Surely some of you remember the toy called Shrinky Dinks, the polystyrene toy that allows users to turn pieces of plastic into smaller pieces of plastic. (According to Wikipedia, 90's alt-rockers Sugar Ray were originally known as 'Shrinky Dinx' until Milton Bradley threatened a lawsuit—more nostalgia than you asked for on a Tuesday morning, I know.) If it's a somewhat dated reference, I must say that I envy the children of the future, who may well grow up with the parentally supervised fun of the 3D printing thanks to iBox Printers. The Melbourne, FL-based company's flagship Nano model is available for pre-order for under $300 on Kickstarter.

We've previously seen a similarly diminutive CNC machine, but the iBox is rather more impressive, considering that 3D printing adds a veritable dimension of complexity. Moreover, the portable device is quiet, lightweight and can run on batteries, all thanks to the use of ultra-efficient LCD lamps to UV-cure the resin. Made from a series of stacked acrylic plates, the housing looks something like a tissue box, with an overhead-projector-style print head; on the UI end, the Nano is controlled primarily via mobile/web app over WiFi.

Motorcyclists know the thrill of the open road... and those without garages know the hassle of securing motorcycle covers to their bikes in inclement weather. For garageless riders, a host of companies have designed a variety of solutions to keep bikes dry, ranging from flimsy to whimsy.

From Japan comes this armadillo-style Cycle Shell:

For those seeking a little more structure, from Poland comes this steel Moto-Box Roller with a sliding track that locks the front wheel into place (warning, turn your sound down):

In Part 1, we looked at storage options for motorcyclists that don't have a garage to call their own. But even for bikers that do have garages, there are other issues, like how to fit the bike in the space when it's being shared with a car.

One design solution is to get the bike in there first, then get it up and out of the way before Florence Four-Wheels comes home. For that there's the nifty Moto-Lift from Germany:

From Italian company Bike Shuttle comes a similar solution, minus the lift:

Opportunities like this don't come along all the time. Quirky, the company that makes invention possible, is looking for a talented industrial design student or recent graduate with an entrepreneurial spirit to join their Manhattan based team as an Industrial Design Intern this fall! From roughly December through February, you'll have the chance to work with Quirky's product team and see a variety of products through from concept to completion.

The right person for this job knows everything there is to know about Quirky (research!) and is looking for a challenge. You also lean toward action and really know how to get sh!t done. If you have an enthusiastic and agile work style and possess the other requirements found on the next page, we recommend you Apply Right Now.

Factory in China, via Wikimedia Commons

In fairness to the much-derided MeezyCube—a case for the MagSafe Power Adapter, a.k.a. The Apple Accessory We Never Saw Coming—I should note that I haven't personally put a MagSafe through the paces; 99% of the time, it's just sitting on my desk. If the laptop charger's egregiously poor rating on the Apple store is any indication, they're rather more fragile than they should be, and, like iPhones and MacBooks, even the lowly power supply may be worth encasing after all. (To commenters who denounced my plan to return the charger after a week, I can only respond that pride had clouded my judgment but I eventually came 'round; the extra charger now sits in my desk drawer.)

In any case (no pun intended), there is still much more at stake—namely, that the unprecedented availability of tools, resources and means of production is but one factor behind the rampant proliferation of dubiously useful products such as snap-together plastic doodads—which is why I was interested to see a closely related topic crop up over in our discussion boards. Beijing-based forumite laowai hyperbolically asks "Are We Ruining the World?":

As industrial designers, we have a large footprint with regard to our contributions to manufacturing. Shouldn't we hold ourselves more accountable towards cleaner manufacturing and power? This seems like a no-brainer and as a global community of designers, surely we have some leverage, right?

The first few replies unanimously shift the responsibility to the consumer, and the fact that I consider myself to be a conscientious one is probably why I felt ambivalent about something as mundane—yet essential—as a laptop charger (this will make more sense if you read the previous post, trust me). That said, I do indulge in retail therapy on occasion, when I succumb to my weakness for printed matter and bicycles; in keeping with Lmo's advice to "buy pre-owned products whenever possible," tracking down deals on secondhand parts is part of the appeal when it comes to the latter. In fact, I very nearly posted another rant when I saw this bike, not for its asymmetric frame but rather its purported mission, to disrupt the bicycle manufacturing industry. Here's a disruptive idea: buy a used bike.

Washi is a type of old-school paper made in Japan. Plant pulp and water are mixed and collected on screens, and after drying, fresh sheets of the stuff are pulled off. Though tissue-like in appearance, washi is reasonably tough, making its long production time worth the wait.

It's typically made in sheets, which can subsequently be pasted together to make three-dimensional shapes; you've undoubtedly seen it rendered into lampshades. But a company in western Japan called Taniguchi Aoya Washi has figured out how to make the stuff 3D from the get-go, right out of the bath. This "Seamless Three-Dimensional Washi" eliminates the exposed edges that come from connecting multiple sheets, and TAW is the only company in Japan that knows how to make the stuff.

In the last entry, we showed you how to cut and mount the spoilboard for a ShopBot Desktop. Here in Part 2 we'll show you how to ensure it's perfectly level, so you can achieve dead-on accuracy with your workpieces.

In my shop I've got so many different types of tape—duct, gaffer's, masking, painter's, packaging, paper, conductive, electrical, et cetera—in so many different colors that I don't have the space to put them all in dispensers. Hence they all sit in a large drawer waiting to be pulled out. Which means anytime I'm using one for a project I'm constantly re-scrutinizing the roll to find out where the end of it is, or dragging my fingernail around the perimeter in low light, usually going in the wrong direction so I can't detect the lip. It's a minor annoyance, but a recurring one. (And I don't like doing the folded triangle thing because it's wasteful.)

Which is why I think these The End is in Sight electrical tape rolls from American Science & Surplus are so brilliant. A simple gray double line spirals around the entire roll, letting you see where the edge is instantly. At $3.75 for three they won't break the bank, but unfortunatly they only come in black, and only electrical tape.

Via Werd

Now that jack-o-lantern season is behind us, we can look forward to two months of bacchanalian gluttony can begin (followed, of course, by the guilt and sobriety of yet another new year). But if you miss the warm glow of foodstuffs that have been 'creatively repurposed' as lamps, Japanese designer Yukiko Morita has a trick—or is that a treat?—in store for you. Exhibited at Tokyo Designers Week, her "Pampshades" give new meaning to burning carbs. These luminous loaves are made are indeed made from flour, salt and yeast... and LEDs "and more." They're reportedly covered in resin, though it's hard to discern the crustiness-vs.-doughiness factor of what is normally a perishable product.

As the story goes, Morita worked in a bakery in her native Kyoto eight years ago, subsquently graduating from the Kyoto University of Arts in 2008 and reportedly launching Pampshades as early as 2010 (the name is a portmanteau of 'pan'—French for bread, derived from the Latin panem—and lampshade). The brief timeline on her website further notes that the first prototype dates back to 2007 and that she relocated to Kobe as of this year.

Recently, RKS presented a topic in one of their Sessions that all designers should be concerned with. Think about it: When was the last time you considered the security of your innovations? When it comes down to it, do you know how to protect your innovations?

Intellectual property attorney Dan Dooley and Matthew Joynes, CEO of the gaming peripheral company Wikipad, provide extensive advice and insight on handling intellectual property from a entrepreneurial perspective. From avoiding willful infringement on patents to protecting and ensuring no infringement on your own patents, this presentation will open your eyes to the IP terrain that must be covered when you're inventing and designing innovative products.

In "Things We'd Like to See: Subway Stations with Better Lighting" we showed you Paris' gorgeous Arts et Metier metro stop and a conceptual design for a sunlit underground station. But since then little has been done in the real world to change subway lighting.

Little, but not nothing. This week a video emerged showing that the UK's Network Rail has installed blue LED lighting on parts of platforms at Gatwick Airport. They're following Japan's lead, as that nation began installing blue LED lighting on Tokyo platforms in 2009--to combat the nation's high suicide rate. (We Americans should recall that in countries without as many firearms as we have, jumping in front of a train is the method of choice for those looking to take their own lives.) It's thought that blue light "has a calming effect on agitated people, or people obsessed with one particular thing, which in this case is committing suicide," as a therapist at the Japan Institute of Color Psychology put it.

Beyond that, Network Rail is hoping the blue lights will influence everything from circadian rhythms to crime figures:

Many of my organizing clients struggle with small kitchens. Collapsible items can help make the most of a small space—but so can items that stack or nest.

Food storage containers (with their lids) are one ongoing storage challenge for many end-users. Joseph Joseph provides one good solution: six nesting containers of differing sizes, with lids that snap together to provide a single lid for the nested collection. The bases are color-coded with a dot on the bottom, indicating which colored lid fits each base. I'm glad to see these are rectangular rather than round, since the rectangular shape makes better use of limited space.

Another way to address the same challenge is to have nesting containers of different depths that all use the same size lid—and then provide a mechanism for stacking the lids. That's what designer Stephen Greenberg did with Stackerware. As he explains: "These containers come with hooks on the lid and bowl. The hooks slip onto a holder base. The bases can be attached to a wall, a cabinet door, in a drawer, or wherever there's space." That ability to mount the Stackerware base in various places gives a space-challenged end user a lot of options.

Mugs and glassware also take a lot of space in a kitchen, so space-challenged end-uers appreciate stackable designs. These stacking stoneware mugs come with a chrome rack.

There's a reason we don't prototype things out of stone. We use wood, metal or plastic because when you inevitably screw something up, there's a chance you can fix it. Stone isn't exactly forgiving. Which is why I have the ultimate respect for the craftsmanship of stone sculptors, with their patience and the high level of skill required to render form from rock.

I always pictured them tapping away in some atelier with a hammer and chisel, but of course the modern-day stone sculptor has access to power tools. San-Francisco-based Chuck Clanton, whose material of choice is marble and whose work you see pictured here, uses chisels driven by air-powered hammers.

"I have been using the Cuturi air hammer line for 20 years," Clanton writes. "I learned about it from the 70-year-old artisani in Italy who have been sculpting for major studios all their lives. They use Cuturi because they stand up to 40-hour weeks, for decades."

Premium coffee is kind of a thing these days, thanks largely to the likes of Stumptown and Blue Bottle, and the nuances of brewing a perfect cup hits a sweet spot of quasi-gastronomical experimentation... not least because it's something that many of us do on a daily basis. Now, as you sip your java juice this morning, I invite you to consider what is quite possibly the most high-tech consumer-level coffeemaker ever (it's only feature creep if it tells you the weather forecast, amirite?).

The Bruvelo is a veritable counterpoint to another Kickstarted take on pourover that we saw earlier this year. Sure, the user needs to measure the beans and mind the water temperature—as is true of any decent brew—but Craighton Berman's "Manual" coffeemaker (that is literally what it's called) is intended to be a sculptural showpiece as much as it is a pourover apparatus. Slated to ship this month, the bell-jar-like coffeemaker may well leapfrog the chemex as a coffee-nerd conversation piece—though it's certainly more practical than, say, a Juicy Salif, the holy grail of mantle-worthy kitchenware.

Manual labor

These are interesting days for product design, as companies are experimentally combining different technologies in an effort to create new classes of objects. Yesterday Amazon unexpectedly announced their Echo product design, a cylindrical domestic object that revealed the company is better at keeping things under wraps than Apple.

So what is Echo? The best way I can describe it is Siri in a can, or an iPad for your ears. Apple's tablet enabled us to view the internet without being tethered to a computer, and Echo aims to aurally provide us with information from the internet, with queries made via voice. Have a look at how Amazon imagines the device would fit into our lives:

Like Apple's iDevices before it, Echo consists of already-existing technologies that the designers are hoping will create a desireable functionality by being combined. But I'm not convinced it will succeed. In today's crowded product landscape, new objects succeed by fulfilling an unmet need, and/or possessing such a strong design-based sex appeal that consumers cannot resist buying it.

I'm not sure the Echo has either. The appeal of hands-free is that it lets you achieve something you'd ordinarily do with your hands, when your hands are already occupied; like the example in the video where the housemum is prepping food and asks for a measurement ratio rather than physically looking it up. That example is certainly valid, but it's a question of how often that need truly occurs.

In today's fast-paced world, it's getting harder and harder to find the time to decompress and let off some steam. And for those who prefer to do this in some steam, well, even the most sauna-addicted can only manage so many Spa Castle visits a month. Design Academy Eindhoven student Marcis Ziemins feels your pain, and has created a miniature version of the classic sauna—one with all the sensory relaxation of a trip to the spa without the roomful of hot, sticky steam. In fact, this pint-sized sauna might even be your next desk accessory.

Billed as the Smallest Sauna on Earth, Ziemins's design was created as a way to share the decaying traditions of his home country of Latvia, where the sauna is a cherished method of cleansing and unwinding. After organizing a class trip to Latvia to learn more about the country's rituals, Ziemins sought ways to bring the sauna tradition back to Eindhoven with him. "When I went [back] to Eindhoven to present my ideas to the teachers, they said that it is not really enough for me to just live there and renovate [a sauna]," Ziemins says. "They asked me to search for translations and something that I could actually bring to Eindhoven to show."

Ziemins scoured Latvian beaches for the perfect-sized stones for his sauna.

An early prototype and a sketch

Ziemins began designing a smaller version of the large saunas he saw in Latvia, something simple in scale and stature so that users could easily understand the concept and principles of how one works. What he arrived at was a device that could imbue a small space with the atmosphere of a sauna. "It will not get as humid or as hot as the real sauna, just the ambience and aroma," Ziemins says. The Latvian native also looked to incorporate the classic four elements—fire, earth, water and air—into the design. Not thinking much about mass-production, Ziemins saw the object as something to be made by hand, feeding into ideas of rituals and tradition.

If you've got the design genius of a Bill Stumpf and a Don Chadwick married to the technological and manufacturing might of a Herman Miller, you can create an Aeron chair for mass production. And you can even make it in three different sizes for folks of differing heights.

Erickson Woodworking, a father-and-son business out of Nevada City, California may not have access to furniture giant resources, but they reckon they've got an office chair that a discerning customers will line up for: A bespoke, made-to-measure model called the Niobrara.

"Every single one is tailor fit to the individual like a suit," writes Tor Erickson, company co-owner. A host of measurements of the customer yield a fit more precise than three sizes can offer, and this is about as far from factory production as you can get: The Ericksons harvest, mill and dry much of the wood they use themselves.

Working for Nike opens countless opportunities for their employees to sharpen their skills, push limits and uncover their potential. No matter the location, or the role, every Nike employee shares one mission: To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world. The Portland, OR Nike office has an opening for a 3D Lead II (3D Generalist) who will serve as a category resource supporting digital creation from ideation through go-to-market (GTM). Why not apply your 3D skills to the world's leading designer, marketer and distributor of authentic athletic footwear, apparel, equipment and accessories?

With a Bachelor's Degree in an industry related field and a minimum of 5 years continuous experience in related field, you'll be perfect for this job if you're ready to anticipate, develop and utilize new technologies that bring innovation to Nike's digital design processes. It also helps if you have experience with Marvelous Designer or Optitex. Apply Now.

By Sheryle Gillihan

Every organization that is developing an app has hopes of becoming the next viral hit, but even great apps compete for attention amongst the distractions.

Moneythink, the established and growing financial literacy program for urban, low-income high school students, also had high expectations of adoption for its app. After completing the Moneythink Mobile pilot last spring, our organization, CauseLabs, reviewed the quantitative and qualitative results with Moneythink. Their initial response? Disappointment. But the CauseLabs team saw something different. We saw the pilot program as a success.

Analyzing the Right Results

It happens all the time. Organizations that are building apps for the first time set the bar too high. Having years of app development experience, CauseLabs knew better than to expect astronomical results and saw success where Moneythink did not.

Consider some of the challenges of mobile engagement: Mobile users are selective when downloading apps due to limited device space. Moreover, studies have shown that, no matter how many apps are installed on a device, users only open an average of 20-30 of them per month. Even useful apps fail to hit 100% engagement.

Take email as an example of a useful app. For some of us, checking email is a daily to-do and behavior that has caused mobile email clients to far surpass their desktop counterparts. Yet, despite prevalent email use, fewer than 20% of email client users were active in the last 12 months, according to an IT Business Net article from earlier this year. Gmail, topping the charts for email usage, showed that only 11% of users were active over a 90-day period.

We don't expect to put a number as low as 11% on reports when we set new app engagement goals, but perhaps it is more realistic. Active use of an app from any user group (outside of paid staff) indicates that it offers something of value. When evaluating our work at CauseLabs, we look through the lens of the 1% difference. Not everything we build will be the next overnight hit, but we build tools to create impact. In the case of Moneythink Mobile, we are introducing financial literacy to the next generation of leaders. If we get Moneythink Mobile in front of 100 students and impact 1% of them in two months, what happens when we reach 1,000 students over a year?

Of the students in the Moneythink Mobile pilot group, 80% downloaded the app and 34% interacted with it, while 4% completed all nine challenges. This percentage may seem small, but these are power users. Moneythink can grow their user group and start to see the 4% impact increase over time.

Aaron Draplin, co-founder of Field Notes and everything-doer at Draplin Design Co.

At Hand-Eye Supply we like getting gritty as often as possible but we're no strangers to desk work. As technologies shift and disciplines change, more and more of our tools take place inside the computer and at the desk. Our fresh fall project From the desk of... pays homage to the diverse and under-appreciated world of the desktop. Featuring 21 of the most talented desks around Portland, we focus on tools and spaces that inspire joy and productivity.

Our visits took us to famous offices and off-the-radar home studios, and we peered in on big personalities and elusive workers alike. You'll find appearances by noted designers and hometown heavyweights like Aaron Draplin of Field Notes, illustrator and artist Kate Bingaman-Burt, Justin "Scrappers" Morrison of the Portland Mercury and Stay Wild Magazine, and JJ Wright of Kinfolk Magazine's product line Ouur.

This exclusive photographic catalog unearths some attractive, odd and sweet corners of desk life and the interesting minds behind it. Visit DeskInspired.com to get to know these cool product designers, graphic artists, sneaker heads, crack coders, and the often intimate workspaces they inhabit!

D'Wayne Edwards, Air Jordan designer and co-founder of Pensole Footwear Design Academy