Last week, we spotted a couple of airplane interior designs from Paperclip Design LTD—aircraft armrests to seating concepts)—which address just a couple of the countless travel-related annoyances. But when you think about the worst that could happen in terms of travel plans, a delayed flight is probably pretty high up there, considering it can throw your entire trip into limbo.

My own personal interaction with major traveling hiccups takes me back to the age of 12, crying in the middle of Reagan International Airport terminal until some nice flight attendant took pity on me and let me tearfully call my parents on her brick of a cell phone. The one thing that might have made me feel better would have been a quiet place to nap and continue mourning my delayed flight home. Enter RESMO. The Red Dot Award winning design is a collapsible seat complete with a privacy shield made expressly for those trying to deal with a delayed flight by catching up on some much-needed rest. (For some of us, this might be considered a vacation in itself.)

Editor: Accidental Designer and his wife have gone all in, and run into a major production roadblock just weeks before filling some major orders. Find out how it all ends here in the exciting final chapter of their story!

When my wife and looked inside the shipping container and found it full of cracked cutting boards, we thought Holy shit, we are bankrupt. This container was supposed to contain the product we'd use to fill the major orders we'd scored, and now we were screwed.

But something didn't add up here. I could understand if some or even most of the load had been damaged in transit. But this container was entirely filled with broken product, every last one, and some of them in suspiciously consistent ways. Why would the factory ship this to me? They had no incentive to screw me, and in fact, their fortunes were tied with mine—they'd floated me several months of credit. This didn't make sense. At the time I didn't know much about factories, but I knew that they weren't in the business of playing expensive and career-ending practical jokes.

I got on the phone with the go-between in China, I'll call him Mister X. When he found out what happened he sounded as panicked as I felt, and he immediately flew out to see us and inspect the container. I mean this guy hung up the phone and headed straight to the airport.

After he landed and checked things out, Mister X figured out what had happened. When the factory was producing the first batch of product, it was trial-and-error, and there were a lot of hiccups before they got the manufacturing down pat. This shipping container was filled with all of the rejects and defects. Mister X knew that somewhere out there was a shipping container filled with all of the correctly-executed product, he swore he'd seen it with his own eyes. Somehow these two containers had gotten swapped out.

I didn't sleep for almost a week. But somehow, Mister X found the right container and got it to us—just before some major purchase orders were going to be canceled! We made it, but I think I lost a few years of my life in stress.

I became good friends with Mister X and this factory, and with good reason—from that point on, business doubled and then tripled each year. I paid off what I owed them and now we were all making money.

At that point in time, no one in the world made bamboo cutting boards. But three years after we got started, no less than 20 companies had knocked me off. I'm talking the exact same designs, some of them right down to the packaging! There was one "competitor" in particular who started turning into a real problem, offering virtually identical product and lowering their prices by 10 or 15 percent every year to price me out.

Remember that chair design that I'd "borrowed" in an earlier entry? Well, here was the karmic payback.

Like many innovative products, FINEX is a new-old idea. Take something beloved, assumed to be a terminal stage of evolution, and find the threads of dissatisfaction and tinker until it's the product of your dreams. Sounds easy, but it also takes passion and dedication and quirky obsession to pull off. Flash back to when the company debuted on Kickstarter and you might recall their clear passion for cast iron, their pragmatism, and their attractive design work. Their American-made ergonomic octagon proved compelling, even for the non-gourmand. After being 844% funded, FINEX hit the ground running. Since then they've been knocking out their Kickstarter orders and as of now the general public can get in on the well-seared action too.

To see how their company functions and celebrate Hand-Eye Supply becoming the first vendor, I visited their historic Portland factory and interviewed founder Mike Whitehead. Mike is an obsessive cast iron collector and passionate about the process. Between checking out cool vintage waffle maker handles and jumping into his own machinery, he gave me the rundown on how these updated old-school skillets get made.

We're partnering with Western Foundries for our casting. We make the patterns here [in Portland] at Willamette Pattern. Everything they make is normally the size of this room. They do like, nuclear reactor coolers, massive casting the size of cars—so this is like a dinky little thing for them. Then they go up to [be cast in] Spokane. Then they go to heat-treat in Clackamas. They're heated to 1,100 degrees for at least an hour, with a slow cool-down, which releases the inherent stresses in the sand-casting process. If we didn't do that, when we machine these we might get some warpage because there's a lot of stress in casting.

THRIVE is a design and innovation consultancy who collaborates with leading companies to create new products and experiences that resonate with customers, strengthen brands, and improve market share. They are looking for an Industrial Design Intern to join their Altanta, GA team this summer. Do you have the creativity, passion, people skills, and the ability to create breakthrough products for their clients?

If so, you should also be able to rapidly visualize concept ideas through sketches, renderings and physical prototypes and develop 3D digital surface models of high complexity and sophistication that are both aesthetically accurate and technically robust. This is an opportunity not to be missed, so gather up your cover letter, resume, and portfolio samples, and Apply Now.

Since Amazon made their name selling books, it made perfect sense when they came out with their own physical object for reading, the Kindle. It enabled them to get a piece of the e-book action. And now that they sell everything else, they've come out with another proprietary physical device related to selling, this one a sort of handheld ordering machine. Whether this object makes any sense, however, remains to be seen.

On the one hand, its utility is clear. The Amazon Dash, as it's called, is a handheld "magic wand" (the company's words) with just two buttons on it. One activates a barcode scanner in the tip, which you run over any item in your house with a UPC code; that object is now added via WiFi to your Amazon shopping list. The second activates a microphone that understands what you say, so you can re-order those pesky items (apples, toilet paper, etc.) that don't have barcodes on them. The catch is that the Dash currently works only with AmazonFresh, their grocery delivery service that only serves a handful of west coast cities, but if this Beta testing period works out, they'll presumably roll it out coast-to-coast.

Rakel is yet again one of the creative minds whose development I've been following for a while now. What is it with people coming from Iceland? It seems like they all have been sprinkled with fairy-dust, and Rakel is no exception. She's a wonderful combination of timid and radiant which transfers into her subtle and yet eye-catching design. This interview is a bit different compared with the previous ones in that I had the pleasure of interviewing her in person.

Core77: Tell us a bit about your background

Rakel Solvadottir: I grew up in Akureyri, a town in the north of Iceland. When I finished gymnasium [secondary school], I moved to Denmark to study fashion and textiles, but after the crisis hit Iceland, I moved back home and started my BA study at the fashion department at the Iceland Art Academy

You left Denmark as to study at Iceland Art Academy, how do you feel about your time there?

It's such a young school in comparison to many other design and art schools in Europe, so of course there are some things that could be improved, but it is constantly evolving. You also have to be aware that you can't learn everything in just three years of studies, and it's up to you to take advantage of this time you have and get as much out of it as you can. I'm very satisfied with my time there. The fashion department has been growing rapidly for the last years and you see more and more graduates making a successful carrier within the field.

You can say that you bachelor project was a success, seeing as one of your pieces was worn by no other then the wonderful artist and fashionista Lady Gaga. Has that influenced your life as a designer in any way?

Of course it has. It was a big deal, a great honor and a wonderful exposure for me as a new young designer. But to be honest, I wasn't prepared for it: The dress was not in production and I didn't have a website, so it was hard to truly use this opportunity to the fullest. But all in all, I'm happy that she liked the dress, that she chose to wear it, and that others got to see my work.

Looking at the pieces from your master project, they are very architectural. What made you go in this direction?

I wanted to depict the female form not as curvy and soft, but in a more angular and graphical way. I wanted to show a woman that was strong and edgy....

Billed as "the first creative conference for the active outdoor industry," the inaugural Struktur took place in Portland last week. In case you missed it, check out our recap of Day One, then read on for more insights from the best and brightest in the game today.

Day two kicked off with another macro view of the transformative power of design, delivered by Marc Galbraith of Nau Clothing. This time the historic lens was widened to talk about even evolutionary shifts. From early tool use to the Gutenberg press to the AK-47, design is taken for granted until it fails or is used for the wrong reasons. Using Nau as an example, Galbraith talked about the need to harness both short and long-term thinking about product development, emphasizing rock solid lateral teamwork, and deep inquiry into impact and use. The slide "We have designed ourselves into this mess and we can design our way out of it" stuck with me.

Enough of the industry lifers, on to start-ups! Mike Brown, designer of the Alpine Hammock, walked us through the current crowdfunding landscape and options for first time entrepreneurs. Even if your work has little to gain from start-up tactics, the amount raised by crowdfunding continues to shoot up. Worth keeping an eye on. This panel unpacked upstarts' successes, difficulties and myths with Oru Kayak, Homeschool Snowboarding and Iva Jean clothing. Their core advice: plan long and hard but expect to miss your mark a lot in the beginning, get a great business partner or team going as early as possible, expect to hustle for it. A lot. If you love it, it's worth it.

The next panel was fun but tough. It was hosted by Makers Row, a website designed to connect designers with American manufacturers, and Spooltown, a textile manufacturer in Portland. The discussion largely focused on how to approach manufacturers for the best result. Tip: Don't slap down an NDA in the first conversation, it's rude and probably wildly unnecessary. Another tip: Don't write off US production just because of higher initial prototyping charges. Labor costs are a big hurdle, but high minimums, global shipping and gaps in communication can be just as expensive in the long run. As the local food movement has shown, transparency and investment in your own economy mean something.

G.E. might bring good things to life, but sometimes they'll also take a moment to destroy the things you love. To promote their Global Research Center in New York, they took a bunch of everyday items like wristwatches, sunglasses, skateboard wheels, etc., and ran them through a few of their industrial testing machines to see how they'd do:

The baseball was kinda surprising, no?

In the world of material science graphene might be considered its Superman, Einstein and Edison combined. In the lab, it has proven itself to be nothing short of magical and amazingly useful time and time again.

The single-atom slice of pure carbon is crazy strong, yet lightweight and very flexible. While it is not yet used in commercial applications, it is under very active development for potential use in photovoltaics, energy storage, electronics and filtration, among many others. We're not talking about it just being part of such applications—it will radically change everything. If it lives up to promise, we'll be able to charge our phones in about five seconds, clean up huge amounts of radioactive waste, make salt water drinkable, create unbreakable touch screens, insert bionic devices in human tissue—the list goes on.

But it looks like the first doubt has been cast upon the darling of materials science. Two studies published this month have found some negative side effects.

There's nothing inviting about a surveillance camera. Closed-circuit cameras invariably raise the question of security at what cost, and while the devices are pivotal to many movies, I'm more reminded of that tape scene in The Grudge that I always watch from behind my fingers. Italian designer Eleonora Trevisanutto gives the cold, boxy cameras a fun, almost toy-like makeover. In fact, at first glance I mistook these for disguised baby monitors.

Created for Italian company Parson, the camera lenses are hidden behind a semi-transparent screen and holds true to the designs' theme by attaching to the wall with a tree branch.

The time has come! Ford and IDSA have teamed up to bring you "Designing Innovation"—a panel discussion on design featuring Nathan Shedroff of the California College of the Arts, Yves Béhar of fuseproject, Jordan Brandt of Autodesk and Freeman Thomas of Ford Motor Company. Check out the video below to see what they have to say about the role of technology in design, shaping consumer behaviors and responses to innovative products and how products stand out from and fit in with the world around them (among many other things, of course). If you submitted a question on Twitter using the hashtag #designinginnovation, you might hear your query onstage.

Here's a little more about the people onstage:

Rakel is yet again one of the creative minds whose development I've been following for a while now. What is it with people coming from Iceland? It seems like they all have been sprinkled with fairy-dust, and Rakel is no exception. She's a wonderful combination of timid and radiant which transfers into her subtle and yet eye-catching design. This interview is a bit different compared with the previous ones in that I had the pleasure of interviewing her in person.

Core77: Tell us a bit about your background

Rakel Solvadottir: I grew up in Akureyri, a town in the north of Iceland. When I finished gymnasium [secondary school], I moved to Denmark to study fashion and textiles, but after the crisis hit Iceland, I moved back home and started my BA study at the fashion department at the Iceland Art Academy

You left Denmark as to study at Iceland Art Academy, how do you feel about your time there?

It's such a young school in comparison to many other design and art schools in Europe, so of course there are some things that could be improved, but it is constantly evolving. You also have to be aware that you can't learn everything in just three years of studies, and it's up to you to take advantage of this time you have and get as much out of it as you can. I'm very satisfied with my time there. The fashion department has been growing rapidly for the last years and you see more and more graduates making a successful carrier within the field.

You can say that you bachelor project was a success, seeing as one of your pieces was worn by no other then the wonderful artist and fashionista Lady Gaga. Has that influenced your life as a designer in any way?

Of course it has. It was a big deal, a great honor and a wonderful exposure for me as a new young designer. But to be honest, I wasn't prepared for it: The dress was not in production and I didn't have a website, so it was hard to truly use this opportunity to the fullest. But all in all, I'm happy that she liked the dress, that she chose to wear it, and that others got to see my work.

Looking at the pieces from your master project, they are very architectural. What made you go in this direction?

I wanted to depict the female form not as curvy and soft, but in a more angular and graphical way. I wanted to show a woman that was strong and edgy....

KLIM Technical Riding Gear is a relatively young company with a rich history built on the values of hard work, sacrifice, and determination. Klim has risen against all odds to become one of power sports most recognized brands and a global leader in designing, developing and manufacturing the most technically advanced motor sports apparel. They're looking for a Technical Designer to join their Ridby, ID team.

This position is responsible for the development of product, from design to final prototype, which translates the consumer need into a brand aligned product brief that can be commercialized with profit margins which drive P&L goals. Drive lifestyle and functional products to achieve KLIM's quality standards. Apply Now before someone else snaps up this opportunity.

The Community. Design. Initiative. is a project located in one of Canada's most at-risk and diverse neighborhoods, facilitating a conversation about architecture's responsibility to engage across not only physical, but economic, social, cultural, and environmental environments. In short, it's kids building buildings—under the watchful mentorship of a few brave social work and design professionals. In Canada, it is pushing the envelope around truly participatory architectural processes.

The project itself is unique collaboration project between a social service delivery hub (East Scarborough Storefront), an architectural think tank (archiTEXT), and an architecture firm (SUSTAINABLE.TO). Based in the priority neighborhood (a neighborhood defined as at-risk) of Kingston Galloway Orton Park in East Scarborough, the building project has engaged youth to design an 8,000 sq. ft. addition to the social service delivery hub, the East Scarborough Storefront. Over the last three years, local youth have been engaged with architects, landscape architects, planners, designers, etc.—over 45 professionals involved in the conception, design, fundraising, approval process, and construction of the building. The complexity of this building process' eco-system continues to engage all ranges of stakeholders, with the youth-led participatory process demonstrating broad reaching positive impacts on the community (and at-risk neighborhoods at large).

Both social workers and designers want to help to improve people's lives, yet they use entirely different words, tools and processes. The Community. Design. Initiative. has allowed (or made it necessary for) the two groups to learn to work together, to share their words, tools and processes.

Who better to create a book focused solely on the wonderful DIYs that can come from a father-daughter relationship than the MAKE magazine Editor in Chief / founder of Boing Boing? No one. Mark Frauenfelder was a man on a mission to find "geeky" DIY projects he could take on with his two daughters and, unfortunately, didn't find much of anything. So he started to compile his own, taking on the alter ego Maker Dad.

According to Boing Boing, the book is "focused on teaching girls lifelong skills—like computer programming, musicality and how to use basic hand tools—as well as how to be creative problem solvers." Watch (and follow along) as Fraudenfelder and his daughter Jane take on the "Friendstrument"—one of the book's 24 how-tos:

When I think of carbon fiber, I think of its automotive applications, like F1 guys making monocoques out of the stuff. But it never occurred to me that carbon fiber could be used to make the hand tools we use to work on cars. A company called CarbonLite Tools is now producing a line of carbon fiber box-end wrenches.

The wrenches are, of course, insanely light; a set of five weighs just 6.7 ounces (190 grams), which the company reckons is lighter than your average steel single 15mm wrench. And yet they're not made completely from carbon fiber—the teeth are made from hardened stainless steel inserts, which you can see in the photo below, so that stubborn nuts won't shred those expensive layers of fiber.

And yes, they are expensive: A set of five—metric on one side, Imperial on the other, from 3/8" & 10mm up to 5/8" & 15mm—will set you back US $140. Beyond the price, the only thing that might give you pause is this caveat from the company: "We recommend using gloves as there is a small possibility the carbon fiber can leave splinters in your hand if the carbon fiber is damaged. The possibility of splinters from the carbon fiber wrench is about the same as with a wood handle on a shovel or hammer."

As I work with clients to organize their offices, I often see them scramble to find everyday things such as pens, paper clips and sticky notes. That's one of the first things we fix, since it's a basic organizing principle to keep often-used items close at hand. And using the proper containers for those items makes them easy to grab when needed.

Especially if the desk does not have a pencil drawer, end-users will want to keep these frequently-used items on their desktops, in some form of desk organizer. Some of these organizers are a single piece, such as the Toolbox from Vitra, designed by Arik Levy. This design is nice for end-users who move between multiple work surfaces—or who work on something like the dining room table, where the desk supplies need to be removed when the table is used for other purposes. The Toolbox also could be used for plenty of other things if needs change and it's no longer needed as a desktop organizer. It's made from ABS plastic.

This desk organizer, from Less & More, consists of two pieces that join together. One piece has holes of various sizes, plus a compartment that would hold a wallet or something of a similar size. The second piece has slots to hold paper and notes, a separate slot that's the right size for a cell phone, and two magnets to hold a few paper clips. Here we see the space-vs-storage tradeoff: This organizer is 10 inches deep (compared to the Vitra toolbox, for example, which is 7 inches deep), which will be too large for some end-users. And the design creates some hard-to-use space in the areas to the left and right of the piece storing the papers and the cell phone—fine if you have space to spare, but not if desktop space is limited.

In comparison, this single-piece wood block desk organizer from l'Atlier d'Exercices is more compact, at only 2.25 inches deep, but it stores much less. There's one hole for pens, and five slots for papers—but nothing for items such as paper clips.

Other desk organizers are modular. These are the Rhombins from AMAC, designed by Eric Pfeiffer and Scot Herbst. Each of the three rhombus-shaped modules has a divider inside to separate items kept within. All sorts of configurations are possible, including a stacked one to save space—although that means the end-user needs to unstack them to get at certain things. The Rhombins are made of Cereplast, a plant-based bio-plastic.

Long before the days of annually featured colors with quirky names, there was this monster of a book by a mysterious artists that goes by A. Boogert. It comes in around 800 pages and features every color you can imagine—much like a grandaddy of the beloved Pantone color guide. Medieval book historian Erik Kwakkel (talk about a job title) found this encyclopedia and quickly it lit up the Internet after he featured his find on his blog.

Kwakkel goes into more detail on where he found the book and what Boogert shared in the book on his blog:

I encountered this Dutch book from 1692 in a French database today and it turns out to be quite special. For one thing, no Dutch scholar appears to have published on it, or even to know about it. Moreover, the object is special because it provides an unusual peek into the workshop of 17th-century painters and illustrators. In over 700 pages of handwritten Dutch, the author, who identifies himself as A. Boogert describes how to make watercolor paints. To illustrate his point he fills each facing page with various shades of the color in question. To top it he made an index of all the colors he described, which in itself is a feast to look at.

Are you known for your creative, innovative and keen eye?
Do you have experience setting a strategy and executing on the plan?
Do you see retail goods and wish you could have designed the packing?
Do you thrive in a fast-moving environment with multiple projects and deadlines?

Sound United (a division of DEI Holdings, Inc.) is the parent company of some of the most respected brands in the consumer electronics industry and they are looking for a Senior Packaging Designer to join their Vista, CA team. The SPD is responsible for developing and implementing a packaging strategy and design aesthetic across the Sound United's Brands (Boom, Polk and Definitive). If you're ready to design stunning packaging across multiple brands, do the right thing, have fun and play to win, Apply Now.

While we hope to never have to see one of these in real life, we spotted this mesmerizing video of airplane emergency slides deploying over on DoobyBrain:

The question is, how the heck do they design and make these things? How is it possible that one little pressurized tank can blow the entire thing up in six seconds? What material are they using that it's strong enough to withstand the process, not to mention the thereotical hundreds of people that might slide down the thing? We did a bit of hunting and found the video below, where you'll see everything from a vacuum table fabric-flattening machine to a CNC cutter to a lot of handwork: