We've talked about using the walls to keep papers close at hand, and to store knives—but walls can be used to store all sorts of odds and ends.

One way to use the walls is with a pegboard; Julia Child's kitchen pegboard, where she hung her copper pots, is a famous example. The pegboard above, from Human | Crafted, takes this old standard and makes it decorative as well as functional. The board is CNC machined from a solid block of walnut; the loops and hooks are 3D-printed nylon. It also comes with five feet of bungee cord, providing one more way to hold items in place.

Droog's Strap, designed by NL Architects, is another example of taking a familiar product—in this case, the straps used to hold luggage on the back of a bike—and doing something new with it. The straps are made from silicone rubber and can hold phones, keys, remotes, books, hand tools, etc. These would work great for end users who work best when everything is clearly visible. But for others, it will add visual clutter.

The naoLoop Loft, with its polyester latex bands, follows the same general approach as the Strap, but with the bands attached to a laser-cut stainless steel (or powder-coated steel) board. Besides transforming the look, the board protects the walls from anything that might get them dirty or cause other damage.

Photo: Michael Wilson

The Hanging Line from Kontextür, designed by Josh Owen, is a single silicone band. Items are stored by tossing them over the line, or hanging them from a hook. Although this was designed for bathroom use, end-users could certainly use it other places, too. It's somewhat limited in what it can hold, much more so than the Strap or the Loft—but it certainly provides more storage options than the standard towel rack.

West Elm is a dynamic, fast-paced brand with an exciting growth strategy. They value imagination, diversity and giving people the opportunity to explore, grow and shape their future. Right now, they are looking for innovative, smart, hard working individuals who enjoy creative thinking and ingenuity; specifically, a Furniture Engineer to join their corporate office located in the D.U.M.B.O district of Brooklyn, NY, right above their flagship store.

If you're the right person for this job, you'll be accountable for generating technical design specifications, procedures, practices, etc. for all new furniture products within the overall business targets of cost, schedule, performance and aesthetics. You'll need a minimum 5-7 years of product development experience and a minimum 4 years in furniture technical development and/or engineering with an emphasis on wood furniture products. Apply Now.

Left: Courtesy of Gary Cruce; Right: Drawing for patent D249,987

So it looks like the honor of Design Crossover Hit of the Week goes to Noonee's Chairless Chair, and while the mainstream media took to hailing it as a futuristic exoskeletal paramedical breakthrough, it so happens that the basic idea dates back to the late 70's. Upon seeing my post about it earlier this week, eagle-eyed reader Gary Cruce sent a note with a photo from an old exhibition catalog, indicating that the product may well have been invented several decades ago. "I doubt Noonee was aware of this earlier concept, but they may want to know of it as they work to take the product to market," Cruce writes. "The exhibit was at the Kohler Arts Center (yes the toilet company) in 1978, based in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. That show featured many studio furniture pieces including selections from Sam Maloof and Wendell Castle." Along with the image and anecdote, Cruce provided an all-important snapshot of the caption from the catalog; crediting the "Wearable Chair (1977)" to Darcy Robert Bonner Jr., it reads:

The "Wearable Chair" consists of two identical "chairs," one strapped to each of the wearer's legs. Bonner states that "It is important for the 'Wearable Chair' to be adjusted to each user. Just like a piece of clothing, if the chair doesn't fit, it will not feel good. When adjusted correctly, you can comfortably relax with all your weight on the chair.

"With the lower member of the chair strapped to the calf, a spring presses the upper member against the back of the thigh. As the user squats, the released compression bar pushes the leg of the chair to a locked position, thereby supporting the body. When the user rises, the lower member is unlocked and is retracted by a spring to its original position, where it will not interfere with the user's movements."

Curious to learn more, a de rigueur Google query revealed that Darcy Robert Bonner had actually filed a patent for his invention, which inspired this "more-than-you-cared-to-know" history of the wearable chair—a bit of rechairche du patents perdu, if you will—gleaned mostly via the USPTO (though tangential sleuthing reveals that one Darcy R. Bonner now heads up an eponymous architectural practice in Chicago).

Left: Uncredited composite image of Darcy Bonner's "Wearable Chair"; Right: Detail of drawing for patent D249,987

The original patent is simply entitled "Wearable Chair," which also happens to describe Noonee's product. Filed in 1977 and granted as D249,987 in October 1978, Bonner's initial design patent is described in Twitter-friendly terms as "the ornamental design for a wearable chair, as shown and described." Although this first iteration briefly resurfaced in the post-Google era in 2008, when the images above made blog rounds, it turns out that Bonner subsequently filed a second patent, US4138156 A, granted in Feburary 1979, which is far more detailed in tenor and scope. Where the former is classified as a "footed," "collapsible or folding" article of furniture, the latter is subject to an entirely different taxonomy of patent-worthiness. US4138156 A is a "device for supporting the weight of a person in a seated position including chairs, seats, and ancillary devices not elsewhere classifiable," specifically a "portable bottom with occupant attacher" (Subclass 4) with "occupant-arising assist" (Digest 10). (In the interest of due diligence, there are 148 patents in the former subclass and 353 in the latter; Noonee's Chairless Chair does not appear to be among them. Fun fact: "Digests" [denoted by DIG followed by a number] are considered secondary subclasses, which are used for indexing purposes only, i.e. as meta tags.)

The gag being a one-liner, I thought this video would be dumb from the description, but it's pretty funny. Carnegie Mellon grad Robb Godshaw is an artist-in-residence at Autodesk's Pier 9 workshop, a fabrication facility in San Francisco, and as such he's got access to some bad-ass machines like an industrial waterjet cutter. So what did he decide to do with it?

Create Alphaclamps, "an exploration of tools and their form. From the I-beam to the C-clamp, the latin letterforms seem to have a chicken-egg relationship with the letter-shaped tools that bear their name. Is the C the basis for design, or simply a descriptor of the form? Curious about how the other letters would work as tools, I set out to explore the mechanical utility of the forsaken letters of our alphabet."

Unbelievably, there are folks who did not realize this was a gag, judging by the comments on the Alphaclamp Instructable Godshaw posted. Oh, internet.

If you've ever been in a long-distance relationship, you know firsthand the challenges of coordinating across time zones to connect with parents, friends and partners. Phone calls are painstakingly scheduled, then spent catching up with a myriad of questions about the day-to-day in an effort to feel closer. Recently, a group of designers proposed a novel way to facilitate that connection: through a set of Internet-connected lights that reflect the weather conditions of another's location.

Called Patch of Sky, the lighting collection was conceived and developed at Fabrica, a communication research center in Treviso, Italy, in a collaboration between six designers, strategists and developers: Leonardo Amico, Federico Floriani, Reda Jouahri, Alice Longo, Akshataa Vishwanath and Giorgia Zanellato.

"Fabrica hosts designers and artists from all over the world, thus distance and nostalgia are naturally recurring topics," explains Amico. "Drawing from these conversations, we had the idea for Patch of Sky, an object that would silently connect people over distance, just by letting them 'share the sky' under which they're living." With that inkling of an idea, Amico and Akshataa invited the other four to join the team; collectively, they brought the project from ideation to fruition over the course of a year, completing it in early 2014.

The lights are made of painted wood and one-way mirror glass, and they come in three versions, for mounting on a wall or placing on a desk. Housed inside each device is an Arduino Uno and custom electronics that control an RGB LED strip. The purchaser of a light must first log in to a website with his or her own Facebook account (sorry Facebook holdouts, you're out of luck), entering a key that will uniquely identify each Patch of Sky device. That device will then be associated with that Facebook user, displaying animations from the account's most recent location. While they have yet to iron out all of the kinks, the Patch of Sky team envisions most customers ordering the product as a gift for a loved one, linking it to Facebook before specifying the recipient's address.

The recipient of the light must connect a small device called the Berg Cloud Bridge to an Internet router. The Bridge will then facilitate a wireless Internet connection with the Patch of Sky—now able to continuously transmit data from the user's Facebook account, pulling his or her location and retrieving the local meteorological conditions from a weather web service. That information is then generalized to one of 11 predetermined weather options, each linked to a lighting animation.

The book publishing industry may be shifting tectonically and perhaps irrevocably as we speak, but, as with vinyl, the cover endures as a canonical canvas for graphic design. The follow-worthy Casual Optimist recently brought a series of Gunter Rambow's amazing book-centric posters to our attention. Designed for the S. Fischer Verlag publishing house in the 70's, these graphics exemplify the light touch required to pull off visual self-reference. These book posters tread between clean forms and surrealist art, walking the delicate line of sight gags without crossing into the crap zone.

Magritte would be proud...

It should go without saying that Rambow created these works of art before the advent of Photoshop and its epiphenomenal 'bombardment,' though it's worth noting that the clever visual puns still hold up today.

...as would M.C. Escher.

Animal Planet calls Anthony Archer-Willis "the best in the world for what he does—designing and delivering the ultimate swimming experience." That's why they gave Archer-Willis, a British landscape architect with a specialization in swimming pool and water garden design, his own show. In "The Poolmaster," he designs dream swimming pools for a handful of lucky clients.

While the TV show will reveal Archer-Willis' own creations, in the following video he shows you his appreciation for another pool designer's work. An unnamed family in Utah commissioned this absolutely insane, mammoth $2-million-dollar swimming pool, which was designed to look all-natural. With five waterfalls, a grotto, a waterslide, hidden passageways, an integrated indoor kitchen/bathroom/showering facility, a scuba diving practice area and more, this is not the average swimming pool that most of us Americans will be hitting up this holiday weekend. Watch and be amazed:

Photography by Brit Leissler for Core77

Designer Martino Gamper guest curated an exhibition presenting a collection of objects from the personal archives of his friends and colleagues at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery in London. His collection, Design is a State of Mind, features a "landscape of shelving options" aimed at sharing the story of the design objects we interact with and how they impact their users and admirers.

The exhibited pieces include finds from the 1930s mixed with modern-day designs. You'll see well-known silhouettes nestled next to one-offs and styles ranging from contemporary to utilitarian. Some of the designers include Ettore Sottsass, Charlotte Perriand, IKEA, Dexion and Giò Ponti. The juxtaposition of styles brings to light a history of how we've housed our belongings and showed them off through the years as various styles and trends have come, gone and reappeared. The items displayed on the shelves are a collection of archives from Gamper's friends and colleagues.

Gamper also designed two exhibits in the Gallery's powder rooms—one being a tribute to Italian designer Enzo Mari and the other a space encouraging visitors to interact with Gamper's furniture designs. The Mari room displays a compilation of the designer's drawings, notes and designs, all held down by a different paperweight of Mari's own collection. Gamper's room invites visitors to sit on the designer's chair and explore a international library of contemporary furniture manufacturing catalogues while watching either Tati's Mon Oncle or Alain Resnais' Le Chant du Styrene—two films that feature the designs of the 1950s and how furniture design has changed in the years leading up to present day.

» View gallery

For small parts storage, I use the cheapie Stack-On containers we covered here. They're useful and inexpensive, but their design also dates back at least several decades. For a more modern-day solution, check out industrial design and manufacturing engineer Jeffrey Bean's Twist Tubes.

Bean's background comes with heavy tooling experience, yielding a specialty in "the rapid design and build of plastic injection molds." He's used his skillset to create a series of storage tubes that open from the side, via rotation, and feature both colored and clear polycarbonate in the same package (for color-coded organization and visibility, respectively). And his Twist Tubes are designed to avoid the one thing that's happened to all of us at some point: Dropping the container and spilling its contents everywhere. Although cylindrical, the toothed design of the cap means the Tubes will lie flat on their sides, preventing them from rolling off of a table; the sealed design (unlike a Stack-On drawer) means the Tubes won't spill their contents even if dropped; and the polycarb ought to withstand the impact of an accidental bench dive.

Open Air Neighborhood (OAN) started off as a collaboration between KaosPilotTheis Reibke and architect Louise Heeboell, back in 2011. At first, the idea was simply to develop "Building Playgrounds" through co-creative processes with the users, as a way to develop the city itself. They applied for and received grants from both the EU and RealDania, and started working on the project. After meeting Ellen O'Gara at a conference in 2012, the project has since been a collaboration between Heeboell and O'Gara.

The main focus for OAN has always been on creating a strong connection with the users by making them a vital part of the processes. Here they share some insights into what made them decide to work together, what brought them onto the path of co-creative processes and what they have learned throughout the various projects

Core77: Let's start off with a little bit of history about each of you.

Ellen O'Gara: Architecture seemed like an interesting thing to study because it combined books and creativity. I liked that combination and I still do. While I studied I really liked that everyone could participate in a discussion on architecture because it is something that is relevant for all. And in some ways we are all experts.

Louise Heeboell: I was both creative and good at math and physics. Good at drawing. I thought I was going to be an engineer. But I figured that the mix of engineering and being creative was being an architect. Besides from that, I had no clue, what being an architect was about. I'm happy about my choice now. Years before Open Air Neighborhood, I worked as a 'normal' architect. But I found that there was a conflict in the way architects work and the way the city develops. I had been looking for a way to work differently, open and with the users as a central part of the development—and still be an architect.

Louise, why was this so important to you?

Because I found that the urban space that was built as a direct result of the architects drawings had no life. (And I'd been drawing some myself, so I felt bad about it!) I was interested in finding out what created the places in the city that are filled with life and where people liked to stay.

Ellen, what brought you onto the path of co-creative processes?

Ellen: I studied at the school of architecture in Copenhagen. At the beginning of every year we went abroad for two weeks to do field work. In Sarajevo, Porto, Lisbon, ... Here we were free to find something that interested us. I would walk around and talk to people. Ask them what was important to them. This would always lead to something interesting. A topic would emerge, a need, a potential. I would gather all the information I could, measurements, conversations... the rest of the year, I and all the other students would develop each our project. I find this way of working very interesting. Looking at the needs and the resources and developing a program from that. It results in some very interesting synergies and very relevant programs. It is bottom-up development.

Of course you can't always just wander around and hope to run into something interesting when a developer wants something built but it is an approach I find very valuable. So what I mean to say is that my education has very directly led me to what I am working on today.

So, when did you two start collaborating?

Ellen: We met at a conference in august of 2012 hosted by the city. We each presented projects we had worked on for the previous months. It was clear that we had the same interests and some of the same ambitions for urban planning. The conference was about a project called Skab din By. Very interesting and experimental project by the municipality.

Louise: After that, we had a coffee and I think I asked if Ellen wanted to take part in the talk, that Open Air Neighborhood was going to give at the Think Space conference in September that year.

Ellen: Yes, and from then we started building OAN together. By January, we were working full time. Doing projects for the city and housing organizations.

During the Think Space conference you each presented a project. What were these projects about?

Ellen & Louise: We presented several projects where you could see that we had some common ideas for how to develop differently, our approach to urban planning and the process by which the city is and should be made. These ideas were about including the users in developing their own urban spaces. We were both very interested in processes where the citizens take a more central part of the development, and we both had experienced first hand that this kind of process can have some good social benefits.

Photos credits: Jaineel Shah, Kyle Oldfield, Valdemar Haugaard Olsen

The equinox may be a few weeks out, but here in the States, Labor Day weekend marks the cusp of the seasons, when we must transition from the long, diverting days of summer to the deskbound marathon of fall. This is especially true for those of you in school, as students, faculty and staff reunite at campuses the world over. As always, Core77 is proud to serve as the premier online resource for industrial design students, prospective, enrolled, and graduated, and this September we are pleased to bring a special editorial focus to design education.

When it comes to design students, Core has long offered multiple platforms for exposure and expert advice: Besides accepting submissions for editorial consideration, we're happy to host thousands of free portfolios on our sister site Coroflot is (did we mention its free?); we offer students the opportunity to strive for glory in our annual awards program; and our dedicated Students and Schools discussion board offers a venue for direct feedback and comments from designers from the world over. We understand that (for better or for worse) it can be easy to lose yourself in the forums so we're revisiting the archives and have compiled handy Discussion Board digests, which we'll be publishing over the next couple of weeks.

Yet the higher education system is changing before our very eyes as the very definition of industrial design expands to include human factors, interaction and service, among other emerging disciplines. As with our popular Design Gatekeepers and Getting Hired series, we're pleased to present D-School Futures, comprising interviews with the chairs of ten top American industrial design programs. Whether you're considering grad school as an undergrad or professional, or you're simply curious about how things have changed (or not) since your own D-School days, this series is not to be missed—check out the first one with Wayne Chung of Carnegie Mellon University and stay tuned for more.

Meanwhile, our Hack2School special feature remains chock full of tips, tricks and lifehacks for undergrads of all stripes (ID or otherwise). Plus, we've refreshed the Design Schools homepage—long overdue for an update—with a few new pieces to complement perennial favorites such as Choosing a Design School and 1,000 Words of Advice for Design Students. While our Education category includes a broad range of initiatives, the Design Schools page is, as always, expressly intended as a one-stop shop for design students—bookmark it now for future reference as we'll be adding the new content over the next few weeks.

ID students at the Savannah College of Art and Design

September is here, and you know what that means—the start of National Honey Month, yes, but also the reluctant acceptance by most students (and professors) that summer is really over and school is really underway for another semester. Here at Core77, we thought we'd use this back-to-school season to assess the state of design education—or, even better, to ask design educators to assess it for us.

Over the summer, we reached out to the chairs of ten top American industrial design programs and asked them each several questions about how ID education is evolving and how their programs are keeping up with the changes. Our questions were as follows:

How different is industrial design education today than it was ten years ago? Will it look very different ten years from now?

What would you say to a prospective student who worries about the relevance of an ID education in an increasingly digital world?

What sets your ID program apart from those at other schools?

What's the job market like for recent graduates of your program? Is now a good time to embark on an ID career?

If you had to give just one piece of advice to an incoming student in your program, what would it be?

Our first answers come from Wayne Chung at Carnegie Mellon University, and we'll be posting a new interview each weekday, with participants from Art Center College of Design, California College of the Arts, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Georgia Institute of Technology, Pratt Institute, Rhode Island School of Design, Savannah College of Art and Design, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the School of Visual Arts.

These educators' answers should be relevant not only to current and prospective students but to anyone interested in the changing face of the industrial design profession. We hope that's everyone reading this—and we hope that you'll weigh in with your thoughts in the comments.

Backpack design by CMU design student Morgan Fritz

This is the first installment of D-School Futures, our interview series on the evolution of industrial design education. Here we have answers from Wayne Chung, chair of the industrial design program at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Design.

How different is industrial design education today than it was ten years ago? Will it look very different ten years from now?

ID education today is requiring us to shove ten pounds into a five-pound bag. This sentiment has always been true for most ID educators. But it feels especially true today due to the proliferation of design positions available: IxD, UX, service design, experience design, etc. ID graduates all want to be playing a significant role in these areas. Consequently, the tools of trade, skills and type of output require augmentation and additions to the course exercises and projects. Add coding, electronics and other physical and digital interaction skills, and you have a lot to cover.

Some of the more overt differences are evident in the visual output for the digital environments. The other significant change has been that at the upper level of their education, designers are tackling wicked problems. These are societal issues that can only be addressed through systemic proposals—not just a single object or product solving a singular problem. And to make your argument for these wicked problems, a full contextual story has to be communicated. This storytelling is best done through a well-choreographed video that shows your research, analysis and insights. So you can see how the list of "required" skills is ever expanding for an ID student. But one of the things that hasn't changed is the core thinking of designing for interaction. This has always been at the CMU's forefront—whether for physical or digital.

As for ten years from now—I'm quite deficient in predicting the future. But by looking at the prior trend of our discipline being pushed into new roles and realms of business, medicine and society, it's clear that the role of design (not just ID) has to take a bigger responsibility in how the world is being shaped in physical and behavioral ways. And one of our best assets is the ability to get disparate disciplines working together toward something bigger than just the next shiny thing. Designers will not only be mastering their craft but energizing others to work communally toward complex goals and solutions.

Wayne Chung and student work by Rachel Inman and Matt Finder

CMU design students Josh Finkle and Erik Glaser at work

Australia-based machinist Ed Jones runs Ed Systems, a "Strange and somewhat crazy hobby shop that specializes in anything electrical, industrial, automotive, and anything in-between." A metal shop engineer by training, Jones' stock-in-trade is production machining, welding, injection molding, electrical work, you name it. As part of his work he needs to disassemble machinery for recycling, so when it came time to break down a Whirlpool, Jones opted for an easier method than de-wrenching it:

To be clear, Jones isn't do this (purely) for fun. "[The] machine was donated by one of Dad's friends, who happens to be a fan of [my YouTube] channel and wanted to see it die again. It was a power surge victim with a leaky drum unit, so its not a waste to scrap it. New ones are about $400, so it's not [a] big deal."

Another thing he can't do

Editor: Where we left off, designer and entrepreneur Pat Calello had run into the headaches that can come with overseas manufacturers. Here he attempts to straighten things out with a deceptive production house—but this time he's got a secret ace up his sleeve!

In October 2003, I was contacted by the president of BRIO U.S., who expressed interest in taking on Automoblox as the sole North America distributor. Within a few weeks, we put together a distribution deal for 2004. There was also some talk of taking over the manufacturing of the line, and we discussed possible terms. But I wasn't willing to let Automoblox out of my control at this point; I still wanted to achieve my dream of being a manufacturer.

To my delight, BRIO issued a purchase order for 10,000 pieces! With the order came a Letter of Credit with an estimated ship date and an expiration date. (This means that if the Letter of Credit expires and Automoblox doesn't deliver, the sale is invalidated.) This order put Swift Tread under fire to resolve the tooling issues in order to meet the delivery date for my first customer. BRIO also talked about annual forecasts in the 60,000-100,000 piece range. At this juncture, and at the height of my anxiety, I felt it was necessary for me to leave my position at Colgate; a week later I was on a plane to China.

During my farewell rounds at Colgate, I stopped to say goodbye to a colleague Yvonne Hsu. Yvonne has the kind of energy that inspires commitment from her team, and she and I worked together under crazy deadlines. I shared with her my plans for Automoblox, and she expressed her support and encouragement. Although ideas for Automoblox had been playing non-stop in my mind, my friends and colleagues at Colgate (for obvious career-related reasons) were unaware of my personal project. Yvonne told me that her dad, who was in the manufacturing business, might be able to help me, and she suggested I give him a call. She warned me that I needed to be prepared to talk specifics, because Henry "isn't the chatty type." Her warning sufficiently scared me enough to put off calling him right away, but by February, I mustered up the courage to call for some advice.

Henry, born in Hong Kong, agreed to meet me for lunch in New York. I showed him my product, and shared with him the trouble I had been experiencing with Swift Tread. The pre-production samples functioned to some degree, but still not correctly. I told him about my upcoming trip to China to work with Swift Tread on final tool modifications and check out some new factories. To my surprise, he offered to accompany me on the trip! I explained that I was not in a position to pay him for his assistance, but he told me not to worry about it, and we agreed that I'd cover his airfare. His offer was one I could not turn down.

Yesterday I had to retire one of my well-used, much-appreciated, everyday objects and figured I'd give it a postmortem, covering what I liked and didn't like about this product design. It's the Jambox, the portable wireless Bluetooth speaker famously designed by Yves Béhar.

Lifespan

I used my Jambox virtually every single day from Dec. 22nd, 2012 to August 31st, 2014. That's over 20 months of daily use. It finally gave up the ghost on August 31st after sustaining damage in a fall (more details further down).

Usage

Because I used this object so frequently, I consider it as having improved the quality of my life. I've used it in every single room in my house and workplace to play music or podcasts while I go about the tedium of life and work: Doing dishes, folding laundry, sewing, working in the shop, sorting parts, fixing sewing machines, cleaning the house, cleaning the studio. I also place it in the bathroom every night when I shower so I can catch up on podcasts. To me the Jambox has been invaluable for breaking up tedium and allowing me to listen to podcasts anywhere, without the bother of headphones.

I travel with it too. On regular trips to a rental house in the country, I connect it to a projector and my laptop to play movies for the group of friends I go up there with.

I've only used it twice for its speakerphone capabilities and don't have any useful input there, beyond that it worked fine.

Parenting can be tough, but at Skip Hop, they believe it can be easier when you have unique, innovative and highly functional products on hand. Their growing Product Development team in the Flatiron district of New York City is looking for a motivated Junior Product Designer with a keen design sense and solid experience designing a wide range of products. If you have 3+ years of experience in softgoods design, this could be the perfect job for you.

The right person for this role is a blue-sky thinker with excellent sketching abilities who thrives in a fast-paced environment. You will be responsible for concept and spec drawings for soft toys, working with overseas factories and approving materials and construction. This is a great opportunity for growth and advancement for passionate, self-starting designers who want to work in a fun environment filled with other passionate, creative designers. Apply Now.

Photo by Brian Quan

For this month's Back-to-School Special, we're going back to the basics and delving deep into the Core77 forums to answer common student queries. First up, we tackle a question as old as time... or at least the first time you heard of "Industrial Design." Just what is Industrial Design? After surveying posts on the subject and consulting our own deep internal wisdom, it's simplest to say that ID is the process of designing objects to look good and work well.

It's difficult to come by consensus beyond that, but the work of industrial designers is at the heart of virtually every industry that entails mass production, from humble office supplies to fast cars. A standard ID toolkit includes CAD programs, drawing tools both OG and digital, but also modeling materials like cardboard, clay, and finds from the Dollar Store. So, are industrial designers dreamers or makers? Are they artists, engineers, or inventors? To explore what Industrial Designers are and what they do, we turn to the crowdsourced feedback of fellow designers and trolls on our forums.

Is ID engineering?

Like many of us, user Forester404 wondered where the line between engineering and ID is drawn. Ralphzoontjens proposed that the dividing line is more of a gradient from conceptual to technical:

In my experience, there are purely designer type of people, involved in the front end, thinking out the innovation and setting up the concepts. There are pure engineers who like to tackle technical challenges. Then there is the design engineer who can handle both, but generally is not as good in any of them. In small firms you may find the last type of person more, in larger companies they will have a separate department for the creative process and one to get it to the factories. This division is often a bit too large in my experience, better concepts come when immediately from the start the technical knowledge is also taken into account.

Noahwangerin agreed that the fields blend, stressing that the purview of both industrial design and engineering are huge! "ID and engineering tend to overlap when it comes to product development... But both ID and engineering have their own spectrum that reach to opposite ends. For example ID can encompass systems, experience design, or concept art for movies and video games. Engineering can encompass stress analysis, performance tests and evaluation." But elsewhere, Bulletproof raised an eyebrow about that notion: "The only overlap I would say between [Mechanical Engineering] and ID is in knowing how to use CAD programs, and knowledge of production methods."

The degree to which they overlap notwithstanding, Cyberdemon puts it simply: "Designers are the ones who need to bridge the gap between the art and the engineering." Elegant—but how exactly does that work?

...typically on large and complex projects the designers and engineers work collaboratively. Where do the components need to go, how are the mechanisms going to work, what are the requirements. The designer can lay a groundwork for this, or it can come from the engineers, it depends on the project. Once the groundwork is laid the designers will usually translate that all into CAD that then goes to a mechanical engineer who will start to detail the parts, make them feasible for manufacturing, add in all the screws and structure to make the part work, and that is what will go out for tooling.

Got that? No engineering chops needed because teamwork is good. But that still sounds really technical.

This is the latest installment of D-School Futures, our interview series on the evolution of industrial design education. Today we have answers from Owen Foster, chair of the industrial design program at the Savannah College of Art and Design.

How different is industrial design education today than it was ten years ago? Will it look very different ten years from now?

There are two trains of thoughts here: the foundation and the progression.

Design education, as a whole, is rooted in certain fundamental practices that are needed to create the next great designers. The foundational skills of observation and application have been taught throughout the history of design and will continue to be what anchors future generations of designers. Without this core, future designers won't have the platform to jump off of to reach greater heights.

With that being said, the progression of design education is in constant change. We have moved from creating the necessary to producing beautiful artifacts and now to creating amazing user-focused experiences. The tools continue to evolve due to advances in technology, manufacturing, materials and the increased awareness of design by the masses. A designer must now be able to speak and understand multiple conversations beyond just art and engineering, including service, interaction and user experience. The goal for the future is to make sure we do not get caught up in what's new and shiny. Instead, we need to stay grounded in the foundational principles of design with the application of the tools around us.

Owen Foster

What would you say to a prospective student who worries about the relevance of an ID education in an increasingly digital world?

I'm not so sure prospective students worry about the digital world. We need to understand that the student of today embraces the digital world as another tool for design. Being what we call "digital natives," they are very aware that design is constantly changing and the need for technology is even more valuable today. Students understand the value of being a hybrid designer and understanding all the different conversations within design—industrial, interaction and service.

The example that I give is the iPhone. Why we see the iPhone as being a complete design is not just the touch screen, the hardware or new manufacturing processes. It's also the design approach as a whole. The artifact, the phone itself, is what people label industrial design: a tangible product that is mass-produced using new materials and cutting-edge production practices.

The icons are labeled interaction design and trigger an internal drive to attain information. To compare it to a simple process, it is similar to how a door functions. A user will open a door by the means of the doorknob to attain the information on the other side of the door, much like a user will access information through an iPhone.

Lastly, what makes the iPhone so unique is the service design of iTunes. This allows users to be part of a larger family that's linked to more applications and products. If you take away the service, you're left with just a smartphone. Remove the icons and interface and you're left with a beautiful paperweight. If you remove the artifact, you're not allowed to connect to any of the digital functions.

For those of you about to enter Industrial Design programs, you'll find epoxy resins are a staple studio adhesive. They're part of the class of super adhesives called structural or engineering adhesives, being a vital part of aircraft construction or on the smaller-scale, furniture design (see the wood fossil table below, made by Studio Nucleo), or even used in root canals, to bind the gutta-percha to the tooth.

Epoxy resins react with what are called polyfunctional amines, acids as well as phenols and alcohols - all commonly known as hardeners or curatives. Once mixed such epoxies transform from a liquid to a solid and become very strong, withstand high temperatures and have high chemical resistance. They are called thermosetting resins, because they cure by internally generating heat.

The important thing to note when one is mixing epoxy resins is the epoxide number which represents the amount of epoxide in 1 kg of resin. This number is used to measure how much hardener you'll need to cure the epoxy. However, the mix ratio can vary by as much as 10 times, from 10:1 to 1:1. Some epoxy resin / hardener combos will cure at room temperature but most need a lot of heat, from 150 degrees Celcius and up to 200 degrees Celcius. If the resin is not heated properly the material will lose its super adhesive properties.

See the above Wood Fossil Table here.