Plastic bottles are made by blow-molding, a beautiful, elegant process that can create a full-bodied shape with a narrow little neck. But how the heck do they make scuba tanks, fire extinguishers and gas canisters, which have similarly narrow necks, but are of course made of non-blow-moldable metal?

My first thought was that they make them in two halves via metal drawing, then weld them together—but obviously that makes no sense. So I looked into and found that yes, a scuba tank comes from a single flat disc of metal alloy.

And while drawing is still the initial production method, I wasn't aware that what they call "hot spinning" is how you get the bottleneck:

Let’s say you met a caveman and wanted to teach him Tetris. How would you go about it?

You and the caveman would probably sit down on a couch one afternoon and, after a perfunctory description of the rules, just start playing. The first few games would end quickly, as they always do, but eventually your caveman would get better. He’d start making inferences. His reaction times would grow quicker. Shortly thereafter, you and your caveman would get hungry, turn off your Atari console, and go eat dinner.

PLAYING A GAME CANNOT BE REDUCED TO ROBOTIC EFFICIENCY.

Devices don’t take dinner breaks. Nor, for that matter, do they get hungry. It should therefore come as little surprise that Deep Mind Technologies, which was acquired by Google in 2014, has built an Artificial Intelligence that can teach itself how to play games on the Atari 2600. “Google's AI system surpassed the performance of expert humans in 29 games,” reports Bloomberg’s Jack Clark, “and outperformed the best-known algorithmic methods for completing games in 43 instances.”

Image of IBM's Watson via Clockready.

Google isn’t coming for your videogames, not even the classics from the 1980s. Tetris is simply easier to learn than, say, driving an automated car. In that respect, Deep Mind Technologies’ current achievement is but a small step on the road to building technologies that can learn from their mistakes and grow wiser with time.

But there’s another reason Google isn’t coming for your videogames, and it’s quite simple: The experience of playing a game cannot be reduced to robotic efficiency. Sure, the point of Tetris is to achieve something close to that efficiency, but its enjoyment comes from the ways in which that goal can never be fully reached. Indeed, as Google’s AI has proven, the goalposts in Tetris keep moving. The game is a fundamentally human pursuit.  

In the latest issue of the London Review of Books, the British journalist and novelist John Lanchester offers a gloomier look at the relationship between games and the (possibly) coming rise of AI:

The scenario we’re given – the one being made to feel inevitable – is of a hyper-capitalist dystopia. There’s capital, doing better than ever; the robots, doing all the work; and the great mass of humanity, doing not much, but having fun playing with its gadgets. (Though if there’s no work, there are going to be questions about who can afford to buy the gadgets.) 

That, Lanchester concedes, is the worst-case scenario. It is also possible that the technologies presaged by a self-taught, computerized Tetris prodigy simply serves to ameliorate labour’s lot. (Lanchester does not find this latter possibility unlikely so much as he is depressed by the lack of interest in these more socialist outcomes.) Regardless, there’s some small comfort in knowing that, when the revolution comes, we’ll be stuck at home with our gadgets. AI can master Tetris but it can never enjoy a game’s visuals or its fleeting pleasures. At the end of the day, we’ll all make it to the end of No Man’s Sky’s universe at the same time.

Story by David Rudin for Kill Screen.

Do you remember Greg Klassen's River Collection of tables? To refresh your memory, the Pacific-Northwest-based craftsman used two slabs with live edges to make one tabletop—but he flipped the live edges over to the inside. By precisely cutting a piece of glass to match the edges, the resultant table looks like a natural river:

A paradoxically similar-but-totally-different table is London-based designer Christopher Duffy's Abyss Table. This one also uses glass and wood:

As you can see, Duffy's gone with plywood (CNC-cut, we imagine) rather than Klassen's natural wood, and references the ocean rather than a river.

It's fascinating how each additional layer of glass filters the light in the same way that ocean water does, creating visually murky depths.

Duffy and his team reportedly spent a year getting the design right. And as you can guess, it's not for mass production: The handmade table's run is limited to just 25 units.

Tennyson Pinheiro is a serial entrepreneur, designer, professor, startup founder and angel investor. You may be familiar with him as the founder and CEO of Livework in Brazil, the pioneering global Service Design agency, or as the creator of Eise - The School for Service Innovation. He has also written two books about design thinking; one, Design Thinking Brasil is a best seller in Brazil and the other, The Service Startup :: Design gets Lean, explores the intersection between design and entrepreneurship.

All this made Tennyson a valuable addition to the 2014 Core77 Design Awards when he accepted our invitation to be the Jury Captain for the Service Design category. He and his jury team sought to surface the service design projects that demonstrated the greatest empathetic eye and in doing so, bring more attention and a broader audience to the industry. Here are his thoughts on why the Core77 Design Awards matter to the Service Design industry. If you work in Service Design and have great ideas to share, enter your designs today! 

2014 Service Design Student Winner "Kandu" by Bahareh Shahriari

Core77 Design Awards: Why are the Design Awards important to the Service Design industry?

Tennyson Pinheiro: It shows that Service Design is getting more known, widespread and helps consolidate it with a broader audience. 

What was most memorable about being a Jury Captain during the 2014 Design Awards?

TP: Definitely the discussions about the project proposals with the jury members. Long, sunny and memorable days spent with good clever people. 

2014 Service Design Professional Winner "The damda" by M&M

What, to you, makes a great project stand out?

TP: We considered three things when looking through the applications. We called them: The designer’s eye, execution and service equity. The first speaks about the designer’s ability to uncover and address a real issue, the second about the presentation layer, and the third about the business model, including how the service exchanges are balanced between actors. 

What surprised you the most when you were a Jury Captain?

TP: First, the support I had. Considering my agenda, I would not be capable of making it without it and the Core77 Design Awards team were spot on in giving me tools and head-starts. 

2014 Professional Service Design Notable "Your Pizza, Your Way" by Scott Shim

This is the fourth of our ten Tech Specs interviews. Previously, we talked to Ladies & Gentlemen Studio.

Name: Abe Burmeister

Job title: Cofounder of the Brooklyn-based clothing company Outlier

Background: Fresh out of school, I started an animation company with a couple friends and got involved in some early web animation stuff. I parlayed that into a not-particularly-successful TV animation period—that lasted about four years. Then I started doing freelance web and graphic design, and then I moved more into interface design, working with a lot of financial companies. And then one day about six years ago I couldn’t find particular pieces of clothing that I wanted, and all of a sudden I had a clothing company.

Computer setup: I have a standing desk with a basic, large-screen iMac. And I’m a devoted Wacom user. I’ve been using Wacom tablets since the turn of the century, and now I basically can’t touch a mouse—I can’t stand to use one for more than about ten minutes. I’ve had situations where I’ve forgotten to bring my Wacom tablet to a freelance gig, and I’ll literally run out and buy another one. 

I don’t actually use the Wacom to draw that much, I just use it as a mouse substitute—there’s a mouse mode and a pen mode, and my guess from talking to other Wacom users is that 80 to 90 percent of them use it in pen mode. I’m actually the only person I’ve ever met that uses it almost exclusively in mouse mode. 

In any case, I actually find that I don’t use the desktop computer or even my desk that much. Basically, what happened is that I created a standing desk for myself, which is great, except I started to find that I would just sit on the couch with my iPad Mini instead. So now I spend more computer time sitting on the couch doing stuff on the iPad than I do standing at the computer working. 

How much of your workday do you spend in front of the computer? Probably about half, maybe less. I’d say I use the desktop about 20 percent of the day and the iPad or iPhone for another 30 percent. The other half of the time I’m either walking around and involved in really physical stuff, or I’m in meetings. 

Burmeister's work couch

Abe Burmeister

Most used software: I’ve spent the last year with the philosophy of doing everything possible to minimize the amount of time that I’m in e-mail. And so I use Slack a lot, which has really helped—we were in the Slack Beta testing period and fell in love with it, and now almost all of the company’s internal communications are in Slack rather than e-mail. 

The key thing about Slack is that it defaults your communications to public, so it sort of inverts e-mail. You’re posting something that everyone can see, so it really opens up the communication among a group, because everyone, if they want to, can read what’s happening. But it’s designed in such a way that you don’t feel some huge pressure to read every thread or be on top of everything. 

When I’m on the iPad, I work a lot in a program called iA Writer. I find that a lot of my work now actually involves writing—a lot of what I do is clarifying the ideas behind designs, explaining why things need to exist, what we’re trying to accomplish. And then after those things are built, I’m trying to clarify what it is that we actually created, and how we can best communicate that to the world. 

For writing, I find that the iPad Mini form factor is really transformative. It’s my favorite mode of writing out of anything. I thumb-type in portrait mode—it’s not quite as fast as touch-typing, but it’s fast enough and very intimate. I feel like I can have a really good relationship with the words. 

And then when I’m on the desktop, I work a lot in Illustrator—that’s my go-to program when I have to do more traditional design work. It’s probably 80 percent Illustrator and 20 percent Photoshop. 

Software that you thought you’d use more often than you do: I guess I had high hopes for doing sketching stuff on the iPad, and I went through a lot of different pieces of software and was pretty frustrated with all of them. I’m almost like a native Illustrator thinker. And while there are some great drawing programs for the iPad, nothing lets me manipulate objects in the way that Illustrator does. 

The New OGs are an updated version of the original Outlier garment—a durable bike-to-work pant that evolved into a full-fledged clothing line.

Phone: iPhone 6

Favorite apps: Besides iA Writer, I love this calculator app called Soulver. 

Apps that are actually useful for your work: I use Numbers quite a bit. I wake up and do ten minutes of very basic business stuff in bed every morning—just updating spreadsheets and making sure that I pay everybody. 

Other than that, there’s a conversion app that I use a lot. There are a couple industries in the world, and clothing is one of them, where you’re just constantly converting measurements. So I find that really useful.

Other devices: I’ve been playing around with a NODE—it’s a little Bluetooth sensor device, and you can plug a bunch of different sensors onto it. In particular, I’ve been trying to work with this color sensor they have, called NODE+chroma. We’re hoping it could be useful for matching colors and comparing things, but it hasn’t gotten past toy status yet.

Other machinery/tools in your workspace: We use a digital microscope sometimes, to look at fabrics and get a sense, on a literally microscopic level, of what’s going on with the materials that we’re working with.

The Ultrahigh Duffle. In addition to its signature pants, Outlier now makes shirts, outerwear, accessories and a small collection of womenswear.

Tools or software you’re thinking of purchasing: There’s a humongous one, which is that we could really use an ERP system, which stands for Enterprise Resource Planning. It’s a software platform that allows you to manage production down to a very material level—it’s designed to tell you, for instance, how many screws go into a car, and how many of those you have in stock, and how long it takes for you to make them, and when you need to reorder them, and all of that kind of stuff. That’s something we’ve been putting off buying for a long time. We know it would help make everything work better, but it’s also a massive investment of time and money to get it going. Even to just pick which one to go with and then install it and get it going and working across the entire team is a huge task. 

How has new technology changed your job in the last 5–10 years? I can do all the stuff today on my couch, which is crazy. That’s obviously the mega one. I spent a decade working only on a laptop, but then when the iPad came out, I used that as a way to do the opposite—to have a desktop with as big a screen as possible, and then when I travel, get rid of the laptop and just use the iPad. I’ve been doing that since a month or two after the first iPad came out. The only thing I miss is Illustrator—oh, and fonts. There’s no good way to do fonts on an iPad; it’s really frustrating. 

When it comes to new tech, are you a Luddite, an early adopter or somewhere in between? I’d say I’m a skeptical early adopter. I’ll never buy a new device the day it comes out, but I’ll wait for the lines to die down and then I’ll get it. I can get swept up in the hype a little bit, but I’m never like, “Wow, this is the new tech that’s going to change everything.” I’m very cautious about what the ramifications of a new tool might be. 

Do you outsource any of your tech tasks? For the most part, we work in physical form—so when we’re designing stuff, we’re making physical patterns and drawing on paper and cut-outs. Then we use third-party services to digitize the patterns. They also do what’s called marking grading. So the pattern is one size and they transform it to your whole size range—that’s all done digitally. In addition, there’s laying out all of the pieces in the most optimal way for the fabric to get cut, so you’re not wasting fabric. There are specialist companies that do all of this; it’s the kind of thing that only exists in major garment districts, like in New York and LA. 

What are your biggest tech gripes? Basically, I would kill for a working supplement of Illustrator on an iPad—that would change everything for me. 

Also, I really want Apple to do a stylus, which I know Steve Jobs was utterly opposed to. But I buy all the new styluses for the iPad and none of them are good enough; they need to be done in a very Apple way, integrated very tightly with the software and hardware. 

Basically, I would kill for a working supplement of Illustrator on an iPad—that would change everything for me.

What do you wish software could do that it can’t now? I’m careful about what I wish for with software, because I’m worried it will bite me in the ass. 

Finally, we've all had instances of software crashing at the worst possible moment, or experienced similar stomach-churning tech malfunctions. Can you tell us about your most memorable tech-related disaster? Back in 2001, when I was doing mostly animation, my partners were in San Francisco and I was in New York. So I was going back and forth all the time, and I had this realization that I could do basically all my work on a laptop and a cell phone. I was having some housing troubles at the time, and I decided that I was just going to get rid of everything I owned except for a carry-on bag with my laptop and my cell, and then I could work anywhere—I could spend a couple weeks in San Francisco, and then I could go somewhere else, and then back to New York. 

So I did this. I sold all my records and most of my clothes and all of my books, and I literally reduced my life down to a carry-on bag. Besides my laptop and cell phone, the one other piece of tech that was important to this equation was a thing called a Ricochet. This was an early broadband wireless company, and the device was amazing because it worked in, like, a dozen cities, it was probably the equivalent of 4G service today, and it was actually synchronous, so it had a faster up time than maybe even my landline connection right now. Ricochet had raised over a billion dollars and they had maybe 50,000 users. And, literally, two days after I started this plan with just my carry-on bag, Ricochet went out of business. Shut down completely. 

And I remember that very night I had to upload some important files for work. I was housesitting at a friend’s place in New York, and I couldn’t get on her dial-up connection, and it was basically like the dawn of WiFi—there were literally three publicly accessible WiFi spots in the entire city. One of them was run by a professor at NYU, so I ended up literally sitting in Washington Square Park—which was still filled with drug dealers at the time—at midnight sucking on this tiny little WiFi connection. It was the only way I could get the files to my client at the time, and that’s when I was like, “OK, this is going to be kind of hard.” I actually stuck with the carry-on life for four years, but it was a tough start. 

This article is part of the Core77 Tech-tacular, an editorial series exploring the myriad ways that technologies are shaping the future of design.

Many people are happy to use their smartphones as their alarm clocks, but that won't work for everyone. Some users don't have smartphones—or are minimally tech-proficient and only know how to use them for limited purposes. Others choose to follow the advice of sleep researchers and feng shui consultants and keep all screens out of the bedroom. And others simply find a physical alarm clock easier to deal with when waking up than a smartphone.

If you're an industrial designer working on an alarm clock, remember that users care about ease of use, the sounds used to wake them up, the display lighting during the night, and of course the reliability. The Lexon FLIP alarm clock, designed by Adrian and Jeremy Wright, certainly keeps things simple; the user just flips the phone over to turn it on and off. This could be useful for a quick alarm silencing when one spouse needs to wake earlier than the other.

The user can choose a 12-hour or a 24-hour display, which is a nice feature. The backlighting only comes on when the user picks up the clock, and turns off quickly. This is a problem for some users, but those who don't want a clock light on all night will be pleased. Some users also noted that this clock tends to run through batteries quite quickly. And it doesn't have a low-battery indicator, as some other alarm clocks do.

Some users need a travel alarm clock—and designers have addressed this need with small, durable alarm clocks, often with added features. The Jetlag clock, designed by Industrial Facility for IDEA Japan, was designed specifically for ease of use; no manual is needed. It has one display for the current time and one for the alarm. However, a couple of users have said the alarm sound is too low, so it may not work for anyone but a light sleeper. (Even if someone prefers a quieter alarm so as not to wake a sleeping spouse, it would be better to have an adjustable volume that could go louder when needed.)

The Braun reflex control travel alarm clock has a motion-activated snooze function. It also has a flip-down lip that protects the clock face while traveling; the interior of the lid has a world time zone map. The silent quartz movement is a feature that would be appreciated on any alarm clock.

Of course, it's not just travel alarms that have novel designs. The Pick-me-up alarm clock from Thomas Bai Designs lights up the clock face (for five seconds) and activates the snooze function when it's picked up, so users don't need to find the snooze or the off button. (As with the FLIP, this could be useful for spouses waking at different times.) However, unlike the Braun, some users said that this clock is too noisy—a common problem with battery-powered analog clocks. (I had to give away a different alarm clock for just this reason.)

For users who'd like to wake up to a gentler sound than a buzzing alarm, there's this alarm clock from Now & Zen, which uses a chime. It also doubles as a countdown timer or an interval repeating timer. This alarm clock is targeted at those who meditate and those who practice yoga or various types of bodywork, but it certainly isn't limited to them; I used an analog version of this clock for years, and enjoyed waking to the chime.

The Timex Simple Set Direct Entry Alarm Clock is notable for just how easy it is to set the time and the alarm; users tend to purchase it for children or the elderly. However, one user noted that the alarm off button isn't that easy to reach; it would be easy to hit the wrong button. And, once more, some users have said the alarm is too soft, even on the loudest setting.

I have mixed reactions to this TimeSmart self-setting alarm clock from Brookstone. On the one hand, with those big buttons (one for each of the two alarms), it sure is easy for the user to see if the alarm is set, and to turn it off. (There's a large snooze bar between the two buttons.) It has a crescendo alarm, getting louder over time, which helps ensure that heavier sleepers (or those living in noisy city environments) wake up without being too startled. Users can set the brightness of the display; there are five settings, with one of them being "off." On the other hand, users choose the brightness setting by pressing on the snooze bar—not exactly intuitive.

Another concern is the whole "self-setting" thing. The clock is factory set to be correct for the Eastern time zone, although you can change the setting to use any other U.S. time zone. But this clock is not radio-controlled, as the user might assume; it's just using data stored internally. (It has a five-year battery.) A number of users have mentioned problems with time accuracy—the single most important thing for an alarm clock.

This alarm clock from Quantysis radio controlled; it's also solar powered. With one charge from some hours in the sun, the clock will run for a year; that's going to appeal to the environmentally focused user, and any user who gets tired of replacing batteries. There's another version that's a combination alarm clock and smoke alarm. The red dot you see by the number 3 is the indicator that the alarm is on. 

The Philips Wake-Up Light Alarm Clock simulates a sunrise; the light gradually increases for 30 minutes. After that, there's a beep at the user's set wake-up time, although many users will be awake before then. There's also a snooze function. 

Another model of wake-up light from Phillips has a choice of three sounds: morning birds, wind chimes or that beep. Some users really miss not having that choice in this model.

Philips claims that 92 percent of users agree that this alarm makes it easier to get out of bed. However, it may not work for users who take naps during the day, or any users (shift workers, etc.) who need to wake during broad daylight; it’s more suited to dark winter mornings. Also, this is not the alarm for anyone sharing a bedroom with someone who needs to wake up later, since it works over time and will light the room rather than being an alarm the user can have close at hand and shut off quickly.

The Sound Rise wireless speaker and alarm clock from Soundfreaq was designed for music lovers. Users can choose to wake to a preset radio station or the music on any Bluetooth device they've paired to it. As one user said: "I select the album I want to hear on Spotify, pause play on my phone, and voila, that is what I wake to. If I forget to do that, it plays random selections from music stored on my phone." And if the Sound Rise has trouble pairing, it will use its built-in chime instead. 

The Sound Rise also has a USB port that can be used to charge devices such as smartphones and tablets. Screen brightness can be adjusted, and turned off entirely for those who prefer to have no display at night. There are dual alarms with weekday/weekend settings. 

The Sound Rise is designed for a nightstand, keeping the footprint as small as possible and going vertical to provide space for the speaker components.

Some alarm clock designs are created specifically for those who tend to turn off other ones and oversleep. This version of the Ramos alarm clock, which is still in development, is intended for that type of user. 

The Ramos Smart is a remotely deactivated alarm clock; it's connected to a smartphone app and a Bluetooth beacon. It forces a user to get out of bed because it will only turn off when the user's smartphone is brought close to the beacon, which should be placed well away from the bed—some place the user wants to go after waking up, such as next to the coffee maker. (Ramos does have a snooze function, but it can only be used a limited number of times.)

Last year I stood in a snow-dusted field in Finland, about 100 kilometers west of Helsinki, handling a variety of bladed tools. There at Fiskars' proving grounds, a bunch of us visitors took turns chopping, cutting and slicing wood with a series of ingeniously-designed gardening tools that surprised me with their ease-of-use.

Case in point, I was handed a pair of loppers (the ones you see below) and provided with a branch—a sapling, really—that I did not think loppers were appropriate for; at roughly two inches in diameter it seemed to call for a saw. But as I brought the handles together there was little resistance, the blades felt like they were cutting through a thick noodle, and the branch separated cleanly. This will sound silly, but it was fun; I wanted to spend half an hour wandering through the nearby forest cutting things in half.

"That's the PowerGear," the Fiskars executive overseeing us explained to me, pointing to the geared mechanism near the blades. "That's what makes it so easy." By employing mechanical advantage, we were told, the force exerted by the user was multiplied by better than a factor of three, versus your standard single-pivot-point pair of cutters.

I handled several different tools varying in length and blade size, from the SWAT-team-boltcutter-length, to handheld, to Zombie-Apocalypse-size. All of these were the second-generation versions of the tools, the PowerGear2 line, which had been tweaked (see video below) over the first generation. At the time the PowerGear 2 line was not available in North America, but Fiskars is finally launching it here this month.

At the proving grounds the Fiskars exec explained some more of the technical details to us while pointing to the different parts of the mechanism, but at the risk of me sounding like an American idiot, I have to confess I had trouble cutting through his Finnish accent. Here, however, is a new video from Fiskars with Dan Cunningham, a Senior Design R&D Engineer based at their Wisconsin facility, explaining the mechanisms, the improvements, the different tools in the line and what they're going for ergonomically:

As much fun as it is to fill a notebook with sketches of fast shoes and sexy cars, ID is definitely a digital field. As we trawled around the forums looking for interesting tech issues we noticed several queries about which programs beginning designers really ought to know. 

One 3D-dabbling graphic designer seeking input about programs for modeling got several pieces of advice most new designers can use. In this case the asker had a bit of experience in Rhino already, but wondered whether having more programs or something like SolidWorks would be vital on a resume. Cyberdemon advocated staying the course… mostly:

As a surfacing tool, Rhino is a great place to start. Solidworks is also valuable, but ultimately as a young employee they would rather see a portfolio of what you can currently do fluently with any 3D tool, rather than read on your resume you are familiar with several tools, but not proficient in any of them. If you have been using Rhino I would keep up with it and develop your skill rather than trying to jump ship to a new tool. Key shot is probably the best choice for an easy to pick up, quick to get good results, renderer right now...The cheap version of Keyshot is probably fine (they also have a trial with watermark I believe) if you just want to learn the tool or do web-sized renders.

User Cameron agreed and took a step back to clarify how the programs are largely distinguished:

I'd Just keep getting better at the path you've already gone down. At this point, you might dabble in other programs for fun, but don't personally invest your own money in new programs. I'd say Rhino/Alias are the go-to surfacing platforms most commonly used, and Solidworks/Pro-E are the most common parametric ones. 

RalphZoontjens also agreed, pointing out the increasing parametric options for Rhino:

I agree that you better work mainly on your design skills and creativity in this phase, and go along with one tool of your choice to get your designs ready for prototyping/production.
It has become possible to do parametric design with the recent (and free!) Grasshopper plugin, which works fantastic. It is a completely different way of modeling but I would highly recommend learning it if you're already familiar with Rhinoceros. It opens up a whole new realm of possibilities.

Hkoehl20 noted the efficiency of using a single program and the importance of considering the desired end product when choosing:

If you have access to solidworks, I suggest spending a little bit of time to get familiar with it. I tend to use solid works more because I can create a general outline of a design then dial in the details pretty easily and efficiently. The things I make in solid works tend to look a little more professional than the the things I model in rhino. Solidworks is especially effective when designing that you plan to create in real life because it is grounded in many of the manufacturing processes. 

For career-tailored decisions, user Design-Engine suggested that learning which tools specific companies use can help guide your choice:

I suggest looking at manufactures that you would love to work with .... for example Trek uses SolidWorks, Caterpillar uses Pro/ENGINEER & Alias. Make your decision from looking at the job descriptions.

In a similar thread, a young ID grad asked about the pros and cons of how designers use SolidWorks and Rhino in their own workflow. While a lot of responses hinged on sheer personal preference, a lot of it boils down to the work environment and your end product or goal. Having an entire engineering team will change what you're expected to produce, and a model for a mass produced injection molded widget and a 3D printed object will have different requirements. 

Many people use a one way flow from Rhino (or other surfacing tools) to SolidWorks (or other parametric options) to go from ideation to full on build mode. However, the determining balance between what you need to do and what you are comfortable using is inherently a subjective one. On one hand a lot of users resent the restrictive, sometimes labyrinthine structures of SolidWorks. On the other, as Cadjunkie notes: 

...just because the program "allows" you to make something on the screen because a couple of buttons have been pushed doesn't equate it to being a good idea in the end. If you aren't thinking about the product with regards to some type of manufacturing process in mind then its a disservice in the long run to have to rebuild the model from scratch.

As Cyberdemon summed it up breezily:

As they say there's a right tool for every job. Not all of our jobs are the same. The guy doing concept modelling, the guy doing interior renderings, the guy doing automotive surfacing, the guy doing rotomolded garbage cans, and the guy designing a space shuttle all need 3D software but each one has its own particular nooks and crannies. A shot glass and a swimming pool both hold liquids. But one makes for a terrible swim.

Overall the advice leans towards deeper, rather than broader, knowledge of programs. Strength of portfolio comes first, and being really dextrous in a commonly used program will likely be more attractive than a cursory understanding of several. However, getting a feel for how other programs work isn’t a bad idea if they’re likely to pop up in your line of work. This is particularly well advised to make going from the sketching and surface modeling stage through to building a functional solid model. 

In sum, consider your desired type of work and desired type of work environment, and then dabble, but deeply!

This article is part of the Core77 Tech-tacular, an editorial series exploring the myriad ways that technologies are shaping the future of design.

Billing their product as the "world's first and only mechanical smart watch hybrid," Kairos Watches has set the expectations bar high. Especially considering their watches haven't launched; they're taking pre-orders, but still working out the tech.

That's because the tech hasn't been done before, at least not in a commercially-viable way. Kairos is aiming to be the first to master OLEDs that are transparent—the company is aiming for 40% to 60% transparency—and if they can pull it off, they'll be able to produce a traditional, mechanical watch with a kick-ass feature: The glass over it will function as a smartwatch display, fulfilling their "hybrid" description. Notifications, social media alerts, fitness-tracking apps, a chronograph, and remote-control functionality for a user's devices are all meant to be displayed on the OLED.

Of course, when you dip your foot into the technological pool, you have to plan for obsolescence. Kairos intends to get around this by offering regular servicing on their customers' watches under their "Watches are Meant to Last" philosophy:

Worried about smart watch components getting outdated? Need more processing power? More memory? More features? With Kairos Watches, customers have the option of sending in their watch for an upgrade of all electronic components including the battery. In fact, we will even service the mechanical movement as well.

The upgrade does come with a small price tag – starting at just $99. Expert technicians will carefully replace the components and mail it back to you.

That's an interesting approach, and one we're curious to see if customers will embrace. While consumers accept that cars must occasionally be brought to the shop for maintenance, we wonder if watch owners—particularly those accustomed to traditional, mechanical models—will be willing to ship it off and live without it for however long it takes.

We should also point out that the company claims they'll have a battery life of 5-7 days. That sounds batshit crazy, but in an apparent nod to reality, they acknowledge that it will be charged via a plug-in USB cord; wireless charging, they say, isn't viable as the magnetic fields that engenders would mess with the mechanical movement of the watch.

In any case, the company is offering two models, one with movement supplied by a Japanese manufacturer, the other Swiss. The lowest-price model will run for $549, and the line tops out at $1,249. (That's for the pre-orders, which the company says are 40% to 50% less than what they'll retail for after launch.)

Okay, ready for the sexy, CG-heavy promo video?

This is the fifth of our ten Tech Specs interviews. Previously, we talked to Outlier's Abe Burmeister.

Name: Victoria Slaker

Job title: VP, Product Design at Ammunition in San Francisco

Background: After industrial-design school, I started at IDEO. Then I was on my own for a while as a small consultancy. I joined with Robert Brunner back in the Pentagram days. When Robert made the decision to found Ammunition, I helped start this office—we took the team over and launched Ammunition a little more than seven years ago.

Computer setup: It’s pretty basic, as are all of our setups here. I’m on a MacBook, which goes with me everywhere, more than I care to admit. It goes on vacation with me—I’m a little tethered to it. 

Otherwise, I keep it pretty minimal. I’m happy to work small, so I don’t have any exotic mouse or monitor setups. I don’t use a Wacom tablet or anything like that. It’s very straightforward.

How much of your workday do you spend in front of the computer? On average, about 70 percent, I’d say. If I’m not in front of the computer, then we’re having meetings.

Victoria Slaker at her desk at Ammunition

Most used software: I’m a little bit old-school. My most used software is for 2D work—a lot of Illustrator and Photoshop. I do a lot of the initial thinking about concepts, so it’s either helping other people with creative direction or getting in there and doing some of the design work myself. 

Other than that, our office is on Outlook, and we use Basecamp for managing client relationships and correspondence —we’ve found it to be a really useful tool.

Software that you thought you’d use more often than you do: The 3D software— I thought I would be more into than I am. I still don’t find it necessary. We have a lot of designers here, so that’s something where it trickles down; some of our other designers are doing the heavy lifting around 3D. 

Phone: I have an iPhone 6 Plus. I thought it was going to be too big, but now when I see iPhone 4s and 5s, I think, “Oh my god, they’re miniature.” I’ve actually enjoyed it much more than I expected.

Favorite apps: One that I think is interesting, but that I haven’t had a chance to really use yet, is a Nike app called Making. It basically helps designers discern the impact of their material choices. So you’re able to dial up and down and decide, “Maybe this is the lesser of two evils,” or “Here’s something that could be a replacement for what we’re using.” 

Apps that are actually useful for your work: There are viewer apps, like a plugin to view a Rhino file on your phone—that can be very helpful.

The other app that I use a lot, Sprig, is for ordering lunch. Because if you’re in a crunch, having lunch delivered is probably one of the best things. 

Ammunition's recent designs include the Polaroid Cube, a rubberized 35-mm action camera

HeartBeats headphones, developed in collaboration with Lady Gaga

Cooks' Tools for Williams-Sonoma

Other devices: I’ve got my iPhone, my iPad and my laptop. That’s pretty much all I need. 

Other machinery/tools in your workspace: We were one of the early adopters of having a straight-up FDM machine in-house. And we were a little unusual in that we let the designers use it as they saw fit—and found it being used almost at the level of sketching. So it’s super iterative, and we felt there was a freedom to allowing designers to print as much as they needed. It was really beneficial to them, and ultimately to the project and the client. We’ve since added to our collection and now we have an Objet printer as well, which is super great. 

Tools or software you’re thinking of purchasing: We don’t feel like we’re lacking anything—the tools that we need, we have in house right now. 

How has new technology changed your job in the last 5–10 years? Speed—I think that’s the biggest thing. In the technology sector in particular, we’ve had to move a lot more quickly. Software can be continually updated, but once the hardware is done and in the user’s hands, it’s very hard to go back and change it. So being more responsive with the hardware side of things, and more iterative—that’s something we’re always chasing. And that has pushed the ID and engineering side of hardware to go faster and just be more nimble. 

We were one of the early adopters of having a straight-up FDM machine in-house. And we were a little unusual in that we let the designers use it as they saw fit—and found it being used almost at the level of sketching. We felt there was a freedom to allowing designers to print as much as they needed.

When it comes to new tech, are you a Luddite, an early adopter or somewhere in between? I’m an impatient early adopter. I’m happy to adopt things, but if it fails initially or it takes a lot of time and effort, I move on.  

Do you outsource any of your tech tasks? We don’t. The only thing we outsource is specialty items—like, we don’t keep a large engineering team on staff, because we’re always partnering depending on the needs of the client. But when it comes to specific design tasks, it’s all done in-house. 

What are your biggest tech gripes? The idea that a rendering is a final product. It used to be that we had student portfolios come into our office, and if they had really wonderful 3D work and beautiful renderings it’s because those students worked super hard and they were actually go-getters in that way. Now, the software and technology in that area has greatly improved and gotten more accessible to more people, so it’s not always an indication of a great designer when they come in with a super shiny rendering. I’m feeling like it’s starting to be more of a crutch than it should be. People are skipping some really important steps to get to those renderings. 

What do you wish software could do that it can’t now? We recently hosted a panel discussion here at Ammunition that included the founder of Autodesk, Carl Bass. He told us that Autodesk is working on software where you can dial in parameters around what a product should be doing, or what you want it to do, and the idea is that the software is able to design for you. Obviously, it’s a very sophisticated idea, but it’s also a kind of dangerous thing—because in the wrong hands, you could have people designing things that they’re not capable of vetting. It’s a little bit uncontrolled, but it’s an interesting concept at least. I don’t know if that’s a wish, exactly. It’s more of a genie-out-of-the-bottle situation. 

Finally, we've all had instances of software crashing at the worst possible moment, or experienced similar stomach-churning tech malfunctions. Can you tell us about your most memorable tech-related disaster? I can’t say that we’ve had any epic tech fails. We have had some pretty hairy FDM fails. We’ve had instances where you open the door and it should be a beautiful print of your design, and instead it’s a spaghetti meltdown of plastic. That’s probably the only area where we’ve had serious tech malfunctions. 

This article is part of the Core77 Tech-tacular, an editorial series exploring the myriad ways that technologies are shaping the future of design.

Mornings in New York: The taste of hot coffee, the din of traffic, the aroma of fresh urine. If you have the bad luck to pass anywhere a drunken bar-goer might have the night before, as most of us do, chances are you'll pass some building nook with a suspicious stain and catch a nasty whiff of beer that's been through somebody.

Drunken public urination isn't just an American problem, of course: Tokyo, London, Hamburg, and every city whose name is under a clock on some globally-concerned office's wall suffers the same problem. But Hamburg is now fighting it with technology. Specifically, superhydrophobic paint, i.e. water-repellent coating, which a local community board has applied liberally to walls in their party district of St. Pauli. Here are the results:

I need to get the name of that coating, and to start lobbying my local community board! Last fall I returned home to find someone peeing on my building's front door. WeWorkNYC, the world's worst neighbors, were throwing another uncontrolled party and revelers didn't feel like waiting for the bathrooms. Meanwhile I had to wait for the guy to finish before entering my building.

"You're an animal," I said to the guy as he zipped up.

"Yeah, I know," he said, unconcernedly, and went back into the party to tank up again.

Hell in a handbasket.

With the woodchipper fired up, the men began tossing $1 million worth of brand-new sneakers into it. Nike, Adidas, Vans, Converse, it didn't matter what it said on the label; all 150,000 pairs were counterfeits, intercepted by the Philippines' Bureau of Customs after they made their way from a Chinese factory to a warehouse in Paranaque City.

The folks over at Hypebeast know kicks, and when HB Producer Ambrose Leung was chatting about counterfeits with some fellow sneakerheads, all insisted they could easily tell the difference. Leung wasn't sure he believed them, as knockoff manufacturers' production quality has become shockingly good. To put them to the test, he assembled a sort of sneaker taste-test, mixing fakes in with the real deal, and recorded it (hat tip to Dooby Brain):

I remember reading, perhaps seven years ago, an article in The Economist where they interviewed an Italian textile manufacturer. He had just returned from a trip to China to investigate the factories that had been knocking off his work—poorly—for years, and the man had returned shellshocked. Not only had they finally begun to match his quality—they had in some cases, he said, exceeded it.

Nothing could be more frustrating to a company that has invested millions of dollars in a new design only to see it duplicated for a fraction of their investment. One one level, the problem seems intractable: These products are made by factory machines, whether they're injection-molding machines or sewing machines, and factory machines can be purchased; with current technology, molds and patterns can be easily duplicated; people are needed to operate the machines, and if a human being contracted by Nike can accurately sew a pattern, a human being not contracted by Nike can too.

But there is some hope. It is interesting to see in the video that the only fakes that everyone spotted were the knockoff Flyknits. Nike's research-heavy Flyknit, with its proprietary blend of yarn and fabric, and their usage of pressure-mapping to inform where the shoe has a more compressive structure, goes to such sophisticated lengths that the pirates are apparently having trouble accurately knocking it off. (At least for now.)

Fake.

Fake.

As good a job as they did, and will continue to do, the Bureau of Customs guys in the start of this article, and their worldwide counterparts, have no hope of winning the war on product piracy. Instead, that war will have to be prosecuted one slow battle at a time, in the R&D and materials science labs of Nike and their corporate contemporaries that have enough cash to fund those labs—and keep them in-house, under lock and key. That will at least buy them some time.

This is not part of our Tech-tacular special, where we'll soon show you how better design and manufacturing software is making a real difference; but this is funny.

Motion graphics software is intended to allow producers to achieve better production quality at a fraction of what it used to cost. Folks who invest the time into learning the software can enter the exciting world of film, video and television production. Or they can make GIFs where things blow up for no reason other than that Michael Bay is seared into all of our psyches.

Sadly none of these are attributed, but all were compiled by a website cleverly named Unnecessary Explosions. There are plenty more to see there, some perhaps NSFW—then again, are any of these, really?

Happy Friday, and stay safe out there.

This is the latest installment of In the Details, our weekly deep-dive into the making of a new product or project. Last week, we examined a smarter jump rope.

Brendan Keim was walking through the National Portrait Gallery in London last September when he stumbled upon a painting of a man with a long thin scepter. Intrigued, he snapped a photo and quickly sketched the object in his sketchbook, along with a note that it could make a pretty interesting light. “I didn’t think about it for a long time afterward, because I wasn’t sure how it would all work,” Keim says. It wasn’t until the New York–based designer revisited his sketchbook in January that he thought of a way to actually build the device. “I was like, ‘Oh—I can make this. I know how to make this.’”

King Edward V, by an unknown artist. © National Portrait Gallery, London

The eventual result of that expedition and sketchbook documentation is the Volta Torch, named after Alessandro Volta, an Italian physicist and the inventor of the battery. The long, slender brass flashlight is an exercise in aesthetics and function—as well as a challenge in feasibility, with its impossibly thin casing, curiously powered by eight 1.5-volt hearing-aid batteries wired in series. “For me, it was really just an experiment in, ‘Can this physically work? Can I make a flashlight?’” Keim says. “And, ‘How simple can I do it?’”

Keim is a lighting designer by trade, working for Lindsey Adelman by day. In his own time, he experiments with a range of personal work that focuses on interactive experiences, often involving some element of programming or code. “I really enjoy tactile, analog inputs and I think a lot of my work has to do with controlling a digital world through those analog inputs,” he says. “For me, I see it as the era in which I grew up. I’m a child of the eighties, this crossover period in between analog toys and digital toys.” Looking around Keim’s home studio, his love of that era is evident, seen in large stereo knobs and boxes of every type of LEGO imaginable. His approach to the Volta Torch is no different.

Brendan Keim's Volta Torch

The "elevated flashlight" switches on with a subtle twist of the head, which closes the threaded piece, completing the circuit and illuminating the LED bulb at its tip. Keim sees it as the world’s swankiest flashlight. “Not high-end from a technical point of view, but from an aesthetic point of view,” he explains. “Something that isn’t meant to go in your junk drawer or your utility closet. This is what you bring with you in the middle of the night to go use the bathroom.”

To begin the project, Keim started by creating parts in SolidWorks, loosely constructing possible ways the object could go together. He worked between SolidWorks and a few rough initial prototypes, revising his drawings each time to reduce the number of parts. The biggest challenge, however, was figuring out how an object with such a small diameter could be powered. It wasn’t until the designer was standing in the aisle of Rite Aid that he had his eureka moment.

“Originally, I was trying to figure out how to use AA or AAA batteries—trying to decide what size tube I could purchase to fit that,” Keim says. “But then you have to take a step back and think, ‘Am I limited to just AA and AAA? What standards are out there?’” Standing in line, Keim spotted hearing-aid batteries, alluring for their small diameter and substantial power. “I was like, ‘Whoa. Those power some pretty sophisticated technologies. How could I stack these up?’”

Inside Keim's home studio

With 1.5 volts per battery, Keim was able to stack 8 together to create 12 volts, enough to power his replaceable LED bulb. After stacking the batteries, he shrink-wrapped them inside a tiny tube of plastic for easy placement. The battery stack sits between a long threaded piece of brass rod and the head of the device, a section of which consists of an LED, a socket, a pre-fabricated nylon connector and a small screw that holds those pieces together.

For Keim, making the Volta Torch has been a process of reduction, trying to use the least number of parts possible. And for his next iteration, the designer plans to reduce things further by machining the head from one piece of solid stock, rather than hacking existing lamp hardware (the nylon piece). That change will make manufacturing easier for the designer, as well as improve the overall aesthetic of the object, which shows slight variations in the gradation of the brass as it transitions from piece to piece. “When you’re dealing with different pieces of brass from different manufacturers, the quality is different as well,” Keim says. “It makes it look like a cigarette or a magic wand, which I don’t particularly care for. To me, this is a fairly refined but still very rough prototype.”

The disassembled Volta Torch

A drawing showing the torch assembly

Although Keim did his undergraduate degree in industrial design at Pratt, and a graduate degree in furniture design at RISD, he has also managed to amass a vast amount of knowledge in electronics—from piecemeal courses in robotics and a residency at SparkFun. “I’m definitely approaching this from a totally different way than a lot of people with an engineering background might approach it,” Keim says. “What’s nice about coming from an open-source electronics world with my projects is knowing that all of this information is out there for you, and a lot of people are there to hold your hand.” In addition to SparkFun, Keim cites Adafruit, O’Reilly Media and Make: magazine as key resources for this work. And to keep the knowledge flowing, he publishes the blueprints to each of his interactive projects on his website, allowing anyone with a beginner’s knowledge of electronics (and access to a machine lathe) to build the designs themselves.

While Keim already has new ideas for improving the piece, the designer views this object as just one step closer to the next prototype. “One of the best pieces of advice I got from the people I work with is that a project never has to be finished,” Keim says. “It can continually improve; you can always step back and look at it. You can take that to a point of insanity, sure, but you don’t ever have to think that your object is done. You can always make it better if you want to.”

This is the sixth of our ten Tech Specs interviews. Previously, we talked to Ammunition's Victoria Slaker.

Name: Greg Howell

Job title: Design Chief, Ram Trucks Exterior Design 

Background: I grew up in the Detroit area and went to the College for Creative Studies, where I studied transportation design. I interned here at Chrysler and was eventually hired in June 2000. From there, I worked in a series of different departments at Chrysler and Dodge, spending a few years at each stop. Eventually, I moved to Jeep, where I spent the longest part of my career; I think I was there for six years. And then three years ago I moved here to Ram. 

Computer setup: We work off laptops here—my current version is an HP ZBook. When I first got it, I was worried that it wouldn’t be as powerful as my desktop was, because we run software that requires a lot of RAM, but the ZBook actually does quite well.

Greg Howell

I have that in a docking station also made by HP, and then that goes into a 36-inch monitor. We went to bigger monitors because we have a fairly impressive animation room that has a big movie screen, and we found that on our smaller monitors we were thinking everything looked OK—and then we would get into the animation room where it was blown up to 50 times the size, and the images were starting to not be as resolution-positive as we thought they were.

Aside from that, I have a Wacom tablet—the Intuos 4. Most of the younger designers here are using Cintiqs, but I still use the old-school tablet because it’s what I was trained on. 

And then outside of my office, there is a huge array of digital and analog tools in-house. The facility we work in is actually the second largest building in the U.S. To give you some sense of scale, the wind tunnel is three-quarters of a mile from where I’m sitting now. 

How much of your workday do you spend in front of the computer? I’d say seven hours. But a lot of that is because the computer goes along with me to meetings and things like that. 

Most used software: The first would be Alias Design and Alias Surface 2015. That’s followed by V-Ray 2015, which is another Autodesk program. And then after that, because I’m managing a lot, I use Microsoft Outlook a tremendous amount for e-mail. I don’t answer my phone, so I really encourage people to e-mail me, because I can write back during meetings. 

Software that you thought you’d use more often than you do: Adobe Illustrator. I got trained on it and then I had to put it down for a number of years, and Illustrator is so complicated and it’s such a deep program that once you don’t use it for a while, it’s one of those that you forget where things are and how to use it. So I don’t use it quite as much as I would have hoped and was trained to do. That’s one that I miss more than the others.

Howell's desk at Ram Trucks

Phone: I sort of hesitate to tell you this, but I have a BlackBerry Curve for work. I used to have a “good” BlackBerry, relatively speaking, and I jumped in a lake with it, so now I’m back to the Curve. We’re supposed to be getting new phones soon. But the Curve is fine because it fits in my pocket and mostly I just use it for work e-mail. 

Favorite apps: Well, there aren’t any apps on the Curve—but anything I don’t have here I have actually bought for my wife, so she has an iPhone and an iPad, and that’s typically what I use when I get home. One app that I use a lot is The Detroit News, to keep current with things that are going on in the industry. Otherwise, I use the iPad to go on design websites—my favorites are Le Container, Autoblog and Jalopnik. 

Apps that are actually useful for your work: I’m not very app heavy; I’m really more website heavy. I do go on Core77 and Coroflot quite often. The latter is more on the management side, looking for talent. It’s a lot better than when I graduated from school. You can see people from anywhere in the world and instantly look at their portfolios. We’re always looking for the best people.

Other devices: The rest of my setup is fairly analog. We just redesigned our offices, and they gave me a giant whiteboard. I used to do everything on sticky notes, because a lot of the work comes in very rapidly, but now I use this enormous whiteboard to keep track of everything that’s due or important, or things I’d typically forget about.

Other machinery/tools in your workspace: Other things in my cube: 8.5-by-11 paper, literally a Bic pen, AD markers, an X-acto knife . . . those are typically the tools of the trade as an industrial designer. The beginning of the process is still very analog. In the studio we have clay tools, and we have an entire woodworking shop in every studio, with band saws, table saw, jig saws, every woodworking tool you could imagine. 

Then, beyond that, we have mills for the clay. And we do a tremendous amount of 3D printing. Those machines are all in our basement. We have an entire facility just for rapid prototyping, which we recently expanded by 100 percent. There are several 3D-printing machines down there, and they’re not the kind that you can buy online. They’re the real deal—the kind of thing where you can SLA the entire grill for a truck. 

Tools or software you’re thinking of purchasing: Me personally—a snow blower. That counts as a tool. I also do want my own 3D printer, to play with at home. You could sit down and in 20 minutes make silverware—I think that’s fascinating. I was looking online at the MakerBot Replicator. But right now we’re at an extremely busy period for the studio, so I wouldn’t really have time to go home and use it. I’m going to hold off on that for now. 

The 2015 Ram 1500 Rebel, introduced at the Detroit Auto Show in January

How has new technology changed your job in the last 5–10 years? More than anything, I think the technology that has changed our world and made our jobs a lot faster is laser scanning. So we can scan anything we want very quickly and then reproduce it. We scan our models every other night and take it to our data development area, where we basically have guys making the data that will be tooled to make the truck. It’s an exact picture of what’s out on the clay in the studio—right down to, if there’s a tape line, it will pick it up. It’s deadly accurate. It’s amazing how far that has come in just the last five years. 

When it comes to new tech, are you a Luddite, an early adopter or somewhere in between? I’m somewhere in between. In some ways I’m an early adopter—when the new version of Alias rolls out, I’m usually one of the first here to test it, to make sure everything is functioning the way it should. On the other hand, I have a BlackBerry. 

Do you outsource any of your tech tasks? Mostly, no. Very rarely, if we get overwhelmed in data development, we will outsource that to a contract house here in the Auburn Hills area. But that’s happened once or twice in the 15 years that I’ve worked here. The nature of our business is somewhat secretive and we try to keep everything inside and contained for the most part.  

More than anything, the technology that has changed our world is laser scanning. We can scan anything we want very quickly and then reproduce it. It’s amazing how far that has come in just the last five years.

What are your biggest tech gripes? Overcomplicated computer software. I’m not going to name names, but there’s a program where there’s the tool in the program—and then there’s the tool from back in 2012. It’s the same tool, but in case people didn’t want to use the new tool, there’s the old one still in there. Things like that overcomplicate the program, so that when you try to move quickly, there are too many options. I hate that. A lot of this job is about speed and reproducing data and sketches and things like that, so anything that’s overcomplicated is not desirable. 

What do you wish software could do that it can’t now? I was really worried about running Alias on a laptop, but now that I’ve seen that it can do it, I would love to see Alias on a tablet as well. I think that would be really cool. It would be that much more portable—then it would be something that I could take home and use just sitting on the couch. I can’t quite do that with my laptop. 

Finally, we've all had instances of software crashing at the worst possible moment, or experienced similar stomach-churning tech malfunctions. Can you tell us about your most memorable tech-related disaster? About five years ago, when I was working at Jeep, I was running a desktop and the hard drive locked up. Normally, that would be fine—we have an entire tech department that’s awesome, they do a great job, and they back up all of our work. But in this particular instance, for whatever reason, none of my projects were being backed up. To this day they don’t know how it slipped through the cracks, but my last backup had occurred four months earlier. And all of the original artwork for the Jeep I was working on was trapped on that hard drive.

This was during the winter, and it got so desperate that they took my entire computer outside. Because the problem was a mechanical failure, the hard drive contracted enough to run for about 20 minutes and then it would overheat and lock back up again. They had to try several times to get the data off that way. In the end they ended up getting most of it, but those were some desperate moments. To reproduce all of that work, it would have meant rewinding four months.

Brought to you by solidThinking

A recent test drive of the beta version of solidThinking’s 2015 edition of Evolve, impressed with the variety and quality of features available in this NURBS-based CAD package. It is a solid option for NURBS curve and surface editing, NURBS solid operations, drawing views, and viewport rendering. With a standard host of 3D data output options and plug-ins for industry standards like Keyshot and SolidWorks, Evolve 2015 is ready to integrate into an existing design workflow. Support for both Windows and Mac OS extends back to Evolve’s origins so unlike most other 3D modeling packages, Mac support does not rely on Boot Camp; nor is it a beta in perpetual development. So even larger design studios with a mix of Mac and Windows systems would have no problem implementing Evolve.

What’s New?

Evolve 2015 features a variety of new tools and enhancements. Notable among them is the Construction Tree which saves a nested history of inputs for top level model elements. This is a unique addition to the existing parametric options and enhances the designer’s ability to iterate on individual features by swapping input geometry and editing parameters. The Construction Tree is only hierarchical in its own context so entities outside of the tree can be swapped in and out dynamically. For example, if you want to swap the input shape of a trim command, the new input curves can be drawn long after the original trim was created and still work. This adds a new dimension to the modeling environment and if the “open without history” option is any indication, this feature is in ongoing development but it is worth noting for the flexibility it offers. 

Evolve 2015 offers a redesigned rendering engine which is surprisingly fast and easy to use. Interactive viewport rendering is handled by progressive ray tracing, with a tandem CPU/GPU option that speeds rendering. The full ray trace with global illumination and caustic effects offers final high quality render output. Creating and editing materials is relatively simple with enough advanced control to achieve highly realistic appearances. 

Lighting is handled by an illumination map for general lighting with a physical sky option for controlling dominant shadows and highlights. The visual fidelity of the new rendering package is noteworthy especially considering the minimal amount of time input required to achieve good results. With an included prefab material library, stock models and environments, the ratio of time input to visual fidelity makes Evolve a viable contender as an all-in-one modeling and rendering solution. Thanks to existing Keyshot Live Link integration and .obj save options, it is ready to interface with industry standard rendering solutions as well.

Another major new feature in Evolve 2015 is a set of modeling primitives and related tools that solidThinking has dubbed “PolyNURBS.” According to Darren Chilton, the Evolve Product Manager, these modeling tools are an entirely new development. They behave like subdivision surfaces while generating useable, manifold NURBS output. The “nurbify” function quickly switches between a hard edged quad-poly model and a smooth-edged NURB surface and the model is editable with familiar polygonal tools in either state. The end result is a fast and intuitive method for generating organic forms that can be manipulated with common NURBS operations like Booleans, blends, rounds and control point edits. To quickly test their viability I exported a PolyNURB model of an organic vessel as an .igs file. The result was a fully developed surface that imported flawlessly into both Inventor and SolidWorks as manifold solid geometry, ready for downstream production processes.    

Overall Impression

solidThinking has demonstrated successful implementation of parametric control in a NURBS modeler. All entities from lines, curves and primitives to lofts, sweeps and even entities created as PolyNurbs offer some degree of parametric control. Parameters can range from coordinates for the endpoints of a line to angles of revolution in a primitive sphere. Most are editable as numerical values in the Control Panel when an object is selected, and as visual controls in the viewports. This hybrid approach offers both intuitive visual control, and precise numerical input. 

What the parametric system does not offer however are global variables or any form of centralized management of parameters familiar to anyone who is used to parametric, feature-based modeling. As a result, there are no functional parameters so objects cannot be driven mathematically—and in some cases require manual editing. However, clever use of instances and patterns almost completely negates the need for dynamic variables and functions because instanced objects dynamically retain the properties of their parent objects.

A Glass Bowl modeled using Evolve 2015

Evolve has its own UI/UX quirks, but overall the interface has a functional look and feel and it is fully customizable, including custom hotkeys. Anyone with experience in Rhino or Alias will feel at home with the 4-view default layout and those familiar with the world of parametric, feature-based modeling will appreciate how easy it is to learn the basics and adapt. Most, if not all, of the frustration I experienced in my short time with Evolve related to habits formed in other modeling environments because ultimately, all modeling software is quirky. After a half hour online with the “Essential Videos” and some additional time reviewing the tutorials I felt comfortable with the interface and confident with the basic tools. Mastering the nuance of the interface and modeling tools will take considerably longer. What is most notable about my experience with the software is how quickly I could move from a simple set of sketches and curves to a fully developed iteration ready for rendering and beyond. Whether you currently use Evolve or you are new to the realm of NURBS modeling altogether, Evolve 2015 is worth a close look for future design projects. 

This article is part of the Core77 Tech-tacular, an editorial series exploring the myriad ways that technologies are shaping the future of design.

For our Tech-Tacular design and technology special, we sought out game-changing power tools: Ones of such unique utility and intelligent design that the capabilities of the tool itself actually change the way we are able to design and build. We then looked for experienced users of the tool to interview on how and why these tools can make such a difference.

For something that comes in a box, the Handibot is about as outside-of-the-box as you can get in terms of how we think of power tools. ShopBot Tools' ingenious, diminutive invention is the world's first mass-market digital power tool, and since its successful Kickstarter launch in 2013, has swiftly made its way into the hands of a diverse user base.

Like the Festool Domino, the Handibot takes an operation where one previously needed to bring the material over to a heavy stationary machine, then flips it the other way 'round; the Handibot is carried to the work and placed on top of it.

That changes everything. The paradox to grasp is that this machine with a seemingly tiny cutting envelope—just 6" x 8" in the X- and Y-axes, 4" in the Z-axis—can work on pieces far larger than what the most gargantuan CNC mill can handle. The user simply registers their piece against the Handibot, and can move it wherever they need to, giving them infinite capacity.

Because the Handibot's applications are so impossibly broad, we spoke with three very different types of users to see what they're using theirs for. One uses it to help kids learn about robotics. Another uses it to build simple things around the house. And a third is using it to build an actual house, among other things!

Paul Suplee, the Chef Roboticist

As if to confirm that there's no such thing as a typical Handibot user, the first one to respond to our outreach was Paul Suplee—a professional chef in Maryland. When he's not in the kitchen juggling pots or teaching classes in molecular gastronomy, Suplee—along with Will Mast, a systems engineer for NASA—runs Titanium Wrecks, Worcester County, Maryland's NASA House Robotics Team.

Core77: What's your design/build background?

Paul Suplee: Absolutely none! I am a chef by trade who fell into the robotics competition arena when myself and two other parents decided that we wanted to start a FIRST Robotics team in 2014. [The FIRST Robotics Competition pits high school teams from around the world against each other to build robots, with the aim of giving students hands-on, real-world building and engineering experience.] I can honestly say, though, that over the last year and a half, I have learned more about design, implementation and prototyping than I ever thought possible.

How did you first hear about the Handibot?

Chris Thompson and Greg Armstrong are the leads of TEC Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes STEM by getting digital tools into students' hands. Their motto is "Make more geeks. Give geeks tools," and they have been ShopBot supporters/users for years. They have a full-sized ShopBot in their shop in Accomack County, Virginia and they use it extensively on their robots for their own First Robotics Challenge team, Team 1829, The Carbonauts.

While we had access to their ShopBot, it's a four-hour round trip to Virginia. We were worried about how to stay competitive, because other teams were using CNC routers fanatically, and we simply didn't have the resources for a large full-table ShopBot of our own. Thankfully Chris and the TEC Foundation, which we're a part of, gave us the opportunity to work with the Handibot.

After using it, what was your first impression of the Handibot?

We were blown away by the accuracy and precision of the tool. When I look at the field of robotics, the first thing that I think of is precision. There is no room for wiggle or rattle, and the process of precision cutting and tooling is something that, as a non-engineer, I couldn't comprehend until I started working with engineers and tools such as the Handibot.

In the beginning we were cutting out simple trophies for handing out at competition, but at present we are working on multiple projects that will be on board the robot as well as the shop (battery trays for our charging station, for example). Needless to say, it has found a home on our team, and it is hands-down the coolest tool that we have in our shop!

How does the Handibot fit into your workflow?

It's perfect for small projects and in our case, we use it for anything from cutting custom mounts for robot parts such as cameras and motor controllers, to cutting out homemade robot kits for kids. We are still perfecting our jigs which essentially will allow us to cut pieces of infinite sizes. This is done by cutting your work in a tile fashion. We're not quite there yet, but we will perfect it. As we are in the middle of build season right now for this year's FIRST Robotics, we have to pick our battles.

And with the Handibot, we are able to cut out different materials to make gearbox plates, kids' robotics kits, signage, battery clips, camera mounts and more. It is becoming more integrated with our build season and will be an important part of our off-season builds.

It is also invaluable in terms of prototyping and when the kids come up with an idea or design, it is a relatively quick process from start to finish. Being able to cut out of a number of materials allows us to keep cost down while prototyping as well.

Since integrating the Handibot into your shop, what can you now do that you couldn't do before?

For us, we had nothing in our shop that could come close to CNC routing at all. We had nothing in terms of funding, and very little in the way of tools. Along came the HandiBot, and all of a sudden we felt like we were 'in business'; a huge boost to our morale!

I also have to point out: When ShopBot asked us to represent them at the FRC World Championships in St. Louis in our rookie season, we were more than happy to oblige, taking the HandiBot with us as we competed in the Galileo Division. We found the tool to be an amazing addition to our fledgling team, so we devoted ourselves to learning the ins and outs very quickly and that started our journey into in-house CNC routing. It was also great to see the kids demonstrating the tool to other teams from around the world.

The results of our first year were humbling and made us so grateful that we had such amazing partners, tools and sponsors. The kids won the Rookie All Star Award, the Rookie Inspiration Award, placed 25th out of 100 teams in the Galileo Division at the World Championships, and we were winners of the Battle O' Baltimore (an FRC off-season event).

Basically, the Handibot has allowed us to breathe easier knowing that we can cut prototypes and projects in-house and not have to make the four-hour round trip to our parent team in Virginia. It has freed us up tremendously and as a learning tool, it gives us the opportunity to teach a very modern way to machine materials to the kids on our team.

For me personally, I'm just trying to figure out how to build a poly knife block out of it. And from what we have done over the past year with our HandiBot, that will be a piece of cake!

Mark Evans, the Helicopter Technician Home DIY'er

Two years ago, a helicopter avionics technician sat in front of his computer monitor, dozing off. He wasn't at work: Mark Evans was off-shift and at home, waiting for the Handibot Kickstarter campaign to go live. "ShopBot was offering an Early Bird deal for the first 25 pledges, and I stayed up, worried that they would go quickly," Evans explains. "Well, I few asleep waiting for it to go live and sure enough, when I woke up all the early birds were taken." But Evans couldn't help himself, and purchased one at full price.

Core77: What is your design/build background?

Mark Evans: I have always been a "wannabe" maker but never made as many things as I'd like, as I am not gifted with great manual dexterity. I mean, as per my job I am above average at detailed soldering, and I can use all standard tools fine—but you know that guy that can walk up to a bandsaw and cut something out so perfectly that it only requires a light final sanding afterwards? Well that is not me, I have to cut it out with an 1/8" safety zone and then sand away the excess!

What sets your work apart from other designer/builders?

I am of the opinion that I have never had an original idea in my life! I make things that I want, that please me and occasionally please others, but everything I have made you can find something similar on Pinterest, Etsy or with Google. I often put my own spin on an idea, but I never consider them truly original or even art, they are things that make my life easier and/or more pleasant.

And what is it that you make?

I mostly build or modify things around the house that I need. I would see something I had to have, something unique that I couldn't pick up for less at a big box store, and I'd break out the jigsaw and drill; I'd kludge things together from what was in my head and crude drawings on the back of envelopes. So the second I heard about the Handibot, I knew it was what I had been hunting for, and was glad I had not bought something else.

How has the Handibot changed your workflow?

Before, I kept everything as simple as I could, like I said just kind of kludging them together; but now that I've got the Handibot, my designs are getting more and more complex as I've been freed from the drudgery of jigging and cutting every feature. I consider the Handibot integral to all my projects, even if I don't use it on a particular item.

For example, large rectangles are easier to just cut out with my table saw, now that I have one. But I can then add details to them with the Handibot. Then, small pieces, pieces with a lot of detail, or odd shapes I do completely on the Handibot. And the ease with which the Handibot fabricates has allowed me to start considering aesthetics—I do a lot fewer plain rectangles now, because now an organic shape is just as easy if cutting digitally.

After getting started with the machine I met Eric Schimelpfenig online through his involvement with the Handibot. He is a big user of Sketchup, and seeing what he does got me using it. Now I won't start a project without first drawing it in Sketchup. This has saved me countless mistakes as when something is not going to work or fit, most of the time I can see that in the sketch, before I start cutting.

At this point, I consider the Handibot a gateway drug--I really want a larger CNC router now! But if/when I get one, the Handibot will continue to get a lot of use because of its unique features.

Eric Schimelpfenig, the Pioneer/Educator/Mad Scientist

The Handibot's been out for less than two years, but in that time Eric Schimelpfenig has pushed the tool farther than most--and endeavors to share and teach every new tip, trick and unforeseen usage he discovers. At his website, Sketchthis.net, users can follow along as Schimelpfenig uses Google Sketchup and a Handibot (among other tools) to create everything from custom kitchens and bathrooms, open-source furniture, and his contributions to the Wikihouse, a project to develop open-source CNC-cut structures that can be cut from sheet goods on-site, or trucked in from a pre-fab facility.

Core77: We need to ask you some questions about the Handibot, but reading through your bio, we're having a tough time figuring out how to describe what you do!

Eric Schimelpfenig: It's funny, an hour ago I was just trying to answer that question for somebody else. My current occupation is that I love figuring stuff out for people. My real passion is designing things, making things, and helping other people design and make things.

I love experimenting with things like the Handibot or 3D printers, and then going to people and saying "Hey, this is what I can do with this machine. What do you think we could apply that to?" And that's what leads to these projects, like the big plywood house, or the indexing rail jig [Editor: More on this in a follow-up article], or making something as simple as picture frames.

Why mess around with the Handibot, and digital tools in general?

First, because it's awesome. Second, the digital stuff is really attractive to me because it allows me to do things that I wouldn't normally be able to do. I'm not a good woodworker, I really am not! And having these digital tools gives me the ability to do really interesting and amazing things in wood and other materials, that I would never have been able to do before.

I don't like mundane or repetitive tasks. And I think a lot of woodworking—the bread and butter, making-money stuff—can be cabinet boxes and items that require a lot of repetitive stuff. But these digital tools can take out a lot of that repetitive stuff, letting you focus your energy on creative things.

So when I say I'm not a good woodworker, I just get really bored cutting panels all day. And I would much rather have a computer do that for me, so that I can then come up with some complicated piece of joinery, or some really interesting way to assemble something. That frees up time to try to figure out something innovative, you know?

Tell us about working on the Wikihouse project.

When people first look at something like a digitally fabricated home, they think that is just the most insane thing from outer space. But when you really break it down, all it is, is using off-the-shelf plywood with CNC machines that are probably already within a few miles of most people's homes, because they're in most medium-sized cabinet shops; literally nothing special there.

I guess where it's maybe risky for me, is trying to figure out the things that haven't been figured out yet. Sometimes it costs a lot of money to figure new stuff out. From a business perspective, it seems like a pretty terrible idea because we can already build really good homes using regular saws and cheap materials.

But I want to expend all of this design time and effort. Because once it is figured out, afterwards it becomes really easy for people to do! So on some level it's a risk because sure, I could potentially spend all this time figuring out a problem that might not necessarily need to be solved in that way; but that pathway to get there is the really interesting thing. That's where I learn a lot, and can take that and find something that might actually work. So my attitude towards projects is "Failure is always an option--and oftentimes welcome!"

Building a house with the CNC machine is just mind-blowingly awesome, and aside from just being able to say you did something really cool, I think something like that will massively excite people to really look to these digital tools to build things. Whether it's just a chair, or an entire building.

And that's what really attracts me to it, because there are huge complex problems to solve, and they're awesome when they're solved!

You got your hands on one of the very first Handibot Beta units. What drove you to pick one up?

Because I realized I could have something that was reliable and heavy duty that was affordable, that I could now use to experiment and cut out joinery or any other things I decided I wanted to make on a CNC machine.

It's a really sturdy little machine, so it's something that you can work with outside or on a jobsite. And nothing like that has ever been made before. So it makes possible all these different scenarios that weren't possible before.

And it's not that $3,000 is pocket change, but it is so much less expensive than anything else out there. Then there's the community element: Not only can I do interesting stuff, but I can see what everybody else was doing that was really interesting, and do the same stuff along with them. That's kind of the magic of like, when MakerBot first started out. They made the first sort of consumer-oriented 3D printer, and thousands of people were making stuff at the same time and all learning from each other. And I think the same opportunity is here with the Handibot.

What do you use the Handibot on now, and where do you see it going in the future?

I use it whenever I can because it's a pretty flexible tool, and the stuff that I do is totally all over the board. The other day I was making picture frames with the Handibot, a few months ago I was using it to build PVC geodesic domes. Next month it'll be some other insane material.

And definitely with the digital fabrication of homes. I think that's a huge thing and it's really awesome! And you'll start to see that the HandiBot also has this awesome in-the-field usage of making repairs to houses and on-site modifications, things like that. I think it will be like, the hand saw of the jobsite of the future. I mean really, anything where you need to bring the tool to a piece of work, I think there is really interesting stuff there that you can do, and stuff that people haven't thought of yet!

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Schimelpfenig, by the way, came up with a ridiculously innovative way to use the Handibot that no one could have foreseen. It warrants its own write-up, so stay tuned!

This article is part of the Core77 Tech-tacular, an editorial series exploring the myriad ways that technologies are shaping the future of design.

In case you missed it, we're celebrating 20 years of Core77 with a look into the future in the Core77 Tech-tacular. Over the next few weeks we'll be exploring the myriad ways that new technologies are shaping the future of design: the ways we ideate, create and relate to design objects. 

Wondering about wearables? Carla Diana dives into the wonderful world of wearable tech with a look at what happens when the world of technology, fashion and wellness collide. From the technology that occupies real estate on your wrist to the technology that occupies real estate of our cities, Sam Jacob tempers excitement around the emerging Smart City by examining the stakeholders and exploring what cities are and what we think they could or should be.

When we promise a Tech-tacular, we mean it. Get a daily dose of Tech Specs, our interview series with designers about the digital tools incorporated into their work flow—computer setups, most-used software, favorite apps, biggest tech gripes and related issues. So far, we've spoken to Thomas Murray of Bresslergroup about digital sketching and corded mice, Paul Hoppe of Local Projects about animating in Keynote, Ladies & Gentlemen Studio about getting out of CAD, Abe Burmeister of Outlier about working from his couch and open email platforms and Victoria Slaker of Ammunition about having an in-house FDM machine.

Not content to stay in the studio, we throw open the doors to the workshop to take a closer look at tools that are changing the way we design and build. First up, the Festool Domino and a comprehensive interview with woodworker and furniture designer Jory Brigham on the impact the Domino has had in his own practice.

And finally, we look to the Core77 Discussion Boards with a tech-focused Forum Frenzy. You still have time to weigh in on the automation argument (yay or nay?) and answer questions about modeling knowledge (deep or wide?). Or start your own discussion and survey the collective knowledge of the Core77 community.

Stay tuned and bookmark our Tech-tacular channel as we wade into the future of design and technology...

When I first heard that Spike TV was putting on a furniture design competition "reality" show, it sounded horrible. Contestants would be asked to slap together a piece of furniture in just 24 hours, an insult to these folks that had spent years mastering their craft. The trailer showed them yelling, screaming and cursing at each other. There were dramatic, Michael-Bay-like wraparound camera shots of them walking through the concrete L.A. River basin. And it was reported that it would be judged by Common, an entertainer whom to my knowledge had zero furniture design experience.

But I was profiling one of the designers on the show, and felt I had to watch "Framework" for background information. So I forced myself to sit through the first episode, and the next, and the next. Then I realized something:

I liked it.

As each episode closed I was eager to see the next. First off, Common won me over quickly; he does not try to present himself as an authority on furniture design, merely your average consumer. In the first episode the two judges with actual experience, Nolen Niu and Brandon Gore, can be seen explaining what the appropriate heights for various furniture surfaces should be; you can see Common listening to them intently, and it becomes clear he's actually interested in learning about what they know. He's there to take it all in as much as move things along as the host.

The challenges turned out to be fun; for the first, the contestants were set loose in a boatyard with a pile of brand-new Sawzalls and Makita drills charged up and ready to go on a table. They had a limited amount of time to strip these derelict boats for whatever materials they could, and those were to be their raw materials for the furniture piece they had to build that episode. In another, they are assigned random materials, each one different than the next, and forced to improvise the unlikely elements into workable furniture against the clock.

And the time given to build turned out not to be a straight 24-hour period, but two 12-hour blocks on separate days, which at least seemed more reasonable.

But what surprised me most about the show, is just how much certain elements of it resembled being back in school for Industrial Design. A little of that is due to having to frantically build with not enough time, and a lot of that is due to the excellent choice of judges in Nolen Niu and Brandon Gore, more on this in a moment.

Now obviously we ID students were paying tuition and the contestants are trying to win $100,000, but once you get past the contrivances of "reality" TV, the root struggles are the same. The contestants are given the assignment, and prior to building must present their design concepts on paper to the judges. Niu and Gore are not there to entertain, and both consistently provide intelligent and insightful critiques of the concepts--while avoiding suggesting concrete solutions. It is up to the contestants to figure it out, just as our ID professors never told us precisely what to design, but were on hand to swiftly point out what would not work and where a design could fail, and we were tasked with devising our own solutions.

Then the contestants all go into the shop and start making sawdust. After they make it through (or don't make it through) the hellish build period--which resembled my time at Pratt Studios' ID rooms so closely, it was almost uncomfortable--they must present their work to the judges, often with a still-glistening finish on it. It is here that the choice of Niu and Gore as judges shines. Both have the exact same no-nonsense, brutally honest communication style that characterized every ID crit I was ever privy to. Neither spares feelings. They are not mean for the sake of being mean, but succinct and, I feel, spot-on. They are quick to smell, and call out, bullshit; they resemble two ID professors who do not want their time wasted.

You know the rest of the formula: Whichever contestant is deemed as having built the worst piece of the group is kicked off of the island. That policy would have made design school very interesting indeed.

As for the contestants themselves, I was again surprised. Because they seem to contain the exact same mix of personality types I recognized from design school:

- The person who can design but can't execute

- The person who can execute but can't design

- The person who can talk but can neither design nor execute

- The cocky shit-talker

- The overconfident neophyte

- The old-timer who went back to undergrad

- The out-of-it person who is clearly wasting their tuition money

- The super-competent person who can do it all and is clearly the one to beat

Et cetera.

For the most part the judging is even-handed and fair, and there are few times where someone is sent packing when you felt they didn't really deserve it. There are a couple contestants who stayed on far longer than they should have, mostly due to luck or for being carried by someone they were forced to partner with, but by the time they get down to the final three for the finale, you feel that these three are in fact the best three contestants.

The finale, by the way, is tomorrow night.

If you haven't yet seen "Framework," you can see the previously-aired episodes on Spike TV's website, provided you log in with your cable subscriber information. [Note: At press time this log-in functionality was experiencing technical difficulties. With any luck they've got it worked out by now.] I highly recommend you watch the series from the beginning though, the finale would be a poor time to jump in.

Now having watched the entire run to date, I can say that of the final three contestants, it is clear to me who should win, though it's also not outside the realm of possibilities that if one of the other contestants pulls out a miracle, s/he may sway the judges. (I am not using names here so as to leave a spoiler-free review, for those that have not seen the show yet.) The third contestant I think does not have as much of a shot, but thus far s/he has not really shown what s/he is capable of.

The designers among you that dislike the show would probably criticize it for not spending as much time on the builds as we'd like to see. And when they do show the builds, more time is spent on what went wrong than what went right. But that is the nature of "reality" TV.

Overall, I'm urging my fellow alumni from my Pratt graduating class to watch it--you will remember what it is like to fall asleep, exhausted, in a dorm bed with sawdust between the sheets.

Some of the planet’s most radical thinkers, makers and performers will converge on London this weekend for one the most unusual and overstimulating events of the cultural design calendar. This year celebrating its third incarnation, FutureFest is UK innovation charity Nesta's flagship weekend event with the tantalizing mission of creating "an immersive experience of what the world might be like in decades to come."  

Curated this year by musician and author Pat Kane, this weekend promises to bring together compelling talks, performances and other more experiential occurrences that will challenge out perceptions of the future.

This year's program will contemplate some meaty contemporary themes including the future of thrills, music, money, machines and democracy.  A star studded line up including the likes of whistleblower Edward Snowden, fashion design legend Vivienne Westwood and journalist such as Jon Ronson and Owen Jones will headline proceedings with a number of robots also tipped to make an appearance

The program for Saturday and Sunday invites revellers to explore the events future facing themes across a number of threads—Explore (talks from the big names), Discover (deep dive presentations from the theorists), Debates (battling it out with fellow delegates), Immerse (experiences recreating what the future might look and feel like) and Savour (an necessary sample of the flavour/alcohol of the future).

Tickets for one day or both are still available here and you can read more about the event on the FutureFest FAQs or in Nesta's preview.

Core77's Sam Dunne will be reporting and tweeting live from the future.

Header photo-credit: Paul Miller