It's late October, the internet is in peril, the political world is a tiring tire fire, and it's getting cold and crappy outside. I have two solutions, and only one involves going outside. This week is a high peak in visibility of the the Orionid meteor shower, if you live in the northern hemisphere and can get away from city lights. The Orionids are a long gentle meteor shower caused by leftover dust from the tail of Halley's comet hitting our atmosphere as we pass it on our annual arc around the sun. Though Halley's comet is a rare occurrence, its old debris kicks up a pretty storm near the Orion constellation every year from around Oct. 20 to Nov. 7. 

Exact times for ideal watching differ, but if you pour some hot chocolate in a thermos, put yourself into several jackets and head out after 11pm you're nearly guaranteed to see some beautiful zinging lights. 

If you're cold-averse, unwilling to leave the safety of street lights, clouded out, or generally not thrilled by the astronomical wonders that surround you—maybe cool stationery is your speed. These envelopes were designed by Japanese art student, Moe Tsukada, as a way to bring a little natural wonder to the indoor practice of letter writing. 

The double layered envelope allows light to filter in with a distinctly twinkly appearance, giving the viewer a nice surprise when they peer inside. The pack comes with a light constellation print outside and instructions in Japanese and English. After submitting the prototype to a design competition, and winning, the starry sky envelop got abducted (peacefully) by the paper goods company, Kaminokousakujo. They're now on offer over at Spoon and Tamago, ready to share with a city slicker friend who needs a little escape.

In some instances, the saying "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" just doesn't cut it; this is perhaps most true for designers. For example, one artifact that has seemingly been preserved under this notion is the humble home doorbell—unaltered in function for ages, to say the doorbell cannot be improved on is a lazy designer's excuse for inaction and an ambitious entrepreneur's potential goldmine (anyone who has missed a FedEx package or hosts their home on Airbnb may be well aware of this).

Designers Avril and John Nussey

This brings us to the case of Avril and John Nussey, two married designers based in London persistently on the search for well-designed home objects. A few years ago after moving into a new home together and needing to replace a broken doorbell, they found themselves unsatisfied with the selections on the market, as John pointed out to Core77:

"We couldn't find a replacement for [the doorbell] that either suited the looks of our house or was modern enough...and it was either super high tech or super low tech; there's not really much in between. So you either have to go for a brass door knocker or a high-tech door entry system—webcam, doorbell. We fell into that middle ground where we wanted something that looked good but [since] we're young people who live on our phones, we appreciate the technology side of it as well."

So the couple did as many designers would do and started to pick apart the traditional doorbell to see how they might improve it. In 2014, they came up with an idea: Ding, a doorbell connected to your phone that matched the traditional look of the doorbell (no fancy video capabilities) while adding the helpful ability to talk to whoever was at the door, wherever you are. 

To see if this idea had potential, they entered their idea in Design Council Spark, an accelerator program run by the UK Design Council that helps fast-track products to market. "We got into the top 30 on the idea alone with no sketches or prototypes, and this encouraged us to explore the idea further," notes John. They then dug into research, surveying people to see what they would want out of a doorbell while buying as many models on the market as they could. The duo also began by creating quick working prototypes, which helped them test the user experience they wanted. Starting with the tech, the team tested the ability to connect to a phone first through SIM card technology and then through Wifi. They came to the conclusion that Wifi works as a more commercially viable option, as they predict that "any person considering smart products will probably have Wifi and most homes in general will." 

The first model for DING

When in the accelerator program, they spent most of their thinking on their business model, "to prove that it had the potential to even make money," says John. After finding that much of their attention was spent focusing on the business side, they decided to seek out a partnership with designers who already knew the business of smart products well. After meeting designers from the well-known creative consultancy, Map, at the Hardware Pioneers meet-up in London, they began a loose conversation about the direction of the product. Avril and John said they ultimately chose to work with them because "they understood what we wanted from the moment we first met them. We didn't want to turn it into a video doorbell, and they totally understood the usability side that we were able to go for." 

A variation of different foam models for the doorbell and speaker hub

Once the basic idea was established, detailed iterating for both the doorbell and the home chime speaker began. "Another reason for working with Map was they make beautiful models," says the design pair, "they prototype it all out in foam, so that way you get a good idea of the size and very slight difference." They also mention that testing out this product proved why handmade model prototype is still so relevant in the digital age: "I think foam actually works quite a lot better for getting a feel of something than the 3D prints we got back...it's almost too precise making renders and then getting it 3D printed. You almost want it like the sketching process to keep it loose, otherwise you focus too quickly on the little details rather than the overall size and shape of the product." 

The pair emphasizes that they "spent more time iterating on the software than the hardware in some ways," and the act of modeling the forms and figuring out the pure product design of the object was the most interesting. For example, making sure the doorbell and chime were both well-designed for their specific contexts. John remembers the chime speaker hub being the first big design breakthrough in the project: "the lozenge worked really well, either hung vertically or resting on a shelf, and the fabric speaker cover made it more like soft furnishings in the home." Next, the team had to figure out how to get the same visual feel for the doorbell so it would work well with the exterior of the home. This ultimately led them to the solid brass button, a modern riff on the look of traditional doorbells. 

The product, as of now being pledged on Kickstarter, is well over their original funding goal with a little over 2 weeks left before the campaign is over. The Ding team is confident the reason for one has to do with their dedication to creating a simplistic product while also really coming to understand who their audience is. "I think a lot of smart products out there have a more challenging pitch for people, and they're trying to sell a new behavior or new feature. In our case, for example, we found a lot of people who work in their back garden or they've got a home studio and they love this doorbell because they're always working from home and missing parcels. It's a product with a very practical everyday use and has a true benefit to the people buying it." 

When it comes to developing a smart product in the age of thousands of superfluous tech-enhanced devices, Ding is active proof of how important it is to keep this idea of indispensability for a specific group at the forefront of product development—and to realize that a smart product doesn't succeed due simply to it's tech-savviness, but also its attentive consideration of the human using it. 

Nearly 12 million tons of furniture is sent to U.S. landfills each year. MOJUHLER believes their new modular furniture system can reduce that number. Using the same components, their furniture can be assembled into many different pieces, so instead of throwing your furniture away, you can build something new.

The system uses just three base components—structural segments, angle brackets, and sex bolts. Multiple ways to join the components and multiple connection points are what makes the system so versatile. Made from durable materials, the system is intended to be assembled and disassembled over and over again with no loss of structural integrity.

MOJUHLER will initially be offering their furniture in three different sized kits. Each kit will be capable of building a main design with the potential to design many more. Individual components will also be available for customers to extend their furniture or to build something that they design themselves. The company is currently working on advanced components, which will allow for different configurations as well as accessories like lights and cushions to plug in or connect to the system.

The Adirondack Kit and Mini Bench Kit

The Adirondack Kit converted into a table

The Adirondack Kit and some additional pieces that can be built with the kit.

Adirondack Kit

Bar Stool Kit

Mini Bench Kit

Sex Bolts - Small, Medium, & Large

I might be the wrong person to ask for opinions on concept bikes, since I prefer bicycles that ride well first and look futuristic second. But from time to time, a flashy one will catch me so far off guard I wind up liking it before I can help myself. The Viks GT Commuter is a new absurdly stripped down frame design from Velonia Bikes. It was created by Indrek Narusk and inspired by the aggressive lines of Lamborghini supercars.

Narusk, an Estonia based designer, has been working with the Viks design since 2012. The riding position is pointedly not ergonomic, but given the uncomfortable tradition of cafe racers, that's nothing new. The frame buys into some other classic minimalist frame cliches—look ma, no seat tube!!—but makes up for it by doubling the tubing used, literally. 

While double top tubes or down tubes are not uncommon to stiffen up cargo bikes, they're the opposite of weight saving, which usually scares off run of the mill, minimalism-minded track bike designers.

This mac 'n cheesy update features 40% lighter aluminum tubing, elegant internal cable routing, upgraded disc brakes, slick brakes, and belt drive.
The Viks GT frames are made in Tallinn, Estonia. The forthcoming line will be produced in a range of Lamborghinish colors, available via Velonia resellers. More info can be found at the Viks site. 

This is the best of what design has to offer: A simple, presumably inexpensive device that easily solves a problem millions of people have through brilliant mastery of materials and form.

Injecting yourself with a needle, as millions of diabetics need to do often, sucks. You have to have a steady hand to ensure the needle goes in without shearing, and you have to inject to a particular depth. And those requiring daily injections must change up their injection spots to avoid building up scar tissue. Oh yeah, and it kind of stings.

UK-based engineer, Peter Bailey's, TickleFlex device solves all of these problems in a very clever way. Take a look at how it works:

What I found fascinating is that the pain-free part operates on the same principle as a team of pickpockets: When a thief's accomplice bumps into you on the street, "saturating the local sensory inputs," the thief can slide your wallet out of your back pocket knowing that you won't feel it.

Bailey is reportedly preparing the devices for sale. They'll come in two color-coded "flavors," a green "Firm" model for normal skin and a blue "Soft" model for sensitive skin.

Maps and globes have been valuable commodities since we figured out how to make them, but not all maps get the full globe treatment. Spacey places like Mars have been long mapped from afar, but there are nearly zero globe makers offering these historical maps in globe form. 

Dr. Michael Plichta is one of the few who does. His Mannheim, German company, Planetenkugel Manufaktur, specializes in traditional handcrafted globes with extra faraway subject matters.

Plichta's first design, titled "Mars and its Canals," is based on the observations and map made in 1906 by astronomer, Percival Lowell. Lowell was a vocal believer in intelligent Martian life and thought the patterns he interpreted as canals were proof. Unfortunately for him, closer photos taken just a few decades later debunked not just the presence of Martians, but their canals too. 

The Lowell maps remain as a beautiful, if kooky, portrait of astronomy as a growing field, and thanks to Planetenkugel Manufaktur, they have more 3D appeal than ever. For more photos of Plichta's process and new designs check them out on Facebook.

This is the first in a series bi-weekly posts dedicated to examining design details in new vehicles.

Tesla's march into new segments continues. The model X follows the S with larger than typical proportions, and takes a high ground-clearance package of an SUV, and combines it with a sedan / hatch profile. 

1) Second outing for Tesla's new corporate nose. The smaller intake graphic reflects the lack of traditional radiator requirement with the electric powertrain and raises the question of how we expect to recognise brands. 

2) Aerodynamic function drive the design language: a softly curved cabin profile, calm surfacing - everything says "smooth."

3) There are three rows of seats here, and the sloping roofline means that the cabin space has to come from somewhere - in this case the bodyside surfacing is deep, and fives the X a 'big-boned' volume. 

4) Falcon-wing doors are unique, solving the challenge of accessing row-3 seating along with parking lot squeezes. European garage heights might be an issue...

5) Black lower-body cladding, the favourite trick of the crossover, is seen here, primarily to disguise the bukl of the body above the wheels, but also adds an air of ruggedness.

Result
An unusual proportion for a car of unusual ability, the X enters a market inhabited by BMW's X6, Mercedes GLE, and latterly Infiniti's FX. The design of the X is unique among its peers with a soft yet precise feel, and a calming character, that goes against the grain of the more aggressive competition.

We are looking for the best creatives in the world to join our team in Washington DC. Design Army seeks an innovative senior designer that can concept, lead, and design at the highest creative levels imaginable. Candidates should possess the following: extraordinary typography skills, accountability for the leadership and direction of the creative process within assigned teams and the ability to manage a large volume of work with tight deadlines

Commonly touted as one of the best college towns—or places to retire—Ithaca, NY has had its fair share of press. Until last year, it was not considered a Harry Potter mecca. However, the surprising success of a community-driven, themed weekend in 2015 quickly changed that.  

Developed and launched within two short weeks during the month of October, the inaugural Wizarding Weekend festival was created to celebrate a love of Harry Potter and drive a little late fall business to downtown merchants. The handful of participating vendors situated in a funky little alleyway originally hoped for 200 guests. Once word got out and over 8,000 people planned to attend the afternoon festival celebrating all things wizarding, they had to swiftly design a larger experience.

Fast forward one year later, and the same core group of entrepreneurs—a chocolate maker, a local energy provider, an urban developer, an electric bike pioneer—are anticipating another record breaking turnout. This time, they've enlisted an area design team to help add elements of interaction and theatrical staging to the event. Wizarding Weekend is planned for four days of experiences. From Character Brunches and Potion Classes to Quidditch Games on electric cargo bikes—the stage (i.e. Ithaca's downtown) must be set to match this expanded itinerary. 

The all-volunteer, community based event reached out to St. John Design Group (SDG) to lead the charge of creating several interactive exhibits to be placed throughout the festival's locations. The company's founder, Pete St. John, is an industrial designer who started his career as a theatrical set designer. He loves Harry Potter and regularly sets aside part of his team's client load for community based projects at low or no cost. Festival organizers felt confident this relationship would be a perfect fit.

After accepting the design challenge, SDG went to work determining how to create elements that fit the following protocol: embodies the spirit and magic of the event, is interactive enough to entertain and delight large crowds, can withstand lots of kid activity and can be built on time and on budget. In other words, all volunteer build labor and five compelling exhibits for under $2,000—Go!

Design: SDG started with simple and quick concept sketches. Drawn on the backs of napkins, yellow legal pads, and discarded pieces of wood with carpenter pencils, they hashed out overall form and interactivity.

After roughing out initial concepts, the process quickly went into a Trimble Sketchup model to work with real world dimensions, proportions, and structural planning. To manage project planning and volunteer roles, SDG utilized Asana, a web-based project tracking software, and Facebook Group pages.

Monster Book. A fan favorite, and a seemingly low build, high impact addition to the festival.

To create the Monster Book, SDG first took the approach of a RC robot base platform for a "Battlebots" style build. While this could have been a great solution, budget constraints quickly led to an alternate solution built on a high rpm remote control car (purchased on Amazon) with a skeleton structure of 2" insulation board, strips of 1" x .25" cedar and water based contact cement (3m's Fastbond 30), which provided enough lightweight strength to build the form of the book. Mold some giant, wonky teeth from Instamorph (low melt plastic), scour Amazon for realistic looking costume fur and eyeballs, and a monster book is born. 

To complete the illusion, Sam Corbett, an IT specialist from Cornell University and lead volunteer responsible for building the monster book, will be cloaked in a wizard robe, complete with belled sleeves to discreetly hide the remote control. Together, the keeper and the monster book will roam the streets of this year's festival.

Portrait Wall. The halls of gilded frames, with portrait subjects that engage, enrage and delight passer-bys is an iconic element to the world of Harry Potter.

To design The Portrait Wall, the team built an 8' x 8' wall created from a frame of 2 x 4's, skinned in .25" luan and then covered with 2" insulation foam board. Volunteers textured the foam to look like castle rock then coated it with Jaxsan 600 (an acrylic latex coating) for sealing. Finally, with paint donated from a variety of volunteers, the wall was given a faux rock finishing. 

There are five large portraits hung on the wall, four of which will feature streaming video content supplied by Russian Cosplay group, The Founders Four. SDG and the Wizarding Weekend team connected with the group to provide footage based on the iconic movie scenes. The center frame will feature a live actor/actress volunteer who will engage with festival goers as they pass by the wall of portraits, bringing the exhibit to life.

The Sorting Hat, built by friend and volunteer, Ericfx

What house will you be in? Festival organizers thought this was a necessary question to ask attendees, so the dream of an interactive sorting hat was born. A small set was designed and built to house the experience—visitors interested in learning which house the hat will choose for them will stand in front of the set, and the hat will be placed on their head. A local voice actor volunteer will be standing behind the set and will speak to the crowd and animate the hat's "face" using hidden posable features, inclusing a fully operable mouth.

Tom Riddles Grave

In addition to these interactive elements, the team designed and built a full scale, fire-bearing Goblet of Fire and a replica of Tom Riddle's Grave. A small team of dedicated volunteers, their children and two interns—one from Cornell University and one from Ithaca College—devoted hundreds of hours over the course of just a few months to bring SDG's visions to life. In addition, Bill Overbaugh, a founding member of the festival, proved instrumental in envisioning the Goblet of Fire. Andy Mansfield, owner of Tamarack Design and a past set builder, devoted a portion of his shop and a wealth of knowledge to the build.

Next year, the team is already planning ways to create new façades for the buildings—murmurs of an articulated, animated dragon can be heard on the Wizarding Weekend Build team's Facebook planning page. There's no telling what next year will bring, but one thing's for sure—magic will once again be found in downtown Ithaca later this week. 30,000 locals will welcome Wizarding fans from across the country to their annual festival with open arms.

The Wizarding Weekend festival takes place throughout Ithaca, NY from October 28-30, 2016.

The title image is copyright Allison Usavage

I once had a certain famous designer as a tirade-prone ID professor. One time, a student presented an object that was typically made of wood, but instead he'd fabricated it out of metal. He accompanied the design with a flowery description as to why he made the material change. The professor let him have it. "No, no, no!" He yelled. "You don't switch materials for the sake of switching materials. There is nothing profound about this." The materials, he insisted, had to serve the object's function and manufacturability.

I agree with him in spirit, but occasionally a material-swapped item does catch my eye. Like this team-up between stereo manufacture,r Crosley Radio, and leather supplier, Moore & Giles. Their co-produced Commonwealth Collection C10 Turntable has a plinth made of wood inlaid with luxurious-looking leather.

Mahogany & Black Calf. The mahogany wood finish is inlaid with calfskin in a sophisticated, smooth matte black. Synonymous with luxury, the small, supple hides are tanned in northern Italy by a family tannery specializing in calf. With use, the flat black color will polish to a handsome luster.

Birch & Modern Saddle. The birch wood finish is paired with a pebbly, vegetable tanned leather called Modern Saddle from a small producer just outside of Pisa, Italy. Each hide is tanned for two month, deepening the color and accentuating the texture of the finished leather. Over time, you can expect Modern Saddle to evolve from its initial golden color, burnishing into a rich shade of dark caramel.

As you can see, the platter mats appear to be leather too. If you're wondering what those lines in it are, they've laser-etched in "the topography of the land between Lynchburg and Louisville—the companies' respective home bases—as an abstract nod to the historical and geographic proximity shared by Crosley and Moore & Giles. These concentric lines of the topographical map echo the concentric lines engraved on a record."

Seeking to underscore the tactile appeal of the record playing experience – the weight of the vinyl, the intricacy of the album art, the ceremony of dropping the needle – by adding extraordinary leather textures and laser-cut detailing to the player's physical design, the Commonwealth Collection C10 Turntable is a record collector's dream.

The $840 CC C10 goes up for pre-sale this week, though few of you will be able to buy these—they're only making 20 of each.

The leather admittedly doesn't add anything to the function or manufacturability, and perhaps an audiophile would insist that the platter mat needs to be something synthetic and perfectly flat, but it does do something for the experience, no? Ah, what do I know, I believe that professor gave me a "C."

Benefit is well known for being a champion of beautiful brows everywhere. Having already established a global network of brick and mortar brow bars, the next step was to create a complete line of products that provide all of the tools needed to master the eyebrow. Dashdot created a visual language that represents the brand's playfully luxurious attitude, and that unifies the entire range of brow products. While the line works together as a family, it was important to give each product it's own voice and attitude.

A discussion taking place on the boards strikes an interesting material challenge for Core77 readers. Discussion board member, mrcry wonders how to find cheap alternative materials for compression molded products with a similar visual effect and level of reliability:

I've been making our products with compression molded EVA for years, but am looking for an alternative. EVA seems expensive and I am hoping to find a cheaper or comparable material to (at least) test out.

Requirements:

- soft finish, or laminate-able with fabric pre molding (or post, if possible to get a clean lamination or even tight fabric cover fit)
- size is about 25"x20"8"
- current cost is about $8-12, so lower would be better

Inspirations

- I've seen some amazing molded PET felt furniture that might work for us, but have no experience or connections to people doing this.
- molded car interior panels - what material is this? the truck cover on a hatchback seems similar to PET with a fabric lamination.
- vacuum formed sheet goods with some kind of flocking?
- I usually produce 1000-3000 units at a time.

Do any of you have experience or ideas?

Our reader also shared a video to further illuminate the process of compression molding—a process film by Benjamin Hubert for his eco-friendly Pod chair, covered several years ago on Core77:

We're curious to hear your material and process ideas for this particular question—also, how can someone look around for the best materials for a particular manufacturing process? Any advice for testing before committing to a material for mass manufacture?

Join the conversation in the comment feed below, or contribute to the original thread on the discussion board!

(Title image credit: DeVorm)

I don't care how exciting your design job is—at some point you have to engage in repetitive, mundane tasks. Whether it's naming Photoshop layers, cutting a crapload of biscuit joints or tediously executing some CAD task that you can't automate—how do you deal with it? Me, I've found a strange way to turn it into a plus.

After a mention in Chris Schwarz's blog, my company, Tools for Working Wood, had a rush on our 18tpi coping saw blades. We buy these in bulk and repackage them in lots of a dozen, which is a lot of mundane work. With everyone else working flat out on other equally important stuff, I realized that if I didn't repackage the blades myself, they would not get done for days.

Even though the rush is now over, whenever I feel I don't have the patience or will to start a new task, I start packaging coping saw blades. It's easy, somewhat mindless work, but getting the blades out of the bulk packages means your hands are going to get scratched up. After a few hundred dozen, you get pretty good at counting to twelve.

The best part of doing this task is that it gives me a chance to think. I realized this is what our ancestors meant when they said "Idle hands do the devil's work." Not every job we do is hard, skilled, or even interesting. But lots of little jobs need patience and reliability. The time to do them is when you need a break.

The trick in all of this is good technique / coming up with a procedure. I can think about stuff while I pack blades because I worked out a procedure for packing blades, so I am not continually applying any effort to the process. This sort of procedure/ efficient technique applies to most mundane chores. If you have places to put stuff on your desk (pencil holder, circular file) and have clear ideas of what goes where, cleaning your desk regularly isn't a brain stretch. Et cetera.

Once I'm in the flow, it's pretty relaxing. Apparently, there is even some scientific research that suggests repetitive mundane tasks like this one lower your levels of stress. There is also a great sense of accomplishment after completing a mundane task—they're tasks that nobody really has the time for or really loves to do. In this case, packing blades must be done if we are going to fill orders. It's certainly more useful than pretending I'm working while surfing the Internet.

How does this pertain to your design work? Forget about the exciting stuff you do, and take a look at the annoying tasks you're faced with—like putting things away in the shop or the studio, cleaning those sandwich crumbs out of your keyboard, sharpening your tools. Try to look at them not as chores, but a useful, relaxing diversions while you collect your thoughts for the next good job. And what's really key, is that as long as you don't see the annoyance of doing the task while you do it, it really will be a "useful, relaxing diversion while you collect your thoughts for the next good job."

Stay sane, folks.

I needed a new desk chair–my old one was a bit...uncomfortable. I don't like buying new chairs because there are already enough of them in the world. Sometimes it's a matter of tweaking an object that already exists to make it fit your needs. My main goal was to make a comfortable chair. Car seats are exactly that, and there are plenty of them around...everywhere. But car seats are not desk chairs. They need some some tweaks—add a simple frame, some wheels and you have a buddy for life.

This story originally appeared on Story Hopper, a collection of design stories worth sharing, squeezed into short videos.

With Halloween celebrations quickly approaching (this weekend!), it's time to stop procrastinating and start getting your costume ideas in order. From art history reminders to creepy looks into the future, here are some of our favorite takes on turning hard labor into indisputable costume party champions. Okay, most of them aren't great for last minute efforts, but hopefully they'll spark some extra creativity before the weekend rolls around: 

12. Impress friends and instantly become the life of the party by housing yourself in a working, wearable Pac-Man arcade game, a segway-equipped Zoltar fortune telling booth or a homemade Etch a Sketch. 

11. If games aren't your forte, try turning yourself into a fully functional iPhone or Nikon camera.

10. Incorporate iPads to instantly add creepy, futuristic meaning to any ordinary get-up.

9. Remind people to get their car washed ASAP as an energetic sky dancer—here's a tutorial. Note: wearer must have the confidence to flail arms in public...all night.

8. Destroy enemies—with child—in a Power Loader suit. Your kid will thank you in 20 years.

7. Wizarding Weekend is going also down this weekend—take note from this loyal boyfriend and craft your own Nimbus 2000 broomstick. Or just cast a spell to make it the easy way.

6. We dare you to take it to the Bauhaus level.

5. This one's for the family—turn yours into light-up stick figures. 

4. If you're someone that prefers planning—way—ahead, you could always make this Daft Punk helmet for next year. The directions say it will take 17 months, but we know our readers can work fast under epic costume creating pressure.

3. Let the cloud inspire you.

GIF via swissmiss

2. Here's another direction you can take the storm motif—you might as well turn your day job into a costume, right?

1. If these over-the-top ideas didn't inspire you to get designing, feel free to take a simpler approach—designers understand that sometimes less is more, after all.

Stay safe in your intricately made Halloween costumes this weekend! We'd love to see what you come up with—send your photos/videos to blogs@core77.com.

We built Harry’s with one simple belief: everyone deserves a great shave at a fair price. As such, we seek to provide our own brand of exceptional shaving products direct to our customers online customer response since then. We’re now looking to bring amazing people, like you, together to redefine the way people interact with brands online.

Before we get to the cow thing, pop quiz: Which sector creates the most greenhouse gas emissions? We've placed the list of sectors below in alphabetical order—see if you can correctly list them in order of worst offenders.

- Agriculture
- Commercial & Residential
- Electricity
- Industry
- Transportation

To force you to scroll down to see the correct answers, I will fill the space here with three videos from the seminal 1980s rock band, Bon Jovi.

You might be surprised to learn that, according to the EPA's most recent (2014) statistics, Electricity production surpasses both Transportation and Industry:

Agriculture is the smallest chunk, but it's still significant—and increasing, which obviously needs to stop. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, "Cattle (raised for both beef and milk, as well as for inedible outputs like manure and draft power) are the animal species responsible for the most emissions, representing about 65% of the livestock sector's emissions."

The bulk of a cow's emissions are methane (44%, with 29% being nitrous dioxide and the remaining 27% carbon dioxide). So the bottom line: Methane from cows is the largest single chunk of GGEs from the Agriculture sector.

Now, an Australian professor of aquaculture may have figured out how to reduce a cow's methane output almost entirely, according to Australian Broadcasting Corporation News. James Cook University professor, Rocky De Nys, has been working with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), and they've found that "adding a small amount of dried seaweed to a cow's diet can reduce the amount of methane a cow produces by up to 99 per cent."

The researchers had already seen similar results with sheep, cutting their diet with 2% seaweed, which reduced their methane output by 50% to 70%. But with the cows, "the amount of success and reduction we saw was very surprising," Professor De Nys says.

Now, the problem is how to harvest the seaweed, which CSIRO researcher Rob Kinley calls "the number one barrier—getting enough seaweed to feed millions of cows.

"Wild harvesting isn't going to do it because it's far too expensive and the resources aren't enough, so we need to get partners on board who can produce the seaweed in a cultivation process."

By the bye, Professor De Nys revealed this surprising fact, which will disappoint schoolchildren everywhere: "The vast majority of methane comes from the cow's burp rather than the gas from the other end of the cow."

You know those ribbon-cutter tools that clay modelers use? Here resourceful vlogger Katie Campshure shows you how to make one out of household items, then uses it to carve a rather intricate design into a pumpkin:

The first smart coffee instrument with a built-in scale and an app enables you to brew coffee with pour-over, immersion and cold drip methods.

Farming is Filled with Emotions

 For the over two million American families who farm professionally, their work is toil and struggle, risk and fear. It is also joy and love, commitment and loyalty. Farm stories are generational, passing down both knowledge and lore from one generation to the next—from tales of the painful, lean years, to romanticized stories of great harvests past, to revolutions in farming that changed the entire industry. For millions of farmers, their work is fueled by a passion for family, community and country.

Although 58% of our produce comes from small family farms, for consumers, these farmers are often an invisible link. Traditional farming happens far from urban centers, where the majority of Americans live, offering little connection between farmers and consumers.

Nate Storey, founder and CEO of Bright Agrotech, wants to use cutting-edge technology to re-establish this link by reinforcing the critical role small family farms play in bringing food to our supermarkets, restaurants, and homes.

Farming Gets Personal

For Storey, it all started with his own family history and a deep connection with the soil. He hails from a family of sheep ranchers in Montana by way of Canada, who, growing up, related romanticized stories of early settler ancestors and hard times survived on the land. Enchanted with the tales of his rancher grandfather, Bob Storey, Nate grew up with a healthy respect for the rigors of farm life.

Nate Storey, the man behind Bright Agrotech

Earning a Ph.D. in Agronomy, Storey became immersed in the technical language of agricultural methods, while remaining grounded in the stories, land, and people essential to understanding the farming culture and practice.

Says Storey, "When every generation before you has suffered for this thing, and you get it and now it's your turn to suffer for it, it's a deeply human thing. It's a deeply human struggle."

Technology Fuels Growth

Storey's company, Bright Agrotech, is a technology start-up designing innovative solutions that support small family farmers working in vertical farms. Vertical farms are built in indoor environments, generally near urban areas where farmers need to optimize a limited amount of space. Many use hydroponic systems - technologies that use nutrient environments without soil, to grow produce. The USDA identifies hydroponic farms as "a growing area of commercial food production" that will become increasingly vital to our food system as our population continues to gravitate toward urban centers. Currently, approximately 21,000 vertical, hydroponic small family farms exist in the USA alone.

Vertical farming at work

Innovators like Bright Agrotech are developing creative solutions that address the unique constraints of these progressive farming environments. "Nothing has been designed for this type of farming before," Storey says.

Two solutions Bright Agrotech developed have been a huge hit with farmers. The first is the CoolBar™: a highly functional, water-cooled, heat neutral, LED lighting product that produces optimal light without compromising temperature-sensitive, indoor environments.

"Our farmers needed a high wattage bar without the adverse heat loads of traditional LED lighting. We developed a way to accomplish that with water cooling. We connected it to a chiller system. The entire thing is basically set up to run heat neutral in the growing environment," says Storey.

The second is ZipFarm: an Internet of Things system and the company's first indoor turnkey product, which delivers a comprehensive solution for lighting, temperature control, as well as growing and dosing equipment.

ZipFarm sans vegetation

"These farms are incredibly complicated. There are thousands of parts, so it's almost like building a car. ZipFarm was our attempt to make it more accessible to more people, in a way that is flexible for a lot of crops and a lot of different sales techniques," explains Storey.

Since the Bright Agrotech customer typically works on a small farm, selling into niche markets, the company has taken the initiative to not only provide them with the tools they need, but also to develop a network that connects them to other farmers, agricultural technology experts, and consumers.

"If you want to be a farmer, if you want to do this really important thing, how can we help you do that," asks Storey, outlining the central mission of Bright Agrotech. "Bright Agrotech is building the infrastructure for a more decentralized and democratized food system where access to fresher, transparently grown local food is paramount," he explains.

Mitigating Risk through Partnerships

"In some industries, people talk about sacrificing for profits, but in farming, you're often sacrificing for life," says Storey. "In traditional farming, you have an entire culture that is very resistant to change, because change represents risk. The risk of losing 1 or 2% might kill you over the course of a decade, or a competitive disadvantage might kill the farm over one or two decades," he explains. "But we're talking about high-tech farming here, not scrapping it out on a parcel of dry, rocky ground. We're leveraging technology to grow."

"I don't see us being able to do it without Autodesk technology," says Storey. "In the last 9 months we've used Fusion 360 to design, model, manufacture and certify a line of custom LED lighting. We were able to go from zero to certified product in 9 months, a product we can sell to our farmers."

Early in the development process, the Autodesk Entrepreneur Impact Program provided Bright Agrotech with the software and additional co-marketing to support the work they were doing. At that stage, Storey was still trying to figure out where he was going with his efforts. As he puts it, "We started with the design philosophy that simpler is always better. When you're first getting started, your building blocks, your core principles, should always be very simple. At the same time, we keep as many options open as possible."

Using Autodesk Fusion 360 to develop Bright Agrotech products

Bright Agrotech was also able to develop their marketing tools with Fusion 360, in parallel with the actual product development. Says Storey, "We were able to create near photo-realistic images and begin building our markets before the Coolbar light was complete. That is a powerful thing for a company like ours that has to move fast, because the lights cost a lot of money to develop and build. We have to have these things sold by the time the first run is done."

The Next Green Revolution

Storey wants to build bridges between the farmers who cultivate the land and the consumers who eat what they produce. The connection, as Storey tells it, is critical. This is the next green revolution.

For Bright Agrotech, this means creating custom structures and even more robust turnkey products to help farmers build and thrive.

"We're going to focus on custom structures, we call them architectural applications, like turning the sides of buildings into farms in ways that are both pretty and economical. There's all this unused space on the sides of buildings. We are going to make it available for people to farm," Storey says

Nate taking a look at one such architectural application

"It's become a personal thing to see more young people have access to farms and farming," continues Storey. "As we're moving agriculture closer to the cities, it gives people a chance to interact with farmers more closely, and I'm hoping that eventually it offers a bridge to traditional field producers, as well, so their stories can be heard and people can understand their situation better."

To that end, Storey created Upstart Farmers—a network of small family farmers working with innovative methods—to both support their labor and to encourage more young people to choose farming as a career. The network currently claims 110 farmer members on 5 continents, who share resources and information to support them as they grow.

Concludes Storey:

"When you throw a bunch of really smart, passionate people together, beautiful things happen."