Endeavor is one of the biggest names in culture and entertainment in the world. Endeavor Global Marketing is “the agency within the agency”, offering everything from brand strategy and activation, advertising, public relations, digital, sponsorship, influencer
View the full design job hereThe holiday season: A time when competitive Americans try to outdo their neighbors with ostentatious displays of blinking decorations. But we are still technically a democracy, so perhaps the real crown in this arena ought to go to a Briton, seeing as they still have a constitutional monarchy.
Well, the British madman and inventor extraordinaire Colin Furze clearly wins this year's prize. Furze acquired a gargantuan tree--a 26-footer apparently pilfered, as it was removed under cover of darkness--then figured out how to get the three-story conifer into his two-story house:
Mathieu Hagelaars, founder of Studio Hagel, is known for his sought after one-off footwear designs, ranging from custom Takashi Murakami sneakers to a Balenciaga Speed Trainer made from an IKEA bag. "I said I was the worst sneaker collector possible. So with those big releases everyone was after, I would just make my own – DIY, MacGyver-style," says Hagelaars. "But it's actually through these spoofs that I was able to explore new directions in sneaker design. These prototypes are about innovation: a way to come up with fresh silhouettes, styles, details, etcetera."
Now, SH fans can rejoice because the design studio has collaborated with Danish brand Ecco to bring 18 new footwear designs to life, all available for purchase.
The experimental collection features a custom leather library specifically designed for this collaboration, which includes Neo, a leather bonded with Dyneema. And in true Studio Hagel fashion, there are plenty of additional tactile elements, especially noticeable in the bungee cord lacing and the various outsole designs. But the reasoning for these elements isn't what you'd expect.
"Right now techwear is a major trend in streetwear. We look like we're ready to climb a mountain, but we're living in the city. Clearly we don't need all that functionality. So what happens when you put functionality in a different context, and start having fun with the language of function? What if we translated this thought into sneaker design?" — Mathieu Hagelaars
The collection explores adding unfunctional functional design elements, including nonfunctional covers, un-pullable pull-tags and bottomless pockets. Even the simpler styles in the range feature plenty of said details:
View the full collection here.
We didn't have much money growing up, and I remember at least one Christmas where a single bulb had burnt out on the tree, interrupting the circuit and ruining the entire strip. We left cookies out for Santa but apparently he couldn't be bothered to rewire our lights. It was then I learned that Santa Claus is basically a lousy contractor who does the bare minimum of work required.
Nowadays even cheap Christmas lights are constructed in such a way that one bad bulb won't prevent the rest from getting juice. And for those of you that have forgotten what a technical marvel Christmas lights actually are, take a look at how they're made, and how they avoid lighting failure:
Why render a sneaker that you yourself would never wear? Because, as industrial designer Eric Strebel explains of his self-described Ugly Show Rendering, "These are the marker colors I had with me at the time of the sketch demo." Those of you trained in traditional studios or at design schools prior to CG will know this feeling well; you don't have the tools you want on hand, but still have to make it work.
Ugly colors aside, sound rendering practices are still on display. Strebel covers shading basics, the importance of working quickly in order to maintain wet edges, post-rendering digital tweaking and more:
In the Dubai Design District, groups of students in school uniform roll around in Thomas Heatherwick's chairs. Buggies transport visitors from one exhibition to another. In the plaza, pop up installations draw visitors in with their cooling mist spray and shade. The coffee shops are crowded with young designers, chatting about their projects while standing in line for a cool drink in the afternoon desert heat.
This is the Global Grad Show, the largest student gathering in the world. It is part of Dubai Design Week, both in their 4th year, and this year the student exhibition showcased 150 projects made by designers from 100 schools across over 40 countries. Talk about representation.
As we walk through the exhibition area filled with medical devices, altered clothings and remodeled furniture, one pattern seems to emerge among the most compelling projects: many of these young designers are designing with the elderly in mind.
Take Jelly Drops, for example, designed by Lewis Hornby. Hornby saw that his grandmother was struggling with dehydration and spent weeks living in her care home to learn how to create a source of hydration that people with dementia would interact with. The result is a box of super hydrating treats–a box of Jelly Drops can be equivalent to drinking over a liter of water—and the colorful, easy-to-eat format encourages dementia patients to feed themselves.
There's Cushy, an inflatable medical chair designed for elderly homes, to make everyday sanitary routine more pleasant and easy for both the residents and their caregivers. Cushy can be used at each step of the process, from transferring the resident from bed into the chair, to undressing, showering, and dressing after.
Memo is sensory therapy for people with Alzheimer's disease. The set includes a speaker and various instruments for music therapy, a fragrant diffuser that can be adjusted for different functions eg. to stimulate appetite, to calm before going to bed. There is also a set of memory exercises and caretakers can add relevant photos that bring back memories.
Another project designed for dementia patients is Sentic, a music player designed for tactile interactions and encourages users to touch and play. Music is said to improve mood and trigger memories and the player, being personalizable, increases feelings of self-control in patients.
It's not just elderly persons' health that the students are attentive to, they also recognize the loneliness in old age. Melo is a music sharing device that connects seniors to their loved ones. Instead of public radio stations, the elderly can tune into the music that their family members are listening to, bringing them together across time and space with one shared tune.
The task of selecting 150 projects for the exhibition out of over 1,000 entries falls on the shoulders of curator Brendan McGetrick, who has been in charge since the show's inception. We sat down with him at the Global Grad Show in Dubai to chat about the trend of student designers designing for seniors, as well as how he evaluates projects for the show.
We've been aging forever, so old age is not a new issue specific to our times, but it doesn't seem like the technology is keeping up with the needs of the elderly. What are the barriers these products face in terms of implementation?
One of the big barriers is simply the limitation of the market and what the market thinks is worth spending money on. Now there are retirees who have more money, the baby boomers are going to change everything because of their size, their resources and because they demand a lot. Although it is a poorly addressed community at the moment, I wouldn't expect that to be the same in 10 to 15 years.
Do you see a trend of an increasing number of students designing for old age?
It's been consistent the whole four years, yes. Maybe it's a counterintuitive thing but it's really clear that young designers are really concerned about this. Not just aging but all the things related to it: dementia, Parkinson's, macular degeneration, all these disabilities that revolve around aging. I wouldn't have guessed that but every year it's been really consistent.
What do you like about Global Grad Show?
I've always preferred student design to profesional design because it's a lot more emotional and you can get a much wider range of projects that deal with issues that are sometimes not commercial. We fly in everybody, all the students, and we don't actively pitch any projects to investors, so it's not a competitive atmosphere. Dubai the city itself is also a mixing chamber of all these cultures and has a friendly approach to visas. This couldn't happen in New York or London.
What types of projects appeal to you most?
It has to do something different. It gets me out of evaluating aesthetic qualities like "Is this chair beautiful?" Yes it matters to me that they make a positive social impact, so I wouldn't pick an app that gets somebody to do your laundry. We have so many submissions so I can be really strategic and pick say, objects that are for the elderly, or objects that are low-technology. I can be a curator now because I have a lot of raw material to work with.
With regards to the elderly-focused projects, are the most viable markets hospitals or private patients?
There's two different kinds. One is for people that live alone. The one about the radio (Melo, above), that's a beautiful project. The idea is that everyone in your family and friends has a radio station and it's playing their music, so you can listen to whatever your grandson is listening to, and it's dealing with this issue of loneliness where music can fill the space.
What's happening now, and is becoming a bit of a political nightmare, is that old people are lonely and they're watching 24 hour news because it kind of is a presence, but it's a really—in my opinion—toxic presence. What Melo is trying to do is fill the space not with TV but with music, and you bring a family or friendship group together.
Last year there was something similar as well, on online gaming for the elderly, and the idea is that you can play a simple game with somebody else—Scrabble or whatever—and the feeling of feeling connected, even when you're living by yourself, that's one range of issues that these student projects tackle.
The other range is really about care and improving the lives of people in old aged homes or in hospitals.
What makes Melo stand out for you?
That's a good project because the technology behind it already exists but it's a very clever way of thinking about how to use that technology, and to identify an experience that means something.
And about the social gaming platform last year...
It was the same concept where they used existing technologies and applied it to a new demographic: elderly people, who don't play online video games so much, but play, say, Scrabble, and then to support them to do so online in a collaborative, social environment.
What happens when someone has a great idea and you like it?
If someone comes by and says, hey I'm the head of Sony, or Apple Music, and I'd like to use this, then yes we would go help connect them and make it happen.
Do you think the next trend might be to adapt existing technologies to an elderly population?
For sure! I accept projects like that all the time. If you don't do that then you'll rely on things that often times require a lot of money to produce a prototype, and a lot of times a project is brilliant because it is a brilliant idea and it looks at something in a new way.
And about elderly products—
It's really one of the themes that's always fascinating for me. Every year there's loads of projects. I have a whole catalogue. In the future, there will be more and more demand for elderly lifestyle and care products.
Once, I gave an interview and I said I'm really surprised and happy to work on elderly projects—it was in the Vancouver Sun or something—and some guy wrote me an email: I'm 87 years old and I read your interview in the Vancouver Sun and it really touched my heart and made me really happy that it's happening. And I went, oh my god! Old people would feel so happy if they knew that young people are not laughing at them or thinking they're irrelevant, but they're trying to figure out how to make their lives better.
East Asia, in particular, has a lot of the best thinking about these kind of stuff. It is a very particular kind of thinking, and you consistently see it coming from Hong Kong, Japan, Korea. To be honest I think you're onto something, because when I see my father and all his friends they're all...old, but young spirit, and they're baby boomers, and they need more and more, so there's a tremendous appetite for elder lifestyle and products. Whoever cracks it will make a lot of money.
Brought to you by MAKO Design + Invent, North America's leading design firm for taking your product idea from a sketch on a napkin to store shelves. Download Mako's Invention Guide for free here.
Navigating the world of crowdfunding can be overwhelming, to put it lightly. Which projects are worth backing? Where's the filter to weed out the hundreds of useless smart devices? To make the process less frustrating, we scour the various online crowdfunding platforms to put together a weekly roundup of our favorite campaigns for your viewing (and spending!) pleasure. Go ahead, free your disposable income:
The Paladin All-Metal SLA 3D Printer features an automatic leveling system, a built-in resin pump and an air purifying system. Add in the fact that it's made from all metal, and you've got yourself a pretty high quality SLA printer for a reasonable price. Those looking for an alternative desktop 3D printer should consider this option.
Brought to you by the Japanese design studio Solahanpu, the Baksteen Sling Crossbody Bag is made from paraffin wax-coated canvas and is just big enough to fit your EDC essentials. It's also equipped with an anti-theft zipper, making it an ideal bag for walking around during travel.
Kickstarter veteran Kristoph Krisjans is back for his eighth campaign, ManualPen. The two part pen is machined out of one solid piece of metal and doesn't contain any extra mechanical parts on the inside, making it more clean and durable.
The Aura Scanner makes scanning books and documents of various complicated sizes a breeze, thanks to its lighting options, hands-free design and ability to convert files to PDF and editable Word documents.
Darter is a tiny sewing kit housed inside of a pen. Avoid plenty of embarrassing moments with this little fixer upper.
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Many people gravitate towards therapy during times of crisis, so why are most therapy offices loud, awkward and uncomfortable? This is something I've experienced personally when I tried out therapy in college. My therapist's office was filled with stark white walls, office furniture, obnoxious sound machines and plenty of awkward encounters with other patients throughout the journey. Granted this was a college medical center, but that doesn't mean it was an acceptable experience. After my second visit, I didn't go back. Maybe I'm a design snob, or maybe there's an actual problem with the way these offices are designed. Either way, we can probably agree that therapy offices could be better.
Patients aren't the only ones fed up with this type of environment. After talking with various providers, former VP of Care Delivery at Oscar Harry Ritter noticed a clear trend in the distain for uncomfortable, uninspiring office environments. Cue Ritter's idea to found Alma, a co-practice space for independent therapists and other wellness experts, such as acupuncturists and nutritionists.
Alma aims to elevate and humanize the experience of going to therapy and other similar medical appointments through small design details that make a big difference. The first being the overall calming design of the space (furniture, plants, natural materials, colors, etc.), which was designed by Lauren Spear. Spear has also designed spaces for Google, Vice, Tesla and more.
The awkward waiting room is where every therapy appointment begins, and it's often one patients dread. The uncomfortable feeling starts with showing your driver's license when you enter the building and it ends with your therapist calling your name out when they're ready for you.
To avoid all of these triggers, Alma sends each patient a personalized digital security badge before each appointment so they can discreetly show it at the front desk and slide right on by. Once in the waiting room, simply sign in on a digital tablet, and you will receive a text with a room number when your therapist is ready for you. The waiting room is designed so that no two seats are directly facing each other, making it more difficult to lock eyes with other patients. Alma has also partnered with Headspace to offer free meditation sessions, which are tucked away in quiet "meditation pods".
Each private room is as similar to the next as it possibly can be, down to the exact same art on the walls and books on each shelf. Ritter noted that consistency in environment is important for both the therapist and the patient to feel at ease session after session.
To keep noise levels down without sticking distracting noise machines in each room, tiny circular sound machines are placed on the walls outside of each room, creating a gentle whooshing sound throughout the hallways. The rooms are also soundproof, which ensures that privacy will actually happen during each appointment.
The Alma experience is equally catered towards the therapists who practice at the co-working space as it is to the patients who choose to visit. The community aspect is similar to a WeWork model, giving therapists access to an event space, private phone booths to make patient phone calls, a whole new social network and a well-designed space to schedule appointments in. After sighing up to be a member, each therapist is interviewed, and the results are published to Alma's directory of providers, making the therapist/patient matching process much more personable and less of a cold call. I'll end by saying that after visiting Alma to see the space (and test out the meditation pods), it's clear that this type of therapy experience is long overdue.
Carter's, Inc. is the largest branded marketer in North America of apparel exclusively for babies and young children. The Company owns the Carter's and OshKosh B'gosh brands, two of the most recognized brands in the marketplace. These brands are sold in leading department stores, national chains, and specialty retailers domestically
View the full design job herePeople seem to love crapping on Elon Musk, but give the guy a break. The man started PayPal and Tesla, he's launching and landing rockets, he figured out how to sell re-branded roofing torches as flamethrowers to the tune of $4 million, and now his Boring Company has completed their first test tunnel.
There are wrinkles to be ironed out, sure, but here's what it's like driving through the 1.14 mile tunnel:
I'm sure they can smooth out the bumpy ride, but two things I'm curious about:
1) What happens if a car breaks down in the tunnel? And,
2) Assuming the goal is for two-way traffic, would it be cheaper to make one larger tunnel, two parallel tunnels, or some funky dual-chamber tunnel shaped the way binocular vision is depicted in movies?
When I was a kid I worked at a restaurant in the suburbs. I can't remember how this started, but when my shift was over, the staff would give me money to drive their cars to a nearby gas station to fill them up. On the weekends, some of them paid me to take their cars home with me and wash them. I'd just gotten my driver's license and this was an exciting opportunity to try driving different car types.
The hostess, Miranda, had this awesome cherry red 1985 Toyota MR2. It was a stickshift, and at the risk of being crass, I remember the shifter was shaped like big penis sheathed in leather. The car was fast, and whenever I drove this car to the Mobil station, it took every ounce of my willpower to not pull it onto the interstate, slam it up into fifth gear and drive to Connecticut.
To this day whenever I see an MR2, I smile, remembering Miranda handing me her keys and warning me not to scratch her car. So after encountering the following piece of news I was grinning like an idiot. A retired college professor rolled up to this Toyota dealership in Missouri looking for a used car. He had something to trade in: His collection of five Toyota MR2s!
The collection consists of a yellow '85, a red '86, a white '87, a supercharged white '88 and an ice blue '89.
According to Japanese Nostalgic Car:
The owner clearly loved the first-generation of Toyota's mid-engined sports cars. Why, then, would he get rid of them all? "He was widowed about two years ago, and just finally decided that five classics is too much to keep up with," Ben [Brotherton, COAD Salesperson] explained.
The collection had been even bigger at one point. "In fact," Ben says, "He traded a black MK1 to us as well. So at one time he had 6 MK1 MR2s." Ben adds, "He also has a new Tacoma he bought last year. He traded in a '89 MR2 and '91 pickup on that one."
We asked Ben what this MR2 obsessive bought after purging his collection anthology of AW11s. "A 2016 Miata with 10,000 miles."
While you may have heard of the Primitive Technology YouTube channel--we posted about his water-powered hammer here--there's actually another YouTube channel called Primitive Technology Idea. While that sounds like a knock-off, it's almost ten years older than the other channel. This latter channel features a different fellow, somewhere in Southeast Asia by the looks of it, who also builds incredible structures by hand.
Needless to say, both of these guys possess an incredible amount of patience. Here's a time lapse of PTI building a multi-room in-cliff dwelling--"to avoid wildlife"--using a freaking stick as his main tool:
The full video is here:
Why are there three rooms for just one dude? PTI explains:
"All three huts are connected by a tunnel system. I cook on a large flat stone by heating the stone and putting food on it to ripen. Warehouse used to store firewood in rainy days. The kitchen is connected to the bedroom so I can set fire to sleep for heating."
It is the inaugural year of Invision's Design Exchange—a free week of itineraries, workshops, studio tours and museums for a select group of professional designers. There was even some mention of a "typography walking tour" in the description that's sure to get the Helvetica neue'ing. But before you get swooned away by the Hogwarts express, let's take a closer look.
Invision was recently valued at 1.9 billion. They've impressed the equity groups, but are still proving themselves to the greater design community. "Nothing inspires the creative spirit, broadens perspectives, and breaks down bias like travel," says Invision copywriter, Stephanie Gonzalez, " With this in mind, we sent five designers from the InVision community—from Google, Airbnb, Pinterest, Indeed, and Automattic—on the trip of a lifetime last month…And we're excited to announce that we'll be doing it again every quarter in 2019."
Surrounded by talent you've never met, in a city you may or may not have explored is sure to stretch our limited lenses. The Design Exchange, even as a marketing maneuver, looks like a promising experience for professional designers. Read about the full prototrip experience here.
You need a work email to apply, and they even mention that that they place "special emphasis on designers from design-driven organizations."Based on the crew of professionals who starred in the prototype trip—employees from Google, Airbnb, Pinterest and Indeed—Invision is probably looking for the highest ranking among us to star in their transformative programs. In terms of inclusion and diversity, Invision says that "Design Exchange is for everyone—and we encourage participation from people with the most varied backgrounds as possible."
Here's the application form and FAQ page if you're interested.
Sometimes we're obligated to give gifts to folks that we don't really like. But with a little ingenuity and holiday sadism, we can even the scales by making those gifts painfully difficult to open. Here's the first example (sadly unattributed):
View the full content hereManaging Architect A/B The New York City School Construction Authority (NYSCA) builds and renovates public schools throughout all of the boroughs. We believe that schools should be efficiently designed and constructed; they should be safe, attractive and environmentally sound. The SCA’s responsibilities span the life of each
View the full design job hereWe're living in a digital age, but we still have lots of physical things we need to carry around. The first bag was probably invented by a caveperson, but here in 2018 we're still cranking out new, innovative bag types. Here's the best of what we saw this year in bag design:
Adam Savage released his NASA-inspired, made-from-recycled-materials EDC Two bag, a lower-cost version of his toolbox-inspired EDC One.
For an actual toolbox-in-a-bag, check out Klein Tools' super-handy Tradesman Pro Tool Master Backpack.
Peak Design continued to demonstrate their mastery of bag design, creating the well-thought-out Travel Line and packing system.
We also got a great behind-the-scenes look at what goes into both the design and final production of a Peak Design bag.
Speaking of behind-the-scenes, this year we got to interview Lina Westin, the designer of IAMRUNBOX's Spin Bag.
If you need to carry a lot of stuff and prefer rectilinear bags, Nomatic's versatile 30-Liter Travel Bag provides a lot of functionality and storage space within a clean, minimalist exterior design.
We also saw some innovation in the design of how bags are meant to be carried. A set of ergonomic and retrofittable SuperStraps came onto the market to make any backpack easier to carry.
The HoverGlide Floating Backpack's design cleverly manipulates physics to stay level in space while you run, conserving energy.
Another clever design is the WoodOX Sling, which vastly improves the ergonomics of carrying tricky-to-transport firewood.
Though not technically a bag, Pelican Cases are known for their legendary durability and protection for hauling sensitive and delicate items. We got to see how they manufacture their indestructible products.
How about a bag that both transports and dispenses booze? The PortoVino Crossbody Bag features a hidden tap, letting you tipple on the go.
Lastly, we encountered this brilliant design for a no-strap backpack.
While everyone seems obsessed with autonomous cars, bicycles are still the most relevant and sustainable transportation form for millions. Here are the best pedal-powered innovations we saw this year.
Most bicycles have two wheels, but the Conference Bicycle has three. That's because it supports seven riders at once!
If you'd rather haul goods than co-workers, the Supermarché Front Loader Cargo Bike offers a versatile series of configurations.
For cargo capacity with an assist, check out the Cero One, a modular electric model based on Japanese utility bicycles.
Want to bend your brain? Have a look at this mind-boggling pop-up bicycle, and see if you can figure out how it works:
Interested in the latest version of the "ultimate race bike?" Check out the design story behind the 2019 Trek Madone SLR.
A start-up named Arevo has figured out how to simplify the carbon fiber manufacturing process, and are demonstrating it by producing this $300 bike frame:
It's not clear if this will ever make it to market, but CeramicSpeed pulled the sheets off of this bearing-based chainless bicycle system concept:
An innovation that did make it to market are these zip-on, zip-off tire treads from Norway:
British bike rack makers are also making a splash on the market. Tailfin's Aeropack was a Kickstarter smash:
Going back to basics for a moment, it's worthwhile to watch this video showing you how steel bicycles are made.
While it's easy to geek out on new bike features, the most important thing is that you use them in the first place. A fellow named Carl's epic 80-day bicycle trip through Germany reminds us why we loved two-wheeled transportation in the first place.
Then there's this guy, who takes an epic bicycle trip every day. Engineer Tom Lutz commutes from New Jersey to Manhattan via folding boat and folding bicycle.
Two things that can contribute to increasing bike ridership: Ease of storage and personal safety. Here are some of the strides (and setbacks?) made in both categories this year.
Utrecht's new, space-efficient three-level bicycle parking facility is a great example of how to fit a lot of bicycles into a very limited space.
An example of bicycle storage design gone wrong? Quebec City's bike rack design competition yielded the staggering cost of $23,600 per rack.
For storing your bike in your own home, we asked you two Yea or Nays. The first was on the Parkis Automatic Vertical Bike Rack.
The second question we asked: Would having removable handlebars on your bike make it easier to store in your apartment?
The ability to both see and be seen is of course a bike safety basic. Vya's Smart Bike Lights aim to provide both features with a minimum of UX hassle.
With the Laserlight Core, designer Emily Brooke has upgraded her bike-based laser projection safety system.
Is there anything worse than being on a bicycle and experiencing a near miss with a deadly, fast-moving bus? In Brazil, they have a novel way to train bus drivers not to get too close to cyclists:
Helping road planners better understand how bike accidents happen is also crucial. This year we learned how a combination of crossroad angles and car's A-pillars have created the perfect deadly intersection for cyclists.
And this year Amsterdam's city planners taught us how simple changes to a bicycle crossing improved efficiency.
Lastly, there was a very controversial debate on how getting rid of bike helmets might actually save lives.
Asembler is a multi-functional outdoor and indoor seat. Inspired by architectural handrail connection, its frame is assembled with milled stainless steel connectors specially designed as an alternative to welding. Using vinyl straps in tension around the metal framework, Asembler presents forms that suggest both social seating and a side table.
In cycling, skateboarding or business environments, this tool will be within your arm's reach and will lessen the load for you. Mallen Tools is 60% lighter than other tools and takes up less space. With a single hand tool instead of multiple hand tools used, it provides faster and more practical use.
