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On top of being a great creative thinker with excellent technical skills, the ideal candidate will have a strong pulse on design trends and what's happening in the marketplace today. You'll be eager to support the industrial design team, while also providing additional support to all levels of strategists and designers. To get in on this fully immersive experience, Apply Now.

The short story of the Caochangdi artist's village is that Ai Weiwei more or less singlehandedly established a creative community in a residential neighborhood on the outskirts of Beijing. The experiment worked, and CCD is now home to dozens of artists and designers, as well as galleries and studios, and is rightfully among the primary sites of Beijing Design Week. Although it's mostly concentrated in a self-contained cluster of austere buildings in the heart of the neighborhood, there is a sense in which Ai's Red Brick complex endures as a vital hub for Chinese design.

"It's a strange area—it's a village on the edge of the city; it hasn't been the subject of regeneration or development or top-down beautification," says Ben Hughes, who curated the exhibition for this year's weeklong celebration of design. "All of the galleries here are entrepreneurial and sort of grassroots. It's a working village—it has its rough edges."

A major thoroughfare in Caochangdi—the main horizontal street in the map below—with the Red Brick complex at left (and Zaha Hadid's Wangjing SOHO in the distance)

Hughes would know, having embedded himself in a live/work space shortly after he relocated to Beijing from London, where he taught at Central Saint Martins, in 2011; he currently works with his partner Alex Chien as A4 Studios. Despite the camaraderie between most everyone who has set up shop there, he notes that the Red Brick complex can be quite desolate at times, the interlocking planes of red and light gray that cast long shadows across the interstitial plazas and alleyways. (The locale is dramatized in Jason Wishnow's recently released dystopian short film Sand Storm, starring none other than Ai himself.)

"In China, design is quite often portrayed as highbrow [or] elitist—something that you need to be quite wealthy to take part in or enjoy," explains Hughes. "For Design Week, the message we're trying to [convey] is that design is accessible... that design is more about everyday things that everyone can get involved with. In the courtyards here—which are normally very brutal, very stark—we've tried to create more like a fair, a village fête kind of atmosphere." To that end, he set out to engage the locals by expressly fostering participation, namely through 'Plug-In Stations': "Things you can take part in, things you can make, things you can draw, things you can produce and take home."

A4 Studios designed the map, which incorporates street-level sights as landmarks; see the full version here

How do you feel after listening to a Stefan Sagmeister lecture? Whether you mean to or not, you probably feel... happy. Sagmeister is a plainspoken powerhouse of graphic design and a walking wealth of lifestyle koans. His Design Week Portland talk, presented by Portland's AIGA, touched on the internal and external frameworks that impact our positive emotions. To illustrate his ideas about designing happiness he veered between beautiful shots of his interactive installations and often smutty infographics unpacking what "happiness" really is and how to get it.

Using the casual, personally-oriented storytelling familiar in most of his public talks on the subject, this keynote also got technical. Through personal anecdotes and work highlights, we got a guided tour through the research and findings he came to while struggling to make his movie on happiness a reality. Up first: definitions and limitations of happiness. Surprisingly, it turns out that self-reporting is pretty accurate. Do you think of yourself as happy? If asked, how would you describe your life satisfaction? From the sound of it, most of our public answers would check out when tested against our MRI readings. So that's cool.

The three factors that he believes influence happiness most are our activities, life conditions, and genetics. Specifically, the more non-repetitive activities, the more supportive your social environment, the better. Genetics, as a factor you can't impact, he doesn't "care for." Moreover, the material conditions of our lives only matter up to a point—money matters up to "middle class" and then stops having an appreciable impact as you get richer than $85K/year. People, perhaps unsurprisingly, find success relative: Most people would prefer to make less money overall but more than their neighbors when opposed to making more money overall but less than their neighbors. Telling. It's also why you get a little depressed seeing everyone else doing so damn well on Facebook.

Sagmeister's own notorious work cycle, which is loosely structured around taking a long sabbatical every six years, incorporates diversity of activity and socializing into his life, which in turn helps bring diversity and social thinking into his work. Even those of us without our own internationally renowned agencies can apply those ideas. The value of seeing new things, talking to new people, and pushing your own boundaries are obvious—as he put it: "Seek discomfort."

Yesterday Tesla Motors held a press event where they announced their new all-wheel-drive models, which hit the road in December. These being electric cars, rather than using a single motor to drive all four wheels, Tesla is simply dropping a second motor into the car; with one up front and one in back, there's no need for a driveshaft in between and all of those pesky linkages.

And these cars will go from 0-60 in an absurd 3.2 seconds, in case you need to smoke a Bugatti. "This car is nuts," Tesla skipper Elon Musk told the audience. "It's like taking off from a carrier deck." (See video below for the full carrier deck/Battlestar Galactica-esque "launch sequence.")

Some optimists assumed that at last night's event, Musk was going to pull the sheets off of a completely self-driving car. While that's undoubtedly a ways off, the autopilot features announced last night for the new models indicate it's not as far off in the future as you might think. Using a combination of radar, a camera and a dozen sensors, this is what Tesla's new models can reportedly do:

- The new system will move the car over a lane when the driver uses the turn signal.
- The car reads speed-limit signs and adjusts the car to the speed on the sign.
- Drivers will be able to get out of the car in their driveways and watch it park itself in the garage. When drivers are ready to leave, the car will able to drive itself up, with the car's temperature and stereo system set to the driver's preferences.

"It will come to you wherever you are," Musk says. "It will slowly make its way to you."

I'm not sure why you'd choose to get out of your car in the driveway rather than in the garage—most architects are thoughtful enough to put a door between the garage and the house—but then again, perhaps Musk is targeting the super-rich owners who live in manses apart from the stables.

I first stumbled upon TJ Volonis's work while attending the Fiercely Made design show last month in Brooklyn. Standing at 30 inches tall and 60 inches long, the Brooklyn-Barcelona Console Table was the centerpiece of the show, inviting attendees to admire its complex geometries—inspired by the bridges and arches of its namesake cities—and its simple use of materials. Just as the show highlighted the work of Brooklyn makers, Volonis's table is a product of his surroundings. For the artist, the city provides the inspiration and backdrop for his work, as well as the pathway to discovering the medium of copper tubing in the first place.

Volonis began working with copper tubing back in 2005, when a dumpster-diving roommate brought home an awful IKEA coffee table. "It was in pretty bad shape," Volonis says. "The legs were quite wobbly, as the supports between them had broken off.". Always curious about copper tubing, Volonis picked some up at his local Lowe's and taught himself how to manipulate and solder it to build new legs for the discarded table.

His next foray into copper tubing was for a chair he made for a benefit art auction. Entering anonymously, Volonis ended up taking home the Best Emerging Artist Award for mixed media, garnering the attention of a gallerist who asked to see the rest of his portfolio. As the chair was only the second piece he had made at the time (and the IKEA table left a bit to be desired), Volonis did as all good creative folks do—said yes and ran home to figure it out. He quickly made another four or five pieces to show the gallerist, and while the opportunity never quite panned out, Volonis began to look more seriously at his work.

This unnamed German gent loves paper airplanes so much that he started a website, Papierfliegerei ("paper aviation"), dedicated to spreading awareness of their history, manufacturing techniques, competitions and more. He also designed and built a machinegun that not only fires paper airplanes—but actually makes them. Which is to say, you load it up with unfolded sheets of A6 paper, the gun turns them into airplanes and then continuously fires them out of the business end:

Interestingly, a minority of the gun's contents are off-the-shelf parts; the rest of it he had 3D printed by Fabberhouse, a Germany-based output house. If that guy in Texas was disseminating designs for 3D-printed guns like this, the news coverage would be considerably different.

Via Pop Sci

ShowPDX is one of the long-running events that makes Design Week Portland worth leaving the house for. Now in its ninth year, the show is a small juried furniture exhibition with a specific focus on brand new work from the Northwest. The votes have been cast, and if you're in town you have until the 14th to visit them in person at the Fisk Building.

As is becoming PDX-standard, this year's submissions showed a heavy slant towards woodworking (they still call us Stumptown for a reason) and lightly updated Midcentury lines. There were some standout pieces, with and without vintage wood appeal. Here are our favorites.

Phloem Studio has retro wood in the blood, but I love the thick rope update to the traditional woven seat on the Harbor Chair. Really elegant frame doesn't hurt. Inspired by childhood boating adventures, it's scratching my macro textile itch without going absurdly nautical.

The Kindred Tables are a set of three indoor-outdoor mini tables, collaboratively designed by Ashley Tackett of SERA Architects and Gavin Younie of Outdoor Scenery. Their separate backgrounds in interior design and landscape architecture combined well with these airy looking but super solid pieces that would work as well in a garden as in a living room. Steel bases with marble off-cut tops make for durability, but the side-centered leg placement keeps them from feeling too clunky and suggests a jewelry-like stone setting.

Warm potato salad. Beers that just aren't cold enough. Chicken that may or may not still be safe to cook. These are all cooler-related disappointments of the past. YETI Coolers created and leads the premium cooler category by making ridiculously tough (bear-proof) coolers that keep things cold for an absurdly long time. This company is a rocket ship in terms of growth with sales that double, on average every year since their founding in 2006. Why wouldn't you want to join their Austin, TX team as a Senior Industrial Designer?

They're looking for a highly motivated self-starting Industrial Designer with a proven track record of bringing consumer products to market who thrives in a fast-paced environment and is comfortable charting new territory. Your creative chops allow you to research, strategize, review, and develop concepts for every different kind of product. You love creating new things. You're going to love working at YETI, so Apply Now.

The Central China Academy of Fine Arts, or CAFA, is easily among the top art schools in China, both for its extremely competitive entrance requirements and its close ties with the government. Originally founded in 1950, the current self-contained campus, established c. 2007, is located in the Wangjing neighborhood in northeast Beijing. As the curator of the Beijing Design Week festivities in Caochangdi this year, faculty member Ben Hughes saw fit to encourage his students in the industrial design department to show their work (as well as inviting them to develop interactive booths for the so-called "Plug-In" Stations).

Exhibited in Naihan Li's new studio from September 27 – October 1, "Everyday Issues" followed from Hughes' brief to his graduating class to research and develop solutions for "everyday problems and basic improvements to everyday life."

Each piece [is] underpinned by thorough research in areas of user experience, technology, materials and processes. Areas dealt with by these projects vary hugely in their diversity but include issues such as Courier drivers' working conditions; using technology to introduce and educate different tea drinking practices; bringing handwriting to mobile communications in a novel way; helping people recycle kitchen waste and grow edible fungi at home; using xuan paper in three dimensional forms and much more.

In addition to images and descriptions of each project, Hughes shared several of short films that the students produced, as well as images from their final presentations. [Note: The work can also be viewed on CAFA's 2014 exhibition website; the number following the project name correspond to the link on this site.]

Huang Weijun - Cha Yeah [032]

Despite the popularity of coffee and qishui (soda), tea endures as a staple beverage in China. "By studying both Western and Chinese drinking habits as well as the day-to-day lives of young people," Huang Weijun notes. The "Cha Yeah" smart kettle/steeper is app-controlled...

Cha Yeah is a smart brewing system for different types of tea. It challenges the idea that authentic tea culture is available only to the committed connoisseur using ancient implements. Through studying both Western and Chinese drinking habits as well as the day-to-day lives of young people, the designer worked on a product that complements current trends whilst providing a useful source of reference and education in the correct preparation and consumption of different teas.

Sai Ailun - Courier Vehicle Design [039]

The designer cites astounding figures in her research: On average, so-called "three-wheeled carts" (motorized cargo trikes) deliver 1.3 million parcels a day and upwards of many times that during holidays. These vehicles are effectively driving the growth of China's domestic e-commerce industry, yet drivers work for long, back-breaking hours for little pay. (Hughes noted that she also made a full-size model but that it was discarded following the graduation show; unfortunately, the video is merely a slideshow.)

This project seeks to develop the courier vehicle with respect to the very specific task that it and its driver have to undertake. Because the production of these vehicles is relatively standardized and highly dispersed, the project's main focus is on the rear compartment and accessories. Through careful research and testing, the designer hopes to be able to improve the efficiency and working environment for the vast and growing number of couriers who are fuelling China's domestic consumption.

The AliveCor heart monitor is the first FDA-cleared device to let patients monitor their heart rhythm through a smartphone, enabling cost-efficient, timely diagnosis of cardiac arrhythmias for those at risk. Designed by Karten Design.

Bringing a consumer product to market is a challenge in and of itself—taking an idea through concept development, business analysis, beta testing, product launch, and beyond. Add the FDA to the mix, and it's a whole 'nother story. This is the challenge faced by medical device and product firms, which not only have to make a fully functioning, well-designed product but also have to put it through several rounds of rigorous testing by the FDA and other regulatory bodies.

"They're parameters. They don't stop you from doing anything, but they do make you do it in a way that you, as a user, would probably think is a good thing," says Aidan Petrie, Co-Founder and Chief Innovation Officer of Ximedica, an FDA-registered product development firm with an exclusive focus on medical products. On any given day, Ximedica is running 40 individual programs, overseeing the steps required to bring these products to market. "We don't do anything that isn't a FDA-regulated product," says Petrie.

The timelines for these projects can run anywhere between two to six years. While time-to-market is not the primary driver, finding ways to close that gap can make a big difference in profitability. For companies like Ximedica and HS Design, closing that gap meant becoming International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 13485 certified. "There are so many regulatory and quality metrics that had to be put in place to satisfy those requirements that it made us a better and stronger company," explains Tor Alden, Principal and CEO at HS Design (HSD). "It also put us to a level where we couldn't just accept any client. We had to become more sophisticated as far as who our clients were and how we could say no or reach a point of compliancy." By building those regulations into the design process, these companies are able to anticipate and plan for any potential timely obstacles from the get-go.

About this time last year, Siemens unveiled their vision for the future of the London Underground: an innovative, lightweight and energy-efficient 'mass transportation solution' with the exterior styling grace of a plastic worm, and all the interior character of a hospital waiting room. When Priestmangoode unveiled their design for the New Tube for London last week, we breathed a sigh of relief that they didn't let the engineers design it.

The New Tube design comes two and half years after the Heatherwick's New Routemaster hit the roads of the capital and follows recent news that the city's upcoming Crossrail project (the hugely ambitious underground rail line cutting directly through the centre of London) will have exterior, interior and livery designed by Barber Osgerby when it opens doors to commuters in 2017. All told, we're pleased to see that London is turning to top British designers to shape the city's public realm.

They are the first to market, but they certainly won't be the last: Power tool manufacturer Bosch has rolled out wireless charging for 18-volt cordless tools before any of their competitors. An inductive charger transmits electricity to the battery placed atop it, meaning for the first time one doesn't have to disconnect the battery to juice it up.

The productivity gains spread across the entire body of users should be enormous. I can't tell you how many times I've been using my drill and impact driver in concert, and invariably one or the other will run out of juice, meaning I've got to go back and forth with one battery on both units while I charge the other battery up. Arguably this wouldn't happen if I had the discipline to disconnect both batteries after every job and pop them back on the charger, but I just don't. With a charger frame like Bosch's, I could simply dock the entire tool after each gig and come back to 100% battery life, checking the little LED indicator on the base to be sure.

Check it out:

The company reports that the new 18V batteries are backwards-compatible, so legacy Bosch users won't be left in the wired-up cold.

For most of us consumers, beer is something we buy in bottles and cans, its creation process something of a mystery; we have a vague notion of grains and a fermentation process being involved. Home brewers more firmly understand the science, but much of their alchemy happens inside opaque stainless steel containers, with your average home brewing set-up hewing to the Walter White Meth Lab school of design. So for his final-year design project Freddie Paul, a Product Design student at London's South Bank University, decided to make the home brewing process more transparent. Literally.

Beer Tree is a gravity fed home brewing kit for brewing craft ales. It concentrates on the brewing process as something to be enjoyed and celebrated. The process can be completely visualised from start to finish, involving the user more than traditional kits to create a strong sense of satisfaction and pride over the final product.

The video gives you a better sense of what the Beer Tree looks like in action:

We're digging Paul's use of laser-etched graphics on the control panel, his use of materials and the overall form. One commenter on the video is more critical: "It looks impossible to clean and sanitize, your mash tun will lose so much heat, it looks like you can't vorlauf" and more brewerspeak. Another commenter is more upbeat: "My close friends and I have all agreed. We would pay good money to own one of these. Seriously consider making a Kickstarter for manufacturing of this product. I would sign up to back you TODAY."

Paul, if you're reading this: Given that you've graduated and we don't see a current employer on your Coroflot profile, perhaps the crowdsourcing is worth a go?

Check out Paul's shots of the development process after the jump.

'Progressive modular' is the Hazard 4 motto. Their products are designed to be at the forefront of innovation and technology. From functionality, materials selection, manufacturing techniques, through testing, quality-control and packaging, their customers can expect Hazard 4 products to be the most modern and cutting-edge available. If you are an entry to mid-level industrial designer with a knack for strong visualization, this job with the Hazard 4 team in Long Beach, CA might be perfect for you.

They're looking for someone who finds creative, relevant, functional, and aesthetically sound design solutions to complex design problems and challenges. The right person also creates high quality design packages to clearly communicate a product concept to an overseas vendor for accurate translation into a prototype. Step up to this opportunity to continue the strong tradition of building reliable products and Apply Now.

By Robert Grace

Business executives, designers and Chinese government officials alike received a hefty dose of knowledge and insight this past weekend about the value and importance of design not only to products and environments but also to the human condition.

A diverse mix of more than 700 attendees—of whom roughly half were non-designer, C-level business officials—attended the inaugural Design Success Summit at the Portman Ritz-Carlton Shanghai on Oct. 11 to listen, learn and debate the role that design can play in enhancing business and improving lives. Held in the midst of Shanghai Design Week, the day-long conference was capped by presentation of about 180 awards to the winners of the ninth annual Successful Design Awards competition.

An underlying yet high-minded theme that emerged at the DSS event, in addition to its stated goal of "amplifying the value of design," was the role that designers can and should play in the betterment of society.

In the highlight of the event, Don Norman, former Apple VP and co-founder/principal of the Fremont, Calif.-based Nielsen Norman Group (and sometime Core77 columnist), tag-teamed with Prof. Patrick Whitney, dean of the Illinois Institute of Technology's Institute of Design, on a 90-minute discussion, during which the pair challenged the aspiring designers in the audience.

Referring to design as "the intermediary between technology and people," Norman urged young designers to become generalists, not specialists. He suggested that students not major in design, but rather focus on gaining an understanding in history, literature, politics, and other such broad-based topics, because designers need to be able "to look at the entire issue." The key, he suggested, is not just solving the immediate problems that present themselves, but rather analyzing the entire situation. "Design is not about giving you answers," he said, "it's a process to determine what the real problem is."

If we look past the media hype behind Lenovo's Yoga Tablet 2 supposedly being "engineered" by Ashton Kutcher, what we have appears to be a very interesting device. As with Samsung's experimental interface designs, I'm happy to see Lenovo challenge the incumbent device—Apple's iPad, obviously—by differentiating themselves through some unique design efforts. By building in a kickstand, adding something like real speakers, dropping in a pico projector and using a cylinder to break the "glass rectangle" form factor while providing some much-needed ergonomics, Lenovo has demonstrated they're willing to take risks and break with convention.

It is of course ironic that Kutcher played the famously focus-group-averse Steve Jobs in Jobs and is now conducting focus groups for an Apple competitor, but if this video is uncooked, it seems they actually got some useful feedback that directly informed the Yoga Tablet 2's design:

So, anti-celebrity snickering aside, what do you all actually think of the design? Pluses and minuses of the bulge? If the projector eventually becomes up-to-snuff (I'm cynically imagining the first-gen will be too dim), do you think that'll become a feature on all tablets? And why don't other tablet manufacturers—or for that matter, phablet and smartphone designers—seem to consider that we humans actually have to hold the things?

When I write about projects and people that I find interesting, I often wonder "Why the heck don't more people know about these projects/people?" You can say that I see it as my duty to spread the word, to inform people about the things going on out there, and make sure that you don't miss out on all the awesomeness that is to be found in various places, and within people... which is a long way of introducing Communitere.

The Beginning

When disaster hit Haiti back in 2010, Sam Bloch was working on a custom-made lighting system for a weekend cabin up in the mountains. He had finished work for the day and was sitting in a bar, drinking a well-deserved beer, when he saw the news about the earthquake. Right then and there (because it sounds more dramatic that way), he decided that he needed to be there. He packed his big backpack with as few private things as possible and filled the rest up with tools. About a week later, he was standing in the middle of the disaster area with the feeling that he had made the right choice and was in the exact place that he needed to be. And although that moment marked the beginning of Communitere, Sam had already been working in disaster relief for about six years.

The name itself, Communitere—which I first thought was French—stands for Communities United In Response, Relief & Renewal.

What works, and what doesn't

With quite a few years within the field, Sam had gathered a fair share of insight into what worked and what didn't work. One of the problems he had identified was the lack of innovation within the global aid industry. Where there's no margin to fail, there's no margin for innovation, at the same time as it's easy to argue that this lack of innovation is failure in itself.

This lack of innovation is the problem that Communitere took to heart and decided to make into its main focus. By creating Resource Centers, spaces that also know as "Spaces of Safe Failure," they have established big workshops where the locals inhabitants can learn how to build their own homes; use the tools provided in the workshops; use the space to work on new ideas; and collaborae with visitors on prototypes and projects to solve a specific problem.

As Bloch says, "You can't empower people, the only thing you can do is give them the tools to empower themselves."

"Focus on solving the problems that others are not"

It's one thing to think that you know what the people you want to help want, but actually knowing what they want may be a whole 'nother thing. There's also a difference between knowing what they want and what they truly need. Needs can be tricky in the sense that sometimes what you need the most is something that you didn't even know existed—a problem that might be so ingrained in your day-to-day life to that you don't even see it as a problem, but rather you take it for granted.

One of the problems you encounter in the world of aid is oftentimes many organizations focusing on solving the same problem without communicating with one another what they are up to, at what time, where, and so on and so forth. This results in redundant efforts, resources going to waste, as well as other areas being neglected when it comes to support, products or medicine.

Basic though their purpose may be, water towers have long been a fixture of inhabited areas far and wide, from the brobdingnagian barrels atop NYC edifices (per 19th century ordinance for buildings taller than six stories) to sci-fi-worthymonoliths that rise from landscapes like alien flora. At best, they are as beautiful as they are iconic, abiding in the gestalt of the built environment as monuments to our collective engineering prowess, humble sentinels of our hydration needs.

On the other hand, those of you who see them as eyesores might change your minds when you see Maud van Deursen's "Chateau d'Eau" series of glass decanters. Inspired to highlight the quality of Dutch tap water, the Design Academy grad has created several tabletop water towers that serve as functional sculptures. "The quality of Dutch tap water is exceptional—regulations for tap water are stricter than those for bottled water. Yet bottled water is a thousand times more expensive, plus, it has a negative effect on the environment."

Industrial design student Quentin Debaene's Dyson-Powered Invisible Umbrella concept generated strong interest when we showed it to you last year. Created as submission for the James Dyson Award, Debaene estimated that his fabric-less umbrella design, which would blow air so forcefully that falling water would be repelled, could be built in the year 2050. Now, however, a self-described research team in China is claiming they can produce an air-blowing, no-fabric umbrella by next year.

As of yesterday, the anonymous development team has successfully Kickstarted their Air Umbrella project (with a shockingly low US $10,000 target).

But before you get too excited, a couple of caveats. One is that the development team's identity and credentials are murky. While they say "We are a R&D team from China. Most of our members hold Ph.D/Master degree of Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics or Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics," the only person listed by name on the campaign, a Chuan Wang, has a Facebook profile that does not list a college degree, indicating only that s/he "studied at" Southeast University in Nanjing.

Caveat number two is that the error-riddled presentation is a bit underwhelming. But we'll let you be the judge:

"Everything can be a lamp with LumiLor," writes Darskide Scientific, the company that developed it. LumiLor is a patented coating that glows when a current is applied to it. (And yes, it's safe to touch, as it's sealed and insulated.) The brilliance of the system is that since it's water-based, you can load it up into any paintspraying system or airbrush and you're off to the races. Here's how the process is applied: