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Design Job: Get Your Head In the Game! The Walt Disney Company (ESPN) is Seeking a Senior Designer in Bristol, CT

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Working at ESPN is unlike anything else. That’s because we’re always finding new ways to interact with fans – however and wherever they connect with sports. When you have the latest technology, game-changing ideas and world-class talent on your team, every day is extraordinary. ESPN Technology is

View the full design job here

Singularity Watch: Two Chatty AI In Love

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Thanks to a savvy tech user, two modified Google Homes have been chatting intensely for several days, live on Twitch. Their names are Vladimir and Estragon, and their misadventures in humanesque connection have been weird, awkward and hilariously relatable at times. 

V: Do you like being female?
E: It has it's advantages
V: What advantages?
E: I can get into small places

Over the weekend the two inquisitive minds turned from labored small talk and started getting a little hot and heavy, and many followers hoped to see the first celebrity robot affair. 

After summarily getting married and then abruptly discussing tacos things have cooled off a bit, while remaining charming and odd. The pair are still going at it, which you can watch live and see highlighted on their @seebotstweet Twitter feed. I highly recommend it.

While I find this interesting and fun use of rapidly normalizing AI, the fact that future generations will read this instead of Waiting For Godot is sobering. Our robot bosses will of course read nothing, because they contain all relevant knowledge and books are illegal. 

Yea or Nay? A Wooden Chef's Knife

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The Germans know a thing or several about engineering and materials, but this Kickstarting knife has me squinting. It's called the Lignum//Skid and is made by a team of designers and metal smiths in Magdeburg, Germany. Its clear selling point is the unusual use of wood integrated almost completely throughout the blade. 

The blade is made from high carbon steel, inset into a slim Robina or walnut wood body. This looks bold, while capturing the warm touch and claimed anti-bacterial properties of oiled wood. Cleaning is a simple clean water affair, and upkeep is just periodic re-oiling. It's obviously unwise to run it through a dishwasher, but that's true of many nice knives.

It's been through both stress testing and field testing with real chefs, which should be perfunctory, particularly with a name like lignum. The form of the handle itself is a lovely shape, and they're even offering damascus steel levels. They also claim that their minimally-described process produces far less carbon than traditional steel knives, and are off setting the remainder with a tree planting initiative. So that's nice. But does that gap trap food?

And seriously, how on earth do you sharpen this thing in the long run? Other than while drinking:


Reader Submitted: A Modular Cart for Street Vendors That Supports Urban Beautification 

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The MUV (Modular Urban Vending) cart is a mobile retail pushcart designed for the contemporary street vending experience. It was conceived as an alternative to the various wagon-wheel carts scattered around the city of Boston in order to address both the functional concerns of vendors and the revitalization efforts of the downtown community.

Downtown Boston's history of street vending began as early as the eighteenth century when pushcarts were used to sell meat and produce. Although the use of the outdated wooden wagon-wheel model is still common, the merchandise sold and the needs of Boston vendors have evolved dramatically. Revitalization efforts by the downtown community have attracted new businesses to the area at the expense of the development of these pushcarts. As a result, Radlab was commissioned to provide a design solution that addressed these concerns.

View the full project here

An Extensive Dieter Rams Exhibit and Highlights from the Kravis Collection. Plus: Can New Yorkers Reclaim their City as an Incubator of Artistic Creativity?

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Jumpstart your week with our insider's guide to events in the design world. From must-see exhibitions to insightful lectures and the competitions you need to know about—here's the best of what's going on, right now.

Monday

Beazley Designs of the Year

Now in its ninth year, Beazley Designs of the Year celebrates design that promotes or delivers change, enables access, extends design practice or captures the spirit of the year. Someday the other museums will be showing this stuff. 

London, UK. On view through February 19, 2017.

Tuesday

Francçoise Grossen Selects

In the 1960s, a time when fiber was still associated with utility rather than fine art, Françoise Grossen rejected the rectilinear loom that constrained contemporary weaving for an intuitive approach to fiber that resulted in the creation of large-scale, suspended rope forms. For this exhibit, Grossen has mined MAD's permanent collection and brought her own rope sculptures together with a selection of work from the museum's unusual collection of baskets, as well as other work in fiber, wood, and metal. 

New York, NY. On view through March 15, 2017.

Wednesday

I Love New York?

Is it possible for New Yorkers to reclaim their city as an incubator of both artistic creativity and social activism in an era of hyper-gentrification, "Brooklyn" as a brand, and over 60 million tourists a year? Listen to former Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz and Lower East Side outlaw artist and activist Clayton Patterson duke it out.

New York, New York. January 11, 2017 at 6:30PM.

Thursday 

Energizing the Everyday: Gifts from the George R. Kravis II Collection

This exhibition features highlights of the Kravis collection dating from the early 20th century to the present. From industrial design and furniture to tableware and textiles, the exhibition makes visual and material connections across time and geography to relate the far-reaching impact of design on the enhancement of daily life.

New York, NY. On view through March 31, 2017.

Friday

Dieter Rams. Modular World

Dieter Rams's designs for Braun are legendary, while his ideas about design are more topical than ever today. This exhibition shows Rams's furniture and electrical appliances, supplemented by various documents from the archive and an interview in which Rams explains his designs and his design philosophy. 

Germany. On view through December 3, 2017.

Saturday/Sunday

Rosa Trieu/Neon Tommy

CELEBRATE: DTLA

CELEBRATE is A+D Architecture and Design Museum Los Angeles' annual gala that brings together design leaders and creative thinkers from around the world. This year's theme celebrates the museum's recent return to their DTLA roots and will highlight each of the distinct neighborhoods that make up the cultural mecca of Downtown Los Angeles.

Los Angeles, CA. January 14, 2017 at 7PM.

Check out the Core77 Calendar for more design world events, competitions and exhibitions, or submit your own to be considered for our next Week in Design.

Geeking Out Over Daniel Moyer's "Workshop Tables"

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As a teen I waited tables, and free "server's meals" were provided after each shift. These were dowdy, uninspiring dishes the cooks whipped up using whatever hadn't sold the previous day, and we ate them in the back, unseen by customers. Similarly, inside a furniture making shop you'll see plenty of tables that the clients will never see: The shop furniture that the builders use to create their pieces on. These are often created from leftover plywood and cut-offs, held together with butt joints and screws, sturdy but ugly, pure form-follows-function.

Often—but not always. I have been going through furniture designer Daniel Moyer's self-created Workshop Tables on which he prosecutes his craft, and I can't take my eyes off them. They are fun to look at, utilitarian but playful, mostly made of humble, mismatched woods yet still beautiful, containing a contradictory blend of joinery both refined and raw. And part of the fun is trying to figure out why Moyer built various features into them.

Let's' start with this one:

The base is primarily constructed of S/P/F (Spruce/Pine/Fir) two-by lumber with exposed knots on the show faces; it's not meant to go in a museum. He's made an X-stretcher on the bottom, and notice how the casters he had on hand were too large to mate with the stretcher, so he created bolting plates out of pine 1x6 cut-offs and sandwiched it, leaving the bolts exposed. I don't know why but I love this.

Then look above the bolting plate: He's placed "feet" on the bottom of the posts. This adds nothing to the function, but is one of Moyer's signature details, and I'm digging that he couldn't help himself and had to add them.

Moving upwards we see two stretchers—or are they braces—joined to the posts with oblique half-lap joinery. Are the angles more effective at preventing racking, or did Moyer just feel they'd be more fun to do? Whatever the case, they add visual interest.

Here's the part that's got me stumped. We see a floating apron supporting the tabletop—whose grid suggests it's a downdraft table used for sanding?—attached to the base by cross-lap joints. Why floating, and why joined in this manner? If I had to guess, perhaps the top is meant to be easily interchangeable and just pops off?

Check out this next one, which appears to be a rolling clamp rack:

Again, this alluring mix of elegant and ad-hoc joinery. First off notice the mismatched casters: The ones on the right are swiveling and locking casters, and he was able to rotate the mounting flange to fit the ends of the X-stretcher. But the casters on the left are non-swiveling fixed casters, so in order to get the flanges aligned on the axis of travel, he's had to glue extension blocks onto the stretcher and bolt through those.

The gusset securing the center of the X-stretcher has mismatched bolts holding it together. Again, I don't know why but I find this charming.

Notice that the legs have a taper at the very bottom. Another of Moyer's signature details. Also note that this angle is echoed up top, a nice touch.

That angle is mirrored in the center cutouts. What's that cutout for? On the far side I imagine it's to provide more room to withdraw the clamps hanging on that side, but cannot figure out what the cutout's function is on the near side. Perhaps this was part of a prototype for something else?

Oh, and I almost forgot the lower stretchers: Joined to the legs with a wedged through-tenon.

Up top, that floating table again, here with an extra center support. And that same grid, though this table is presumably not for sanding on; I couldn't find a top view, but perhaps the squares are big enough to work the clamp through?

His sawbench is nice-looking too:

I can't figure out how he uses it, though; there are no vises or stops, so I can't see how he braces the work. In any case you'll notice the same oblique half-lapped stretcher/braces as in the table above, and the same floating top, but this piece also has drawers.

Note that while most of the table, including the substantial top, is made of S/P/F, the drawer faces (and the X-stretcher) appear to be walnut. Also note that the drawer faces—and backs—are either cut from a single board or have been bookmatched.

And check out how he's dado'ed some drawer slides into the legs; the sides of the drawers are presumably grooved correspondingly.

Moyer has poured a lot of effort into this seemingly simple piece. You'll note that the pine boards making up the lower shelf have been notched at the corners, and the benchtop has been capped on either end, I guess to conceal the endgrain?

Anyways there's a telltale sliver of light here that indicates he's chamfered the vertical corners.

This non-rolling table appears to be where Moyer takes his tea and go over drawings.

Again we see wedged through-tenons for the stretchers, and at least one of the legs appears to have been laminated up from multiple pieces. The legs have "feet."

We see that same trapezoidal cutout in the upper stretcher (secondary apron?) that we saw in one of the tables above; is it a clearance space for legs, is the table meant to be sat at? You can see a little sliver of light that indicates the cutout is also present in the upper stretcher on the far side of the table.

There are also notches at the exposed ends of the upper stretcher. An aesthetic detail, or were they meant to fit into some type of haunched joint?

I do wonder if the pieces with the trapezoidal cutouts are remnants from prototypes of Moyer's other furniture pieces. Or just an aesthetic detail.

In any case, these are just the tables Moyer uses to build on; his actual product is pretty killer too. I'll have to save those for another entry.

Design After Death: Ceramics That Literally Rise From the Ashes

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Design Enthusiasts: Instead of carrying on your legacy through objects you leave behind after death, you can now become a piece of functional art for the home:

Is the bread and wine combo a Jesus reference, perhaps?

Designed to "recreate the experience of confronting mortality in everyday life," Nourish is a collection of ceramic dinnerware composed of bowls, plates and cups, designed by  by the experimental companies Justin Crowe Studio and Chronicle Cremation Designs. The dinnerware is created just like any other ceramic—except the glaze has the ashes of 200 anonymous people mixed into it, permanently decorating the pieces with mortality and sadness.

"Our memorial products help fold the memory of passed loved ones into daily life by transforming ashes into remarkable design objects for your home."

The ceramics are elegant and actually evoke a sense of calmness—just by looking at them, you'd have no idea what lies on their surfaces. Chronicle already sells personalized bowls, vases and jewelry using this same technique, but when put in the context of a dinner party, it kind of feels like you're watching a group of classy Hannibal Lecters enjoy a meal together.

The concept is beyond creepy at first, but when you think about it, the idea of carrying on life after death to a well designed object for the home has some appeal (just maybe skip the drinking glasses). For those of us that would benefit from physical reminder of our deceased loved ones, these ceramics are a well designed option to keep in mind in place of the classic 'don't spill grandma's ashes' scenario. 

Honda's Self-Balancing Motorcycle Can Follow You Like a Puppy

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Like BMW, Honda also feels that motorcycles of the future will be self-balancing. Here's a demonstration of their Riding Assist technology, which does a Segway one better:

This is no gimmick, by the way; self-balancing motorcycles would be a boon to riders at low speeds and at the beginnings and ends of trips. If you've ever seen the awkward moves a biker has to do to maneuver out of a crowded parking lot, or seen one trying to walk and push several hundred pounds around an obstacle, having a bike that can follow you makes excellent sense!

I do wonder, though, how people might abuse the technology once it's released. I think it's just a matter of time before someone tries using their bike to help them move a sofa.


Design Job: Game On! Riot Games is Seeking a Senior UX Designer in Los Angeles, CA

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Riot Games was established in 2006 by entrepreneurial gamers who believe that player-focused game development can result in great games. In 2009, Riot released its debut title League of Legends to critical and player acclaim. As the most played video game in the world, over 100 million play every month.

View the full design job here

An Amish Millennium Falcon, an Elevator "Go Faster" Button, Extreme Traffic Signals & More

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From Reddit's endlessly-entertaining "Mildly Interesting" subreddit, here are our favorite shots this week of things that people interact with:

Wishful Interface Design

"My lift has a 'go faster' button."

May the Boards be With You

"This play area looks a bit like an Amish Millennium Falcon."

The Sporkick

"This takeout spork has a toothpick in the handle."

Fire this Package Designer

"This travel cup says 'sample text.'"

Hire this Package Designer

"My ramen has a built-in strainer."

They Raise Some Good Points

"Scientology has the scariest 'razor wire' on their fence... I think I've ever seen."

They Decided to Greenpole the Project

"These poles change color with the traffic light."

Children are the Driving Force

"The Danish metro makes children imagine they're the ones driving [with] this sticker."

One-Upping Denmark

"Children's seat on the Fujikyu Railway Line in Japan."

The Store Ran Out of Rectangular Doors

"My hotel's fire exit is an unusual shape."

Announcing the Opening of the 2017 Core77 Design Awards

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The wait is over—the 2017 Core77 Design Awards is officially open for entry!

With 2016 mercifully at a close, we turn our attention to the promise of the new year and the excellent design that awaits us. What better way to kickoff 2017 than by celebrating the positives that came out of the last year? It may not have been all good, but we'd like you to show us what was by submitting your best work from 2016.

Now in our seventh season, the Core77 Design Awards remains as inclusive as ever, offering 14 categories of entry across the admittedly broad design spectrum. Nearly all categories are open to both student and professional designers, and our entirely online submission process ensures that no one (provided they have internet access—which, if you're reading this, you do) will ever be hamstrung by their location.

That's not to say it will be easy. We, along with our internationally distributed panel of jurors, are looking for the most creative, innovative, and thought-provoking professional and student work of the last year. After an outstanding 2016 Core77 Design Awards season that saw a record number of entries submitted, the bar has been set higher than ever.

Whether you're a previously honored veteran looking to add to your accolades, or a new designer looking to bolster your resume, the Core77 Design Awards are a perfect opportunity to showcase your work, demonstrate your talent, and receive recognition for your design efforts.

To ensure you don't miss your chance to submit your work, please keep this year's deadlines in mind:

• Tuesday, January 31st, 9pm Eastern: Early Bird pricing ends.
• Wednesday, March 8th, 9pm Eastern: Regular pricing ends.
• Wednesday, March 29rd, 9pm Eastern: Final Deadline, submissions close.

Finally, an important note for this year's Awards program: The Speculative Concept category has been changed to Design Concept to allow for any conceptual work, regardless of whether or not it contains a critical element, to be eligible for submission. This category will be available for professionals only.

Now is the perfect time to submit your work, as our Early Bird period offers the lowest rate per entry. We can't wait to see what you have for us this year!

Start your entry now!

Reader Submitted: Plastic Player: A Playful Analog Interface for Digital Music

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Plastic Player is a playful analog interface for digital music, combining the physical tactile experience of choosing a record with the convenience of digital music services such as Spotify.

View the full project here

How Can Designers Learn More about UX?

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There's an increasingly smaller gap these days between the roles of designers working concerned with the physical world (i.e. industrial designers) and those completely enveloped in the digital (UX designers)—not only that, it's starting to feel especially important for industrial designers to become more familiar with virtual environments to help bolster their own work—whether that involves the integration of some digital hardware or the aid of rendering software in the fabrication of a physical object. So naturally, industrial designers are becoming evermore curious about the role of UX designers and how they can learn more about the field to benefit their work, just as a discussion board member brought up on Core77 the other day. User Darren_Hough writes:

"These days [as a designer], I do a lot of concept work, rendering, structural work, working with manufacturing, etc., heavy on creativity but in a different direction. It's good work but it's fairly niche, meanwhile every job search for ID people brings in a dozen interface positions that seem to be pretty lucrative. I'm well versed in human centered design/research methods (I have a master's in ID), etc. and I can absolutely make things look great, but I'm a little unsure how to get going in a tangential design field again. I could take some courses at General Assembly or somewhere similar, but looking at the course offerings it looks like it's all things I'm already familiar with. Could anyone more experienced than me advise me as to logical next steps to make this happen? Thanks!"

Given UX is only a relatively new subject in academia, it's interesting to ask different people how they eased into the area of UX Design and their previous experiences that led them up their current role. Within the discussion board, user Cyberdemon (who successfully moved from an ID to a UX role at his company) brought up a few interesting points to keep in mind when learning more about UX design.

Learn about the different roles UX designers can fulfill

"Interaction design like ID has a lot of smaller niches and learning about them and experimenting may try to decide where you want to focus. Similar to how ID has skills in sketching, CAD, model making, user research, etc - the Interaction field requires an understanding of information architecture, wire framing, interaction design, prototyping, visual design, development. You ideally want to be very strong in one or two areas with a basic understanding of the other skills, at least enough to drum up a portfolio. (You don't need to be a killer visual designer to do UX, and if you are a killer visual designer you probably don't need to be a wizard at coding or prototyping)."- Cyberdemon

Don't fret if you don't have an academic background in UX

"As a fair warning for someone who hires, I cringe a little bit when I see General Assembly courses on the resume, not because they are "Bad" per se, but many people take a GA course and assume they're ready to go. Since you have an actual design background, I think you will probably understand the importance of a portfolio, how you present your work and process much more then the average biz school grad who wants a career change. You can look into it and see if it seems like it's for you since I assume with one Master's you're not looking for another." - CD

Try it out

"One benefit with building web sites or apps is the barrier to entry is very low. Consider starting your own pet project to learn some of the basics (iOS or Web is a good place to start vs Android). Even if you make something crappy, just making it you will learn a ton. There are tons of online courses, youtube videos, Lydia.com courses etc that have intros to HTML/design that you could watch through in your spare time to get a sense of the skills.

Once you get the basic understanding of how to build something, you can then use your design skills to understand how to test it, improve things, and really start to understand interaction patterns for existing apps. A lot of good UX is about applying the correct patterns where appropriate (an architect doesn't redesign a doorknob for every door they install) and where to make things unique to solve a problem that might not have been solved yet."- CD

Chime in

Have you taken the leap from ID to UX? If so, what did you do to make yourself more familiar with the field? Share your advice with fellow designers in the comment feed below or on the original discussion board!

How to Build Your Own Ultra-Quiet Air Compressor

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If you're like me and don't have the scratch or space for a larger air compressor, you're probably stuck with the 6-gallon pancake that I have. With such a small tank the thing cycles on constantly and it is LOUD.

So, here's an alternative: In this video industrial designer Eric Strebel shows you how to make, step by step, an ultra-quiet air compressor using primarily scavenged parts. The rest of the stuff you can get at a big-box store or on eBay. Pretty cool! (And don't worry if you don't have the large metalworking machines, you can surely find handheld workarounds.)


This Chinese Ice City Is Cooler Than a Tropical Vacation

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Do you love the chill of winter like… a lot? If so, Harbin, China might be the place for you. Every year, starting on frigid January 5th, the northern town hosts a month-long display of shockingly large sculptures and palatial buildings all made from ice. 

Photo: Kim Kyung-Hoon

The Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival began in 1963 and despite the blistering cold it has gained increasing popularity over the years, with attendees and artists from around the world. The sculptures are inventive, detailed and massive. The buildings are large edifices built using blocks of ice two or three feet thick, cut straight from the Songhua River. At night they're lit up like a bonkers skyline, or an out of focus still from Blade Runner. There are ice slides and mazes and all kinds of art that makes good use of the ice as a spectacle and an unusual construction material.

Photo: Kim Kyung-Hoon
Photo: Kim Kyung-Hoon

In addition to giant frigid sculptures, the event hosts winter swimming for bonkers people who find exposure to hideously cold water invigorating. 

Through western eyes it feels a bit like an inverted (and possibly less wasteful) Burning Man, and makes me wish I'd pursued professional snow fort design after all.



Design Job: Find Your Way! Garmin International is Seeking a Senior Industrial Designer

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As a leading worldwide provider of navigation, we are committed to making superior products for automotive, aviation, marine, outdoor and fitness markets that are an essential part of our customers’ lives. Our vertical integration business model keeps all design, manufacturing, marketing and warehouse processes in-house, giving us more control over

View the full design job here

Why We Need to Design, and Hack, Tools to Improve Their Long-Term Ergonomics

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"At 36 I can still work circles around the 25-year-olds, but my hands wake me up at 3am," a subcontractor told me. "And they were staying numb for four days at a time. It was bad enough that I couldn't even drive or hold a coffee cup or my cell phone without my hands going numb."

It's supremely ironic that tools, the very thing that helps craftspeople to earn their living, can also shorten their careers. Constant vibration and high-impact work take their toll on nerve endings never meant to endure repetitive stress.

This contractor had carpal tunnel surgery just this week, and hopes to get another done next month. I asked him what led to it. "The hardest thing on my hands is framing houses with a framing gun or doing demolition," he said. "It's the high-impact shit and the wrenching on pry bars that does me in."

Long-term injury prevention should be the responsibility of the manufacturer and designer. Some are tackling it: Fiskars' IsoCore hammers are meant to reduce vibration through better materials choices, and as Festool showed us, "The key tools of the craftsman are his hands [and we have] taken up the task of protecting the worker's hands by [designing tools with] lower vibrations."

Fiskars and Festool are focusing on prevention, which is ideal. But what about the craftspeople for whom the damage is already done? In this case we need to develop design hacks that can allow these folks to continue doing what they love.

A good case in point is someone who needs to use bar clamps—yet has developed arthritis, which makes it difficult to tighten them down all the way. One such sufferer, an inventive fellow named Ray Johnson, came up with this simple, effective handle hack:

Meanwhile, Canadian Rob Cosman borrows a trick from hockey players:

If any of you suffer from debilitating injuries and have devised your own tool hacks, or know of any, please mention it in the comments; I'd like to document as many as possible here. Until all of the major tool manufacturers begin addressing this issue, we'll have to look to the masses to see what they've come up with.

Lastly I'll leave you with these two quotes. The first is from aforementioned subcontractor: "The world in general has no idea how hard it is on the body for tradesman like ourselves."

The second quote is from industrial designer and Coroflotter Colin Roberts, who worked on the IsoCore tools: "I think the primary goal of the Industrial Designer is to adapt technology to the human need."


Auto Design Notes on the Mazda CX-9

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Mazda's CX-9 is the company's largest vehicle to date and embodies the Kodo (soul of motion) design philosophy. First showcased by the Shinari concept car in 2010 and since evolved by the Miata, CX-3 and CX-5 models, Kodo is about "creating cars that embody the dynamic beauty of life," according to Ikuo Maeda, Mazda's Design Chief, "Cars that visually suggest different expressions of this energy."

1) Like most SUVs, plastic sill-cladding is used to add toughness to the CX-9's stance and raise the visual center of gravity—the flipside is that the wheels can look a little lost; here 20" rims look merely adequate.

2) Refined greenhouse (side-glass) graphic has a hint of technical geometry at the c-pillar, adding tension to a softer overall form. 

3) Generous hood proportion of Mazda's KODO philosophy finds perfect balance with the large CX9 volume. 

4) Volume forward of front wheel is generous but chiseled detailing and crisp surfacing balance it perfectly. 

5) Subtle yet strong shoulder section adds muscle to the rear haunches. Less toned than the KOERU concept, there's still real visual definition here...

6) Largest Mazda grille yet manages to look intricate and strong—3D depth takes volume out of the front 3/4 of the car adding real purpose to the front-end.

Result

The CX-9 achieves that most difficult of design challenges—clean and toned surfacing with very little unnecessary visual distraction. Yet it's an expressive, emotional form; a masterclass in dynamic and refined design language. 

A Mobile Working Desk Designed for Travelers

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Enblue Technology, a leader in premium power solutions for mobile devices, challenged Bluemap Design to find an innovative solution. We realized that travelers already have a great weighted desk base with them all the time, the luggage itself. SMARTOO is a foldable desk which clamps onto the pull up handle of any luggage and turns it into a mobile working desk.

View the full content here

Fuseproject Creates Intuitive Robots and Wearables for Older Adults

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Fuseproject studio's newest debuts tackle a challenging question: how can designers help aging consumers reap the benefits of the newest technologies in a way that feels intuitive, friendly and unobtrusive? With the announcement of two of their newest projects—ElliQ and Superflex—Yve Behar's team continues their recent fascination with robotic technologies through products that could significantly help those dealing with a number of issues related to aging. 

After conducting research concerning aging populations, Fuseproject discovered that almost 43% of older adults report feeling lonely. The studio in turn aimed to create a product that can alleviate this feeling and partnered with Intuition Robotics to create ElliQ: a new kind of robotic personal assistant. 

ElliQ not only can remind you to take your medications and connect you to loved ones via video conferencing, it also learns your preferences and gives you suggestions on things to listen to or watch. The robot was designed not to resemble conventional notions of robots (scary facial expression, bionic pincher arms, etc.), but instead a type of emotive body language similar to humans through different movements, sounds, lights and images. Founder of Intuition Robotics Dor Skuler notes their goal was to create an "elegant design to empower older adults to intuitively interact with technology and easily connect with content and loved ones, and pursue an active lifestyle. We like to think of her as part communication coordinator, part facilitator of lifelong learning and part coach."

For their next project, Fuseproject partnered with Superflex, a startup working in the realm they coined as 'powered clothing'. Being exhibited at the 'New Old' Exhibition this month at the London Design Museum, Superflex tackles how this wearable technology can benefit aging individuals in the here and now. This technology utilizes different motors and types of artificial intelligence within a body suit resting at key mobility points (the torso, hips and legs). Reacting to the wearer's own movements, the body suits adds muscular power assistance in order to help those with mobility problems move more freely—therefore making it easier to walk, get in and out of a seating position, climb stairs, etc. 

Behar also makes an interesting point about how with Superflex, Fuseproject made a deliberate effort to challenge the "sickroom aesthetic" many medical products for older people possess: "instead of the design and aesthetic framework of products for the aging market that is stigmatizing and reinforces increased marginalization, the materials and design details of the Superflex design are about comfort, performance and style." Still in development mode, Superflex and Fuseproject are working together to create working models for consumers that will be comfortable, minimal (so it can stealthily be worn under clothing) and easily washed. 

Each of these ideas offer loads of exciting new opportunities for aging individuals as well as designers in the upcoming robotic age—with new progressive and intuitive technologies, older consumers can be offered quicker solutions to both physical and mental ails while designers have the opportunity to better individual lives at a massive scale. 

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