the greater Tri-state Area as a builder hotspot, home to the likes of J.P. Weigle and Richard Sachs, who have a collective 75 years of experience between them.

Indeed, one of Harry Schwartzman's goals in producing the event is to showcase the previous generation of builders—those that Jamie Swan of Northport, Long Island, calls "Keepers of the Flame." We'll have more on the elusive Swan (a cult figure in his own right) shortly, but we can glean some of his story through his young charge Rick Jones, to whom he has passed the proverbial torch and, by his mentor's account, may well surpass his forbear.

Nestled in a quiet corner of the North Shore, Jones' unassuming workspace is tucked in the back of his family-owned bicycle shop. Glen Cove is a short train ride away from New York City but a world apart, and if the Road Runners Bicycles storefront probably doesn't look too different from any other suburban bike shop, it's worth noting that it's been around for some 50 years now. The 33-year-old mechanic and framebuilder shared more in a recent conversation with his mentor and friend.

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Jamie Swan: Ok, we're at Road Runner's bicycles in Glen Cove, New York. We're talking to Rick Jones, proprietor and framebuilder. Rick, how long have you been in the bicycle business?

I was kinda born into it—my family has owned this shop since before I was born; I've [been] spending a lot of time here since I was about eight years old. Since then, I've probably been here every weekend at least—now I'm here every day—it's just been a big part of my life since as far back as I can remember.

I also raced BMX starting when I was nine or ten years old. I took to it, like I wind up taking to a lot of things: full steam ahead, going for it. In a very short amount of time, I went from just riding a BMX bike to racing on a pretty serious level, full national circuit, becoming nationally ranked... I did that for about three or four years, and then I moved away from bicycles for a while.

And your grandfather started the shop?

My grandfather opened the shop in 1964. It was originally a motorcycle shop, but they'd [also] fix bicycles and eventually morphed from being a motorcycle shop to being a bicycle shop. During that time [in the 60's and 70's] when the shop started out, my father raced motocross, to show support for the lines that they were selling.

Do you still fix motorcycles?

Yeah, we still fix all sorts of old motorcycles and stuff. Mostly vintage stuff that we'd started working on, in that era, when they were doing motorcycles. Today, we still do some restoration work on British and German motorcycles; we do a lot of vintage British—Norton, BSA, Triumph—and BMWs.

And I understand that you worked in the automotive industry for a while?

I spent about seven years as an auto mechanic; I started out working on a variety of high-end European cars, and then moving to Mercedes for the last five years, where I was a factory-certified engine builder and diagnostic technician.

But throughout the time when I was working on cars, like I said, I was here any day off I had, helping out. When I left working on automobiles—it's been about 12 years ago now—it's been a full-time six, or seven, or eight days a week kind of thing for me. [Laughs.]

When and why did you decide to get involved in the family business?

It was almost a matter of necessity. I had lost my job fixing cars and I didn't know what I wanted to do. After working on cars for several years, I kind of decided that as much as I actually liked the actual work of working on cars, I just hated working for car dealerships. It was just a miserable experience for me. I weighed about 325 pounds, I smoked about two packs a day... I was at a very low, depressed point in my life. And just out of needing a salary, I came to work here to see where things were gonna fall for me and figure out where I wanted to head.

I immediately bought a bike, started riding again, and started to see this passion get reignited in me, that I had when I was a kid, racing BMX. And I started getting into mountain bike riding again, and I just started getting more and more and more... more deeply involved with bike riding, bike racing. And it was after a short amount of time when I started back up here again, it was just like, 'Ding, this is where I was supposed to be,' and I realized that this is what I'm supposed to be doing. And it's just been like that ever since.

It's certainly not an easy business to be in—I often tell people that 'It's a good thing that I like what I do, because I gotta do it a lot.' [Laughs.] But it's great, I love every aspect of bicycles. I love building custom bicycles. I love being the guy that, you know, sells a four-year-old his first bike—having this kid look at you like you're god, you know, and you see this future 'Brother of the Wheel,' budding right in front of you. It's a really cool thing—it's a fun business to be in. I find it to be very rewarding.

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Objects I Use: Detachable Key Rings

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It seems so hopelessly primitive to me that we all carry a pocketful of little pieces of metal to gain entry to our homes and workplaces. Side gigs that I've had required me to carry as many as fifteen keys including my own, and I hate the pocket bulk. So I'll happily embrace smartphone-based digital locks when they become widespread (and when my landlord allows them).

In the meantime, one of the most often-used and well-worn objects I own is the multi-keyholder you see above. I purchased it in 1998 in Japan for 2,000 yen (something like twenty bucks back then), and the manufacturer's mark says "Lexon."

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Design & Operation

The design is brilliant. With your thumb you slide the little nub on the exterior, which is attached to a small spring bolt. That allows the spherical part of the little barbell attached to the individual key rings to slide out of the slit in the perimeter.

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While releasing the bolt is easy when you want to do it, in 15 years of daily carrying it's never once accidentally opened.

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Join Bloomberg as an Interactive Graphic Journalist in New York, New York

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Work for Bloomberg!




wants an Interactive Graphic Journalist
in New York, New York

Bloomberg is seeking a talented and motivated interactive graphic storyteller to create data-rich interactive news infographics for Bloomberg News, Bloomberg.com, and Bloomberg View. The role participates in all aspects of the creative process, from collaborating with reporters to identify strong graphic projects and sourcing & analyzing large data sets, to storyboarding ideas, writing copy and coding the experience.

Bloomberg graphic journalists have strong research and reporting skills, so experience working in a newsroom under deadline is critical. Strong candidates will be as comfortable creating data-driven infographics for a breaking news story as they are crafting multimedia explainers for an investigative piece.

Do you have what it takes to succeed here?.

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'Immediate Objects: Explorations in 3D Printing' at the School at the Art Institute of Chicago

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In order to ensure that all incoming students are comfortable (at comparable levels of proficiency) with the skills, processes, and facilities they'll be engaging from day one of their first semester, the Designed Objects program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) recently created the first classroom in the world equipped with a class-count of individual 3D printers with support from Printrbot, Taulman 3D and Simplify 3D. The 11 students were encouraged to 3D print output by proposing textiles, printing intelligence and a future that celebrates the immediate, provisional, and transient. The course is action-oriented and exhibition-driven, and is more about experiencing fast and complete cycles of realization (with idea development de-emphasized in favor of range of exposure).

Although the incoming class participates in the summer intensive every year, this was the first year that 3D printing was part of the curriculum. Instructor Brian Anderson was in conversation with Printrbot for a personal project early in the summer and our exchanges expanded into the possibility of pulling together the first classroom with so many accessible printers, and the desktop 3D printing component ended up taking the final quarter of the six-week course. Here he shares the story behind "Immediate Objects: Explorations in 3D printing."

Text & Images courtesy of Brian Anderson

Each year, SAIC's incoming Master of Design students spends six weeks in a pre-term boot camp exploring the how and when of rough and refined design visualization and prototyping. Through daily and weekly projects the class advances digital design skills and gains comprehensive exposure to the fabrication and production capabilities across the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Using these capabilities and tools, students in the course explore approaches to visualization and construction ranging from simple to sophisticated and exhibit drawings and objects developed through integrated approaches. This summer, the Designed Objects boot camp culminated in a week-long 3D printing intensive, a low- to medium-fidelity laboratory that explored the idea of ubiquitous 3D printing.

Because of the relatively high price of equipping classrooms with ten or more semi-pro 3D printers, courses focusing on digital output often can only afford to provide students access to one or two machines. Responding to this impasse, I conceived of a collaboration intended to marry accessible, low-cost 3D printing (the Printrbot Simple is the world's least expensive 3D printer) with a print material that is readily optimized in terms of print volume and strength (it takes less nylon to achieve high structural integrity and Taulman 3D is actively involved in developing this and other aspects of print output) and lastly a simplified and robust software interface and workflow (Simplify 3D's Creator software).

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Core77 Design Awards 2013 Honorees: Equipment, Part One

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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.


Professional Runner-Up

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Project Name: HazMatID Elite
Designers: Bresslergroup and Nexus Design LLC

The Smiths Detection HazMatID Elite is a portable chemical identifier used to detect hazardous chemical and biological substances. The product is used by military and civilian first responders to quickly and accurately detect health and safety risks in the field.

The product helps first responders keep people out of harm's way and reduce the social and economic impacts of chemical incidents and attacks via a clear and intuitive design.


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

We watched it live!

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

The device has won Appliance Design Excellence in Design Gold and IDSA IDEA Bronze.

- What is one quick anecdote about your project?

The client HazMatID Elite development team were very flexible and open-minded to some of our more novel interaction design ideas—which really allowed us to push the boundaries of designing their next generation user interface beyond what they were used to in the past.

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

Realizing that the thoughtful information architecture, and the functional design of user interfaces for first-responders is hugely important, and in some cases, could be a matter of life or death.

View the full project here.

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KeyMe: An Interstitial Take on Digital Keys

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Speaking of keys, you needn't look further than modern-day car key fobs to see what's coming. But until that day arrives, here's an odd interstitial technology hovering between the incumbency of metal keys and the inevitable adoption of wireless unlocking devices.

KeyMe is a smartphone app that allows users to "store, share, and duplicate their physical keys using a digital scan that is securely stored in the cloud." By using the camera on your phone, you can scan your keys. Should you need to make copies of them, the app translates your keys' dimensions into something a keymaker can reproduce.

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True I.D. Stories #8: The Design Ninja - Corporate vs. Consultancy

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

Editor: This one comes to us from "Design Ninja," who early on in his ID career finds himself grappling with something many of us have: Should I go Corporate or Consultant?


Loosely speaking, as big-city industrial designer looking for full-time work there are two paths you can pursue straight out of school: Going consultancy or going "in-house," i.e., corporate. After undergrad, I discovered the hard way that my book was good enough to get me corporate work but not good enough for the consultancies. So I landed a job at a certain corporation's in-house product design department.

Corporate work was fine for me in the beginning. The hours were great (strictly nine-to-five), I never minded wearing a suit, and I got along great with the four guys and one woman in the design department. But the things I were designing were all in the same family of products—let's say that I was designing restaurant equipment—and after a while you get tired of doing soap dispensers, injection-molded dish racks and coffee stations.

After a few years I decided I had enough ambition and talent to do more than that. That's not to say the guys who worked where I did lacked those things, it's just that they were content, and I was not. So I started secretly sending my book out to several consultancies in the area. I scored a few interviews, but during them it became clear that my narrow focus in one area of products was not adequate.

So I did what Good Ol' Boy did and went back to grad school. The decision didn't come lightly, but I looked at some of the older guys at my job's design department and decided I didn't want to end up there.

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My grad school story isn't as epic as Good Ol' Boy's, but I achieved what I wanted, which was an improved book with a good range of stuff in it. Money was an issue for me, so during grad school I only interned at corporate design places because they paid more. But it was consultancy work that I really wanted to try. It sounded so exciting from what I'd read about it, to get to work on an interface for a car dashboard one month, then a cool retail store, then a line of furniture.

Straight out of grad school I was pretty proud of my book, and sent it to the Best Design Consultancy in the city. I knew I wouldn't get the job, but I wanted to aim high and work my way down.

They called me in for an interview—and I actually got the job. I couldn't believe it. First place I'd applied to! I'd been prepared to flounder for a couple of months and freelance to pay the bills, but here I was with a job at [Best Design], basically a week after getting my Masters.

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R.I.P. Red Burns: NYU ITP Founder Passes Away at 88

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Red Burns, founder of Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU, passed away in her Manhattan home last Friday, at the age of 88. True to her legacy in touching thousands of lives, the obituary on ITP's website includes a section for sharing stories about the celebrated educator.

I never had the pleasure of meeting the aptly-nicknamed "Godmother of Silicon Alley"—my secondhand experience of ITP comes mostly from meeting many students, faculty and alumni over the years—but the incredible response to news of her passing (through social media tools that ITPers may well have helped to develop, no less) paints a portrait of a brilliant pioneer in the fields of media, technology, education and where they intersect. John Maeda shared the video below and Burns' moving presentation [PDF] to incoming ITP students over the weekend; the NYTimes published a nice obit yesterday, as did Rhizome.

The fact is, ITP has long transcended its acronymous origin and has come into its own as a sui generis setting for exploring media and its potential to change the way we see and engage with the world, turning technology into art and vice versa. Burns shaped a current generation of designers, technologists, makers and entrepreneurs, and these individuals—past, present and future friends, colleagues, mentors and pupils—will continue to honor her spirit through their work.

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Kim Seongjin's Concept Work: A Braun Camera, Easy-to-Cut Zip Ties, an Anti-Theft Umbrella and More

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Seoul-based Kim Seongjin was studying Chemical Engineering at Chonnam National University, but dropped out to complete South Korea's mandatory military service. After two years in the Marines, he went back to school, this time for Industrial Design. We're glad he made the career switch; we've just stumbled across some of the freshly-minted B.I.D.'s concept work, and it shows a promising grasp of the not-always-intersecting areas of graphics, functionality, style and re-use.

Graphics - His Data Pouch was a school project, done in conjunction with LG, to envision portable hard drives from the year 2018. We dig the simple touch of having the drive's current capacity demonstrated via nature-based images, and the pouring metaphor for transferring data.

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FABtotum Personal Fabricator: A Multi-Purpose Digi-Fab Workstation in a Single Box

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The jury's still out on the growth of 3D printing this year, but recent reporting suggests that the industry will extruding, fusing and sintering way towards the proverbial tipping point yet. A new "Low-Cost Desktop Personal Fabrication Device" (LCDPFD, anyone?) strikes a nice balance between price, practicality, and sheer versatility for the maker on a budget.

It's not quite as slick as the previously-seen PopFab, but if its success thus far on Indiegogo is any indication, the FABtotum is a few steps closer to becoming a reality. Competitively priced at $1099 for the fully assembled machine, the personal fabricator was nearing its $50K funding goal as of press time, with nearly six weeks to go in its 50-day campaign (a build-it-yourself kit comes in at just under a G; a $699 conversion kit allows a savvy DIYer to convert their old 3D printer into a FABtotum).

Where the likes of FormLabs and Mike Joyce offer higher-end stereolithography machines at prosumer prices, we're also seeing several interesting new developments in low-cost 3D printers (i.e. the $300 Printrbots used in the SAIC summer intensive) to multi-functional solutions such as the FABtotum:

Finding the right conditions where you can have both decent subtractive and additive manufacturing in one small envelope is no easy task. we think we reached a good compromise between speed precision and strength thanks to unconventional movement transmission methods and structural solutions.

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Got ALIAS Modeling/Design Skills? Linkage Design Wants to Talk to You

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Work for Linkage Design!




wants a Alias Modeler/Designer
in Detroit, Michigan

Linkage Design is one of the leading providers of design resources with emphasis on providing these resources combined with the use of advanced digital design software solutions.

They are looking for an Alias Modeler / Designer for their San Francisco based client that has a 4 to 6 month project starting September.

What do you say? Apply Now.

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