Astro is currently looking for a Lead Product Designer. Lead Designers at Astro set the creative pace on multiple programs and at times, lead other designers and outside collaborators. All designers must be able to present strong points of view via killer visual & verbal skills to Astro teams and clients alike. In addition to collaborating on design, designers must have the ability to hit schedule & budget goals and support other design teams as needed.

This tricky visual is called "The Coffer Illusion." What do you see?

There are 16 circles in this image.

There are in fact 16 circles sitting right there in plain sight. Keep staring and eventually you'll see them, resulting in an odd feeling of satisfaction and/or a splitting headache.

According to Digg, here's why we can't see the circles at first:

The Coffer Illusion plays on the fact that the visual brain is heavily geared towards identifying objects. "Pixels" are grouped to form edges and contours, shapes, and finally objects.

Sometimes, as in the Coffer Illusion, there is no "right" grouping because the image is inherently ambiguous. Two different groupings make sense — a single set of horizontal lines can either form a circle, or be the intersection between two rectangles.

For most people, the grouping into rectangles initially dominates. This may be because rectangles (including the ones we see in door panels) are often more common than circles in our daily environment, and so the brain favors the grouping that delivers rectangular shapes.

As our work environments evolve from stagnant cubicles to spaces that demand adaptability for the sake of efficiency and creative thinking, the objects around us should do the same. A need for flexible workspaces has led to the normalization of products in the workplace like the standing desk.

The productivity benefits that standing desks offer workers recently inspired 3M, a company ingrained with an understanding of the importance of quality engineering, to develop a standing desk of their very own: the 3M Precision Standing Desk.

Ergonomic Customizability

In addition to quickly and easily transforming from a conventional desk to a sit-stand workstation, the 3M Precision Standing Desk's embedded mechanisms allow for ergonomic personalization. Equipped with gas assist height adjustment technology, users can move smoothly and effortlessly between sitting and standing positions in mere seconds. Another unique detail of the 3M Precision Standing Desk is its fully customizable lever system—as there are no pre-determined settings, users are free to find their most comfortable work position down to a precise point. With its simple, innate functionality, transitioning from sitting to standing has never been more intuitive.

Smarter Components

The 3M Precision Standing Desk's strengths also lie in its incorporation of other quality products, such as the Gel Wrist Rest and Precise Mouse Pad with Battery Saving Design* and the adjustable keyboard. While the gel wrist provides wrist support throughout the workday, the innovative mouse pad extends your wireless mouse's battery life by up to 50%, taking away the need to replace low batteries. Additionally, the desk has an adjustable keyboard platform, with a +10°/-10° tilt range, to guarantee that you are typing in a comfortable position throughout the workday.

Plenty of Space

A great amount of careful engineering has gone into this desk to guarantee it can accommodate all of your work essentials. The stable work surface securely supports up to 35 pounds of technology and office supplies and is large enough to fit two 24" monitors.

The 3M Precision Standing Desk is also designed to coordinate with any products from the 3M Workplace Solutions portfolio, allowing you to customize every aspect of your workspace according to your needs.

No Assembly Required

You won't have to spend time fussing with minuscule parts and confusing directions with a purchase of the 3M Precision Standing Desk. The desk arrives at your door fully assembled, meaning no professional installers required, no stress, and you can immediately get to work at your brand new desk.

The 3M Precision Standing Desk is now available at 3M.com

3M™ Precise™ Mouse Pads with battery saving design extend battery life up to 50%. They draw less current than darker mousing surfaces, which results in extended battery life.

Now that the Nokia brand has been resurrected, we're starting to see licensee HMD Global Oy take creative strides to make them competitive again. First they relaunched the 3310, essentially a vintage cell phone design that's 17 years old. Now they've moving into smartphone territory with their Nokia 8, and they're hoping a new technological feature, the "bothie," will capture market attention.

A bothie, as you may have guessed, uses both the front and rear camera simultaneously to let you capture both your precious face and whatever it is you're looking at. The Guardian envisions it being used like this:

Image: John Nguyen/Press Association

For their part, Nokia hopes you'll use their "Dual-Sight mode" to record or transmit shots of you and a friend opposite…

…or Facebook Live your experiences like this:

Now that most smartphones have both front and rear cameras, this is a relatively simple technological trick for manufacturers to pull off. Our question to you is, will the bothie gain traction? Or are smartphone users like certain narcissistic politicians in that they'll feel there's really only room in the frame for one person?

Of all the silly web games out there, this one is actually fun for Pantone-familiar designers. iGame's Eye Test presents a grid of colors, giving you 15 seconds to click the one tile that's off by a few shades. Click it and it presents a new grid with new colors. This starts off pretty simple…

First semester students at the University of Arts, Braunschweig create a parametrically designed and digitally produced chess board during their 'Digital Crafting' classes.

Renderings of one of each student's figures produced from layered sheets of cardboard

Credit: Manuel Kretzer

Complete set

Credit: Maximilian Dauscha and Benedikt Schaudinn

Credit: Maximilian Dauscha and Benedikt Schaudinn

Credit: Maximilian Dauscha and Benedikt Schaudinn

Credit: Maximilian Dauscha and Benedikt Schaudinn

Credit: Maximilian Dauscha and Benedikt Schaudinn

Credit: Maximilian Dauscha and Benedikt Schaudinn

Credit: Maximilian Dauscha and Benedikt Schaudinn

Poster of chess figures

Credit: Leon Ehmke

Poster of chess figures

Credit: Tim Lüders

This is one of my dogs, Betsy, right before she starts furiously digging. She does it every time I take her to the beach and I joke that she's trying to get back to Japan, where her breed, the Shiba Inu, originates from.

But assuming Betsy tunneled straight down from this New York beach and all the way through the planet, somehow managing to withstand the heat at the core of the Earth, would she wind up in Japan? When I was growing up in America it was common knowledge that digging straight down would land you in China. All of us eight-year-olds agreed this was true.

Well, now the folks behind the Antipodes Map show you precisely where you'd wind up if you tunneled directly through the Earth. I entered the zip code of the Core77 offices, not far from my apartment and "started digging."

Here's where I wound up:

Darnit.

If you want to try it yourself, click here.

Lastly I'll say that as a travel lover, I can handle flights to L.A. or Stuttgart. But anytime I've had to fly from JFK to Narita—a 14-hour ordeal if you're lucky—I found myself wishing that engineers had bored a tunnel through the Earth, directly from downtown Manhattan to Shibuya Station, and come up with some elevator (or Hyperloop, nowadays) that I could ride. It would have to be faster in a straight line, no? And if we went point-to-point, i.e. NYC to Tokyo, we could avoid that pesky molten core.

Science News, a biweekly magazine and website, is seeking a hard-working and talented assistant art director for a full-time, on-site position. Science News is published by Society for Science & the Public, a non-profit 501(c)(3) membership organization headquartered in Washington, D.C. The Society’s mission is to engage the public in

I learned to drive on a five-speed Datsun 280ZX that had 195/70 R14 tires. (If you don't understand what those numbers mean, read this breakdown of tire codes.) Yes, 14-inch wheels sporting tires with high sidewalls. This was normal in the '80s, but nowadays the rage is to have beefier rims with low-profile tires, a trend that I suspect was advanced by car renderings. Every automotive renderer seems to draw rims that threaten to bottom out inside the wheel wells, with only the faintest sliver of black to indicate there's any rubber on them.

Nowadays you'd be hard-pressed to find 14" wheels on any car claiming to offer sporty performance. Volkswagen's GTI, as one example, comes standard with 15" wheels, but I'm guessing most buyers ponying up for a GTI over the Golf upgrade to the 16", 17" or 18" wheel options.

Which wheel size is faster? Which size is preferred if you live in rainy Oregon versus dry Arizona? Which size offers more comfort, makes more noise, or handles better? To find out, Tyre Reviews tried out three different rim and tire sizes—225/45 R17, 225/40 R18, and 225/35 R19—on Goodyear's test track in the south of France. Some of the results are surprising.

By the bye, how brilliant are Goodyear's executives for decreeing that their test track be located in the south of France?

Artist Mike Mitchell actually created this back in May, but it's suddenly more relevant now that our President has waffled on whether to denounce neo-Nazis and white supremacists.

"Here's a high res copy which I'm allowing for personal use (signs, shirts, buttons)," Mitchell writes. "Spread it far and wide."

This stylish power tool improves the user experience and product semantics for non-professional users. The drill is designed by Yu-Chung Chang for Electrolux in Birmingham City University.

Electrolux Drill

Credit: Yu-Chung Chang

Unlock trigger

Credit: Yu-Chung Chang

Drills straight, collects dust, shows depth

Credit: Yu-Chung Chang

Working with LED

Credit: Yu-Chung Chang

Screw holder

Credit: Yu-Chung Chang

Standing on table

Credit: Yu-Chung Chang

Charger

Credit: Yu-Chung Chang

Luxury packaging

Credit: Yu-Chung Chang

Luxury packaging

Credit: Yu-Chung Chang

Cardboard Helicopter Product Design has created an enclosure and base for a medical power pack. The pack has an exoskeleton made of stainless steel and injection molded plastic cover. Indicator and led screen to read out battery life and timer.

For those of us who are beginner or even intermediate level woodworkers, making a delicate box with a perfect finish is hard enough. Imagine that you get all of that done, and then the real work starts. If you've ever been to Korea, you may have seen some of these lacquered boxes inlaid with what looks like pearl or shells:

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:

A look at one of the most fascinating motorcycles of the 1990s – the Britten V1000.

Here's how dumb we've become: This guy encounters a bear in his garage, first thing he grabs is his phone to record.

The world's largest floating solar farm is producing energy atop a former coal mine.

The nostalgic beauty of forgotten Pizza Huts. Speaking of nostalgic architecture... the forgotten artistic playgrounds of the 20th century.

An analysis of leaving downtown at rush hour in America's largest cities.

Quick-thinking driver narrowly escapes carjacking. 

An illustrated timeline of women's fashion every year from 1784-1970.

Roger Lee: Bay Area's modern architect for the common man.

Hot Tip: Discover more blazin' hot Internet finds on our Twitter and Instagram pages.

By now you've probably seen this image, which was created by Funny or Die:

While there's nothing funny about what happened at Charlottesville, more than a few pointed out the levity within the act of white supremacists presumably purchasing their torches at a Party City retail outpost.

Tiki Brand, the manufacturer of the torches, swiftly issued a statement distancing themselves from the Neo-Nazis wielding their products.

When some cried cultural appropriation, this got me thinking: Just where are Tiki torches from? So I did a little research.

First off, there is no Tiki people. Tiki is the name of the first human male in the Maori culture's creation myth; his counterpart in Christianity is Adam. Over time "tiki" was used to refer to stone or wood carvings, presumably of Tiki himself.

It was an American who introduced the notion of "tiki culture" to the 'States in the 1930s. Ernest Raymond Beaumont-Gantt, an adventurer who had spent years sailing around the Caribbean and the South Pacific, moved to Los Angeles in 1932. He started up a bar called "Don the Beachcomber," decorating it with Polynesian artifacts he'd collected on his journeys, and concocting a series of rum-based cocktails.

Beaumont-Gantt also served "exotic" Polynesian food, which was, hilariously, actually a series of Cantonese dishes. Considered exotic, Don the Beachcomber became a Hollywood hotspot, and what would later be called "tiki culture"—a marketing term if ever there was one—was born.

In the 1940s, following World War II, tiki-themed restaurants enjoyed a surge in popularity that persisted throughout the '50s and '60s. The iconic "tiki torch" was a mainstay of these "tiki bars" and "tiki restaurants," though there's no evidence nor record of who the original inventor might have been. Tiki Brand's website has only a vague mention of their origin:

In the 1950s, tiki culture was in full swing. Pacific Island-themed restaurants, bars and even living rooms were all the rage. At the height of tiki popularity, the first original TIKI® torch was produced, igniting a backyard tradition that still burns brightly over 60 years later.

That seems to indicate that that company's version of the torch was created in the '50s.

It's likely we'll never know what individual or tribe actually invented the tiki torch, or what its original name was. Meanwhile, internet sleuths are busy determining the identities of tiki-wielders that marched at Charlottesville with lightning-like speed.

What a time that we live in.

Multi-bit drivers used to suck but have been greatly refined in recent years. Case in point—Klein's HVAC 8-in-1 Hex Head Slide Driver. To look at it you would think it's a nut driver, which for some reason has a knurled sleeve behind the head. But why?

The sleeve is a threaded lock for the magnetic head. Slide the head forward and it drives 5/16" hex fasteners; slide it back and it drives 1/4" hex fasteners—the most frequently used sizes in the HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) trades. It's fast and convenient to use a sliding head because nut sizes can be changed without reversing the shaft or installing different sockets.

Klein has produced drivers to fit 1/4" and 5/16" hex fasteners for several years: a 6" fixed shaft slide driver, a stubby slide driver, and a driver with a reversible shaft. The 8-in1 model does what they do while offering additional options for driving.

The shaft can be pulled from the handle and reversed to expose a hollow end that fits 3/8" hex fasteners. A reversible hollow sleeve fits inside and can be used to hold or store a pair of reversible 1/4 hex shank tips, or used by itself to drive 1/4" hex head fasteners. 

The loose parts at the bottom store in the shaft.

Tips include #2 Phillips, 1/4" and 1/8" flat, and a bit to adjust TR-4 Shrader valves. You may be unfamiliar with the term but you have certainly seen a Shrader valve; it's the mechanism inside the valve stem of a bike or auto tire. The same type of valve is used for HVAC applications such as pressure testing gas lines and charging AC and refrigerator compressors.

There's nothing sacrosanct about the combination of hex shank tips that come with the HVAC 8-in-1 Hex Head Slide Driver; they could easily be swapped out for ones better suited to other tasks or trades.

This is a clever configuration that allows the HVAC mechanic to use a single tool for 8 types of fasteners and fittings. In a shop setting it might make sense to use 8 different tools but when working out of a tool pouch—as tradespeople frequently do on the jobsite—it's best to travel light and perform as many tasks as possible with a single tool. 

Marking a revolution in the industry, the ease of installation, friendly shape, and lack of wires makes this a portable, affordable solution that opens up a new market of possible users and applications. Arlo cameras don’t rely on proximity to a wired power source and are easily ported to different locations, making them the first truly modular and renter-friendly solution. With no unsightly power cords, Arlo is unobtrusive and perfect for use in any home, office, or commercial space.

New Balance has a 100 year history of enduring performance and is still running strong today. Part of what makes New Balance so unique is our commitment to making products that not only provide performance but also superior fit and comfort. The same attention that is placed on our athletic shoes and apparel is also placed on our associates. We seek talented individuals that fit into our team-oriented atmosphere.

At this summer's 99U conference, Pentagram partner and designer Natasha Jen gave a presentation with an eye-catching title: "Design Thinking is Bullshit." This was actually the second time she'd given the talk—back in May Jen tweeted "Finally let it out of my system" after presenting it at HOWlive in Chicago—but video of it was never released, so few got to see it. But this month video of the 99U talk was finally made public:

What do you think? On the one hand I think Jen's correct in that distilling a complicated process into an easily-replicable formula isn't always possible, but on the other hand I see the "Design Thinking" introduction to businesses as a positive step towards fresh thinking. I had always assumed "Crit" was built into the process, but perhaps those of you with direct experience of a design-unsavvy business first attempting to integrate the process could speak to this.

I wholeheartedly agree with Jen's assertion that design is not merely a box to be checked, and I think the idea that anyone can be a designer will of course be anathema to practicing professionals. I also support her push for evidence, and on this note, if you're not already reading Design That Matters' series of posts, you ought to be!

Your thoughts on Jen's talk?