Many users will be fine with standard shoe storage products: basic shoe racks, plastic shoe boxes, shoe cubbies or shelves in a closet, over-the-door shoe pockets, etc. But shoe storage can also involve creative designs which some users will appreciate.

The wall-mounted horizontal shoe racks from J-Me (above) come in two styles; one is designed specifically for stilettos and one for shoes in general. The non-stiletto version also comes in two lengths, holding either three or six pairs of shoes. These racks could be used in many different places: an entranceway for shoes-off homes, a bedroom, a closet, etc. Many users have chosen to stack two or more of them, one above the other. The standard racks take up as little room as shoe racks possibly could, so they're going to work well in small spaces. But they won't work in homes with dogs or children who will grab the shoes, unless the racks are placed above their reach (which wouldn't be the normal location).

The ZJUP shoe holder from LoCa, designed by Harrit-Sørensen, was designed to accommodate shoes of all shapes and sizes—and Nicolai Sørensen says it should indeed work for about 95 percent of shoe types. KJUP was also designed to protect the walls from muddy or wet shoes. (Any shoe rack accommodating wet shoes would need to be placed over appropriate flooring, obviously.) The plastic bar holding the shoes in place is a non-spring loaded bar, so it exerts no pressure on the shoes. Because each ZJUP holds just one pair of shoes, it can fit in places where a multi-shoe rack could not.

The Shrine shoe rack goes with a vertical orientation, so it will fit into spaces where a horizontal rack would not. This one won't work if the shoes are wet, though, since the top ones could drip onto the lower ones. The shoes are more on display here than with the previous racks, which will appeal to some users.

We've mentioned the Rakku shoe wheel before. But having seen one of these in person recently, I noted that it's actually somewhat awkward to get the shoes in and out, so it's not a product I would recommend.

I thought this was a gag, but the website appears to market it in earnest. (At least when translated into English from its original French.) Ram & Row is an endtable that unfolds into...a rowing machine.

For butterfingered woodworkers, dropping a project on the shop floor can be bad. But just imagine if your materials of choice were crystal and glass.

Since 2004, California-based artist Jack Storms has been producing these rare "optic sculptures." Created by precision-machining lead crystal and dichroic glass, a single piece can take up to 18 weeks to produce.

While Storms has advanced the art by inventing a lathe that allows him to turn glass like wood, he first learned the "cold-glass" process of joining lead crystal and dichroic glass from a glass artist in New Hampshire. "Working side by side with the artisan for over a year, Jack learned every component and facet of this incredibly challenging and rare art form and eventually was a strong enough sculptor to branch out on his own in 2004 and open StormWorks Studio," reads the bio on his website.

Since ROCCAT swept through the gaming scene like a snowstorm, award after award has rained down on their ingenious products which are all perfectly tailored to meet gamers' needs. ROCCAT is the industry-leading German manufacturer of professional gaming peripherals, and developer of extensively customizable second-screen applications. They develop, manufacture, and distribute our products worldwide from a single source. To support their steadily growing Industrial Design Team, they are looking for an Industrial Designer f/m in Hamburg.

The right person for this job will have 3+ years of product design experience , preferably in consumer electronics, automotive, sports gear or something similar. An outstanding portfolio, preferably with already realized product designs, and at least a Bachelor's degree in Industrial Design or Product Design are required as well. Apply Now.

No no, it's not official, but it does look like a group of game designers may have managed to capture the infernally infuriating experience of putting together IKEA flatpack furniture in virtual reality. Höme Improvisåtion as the game is called (complete with appropriate Scandinavian accents) is apparently one creation to come out of last week's Global Game Jam, a 48-hour event challenging developers to create the best games in a presumably messy weekend of pizza and coding.

Declaring itself "the world's most fun and accurate cooperative furniture assembly experience", the below video gives an amusing introduction to the objective and gameplay. Apparently, the game begins as flatpack furniture box lands at it's own whim in your livingroom (we all know that feeling) leaving you to assemble the pieces before the next items arrive. Oh, it gets worse. The creators have refrained from including assembly instructions in the mix (clearly damaged and vengeful IKEA flatpack veterans/victims) leaving you to assemble the objects in your strange, isometric home on the fly. Don't worry though, these sick sadists offer up some useful troubleshooting advice—"If ever you don't know what to do, just think like a Scandinavian industrial designer".

Problem: What do you do if you're an arms dealer that likes to entertain at home? When a would-be buyer of a re-fitted Abrams tank comes by with a bottle of rotgut, it's rude of you not to offer him a drink—but your ho-hum Venetian marble bar doesn't really make a statement, and that one that you've got made out of human skulls in the basement is too hard to balance bottles on.

Help is here from UK-based Fallen Furniture, which turns aircraft parts into art furniture. Their impressive, 600-pound, eight-foot-plus Cluster Bomb Drinks Cabinet "conceals an armory of custom-made cocktail utensils," features round glass shelves that rotate on a gold-plated spindle and lets the customer know that you are not a man to be trifled with.

It's not unexploded ordnance, by the way; Fallen Furniture creates these out of unarmed practice units used by the Royal Air Force in the '70s. But your guests don't need to know that. In fact, if you want to test their mettle, push the cabinet over in a fit of rage when negotiations get heated, and watch them scatter before the thing hits the ground. Their expressions will be priceless.

Despite an unintentionally hilarious product video, the Coolbox—billed as "The world's most advanced toolbox"—has successfully, swiftly tripled its funding target on Indiegogo. Before we get into this one, take a look:

First off, I like a lot of the ideas in the design, assuming you'd have the toolbox within arm's reach of your project: The whiteboard would be handy for jotting down measurements; the magnetic lid would help stowing fasteners you temporarily remove and then pop back in; the floodlight, on-board power and clock are all undeniably useful. For transport I'd like to see slightly bigger wheels that could easily roll over an extension cord, but small wheels are better than no wheels. And the handles on either side would make it easier to pull out of the trunk.

This being America, we're not content to only produce the run-of-the-mill stadium luxury suites that we looked at here. While more than one NFL CEO undoubtedly has a swank, over-the-top personal luxury suite in their arena, given the current anti-rich climate they probably keep them under wraps; but somehow photos have leaked of Clark Hunt's skybox at Arrowhead Stadium.

Maybe "skybox" isn't the right word. Hunt owns the Kansas City Chiefs, and he can view their games from within the three-story, six-bedroom luxury suite you see here:

Berlin-based The Fundamental Group works within the realm of what they call "the architecture of fascination," and their Atlas Table bears this out. Made from alternating, angled blocks of oak and smoked oak, just thinking about what the glue-up must have involved gives me a headache.

I love that people are still designing sawhorses. For such a simple, basic item that's been around for centuries, you'd think that by now we'd have settled on a perfect one and stuck with it. But the fact that folks can continue to tweak, innovate and personalize a sawhorse design is a testament to our creativity as a species.

An unnamed high school woodshop teacher in New Mexico, who goes by the alias of "Woodshop Dude," calls his sawhorse design the Shopdog. The design criteria was: Easy and cheap to make, flexible in what it can hold, whether materials, clamps or tools, easy and quick to set up, and has to be able to fold flat to stow on the wall of his shop. Check it out in action:

Plans are available on his website for five bucks.

In the summer of 2013, Andy Quitmeyer was teaching electronics workshops to scientists in the jungles of Panama as part of his dissertation, when he met a woman with a very specific project in mind: a vibrator. Quitmeyer sat down with the woman and showed her how to program various vibrating patterns and build one of her own. "These scientists are spending all this time out in the jungle and have needs to be taken care of," Quitmeyer says. "It was a cool design challenge."

When Quitmeyer returned to his studies at Georgia Tech, he shared that experience with fellow classmate Paul Clifton, and they discussed the details of what a truly universal vibrator might look and feel like. "I originally thought that it was just taking something that vibrates, put it in something, then put it inside a person," Quitmeyer says. "But then there are these very specific needs for each person." In the case of the Panama-based scientist, that need was a vibrator that wouldn't overstimulate her clitoris ring, meaning that it had to be maneuverable and insertable to avoid the sensitive region—a tricky but not impossible endeavor.

The two Ph.D. candidates soon began reading sex-toy review blogs to understand the specific likes and dislikes of different users. They also started scouting local sex shops in Atlanta, spending a lot of time interviewing customers and, in particular, the owners of these stores. "They have a really on-the-street, on-the-ground perspective of what people are buying and using," Clifton says.

A diagram of the second-generation Mod, now funding on Indiegogo

The feedback they received led them to create the Mod (v0.1), the first edition of their universal vibrator, which uses an off-the-shelf Arduino LilyPad USB (32u4 Chip), chosen for its onboard battery charging and lack of drivers necessary for installation. Inside its silicone casing are three powerful Parallax Vibration Motors powered by a LIPO battery, and a sensor port with power, ground and two analog inputs. Careful attention was paid to the programming—exactly how the Mod reacts to turning on and off, charging, et cetera. "We had to go and say, when you push the power button on this dildo, what do you actually want to have happen, and how do we set the circuit up to behave that way?" Clifton says.

Last year, Clifton and Quitmeyer launched Comingle, a DIY and open-source sex-toy company, and now the Comingle team is raising funds for the second edition of the Mod. The updated design has several key improvements, including the use of custom components like the Dilduino (more on that later) and a more durable and flexible shaft. Creating it meant really reinventing the vibrator from the inside out. "Most vibration motors that you get have little holes in them that can let the silicone go into them and then jam up your motor," Clifton says. "Then they have these shitty motor leads on them with the worst wires I've ever seen in my whole life."

For the flexible second-gen Mod, Clifton and his colleagues had to figure out a way to prevent the wires from coming out of the motor when the vibrator was bent. In addition, because the motors are plastic, the Comingle team struggled with getting them to bond to the silicone; the motors would break free and loosely buzz inside the device, transferring less power. Ultimately, the team discovered that by wrapping the electronic pieces with silicone tape, spacing the motors out and splicing in thicker wires, they were able to create much more durable connections that also adhered to the silicone itself. While Clifton doubts that customers will notice such details, Quitmeyer points out that the true difference shows in the flexibility of the shaft. "That's not something that you see very often," he says.

The Dilduino board

Another facet the team had to consider was creating an Arduino that was intended to be embedded in something and not removed. The typical Arduino is full of broken-out pins for connecting to various outputs. In the case of the Mod, those outputs are vibro-controllers, which are sealed away within the silicone—unable to be switched out by a user. The Comingle team had to decide what outputs they wanted and how to make them generic enough to be used in a variety of projects, while still being specific enough to the vibrator. The final solution implemented in the second-gen Mod was the Dilduino, a custom board which shares similarities to an Arduino Leonardo, an Arduino LilyPad USB or another ATmega32u4-based Arduino, but with three main additions: an integrated motor control circuit that allows the motors enough current to go at full speed; integrated battery charging over USB; and an on-board multiplexer for selecting between inputs.

Here in 2015, a desk is many things: A computing workstation, a charging dock holder, a lunch table, a speaker platform, a drink tray, a phone holder, et cetera. Contrast that with the monofunction of an old-school draftsman's table, which had the sole task of supporting paper that you made marks on with a pencil.

One thing a draftsman's table was designed to do, that today's tables are not, was to transform from flat to tilted.

An early example of ergonomics, the angled top meant the user could reach all four corners of the drawing board with ease, as well as have a flat view of the work, unskewed by perspective. But folks were different heights, so a mechanism for adjustability had to be designed. This took some experimentation to get right.

The Keuffel & Esser Co., founded in 1867, was America's first drafting table manufacturer. As you can see, this early example of their work is all wood:

With iron not yet a staple of manufacturing—America's Industrial Revolution got going a bit later than the UK's—let's look at how they handled the adjustability:

Inelegant, and would take two men (or one orangutuan) to make the adjustment, but it worked. Now let's look at how this design evolved.

Story by David Rudin for Kill Screen

The ball pool is no longer a snot-covered cage match for young children whose parents are shopping for a new couch. As reimagined by Pearlfisher, a creative agency based in London, the ball pool is an adult playground, a relaxation zone, and, for some progressive businesses, a place to hold meetings.

This is not Ikea's ball pool. It is a vision in white, a white room in Hammersmith filled with 81,000 white balls. Thirty-one people can be fitted amidst the balls and Pearlfisher donates £1 to Right to Play every time a visitor enters the pool.

How is it that Pearlfisher's ball pool, despite its superficial modifications, has such a different effect on its occupants than the ball pool of your youth? The color scheme surely has an impact: a white palette is more soothing than a collection of neons and primary colors. Moreover adults are calmer than hyperactive children. (There is, admittedly, anecdotal evidence to counter that claim.) But the real explanation for the ball pool's transformation is that it is—and always was—a space onto which users could impose their whims and desires.

"Andarkan" by Levent Tuna, Professional Winner

The results of the second annual FNSS MILDESIGN2015 competition have been announced—14 different projects were selected from over 150 entries. Sponsored by FNSS, the Turkish armored combat vehicle manufacturer, the focus of the design competition is to provide a platform for the work of designers working in the defense industry. This year's design competition asked participants to create a, "conceptual design of a manned or remote controlled modular military land vehicle with ballistic protection."

"Truva," by Alican Sayan, Faruk Mert, Enes Yigit, Kubra Kaya of Gazi University, Student Winner

This year's winners receive cash prizes and the award-winning concepts will be part of an upcoming awards ceremony and exhibition held in May 2015. See the full gallery of winning projects here.

Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Inc. (MSLO) is a leading provider of original "how-to" information, inspiring and engaging consumers with unique lifestyle content and beautifully designed, high-quality products. Located in New York, NY, they are seeking a Tabletop Designer to design and develop the MS Collection Tabletop Categories including all Dinnerware, Serveware, Giftware, Glassware, Decorative Housewares and Holiday specific products.

If you're interested in joining the team, you'll need a Bachelor's Degree in Industrial Design, a minimum 2-3 years of professional experience specifically in Tabletop or Housewares categories and an excellent sense of color and design. If you also have a strong sense of Martha Stewart Living design aesthetic throughout the design of all merchandise, you should Apply Now.

tCup by Lawrence Cummins and Hum by Emily Rose Litten

Leaving the hallowed halls of higher education can be a traumatic experience for most new grads. New graduates are often faced with the task of finding work, building a career and maintaining a creative practice whilst presumably being crushed by student debt.

Precisely to combat this issue, 'professional practice' courses exist in nearly every design curriculum to smooth the transition and give a leg up on the competition. The vast majority of courses however, never manage to adequately cover the scope of possibilities for how to structure a fulfilling career in design. Instead these courses focus on the traditional professional skills of writing a resume and designing a portfolio. Luckily, a handful of schools are taking the first step towards new methods of real-world training by looking at trends in making, crowdfunding and direct to consumer products as necessary topics to cover with design students.

One such example comes from the University of Illinois at Chicago in their year-long "Entrepreneurial Product Development" course. The course, led by product designer, illustrator and Core77 CoreToon-istCraighton Berman, asks students to spend the first semester making a product and the second launching it on Kickstarter. Over 9 months, students go through the process of development, manufacturing, marketing, sourcing and distribution of their ideas. The two semesters, appropriately themed "Make" and "Scale" cover all the steps to independently launching a product in addition to lesser covered topics in design school such as royalties, capital investment, retail distribution and more. Additionally, a number of notable guests (Max Temkin of Cards Against Humanity, Michael Una of Inventables and even Charles Adler the Co-Founder of Kickstarter) are thrown in to add real world perspective.

Cave by Jonathon Owens and cbits by Dan Cigler

As one of the earliest adapters to Kickstarter, Berman has launched a number of products to date including Sharpener Jar and the more recent Manual Coffeemaker. I had the pleasure to speak with him about the class, the ever-changing landscape of independent design and of course—how to make a great Kickstarter video.

Mark your calendars for the February 9th launch of the 2015 Core77 Design Awards! This year marks the fifth time we're celebrating excellence in all areas of design, and to honor the occasion, we're upping the ante for all those who win. While we can't divulge the spoils just yet, we can say that we are making a much bigger deal of the people and projects that earn a trophy this year.

What hasn't changed is our dedication to showcasing the freshest, most innovative and creative ideas in the design community. We're also enlisting an international jury panel of design experts to critique and comment on your submissions. Sign up today for important updates on deadlines, jury members and more, so you don't miss a thing.

We can't wait to see your designs!

"Since Saab was started, we have strived to keep society and people safe," writes the company. And they're not talking about putting airbags in 9-3's; this is the Saab Group, the aerospace and defence company, not the automobile venture. "It is a basic human need to feel safe and, as we see it, a human right. Through systems and solutions that increase security, we can make this possible."

Their latest solution, Soft Armour, is both fascinating and sadly needed. It's a system of bulletproofing structures, and potentially vehicles, by means of modular boxes that are filled with what look like ceramic marbles. Check out how it works:

While the system can be built into new structures, Saab Group stresses that it can easily be retrofitted to existing ones. The modular panel boxes can be built on site with common tools, filled with the ceramic marbles, and stacked up "as a Lego system for protection." It will stop armor-piercing rounds (of the small arms variety) and, they claim, "has a lower total cost than ceramic and composite protection, with reusability, multi-hit capabilities and high flexibility."

This is the latest installment of our Core77 Questionnaire. Previously, we talked to Tanya Aguiñiga.

Name:Constance Guisset

Occupation: Designer. I design objects mainly, but I also do set design as well as interior architecture.

Location: Paris

Current projects: In general, I have between 20 and 25 projects going at one time. Which sounds like a lot, but when you do design, temporality is different from one project to another; some projects take a very long time while others are fast. It allows you to have many projects at once, because the action is not all at the same time.

At the moment I'm preparing an exhibition of my work to take place in 2016. I'm doing set design for exhibitions in different museums this year and next year. And then I have several objects that were just released during Maison et Objet—some bags for the French brand Bensimon, outdoor furniture for Tectona, and an essential-oil diffuser and a backpack for another French brand called Nature & Découvertes.

Mission: I feel I have a mission of softening the environment, in a sense. Also, I'm trying to propose a more moving-objects world—with objects that move—and to propose a kind of little dream that comes with it. This is the mission I decided to give myself. But in a more general way, my mission is the same as any other designer, to make objects in the best ergonomic and aesthetic shape possible.

Guisset's new Tokyo bags for Bensimon

Windmills is a collection of round poufs for La Cividina.

When did you decide that you wanted to be a designer? This arrived quite late. When I was younger, after my A level, I asked my parents if I could become a carpenter. And they said, well, why not try to do some studies first? And I was quite OK at school, so I did a preparatory school and then I went to business school and then I did a school of politics. I also studied in Japan and India. And then when I began to work, I realized that everything that I was doing outside of my studies—for example, I was doing carpentry and modeling and drawing and so on—I realized that all of this was more important, in fact, than my work. So I changed my life when I was between 25 and 27. I thought that design would be better for me. To finance my studies I worked as the administrator of the Bouroullec studio, and then I launched my studio between 2007 and 2009.

Education: I graduated from ENSCI–Les Ateliers in 2007.

First design job: My very first design job was when I was still a student and I did a set-design project for the Musée des Arts Décoratifs. But my first real design commission was from La Cie—one day I received an e-mail from them asking if I wanted to meet and propose a project. That became my first professional object as a designer.

Who is your design hero? I have several. I think it's maybe a chimera between Bruno Munari and Castiglioni and Noguchi. Something like that.

Inside Guisset's studio in Paris

Describe your workspace: It's a very soft place with very nice people. When you enter, it's full of light; it's warm and soft at the same time. Well, to be honest, when it's winter it's not very warm—but there's a kind of visual warmness coming out of it. And there is color and it is white and you can see the sky.

Speaking of drafting tables, carpenter Sean Headrick decided to build his own out of baltic birch ply, and featuring human-powered adjustability mechanisms. Judging by the looks of it, he either cut the forms out with a CNC machine or has extreme OCD.

See it in action: