Opower's mission is to empower everyone on the planet to use less energy, and they do it by designing products that nudge people to change their behavior. With your incredible UX skills, you'll write content for Opower's products that will encourage and motivate people even more.

This is an ideal job for a hands-on leader who has a proven passion for designing for social good, wants to be a part of a dynamic, growing team in San Francisco, and is excited by the challenge of designing for behavior change.

If you have a stellar portfolio to show off, you've worked in-house with UX designers and developers before and you're ready to perform a leadership role in "The Inklings," Opower's cross-disciplinary writing team, Apply Now.

A buddy of mine recently returned from his annual trip to Japan, lacing our female friends with omiyage (souvenirs) that are difficult or impossible to find in the 'States: Green Tea Kit Kat bars, exotic-flavored Gummi Bears, gourmet shrimp chips, et cetera. And I knew he'd have some guy gear that one could only find in Tokyo. This time he was sporting the impossibly stylish Cycling Jacket you see above—you've got to see it and touch it in person to appreciate—which is both well-tailored and functional, constructed from a proprietary blend of moleskin and Windstopper fabrics. While Japanese manufacturer Nanamica sells a few jackets Stateside through the J. Crew Menswear Store, if you want the Cycling Jacket you have to go to their shop in Daikanyama, Tokyo.

To a lover of designed objects, the words "Japanese Market Only" are three of the worst words in the English language. So much cool stuff is designed on that island and destined never to leave its shores, like this beer glass designed to evoke Mt. Fuji, this cutting board meant to put you in a good mood, or this malted milk ball dispenser that I must acquire if I am ever to become a grandparent.

With dual degrees from RISD in both Fine Arts and Architecture, Phillip K. Smith has a good grasp of both expression and structure. Along with technical acumen in lighting design, these skills served him well for his "Lucid Stead" project, whereby he transformed a 70-year-old Joshua Tree homestead from weatherbeaten shack to web-friendly spectacle.

By replacing every other siding board and all of the building's apertures with mirrored glass, Smith has created a brilliantly striking structure that blends into the desert without disappearing or denying its true roots. (For you fans of '80s X-Men comics, it looks like something the character Forge would have built.)

And "Lucid Stead" fits in with the desert in more ways than one. Deserts offer more contrast that your average environment, what with blazing hot days and freezing cold nights. And as the sun goes down on Smith's structure, so too does the building shift into something entirely different: A semi-transparent structure where LEDs within reveal cracks and seams, allowing one to glimpse the cross-bracing within.

Photos via Sebastian Errazuriz Studio

Sebastian Errazuriz has no fear of sharing his thoughts and beliefs, whether they're translated through bike lane performance art or other shocking surfaces. To put it plainly, the designer is mighty outspoken—and that's why we always love the work he brings to the table. This time, Errazuriz is back with another series worthy of a double-take: "12 Shoes for 12 Lovers."

"Honey"

Errazuriz is working with shoe brand Melissa (yes, the name behind the jelly slip-ons we all used to love) to create the 3D printed sculptures. The exhibit will be on display December 6th through January 6th at the Melissa pop-up shop in Miami. Each shoe design is accompanied by an anecdote (and a few NSFW personal photos) featuring an ex-girlfriend that unofficially—and pretty harshly, in some instances—describes the relationship between her and the shoe design. Some of the series' highlights so far: "Gold Digger," a beautiful and very expensive looking gold heel; "Ice Queen," a chilling display of icicle heels; and "Cry Baby," a splash of spilled milk turned avant garde footwear.

Digital drawings for "Gold Digger"

Errazuriz shared some to say about the series and some of the responses he got from the featured exes:

The things that people do to snag a job are nuts. Standing out among the unemployed and enthusiastic is becoming pretty tough... especially when you have people like photographer Jens Lennartsson sending a minion of mini me action figures to the places he'd love to work.

Think of all of the possibilities: exaggerate your skills into super-hero-esque job qualifications, avoid handing in a resume that hits below expectations (design or otherwise) and bask in the fact that your first impression will always be on a perpetual good hair day. When you think about all of the time you spend perfecting your resume, you really wouldn't spend much more time on an action figure version of yourself.

Lennartsson's figurine, named GI Jens, is actualized as a camera-toting embodiment of who he is as a photographer. The packaging boosts his professional skills in an eye-catching display. No action figure is complete without a brochure displaying all of the toys features and Lennartsson doesn't miss that opportunity to display some of his work. Check out the videos after the jump for a behind-the-scenes look the complete GI Jens package and how he pulled this off:

Paint restoration is a painstaking and challenging skill to master. But it can also be hugely satisfying.

One of the more challenging tasks is restoring the paint on an old car.

I never thought I'd be interested in car paint correction until I came across Larry Kosilla and his quite extraordinary detailing skills. In this 15-minute video he goes through the entire process of restoring the beat-up paint on a 1958 Porsche Speedster to its original glory.

It's truly shocking to see the difference at the end of the process.

Here's a summary of the cooler tips and geeky tools for those who are considering a paint restoration project for a car.

For over 20 years, Uniplan has been providing refreshing live communication solutions. They develop ideas, campaigns, communications and innovations for international events and exhibition projects. They also believe that everything, every task and every idea, requires and deserves its own approach. This is place to reinvent yourself!

If you have a dream of one day being the best, Uniplan believes that now is the time to run after that dream. With working knowledge of fabrication for events and props, experience working in the creative agency environment and a passion to be the best, you'll fit right in with this creative and dynamic team in Hong Kong. Apply Now.

Today is Thanksgiving here in the U.S., when we all give thanks that the heavens have provided us with the Kardashians, a bitterly bifurcated government and wildly diverging views on firearms. We celebrate these things by cooking lots of food, most of it in ovens. But if more of us were like Grant Thompson, a.k.a. The King of Random, we could heat our meals by harnessing the sun's power.

Inveterate tinkerer Thompson has 46 million hits on YouTube for good reason: Because he does crazy shit like snagging a free projection TV on Craigslist and turning the screen—which is essentially an enormous magnifiying glass—into an absurdly powerful, eco-friendly death ray capable of heating things to 2000 degrees Farenheit. Observe:

If only there were, for every kid glued to an XBox, another kid like Wesley Souza. After observing how an escavadeira (excavator) works, the Brazilian teen replicated the hydraulic mechanisms using syringes and plastic tubing; with a little help from family member Lidio, he even carved up some wood scraps to create a working scale model.

See it in action:

"Was an African or Arab or a Portuguese shipwreck implicated? Marooned Indonesian sailors? Had Aborigines traveled to Kilwa in days of old?" The Past Masters dig the truth.

I'm not trying to start nothing, but this crowdfunding campaign could kick your crowdfunding campaign's ass. The team: archeologists, anthropologists, an Aboriginal army unit, shipwreck hunters, and native rock art historians. The goal: investigating mysterious East African Kilwa coins found in Australia, dating from centuries before known non-native contact on the continent. They call themselves the Past Masters, and they want to change Australian history.

Now, Australia has been populated for a while—upwards of 40,000 years, in fact. It is a conspicuously large land mass, with several expansive trading cultures around its perimeter that predated Western contact. Yet, the story still goes that Australia was discovered for the very first time (the first arrival of human settlement notwithstanding) in either 1770 by Captain James Cook, or 1606 by the Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon. The presumed likelihood of this theory has declined somewhat with the increase in "facts" and "evidence" of earlier trade linking East Africa, Arabia, Persia, India, China and Indonesia. These coins may not have rested on the beach since they were first in circulation, but the Past Masters believe the region's history is less cut and dried than supposed.

As I mentioned in this post on travel methodologies, I never travel with anything larger than a rolling carry-on. So if I'm flying someplace that has inclement weather and I think I might need to bring boots, I have a simple space-saving trick: I wear them onto the flight. Even filled with rolled-up socks and power cables, boots take up far too much space packed into luggage, whereas the sneakers I pack are easy to crush and stow.

The problem with the boots-wearing is, it's a pain unlacing and re-lacing them at the airport security line. But I think I've just found a solution: A company called LEMs, for Live Easy & Minimal, sells a collapsible, packable boot that I could easily squeeze into packed luggage.

How do you take two things most people don't like—airline travel and advertising—and combine them into a pleasing experience? That was the task online retailer Zappos set for Mullen, and the Boston ad agency came up with a client-pleasing solution. This Thankgsiving Eve, travelers through Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport found their baggage claim conveyor belt festooned with what appeared to be Zappos advertising banners, but which were in fact prize markers for clothing, appliances, accessories and gift certificates. The entire conveyor belt had effectively been transformed into a giant roulette wheel, with travelers' individual pieces of luggage serving as the ball.

"Zappos wants to intercept people in their everyday lives and bring surprise and delight," Mullen executive creative director Tim Vaccarino told Ad Age. "So right away we're always looking for something fresh in approach."

Zappos staff were on hand to verify prize winnings, with at least one of them dressed like a turkey. And unlike America's usual Black Friday shenanigans, there were no fistfights, stabbings or shootings reported.

In the context of design, fabrication is essentially a fancy term for making, and insofar as the term is refers to the process of producing a physical thing, the word transcends its alternate meaning: to contrive or devise, without justification—in short, to lie. Negative connotation aside, it's loosely synonymous with invention, such that 'digital fabrication'—term of art notwithstanding—might also refer to algorithmically generated designs. If the concept is the frontier of new media art (Phillips de Pury's recent "Paddles On!" auction made art-world headlines for unprecedented sales of GIFs and Tumblogs), it is at once more and less apropos design. On one hand, there is a sense in which design is intrinsically algorithmic, where function serves as an overarching constraint—to say nothing of manufacturing considerations—yet there is also a sense in which the premise of creating a bit of code to dictate an aesthetic seems more like art than design.

Which is a long way of introducing Zhang Zhoujie's current project on Indiegogo, his first—and the first international crowdfunding campaign by a bona fide Chinese designer. Over the past few years, we've encountered Zhang's work at various design festivals around the world, starting in 2011 at London Design Festival (he studied with Ben Hughes at Central St. Martins) to the Salone and Shanghai last year (he's based in the latter city). Between the design concept and the fact that he's turned to Indiegogo, there are a lot of angles to the Digital Vessel (pun intended). He notes that "I believe that Indiegogo is the right platform to find the support needed to launch an entire digital revolution, a generation of backers that understand and can identify with my vision."

As he says in the pitch video above, that vision "is not about designing something... it's about finding something." And while Zhang only mentions it in passing in, his ultimate goal is to approximate nature itself—arguably the original designer—with algorithms for objects that grow or evolve of their own accord. (I struggled to grasp the concept when he explained it to me during Beijing Design Week, but he elaborated at length about his ongoing research and is clearly fixated on emulating nature through software.)

Industrial designers who work for Milwaukee Electric Tool Corp. work on a product line that includes more than 500 tools and over 3,500 accessories. These are the heavy-duty, high quality, portable electric power tools and accessories that professional users worldwide rely on to get the job done. Why should you join their team in Milwaukee, WI?

Beyond the opportunity to help shape one of the leading brands in this industry, your benefits start on your first day of work (health, dental, vision, life insurance, 401k) and you get to enjoy an excellent working environment that includes an on-site cafeteria, state of the art fitness facility, recreational sports leagues and company outings. What's not to love?

Apply Now.

Hosted by Don Lehman, Core77's podcast series is designed for all those times you're sketching, working in the shop, or just looking for inspiration from inspiring people. We'll have conversations with interesting creatives and regular guests. The viewpoint of Afterschool will come from industrial design, but the focus will be on all types of creativity: graphic design, storytelling, architecture, cooking, illustration, branding, materials, business, research... anything that could enrich your thought process, we'll talk about.

The past couple of weeks have seen the release of two next generation video game consoles: The PS4 and the Xbox One. I love when new consoles come out. It's such an infrequent occurrence that every console becomes a milestone for design and technology. So I thought it would be fun to break down the game industry's efforts, as well as try to decipher where they're going next, with my buddy Peter Rivera-Pierola. Besides being an avid gamer and tech nerd like myself, Peter is also an industrial designer and a manager of strategic concepts at McDonald's in Chicago.

Get the Afterschool Podcast, Episode #13 - Next Generation Gaming Consoles: Available at the iTunes store or direct download via Soundcloud below.

[image via JBT AeroTech]

Your correspondent managed to travel via subway this Thanksgiving, avoiding the car-clogged roads, the train-jammed tracks and most importantly, the airplane-choked skies. But this past weekend, I departed for Autodesk University on the other side of the country, meaning there's a plane ride in my immediate future.

On the jet bridge, I'll be looking out for that little wheeled thing in the photograph above, which I've not noticed (so much for being an observant industrial designer) on the numerous flights I've taken in my lifetime, probably because during the boarding process I'm more concerned with if there's any overhead bin space left. Slate, however, has been kind enough to point the object out and explain its function. Can any of you guess what it is, and what it does?

Last night on the American news program 60 Minutes, Amazon skipper Jeff Bezos unveiled the company's plans to have packages delivered not by strapping UPS men, but by autonomous drones that it is impossible for your girlfriend to develop a crush on. It turns out that 86% of Amazon packages are under five pounds, a very do-able payload capacity for our little octo-rotor friends. With well-placed distribution centers, Amazon reckons that "Prime Air Delivery," as they're calling it, will get package delivery times down to just 30 minutes for those living in the right zones.

Here's what it would look like in action, using footage purportedly from an actual test flight:

Dogs may be man's best friend, but UK laundry company JTM Serviceis helping them creep into that "one pet fits all" territory. They've created a bark activated washing machine, making it possible for support dogs to take on their share of chores to help owners with disabilities.

The invention, aptly named "Woof to Wash," has been dogified with height-appropriate buttons and a pull toy attachment on the door handle, making it easy to open. Check out the video after the jump to see machine (and adorable support dog Duffy) at work:

Hailing from the Netherlands, Sabine Spanjer was an interaction designer. Fellow Dutchwoman Kika Vliegenthart earned a Bachelors in Economics. So naturally the two found themselves starting up a leather goods company in NYC, producing beautiful models like the Postal BackPack #3, above and below, and a line of bags, device cases, sandals, belts, suspenders, wallets and more. (See the full line-up here.)

The two operate out of a space in Brooklyn's Navy Yard under the name Kika NY, designing and producing goods--all by hand--that go out to shops in New York, San Francisco, L.A., Austin, Portland, and overseas.

Our goal is to design high quality goods that will last a lifetime —ones with clean, simple lines that eliminate the unnecessary.

To keep the the tradition alive, we work with machines custom-built for our studio and tools from old-school suppliers in France and the UK. Most of our resources come from Europe as well. We use high-end leather from Portugal, Italy, and Belgium, and our solid brass hardware is hand-tooled in a family-owned foundry in Europe.

It didn't happen overnight, of course; before starting up Kika NY, Vliegenthart spent some 15 years apprenticing under a rather legendary NYC leathersmith whom we'll look at next.

Like most everyone who was born after, say, the mid-70's, we're big fans of Super Mario—see figs. 1, 2, 3—so we're definitely digging Robert Bacon's "Super Mario New York City Subway" Map. As Andy Cush of Animal New York puts it, the poster is "perfect for the transit-obsessed gamer on your list."