The ancient Greeks were extremely clever people who developed architectural, mathematical and philosophical principles that we still use today. However, they also believed that when lightning struck, it was because this guy was standing up on a cloud throwing the stuff down at us:

The ancient Greeks also apparently invented P90x

Of course that seems silly today, but imagine that you don't know anything about meteorology, you're standing outside the Temple of Athena or whatever during a rainstorm and suddenly you see something like this happen:

It seems almost natural that they'd invent a bunch of Avengers to explain the phenomena they couldn't possibly deconstruct.

By the way, is it not impressive how cleanly the lightning bolt stripped that tree of branches while leaving the trunk largely intact? And does anyone know what the hell that puff of smoke to the right of the tree is? Here's the same scene in GIF, courtesy of Sploid, so that you can study it:

GIF via Sploid

It's either a secondary strike, or there was an overwhelmed squirrel watching the whole thing and its brain just exploded.

Some of you designers work in consultancies where you get to work on a variety of project types. Others among you have developed narrow specialities, where you essentially design the same class of object over and over again. It would be easy for the former to assume the latter's gig is boring, but that's not always the case; in fact, it might require even more creativity to constantly come up with new ways to spin a singular object.

Here's a great example of a man who cranks out literally hundreds of variations of a single object, the cutting board. Sound boring? It might be in the hands of a lesser creative, but working out of his shop in Izhevsk, Russia, designer/builder Muntyan Andrey seems to have no shortage of ideas. Take a peek at the work he does, and dig some of the Frank-Howarth-esque build animations:

Andrey's business, MTM Wood, sells globally. And apparently he's doing well: To date he's shipped product to Armenia, Australia, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Iceland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kirgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Mexico, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Turkey, the USA and the United Kingdom.

MTM Wood's marketing seems to consist primarily of their website and their YouTube page, which Andrey populates with his build videos. So for those of you design entrepreneurs with a shop, an internet connection and proficiency in creating at least one object, here's your reminder that the world can be your marketplace.

Atom is the name of "a hackable text editor" developed by Chris Wanstrath, the founder of software-building community GitHub. And while Atom is software, to celebrate their release of version 1.0 last year, Wanstrath and co. commissioned the mock-up of this dummy Atom-housing computer to create an amusingly old-school promo:

I can't decide which I like more: The spinning disc, the joystick or the Mr. Rogers sweater. Also, I wish I knew which design firm or fabrication house produced the physical object, but you guys know the deal: The ID'ers lot in life is to remain largely anonymous, none more so than modelmakers.

Via B3ta

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See also: Hilarious Industrial Design Fails - Weird PCs from the '90s

Cycling has long been hailed as a kind of all-purpose urban panacea, an all-purpose solution for congestion and the first-and-last-mile—getting people to and from a transportation hub. Now, Beijing's People's Architecture Office has designed a bike — by a slight stretch of the imagination — into a destination in itself. Billed as "architecture for events and architecture as event," the People's Canopy is a kind of pedal-powered pop-up pavilion: The expandable two-story canopy is set on unicyclic "feet," such that it functions as its own transportation system, a simple and elegant form of mobile placemaking.

The People's Canopy was commissioned by In Certain Places— an ongoing program of urban interventions and events — for the Lancashire Encounter, an arts festival in the city of Preston, UK in September of last year. As ICP curators Charles Quick and Elaine Speight and PAO principal James Shen explain in the expository video, it is a connective space in several ways, not only as a civic gesture of activating an urban space but a kind of cultural exchange, transposing the vernacular canopies of Southern China to a rainy locale on the other side of the world.

Shen also shared some additional insights about the event, production and future of the People's Canopy:

On one hand, the cycling aspect is a matter of practicality, as it does make it very convenient to move the canopies across large distances for use at various sites. On the other hand, it makes a spectacle out of this communal activity. For eight people to cycle together and navigate the canopies through the city requires real teamwork. At a length of 10m and 4.5m in height the double decker bus size of the vehicles and the parade-like aspect of the cycling makes moving the canopies around an urban event. And when parked and expanded, the canopies take on a different role and become backdrops for events.

Cyclists on bicycles flanked the canopies as they were being cycled and there were people cycling and skateboarding under the canopies when they were expanded. The project certainly promotes cycling in the city, but it is also a celebration of public occupation of space: The canopies transform roads for pedestrian use, allowing cities to experiment with multifunctional uses of space. Simply providing covering does a lot to promote public activity, especially in a rainy city like Preston.

A dozen canopies were designed and manufactured in China then shipped to Preston in two shipping containers where they were then assembled. So far they have been moved between at least four locations in the city, including the University of Central Lancashire and the center of Preston. The canopies were physically cycled between each of these locations by volunteers.

The People's Canopies were put in storage in Preston after last year's event and will continue to be used in Preston for years to come. Since the festival, another set of People's Canopies was installed in Hong Kong for the Urbanism/Architecture Biennale. They are there until March and are currently being used to host a variety of events. Those who have taken a seat in the People's Canopy include filmmaker Christopher Doyle and Mr. Mobile Architecture Peter Cook, who immediately incorporated the project into his keynote talk at the biennale.

We've also received a request from an organization in Kolkata India who want to use the People's Canopies for a food festival there. I imagine we'll be getting more interest from people as we start to promote the project. And these are mass-produced, prefabricated, modular structures. I would consider the People's Canopy to be product design on an architecture scale. But with canopies weighing up to one ton each, the need for street closures, and structural and wind-load certification, it's not such a simple thing for People's Canopies to roll into a city near you. Because they are architectural in size, they come with a range of health and safety concerns. 

Bonus: A brilliant clip of the People's Canopy in Hong Kong, and a time-lapse video of the construction process.

You'll recommend and execute design modifications for new and carryover products so you must not only possess a broad knowledge of footwear and accessory design and development but also a knowledge of general design processes from concept to commercialization. You should have 3+ years experience with footwear and leather goods.

When you think "industrial cart," you probably picture something like this:

However, at some point you've undoubtedly seen images of old industrial carts from previous centuries that look like this:

You're probably wondering why the wheels are in a diamond, rather than a four-corner, configuration. The answer has to do with both function and economics.

First off, consider what a cart like this would be used to carry in the decades following the Industrial Revolution, items like heavy timbers or iron bar stock. Those items are quite long in length. Imagine trying to maneuver something sixteen feet long around a factory or warehouse floor; it would be advantageous if the cart they were sitting on could turn on a dime, or even rotate 90 degrees in place, which is the precise functionality you get from having the two fixed parallel wheels aligned on the narrow axis of the diamond. The two swiveling casters at the points of the long axis provide support and readily rotate.

The disadvantage of this configuration is that the load must be evenly spread with long, like-shaped objects; for example, if one was to load it with boxes of different sizes and weights and place heavier boxes towards the corners, disaster would ensue.

So, you say, why not simply use four swiveling casters at the corners? After all, this would enable the cart to turn in place while preventing the corner-overloading problem. The answer is simple economics: Swiveling casters are more expensive to make than fixed ones, and the factories producing hundreds or thousands of these carts could see a significant savings by going half and half.

Now please turn the volume up on your speakers and click on the video below.

Given current trends in woodworking, every single solid-wood workbench I've seen features a top consisting of boards glued face-to-face, with the side grain pointing up. (See: Jay Bates' workbench build in our Weekly Maker's Roundup.) This is believed to be a French convention, and the design relies on mass for stability. It also requires a lot of wood.

The traditional English workbench, in contrast, is far more parsimonious in its use of materials. With the English style the stability comes from engineering rather than mass, with massive stretchers but a relatively lightweight top. In the video below Richard Maguire, a/k/a The English Woodworker, shows you his simple plank-top design:

What surprised me, and what is not obvious from viewing the video, is that the top uses no glue at all and is instead affixed by nails. Writes Maguire,

…The boards which make the top are all independent of each other. They're not glued together, but instead laid on to the frame of the bench and fixed down with a gap between each of the boards.

As a rule they're going to be thin boards 2? and under and faily wide, 6? to 12? or so….

How do we do it? Nail it down. Straight through the top.

Reason one – timber movement.
Nails will flex and bend allowing the boards to expand and contract in to those gaps we've left. Screws are hard and brittle so require elongated holes to achieve the same, but we want our boards fixed down here.

Reason two – consider your plane irons. Nailing through the top might sound strange, but I'd rather see the enemy and be able to punch it down than screw from underneath and encounter a stealth demon later on. Remember the top's quite thin.

The idea makes me a bit queasy, as klutz that I am, I'm certain I'd eventually run a plane iron over a nailhead while reflattening. However, I don't have anything like Maguire's experience, so I have to assume there are benefits to the design. Speaking of which:

Why a planked top? We've already explained that it's simple, but thin softwood tops can be one of the big turn offs for the English style bench. In 10 – 15 years of hard use and regular flattening you might not actually have much top left.

With a planked top the solution is easy as you can simply rip off an individual board and replace it quickly and cheaply. I still don't belive that the majority of benches built will ever require the top replacing, but it's good peace of mind for the over thinkers. Also having this in mind will allow you to use your bench top in ways that you would never dream to do with a fully fledged hardwood top.

So, makers: What say you? I can't deny that the design makes far more economical use of materials than what I've seen, but I'm curious to hear what you all think of the pluses and minuses.

Lastly, Maguire's video above is a promo for an online course he's running, where he will show you how to make the bench in a five-hour, eight-chapter format complete with PDF plans. The price of entry is £26.00 (USD ~$40), a steal when you consider the price of a traditional brick-and-mortar woodworking class. We're curious: How many of you would pay for detailed, project-based online instruction? It does seem to be the way things are going these days.

A student team from TU Delft in the Netherlands has designed and produced a fully functional 3D printed stainless steel bicycle. The students designed the frame of the bicycle to demonstrate the potential of a new method for 3D printing metal.

The students achieved the goal of their three-month project by printing the bicycle frame with the help of MX3D in Amsterdam. The bicycle was designed as part of a research project at the Industrial Design Engineering faculty into the viability of metal 3D printing using a welding process. Part of wider research being done at the Delft University of Technology and the 3D Building FieldLab.

Core77's editors spend time combing through the news so you don't have to. Here's a weekly roundup of our favorite stories from the World Wide Web.

A Scrum Master in Ninja Socks, and Other Tales

When Bloomberg Businessweek published Paul Ford's epic "What Is Code?" last June, I had every intention of reading it—really—but somehow never quite found the time (it's 38,000 words long), and subsequently felt a stab of guilt and inadequacy every time I saw or heard it mentioned. When it won a National Magazine Award the other night, it was the last straw. I'm now halfway through, and experiencing a mix of amusement, enlightenment and discomfort/fear not normally inspired by magazine writing. 

—Mason Currey, senior editor

Kickass Female Designers

Our loyal Designing Women readers won't be surprised to hear that I'm always on the lookout for awesome products created by women. So I was excited to read an interview with Terese Alstin this week about her online store No Sir, where she promotes the work of "kickass female designers." 

—Rebecca Veit, columnist, Designing Women

15 Surprising Things Productive People Do Differently

Next week marks the beginning of the Lunar New Year—another opportunity to start the year on the right foot. After interviewing over 200 "ultra-productive people" and distilling their responses, here's a listicle of 15 habits for getting the most out of this monkey year.

—LinYee Yuan, managing editor

The Man Who Invented Whack-a-Mole Has One More Chance

From exploding gas cylinders to pistol-packing "clients", there are many lessons to be learned by ID'ers in this tale.

—Eric Ludlum, editorial director

Multitasking is Killing Your Brain

We all like to hit ourselves on the head about procrastination and will often blame our lack of willpower or self-motivation. As it turns out, our brains might just be to blame. Studies show our tendency to multitask put us in a feedback loop that rewards us with dopamine hits when we perform small and usually unproductive tasks (i.e. looking at emails and text messages). Learn more about what happens in our heads when we multitask, and maybe even find a way to break the cycle. 

- Allison Fonder, community manager

It's well-known that America completely outproduced the Axis powers, but how was it practically achieved?

I'm reading Arthur Herman's Freedom's Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II. How were GM auto plants converted to produce tanks, and what genius figured out how to crank out Liberty ships in under a week? Here's the story of the beleaguered industrialists you've never heard of and the incredible job they did of marshaling resources, ingenuity and the unsung labor of millions.

—Rain Noe, senior editor

Werner Herzog on Virtual Reality

The German director (who previously experimented with 3D film in his 2010 documentary "Cave of Forgotten Dreams") articulates some of his thoughts on the future of Virtual Reality, and how it will generate a completely new type of expression: "I am convinced that this is not going to be an extension of cinema or 3-D cinema or video games. It is something new, different and not experienced yet."

—Alexandra Alexa, editorial assistant

This tidy workshop in Denmark is home to Tortus Copenhagen, a ceramics studio founded by master potter Eric Landon. It's here that he creates pieces like what you see below.

You've undoubtedly seen the tools used to turn clay, and a potter's wheel, and the act of clay being turned:

But what you've probably never seen is the range of gestures a master potter wields to shape the clay. Landon has taken the trouble to have them photographed:

Also, I'm guessing the dude either has a gym membership, or shaping clay is a better workout than I'd expected:

We came across Landon on Colossal, which linked to a video he'd done a few years ago where he turned a piece and recorded it from the wheel's POV:

The video's awesome, but I think we can all agree that the pottery wheel POV video we'd really like to see would be from this vantage:

Check out more of Landon's work here.

Transforming Furniture

The always inventive Izzy Swan came up with this three-in-one piece of furniture, a bench that folds into two different types of tables:

Arcade Machine Cabinet

Monster build! Bob Clagett tackles a full-sized arcade machine cabinet from scratch. The video moves at breakneck speed, but watch closely and you'll see tons of little efficiency tricks, as well as some good examples of how clever forethought can make what would otherwise be tricky installations go a lot faster.

Shop Organization Cabinet

April Wilkerson is back in her dad's shop, helping Wilkerson Sr. get it organized. Here she takes one look at the mess, then comes up with a four-part organizing set-up to keep everything in its place:

Why Being Organized Makes You Money

Speaking of organization, here's an informational, inspirational video from Ron Paulk. Anyone with a shop, or any kind of area where you make things, ought listen to Paulk's talk on the subject of organization. This is a great example of how you can put in a little time and get a lot more time out.

Obsessive Attention to Detail

You're gonna have to full-screen this to see what's going on, but this is nuts: Jesse de Geest shows you his method for faceting the ends of the pegs on his pegged mortises. To spend this much time and effort on a detail that the unobservant will not even notice reveals this man's deep love of his craft.

Sapele-Topped Porch Cabinet

Jay Bates has help this time, from someone other than his clone. Here he's joined by buddy Nick Ferry for this outdoor cabinet build with a pretty sapele top:

Steel Sawhorses

What do you do when wooden sawhorses won't cut it? Here Jimmy DiResta knocks out a pair in steel:

Sturdy Rolling Workbench for Metalwork

Speaking of steel, Matthias Wandel needs a metalworking station separate from his main workbench. Thus this week he builds a sturdy workbench on casters that he can roll outside:

Laser Cutting Veneers for Lamination

While you might not have any need for a masquerade mask in a fox motif, watching David Picciuto make one shows you how to make any sort of bent-veneer lamination using a laser cutter:

Tiny House Floor Framing

As Ana White's tiny-house-on-a-trailer starts to take shape, here husband Jacob explains how they built the flooring:

Rolling, Nesting Whiteboards

The nonprofit firm Design that Matters, which focuses on solving health issues for the impoverished in developing nations, figures out a way to declutter their office space and add some much-needed surface area for brainstorming and project management:

You've been busy, assuring yourself you have plenty of time, that the end of Early Bird pricing is miles away. Or, maybe you saw the 12 Things to Buy With the Money You'll Save post and thought, "eh, I don't really want any of those awesome things."

Either way, the time has come. At 9pm Eastern Time tomorrow (February 9th), Early Bird prices officially end for the 2016 season. Here's your chance for eternal glory with the 2016 Core77 Design Awards AND an opportunity to save money.  Follow the example of these six Winners from the 2015 Core77 Design Awards season that not only took home a personalized Core77 Trophy for winning their respective category, but pocketed a little extra cash by getting their work in before Early Bird pricing ended.

IKO Prosthetic - Open Design - Student Winner

IKO Prosthetic proposes a new mindset from what current prosthetic models are by opening them up to creativity, interaction and fun. Breaking from the drab, at times robotic prosthetics that dominate the market, IKO gives children the opportunity to customize their artificial limb in a way that matches their personality and needs, while allowing for easy socialization with other children. Carlos Arturo Torres submitted this design more than a week before the 2015 Early prices ended. 

Chirming - Visual Communication - Student Winner

Chirming is a creative and unorthodox project that attempts to create a visual manifestation of bird songs. Designing an array of representations that vary according to the type of bird, Chirming presents a series of images that are both compelling and soothing. The project's designer, Sukgo, succeeded in fusing bird song with mandala designs and submitted her project five days ahead of the end of 2015 Early Bird pricing. 

Commercial Type Showcase - Visual Communication - Professional Winner

Commercial Type Showcase is a set of sixteen microsites for the Commercial Type webfonts library. The microsites explore how a type specimen can be experienced differently when paired with the abilities of the web. Each of the microsites shows a different family from the Commercial Type library and highlights a different aspect of its personality. Wael Morcos entered this interactive project with only four days left in the 2015 Early Bird pricing. 

LINDO Smart Vehicle - Transportation - Student Winner

LINDO Smart Vehicle is a three-wheeled, electric vehicle concept that is both environmentally friendly and convenient to use. LINDO is imagined as a public transport system that can be hailed via smartphone, and aims to make transit in the city of Melbourne less linear and less congested. Kyle Armstrong from RMIT University submitted this concept project the day before the 2015 Early Bird prices closed.

Room on the Roof - Built Environment - Professional Winner

Built into the interior of a tower located in the heart of Amsterdam, Room on the Roofis a haven for artists of all denominations. The interior installation plays with scale and perception in the vein of 'Alice in Wonderland', and includes storage, a pantry, a desk, and a daybed stacked on top of one another as if to invoke the notion of a 'living cabinet'. This project made the Early Bird pricing cut with just over 12 hours left to spare. 

Palisade Collection - Furniture & Lighting - Professional Winner

The Palisade Collection is a series of furniture pieces that aim to address the needs of both patients and visitors in a healthcare facility. Offering seating, technology support, lighting, storage, sleeping and work space, Palisade has thoughtful features that make it easy for guests to talk eye-to-eye with patients, share meals, entertain themselves, check in at the office, and sleep without leaving the patient's side. With only about seven hours left before the Early Bird pricing ended last year, Jess Sorel got his submission in and took home the trophy!

Your chance to add savings on top of the glory of winning ends tomorrow. Don't delay, get your entry in now!

Seeking design guru with 5-10 years experience who has created, produced, launched and successfully lead/executed strategic omni-channel (360-degree) communication campaigns across print ads, television/video media (paid/earned), digital, social, PR, and Retail and Events (outdoor), driving emotional brand affinity thus creating demand. 7-12 years experience in all aspects of leadership required.

It's official: English architect Thomas Heatherwick has made his US debut. In anticipation of his forthcoming projects in New York and California, Cooper Hewitt curator Brooke Hodge organized an exhibition, aptly titled Provocations, to introduce American audiences to Heatherwick Studio's impressive body of work. After stops at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, Heatherwick's US tour concluded with a six-month long show at New York's Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum—a fitting choice for the designer of Pier55, which will soon be Manhattan's newest public park and performance space.

Installation view of Provocations at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Process Model

Process Model

Process Model

Upon entering the exhibition at Cooper Hewitt, visitors were greeted by a custom designed 'brochure machine' they could physically crank open to dispense descriptions of Heatherwick's most prominent projects. Inspired by the printing process itself, this playful contraption immediately introduced users to the studio's impressive breadth of work. It's perhaps this sense of playfulness—the belief that design can be both whimsical and practical—that has enabled Heatherwick's to be successful across the disciplines of architecture, infrastructure and product design. As a result, the range of projects the studio has completed is remarkable: from the UK Pavilion (also referred to as the Seed Cathedral) at the 2010 World Expo, the Learning Hub for Nanyang Technical University in Singapore, a new bus for London and even the Olympic Cauldron for the London Olympic Games in 2012. Oh, and don't forget the Longchamp handbag completely  made out of zippers. As I explored the exhibition, I wondered, "Why hasn't he brought his talents to the United States yet?" 

Rendering of Pier55 design

Well, our prayers (and envy) have been answered. A quick subway ride downtown from the Cooper Hewitt, Heatherwick's plan for Pier55, a floating park on the Hudson River, is expected to start construction later this year. The park will sit above the water, propped up by large columns to support the weight of trees and man-made parkland. New Yorkers will have a new place to enjoy outdoor performances, beautiful views and some much-needed greenery in Chelsea. 

Renderings of initial Googleplex proposal

Renderings of initial Googleplex proposal

On the West Coast, Heatherwick Studio has been commissioned to design the new Google headquarters in Mountain View, California in collaboration with Bjarke Ingels Group. The new Googleplex will be made of lightweight structures that can be moved around, giving the company the necessary flexibility to make their workspaces adapt to their needs and different departments evolve and grow. According to the building plans, each site will be covered by a large translucent canopy, designed to let air and light inside, yet keep its users protected from the elements. 

As American audiences learned at the Provocations exhibit, the scope of Heatherwick's work is seemingly limitless. His diverse, multidisciplinary approach transcends geography, typology and stylistic categorization. The studio's work shows us that great surprises arise when great designers are put to the test. And here in the United States, we can't wait to see what he does next.

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

Johnny Swing, Half Dollar Chair (designed 2003, executed 2015). 

Be sure to catch The Garden in the Machine: Organic Design 1930 to the Present currently on view at Friedman Benda Gallery before it closes later this week. The show charts the evolution of "organic" design throughout the 20th and 21st Centuries by juxtaposing more literal evocations of natural form—as in the modernist bent ply of Marcel Breuer—to contemporary interpretations of "organic" forms using experimental materials and production methods.

New York, NY. On view through February 13th. 

Tuesday

Jólan van der Wiel, Gravity Stools 

The fifth installment of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum's contemporary design Triennial opens on Tuesday. This year's edition, Beauty, will feature work by 63 international designers exploring the concept of beauty through seven lenses: extravagant, intricate, ethereal, transgressive, emergent, elemental and transformative. (Also of note, the museum will host a presentation by the Haas Brothers on Saturday, February 13th about their collaborations with craftswomen from the Khayelitsha informal settlement outside Cape Town, South Africa)

New York, NY. On view through August 21, 2016. 

Wednesday

For a Hump Day pick-me-up, join AIGA/NY for their monthly design community gathering, MIX: Designers + Drinks = _______. This time, the party will be hosted by The New York Times Digital Design Team, featuring musical stylings by Director and DJ, Ian Adelman.

New York, NY. Doors open at 7PM. 

Thursday

One of the world's most eclectic design conferences, Design Indaba Festival, opens its 2016 edition on Thursday. This year, the event will be slightly restructured within its new venue, the Artscape Theater in Capetown. For further programming details, check out this list of noteworthy speakers—which includes the likes of Benjamin Hubert and Imogen Heap—and events to get excited about.

Capetown, South Africa. On view through February 20, 2016. 

Friday

From artificial flavoring to the future of permaculture and how we handle food waste, the links between food and design are complex and intertwined. If you're in the LA area, join Design Observer for TASTE, a day-long symposium on design and food. For a quick primer on the ideas that will be explored, check out our interview with producer Jessica Helfand. 

Los Angeles, California. February 12, 2016. 

Saturday/Sunday

The annual hub of inspiration for the latest and greatest Scandinavian design, Stockholm Furniture & Light Fair opens its doors to the public on Saturday.  Beyond the extensive exhibitors list, other programming will include the concurrent Stockholm Design Talks exploring the theme of "Scandinavia Now," a curated exhibition centered around the idea that "Nature is back for good," and a tribute to the 2016 guests of honor, designers Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby. 

Stockholm, Sweden. On view through February 13, 2016. 

Upcoming Deadlines

February 10 - Red Dot Award: Product Design 2016

February 12 - 10th International Outdoor Furniture Design Contest

February 14 - 2016 SEGD Global Design Awards

February 14 - The Future of Urban Mobility Design Competition

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.

Tink Things is engaged in designing products that encourage the development of sensory intelligence in children.

Considering different sensory needs and using therapeutic principles to shape a comfortable environment for all kids are the driving principles behind this collection. We hope these pieces can maximize the potential of children's interplay with their surroundings.

Well-directed interaction with space, movement and play have a great influence on the growth and development, concentration and learning ability of all children. That is the case regardless of whether they have diagnosed difficulties in sensory processing. Fine motor skills and complex mental processes may well develop only on the basis of good sensory processing.

Our Mia & Ika chairs and Cufi table are the first products being developed under the Tink Things brand, for use both in private and public educational spaces. We are currently wrapping up the last details before launching.

Prototype of Mia chair

Prototypes of Mia & Ika chairs

Prototypes of Mia & Ika chair

Prototypes of Mia chair & Cufi desk

Prototype of Ika chair

Prototypes of Ika & Mia chairs

Prototypes of Mia chair & Cufi desk

Those of you watching Super Bowl 50 yesterday undoubtedly take that virtual yellow 1st & 10 line for granted, as it's been there since the late '90s. But some of you have undoubtedly wondered: How do they lay that into the picture while masking out the players in real time? As it turns out, it took a fair bit of cleverness to pull it off:

The company they refer to in the video, by the way, is Sportvision. 

Core77 reached out to Cam Newton to ask for some commentary on the technology, but he delivered a monosyllabic answer and left the room. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

In the Industrial Design department at Pratt, they taught us how to spray thinned joint compound onto our mock-ups. It was the quickest way to get sandably-smooth paint-ready surfaces on tricky shapes. For the rest of society, joint compound is something you use to patch holes, seal seams and get surfaces flush. But in the hands of Canada-based Bernie Mitchell, joint compound isn't rendered smooth at all; instead he builds it up, creating surprisingly detailed wall sculptures that far surpass the material's humble original purpose.

"The key is to work on a wall where the light comes in at an angle," Mitchell told The Journal of Light Construction(who refers to him as the "Mud Michelangelo"). "When you're done, you have something that's always responding to the light moving across it. I never get tired watching it change throughout the day."

What most amazed me about Mitchell's process are some of the tools he uses, which you can see in the video below:

Watching that, I was like "A putty knife, are you kidding me?" I don't know how the heck he keeps it so clean between strokes; when I'm doing something as mundane as patching screwholes, if I don't scrape the thing every few seconds, it crusts on the blade and leaves tracks on the next surface.

Then again, Mitchell is a pro, and I assume he's got the mixing and wiping down to a science. As a professional drywall contractor he's been taping joints for decades; in the early 1990s he began "experimenting with raised panels on wall surfaces where natural light had a positive effect as a relief form," according to his bio.

Now, after 20-something years of mastering the technique, Mitchell is preparing to release a series of video tutorials in hopes of passing the art on to others. Interested parties, watch this space for updates.

Wallpaper is essentially clothing for your walls, which is why I consider it crazy to use it. Clothes go out of fashion, and nothing makes a home look more dated than wallpaper with a pattern that was clearly designed decades ago.

What's even crazier is how labor-intensive it used to be to create wallpaper, even well into the 20th Century. Take a look at this video showing wallpaper production in Great Britain, shot in 1968:

I love the old look of the silver router the woman in the beginning uses, freehand no less, even as I cringe to see she lacks both eye and respiratory protection, and of course there is no dust collection. I guess I should be more amazed that there were professional power-tool-wielding women in the '60s at all, as I'd assumed that the sexism of the time would have precluded her from that role. Anyways check out the crazy Fred-Flintstone-looking wishbone handle in the photo below, which looks like it drives the screw that clamps the base to the router:

What the video didn't show is where some of those patterns came from. For that we go back to 1957, where this thief with a camera is stealing them from the greatest artist that ever lived:

It's cool to see how these things were made, but gosh—is there anything more hideous than old textile patterns?

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