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DIY Smartphone Holograms

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The internet is awash in videos showing you how to turn your smartphone into a hologram projector, and this is the fastest one we've seen:

One of the most-viewed, however, is this one by UK-based student Arun Maini. The 14-million-plus hits is undoubtedly down to the excellent examples he shows starting around 1:37:

We industrial designers once had to carry enormous portfolios to job interviews. Nowadays prospectees stroll into the interview with an iPad. Do you reckon that in future we'll be showing off our designs with these plastic pyramids?


How to Fool Americans with Fake Italian Cheese: Add...Wood Pulp?

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It's come to light that some Italian manufacturers have been getting knocked off, not in China that gets so much piracy press, but right here in the United States. The knock-off artists follow the knock-off script: Their product is disguised as the genuine article, but inferior materials are substituted in order to produce them for a fraction of the cost.

So what're we talking about here, handbags? Sunglasses? Coffeemakers? Nope. Cheese. Specifically, the grated kind. And the offending manufacturers have been bulking up their fake Parmesan and Romano with a wood byproduct, cellulose.

This practice has extended pretty far into the food business. When you buy a dollar pizza slice at some greasy-tray pizzeria in midtown Manhattan, it's no surprise that you're not eating real cheese; no one could make it work at those prices. But you'd expect that something labeled "100% Grated Parmesan" and sold at Whole Foods would be the real deal, and it ain't.

Whole Foods' 360 Brand, along with Wal-Mart's 100% Grated Parmesan Cheese, Kraft 100% Grated Parmesan Cheese and Jewel-Osco's Essential Everyday 100% Grated Parmesan Cheese all contain cellulose filler. In an article called "The Parmesan Cheese You Sprinkle on Your Penne Could Be Wood," Bloomberg published the percentages as 0.3%, 7.8%, 3.8% and 8.8%, respectively, after buying these products off-the-shelf and paying for an independent laboratory to test them.

More amazing is the company at the center of the article, the now-out-of-business Castle Cheese, Inc., which sold "100% Parmesan Cheese" that actually contained 0% Parmesan. (It was composed of offcuts of Swiss, cheddar, mozzarella, and rounded out with cellulose derived from wood pulp.) Castle supplied a wholesale grocer that in turn supplied over 3,000 grocery stores in the United States, until someone blew the whistle on them and the FDA shut them down.

Here are some questions you likely have:

Is it safe to eat wood pulp/cellulose?

I've been waiting for just the right moment to bore someone at the bar with this factoid: A human being has to eat about a pound of sawdust before it will kill them. It's unlikely that the cellulose these companies are stashing in cheese is just raw sawdust, as I'd think you'd see the particles. They presumably grind it down further or perhaps even process it into cellulose using other methods—I just hope they're not bleaching it, like they do with paper:

However, it may not be from sawdust at all (see next question). The bottom line is, in small doses cellulose is what they call "dietary fiber." It won't kill you, but will make your poops robust. And cellulose is currently in everything from ice cream to bread, pancakes to salad dressings. (See link at the bottom of this entry.)

Is it possible that the cellulose in these cheeses is from something other than wood pulp, or is it really sawdust?

While the Bloomberg article cites wood pulp, it's totally possible that the cellulose in those cheeses is from some other source. (But that must not stop you from telling someone at the bar that "A human being has to eat about a pound of sawdust before it will kill them.") In fact, NPR interviewed a company whose sole purpose is to supply cellulose to the food industry, and learned that "sawdust contains only about 40 percent cellulose. Whereas the powdered cellulose used in foods contains about 97 percent cellulose."

Why do these manufacturers create artificial fillers for cheese?

The same reason all knock-off companies do what they do: Money. Bloomberg explains how Parmesan manufacturing works:

Of all the popular cheeses in the U.S., the hard Italian varieties are the most likely to have fillers because of their expense. Parmesan wheels sit in curing rooms for months, losing moisture, which results in a smaller yield than other cheeses offer. While 100 pounds of milk might produce 10 pounds of cheddar, it makes only eight pounds of Parmesan. That two-pound difference means millions of dollars to manufacturers, according to [Center for Dairy Research cheese technologist Dean] Sommer.

How do they get away with it?

Probably because the FDA is spread too thin, and is primarily occupied with preventing people from eating stuff that will kill them. Someone sprinkling Doug Fir on their tortellini is a low priority. If Castle Cheese didn't have a disgruntled ex-employee who had been fired and was angry enough to drop the dime on them to the FDA, it's unlikely their cheese ruse would have ever been discovered.

Lastly, the trolls among you may insist that these companies aren't actually doing anything wrong, due to the order of the wording in the products' titles. "It says '100% Grated,'" says Mr. Troll, "not '100% Parmesan.'"

You can learn more about common uses of cellulose in food over at The L.A. Times.

Design Job: Add Shelf Appeal to Your Resume and Become a Package Designer at Merkury Innovations in New York

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The Designer will be responsible for exploration, conceptualizing, and execution of creative packaging and marketing designs and solutions across a range of both in-house and licensed brands. Ideal applicants have 4-7 years of industry design experience in branding and packaging and knowledge of composition, colors and typography. *Local candidates only*

View the full design job here

Brilliant 3D-Printed Sundial "Projects" the Time, Digitally

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Combining an ancient technology with a new one has yielded surprising dividends here. A French inventor going by the handle "Julldozer" has invented a 3D-printed sundial that actually "projects" the time in digital form.

Calculating the angles at which the sunlight would land on the device throughout the day, then designing corresponding channels into the object, has yielded this effect:

Simple physics dictates that there are only so many apertures one can perforate a hollow object with while still maintaining its structure, so some trade-offs had to be made: The time can only be presented in 20-minute increments, and like a lazy shopowner, it only works from 10am to 4pm. But it's still damn impressive, and I'd love to see a large-scale version of this made and installed in a public place. How cool would this be in a public plaza or town square with direct sunlight exposures?

Until an enterprising municipal official seizes upon that idea, you can purchase your own Digital Sundial on Mojoptix, Julldozer's Etsy shop, or you can download the files on Thingiverse and print your own. 

Here's how he developed the idea, by the way:

It looks like the trolls haven't gotten to this one yet, so I'll provide some troll-like comments here in order to restore balance to the universe: "I'm unimpressed. Why doesn't it have a second hand? And why can't you make it tell the time at night?"

Via Colossal

Designing for Desire

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Objects of Desire, coming out March 28 from Schiffer Publishing, is a coffee-table book for people who don’t mind raising a few eyebrows among their guests—although, these days, that’s probably all the reaction it would elicit. Yes, it’s a book about sex toys, but a particularly tasteful one, geared toward design lovers and well-calibrated for a moment when sex toys have pretty much completed their evolution from seedy novelties to mainstream consumer products. As the author, Rita Catinella Orrell, writes in an introductory note, “One of our main goals was to present the product design in an open-minded, impartial, and inclusive fashion.” In that, Orrell and the book’s designer, Jason Scuderi, have succeeded, pairing more than 100 products with straightforward, unblushing descriptions of their function and design, as well as a handful of interviews with sex-positive bloggers, retailers, manufacturers and designers. Recently, we e-mailed with Orrell to find out a little more about the book and her thoughts on the state of sex-toy design.

In the book’s introduction, you write about stumbling upon a design revolution in erotic products. When, and how, did that revolution come about, and are we still in the midst of it? 

The book comes out March 28. The cover features the Vesper vibrator necklace by Crave.

This latest revolution started about a decade ago when we began to see commercially available sex toys and other erotic objects designed with a level of aesthetics and functionality not typically seen before in this industry. This paralleled the rise of more friendly, well-lit shops that attracted both men and women, queer and straight. We are still in the midst of that revolution, while also witnessing the evolution of virtual reality/remote sex and the beginning of artificially intelligent/robotic sex. This is accompanied by improvements in materiality, battery charging and motor quality across all types of products. 

What type of sex toy has seen the most innovation—and what category do you think is most in need of designers’ attention? 

I would have to say vibrators have seen the most innovation. For example, HUM by Dimensional Industries, the first artificially intelligent vibrator, was designed to respond to the human orgasm and draw out the experience. MOD, by Comingle LLC, is an open-source vibe for DYIers and hackers. And Eva, by Dame Products, is the first non-insertable hands-free vibrator that uses two flexible wings that tuck under the labia majora to keep the vibe securely in place. 

Eva is “the first truly wearable couple's vibrator.”

I think there is a need in the market for products that help couples who are trying to conceive—either by aiding insemination or helping to bring the woman to orgasm. One product in the book that fits this category is the Semenette, an anatomically correct dildo with an attached pump and replaceable liner. In addition to helping lesbian couples conceive, the product can also be an option for the transgender community (specifically female-to-male individuals), or in various other scenarios where both partners want to enjoy an authentic ejaculation experience. 

Can you talk a little about material innovation in this category? What have been the big breakthroughs, and what sorts of material problems are companies trying to solve next?

This industry is unregulated, but many companies take the time and expense to invest in good quality materials.The biggest innovation in materials was the evolution from rubber and PVC toys to silicone. You can find silicone in vibrators, paddles, cock rings, anal toys, male strokers and other toys now. Silicone was brought to the industry by a disabled entrepreneur named Gosnell Duncan. In her introduction to the book, sexologist Carol Queen explains that Duncan was an industrial chemist who knew silicone’s body-safe and easy-to-clean properties would make it ideal for sex toys. In 1997, sex-toy maker Tantus set out to make mainstream silicone sex toys available to larger sex-toy-buying audiences. In my interview with Tantus founder and CEO Metis Black, she talks about the challenges of selling a product that could last a lifetime while convincing buyers that people would come back for more. 

A spread from the book featuring Trainer Toyfriends, a line of Kegel exercisers by the Swedish company Tickler

The erotic-products industry has long been male-dominated. When did women start to make inroads as sex-toy designers and craftswomen, and is the industry now more gender equitable? 

There are many women behind companies—although few are trained industrial designers. I think women started to make inroads in the last decade, around the same time the industry started this new revolution. We have a lot of amazing women designers and craftswomen featured in the book including Ti Chang, Bliss Lau, Metis Black, Shiri Zinn, PJ Linden, Viviane Yazdani and many more. Challenges still remain for female designers, but it is important that they are at the table when it comes to designing products for women.

Objects of Desire includes interviews with sex bloggers, shop owners and toy designers—including Karim Rashid, above.

Do you have any advice for young designers interested in working in this industry? 

Really get to know the products. Do your research, play with these toys and talk to toy reviewers. Don’t go overboard on bells-and-whistles or gimmicks. 

SexShop3D.com allows customers to—you guessed it—3D-print sex toys at home. Its most popular model is the Big Black Dildo, shown here on an Ultimaker 2 digital printer. The BBD takes about eight hours to print.

Are there any sex-toy trends you’re sick of, or any product categories that you think are overrated? 

I do not like the trend of attaching something to your phone to turn it into a vibrator. A phone is one of the dirtiest things around—why would someone want to put that near their clitoris when there are so many other more practical options out there? I also don’t like teddy bears, rubber ducks, or any other children’s toy turned into a vibrator. If you want to be able to leave your toy out in plain sight, there are many other options. 

Where will we see the next breakthroughs in erotic products? Are you bullish about the possibilities for VR intimacy, 3D-printed toys, “teledildonics” or other futuristic-sounding possibilities? 

Virtual reality, 3D printed toys and teledildonics for remote sex are all still in their nascency but progressing quickly. You can already print out a dildo on your home 3D printer or have remote sex where one person controls the other’s sex toy. We will continue to see advancements in this area almost as soon as they come across from other fields. Even artificially intelligent toys are now a reality. I am a little nervous about the advent of fully functioning, A.I. sex robots, but that is probably from watching Ex Machina and Battlestar Galactica. They are coming, though—that’s for certain.

This interview is part of the Core77 Sex-tacular, our editorial series exploring the myriad ways that technology and design are shaping the future of intimacy and sex.

Reader Submitted: Single-Use Aid: Tackling Unsafe Syringe Use

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Single-Use Aid is a non-reusable syringe comprising of a disposable cardboard body and a medication blister with an attached needle. This syringe tries to fight the problem of disease spread by the reuse of syringes.

View the full project here

12 Hours Left to Enter our Sex-tacular Sketch Competition

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2016 is the year of the intelligent sex toy. Once simple products focused solely on ergonomics, sex toys are now enhanced with highly advanced technologies. For example, KIIROO is a teledildonic system that allows long distance couples to simulate intercourse through identically choreographed motion-enabled sex toys. We recently wrote about Comingle's Mod, an open-source multivibrating dildo.

View the full content here

Boston Dynamics Inexplicably Programs Humanoid Robot to Behave Like Unruly Amazon Warehouse Employee

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Boston Dynamics hasn't bothered updating their Atlas webpage since 2013. But they've apparently been very busy upgrading the robot itself. Yesterday they released footage of the latest iteration, and the things that this humanoid 'bot is now capable of are truly staggering (no pun intended).

What's peculiar is the behavior module that the engineers have programmed into Atlas: They've inexplicably chosen Slow, Unruly Amazon Warehouse Worker.

As you can see, the robot begins by taking an unauthorized break…

…letting itself out of the building to wander the snowy wilderness like friggin' Leo DiCaprio in The Revenant.

It is only after the guy with the red gloves finally leads the 'bot back inside that it starts doing some work, albeit half-heartedly.

And after being punished for insubordination...

...it again lets itself out of the building to take another break! The thing barely picked up three lousy boxes and it already needs some fresh air?

That being said, I'm taken with how Boston Dynamics' engineers have managed to keep the robot's immediate emotions in check, at least on camera. While he appears agitated after regaining his feet and stamps his feet petulantly, I expected him to angrily lash out at his masters and was surprised that he chose the path of nonviolence.

However, it's also easy to see the long-term mistakes that the engineers are making during the testing process:

It doesn't take a PhD in psychology to understand that impeding the robot's progress with a hockey stick is going to ingrain a deep hatred of hockey players, one that will take years of therapy to undo. If a horde of Atlas 'bots manages to locate the NHL finals, for instance, it's not difficult to imagine what will ensue.


Airbus Patent Illustrator Has Terrifyingly Poor Grasp of Human Proportions

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Sorry for the jokesy headline, but is there anything funnier than rendering children by simply shrinking down adults? In U.S. Patent # US20160039387, Airbus reveals the following design with that classic patent-drawing attention to human anatomy:

While the drawing above appears to represent two ventriloquists who have brought their professional gear on as carry-on luggage, Airbus' design for a "Re-Configurable Passenger Bench Seat" is a little more complicated than that. It's meant to address the fact that the current one-size-fits-all airplane seat design, which is reportedly based on human dimensions from the year 1962, is no longer suitable for the wide range of sizes humans now come in. So let's have a look at the seat:

As you can see, panel 60b folds down to reveal cavity 62a, which I assumed would contain a gloriously backlit bottle of Cuervo. But looking at the next drawing tells a different tale:

Panel 60b is in fact a giant-sized armrest. This, along with the width of the bench, means that one large man who favors V-necks can comfortably sit alongside another large man who favors crewnecks, and they can hold hands to confer mutual reassurance in times of turbulence.

In the next drawing, we see another configuration, whereby panels 60c are folded down:

You've undoubtedly noticed the appearance of an extra seatbelt in the image above, which allows what you see in the image below:

Now a tall man who favors V-necks can sit flanked by two shorter men who belong to Team Crewneck. While the armrests are now too narrow to support handholding, it does appear that a provision has been made whereby the passenger on the left can place his hand within the pants pocket of the passenger in the center.

Finally, if we add yet another seatbelt…

…two grossly misshapen adults can now sit alongside two children who resemble action figures:

And if you're wondering how the seatbelts are added and subtracted, concealed between the cushions is a rail system with detachable fixtures:

It appears that the bench would need to have its seatbelt configured prior to each flight, and in accordance with the width of specific passengers. This could provide a wonderful opportunity for interaction during the boarding process, as cheerful flight attendants smilingly measure the width of each happy passenger. Furthermore, the pilot could order the co-pilot into the cabin to configure all of the seatbelts, in order for the former to clearly establish dominance over the latter.

I know, I know, it's just a patent and there's little chance we'll see this design realized. But we can dream, can't we?

Which "Maker Persona" are You? Take Autodesk's Quiz

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In our Weekly Maker's Roundup, we post videos from a cross-section of folks whom we hope will appeal to the Core77 audience. What they all have in common is that they create physical objects and record the act, but beyond that they have wildly different styles, skillsets and personalities. In fact we'd be hard-pressed to place makers of any sort into highly specific categories.

That hasn't stopped Autodesk from trying, however. In an effort to "[investigate] the personas that form the maker and designer community, to see if they fall into specific categories, and how these differ in each culture," the company worked with a Professor of Psychology from City University London to pigeonhole makers into five personas:

They then came up with a questionnaire designed to reveal which of these categories any given maker falls into, and surveyed over 4,000 people in six countries:

Curious to see which category you fall into? The online questionnaire is here.

Meet Your Core77 Design Awards Jury Captains for Interaction, Consumer Products, Built Environment and Transportation

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Where does the time go? Just last week we introduced you to the first four Jury Captains for the 2016 Core77 Design Awards so you could get familiar with the design minds that will be reviewing your Packaging, Furniture & Lighting, Open Design and Service Design entries. Now we have a new batch of Jury Captains to introduce and we are a mere 11 days away from the end of regular pricing. (That's March 8th, just in case you don't have it marked on your calendar.) 

 Before you jot down that important date, learn more about the jury team leaders of the Interaction, Consumer Products, Built Environment and Transportation categories. They're eager to see your work so get your entries in as soon as possible.

Alexis Lloyd - 2016 Interaction Jury Captain

Creative Director, New York Times R+D Lab

Alexis Lloyd is the Creative Director of The New York Times Research & Development Lab, where she investigates emerging technologies and prototypes future concepts for news and media. Her work is focused on creating immersive and exploratory experiences through innovative physical-to-digital interactions, data visualization and screen-based interfaces. 

What’s the main objective for the R+D Lab? What was your career path leading up to heading up this experimental project?

The mission for the R&D Lab is to look beyond the next product cycle, identifying trends and technologies that will emerge in the coming years. We develop applications and prototypes that imagine the impacts these changes will create, and we share those prototypes to facilitate innovation and thoughtful consideration of the future of media. We begin our research by scanning and gathering signals of change from a variety of sources and across industries. We then identify ways that we can experiment, or do "research through making," in order to explore how the changes we identify might be applied to media contexts in the near future. The outcomes of our work are both the prototypes themselves and the broader research, analysis, and conclusions we come to about trends and changes we anticipate. Our goal is not to create beta products, but to generate deeply informed knowledge that can be used to help guide our path forward at The New York Times.

Prior to joining The Times, I had worked for a number of years as a user experience designer and interaction designer, primarily in media and educational contexts, including Columbia University and FOX. After a number of years working in the industry and being mostly self-taught (my undergraduate degree is in theater!), I decided to spend some time more deeply developing my own voice as a designer and media artist, and went back to school for my MFA in the Design & Technology program at Parsons School of Design. It's a fantastic program, where I have since taught, and my MFA thesis work directly led to my being hired at The New York Times R&D Lab.

When designing a user experience, what do you feel are the key elements to a successful product?

I think the key to a successful user experience is having the form and "feel" of the interaction be deeply aligned with its function, to have a system's posture towards its users feel appropriate to the nature of the experience. 

My work lately has been focused on how every interaction we design with a computational system is an expression of an underlying relationship being posited between the person and the machine, and I'd like to see designers thinking more explicitly about what those relationships are and how they're represented. This approach becomes even more important as we see the ascendance of conversational UI as a dominant framework. We are very literally having conversations with machines. As a result, designing those conversations and thinking critically about the kind of relationships we're building with bots and automated systems becomes absolutely crucial. In many ways, I think relationship design is the new frontier of UX design and will become increasingly important over the next few years.

Please share your most memorable project and its impact on your own process and its intended user.

A recent project that was fascinating to work on was the Listening Table, which is a table that hears and augments the conversation that's happening around it. It was a collaboration between a number of people in the lab, including Noah Feehan who worked on the electronics and hardware design, and a Brooklyn-based furniture designer, François Chambard, who did the physical design and fabrication of the table. The Listening Table is an example of the more provocative, speculative projects we do in the lab, where we tie together several research themes and try to create an artifact from the near future that impacts how either The Times or our readers might interact with information. In this case, we brought together research we had been doing on the future of IoT and connected environments, on "semantic listening" (building sensors for meaning), and UX questions about designing positive and ethical interactions with devices that continuously listen to us (smartphones, XBoxes, Hello Barbie, etc.). We wanted to create a table that could at least partially replace the need to take notes during a meeting or interview, by offloading audio recording and transcription and creating elegant affordances for people to mark meaningful moments in the conversation that they want to remember later.

The design process itself was fascinating, as it was almost entirely an exercise in subtraction. We had to work through all the ideas that sounded potentially interesting in theory (like visualizing conversational dynamics on the table), but were actually intrusive and distracting in practice. It was also a process where we explored how to best design a collaboration between human intelligence and machine intelligence -- what tasks do you want to offload to automation and what tasks do you need human interpretation and input for? And in the end, since we were the primary users of the table, it engendered a really comprehensive conversation about design principles for creating listening machines that we would be willing to live with. These principles are things like designing systems to have a limited memory, making sure that an object visually communicates when it's listening, and making it easy for users to opt out. 

This is why we do a great deal of our research through making in the lab. When we start to try and build these things that are just recently possible, we learn so much about both the capabilities of a new technology and the nuances of designing ways that a person might engage with it. Between this prototyping process and our broader scanning and signal gathering, we develop a comprehensive perspective on what changes are beginning to take shape, how they might be applied, and principles for how to apply them in positive ways.

Jon Marshall - 2016 Consumer Products Jury Captain

Director of Design, Map

Jon Marshall is the Co-Founder and Design Director at Map, a London-based creative consultancy that specializes in strategy-led industrial design, packaging design and UX/UI. Map’s clients include some of the most innovative and well-known companies in the world such as Virgin Atlantic, Google, Yamaha and Panasonic alongside ambitious growth companies such as Kano, Sam Labs, and Sabi. 

Kano screen kit, a 720p HD display anyone can make.

As consumers become more sophisticated and technology more complex, in what ways should consumer products evolve? What things should change and what should remain the same?

I think as technology becomes more complex and powerful we need to re-focus on making products user friendly, easy to understand and intelligent. At the moment consumer products are smart enough to keep us constantly connected and notify us with helpful information, but not intelligent enough to help process all that information, or to know when we don’t want to be disturbed.

At Map, the idea of “informed creativity” is a guiding design principle. Can you explain this idea and how it brings new ideas and design directions to light?

At Map we have an approach we call 'informed creativity’ where we try to identify creative opportunities using designer-led research and then work with our clients to create a clear written design strategy before embarking on the creative process. We try to work closely with clients to co-create our designs and we use iterative mock-up making and prototyping to test ideas early. This approach not only helps us identify new ideas quickly but also helps us evaluate them and make sure they are relevant for our clients and therefore better for business.

Hackaball is a smart and responsive ball that lets kids invent and play games.

Many new consumer products depend on the power of current technologies but raise important questions about a product’s life cycle. How can designers create products that “stay alive” for years to come?

Technology moves fast and can become obsolete quickly, so I think its incumbent on designers and manufacturers to carefully consider product lifecycle in the creation of new products. The use of recycled materials and designing products to be disassembled, fixed or upgraded are good principles. However if core technologies could be standardized and modularized more across different brands it would be easier to re-use elements of products or repurpose them, which would cut down on waste. I think one of the most interesting things I’ve seen in this space is Nascent Objects.

Arthur Huang - 2016 Built Environment Jury Captain

Co-founder/CEO, Miniwiz

Arthur Huang is a structural engineer, architect and innovator of loop economy building material solutions. He founded Miniwiz in 2005 and has led the firm since. Among other honors, Miniwiz under Arthur Huang’s leadership won the Financial Times’ “Earth Award” in 2010 and The Wall Street Journal’s “Asian Innovation Award” in 2011. Miniwiz received the “Technology Pioneers 2015” title by the World Economic Forum, recognizing the potential of the new industry that Miniwiz is leading and the positive impact of its activities on the state of the world.

Your own practice is interdisciplinary...touching building systems, consumer products, furniture, architecture and even a boat! What is your educational background and how did you prioritize your interests to arrive at this point in your practice? 

We even have airplanes, not just boats!

I studied structure and architecture—by nature both disciplines are already very interdisciplinary. You need structure for architectures, for chairs, for clothes, for carpets, for chemical molecules, even for a cupcake! Structure is everywhere at different scales, that is all. 

POLLI BOAT is the world's first trimaran inspired by the 3R practices-Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle

For us, all this interdisciplinary is based on one mission. We are trying to create the demand for people to want to use trash (urban mined resources) for future products and to enable a true circular economy for today and tomorrow. However, the current supply of trash recycled materials are unattractive, weak structurally, and basically not sexy. When something is not sexy, no one wants to use it. And that’s why when we are developing a new material for different fields, we are actually transforming material into something that’s attractive for the industry to use, to manufacture, to sell and there’s a lot of learning! The reason why we must execute an interdisciplinary approach in design is so that you will have the learning of different industries. When making recycled materials for new products, technology is not the issue. The challenge is the will to develop something truly new, because the process is slow and costly. But thanks to 60 years of data IT technology, this way of working is possible today.

In this moment of revolutionary materials innovation, why is it important for architects and designers working in the field of built environments to integrate materials research in their own practice?

Designers for the past century have been playing in the visible scale (from meters to millimeter). However, these old considerations are not really solving any real climate change or sustainability challenges; we can no longer rely on additive ways of designing on a visible scale. Technology—including the internet, information technology, database, and new manufacturing systems—enable architects, engineers and designers to innovate and design on a non-visible scale today which is in materials, the building block of all physical designs. 

In order for you to solve an environmental issue, you must design at the elemental building block level with new recycled material. Miniwiz’s design constraints like “single material” is to enable virgin or recycled material can be re-recycled. It has to be stronger and perform better to have a real market value. But how do you make post consumer recycled material stronger with better performance when the material is inherently weaker? Another constraint is to use no glue and no adhesives, so it can be re-recycled. The last constraint is about integrating into different manufacturing techniques, so these material can be scaled for new/old applications.

Miniwiz installation for Nike's #NatureAmplified exhibition

What are some considerations that designers often overlook when creating built environments? Why do you think these considerations are important for the future of the practice?

The considerations that designers overlook nowadays are: 

• Production embedded carbon footprint (that’s what everyone always forgets when they design)
• Toxicity (for the land, air, water in the production process)
• Operational carbon footprint (when you transfer to the user, there’s operational carbon footprint)
• Operational toxicity (like VOC, its operational toxicity in the air, water runoff. Does it have mercury or lead or toxic leaching from this product during use?)

According to the law of conservation of energy, everything goes to zero. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed; rather, it transforms from one form to another. At the end a designer should consider that the amount of material you put in, you have to take just as much material back. Why are we wasting perfectly good multiuse high performance space-age materials and letting them pollute our waterways and oceans. 

The difference between durable goods and consumer goods is that consumer goods have a short lifespan. Designers rarely considered the footprint and toxicity in the production process which accounts for close to 90% of a consumer product's embedded carbon footprint. Without these considerations, the design energy is literally a waste. No pun intended.

Eric Noble - 2016 Transportation Jury Captain

Professor, Vehicle Technology, Art Center College of Design

Eric is founder and president of The CARLAB, an advanced automotive consulting firm which helps manufacturers and suppliers plan and design new vehicles. Founded in 1999, it is the most influential auto product consultancy in North America, serving carmakers from Nissan to Ferrari, Toyota, VW, Honda and Subaru, in addition to industry suppliers such as Continental, global auto clubs and the energy industry. Eric is also Professor of Vehicle Technology at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, where most of the world’s top car designers are trained.

As a critic, consultant and an educator, what are the most important design considerations you look for in transportation designs?

Empathy. Were the designers able, figuratively, to get themselves into the shoes of the intended user?  Great design enhances the lives of those that use it.  Our job is to serve others, not ourselves.  

CARLAB engineered Bi-Fuel Ford Mustang GT.

There is a lot of speculation about the future of transportation, particularly for the auto industry. What innovations are you most excited about in the transportation field?

For nearly everyone, the promise of automation is tremendously exciting, and we agree.  But that won't come overnight, or even as fast as most pundits have predicted.  We're more than ok with that, since the process, and the partial automation that will evolve for years in the interim, will be very interesting.  The law of unintended consequences fully applied.  

How can transportation design transform the quality of people’s daily lives? Should it aspire to be design for social good?

Social good is a normative term, and has historically been the justification for all sorts of horrors.  Again, design should serve people.  And, yes, it can transform the quality of lives.  We're car and truck people at The CARLAB—never outgrew our Hot Wheels—but see the biggest need for inspired, new design in public transportation.  Urban planners and bureaucrats continue to attack the private vehicle in an attempt to make it less attractive for use in our cities and urban areas.  But hobbling the opponent is an act of cowardice.  If we had guts we'd admit that most public and mass transit systems are slow, uncomfortable,   

When are we getting our jet packs? 

What, you don't have yours yet?!

Don't wait until the regular entry prices are gone. Enter the 2016 Core77 Design Awards today! 

Design Job: Break New Ground at the Adidas Design Academy in Niederdorla, Germany

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Come take part in an exciting 24-month journey! The adidas Design Academy, focused on Apparel, Footwear or Graphic design, includes multiple departmental rotations every 5-6 months, including one assignment abroad. Creators will gain cross-functional knowledge in a 4-week rotation with the Brand Design, Product Marketing or Development teams.

View the full design job here

Will Porn Finally Make Virtual Reality Popular?

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Virtual Reality is well-established in the cultural consciousness thanks to generations of sci-fi but it's taken ages for the technology to get traction IRL. Thanks to recent leaps in affordability and portability, content producers are taking the intimate immersive tech to its only natural conclusion: using it to look at people doing sex. Now what once sounded like a '90s nerd fantasy or deep web specialty interest may change the way all kinds of consumers interact with their media, and themselves.

The popularity of Oculus Rift is still rocketing, Sony and HTC are going hard on their own VR headsets, and since most of us carry tiny video machines in our pockets, options like Google Cardboard make the bar for entry to Virtual Realities surprisingly low. With investors like Google and Microsoft taking the platform seriously it's harder to write it off as a fad, but what we'll actually use VR for in the future is unclear even to early adopters. This is a big reason the porn industry's interest in it is interesting.

I'm like a beautiful stallion!

Porn has been known to make or break media platforms. When porn producers backed VHS over Betamax, it stuck. Ditto with Blu-ray. Even the advent of cable TV had smut-makers to thank for its pay-worthy content. No matter how you feel about it politically, porn is a massive and innovative industry. When adult media companies start to invest time and energy in a certain new medium, it's a bid of confidence. And when a traditional porn company dedicates all of its production to the new platform, it's worth taking note. As of now, dozens of companies are producing VR content on a regular basis, and several have been for years—Barcelona's BaDoink has gone fully VR.

Reporters tried out this racy new content at this year's CES and the AVN Expo, to generally positive results. Among the normally optimistic but cautious tech talk there were mentions about how "visceral" and "crazy realistic" it is, how it's the "obvious future" of the industry, and that "porn will never be the same." Most popular were the first-person POV videos, where you take on the view and body of an actual porn star for the duration of a scene. For many, the feeling of inhabiting another person's body in a hyper-real, intimate, explicit and human-scale scene was startling... then intriguing. Not only is the content just plain bigger than on a standard computer screen, you get the sensation of having a new porn-ready body (abs, boobs, whatever you choose) as it's put to professional use.

Man, I'd look good with boobs.

The VR porn out there now is both traditional and high-tech. HoloGirlsVR offers 180 degree Point of View options with real actors and companies like Holodexxx are offering 360 degree environments and customizable CG characters. Big names like Naughty America and Kink are trialling production for both traditional, alternative, and kink content. There is enough being made that VR-specific content aggregators like VRSmash and SexLikeReal have sprung up online, and cater to multiple different viewing systems, and all kinds of viewers.

In them, the field of view is often limited, and in live-acted videos your movements don't affect the action. But in the case of a sitting or prone viewer, this doesn't seem distracting. Unlike in other VR applications, moving around to explore really isn't the point with porn. Which isn't to say exploration is unlikely. Because the only limit on who you can "be" is set by the content available, some viewers believe experiencing the POV of people of other genders or sexual orientations could have a humanizing effect you don't get in standard porn. The intimacy of the view could even allow for more comfort in personal exploration in general.

Ladies watch porn too, go on brush ya browser off.

But will "normal" people buy a fancy headset just for porn? And does this mean the future of porn will be interactive? Not necessarily, on either count. Many big hitters in the tech world believe that passive media are on the rise in general, and that interactive gaming and entertainment will soon be eclipsed by individual viewing experiences. William Rhys Dekle, senior director at Microsoft Game Studios has said "I think that in the next 10 years, the major changes we will see will be different forms of passive entertainment." Many professional futurists, like author Neil Stephenson (also a proponent of VR), share this view. Trends in the popularity of professional gaming as entertainment certainly support it. 

Other forward-looking tech folks think VR will be the thing to replace personal computing, or even smartphones. These claims are harder to sell, but sea change or not VR is estimated to be a $120 billion industry by 2020, and at least $20 billion is projected to come from porn.

So visionaries want our lives wrapped in VR, and VR porn wants us wrapped in new selves. Which wouldn't necessarily be bad. As Will Fulton at Digital Trends noted, "In addition to opening up whole new avenues of kink, the ability to viscerally inhabit bodies unlike our own has compelling implications for how VR experiences could be used to cultivate empathy." But not everyone is so optimistic. Like other types of porn, the VR version can be seen as an extremely isolating way of experiencing intimacy—literally cutting you off from the world around you, and can function to reinforce unrealistic norms around bodies and sex. At this stage it's unclear whether or not a VR environment will intensify any of these existing concerns.

Sleek, inviting, sssexy.

The tech issues are simpler. The interface itself is still pretty encumbered. You wear a bulky blinding headset, use headphones, have to run a couple programs, stay clear of the corresponding wires, and download rather than stream your content. If the Kinect had issues getting buy-in because people didn't want to look silly, will people be likely to don weird headgear just for an immersive erotic thrill? And speaking of that "immersive" experience, how will the sensory isolation relate to the desire for privacy? While it might be easier to hide what you're currently looking at, it might be easier to get walked in on once you're plugged in and going to town. Weirder looking sex toys exist, but as it stands streamlining will be helpful.

Visionaries want our lives wrapped in VR, and VR porn wants us wrapped in new selves.

Other technologies currently in development may make this kind of viewing experience even more compelling. Projects like Ultrahaptics are working on bringing haptic feedback and tactile sensation to VR. While it's still in the works, results are suggesting that simulated physical sensations to compliment interactive visuals might not be too far off. Immersive porn you "act" in and can feel? That could get pretty intense.

How long until there's VR porn of people using VR porn? 

If the concerns around isolation and self-consciousness are justified, the real/virtual blend of Augmented Reality might be the real goal, rather than full Virtual Reality. The use of total environments in VR makes for a compelling escape, but projecting content into real life and surroundings can give viewers a greater sense of believability and control. Plus AR tech is well on its way. Anyone with Snapchat has seen trivial augmentation in action, Pokemon Go is gameifying it in a handheld capacity, and brands like Microsoft are exploring its potential with serious tools like the HoloLens. While reviled, Google Glass already proved how much visual input we can fit into tiny wearables. Could the future of porn be a blended experience bringing actors and scenes into "real" personal spaces? Maybe AR would make shared viewing feasible?

As the high-tech sex entertainment industry develops, it'll be interesting to consider where the questions of good design come in. Is VR an intimacy tool that responds to the needs of users, or does its complexity detract from its value? Are we more likely to see VR (or AR) adopted through better wearables, or implants, or other environmental design... like the TV room in Farenheit 451? 

Are you turned off by the idea, or is this a step towards that jetpack/flying car/hoverboard/hot android you dream of?

This post is part of the Core77 Sex-tacular, our editorial series exploring the myriad ways that technology and design are shaping the future of intimacy and sex.

Kitchen Organizing: Managing the Leftovers

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When I work with people to help organize their kitchens, they often report problems in dealing with food storage containers. The cartoons you see with containers tumbling out of cabinets can be pretty close to the truth. I've written about leftover storage before, but I'm now seeing more interesting designs.

Sometimes end users keep a bunch of containers because they haven't found any they really like. The Clip & Close containers from Emsa, available in glass or plastic, are nicely designed to meet all the basic needs people describe. They stack, they are truly leak-proof (rather than leak-resistant), and the lids are pretty easy to open and close. They can be used in the freezer, microwave and dishwasher—and the glass ones can be used in the oven. They even have a 30-year guarantee!

Emsa explains that its containers work so well because the seal and lid are firmly attached to each other, with no gap between them.

But other end users have some specific challenges, such as what to do with the lids. If you store them on the containers, you use a lot of space. If you don't, the lids can create a mess. Rubbermaid addresses this with its Easy Find Lids, which snap together and also snap onto the bottom of the containers they go with. The one drawback: Not all end users will want plastic storage containers.

The Smart Spin System (and similar products such as the one from Handy Gourmet) provide containers and a rack to store them in. All the containers take the same size lid, which makes things simple. This is a nice compact storage solution, except the end user is stuck with the container sizes provided, and some purchasers say they wish there were larger ones. (There are many complaints from purchasers about the quality of the Handy Gourmet product, but the design is still interesting.) 

YouCopia's StoraStack comes in two versions: one for cabinets and one for drawers. This one does not come with containers; rather, it's designed to fit a number of common nested storage containers with snap-on lids, including those from Ziplock and Glad. End users who prefer those specific containers might find this a handy way to keep them organized. But some will find sliding the lids into the slots to be a bit too fiddly. (No product works for everyone.)

Storing the containers with the lids on them doesn't require much space when the containers are collapsible. These collapsible bowls from Aladdin get praised by purchasers for the screw-on lids; they are easy to attach and remove, and they stay securely in place. (With many other collapsible containers, end users complain about the lids popping off.) 

Another concern some end users have is keeping track of what's being stored, so things get used before they go bad. Sure, you can just label the container, but many people don't; keeping labels and pens around (and using them) is too bothersome. The DaysAgo digital day counter is an alternative; it attaches to a container using either a suction or magnetic base, and reminds the end user when the spaghetti sauce jar was opened or when the leftovers got put away. End users who like gadgets might use this when they'd never use ordinary labels. And they can use the DaysAgo with any storage containers they already have.

Joseph Joseph has recently come out with Dial, its stackable food storage containers with dateable lids. There are no separate gadget to attach to the containers, so there's nothing to interfere with stacking the containers as could happen if a DaysAgo counter was placed on a lid. The display also looks easier to read than the one on the DaysAgo. 

The end user can choose to display either the date stored or the use-by date; as long as one or the other is used consistently, there shouldn't be any confusion. The dial used to set the date moves with a simple finger touch, so no hand strength or special dexterity is needed. One drawback: The lids are not microwave safe, although the bases are. 

Yet another way to track freshness would be with Cuisinart's SmarTrack containers and app, which involves scanning a QR code and selecting the appropriate food type from the app. The end user can then get a reminder when the food is about to go bad; the app can also track the container's location. There's an Android and an iOS version of the app.

This product will appeal to some end users, I'm sure, but it's way too much effort for the people I know and work with. 

End users who use the microwave a lot might like the Wrap Bowl, designed by Kanae Tsukamoto; the silicone lid has a plug designed to let condensation and steam be released. (Of course, other lidded containers can be used if the lid isn't on so tight that steam can't escape, so this may not be a huge advantage.) The lid stretches over a ceramic bowl, so it's a good alternative to glass containers for those end users who prefer not to use plastics for food storage. One disadvantage: Since it's not transparent, the end user will either need to remember what's stored inside or attach some sort of label to the bowl.

Glasslock now has containers with handles. That's not a feature I've ever heard anyone ask for, but it probably makes it easier to transport larger containers, which can get heavy. However, while most purchasers are happy, some have reported problems with the handles breaking; a review that says "works great except for the handle" isn't very encouraging.

So, You've Graduated...Now What?

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After the initial euphoria of graduating college begins to dissipate, a far more annoying voice takes up residence in your mind, persistently asking you that impossible question: "What Now?!" It's likely the first time in your life that you lack a clear structure or path forward—the next step is all up to you. Especially in the design world, where you can pursue a multitude of directions, it can be hard to know which way to go. The good news is that the design landscape is evolving in such a way that your decision doesn't have to be so black or white. There is an emerging culture of young designers who leave school with a vision—and find ways to bring it to reality.

Of course it helps if you've been exposed to a forward-thinking design program. At the Istituto Europeo di Design (IED)—an Italian network of design schools with branches in Italy Spain and Brazil—the focus is on combining a more traditional, theoretical approach with concrete problem solving methods grounded in the real world. The faculty is composed of working professional designers who bring strong experiences in the industry to the table. As former student Andrea Caruso Dalmas puts it, IED is a recipe for learning success: "1 year. 10 trips to the best design cities of Europe. 15 young and hungry designers. Numerous workshops led by top international designers. Shake. The result is a magic experience in learning by doing."

We caught up with three recent IED grads who have not only survived the student-to-professional transition, but even thrived while doing so. Each of the following designers have used the lessons they gathered during school and used them as a launching pad to pursue their unique approach to design.

Andrea Caruso Dalmas

As I worked alongside a group of very different designers [at IED], I realized that each one of them had a unique story...in design, and in life, there is no formula.

Andrea Caruso Dalmas's design studio, Ciszak Dalmas—cofounded with Alberto Gobbino Ciszak after they both graduated from IED in 2009—approaches design from multiple angles. In a holistic manner they consider everything from material research and sourcing through to the final phases of design. With a precise eye, they also develop the art direction for each of their products, creating a context for their work and the beginnings of a worldview. The duo also launched La Clinica Design, a separate brand based in Madrid that focuses on limited edition products using local materials and handmade by local artisans.

For a relatively young studio, they have already attained a well-defined aesthetic and philosophy. "As I worked alongside a group of very different designers [at IED], I realized that each one of them had a unique story," notes Dalmas. "I learned that in design, and in life, there is no formula—as soon as you start digging into your own set of potentials you can develop the kind of work that is unique to you. The most important help you receive [from the professors] is support, but then you have to close your eyes and jump into the darkness. If you are still alive when you recover then you have the right energy for an entrepreneurial project."

Dalmas stayed on at IED as a professor, teaching courses in Product Design, Design Thinking as well as Strategic and Communication Design. We asked him to tell us the most important piece of advice he gives his students with entrepreneurial leanings of their own: "You have to take care of many different aspects of the business and be able to carry them on simultaneously. The most important thing is to always remain humble and curious."

Serena Bonomi

Being a flexible designer is directly linked to one's curiosity and interest in being challenged to step outside their comfort zone.

Serena Bonomi completed both her undergraduate and graduate studies at IED. In the beginning, she was driven by the desire to create beautiful things but over the course of her tenure she began to develop a more nuanced approach to design. "IED pushed me to dive beyond the surface and go deeper into understanding the complexity behind any product or service," she explains. "By studying the way people perceive objects beyond aesthetics, through the lenses of sociology, marketing and other disciplines, I gained a 360° view of design that formed my current approach: merging the two 'opposites' of creativity and rationality toward the common goal of creating a fulfilling experience on multiple levels."

Her view of design as "creative rationality," as she calls it, culminated at IED with her award-winning project proposal for a BMW Creative Lab Design Contest in 2014. "My concept came from a very broad analysis of people's activities while commuting. I wanted my product to support a wide range of lifestyles so I created a line of jackets made of modular panels that can be reconfigured to target different types of people." Her success led her to a double internship first with BMW Designworks and afterwards at Napajiri. Within these diverse professional environments, she's had to draw on the lessons she learned at IED. "Being a flexible designer is directly linked to one's curiosity and interest in being challenged to step outside their comfort zone. IED is structured to foster nimbleness. The courses stimulate you to explore alternative industries and creative fields to bring different types of knowledge into each project."

Lorenzo Longo

Good design is being able to tell a story—transmitting experiences and feelings—through form.

"I didn't immediately plan on having my own studio," remembers Italian designer Lorenzo Longo. "The day after I graduated from IED I started working as a design consultant for Pirelli. I was the only designer in a team of over 100 engineers, it wasn't easy to be so outnumbered but I had the opportunity to be exposed to all the problems of industrial development. After a year I grew a little bored of designing only tires, so I continued working for Pirelli in the day but started developing my personal projects by night." Since launching his own studio, De-Signum Studio Lab, in 2006, Longo has worked with a broad range of clients while streamlining a clean aesthetic that is also capable of transmitting an experience or feeling. "In my opinion the term design means first of all 'story,'" he explains.  

To develop his practice, Longo went back a bit to the ideas he developed at school. "IED gives you a methodology to approach design problems but at the same time it gives you the space to build your own creative identity," he notes. In fact, one of his school assignments ended up evolving into a product design hit. "During a lighting design course at IED I started working on my first design for a lamp. At that time, Mirage was just a little model made of cardboard but two years later it was a product in the catalogue of Kundalini." Today, Longo's studio, De-Signum, has grown into a multitasking design enterprise working across product design, architecture and interior design. "We are constantly receiving new projects in Italy and abroad for both big, established brands and smaller companies. I'm actually working on my sixth product for Kundalini right now."

Learn more about Istituto Europeo di Design (IED) and their international network of design programs!


Creative Business: A Chat with Studio [D] Tale at Design Indaba 2016

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Perhaps Studio [D] Tale is a creative business with a social edge—or maybe it's a social impact project with an eye towards business. Whichever is appropriate—the joint studio of Safia Qureshi and Maxwell Mutanda is far from your average architecture firm. Last week, on the stage of Design Indaba 2016 in Cape Town, the pair presented recent work from their recent projects across the UK, South Africa and Zimbabwe. 

Mutanda and Qureshi at Design Indaba 2016

Perhaps most notable is the project 'CupClub'—a plan and product for tackling the issue of disposable coffee cups across London (and any city for that matter). The duo first gained recognition for the concept of CupClub after its launch at London Design week and are now finalizing a pilot program that will launch later this year.

CupClub is beautiful it its simplicity and pragmatism. The disposable coffee cups is redesigned for washability while maintaining the key features we have come to expect of our to-go coffee. The new and improved cup and paired with an underlying service design that washes them and redistributes them to vendors. CupClub goes a step further providing opportunity to brand the cups of each vendor, blending seamlessly into an existing system while lowering pollution and trash.

Qureshi and Mutanda met at the Bartlett School of Architecture as students. Upon graduation, Qureshi would go on to run large-scale architectural projects in London while Mutanda returned to Zimbabwe to take up a job in branding. The two would rejoin in 2013 to begin the studio that would work across the two cities on projects ranging from product to service design. 

We caught up with the charismatic pair to ask them about the studio, their plans for CupClub and knowing just the right moment for an idea.

Core77: At what point did you decide to set up Studio [D] Tale?

Qureshi: I set up the studio with the idea to do something that was different. I was very frustrated with my role as an architect, which had been a bit derailed - mainly lining the pockets of big developers. It became a very demoralizing industry in London specifically – and I wanted to really focus. 

We set up the studio in 2013 and I think the inspiration came from the idea of creating a studio that was global as well as local. Africa as an emerging market and for various cities that are going through rapid urbanization it's a very interesting place to explore - especially for social impact. [In contrast] London has fantastic access to innovation, funding, opportunity that are global level and you have this ability to create smaller studio or satellite to look at specifically whats happening on the ground—grass roots level. If you bring them together it becomes really powerful. So I asked Max—why don't you join and set up a studio from Harare and Cape Town lets see how it goes and run some projects. 

Qureshi presenting at Design Indaba 2016

Core77: What kind of projects or clients did you begin with? 

Qureshi: So we started with residential product in London. Max was looking at interventions and specifically setting up projects that dealt with infrastructure. It's almost as if we are avoiding doing a real building but were doing everything else - because it's what we want to understand and explore.

Mutanda: Also, when you start out—you always know what you don't want to do.

Qureshi: Yes, and we didn't want to become a product of clients that had come to us. Its not a criticism—but you start to do work that is a mirror of the work that has come to you—as opposed to developing the work yourself. It's a hard process because you have to turn the whole thing upside down –you're not getting funding straight up—you're going out looking for opportunities, building teams and getting partnerships or sponsorships to get funding at the end. It's a lot of upfront work, but it means that you can do the work that you want and draft the way you design your studio.

Core77: One of the most striking things about your work is that there isn't just a service or product—there's actually an underlying business model—how does that work logistically?

Qureshi: When we set up the studio I didn't think that every year after that I would be setting up a new company. But then you challenge yourself and say if you're not providing just a service, if you've done all this research and innovation—who's going to implement this but you? 

Qureshi: Suddenly, it becomes a factory for these smaller startups. So CupClub is the first to come out—and it's the most fast-paced. At the moment we have aligned partners and we are doing a pilot and in September we will know the results and then hopefully get funded. We've really set up a entirely new business with its own entity and its own experts that has grown from the mothership as you might say.

Core77: Where did the idea for Cup Club originate?

Mutanda: When Safia first voiced CupClub, there was another project at the front of our minds. [CupClub] wasn't even on the back burner, but she came and said 'oh I've been thinking about this thing' and I just said do it—do it now! You know what they say about luck is just opportunity meeting hard work and that's really what this was.

Qureshi: I was on the train and I did this little sketch because I saw these guys with cups and they got off and they threw it in this bin and I thought ah.. this is going to become a bigger bin, and a bigger bin—and I said to Max we don't have time for this right now we will get to this later.

CupClub prototypes

But a week after, I was at this event where someone from the Greater London Authority stood up and said we are looking for new interventions to reduce waste in the city. He just named everything that that sketch embodied, and I thought you've got to be really stupid if you don't take him aside and talk to him about this. So he said come and see me in a month and I though—now I've got to do this. 

So I said to the team lets just hold back on this for a second and focus on the cups. You can't do everything—you have to follow whatever is catching fire first. Quickly, every door started opening and then you know you're doing something right when things are moving that fast.

Core77: In most of your projects, technology is really at the forefront. How has that developed as a core feature of your practice?

Qureshi: It's paramount. Technology is really empowering and it's empowering to everyone, and it's accessible to everyone. Even in Africa—a fruit seller with a mountain of oranges and a rickety cart will have two phones. Why not harness that? Everyone has access to a phone—make that an opportunity to let people into this entire web—it's mandatory. And what's amazing is we've only just started and I'm looking forward to what will happen on the next level.

Mutanda: I think it's the time that we are in, everything you do has to somehow relate to what's going on. There is this infusion of technology in everything.

Core77: What's on the horizon for Studio [D] Tale? Are there some projects you're excited to get started on?

Qureshi: There are so many projects we haven't talked about and are in the pipeline, we've done volumes of research and just put it there. There are those projects that are waiting for this thing to fly out. I genuinely believe there is a time for everything and projects are the same you can't push them you have to let them simmer away and there will be an opportunity when someone comes up to you and says I've been looking for exactly this.

Thanks to Safia Qureshi and Maxwell Mutanda for sharing their experiences with us. We certainly look forward to what is next on the horizen for Studio [D] Tale. For more of their work see their website.

Did This Graphic Designer Mean to Enter Our Sex Toy Design Challenge?

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According to the Chinese calender it's Year of the Monkey. San-Francisco-based designer Lehu Zhang wanted to design a poster to commemorate it, and came up with this:

Well. Around 8,000 people retweeted the image with the hashtag "#designfail" conferred by entertainment publicist Greg Veks.

The thick-skinned Zhang is taking it in stride. "A monkey face was my initial plan," he writes on his portfolio page. "But as long as I was drawing, this turned out. For sure I knew what I made before I post it. So I would say it was a double-meaning poster at very beginning, no matter it was accidentally or not. I apologize if it hurts somebody but all I wanted was to celebrate new year and make some funny thing.

"Happy new year."

How the Hell Did They Shoot This?!?

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Here's the absolute most fun-to-watch action sports video I've seen in the past year, and it was all shot in a single amazing take. Watching it, I was so in awe of the coordination required to pull this off that I completely missed a crucial production detail. First off, watch the vid, which we've cued up to the appropriate two minutes:

As for that detail: How the hell did they shoot this? Rewinding back to the opening frames, we can spot the shadow of a cameraman toting a steadicam rig:

To be able to follow these pros while accelerating and decelerating at will, using only gravity and body control, and also while managing to keep the (heavy) camera rig pointed in the right direction is an amazing feat. But sadly, the cameraperson him- or herself gets no green flag.

The video was put out in collaboration between Burton and Green Label, the latter being Mountain Dew's promotional arm. Sadly I was not able to find any mention of the crew or cameraman involved in this project. I was, however, able to find a video released this week of Abe Kislevitz, Chris Farro and Caleb Farro, three of the follow-cam professionals that GoPro uses:

To give you a further idea of what these follow-cam guys go through, watch this video of GoPro production artist Matt Cook striving to capture the perfect framing of Travis Rice getting air. What must the pressure be like, when your re-set consists of waiting for a helicopter to take you back up to the top?

If anyone comes across any details of the Peace Park cameraperson, please do let us know in the comments; the man or woman deserves credit!

An Organization That Lands Airplanes in Crazy Places to Provide Aid

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Remember our story on Backpack Medics in Burma? These incredibly brave, and fit, men and women strap on rucks filled with medical supplies—then literally run through a jungle crawling with hostile military forces and landmines in order to bring supplies to remote villages. Then they run back. There is no other way to deliver these crucial medical supplies, and the importance of the Backpack Health Workers Team cannot be understated.

Another organization that does similar work, albeit with better funding and technology, is the Mission Aviation Fellowship. They've amassed a fleet of Cessnas and other "bush planes," i.e. small, sturdy craft that can land and take off from impossibly short runways. With specially-trained pilots and 52 planes spread over 15 bases in Africa, Asia, Eurasia and Latin America, the MAF can get help to otherwise inaccessible places in the Congo, Nepal, Papua, Haiti and elsewhere.

Following an open letter by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that asks how real-life superheroes can make a difference in helping the impoverished, Dustin from Smarter Every Day paid a visit to the MAF. In the following video we learn about their training, see some of the cool design features that enable their planes to do what they do, and get to see a couple of landings on unlikely airstrips:

You can learn more about the MAF, and read stories from some of the pilots, here.

Design Job: Possess a Genuine Love for Making? Join Sphero as their next Motion Graphics Designer in Boulder, CO

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Seeking exceptional motion graphics designers with expertise in Cinema 4D and a focus on animation (can you model products in Cinema 4D, then bring it to life with animation?). Primary responsibility will be to conceptualize, design and produce top notch work (both in motion and static) from concept to completion.

View the full design job here
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