You probably have an inkling that modern-day mail is sorted by machines. But back in 1903, it had to be done by guys named Ralph or Wesley. They had a lot of letters to sort, and they had to do it quickly—so this is the "system" the U.S. Post Office Department came up with. (You don't have to watch the whole clip, ten seconds will give you the idea.)

Sometimes Ralph and Wes were on shift at the same time, while a third guy named Clarence kept dumping letters onto their desk:

Those things they're throwing the letters into aren't bins, but bags. Here they're tying them up, joined by Clarence as well as Samuel:

That last video was in focus enough that I became curious about those semicircular racks, which were probably made out of either iron or dinosaur bones. Alas, all I could find was a patent application for a later (1910) design that apparently improved on the design of the one we saw in the videos. Near as I can tell from the language in the application, the chief improvement seems to be that these can be broken down.

In any case, the modern-day U.S. Postal Service has a decidedly more efficient system in place:

I might actually prefer to work at the older place.

Ideal candidates can lead creative brand executions nationally and globally for major automotive clients. They'll have 2-5 years of experience and both strong computer rendering ability in Rhino+Vray and/or 3D MAX+Vray and a strong understanding of 3D space and multi-experience strategy. Understanding of interactive and digital interface applications a must!

The inflatable neck pillow I showed you in this post is one of the handiest travel items I own. It's also, small as it is, one more thing to carry. So building an inflatable pillow into a hoodie seems a particularly bright idea, and these two folks seem to have executed it well:

The Kickstarter campaign for the Hypnos is nearly over, with just four days to go at press time. They've cleared their target and then some—while they were looking for $30,000, they've netted $247,620 to date!

We know what you're thinking: "Oh, another video that starts off with gentle folk music and dolly shots of wood shavings." But no, this one's different. First off, the guy in this one's got a British accent, so there. Secondly, from some angles he kind of looks like a cross between Jude Law and Christian Bale. Thirdly is the nature of the objects he brings into existence.

There are parallels and overlapping skill sets between those who build furniture and those who build boats. I've built a chair or two in my day and there is nothing like the satisfaction of sitting in the completed object for the first time. Can you imagine what it must feel like to build, then launch, a freaking sailing yacht? I mean yes, mine would probably sink while I was trying to Instagram it, but those first few moments beforehand would be magic.

The man's name is Ben Harris, by the way, and the film was put together by Bristol-based production house Pixillion.

Are any of you interested in learning how to build a craft like this, or something even larger? Well, turns out you can, if you pass muster and can get to Cornwall. Harris has announced he's seeking contributors/apprentices to learn and help him get a larger boat into the water. There's a video (mysteriously unembeddable) describing the course here—scroll down to the second one at the link—and it appears it will start in September of 2016.

We've all been there, what's supposed to be a 5 minute snooze ends up being a vicious snooze cycle we struggle to fight out of. Sleep experts agree that snoozing only contributes to a tired morning, and doesn't help us feel more rested. But how can we resist our warm, comfy bed and sweet dreams when the only thing stopping us is a touch of the snooze?

Remember the "Crooked Forest" mystery we showed you earlier? Here's a photo:

To refresh your memory, this pine grove in Poland contained a high number of these remarkably-shaped trees, which prompted theories on their causation ranging from snowfall to meteorites to fungal infections. But ultimately, consensus stated that the trees had been deliberately, mechanically distorted in their infancy by humans, with the intent of purposely growing curved timbers to later incorporate into some sort of manmade object.

One theory is that these unharvested trees were meant to be canes, with production interrupted by World War II. There were also precedents for earlier shipbuilders to manipulate trees for integration into seacraft in addition to seeking out nature-bent trees. Indeed, here's a diagram (via MinnesotaStan) from Milton Roth's Ship Modeling from Stem to Stern that illustrates how various tree parts were once harvested for boatbuilding:

However, it turns out that another crop of unusually bent trees exist across America, and apparently have nothing to do with shipbuilding:

Image via Lakes Region Historical Society/Wikimedia

As spotted in Atlas Obscura, it appears these trees were also manipulated by man—but in this case by Native Americans, and not for harvesting, but for navigation. AO looked at the research of Dennis Downes of the Great Lake Trail Marker Tree Society:

Many people who come across trees like these in the forest share the same instinctive response: this can't be natural. And as a kid, Downes was taught that they were not. The trees looked like that, he was told, because native tribes had purposefully shaped them to mark trails through the woods and across the water. "Having the knowledge of these trail trees could mean the difference between life and death, between eating and starving, between crossing the river correctly or incorrectly," he says.

If that sounds like something told to children, perhaps it was, but Downes subsequently spent nearly 30 years researching them and consulting with Native American members, historians and experts to find it was true. Downes subsequently released a photo-filled 264-page book on the subject called Native American Trail Marker Trees: Marking Paths Through the Wilderness.

You have to respect and admire tree markers as a system, and note its inherent sustainability. While both shipbuilders and Native Americans were able to derive great functional value from the tree, the marker system allowed the tree to continue living.

When it comes to Frank Lloyd Wright, you've all seen images of Fallingwater, the Imperial Hotel and of course the Guggenheim. But you've likely never seen inside of the Hollyhock House in L.A., which has only been open to the public on and off, amidst renovations, for the last 10 years. So feast your eyes on this stunning video of the interior, exterior and even aerial footage, the latter shot by drone:

It's gorgeous, isn't it? And what you can't see in the video is that the original design featured a pool in the courtyard to feed water, via tunnel, underneath the house and into a moat around the house, which then funneled it into a fountain.

Unfortunately, that went wrong, as you'll read below. And in many senses this house, as pretty as it is, was a failure. It was built in 1921 for oil heiress Aline Barnsdall, but disillusioned with the house, she gave it up after just six years. According to Brendan Gill's Many Masks: A Life Of Frank Lloyd Wright, client and architect argued throughout the project. After it was completed--at least the main house, anyway, the rest of the larger project was scuttled--Gill writes: "The sleeping quarters for Barnsdall and her daughter…were cramped and ill-lighted…. In his autobiography, Wright confesses that the Hollyhock House is full of mistakes…in part because he had flouted his client's wishes…." It also went way over budget, even for a wealthy oil heiress.

More damning still is this passage on the house from the World Heritage Encyclopedia:

Like many houses designed by Wright, it proved to be better as an aesthetic work than as a livable dwelling. Water tended to flow over the central lawn and into the living room, and the flat roof terraces were conceived without an understanding of Los Angeles' rains. The cantilevered concrete also has not stood up well to the area's earthquakes.

I am all for us having and holding up design heroes and honoring their accomplishments. But so too we must study their failures. The entire reason we as humans began building shelters in the first place is to keep water off of us. To introduce a frivolous architectural feature that then causes water to cascade into the living room is an unforgivable sin. How ironic that Wright's most iconic work would later be called Fallingwater.

Furniture Design Competition, Winner Gets Royalty Contract!

This first maker video's got nothing being made in it, and instead has to do with you. Izzy Swan has pulled together sponsorship for a furniture design competition, where the winner's piece will go into production and the designer will get royalties! You can learn about the competition at this link, and you can also hear Izzy tell you about it himself:

Room With a (Better) View

From La Fabrique DIY comes this French gent, who's got a view of the Eiffel Tower—kind of. If you stick your head out of the window of his Parisian flat and crane it a bit, you can see it. But he wanted to see it all the time, particularly at night when it's lit up, so came up with this:

Quick Shelves Trick

I almost didn't watch this one because it sounded too basic, but I'm glad I did, because Ana White's got a clever trick up her sleeve to quickly build some utility shelves:

Can a Tracksaw Replace a Table Saw?

Some of you own some of Festool's expensive products, and those of you that don't hate those of us who do, either out of jealousy or because you think we're overpaying idiots. In any case, here homebuilder Ron Paulk explains the best way to clamp the track—and explains why, to him, the tracksaw will not replace a table saw. For those of you who've been debating whether you could replace your tablesaw with a tracksaw, you'll want to watch this and see if your needs line up with Ron's.

Checkmake

I don't even know where to begin with this one. It's not nuts that Jimmy DiResta made a metal chess set using a lathe. It is nuts that he freaking freehanded all of the designs! Some cool details in this vid: Check out how he adds the knurled texture to the cylindrical base—I had no idea that that's how it was done—and how he mills the crenellations for the rooks, the crown for the Queens, etc. And of course, there's some pieces that can't be done on the lathe, like the knights; he shows you how he did those too. At the end he uses the originals to make molds and then casts duplicates.

Marching to the Beat of Your Own Drum Sander

Frank Howarth got his hands on a beast of a vintage tool: An old-school drum sander, the old-school jointer-style kind with no top. There's a lot of problem-solving here, starting with how to get something so big and heavy out of one person's shop and into Howarth's, which is down three steps. And once it's in, well, that's just the beginning….

Makers for Make-A-Wish

This last one is a bit of sunshine. Steve Ramsey, the woodworker with a heart of gold, co-sponsored the 2015 Makers Care project, which asked makers to send in self-made toy airplanes for charity. Ramsey and others pitched in $5 per plane, and raised over $8,000 for the Make-A-Wish Foundation! Ramsey then stitched all of the planes together in a single video, and somehow cleared the rights to a certain catchy Katrina and the Waves tune:

As the idea of autonomous cars becomes more widely accepted, there's a challenge that tomorrow's automotive designers will need to tackle: how to design desirability into the autonomous car?

Industry consensus is that the move to autonomous cars is a gradual but inevitable process. We already expect increasingly more sophisticated driver-assistance technology embedded in our cars and we have an expectation that this technology will continually improve. So while autonomous technology is expected, what we're perhaps not prepared for is the revolutionary vehicle-architecture opportunities that fully autonomous cars promise to give us.

The challenge for future auto-design students: Projecting 15 years into the future, without the traditional horse-and-carriage architecture of the internal-combustion powered car or the form-defining crash-structure required when inconsistent humans drive. The challenge is: 

How to make a mobile living-room sexy?

In one sense, it's remarkable how creatively the self-driving car has been explored recently, in what is still the very early days of the idea being generally accepted. Concepts for self-driving cars existed in the imagination of Detroit's finest minds back in the mid-1950s, motivated by the start of the space-race, post-war optimism, and a buoyant economy. And there have been many more examples recently, with the Google car being the most widely known.

The self-driving car is most interesting, though, in the context of established automotive brands who are dealing with maintaining or growing market share, but who also, critically, have a carefully managed image to protect.

Vovlo's IntelliSafe Autopilot allows for some flexibility to choose when to cede control to the car.

For Volvo, the epitome of elegant safety with a dash of Scandi-chic, focusing on the benefits that the technology brings to safety and lifestyle makes perfect sense. 2015 saw a slew of self-drive ideas, from its relatively simple behind-the-wheel controls of theIntelliSafe Autopilot "your co-pilot on the road," which allows the driver some flexibility to choose when to cede control to the car, to the more radical Concept 26–effectively a series of non-driving modes for the driver in an existing conventionally-styled vehicle.

Volvo's Concept 26, a series of non-driving modes in a conventionally-styled vehicle.

Cleverly, Volvo has focused purely on the improvements to interior usability (and pedestrian safety) that its IntelliSafe AutoPilot technology will offer, and steered clear of creating a new exterior aesthetic.

Mercedes looks towards another route—notably, farther into the future—with its F 015 Luxury in Motion concept, which develops what Mercedes describe as "a mobile living space." As a fully-autonomous (Level 4) concept, the driving experience is obviously secondary here; it's 'the journey' that becomes the focus.

To that end media and social connectivity is key, and, reflecting this shift in focus towards the interior, the exterior design of the F 015 is very clearly defined by its interior function—it's a large volume that says 'people-carrier' from every angle.

Mercedes' F 015 Concept is a "people-carrier."

Nissan takes yet another route with the IDS concept, a cohesive proposal that, like Volvo, explores controls 'morphing' according to whether the car is driving or 'being driven'. This selectable level of autonomy is developed around a number of scenarios and, crucially, there's an acknowledgment that for many of us, driving is not purely a chore to be endured; it's something we actively enjoy, a sensory experience that is hard-wired to our perceptions of freedom of movement, independence, even adrenaline.

Nissan IDS exterior is more conventional than the Mercedes.

The exterior form here is more conventional and dynamic than the Mercedes, and reflects the combined roles the IDS concept explores—it's both a responsible, responsive member of our urban environment, yet it knows when to have fun out on the open road. In the media for the IDS concept launch there's a scene based around our immaculately dressed hero driving out on country roads where he comes across a group of friendly and competitive motorcyclists…the IDS responds like a sports car, immersing the driver and passenger in a familiar interactive experience.

And many would argue that's precisely what most of us want—a car that responds to our mood: intelligent enough to allow us the responsibility and enjoyment of driving, yet completely in control of our precious cargo when Level 4 autonomy is required.

So, while the volume car companies have the R+D and incentive to develop cars that can fit within this changing landscape, what happens to the sports car manufacturers, who are low-volume companies that have built their history on involving sensation-rich machines?

This is where there's unchartered space in the autonomous concept marketplace—there's a huge opportunity for emotive 'design-desirability' that is, as yet, untapped.

It's hard to integrate this 'design-desirability' around the constraints of a so-called 'mobile living space'—and getting it right will be increasingly problematic, as Level 4 autonomy becomes more common. Currently, autonomous driving is being pushed for reasons of time-efficiency and safety (driver-error being cited as a reason for at least 90% of all vehicle accidents, according to the International Organisation for Road Accident Prevention), yet it's the dangerous act of driving that is central to the desirability of much of the car market.

So, while fully autonomous cars are perhaps inevitable, the opportunities for creating a car that recognizes the conflicting roles of protective cocoon on the one hand, and visual and sensory desirability on the other, are wide open for tomorrow's superstar automotive designers.

This Designer will be responsible for the full creation and mechanical design of new products and will also work on developing improvements to existing products. They'll apply sound engineering principles to custom or special client solutions, have 5+ years of product design experience, and have strong 3D modeling capabilities.

Happy Monday! Jumpstart your week with our insider's guide to events in the design world. From must-see exhibitions to insightful lectures and the competitions you need to know about—here's the best of what's going on, right now. 

Monday

Yuxi Cao, A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains (2014)

The art of data

Start things off at an exhibition that has no shortage of compelling imagery. The Arbitrary Art of Numbers at the Made in NY Media Center questions the subjective nature of data visualizations through the exploratory work of seven new media artists. Among the standout projects is Yuxi Cao's distortion of an iconic 900-year-old Chinese painting by overlaying it with data of Beijing's present-day air quality levels. 

New York, NY - On view through January 17. 

Tuesday

What defines great graphic design?

Celebrated designer Michael Bierut—the man behind Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign logo and numerous iconic brand identities—heads to the 92nd Street Y for a conversation with Fern Mallis about his new book, How to Use Graphic Design to Sell Things, Explain Things, Make Things Look Better, Make People Laugh, Make People Cry, and (Every Once in a While) Change the World, a volume that is equal parts monograph, manual and manifesto. Find out more about his creative process and gather some insight into the day-to-day of design professionals. 

New York, NY - January 12th at 8:15 PM. 

Wednesday

The evolution of hand tools

If you're around Washington D.C., don't miss a rare opportunity to tour the National Building Museum's tool collection. Feed your inner nerd with woodworking, sheet metal, and plaster work tools dating back to the early 19th century. 

Washington D.C. - January 13th at 5:30 PM.

Thursday

Insights on the transition from designer to entrepreneur

Mathias Corea left a long career designing printed matter and plunged deep into the digital sphere when he left his day job to co-found the online portfolio platform for creative professionals, Behance, in 2006. Hear more about his journey and the invaluable lessons he's learned along the way. 

New York, NY - January 14th at 6:30 PM.

Friday

Percival Lafer, Lounge Chair and Ottoman (1970). Check out a preview of FOG Art + Design 2016 on Artsy. 

When design melds with art

The weather phenomenon that the Bay Area is known for becomes a metaphor for San Francisco's FOG Design + Art Fair—a platform highlighting the elusive boundaries between art and design. A host of international exhibitors will showcase prominent 20th century and contemporary work. 

San Francisco, CA - On view January 14-17. 

Saturday / Sunday

Two major exhibitions come to a close at MoMA

The weekend will be a great time to catch a couple MoMA blockbusters, if you haven't already done so. We tend to bask in all the possibilities the internet age has given us, but is design in our technological era truly striving for democracy? That is the question at the heart of This Is for Everyone: Design Experiments for the Common Good, a deep-dive into the state of contemporary design and its promises. Another noteworthy exhibit is Making Music Modern: Design for Ear and Eye, exploring the many links between music and design throughout the 20th century. 

New York, NY - Both shows on view through January 18th. 

Upcoming Deadlines

January 15 - TechSAge Design Competition 2016

How can technology support healthy aging? Propose a product or system that focuses on fostering mobility, independence and an active, social lifestyle for those suffering from chronic illnesses and/or disabilities. 

January 15 - d3 Housing Tomorrow 2016

What will residential living in the near future look like? Submit your concepts for new approaches to housing—they may be realistic or a bit more fantastic, but should consider issues of sustainability. 

Plan Ahead

IMM Cologne 2016 launches on January 22 and will be on view through the 24th. An extensive exhibitors list will showcase the best of furniture and interior design. Highlights this year will include the Pure Talents Contest and the Featured Editions exhibit, where designers collaborate on innovative installations with architects, artists and graphic designers.

The Biomimicry Global Design Challenge asks you to solve a particular problem facing our food ecosystem today by drawing inspiration from a mechanism, process, pattern, or system already found in nature. Submissions are open through May 11th, but you'll be able to save on registration if you apply earlier.

Check out the Core77 Calendar for more design world events, competitions and exhibitions, or submit your own to be considered for our next Week in Design. 

I’m a firm believer that rugs are incredibly underrated. All day, every day they are the subtle cushioning between us and the hard, cruel and often cold world, er, floor. Luckily, rugs seem to be enjoying a resurgence, with new inventions in a myriad of styles and techniques. One of my favorite recent rug innovations is by Louie Rigano and Gil Muller, whose Shore Rugs are hand-woven from custom-engineered silicone cord.

Born out of the Design Products MA program at London’s Royal College of Art, the idea for Shore Rugs stemmed from a desire to create a designer anti-fatigue mat—yes, that ugly piece of rubber foam behind cashier counters or beneath your standing desk, meant to provide comfort for those on their feet all day. As Rigano says, “Anti-fatigue mats, as inherently functional and technical products, have never been made in an aesthetically progressive way.”

But Muller and Rigano were not only concerned with aesthetics. They were also interested in using high-performance materials to create something technically superior—or at least comparable—to what was currently on the market. “Rarely do aesthetics and technical benefits align so naturally in a single product, and we wanted to achieve this in our rugs,” Muller says. Additionally, as part of their RCA studio, the duo was focused on creating a product that could be commercialized for domestic use.

During their initial research, in January 2015, Muller and Rigano identified silicone sponge cord as the ideal material. After all, it can be woven—“a process which evokes a tradition of domesticity,” Muller says—and it possesses a dynamic tactile quality. Plus, it’s the material of choice for a number of high-performance applications, including as a sealing component in machine and engine O-rings. “In these applications, the cord must meet a very high standard of consistency and durability,” Rigano says. “It was our intention to utilize and enhance all of these benefits in a design for the domestic realm.”

Some of the different silicone cords Shore Rugs’ founders tested during the development process

The final rugs are now available to order on Shore Rugs’ website, with prices starting at $240.

The more the duo looked at silicone, the more it seemed preferable to other materials they considered, like polyurethane and neoprene. “Unlike the latter two,” Rigano says, “silicone will not give off toxic fumes or disintegrate, and unlike a normal fiber-based rug it will not harbor dust either.” Muller and Rigano cite silicone’s UV resistance and the fact that it’s hypoallergenic as further advantages.

Of course, the designers also made sure that woven silicone would provide the kind of cushioning needed for an anti-fatigue product. During development, Muller and Rigano showed their final mats to physiotherapists and tested them with users, whom would use them for lengthy periods alongside their standing desks. “Having examined different weaving techniques, cord densities and profiles we arrived at our product range,” Muller says. “Our rugs ideally balance density, weight and durability.” Plus, most anti-fatigue mats use polyurethane, which can have a negative environmental impact. “As a company we have decided to not promote using such a material but instead decided to put all our efforts into researching and developing silicone material,” Muller says.

The designers had special looms custom-fabricated for the rug weaving process.

After finding a partner in a nearby cord manufacturer in the heart of England’s historic weaving industry, Muller and Rigano worked with the factory to refine details of the silicone cord-making process. Although the designers knew they wanted to work with silicone sponge cord as a material, they wanted to customize the consistency to arrive at a specific look and feel for their final mats. “As our rugs consist exclusively of one single material, it was essential to get it right,” Rigano says. “One of the biggest challenges we’ve faced so far was to find and develop a cord material to meet our particular criteria: we needed a material that was UV resistant (for use outdoors), durable, waterproof and that could be made in unique and diverse colors.” The entire process took roughly six months.

The final cord has a tough, leather-like texture and an optimized density tested to produce the right balance for standing comfort. Like most silicone cords, it is produced through an extrusion, where a silicone compound is pushed through a round profile die to result in a very long, continuous strand. Muller and Rigano also worked with the manufacturer to develop a technique for combining different color compounds together to create unique and vivid color transitions. “During that development period, it was absolutely essential to develop a close working relationship with our cord manufacturers, as they had never before produced the cord for an application such as ours,” Rigano says.

After arriving at a final cord the team was satisfied with, the next challenge was finding a technique for weaving the mats. “As the cord is stretchy, it has to be woven under even and constant tension,” Muller says. “We also had to find a technique to weave them quickly and consistently.” The designers considered weaving the cord on traditional hand looms, but that proved too difficult due to the natural stretchiness and size of the cord. Instead, they opted for having looms custom-fabricated for working with the cord; these special looms have frames with hooks on all sides to hold the warp (the vertical strands) in place as the weft (the horizontal strands) is fed through.

The two designers graduated from RCA last July, launched the first Shore Rugs collection during London Design Festival last September, and are now focusing on growing the business. “Standing desks are increasingly popular and we think we are offering something that truly stands out in a relatively monotonous market of corporate furniture,” Rigano says. They also see potential in expanding their offering for other use cases: “The areas of yacht furnishings as well as baby play mats are also interesting in the long term.”

We spend a portion of our day in this wet and slippery space alone with the door locked, often with no smartphone to call for help if something goes wrong—we are of course talking about the the bathroom. How can one alleviate potential danger in this private space through clever and responsive design?

Göz is a family of smart home-monitoring devices aimed at making the bathroom a safer place.

NYC law states that by 2020, half of Gotham's yellow cab fleet (currently 13,437 cars total) must be wheelchair-accessible. Given the design of your average taxi, including the Nissan NV200 that's been selected as the city's official taxicab, that's no easy feat.

For the NV200 retrofit, the task fell to the designers at Indiana-based BraunAbility, which specializes in adding aftermarket wheelchair accessibility to vehicles. Here's the system they came up with:

The design seems serviceable enough. It overcomes the challenges of how to deploy the ramp and keep it unobtrusive when not in use. And accessing the vehicle from the rear means a wheelchair user can hail a cab from either side of the street, a key consideration as New York City has a lot of one-way streets.

However, the design is being challenged by a company called Vehicle Production Group. Michigan-based VPG manufactures wheelchair-accessible vehicles from the ground-up, as an OEM, and has developed what they feel is a superior design in their MV-1. I could not find a singular video that showed both the MV-1's ramp being deployed and then someone using it to enter the vehicle, so instead we must show you two videos:

Looking at VPG's design, it occurs to me that entering a taxi from the rear might be a hair-raising experience in Manhattan traffic. It seems VPG's side-access approach would be more pleasant, although it does raise the problem of a wheelchair user only being able to hail a cab from one side of a one-way street.

Which design do you think is better? It's hard to deny that VPG's ramp solution is way more elegant, and the design is presumably a function of the ground-up design. And it obviates the need to fold the rear seats away, meaning a wheelchair user can ride with two friends in the back, versus one in the front with the BraunAbility design.

In the end, as with so many design issues, it may not come down to design at all, but cost. The Daily Newsreports that VPG will announce a steep price-cut today, slashing the MV-1's cost from $39,000 to $33,000, apparently in a move to compete with Nissan in the NYC cab market. A further rebate from the Taxi & Limousine Commission will knock another $14,000 off the price, bringing the MV-1 down to $19,000.

In contrast, the retrofitted NV200s are expected to run nearly $30,000 after the TLC rebate.

The benefits of designing a purpose-built vehicle from the ground up versus retrofitting a legacy vehicle seem clear here. BraunAbility's designers had a tough task. Do you think there was anything they could've done differently?

In the late 19th Century, French inventor Charles-Émile Reynaud developed a way to project primitive moving images onto a painted background scene. He called his invention the Théâtre Optique (Optical Theater) and began wowing Parisian crowds with it in 1892.

Here in 2016, film director and visual artist Jeff Desom is taking a page out of Reynaud's book—and going 3D with it. Desom has modelmaker Oli Pesch create miniature sets, into which Desom projects carefully-rotoscoped holograms to create these:

Desom calls the resultant presentation The Holorama.

For those interested in the influence Desom cites, here's a video of Walt Disney himself explaining and demonstrating Reynaud's invention:

Imagine being an archaeologist in the 1930s and finding, etched into a fossilized chunk of sandstone, a perfect circle. Far too perfect to have been drawn by human hands. Or imagine being a Viking coming ashore onto Iceland for the first time, and finding perfect circles in the sand of the same sort you'd seen on the coast back in Sweden. This is what they would've looked like, and it might've taken you a moment to realize where they came from:

Image credit: David Marvin

Scratch Circles or Scharrkreise, as they're known, have popped up everywhere from Iceland to Sweden to Finland to the shore of Lake Michigan as photographed above, and even in the fossil record. At least one gent cited in this paper [PDF] was studying them as early as 1935.

The way that they form is simple, as explained by photographer David Marvin:

Etched by windblown, dried dune grasses, the circles take shape when the wind causes a bent stalk of grass to pivot around on its axis, scratching out an arc or full circle in the sand.

Scratch Circles range in diameter from roughly four inches to sixteen inches (10cm to 40cm), and are occasionally half-circles or partial arcs. And apparently some folks use them to predict the weather: Sometime in the mid-20th-century the nature writer, marine biologist and environmental pioneer Rachel Carson wrote that "Arcs, especially on the southeast side of the grass, mean unsettled weather, so they say; whole circles foretell fair weather because they show the wind to be blowing alternately from different quarters." It makes some degree of sense, and prior to Weather.com I guess you could do a lot worse.

Image credit: David Marvin

It's safe to assume ancient people with even basic observation skills could deduce how they were formed (unless they were looking at a fossilized sample, which must've had them stumped if the vegetable matter had decayed). I wonder if Scratch Circles were what inspired the first compasses.

It's nearly here! On January 19th the ribbon will be cut and the 2016 Core77 Design Awards will be officially open for entries. A celebration of innovative, disruptive, and mindful design across all areas of enterprise, the Core77 Design Awards are an excellent platform for both upcoming and established designers to showcase their most inspired work.

With one week remaining until the launch of our sixth season, get your design gears in motion by taking a look at a few of the honored projects that caught the attention of both Core77, and the juries, in 2015.

Mosskin

Mosskin - 2015 Social Impact Student Notable

A vehicle of recovery for a marginalized community, Mosskin effectively blends elements of the pharmaceutical industry with fashion-forward thinking to create a soothing textile for female burn victims that is both functionally and aesthetically compelling. The Social Impact jury was equally impressed, commenting that Mosskin is: "an ingenious way to promote healing, inside and out."

EVO Urban Utility Bike

EVO Urban Utility Bike - 2015 Transportation Professional Runner Up

Combining the functionality of a city bike with the tenacity of its mountain counterpart, EVO offers an elegant solution for the diverse biking needs that come with living in an urban environment. EVO is designed with attachable and removable accessories to allow for the temporary customization necessary for an ever-changing lifestyle. The Transportation jury raved that "(EVO) really could be the bike for just about anyone in an urban environment."

Festivine Wine

Festivine Wine - 2015 Packaging Student Winner

Festivine Wine cleverly succeeds in answering a question no one had thought to ask before- can wine bottles be interactive? By developing a relationship between people and product, Festivine Wine adds a uniquely fun element to an already enjoyable experience. The Packaging jury also loved it, calling Festivine Wine: "Delightful, easy, light. A beautiful product."

Society of Grownups

Society of Grownups - 2015 Service Design Professional Runner Up and 2015 Strategy & Research Professional Winner

Society of Grownups approaches the unpleasant topic of transitioning into adulthood with creativity and pragmatism. Addressing an unheralded, but very real, cultural problem, Society of Grownups aims to make the daunting process of leaving youth behind considerably more graceful. The Service Design jury particularly praised the fact that: "Every touch point was considered and designed with the stakeholders in mind."

To see every honored project from the 2015 Core77 Design Awards, and find your own inspiration for this coming season, check out the 2015 Winner's Page.

You'll need a strong interest and aptitude in digital 3D modeling to create high quality digital 3D surface models used in the industrial design and product development process. Responsibilities include interpreting/defining design intent of the industrial designer using Alias software, while collaborating with mechanical engineering, packaging, and tooling teams.

This is the latest installment of our Designing Women series. Previously, we profiled the Swedish-Californian designer Greta Magnusson Grossman.

Clara Porset with a model of a table for production. Photo by Elizabeth Timberman; image from Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Esther McCoy Papers

If you happen to be in Austin this week, be sure to check out the final days of Moderno: Design for Living in Brazil, Mexico, and Venezuela, 1940–1978at the University of Texas’s Blanton Museum of Art. With a selection of 130 design objects, the exhibition celebrates a pioneering chapter in Latin American modernism while also highlighting some lesser-known designers from south of the border—including Clara Porset, a Cuban-born furniture and interior designer who called Mexico home.

Born to a wealthy Cuban family in 1895, Porset traveled widely in her youth, studying architecture and design in New York and Paris before visiting Germany to meet Walter Gropius and Hannes Meyer of the Bauhaus. Their focus on combining art, technology and craftsmanship in a larger dialogue with society resonated deeply with Porset, who returned home to Havana in 1932 to begin working as a professional designer. A few years later, she joined former Bauhaus instructors Josef and Anni Albers at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where she spent a summer steeped in the Alberses’ modernist design teachings. The trio would become lifelong friends, and Porset’s designs would always evince a strong Bauhaus influence.

Porset is best remembered for her butaque-inspired chair designs from the 1940s and ’50s, which were reinterpretations of a traditional Mexican chair (the butaque’s curule shaped base was most likely introduced by Spanish colonialists). Porset experimented with different materials, shapes and sizes, giving her chairs a tropical-modernist flair.

When the political situation in Cuba began to unravel, Porset left for Mexico, which would become her adopted home in 1940. There she found inspiration in traditional folk arts and crafts whose rustic qualities she translated into sleek furniture designs. This is best seen in her butaque chairs, handsome, low-slung loungers that could be long-lost tropical cousins of Alvar Aalto’s Armchair 406 and Hans Wegner’s CH25 Lounge Chair. Over the years, Porset would experiment with different proportions and ergonomics to make the chairs more functional, as well as various elastic materials and also natural fabrics like palm, jute and ixtle (a native Mexican plant fiber) for the chairs’ seat and back. One of the few female designers working in Mexico at the time, Porset made furniture for the residences of Mexico’s elite and received commercial commissions to furnish hotels and public housing projects; she is also remembered for her furniture design collaborations with the trailblazing Mexican architect Luis Barragan at his own residence and numerous others’. During this era Porset had a number of successful furniture collections put into production by the Mexican manufacturers IRGSA and DOMUS.

Porset’s chaise lounge CP-403 for IRGSA, made of laminated plywood with woven rattan. Above and below image from Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Esther McCoy Papers

Porset’s mahogany chair CP-423 for IRGSA, made with woven rattan and bamboo

Beyond Mexico, Porset’s designs were featured in the Artek-Pascoe showroom in New York in 1946, and in the early 1950s they were championed by Esther McCoy in the pages of Arts & Architecture and The Los Angeles Times Home Magazine. Porset also collaborated with her husband, the muralist Xavier Guerrero, on a design proposal for MoMA’s Organic Design in Home Furnishings competition in 1940. Although Porset was the only female designer from Latin America to participate, Guerrero received sole credit for their competition entry, an oversight that MoMA later remedied. The couple also entered MoMA’s 1950 competition for low-cost furniture design, with a tubular steel chair strung with a plastic seat and back.

Entry panel by Porset and Guerrero for MoMA’s Organic Design in Home Furnishings competition, circa 1940—this was the first time that MoMA’s competition brief included Latin American designers. Image courtesy the Museum of Modern Art

Entry panel by Porset and Guerrero for MoMA’s low-cost furniture design competition, circa 1950. Image courtesy the Museum of Modern Art

After the Cuban Revolution, in 1959, Porset was invited to return to Cuba to found a school of industrial design intended to help establish a new class of utilitarian designers on the now Communist island. Although her plan was never fully realized, she was also commissioned by Che Guevara (then Minister of Industries) to design furniture for a number of local schools and institutions. A few years later, Porset returned to Mexico, where she helped launch a program in industrial design at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, teaching there until her death in 1981. Porset’s will established a scholarship fund (now a design award) to encourage a new generation of young female designers in Mexico.

Porset in the workshop circa 1950s with furniture maker Alfonso Rojas, who is adjusting a plywood mould to create a chair back. Photo by Elizabeth Timberman. Above and below images from Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Esther McCoy Papers

In 1952, Porset organized an exhibition of design objects from Mexico called El Arte en la Vida Diaria at the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City, displaying the country’s strong tradition of craftsmanship in dialogue with modern industrial design. Above is Porset’s chair alongside various handicraft textiles.

Porset designed this set of patio chairs for the Mexican architect Mario Pani. Photo by Lola Alvarez Bravo

A pair of mahogany lounge chairs CP-418 for IRGSA made with woven rattan

Another lounge chair design in mahogany with woven rattan by Porset for IRGSA

A page from the IRGSA catalog featuring Porset’s design for a mahogany table with traditional rattan bindings

There's only 3 more weeks to apply to be a part of the Class of 2018 at SVA's MFA in Products of Design. Chaired by Core77's Allan Chochinov, the program is a pan-discipline design program concentrating on the sweet spot between design thinking and design making.

Here's a bit more: "Deep in the pedagogy is an appreciation of the shift in design from products to services, systems, and platforms, as well as a dogged belief in the power of the prototyping and iteration. Students build fluencies around strategy and brand, but also around business and stewardship. We emphasize new making in digital fabrication and smart objects/coding, along with strong mapping and narrative skills."

To learn more about applying to the program, hit their apply page. You can also read 14 THINGS THAT MATTER: What distinguishes the MFA in Products of Design? or watch their short "Life at Products of Design"Film by Michael Chung .