Here's a fascinating interview with The Sucklord, the NYC-based artist that cranks out modified and unlicensed action figures from his downtown studio. Whether it's Gay Empire Homotroopers, and AT-AT that looks like it's been through the South Bronx in the late '70s or a Sleestak in a business suit, the Suckadelic brand is known for producing irreverent social commentary via toys that appear innocuous until you get up close.

The Sucklord, a/k/a/ Morgan Phillips, reveals that needing to pay the rent on his first studio is "what drove me to come up with a cheap way of doing mass production," before revealing his moldmaking technique. He also talks about his trenchant philosophy on why "villains are just better:"

The New Balance one year Apprenticeship Program is all about taking young talented designers and molding them into future design stars. Our internship program, The Design Foundry, will give you the opportunity to work as part of the global design team and learn from industry veterans.

In the 1980s, if you wanted to play videogames you had to clear some hurdles. First you had to save up some quarters. Then you had to journey to a smoke-filled arcade, and avoid being punched by a kid named Seth who smoked cigarettes and wore a bandanna and a jean jacket. Then you placed your quarter on the lip of the screen of a machine that someone else was playing--there was always a line--to indicate that you had "next." And I remember that there were always cigarette burns on any horizontal part of the console, the laminated graphics burnt with little telltale brown ovals.

By the '90s arcades were dwindling like Seth's lungs. Kids were playing at home, and in early 1991 the Sega Genesis was the dominant home platform. And then, 25 years ago this week, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System debuted in America, starting the 16-bit game console wars.

Early commercials were marketed towards those who well remembered arcades:

What's interesting about the original rash of commercials is that they showed very little gameplay:

What the commercials were trying to get across to the consumer was the UX, the overall experience of the system. Watch this commercial and see what gets the most screentime:

As you've noticed, there's a couple seconds of gameplay--and the rest of it is shots of the users' faces. Never mind what's on screen, the commercial seems to say, these kids are having a blast.

"No one else creates this kind of experience," says this SNES commercial, which amusingly stars a young Paul Rudd:

Nintendo's independent game developers, too, seemed to stay on-message with their own commercials: The word "experience" being a key part of the message. "You won't believe the feeling you get…until you experience it for yourself."

It's possible that SNES' marketing team simply felt the graphics weren't up to snuff, and that it was more important to emphasize the overall UX.

Whatever the case, the SNES was a hit that knocked the Sega Genesis off of its perch; the SNES became the bestselling 16-bit console worldwide, and was so popular that it continued to compete even when 32-bit consoles began appearing in the mid-'90s. Nintendo kept selling them in America until 1999, and in Asia and Brazil, it shockingly survived until 2003. All told, Nintendo sold 49.1 million units worldwide.

Happy Birthday SNES!

As designers, we bring order to chaos.

Reduce complexity in design sketching by following this three step process: Form, Divide, Beautify. In Coreskills Episode 2, Spencer walks us through a simple strategy for getting your ideas onto paper, starting from the primitive shape, adding layers, textures and ending with a visual for communicating your ideas.

Train yourself like the elite design athlete that you are with these warm up exercises in Coreskills Episode 1. Spencer is squeezing seven years of leading workshops and sharing sketching tutorials at Sketch-a-Day into some great tips for upping your design sketching skills—from warmups to practice exercises—to get you into prime shape for visually communicating your ideas.

Learn more about design sketching from Spencer Nugent at this September's Core77 Conference in Los Angeles. Buy your workshop ticket today!

The Thunderboard React Car Kit is a mini smart car that senses what's happening in the world around it, transmits that data to the cloud via your mobile device, and displays the data in real-time so you can respond to the big picture. The kit makes prototyping and testing IoT applications easier. The Thunderboard React board is paired via Bluetooth to a free companion app built by Mutual Mobile. The mobile app provides a frictionless interface between Thunderboard React and web-based application

Is there anything better than seeing a design team that's clearly obsessed with their product? Here Pete Dering and Art Viger of Peak Design break down their Everyday Backpack, which might be the most well-thought-out, functional and good-looking bag design I've ever seen:

This is actually part of a Kickstarter campaign for three different bags: The Everyday Backpack, Everyday Tote and Everyday Sling. They all look good, but the backpack is what I've been in the market for.

So, here's how I know I'm a bad person: As I was writing this up, I observed that the early-bird specials on the Backpack were disappearing, shrinking from 162 available to 120. So I immediately stopped writing this post, returning to it only after I'd taken the time to pledge. If everything goes right, I'll be getting the 20-liter-capacity Everyday sometime this December.

That the campaign will be funded is not in question, as Peak was seeking $500,000, and have already snagged about $3.5 million at press time. Those interested in pledging have got 16 days left.

At the Holz-Handwerk show earlier this year, we saw a bunch of stuff that wouldn't fit in our other galleries: Furniture, shop furniture, fixtures, fittings and tool storage. Everything from the student work to the stuff designed by the pros was, as you'd expect from one of Germany's largest tradeshows, of extremely high quality.

Sortimo has a wide variety of tool storage systems. Read details about them here.

Sortimo has a wide variety of tool storage systems. Read details about them here.

Sortimo has a wide variety of tool storage systems. Read details about them here.

Sortimo has a wide variety of tool storage systems. Read details about them here.

Sortimo has a wide variety of tool storage systems. Read details about them here.

Sortimo has a wide variety of tool storage systems. Read details about them here.

Sortimo's also a big player in the tool-van-organization-systems space. More details here.

Sortimo's also a big player in the tool-van-organization-systems space. More details here.

Sortimo's also a big player in the tool-van-organization-systems space. More details here.

Sortimo's also a big player in the tool-van-organization-systems space. More details here.

Personal mobility is one of those 'key words' that car companies use when they're talking about future scenarios. It's effectively a marketing phrase that's been accepted into mainstream culture, and there are countless studies and projects attempting to find the best and most compelling solution.

But perhaps the ultimate personal mobility device is one that's been around in various forms for several hundred years – the humble bicycle.

Many auto companies started makingbikes before cars: Rover built a 'safety bicycle' back in 1885—the first bike with a metal chain and a contemporary frame-design—while Peugeot started cycle manufacturing back in 1888, and are still creating bikes to this day.

But what happens when car companies collaborate with bike-makers? Below we look at some of the more high-profile collaborations, and several of the more obscure, future collector's items. Here are ten that feed our design curiosity:

1. Montante 8CTF for Maserati

Loosely based around the 8CTF track car from 1955, the 2010 Montante luxuriates in beautiful detailing. Nothing carbon-fibre here, it was a love-letter to the hand-built machinery of the 50's. A hydraulic front disc-brake is the one concession to current technology on this romantic cruiser.

2. McLaren Specialized S-Works Venge

As you'd expect from two legends of their respective racing worlds, the McLaren S-Works series was and probably still is state of the art for lightweight, aerodynamic racing bikes. Six-years in development, the Venge is the ultimate expression of McLaren's composite material expertise and Specialized's bike design.

3. Pininfarina Fouriserie 

A hand-crafted beauty, designed to pay homage to coachbuilt Italian cars of the 1930's. Pininfarina are active in bike design, currently with DeRosa, but this bespoke model built by 43Milano, was limited to a 30unit production run and cost around $10K depending on spec. Handlebar and saddle-leather are inspired by the interior of the Lancia Astura Bocca, an iconic model designed by Pininfarina in 1936.

A nice contemporary twist is the powertrain with e-booster motor and full LED lighting. One for the aesthetes.

4. Jaguar TeamSky 

Ok this is more about the car than the bike—in 2014/15 TeamSky collaborated with Jaguar with a support vehicle, developed by Jaguar's SVO (special vehicles operations) team and featuring a special racking system to carry the two Pinarello Bolide bikes, plus all the necessary support equipment (very) tightly packed in the Jaguar F-type's trunk.

In 2015 Jaguar unveiled the F-Pace SUV during a stage of the Tour de France—more space, a little less pace.

5. Volkswagen Trek 

Perhaps the earliest marketed collaboration, the 1996 VW Golf and Jetta Trek edition came with a bespoke cycle rack, edgy 'Trek' interior trim, and the icing on the cake: a unique Trek mountain bike. Basic by today's standards the bike had that most 90's piece of equipment; the twist-grip gear-shift. A guaranteed collector's item—if you can find one.

6. Aston-Martin One77 

Reflecting Aston's bespoke luxury-sports image, the One77 was limited to 77 units to guarantee exclusivity—the £25K price-tag no doubt helped with that too, and it featured leather-trimmed handlebars alongside the usual full-carbon construction. Factor bikes were partner to Aston-Martin on this project.

These next ones are cheats, not being 'collaborations' in the strictest sense, but they're car companies' takes on urban mobility or the last-mile, and each have their own distinctive automotive DNA:

7. Ford MoDe:Flex

The last mile solution. The 2015 MoDe:Flex tackles the problem of urban zoning where you typically have to park outside of a city-centre and then ride to your place of work or home. The larger of the MoDe concepts doesn't actually fold, it 'collapses' and thankfully it doesn't look like a folding bike either...plus it fits in the trunk of your, obviously electric, commute car.

8. Smart ebike 

Full of features that were pretty cutting-edge back in 2012, this electric city bike features brake regen, full smart-phone integration, and a carbon belt.

9. Peugeot Onyx 

There are many more functional bikes than this, but the Onyx concept that was developed alongside the equally stunning concept car in 2012 is here because it's a beautiful piece of free-wheeling sculpture.

10. Audi ebike Wörthersee concept 

What was it about 2012? Another ebike concept, this time from Audi—the most edgy of them all with full suspension, telemetry for ride-evaluation, and a carbon-fibre wheelset to keep the bike under 20kgs: impressive for a fully-suspended ebike.

So next time you hear the phrase 'urban mobility', remember—the answer might have been around for longer than you think...

On one end of the architectural spectrum, you've got the self-important avant garde starchitects who design alienating structures incomprehensible to the layperson. On the other end, you've got the McMansion-designing maniacs whose designs appear to have been conceived of by creating collages in Photoshop. Which is worse?

An anonymously-written website called McMansion Hell takes aim at the latter group, heaping scorn on the style while trying to educate laypeople with "weekly informative essays about urbanism, architecture, sociology, and interior design." While the scornful stuff is obviously more fun, let's start with the educational stuff:

Image credit: McMansion Hell

An article called "McMansion 101" explains the difference between a proper mansion and a McMansion, with both photographs and explanatory text. Here's an excerpt:

Mansion or McMansion: What Distinguishes the Two?

The distinctions between a Mansion and a McMansion can be divided into three categories:

1.) Age

2.) Craftsmanship (e.g. being designed for the space of the lot, the quality of the building materials)

3.) Architectural and Stylistic Integrity (how well historical design styles are integrated or reproduced, attention to detail and principles of design)

Image credit: McMansion Hell

Image credit: McMansion Hell

It then goes into detail into these three categories and more. It's worth a read. While some of the points are obvious to those of us with design educations, the information would certainly be of use to laypeople, in terms of training their eyes for what to look for.

More fun are the entries, like this one, which excoriates the design of a $1.7 million home in Virginia.

Image credit: McMansion Hell

Image credit: McMansion Hell

Image credit: McMansion Hell

Image credit: McMansion Hell

Image credit: McMansion Hell

Image credit: McMansion Hell

Image credit: McMansion Hell

Image credit: McMansion Hell

Image credit: McMansion Hell

Image credit: McMansion Hell

The original entry also features tons of explanatory text accompanying the photos, you can read it here.

Responsibilities include working closely with the Senior Art Director to create consistent brand materials across all channels and assisting the Photographer and Senior Art Director with various photo shoots—editorial, campaign, still life, social, etc.

For shops that need to cut complicated shapes out of wood, there are two popular options: Use a gantry-style CNC mill or a handheld router. The former requires lots of space and can be pricey. The latter is much more affordable, but requires making templates for repeatability.

A company called Shaper has combined the two to provide a third option. Their Origin is a trim router wrapped in a small computer, equipped with a camera and tricked-out with a self-correcting mechanism that precisely places the cutting head, rather like an auto-targeting system; the user need only get it in the general vicinity. Take a look:

Here's how they envision it being used:

The technology was developed four years ago at MIT (we covered it here) and is finally being brought to market. When it arrives in September of 2017, it will retail for $2,099. The company is currently taking pre-orders (in limited numbers) at the reduced price of $1,499.

Julian Checkley is master "special creature effects" fabricator for the film industry, and recently decided to make something to put regular cosplayers to shame: A convincing Batman suit that contains 23 functioning gadgets, like a gaunlet-mounted display linked to a magnetic throwable tracking device, flashbang grenades, a wrist-mounted gas dispenser and more. Take a look at this:

Checkley's efforts were good enough to land him a page in the Guinness World Records: Gamer's Edition 2017.

Even though some of our devices are now wireless, most of us who spend considerable time in the digital world still have a mess of cables to deal with—which explains why cable organizing products are so numerous.

The MACO (Magnetic Cable Organizer) from Three1Design is a magnetic cable tie that allows the end user to keep long cords bundled up neatly. Because the cord gets threaded though a slit, the end user probably won't misplace the MACO, unlike some other cable ties.

Since the ties have a magnetic closure, they can also be used with a metallic surface to hold cords in place. For those without such a surface close at hand, Three1Design provides round and square docks (with reusable micro suction pads) that can be placed on a desk, a wall, etc. 

While this seems like a really smart design, purchasers have noted some issues. This product was launched on Kickstarter, and some backers had problems with durability. Also, early versions of the red and orange MACOs weren't colorfast. And people noted the MACO was too short for some of the cables they wanted to wrap.

For end users who just want a simple cable tie, there's the Unlace from Unplugged Goods, made from silicone molded over flexible wire. The Unlaces are available in 5-inch and 10-inch lengths. Purchasers seem happy with them, and one reviewer noted that the bright colors mean they're easy to find in a laptop bag, a purse, etc.

Instead of wrapping something around the cord, the Wrapqarw cord wrap from To-mo-ni gives the end user something to wrap the cord around. It comes in three sizes, so there's something to fit a wide range of cord types. Also cool: These are made from scrap wood that results from manufacturing custom furniture. 

There are also Wrapqarws in various colors, made from paint that was created for furniture but didn't get fully used.

Other designs focus on keeping cords from slipping to the floor when not in use. Igloo Studio makes a desk cable holder from Corian, with a maple base and cork pad on the bottom. The slots are two different sizes; four are 5mm and one is 7mm.

However, since these cable holders are made to order, they can be customized to meet each purchaser's needs. The slot sizes can be adjusted, and the holder can be made longer to accommodate more cords. Adhesive pads can get added to the bottom, which might be helpful especially in a household with cats that jump on desks and knock things over. 

Another simple but effective design for holding cords in place is the plastic Toothy cable tidy from Headsprung, which is installed with double-sided tape or two small screws. Again, the spacing between the teeth varies to accommodate different size cords. One problem some end users (like me) may have with this as compared to a desktop cord holder: When I'm sitting at my desk, it's quite a stretch to reach the back of the desk.

Prototype House brings us the Onix cable organizer, with a 3M adhesive backing. That means it should stay in place with no problem, but it's not something the end user will be able to move around at will. This organizer's unique feature is the 360-degree swivel. While I'm not sure how useful that is, I'd imagine it's more of a desirable feature for a fixed-in-place cable organizer than one the end user can just move around.

Other organizers help the end user avoid having a mess of cords on the floor—exactly the problem I'm currently facing myself. The Cable Corral from TechDek, available in two sizes, is an under-desk organizer that can hold power strips, surge protectors, power adapters, etc. It's made of 100 percent recycled steel. It installs using four self-tapping screws and some two-sided tape (which holds the Corral in place until the screws are inserted). It's a simple but effective design—but it obviously won't work for some desks, such as those made of glass.

The Hanging Cable Loft cord organizer was designed by Jane Ni when The Container Store, Kikkerland Design and the Rhode Island School of Design partnered in a challenge to the school's industrial design students. There's no installation; a silicone strip keeps the organizer in place.

One drawback: The shelf for the power strip or surge protector isn't wide enough for many such items. (It certainly wouldn't hold mine.) Also, for those of us whose desks do not face a wall, this organizer is going to be in plain view, and it isn't all that attractive. 

Another place where cord clutter can occur is the car. I have this problem; my phone charger cord winds up with one end on the floor, which isn't so good when I have a passenger. While some cable organizers will stick to the dashboard (including some mentioned above), the Griffin Hanger cable organizer attaches to a fin on the air conditioning vents. One drawback: This will interfere with air flow somewhat. 

Inspired by Japanese wood joinery, ButterPly desks are easy to assemble and require no screws or tools. The height of the frame can be adjusted thanks to the in-house developed smart joinery system. ButterPly desks' durable table tops are ergonomically crafted with various functions embedded. The ButterPly furniture series offers 4 different sizes ranging from an upstanding desk, a personal desk to a dining table.

The Shaper Origin's demo videos look pretty awesome—but just how, precisely, would the tool fit into your workflow? Whether you're a shop newbie or a pro with a router/CNC mill, you've likely got some questions about what it would be like in actual use. Let's get them out on the table.

First off, the Origin will still have certain limitations that all routers do, like burning the workpiece if your feed rate is incorrect, and having to deal with clamps getting in the way while working on smaller pieces. 

Image via Tested

But those are all problems with established solutions. So let's move on to the positives.

No More Templates

The router mavens among you will instantly recognize that the Origin obviates the need to make templates. This has two clear benefits. The first is that, obviously, you needn't take the time to make a physical template, with all of the care that entails; because a template will be copied precisely, each radii and tangent must be dead-nuts perfect. For those of you that hate sanding MDF, the no-template-making thing alone will be attractive.

The second is that with an Origin, you wouldn't need to store templates. This isn't an issue if you've got a shop the size of, say, Jory Brigham's...

...but for those of you operating out of tight spaces, having templates that exist only as 1s and 0s sure frees up a lot of wall space.

Portable & Stowable

The second obvious, killer feature of the Origin is its physical size, which again has two advantages. The first being that this tool can arguably do whatever a 4x8, or 5x10 gantry-style CNC mill can without occupying those machines' tremendous, permanent in-shop footprints. Again, for space-tight shops this is a win.

The other huge benefit to the size is you can easily haul this thing to the jobsite. Imagine being able to cut, say, signage on-site, and even modify it on-the-fly. In the hands of someone from a relevant trade, the portability alone is bound to be a game-changer; over time, reducing the hours spent shuttling back and forth from your shop will lead to increased profits.

Then there's the size, and relatively squarish shape, of the base. Because it's got increased contact area on the camera-side of the bit, it ought be easy to keep this thing stable while working close to an edge, provided the edge is kept on the operator side. (Admittedly, one small downside of the larger base is that clamps may more easily get in the way.)

Questions We've Got

So above are what we see as the most obvious benefits. But we've still got plenty of questions, particularly after we saw this demo video:

Couple things here. First off, the guy making the speaker housing is cutting box joints for the corners. 

It goes without saying that a router cannot cut box joints on a horizontal sheet, as the bit is round and cannot cut proper corners:

So we went back and watched it closely, and spotted this:

As you can see, the operator has rigged up a hole in his workbench that allows him to clamp the piece vertically, so that he's routing into the endgrain. Aha, makes perfect sense. The set-up can be fiddly, as the workpiece must be plumb in two axes, set to precisely the right height, and ought have backer boards attached to prevent blowing out the grain, but that's all doable.

It's when we look at the perfect end-fingers in the final product...

...that our question becomes, how does he index the workpiece to the cutting head? We can see that the cut starts precisely at the edge of the board, allowing the one on the very edge to be the same width as all of them; how is that achieved, can the Origin's on-board camera detect the edge of a board with that level of accuracy?

Similarly, in the video where the woman is making the plug...

...it appears that she had the plug already cut, then places it on the workpiece that will receive it, then appears to cut the negative in that precise location. Is the Origin scanning the plug itself, or cutting the perfect negative by using the same file as the plug, but with an inside/outside offset?

Questions we've got beyond that:

How efficient is the dust collection?

Can the camera become obscured by sawdust kicked up during use?

How does one "zero" the bit to the worksurface?

Is it a pain in the ass getting the tape off, does it leave adhesive residue that must then be removed prior to finishing?

What kinds of service options are available if the product malfunctions?

Questions You've Got

There are plenty of you reading this who have more daily experience with routers and CNC mills than those of us on this side of the screen. So we'd like to hear the questions that you'd need answers to before considering one of these. Because we can get Shaper on the phone and get all of the answers. So let us know in the comments below, or if you'd rather ask privately, e-mail us at core77editors [at] gmail -dot- com, subject line: "Shaper Questions." We'll round them all up and get back to you with the answers.

Adhesives and tapes come in a variety of forms—the selection process can be overwhelming and quite honestly, confusing. Sometimes, you may not even realize you could be using adhesive-based products to bond your work instead of rivets, screws or fasteners. Here, 3M gives us seven things to consider before selecting the proper adhesive-based product—including some unexpected applications where tapes and adhesives could be superior alternatives to mechanical fasteners:

Don't Be Tacky

Whether its human or adhesive behavior, tackiness comes in varying degrees. Tapes are solids but remain tacky—gradually building full bond strength. Liquid adhesives, however, generally need to dry or cure. Some, like hot melts, cool quickly, becoming dry and tack-free relatively fast. Others, such as epoxies need a chemical reaction to form a solid bond, so they may take longer to lose their tackiness. Depending on the product, it could be minutes or hours before the adhesive finishes its reaction. 

Fortunately, there is a wide variety of technologies in tapes and liquid adhesives that enable you to select the method that fits your production needs. Before you get started, remember this: adhesives aren't designed to bond skin, so stop the thumb tests. Instead, refer to the manufacturer's spec for dry or cure times.

If your surface energy is low, you might have a hard time bonding. 

Low surface energy (LSE) does not refer to a surface's laid-back personality—surface energy impacts the ability of a surface to accept wetting via an adhesive or tape. If the adhesive or tape cannot flow over the surface, then the bonding strength will be reduced. LSE materials like thermoplastic polyolefin, polypropylene and polyethylenes repulse adhesives, creating tension that inhibits their ability to "wet out" the surface to create a bond. In the past, adhesion promoters or energizers, such as plasma were used to modify the surface or increase the surface's energy. Technology, however, has advanced, and adhesives alone are capable of high performance bonding to LSE substrates. 3M™ Scotch-Weld™ Structural Plastic Adhesive DP8010 Blue and 3M™ Scotch-Weld™ Structural Plastic Adhesive DP8005 are examples of products uniquely formulated to bond to LSE plastics.

Walt Disney Concert Hall

Tape is the Secret Design Feature in Some of the World's Most Beautiful Buildings

In particular, 3M™ VHB™ tape. This tape permanently bonds with amazing resistance to wind and thermal loads. 3M™ VHB™ tape can be found holding up the Walt Disney Concert Hall's stainless steel exterior curtain and creating a seamless appearance in Duisberg, Germany's Five Boats Office complex. It's the perfect tape for combining stunning beauty with surprising strength.

How to Lift an Elephant With Adhesives 

The average African Bush Elephant weighs in at about 13,000 pounds. According to the recent video from 3M below, two metal coupling plates joined using only a thin layer of Scotch-Weld™ Epoxy Adhesive DP420 could lift a cargo container filled with concrete, weighing 14550 pounds. 

Although no actual elephant was lifted in the making of the video, it could have been. It took very little adhesive to hold more than 7 tons of weight, and the bond held strong, even under constant stress from a concentrated load. Holding the weight of an African elephant may never be part of your design requirements, but you can be confident in epoxy adhesive's ability to maintain structural strength bonds.

You're Not Counting Calories With CARB Compliance

CARB is the acronym for California Air Resource Board. California was one of the first states with a regulatory agency managing air sanitation, but other states have adopted their standards for healthy air quality. CARB standards apply to everything from paints, coatings and deodorant to cleaning products and adhesives. 3M was a pioneer in reducing volatile organic compounds from its adhesive formulations and offers a full line of high bonding, low VOC-emitting products. When selecting an aerosol adhesive, check the product description for CARB compliance or Low VOC labeling.

Slow Your Roll or Lose Your Screws

When working with fiber reinforced composite materials, it's important to keep the reinforcing layers that give the material its strength intact when drilling holes for fastening. Under pressure to improve throughput, drilling feed speeds can be pushed to exceed recommended forces. This can lead to fiber damage and de-lamination of composite materials, which can actually reduce load bearing capacity. Additionally, drilling creates leak points and unsightly surface disruptions. One way of avoiding this risk is to bond composite materials using adhesives or bonding tapes. Adhesives and bonding tapes require no drilling and are formulated to work with a variety of composite compositions. In addition, they leave a smooth, aesthetically pleasing surface by replacing bolt heads, screws and rivets throughout your design.

Throw Bowling Balls at Your Glass Objects

A new video from 3M demonstrates how a 15 pound ball dropped from a four foot height will not destroy the joint of a thin protective barrier, nor the hand-blown glass balls placed beneath it. 

Here's the catch—the joint needs to be bonded with tapes or adhesive. Mechanical fasteners (rivets and screws) fail, allowing the glass to shatter because they cannot distribute stress the same way tapes and adhesives do. An intense hit from the dropped sphere easily breaks through the panels where the mechanical fasteners concentrate their bonding strength. Meanwhile, tapes and adhesives, with their unique viscoelasticity properties, spread stress across the full length of the bond, minimizing the chance of failure. When designing for routine or extreme stress, consider tapes and adhesives as an alternative to mechanical fasteners—they will ensure an even distribution of stress in your designs.

Over the past few months, designers and healthcare providers from around the world have been collaboratively working on reimagining the end of life experience—one of the most critical challenges facing our aging populations. 

Each year around 55 million people worldwide and over 2.5 million in the United States face the end-of-life. In the U.S., the end-of-life experience has shifted dramatically since the 1950s, as death has moved away from the home into institutions like hospitals and nursing homes. By the 1980s, less than 17% of people died at home. We believe the people and unmet needs behind these numbers inspire a huge opportunity for design.

In June, Core77 spoke with Dr. BJ Miller, an advisor for the OpenIDEO challenge and Senior Director and Advocate, Zen Hospice Project, and Dana Cho, IDEO partner and Managing Director of IDEO Palo Alto, about their work, insights from the stories collected on OpenIDEO in the first phase of the challenge and how design can truly make an impact in people's end of life experiences. 

We followed along as the challenge progressed and now, with the 2016 Core77 Conference right around the corner where we'll be featuring Dana Cho as a keynote speaker, we wanted to followup with three major themes that emerged from over 300 contributions to the OpenIDEO challenge.

Healing Sounds

Of the top 10 ideas for this challenge, two of them linked sound and healing. Yoko Sen's "Sound Will" is working to create a sound environment within hospitals to empower patients and help shift the conversation from, "disease control and prevention to a focus on personal spiritual and emotional needs." 

"Music at the End of Life" from Ned Buskirk is a music hospice program that encourages local musicians to not only build relationships with the dying but also act as modern day griots, singing the personal stories of those who are dying or have passed.

Both of these powerful projects center the patient's humanity and dignity and bring an element of holistic wellness into an often sterile space.

Connected Education and Planning

Technology can only solve so much of a problem—general education around the space and planning for patients and their loved ones have to be central in designing for death. Justin Magnuson, Living Fully Handbook, is a website designed to encourage intergenerational and community conversation around planning for one's end of life experience. The idea of "connectedness" is central to Magnuson's proposal—between patients and caregivers, community and resources, and providers outside of their local networks.  Liz Ramsay's "In My Hands" website is similar in scope in that it empowers people to plan their own path for their end of life experience.

Dawn Gross proposed "Death Ed," an educational course targeting grade school students. In her proposal, Gross pointedly explains, "Today, there are drills for lockdowns and earthquakes, yet nothing about death and dying, a practice arguably more prevalent and a part of life than sex." 

Intimate Storytelling

Storytelling is central to humanizing the end of life experience. Patients can feel disconnected from the world beyond their four walls and technology enables patients, family and caregivers to connect with one another in new and interesting ways. Jim Rosenberg's "I Know Something," is a proposal to set up a peer-to-peer storytelling platform connecting people around the world in their journeys. 

The end of life is a universal experience. Yet when you are in the experience it feels like alien, uncharted territory. Everything is new—the emotions, medical questions, financial worries, family communication, legal requirements, you name it—even though literally millions of people have stood in your same shoes before. How can we learn from everyone who has gone before us and break through the sense that we are in this alone?

Another tech-enabled project, Ken Rosenfeld's "Get to Know Me" , enables patients and their families to share their personal stories with their caregivers through a web portal and in-room "story" tablet. As Rosenfeld explains, "It will help providers gain a deeper understanding of the individual behind the patient, and also permits families to connect with, and reflect on over time, their loved one's personhood and deeply-held values."

And the most jubilant of the ideas is Vibhu Krishna's "Vykarious," an online platform where strangers can help check off items on patient bucket lists. The simple but effective idea allows patients to "lead a mission" and "transform the traditional bucket-list into a dynamic journey towards fulfillment and deep human connection."

More on the Top 10 ideas to emerge from OpenIDEO's challenge on reimagining the end of life experience here.

Learn more about designing for death at this September's Core77 Conference in Los Angeles. Buy your ticket today!

Build-A-Bear Workshop, Inc. is looking for a product designer with a creative mind, an artful eye and a passion for plush. The successful designer will have design ownership of their product category(s) that includes concepting & designing bears/other plush characters and their coordinating play accessories. If you meet the qualifications

I'm a proud hype-human for everyday tools, and today I'd like to share one that's particularly special. You deserve better scissors, and you deserve them in the kitchen. Almost all kitchens do have a catch-all drawer full of mixed necessities: tape rolls, rubber bands, and a well-used if poorly made set of scissors. These are almost the scissors I'm talking about, but not quite. Once you have them, nothing will feel the same.

In a perfect world, catch-all kitchen scissors would lean into their locale and do a lot more. They should still open frustrating blister packaging and dice old credit cards, but they would also elegantly glide through green onions, comfortably debone chickens and delicately mince herbs. They should be slow to dull, and easy as hell to clean. And, considering what we're into around here, looking nice would be nice.

This all sounds easy, and regular restaurant suppliers do have shears on offer, but it really isn't simple. Long before Teflon coating and plastic handles and impulse-buy options, scissors were a tricky and considered tool, built to work hard and last. They were carefully forged, formed, hand assembled and intended to be re-sharpened, like a nice chef's knife. A good pair would (I think should) last for decades of regular use. Common contemporary options usually disappoint. 

Ernest Wright & Sons Ltd. has been making that special blend of wicked sharp, well-balanced, outlive-you quality scissors for over 100 years. Located in Sheffield, they've been producing since the earliest days of stainless steel, and the family's incredibly meticulous process has gotten them famous among quality-minded tool lovers today.

EW&S is now Kickstarting to re-release the Kutrite, a decidedly mod mid-century kitchen scissor, originally produced from the 1960s-'80s. This sleek shear has all the badass little features a simple tool lover needs. With a name like 'Kutrite' it sounds like it should come in avocado green, with a matched set of Tupperware. Instead it comes with the company's famed cutting quality, plus a streamlined flat profile, large leverage-friendly loops, pop-apart blades for cleaning, toothed sections for grippy cutting and cracking nuts. And a bottle opener, because because. 

They're also offering a more traditional 'Turton' profile, with rounded handle and familiar angled blades reminiscent of their tailoring shears. Both start at ~$67 USD during the Kickstarter campaign. 

The difficult part is explaining how different nice scissors feel in use. Having used various other EW&S scissors, I can attest to their ability to handle tasks that would tucker cheaper options out with a single project. In the kitchen, that kind of quality and precision can reduce the number of knives needed in cooking, reduce hand strain for innumerable small tasks, and cut out waste. There will always be cheaper and fancier options, but over the years the reliability and satisfaction of a good everyday tool becomes a meaningful investment. 

You've got about one more day to get in on the early bird Kickstarter pricing, but having more than tripled their goal, this storied company will definitely deliver.

As part of her "Salt" series, Israeli artist Sigalit Landau suspends objects within the Dead Sea for set periods of time. Because the Dead Sea has a salinity level of 34.2%, making it nearly 10 times as salty as typical ocean water, it has an interesting effect on said objects. Here's Landau's latest, "Salt Bride," a replica of a traditional Hasidic dress that she left in the drink over a two-month period:

The traditional Hasidic garment shown in the photographs is a replica of the costume worn by the female character Leah in the canonical Yiddish play, The Dybbuk, as portrayed by legendary actress Hanna Rovina for forty years with the Habima Theatre, first in Russia and then Israel.

Written by S. Ansky between 1913 and 1916, The Dybbuk tells the story of a young bride possessed by an evil spirit and subsequently exorcised. In Landau's Salt Bride series, Leah's black garb is transformed underwater as salt crystals gradually adhere to the fabric. Over time, the sea's alchemy transforms the plain garment from a symbol associated with death and madness into the wedding dress it was always intended to be.

Eight underwater images that Landau shot while documenting the crystallization process are currently on display at London's Marlborough Contemporary. You've got until September 3rd to catch it.