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Transferring the Design Language of Classic Game Consoles to Cars

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Something like this should be an assignment at every industrial design program--and it was conceived of by a used car dealer in the UK. The imaginative folks over at Jennings Ford Direct have commissioned an unknown designer to render "8 Classic Game Consoles Redesigned as Cars," whereby s/he essentially transfers the design language from one series of objects onto another:

Atari 2600

Atari brought the arcade experience to your home in the early 1980s. With its faux-wood panelling and chunky black chassis, you'll be eager to flick that satisfying 'On' lever in our street level version.

NES

The NES car is inspired equally by the early Nintendo's blocky 8-bit graphics and the boxy console itself. Just as the Nintendo Entertainment System took gaming from geek territory into family pastime, you'll be able to fit the whole tribe into this one!

Sega Genesis/Megadrive

The Sega Genesis, or Megadrive as it was known outside of North America, dragged console culture into the 16-bit age. The machine that gave us Sonic the Hedgehog was a sleeker number than its predecessors. You'll want to get its pacy automobile equivalent onto the open road to put it to the test.

Playstation 2

With a 128-bit, 294 Mhz Emotion Engine running under the hood, Sony's breakthrough games machine is the godfather of 21st century consoles. Just one look at the powerful Playstation car will tell you that now we mean business.

Gamecube

Nintendo's PS2-rival was a prettier machine both inside and out. The superior graphics of the games were matched by the elegant indigo box that powered them. The vehicular version is similarly elegant – and easy to park!

Game Boy Color

It's funny to think that the graphics of handheld consoles used to be in black and white. Sega and Atari both beat Nintendo off the mark when it came to producing a color screen – but when the Game Boy Color arrived, its batteries had far better staying power. The Game Boy car, therefore, is a neat little runaround that'll keep going as long as you need it.

Xbox 360

The Xbox 360 introduced console gaming as we know it today. With its superior graphics, built-in hard drive, DVD player, web access and usb ports, the machine is ready to communicate with the outside world. We reckon this makes the car version just about 'driverless'-ready – and versatile enough for town, arena, and off-road.

Nintendo Switch

Finally consoles have gone truly mobile: the Switch is a powerful home console that you can pick up and play on the go. Naturally, its car version is a sporty 2-seater that looks like it's ready for anything!

If you were an ID professor giving this assignment, what two object categories would you have your students connect? Assume that it's an exercise and not practical. I'd like to see mid century modern superyachts, modernist farm tractors and Memphis-style exercise machines.


Design Job: Rev Up Your Career! Honda R&D Americas, Inc. is Seeking a Contract - Color/Materials Designer in Torrance, CA 

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Coordinates and performs a full range of automotive color and materials research, design and development functions including interior/exterior colors, materials and trim concept development. Provides feedback for proposals, implementation, materials styling, cost and production management, consumer research, strategic analysis/reporting and general project management. Serves as liaison and technical consultant to

View the full design job here

The Industrial Design Prototyping Process, Part 3: Vacuum Forming

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Here in Part 3, we get down to physically manipulating materials. Industrial designer Eric Strebel, founder of Botzen Design, demonstrates how he creates the "petals" that unfurl on his mobile solar charging platform: "Vacuum forming Styrene over a piece of 20LB polyurethane foam, using baby powder as a release agent."

Strebel points out that you don't need fancy machines to get this done. "The former I am using is pretty basic and all manual," he writes. "As you will see, I need to use my knee to open the valve to draw the air into the vac tank."

And a helpful pro tip: "The parts pop out of the mold pretty easy since there is enough draft on the parts. This is important--I see a lot of people neglect this detail."

Here we go:


Reader Submitted: Straighten Your Teeth Individually with YAYA

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YAYA is a concept wearable device designed to revolutionize the way we straighten our teeth. As a smart wearable teeth brace, YAYA can detect the position of your teeth with its sensor, then shifts each tooth separately to the right place by using several magnetic controllers. YAYA can be connected to your smart device, such as your smart-phone or your smart-watch. This allows YAYA to remind users to put on it and get the best outcome.

View the full project here

Spotted On Coroflot: A Hot Student Solution For Hypothermia

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Like most school work, project topics for Product Design students aren't always terribly exciting (though it's a field where we get hype about tire tread patterns and tea kettle shape... so maybe I'm the jerk). So when a cool prompt gets met with both enthusiasm and sharp thinking, I get happy vicariously. The Pre-Hospital Hypothermia Rewarming Bag might sound a little dry, but it's a fun foray into well-informed problem solving. 

The project was posted by Alisa Yao, a student at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. The team's brief was to design a more affordable, safe and effective method for heat stabilizing exposure victims after rescue and before hospitalization. Could they come up with something better than tarps? Clearly, yes.

Their work called on the expertise of several industry heads, including an R&D director at a clothing company for extreme conditions, a researcher working on human physiology in extreme environments, and a ski patrol search and rescue professional. Gleaning the pros and cons of regularly used tools, the team came up with a series of prototypes that aim to fit a wide range of body types, give adequate access to the body for medical care and equipment, all while insulating strategically.

The final iteration resembles an interesting mix of low temp sleeping bag and lightweight backpack design. The hood and sides offer compression for a tighter air pocket, the front panel opens for IV or CPR access, padding is increased in high vulnerability areas, and the foot can be rolled up and snapped in place with carabiners. 

Given the team's lack of access to some of the tools they'd have liked, it looks like they made good with the materials and tech on hand—like opting for Bemis seams in place of a RF welder. The finished prototype is getting handed off to peers in the Technical Apparel program for testing. All in all, it feels like a great prompt handled pragmatically, and (dare I say) even stylishly. 

The Design Flaws in This Otherwise Nifty Portable Cassette Player

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Sometimes novel designs are not good ones, but have enough "wow" factor to create desirability in those who aren't thinking it through. I'll put this Elbow portable cassette player concept in this category. Designed to reduce a Walkman to the barest minimum, it consists of a biaxial arm and provides what initially looks to be a satisfying way to interface with and manipulate a cassette.

The first axis of the arm allows the user to clasp it shut, inserting a spindle into one of the cassette's gears. The device is then rotated so that the magnetic head can read the tape.

Controls are provided by a single dial which regulates the volume, play, and fast forward functions.

Seems nifty, doesn't it? But we see several problems that actually make this design a step backwards from Sony's venerated Walkman. First off is the problem of directionality/orientation. Cassettes have two sides, and the user selects which side of the tape they'd like to listen to. With the Walkman and every other cassette player, this problem is solved in an obvious way: The desired side of the cassette faces outwards.

With the design of the Elbow, "outwards" is presumably the side with the dial on it. But the user is presented with one spindle and two cassette eyes that it could possibly be inserted into. Because the motor only rotates in one direction (there is no rewind functionality), the user must insert it into the correct hole, or risk unspooling the tape on one reel without the slack being taken up by the other reel. So right away, we've got the potential for operator error.

The second, more glaring problem is that the device appears to have been designed to make a neat photograph, rather than considering how the user will actually interact with it. Here's what we mean:

Is the Elbow meant to be held in one's hand for the entirety of the listening session? Or thrown in a bag? Either way the design, which leaves parts of the cassette exposed, presents a problem. Walkmen, while in use, were either held in the hand (while jogging, for instance), thrown into a jacket pocket, clipped to one's belt or thrown into a bag. In all four of those scenarios, both eyes of the cassette and the exposed portion of the tape are completely enclosed by the Walkman; there is no danger that the user's sweaty grip, or debris in a pocket or bag, will interfere with the tape or the cassette's eyes. The relatively smooth outer shape of a Walkman also provided no sharp surfaces or undercuts which could snag on something. Those positive qualities are absent on the Elbow.

Nevertheless, we'll probably continue to see these images being eagerly forwarded on social media, with folks proclaiming it a neat design. I suppose it is neat. It's just not practical nor user-friendly.

Ex-Ferrari-Designer's Japanese Luxury Train Launches

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Three years ago we reported that Ken Okuyama, designer of the Enzo Ferrari, was working on a luxury train for the Japanese market. Now it's become a reality, and we were surprised to see that the real deal actually looks a lot like the renderings.

It seems the name is the biggest thing that's changed; what was once referred to as the Cruise Train is now called the Train Suite Shiki-shima, and it took its maiden voyage last week.

Maintained by the East Japan Railway Company, the ten-car train features a lounge car, a dining car, observation cars front and rear, and six sleeping cars. The sleepers consists of both regular suites and three split-level "maisonettes." Total passenger capacity is just 34 people.

Two-, three- and four-day trip lengths are offered, at prices ranging from USD $2,860 to roughly $10,000. But that's if you can even get a ticket in the first place; an application is required, and even if yours is accepted, you're then entered into a lottery where your chances of getting a slot are 1 in 76. The train has proven so popular that it's sold out through March of 2018.

This unnarrated footage from the pre-journey press event gives you a good sense of what the interiors feel like to be inside of:

The Blade Runner 2049 Set Design Is Officially Not Going To Suck

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The newest Blade Runner 2049 trailer is out and the visuals are worth getting excited for. I promise we aren't pivoting to a fan site for Ridley Scott adjacent projects, but good set design deserves as much love as we can throw at it. It's not that I'm anti-CGI, but practical effects can still launch a movie from good to great. It's why we still care about the first Blade Runner today.

I won't dig into the new storyline pieces, I'm just thrilled to see solid visual callbacks to the 1982 original that feel cohesive and familiar enough to come through in a tight edit. Vaulted pyramidic buildings and crumbling edifices are dotted throughout, with enough clean futuristic interiors to keep novelty and surprise up. We'll definitely get grit and apocalyptic tech and downtown lights and flying cars, along with gutted hopeless buildings to match our grizzled old friend Deckard and the future in general.

Production designer Dennis Gassner has some deeply atmospheric credits under his belt (Skyfall and Waterworld among them) and the dedication to world building really pops once you tune out the cops and gaze at the environments. 

Plenty has already been said about director Denis Villeneuve (of Arrival and Sicario fame) and cinematographer Roger Deakins (Hail, Caesar!, Sicario, and dozens of other incredibly shot classics). So let's just marinate in some stills of the enormous practical effects that "overwhelmed" Ryan Gosling while filming, fantasize about their fabrication shop, and mark our calendars for October. 



Amazon Reveals New Category of Lifestyle Device: The Echo Show

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This week Amazon revealed the new lifestyle device they've been working on, the Echo Show. By incorporating their Alexa digital assistant into something with a screen, they're hoping to create a new class of hands-free object that connects you both to the internet and to other people.

The demonstration video has an oddly 1950s-esque cast to it, depicting stereotypically perfect families engaged in the business of interpersonal familial activities:

The $230 device will be available in late June, and in a bid to sell them in pairs, they're knocking $100 off the total price if you buy two.


Design Job: Think Outside the Box! Planterworx is Seeking a Junior Designer/Estimator in Brooklyn, NY

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Planterworx is currently looking for a junior designer/estimator with 2-3 years of industrial design/estimating work experience to join our growing design and manufacturing company in Brooklyn, New York. Planterworx is unique in that we have both our design, and manufacturing facilities in the same building, that means that prototypes, and

View the full design job here

Business Tips for Designers: Hourly vs. Flat Rate, How to Price, Increase Revenue & More

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Chris Do, founder and CEO of brand strategy consultancy Blind, is both a brilliant art director and a brilliant businessman. In this talk he holds nothing back, revealing his time-tested techniques for increasing your value to companies as a designer. (It is targeted towards graphic designers but the industrial designers among you should be able to find the intersections.)

We've broken the entire video down into chunks, cueing it up into segments, so that you can skip to specific parts if you're pressed for time. (But at some point you should watch the entire thing.)

1. Intro: Answering the question "How do you break down what to charge the client?" Three examples from the audience.

2. Answering the question "Why can somebody charge 1x, versus 10x or 100x? Why will some companies pay $1,000,000 for a logo?"

3. "Why My Rates are Higher Than Yours:" Chris breaks down his own rates and why he charges what he does.

4. Why Flat Rate is Better Than Hourly.

5. Answering the question "Are your high prices are based on your value, or the client's? Where does the valuation come from?"

6. Ask the Right Questions to Get the Right Price 

7. Answering the question "Why should I pay your expensive price, when this other good designer is offering a cheaper price?"

8. How to Raise Your Rates

9. The Quality You Must Have for Clients to Pick You Over the Competition

10. A trick for getting clients to reveal their revenue, so that you can decide what to charge. (This is the longest segment, and a very important one.)

11. The HUGE benefits that come when you stop seeing yourself as a designer, and start seeing yourself as a business-savvy consultant.

For those of you with the time, here's the entire video:


The Perfect Shower Awaits You Thanks to U Shower System

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We helped Moen create a product that allows users to wake up and turn on the shower from their phones with the shower knowing their personal preferences (temperature, etc). The shower will heat up to the desired temperature and then pause until you arrive, which helps decrease water waste. Once in the shower, users can restart the flow of water with the U by Moen shower controller on the shower wall.

View the full content here

Land Your Dream Job at Wanted Career Day During NYCxDesign

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This article originally appeared on Coroflot, Core77's Design Job site. Visit their blog for more insight on working and recruiting in the creative professions. 

The month of May is a great time to be looking for job opportunities, as many employers are looking to hire new staffers before summer hits. For those recruiting talent, it's the perfect time to find new graduates who are eager to embark on their first career, as well as those with experience looking to land a new position. Next week, we will be bringing together creative job seekers, employers and recruiters for a unique event that connects both sides with the best of the best.

We are excited to be working together with our friends at WantedDesign to support young creatives in their career development. The 2017 Wanted Career Day, taking place at WantedDesign Brooklyn from 9AM to 1PM on Wednesday, May 17, offers designers in-person interviewing opportunities with manufacturers and design firms seeking to recruit promising talent in the field of Design. Don't miss this chance to take your career to the next level or launch an entirely new one during NYCXDesign.

Interviews / Portfolio reviews:

9:00 am - 1:00 pm | Wednesday, May 17 2017

Industry City, 274 36th St., Brooklyn, NY

Interested in interviewing with companies at Wanted Career Day? It only takes a few minutes to create your Talent Profile and be signed up for the event! Start Now

Tools & Craft #46: What Should a Designer/Builder Wear When Dealing with Clients?

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I'm not interested in clothing. You might be wondering why I sell any. Well, for my business I hand-pick items that solve specific problems for designer/builders. Because of the nature of business, this sometimes has to expand beyond tools for them to wield and books to educate them. Here's what I mean:

Americans are probably the most casual dressers in the developed world. Any smart salesperson here knows they cannot judge a customer based on how they dress. But, and this very important, the reverse isn't true. If you're selling high-end furniture or cabinetry, customers will judge you all the time.

It's about first impressions. You might have just gotten out of the workshop (which destroys clothing), and you might be an honest craftsperson who produces well-made products, but the first impression your customer will have is of a guy or gal wearing beat-up clothing. (We know that making things is dirty work, but you'd be surprised how many people don't.)

On the other hand, if you show up to a meeting in a suit and tie, you're breaking the connection the customers want to have with the "maker," with the "craftsperson". Even if you happen to be the person making the stuff, you come off as a sales guy/gal and lose your maker cred.

Most folks I know who are in this situation make sure they aren't wearing their shop clothing when dealing with clients. Instead they wear clean and stylish versions of their shop clothing: Something that's clean, fits, seems informal but respectful, and most of all is well made and looks it. When you're selling your work your clothing ought be stylish enough that people don't think that you and your work are old fashioned.

Instead what you wear should have the details and quality that they are looking for in furniture. You want your clothing to advertise that you are a person who understands quality and that your bid, while on the high side of your competitors (of course), reflects your plan to deliver exactly the quality product they are looking for because you understand exactly what the customer is looking for.

Before you yell at me and tell me I'm exaggerating, think about how hard it is to convince anyone what quality is and why they should pay you for it, and then think about how we can all use any help we can get in moving a deal to close. Even if clothing isn't something you are naturally interested in—and as I said, I'm certainly not interested in clothing—it doesn't mean you can't be better at it. Fortunately, unlike learning to play the banjo, dressing better is mostly about finding sources for well-made clothing, and making sure it fits.

This is a lesson I learned late in life. Preparing a presentation is just one more part of a project, and the accessories, including clothing, to make the presentation go well are just the cost of doing business. I think of it as a presentation tool like any other.

Am I bringing all of this up to sell you something? Of course, but it's something I think is useful and important. We stock, in very limited quantities, a few styles of work clothing by "Engineered Garments". EG clothing is all made in a 50-mile radius of New York City, and the quality comes from using top-notch fabrics and extreme attention to detail.

We were introduced to the brand when Nepetheles, the NYC garment firm that owns them, invited us a few years ago to have a pop-up store in their store; we were so taken by the quality of the stuff they make, we thought we would give it a try. I have personally bought two pairs of pants and for the first time in my life I'm getting a few compliments because the pants are properly tailored in the first place and they just fit me better. In my biased opinion Engineered Garments is one of the best makers of work clothing in the US, and uncoincidentally they happen to be at the high end of quality and price.

We also sell an even more limited number of work clothes by Blaklader, one of Sweden's leading producers of heavy working clothes. We're not trying to be a major clothing vendor, but we understand the role of workwear in our customers' lives.

That's the end of my sales pitch. Whether you buy EG or Blaklader stuff from us or something from another manufacturer elsewhere, I do urge you to upgrade your clothing game if you're dealing with clients. Look around, ask around and find a clothing maker who speaks both to how you want to be presented and to your budget. You will find that you will walk into a sales meeting with more confidence, you will create a better impression, and both advantages will make it easier to close a deal.

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This "Tools & Craft" section is provided courtesy of Joel Moskowitz, founder of Tools for Working Wood, the Brooklyn-based catalog retailer of everything from hand tools to Festool; check out their online shop here. Joel also founded Gramercy Tools, the award-winning boutique manufacturer of hand tools made the old-fashioned way: Built to work and built to last.


How a Shirt-Folding Machine Works, and How to Make Your Own for $1

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Here's the type of machine that shirt manufacturers use to fold shirts into perfect rectangles off of the production line:

You can find low-tech manual versions online and at big-box stores for about $10 to $25…

…but this guy made his for a dollar:



Steven M. Johnson's Bizarre Invention #63: The Verticar 

Design Job: Pedal Power! Pearl Izumi is Seeking a Director, Design in Louisville, CO

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Director, Design General Purpose: As Director, Design for Pearl Izumi, you'll lead a talented design team to create product that combines aesthetic appeal with performance innovation. You'll collaborate with the VP of Product and your fellow Directors to set strategic direction

View the full design job here

Magnetic Blocks Make Building Art Easy

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Does making snappy construction blocks lo-fi give them an advantage? The hecka successful Pixio Magnetic Blocks over on Kickstarter think an easier connection might make blocky creativity even better. 

The blocks' design hinges on cubes of ABS plastic, each face fitted with four neodymium magnets (N52), arranged to make assembly as easy as putting a magnet on your fridge. 

At first glance, the Pixio project seems too pared down to offer obvious benefit over familiar block brands, but like pixel art itself, there are unexpected charms to the clunky shapes. The range of colors and small size (8mm dia.) make them good for figurative and artistic work where other blocks falter.

The team is also putting together a cool app for design recipes and how-tos, with exploded diagrams that are incredibly satisfying to look at even without fun haptic toys in hand.

Not into nostalgic art for its own sake? Same here, so I got a bit more interested when they spelled out all the other uses that set a magnetic set apart. Use as magnets is a visual update on fridge poetry or a 3D way to personalize office equipment. The possibilities for animation and other minimal character design are open. 

The kid appeal is also real. While creative games like Minecraft support spacial thinking in players of all ages, getting time for hands-on tinkering is crucial for young brains. These might increase the choking hazard, but you shouldn't leave your baby near your block bin now either.

Even if you have few block based interests, Pixio's success is a nice reminder that stripping out functionality is sometimes good—or just a good way to reconsider what your product really does. 

The BLK360: Leica's Tiny, Sexy 360-Degree Laser Scanner

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If you've ever done the time-consuming grunt work of measuring a space to create plans from, or have had to CAD the plans up from someone else's wonky measurements, you know the process is riddled with the potential for expensive errors. Now that laser scanners are on the market, the process is faster and easier—and now, thanks to Leica, sexier. This is their BLK360, a diminutive R2-D2-shaped device that swiftly captures 360-degree environments to a range of 60 meters:

To make using it easy, Leica's teamed up with Autodesk to integrate the latter's ReCap Pro software. You can beam scans directly to your iPad, and the software automatically combines multiple scans (i.e. from different locations within the same space) together. Here's how it works:

Stats:
- 6.5" tall, 4" in diameter (165mm x 100mm)
- Weighs 2.2 pounds (1kg)
- +/- 4mm accuracy at 10 meters
- Overall 0.6 - 60-meter range
- Three resolutions: High, Standard, Fast
- Less than 3 minutes for full-dome scan (in Standard resolution)
- 150 MP spherical image generation
- 360,000 laser scan pts/sec
- $15,990/€15,000

Here's some of the guys from Leica demonstrating the BLK360 to the target market:

You can learn more about the device here.


Reader Submitted: A Protective Super Suit for Loggers

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Aegis is an exoskeleton that assists loggers with their tasks and protects them from falling objects such as trees and limbs.

View the full project here
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