Plenty of people tout innovative uses for recycled plastic, from vertical gardens made out of discarded plastic bottles to this unnecessarily robust coin purse. But, at the end of the day, many of these designs fall short because they're not creating a product that is desirable when divorced from the fact that they are, in fact, byproducts of waste.

The adidas x Parley is an exception to that paradigm—a shoe from recycled plastic that you actually want to wear, not just because you're saving the earth, but because it looks good, too. As you might surmise from the name, adidas x Parley is the product of a collaboration with Parley for the Oceans, an initiative that invites creators to raise awareness and protect ocean life through various projects. To bring this project to life, adidas also reached out to long-time collaborator Alexander Taylor, a London-based industrial designer.

The environmentally-friendly sneakers use two kinds of recycled plastic: PET, which you probably know since water bottle manufacturing has made it nearly ubiquitous, and nylon 6 gill-net, a material salvaged off the coast of Africa from illegal fishermen. "It is just part of the 72 [kilometers] of net which was pulled in by hand and brought back to port in La Rochelle prior to sending a small amount to us," Taylor says. "The white part of the shoe is recycled PET, which was produced using PET rubbish collected during a clean up operation in the Maldives in November last year."

Taking after adidas' already iconic running shoe silhouette, the adidas x Parley features a thin sole and sleek form, but diverges with its stylized exterior— concentric layers of teal nylon woven around the upper of the sneaker with a white, bubbly-textured PET sole. "This was a very special project in many ways—one of which being that we were able to create a design that could stand outside the more familiar and recognizable [adidas] lines . . . something which I was very conscious of was that [the shoes] should also be in some way intuitive to the cause," explains Taylor. "The 'wave' graphic came naturally, following the shell pattern of the shoe, and we worked and developed that design and graphic for the original shoes." The upper alone repurposes 16.5 plastic bottles and 13 grams of nylon.

Due to an unusually strict timeline (Taylor only had a few weeks to design and produce the kicks in order to officially unveil them at the United Nations earlier this year), the designer was forced to work quickly, using electrical wire to swiftly execute his first functional prototypes until the final material was ready. "It was really only a matter of [6] days to create the first couple of pairs which were presented at the UN," Taylor says.

That initial prototype with the final materials, while successful in proving the concept, turned out to be too stiff for actual wear. After the launch, Taylor and his team went back to the drawing board, experimenting with new ways of manufacturing and integrating the plastic.

"Every time we received a new material or slightly different weight, quality— something happened which was unexpected and then, of course, you have to re-think," Taylor says. "Even to retain the graphic with a different scale of green gill-net was a challenge." As with any adidas shoe, performance played an integral role, so each prototype had to be tested across hundreds of miles for endurance, as well as pass strenuous flex tests to ensure durability.

Re-engineered gill net bobbins: The white bobbins are PET, reprocessed using plastic collected during a clean-up operation in the Maldives and the green bobbins are nylon form illegal fishing deep sea gill nets, salvaged off the coast of West Africa.

After a year of engineering and rejiggering, the team arrived at a process that worked well, one which required grinding the nylon plastic to a powder and then extruding it. "This process required a huge amount of work by Kelli George in the Portland material development team," Taylor says. "The gill-net is nylon 6, perhaps one of the worst types of plastic to work with, so the first focus was to make this [material] soft enough for comfort and to work mechanically on the shoe. [It took] many rounds of processing, but the material now on the bobbins is such a high quality even when compared to virgin materials. It's amazing."

Turns out, salvaging used fishing nets from the ocean poses its own unique set of challenges. "I remember with the first shoe, I had a conversation with John Warner (green chemist, and friend to Parley) and he was telling me how he had to first try and get rid of the smell of rotting fish, as well as all the lead and foreign articles caught in the net," Taylor says. "Subsequently, the cleaning aspect of the material is still relatively 'low tech' however, this is just one of the process's challenges which still needs to be developed."

For the final construction of the shoe, adidas uses an embroidery technology commonly found in the automotive and aerospace sectors. Recycled plastic is towed off the bobbin and laid onto the machine bed, where it is then stitched over itself to build up multiple layers. "The advantage of this technology from a performance context is the idea that the network of material can be engineered in a way that responds to biomechanics and the athlete's or consumer's requirements for support and flexibility variation," Taylor says. "In addition to building the layers, we are also able to control the direction of the fibers and filaments to create the best possible structures. With regards to efficiency of material, we only need to lay down the specific material required, resulting in practically zero waste."

Despite overcoming a slew of challenges to bring adidas x Parley to production, the shoes won't be going to mass production anytime soon, partially due to the significant amount of hand-labor required for each pair. "There were many challenges and there still are many elements we are working on in order to refine further and continue developing to ensure we have the best possible product," Taylor says.

Those interested in the upcycled kicks will have to move fast. Adidas is only giving away 50 pairs of the limited edition shoes to individuals lucky—and creative— enough to enter their Instagram contest. Announced earlier this month in time for World Oceans Day, the contest invites sneaker-heads and micro-filmmakers alike to create an Instagram video sharing how they'll reduce single-use plastic from their lives. The contest runs until July 31 (complete rules can be found on adidas' social media accounts).

Natural experiences, especially in hospital settings, serve as positive emotion boosters. When patients are having fun, it’s easier for them to learn and to heal. But natural materials are dangerous for kids with weak immune systems who can’t be exposed to germs and bacteria. Katie Stoudemire, founder of Wonder Connection, a program with a mission to bring the natural world to pediatric patients, envisioned a product that lets hospitalized kids get their hands dirty. From her work in environment

There's no storage in my bathroom, so last weekend's DIY project was to build this simple shelf over the sink using scraps.

The three walls of the nook are neither flat nor square. I had just one piece of scrap pine to use for the shelf, and needed to cut both ends at different angles to get it to fit properly. So I built this simple jig out of more scraps to "measure" the angles, then trace them onto the shelf:

It worked okay. Then, the very next day I see this thing online:

That is officially the most useful-looking tool with the worst-quality product video ever.

While it wouldn't have been wide enough to measure both angles of my shelf in a single shot, I could've done one side at a time and gotten close results.

It's called the Angle-izer and it goes for about $22 on Amazon.

Do you guys and gals have any of your own DIY angle-transferring solutions? (Preferably the kind that don't involve math….)

Brooklyn Bridge Park is an oasis of calm in New York City, providing stunning waterside views and some much-needed greenery. To further isolate the park's Pier 3 Greenway Terrace, the developers constructed a 45-foot sound-attenuating hill behind it, blocking the noise of the city and traffic on the other side.

The problem is that weeds have begun attacking the hill. These cannot be controlled with pesticides, thanks to the park's sensible "organic-only" regulations, and sending city workers onto the treacherous slopes to pull the weeds has been deemed unworkable. Thus Rebecca McMackin, the park's Director of Horticulture, has struck upon a better solution: Rescue goats.

Four Nubian goats—Eyebrows, Hector, Horatio and Minnie—were rescues from a petting zoo that was shut down, and are now contentedly fenced onto the hill during the daytime. The creatures have no problem navigating the slope, and spend their day going up and down the hill, seeking out weeds and consuming them. "They don't eat the grasses as much they eat the weeds, they literally have a preference," McMackin told Gothamist. "This is a goat paradise. They're thrilled."

The goats will be allowed to freely roam the berm each day, and at night will be housed in a covered shed on the property, where they'll have access to food and water. Brooklyn Bridge Park plans to keep them for two months before reassessing if they are a sustainable answer to the weed problem. If all goes according to plan, the goats will move in permanently.

…Cute as they may be, however, the park is going to great lengths to keep them away from people. "In order for this project to work, they can't be disturbed by the public," McMackin stressed. "We need the public to not pester them and especially not to feed them. If they're being given food, they won't be hungry enough to eat the weeds, and if they don't do their job the project will be a failure."

The Prospect Park Alliance has also used goats to rid their site of weeds, explaining that the animals are a superior choice to machinery. As The Daily News reports,

"It's feasible to go in with people, but that part of the park is incredibly steep," [said Alliance spokeswoman Grace McCreight], adding that the area in question is too heavily wooded and precipitous for machinery. "Sending a person up those slopes would be a very strenuous climb…. It is more cost-efficient to do this kind of work with goats than with humans."

Incidentally, New York City's nickname of Gotham was borrowed from a town in Nottinghamshire, England. In Old English, "Got-" = "goat," and "-ham" = "home," loosely translated as "goat homestead."

Last night's GoT season finale had something for everyone: Schemers, revenge-seekers, fans of political intrigue…and book nerds. Nearly halfway through last night's extra-long episode, we're treated to a few fleeting, magnificent shots of what is meant to be the greatest library within that fantasy universe, and it does not disappoint.

For the GoT-non-initiated, a character named Samwell is sent to study at The Citadel in Oldtown order to become a "maester." (It's akin to being shipped off to an elite university in order to earn PhD's in everything from history to medicine to political science.) Once Sam arrives at the city limits, he catches a glimpse of The Citadel:

It is a massive and imposing structure, perhaps even more impressive than The Red Keep at King's Landing because there are no other tall structures around it.

Architecturally, the style is vague. One of the brilliant achievements of GoT's set-design team, led by production designer Deborah Riley, is that they successfully apply a mishmash of real-world ancient architectural styles—Roman, Egyptian, Mayan, Moorish, Greek, Germanic, Indian, etc.—without tipping their hand; at least with the computer-generated environments, you'll see no telltale, entirely Gothic or Romanesque arches, for instance. By carefully avoiding real-world, historical analogs, the designers convince you that this is indeed an alternate universe.

That lack of analog is evident once Sam enters the Citadel library, which is stunning. I was particularly fascinated to see that the designers really did take time to think the space out, from a functional standpoint, while simultaneously incorporating fantastical architectural elements. First off, the first problem with such a massive space, in an electricity-free world, is how to provide light. All of the interior illumination in Game of Thrones' other massive structure is provided by torch and candle. But in what is essentially that world's largest tinderbox, filled as it is with paper, open flame is inadvisable. While we do see a few candles in the reception area…

…once Sam enters a book-lined passageway to reach the library proper, he's given no torch or lantern, and we see there's not a single sconce along the way:

Entering the main hall, we see that natural light is of course provided via clerestory windows.

Nitpickers among you will note that the chamber is octagonal, with at least one pair of clerestory windows clearly installed within adjoining facets of an octagon, and that this does not jive with the exterior shot of the building.

If you noticed that, you suffer from what I call the Designer's Curse. I've said to friends that being trained in ID unlocked my imagination while grounding me in the practicalities of how things are physically made; this means that, while watching Game of Thrones, I can suspend disbelief for the dragons but cannot get over Samwell's clearly machine-quilted jacket.

In any case, back to the lighting. In order to distribute light around the space, the designers have created something that's part-Alexander-Caldwell, part-Edwin-Hubble: A massive mobile consisting of enormous lenses, designed to magnify and reflect incoming sunlight around the chamber.

One of these beams fortuitously illuminates Sam.

Something else that tickled me was when we catch a glimpse of the furniture and its attendant details. Even in a fantasy world, they cannot get 24-inch wide boards. Here you can see the reading surface of the carrels consists of two boards joined edge-grain-to-edge-grain.

The support structure of the bench appears to be joined with a cross-lap.

And we see that the space is cavernous, absolutely loaded with stories (pun intended.)

All of those levels require some means of ascending—or multiple means. I love the sheer architectural chaos of the space: It looks like several generations of architects and contractors were hired and fired at various stages of the construction. One firm was clearly a fan of spiral staircases, where the next opted for conventional stairs. One contractor clearly had ties to a stone distributor, while another insisted on working with natural wood.

All in all the space is meant to awe, and for me at least it was completely successful. To those of us who grew up loving books, if walking into a space such as this, how could we not have this expression on our faces?

We've been longtime fans of Local Motors, the low-volume vehicle manufacturer whose crowdsourced approach might be the antidote to corporate-designed cars. And we were really excited to hear that their Rally Fighter would be featured in Transformers 4. Then, unfortunately, we saw Transformers 4.

But there's another Hollywood property with more promising prospects that will also put the Rally Fighter on the silver screen. The producers of the Fast & Furious franchise have just released images of the vehicles that will be featured in the upcoming Fast 8, and the Rally Fighter will apparently be used to conquer Iceland, driven by Michelle Rodriguez's Letty character:

(By the bye, if you're wondering what's up with those spots on the tires, read about our trip to Iceland where we explain.)

The Letty-in-a-Rally-Fighter pairing makes the forthcoming film's more conventional car choices seem ho-hum. Vin Diesel's Dominic Toretto will, of course, be charging across the landscape in a modified Dodge Charger that seems to attract lead:

Tyrese Gibson's Roman will be behind the wheel of what looks to be a Lamborghini Aventador (bor-ring….)

Ludacris' Tej follows Letty's lead with another small-batch ride, a modified version of the Ripsaw EV2 "luxury tank" manufactured by Howe & Howe:

Probably the strangest vehicle of all will be piloted by The Rock's Hobbs, who drives this "Ice Ram:"

As you can see, the business end is in the back, and the "ram" part doesn't refer to the vehicle's function; rather, it's based on a Dodge Ram pickup truck.

Fast 8 zooms into theaters next April. And no, this is not sponsored content, I'm just a fan. And yes, I'm aware that the franchise isn't exactly Fellini. But we all have our guilty pleasures. Anytime a character can tell another character that "I live my life a quarter mile at a time" without a trace of irony, guilt or shame, I'm completely in.

By the bye, I always wondered if that line came across strange when translated overseas. "I live my life 0.402 kilometers at a time."

The Johnson & Johnson Medical Devices organization is seeking a multi-faceted, exceptionally talented, user-centered Senior Manager, Industrial Design & Human Factors (IDHF) who is passionate about improving the quality of people's lives through compelling design experiences. This position will be located

Earlier this year, a two-year-old in Minnesota died when a Malm dresser from Ikea toppled over and crushed him. You may remember that Ikea was in the news for something similar in 2014, when another two two-year-olds suffered the same fatal mishap. (See: "When Furniture Kills:" Let's Cut Through The Hype.)

Yesterday Lars Peterson, Ikea's U.S. president, told NBC that they're issuing a massive recall for nearly 30 million Malm dressers. At press time the Malm had disappeared from Ikea's U.S. website. The company is offering to buy back Malm units outright, or to send free anchoring kits to owners who wish to keep them (although these kits were already included with the original purchase).

Headlines in U.S. publications are referring to the Malm as "dangerous dressers." The lawyer representing two of the families refers to the Malm as "defective dressers." Reactions I've seen on social media have been predictably shrill, making Ikea out to be merchants of death. 

However, the truth is that the Malm is no more dangerous than any other dresser of similar proportions made out of similar materials, of which there are millions in the world. If there is a design defect with the Malm line, then there is a design defect with all dressers in that their form factors involve drawers going up and down their height.

The danger of any dresser presents itself when too many of the drawers, particularly closer to the top, are extended. If a child begins climbing or pulling on the drawers when the bulk of the contents' weight is no longer over the dresser's feet, disaster can ensue. That's basic physics. That's why Ikea includes an anchoring kit and instructions for how to use it with all of their dressers. 

It should also be noted that the tipping problem is not limited to dressers and units with drawers. Here's a video from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission from seven years ago, well before the current round of media hype, trying to warn parents of the dangers of unsecured tall furniture, regardless of brand. (Warning: Though there is no actual human harm depicted here, this video is tough to watch, and will be doubly tough for parents to watch—although they certainly should.)

Now let's add some perspective here. The death of three children is horrible, and our hearts of course go out to the families that have had to go through this hell. A total of six child deaths can be attributed to Ikea dressers if we go all the way back to 1989.

That's six deaths in 27 years.

According to the CPSC, a child dies every two weeks from having furniture or a television fall on them. Spread over 27 years, that's 2,808 deaths. That means Ikea is responsible for less than 1% of all furniture-or-TV-based child deaths, at roughly 0.2% over that 27-year period.

Yet it is Ikea, and not any of the other manufacturers "responsible" for that other 99.8% of the deaths, that is being sued by two sets of parents.

Which is what all of this is really about: Not a design defect, not manufacturing negligence. This is about suing people, this is about hiring lawyers to enact court proceedings that will move money from one bank account into another's. The reason that you don't hear about lawsuits involving that other 99.8% is because those are spread out amongst myriad manufacturers. Ikea, in contrast, presents a big, fat, highly visible, singular target.

Some people will say that these lawsuits are about highlighting child safety. Well, according to the CDC, two children drown in America every day. If we plug that into the 27-year figure that's 19,710 deaths. Water kills a lot more children than furniture. To be more precise, water is 3,285 times more likely to kill a child than an Ikea dresser is. But we don't hear about a lot of swimming pool installers being sued nor bathtubs recalled.

There are at least two takeaways here. First off, if you live in a household with children and own tall furniture of any variety, PLEASE take the time to anchor them to your wall. If you have friends who are parents, please urge them to do the same. And if you or they don't know how to do it, you'll find plenty of videos on YouTube demonstrating the process. You might need to spend a few bucks on a drill, a studfinder and/or some wall anchors, but it's money well spent.

Secondly, let this be a lesson to those of you that design/build/sell your own furniture. If it's something tall and you've not designed in some type of anchoring system, and ensured that your customers know about it, you might be asking for trouble.

This is the latest installment of our Core77 Questionnaire. Previously, we talked to Mauro Porcini, CDO of PepsiCo.

Name: Keetra Dean Dixon

Occupation: Designer. When I'm speaking to people within the design field I'll specify further: lettering, experiential design and a little bit of object design.

Location: Currently rural Alaska, but soon to be Rhode Island (for a teaching position at the Rhode Island School of Design starting this fall) and rural Alaska. 

Current projects: I'm a bit splintered right now. Since I've gotten the teaching gig, I've been working on curriculum. Actually the act of constructing an experiential design course is kind of long-form experiential design itself, so I'm having fun with that. I'm also planning a giant studio makeover. 

My practice after relocating to Rhode Island is going to narrow to outputting goods that spur or reflect the creative process. A good example is the retooling crayons I've been making. The goal was to encapsulate a beginner's approach to creativity and combine it with the designer, or artist's, tendency to fetishize tools and view them as sacred. I wanted to create an object that codes a question to users outside of the design or arts practice, that made them ask, Is this a tool to use or an object to keep? 

Keetra Dean Dixon's ReTool Crayons, 2015 ongoing.

Mission: Unite my love of learning, making and teaching into a singular studio practice. In regards to teaching, to encourage the integration of R&D into more traditional graphic design methods. More generally and for self-authored work, my goal is always to facilitate or reflect social relation, to question understood patterns and standards, and to cultivate an openness with play.

When did you decide that you wanted to be a designer? I grew up in Alaska and I really didn't know what design was, nor did it occur to me that there was a design action involved in object-making. During undergrad I took an entry-level graphic design course as part of my foundational studies, and was introduced to Gestalt psychology and the general principles of perception. That's when I knew this is absolutely the thing for me! It was a relief to have this general set of guides to help me understand, in a more objective way, how other people were perceiving visual work. That was my first taste of what the deeper design methodologies had to offer. Gestalt psychology totally seduced me into design. 

Visual foreword for Digital Design Theory by Princeton Architectural Press, Fall 2015.

Education: I went to the Minneapolis College of Art and Design on a painting scholarship, and later changed my major to graphic design. For my graduate degree I went to Cranbrook and studied 2D design, although a majority of the work I was doing was actually three-dimensional and experiential.

First design job: At MCAD I assumed that I never wanted to work in advertising, but I had zero actual experience in the field. So I decided I should try it out before I ruled it out and I got an internship at Carmichael Lynch in Minneapolis. I loved it! I was working with fantastic people who were really passionate about what they were doing, and who had a hyper-stringent, hyper-structured internal method. That's actually where I learned a lot of thinking strategies that I still use now. I'm super thankful for that job. 

The Anonymous Hugging Wall, Ongoing series. First Installation appeared in Alaska, 2008.

What was your big break? After graduating MCAD in 1999, I moved out to San Francisco and landed a job with a group called Futurefarmers. They were making waves on the Internet as very early aesthetic form makers, by exploring interactivity in unusual ways, and by making new definitions of what was possible on the web. I had a crush on their aesthetic in general, so when I got a job with them it very much felt like I had made it. 

When I started working there it was just three people including me, and the studio was really an extension of the founder, Amy Franceschini. At the time she was doing 50% client-based work and 50% self-authored work, but she wanted to transition into completely self-authored work. Essentially, my role became taking over all of the client work and emulating her in a way. She would invite me into her office and I would stand over her shoulder and watch her work; it really became this mentor-mentee relationship. During my process of learning the ways of design, I think I lost some of the playfulness and intuitive exploration that just comes naturally, before you've been trained into a method. Amy gave me permission to integrate all that stuff back into my way of working. And she gave me a ton of autonomy, which thinking back on it, was insane but incredibly trusting.

Describe your workspace: My husband and occasional work partner, JK Keller and I live on 18 acres in Alaska. The land is on the top of the Chugach mountain range, just a bit above tree-line so we have a lot of low-lying bush, and because our house is built in the middle of a wildlife migratory pathway we get a ton of moose, lots and lots of eagles, and big beautiful cranes nesting on the property. The house itself is sprawling and ranch-style—way too much space for two people. I tend to live amongst my work with zero work-life division. 

Drill press lathe experiment.

What's happened organically is that we've divided the house into rooms that are dedicated to different conditions for a range of processes. There's the desk area for computer work and sketching, with stacks of books and Post-it notes all over. Then we have a dry space. That's where all the fabrication happens, and sewing, there's a knitting machine, an embroidery machine, the photo sweep and lighting stuff, anything that needs to say clean and dry, and relatively organized—including our materials library. Then we have the wet space. That's for wet fabrication, so any kind of casting, melting, or painting. It's near heat and water and is well-ventilated, and stocked with tons of ingredients—solvents, resin mixes, etc. We also have a shop dedicated to heavy power tools and machinery. That's more messy. You get greasy; it's really loud and dirty. And we have two dogs that just run through everything. 

Studio desk and dry space.

What is your most important tool? My first answer is the Internet. But half of my work is really led by learning a new tool, and I think my most recent crush is this old-school programmable knitting machine. I've been trying to figure out how to utilize patterns and repeats, almost like regressing in computational capability and finding innovation that way. The fact that I can pump out these giant blankets in a couple of hours is really inspiring. That's a recent crush but I don't know if it's my most important tool. I'd still say the Internet for researching and weirdly my iPhone for photo documentation. 

What is the best part of your job? All the learning and innovation. It's probably the most difficult part of my job too, navigating all the unknowns of a new tool or a new medium, then trying to squeeze that new thing into a predictable timeline can be problematic. But that's where all of my motivation comes from; a new territory keeps me exited about the potential of my practice. 

Layered Wax Type: Become. Collaborative work with JK Keller. Commissioned work for the 2009 US Presidential Inauguration.

What is the worst part of your job? The thing that I dread and that I never planned to have as a part of my job is public speaking. I think I went into design because it was less performative and I could divert attention away from myself. Now it's such a major part of the practice. I do get a lot out of the process, but I wish I could fast-forward through the speaking part and just reap the benefits of putting together a talk and meeting new people. 

What time do you get up and go to bed? I try my best to get up by 8:30 a.m. I'm definitely not a morning person and I don't have a commute, so I can just fall out of bed, splash water on my face and start working. It's often difficult to get myself up in the morning because I'm an insomniac. A lot of the time I'll get to bed about 3:00 a.m., but that often doesn't stick.

How do you procrastinate? Just by doing more work. If whatever I'm supposed to be working on isn't holding my attention, then it's very easy for me to jump into a spin-off idea and start brainstorming. Before I know it I have a whole new project that I never intended.

Swing Hall, Swing All, 2012 Commission for Northern Spark, MCAD Minneapolis Minnesota.

What is your favorite productivity tip or trick? When timelines will allow, I try to let myself follow what I'm compelled to be working on at the moment. I keep really big lists, so if there's enough flexibility and I'm not captivated by what I'm currently doing, then I'll pick the thing that I'm actually excited by and focus on that instead. Maybe I'm not into meditative form-making, but I'm excited to line up numbers on a spreadsheet; I can jump into something else and check things off my list. It's about productivity and happiness.

But that's where all of my motivation comes from; a new territory keeps me exited about the potential of my practice.

What is the best-designed object in your home? A toddler high chair that used to belong to my Grandmother. It has this little set of steps mounted to the stool base on a hinge, so you can flip the steps up and essentially transform the chair into a taller stepping stool. It's not a beautiful object, but that transitional moment of the steps swinging up and resting on the seat—it feels so good to use. Every time I flip those steps it just tickles me a bit. I altered it by stripping off some of the old foam—it was covered in red vinyl—and the fact that I made it a little bit less precious means I'm more likely to use it. It's such a simple innovation, I love using it.

Illustration for The New York Times Article: "Madam C.E.O., Get Me a Coffee" by Adam Grant and Sheryl Sandberg. Art Directed by Alexandra Zsigmond. 2015

Who is your design hero? I often get inspired by singular projects rather than a whole body of work, and usually I'm looking outside of design for inspiration. One of the most influential bodies of work and possibly a reflection of a way of thinking, are films by Charlie Kaufman, Spike Jonze, and sometimes Michel Gondry. Films like Adaptation, Her, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, or Being John Malkovich—that are this blend of familiar and surreal, sentimental, fantastic and mundane. Films that really utilize environment to heighten emotion, pulling theatrical devices into real world settings in order to depict moments that's aren't real, but that capture what it feels like to be a human in the real world. I revisit that idea or feeling again and again when I'm thinking of experiential work.

What is the most important quality in a designer? It's a tie between being obsessive and being curious. Curiosity implies that you're very attentive to your surroundings in some way, always seeking out new things, always asking why and seeking a deeper understanding. That's invaluable as a designer. Obsession compels you to dig deeply, to focus, and most importantly to persist through some of the arduous tasks that are involved in design. I think it's really important to be able to flex between the two sides. 

What is the most widespread misunderstanding about design or designers? There isn't really a phenomenally consistent one, but perhaps the assumption that executing a simple or concise idea in a design results from a simple and concise process. If it's complex, it usually feels very comfortable and effortless in the way that it manifests, so it's easy to assume that the work flowed from its creator that way. But so rarely is that the case. 

Codependant Douballoons for the LUFTMUSEUM e.v. AIR MUSEUM in Germany, 2015 Edition.

What is exciting you in design right now? I'm really ecstatic to see what is generally referred to as participatory design or conditional design become more common. Those methods have been around for as long as people have been constructing work and communicating with one another, but I think integrating them in a more controlled, intentional design process, is super rewarding—when you're a designer or an audience member.

SelfieBroom, the Self Standing Broom With a Whimsical Twist, is Live on Kickstarter. SelfieBroom allows users to stand your broom upright without propping or leaning it against a wall or countertops and no need to bend over to pick-up your misplaced broom. Giving the user the ability to truly be more efficient while completing your chores.

Before I dive much further into product licensing strategy, I want to describe some of the broad conclusions I've reached about protecting your creations and the value of intellectual property. To do that, I need to explain a little bit more about my background first, because the conclusions I've reached are based on my own experiences, of course.

Like you, I am a very creative person. I have been since I was young and believed I could do absolutely anything. I think most creative people are a little naïve. It helps to look at the world with wonder, not suspicion.

In the hills beyond the house I grew up in Los Gatos, I dreamt up my own universes and populated them with model airplanes and battleships, makeshift jetpacks and snakes I had collected. If it moved, I incorporated it into my vision. I was always asking myself, what if? Looking back, the same sources of inspiration — play, imagination — shaped and encouraged my ability to come up with ideas for new products. And in fact the first concepts I brought to market were all novelty gifts. We're talking silly, whimsical creations, like nylons stuffed to resemble playful fruits and vegetables that I sold at fairs across the state.

When I began licensing my concepts to the novelty gift industry, like plastic darts inscribed with the words "I'm Stuck On You," I never felt threatened. I'd submit a sketch of one of my ideas and wait to hear back. Eventually, an open dialogue developed, so much so that the companies I licensed my ideas to told me what they were looking for. It felt safe. Working together to create something out of nothing was empowering.

The idea that someone would steal one of my creations was unfathomable, not to mention absolutely terrifying and horrific. I wasn't very fearful. I didn't really think about it, to be honest. That is, until the day a Fortune 500 company asked me if I had a patent on the idea I was presenting to them.

I know better now. Do I think companies steal ideas? Not really. I do think they work around them, though, if you give them a reason to. After reading an article that described how labels are rarely able to contain all of the information that is needed on them, I left the warm world of novelty gifts and toys for the packaging industry. Eventually, I licensed the rotating label I developed to the largest pressure sensitive label company in the world. 

Spin label 

I thought the idea could be big, so I began filing patents. Spin labels began selling worldwide, with additional sublicenses signed in Japan and Ireland. The label began winning awards and appearing in trade magazines. (Nescafé coffee in Japan, and Rexall Sundown herbals and Jim Beam DeKuyper liqueurs in the United States.)

Royalties were coming in! The phone was ringing off the hook. In hindsight, it may have not been the best time to take a road trip around the country with my family for six months. Before I left, my sublicensee in Ireland got in touch to ask me to create samples for Lego, which was launching a new toy name named Bionicles the following spring. Needless to say, I was extremely excited. 

On the road, there were warning signs — namely, that I had heard little back. When I returned home that May, my son celebrated his birthday. Like every boy his age, his favorite toys were all Lego products. I was in the garage working on an art project when my wife walked in with a Bionicle in her hand and a grimace on her face. The Bionicle featured my spin label! My label.

I was devastated. I felt violated. And I immediately began the process of taking Lego to court. Sparring with a powerful, global company like Lego was an experience I would not recommend to anyone. But I had no choice. I had to defend my intellectual property. It was a long, drawn-out, painful fight. After three years, we finally settled two weeks before trial.

Although it was extremely painful, it was probably one of the best experiences I could have ever had. What I think happened is this. When Lego received my samples and a price quote, they thought the cost was too high. And truthfully, it probably was. They weren't the only company to feel that way. (I eventually had to reconfigure the label to be manufactured more cheaply and quickly.) With that frustration in mind, they set about reviewing my patents to try to find a way to work around them. That's what engineers do. It's their very job to find ways to manufacture products better, more cheaply. At the time I had three issued patents and three more patent pending — the latter of which Lego didn't know the contents of.

I was too far aware from what was happening at the time. I wasn't involved in the conversation, which was a mistake. I didn't have the experience or the insight to see what was coming. Today I would act very differently by involving myself deeply in the negotiations.

What have I included? That one of the best ways of protecting your ownership is by being reasonable. It's extremely important that you work with potential licensees to overcome their objections. If you act unreasonably, like asking for too much money upfront, companies will be motivated to work around your intellectual property. Do not give anyone a reason to try. Truly, if there's a will there's a way. I really believe that. Battling Lego in federal court shaped my perspective on intellectual property. 

What do I believe now, after listening to my lawyers dissect every word written in my claims?

That no matter how many patents you have, you can never really own anything. There will always be workarounds and variations. Patents are just words interpreted by patent examiners, judges, juries, and potential licensees.

I do believe it's possible to establish perceived ownership over the products you create. And perceived ownership is all you really need to license simple ideas. Emphasis on simple — different kinds of ideas require significantly different strategies. Establishing perceived ownership over a 'big' idea, one with lasting potential, requires a veritable wall of intellectual property.

One of the best ways of protecting your ownership is by being reasonable.

In future articles, I will discuss all of the ways it's possible to develop perceived ownership over your creations, and thus get companies to license them from you. I will discuss the difference between protecting simple ideas, big ideas, and ideas that cannot be protected with intellectual property. I'll explain how to license ideas without any intellectual property at all.

It's okay to be concerned. You should. But acting out of fear is a mistake. I think most creative people would prefer to stay in their fantasy worlds. Determining intellectual property strategy from a business perspective is not my idea of a good time, and a pretty far cry from how and why I originally got into this business. But it's so necessary. There are no black and whites when it comes to intellectual property — only strategy.

Read more from Stephen Key's column on Product Licensing.

This week we bring you a fun open-ended question straight from our reader-driven discussion boards! This one's a mental exercise started by cwatkinson, who was inspired by a particular piece of wood on a trip to Woodcraft:

"So as i am much more of a product architect / process consultant now in my role i have been scratching my design and build itch at home. I am in the process of building some bedside end tables and then some other bedroom pieces. While looking at some tools, i fell in love with this piece of "material" and have already begun the mental design process for what i could do with it.

With that said I thought a good thread to start could potentially be 'what would you do?' The challenge - to post a piece of raw material and then for the forum to explore what they would design with the said piece of raw material."

We want to see what materials inspire you and how you would use them—attach a picture of an inspirational raw material and share your ideas in the comment feed below!

(Also feel free to check out the original post and contribute on our discussion board!)

Carly Ayres is a member of the Core77 family and a freelancer near and dear to our hearts—a self-described "specialized generalist" who's created work for clients like Google Creative Lab and Wallpaper* as well as being a regular contributor to Core77 with the beloved In the Details column. Given the 1-Hour Design Challenge prompt to design objects for freelancers, we thought Carly would be a great judge and could bring some significant insight into products that independent workers might actually be interested in owning and using. 

We recently sat down with Carly to learn a little more about her start as a freelancer, the routines and productivity tips she swears by, and what sort of freelance power tool she might design for herself. 

Core77: How long have you been freelancing? Why did you decide to take the leap?

Carly: I made the jump to full-time freelance around November of 2014, but have always been freelancing in some capacity. I think my very first freelance client might have actually been Core77, when I was covering student projects and events on campus as a student at RISD.

After college, I joined CreativeMornings, where I took founder Tina Roth Eisenberg's vision for what she wanted the lecture series to be and translated that into a voice and tone that resonated with attendees across the globe. 

After a few years there, I found myself with the familiar itch to work on something new. I realized that the work that truly scared me and was pushing me past my comfort zone were projects I was doing after hours and on weekends. If I was to continue growing, that was the work I needed to be doing.

What's your experience of working as a freelancer in the city—have you worked at home and in co-working spaces? What have been your best and worst freelance work setups and why? 

My experience as a freelancer in New York City has really run the gamut. I spent some time working in-house for clients like Google's Creative Lab and Deeplocal, as well as bouncing around a few different co-working spaces like Small City Studios and Friends. 

I'm a huge extrovert, so really crave the ability to talk to other folks and bounce ideas off others—occasionally to my own detriment. I've found that the perfect balance for me is working from my apartment, but making sure I carve out that time to be around other people, whether it's coffee one morning or co-working one afternoon a week. Separating that time makes a huge difference in the work I'm able to get done.

What sorts of items or tools do you need around you in order to maintain productivity and success?

At the risk of sounding mildly dorky, having a bottle of water next to me while working has made the biggest difference in productivity. If you asked me a year ago, my resounding answer would have been coffee, but a year later, I've realized that any grogginess or headaches are likely just symptoms of dehydration, alleviated by simply drinking water.

Beyond that, all I really need is a laptop and a power cord. Lately, I've also been listening to a lot of classical music, particularly nonverbal, which lets me focus when doing any type of writing. 

What have you learned about freelancing and yourself over the years working independently? 

Freelancing has forced me to think more critically about my time and how I spend it. Whether its the inputs I'm taking in or the work I'm pushing out, being in control of my own time has led me to be more focused in those pursuits, as well as in the people I surround myself with each day.

One of the projects Ayres' is working on: an experimental social network called "Temporary Highs" 

As a freelancer, you're accountable to yourself for the work you do (or don't) and what you put out into the world. It's made me answer a lot of questions around what type of work I want to being doing and what impact I want that work to have.
The end result might be a flip book of a logo's evolution, a newsletter on doing things again and again, or an amplified social network—but I'm always trying to rethink how to engage with an audience and encourage them to think about things a bit differently. 

If you could design something to improve your freelancing life, what would it be? 

So many things! Recently, I started a small Slack community of creative folks— many freelancers—called 100s Under 100, which I've found to be a great way to share work, elicit feedback, and post other jobs and resources. I think the only other thing that might drastically improve my freelance life would be a Chrome plugin that shuts off my internet at 10:00p every night to force me to go to bed (though as I type this it's 12:00 AM...).

What are your top 3 quick tips for other freelancers or aspiring freelancers? 

1. Find a community.

2. Do the work you want to get more of.

3. Drink lots of water.

Only one hour until we announce the winner of our 1-Hour Design Challenge! Check out all the entries on our dedicated discussion board or Facebook group + stay tuned to see who wins the big enchilada... 

The Blackbird has got an adjustable wheelbase, zero front and rear overhang and an engine that can mimic the performance qualities of everything from econo-boxes to muscle cars and in between. It only carries one person. And while it's real, it wasn't created by an established car brand; instead, postproduction house The Mill commissioned its creation because they needed an Everycar.

The car was built by J.E.M. F/X, a California-based special effects design & fabrication house that builds those utilitarian-looking, matte-black "follow-cam" vehicles you see on DVD extras. There's no word on what it cost to fabricate, but given that it "can be shot at any time, in any location, without the need to rely on a [specific] physical car" it's bound to be a long-term cost-saving measure given the budgets of car commercials these days.

We've long known that the environments most car commercials are shot in—empty highways absent any traffic, empty cities absent any traffic jams—aren't real, so the car we're seeing might as well not be real either.

Advice on how to successfully run a freelance operation is everywhere as the working population shifts more and more toward a self-employed workforce, but how many people are actually thinking about objects or systems that can help these independent workers?

For our latest 1-Hour Design Challenge, we asked this very question: if you could design a piece or furniture or object that would help freelancers work more efficiently and happily, what would you make?  We were happy to see that many of you were excited to explore this question, and after looking over many of your sketches we've determined a winner!

Here is the list of winners and runner ups in our 1-Hour Design Challenge: Furniture for Freelancers Edition: 

GRAND PRIZE

The Wind Up Power Cord by Graham Wilson

Wilson's design for an adjustable computer charger really struck a "cord" with all of our judges...equipped with wind-up functionality as well as an interface indicating the charge status of your computer, this design is simple yet highly useful. Our judges at Grovemade complimented the project saying it was a "simple concept with a lot of usefulness" while judge Carly Ayres summed it all up in one simple sentiment: "Preach." 

RUNNER UPS

Work Cocoon by knoll321

Runner ups in the 1-Hour Design Challenge all turned out to be rather future gazing, one being the Work Cocoon by knoll321. Judge Brad Augustine of Humanscale dubbed it as one of his favorites—"[The project] addresses a major issue of privacy...though concerns over breathability and claustrophobia need to be addressed."  

Air Stool by Aaron Yong

Our other runner-up imagined a progressive new system for getting work done, simply utilizing a VR workstation and a nifty levitating swivel stool. Grovemade designers applauded Yong for his forward-thinking ideas: "Very conceptual but the designer goes into detail about the tech and the integration it will have into our future...Overall the product is well considered and detailed for just a concept. The concept might not be the most attainable at the moment but shows the type of thoughtfulness that helps move technology and design forward."

Thanks again everyone for your submissions! Congratulations to the grand prize winner, who will be taking home an amazing desk set from Grovemade, designed by our 1-HDC judges, while runner ups will be taking home $25 gift certificates to Hand Eye Supply! 

Also: stay tuned in the future for more 1-Hour Design Challenges by joining our Facebook group or following our 1-HDC discussion board page!

Provide Product Development leadership responsibility of New Product Commercialization (NPC) projects. Represents the Product Development functions to NPC core teams and provides leadership to Product Development sub-teams. In providing representation and leadership, the Manager of Product Development speaks for all disciplines within the Product

Ninety-two-year-old Gert Boyle is the Chairman of outdoor gear manufacturer Columbia Sportswear. Actually, she's the Chairwoman; "Gert" is short for Gertrude. Those of you raised in the '80s may remember that she starred in the company's tongue-in-cheek commercials of the time (like this one) where she subjected her son to all manner of hardships in order to demonstrate the durability of the company's goods.

In any case, the notoriously tough Boyle is reportedly known for saying "It's perfect, now make it better." With that phrase in mind, ad firm Ogilvy & Mather's Istanbul outpost took something that was perfectly adequate, the laundry care hangtags attached to every new piece of clothing, and added some rather extreme functionality to them:

We figured this was just an advertising gimmick, but the GPS coordinates in the video correspond with the location of Columbia's flagship store in Istanbul, where the tags are apparently available. There's no word on whether they're actually being included with purchased clothing as hangtags—that can't make economic sense—or just a one-time promotional item.

Thomas Thwaites' first major project, The Toaster Project, was a huge success which resulted in worldwide media coverage, a popular TED talk, an appearance on "The Colbert Report," and a book. His most recent project, GoatMan, experiments with taking a holiday from being human, and his recently-released book chronicles the experience. 

This project began with a desire to escape the stresses of being human by asking "Wouldn't it be nice to be an animal for just a bit?" A research grant by the Wellcome Trust provided the necessary support. Wellcome is an organization with a mission of improving health for everyone by starting conversations about science, health and the human condition (hello, discursive design).

Once funded, plans were underway to traverse the alps as a goat while thinking like a goat (using transcranial magnetic stimulation), eating like a goat (via an external-artificial rumen), and walking like a goat (with custom prostheses). In order to do this, Thwaites engaged experts in a variety of fields including neuroscientists, prosthetists, goat sanctuary workers, goat herders and animal behaviorists.

We recently corresponded about the project.

"While I'll agree that this goatman sounds mad, I'll bet someone will patent something he's 'invented' and use it for human artificial limbs in the next decade." - commentary from an NPR article

Tharp: You call yourself a "maker of projects with a touch of the future about them." Can you comment on speculative design's relationship to design practice or to innovation more generally?

Thwaites: Speculative design is about 'the vision'; and if it doesn't seem strange or absurd, then it can't be adding much that's different from what we're already familiar with. This is what separates speculative design from innovation, or design concepts. Innovation in design doesn't (or shouldn't?) seem absurd or weird. But speculative design thrives off this unfamiliarity. However, going too far so that it just becomes nonsense is also a problem. Whereas innovation is constrained by what's practical, speculative design is constrained by what could be practical. I look for this balance between weirdness and plausibility.

Thomas Thwaites, the man who goatified himself because, as he put it, it'd be "an interesting and slightly different way of looking at the world and thinking about ourselves in relation to other people, other objects, other animals." - NPR

Designers spend a great deal of time trying to empathize in their process and this project clearly is empathic (even if it wasn't the main goal) — do you have advice on obtaining (better) empathic insights?

Always remember everyone grew up and are living in their own bubble, including yourself of course. So everyone will have their own view of what's obvious, (and non-obvious). When I was researching how a shaman could say that 'I can at will transform into an elk,' I came across the work of a researcher who went round Siberia in the early 1900s, asking pre-literate people questions from IQ tests, like which one's the odd one out from: a saw, a hammer and a fish. And these intelligent yet non-literate people would give very unexpected (and 'wrong') answers, and yet have reasoned arguments for them. It's like the ancient Greeks said the sea was the color of red wine. That seems completely wrong to us, because the sea is blue right? But it makes clear just how 'top-down' our perception of the world is: we see what we already believe we're going to see.

Testing the arm and leg prostheses

I read that it took you a year to develop the arm and leg prostheses — could you tell us a little bit about the formal iterative process with Dr. Glyn Heath, the prosthetist at the University of Salford.

Well it was about a year doing the whole project, not just the prosthetics. By the time I went to see Dr. Heath, I had already made three prototype quadruped walking devices and dissected a goat at the Royal Veterinary College, so I was coming round to the idea that undoing 5 million years of evolution into a biped might not be quite as simple as I had at first hoped. My time at Dr. Heath's clinic confirmed that. He had me walk around the clinic using a pair of sawn off crutches, and adjusted the heights until he was happy I was putting the correct amount of body weight on my front legs. Then we tried out different positions for my hands and feet, different types of prosthetic joints, different angles of those joints and so on. It was a nice mix of very practical manual work, and a lifetime worth of clinical expertise.

How well did the prostheses work? Are there things you would focus on if you were to do another iteration?

I of course learned a lot in the field, so I've already re-made my back leg prosthetics to enable a more comfortable, and goat-like, posture. Dr Heath has sent me some additional joints for the front legs too, so yes there are lots of things to be improved in the next iteration. But will I ever gallop? I'm not sure. It was uncomfortable enough just walking.

Do you see any practical use for the prostheses? Was there anything gleaned from the process that has any further application?

Dr. Heath was very impressed with my ability to trot pretty much spontaneously in the clinic. He said he'd consider writing a paper on what he saw as this vestigial ability. But in terms of practicality, well, maybe I'll spin out a goat holiday start up from the project.

"So I thought I would try and take a holiday from being a human."

Through this work, what did you learn about escaping the human condition?

Well, that ultimately the only permanent escape is oblivion. I suppose that's where the sentiment of resting in peace comes from. But talking to the neuroscientist who used transcranial magnetic stimulation on me, so as to switch off my ability to speak, was enlightening, in that he was speaking a lot about stories. As in, it's the ability we have to think in terms of stories, that's a major difference between us and other animals. Our episodic memory of a particular event from our past, we retell to ourselves as a story. And when we build scenarios about possible things that might happen, we use stories (stories in the widest sense). He said that there's a lot of thinking that 'we are the stories we tell.' So the project has further deepened my conviction that humans are very story driven animals. So we need to be careful about the stories we make of our lives. This relates to work in treating post traumatic stress, and cognitive behavioral therapy: giving troubled people the ability to rewrite their stories to be less troubling.

In the coverage of the project, you have been called 'crazy,' 'narcissistic,' 'NUTS!,' 'unhealthy,' 'insanely stupid,' 'mentally ill,' and 'someone (with) the free time to do weird stuff like this is because his labor is not required to sustain society's standard of living.' What do you say to these naysayers about your contribution(s) to society?

The surface narrative of my project is 'I tried to become goat.' Some people, and some media coverage will never get beyond this. At this surface level the project can be viewed as entertainment, whether you like it, or depending on your tastes. There is certainly value in entertainment…it's a serious business, an industry. I think sometimes people overlook that much of science and technology is driven by humans wanting things beyond sustenance and health. A large portion of society's activity is devoted to keeping ourselves entertained in the broadest sense of the word, through travel, food, stories in hundreds of different media, fiction and non-fiction etc. This stuff is not trivial, and is certainly a part of society's standard of living. So, if some people only ever see the project as entertainment, 'design comedy' as someone called it, then that's OK, and they can decide if they like it or not, and if not, go and find things they do like to entertain themselves, like a Hollywood film, poetry, classical sculpture, video games or whatever. 

But I think that like all good entertainment, and my intention with the project, was a few errm, deeper concerns. So for example, and the reason why I think the Wellcome Trust have their arts award funding stream at all, is a concern with this old idea of the two cultures; 'the arts' and 'the sciences,' and never the twain shall meet. With this project there's a bit of reconciliation going on…In the same book I'm looking at views of what it means to be a human animal, a 'person,' from the perspective of a shaman and a neuroscientist, a psychologist and an anthropologist. In many ways the whole 'becoming a goat' thing is just an excuse to go to the back corridors of universities and ask various very specialized specialists some expansive questions.

There's also a more design critique aspect of coming up with a counter to some of the wilder aesthetics in speculative design projects concerned with biomedical futures.

In terms of some contribution to society in general, well, there's an ongoing societal conversation about the direction our culture should take, and I would argue this project, as well as other projects I've done like the ole' Toaster Project are a contribution to that. Yes there's an absurdity to them, but if you look beyond the absurdity then there's some thought, and some pedagogic intent. This goat thing has been in a few tabloid newspapers here in the UK, and I did have a conversation with the photographer who took the photos in the alps, about whether or not to let the tabloids have his photos. He's a talented photographer, and he took the photos in the alps on large format film, and he wasn't too pleased that his photos were shrunk down to 200px wide on some tabloid website. But then the reverse of that is 'oh, it's too high art for the tabloids' which would be a kind of reverse snobbery. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I think some folk mistake populism or absurdity for a lack of seriousness and depth to a project. And of course, one of the arguments for speculative design in general is supposed to be about communication and debate… And one of the criticisms, is that the only communication going on is within 'speculative critical design' circles. I want some of my work to get out of the design bubble!

Discursive designers collaborating with scientists, technologists, and other specialists can have an impact on how they see their work or ask questions that they did not think about or do not have permission to. How do you see having an influence on other fields, researchers, and practitioners?

I'm not totally convinced about this notion that discursive designers involved in a collaborative project for maybe a year, could provoke new questions in people who've been specializing in something for years. On the other hand, designers are sort of trained novices, trained in thinking around an issue, approaching things indirectly and so on, looking for the twist, etc. But I'm not sure my collaborations with scientists have genuinely led to them making a new advance in their field, at least not directly. But indirectly, a few months later? Well who knows!

What's the next speculative design project for you?

I'm doing a project about (the future of) work, for the 2017 St. Etienne Design Biannual.

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Thanks to Thomas for taking the time to talk with us!

The Shinwa Sliding Bevel Gauge is a pretty darn good tool. Up to this point, I have just always used an old wood and brass Stanley, which is fine and I will continue to use it, but now along with my new Shinwa. The Stanley sure is a chunky fella, and it certainly isn't the most comfortable thing to have rattling around in your apron pockets. This is one of the primary benefits of the little Shinwa. It comes in two sizes—6" and 9 7/8". In my opinion, the 6" is the most useful size as it fits in the pen slot on my button-up shirts. The larger of the two fits comfortably in an apron pocket.

They are both made entirely of stainless steel, with the exception of the brass thumb nut. Their smooth faces mean you can write on them with sharpie to remember what they are being used for, then wipe them clean with thinner or alcohol when you're done.

The nut has a screwdriver slot in it, which fits the head of a house key or engineers square rule perfectly. Snugging the nut by hand is enough for quick layout work, but if you really want to keep that angle accurate for a while I would snug it up a bit. Once you do snug it, that puppy isn't going to shift for anything short of a drop on the floor.

All in all, it's a darn good little tool. For the price, it can't be beat. For around the same coinage, you will walk out of the big box store with a shoddily made number. If you want a traditional style bevel gauge and don't want to spend major dough for it, you are likely going to have to hunt down an antique one. Or you can just get a Shinwa for 14 or 20 bucks, and stick it in your shirt pocket. Or get a few for projects where you need to keep track of more than one angle at a time.

Line up with the 6" bevel gauge here.
Or the 9 7/8 bevel gauge here. 

And check out more tools at Hand-Eye Supply. 

In the early 19th century everything was done by hand. From the engraver carving a family crest on a pocket watch to the seven year old assembling fusee chains for tuppence a day (or thereabouts). Woodworking, metalwork, it was all the same. Hand work, under various working conditions and repetition. Practice, by the way, really makes perfect and you can go faster.

Then along came machines and hand work was replaced by machine work. Where in the old days a machinist would have to hand scrape a valve facing to ensure accuracy in joining, now a surface grinder does that in a trice, with just a machine operator to run the machine. The skill isn't in the "doing" anymore, it's in the "figuring out how to do". This frees the "figuring out how to do it" guy to make stuff to very high repeatability and accuracy at the expense of some expensive tooling. And it means that the "doing it" person needs to have a lot of practice before they can do repeatable work, but they don't need to have all that expensive equipment.

And right now it occurred to me between the blogs of Konrad Sauer and Karl Holtey you can see both philosophies at work. Both guys do really, really wonderful work. Karl can set up his machines to produce planes that are so exact in dimension that he can pin them together. Konrad on the other hand can do all sorts of custom designs and tweaks because there is no tooling and setup time to worry about.

Karl needs a shop full of expensive equipment, Konrad needs time and practice. Karl can run a batch of identical planes extremely efficiently to an incredible level of repeatability. But customization means new expensive tooling.

Each plane in Konrad's shop is slightly and unintentionally different, and he has to custom fit each part to every plane, but special orders are easy to deal with efficiently.

Which approach is better? Well I think both guys do great work and both of them found a work method that works for them. So that's not the issue.

Why is all this important? Because modern amateur woodworking has a very distinct slant in the machine approach. Your average woodworker who wants to do something just buys a machine and it's done. There isn't much call for basic skills. The goal is to produce something. Folks like me are more interested in learning the hand skills, just like people want to learn how to play the guitar. 

Both approaches are perfectly valid. I can list the advantages to both but it would take hours. The trick I think is not getting buttonholed. And every once in awhile someone reminds me that finishing projects is also important, good power tools can help you do that, and compensate for lack of professional speed and 18th century hand skills. 

So if you use machines a lot—try taking the time to learn classic hand skills—you might find it relaxing and more productive than limiting yourself to what your machines can do. Relish the freedom not having to do only what the machine lets you do. Work to fit, making pieces as you go. 

If you use hand tools for everything, remember that certain tasks a machine can do faster and better, and there is no reason to get discouraged if you find that certain hand operations are beyond your current level of skill to do efficiently but can easily be done by machine. 

It all comes out the same. In the picture above one piece of wood was cut by hand and shot on a shooting board (using a dullish Bedrock 604), the other was cut using a Festool Kapex chopsaw. I needed a bunch of pieces for another blog entry I am working on, time is short, and I was glad I had the machines available.

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This new "Tools & Craft" section is provided courtesy of Joel Moskowitz, founder of Tools for Working Wood, the Brooklyn-based catalog retailer of everything from hand tools to Festool; check out their online shop here. Joel also founded Gramercy Tools, the award-winning boutique manufacturer of hand tools made the old-fashioned way: Built to work and built to last.