Jeffrey Nelson runs Maryland-based Macpod LLC, which does software, electronics design and hardware prototyping. It being a small operation--I suspect maybe even a one-man shop--Nelson's got a tilting-column HiTorque Mini Mill in his house. Which means that during a recent snow-in, when Nelson found it "too wet and cold to play outside" and found it "time to make something stupid," he's got the in-house tech to create something a bit more sophisticated than your average craft project:

Did you know that the regular deadline for the 2015 Core77 Design Awards is this Tuesday, at 9pm Eastern? That means you only have this weekend, Monday and part of Tuesday to enter your designs before the prices go up. Time is of the essence, so instead of talking about what you get when you win, or the juries that will be reviewing your work, let's discuss how to make your entry stand out from crowd.

Your designs could be amazing, but if your entry isn't done right, you may have trouble submitting it or fully communicating the intent of your project. Here are all the details you'll need to enter your designs successfully this year:

First, create a Core77 Account

Not only does creating an account allow you to enter the Core77 Design Awards, it automatically gives you access to all the other great features on Core77.

Next, choose your entry type. 

If you were in school when you created your project between Jan 1 2014 and December 31st 2014, you'll want to select student. Otherwise, professional entry it is!

Fill out the elements of your entry!

The following elements of your entry are required for submission, so your entry won't be complete with out them:

• Project Title
• The Designer Name (whether it's you or someone else)
• The Client Name 
• The Thumbnail Image (must be at least 400 pixels tall and 400 pixels wide)
• The Project Overview
• At least one Project Image
• The Project Details
• At least one Category selected

Some helpful tips for these entry elements...

• Your Project Overview should give the jury a brief idea of what your entry is and it should capture this idea in 500 words or less. Your Project Details section is the place to write about your work in much greater detail. This section is limited to 1500 words and should include things like process, relevancy and importance.

• When preparing your Project Images, make sure they are either JPEG, GIF or PNG formats. The maximum image dimension is 3000 pixels tall or wide and the maximum individual file size is 15MB. Sorry, but we can't accept Zip, Stuffit or other compressed files. 

• When you are uploading your files, double and triple check that your sizes and file types are correct! Also check that you haven't exceeded the character limit in your Project Overview or Project Details, especially if you cut and pasted your text from another file. We don't want your words to get cut off!

More helpful tips for your entry...

All the other elements (team credits, external link, project PDF, title image and project video) are an opportunity for you to enhance your entry with supporting materials, but not necessary for submission. If you are including these additional elements in your entry, keep the following in mind:

• The Project PDF can not be larger than 15MB and no longer than 30 pages. 
• The Project Video should be simple and short - under 2 minutes and 30 seconds is best. The video file needs to be in mp4 format and cannot be larger than 200MB. If you run into any troubles uploading, check that the video codec is H264. We have even more Project Video Tips here. 
• The External Link is a great way to offer additional information about your project, especially if your client or school wrote about it. 
• Think of the Title Image as yet another way to visually showcase your project. It's the biggest image the juries will see, so choose wisely. 
• Don't forget to give a nod to your teammates, if you have them, by filling out the Team Credits section. That way, when you win, everyone gets the recognition!

Completing and paying for your entry.

As you fill in all your images and elements, don't forge to SAVE your project at the bottom of the entry page. 

Once your entry is complete and saved, you'll see it on the main Awards section of your account under Unpaid Award Entries. Now you can click Continue to Payment to submit your entry.

Just for fun, let's say you click the Continue to Payment button, but the following page looks like this:

Your entry isn't listed under the Unpaid Award Entries section. This means you missed one of the required elements (listed above) and your entry isn't complete. If you have all the required elements of your entry filled in, your check out page will look like this:

Now just click on the Add to cart button, and check the box next to our Editing Agreement, Terms of Service and Program Rules:

Your entry is complete and in your cart and you are now officially ready to continue to billing! 

If you've followed this guide carefully, and you're still running into a problem, please contact us at awards@core77.com. Now that you're equipped with all this knowledge, go forth and enter your best designs! The Regular Deadline is this Tuesday, March 24th at 9pm Eastern, so don't delay. Enter now!

This week a single grand opening ushered in a new life for two Portland, OR institutions. The Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) opened the doors of its new home in the beautifully restored and updated Federal Post Office building, now known as the Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Center for Art and Design. It's always exciting when things go well for schools, and for this century old institution things are looking very bright. The move into the 96 year old building has taken over a decade of work and $34 million to complete, and brings massively expanded space for studios, lectures, material labs, exhibitions, screenings, and community gatherings.

PNCA was originally conceived as the school for the Portland Art Museum in 1909, making it the first museum school on the West Coast. The 1919 six-floor Post Office building was originally designed by Lewis P. Hobart, and it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. Now, the school and building are positioned to become a ground-breaking anchor for the creatively quiet Park Blocks and Chinatown neighborhood nearby and the Northwest at large.

The renovation was spearheaded by Allied Works Architecture, headed by Brad Cloepfil, and must have felt more like an excavation. After undoing decades of dank "improvements" (think oppressively dropped ceilings and covered up windows) the new building almost hums with light. The finished remodel proudly displays gorgeous old molding, rich materials and soaring windows, and is additionally opened up with a modern atrium, skylighting and clean new finishes. The stoic grandness of old federal architecture is relieved by inviting curved balconies and spaces. The new and old are pinned neatly together with details like the bright but original cherrywood flooring, kept, as Cloepfil put it, "Because it's awesome."

The school is situated at a nexus of interesting and rapidly changing development around the downtown Portland Park Blocks. Centrally located and facing a long band of green space, the 511 building has views of industrial areas and swanky boutique districts alike. The facilities reflect that old and new mix, with dedicated spaces for a range of traditional methods and new technologies. 

The press opening was graced with simple fanfare and remarks from representatives of the many groups that have been pulling during the project's development. The overall tone carried pride in the successful partnerships and great faith in the importance of investing in creative capital for the success of both individuals and communities. After years of incremental growth, PNCA is expanding as a cultural resource and touchstone. In PNCA President Tom Manley's words, "We invite Portlanders to explore our galleries and engage with our public programs and be a part of this new era in PNCA's rich history."

Looking around your home or office—or anywhere, really—it's extraordinarily likely that you posses something constructed of a plastic polymer. This item was most likely pumped out by the hundreds of thousands in a factory overseas, along with billions of other mundane objects that have come to completely surround us in our daily lives. James Shaw wants you to shift your conception of plastic from a nameless, faceless material to one steeped in handcraft and tradition. Designing a suite of baroque furniture (and a tool for manufacturing it), Shaw hopes to break the mold by elevating these pieces high above the lowly plastic counterparts you have seen before.

A recent graduate of London's Royal College of Art, Shaw first created the plastic-extruding gun used to make this furniture as part of a graduation project while enrolled in the school's Design Products program. It was part of an arsenal of three "gun" tools—the others were a gun that shot out molten pewter and another that sprayed plastic fiber and glue to create papier-mâché upon contact. "The project was informed by the idea that the tool dictates the outcome and so having new tools would allow new outcomes, but it was also to make tools that would allow small-scale expedient manufacture, to set me up for the studio furniture practice that I would embark upon after I left the college," Shaw explains. "The reason that I styled them as guns was partly a tongue-in-cheek idea that I would need to 'fight' for survival once I left education, but also based on the observation that so many tools are already in gun form—think nail gun, glue gun, spray gun or even the common power drill—and I liked the relations between creation and destruction that this raises." 

Shaw's extruded-plastic bureau. Furniture photos by Paul Plews

The gun

Shaw's plastic-extruding gun pumps out high-density polyethylene (HDPE), one of the most commonly used packaging plastics, which Shaw sources from a recycling company in East London called Closed Loop. "We have what can only be thought of as an extremely unhealthy relationship with the polymers that completely surround and make up our daily lives," Shaw says. "The plastic-extruding gun turns it into a handheld process."

Shortly after his graduation in 2013, Shaw's gun became the catalyst for a number of commissions, pieces that allowed him to hone his skills and refine the process for using the tool. Adam Gallery approached Shaw in the early summer of 2014, asking the designer to develop some new work for an exhibition during London Design Week. The result is the Plastic Baroque Collection, inspired by visual similarities Shaw noticed between the 17th-century art movement and how the plastic naturally behaved when extruded. "The sense of dynamic movement and complexity of form seemed to have an association with artworks and furniture from the Baroque," Shaw says. "Then, as I researched more into the movement, I found that a lot of the ideas rang really true with what I was trying to achieve with these works. The Baroque is all about embracing sensuality and worldly values and the expression of movement through mass, which for me resonated strongly with a project that is about trying to come to grips with a very ubiquitous and misused material."

A closeup view of the bureau

With a starting point in mind, Shaw chose to base the items on the tradition of a suite of furniture, usually comprised a bureau table, a mirror and two candlesticks. "These pieces were often the most precious and exquisite in the house—or more likely, palace—made from rare materials such as exotic inlayed timbers or marble," Shaw says. "Louis XIV is reputed to have owned one made from solid silver. I decided to kind of riff on the idea of one of these baroque suites."

Shaw began the process by sketching and prototyping in tandem. "A lot of my ideas come about from the material and the way that it behaves," he says. "But since this collection draws so heavily on concepts around the Baroque and historical references, sketching and visual research were a bigger part of the process than usual for me." Alternating between the mediums of paper and plastic, the designer made sure that the formal development on paper always matched up to what he could realistically execute.

Shaw in the studio

Experimenting with the plastic-extruding gun. Left and above photos by Sasa Stucin

Working quickly, Shaw started at the base of each object, moving upwards to build out each piece based on his sketches and prototypes. Since the material would only bond while still warm—and since it cooled quickly—the designer used multiple jigs to get the correct dimensions and ensure that pieces with glass components would fit together properly. "When the plastic comes out from the extruder, it kind of has the consistency of blue-tack or marshmallow, but it starts to go solid quite quickly as it cools," Shaw explains. "You probably only have a minute or so before it goes too hard to work with, so you have to be quite fast-paced when working with it."

Dealing with the somewhat organic nature of the material proved to be the most challenging part of the process, as the plastic would continue to move as it cooled even up to a day or two later. "I was really surprised to find how 'organic' the behavior of this 'synthetic' material was," Shaw says. "Because of the freedom of the material, it requires a certain amount of improvisation as you are going along—which I enjoy. It becomes a very dynamic way of making something where you really have to respect the material."

The complete Plastic Baroque Collection

Shaw's final suite consists of a bureau, a mirror and two floor lights (replacing the traditional candlesticks)—in what at first glance could be mistaken for sheets of glass supported by globs of very thick teal and turquoise toothpaste. The colors are a result of what Closed Loop sweeps up from its floor, bits and pieces of a light greenish hue. Shaw wanted to accentuate those even further, however, so he added pigment and other bits of HDPE to alter the saturation. "I wanted to choose colors that were a bit weird but somehow worked, which is the vibe I was going for with the whole collection," Shaw says. 

With this collection under his belt, Shaw has been mulling over what to tackle next, but thinks that a series of smaller objects or accessories produced in batches using the plastic-extruding gun might be in store. "I am also getting to a point where I want to adapt the tool," he says. "Having worked with it for a while now, I am starting to see how I could improve it, which is exciting. As the tool evolves, the capabilities of what I can do with it will, too."

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 checked out a light-socket projector.

At his peak, professional snowboarder Mike Basich was clocking $170,000 a year, enough to get himself into a 4,000-square-foot house he ultimately discovered he didn't need. Now retired from competition, Basich spent five years building himself more unusual digs: An off-grid stone and wood cabin less than 250 square feet, located on a 40-acre plot of land he purchased in the Sierra Nevada mountains.

It took a long time to build as Basich did most of the work himself, sourcing the granite, pine and Douglas Fir from the property itself. The "toilet" is outdoors, absent even an outhouse; the electricity comes from solar; the water is snowmelt; the heat comes from large south-facing windows.

Journalist Laura Ling took a closer look at Basich's place for her web series "Going Off Grid," and the episode went live last week:

If Basich seems like an outlier to you, consider the stats Ling presents in "Going Off Grid's" description: "[We examine] how 180,000 Americans a year are choosing to live entirely disconnected from our modern internet-focused world in pursuit of a more sustainable, simple lifestyle." 

The last time we looked at a suitcase redesign, it proved to be a smash success: The Trunkster was seeking $50,000 in crowdsourced funding and netted nearly $1.4 million. There is an opportunity for designers here. More folks are traveling than ever, and more folks are growing dissatisfied with the design of their luggage.

This month Japanese design firm Nendo throws their hat into the ring with the Kame. Designed for Italian luggage brand Fabbrica Pelletterie Milano, the Kame (that's Japanese for "tortoise") opts for a hybrid approach to materials, going with the standard polycarbonate for the body for rigidity…

...but switching over to fabric for the lid.

Why? Well, in addition to the fabric having a bit of "give" if you need to throw that extra sweater in there, they've re-thought what the prime functionality of a suitcase's lid should be. Most luggage manufacturers see the lid as prime real estate for small-item storage. The trade-off is that a loaded-down lid becomes unwieldy to open. Nendo's design approach realizes that end-users often access the inside of their baggage while on-the-go, so they've eschewed the lid-as-storage principle in favor of creating something more innovative.

The soft, segmented lid can unfurl open on two different axes, depending on how the zipper is undone:

In Nendo's words,

The lids of most hard suitcases are heavy to open and close, because they're also used for storage, but this suitcase is easy to open and close by rolling the lid to the side.

Unlike most suitcases, the lid unzips from the top as well as the side, making it easy to take things in and out of the suitcase when it's upright. It also rolls up neatly so that the suitcase can be opened even in tight spaces like cars and crowded, busy corridors. The rolled-up lid can be fastened with an elasticised band which doubles as a fastener for the suitcase itself when not in use. The inside lining comes with two mesh pockets and is easily configurable for contents of different volumes.

Another nice design touch is that you can use the cable lock to shackle the suitcase to something immobile, which would come in handy in crowded urban areas when you need to make a phone call or deal with some other distraction and don't want your bag to walk off.

And on the micro level, I'm loving these zipper pulls—I want to reach into the photo and touch them. 

My local coffeeshops are all filled with people, none of them talking to each other; they're all staring into individual smartphones, tablets or laptop screens. Screens are items for individuals, not groups.

However, recent industrial design grad Benjamin Sowa has a radically different idea:

For his graduate thesis at the University of Wuppertal, Sowa—who spent seven months (presumably interning) at Nintendo of Europe for two semesters—envisioned a huge, half-meter-square tablet meant to be laid flat on a table surrounded by people. And crucially, his Big Table Top would not have internet connectivity.

Instead of being a web-surfing device, the tablet is meant to take the place of traditional board games played by groups of family members or friends.

Games would be inserted old-school style—via media, in this case SD cards rather than bulky cartridges. "For many people it is important to physically hold and feel what we care about," Sowa writes. "The digital distribution of gaming content…leads to a situation where people don't appreciate it the way [they used to]."

The device's lack of connectivity not only precludes downloadable games, but is also meant to increase human interaction and give parents peace of mind. "This gaming platform is about a social gathering as well as for children. It's about shutting internet devices off and putting phones aside. Further, parents should have a good feeling when they leave their kids playing on this tablet without having to be afraid that they might go online and do something stupid or carry out some in-app purchases or micropayments."

As for the screen itself, it would feature the expected multitouch as well as sensors to detect physical objects—game pieces, for instance—placed atop the tablet. As additional input devices, Sowa has designed individual controllers whose stark simplicity is meant to lower the barrier to entry for the tech-averse older generation.

Here's what the BTT would look like in action, by the way:

Now we get to the sad part: It is just a concept, a thesis project, with no apparent plans for production (although Sowa has gone to a lot of trouble to lay out what the technical aspects would be). But there's a chance Sowa might have something planned for the future: In the section of the device's website titled "Prospect," it features the line "Content coming soon." Assuming he could undertake the massive task of finding manufacturers and game developers, I'm guessing this one would be a successful Kickstart project.

As microapartments and tiny houses continue to trend, we've seen all manner of beds that fold out and furniture that transforms into something else. But one area we've seen that hasn't received much design attention is the kitchen sink—arguably one of the more important elements, at least for the micro-dweller who cooks.

As countertops get smaller, space for preparing food comes at a premium, and designers are faced with an unpleasant choice: Go large on the sink and provide less counterspace, or go small on the sink and provide less room for washing up.

Blanco, Germany's largest manufacturer of sinks, reckons the customer can have it both ways with their Blanco Ronis Single Bowl sink. The designers made the intelligent observation that a single cook can either wash produce or cut it up, but not both at the same time; thus it makes sense to utilize the space the sink occupies for both tasks. Check it out:

I'd actually like to see that rotating holder kitted out with four bowls rather than two, as when cooking (I recently got into Blue Apron), I find I'm always cutting up at least four items before I even get to the meat. I'd also like to see the sink a bit deeper—it's just over 6.5 inches deep—but the diameter seems decent at roughly 20 inches.

Unsurprisingly, the extra utility of the sink doesn't come cheap--'Stateside at least, this bad boy will set you back US $1,400. 

Name:Ineke Hans

Occupation: Industrial designer

Location: Arnhem, the Netherlands

Current projects: We recently launched two new products: the Drawer Table for the Dutch brand Arco, and the Aline bar stool for the Swedish company Johanson. In addition, we recently designed one kilometer of balconies for an apartment building in Haarlem, the Netherlands.

Portrait by Gerard van Bree

Mission: I'd like to design products and projects that are clear, clean and clever. I try to make them innovative by using new materials or techniques, or because they deal with changing social habits. I like to look at my work as "characters"—but they have to be able to stand the test of time.

When did you decide that you wanted to be a designer? I started to study art, but soon realized that I was not a painter but a sculptor, and that I liked to think about how people deal with objects: how they use them, or not use them, or recognize their use. 

Education: I studied 3D Design at the ArtEZ Institute of the Arts in Arnhem, then did an M.A. in furniture design at the Royal College of Art, London.

First design job: I was an intern at Studio Sipek in Amsterdam. I worked on all kinds of jobs that came up in the studio, but also had a project on my own and designed special packages for Sipek's glass works. That was presented during the Milan fair in 1989, but it did not really get produced. (Welcome to the world of design!)

Inside Hans's studio in Arnhem

Who is your design hero? Rietveld is one of them. His furniture changed a lot from the red/blue/yellow chair to the more "industrial-thought" work of his later years. I like all of it also because he dared to change along the years!

Describe your workspace: Colorful and spacious, with lots of loose papers and notes on my desk, lots of plants and lots of light

Other than the computer, what is your most important tool? My brain, my pen, my sketchbook and my hands

Hans's new Drawer Table is a rethinking of the classic kitchen table, intended to be used for a variety of activities throughout the day.

The drawers are lined with recycled PET.

What is the best part of your job? Puzzling and thinking about difficult problems. Solving them and turn things into products that look like they have always been meant to be like that.

What is the worst part of your job? Administration, paperwork and dealing with the business part. I really hate it and find that it makes it difficult to start conversations with new people.

What time do you get up and go to bed? I'm out of bed at 7:30 to 8:00 in the morning, and back into bed at 2:00 a.m.

Also new for this year, the Aline bar stool

How do you procrastinate? By watering the plants

What is your favorite productivity tip or trick? Not too many people and no noises around me, and a serious deadline coming up

What is the most important quality in a designer? Clever thinking and poetic hands. I like it when head and heart go together in products.

What is exciting you in design right now? We have some great projects and collaborations coming up, with nice clients. This April in Milan we'll be showing work with Iittala, and it looks like we might start doing some projects in London.

In Haarlem, Hans designed one kilometer worth of balconies for an apartment building by the architects Kühne & Co.

The balcony "leaves" hang out from the facade and prevent pedestrians on street level from seeing onto the balconies.

If you could redesign anything, what would you choose? I have thought for a long time that I wanted to work on a camper van. The idea is that you are out for a holiday and it's supposed to be more flexible than camping—but there is a total lack of a camping feeling with most of them. Nowadays, most of them contain what you already have at home: a TV, even a shower! And I have always found it unbelievable that campers look like movable fridges. So I would love to have a go at one. It feels like a super interesting project where you have to deal with how you experience space and deal with space where there is little available.

What do you hope to be doing in ten years? I hope I'm still working with some of the clients we work for today—perhaps art directing for one or two of them—and also with potential new clients that we have been in touch with over the last number of years, but so far haven't been able to start collaborating with because of time or other commitments. Other than that, I'd like to mix working on furniture and products with working on public spaces—I see the studio doing a mix of interiors, installations, exhibitions, architecture and outdoor spaces.

Lastly, who's more fun to have a drink with: architects, industrial designers, or graphic designers? All of them, but also: ARTISTS! I live with one!

This was the latest installment of our Core77 Questionnaire. Previously, we talked to Gadi Amit. 

Content guidelines be damned, we always feel compelled to post OK Go's music videos because they're just so damned creative. So when we heard they were doing a commercial for Chinese furniture brand Red Star Macalline—which is something like China's Ikea—we didn't know what to expect: Would the company reign them in? Sinicize the content? Or do the smart thing and let them do whatever they want with their visual trickery galore?

Well here's the video, hot from the hard drive, see for yourself:

And in the following vid—not so much a behind-the-scenes as a brief explanation—you can see why they opted not to have the band sing in Mandarin. The dubbing is not hard to spot:

Tonight at Hand-Eye Supply's Curiosity Club we're thrilled to feature Michael Madigan, a local heavyweight in the conscientious food community! He will give the talk "Remastering The Basics: Getting Back In Touch With Our Food." Starts 6pm PST at the Hand-Eye Supply store or streaming on the Curiosity Club homepage!

Recent years have seen a backlash to the tyranny of huge agribusiness, mass produced foods, and better nutrition through chemistry. Oregon is leading the country in managing a regional foodshed from end to end: production of high quality ingredients (produce and proteins) while caring for the land and water; creative use of product to make delicious food; and a motivated and engaged consumer base. Some of the most exciting food in the country is being grown and produced in Oregon right now. We will explore this movement and learn about how creative farmers, cooks, and other industry players are revitalizing food culture in Oregon, for all our benefit. 

An entrepreneur and accomplished businessman, Michael Madigan is the brains behind KitchenCru and the owner at both Bowery Bagels and Remedy Wine Bar. A New York City native, Michael moved to Portland, Oregon in 1987. With a love of food and wine and a passion for knowledge, Michael opened Portland's KitchenCru, a shared use community kitchen and culinary incubator, in March 2011. Surrounded and inspired by creativity and talent, and driven by the desire for a solid, New York-style bagel, he eventually decided that enough was enough and opened his own Bowery Bagels and CruMarket in 2012. A family staple growing up, he ate one from the German bakery his family frequented every Sunday after church. Bowery Bagels, named after the subway station he passed through every day in high school, has been chosen as the best bagel in Portland by a Willamette Week panel of rabbis, definitely living up to their name as true New York-style bagels. Michael and his wife, Lynn, live just south of Portland in West Linn, Oregon. When he's not at one of his many businesses, he is thinking up new ones to start, cooking at home, reading non-fiction, and going to the house he built himself on the Washington Coast.

This is Le Mont Saint-Michel, a monastery in Normandy that's over 1,200 years old. The interior looks like something out of Game of Thrones.

Though now connected to the mainland via erosion, this was once a part-time island roughly 600 meters off of the coast; during low tide it was accessible via land, but come high tide, you needed a boat. This unusual geographical feature had military appeal, making it the site of a modest stronghold in the 6th Century. But in the 8th Century ground was broken to build a monastery there instead, and it took nearly 200 years just to get this modest structure built on the highest point:

By the 11th Century, the King of Normandy brought in Italian architect William de Volpiano to design an impressive Romanesque church, the construction of which took another century:

Over the next few hundred years, the structure was further upgraded and expanded, initially for defensive purposes. (Mont Saint-Michel reportedly withstood a 30-year siege in the 14th Century.) Parts of the Romanesque church were subsequently torn down and replaced with Gothic-style structures. Sadly, by the 18th Century it no longer functioned as a place of worship and was instead converted into an island prison, like some French pre-Alcatraz.

By the 20th Century the prison had shut down, monks had moved back in, and the structures were once again upgraded.

Today erosion means that most of the time, Mont Saint-Michel is no longer an island, but connected to the mainland by both land and a manmade bridge.

But Mother Nature's a bit fickle. Every 18 years the tide starts to recede…

…and the site is once again transformed into an island fortress.

Last Saturday was Zero Day, and as the waters around it shrank, Mont Saint-Michel was once again besieged…by tourists. 

Consumer Reports once tested various bottles to see how much product is actually left when we consider it "empty." The results were shocking: Up to 13% of toothpaste, 15% of condiments, 16% of detergent and a whopping 25% of hand lotion gets thrown out with the bottle, as consumers find it too difficult to evacuate the rest.

So when we first heard about LiquiGlide we were excited (particularly me, as I worked in "structural package design"—bottle design—for over a decade). Applied to the inside of a bottle, this no-stick miracle coating would let us evacuate every last drop of lotion, shampoo, ketchup, wood glue, et cetera, saving consumers millions of dollars collectively.

But when we didn't hear anything more for almost three years, we figured LiquiGlide had failed, another miracle technology that didn't live up to the hype. Thankfully, we were wrong: The Times has just reported that LiquiGlide has secured $7 million in VC funding and signed up their first manufacturer, Elmer's, who reckons the coating will give their glue bottles "a competitive advantage." (They've signed an exclusive licensing agreement.)

For furniture designer/builders who work with wood, this may not make a difference; while being able to get the last drop of wood glue from a bottle would be satisfying, from what I understand most woodworkers prefer Titebond's more expensive glue, as it's got a longer shelf life and supposedly performs better. (Any opinions?)

What interested us is LiquiGlide's formulators' earlier claims that their product would influence structural package design. "Those squeeze bottles need a big cap. By eliminating the need for such a big cap we'd save 25,000 tons of petroleum-based plastics each year."

While I don't doubt those figures, I do doubt they'll change the shape of bottles and cap sizes. I understand the logic: Bottle openings are sized as large as they are to give stubborn mayonnaise, ketchup and the like the room to get out. But those predetermined sizes come with manufacturing incumbencies. The companies that produce the injection-molded pre-bottles—they look like test tubes—that will later go into blow-molding machines are all tooled up to specific sizes.

Furthermore, once a bottle is blown it needs to be filled, at high speed on a production line encompassing thousands of bottles. Every second it takes to fill a bottle costs the factory something. If the neck is made narrower to accommodate a smaller cap, the filling tubes will need to be made more narrow as well. With the same pumping pressure, they'll therefore fill more slowly. Increased pumping pressure will not come for free.

It's possible that if LiquiGlide takes off, the increased savings of smaller caps will pressure manufacturers to retool the molding and filling equipment. But the cost of applying LiquiGlide will be a factor in this as well. For now, we'll just have to wait to see how well Elmer's new bottles sell. And the company claims that a mayonnaise bottle will be released this year or next, possibly followed by a toothpaste container.

We get it. Things happen. Work piles up. Free time gets stolen by unexpected occasions and visitors. If, for whatever reason, you didn't catch the Regular Deadline for the Core77 Design Awards yesterday, don't worry. You still have time to enter and win!

You could be 7 days away from securing one of these for yourself. 

In fact, you have until 9pm on Tuesday, March 31st to put the finishing touches on your project and submit it to our discerning teams of juries. As you prepare your entry, check out our Guide to Create the Perfect Core77 Design Awards Entry. In it you'll find valuable information about the sections you must fill out before you can submit your entry, what to think about when filling out the Project Details section, what file types your images need to be and a much more. Think of it as your own personal sherpa, guiding you to the trophy atop Mount Design Awards.... or just an incredibly helpful blog post. 

The next seven days will go by faster than you think, so don't wait until the last minute. Enter today! 

G-Force and Robotech were revolutionary in the animation world, and mind-blowing to those of us raised in the '70s and '80s. Well before CG, the "camera" in those shows could do things we'd never seen before: A long shot of battling spaceships would suddenly zoom in on one craft, bringing us inside the cockpit and coming to focus right on the pilot's eyeball, his widening pupils reflecting explosions.

And the aesthetic was so distinct. Insanely detailed line-dense drawings, though the lines themselves were never crisp, looked to be hand-drawn with a blotting pen; the shading was never achieved by smooth gradations but by abrupt juxtapositions of solid colors; the low framerates called on our juvenile minds to fill in the animation blanks, coloring in how a tumbling spaceship managed to flip and soar across the screen in just a few frames.

UK-based Paul Michael Johnson was apparently a student of these shows. The talented animator has spent nearly half a decade creating this TIE Fighter short that completely nails the '80s anime aesthetic, right down to the sound design and the wailing electric guitars. It has to be seen to be believed:

Johnson, who goes by the handle MightyOtaking on Deviant Art, has spent his weekends for the past four years drawing and animating the project. It was a complete labor of love, and as he writes:

Don't support me on Patreon, because I don't have one! And don't donate to my Kickstarter, because I don't have one of those either. Instead, if you enjoyed this, give someone at your workplace, uni, school or whatever a random bar of chocolate or can or Coke or something. Seriously, it'll probably make their day. That would totally make my day.

For those of you that own table saws, have you ever had to take yours apart? I'm not talking about swapping out the blade, I mean actually getting inside the machine and removing parts to perform maintenance. That's what Frank Howarth had to do when trying to diagnose and repair the sticky adjustment handwheels on his Powermatic.

While most of us would try to complete that job as quickly as possible, Howarth realized he had a prime opportunity to create one of his killer stop-motion videos revealing the process. And after "5 days and 5,888 frames," here's what he came up with:

Unbelievable, as always. And is it just me, or animation and storytelling skills aside, is Howarth's sound design killer or what? In the following "making-of" video he not only shows you the work that goes into capturing his shots, but also shows you how he creates some of the sounds that he does. As a bonus, you also get to see the DIY creations he came up with to pan and rotate the camera, and he reveals how he gets certain parts to "crawl" up vertical surfaces:

Longtime Howarth watchers will note the new watermark in the first video. Yes, it's finally happened, unscrupulous folks have begun stealing his videos and reposting them to cash in on the traffic. Same thing happened to Izzy Swan, and just yesterday I stumbled across a website that rips off Core77--I'm talking blatant cut-and-pastes of entire posts, word-for-word--with no attribution whatsoever. The internet giveth, and the internet taketh away.

Howarth putting in the hours

Maker Peter Brown wanted a plastic mallet, but rather than buy one, decided to make one himself—using whatever he had lying around, no plastic-handling equipment in sight. Which means, maniac that Brown is, he used a toaster oven to melt down milk jugs to get that delicious, creamy HDPE into a nice and gooey state.

How did he then get the raw material into the shape he wanted, absent any molding equipment? Like this:

You've gotta admit it looks pretty decent!

In 1867, Victor Fournel published a work in which he described the flâneur as (translated roughly) the image of the public, of the city, the antipathies and admirations of the crowd, public esprit; basically the figurehead of contemporary urban experience. A flâneur is, by definition, a time waster: someone who uses their time not for work, or research, or study, but for urban investigation, the indulging of urban life, and the exploration of contemporary culture.

Without first understanding the flâneur we cannot understand the development of arcades. The figure of the flâneur is one typically imagined as a bowler hat wearing, cane-wielding man in a three-piece suit waltzing through the streets of 19th century Paris amidst sidewalk cafes and a young upper-class. These individuals used to wander the early arcades, spending money and showing off wealth in the pursuit of amusement and social connection. They spent their time enjoying the presence of others and engaging in the urban crowd, through the vessel of the arcade. This concept is, however, a timeless one. By Fournel's definition the flâneur could exist, as we will discover, in 19th century Paris, the video arcades of North America in the 1980's, and the boardwalk arcades of early amusement parks. 

A SOCIAL GAME WHERE YOU WERE A PART OF THIS RESERVOIR OF ENERGY

This arcade of the 19th century is more akin to a modern shopping mall than what we would understand as an arcade. The structures were essentially covered streets lined with consumer outlets such as cafes, clothing shops, and butchers, created as a means to remove this part of life from the streets. It allowed for the expression of wealth and the wearing of high fashion all throughout the year, and alienated this lifestyle from the grime and filth of the Parisian streets. The occupants of these arcades were the flâneurs, a type of urban socialite embodied by a sense of public expression and social engagement.

This arcade of the 19th century is more akin to a modern shopping mall than what we would understand as an arcade. The structures were essentially covered streets lined with consumer outlets such as cafes, clothing shops, and butchers, created as a means to remove this part of life from the streets. It allowed for the expression of wealth and the wearing of high fashion all throughout the year, and alienated this lifestyle from the grime and filth of the Parisian streets. The occupants of these arcades were the flâneurs, a type of urban socialite embodied by a sense of public expression and social engagement.

///

"The lover of universal life (flâneur) enters into the crowd as though it were an immense reservoir of electrical energy. Or we might liken him to a mirror as vast as the crowd itself; or to a kaleidoscope gifted with consciousness, responding to each one of its movements and reproducing the multiplicity of life and the flickering grace of all the elements of life." —Charles Baudelaire, "The Painter of Modern Life"

///

In the 1980's, upon the creation of the modern arcade machine, these urban socialites were replaced by, well, kids. Your everyday child with pockets full of quarters, running down to the arcade after school to see their friends and play Lunar Lander or Pac-Man. These kids wanted to engage in a social atmosphere that was largely predicated around the experience of many. Everyone played the same games and tried to beat each others' high scores. It was a social game where you were a part of this reservoir of energy, responding to the ebb and flow of casual competition within a sphere of like-minded individuals. These kids are, as it were, a new type of flâneur: instead of congregating in public cafes and shopping arcades, they gathered amidst towers of arcade machines in strip malls and downtown arcades. 

Where this differs from other forms of spectator culture—sports, live music, art, film—is that you are, as a flâneur, spectating the crowd of whom you are a part. You are, as Baudelaire puts it, "a mirror as vast as the crowd itself". This common thread connects the urban socialites of the 19th century with the children of modern arcades. I find it no surprise that their architectures share a common etymology: they both bear the title arcade. This thread could be extended into the rows of boardwalk games at amusement parks which, upon their introduction in the early 20th century, marked the beginning of a transformation for the flâneur.

THE SOCIALLY COMPETITIVE URBANITE HAD BEEN DISTILLED EVEN FURTHER

The boardwalk arcade, known in contemporary culture as the realm of stuffed animals and carnies, was the point in history where the flâneur began to take a less stuffy approach to social engagement and instead opted for something more lighthearted. This version of the flâneur can take on a wide range of guises: couples, children, families, rich, poor. The evolution here is that of social class: being an organic entity, the flâneur shifts to embody the sort of person who would attend the arcades at amusement parks as it is the emerging social activity of the time. The flâneur is now the everyman, united by the common interest of play rather than the spending and exposition of wealth. Everyone wanted to have lighthearted fun, and be rewarded for their performance at some particular game rather than for how much money they have earned and spent. The shift from exhibition of wealth to exhibition of talent is an important one, and illustrates a changing mindset of social taboo and notions of play.

This shift brings to mind the equal and opposite reaction of both spending money and exhibiting talent: reward. While the earlier flâneurs were rewarded for their wealthy habits with material goods and social admiration, the creation of the casual-gamer in the early 1900's brought with it a culture of talent exhibition. These games were fun, and you could compete against each other in a way that was more than skin-deep. People had something to practice at, something to excel at even if their monetary situation wasn't exhibition quality.

When we move into the development of the video arcade, the physical reward aspect seems to disappear. When you did well at a round of pinball the table didn't spit out a stuffed bumper. The socially competitive urbanite had been distilled even further now, and only strove to get better and achieve a new high-score, that all encompassing number that evaluated how well you did.

By this point the playing of games had become more taboo to older generations. In both earlier types of flânerie the individual could be young or old, as the practices were more socially normal and society viewed them in a softer light. Possibly after the events of the 1900's "playing" wasn't an okay thing to do anymore. The world was turned inside out during that century, and playing was often seen as a waste of time, as not benefiting an individual in any way. It was reserved for children, as an outlet for the mid-century child. 

Even in contemporary culture gaming is seen simply as "playing" or an underground entity. 200 years ago you would be revered for having the ability to engage in play, as it meant that you were doing things right: you had money, you had friends, and you had fun, all while maintaining a balanced life. After two world wars and the threat of global nuclear crisis we seem to have lost our appreciation for the lighter things in life, relegating our spare time to the study of far-off conflicts and reading the newspapers of our global village.

So now we have a set of characters: the well-dressed arcade wanderer of the 1800's, the skilled arcade players of the early 1900's, and the gamer socialite of the 1980's into today. The transformation of the flâneur into this contemporary notion of a player took about two centuries, having moved through social structures and cultural boundaries. On the surface, a lot sets our caste of characters apart: income, dress, social conduct. The architecture that surrounds them holds true to the ideology of play, and so too does the outlook of the arcade goer.

///

Story by Aaron Coté

Header image via Torley.
The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan via Roberto Taddeo.
The Pacific Mall in Ontario via Joey.

Which do you think is trickier: Dreaming up a form for an entirely new sort of object, or re-imagining an established form factor? Industrial designer Stian Korntved Ruud recently undertook a massive project falling into the latter category. Oslo-based Ruud has become consumed with "making objects with pure functional or aesthetic features," and decided he would spend a year designing and making new spoons.

The thing is, he decided he'd design and make a new spoon every day, until he'd created 365 designs. Hence the project's title, Daily Spoon.

By repeating the production of a spoon every day for a longer period of time (365 days), the goal is to challenge and explore a spoon's aesthetic and functional qualities.

I make all the spoons in a traditional way with only hand tools. The point of this is to actively cooperate with the material, in this case wood.

In a modern industrial production the machines overwrites the wooden structures and natural growth pattern. When using manual hand tools my hand collaborates with the wood structure during the forming process. This underpins all the spoons unique qualities.

Ruud began the project in March of 2014, so assuming he's kept pace, the project should be wrapped (though he's made no mention of stopping).

You can see the astonishing diversity of designs Ruud's produced on his Instagram.

Here's to hoping Ruud continues, and/or switches over to forks and knives.

Desktop file holders work well for quick and easy access to the files a user needs most often—usually active files for bills, work in progress, etc. They also allow a user to work almost anywhere in the home and office, since they can easily be moved to a new location.

The Bigso file box shown above has no lid, which works well for users who need to see their files and want the quickest possible access to them. The handles will make it easy to move the box around. It comes with eight hanging file folders, which is about all this box will hold. That's a fairly common size, limiting the desktop space required, but it will be a little too small for some users.

The Magis XX File Holder, designed by Jasper Morrison, has the advantage of being stackable. That lets the user store more files in the same desktop footprint, but it does make the files in the lower holder significantly less accessible. Sadly, the holders are often sold in sets of four, so users who don't want to stack them (and who don't have a large available expanse of flat surface) are out of luck.

The Lee Flexifile Expandable Collator/Organizer holds standard file folders, not hanging folders. Anticipating users' varying needs, Lee makes this product with six, 12, 18 or 24 slots. The open design means it can hold varying file folder sizes: U.S. letter and legal files as well as sizes used in other countries. 

The WoodWorx StepUp file is one of many products often called step files or incline files; the angled base makes it easier to see all the files. But users who want to have their desktop files be mobile might prefer a different product; files could easily fall out the sides when this one is moved, unless the user is careful. And users aren't always careful; they're in a hurry, they're distracted, etc.

The StationMate desktop organizer would be easy to move around, since all the files go into compartments with sides. It comes with 25 PocketFiles, so it's a large-capacity product. That will be perfect for some users and too bulky for others. 

Less & More makes a smaller-capacity inclined file organizer with slots for the files. Putting the files away won't be quite as easy as with the WoodWorx StepUp file, which may frustrate the impatient or those with physical challenges, but many users will be fine with it. Buyers have commented appreciatively on the sturdiness and the high quality of workmanship.

Some users may prefer to have a lidded product; they may be concerned about privacy or dust, or they may simply be people who prefer a more hidden-away look, aesthetically. Lidded boxes also pretty easy to carry around.

This box from Snap-N-Store can hold U.S. letter-sized or legal-sized folders—a nice bit of flexibility. It stores flat, and is snapped together when needed. However, some buyers have had problems with the snaps coming loose, especially as the boxes got close to full. (Note: Users often overfill any storage container, so the design should take that into consideration.) 

Another concern has been the fit of the lid. As one buyer noted: "If your hanging files have tabs, as mine do, the box top will just sit perched above these tabs. So the top doesn't really close, it just loosely sits on the files."

Some users might want to take those active files with them when they leave their homes or offices. Rather than taking the files from wherever they're stored and putting into a briefcase, messenger bag or backpack, they could simply keep the files in a Jamie Raquel file tote. This is not a lightweight product, but it's very sturdy.

For users who want or need to protect the privacy of their files, Vaultz has locking file totes, with double combination locks, which they say are HIPAA compliant.

Photo by Jill Richards Photography

OneLessFile from Heckler Design could be used on a sturdy tabletop, if there was enough space, or it could just sit on the floor. It's 18.25 inches by 12.32 inches, so it might work for users who need something a bit bigger than the normal desktop file. Since it's made from heavy-duty steel and weighs 12.9 pounds, it will work better for users who aren't looking for a mobile filing product.