For the holiday slackers out there, we feel you and we've got you covered. We're upgrading standard shipping for free, so you've got one more day: order by noon PT 12/21 to get domestic orders in for arrival by Christmas! Here are some easy, affordable picks for last minute gifting from the Under $25 collection.

Double ended markers give you five colors two ways—chisel tipped and fine point - in brilliant colors with ink light enough to layer. $15.00, simple and fun.

Grids and Guides Notebook in red. $16.95 gets you a grip of different grids, graph, and pattered pages with fun informational asides.

Clip Clip Spoon by Hay is a brassy jump-starter for morning coffee. $17.00 will keep coffee bags closed and tastefully scooped.

Smooth, classic Palomino Blackwing pencils are beloved by all kinds artists and writers, and their giftable boxes are are even more inviting this year. $21.95 for a box of 12 of the most revered pencils on the market.

The Contour Bell Keyring keeps keys together and keeps it stylish. Simple tough 10 ga. brass, designed by Karl Zahn. $16.00.

American-made, telescoping weenie roasters that also rotate with a flick of your thumb? At $12.00 per pair they're a great bet for the lazy camper in your life.

More gift picks in the Under $25 Collection! 

As the Senior CMF Designer, you'll develop personal care products by designing solutions that contain the highest levels of usability, ergonomics and market trend relevance. Your main responsibilities will be the development of Color, Texture and Graphics concepts/specifications and user interface design for Spectrum's markets.

Hemingway once said that the hardest part about being a writer was cleaning out the refrigerator on the way to the typewriter. If you're a designer with any experience, you've now learned that the hard part isn't always the design work; it's primarily the crap you have to deal with on the way to getting that design produced. The refrigerator is pretty damned dirty.

So it's always enlightening to hear how someone pursued their design dream—particularly one that everyone felt was impossible—and got it off of the ground, against all odds. In ten years, Michael McDaniel went from being a designer at frogdesign to forming the Exo-producing Reaction, a company with a mission so attractive that people have quit working at Apple, BMW, Boeing, GE, Dell and HP to work there. How did he go from backyard tinkerer to CEO, and see his dream design realized? As you can imagine, it wasn't easy, and he had to invent some new material combinations along the way:

Not too hard to figure out which unnamed famous designer approached him after the TED Talk, was it?

The Finnish-born, Los Angeles–based designer Janne Kyttanen has been pushing the limits of 3D printing for the past 20 years, creating everything from a print-on-demand luggage kit to an ultralightweight mesh sofa. Kyttanen sees these works as prototypes for a not-so-distant future where combining seemingly incongruous technologies and materials is commonplace. With his latest product, for instance, the designer combined 3D printing with metal plating for an effect resembling volcanic obsidian blending into a metal mesh. The resulting table is called Metsidian—as in metal plus obsidian.

Kyttanen likens the process to the way the human body is constructed. “If you look at the human body, it’s a solid piece, but it blends together in a perfect way,” he says. “Your ears are cartilage on the outside of your body, but they blend into soft tissue and cells. I think one day in the future we’ll be able to control how that happens in a very digital and efficient way. I’m conceptually driven to create these kind of stories for the future and hopefully inspire others to help make them happen.”

Specifically, Kyttanen says, Metsidian suggests opportunities for the future of 3D printing. “Today we can print in multiple materials together, but I am more curious about creating new problems for the future, rather than solving existing ones,” he says. “How could we mix oil with water, for example, and how could we control that digitally? A lot of things are physically ‘not possible’ before somebody proves otherwise.”

For Metsidian, Kyttanen initially sketched out the form using the programs ZBrush and Studio Max. He focused on creating a form that would emphasize the act of blending not just materials but processes together. Starting with a mesh structure, the designer stretched out the front of the table and built out the heavier backside using ZBrush. “I wanted it to look delicate,” he says. 

Although the table looks like obsidian and metal, it’s mostly made of plastic and plaster. The final form was realized as a blend of 3D-printed thermoplastic photo polymers and plaster, with careful attention to making sure the seams between the materials were finished properly. “Weight was one challenge of course, and of course the possibility that it might not work,” Kyttanen says. “The back part is made in plaster to give it a lot more weight and the front is made from plastic, so they had to come together in an easy way.” The designer created a few prototypes, including a 1:1 scale replica, to test balance for the asymmetrical table.

Once the seams were finished, the plaster and plastic core was prepared for electroplating. Carefully dipped into a bath, the entire form was coated in a thin layer of copper, sealing the mixture of materials inside. After electroplating, a patina process was applied to the heavier back of the table to create the illusion of volcanic obsidian seamlessly blending into copper.

“People always ask me, is it a sculpture or is it a table?” the designer says. “It’s neither. It’s a morph between them both. It’s a blend from a rock to a copper and also a natural form. It’s a blend from a natural structure into a man-made architectural structure.” The final result, Kyttanen says, is a “six-way digital blend.”

While melding plaster, plastic, copper and a fickle patina together might seem like enough of a struggle, Kyttanen says that the biggest challenge was shipping the piece to Design Miami the day before Thanksgiving. “I didn’t have a weighing scale, so I just guessed the weight of the piece by lifting it myself,” he says. ”I figured it was probably 110 pounds. When the guy came by to pick it up, he said it was more like 140—and refused to take it. So that was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and it had to be [in Miami] by Saturday. The only option I had was to get it shipped from Los Angeles on Friday in a big crate and arrive in Miami on Saturday. The thing did actually weigh 140 pounds.”

The Metsidian table is an edition of eight, so Kyttanen and his team are already busy making more pieces while the first of the series, the one that was on display in Miami, travels to a few different galleries. Due to the uncontrollable nature of the patina, no piece will be exactly alike. “The patina is a little difficult to control, so there will be some variation between the pieces,” Kyttanen notes. “Every piece is a unique piece.”

With the amount of waste produced in the US, the goal of this project was to design a product platform that demonstrates product longevity by empowering consumers to take an active role in prolonging the life of their products. Through research I found that people aren't willing to service or fix damaged products themselves if they don't understand how to do so—they'd simply rather simply buy a new "thing."

If complex products were simple to understand, diagnose, and disassemble, would this change consumers' willingness to fix them? This question was at the core of the design decisions I made. Furthermore, creating a product of value was extremely important. When someone buys a car, that individual doesn't throw it away when it breaks down; why not? Because cars are investments, they are very expensive and very important to those who drive. Thus I knew that the product I design needs to be an important investment to the end user.

With this in mind, I faced a few challenges throughout the design process. First, since I am proposing a solution for product longevity, the overall design should be timeless and able to span generations. Second, in order to create a product that people will feel comfortable disassembling, diagnosing, and replacing the parts themselves, the design needs to be simple and approachable. Finally, in order to to add value to this product, it needs to be extremely efficient in how it is designed and works.

Since 2005, KIOSK has been scouring the far reaches of the globe for the most beautiful (and functional) every day objects. Their storied storefront in SoHo was part exhibition space, part retail, part creative lab and community hub where uncountable openings turned into late-night dance parties. As the founders explain:

Our format is really simple: we go to a place, search for the very basic, common, independently produced objects, bring or ship them back, present them in an exhibition format (by having one of each thing on view with it's accompanying text) and sell the stuff. Easy. Every object tells a story, everything opens a conversation, look, learn, touch and talk and then take the thing home with you. That way, the life of the object and in turn KIOSK, goes on and on.

As part of MoMA PS1's "Greater New York," exhibition, KIOSK shares their entire archive in a maze-like installation that takes up an entire room of the museum. It's delightful, captivating and a bit magical to wander through, let your eyes settle on an object, and appreciate the design of an every day thing—a sardine can, a coat hanger, a sandwich press—in its full glory. Below, to celebrate their participation in the exhibition—and to inspire those last minute Christmas shoppers—the founders share ten of their favorite items from their collection. 

Audobon Bird Call / USA - $12 - Fifteen different calls and counting

Metal Tape Dispenser / Italy - $36 - This is our savior.

Black Cross Skateboard / USA - $250 - Essentially a 2x4 as a skateboard, yes it works, well.

Tears of Love / Italy - $42 - Magical inside, uncountable flavors, nothing else like it.

Stapler / Sweden - $42 - Makes work much much better, accounting too

Carpet Beater - $36 - Do it Finnish style, place your carpet in the snow and beat it with this.

Rainbow Prism / Germany - $75 - Rainbow on demand, if you have sun, you have rainbow.

Famos Peeler / Germany - $12 - A peeler that contradicts everything you have been told about peelers, for one you pull towards you, for two it is dangerous.

Wiring Clips / Hong Kong - $9 - A obsessive compulsives' joy.

Wooly Willy / USA - $6 - Surprising how fast the hours pass.

The KIOSK Archive at MoMA PS1's "Greater New York" is on view through March 7, 2016.

The new face of terror

Few people would think of applying a CNC mill to dentistry. However, your dentist does occasionally need to poke around inside your mouth with a drill, and what is a CNC mill but a very fancy, precise drill? Thus Russian inventor Semenov Dahir Kurmanbievich has applied for a patent for this crazy device, which we are guessing only exists in rendering form:

Was I the only one wondering where the rest of the dentist's clothes were?

Ideal candidates are product design students, at least in their 4th year, that are highly motivated and creative team players. The intern will work on conceptual design studies as well as regular projects, getting hands-on experience. Interns can demonstrate strong conception and sketching skills. *Round-trip-flight on PEGA

We think of trailer park homes as being lamentably small--unless you upgrade to a double-wide. But what if you could upgrade to a quadruple-wide? Or heck, a quadruple-wide and triple-high? Invention and patent maven Semenov Dahir Kurmanbievich has worked out CG animations (if not the practical engineering) for how a fold-out trailer-borne house would unfurl, and just how big they could be:

It would be neat if every trailer park secretly does, in fact, operate like this; but when they hear visitors are coming, everyone folds their houses up tight for appearance's sake.

Five years ago it was unthinkable that a major news program would be allowed to come inside Apple's secretive design studio—and record it. But that's exactly what happened with 60 Minutes, and for those of you that missed the program's airing on Sunday, CBS has now made the footage embeddable.

The excerpt below is from Part 1, and the look at the design studio starts at around 4:00. That footage starts off with Charlie Rose asking one of the dumbest questions I've ever heard in an interview—and Jonathan Ive delivering the perfect response:

Here's a concept I'm surprised didn't come from America: A drive-in supermarket. It's another fascinating patent application from Semenov Dahir Kurmanbievich, the Russian inventor behind the in-mouth CNC mill.

The video could definitely use some editing, but if you stick it out to the end, you'll see the floors above and Semenov's idea of how the workers would keep all of those stations stocked:

Obviously this concept, if realized, ought be limited to zero-emissions cars. Tesla should put one of these up as a way to discriminate against "gassies," who will have to go elsewhere and shop on foot, the old-fashioned way.

Semenov Dahir Kurmanbievich, the mad-scientist engineer whose work we've been looking at lately, is capable of some seriously outside-of-the-box thinking. His wild design concepts, all of which combine the fantastically improbable with just enough of the hey-that-might-work factor to keep them appealing, run the gamut from the primarily peaceful domestic concepts we've seen so far—folding houses, drive-in supermarkets, dental in-mouth CNC machines—to some terrifying killing machines.

Here Semenov conceives of an airdropped, camouflaged, solar-powered network of tank-destroying ground drones:

Like you, I thought those cylindrical things that were dropped out of the plane first were missiles. The first hint that they're not is this mysterious video showing the depths they can be plunged to depending on the height from which they're dropped:

Further investigation suggests they are some kind of sensor array (Semenov isn't saying on the project page, at least not in a manner that we can decipher):

We've saved Semenov's craziest, most unsettling concept for last. Here we have your next James Bond villain's Earth-controlling device, the only superweapon that comes with two motorcycles:

You can see more of his crazy concepts (all in Russian, no English) here.

I saw The Force Awakens on Friday, and I can't talk about it. I didn't want to see it so early, but as someone who spends a lot of time on the internet for work, I was already coming across spoilers last week and figured I'd better see it before it was ruined. And I don't want to spoil anything for those of you that haven't seen it yet.

So all I can talk about is this: In the original Star Wars, perhaps the galaxy's greatest Jedi knight was toiling away in obscurity on a moisture farm. Here on Earth, perhaps one of the country's greatest modelmakers has been toiling away in obscurity in a call center.

That man's name is Jeremy Brumage, and while the Force is apparently strong with him, fielding calls from a cubicle didn't give him a lot of chance to exercise it. So between calls, the veteran Star Wars fan began assembling shockingly faithful vehicle models from the franchise—out of office supplies.

The level of detail is incredible.

According to his local news network:

"Scrap materials. Each one has paperclips, folders, staples. Then some more complicated parts would be like telephone headset pieces, that you know, [a co-worker's] headset would break and they'd start giving me pieces," Brummage said. "Then to make the stands, I used either a marker or a highlighter and cut that in half and used the lid to plug it in and let them stand up that way."

Brummage also used coffee stirrers, thumb tacks and pencil erasers to make the models. Pens were used to make up the laser cannons on the X-Wing Fighter. Markers make up the thrust engines.

To those of you working at an ID firm that still has an actual modelmaking shop: You need to step up, become this man's Ben Kenobi, snatch him up out of that call center and teach him the ways of The Force. Meet me at the bar, I'll tell you how fast my car is, then drive you guys back to your studio.

This creative will be responsible for the development, strategy, design and execution of showroom displays and trade shows. They'll be in charge of coordinating meetings, events, trade shows, and initiatives. They'll manage prop assets and photo shoots and must have a strong eye for detail and ability to hit deadlines.

While I applaud Nendo for taking the initiative to design the Minim+Aid, a disaster-aid kit inspired by Japan's 2011 earthquake, I am not sure this one hits the mark. But before getting into what I think is wrong with this, let's look at what's right with it.

The overall shape is that of a cylinder, which is waterproof and will float.

The top lid contains a whistle.

Inside the main cylinder are five cylindrical components.

Part 01 holds a radio and an internal battery which can be charged via handcrank.

That charge can then be transferred to your cell phone, or to part 03, which is a portable lantern.

Part 02 holds a raincoat.

Part 04 holds a doypack containing drinking water.

Part 05 is just a simple case, which you presumably fill with your own small personal items or first aid materials.

So on the surface, it seems a handy all-in-one item that "includes the bare minimum necessary for a city-dweller to make it to a place of refuge during an earthquake or other disaster," as the company writes. But I don't feel it addresses actual usage. Here are my gripes:

The Color

The Minim+Aid comes in a MoMA-worthy silver, black or white and "is intended to be kept near an entrance in case of an emergency." If there's an object I'm meant to grab in a hurry because my building's starting to shake, I want it to be fluorescent orange (and I don't want to have to undo a strap to get it off of a closet rod).

Actually Wearing It

Remember the ArtBin tubes we had to carry in design school? At first those seemed like a great idea. Then you actually tried wearing one, and you learned that it doesn't conveniently "pair" with a backpack or shoulder bag. It must be strapped on last and if you wear it archer-style along with a bag, the tube is awkward and the strap interferes with your bag's straps and/or falls off of your shoulder in motion. If you wear it slung diagonally across your back, i.e. from left shoulder to right hip, it makes navigating doorways and obstacles awkward. Ditto for if you wear it horizontally.

Cylinders of this dimension are not meant to be worn on the human body, and this is the last thing I'd want strapped to my back if I was navigating debris; you don't want to fall while wearing something like this--imagine falling backwards with one of these on and landing on your back. Where would the force of impact be concentrated on your body?

Actually Accessing It

The nice thing about a backpack with multiple pockets is that you can quickly access the item you need without going through all of the others; access is non-linear. With the Minim+Aid, it appears the cylinder unscrews at the top and the bottom. That means you can only quickly access whatever's at the very top or bottom, and if you want, say, the lantern/03 (assuming you've kept the canisters in order), you've got to pull two things out first to get it.

Actually Using It

Then there's the actual process of retrieving a particular item: You must remove one of the lids, then up-end the tube to dump the pieces out (or to get them back in if you're going from the bottom). If you were, God forbid, trapped in a tight space, how inconvenient would this be?

Let's take this further and imagine using this in the field. You're sitting down on, I dunno, a pile of rubble and you need the lantern. You unscrew the cap, up-end the tube, pull out 01, set it down. Pull out 02, set it down. Pull out 03 to use it. Do you then put 02 and 01 back in the tube, then put 03 back in on top when you're done? Now they're out of order, will you remember that when next you open it?

Lastly, a cylinder—as pretty as it is—is a poor choice of shapes for multiple items that you're meant to remove and set down. Because that's the perfect shape for something to roll away from you when you accidentally knock it over.

Conclusion

To be fair to Nendo, the Minim+Aid was not designed for Bear Grylls; going back to their description, it does say "the bare minimum necessary for a city-dweller to make it to a place of refuge…." So it implies an urban setting and a presumably short journey. But I feel they could've taken this a lot further and designed something more practical that more folks could use in more situations.

What say you? Should I lay off, since they accomplished precisely what they stated in the description? Or is this just a piece of feel-good-look-purty for design blogs to fawn over?

The will and the enthusiasm that we put in mechanical planning within the realm of design have encouraged us to study, develop and give life to a new project: a powerful, compact, and easy CNC Mill, different from all the other problematic, heavy and expensive machines.

Evo-One CNC can be easily used by anyone: a hobbyist, a maker, a fab lab or a company. Thanks to its ease of use and to its polymethyl methacrylate covering you can use it inside any room, in your garage or in your office with no filth or dust coming out of the machine during the process and with a considerable reduction of noise.

Materials that can be milled

Some objects milled

What most people don't realize is that using your drone to surveil your neighbors is hard work. Making constant passes over their house, then bringing the drone back to dump the footage, one can work up a thirst; a smoothie or protein shake might be nice, but who wants to go all the way from the yard into the kitchen, and potentially miss good footage?

Here's the in situ solution as revealed by Speed Motion Films, the UK-based production house that has access to a camera that can shoot at 1,500 frames per second. They've figured out that your drone can be used as a blender, with high-speed videography revealing the efficacy of the blades:

While it appears that cukes are a no-go, who the hell wants that in a smoothie anyway? The sausages, donut and yogurt seemed to blend fine and would make for a superior flavor profile.

It's time for some automotive eye candy, in three different flavors. All were shot by Luke Huxham, the Japan-based Kiwi expat filmmaker whose work we previously saw in "In Tokyo, at the Intersection of Gangster Culture and Lamborghinis."

The first video is a low-key look at a highly unusual situation in Japan: The unnamed man in the video has, against all odds, acquired a freaking street-legal Group C* racecar. You'd think he'd keep it under a tarp and trailer it out to a closed track on weekends; but nope, he hops into his Porsche 962C when he wants an energy drink from the local convenience store:

The second goes heavier on the adrenaline. Here a bunch of professional racing maniacs throw a variety of exciting cars—a Nissan Skyline GT-R, a Subaru WRX STi, a BMW Z4, a right-hand drive Ford GT40—into a hill climb at the twisty Hakone mountain road, which one racer calls "Japan's Nurburgring." (If you watch it with headphones on, you'll get a gut-wrenching thrill out of the throttle note on the Skyline and the in-car revs-and-shifting noises of the WRX.)

I dug that in the video above, the drivers openly discuss the prominent place of fear in the proceedings.

This last video is pure advertising, but still fun to watch. Here BMW rustles up a group of pro drifters to put their M235i—actually, five M235i's—through what looks like some shockingly dangerous choreography:

CG, you say? Not, judging by the looks of the making-of video:

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*Most of you have heard of Formula One and NASCAR, but may not be familiar with the closed-top prototype racecars of the GTP and later Group C racing series. Racing nerds may take issue with my recollection from the '80s, but Group C racing was an innovative program that placed limits on fuel consumption for each race; that meant that rather than just beefing up the turbochargers and burning more fuel to go faster, car manufacturers were forced to figure out how to build more efficient, not more powerful, prototypes.

This restraint yielded a Star-Wars-cantina-like level of technological diversity, where you had naturally-aspirated V12s racing twin-turbo V8s racing rotary engines. Additionally, the races were 1,000-kilometers-plus, demanding durability and endurance from the cars. The series attracted British, French, German, Italian, Japanese and American car companies, and later, deep-pocketed privateers. It was eventually disbanded in the '90s due to regulations changes.

Most of you know that Darth Vader's helmet was, unlike a motorcycle helmet, comprised of two pieces. Design studies written on the subject indicated that he refused to wear a chin strap, necessitating a two-piece design; were his helmet and facemask only one piece, the opening would have to be larger in order to get it on, and a chin strap would be required to take up the slack once in place.

While Imperial designers couldn't crack that problem, an Australian company called Vozz Helmets has. That's right, they've come up with a one-piece helmet and facemask, fully enclosed, no chin strap. Here's how they did it:

In the video below, a rare Australian Sith explains the user benefits of the Vozz design:

The helmet is project to start shipping next month. In the meantime, here is some highly relevant footage revealing why James Earl Jones' voice was used for Darth Vader, rather than the voice of the German actor who actually portrayed Vader on film:

Christmas ornaments aren't the only holiday decor items that need to be carefully stored away. Lights and wreaths also need good storage, and designers have found numerous ways to help store them well.

Dealing with tangled lights is a horrible way to start the Christmas season, so there are lots of products to help prevent the tangling. The LightKeeper storage boxes from CoverMates, with their light storage reels, have a number of good features: a padded bottom, handles to make moving the box easier, and a place to label which lights are in which box. 

The IRIS wing-lid box with its light wraps is a similar option. Since the boxes are clear, the end user may be able to tell what's inside without a label. Many end users love these hinged-lid boxes because the cover can't get misplaced, but some end users find the interlocking lids to be a pain to close.

The light wraps have notches to hold the ends of the stands, which is a nice feature. They hang in the box in the same way that hanging file folders work.

The reels-in-a-bag design is another common option for storing lights. These bags can't be stacked the way boxes can, though. 

But the reels could be stored in a box, and Neu Home provides this type of solution. One drawback: Some purchasers have complained that the "easy assembly" claim doesn't match their experiences, and no one needs an additional hassle around the holidays.

Santa's Bags took the reel design and added a clamp to the reels, so they can hang from a ladder or a gutter; the spool spins when clamped. 

The Holiday Light Saver uses a totally different approach to keeping the lights untangled, encasing them in plastic sleeves; they can then be kept in any storage bins the end user chooses. 

Large wreaths don't fit in standard storage bins, so other tools are necessary to keep them looking good from year to year. A simple way to do that is with a bag that can hang from a hook. Those from Santa's Bags, with their "direct suspend system," have a handle which attaches to the wreath frame, preserving the shape by keeping the wreath from slipping to the bottom of the bag.

The wreath storage bag from CoverMates has an interior buckle strap to keep the wreath in place when it hangs from the D-ring. The bag also has a center storage container, making good use of what might otherwise be dead space. Other nice touches: It has padded carrying straps and an "ID window" to label what's inside. Some end users have multiple wreaths, for Christmas or for other seasons, so a label is handy—especially since wreath bags tend to come in only one or two colors (red and green) so there's no other visual cue to what's inside.

Some end users won't want to hang the wreaths for storage, and in that case stackable boxes are a useful design. Gaylord has one that's acid- and lignin-free. that might be useful for a wreath with precious ornaments entwined.

The HOMZ wreath boxes can be stacked, but they can also stand on end. With the clear lid, the end user can see which wreath is stored inside. One possible drawback: A number of purchasers expressed some concern about how well the latches would hold up.