Eco-friendly, re-usable, food safe mold making. Duplicate almost anything. Made in Manchester, Maine. This material is an eco-friendly reusable mold making putty that allows you to duplicate your own parts into edible treats. Heat this putty in the microwave for 10 seconds, press over your object, cool it, pull off and pour in your chocolate or butter or isomalt or fondant or gum paste.In 10 minutes you've made a mold and some awesome shapes that you can eat.

What makes this truly unique and different from anything else on the market is you can re-melt this putty to make a new shape just by putting it in the microwave for another 10 seconds.

If you were my boss at an animal design firm and I submitted you this proposal sketch for a climbing animal, you'd probably think about firing me. There's nothing in the structure of this animal that suggests it would be good at scaling things. Well, maybe you've seen these photos that National Geo ran last year by photographer Adriano Migliorati:

In one of his Hand Tool School posts, Core77 contributor Shannon Rogers raved about the shop aprons made by Texas Heritage Woodworks. I finally headed over to their website to check 'em out, and found that in addition to their apron mainstays, they make some other nifty stuff:

Half Apron (Nail Apron)

Made from waxed canvas, leather, copper rivets and brass hardware, these are for when you don't want to commit to the full apron but still want an on-body place to hold ancillary tools.

The two large pockets in the middle are meant to hold fasteners; the one on the right will fit a block plane or utility knife; the pocket on the left tucked behind the leather triple pocket is sized to hold a 3.5" x 6" notepad; and the subdivided leather will hold writing utensils, rulers, nail sets, etc. Around back, the waist strap features a leather hammer loop.

Benchside "Saddlebags"

THW founder Jason Thigpen originally made one of these for the inside of his Dutch tool chest, but found it was too useful to limit it to that application. "Due to its small footprint and various pocket sizes, the organizer works well in numerous situations," he writes. 

"It can be mounted to a wall, inside a toolchest, or even on the side of a workbench." Fellow craftspeople apparently agree; at press time the Saddlebag was sold out, though Thigpen promises more are on the way.

Leather Mugs

This is a very tactile twist on the commuter mug: A leather sleeve, stiff leather handle and a 16-ounce Mason jar to hold your beverage on-the-go. I can make a good argument against the ergonomics of trying to drive and screw/unscrew a jar, but at the same time, this is one of those things that I look at and am just like Man I gotta get one of those.

Check out more of THW's stuff here.

Tomorrow, September 13th, 2017: Pop your popcorn and prepare for Pensole founder D'Wayne Edwards and America's Next Top Model producer Ken Mok's ultimate sneaker design showdown, Lace Up. Get ready to yell critiques at your TV and try to out-sketch 12 sneaker designers from around the world as they compete to win bragging rights and a real design job at adidas. 

Here is the only footage available so far:

Basically, the designers involved will be broken down into teams and tasked with challenges ranging from actual manufacturing to bringing their designs to market. 

The stakes are high, and I'm not convinced the special guests should have much or any say at all in selecting the winner. The guest list does include some notable names, like tennis star and sneaker innovator Stan Smith, but also included are mediocre musicians Fetty Wap and Macklemore. Hopefully these choices were made because rapper and well-known sneaker enthusiast Wale was not available. 

The pop culture element is a little much, but hopefully it won't dilute the talent the competitors bring to the table. I'm excited to see sneaker design hit the big screen and may even consider a YouTube Red subscription to watch the drama go down, because as of now that's the only way you can.

The Mechanical Designer works closely with TEAGUE's mechanical and industrial designers, interaction designers, researchers, and strategists to create unique mechanical systems solutions for our clients in the transportation and technology industries. This role demands a passion for collaborative problem solving, as well as a strong foundation in mechanical design, along with expertise in product development.

Yesterday, Kickstarter opened up its platform to Japan, further expanding its reach to welcome creators in the incrediblyinnovativecountry. Not only are they opening their platform, they are also making the backend experience easier for Japanese creators through offering customer service, the website and mobile app in Japanese. 

For the launch of the expanded platform, Kickstarter filled its roster with some rather exciting campaigns. Our favorites include those that rethink transportation methods and update traditional Japanese craft:

A snowboard accessory that transforms your board into a bike. Merging X Game sports seems to be a trend amongst transportation designers, and we're along for the ride.

CrossHelmet is a smart motorcycle helmet with sound control and 360 degree visibility. We can't help but picture the motorcycle gang of the future wearing these and communicating during rides.

These traditional Japanese woodblock prints depicting epic video game character battles brings together two things worth nerding out over—video games and process porn.

Given this taste of what we can expect from Japanese designers, engineers and entrepreneurs, we're excited to see what the country brings to the crowdfunding table next. 

The concept for the +x Bookshelf originated as a shelving solution to match the angle of the pitched roof of our firm's office, located in a traditional Beijing courtyard house. From that starting point, People's Industrial Design Office (PIDO) continued to develop +x Bookshelf components into a flexible, modular shelving system with limitless possibilities.

JoyTops is an invention that attaches to game controller joysticks increasing comfort, performance and style. The 2 founders of JoyTops came to us with a napkin sketch and a problem—a lack of premium options for gamer's to customize and personalize their game controller while also resolving common issues facing gamer's, joystick wear and tear. They were looking to design an innovative joystick topper that not only covers and prevents wear and tear but also enhances the user's performance with sp

My mother bought this bookcase sometime in the 1940's, I think. It was sitting in my parents living room for over 40 years before they downsized and gave it to me. I brought it to the shop because my apartment already has too much stuff but I liked having it around. In our former location I had an office and had room for the bookshelf and a need for a place for my tool books, but at our current location I've struggled to put it to good use.

I still love the bookcase but I admit it's now in the way.

What continues to charm me about the bookshelf? I'm old enough to remember Scandinavian modern BI—that is, Before Ikea. I had a Wim & Karen bed. Blond wood, simple and elegant lines. Nowadays the Scandinavian look has been co-opted by Ikea - though to be fair Ikea has also rummaged extensively in Japanese and other nationalities' aesthetics - so much so that some people assumed that the pricey Wim & Karen furniture was Ikea's. But Ikea stuff never had the details of this bookcase.

I love the carved in recessed handles of the glass doors. 

I love the glass top. Were the mod-century owners expected to put a highball glass on their bookcases? Of course. No wonder they needed a glass top.

Historically, this piece dates from the early days of "modern furniture". Unlike a modern piece, everything is solid. The shelves are pretty thick but chamfered at the bottom to give the appearance of a lighter design. That's a good trick and worth remembering. Since this is the early days the shelves, pins are turned metal, not stamped out.

I find the details at the bottom—a base that mimics the main carcass but is upside down—very interesting, and the large miters at the corners perfect for a piece that is modern in look but not really in construction.

The bookcase is in pretty good shape, albeit with a lot of nicks and dents. So it might need some refinishing. The glass is in very good shape and moves smoothly on its track, which of course is the key. If you are interested in having it for yourself, $199 or Best Offer takes it away. (Actually, you will need to take it away. We will not ship it though we will help you pack the glass for safe transit.) If it doesn't move in a week or two, off it goes to a charity thrift store and later into a new home of admirers.

PS - This blog entry was originally published at toolsforworkingwood.com  a few weeks ago. The bookcase found a real nice home with an architect in Annapolis.

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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.

"By 2025," says Harald Krüger, BMW's Chairman of the Board of Management, "we will be offering 25 models with an electrified drive system – of which 12 will be pure-electric." Right now they've got the all-electric i3 and the plug-in hybrid i8, which Krüger says already adds up to "more electrified vehicles on the road than any established competitor." And something BMW's designers have done well here is to port the company's design language over to these two models, retaining the BMW flavor while adding enough distinction to make it clear that these cars are something new, fresh and intrinsically different.

Now the company is starting to ramp up towards that 25 number, again porting their electrified design language onto a different model: Their somewhat clunkily-named i Vision Dynamics, a sleek four-door meant to fall between the boxy, practical i3 and the exotic two-door i8. "The BMW i Vision Dynamics is combining electric mobility with the core values of BMW: dynamism and elegance," says Adrian van Hooydonk, BMW Group Design Senior Vice President. We are therefore demonstrating how the product range and the design language of BMW i can be evolved further into other concepts."

It looks pretty freakin' sweet, from the monolithic form to the upgraded "grill" and the Batman-like side window profiles. As for that latter feature, these side windows' "virtually symmetrical form allows all passengers an equally good view out, highlighting the attention paid to the passengers and the shared driving experience in the interior," the company writes. "This is something that will gain further in importance in the future, in particular as far as (semi-) autonomous and connected driving is concerned."

Another cool feature is that the windshield actually stretches from the front of the car all the way to the rear, blending directly into the rear window. "This heightens the sensation of room and enables a feeling of spaciousness and freedom inside the car that belies its dynamic exterior silhouette," the company writes.

We assume the i Vision Dynamics is merely a design exercise as there's no mention of production plans (nor a more rational name).

Performance sneakers made from wool sound too warm and itchy to be true, so we were intrigued when Allbirds took to Kickstarter to pitch their Wool Runners to the world back in 2014—and reached their maximum target in just five days. When you think about this classic example of an old material put to new use, however, it makes sense. The Wool Runners are made from superfine merino wool, a natural material with odor minimizing, temperature regulating and moisture wicking properties. In short, wool should theoretically solve all gross footwear needs, making the material a surprisingly appropriate choice for performance sneakers.

Stemming from years of playing professional soccer, coming to the realization that the footwear industry is all around dirty, and taking inspiration from his home country of New Zealand, Allbirds Co-Founder Tim Brown set out to create a sustainable footwear option. After testing the market through his 2014 Kickstarter campaign, Brown teamed up with his co-founder, Joey Zwillinger, a renewables expert, to fine tune initial samples and get the sustainable sneakers to market on a larger scale.

Today, three years after their initial Kickstarter campaign, Allbirds announced the opening of their new New York City storefront, proving materials innovation and selection can make or break a company. 

In this interview, Brown discusses the challenges he faced during The Wool Runner's prototype phase and how Allbirds's "no branding" branding strategy came to be. We've mixed in some of their best process videos as well because some of the machinery is rather fascinating:

Core77: How did you determine wool was a high-performing material for sneakers? What was the process that went into making the first prototypes?

Tim Brown: My first ever visit to a shoe factory made it clear that the industry relied almost entirely on synthetics and nasty leathers to make shoes. Coming from the land of 29 million sheep (New Zealand, I had the insight that merino wool might be able to make a shoe that was both more comfortable and better for the environment than anything else that existed. I thought it would be simple to find a material to execute this vision, and I was very surprised to find that it didn't exist. Creating one, with the help of a grant from the New Zealand wool industry and a world leading research lab, took nearly two years.

What were the main challenges you faced in the early stages of Allbirds? Are there any challenges you still face today?

My Co-Founder and I had to overcome many hurdles in the product development phase. Literally no one had made woolen shoes before. Taking our 17.5 micron superfine NZ merino that is typically used in fine suits by some of the finest fashion brands in the world and then turning it into a shoe was a relentless process of trial and error. Making a shoe, and in the type of simple design we favor, is in and of itself hard. Doing it with a new sustainable material innovation was something else all together, and we went through hundreds and hundreds of prototypes.

Part of the beauty of being direct-to-consumer is that we're really able to listen to our customers and apply their feedback to development, as we did with our Wool Runner, which we've tweaked nearly 25 times since launch. For us, it's about always striving to find a better way of doing things.

You choose to avoid obvious branding on your products, which is especially rare in the sneaker industry. Can you explain your decision to move forward with a "no branding" branding strategy?

In my time playing professional soccer, I was inundated with tons of sports gear, often covered in logos. These products had gone beyond any real functionality and just become an extension of those companies' brand marketing. My style has always been more minimal, so I was really looking to create a product that blended great design with a universal functionality. At Allbirds, we've created a silhouette, a shape, and a visual language that really stands out, and I think it does that by whispering when everyone else is screaming.

Do you have any advice for designers thinking about developing a non-traditional product?

Try. Start. Make. Trust your instincts. Most people talk about doing things and never do them. It is always harder to do something well than you think, and great design, certainly in the context of product, is a contact sport.

Picking a meaningful problem is usually a great way to find the energy to drive through the inevitable hurdles and setbacks you will face.

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Starting tomorrow, September 14 from 11am-8pm, you can visit Allbirds's new NYC location at 68 Prince Street.

A research team from Princeton University, and a separate research team at China's Zhejiang University, have both come to the same unnerving conclusion: It's possible to hack into voice-assistant-equipped devices, like a smartphone, a digital home assistant and even a car, by using ultrasonic commands that the human ear can't detect—but that Siri, Alexa and Google Now can, and which they'll obey.

"We show that the [attacker can] play well-designed inaudible ultrasounds to cause the microphone to record normal voice commands, and thus control the victim [sic] device inconspicuously," reads the Princeton research paper. "We demonstrate via end-to-end real-world experiments that our inaudible voice commands can attack an Android phone and an Amazon Echo device with high success rates at a range of 2-3 meters."

The team from Zhejiang University, too, discovered [PDF] that if they transmitted voice commands above the 20kHz human threshold of hearing, from a distance of under two meters they were able to succesfully manipulate "popular speech recognition systems, including Siri, Google Now, Samsung S Voice, Huawei HiVoice, Cortana and Alexa. [We also succeeded in] manipulating the navigation system in an Audi automobile."

The ZU team calls their method DolphinAttack, and here's what it looks like in action:

To illustrate, we show that DolphinAttack can achieve the following sneaky attacks purely by a sequence of inaudible voice commands:

(1) Visiting a malicious website. The device can open a malicious website, which can launch a drive-by-download attack or exploit a device with 0-day vulnerabilities.

(2) Spying. An adversary can make the victim device initiate outgoing video/phone calls, therefore getting access to the image/sound of device surroundings.

(3) Injecting fake information. An adversary may instruct the victim [sic] device to send fake text messages and emails, to publish fake online posts, to add fake events to a calendar, etc.

(4) Denial of service. An adversary may inject commands to turn on the airplane mode, disconnecting all wireless communications.

(5) Concealing attacks. The screen display and voice feedback may expose the attacks. The adversary may decrease the odds by dimming the screen and lowering the volume.

The are two, very obvious fixes. The first is that manufacturers of digital assistants ought release patches that have the microphones ignore or filter out ultrasonic frequencies. This is feasible but rather boring.

The second potential fix, which we endorse, is for manufacturers to acquire and distribute, free of charge to consumers, Egyptian fruit bats.

We could carry these bats around with us, always keeping them near our smartphones, and they'd be specially trained to shriek and flap their wings to draw your attention anytime an ultrasonic voice command came in. 

[Image by Zoharby - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0]

It might seem inconvenient to carry a bat around, but look, if it's either live with the bat or deal with a bricked phone, which are you going to choose? 

Plus they're pretty cute.

Awwww!  [Image by Dawson - CC BY-SA 2.5]

Back in August, transportation reporter Adam Tuss recorded this unintentionally hilarious video in Virginia:

Tuss had come across an apparently autonomous Ford Transit, but saw the man's hands sticking out of the "seat" when he approached the car.

Now Ford has revealed just what the heck was going on. They were conducting an experiment in collaboration with Virginia Tech's Transportation Institute to see how pedestrians react to autonomous vehicles, without having to worry about the hassles/paperwork of actual autonomy:

It does raise an interesting question, of how autonomous vehicles can signal intent to replace those unspoken eye-contact interactions that occasionally occur between motorist and pedestrians. It will be fun to see the dynamic signage design experimentation each manufacturer will engage in. Ultimately, though, I imagine the government will mandate some kind of standard, as they did with third brake lights.

This is a unique position for a talented two-and three-dimensional designer requiring design work in various capacities. The designer will primarily be responsible for executing event installations with supervision from the Design Director, from participating in initial brainstorming sessions, creating floor plans and rendering ideas for presentations to creating technical

Picture, in your mind, a homicide detective. Now picture a kindergarten teacher. I'm guessing you imagined the first person as male, and the second as female. Based on direct experience or what we've seen on TV, we all have certain stereotypes about which genders work in which occupations. But what does the data actually say?

Statistician and information designer Nathan Yau pored over data collected from 1950 to 2015 to break down the Most Female and Male Occupations Since 1950. Let's consider that in 1950 the workforce was predominantly male; roughly 30 percent of women had jobs and 80 percent of men had jobs. Today about 70 percent of both men and women have jobs. So what jobs saw very little gender change over those decades? These two:

More interesting are occupations that were male-heavy in 1950, and which flipped to become female-heavy by 2015. Here are some examples:

I must admit the bartender stats surprised me, but that's probably a function of the bars I go to.

Yau's next breakdown was to find which jobs were male-heavy in 1950, then worked their way to about a 50/50 gender split in 2015:

I was excited to see Yau made a little applet where you could type in the name of a profession to see how the gender ratio changed over the years. I typed in "industrial designers," and it was of course not listed as a category. Instead I had to settle for "architects:"

Then I went with the more general "designers:"

The term is, of course, too vague to draw any conclusions. In my own "picture which gender" exercise, I stereotype graphic designers to be predominantly female, industrial designers male, interior designers female. I wish there was a more detailed breakdown so I could discover the truth.

I then tried typing in "product designers," which wasn't available, but it autofilled "Actors, producers and directors" and I found this interesting result:

In other words, we have almost identical male/female percentages for these jobs today that we did in 1950, but there was an odd moment of parity in 1970, and then it snapped back to the default in 1980 and hasn't changed much since.

The applet is fun to play around with, and you can also have it show you the results for random occupations. Check it out here.

One of the first signs of fetal wellbeing is mother's perception of movements. Currently women are told to report any abnormalities in fetal movement with a quantified number stated as less than 10 felt kicks/rolls per day. However, the minimum activity is highly dependent on an individual pregnancy case, and one of the greatest challenges is defining what is normal when it comes to fetal activity.

Bumpe proposes a safe, at home and reliable answer to current products that can be also used after the child is born. It is a remote system that assists with the tracking of fetal movements during pregnancy. Its developed passive sensing technology allows for continuous monitoring outside of a hospital and can be safely used from the third trimester. Also, Bumpe is there for you to assist and bring reassurance after the birth of your baby. The sensors gather data over the course of your baby's development. They provide information about the infant's breathing patterns and sleep cycles. The system consists of a wearable device, base station and assistive App.

Bumpe was designed in conjunction with health care professionals and in compliance with early-stage health assessment guidance.

App to use during pregnancy

And after a child's birth

To ensure the project's feasibility, the passive sensing technology was tested in the scenario

The design process involved thorough prototyping and testing

Are.na is a collaborative research website that allows designers and artists alike to connect dots and dig into creative interests. This article was originally published on Are.na's blog.

A Collection of Channels is a series highlighting channels we're paying attention to on Are.na. Interface focuses on channels related to the place at which independent and often unrelated systems meet and act on or communicate with each other.

Ascetic User Interfaces

View this channel on Are.na

Situational Awareness 

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Beige Electronics with a Red Button or Two

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Desktops

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Body Interface

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Input Devices

View this channel on Are.na

Interfaces with Black Backgrounds (Only)

View this channel on Are.na

Experimental Interfaces

View this channel on Are.na

Circular UI

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Baroque User Interface

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Hybrid Interface

View this channel on Are.na

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I've just released a new course at The Hand Tool School called Orientation. Its the result of running the school for more than 7 years and learning how new woodworkers absorb information and what questions they have right out of the gate that hold them back. This semester assumes nothing, requires no previous experience and no tools. We add 4 or 5 tools and build 4 projects.

Thanks for checking out this video. You can learn more about the new course here.

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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.

Looks like we officially have a trend on our hands: Retro-Electric? We saw both Volkswagen and Jaguar reinvigorating classic automotive designs with electric powerplants, and now Honda's dipping their foot in the pool as well. Their compact Urban EV, unveiled at the Frankfurt Motor Show, bears a striking resemblance to their original Civic, the car that put Honda on the map in America in the early '70s.

Urban EV

First-generation Civic

Some condensed automotive history: In the early '70s we Yanks were still driving around in land boats. Japanese cars at the time were not taken seriously, being much smaller, and Japan was not yet recognized as a technological and engineering powerhouse. (Throughout the '50s and '60s Japan, which was steadily rebuilding after World War II, had a reputation for producing goods of shoddy quality, similar to the perception of Chinese-made goods today.)

The original Civic, introduced in Japan in 1972, could not have come at a more perfect time: The 1973 oil crisis hit the following year, and the affordable Civic's 1.2-liter four-cylinder engine sipped gas economically. Americans hit hard by high gasoline prices were willing to give the tiny Civic a try. They found the car to be reliable and well-made at a time when Detroit's quality control seemed to have disappeared. On this reputation of economy and reliability, Honda and other Japanese automakers were able to gain a foothold in the American automotive market that would in later years blossom into outright domination.

First-generation Civic

Despite its tiny appearance, the Urban EV is actually a four-seater, and it looks like Honda is following in the original Civic's economical spirit by opting for bench seating (both fore and aft, unlike the original Civic, which had split seating up front). The interior is Spartan, to say the least:

One interesting interior feature is that camera-connected screens embedded within the doors themselves take the place of rearview mirrors. And an interesting exterior feature, though it's not shown in the photos, is that the car will have suicide doors (i.e. hinged at the rear).

And yes, we said "will." Honda President and CEO Takahiro Hachigo has announced that "This is not some vision of the distant future; a production version of this car will be here in Europe in 2019." No word on whether they'll bring it Stateside.