While we looked at Better Packages, Inc.'s cool automatic tape-dispensing machine, a pair of Cooper Union engineering students are hoping to get rid of packing tape almost entirely—by redesigning the box. Henry Wang and Chris Curro have developed the Rapid Packing Container, a re-think of the cardboard box that aims to make it easier to open, easier to seal, and easier to re-use. Have a look:

It might look like a snowy version of a meticulously planned crop circle, but really it's just a guy going out for a long, winter stroll. Simon Beck, a British artist makes the snow a better place for all of us, thanks to his geometric snow designs. He doesn't use a single tool (other than his won two feet) to create these—he simply keeps walking.

These last week of the year is always kind of a weird duration, one that typically feels slow and fast at the same time, a stretch of five or six days that is invariably removed from the epicyclic progress of the rest of the year, demarcated by a pair of holidays. Work and school are generally put on hold in favor of family-related obligations, yet there's inevitably some project to catch up on—even it's just sleep—and before you know you it, you're back at your desk... like you never left.

Meanwhile, the beginning of the new year is both the end of a specific timeframe and an opportunity for a fresh start. Thus, we'd like to take a moment to reflect on what we've seen in the past 360-ish days or so in order to draw insight into what might be on the horizon in 2014.

We'll start with a seemingly straightforward cross-section of our content mix: the top ten most popular posts this year. Insofar as their viral appeal is predicated on broadly interesting subject matter, many of these stories are not explicitly related to industrial design per se; rather, they illustrate how the natural and manmade world has the power to surprise and delight us.

10.) How a Doctor's Five-Minute, $15 iPhone Hack Could Affect 600 Million Lives

9.) Owning Two of a Certain Object Indicates Your Kids Will Do Well in School. Can You Guess What It Is?

8.) Underwater Archaeologist Franck Goddio Finds 1,600-Year-Old City that Vanished 1,200 Years Ago

7.) A Drinking Glass That Can Prevent Sexual Assault

Procrastinating is way too easy when there are holiday parties to attend, gifts to buy, and Christmas-themed baked goods to consume. But the Earlybird deadline for this year's Core77 Design Awards is quickly approaching (January 30th), so we would advise you to take advantage of the break to get started on your entry. Plus, if you want us to send you one of our limited edition silk-screened posters, you've got to submit your entry by December 31st.

Don't freak—you've still got time. Here are a few tips for fighting procrastination and getting your entry ready for the judges before the end of the year:

For 2013, one of our most-trafficked furniture stories was a check-in with Hellman-Chang, the Brooklyn-based duo that's Bringing the Glamour Back into Furniture Design. Dan Hellman and Eric Chang are Core77 faves, as we've watched them achieve, in less than ten years, what much larger furniture groups have literally taken generations to reach. And they've also managed to accomplish some industry firsts, as we heard in a follow-up video, " From Small Shop to Big Time, from Small Screen to Big Screen."

Across the country in Washington State, we heard from a creator of very different types of furniture. Homebuilder Ron Paulk not only told us all about his amazing mobile woodshop, but gave us the story of how he'd created an accidental product design hit with his Paulk Workbench (the plans for which can be ordered here).

When it comes to space-saving, transformable furniture, no one has a better eye for curating it than Ron Barth and his Resource Furniture distribution company. This year we got a take a look at video of their Transforming Micro-Apartment, sited at the Museum of the City of New York. Loaded up with cleverly-designed pieces by Italian manufacturer Clei, the 325-square-foot "Launchpad" boasts more functionality than places three times the size.

On the other end of the spectrum in space-saving, we saw Seattle-based Steve Sauer's self-designed, self-built Pico Dwelling Micro-Apartment. Engineer Sauer sought to turn a virtually unlivable 182-square-foot storage unit into a home in its own right, and we have to say the Ikea-hacking bike nut pulled it off admirably.

Ricardo Freisleben Lacerda's Space-Saving Table and Breakdown Closet were also big hits with readers. Coroflotter Lacerda is a Brazil-based industrial designer, and his Gaming Table and Nomad Closet, as they're officially called, are clever exercises in doing more with less space; and the Nomad Closet wins extra points for both breaking down into a tidy box and coming together without the use of tools.

I hate lifting a coffee cup and finding the coaster has stuck to the bottom of it. It's minor and merely annoying, yes, but on some level that's a design fail. Similarly, I find it absurd that I have to use two hands to de-dock my iPhone, to prevent the dock from coming up off the table with the phone.

That's why this next product sounds crazy but actually makes sense, or at least highlights the central flaw in the iPhone dock's design. Hanover-based Mac accessories manufacturer Hardwrk's Massive Dock is made out of concrete.

American Specialty Cars (ASC) is an established product development and manufacturing firm in the transportation and product sectors. They have over 45 years of experience in how to make a product unique and at great value with their staff of researchers, designers, CAD sculptors, prototype modelers, fabricators, and engineers. They'd like you to join their staff as an Automotive Industrial Designer.

ASC is a rare place where you have the best of all professional creative worlds with a rich multi-discipline culture and a full design and concept studio in the heart of automotive design, Southeast Michigan. 4+ years of professional transportation or automotive industrial design experience makes you an excellent candidate for this position. Apply Now.

Unsurprisingly, 2013 was a big year for digital fabrication, as the technology continues to trickle down into the affordable consumer category. So before we even get into what designers have done with the new technologies available to us, let's take a look at what the companies responsible for those technologies have gifted us with this year.

ShopBot Tools Handibot

The runaway Kickstarter digital fabrication success of the year was the HandiBot. North-Carolina-based ShopBot Tools' unusual concept—a portable CNC mill whose man-handle-ability gives it an infinite work area footprint--was a smashing success, hitting and more than doubling its funding target within days of going live (the first 150 units have since been delivered). "We really love the idea of a highly portable and affordable little CNC," says ShopBot founder Ted Hall. "The fact that you 'take the tool to the material' creates all sorts of new options for CNC... but the real aspiration for Handibot is to break the ease-of-use barrier for CNC-style, subtractive, digital fabrication." To that end, Hall and team are working on creating an app environment for the Handibot; in the company's vision of the Handibot's future, users will download apps for specific operations they want to perform, call them up on a paired smartphone, tablet or computer, then "click 'Start' and have the tool get to work right in front of you."

Inventables Shapeoko 2

On the open-source front, Inventables launched their Shapeoko 2 CNC mill, a small-footprint (12×12×2.5) desktop machine going for $650–685 depending on configuration. Some five years in the making, the Shapeoko 2 can also be ordered in a $300 kit form for those tinkerers willing to supply the electronics, belts, pulleys, etc. and assemble it themselves.

MATAERIAL Anti-Gravity Object Modeling 3D Printer

If there's a 3D-printing version of the Handibot—which is to say, a machine independent of a build platform—it's the MATAERIAL Anti-Gravity Object Modeling 3D Printer. The machine's articulating, robotic arm extrudes material in 3D space, rather than depositing it layer-by-layer, and the thing is so radical we expect it will take a little time for designers' imagination can catch up to what the machine is capable of.

Last month, we announced the Surface Classroom Design Challenge (where our own Allan Chochinov will a part of the judging panel). If you haven't already, make sure to enter the contest before January 24th, 2014. Let's take a look at the way Surface has been changing the classroom environment with a few thoughts from teachers and students:

For the story of digital fabrication in 2013, it hasn't just been the rise of the machines; we've also seen developments in materials, processes and business.

Materialise's TPU-92A-1

For starters, Belgian digital fabrication company Materialise released TPU 92A-1, a new material for laser sintering. Durable yet elastic, the new stuff is a counterintuitive blend of flexible, durable, abrasion- and tear-resistant, and when sintered into a matrix-like form, has impressive shape memory. A certain fashion designer has taken to the material with a vengeance, but we'll get around to actual applications in the next entry.

Shapeways' Brass and Gold

On a more conventional front, Materialise competitor Shapeways brings two classic elements into their materials stable: gold and brass, now available through a combination of 3D printing, casting and old-fashioned hand polishing (and electroplating, in the case of gold). And unlike TPU 92A-1, which seems to be available only to industrial customers, anyone using Shapeways' services can order the stuff.

LAYWOO-D3 Wooden 3D Printing Filament

From Germany came LAYWOO-D3, a 3D-printing filament made from 40% recycled wood bound together by polymer. Advertised as "cherry," the stuff reportedly looks like wood, smells like wood, and can be sanded, worked and painted like wood once it's out of the printer.

Modern Meadow 3D Printed Meat

A material for 3D printing that none of you may be clamoring for is... meat. Andras Forgacs and his Modern Meadow company are seeking to produce meat-based protein for human consumption by bioengineering the stuff and having it spit out of a printer; for the sake of—I dunno, authenticity?—they'll reportedly keep the meat animal-specific, "Pig stays pig. Cow stays cow. Etc." to "ensure purity." Mmmmmmm. [retch]

Core77 2013 Year in Review: Top Ten Posts· Furniture, Pt. 1· Furniture, Pt. 2
Digital Fabrication, Pt. 1· Digital Fabrication, Pt. 2· Digital Fabrication, Pt. 3· Digital Fabrication, Pt. 4

There was plenty of eye candy and food for design thought in this year's crop of digitally fabricated projects. The monster draw was, hands-down, this straight-up piece of bike porn: industrial designer Ralf Holleis' VRZ 2 Track Bike. This trickily-made fixie boasts lugs that one might think are laser sintered; instead, they're laserCUSED, which is the name of a proprietary process so complicated to explain it will get its own entry in future.

A very different type of bicycle also drew many mouseclicks: the "Draisienne" by Samuel Bernier and Andreas Bhend. But like Holleis' creation, you won't be able to buy this one in stores; it was hacked together from an IKEA Frosta stool and bespoke parts produced in a Makerbot Replicator 2, in a collaboration between Bernier and Bhend that (exhaling on fingernails) we believe we inspired.

We all know vinyl doesn't grow on trees, but maple sure does. Instructables editor Amanda Ghassaei blew our minds by turning the stuff into records, after coaxing an Epilog laser cutter into etching the strains of Radiohead and The Velvet Underground into the material's surface.

Core77 2013 Year in Review: Top Ten Posts· Furniture, Pt. 1· Furniture, Pt. 2
Digital Fabrication, Pt. 1· Digital Fabrication, Pt. 2· Digital Fabrication, Pt. 3· Digital Fabrication, Pt. 4

When it comes to boundary-pushing research, MIT Media Lab is no slouch. This year their Mediated Matter Group stunned with their Silk Pavilion, which harnessed architecture, design and biomimicry with digital fabrication in an unusual way: The two-part structure was begun using CNC-deposited silk fibers laid out by an algorithm, then actual silkworms themselves were used to fill in the gaps with their own material, behaving as "biological printers."

Across MIT's campus, meanwhile, Skylar Tibbits and his Self-Assembly Lab are themselves adding a new dimension to 3D printing: Time. Tibbits and his team's research into how 3D-printed objects can be induced into changing their form over time has yielded what they're calling 4D printing. One of their goals, as the organization's name suggests, will be to create self-assembling objects and structures.

Jake Evill isn't from MIT, but rather Victoria University of Wellington, and the freshly-minted ID grad has been experimenting with 3D-Printed Exoskeletal Casts. Protective, lightweight, breathable, and fully customizable to the user, Evill's concept makes itchy plaster casts look as primitive as leeching people for blood.

More on BASF's premium penny-farthing below...

Core77 2013 Year in Review: Top Ten Posts· Furniture, Pt. 1· Furniture, Pt. 2
Digital Fabrication, Pt. 1· Digital Fabrication, Pt. 2· Digital Fabrication, Pt. 3· Digital Fabrication, Pt. 4
Insights from the Core77 Questionnaire· Maker Culture: The Good, the Bad and the Future· Food & Drink
Materials, Pt. 1: Wood· Materials, Pt. 2: Creative Repurposing· Materials, Pt. 3: The New Stuff
True I.D. Stories· High-Tech Headlines

If industrial designers are unsung, materials scientists are even more unsung. You don't know the name of the person who shaped the handle on your coffeepot, and you darn sure don't know who invented the plastic it's made out of.

We don't always know their names, but we know the fruits of their labor. So what stuff did the guys in white lab coats come up with that made the news this year? The hands-down Materials traffic winner was "Kinetic Sand," which results from mixing regular sand with an ingredient from Silly Putty. If you haven't already seen it, peep the video, be amazed.

A material nearly as humble as sand, cement, also caught rec' this year. Not regular cement of course, but the pollution-killing, smog-eating variety first developed by Italian manufacturer Italcementi. Once the magic ingredient of titanium oxide is added to the mix, everything from Roman churches to sidewalks in Chicago to Dutch roads do the environment a good turn—while remaining self-cleaning, as mere rainwater rinses them off.

Speaking of rainwater, it never seems to fall in a consistent schedule, which farmers know only too well. That's why Mexican engineer Sergio Jesus Vaelasco created Solid Rain, which is essentially instant water. Vaelasco's invention can let farmers dodge droughts, and make greenery possible in environments where it was not previously viable.

This is the second part in STUDIOFYNN's 'Brave New Modernism' series, which launched with a photo essay on Shanghai.

Dubai symbolizes the megacity with the megaprojects like no other. Rarely have our talents as builders been so effectively combined with our talents as storytellers. Dubai tells the story of unprecedented and rapid economic expansion spurred by oil wealth and the city's desire to be the hub of commerce for the region. The enactment of carefully crafted policies has created an international center for finance, tourism, trade and manufacture.

The fictional nature of Dubai has been the subject of much debate but interpreting the elements that contribute to the increasingly blurred lines between fact and fiction, myth and realty are a challenge for our era. Our abilities as architects and designers to understand the power of a brand now bridges every aspect of what we create. From handbags to high-rises, the entire built world becomes ever more sophisticated as we evolve our practices to better cater for the motivations and desires of both business and the individual.

One of the key differences on how cities develop visual characteristics and urban plans today is the power of the media. The media is not only a modern phenomenon capable of generating huge revenue and needing many square feet of office space to do this, but also a conduit that creates new visual myths and realities, especially through the photographic image and the cinema. Dubai is characterized strongly by these phenomena as its architecture takes on visual codes inspired by science fiction cinema and a need to communicate its value through the TV, online media, billboards and magazines. The built environment therefore has to take on a form conducive to dissemination of value propositions through media channels, possibly more so than catering to our basic needs and sensitivities towards issues of relative human scale, climate, recreation and keeping in balance with the natural world.

Such brave thrusts forward come with their wake, something we have much less understanding of than the pursuit of progress. Apart from disconnecting us from some basic elements of well being, there are the issues of environment, carbon footprint and the inevitable social consequences of rapid development and labour migration. With the need to desalinate its water supply and air condition its interior spaces, Dubai is one of the world leaders of energy consumption per capita. One persons shopping paradise can be another's environmental transgression so the definition of success and failure has many facets. What is apparent is that designers and architects, in conjunction with policy makers, marketers, industrialists and alike need to anticipate the wake of progress and learn to design for it with equal measure, otherwise our long term visions may not achieve the much vaunted status of 'sustainable.'

Core77 2013 Year in Review: Top Ten Posts· Furniture, Pt. 1· Furniture, Pt. 2
Digital Fabrication, Pt. 1· Digital Fabrication, Pt. 2· Digital Fabrication, Pt. 3· Digital Fabrication, Pt. 4
Insights from the Core77 Questionnaire· Maker Culture: The Good, the Bad and the Future· Food & Drink
Materials, Pt. 1: Wood· Materials, Pt. 2: Creative Repurposing· Materials, Pt. 3: The New Stuff
True I.D. Stories· High-Tech Headlines

For 2013 we rolled out a new section, one that's quickly become a reader favorite: True I.D. Stories, where industrial designers in our readership stepped forward (albeit anonymously) to tell their tales. What can go wrong for an industrial designer? The short answer is, lots.

First, "Newbie Designer" sounded off with "Off the Grid," the tale of his first ID business trip. The newly-minted exhibit designer was flown across the country to oversee a store installation, and the trouble started nearly as soon as he got to the store.

» True I.D. Stories #1: Off the Grid

Next, "Design Minion" told us his story of "Fun in the Sun." The designer of recreational pleasure craft found no pleasure during his first, hellish, on-site product catalog photo shoot.

» True I.D. Stories #2: Fun in the Sun?

Then we got into epic tale territory, as "Good Ol' Boy" took us through his multi-part adventure of going from useless, unskilled design grad to getting his dream ID job. It was by no means a straight line—this tale has more crazy twists and turns than a spy novel!

» True I.D. Stories #3: Get a Job, Any Job!
» True I.D. Stories #4: My Master(s) Plan
» True I.D. Stories #5: Game of ID Thrones
» True I.D. Stories #6: Opportunity Knocks. And Her Name is Amber
» True I.D. Stories #7: Money, Revenge, and Miscalculations

Theirs is a small yet creative, sometimes irreverent, driven, sarcastic, damn good-looking, modest (wait, no, not modest), and talented multinational team. While AE Outdoor is only a three person team, their designs and products can be found all over Europe and in major retailers across the US. From patio furniture and umbrellas to gazebos, if you want to see your own outdoor designs sold in these stores, this team wants to hire you.

As an AE designer, you will experience all phases of design/product development from trend research and concept ideation all the way through the manufacturing process. This requires a degree in Industrial Design or Furniture Design, 2+ years of experience and a strong eye for style, proportions, overall aesthetics. Don't wait, Apply Now.

Talk about doing more with less. Honda's boxy little contribution to the tiny kei car category is the N Box +, which has at least four awesome design features: A telescoping load ramp, an internal power winch, hideaway trunk shelving, and the ability for the entire interior to flatten into a bed nearly two meters long. The features are best seen in video, and this particular version of their Japanese-TV-market commercial is great for the utter translation fail:

Alas, as with some of the best things to be designed and produced in Japan, this dimunitive vehicle will never make its way to U.S. shores.

On Avenue Mont-Royal in Montreal, you'll find just what you'd expect—gaggles of traffic making their way through cold temperatures, quaint storefronts, natives and tourists bouncing from door to door and old-fashioned street lights at every corner. But those aren't the only lights shining up the sidewalks. Turn Me On Design recently won a competition launched in 2012 by Avenue Mont-Royal with IDEA-O-RAMA—their comic book inspired street lamps that help give the street a bite of personality.

Suffice it to say that the Mac Pro was easily the best thing Apple did this year.

Core77 2013 Year in Review: Top Ten Posts· Furniture, Pt. 1· Furniture, Pt. 2
Digital Fabrication, Pt. 1· Digital Fabrication, Pt. 2· Digital Fabrication, Pt. 3· Digital Fabrication, Pt. 4
Insights from the Core77 Questionnaire· Maker Culture: The Good, the Bad and the Future· Food & Drink
Materials, Pt. 1: Wood· Materials, Pt. 2: Creative Repurposing· Materials, Pt. 3: The New Stuff
True I.D. Stories· High-Tech Headlines

The preponderance of Jony Ive-related headlines this year suggests that technology and design are as deeply connected as ever, and we certainly saw a fair share of interesting innovations from Silicon Valley and beyond. That didn't stop Quartz's Christopher Mims from boldly asserting that "2013 Was a Lost Year for Tech, though I felt that he overlooked the implications of Google Glass as a sign of the times. Even so, his suggestion that it "doesn't count" due to its "tone-deaf design" only underscores the importance of industrial design in the technology sector (more on Glass below). IDEO's Tim Brown, on the other hand, offers rather more positive outlook—and a telling follow-up to Mims' optimistic 2012 year-end roundup—at least to the effect that iterative feedback loops and decimal-pointed-versioning hold the promise of exciting new developments in 2014.

If Toymail demonstrates the power of the Internet of Things from an early age...

Based purely on anecdotal / qualitative data, it seems that the 'Internet of Things' has surpassed 'Digital Fabrication' as the Next Big Thing—wearables, in particular, have taken on the buzz of 3D printers before them. But unlike the broader domain of digital fabrication, the connected devices have more commercial potential than the 3D printer's cousins—open-sourceCNC mills, wire benders, etc.

Of course, 2013 will mostly be remembered—at least in the short term—as the year that Google Glass came out, not least for the subsequent backlash to the limited launch of the eyeglass+HUD form factor. Mat Honan's chronicle of his year with Glass offers at least a few insights into the actual experience of the $1,500 device (though his refusal to wear it on public transit, when he's out for dinner or drinks, at movies or around kids speaks to Mims' point that it's inherently alienating), but its impact as a novel cultural artifact. And in some ways, Mims is right in dismissing Glass as a gamechanger: Frankly, I still can't help but do a double-take each time I see it in public, and it's simply too soon to tell how significant Glass will be in the long run.

From L to R: Google Glass, Melon, No More Woof