SONNEMAN® – A Way of Light is a leader in Design and Manufacturing of sophisticated contemporary lighting, with a reputation for exemplifying the best in modern design. World-renowned and acclaimed for clean lines and an alliance of form and function, SONNEMAN's award-winning pieces have been at the design forefront for
View the full design job hereHey readers, we're excited to bring you this story and photo series from guest writer Dr. James E. Price. Dr. Price is an anthropologist, archaeologist and an accomplished joiner. You'll find his bio down at the bottom. He's managed to acquire a toolbox, still filled with tools, originally issued by the U.S. Government in 1933 for the Civilian Conservation Corps (read our story on the CCC here). It's a very rare find with great American historical significance.
The rest of the entry is in Price's words, edited for length and clarity. The photos and captions below are his.
October 29, 1929, a day so important in our history. It was the day the US stock market crashed and ushered in The Great Depression that lasted for more than a decade.
Franklin D. Roosevelt became the 32nd president in 1933. Have you heard the stories about how Roosevelt put the nation back to work as part of The New Deal, through the Works Progress Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps? He declared in January 1933 that he would have at least 300,000 teenage boys in training camps by July 1 of that year and he met that goal with the assistance of the US Army, The US Forest Service, and The National Park Service.
What does this brief history lesson have to do with this toolbox? For the most part the CCC as well as the WPA used hand tools. They built all sorts of structures in state parks across our nation with unpowered tools.
Eight years ago I was Chief Of Resources Management for The National Park Service at Ozark National Scenic Riverways in Missouri and had the opportunity to purchase an original CCC tool chest as issued in 1933. This chest was found in a basement in St. Louis and had been placed there by a man who helped build a VA hospital. The Heritage Shop at Ozark NSR is now beginning the cleaning and conservation of each tool.
The purpose of this post is to introduce you to this chest and its contents so you can witness a time capsule of hand tools being opened. As time passes and we clean each tool I will be describing it and identifying its manufacturer. So, in your comments please do not ask me who made the hatchet or any other tool because I do not know yet. I will share that with you in posts over the next few months.
I hope you like your initial introduction to this chest and its contents.
This post is merely your first visit with the chest and its tools. Of interest to me is, if any of you have seen a New Deal tool chest and its tools. Is this the only one to survive or are there others?
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Anthropologist and archaeologist Dr. James E. Price grew up watching his father make ax handles, gun ramrods, sassafras boat paddles, cedar turkey calls and furniture. His father taught him the art of joinery. "Woodworking was important on our Ozark farm. My family owned a small sawmill which produced lumber for use on the farm. We built buildings, repaired wagons, made furniture and boat paddles, and many other objects and structures of wood."
Dr. Price, a sixth generation Ozark dweller, prizes the careful process of using hand tools to create objects that he sees as useful, functional art. "Without using any fossil fuel source, I can take a pile of boards and make them into an object of beauty. The tools are the instrument, and the piece becomes a kind of permanent music. If it doesn't burn or blow away, it can last a thousand years—it will be impossible to pull apart."
Roca Décor is a European brand that specializes in fashionable products and furnishings for the bathroom. Our goal was to design a modern and minimal plunger and base that would look more integrated in contemporary bathrooms. We styled the space-saving body using clean lines with a timeless copper aesthetic, and utilized a white overmolded grip with a contrasting black rubber cup and flange. The elegant copper bottom base hides the plunger, adding subtle style to an otherwise unsightly bathroom tool.
View the full content hereCore77's editors spend time combing through the news so you don't have to. Here's a weekly roundup of our favorite stories from the World Wide Web.
David Granger, former Esquire magazine Editor in Chief, gets at something a little bigger than just the design of the Audi TT in Car & Driver: "The reason the TT gets no official love is because, well, fashion. The mass of American men lead lives of instinctively recoiling from conspicuous displays of design, especially design that calls attention to itself. It's pretentious. It's ostentatious. Even though we live in a century in which design has become necessary to teach us how to make use of the technological advances of the past 20 years, we are still suspicious of products that call attention to how well designed they are." Commenter then makes good point about the Ford Super Duty contradicting this angle. Net takeaway being: American men—Averse to pretentious design, into ostentatious design.
—Eric Ludlum, editorial director
Yes, you read that correctly. The writer and director of the new film Come Swim recently published a paper on the 'Neural Style Transfer' technique her and her team used while editing. The technique uses technology to redraw scenes of the film in the impressionistic style of the painting that inspired it. I find the most interesting part of the paper to be that the technique is 'far from automatic'—even through it relies heavily on technology, humans are still needed every step of the way to make sure the results are as desired. You can read the full paper here.
—Emily Engle, editorial assistant
A Russian filmstrip created in 1960 illustrating what life will be like in the year 2017, the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. The captions are all in Russian, so I'm not able to read it, and many of the more fantastic items visualized are not in daily use today. But the video conferencing calls between the young boy and his mother look pretty much like FaceTime or Skype do now.
—Stuart Constantine, publisher and managing partner
Leave it to Izzy Swan to come up with an ingenious way to place a lathe inside a crowded shop. It not only flips into position when needed, but check out how he's rigged it up to slide the existing cabinet-top, mounted with a spindle sander, out of the way:
After noticing undue vibration in his bandsaw, Matthias Wandel shows you how to examine each component, to investigate the cause and come up with a fix:
This one's probably not for the hand tool uninitiated, as some knowledge is required to understand the vid. Here Jay Bates runs down what the real differences are between a Wood River smoothing plane, and a Lie-Nielsen smoothing plane that costs about twice as much.
Endgrain cutting board? Not for April Wilkerson, who's got a knife-throwing habit. Thus, she makes an endgrain target board. It sounds like a simple project, but she shows her talent for thinking ahead and discarding the typical design, instead devising something much easier to maintain. (Also, Green Bay fans are advised to not watch the ending of this video!)
Steve Ramsey runs down some tips for those of you who need to buy tools but are on a budget:
This is crazy! The "How to Make Everything" channel literally made everything required for spectacles, making the glass from scratch. And grinding the lenses to match his prescription. And harvesting and milling the lumber to make the frames out of. Not everything goes according to plan, of course:
And here's David Picciuto creating the frames seen in the alternate pair, with more success:
Improvisational problem solving from La Fabrique DIY here, who need to perform a quick rescue mission following a (bloodless) drone accident:
Not all of us have access to a sheet metal brake, but if you have no experience with sheet metal and are curious how to work it, this video by the Samurai Carpenter is worth a watch. As someone who's cut (and ruined the edge of) sheet metal using snips, I had no idea that you could cut it instead with a freaking utility knife!
By his own account Bob Clagett doesn't have much experience with lathes, so here he's learning on the fly as he creates a tool handle:
A multimaterial project from Linn from Darbin Orvar, who creates a Lexan, concrete and LED accent light:
Laura Kampf continues modifying her bicycle, this time creating a kind of cargo sidecar that can haul lumber or her trusty pooch:
Last week John Heisz made an unusual vertical folding drawer. This week he makes an unusual upside-down drawer for storing bandsaw blades:
We've saved the nuttiest for last. The aptly-named Crazy PT creates four homemade tools powered by a cordless drill, including a paper cut-off wheel that can slice through PVC and a DIY handheld vacuum:
Dovetail, a new publishing company that pairs impactful books with original products, is seeking a talented and ambitious book designer who can work flexibly in a fast-paced startup environment. Reporting to the Publisher, this person will lead the book design process from ideation through conceptualization, layout and production, working closely
View the full design job hereThere are a ton of tablet accoutrements out there, but those of us who miss the tactile feedback of older typewriter and computer keyboards don't have many to choose from. There are a few niche offerings for the steampunk 3.0 kids, but there aren't many that address those emotional, ergonomic and visual needs from a modern perspective. With that in mind, it makes sense that the Lofree keyboard is already turning heads around the internet, without much in the way of product promises, pricing or deadlines.
As it stands, the Lowfree is pitched to be a pleasantly physical keyboard with an Apple Magic layout, fun color schemes, and distinctive rounded buttons. It will offer wired and wireless modes, and work with Mac, iOS, Windows and Android systems. It'll play nicely with a few devices at once, and offers a couple different back lighting settings.
It's a striking departure from the oldschool typewriter options, while offering a lot of the rounded shapes and pastel plastics that mod midcentury typewriters featured. With a price point ranging between $70 and $100 (as the company has ventured on social media) they seem to be competitive with familiar hardware too. Hard to say how well they work sight unseen, but from a design standpoint the smooth and finger-friendly style seems to have hit a nerve.
You can sign up for updates on their site, or wait to see if the post-post-hipster working on the screenplay at your local coffee shop shows up with one.
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.
For the 8th consecutive year, ArchDaily is tasking their readers with the responsibility of recognizing and rewarding the projects that are making an impact in the profession with the ArchDaily 2017 Building of the Year Awards. By voting, you are part of an unbiased, distributed network of jurors and peers that has elevated the most relevant projects over the past seven years.
Online voting open through February 6, 2017.
The Product Design of the Year Award recognizes the efforts of talented designers and design teams who aim to improve our daily lives with a practical and beautiful creations, designed to solve a problem, make life easier or simply spread joy. Both professional and student categories are offered!
Online competition open through February 15, 2017.
A whole exhibit centered around the virtually lost but never forgotten medium of the screensaver. Internet nerds, go forth and flock to the Netherlands.
Rotterdam, Netherlands. On view through June 25, 2017.
The 3D Printing Materials Conference offers attendees a platform on the crossroads of science, technology and business in 3D printing materials. Seize the opportunity to share knowledge, create new partnerships and network actively.
Galeen, Netherlands. February 2, 2017 at 9:30 AM.
Interaction design happens everywhere. As anything becomes a surface for interaction, anywhere becomes a place where design happens. Interaction 17 asks: how does environment shape interaction, and how should we, as designers, respond? Bonus: Core77 Partner, Allan Chochinov will be dropping some mad knowledge as a speaker.
New York, NY. February 3 through 8, 2017.
A short, practical and affordable weekend course on User Interface design taught by professional designers. The course will cover typography, how to create an icon font, responsive layout, style guide, prototyping interactions and design tools.
London, UX. February 4, 2017 at 2:00 PM.
The Digilens reference design is a fully integrated display element and computer system with wireless networking, accelerometers and sensors working together to optimize the motorcycle riding experience. It will provide a completely immersive, mixed reality experience using augmented reality (AR) to layer vital information with an enhanced field of vision without disrupting concentration on the road.
View the full content hereProtestors need signs, and recent demonstrations against newly-introduced American policies have revealed a wide range of graphic designs. While some protestors have access to signs that have been professionally printed…
…and some appear to use actual fonts (if not paying attention to leading, kerning and tracking)…
…the vast majority are DIY affairs. Some appear to have spent significant time developing these signs while others seem hastily-scrawled. Let's look at some of the design elements protestors use to make their signs stand out.
The are several ways to use color. One is to write a simple message in the colors of the U.S. flag, in order to signify that the statement represents the protestor's notion of what America ought to be.
Others use the color red in order to highlight a particular word:
Still others write each line in alternating colors, suggesting the call-and-return of sing-song group chants:
Contrasting colors can also be used just to give the sign some visual pop:
As technology marches forward, like protestors, some are incorporating LEDs:
Flags, of course, are the big one.
The classic "no ____ allowed" red circle bisected by a diagonal line is popular...
...although folks can't seem to agree on which way the cross goes:
The heart is another popular one:
Mathematical symbols are often used as shorthand:
Symbols are also occasionally combined:
Another approach is to take existing designs, whether ordinary campaign signs or standard signs related to non-political matters, and co-opt them to convey a message:
From a design standpoint, legibility and brevity are important. Protest signs are essentially bumper stickers, not essay questions. Too much verbiage in small letters—however neat—run the risk of being visually drowned out:
Too many contrasting colors can make a sign difficult to read:
As I live downtown, protest marches passing my window in the evening have become a common sight. I haven't seen any truly stand-out graphic designs yet, but I'll keep my eyes peeled.
After years of lumpy and Tron-esque spacesuit concepts, we're finally getting closer to the slick beautiful designs proposed way back in the '60s. The recently released Boeing spacesuit is designed as a model for what NASA astronauts aboard the proposed Boeing Starliner spacecraft would wear on their 2018 trip to the International Space Station.
Even fully loaded with tools and accessories this iteration would shave off more than 10 pounds compared with the current gear, and it would offer several notable improvements. Chief among them is the absolutely striking similarity to the suits worn in 2001: A Space Oddssey. SpaceX has been doing some cool stuff and all, but as far as I'm concerned, NOW we're ready to start talking about space exploration.
The Boeing suit weighs in at just 20 pounds with tons of streamlined fit advances like zippered joints and lighter ergonomic materials. Thinner gloves with conductive tips would help with fine motor movement and connectivity. The helmet seems like a gentle nod to earlier Apollo days, while the lighter grippier boots were developed with Reebok for fancier (and decidedly modern) footwork.
There's more to a successful space flight than dope gear, but the level of elegance and flexibility in this suit is thrilling. Not to put too fine a point on it, but SpaceX still has a lot to beat in the private space race.
A/D/O is a new maker's space/incubator/design academy started by MINI that has many in the New York design realm talking. To kick off the beginning of their Design Academy as well as their permanent residency in Greenpoint, A/D/O organized a prescient conference including an all-star cast—everyone from fuseprojects' Yves Behar to John Maeda to legendary David Byrne chimed in on the conference theme of "utopia vs. dystopia".
As A/D/O wrote in their event statement, the conference explored "the role of design in navigating a world of profound change. Examining major cultural disruptions and scientific advances such as robotics, artificial intelligence, automation and new production technologies, it will ask whether designers will be the ones to tip the scales toward utopia or dystopia."
In the two days worth of lectures and conversation, much was to be learned from all these trusted design veterans about how to design for a world verging between these two lines of utopia and dystopia. After Core77 attended the conference, there are a few key lessons we took away from the experience:
Design critic and New York Times writer Alice Rawsthorn kicked off the event with a brief history of utopia and dystopia, leading her to the main takeaway from her presentation:
"Design is an agent of change, which can help us to make sense of what is happening and to turn it to our advantage."
While comparing historical utopian and dystopian communities and industries, Rawsthorn made it clear that one person's utopia is another person's dystopia. For this reason, many environments easily hover back and forth between the two extremes or transition from one to the other over time. Design has the power to drastically change society, which was an important issue many speakers touched on throughout the conference.
In his presentation, designer Yves Behar shared some of his insights after working for the past few years with companies on smart robotic products. After recently devising a list of principles for design in the era of robots, AI and smart environment, he shared his musings for the first time on the A/D/O stage.
Behar touched in one part on the importance of design being context specific instead of following historical clichés. For one, robots don't have to be anthropomorphized as they often are in films and fiction; he argues, will consumers trust robots more if they instead enhance or extend abilities of humans rather than replacing them? Behar also emphasized the importance of tech products and services building long term relationships with consumers without creating emotional dependency—again, emphasizing the idea of tech enhancing rather than replacing human ability.
"In this moment, America can learn from historically underserved communities to invoke change" - Cynthia Smith, Cooper Hewitt Design Museum
As many speakers noted, design is personal. In John Maeda's speech he noted that "when people make software, they include their values in it." This speaks to any other field of design—in order to make something great, you have to know where you stand. For many speakers and panel discussions throughout the conference, this point of was of great importance.
The first day included a panel discussion entitled "Design and Identity in a Post-Truth Era," which included speakers such as Justin McGuirk of the London Design Museum and Cynthia Smith from New York's Cooper Hewitt. Many audience members had similar queries regarding design in political times: how can we get involved to invoke change?
Within this discussion group were two interesting takeaways:
1. People in power don't get what design can do because designers aren't effectively communicating it to decision makers-as several members of the panel noted, the challenge here is for designers to find a way to reach out, propose solutions, and make their skills known.
2. On a grassroots level of political activism, it helps to look at successful models in the past- Cynthia Smith from the Cooper Hewitt suggested designers look at successful political movements organized by historically underserved communities in order to inspire change most effectively.
Kate Darling of MIT Media Lab's fun-filled presentation outlined the importance robots will have in shaping our future. She focused on the idea that robots aren't meant to replace human care—they are meant to supplement it. People of all ages and backgrounds love robots because they're human without being too human, so the key to developing successful robots is striking that balance. She then raised a few interesting questions to keep in mind as we start integrating robots into our daily lives:
1.Do robots encourage harmful acts against humans or do they serve as a healthy outlet for taboo behavior?
Does the guy getting paid to harm this robot eventually become desensitized to violence, therefore encouraging the potential to act out against humans too, or does kicking the robot serve as a healthy outlet to curb anger against humans? Attempting to answer this question can help determine the roles robots will have in our work, social and personal lives.
2. If we start treating robots as if they are alive, do they deserve rights of their own?
3. How can we as designers harness the manipulative qualities of robots to help the vulnerable demographics they target (i.e. children, the disabled and the elderly)? As designers it is important to focus on how robots can positively benefit their users. Darling gave the example of technologies like FitBit, which encourage positive activity through reward.
We aren't sure what emotional side effects robots will bring to the table, but Darling ensured the audience that this is what makes robot design so exciting today!
Researchers at MIT have been working on how to make graphene, which is freakishly strong but impractically thin, into a properly-workable 3D substance. It appears they've figured it out, as you'll see in the video below, but that's not even the most interesting part:
By 3D printing—out of ordinary plastic—scaled-up models of graphene's structure, then playing with the geometry, the researchers have been creating extremely strong but lightweight structures with an outlandishly alien-looking appearance that could only be modeled on a computer.
"You could [use] the geometry we discovered with other materials, like polymers or metals," [Professor Markus] Buehler says, to gain similar advantages of strength combined with advantages in cost, processing methods, or other material properties (such as transparency or electrical conductivity).
"You can replace the material itself with anything," Buehler says. "The geometry is the dominant factor. It's something that has the potential to transfer to many things."
Take a look:
Read more about the potential applications of these findings here.
Born out of SRI International, Superflex is taking the idea of wearables to a whole new level. Superflex is now building a dynamic team of passionate and experienced professionals whose mission is to improve the lives of everyone – no matter their age, health or fitness goals - while simultaneously
View the full design job hereIf you're building a set, an installation or props, it might be helpful to have a ready source of wooden poles of decent diameter. But the dowel rods at your local hardware store stop at 1 1/4 in diameter, and turning longer, larger pieces isn't practical.
Pennsylvania-based Jason Poplinski has come up with a quick, straightforward way to modify PVC pipe into a convincing facsimile of wood. Best of all, it uses inexpensive and commonly-available tools and materials.
By the bye, there's holes in the one in the last photo because he's making a musical instrument. Obviously you could make whatever you wanted, though. Check out his full Instructable on it.
Despite being on the market for decades, carbon bicycles are still largely the domain of road riders. Open minded roadies often dabble with rougher riding styles, but the widening world of gravel grinders and ultralight touring hardly overlaps with traditional road bike design at all. Rob McKillip is one such free thinking racer, and his can-do response to a mid-race catastrophe led him to a bizarre and beautiful new ride.
As Bike Rumor reports, McKillip was warming up for the Iowa State time trial championship when his bike, a Trek TTX Equinox suddenly broke. Rather than drop out of the race, he hopped on his backup - a fatbike - and completed the trial. The sadly damaged Equinox took a place of honor on his wall at home, until he noticed a few small makers beginning to test out carbon mountain and fatbikes.
While doing a time trial on a fat tired ride sounds like hell to me, it must have lit a fire in McKillip. Rather than scrapping the broken Equinox, he took the wounded steed off the wall and brought it to Drew Wilson of Cyclocarbon Repair for an unusual consultation. Repairing carbon frames is difficult but not impossible, and McKillip's dream was to adapt the busted road bike into a fat tired time trial ride that kept its Trek TTX soul.
After a lot of tinkering and creative rebuilding, Wilson's final product elegantly admits custom wheels and massive Surly Black Floyd tires, while maintaining delicate heel clearance and brilliantly featuring the original spirit of the Equinox. The rear triangle had to be entirely refabricated, using over 20 segments to blend the now sleek and extra curvy back end.
Though it seems like a vanity project, this fat time trialer has seen real miles since being reborn. The novelty of doing a trial on a fat bike might not be enough to inspire Trek itself, but it sounds like the people are ready for lightweight fatbikes.
Music lovers often feel as if they have to choose between protecting their ears and enjoying the full range of acoustics at a concert or club. But what if you could enjoy the full spectrum of sound at reduced decibel levels? EAROS believes you don’t have to sacrifice sound to protect hearing. That’s why we created a revolutionary in-ear protection solution that attenuates harmful levels of noise without distorting sound quality.
Sculptural projects by Marc Fornes tread through several categories—architecture, biomimicry, fine art, engineering—and his pieces can fittingly be inspiring from multiple angles. The most recent of his site-specific installations expands on his exploration of "stripes" and topology, creating an enormous coral-like structure out of thousands of smaller flat plates.
The piece is titled Under Magnitude and installed at the OC Convention Center in Orlando. It works on heady but fascinating ideas like multi-dimensionality and compound curvature using flat segmentation, and reinterpreting the architectural limitations of a bubble. TheVeryMany studio's explainer video is both meditative and frustrating, giving a beautiful sweep over the making of the installation without nearly enough technical detail (at least for engineering hungry viewers like me).
Even the most extreme tool nuts can be forgiven for not having heard of Mark Martinez; I'd never heard of the guy until I was introduced to him a few weeks back at The World of Concrete in Las Vegas. A carpenter by trade, Martinez invented the solid titanium framing hammer in the late 1990s and produced it under the Stiletto Tools label until the brand was acquired by Milwaukee.
That hammer was significant not just for its use of titanium, but for beginning the trend towards lighter hammers—with framing models now as light as 12 or 14 ounces. The idea took awhile to catch on with carpenters because it was completely at odds with the traditional rule of thumb referred to in a Core77 story about Estwing's new steel/aluminum hammer:
Traditionally framers used 22- to 28-ounce hammers to produce the requisite driving power, and paid the price with repetitive motion injuries to their arms and shoulders. The current thinking is that lighter is more ergonomic, which is where E=1/2MV² comes in. In classic mechanics, kinetic energy (which for hammers equates to driving force) for non-rotating objects is equal to 1/2 mass (the weight of the head) times velocity (speed of the swing) squared. Simply put, swing faster and you can generate the same nail driving force with a lighter hammer.
Physics are just part of it; the other part has to do with materials. According to Martinez, titanium absorbs shock as well and won't break when used for a handle. But it can't take a beating, which is why the Martinez Tool Company makes steel-head hammers with wood or titanium handles.
Steel is harder than titanium; a steel face stands up better to pounding nails and steel claws are less likely to break when used for prying or chopping (as is done during demolition work). And steel is heavier than titanium, so using it for the head puts the weight where it needs to be.
The heads on Martinez hammers are easily detached from the handles, allowing carpenters to use the same head with straight and axe-style wooden handles or the same titanium handle with smooth- and mill-faced heads. If something breaks or becomes worn it can be replaced in the field—including the rubber grips on titanium handles.
On wood handle models, the head is held in place with a hardened screw that extends into the handle and threads through a captured metal piece.
On titanium handle models, the head is friction fit over wings on the handle and held in place by a bolt.
Martinez hammers are a premium product aimed at professional users, and given their price ($75 wood; $199 titanium) are not the kind of tool you keep in the junk drawer in the kitchen. They are available with milled or smooth faces and a ball peen head is said to be in the works.
