On woodworking forums you'll often read the adage "Buy your last tool first." Buying an inferior tool, the thinking goes, is a waste of money as its poor functionality will cause you to upgrade later. This is not a bad thought, but I think there are a few things wrong with this specifically relating to hand tool woodworking.

A post drill

First, "Buy your last tool..." suggests that there will ever be a "last" tool. I don't know a woodworker who doesn't have an eye out waiting for some tool to go on sale or pop up on eBay. Lately I have adopted a less is more ideal with my tool kit, but that doesn't mean I'm not diligently looking for a post drill or panel raising plane. To me there is no such thing as a last tool.

Enough glibness, on to my real point. This will sound wrong coming from a guy that run The Hand Tool School, but hand tools are not for everybody. Anybody can learn to work with great accuracy and speed with hand tools, but a lot of people may get midway through the process and realize they don't actually enjoy it. I'm a little crazy in that I actually enjoy milling stock by hand, but even still I won't be selling my thickness planer anytime soon. With this in mind, I hate to see this "last tool first" idea being given as advice to folks who are looking to dip their foot into the hand tool pool.

That's because for the woodworker looking to get started with hand tools, there is much unknown. Will they stick with hand tool work, or get fed up with the tedium of hand milling and buy a jointer and planer? Will they decide that hand cut dovetails don't look different enough and buy a router jig? Will the marking, cut, fit, marking, cut, fit, rinse-and-repeat approach of hand-cut tenons bore them and see them buying a good miter gauge or tenon jig for their table saw instead?

Imagine if these lessons are learned after the woodworker has dropped $2,500 on saws, planes, marking tools, chisels, etc. (That number is quite low actually.) Now the woodworker in question may gravitate back to hand tools later on and their expenditure will be worthwhile, but I have to imagine that some buyer's remorse may creep in there or worse, the funds to buy the power tools will have come by selling off said hand tools.

I would like to think that the satisfaction from cutting joinery by hand feeds the obsession, but different people are motivated by different things. If your experience is based on completing pieces then the journey may not be as important. There is also a little bit of Tim the Tool Man Taylor in all of us that yearns for the monster power tool that can rip a 32/4 piece of Maple without stuttering that draws many away from hand work.

So I think that advising someone to start working with premium tools who has not had prior experience may not be the best course of action. This is coming from someone who has been known to do just this too. There is something to be said about working with a finely tuned hand saw or plane after understanding how it should feel or how sharp it should be, but the cost that comes with that tool gives me concern, especially considering that it is hard to build furniture with just 1 or 2 tools. Add together the cost of a basic tool kit and very quickly your wallet begins to sweat.

Even vintage tools can add up quickly. These 10 saws easily cost more than $1,000

So what are some options?

Vintage tools can be a type of gateway tool that can get someone started quickly and cheaply, but some knowledge and a willingness to clean them up and tune them is necessary. Many would say this is a prerequisite skill and while I agree, the realistic side of me knows that our instant gratification society doesn't play this way.

We are seeing some mid range toolmakers creating good quality tools for less and even some makers like Lee Valley that astound me with the relatively low prices, yet high quality, of their saws. These make for a good option to get the tool in the woodworker's hand, to let them affordably determine if hand work is something they are going to enjoy.

Tool shows are a good option, although they're not a realistic simulation of day-in, day-out usage. If you are looking for a specific tool, this is a great place to lay hands on it and get a feel for that maker's offering. If you have no frame of reference then it doesn't really do much for you. We all know that there is a difference between being in your shop alone and trying to do something as compared to having an expert looking over your shoulder with a perfectly tuned tool in your hand working on non threatening stock that costs the woodworker nothing.

There are a lot of things to consider and I should shut up before I begin to ramble further, but let me just close by saying that I think the best way in to the hand tool world for the neophyte is to go as minimalistic and cheaply as possible, keeping quality in mind and then to get into the shop and work. Yes, there will be tools you wish you had to make a job easier, but if you pick a simple piece that you can be proud of when it is finished, I think you can gain an understanding of how much or how little you enjoy working by hand…before you spend your mortgage on tools.

The experienced among you: Have you ever bought the "last" hand tool first and regretted it?

_______________

This "Hand Tool School" series is provided courtesy of Shannon Rogers, a/k/a The Renaissance Woodworker. Rogers is founder of The Hand Tool School, which provides members with an online apprenticeship that teaches them how to use hand tools and to build furniture with traditional methods.

Seasick 8-Ball

"Self-stabilizing pool table on a cruise ship."

Minotaur Lighting Design

"The shadow from this mounted Bulls head looks like it has a human body."

[source]

Compensating for Typical Vending Machine Design

"These breath mints are taped to playing cards so they can be dispensed properly."

[source] 

Layout Determined By Politics

"My university library has cnn on the far left and fox news on the far right."

[source]

Tool Hack

"I didn't have a caulk gun so I had to improvise"

[source]

One of These Things Sucks More Than the Other

"This lady cleaning with a vacuum at an iRobot shop."

[source]

Birds Attracted to Cheap Prices

"Nothing to see here, just a Costco employee silently hunting a pigeon"

[source]

Mail the Force Be With You

"My neighbors mailbox"

[source]

Superior Toaster Interface Design

"My toaster has a button for when you need your toast done 'a bit more'"

[source]

There are 7 billion people on this planet. And by 2050, there will be 2 billion more... many moving into urban centers at an unprecedented rate. Making sure there is enough food, fiber and infrastructure for our rapidly growing world is what we’re all about at John Deere. And it’s why we’re investing in our people and our technology like never before in our 175-year history. Here the world’s brightest minds are tackling the world’s biggest challenges. If you believe one person can make the world a better place, we’ll put you to work. RIGHT NOW.

My life is a constant battle with clutter. On a daily basis I try and fail to organize the plethora of objects required for working and living. I spend way more time searching for things than finding things.

The card catalogs I've acquired over the years have helped tremendously. Confining objects of specific categories inside each labeled drawer means less time spent searching, and I love being able to pull the drawers out to tote them over to where they're needed. 

However, the thing about card catalog drawers is that they're lousy at organizing anything besides cards. 

Absent integrated subdividers, I find myself compulsively collecting little boxes and containers I come across that I can use to keep things separate inside the drawers. This creates more clutter as now I have a box of boxes I'm hanging onto.

And those little boxes are never quite the right size. I tend to go through a lot of batteries for the studio and other stuff, and look at the disaster that drawer has become:

So now I say, no more. Since I have access to a desktop CNC mill I have no excuse. So I spent ten minutes with a pair of digital calipers to get the average diameters of different battery sizes, then spent another 20 minutes creating a pattern in CAD. Then I grabbed a scrap of plywood and put the machine to work:

Itch scratched.

And now everything's better. For this one drawer, at least. I'll have to tackle the other 29 when I find time.

Designer's Curse takes many forms: We are the folks crawling around underneath a display table in a store to see how it's put together, embarrassing our spouse; straining to peek behind something to see how it's mounted to the wall while the museum guard watches you like a hawk; opening a door, then stopping and crouching down because the knob is somehow fascinating and you need to give it a close inspection.

And only a designer would think to send in a furniture design mini-review while in the hospital waiting for his wife to give birth. UI/UX designer, Core77 reader and new father Jason Pokines writes in:

My wife and I are new parents, so I've had the joy of spending quite a few mostly sleepless nights in a hospital recently. The hospital we delivered in (Mercy of Lorain, Ohio) was newly remodeled, and had some custom sleeper sofas in every room.

I was in love with the couch we had that converted to a single bed. I looked it up and it's called the Wieland SleepTwo. It seems they are made to order, and in our hospital's case they were made to fit the width of a specific alcove in the room.

Note that the placement of the table allows two to sit face-to-face.

This handle beneath the table…

…allows you to lower the table level with the seats.

Then you can press this button…

…to release the back, which automatically raises it up.

Now you can fold the back flat.

Sleep time.

Here's how you put it back into sofa mode.

I found just two issues:

One was that I'm of "average" height at 5' 7", and I found my heels were hitting the armrest at the end, so I can imagine taller folk would find issue with Mercy's choice in dimensions.

Two was that when the back is released the cover rubs against the back support, making a very loud zipper sound - a bit of an issue when you don't want to disturb a sleeping mother and baby.

Other than that, I thought this sofa was awesome. Very comfortable and practical. Check it out, and enjoy!

- Jason

_______________________

Here's how it looks in action:

Thanks for sending this in Jason, and congratulations to your and your wife! And your new child, whom we expect you've named "Wieland SleepTwo Pokines."

Also remember that when you go cake shopping for your child's first birthday, we expect a review of the interior design of the cake store.

This design captures the essence of the American Golden Age: the 50's. The overall profile of the display resonate well with Sonic's loyal audiences. It integrates cutting-edge technology in a user friendly design. The Americana is back... Our belief in good design tailored towards manufacturing is very well reflected in this project.

Here at Design that Matters we do a lot of 3D printing, so we've built up this collection of handy but inexpensive tools for supporting our 3D printers. They live in IKEA silverware caddies mounted next to the machines and they just make the work go easier.

1. Super Lube synthetic grease for the build plate lead screw (the lube supplied with most machines gets used up quickly). A single tube of lube lasts for ages. 

2. Cheap cutting pliers for trimming PLA spools.

3. Metal feeler gauge for consistent results when manually leveling the printer build plate (Makerbot Rep2 works best when the 0.2mm gauge just fits between nozzle and build plate).

4. UHU glue stick for securing prints to build plate (useful even with heated build plates). This works better and is more convenient than covering the build plate with blue painter's tape.  

5. Window scraper for removing glue residue and stubborn PLA deposits from build plate. 

6. Cricut craft spatula for un-sticking prints. We'll create a little gap under the print with the window scraper, and then lever the rest of the print off the build plate with the craft spatula.  Bonus: we're less likely to stab ourselves. 

7. iFixit metal spudgers for scraping off and digging out printed support material and other defects.

8. Cheap dental picks for removing support material from internal cavities.

9. Steel tweezers for getting gunk off the extruder nozzle without melting fingers.

10. We also have a couple self-healing cutting mats taped to the table next to the machine so we can fuss around with scrapers without scarring the tabletops or damaging the build plates. 

A Few More Items:

We've mounted an appropriate set of Allen wrenches on a 3D-printed bracket attached to every machine. 

To reduce filament-jams in our oldest machine, the trusty Replicator 2, we printed and mounted this filament guide from Thingiverse on the back of the machine:

Image by FERDYP

For storing PLA, we were delighted to discover that even the big Makerbot-brand spools fit perfectly inside a standard 5-gallon bucket. To prevent humidity from spoiling the PLA, we snap a Gamma Seal Lid on top of the bucket and throw in a handful of silica gel desiccant packs before we screw it shut.

Stay Tuned!

After a productive four years with our Makerbot Replicator 2 (and a frustrating two years with our Makerbot Replicator Gen5), we just upgraded to a Lulzbot Taz 6.  We've started experimenting with new filament materials and a heated printer bed.  

We find that glue sticks are still useful for first-layer adhesion, although for exotic materials like nylon some consider generic PVP-based glue sticks more effective than UHU sticks. We still prefer the combination of the window scraper and the spatula for unsticking prints. The new filament spools also fit in our airtight 5-gallon buckets for storage. The biggest change is that we no longer need the feeler gauge, given that the Lulzbot has a self-leveling bed.

Do You Have Any Tips for Us?

We're still learning how to get the best results from our 3D printers for the least amount of effort. Some machines create rafts (print bases) that are tedious to remove. Although we've had success sanding parts with paper or a Dremel, the resulting smooth parts very quickly look grubby (something about dust and oil getting into the seams). For high-quality aesthetic models, we haven't found an alternative to the laborious process of: bondo, sand, primer, paint, clear-coat. Have any of you come up with a better solution?

_____________________________________

This "Design Experience that Matters" series is provided courtesy of Timothy Prestero and the team at Design that Matters (DtM). As a nonprofit, DtM collaborates with leading social entrepreneurs and hundreds of volunteers to design new medical technologies for the poor in developing countries. DtM's Firefly infant phototherapy device is treating thousands of newborns in 21 counties from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. In 2012, DtM was named the winner of the National Design Award.

The Core77 team spends time combing through the news so you don't have to. Here's a weekly roundup of our favorite finds from the World Wide Web:

Crazy trapezoidal 1980s concept car.

A bad-ass triple violin-playing machine with a rotary bow design.

The Milan furniture fair is fast approaching—time to brush up on your Italian hand gestures - Bruno Munari will be your teacher.

What is design, you ask?

World's worst Uber ride (it involves an exploding gas station).

Difficult information security concepts explained by Google and the Washington Post.

Google's new algorithm shrinks JPEG files by 35 percent.

Pass the Heinz, Don Draper style.

Friday Throwback: Do you still get brain tingles from this internet classic? 

Leave a window open while you work today and monitor your transtextual response.

John Maeda's Design In Tech report, delivered at this year's SXSW conference, covers design trends revolutionizing the entrepreneurial and corporate ecosystems in tech, related M&A activity, new patterns in creativity × business, and the rise of computational design.

I'd buy it: ART-T-QUE.

Apparently the answer to saving our planet's beaches is to drink more beer? I'm sure there are plenty of people out there up for this arduous task...

Speaking of beaches: Watch Core77 Co-Founder Stuart Constantine launch an 11 ft hammerhead shark back into the ocean (!!!).

People to follow: Gudim Anton's relatable, surreal and slightly depressing illustrations.

Kerry Callen's strips are freaking hilarious.

The final deadline for our Design Awards is March 29th. Don't procrastinate. 

Hot Tip: Check out more blazin' Internet finds on our Twitter page.

Sword in a Cane

This one is nuts! Jimmy DiResta not only fabricates a kris-style blade from Damascus steel, but then fabricates a spring-loaded brass mechanism that allows him to pop it in and out of a cane/scabbard:

Bandsaw-on-a-Dolly Sawmill

Prior to this video we never heard Matthias Wandel say he's nervous, but here he has good reason to be: He's attempting a rather unorthodox method of using a bandsaw as a sawmill. I almost bit my nails while watching this:

Improvements to the DIY Fast-Action Bench Vise

Now that he's had a few months to live with it and abuse it, Izzy Swan shores up the design of his innovative fast-action bench vise and demonstrates it in use:

5 Table Saw Tips for Beginners

Izzy lays out safety, efficiency and maintenance tips borne from years of experience. I hadn't thought of the baseball cap issue:

Wood Bowtie to the Auction

Frank Howarth attends the auction where his wooden handprint art piece is on the block, first fabricating a bowtie for himself from the original piece's cut-offs:

How to Build a Picnic Table

Still no shop, but April Wilkerson's making do working off the back of her truck. Here she knocks together a picnic table at her folks' property:

Improving Dresser Drawer Clothes Storage

Steve Ramsey has become Kondo-ized after reading Marie Kondo's Decluttering Bible. Here he comes up with a simple contraption to make her prescribed method of T-shirt storage work better:

Harbor Freight Drone Case

Bob Clagett repurposes an old hard plastic toolcase, kitting it out to carry all of his drone gear with protective foam fittings:

Beer Bike (BMX meets Handtruck)

This is an awesome combination of a bicycle with two of Germany's greatest productions: Laura Kampf and beer!

DIY Concrete Dog Feeding Station

As dog owners know, having dog bowls that slide all across the floor while they're eating out of them can get messy. Ben Uyeda solves it with concrete, and I like the creative use of plastic bottles in the mold:

Scraper Made from Recycled Planer Blades

Why waste good steel? As John Heisz shows you, you needn't. Here he upcycles some planer blades into a handy handheld scraper:

Modular Headboard

For his son's bed, Chris Salomone creates a slatwall-style headboard that storage units can be slid into and out of:

Make Your Own Adjustable Router Fence

Inspired by his hatred of MDF (which I have to believe many of us share), Dustin Penner creates a handy, adjustable dust-collecting fence for his router table:

Fixing a Plastic Tricycle

Not a build video, but an interesting bit of problem-solving: When a plastic children's toy breaks, most folks throw them away as plastic doesn't lend itself to repairs. Enter Matthias Wandel:

Barrel Vessel Made with Bandsaw Jig

Izzy Swan has a talent for figuring out how to get straight-line tools to cut curves for complicated objects. Here he jigs up a table saw and bandsaw to cut barrel staves:

DIY Horizontal Router Jig/Pattern Follower

I found it fun to watch Izzy invent this pattern-following router jig, even though he admits using it can be "a pain in the butt:"

The Original Smiley Company is looking for a Character & Background Concept Designer with the following responsibilities: Creation of characters & backgrounds for a kid-targeted TV and book concept; * Pre-school target based on an iconic 80s toy; * Bright, colourful, fun concepts. Deliverables: - 4 animals (based on existing artwork); - 2 characters (boy & girl –

In most densely populated cities, smog is nothing to sneeze at. Kids are particularly at risk from airborne pollutants, but getting them on board with wearing annoying safety gear is even harder than with adults. To help get kids more invested in the boring and uncomfortable world of smog ventilators, Kilo Design was approached by Airmotion Labs to create the Woobi Play. 

The Woobi Play is a colorful and simple ventilator, designed from a child's point of view to invite hands-on assembly and interaction. The Woobi ships deconstructed, with instructions on how to piece it together like a puzzle.

Kilo designer Lars Larsen points out that making the function of the mask accessible also opens up room to talk about the health reasons around its use. With fun visual tools on their side, kids' understanding of how pollution works and how masks work to prevent harm can feel more like a meaningful task and less like a vague parental mandate. 

The Woobi Play uses a certified micro high-efficiency particulate HEPA filter, positioned asymmetrically at the side of the mask. The filter protects the wearer from 95 percent of airborne particles, and the soft materials keep things face-friendly.

As the campaign points out, there are an estimated 300 million children living in regions with dangerously high rates of toxic air pollution. Creative solutions to make things better, from lowering toxins to increasing protection, are going to be increasingly important for the foreseeable future.

Kilo Design via Dezeen

In an earlier post, I lamented receiving an order from Staples where the box was way too big for the product. I had a vague idea of why that had happened, but reader Andrew Roberson did us one better, tracking down the company that provides Staples' fulfillment machinery.

One example is the machine you see at left, which takes predetermined widths of corrugated cardboard and turns it into boxes. They're produced by a company called Packsize and, as suspected, they do indeed reduce waste in the long run (with my case being an outlier).

I looked into the company's system of "on-demand packaging," and found it edifying to learn exactly what is going on inside a fulfillment center:

Here's the video Roberson linked to, which shows the inside of an actual Staples facility incorporating the machines:

So it appears that Staples has chosen the sizes of corrugated Z-fold most common to their order, with my tiny battery being an anomaly. 

Finally, here's a toy company explaining how Packsize's system totally changed their fulfillment game, with some helpful explanations from the company veep on how things used to work versus how they're done now:

I was surprised to hear that they did not have to pay for the machines, but just need to buy the corrugated from Packsize. It looks like the razor-and-handle business model works well here.

Thanks Andrew!

Smartplate is Tandem's No.6 crowd funding design success for its tech start up clients. The innovative product lets you track what you eat. SmartPlate allows you to instantly analyze and track up to three separate food items at once, analyzing their carbohydrate levels, calories, etc. An easy way to gain self-control when eating, due to its proportioned sections.

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

Last Call: Brexit Passport Design Competition 

Redesign the document that all UK citizens carry when traveling abroad! Dezeen is looking for designs that both present a positive vision of the post-Brexit UK to the world and represent all its citizens.

Online competition open through March 24, 2017.

Tuesday

Mnifesto Series: At Extremes

Manifesto Series: At Extremes discusses how architecture, infrastructure, and technology negotiate limits and operate in conditions of imbalance. Participants will draw from Bracket Vol 3. At Extremes to present a manifesto for or against how risk and extreme circumstances could become a tool for productive models in architecture.

New York, NY. March 21, 2017 at 7:00 PM.

Wednesday

2016 Winner: Rainforest Solutions Project

Last Call: 2017 Fuller Challenge

The end of March marks your last chance to apply for the 10th anniversary of this unique prize, which encourages applicants to take a full systems approach to solving real-world problems.

Online Competition open through March 31, 2017.

Thursday

FLAT ONE-The smart aquarium lighting

Call for Entries: Golden Pin Design Award

Taiwan's Golden Pin Design Award is the only international design award focused on the world's Chinese-speaking, or huaren, communities. The competition represents a chance for companies and brands to test the viability of their products and projects in the dynamic Greater China region.

Online competition open through June 30, 2017.

Friday

Whitney Biennial 2017

The 78th installment of the longest-running survey of American art arrives at a time of racial tensions, economic inequities, and polarizing politics. Throughout the exhibition, artists challenge us to consider how these realities affect our senses of self and community. 

New York, NY. On view through June 11, 2017.

Saturday/Sunday

Opening: Architecture of an Asylum

An exhibition that explores the architecture and landscape architecture of St. Elizabeths, The Government Hospital for the Insane, as the campus was originally named. The multi-disciplinary exhibition will tell the story of St. Elizabeths' change over time, reflecting evolving theories of how to care for the mentally ill, as well as the later reconfiguration of the campus as a federal workplace and mixed-use urban development.

Washington, DC. On view through January 15, 2018.

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.

After Benjamin Hubert rebranded his studio to become LAYER a little over a year ago, the experience design studio has been anything but quiet. Rolling out projects like the GO wheelchair and the LABB watchband, the agency is already pushing boundaries in the realm of human centered design. Until now, what has remained quiet is the space where the magic happens. 

LAYER's new 3,500 sqft warehouse in Hackney, London resembles a gallery space more than anything. The white walls with colored deep-set display boxes show off projects to visitors and clients in an aesthetically pleasing way:

The workspaces are minimal with a few different collaborative rooms for designers to work and share ideas, including a mildly intimidating conference room.

Soft grey room dividers make the space able to accommodate various meeting types and sizes.

The workspaces definitely won't look this clean forever—these images are good vision board inspiration for when your studio starts looking cluttered though, I guess.

It's refreshing to see a studio display their industrial and furniture design work as as stand alone art pieces. On a slightly unrelated note, LAYER's muted color scheme is inspiring me to redecorate my primary color-centric apartment. 

_________________________

Benjamin Hubert is the Design Concept Jury Captain for the 2017 Core77 Design Awards.  There's still time left to apply and have your work reviewed by the influential industrial designer! Final Deadline is March 29, 2017.

"…The pursuit of happiness" is written right in our Declaration of Independence, but while we Americans pursue it, we're lousy at attaining it. The U.N.-commissioned 2017 World Happiness Report has been released and we're not even in the top ten.

The report, put together by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, comes out each year. The idea is that world leaders can review the document to see where and how to improve their own citizens' well-being.

So how do you measure happiness? The SDSN looks at survey results from 155 countries that provide data on the following positive and negative areas:

GDP per capita. Self-explanatory.

Freedom to make life choices. Self-explanatory.

Healthy life expectancy. Self-explanatory.

Social support. Not government-based; specifically they're asking "If you were in trouble, do you have relatives or friends you can count on to help you whenever you need them, or not?"

Generosity. Specifically, "Have you donated money to a charity in the past month?"

Corruption. Do you feel you can trust the government in your country?

Positive affect. How often do you experience laughter and enjoyment?

Negative affect. How often do you experience worry, sadness and anger?

As they do every year, Scandinavia just crushes it. Here are the top ten rankings and their scores, with 8 indicating Utopia:

1. Norway (7.537)
2. Denmark (7.522)
3. Iceland (7.504)
4. Switzerland (7.494)
5. Finland (7.469)
6. Netherlands (7.377)
7. Canada (7.316)
8. New Zealand (7.314)
9. Australia (7.284)
10. Sweden (7.284)

The U.S. is 14, just ahead of Ireland and just behind Austria. If you want to see where your country is, you can download the PDF here. If you're too lazy to do that, I'll put the image of the charts down at the bottom of this entry.

In addition to the main document, the SDSN has also put together some supplementary reports, like "Happiness at Work:" "Since the majority of people spend much of their lives at work, it is critically important to gain a solid understanding of the role that employment and the workplace play in shaping happiness for individuals and communities around the world."

Freelancers get a shout-out here: "We find that being self-employed is associated with higher overall life evaluation in most developed nations, but that self-employment is also associated with the heightened experience of negative emotions such as stress and worry." I'll have to say that's true.

Obviously they didn't drill down as specifically as "industrial designer," but if you want to find the column that your job falls within, and are curious how your Job + Life Evaluation stacks up against the others around the world, here's one of the charts:

Sorry for the blurry text, that's how they provided it. So this happiness report is probably making graphic designers unhappy.

The "Cantril Ladder of Life" they're referring to basically means "On a scale of 1-10."

Here's how job satisfaction looks around the world:

The percentages of folks satisfied with their jobs:

The document(s) are huge, but they're free, so those of you interested in this sort of thing ought flip through them. One surprising tidbit I found is that folks in China are no happier now than they were 25 years ago, despite that nation's staggering industrial growth. "[Researchers] attribute the [low] happiness…to rising unemployment and fraying social safety nets."

We Americans are no better off. A sub-document called "Restoring American Happiness" had this to say:

The central paradox of the modern American economy, as identified by Richard Easterlin (1964, 2016), is this: income per person has increased roughly three times since 1960, but measured happiness has not risen. The situation has gotten worse in recent years: per capita GDP is still rising, but happiness is now actually falling.

The predominant political discourse in the United States is aimed at raising economic growth, with the goal of restoring the American Dream and the happiness that is supposed to accompany it. But the data show conclusively that this is the wrong approach. The United States can and should raise happiness by addressing America's multi-faceted social crisis— rising inequality, corruption, isolation, and distrust—rather than focusing exclusively or even mainly on economic growth, especially since the concrete proposals along these lines would exacerbate rather than ameliorate the deepening social crisis.

Yeah, good luck with that!

Hey Norway, you got room for one more?

The Aero-Loop was designer Thor Yi Chun's proposal for an airport with banked, circular runways. The idea was that it would take up much less space than an airport with conventional runways.

Thor's proposal was for a design competition some years ago and the idea was never seriously pursued. But now Henk Hesselink, an aviation expert of the Netherlands Aerospace Centre, has proposed a similar concept called the Endless Runway.

Hesselink reckons that with a circular runway, planes can always land in a headwind, altering their point of touchdown depending on which direction the wind is traveling. And in calm conditions, the runway could conceivably be used, he claims, by three airplanes simultaneously. Here's how it would look and operate:

SCAD seeks a multidisciplinary designer who understands the human user, business context and effective application of technology to chair the industrial design department. This award-winning program cultivates highly motivated, visionary students who consider business challenges while creating and communicating innovative solutions that improve people’s lives. As the full-time chair of the department at SCAD Savannah, you will advance these objectives and prepare the next generation of creative leaders.

The business of making and selling clothes has waste built right into the process: Rolls of fabric have patterns cut out of them, creating unusable scraps; retailers must guess what will be popular and how many units will sell, and whatever doesn't move becomes clearance. That results in slashed price tags, eroding profits.

A research project out of Germany involving Adidas, academics, industrial partners and with the support of the German government is looking to tackle this problem. For the past few months they've been testing an Adidas-branded pop-up shop in Berlin where customers come in, get a body scan and "design" their own sweater by manipulating patterns. An industrial knitting machine located on-site then spits the sweater out.

Here's what the process looks like in action:

The process is not immediate, as shown in the video, nor does the machine do all of the work; human hands finish the sweater, then wash and dry it on-site. Real-life elapsed time is about four hours.

Still, four hours is a lot faster than the months of lead time required to source sweaters the conventional way, and that's what's got Adidas interested. "Fast fashion" is tricky to execute, and making clothes on-demand obviates the clearance problem. According to Reuters,

Adidas wants 50 percent of its products to be made in a faster time frame by 2020, double the rate in 2016, which it expects will increase the proportion of products sold at full price to 70 percent from less than half now.


"If we can give the consumer what they want, where they want it, when they want it, we can decrease risk ... at the moment we are guessing what might be popular," Adidas brand chief Eric Liedtke told investors last week.

The trial run, which just wrapped last week, is called "Knit for You." The company is now evaluating the results and deciding whether or not to pursue this strategy.

Sneakers, as we saw, are fiendishly complicated to manufacture. But should Adidas pursue on-demand wholeheartedly it's not difficult to imagine, with the design of clever machines, made-to-order, while-you-wait sneakers in our future.