Perennially in sync with the autumnal equinox, London Design Festival is duly billed as the biggest design week this side of Milan. And just as the changing leaves offer a flourish of color, so too did many of projects on view in East London—especially large-scale installations by Camille Walala and Yinka Ilori, at Exchange Square and the CitizenM Hotel, respectively.

Meanwhile, the moniker "Shoreditch Design Triangle" suggests a bit of funky geometry, which also informed a number of projects as designers channelled and challenged the rectilinear tenets of modernism. And beyond shape, size, and postmodern palettes, we also saw some exciting experimentation with materials and process.

Here are a few of the highlights from Shoreditch:

CitizenM Hotel commissioned Yinka Ilori to create an installation in the public terrace of it's Shoreditch location. Rendering the equipment in his signature color-block aesthetic, Ilori fondly pays homage to the "Estate Playground" of the North London council flat where he grew up.

On the occasion of LDF, Ilori also collaborated with Restoration Station, a workshop for recovering individuals to restore furniture.

The designer imparted his ability to tell stories through colors and patterns. 

The resulting pieces, sold through a silent auction to benefit the organization, were on view at their storefront on Shoreditch High Street.

For this year's guest country pavilion, London Design Fair invited Sight Unseen to curate "Assembly," featuring 13 designers from across the country. Indianapolis-based Christopher Stuart debuted his CAD-inspired "Drape" chair and shelf at the show. At right, works by Ladies & Gentlemen Studio.

After teasing a bit of process porn on Instagram in the leadup to LDF, Steven Haulenbeek unveiled his new RBS lamps, alongside a couple of resin-bonded sand vases.

New York and Moscow-based Crosby Studios against the backdrop of Old Truman Brewery

Newcomer Bethany Stafford presented her slip-cast "brutalist-inspired ceramics"

Ariane Prin debuted "Rustiles" in two sizes —the other side of the wall was clad in smaller ones—as part of the "Material of the Year: Jesmonite" exhibition

The jam-packed "Dutch Stuff" pavilion included the latest edition of Dutch Invertuals exhibition, following its debut in Milan. In the center, pieces by Thomas Ballouhey

Rive Roshan presented several pieces with their signature ombre effect.

Swedish Design Moves curated a national pavilion chock full of Scandinavian goodies from studios such as Future Days and Andréason & Leibel

Formerly an aerospace engineer and currently a jewelry designer, Lynne Maclachlan has translated her digital optical effect in "Entangle" wall tiles

Taking a focus on recycled materials, the third edition of "Ready Made Go"—the LDF collaboration between Ace Hotel and Modern Design Review—featured new products and projects by five design studios. In additional to "Plastic Baroque" counter displays in the café, James Shaw used his homemade, handheld recycled-plastic extrusion gun to create an installation on the terrace. "Plastic Primitive" draws a long thread between organic matter, such as plants, which are transformed over millennia into fossil fuels, and in turn petroleum-based materials such as plastic.

From September 21–23, the design departments of the Kingston School of Art staged a three-day live-making event at the Old Spitalfields Market.

Known as "Manufactory," dozens of students manned some 30 stalls—such as the "Spitalfields Scribe" by Joey Yu—in the heart of the public marketplace.

From furniture to kid-friendly arts and crafts, Manufactory offered a performative alternative (as in Tabassum Aktar's "Hand Machine") to tradeshows and showrooms.

Tucked away behind bustling Liverpool Station, Villa Walala was this year's LDF Landmark Project.

Around 1902, mechanical engineer and inventor Hiram Percy Maxim confronted a difficult problem: How could you make firing a rifle a quiet act? For those who like to hunt, the retort of the bullet leaving the muzzle is not only hard on the eardrums, but it startles the game. And for soldiers, firing a bullet instantly reveals one's position to anyone nearby with ears.

To understand how Maxim solved it, we must first understand what creates the sound. As a bullet casing is struck by the firearm's hammer and fires from the barrel, there are two sources of noise: The combustion of the gunpowder, and the subsequent sonic boom of the bullet (events that are sequential but occur so fast that they sound simultaneous to us). Maxim figured out he could silence both by creating a sleeve through which the bullet must travel. Inside the sleeve are chambers that trap both the trail of gas spewing out from behind the bullet and the soundwaves from the sonic boom.

Maxim's silencer, also called a suppressor, worked, and one fringe benefit of the gas-trapping chambers was that they also contained the muzzle flash. Again, for reasons of not revealing one's position, it's a militarily-useful feature.

Destin Sandlin, the man behind the SmarterEveryDay YouTube channel, found a very cool way to illustrate how suppressors/silencers work. Sandlin linked up with engineer Steve Dean, the former owner of a CNC machining company whose new venture, Soteria, improves the design of silencers. 

Dean created a variety of his designs that he sleeved with sacrificial and transparent acrylic plastic, so that you can see, using high-speed video recording, what's happening inside the suppressor as the bullet travels through it:

Over the summer, I read a moderately terrifying article in the Economist on what would happen if America lost electricity for a long period of time. If, say, hackers managed to infiltrate the system, or North Korea detonated a nuke 40 miles above Nebraska and caused an electromagnetic pulse, or if a solar flare acted up.

I'll get to the article's chief worries in a moment. My only experience in an electricity-free realm is trifling and limited to the 2003 blackout of northeastern America. Here's what I quickly learned at that time:

People Get Stuck

I thanked my lucky stars that I was working from home on the day of the blackout. Thousands of other New Yorkers were not so lucky, as they were riding in elevators and subway cars at 4:11pm. The Fire Department had a hell of a job to do, with roughly 800 skyscrapers, both office and apartment buildings, filled with people stuck in elevators. Transit conductors eventually led stranded commuters onto the tracks and to the nearest exit. Dirty people were literally climbing out of manhole covers like C.H.U.D. And with no train service, folks stranded far from home had no way to get there.

Communications Go Out

Obviously there was no cell phone service nor internet. The only way I knew what the hell was going on was because I'd started keeping a small transistor radio near me ever since 9/11, and I found the one working ratio station operating off of a backup generator.

Food Goes Bad

The first thing my neighbors and I did was to start eating all of our ice cream, as it was a hot August day and all of it would melt within hours.

People Can't Buy Things

People using plastic were S.O.L. Those with cash could only buy stuff if the store's cash register was mechanical.

Traffic Laws Break Down

When all the stoplights stopped working, downtown Manhattan turned into a snarled free-for-all, with intersections jammed with tangled cars pointed in all four directions.

Water Disappears

The radio had urged us to start rationing water, as they didn't know how long the blackout would last. With no electricity, there's no way to pump water nor purify sewage.

________________

Power was back on the next day, leaving me with some cute little stories to tell. But there's nothing cute about what is going on in Puerto Rico right now. Following Hurricane Maria's devastating path of destruction, "Most of the U.S. territory currently has no electricity or running water, fewer than 250 of the island's 1,600 cellphone towers are operational, and damaged ports, roads, and airports are slowing the arrival and transport of aid," says The Atlantic.

Some 90% of the power distribution network is out of commission, and Reuters reports that "[It] is expected to be a months-long effort to rebuild the island's power system, keeping much of its 3.4 million people in darkness for an extended period."

So what's going to happen next? The Economist article points to the troubles that we find familiar in post-apocalyptic TV shows and movies, which is the breakdown of society, looting, pillaging, law enforcement abandoning their stations to protect their own families, et cetera. I desperately hope that these things will not come to pass in a U.S. territory where the larger U.S. government is still functioning. In order to tackle the six points above, massive aid will be required.

Also required will be lots of people working together. In order for that to happen we need to clearly understand the problem, and communication between the different parties must be clear. I find that can be complicated by media bodies or readers who only want to focus on one side of the story.

For example, this morning papers like the Guardian are reporting that our President sent out a tone-deaf series of Tweets on Puerto Rico's crisis bringing up their debt status rather than any humanitarian words. That is true, and has left readers with the perception that he is not doing anything about the crisis; I myself find that easy to believe.

However, PBS News Hour has printed this contradictory evidence from a conversation with Puerto Rico's Governor, Ricardo Rossello:

JOHN YANG: Governor, are you getting all the aid you need or getting it fast enough from the states?

GOV. RICARDO ROSSELLO: First of all, we are very grateful for the administration. They have responded quickly.

"The president has been very attentive to the situation, personally calling me several times. FEMA and the FEMA director have been here in Puerto Rico twice. As a matter of fact, they were here with us today, making sure that all the resources in FEMA were working in conjunction with the central government.

"We have been working together. We have been getting results. The magnitude of this catastrophe is enormous. This is going to take a lot of help, a lot of collaboration. So, my call is to congressmen and congresswomen to take action quickly and conclusively with an aid package for Puerto Rico.

"We are in the midst of potentially having a humanitarian crisis here in Puerto Rico which would translate to a humanitarian crisis in the United States. So, I call upon Congress to take action immediately. You know, Puerto Ricans are proud U.S. citizens."

Governor Rossello also points out something many of us may not have realized:

GOV. RICARDO ROSSELLO: We have shown [we are proud U.S. citizens] when Irma went through our region. It impacted us, but that didn't stop us from going to the aid of other almost 4,000 U.S. citizens that were stranded in some of the islands. We gave them food, shelter. We make them out of harm's way and we have them go back to their homes.

If you are interested in offering assistance, there is a list of ways you can help here.

The Guide is available with a posting to Coroflot's Design Job Board.

For over 15 years Core77 and Coroflot – the design recruiting site – have polled working designers across the professional spectrum about their careers. The result is two-fold; first, an ever growing "real-time" design salary guide at Coroflot.com, where the data completes a creative hiring trifecta alongside a design job board and database of 200,000 designer portfolios. Second, a historical snapshot of today's creative professions; a compilation of 1000's of responses from earlier this year, analyzed and presented on their own and compared against data from 5 years ago. The first is freely available 24/7 at Coroflot.com/designsalaryguide, the second is launching today and, for a limited time, complimentary with any job posting at Coroflot. Wether you are a small firm wondering how competitive your offers are, or a large company seeking insight into what attracts a creative workforce, you will want this report for reference. Get started with a design job posting here to get your copy.

For the second year in row, the MFA in Products of Design program at SVA is launching their Open House Design Challenge—a quick-'n-dirty design competition open to people interested in learning about the program and attending their Open House and info session in New York City on November 10th. 

Comments Products of Design chair Allan Chochinov, "Lots of people are keen on learning about grad school and about the unique aspects of our program, but it can be expensive to come to New York City. And since there's nothing like actually hanging out in the department, meeting current students in person, and really getting a sense of the place, we wanted to make it a little bit easier to attend. So this is a fun way to help out with the airfare. "

The requirements for entering are pretty simple—pick a question, and answer it by creating one sketch, along with a two-paragraph description of the idea. And the topics are juicy:

Pick one of the following questions:

A. Sketch what you hoped the iPhone X would have been before you saw any of the leaks

B. If Tesla and T.J.Maxx launched a new initiative together, what would it be?

C. Sketch an app for animal shelters to increase pet adoption rates

D. Design an umbrella for use in crowded areas

E. Design a service that helps the formerly incarcerated rejoin society

The top 5 winning entrants receive expert portfolio reviews from faculty and experts, and the overall winner will receive travel reimbursement up to $750 to come to the department's open house in New York City.

"This isn't a skills competition by the way," adds Chochinov. "What we're looking for are ingenious ideas, novel approaches to problem-solving, and just plain imagination. Also, of course, we're looking for brave and bold ideas...since we're looking for brave and bold students to apply to join us in the fall!"

The deadline for submitting your idea is Friday, October 20th. Find all the details at the Products of Design site.

The Department of the History of Art and Design at Pratt Institute invites applications for a full-time tenure-track Assistant Professor position in Design History to begin August 2018. Priority will be given to historians of Industrial Design, however, all Design History specializations will be considered. The selected candidate will have expertise in teaching the history and theory of design to undergraduate and graduate students, an understanding of current and future trends in contemporary design, and will be able to address visual and material culture from a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives.

More often than not, construction workers are exposed to many hazards in specific situations, like tunnel excavation. The result of interviews with swiss construction workers, Unit Helmet has adopted a modular system that makes it easily assembled or disassembled. This enables workers to actively respond to volatile surroundings.

All of the helmet's accessories can be easily replaced by means of the magnetic snap system, and the unit is able to be attached to many fastener systems that are ergonomically situated on top of the helmet. This allows the accessories to be assembled in combination with the other units, which ensures safety from multiple hazards that may occur simultaneously.

Watch a video of Unit Helmet in action here.

Responding to a governor-to-governor call, New York's Governor Cuomo traveled to Puerto Rico last week to offer assistance to Puerto Rico's Governor Rossello. Cuomo brought with him ten engineers, planners, technical supervisors and translators from the New York Power Authority. He also brought, from the New York Department of Environmental Conservation, three drones and two drone pilots.

The drones were intended to help the New York delegation execute their mission, which is to figure out how to restore power to the island. But they could also be used, and presumably will be in future, to assist with crucial search-and-rescue tasks.

Rescue workers in Puerto Rico have a daunting task ahead of them. While the island is shaped like a remarkably orderly rectangle, the topography is a tangle of mountainous rainforest. 

With both electricity and communications grids down, and highways strewn with collapsed electricity poles and streetlights, folks stuck in the interior of the territory have no way to reach out for help and no easy means of transportation.

The first problem is conducting triage. A good solution would be to use drones, sending them over impassable terrain to scan for survivors. Drones outfitted with video and thermal cameras—as the DEC drones are—could locate pockets of people trapped in mountain villages, alerting authorities to their presence. Here's an example of how DEC's drones use thermal imaging to locate bat hibernation locations:

As Forbes reports, other drone experiments undertaken by environmental bodies show great promise by turning drone footage into useful data:

Early applications using large volunteer teams to identify wildlife in satellite imagery and train computer algorithms to conduct basic wildlife censuses have evolved into large-scale disaster triage efforts using drone imagery. Under one pilot application, live drone imagery would be streamed to a remote team of volunteers who would click on the video feed to identify damaged locations. Areas receiving large numbers of clicks would be highlighted on the screen for drone operators to investigate further, offering realtime feedback. During one test over 100 volunteers collectively provided 49,706 identifications that were 87% accurate.

Drones could also serve as force multipliers, if fixed-wing UAVs like the one being developed at MIT's CSAIL (Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab) were used. Their slingshot-launched drone can fly autonomously, using stereo-vision, on-board CPUs and custom algorithms that can detect and avoid obstacles.

Another type of drone that could prove useful in disaster areas is the PARC, or Persistent Aerial Reconnaissance and Communications system designed by CyPhy Works for the U.S. Army. 

The PARC is essentially stationary, and using one is like having sensors on top of a 400-foot tower—without needing to build the tower. Tethered to a fixed location, the PARC can fly for over 200 hours at a stretch, as power is fed to it through the tether. Communications data, meanwhile, is fed from the drone back down to the operator via the same tether. While the PARC's lack of mobility doesn't suit search-and-rescue operations, it would be useful in situations where sites need to be monitored for signs of imminent disaster, like a dam on the verge of collapsing or a facility at risk of explosion.

Here's how the PARC operates:

Monitoring locations and searching for survivors is one way drones can help. But how can they be used to actually get supplies to those who need it? We'll look at that next.

It's hard to believe that years ago, it was common for living rooms to be arranged like this:

The furniture was arranged for entertaining, for conversation, for "company." It was once common for friends to drop by, even unannounced, and for you to spread some refreshments around while you sat on couches, facing each other, to shoot the breeze.

Nowadays that sounds insane. Comedian Sebastian Maniscalco perfectly and hilariously illustrates the difference between someone dropping by 20 years ago versus now:

Today it's rare to see a pair of sofas facing each other; modern living rooms often feature a couch facing the flatscreen. We don't go over each other's houses to socialize much these days, opting instead to conduct our social lives on social media. And as open-plan offices and shared workspaces become common, there is a need or desire for furniture that delivers the comfort of a sofa with the privacy of a separate office.

Thus we see designs like Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec's Alcove seating, designed for Vitra:

The PRIVÉE line designed by Progetto CMR for Aresline:

The throne-like V1 Chair, designed by ODESD2.

Steelcase's Brody WorkLounge:

Sitland's Cell 128:

The designs above are primarily form-follows-function, but Studio Makkink & Bey's EarChair co-opts the form of the wingback chair:

See Also:

- Why do wingback chairs have wings?

- The design benefits of sunken conversation pits

Over a decade ago, Timothy Corbett and I had finished up the first Gramercy Tools Saw, the Bowsaw, and were embarking on our next project: A dovetail saw. Tim recently shared with me some of the original artwork for the saw etch of that latter saw, and it's on my mind so I figured I'd tell you the story.

We figured out that there are roughly two ways to brand a saw: Stamp or engrave the brass back, which was the common thing up to the mid-19th century, or etch the blade with acid which was popular in the latter part of the 19th century. Both of us really loved the artwork of the old saw etches and Tim, who had experience in acid etchings, loved the idea of doing a proper logo for Gramercy tools, appropriate for a saw blade.

Originally the etch was for a line of panel saws made for us by a third party, but when we sent the artwork to the maker he could not do the detail we needed and the project was dropped.

We finally found a company that could actually do a real acid etch on a piece of steel. Deep enough to withstand wear, and analog enough to allow the classic detail that we wanted in a professional saw etch design.

Gramercy Tools got its name because at the time we were located on 20th street in Manhattan, and every day I walked past Gramercy Park, the last private park in NYC, dating back to 1831. 

It seemed appropriate to do something related to the park. We started with a narrative idea, a joiner on his way to work in one of the fancy townhouses next to the park. I don't remember if Tim and I had conversations about the content of the etch or if he just came up with the design. But I do know on one hot day in the late summer of 2006 I found myself walking back and forth in front of the 20th street gates of Gramercy Park to provide the source material. I also lent Tim a copy of my reprint 1897 Sears Catalog so he would have some reference material on clothing.

The first drawing to show the real elements of the final composition.

Then he disappeared for a week or so. I only made two important contributions to the project: 1) Complaining to Tim about how long it took him to draw the logo, and 2) I suggested that some holdfasts to keep the etch from sliding off the saw would be a good idea. (You can see he wrote "holdfasts" on the sketch above.)

A later sketch - we can see a sketch of the holdfast in the corner - an alternate view that was rejected.

Days went by but soon we had finished art. The original is very large and done by hand. 

The background isn't drawn yet but we can see where we are going.

Tim did some test photos to see how the banner bunting would look when held by a holdfast.

The final etch with all its details.

We use the etch on a lot of tools and at exhibitions. Depending on the size of the saw the etch will have more or less detail.

So there you have it.

_________

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.

When designing for the overall population, it can be easy to overlook the effect our work will have on smaller subgroups of people. Case in point: you may not encounter many openly colorblind folks on a daily basis, but they actually account for around 13 million people in the US and 350 million worldwide. The two most common colors colorblind people can't see properly are red and green, which has a larger effect on daily life than you may think—getting dressed in the morning is a struggle, and Christmas is a total blur (even without Eggnog).

To give you a basic sense of daily colorblind predicaments, consider the stop light. Since stop lights are mainly red and green, they're forced to associate "stop" and "go" with positioning, rather than color. It's easy enough to remember "go" is at the bottom, but sometimes you're hit with curveballs—usually in the form of my colorblind father's worst enemy, horizontal stop lights: 

To the color differentiating eye, it's clear you need to stop, but to those who are colorblind, it feels more like this:

Traffic Light Tree by Pierre Vivant in London's Canary Wharf. Via International Business Times. 

Now imagine you're a colorblind child that wants to play a board game with friends, but you instantly get frustrated because everything from the board to game pieces are color-coded. This frustration leads to insecurity that can stick around for years.

Mattel recently took a step in the inclusive direction by designing a colorblind friendly version of the classic card game, UNO. The game is designed to be easy, as the only goal is to get rid of all of your cards by matching colors and numbers. However, it only took 46 years to figure out that colorblind people can't play the game at all because red and green are two of UNO's iconic colors. 

An easy way to learn the basics of the ColorADD system

Since UNO was designed to be an easy game for everyone, upon this realization, Mattel decided to create UNO ColorADD. Designed in partnership with the organization ColorADD, the pack incorporates ColorADD's color identification alphabet, a graphic system that helps people who can't see color easily recognize the hue's they're looking at. Cards in the packs are marked with the ColorADD symbols for the traditional UNO colors of blue, red, green and yellow, but all other rules of classic UNO apply. 

A closer look at ColorADD's color identification alphabet

Technically, UNO could've gotten away with spelling out the names of each color on the cards. But in the grand scheme of things, exploring the possibilities of a universal color identifying system through easy applications, like games, isn't a bad idea. If the system is taught starting at a young age and integrated in the right ways, small difficult tasks could be made a lot easier for those who can't identify color.

While the UNO ColorADD pack doesn't change the more complex challenges colorblind folks face (can every country just come to a consensus on stop light design already?), the ColorADD system has already been used across the Europe in various ways. Use in grammar schools, public transportation, hospitals and consumer goods, such as colored pencils and clothing has already been explored, but it's the first time the system is being used in the U.S. I reached out to my dad for a quote, and all he said was, "it's about damn time."

What other ways could you envision ColorADD's color identification alphabet being used? Let us know in the comments thread.

As with any design week, the tentpole tradeshows and group exhibitions of London Design Festival can be a mixed bag of brands, manufacturers, collectives, independent designers, and sponsored pavilions. While the disparate exhibitors cater to different albeit overlapping audiences, the jarring juxtapositions can be chaotic if not altogether unfortunate.

Thankfully, galleries offer a rather more curated experience, while student exhibitions remain as timely and relevant as ever, and LDF did not disappoint on either front. Forgoing the debate about drawing a distinction between “collectible design” and art, we made rounds of elite galleries in Mayfair, as well as a couple of graduation shows.

Christie's collaborated with gallerist Andreas Siegfried on the exhibition Tropicana, featuring new work by the designers Anton Alvarez and Jonathan Tryte.

Alvarez, a Swedish-Chilean designer currently based in Stockholm, is known for creating machines that wrap scrap materials in brightly colored thread.

The top-tier auction house mixed the pieces in the three ground-floor galleries of its Mayfair location.

London-based Trayte works explores and combines various materials in functional sculptures that allude to pop art, probing the psychology of consumerism.

Of course, the Alvarez installation stole the show

Up the street, Mazzoleni Gallery invited Milan's DimoreStudio to create a series of carefully rooms featuring objects, furniture, and artworks from the gallery's extensive, predominantly Italian inventory.

At Carpenter's Workshop, Li Edelkoort's selection of "European design talent" skewed heavily toward Design Academy Eindhoven, where she served as director from 1999-2009. From left to right, works by Anton Hendrik Denys, Kathrine Barbro Bendixen, and Martin Laforet

Another DAE grad, Kostas Lambridis presented his thesis project "Work in Progress," which stole the show for its sheer scale. (Full disclosure: I studied with Lambridis at the Design Academy.)

The Graduate(s) also included (from left to right) Julie do Mol, Priyanka Sharma & Dushyant, and Bram van Breda, among a few others. All in all, the works were somehow totemic or elemental, unified by a kind of "prehistoric chic."

On the occasion of LDF, the well-curated stationery shop Present & Correct exhibited "Cliptomania," a graphically appealing (read: highly Instagrammable) display of the humble objects.

Viaduct Gallery's furniture and lighting showcase Punctuating Space included Child Studio's "In the Shadow of a Man," which debuted in Milan this year.

Central St. Martin's Creative Unions featured 50 projects that broadly responded to the geopolitical upheaval since the Brexit. From a Lars von Trier-inspired design "dogme" to speculations on climate change and cartography, the exhibition showcased the full spectrum of design.

Nestled in a side street of Clerkenwell, Candid Arts Trust hosted Graduated, an exhibition of student projects from Kingston University. With some 90 pieces on view, the exhibition was understandably uneven but refreshingly playful on the balance.

At Allbirds, we’re on a mission to prove that comfort, good design and sustainability don’t have to be mutually exclusive. We are dedicated to making the most sustainable footwear we can using premium natural materials, designed for life’s everyday adventures. Our commitment to making better shoes in a better way is fueled by a belief that the shoe industry needs to focus less on flash and more on thoughtfulness.

"Artrageous with Nate" is the name of a web series that seeks to "educate and inspire creativity through interactive episodes combining art, science and history." In this episode, host Nate learns what industrial design is, traveling to Delta Faucet Company to see what ID'er Jordan Bahler does.

They cover why she got into ID, where inspiration comes from, whether design or engineering comes first, and how exactly industrial designers and engineers go back and forth on a project.

(You can skip the last third of the video, where the host attempts to design something himself.)

While the host seems to grasp what our field is fairly quickly, I wonder: Whenever you yourself have had to explain what industrial design is to someone who's never heard of it, how often does it take on average before they "get it?" And did you ever run into that person who just couldn't wrap their head around it?

Delivering crucial supplies to people on the ground is a logistics problem faced by both military and humanitarian organizations. One way to do it is via air drops, and we showed you some awesome footage of that here. But "The biggest problem we have with dropping relief supplies is, they don't land where they're supposed to," Lt. Col. Howard Marotto, a U.S. Marine Corps logistician, told Military.com. "They land on a house or behind enemy lines, so the people who really need that materiel don't get it."

Thus the Army and the Marines have commissioned a prototype JTARV, or Joint Tactical Aerial Resupply Vehicle, a quadrotor package mule that will be able to carry up to 300 pounds and drop them off with the precision of a package drone.

Colloquially called the Picatinny Pallet, it seems they're still deciding whether it needs a human pilot or not. In the demonstration above it's shown being remotely piloted, and described as ultimately being unmanned and autonomous, yet the Army refers to it as a "hoverbike" and on the presentation board you can clearly see a rider in one of the drawings:

The prototype JTARV, which can currently carry only 50 pounds, was designed by Australian mechanical engineer Chris Malloy. We first wrote about Malloy's invention in 2011, when he was developing it independently, and if you look at his earlier iteration you can see that the design has evolved by comparing it to the walkaround video below:

It's interesting how they've overlapped the rotors in order to narrow the footprint; I didn't realize lift could be achieved with that Venn Diagram configuration.

The military has been transporting the vehicle to various bases around the country for tests and demonstrations, and thus far they've logged 200 hours of flight "without incident."

The target radius of operations is said to be 20 to 25 miles. It is a shame that the JTARV is still in the prototype phase, as such a vehicle would be perfect for delivering relief supplies to folks in Puerto Rico that are stuck in remote villages with no power, communications or running water.

The 9 to 5 work schedule is changing. In modern life, there are people who work night shifts, and people who need to study all night. Emergency room workers can be called on at all hours. People with new businesses may have to stay up at night, too. Some just prefer to work at night.

The New Normalis a lighthearted project which aims to make the working environment more playful. No matter where people work, they are often in a confined and isolated space that can feel stressful. This project provides soothing and energizing elements to make any work space more comfortable.

The objects of The New Normal include a removable backrest that also functions as a blanket, a moveable recorder pillow, and a foot ramp to allow leg movement.

Early last year, we came across a video that broke down generally which types of jobs would be in danger with the adoption of automation in the workforce, and it primarily told us that all repetitive blue collar jobs were at risk. Yesterday, the Telegraph released a comprehensive list of jobs that were most likely to be computerised with percentage probabilities, and to be frank, it's a bit more shocking to look at the job titles at risk on an individual level. Here's a list within the article of the 12 jobs with a whopping 99% chance of being automated in the future: 

- Data Entry Keyers
- Library Technicians
- New Accounts Clerks
- Photographic Process Workers and Processing Machine Operators
- Tax Preparers
- Cargo and Freight Agents
- Watch Repairers
- Insurance Underwriters
- Mathematical Technicians
- Sewers, Hand
- Title Examiners, Abstractors, and Searchers
- Telemarketers

The jobs least likely to be automated were as follows:

- Recreational Therapists
- First-Line Supervisors of Mechanics, Installers, and Repairers
- Emergency Management Directors
- Mental Health and Substance Abuse Social Workers
- Audiologists
- Occupational Therapists
- Orthotists and Prosthetists
- Healthcare Social Workers

A full, searchable list of over 700 jobs at risk of automation is available within the Telegraph article, which I recommend checking out. Interestingly, jobs like modelmaking or milling & planing setters both have a 96-98% chance of automation replacement, graphic designers an 8.2% chance, while industrial designers are still incredibly low at 3.7% (so designers, you're still safe for now). 

Another interesting aspect of this article is how it described low-skill workers jobs evolving in the future, a group most at risk in the automation switchover. The solution, the original study concludes, has to do with these workers acquiring creative skills:

"Our model predicts a truncation in the current trend towards labour market polarisation, with computerisation being principally confined to low-skill and low-wage occupations.

Our findings thus imply that as technology races ahead, low-skill workers will reallocate to tasks that are non-susceptible to computerisation - i.e., tasks requiring creative and social intelligence. For workers to win the race, however, they will have to acquire creative and social skills."

In this scenario, the possibility for these low-skill workers to acquire the skills to thrive in a largely automated economy seems to lie in better vocational training programs in and outside the workplace around the world with a focus on critical thinking and problem solving.

Engineer Nigel Gifford, who has completed over 1,000 parachute jumps, had a job you've probably never heard of: As a Captain in the British Army Catering Corps, his job was to feed soldiers in hostile environments.

Given his specialty, after retirement he was approached by the British military and asked to help develop a drone that could deliver food. "They were looking at conventional UAVs (unmanned air vehicles)," Gifford told Business Insider, "and I said, 'Well, why would you bring it back? Why don't you leave it there, and why don't you make it all out of food?'"

"I keep getting trouble with my wife at home - when we go shopping in the delicatessen, I'm the one that's flexing the salamis to see what their tensile strength is because they'd make good spars [part of the wing structure]!"

Gifford designed what he calls the Pouncer, a fixed-wing drone that is not only loaded with food, but will be made of food. While he's still working out which edible material will make the best wing structure, he's decided that other structural elements can be made from wood, which can be burned as fuel by the party that receives it, and the skin will be made from an unspecified material that can be integrated into a shelter.

It sounds far-fetched, but Gifford's company, Windhorse Aerospace, claims that a single Pouncer will deliver a day's worth of rations for 50 people, cost £500 (USD $672) apiece, and deliver with an accuracy of 7 meters. The drone is meant to be dropped from a C-130 transport plane; it's not at all clear how the thing will steer itself to the target.

As with the military hoverbike we just looked it, it is a shame that the Pouncer is not yet a reality, as it would be perfect for a disaster relief scenario such as the one currently being faced in Puerto Rico.

I'm not a fan of sawing guides or plane fences. Basically anything that gets in the way of the freedom of motion of the tool. But sawing guides like these Barron guides can be a major head start to someone new to hand cut dovetails or someone struggling with their sawing. Here is my review of the Barron Dovetail Guides using both a Japanese saw and some Western Dovetail saws.

I have to say that I did enjoy using these guides and I'm definitely going to add a 45 degree guide to my collection. I don't know that I will be using them to cut dovetails in the future, but it is good to know they are there when I'm having a bad day and can't saw straight at all. Thanks to David Barron for the opportunity to try out his guides and be sure to visit his site for more information/videos/etc on these and other cool products he makes.

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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.