The merchandising development position requires experience in point-of-sale display manufacturing techniques and an understanding of design engineering for the retailing of prestige cosmetics. It entails supporting the development process for the production and updating of three-dimensional, high quality Corporate Open Sell systems (Sephora, Shoppers Drug Mart, etc) in liaison with the Retail Design & Development Center (RDDC), NA Project Manager and Open Sell Indirect Procurement position.

In the life of a baby, the first stages are very short indeed. Normally clothes get outgrown almost right away, shoes for crawling still look brand new when you already have to change them for the next step up, and bottles and pacifiers generally only last 3 to 6 months. This is actually the case with pretty much all objects that surround our babies in their everyday lives, including toys.

This is the context from which Eco-Lecho was born, created and manufactured by industrial designer Fernando Palma Fanjul in collaboration with be.mammals, a company that creates products for babies. Both are located in Concepción city in the south of Chile.

Front 3/4 view (White)

Credit: F.Palma

Back 3/4 view (White)

Credit: F.Palma

Front view (White)

Credit: F.Palma

Side and back view (White)

Credit: F.Palma

Colors

Credit: F.Palma

In use 1

Credit: F.Palma

In use 2

Credit: F.Palma

Instalation

Credit: E.Leigh

Assembly

Credit: E.Leigh

Art

Credit: C.Viviani

One of the best parts of camping is sitting around a fire with your friends--unless you're in that position where the wind is blowing the smoke directly in your face.

BioLite has solved this with their FirePit, an intelligently-designed sort of floating hearth that uses 51 air jets to increase burn efficiency and virtually eliminate the smoke. Here's how it works:

In addition to the fact that you can cook on it, the icing on the cake is that you get BioLite's signature USB charging ability, with the energy drawn directly from the fire itself.

The FirePit has caught fire on Kickstarter, garnering $2.3 million in pledges on a $100,000 goal. It's no surprise why: The company is throwing in a $60 Solar Carry Cover, which keeps the FirePit's battery charged in between burns, for free to all pledgers.

If you want to get in on it, you'll have to hurry: There's only a day left to pledge.

"Lunch Atop a Skyscraper," the iconic 1932 photograph of ironworkers perched on a beam 840 feet in the sky, is probably one of the most recognized photographs of the 20th Century.

While the ironworkers in the photo really were the men building the 30 Rockefeller Plaza building, and are actually on-site, it is widely believed that the photograph was staged and not captured spontaneously. Hilariously, this has led internet conspiracy theorists and/or jokesters to misbelieve that the photograph is fake. In turn these folks have Photoshopped fake versions of it being faked:

THIS IS FAKE

THIS IS FAKE

The actual photograph is real, and Corbis owns the original negative.

In any case, a bunch of ironworkers in Chicago decided to recreate the photograph, with a couple of modern-day twists (apart from the modern-day background). See if you can spot them:

You've got to admit the Chicago guys did a pretty good job with the mimicry.

If you're a would-be Festool owner but find their high prices too much to swallow, check out their newly-launched website: Festool Recon, which sells their "gently used" tools at a discount. Because the company has a 30-day return policy, they've got an inventory of like-new tools that owners either returned because they didn't like them, or that were defective and have now been reconditioned. They also sell discontinued tools.

"All tools meet Festool's high performance and quality standards," the company writes. "However, you should expect them to have visual blemishes."

Be aware that the stock is constantly rotating; at press time there was only one model of tool on offer, their TS 55 Tracksaw--selling for $420, versus the usual price of $560. "Shit goes fast," writes Randy, the buddy of mine who told me about the site. "They load up a random item every day, send out an email, and depending on the product they are gone within hours."

"It will not be transparent what tool will be for sale next," Festool states, with German frankness. "You will only learn of new offers through the official announcement sent out with the recon newsletter posting. Once it expires, the next offer will become available."

You can sign up here.

Lastly, Randy just texted me this: "Tell [Core77 readers] that I asked you not to write about the site, so I would not be competing with everyone else to pick up the tools I want." Sorry, Randy, that's what you get for befriending a blogger.

Conceived as a competition entry, Tilt transformed into a symbol of balance and the icon of level's studio philosophy.

The best way to find gear is getting a tip from a friend you trust. As friends of our design community for over 20 years, we want to be that voice of reason by helping our readers find products that really, truly work. So, we've gathered a list of things we regularly use or cannot wait to get ourselves and put together our new Shopping Guide for Designers.

The common denominator between every featured item is good design: some highlight great style, others impeccable functionality. The list features great tools that design students and professionals alike should have, trustworthy outdoors products, functional yet fashionable clothing and accessories, and more. Whatever it is you find on this list, you can trust it's something built for or approved by designers.

We'll be gradually adding to this list, so if you have any products you've tested and would like to see featured, we'd love to hear your suggestions. Send us an email to shopping@core77.com, and if we like it, we might add it to to the list!

Shop the "Core77 Shopping Guide for Designers" here.

It's important to note that if you purchase some products featured in the Shopping Guide through our links, Core77 may receive a small percentage of the sale. However, all products featured were chosen because they are items our staff can actually vouch for. In other words, anything we don't love isn't allowed on this list!

Halloween is this month, and for those of you who like to render your houses haunted, cobwebs are great visual shorthand. It would be handy to have a way to quickly apply them, and to be able to easily remove them come November 1st. Well, help is here in the form of the Webcaster Gun:

This week MacCallister Higgins, a software engineer who specializes in autonomous vehicles, Tweeted this video that's reportedly of Apple's self-driving car:

Higgins co-founded Voyage Auto, a group of ex-Apple, ex-Google and ex-Udacity engineers that are developing self-driving vehicles. It's possible he or his company is doing freelance work for Apple.

In any case, the car is apparently out in the wild for testing; a MacRumors reader also spotted the car and uploaded this quick clip of it:

What we're looking at here is a Lexus RX, and the ungainly rig up top is reportedly a sensor array consisting of LIDAR, cameras and either sonar or radar. You may remember that Apple once hoped to build their own car from scratch, but abandoned that plan and decided to pursue autonomous driving instead; so what's interesting about the roof array is that it may point towards a future in which these are fitted to existing cars as an aftermarket add-on, rendering the vehicle autonomous.

Apple fans have lamented the company's lack of recent hit products; might the roof add-on be the next one?

BeamNG.drive is a vehicle simulation program that “applies basic engineering principles gleaned through its research into materials science,” as the BBC puts it. By accurately modeling how glass, plastic and steel all deform differently under impacts, the program’s physics engine can depict incredibly realistic crashes that might provide useful data to safety researchers, and Hollywood studios have reportedly expressed interest in using the game to pre-visualize automotive stunts before putting actual stuntmen at risk.

Released as a game on the Steam platform, people have been steadily abusing it to create hilariously stupid and elaborate ways to destroy a car. There are entire YouTube channels dedicated to showcasing their kinetic creativity:

Impossible Car Stunts

100 Speed Bumps at Over 100 M.P.H.

Narrowing Walls Car Crashes

Cars vs. Giant Concrete Balls

Cars Jumping Into Gigantic Circular Saw Blades

I’m not sure what’s funnier: The dumbness of the scenarios, or the fact that people spent hours conceiving of and executing them, or the fact that I’m sitting here watching them all.

You can find more at the following channels: ExtenPro,Car Pal and DestructionNation.

Associate Creative Director Developing unique work that no one else has thought of, and that no one outside of Amazon could actually accomplish, Amazon Media Group seeks an associate creative director with the chops to help our advertising clients make an impact with Amazon customers. We’re looking for a thinker with great ideas and great craft, who is unselfishly creative, who can share ideas with younger teams while fostering their growth, and who is ambitious—but nice to be around.

In the 1920s, if you wanted to cross the Atlantic you got on a ship. Then Germany set up the world's first transatlantic air service for passengers, launching the Graf Zeppelin, the world's largest airship at the time. In 1930 it could fly you all the way from Germany to Brazil. You'd leave Friedrichshafen on Saturday night and arrive in Rio de Janeiro on Thursday morning.

By 1936 Germany had produced an even bigger blimp, the Hindenburg, which began shuttling passengers, cargo and mail from Frankfurt to New Jersey and back. The ship could carry 50 (later 72) passengers and had a crew of 40 to 60 people. The trip took about four days in each direction, and make no mistake, it was for rich passengers only; a one-way ticket was $400, which translates to about $7,050 in 2017 dollars.

It's bizarre seeing the swastika flying over New York City. 1937, folks.

So what did you get for your money? First off, the travel time was almost a day faster than going by ship, plus there was no chance you'd get seasick. The lift-off procedure was so gentle that passengers who weren't paying attention reportedly didn't realize that they'd left the ground. Once in flight, the voyage was said to be so smooth that you could balance a pencil on a table.

Speaking of tables, you ate the kind of luxury chow that "one might find at a traditional, high-end European hotel," according to Atlas Obscura, pointing out that the chef on the final Hindenburg voyage was from the Ritz in Paris. NPR lists "Beef Broth with Marrow Dumplings and Rhine Salmon a la Graf Zeppelin" as an example of a typical Hindenburg meal.

The tables could alternatively be arranged in banquet style

The tables could alternatively be arranged in banquet style

If you had a European palate, the food probably tasted delicious. Airplane food sucks because the high altitudes deaden our taste buds. But the Hindenburg flew just 330 to 650 feet off of the ground! The passenger areas were not pressurized (except for a single room, we'll get to that in a moment) and you could even open the windows.

Those windows were on the promenades locating on the port and starboard sides, inbound of which were a lounge and the dining room. The lounge even contained a grand piano, made from aluminum to save weight.

The lounge

The lounge

Downside of being in the lounge: Portrait of Hitler on the wall

Although weight was spared wherever possible--you'll note further down that they're using ladders perforated with holes--it wasn't to keep the blimp in the air, it was presumably so that they could haul more cargo. The lifting capacity of the blimp was such that they could even transport cars.

The kitchen was downstairs, and all heat sources were electric. Food was shuttled upstairs by a dumbwaiter that led to a pantry off of the dining room.

The passenger cabins were pretty tight and utilitarian, featuring two bunks, like in the sleeper compartment of a train. Each room did, however, have its own sink with both hot and cold running water.

The toilets and a shower were downstairs, as was the bar. Yes, you could booze on this baby.

The bar

The bar

Beyond the bar was a two-door airlock that led to the single pressurized room. This was, incredibly, a smoking room where you could puff on cigarettes, cigars or pipes--while riding in something that was kept aloft by 5,000,000 cubic feet of highly flammable hydrogen. The room was pressurized so that hydrogen could not enter it. Even still, the lighters provided were electric, as they didn't want to risk open flame.

The smoking room

The smoking room

The smoking room

The Hindenburg's operators were experimenting with a very cool feature: They rigged up a trapeze-like aircraft hook-on point. The idea was that as they approached their destination, customs officials would fly out to them, board, and process the passengers in the air, so that the passengers wouldn't have to wait to do it on the ground.

Two experiments with the aircraft hook-up, in March and April of 1937, ran into problems with turbulence. Then, before they had a chance to iron those kinks out, this happened in May:

The ship was carrying 36 passengers and 61 crew members; what's amazing is that 23 passengers and 39 crew members actually survived that.

To this day, no one knows precisely what caused the initial explosion.

The Hindenburg Disaster, as it came to be known, put an end to the era of blimp passenger flights. But for a short while you could cruise a couple of hundred feet above the Atlantic Ocean at 80 miles per hour, chowing down on marrow dumplings and salmon.

See Also:

What You Didn't Know About Dirigibles

OSTRICHPILLOW® Loop is a stylish eye pillow providing a cocoon to disconnect and rest in the blink of an eye where you want, when you want. Although we are eager for a moment to relax, rest or even sleep, it is not always so easy.

That is why OSTRICHPILLOW Loop has been created. a sleek and light eye mask that delivers an experience of unparalleled comfort and true blackout for you to relax without fuss. Seamlessly stylish, onesize- fits-all, and compatible with headphones for the fans of noise isolation.

Our ideal candidate is a creative, self-motivated team player who can work in a fast-paced, deadline driven environment and pays close attention to detail. Having an understanding of the screen print process and techniques are needed. Knowledge of art separations for screen-printing production is a plus. CottonImages.com creates T-Shirt designs for large corporate accounts such as Disney, Carnival Cruise Lines, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, MSC Crociere, Cabela’s and more.

Australia is plagued with a unique danger to cyclists: Magpies. It sounds like a joke, but these fiercely territorial birds will patrol the area around their nest, and if a cyclist happens to pass, the bird will swoop down and relentlessly attack the cyclist's helmet. Here's an example:

While the guy in the video is amused, magpie attacks are obviously quite dangerous, as startled cyclists can lose control and crash. And the swooping birds can do damage to both helmets and body parts with their beaks and claws.

Because no company has yet designed an anti-magpie bicycle helmet, Australians have had to come up with some DIY solutions. One method is to festoon one's helmet with zip-ties:

Another solution is based on analyzing the magpies' attack methods. They usually attack from the rear, and some think that if you place eyes or a face on the rear of your helmet, this will discourage the magpie from attacking:

A doctor in Osborne, beleaguered by magpies during his bicycle commute, designed this rather absurd contraption:

Here's how it works:

The jury's still out on whether any of these hacks are actually effective. If you ask me, this guy below has the only foolproof solution:

Anybody got any other ideas?

Fire engines are large by necessity. They're also often needed in a hurry, and in a traffic-choked city like New York their size becomes a liability that slows them down.

To address that issue, Russian inventor Semenov Dahir Kurmanbievich came up with this crazy concept. (Warning--turn your speakers down or off. The video's unnecessary music bed is the absolute shittiest song I have ever heard in my life.)

Notice that the firefighters initially appear to be using those Elide Fire Balls, which are pretty neat.

Kurmanbievich also thinks his stork-like concept could be applied to mass transit:

See Also:

If Semonov's name sounds familiar, that's because we've covered a bunch of his stuff before:

A Five-Axis CNC Mill Concept that Fits Inside Your Mouth

A Supermarket That You Drive Around Inside Of

Unfolding Houses

A Solar-Powered Tank-Destroying System and a James Bond Villain's Superdrone

The HATCH watch is a playful wristwatch composed of two superposed metal discs that create cross-hatching patterns as time changes.

Designed by Catherine Stolarski Design, a multidisciplinary studio based in East London, the watchis inspired by industrial metal grid patterns and graphic layer superposition from the designer's own product and visual design practice.

HATCH offers endless possibilities of combining colors and create optical effects.

Animation of changing patterns along time.

Credit: Catherine Stolarski Design

Different styles.

Credit: Catherine Stolarski

Hatch watch.

Credit: Catherine Stolarski Design

Metal grid hands.

Credit: Catherine Stolarski Design

Combinations of different colours.

Credit: Catherine Stolarski Design

Various effect with different colours and time.

Credit: Catherine Stolarski Design

Same watch, different times.

Credit: Catherine Stolarski Design

Components of the Hach watch.

Credit: Catherine Stolarski Design

Preview of the Hatch watch.

Credit: Catherine Stolarski Design

What happens when billionaires want their homes to be safe from all forms of threats? They call Al Corbi, founder of SAFE (Strategically Armored & Fortified Environments). Corbi's a man who designs "secret and secure installations for the U.S. Department of Justice, other U.S. agencies, and governments worldwide" and has been at it since 1971.

Here's an example of a Corbi-designed house that just came on the market. The Rice House, as it's called, is a veritable fortress that will survive the zombie apocalypse. There's also this very unique design feature that ensures no one will ever be able to steal cars out of your garage:

The L.A. Times describes what you're seeing in the photos:

Corbi recently was commissioned to design a Bat Cave, as he calls it, to protect a car collection. The design included a waterfall in front of the garage, which parts, Red Sea-like, when the owner arrives home. The door opens, a steel plate slides out of the garage, and the driver pulls onto it. The plate then slides back into the garage and onto a turntable that pivots to the car's parking spot on a platform, 2 feet off the ground.

That garage is 5,000 square feet, by the way.

The house is fortified with bulletproof protection, which you'll see in the video below. It also includes door closures designed to "withstand an 8-foot Dade County missile D category 5." (According to Engineering Express, a firm that specializes in designing house components, that means "a 9-pound 2×4 lumber missile striking the product end-on at 50 feet per second.") Should someone manage to get inside, however, you can blast them with built-in tear gas dispensers from the safety of the vault-like Safe Room. Another signature Corbi design, though it's not clear if it's in this house, are remote-controlled shotgun shells that fire out of the walls and ceilings. And thermal cameras on the property let you see intruders even at night.

You'd be safe here in the apocalypse, and you wouldn't be thirsty: Three 1,000-foot wells have been dug, giving the house its own water supply. Solar panels on the roof provide juice.

The house also comes with an art gallery…

…a bowling alley…

…a gun range…

…and a wine cellar.

Here's an older video of Corbi where he shows you some of his signature security features in his showroom house:

By the bye, if you're in the market, the Rice House is going for $14.7 million, although it was built for $30 million and has never been lived in.

Extraordinary presidential compound-one of the world's safest homes for life and personal property. Modern fortress with commanding views designed and fortified to "live to die another day" standards by global security expert Al Corbi. Self-sustaining water and power supply, thirty capacity car vault, art museum, three kitchens included. Catering and summer. Infinity pool, bowling alley, gun range, game room, solarium, spa, theater, wine cellar and room, vault, command center, two commercial elevators, geothermal systems. Some photos are only representative, as the property purposefully awaits final personalization.

If you're wondering why it's never been lived in, Bloomberg reports that "The owner planned the Rice House as a family legacy, only to learn that his son wasn't interested in living there" so they're selling it.

Being rich must be awesome.

When automotive designers do initial concept sketches, they appear to be freewheeling, loose and expressive. But we all know that in order to translate that collection of lines and curves into an actual car, there's a lot of back-and-forth with engineers and executives: Will the engine we've selected fit? Can we slide the windshield wiper motor this way so that this cowl design looks visually appealing? Does this B-pillar offer enough structure? The practical requirements are so manifold, it seems a miracle that any design elements from the original sketch make it into the finished car at all.

One important factor that helps determine the shape of cars, and which most Americans are probably unaware of, is that each year over 270,000 cars slam into pedestrians and kill them. Governments in Asia and Europe find this statistic unacceptable, and in the first decade of the 2000s began passing laws requiring their native auto manufacturers to design cars that would increase the survival rate of a struck pedestrian.

To understand how this has influenced Asian and European car designs, we must first understand what happens when a car hits a person. Understand that the majority of these accidents occur at relatively low speeds; obviously cities contain the highest concentrations of pedestrians and cars in close proximity, and no car in a city center is traveling at 100 k.p.h. In such low-speed impacts, this is how it goes down:

As you can see, there are really two phases to the accident whereby a pedestrian can sustain injury. The first is the actual impact with the car, and the second is the impact with the ground that happens after they are thrown forward.

Short of devising a method for a car to keep a pedestrian stuck to the hood on impact, there isn't much a car can do to prevent injuries from that second phase. Plus research showed that 80 percent of deaths came from the first phase of the impact. Watch this clip and you'll understand:

In that first phase, the pedestrian's legs are struck by the bumper. People can survive with broken legs. But what did 80 percent of them in was when they then slam their head into the hood of the car. So that's what the automakers, prodded by legislation, began to focus on.

The sheet metal that most car hoods are made from is relatively soft and deformable. Smacking a person's head into it could be survivable. The problem is that just millimeters beneath that soft sheet metal is a solid engine block, and that's what was cracking people's heads open. So automakers began designing clearance between the underside of the hood and the top of the engine, leading to "higher hoods and taller noses," as Car and Driver put it. "But that little bit of air over the intake manifold ripples through and changes everything" with regards to the shape of the car:

1. A minimum of 20 mm (0.8 inch) of clearance is required between the underside of the hood and the highest part of the engine or any other hard point such as the windshield-wiper motor or the HVAC plenum. This raises not only the front of the hood but also its trailing edge by at least 0.8 inch.

2. With the rear edge of the hood elevated, the entire cowl must be raised a like amount—or a bit more if the designers want a wedge-shaped profile. This moves the windshield base and the dash higher as well.

3. A taller cowl and dash force the front seats to be raised for visibility.

4. With people sitting higher in the car, the roof goes up to maintain headroom.

5. Now that the roof is higher, the beltline (the base of the side windows) has to be lifted to keep the car from looking bubbleheaded.

6. The higher beltline adds sheetmetal above the rear-wheel openings, reducing the wheel-to-body ratio.

7. Would you believe that pedestrian protection influences wheel sizes? With wheel openings relatively smaller than those on cars made before the regs, the 245/50-18s on, say, a base BMW 7-series don't look very big at all. The solution has been to fit 19- and 20-inch wheel/tire packages to replicate more attractive proportions.

Some cars have shorter hoods, and in those instances, a taller pedestrian can die by smacking his or her hood on the windshield or even the A-pillar. 

Obviously windshields must be made strong enough to protect the car's occupants from projectiles, and the A-pillars must be kept stiff to protect the occupants in the event of a rollover. How can they be made soft enough to not crack a pedestrian's skull open? They can't. So to solve that problem, Volvo designed an external airbag. Sensors in the front of the car detect when they have hit something, and a small explosive charge raises the rear of the hood and deploys a protective U-shaped airbag:

Other automakers like Jaguar, Lexus and Citroen have similar systems that use charges to raise the hood in a crash (but do not feature external airbags), and Hyundai is developing a system that does the same via a pivoting hinge, as seen below.

Of course, sensible engineers realize that it would be better if pedestrians were never hit by cars in the first place. Thus many automakers continue to develop systems like Volvo's City Safety Technology, which uses sensors to detect pedestrians and cyclists ahead and automatically slams on the brakes if they step or swerve in front of you.

If autonomous cars do indeed become widespread and accidents become a non-issue, it's possible we'll see a return to the low-slung car forms of the '70s, '80s and '90s.

Earlier I'd written that "most Americans are probably unaware of" cars being designed to protect pedestrians. That's because ten years ago, when pedestrian safety design features began gaining traction in Europe, Japan and Korea, America's NHTSA offered evasive excuses for why they were not interested in pursuing such legislation here. As journalist Martin Schwoerer wrote at the time,

In a phone interview, a NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) spokesman told me that America's vehicle mix-– more trucks and SUVs— isn't as conducive to pedestrian-friendly technology as cars in the Eurozone. NHTSA research suggests that there are unexplored trade-offs involved. "You can make a car front better for children, but then it may get worse for adults." Why not publish pedestrian-safety ratings and let the consumer decide? "Again, we don't think you can find a one-size-fits-all solution."

According to Prof. Florian Kramer at Germany's Dresden Technical University, those are weak arguments. "Of course it is difficult, but in constructing cars, everything is a compromise," he says. "The point is, there is very much room for improving the pedestrian-safety of cars."

I finally caught Blade Runner 2049 over the weekend, and it was fantastic, a true successor the original. It's underperforming at the box office due to business reasons that have nothing to do with its high quality. If you haven't seen it, check it out before it disappears; this is one that you really need to see on the big screen.

Blade Runner is one of those rare franchises where the product placement doesn't bother me, and part of the fun this time 'round was seeing which brands have survived in this alternative version of our future: Atari, Pan-Am, Sony--that one being no surprise as they own Columbia Pictures, which produced the movie--and K's spinner is a Peugeot.

My favorite brand appearance of all was Johnnie Walker. I'm triple-biased as I like the Blade Runner universe, I used to work in structural package design (i.e. bottles) and I loves me some Johnnie Black.

Fans of the original will remember that both Deckard and his supervisor Bryant are seen swilling from futuristic bottles of Black Label, the giveaway being the distinctive diagonal label.

Now we see that thirty years later Deckard is still drinking the same booze, but the bottle design has gotten a nifty redesign:

I had to look these up. Alcohol industry trade magazineBeverage Media reports that Diageo actually made 39,000 of the funky bottles, filled them with a stronger 98-proof blend (the regular stuff is 80-proof), and started selling them this month for $90.

Of course, exactly what you'd think would happen has happened: A bunch of jerks have bought every one of these bottles they could get their hands on, and are now hawking them on eBay for double the price. And this jerk right here is selling his for $178.18--empty. The nerve!