Aw yeah, Orion! We thankfully got good news about the second attempt to launch NASA's Orion spacecraft. Originally scheduled for Too Damn Early AM PST Thursday, the delayed launch today (at Still Too Early AM PST) went off beautifully.

If you're even generally into science, or just movies with a lot of spaceships and lasers, the Orion project should pique your interest. Its success is a key stepping stone towards building the most powerful rockets in history, capable of taking us ungrateful bipeds past the moon, to asteroids and eventually Mars. The thing itself is a mix of new and old technologies, and it's absolutely massive. Reminiscent of the Apollos of yore, this new space explorer is based on super powerful Delta IV Heavy rockets with the "Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle" perched on top. No crew today, but after proving itself it will seat 4 for future deepspace explorations.

I want to believe.

Thursday morning the lift-off was stalled by wind, misbehaving valves, and (somewhat surprisingly) a nosy boat. But even without leaving the pad, the security checks still yielded good information about the monitoring and powering systems. Today's launch showed that the setup worked very well, delivering the capsule into orbit a whopping 3,600 miles above Earth, passing through the intense radiation band of the Van Allen belt, making two orbits and a perfect on-target splash down off the coast of Baja. Vitally, it survived both lift-off (a traditionally explosive point), and a blistering 4,000 degree Fahrenheit reentry.

Product Creation Studio is one of the Pacific Northwest's foremost Product Development groups. They have great passion and energy for developing products that enhance people's lives - think consumer, research, industrial and medical fields over furniture and shoes. The products they develop are made specially for Fortune 100/500 companies and Venture Capital start-ups, which means you'd get to put that on your resume if you get hired as their Industrial Design Intern.

How are your raw sketching skills? This team in Seattle, WA is looking for someone can support their design staff with concept sketching, prototyping, 2D collateral. While you will primarily be supporting on projects, having a 'no job too small' attitude will take you far. One day you may be working on packaging mockups, and another day you may be designing a watch or putting together inspiration boards. Apply Now to this exciting opportunity!

It seems absurd to be burning energy by using lightbulbs while the sun is shining, but buildings can only have so many windows, and sunlight can only penetrate so far. MIT's Solar Bottle Bulb and Ross Lovegrove's Sun Tunnel are two ways to get sunlight inside, but both solutions require piercing a roof for installation. This new system called the Light Bandit, in contrast, is a no-construction-required solution. And it's brilliant:

"Sunlight is the fuel that powers all life on Earth, yet our lifestyles block most of it out," the developers write. "Between work, school and home we spend most of our time indoors under artificial lighting that lacks important benefits of natural lighting. The Light Bandit changes that."

What's fascinating is that the coating on the reflectors filters out UV and infrared, delivering only visible light; this means you won't fade out the part of your couch that's got a Light Bandit lamp over it.

The Light Bandit Kickstarter is no foregone conclusion, by the way; these guys need help and publicity. At press time they'd clocked under six grand out of a $200,000 target, and there's just 21 days left to go. But we've seen less impressive projects hit higher targets in a shorter stretch of time, so we're hoping this product becomes a reality.

Have you guys ever sold your house? When potential buyers file in, you want them to see your spacious rooms—but you don't want them lingering too long picking out the flaws. What's the best way to hustle them through so they can see it all, without their eyes picking up on the imperfect miters on the crown molding and such?

Simple: Build an in-house rollercoaster:

By Geoff Ledford, Industrial Designer at Soulcake Creative/INDUS Outdoors

The modern designer/manufacturer/consumer loop isn't sustainable. That's well-covered territory and the subject of books, lectures and articles by people that are smarter and much more qualified to speak on the subject than me.

But as a product designer going into the holiday spend-a-thon™, the realities of a society obsessed with stuff always hits me particularly hard this time of year. Every product that we design, produce and sell uses finite resources that will eventually run out. Mass-produced products are easily replaceable (read: disposable), which compounds the problem. And, sadly, the only inexhaustible part of the loop seems to be consumers' incessant demand for more.

What's a designer to do?
As designers, we can't do much to discourage society's obsession with stuff. (Admittedly, I suppose a designer could combat consumerism by creating hard to use, ugly or otherwise inferior products. But then he'd likely be out of a job too.) If designers do our jobs well, we actually encourage customers to buy more stuff, not less.

So if designers are, in fact, the problem solvers that we claim to be, how do we confront consumerism in the face of the impending environmental crisis? To paraphrase leadership guru Stephen Covey, it's a much better strategy to focus on things that you can control rather than worry about the things you can't. (He called it a "circle of influence.") And it's within this circle of influence that design can start to sing a sustainable tune.

Indus designers create a clay model for a hiking stick handle that allows for multiple, ergonomic grips.

A modest example
At Soulcake, we've found a way to help the environment that is within our direct circle of influence—going after upstream sources of manufacturer waste that are many of our clients' backyards. Companies routinely purge scraps and "manufacturer excess" as an accepted part of their business practice—in many cases long before finished products ever get into the hands of consumers.

Only recently, techno-champion Elon Musk uncharacteristically called for caution on "summoning the demon" that is artificial intelligence. Now, it appears esteemed theoretical physicist Steven Hawking has expressed similar concerns—whilst also calling for a 'pinch of salt' in claims that we are close to AI emergence—alongside the announcement of a collaboration with predictive typing software Swiftkey to upgrade his outdated communication system (a boon for the tech company's own corporate communication too, no doubt).

In a project entitled 'The Assembly,' design students at the University of Arts Bremen Jasna Dimitrovska, Julian Hespenheide and Jonas Otto have imagined a future world in which machines have developed some sentience.

Shrink wrapped trees and glued bark

Rather than launching a campaign to destroy their creators, the machines choose only to flee from their organic keepers. Describing their work as a 'cautionary tale,' the team envisages a group of Kuka robotic arms growing weary of their assembly line labor and leaving the modern world behind in search of a new beginning in more natural surroundings. Striking out on their own, our brave protagonists (The Wrapper, The Laser-er, The Gluer, The Sprayer and The Sorter) can't help but be haunted by their past; a trail of shrink wrap, laser-etched markings and sorted and glued natural objects show signs of the robots struggles to shake off the habits of the past.

PackIt is a rapidly growing consumer goods company that creates smart cooling solutions for life on the go. Never mind packing a bulky cooler with ice or a bag with ice packs - PackIt bags are the world's first insulated bags to make and keep things cold all on their own. With a variety of fashionable colors and patters, these bags look cool, too! Want to join in on the revolution? If you're a Junior Product Designer with Softgood experience, PackIt wants to hire you in Los Angeles, CA.

Ideal candidates for this opportunity are able to work independently, must be organized, take initiative, and are driven by a hunger for new knowledge. You'll support user, product, and marketing research as necessary, and demonstrate your knowledge of soft goods construction techniques, materials and hardware. Don't wait - Apply Now.

News in the UK is that national postal service the Royal Mail (no longer in fact 'Her Majesty's' following a quite scandalous privatization earlier this year) are investing their new found (dirty) money in a scheme to bring 3D printers to local stores in collaboration with 3D printing specialist iMakr.

Initially set to pilot in London's central New Cavendish Street delivery office, the service is intended to make the technology more accessible for consumers and small business. Although we have to welcome efforts to make 3D printing more available to the public, it seems unclear whether the service will allow for printing original designs. Already front and center on the Royal Mail's homepage, there only appears to be 'a selection of gifts created by designers exclusively for 3D printing' available, some which show signs of customization options.

After discovering a vintage ball peen hammer with a mysterious middle cut-out that was not an ingenious bottle opener, the guys at Good Beer Hunting got to work. With a great design team and an exceptional drinking team they produced the Beer Peen Hammer: a tough, cast bronze ball peen with an integrated bottle opener that does work. Ball peens are ideal for precise workshop tasks and household fixing, and this one can't be beat at bottle fixing. The black oxidized finish is good looking and it comes with a protective waxed canvas bag. Impress the tool junkie in your life with this back to basics twist on two of the most vital tools - $55 at Hand-Eye Supply.

Scarcity is a tough teacher. There's nothing romantic about people being so desperate for building materials, they'll strip a newly built school down to its foundations. But constraints can lead to clever creative breakthroughs—a principle that every designer knows. Some very smart solutions in sustainability, tech and product design are emerging from the African continent. Design Indaba has been championing these examples of African innovation since it was founded in 1995 but is now using the full power of its online publication and presence to cover the continent like never before.

At DesignIndaba.com, you'll find a treasure trove of stories about African makers and creators with a singular, make-do approach to materiality, transforming what's at hand into unexpected objects and designs that delight. Found objects are repurposed in ingenious ways while mass-produced materials are reimagined in novel applications—always reflecting traces of a previous incarnation.

Here are three stories from Design Indaba that reflect this capacity to think on your feet, adapt and improvise in order to create ingenious design applications. Design Indaba's online publication publishes content about design and innovation from Africa and beyond every day.

Slow and Steady Wins the Race

Dutch designers Melle Smets and Joost van Onna followed the trail of Europe's discarded vehicles to capitalism's periphery—the industrial hub of Suame Magazine in Ghana. In this immense open-air factory, over 200,000 craftsmen recycle discarded car parts into new vehicles. Smets and Van Onna collaborated with local craftsmen to create a new, archetypical African car: the SMATI Turtle 1. The car took its name from its characteristics—slow but steady speed, its basic and strong mechanics and its protective bodywork.

Local Motors' Strati, the world's first 3D printed car.

Last week, Las Vegas played host to Autodesk University, Autodesk's annual gathering—part conference, part continuing education—for 9,000 professional designers, engineers and animators. Below is a summary of some of the big ideas and themes that will be shaping the conversation around making in 2015.

It's alive!
Design is a living process that lives past the moment of creation—a key theme for this year's Autodesk University. From featured speakers and workshop presenters to the company's CTO and CEO, the message was clear: we are moving swiftly past the Internet of Things, where devices interact with us, toward a broader, more complex and, ultimately, more valuable Community of Things, where products interact with each other and respond collaboratively to the environments in which they exist.

Jeff Kowalski, Chief Technology Officer and SVP, Autodesk

Hardware is hot, hot, hot.
Three elements in the design process and manufacturing are supporting the innovation that will drive this evolution—an evolution that's not just on the way, it's already here. First, the advancement of 3D printing, micro-molding, capital and funding options means that production is more flexible and robust than ever before. Second, demand is continuing to grow from "a few sizes fit all" to individual customization (see Normal's custom-fit ear buds after the jump). And finally, our attitudes towards products are changing. For a variety of reasons—sustainability, cost, our own hyper-individualized mentalities and even our desire to create better communities—we are starting to expect that products will be responsive, change and get better over time.

A lot of modern-day architecture discussions can be confusing, alienating and overly academic. That's why I was drawn right away to Barry Berkus' "How to Think Like an Architect" video series, because he speaks and thinks in such a sensible, pragmatic and accessible manner:

Now to the industrial designers among you: When you're in the sketching phase, how do you start designing, say, a handheld product? Do you start by drawing the human hand and filling it with your object? Do you start with the object's innards, if it's got electric guts, and start shaping the form around that? You're probably familiar with a variety of processes, but you'll likely find Berkus' architecture-based design process as interesting as it is different to what ID'ers do. Here he shows how he goes from vague bubbles to hard lines:

In the tradition of hosting compelling discourses about how technology and design shape our lives, the Designing Innovation series continues tomorrow, Wednesday, December 10th, with a panel discussion streaming live from the Cooper Union right here in New York City. Ford and IDSA NY are proud to present this discussion that will explore how design innovation takes place now and in the future, locally and globally. Everything kicks off at 7pm ET so watch this Designing Innovation page for the live feed and join in the discussion on Twitter using #designinginnovation.

We caught up with Craig Metros, Designing Innovation panelist and Exterior Design Director, The Americas at Ford, to ask him a few questions about what he finds innovative in the automotive industry and what part of the panel discussion he's looking forward to the most. Craig has come a long way in the past year; all the way from Melbourne, Australia where he was Design Director for Ford Asia Pacific, back to his hometown of Detroit to take up his new position as Ford's exterior design director of The Americas. Craig shared his excitement to be back in his hometown and what impact his artistic pursuits have on his automotive designs.

The Ford 2005 Mustang GT and the Ford 2015 Mustang GT350 wow Craig every time.
Core77: Is there a specific car model that leaves you uttering, "Wow," every time?

Craig Metros: My favorite models are the '05 Ford GT and the 2015 Mustang GT350. They are the embodiment of how Ford vehicles are designed—not just styled. The '05 GT came out as a symbol of Ford's automotive prowess, giving a subtle nod to the legendary Ford GT-40 race cars in certain aspects of its distinctive design DNA, while also offering a taste of the future with its bold, aspirational visual cues. Looking at the recently released Mustang GT350, I appreciate the fine balance between continuity and change. The car retains the key Mustang DNA elements but with a modern interpretation (the long hood, shark-bite nose, signature tri-bar tail lamps) while the lower roof and wider hips give its unique muscularity clearly differentiating it from any other Mustang.

America's premier contemporary lighting manufacturer seeks to hire an experienced mechanical engineer to develop the best in lighting products. This job is about diligence, organization, passion, and winning! The mission at Rich Brilliant Willing is to design and manufacture lighting for hospitality and workplace environments, using technology, simplicity and creativity. With your engineering expertise, they'll create even more illuminating atmospheres.

If you have tons of experience creating, engineering, and detailing products for manufacture, you're great. If you have experience with LED lighting (color rendering, lumen efficiencies, beam spreads, thermal dissipation analysis, and binning) you're perfect. This is a great opportunity to make a big difference at a fast-moving startup. Don't wait - Apply Now.

Portrait by Peter Krejci

This is the latest installment of our Core77 Questionnaire. Previously, we talked to Sam Jacob.

Names: Nipa Doshi and Jonathan Levien

Occupation: Founders and partners of the design studio Doshi Levien

Location: London

Current projects:

Doshi: There are many. We're working on a range of textiles. We're working on quite a few projects for Galerie Kreo, which is a gallery based in Paris. We're working on new collections for B&B Italia, Moroso, Kvadrat—there are quite a few different projects going on.

Levien: The work is very varied. Which is great, because we hop from one project to another, and they tend to feed each other in terms of ideas—there's a lot of crossover between the different areas.

Mission:

Doshi: "Mission" sounds a bit too New Age to me. I think that when you work as a designer, your aims and your ambitions develop over time. Considering that we have worked a lot on product and furniture, I see the next step for us as working on space—it could be a public space, a hotel, a gallery.

Levien: As you go into a larger scale, the social aspect becomes a factor in the work, and I think that's really interesting for us. We designed our perfect house not so long ago, for an exhibition called Das Haus at IMM Cologne in Germany. I think that was the beginning of a new way of working for us, a new direction for our studio.

Doshi Levien's Almora lounge chair for B&B Italia, released earlier this year

An early sketch for Almora (left) and the first model of the chair

When did you decide that you wanted to be a designer?

Levien: I didn't know that design existed as a profession until I had been to cabinetmaking college at 16. Design was not really a focus at that point, more the idea of making things perfectly and learning about wood. I value that experience so much now, as it established a kind of tacit understanding of and feeling for materials, a kind of sensitivity that I now apply to any production process. After making for a couple of years, I realized that what was missing was a design element—considering why things exist, and not just focusing on how things are made. So, in a way, design was a natural step from a making background.

Doshi: When I was growing up in India, design as an organized profession didn't exist. I applied to study architecture, and then one of my tutors told me about this design school which was founded on the manifest of Charles and Ray Eames, the National Institute of Design in India. And it was after having applied there that I really understood what design was. Up until then it was just an idea for me, but I first fell in love with the campus and the whole environment, and I knew I wanted to be creative in that way. It was actually through studying design that I understood I wanted to do design, if that makes sense.

"I noticed I was using packs and packs of mechanical pencils at work as disposable items," writes Andrew Sanderson, who spent six years as an aircraft propulsion technician and a decade as a gas turbine engineer. He subsequently switched to product design, with the goal of creating a mechanical pencil that you could keep and use forever.

"I set out to design a mechanical pencil that would reduce the waste, be a testament to U.S. manufacturing and design, and not break the bank," Sanderson explains. "Having a single mechanical pencil that replaces the endless packs of plastic that end up sitting it landfills and floating in our oceans has to be a good thing."

What most impressed me about Sanderson's design is how he endeavored to hide the seams. It really does look like the conical tip and the shaft are one solid, machined piece, though of course they're not. Take a closer look:

For many years, together with a number of design educators, I have been discussing how design can address the complex socio-technological systems that characterize our world. The issues are not new: many people and disciplines have grappled with them for some time. But how can design play a role? Do our educational methods, especially the emphasis upon craft, prepare designers for this? What can design add?

In Fall 2014, a number of us found ourselves in Shanghai where we were serving as advisors to the newly formed College of Design and Innovation at Tongji University. (The list of participants appears below.) We decided it was time to act. As a result, over the next month we wrote a position paper, describing the nature of the issues and the framework for working on the problems. We didn't know what kind of design we should associate with this approach, and after many iterations on a name, we simply called it X—as in the algebraic variable that can take on multiple values. Hence, DesignX. The next section presents highlights from our statement.

Collaboratively authored by (in alphabetical order): Ken Friedman (Tongji University, College of Design and Innovation and Swinburne University Centre for Design Innovation), Yongqi Lou (Tongji), Don Norman (University of California, San Diego, Design Lab), Pieter Jan Stappers (Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering), Ena Voûte (Delft), and Patrick Whitney (Illinois Institute of Technology, Institute of Design). Contact email: designxcollaborative@gmail.com

In the 1830s, an upholsterer and cabinetmaker named Theodore Alexander Robert Jupe was awarded British Patent No. 6788 for an expandable table design. The round six-seater table contained a particularly ingenious mechanical mechanism that must have astonished citizens of the Georgian era. Before we get into the mechanism, have a look at the table from overhead:

Round Dining Table by Robert Jupe from M.S. Rau Antiques on Vimeo.

Here's what's funny: In my opinion, the auctioneer actually uses the table mechanism incorrectly! Watch the footage from 0:21 to 0:27, and you'll see he turns the table counterclockwise to separate the wedges, which is correct. But after adding the inserts, at 0:44 to 0:48 he rotates the table clockwise to tighten the leaves. I feel he has missed the most important point of the table's mechanism, which is called a Capstan mechanism. Watch the CG animation below to understand how it works:

In their most recent presentation, RKS brought us a discussion about the very chair you could be sitting on right now. This RKS Session, "Designing for Function and Style" was led by Bernard Brucha of Mashstudios, a firm well-versed in the art of honoring function when designing furniture with style.

As Bernard puts it, work doesn't just happen at the office any more. When his team approaches the design of office space and furniture application for clients like Uber, Pinterest and Jacob Engineering, they examine more than just the physical space to ensure technology can be leveraged to serve everyone best. The result is a highly functional and pleasing environment in which to spend a good portion of your day. Watch the entire presentation after the jump:

For our fourth installment of Ford and IDSA's 'Designing Innovation' series, we've invited a diverse group of experts panelists to discuss ways designers can innovate to fortify the relationships between a brands' products and the consumers who enjoy them. Moderated by Rama Chorpash, the Director of MFA Industrial Design at Parsons, tonight's conversation highlights the broad influence of design in today's marketplace and features Ingrid Fetell, Design Director at IDEO; Steve Schlafman, Principal at RRE Ventures; our very own Allan Chochinov, Chair of MFA Products of Design at SVA; and Craig Metros, Exterior Design Director of the Americas at Ford Motor Company (read our recent Q+A with him here.)

The discussion kicks off at 7pm EST. Remember, you can join the conversation by submitting a question on Twitter using the hashtag #DesigningInnovation—we'll be selecting a few to ask the panelists live on stage. Tune in below to see the 'Designing Innovation' panel live from New York City's Cooper Union.

Read up on the panelists onstage: