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There's One Week Left to Submit Your Designs to the 2014 Core77 Design Awards (and Here's 10 Reasons Why You Should Enter)

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With only one week left to submit a trophy-worthy design, it's safe to say you might need a glimpse of that "light at the end of the tunnel." We've put our minds together at the Core77 Headquarters to come up with ten perks that come with submitting your work to the program.

Read on to see what we came up with and submit your own in the comments:

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Throwback Thursday: Meet 'Cub,' The Original 'Little Printer'

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Pint-sized printers are by no means a new invention, but they're apparently back in vogue. You may remember Little Printer—the ticker-producing content curator—which we covered when our friends at BERG first introduced it. If we were to go as far as to make broad historical comparisons, as we do, the "Cub"—an early 20th century printing pess kit for kids, made by the Chicago-based Superior Marking Equipment Company (SMEC)—is the analog precursor to the Little Printer.

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Tiny rubber characters (clearly intended for child-sized fingers) were included with each kit—more characters and images could be purchased, Gillette-style, of course. To create customized prints, users would carefully align the rubber stamps on the rotary with tweezers. While the outcome would put the printer miles ahead of the competition when it came to personalized babysitting or lawn mowing fliers, this was not a toy for the short of patience.

PrintPress-AdComp.jpgLeft: sample copy from a print press kit; right: 1951 Popular Science ad

If you think the miniature press itself is awww-inducing, check out this throwback commercial from SMEC competitor, Ideal:

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Hands-On Automotive Innovation with Smart Design

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Content sponsored by Adobe
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When someone mentions automotive design, sleek, aerodynamic car models debuting at national car shows often come to mind. But the world of automotive design goes far beyond a car's exterior and in some cases, it's the interior features and interactive options that ultimately steal the show and wow auto enthusiasts. Through a combination of inventive design and technology, Smart Design works with manufacturers to deliver new, relevant automobile experiences that meet ever-changing consumer needs and preferences.

Every automotive design begins with a broad question or hypothesis, narrowed down by constraints—of the market, human factors and context. The collaborative teams at Smart Design start with rough sketches on paper or often on whiteboards to create and visualize concepts. As digital prototypes begin to take shape, supporting documentation follows that reflects the thinking behind the design.

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"What's important to us is having an underlying structure, which can be a metaphor, a way of thinking about a product, or insight from user research," explains Dan Saffer, a creative director with Smart Design specializing in interaction design. "There's always an underlying 'why' that drives our product concept."

Contextual design factors heavily into to the automotive design process. Rather than staying in front of a computer screen, the team sets up circumstances simulating to how a product or feature will be used. Sketching and then building in physical form, with foam, cardboard, and clay, allows the team explore ideas and clarify designs.

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What 'Obsolete' Object Just Tripled Its Kickstarter Target, Netting $2.4 Million in 48 Hours?

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Here's an unexpected one: Just two days ago the Pono went live on Kickstarter, and within 24 hours quickly smashed through its $800,000 target at a pledging rate of nearly $100,000 per hour. As of this morning the rate has slowed somewhat, but it had still hit $2.4 million at press time.

More amazing is what the Pono is. It's a freaking MP3 player. So why, when we all have smartphones that play music, has this been able to succeed 13 years after the iPod was introduced? Well, here's why:

What is most interesting about the Pono is that it addresses the user experience in a way many objects and technology today do not. In some sense we have been moving backwards as a society. A landline phone call used to be a somewhat intimate experience, where you could hear even the slightest changes in infleciton in someone's voice. Today with the lousy voice quality of a cell phone, I struggle just to hear every word. Music quality has also gone way down, where even a 256kbps file cannot convey the fidelity an audiophile would prefer. By sticking with the FLAC format which contains anywhere from six to 30 times the "resolution" of an MP3, the Pono moves us forward with technology, delivering a far richer spectrum of audio.

And by taking a page from Apple's book and setting up a music ecosystem, whereby users can download music from a central location, the Pono aims to provide the ease-of-use we've all become accustomed to with iTunes.

Interestingly enough PonoMusic, the company behind the Pono, was founded by Neil Young.

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The early-adopter $200 units are all gone, but there are still $300 ones left. Music lovers can pledge here.

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Designs for the Hanging of Things, Part 2: Coat Racks

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Do you (or your interior design clients) want an easy way to hang up coats, scarves, bags, towels, aprons and more? Then hooks are the way to go. And rather than getting multiple single hooks, you may want a wall-mounted rack that provides those multiple hooks in a single product.

The Eames Hang-It-All is the most well-known wall-mounted coat rack, but numerous other designs are worth some attention. The Leaf hanger from Miniforms is made from laser cut sheet steel. Each hanger has three hexagons, and each of those is a different distance from the wall, making it easier to use all three at the same time.

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Some hooks are designed to flip down for use—so there's nothing rough for anyone to brush against when walking by. The Knox products from LoCa are a nice example of this style.

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Of course, you could go vertical as well as horizontal. Since the hooks are right on top of each other in this design, it may not work well for multiple long coats. But it could be just fine for a warm winter hat, a scarf and a coat—or various other combinations. To provide a lot of hooks in a small space, LoCa has an angled design with hooks on two sides.

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Eye Candy: Stunning Video Animation of 24 Hours' Worth of Flights Through Europe

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How is it that such a miserable experience can look so beautiful from afar? The UK's National Air Traffic Service, a.k.a. NATS, helps some 2.2 million flights each year get through UK airspace—and with access to all of that international flight data, they turned 24 hours' worth of flights into a gorgeous video animation:

"European airspace is some of the busiest and most complex anywhere in the world," the organization writes on their blog. "Every day thousands of air traffic controllers guide millions of passengers safely to their destinations. Yet to most people, the choreography going on above them is entirely unnoticed." Probably because we're sitting inside of each of those glowing dots with not enough legroom, badly-behaved fellow passengers and not enough room in the overheads.

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Design Furniture for this Award Winning Company in Coventry, Rhode Island

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Work for Seaside Casual Furniture!

Seaside Casual is a leader in the design and manufacture of outdoor furniture, made from recycled, High Density Polyethylene (HDPE). Their extensive collection of Classic, Traditional and Modern designs is sold throughout the US and expanding international markets. Seaside Casual is an award winning manufacturer, recognized for exceptional customer service, design appeal and overall product performance. How would you like to work for them?

They are seeking a exceptional talent to join their Rhode Island team and advance their entire design process with innovation, style and a keen eye towards market trends. They're looking for someone with 3+ years in furniture design who can produce sketches, renderings, 3D modeling and hard prototype samples. This is a fun, rewarding company to work for so if you have the skills, Apply Now.

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Announcement: Help Fight Counterfeit Design with Be Original Americas

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As we're discovering (and hopefully already knew) from the latest installment of True I.D. Stories, stealing designs is a nerve-wrecking and inexcusable act for all parties involved. Despite the guilt that comes with the crime, it happens far more often than anyone would like to admit. Be Original Americas, an organization committed to raising awareness and initiating discussion on the importance of preserving original design, is taking a step toward raiding awareness on the sore subject. As of this morning, they've announced that they'll be opening up membership to the public. Companies, individuals, arts and educational institutions are invited to join the movement in recognizing the value of original design by participating in events, lectures and other original design focused happenings.

Membership levels will be available in three different options: members, affiliates and individuals. You can read more about the different memberships on the organization's website.

BeOriginal-PosterComp1.jpgVia Be Original Americas' Tumblr page

Be Original and Berhardt Design President (and Design Gatekeeper) Jerry Helling shares some words on what being a part of the organization means to him:

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When Concept Cars Get Real: Ford Motors designer Kevin George on the making of the Edge Concept

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Making a concept car is a little like building a toy—a huge, expensive toy for the finicky giant-baby that is the international car market. Like toys, concept cars are often more fantastic than feasible, but some do hit the sweet spot between production and wild projection. Ford unveiled its new Edge Concept last year and it is positioned uniquely to blend pragmatic new technologies and fun design. It combines the core of the existing Edge, but reaches out to touch on sweet new car tech (remote parking! Glowing armrests!?) and the obsessive tech-savviness of People These Days. We talked with Kevin George, Design Manager at Ford Motor Co., about what it's like working on a not-quite-production car like the Edge Concept.

C77: Walk me through the process of conceiving and building the Edge Concept.

Kevin George: The beginning of the process for us was looking at how the target customer was evolving. One of the main purposes of Edge Concept was to confirm a hypothesis we had about how the design should move based on that. The idea was that the customer had evolved into somebody who was more socially nimble. They make plans with their friends on the fly, maybe through social media connections, so how should the imagery of the car evolve to meet that need? The other concern we had was how are gas prices going to be in a few years, and what would that do to the customer's idea of the efficiency of the machine. So we wanted to test out something that looked a little more nimble. So the customer is more socially agile and the vehicle needed to look a little more agile so it would convey the right message about the car's efficiency.

We looked at Edge in the market: it's leading its category at least here in North America, we don't want to just start over. We don't want to throw out the earlier work of other great designers, but we wanted to leverage their work in a way that would fit this predicted image. In the past you may have seen Ford do some wild, out-there concept cars, and one issue with those is that if they never come to fruition then the customer is frustrated. One of the ways we really connect with customers is to build these concept vehicles that relate to the production.

Edge today is very modern, very monolithic, but not very agile. So the slab sides you see on Edge are gone on Edge Concept. So we started sketching Edge Concept to be more athletic in an agile way. Evolving it from sporty like a heavyweight boxer to sporty like an Olympic sprinter. And to bring it into the new Ford DNA, because Edge was originally developed during the last incarnation of the brand DNA and it needed to catch up to be more like the Fiesta or Focus. Those surface languages were influential to the designers as well.

FordEdge2.jpg"For a smooth, cohesive look, sculptors sand away the paint of hte liftgate on Ford Edge Concept to create a concave, angular form to the valance. The body shell arrives at the studio as a complete form, but requires serious hands-on attention before it becomes a vehicle designed by Ford."

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In the Details: Behind One Company's Decision to Use a Waste-Oil Furnace for Metal Casting

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Based in Syracuse, New York, Borough Furnace is a small metal-casting workshop founded by cousins John Truex and Jason Connelly. The crux of their operation is the Skilletron, a custom crucible furnace now on its fifth or sixth iteration that melts scrap metal by burning waste vegetable oil.

Truex was first introduced to the world of iron casting via a small cupola furnace, a miniature version of the old coke-fired furnaces that were the staple of industrial iron production for a long time. "Now most U.S. iron production is done in large electric induction furnaces; a lot of Indian and Chinese iron production is still done with large coke-fired cupola furnaces," Truex says. Wanting to create a small batch of cast-iron goods like skillets and bottle openers, Truex and Connelly looked at a variety of furnaces and manufacturing options to see what would make the most sense.

The duo discovered that for the same amount of money they would need to spend on tooling for overseas production they could build out their own micro-foundry and prototyping studio in the States that would also allow them to explore new cast-iron products and objects—retooling and making their own production molds for each new piece. Investigating further, they found that existing cost-effective furnaces like cupolas were restricting in their ability to only cast iron and types of bronze; also, because of the coke fuel, they were extremely dirty. But more expensive crucibles, which can melt aluminum or any other metal cleanly, proved unacceptable in the amount of pollution and fuel the process requires.

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U.S. Mint to Launch 3D Coins This Month

This Japanese Vending Machine Design Has the World's Most Amazing Help Button

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The customer service in Japan is legendary, and the year I spent living there bore that out. As one example, I wandered into a McDonald's during a slow time of day, and the high school kids behind the counter were role-playing: One of them stood on the customer side and pretended to place a difficult and unusual order, while the two behind the counter yelled "hai" and scurried to accommodate his demands. But this train station ticket vending machine is the absolute cake-taker:

The Japanese will often use our English word for service, rendering it "saabisu." But clearly we Westerners ought to be using their word instead.

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'It's Not What It Seems': Cleverly Disguised Foods by Hika Rucho

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Most of us know the disappointment of biting into a piece of fruit or a veggie imagining one taste and getting something totally unexpected. Not only is it unfortunate in the moment, but it can ruin a specific food forever if the mishap is memorable enough. Artist Hika Rucho has created a series that won't taste bad and is mighty easy to admire.

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International Home + Housewares Show 2014: Live from Chicago!

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As our loyal readers know, we're here in Chicago to bring you the best of the International Home + Housewares Show—starting this weekend we'll be bringing you highlights from McCormick Place for the fourth year running. We'll be tweeting as we go—the IHA has four hashtags for this year's show—and sharing blogposts, photos and videos here at Core77.com/IHHS.

To kick things off, here's a warm welcome from Design Programs Manager Vicki Matranga. She'll be MC'ing at the Innovation Theater, where she's put together an impressive lineup of speakers, for the duration, so be sure to say hi if you see her this weekend!

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Bose Corporation is Looking For Industrial Design Interns in Framingham. Are you in?

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Work for Bose Corporation!

You are well on your way to a long, fulfilling career of designing products that improve lives, open minds and challenge standards with innovative solutions. All that starts right here with an Industrial Design internship with Bose Corporation. The Bose Design Center is a vibrant, multicultural, growing team that is focused on Industrial Design for all Bose products and there's a spot waiting for you.

Like any other design team member, you will work on multiple projects, interfacing with technical and marketing teams, and in many cases represent the greater design team outside of the design center. Design is a competitive industry, so Bose compensates competitively. If you are an undergrad Industrial Design student and can sketch like the wind, check out the entire list of requirements and preferences on the next page and Apply Now.

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B. Super: Transformative Tools for the Everyday Protestor

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The word "protestor" probably brings a few images to mind: a hazy scene of conflict, throngs of angry bystanders with politically charged signs and the police. While creative repurposing tends to trump product design when it comes to civil unrest, a class at the School of Visual Arts was recently tasked with designing for protest culture in a class called "Product, Brand and Experience," for which the subtitle is the brief: "Consumer Products for Protestors." [Disclosure: Core77 partner and Editor-at-Large Allan Chochinov is the Chair of the Products of Design Program.]

Damon Ahola and Richard Clarkson were among the students who took the class last semester, teaming up to design B. Super—a collection of transformative tools (including a utility belt) that transform the wearer/user into a superhero in minutes. See what they had to say about their experience and the product series they created:

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Core77: Was there an "a-ha moment" that resulted in the idea for this series of products?

Damon Ahola & Richard Clarkson: We were discussing possible brand values and product directions early on in the process, Richard introduced the idea of superheroes. He was exploring the concept of superpowers in his thesis, so he was already quite knowledgeable about the topic. Damon quickly picked up the idea and immediately began sketching product concepts to give protesters a greater sense of confidence.

Could you walk me through the different products and their uses?

Each tool aids the protester in a specific task and is branded as such. The respirator mask,""breath," assists in surviving airborne toxins. To elude authorities, "disguise" is a fake mustache kit at the ready. Duct tape, handy in any situation, is included as "repair." "Relieve" is a lemon juice solution applied to allay the sting of pepper spray in the eye. As a mask, "hide" protects the protester's identity. Embodied as "declare," a rewritable roll-out canvas and marker act as a necessary communication tool. The single-use items are encased in a reusable box as "revive." Finally, the starter kit including the belt system and three of the tools is "empower."

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A Visit to Jungshi Handmade Paper Factory in Bhutan

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We travel far and wide to bring you insights into the latest developments in manufacturing techniques. This time, we trekked all the way into the Himalaya to bring you one of the most ancient ones, relying only on local production, manual labor and artisan skill. Alongside Bhutan's internationally applauded concept of Gross National Happiness, the jaw-dropping landscapes, and the plethora of Buddhist sights, the country takes a distinct pride in its cultural heritage in arts and crafts, and along with painting, weaving and woodwork, paper making is one of them. While young people here as much as anywhere stare at their smart devices and wear the latest candy-colored headphones, keeping old wisdom alive and kicking is one of the pillars of the country's master plan for happiness, and this is visible in architecture, clothing and products for everyday life.

In 1990, the Ministry of Trade and Industry established the Jungshi Handmade Paper Factory (Jungshi meaning natural) in Bhutan's capital Thimphu, to expand the old domestic skill for commercial purposes, and thus give the ancient art a relevance in the modern world. Today, they export their products to the US, Japan, Europe, India and Nepal. We were invited to get a closer look at all the steps involved in the manufacturing process, from raw material to finished product.

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The paper made here is based on unique materials of the Himalaya, the bark of the The Daphne Papyri, which can be found at altitudes of 3,000 feet and above, the bark of the Edgeworthia Papyri, plus various additional ingredients like flowers and leaves (for example from the ubiquitous chili and hemp plants), to add textures and patterns.

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As a first step, the bark is soaked in water and boiled, then washed and cleaned to sort the good fibers from the bad.

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Next, the material is pounded into a pulp, and mixed with water and vegetable starch made from Hibiscus plant roots.

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Meet Your 2014 Core77 Design Awards Jury Captains: Pt. 3

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You've already met the majority of this year's Core77 Design Awards jury captains in our first two announcements (here and here). As you know, these are the people that will be critiquing your work when you enter the Design Awards, which you should definitely do before March 20th. We're pleased to round out our search for the most prominent voices in contemporary design with the final five captains: Alongside their handpicked jury teams, these all-stars will be judging the Consumer Products, Furniture & Lighting, Soft Goods, Interaction and Transportation categories.

Never fear—there's more excitement to be had. Stay tuned for our final jury team announcement coming this week.

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International Home + Housewares Show 2014: Compleat Offers Discrete Brown Bag Options

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Content sponsored by the IHA
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Reporting by Morgan Walsh, photos by Ben Gross and Ray Hu

"Americans eat tall food." This was what Tom, the representative for the line Compleat told us when we quizzically picked up a laptop-shaped lunch box. As a Norwegian, Tom explained how his lunch fit in the hard-sided Foodbook (pictured below), a slice of bread here, a slice of bread there, another here and another there—each neatly separated by a cross-shaped removable partition. Though Americans may not typically bring four pieces of bread for lunch, we were already brainstorming other edibles that that would travel well in Foodbook. The obvious choice is pizza, but other ideas included a chicken breast with rice, bowtie pasta salad, a salmon filet with sliced carrots and peppers.

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Foodskin (at top and below) is Foodbook's smaller cousin—size-wise it is the iPad Mini to a Macbook Pro. But rather than a double-sided plastic shell, one side acts as a frame for a stretchy silicone film. This silicone has a dual purpose, it can accommodate bulkier or oddly shaped items, but also serves as a retainer, keeping an unwieldy (and tall!) baguette sandwich neatly stacked. Once the food (or anything that needs secure transportation) is removed, Foodskin returns to a flat state and fits neatly into a purse or tote bag.

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Rich Brilliant Willing, matali crasset Part of IKEA's PS 2014 Design Team

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More details on IKEA's forthcoming PS 2014 Collection: It seems the Swedish furniture giant had hired a gaggle of designers "hand-picked from around the world" to complete the line, and while some are relative unknowns, at least four are not: Both Rich Brilliant Willing and matali crasset were commissioned to add their respective design spins to the youth-based collection.

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Brooklyn-based RBW's statement on their two objects, the Storage Table and LED Stool Lamp, are as terse as their designs are clean:

A few words can describe the idea behind our two works: seamless, lively, transform. Other thoughts: simple, active /dynamic, mutate/metamorphosis.
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