Electric vehicles, you've heard they're going to be everywhere soon. That's a realistic forecast for dealer lots at least, as most manufacturers are ready or close to introducing new all-electric models. Watch out for VW's launch of the ID hatchback later in 2019, the first EV of an 8 model lineup. Porsche is close to revealing their first production electric sports sedan, the Taycan. Jaguar, Mercedes-Benz and Audi all have electric SUV already on sale and this segment will only get more crowded in the near future. What about an electric pickup truck? Well, there's the one Tesla is working on that'll probably promise to get you to Lowe's and back home in under 3 seconds. Rivian is pressing on with developing their R1T pickup designed for adventure seekers. Ford is testing an electric F-150 prototype that apparently doubles as a train locomotive.

US-based Atlis Motor Vehicles is a name you might not be familiar with. However, with the XT Pickup the company aims to be a formidable player in the electric light truck market, which in North America as you might assume is huge. In 2018, nearly 3 million pickup trucks were sold in the US. To appreciate that number, that's 5 trucks sold every minute, over 365 days. If you really want to get into the weeds on what drives America's appetite for pickups, check out this 2018 Pickup Truck Study by Cox Automotive that surveys the state of the segment. Included is an interesting de-bagged design lineup that asked people to correctly identify and name top selling pickup trucks based on styling (spoiler: the winner wasn't Ford or GM)

Atlis, like Rivian are starting from scratch as a brand and manufacturer. They're going up against the technology lead Tesla has and the manufacturing legacy of GM, Ford and potentially Toyota. Core77 spoke with both Mark Hanchett, CEO and Founder of Atlis Motor Vehicles and Ross Compton, Lead Designer to get the story behind the company and learn about how they're designing a pickup truck for the twenty-first century.

Core77: For now, the most we can see about Atlis Motor Vehicles is online. Can you introduce the company and describe what you're trying to achieve?

Mark Hanchett: So I think the most obvious thing that you see when you look at the website is it looks as though we're basically just an automotive electric vehicle startup, and Atlis really is. However, the vision and the mission is so much more than that. It's really about bringing sustainability to the world, but doing it in a way that is very centered on one of the most critical roles that exists in the world today, which is getting work done. What I mean by that is we're building technology that can truly change the world in terms of bringing things like sustainable battery-powered vehicles, home battery solutions, energy storage, to the world, but through different business models and through new technology that we're developing.

We're not just building an electric vehicle, we're building a business model around it that kind of breaks down some barriers that people have with shifting to electric, with subscription service ownership models that are kind of a blend between ownership, lease, and rent. But we actually have a vision where it's long term, where technology, both software and hardware, is updated over time as you own that vehicle. Designs can be updated and it's more of this progressive thing, and electrification brings that to the market.

The technology that we're building to power the truck can then be applied to home energy storage as well as remote energy distribution. We're in discussions today for some more developing areas of the world or more like disaster zones and areas of the world where we can actually bring some of this technology there and bring power generation to hospitals, to mobile hospitals and things like that. We're looking at all the different aspects of what we're building here. It's far beyond just building the truck. It's building a technology solution that works within an ecosystem of products.

An electric pickup truck seems like a particularly difficult vehicle to start with considering the additional load carrying, towing and offload capability criteria that needs to be solved. What drove the decision to do a truck instead of getting acclimated with say an SUV that's more about packaging people and smaller cargo?

Mark Hanchett:Pickup trucks are evolving to become what SUVs used to be about. It's the only automotive segment that's really centered on capability. First of all, pickup trucks are designed to tow and haul and do various different tasks, right? Because of their capability in doing that and the fact that they've now grown into vehicles that have more room, some have four doors and there's the option for back seats. People are even modify them to have six doors. The pickup truck is considered an option to the family SUV. It's the one most desirable market that's out there. It's the number one, number two, and number three in terms of top-selling vehicles in the world. Passenger car sales are declining showing people are just, they're not necessarily interested in them. They're interested in the SUVs and pickup trucks.

Now, our particular focus is not necessarily on luxury trucks, or on adventure like Rivian. We're very focused on the core aspects of what a pickup truck can do, which is for work trucks. It's for construction crews, for utility crews, for cities. We're focused on fleet customers, where bringing electrification to those markets can make the biggest impact at the fastest pace where they're much more interested in doing it right away.

Ross, How did you approach designing for Atlis, a brand with no prior history or reference points?

Ross Compton: Being a brand with no history or previous design language meant that I was able to bring my own style into the brand image. As Atlis is a young brand I decided to come at it from a fresh approach. I wanted to make sure the companies ideals and ethos were promoted throughout the design language, while at the same time developing an image that is recognizable and new. I reviewed all competitor brands as well as emerging electric vehicle brands to analyze their individual designs and style so I could map out a language for us that didn't sit within the same themes. I didn't want to create a standard truck, it had to have interesting elements that perhaps hadn't been seen much on vehicles in this segment. Finally, above all, it needed to be instantly recognizable as an Atlis product.

The modern EV market is young and there's something of an expectation for these vehicles to look sci-fi and unconventional. What's your take on this and were you worried about designing too far beyond what the traditional expectations of what a pickup truck should look like?

Ross Compton:I think this expectation is weird. There is no real reason why gas-powered vehicles can't adopt this new style too. It seems that brands go out of their way to emphasize that this vehicle is electric, that it's the future, etc. This ironically has already created a stereotype in electric vehicle design — it's like you need to be weird or different to fully qualify for the electric badge. I've personally noticed the overuse of blue accents to denote clean energy.

Overall, I have no real issue with this as we are seeing much more variety within market segments. But I do think we are sacrificing something. The soul and joy in vehicle design begin at the tip of the designer's pen and it feels as if the excitement is being forced into modern electric vehicle designs. There are a few exceptions to this but already we are seeing a growing market with new styles that just look as if they are trying too hard. Maybe companies are too hung up on this idea of being different or looking unique? Or maybe the market is so new, this trial and error is exactly what's needed?

Combine this with the pickup truck market and you have a melting pot of expectations that simply don't mix. That is where I wanted the Atlis truck to shine. We are a company of truck owners, so we know what we love and hate in truck design. We are also a company of electric vehicle owners/enthusiasts, and again we know what appeals to us and what doesn't.

The truck first and foremost needed to be a proper work vehicle. It could look like anything, so long as it embodied that tough and 'ready for everything' attitude. Once you take that ethos the traditional element behind the design naturally starts to creep in. You are creating designs that are pushing the boundaries without spilling over into a territory where neither camp likes it. I found that the designs were all very aggressively styled, with an imposing presence. But this was also mixing with a newer design language thanks to the truck's innovative nature. The result is something that I hope appeals to both camps — with some elements displaying traditional truck styling, and other areas pushing the expectation of what a truck could look like.

Major automakers have large studios staffed with hundreds of people working often for years on developing a new model. Can you describe the way the Atlis pickup was developed? Was it along the lines of a typical pipeline, sketches, models, prototype, or a different workflow?

Ross Compton:Major automakers have masses of people who by and large, aren't personally invested in what they are creating. Yes, of course they care about what their product looks like and how it functions, but the personal investment is lacking. Unless you are high up enough to be seen, you aren't going to be heard. That is where we differ as we can use the size of our team as an advantage. We are all in this together and every member of the team has their name tagged on many areas of the truck. This means that while our workflow occasionally differs from the typical, the overall workflow is relatively left unchanged.

The first stages were very typical, sketches and more sketches exploring different avenues. The beauty about having a smaller team is that everyone can give their own ideas or opinions. I wanted to make sure that I gathered as much as I could in terms of feedback, so we all had our say in the process. During the sketching stage this was invaluable.

The next stages followed a typical path of refinement, model making and more refinement. Because we are always looking for new technology to stay at the cutting edge, the design is influenced and adapted accordingly. This evolution continues even now, if on a smaller scale as we edge towards to final prototype.

What were some of the biggest problems you identified with current pickup trucks? Does Atlis introduce any innovative features to address these issues?

Ross Compton:Being able to truly work out of your tuck seems to be an issue within the market. A major innovative feature of the Atlis truck is its massive front cargo area. Fully equipped with power points and enough space for tools, shopping or luggage. It gives tradespeople the opportunity to literally work out of their vehicle. I don't think any other pickup truck can offer that the way we can.

Current pickup trucks in large do not feel special either. You must buy the top of the range model to see a real difference. I wanted the Atlis to feel special and unique — for every owner, not just the special few that have deep enough pockets. Because of this the interior has been created to make the driver and passengers feel relaxed in a premium environment. The dash has a floating design to create a spacious feel. The soft touch materials that coat the dash and touch points on the door panel help to deliver comfort and give a greater feel of quality.

The premium nature doesn't stop there, with a large touch screen in the center, mostly all buttons are found on the screen — with two customizable dials left underneath to help with quick select functions. The steering wheel is flanked either side by a further two screens, showing the live video feed from the side cameras. All of this comes together to make a visually clean dash, without a bare aesthetic.

For a long time, mainstream automakers viewed Tesla as a fringe company that didn't have much chance to survive. Now many of them are racing to bring their own electric vehicles to market to catch up. Do you feel pressure to get the Atlis pickup into production quickly to get ahead of Tesla, Rivian and Ford?

Mark Hanchett:The argument that first-to-market is super important is valid to a certain point, but when I look at the truck market as a whole, passenger car ownership and driving yourself somewhere, that is going to change significantly over the coming years as autonomous vehicles take hold, as subsidized Uber-like services start to bring the cost of ride-sharing down. You're going to see a shift towards certain individuals or certain demographics of people don't necessarily want to own a car anymore. They may shift to just purely ride-sharing. But the one thing that will never go away is the work truck and the necessity to have that utility vehicle there, and that's why we're focused on that is because that's the one segment of the market that is really ... it may shift in form, in terms of it may not look like a pickup truck in 10 years, but the task that it needs to accomplish will exist probably forever, so it makes sense to go after one of these markets that's long-lasting.

In terms of competition that's out there, if you have Rivian, they're going after the adventure market, if you have Tesla, we should always be conscious of what Tesla's going to do. They'll probably do something that is really cool. They'll do something that is super fast, great acceleration, great range, but it fits within a certain market segment that really is common to their Model S, Model X, and Model 3 ownership. It's a little bit on the higher end, a little bit more on the luxury side of things.

We're aiming for more of the utility aspect of it, that market, and getting things done and coming in at a cost standpoint and capability standpoint that makes sense for that particular market. With Ford and GM and potentially even Toyota doing something as well, you should always be conscious of them, but for the big OEMs to make that shift, for them to shift from their gas and diesel vehicles today to electric, that's going to be a very long process, so there's still an opportunity there, even if we're not first. If we come out with a very compelling product, if we come out with the right product, then we will still win. First-to-market doesn't always win, but the right product will always win, and that's not just the truck, it's the ecosystem that lives in. It's the entirety of that ownership experience.

You're developing your own electric drive platform as well, can you describe what design and engineering advantages that offers?

Mark Hanchett:From an architecture standpoint, our entire vehicle system is modular, which means our XP platform, it has a complete sub-drive system that is independently operational, steering, braking, drive motors, suspension. All this stuff is contained within an assembly, that when we load it into whatever vehicle configuration we have, it's purely plug-and-play. We wanted to make sure that this thing could grow to the size of an RV, it could shrink to the size of a mid-sized truck, and we can do so in a modular system where we can build these submodules that can be simply just plug-and-play, dropped in.

We're building the vehicle in a way that you should be able to fix or replace anything on the side of the road. It's a modular platform, and when I say that, we try to avoid the marketing gimmicks ... we don't want to say it's modular in terms of hey, we could redesign it and use some of the motor components in a longer platform or something like that. No, it's truly modular in the sense that if we wanted to build an RV, all we would have to do is take the base core structure and design that to be 40 feet long and we could plug in our drive system and suspension system in the back, either in a single axle or tandem axle configuration. We could plug it in up front and then we could, once we make that frame longer, we can basically plug in battery modules to add whatever specific capacity you need.

We have a tremendous amount of interest of from individuals wanting to take older model trucks, vans, or even their own custom body ... we've got a gentleman in the Midwest that's building custom farm vehicles, that wants to basically take our platform and then drop his tube frame, you know, rugged body on top of it and use it on farms and sell it to some of the local farms that are there. We're all for that. The most interesting thing is that some of the greatest ideas and some of the best ideas don't come from within an organization. They typically come from without, where people have a completely unique perspective on what's needed. We want to be the company that helps that happen.

You've chosen a crowdfunding path to sustain Atlis Motor Vehicles. Can you talk about the approach and how successful it has been for developing a product?

Mark Hanchett:The first one that we did outside of personal investments, it was a regulation CF campaign, which is basically a regulation crowdfunding campaign to raise equity for the company, which means individuals buy common stock shares of the company. It's not necessarily like a Kickstarter campaign where you may put a deposit down on a product or you may buy a product outright and then hope that it comes to market afterwards. This is a little bit different in that we are offering individuals, and primarily our customer base, the opportunity to own a piece of Atlis motor vehicles, to share in the success that we have. That's something that was super important, especially early on, where we were looking at, okay, are people really going to be interested in this? How do we gauge that?

I come from a different background, I think, than most founders, where I spent 10 years of my life developing products, programs, and ecosystems that changed the world in the law enforcement space, and I'm applying some of those principles here to this particular market. But I don't come from a wealthy background. I'm a more humble person. I don't necessarily come from those connections, but what this regulation crowdfunding allowed us to do is actually go out there and connect with the people and the customers and give them the opportunity to participate in this. I think that's super important in terms of the message of what we're trying to do. This isn't about raising massive amounts of funding and getting rich. This is about building a product that is customer-centric. This is about building a company that is customer-centric. That's why every ownership model that we built is coming from the customer back and saying what are the pain points that they have and how can we solve that and then how can we build a product or a set of products that are centered on solving those problems?

What do you think design geeks will find particularly interesting about the Atlis pickup?

Ross Compton:I really hope my fellow geeks will feel some way about the design, good or bad. I wanted a reaction. In part I have got one, we receive many awesome comments every day about how great people think the truck looks, as well as comments that flat out hate it. This is exactly what I wanted. For us not to go under the radar.

There are a few areas that I hope interests' people. First, the hood bulge. I was looking over older trucks and loved the brash promotion of brand identity through massive labels/logos. Usually done via big text in the massive chrome front grill, this element to me screams pickup truck and classic American design. So, I wanted to encapsulate this but bring it forward into our truck (that doesn't have a massive front grill for text to sit in). By creating this small bulge for the Atlis logo to be placed on, it was my way of promoting ourselves and paying homage to cars of the past. Hood ornaments are a rare thing now and would be too retro for this truck, as well as delicate, but by pushing out the surface it created a strong place holder for our logo and gave a small nod to the past.

These small areas of interest are dotted over the vehicle. Another is in the side vent. We have airflow coming from the front two intakes and then being pushed through the sides. These vents are formed by making the body work look as if it's overlapping itself. The vent is quite industrial, there is no fanfare to it by way of chrome surrounds, but it sits there clearly on the side. It again takes conventional areas and just tweaks them to suit our ethos and deliver something a little different.

My last example would be the front and rear lights. I love designs that look simple until you step closer and realize just how much detail is going on. This is the case for the lights. Taking the taillight as an example - on the surface it seems like a standard bar light configuration with a 'C' running light in the centre. But as you get closer you can see small jewel-like lights within a chrome casing in the centre of the 'C'. The Atlis text is stamped inside here too, accompanying the jewels that look to almost line the back of the chrome housing.

When are we likely to see the first electric Atlis XT pickup trucks on the road?

Mark Hanchett:We would like to get a hundred trucks into customers' hands by the end of next year, December 2020. That's the challenge. It's one that we're obviously marching towards. It's one that I think is super important. We're not making big promises of 10,000 - 20,000 - 30,000 vehicles a year. I think our current reservation list is close to 11,000 vehicles currently, and we're not making big promises on the number that we're going to produce a week or anything like that. We're very realistic in the fact that we'll build a hundred, then we'll build a thousand, then we'll continuously scale from there and scale as fast as we can.

All images provided by Atlis Motor Vehicles

E-CITY is 8 months development project of, a small three-wheeled, urban electric car designed by industrial designer Radek Micka for BEKO Engineering, spol. s.r.o . (Czech Republic) It is a two-seat vehicle that represents modern design and practicality in one. The unique design of the three-wheeled vehicle has many advantages in crowded cities, the most important of which are affordability and its dual design, one of which is also for teenagers from 15 years of age. With the aging of the world's population, it is necessary to adapt to seniors and people with limited mobility, which can be easily suited, as the floor is low and level. In addition, the small size of the vehicle allows it to be parked perpendicular to other cars, saving space.

A few months after announcing their 2019 winners, French fashion house Loewe has opened submissions for the 2020 edition of their Craft Prize. Though a relatively new award program—it was launched in 2016—it received over 2,500 submissions from around the world this year and that number is only expected to increase.

The 50,000 euro prize that each year's winner receives may have something to do with its appeal, and this year all shortlisted applicants will also get to participate in a group exhibition at Paris's Musée des Arts Décoratifs.

View of the 2019 semifinalist exhibition at Isamu Noguchi's indoor stone garden at the Sogetsu Kaikan in Tokyo

Japanese sculptor Genta Ishizuka took home the top prize this year. An expert in the ancient urushi lacquer technique, Ishizuka was inspired by oranges in a mesh bag when he created his winning work, Surface Tactility #11. Ishizuka used the kanshitsu technique, naturally-sourced urushi sap, and many coats of lacquer to create the lustrous finish.

Deloss Webber's Geisha Handbag Series (2016) is made of granite, Susutake bamboo, rattan, and is an homage to Japanese weaving techniques.

Giovanni Corvaja, Italy, Mandala bowl, 18ct gold, 2017

Jim Partridge and Liz Walmsley, United Kingdom, Curved Block Seat, oak, 2018

The prize was created to "acknowledge the importance of craft in today's culture and recognize working artisans whose talent, vision and will to innovate set a standard for the future. Creative director Jonathan Anderson started the tradition as a nod to Loewe's beginnings as a collective craft workshop in 1846.

To select a winner from thousands of applicants, Loewe first brings together a panel of experts—made up of former finalists and a variety of interdisciplinary professionals—to whittle all the applicants down to 30 semifinalists. That group of 30 will travel to Paris and exhibit their work at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs. A separate jury will convene in Paris and choose a winner from the exhibition. This year's jury includes Naoto Fukasawa, Patricia Urquiola, Deyan Sudjic, and Benedetta Tagliabue, alongside other leading figures.

The jury will be looking at the following factors: originality, clear artistic vision and merit, precise execution, material excellence, innovative value, and a distinct authorial mark.

Applications are open through October 30. Find out more details or apply here.

The Anchorage Museum connects people, expands perspectives, and encourages global dialog about the North and its distinct environment. Exploring the intersection of art, history and science, the Anchorage Museum shares multiple perspectives and experiences that tell a greater story. We welcome diverse perspectives and recognize all are enriched when a

See the full job details or check out all design jobs at Coroflot.

Back when plastic was having its day, its aesthetic, that was born from its ability to morph and be colored, defined an age. It both reflected popular culture and influenced it. The Italian avant-garde movements of the 1950's & 60's played with new forms, surfaces, pattern, transparency and gloss levels that expressed and celebrated the aesthetic of plastic and marked its evolution away from the dark Bakelite of its early incarnation. Since then plastic has gone from a well-rounded, glossy and bright colored character into a personality that is still trying to find it's place in the future.

Petra Cullmann, director of the K Show, the biggest plastic trade show on earth, explains that a better approach to our relationship with plastic is not simply "reducing plastic" but instead to use it more thoughtfully, such as to reduce the weight in cars, which leads to greater fuel efficiency. Considered use of materials can help communicate the notion of sustainability in products. Educating consumers on the value of a material made from post-consumer waste, or the value of a vehicle that weighs less than it otherwise would is challenging. How can we adapt the appearance of plastic to give it a higher perceived value versus the 'real' materials that are so dominant, like glass and metals, that would perhaps encourage us to keep our products longer and thereby reduce consumption. What is the aesthetic of plastics and what are the trends that capture the CMF that is in constant motion?

Transparency

Transparency gives us confidence in our products, a feeling of achievement. It gives products an alluring look of partial visibility and it is one of the most searched attributes in design materials databases. A transparent window in a product housing allows users to understand its workings. A Dyson vacuum cleaner gives you an emotional reward and sense of achievement by showing you the dirt that was once on your floor tidily captured in a sealed bin. Transparency has functional, sensorial and emotional rewards. As plastics advance to technically challenge the properties of glass, so do the opportunities to create poetic color combinations through subtly tinted translucent plastics.

Sustainable composites

While some brands may not want to make a noise about their environmental approach to plastics, there are others that want to make sure these stories take on an aesthetic that can be appreciated by consumers.

The first wave of bio-based plastics resulted in a crunchy and brown aesthetic due to the mostly wood fibre content mixed with virgin plastics. Today the speckled effect is the 'on-trend' evolution of this giving consumers a refined update. But the idea of using post-consumer waste from engineering plastics in cars and electronics means it is difficult to get away from black and grey. Plastic compounders are now developing ingredients to give these materials a new aesthetic lease of life based on bright colors.

Soft tactility

Ivy Ross, VP of Hardware Design at Google, explains that Google's approach to plastics is one that gives tech a soft, human, relatable personality. In this group plastics take on a decorative and functional aesthetic–patterns are molded onto both rigid and soft plastics, creating sensorial cues that focus on tactility that feel like they are taking plastics into areas of emotional comfort.

Premium plastic

Plastic plays to both the low and high ground in its aesthetic, from low-cost to the premium 'unashamedly plastic' of how Apple described iPhone 5.

The concept that plastics can be used to define a premium experience where the product is elevated rather than being covered up points to a future where plastics could be used for more durable products that we want to keep rather than treat as disposable. Sensitive design can celebrate the intrinsic properties of plastics through thoughtful treatment of their processing. As the contemporary cousin of 'luxury', premium plastics can be a very slippery thing to define. Many brands are searching for ways to elevate materials to this higher level but figuring out how to achieve this when specifying plastics can be challenging.

Marc Barros suffered from optimism. When GoPro raised $80 million just a few months after his action camera company Contour raised $10 million, he celebrated the competition as proof of the potential of these types of products. "That should have been the 'Oh shit' moment," he realizes in retrospect. "That should have been like, 'Wait a second, stop. How are we going to compete?' We didn't understand that."

Contour failed—GoPro has struggled plenty, too—but Barros turned what he learned from that experience into a successful new company. Moment, best known for its mobile photography gear, has attracted more than 1.5 million followers and raised more than $3 million on Kickstarter over the course of five campaigns. Their latest—for an anamorphic lens, filters, and cases for drones—takes their offerings to new heights. As it racks up thousands of backers, we sat down with Barros to hear how his past failure helped shape his approach to growing Moment.

The problem with Contour was that they were doing too much, without enough "why"

"I think when you lose, you make more reflections on why you lost," Barros says—and those reflections guide his work now.

The biggest mistake Contour's product-focused team made was almost entirely ignoring how storytelling translates into new customers. "We were not capturing consumer hearts," Barros says. "We really tried to be functional, to capture minds. We thought that the best product would win. GoPro captured hearts. They really owned action video at its essence; they showed the emotion of that experience. They just beat the shit out of us."

Barros also acknowledges now that he probably wasn't the right person to express that emotion. He acknowledges now that Contour wasn't aligned with his own photography passions. "I wasn't really into action video," he admits. "I wasn't going home and making action videos. I think the purpose just wasn't there, beyond wanting to make something."

What Barros felt passionate about was photography. So when his investors fired him in 2012—the company went bankrupt nine months later—Barros thought about how his next project, Moment, could come from a more genuine place. "We started with a much better why: the happiness photography brings."

Restarting with more room for experimentation

Barros remembers his first digital camera was a game changer for his photography; he loved the instant feedback loop of "shooting, learning, getting better at it.

"It's very similar to that ethos of 'Make something, see if customers will buy it, and then learn,'" he says—and it's a mentality that's deeply ingrained in Moment's product philosophy.

Having made complicated cameras with Contour, Barros wanted to start Moment in a simple way, as a single lens that the team could evolve and improve over time. "We literally started with glass and metal. We just started concepting, prototyping, and then put it on Kickstarter to see what would happen."

Their first campaign, for quality wide and tele lenses that attach onto smartphones, soon raised half a million dollars in pledges.

The marketing team: Marketers need not apply

As Barros built his simple product proposal into a thriving company, he put authentic storytelling first. He tried traditional ads, too, but time and time again, his hypothesis proved true: Real content from relatable personalities was what resonated.

Moment's marketing strategy is to not do any marketing. "All the people we hire are either a designer, engineer, or content creator," he says. "The people who call themselves marketers are all about marketing, and they want to be good at the skill set of marketing. If someone's LinkedIn says 'marketer,' I'm not interested."

Instead, he thinks in terms of hiring customers, or the types of people who might be customers.

Taylor Pendleton field testing Moment's new anamorphic lens—and making social content about it.

"At Contour, if you looked at the 50 employees, they were all there for a different reason. Some were into the product, some were into action sports, some were just there for startup [culture]. This time around, we looked for people who are into photography and filmmaking."

Many team members were first photography influencers whom Barros shared the product with for reviews. Caleb Babcock, Niles Grey Jeran, and Taylor Pendleton, who make frequent appearances on the brand's YouTube and Instagram, post their own reviews and guides that follow vlogger formats and don't come off as overly professional.

"They're just honest about it," says Barros. "It's not scripted; they're trying the products like a regular user. They explain what they like, what they don't like. They're advanced as filmmakers, but they aren't over-the-top pros you can't relate to. I think that their relatability is a really important thread in what we're doing.

"We put the product in the hands of the core customer, and we build everything around that. We see how they talk about it, how they share it with friends, how they would use it. That drives the campaign. If your team isn't the exact customer, that's going to be harder for you. Everything we do starts with asking who the customer is, getting the prototype in their hands, and riffing with them."

Expanding the offering, growing the community

The feedback loop isn't restricted to photography fans in the office. Working closely with the community and listening to what users are excited about online has helped the team expand into new types of marketing and even products.

In 2016, the company hosted their first Moment Invitational Film Festival with just over a dozen participants. "That—like everything—started simple," Barros says. "We just said, 'Let's try to make some inspiring films.' Then we commissioned creators we thought were amazing. And from there we learned a lot. So by the time we got to year four, it was way more sophisticated." The 2019 festival drew 1,100 filmmakers competing for $100,000 in cash and gear.

"I think that's a rule of thumb in everything we do," Barros says. "What's the simplest thing you can do? See if it works, then do more of it if it's working."

The company is now starting to test this iterative approach with a more high-touch service: photography tours and workshops. "We found that our customers were coming to us because they were going to take a trip. At the same time they were asking us for tips on where to go and how to improve. So we started doing these small custom trips. We would take our customers to say Alaska for little eight-person workshops. Out of that we realized that people were really into the trips, experiences, and learning. So a year ago we launched photography trips run by a pro guide." Upcoming excursions are heading to Kyrgyzstan, Bali, Iceland, and dozens of other picturesque destinations around the world.

An Iceland expedition led by Chris König.

It's all part of the experimental outlook that drives the company. "It's a little bit of luck as early on you try a lot of ideas," Barros says. "Some sticks, some doesn't. You focus on the ideas that are working."

Moment Air: Anamorphic Lens, Filters, and Cases for Drones is live on Kickstarter through September 7, 2019.

Veteran industrial designer Matthew Cockerill has worked for PriestmanGoode, Samsung, tangerine, Seymourpowell and others. Now an independent consultant who focuses on "creating unexpected, relevant solutions for what's next," Cockerill was recently asked to chair a panel discussion on the role of design and technology in the home. Following the panel, which featured some of the industry's heavy hitters, Cockerill isolated six important takeaways and put them into print. Here they are:

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"Smart Living: the factors shaping ambient technology in our future homes"

by Matthew Cockerill

Our experience of our homes is changing as they become increasingly tech-enabled, from explicit interactions with screens to whole-room led interactions where technology is more observant, responsive and prescient to our needs. I recently hosted a panel discussion with researchers, designers and engineers from some of the world's leading brands, including Samsung, IKEA, Google ATAP (Advanced Technology and Products) and Nest, to discuss the opportunities and challenges of embedding more ambient technology into our future smart homes. Here are six key [takeaways] from that conversation.

1. The aesthetics of technology have become more complementary to our homes.

When technology such as the radio and television first entered our homes, it took the guise of furniture. But Sung Bai, Head of industrial design at Nest, pointed out that over time, as brands wanted to showcase their tech more and stand out in the market, we ended up with shiny tech objects in our living spaces that eventually started to become obtrusive.

We're seeing a reversal of this trend now as brands let technology visually recede into the fabric of our homes with products like the wireless speakers from Sonos, Libratone, Google and Amazon taking inspiration from home furnishings. Samsung have gone a step further in this regard with the 'ambient mode' on their OLED TV that matches the screen image to the interior wall colour and texture, eliminating the black rectangle in our home when it's on stand-by.

Samsung's "Ambient Mode" allows the screen to virtually disappear

2. A sense of agency will become increasingly important.

Smart products can give us the potential for more control at home, but also take control away from us as they become more autonomous. There is an important balance to be made here. As Rick Marks, Director, Technical Project Lead at Google ATAP, put it, "one of the really interesting things about our home is it's where we have the most authority over what's going to happen." For this reason, products that increase our sense of agency and empower us to do more than we can currently do, rather than those that simply do everything for us, will feel more appropriate in our future homes.

At the moment, we don't always have a sense of initiating, executing, and controlling technology. Marks, who spent 19 years at PlayStation before joining Google ATAP, believes that there are lessons to be learned from the video game world to help achieve a greater sense of agency. This includes creating a really well-defined interface of how to interact with our increasingly intelligent technology at home.

Google ATAP's Project Soli enables touchless gesture interactions

3. We should unlock new experiences, not just enhance existing ones.

Ambient technologies have the potential to allow us to do completely new things in the home. But a lack of imagination often results in the transfer of existing screen-based digital products into new technology platforms. [However], things start to get interesting when we combine smart products. For example, smart doorbells (with one time access) and cameras in the home might eventually give us the confidence to accept services being carried out within our home without us being present, such as internet deliveries. New technologies like 8K resolution and 5G could open up the opportunity to deliver more intimate interactions in the comfort of our homes with, for example, healthcare professionals, beyond what we do now. Initially for convenience, ideas like these have the potential to open up radical new ways of using our time and our homes.

The Nest Hello smart doorbell

In turn, technology might change the very nature of our houses. Yasushi Kusume, Innovation & Creative Manager at IKEA, explained that they experimented with transforming the walls of our homes from barriers into filters that allow in the things we want, like sunlight and fresh air, and filter out what we don't, like pollutants and noise. While this idea requires a fundamental change to the architecture of our homes, a lot of the tech we need for this already exists.

4. Collaborative, not competitive, product development is key.

Most of the devices in our homes are designed separately from one another. Despite technology standards and reducing platform fragmentation, we're still not at a point where services work seamlessly across products unless they come from one company. It's hard for designers think like this when they often working for a single brand. But more cross-collaboration between brands could deliver much more complete and interesting solutions for consumers in the home. Each brand able to bring their particular strengths to the table.

5. Technology as a social enabler, rather than social barrier.

Currently, technology is focused around personal devices, which often isolate people from one other. But ambient technology, where we don't have to interact with our digital products through screens, opens up opportunities for more multi-user experiences that can reintroduce or enhance the social experiences we have in our homes. Through whole-room experiences we will be able to interact and collaborate together seamlessly in the same space which we wouldn't have been able to do before. Suddenly, technology becomes a social enabler, rather than a barrier.

In the past, Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft utilised cameras with depth sensing to understand multiple users inputs for gaming purposes. Now more advanced systems coming on stream like Intel's RealSense and Amazon's AWS DeepLens coupled with deep learning algorithms are allowing designer to conceive new multi user experiences for their everyday lives not simply for gaming.

Amazon's AWS DeepLens is a programmable and trainable smart camera

6. Technology must be constantly interrogated.

A word of caution was raised about embedding observant and data capturing technologies into our homes. Rick Marks from Google ATAP identified the move away from cloud computing to edge computing, which stores data more locally to where it's being used rather than on a small number of centralised data centres, as partly relating to concerns over trust and privacy. Indeed, there is an ongoing tension between the desire to create better and new experiences enabled by data-gathering services and growing concerns around surveillance. We need to fully understand the implications of new technologies in this area and bake-in privacy and trust into all products and experiences we create for our future homes.

As e-commerce continues to grow, it's becoming increasingly important to rethink wasteful shipping practices and come up with alternatives to bulky boxes and filler materials. Minnesota-based materials company 3M has just debuted a new type of packaging that claims to cut the time, materials, and space required to ship products by 50%.

The Flex & Seal Shipping Roll is made up of three plastics developed by 3M: a tear- and water-proof outer layer, a bubble-wrap cushioning middle layer, and an adhesive inner layer. The packaging option can be used on a variety of objects under three pounds, a category that, according to 3M, accounts for 60% of the items that are bought online. Users can simply cut what they need from the roll, fold the material over the object, and press down to seal—no need for tape. The adhesive only sticks to itself so there's no worry that it will stick to whatever you're packing.

The process is a lot easier than the multi-step process of making a cardboard box and the resulting packages save a lot of space in delivery trucks. According to Fast Company, 3M is looking into large-scale retail partnerships with companies like Walmart and Target who are competing with Amazon's Prime delivery speeds. "Some of their business is automated [with robot-powered fulfillment centers], but some is done by hand," said business director Remi Kent. "We think we're a better solution for those items done by hand."

The material can be recycled with other plastics, though 3M said it's looking into alternative materials that would make recycling even easier.

Last year, temperatures of and above 40°C were recorded on the London underground tube network, which surpasses the EU limit for transporting livestock. These conditions resulted in increased levels of passenger discomfort during warm weather conditions.

Flo is a wearable product, designed to evaporate sweat and reduce body temperature to improve thermal comfort amongst London Underground commuters. The product applies localised cooling directly onto the user medial lower and upper back, using a combination of phase changing material and ventilation technology.

Thermal & Wetness Sensitivity Maps

Functional Prototype Iterations

Prototype Testing

Photoshop Visualisation

Product Render

Product Render

Aesthetic Model

Passion. Creativity. Integrity. Teamwork. Ambition. Innovation. These are the qualities that have made Wilson Sporting Goods Co. the number one sports equipment brand in the world. And these are the qualities that our global team embodies every day as we pursue one shared bold mission: to ignite the true

See the full job details or check out all design jobs at Coroflot.

If you're a designer, it's likely you interact with objects on a daily basis and think, "there's a much better way to design this [insert object here]," or more simply, "this thing is trash!" So attain a bit of catharsis today by watching seasoned industrial designer and Smart Design co-founder Dan Formosa rate and test out kitchen gadgets for Epicurious:

While Formosa only employs a couple methods for testing a product's effectiveness, it still reveals to the non-designer the many minutiae involved with getting a kitchen tool right they may have never considered. To make the video even better, Formosa does some sketching to demonstrate how each object could be designed to improve on the original. Bon appétit, designers!

How would you have redesigned one of the objects featured in the video? Share in the comment section below.

The biggest complaint about Sony's newly announced Reon Pocket wearable air conditioner is that it won't be ready in time for users to get relief from this year's global heatwave. The device looks like a thin Apple mouse and can be worn with a special shirt that has a discrete pocket for it at the base of the neck, where it uses the Peltier effect to either lower or raise your body temperature, depending on the season. Sony probably couldn't have timed the announcement better—as so many of us are struggling to stay comfortable, a personal air conditioner has never sounded more appealing.

Reon pairs with—surprise, surprise—a mobile app that lets users control the temperature. Sony claims it can lower body temperature by 23 degrees Fahrenheit or raise it by 14 degrees. The design is pretty subtle, it weighs only three ounces and doesn't make any sounds.

While initial reports touted a 24-hour battery life, Sony recently chimed in and let Engadget know that the actual battery life will be a paltry two hours. That tiny detail, combined with the fact that you have to use it with a special shirt, certainly limits how users can take advantage of the device. But perhaps, as one commenter already pointed out, the more interesting thing about this product is thinking about it less like a cool new gadget and more as a "progression in how we view clothing."

None of the downsides have curbed enthusiasm for Reon. The product was crowdfunded in less than a week on First Flight, Sony's own accelerator platform that launched in 2015 to champion new projects by Sony employees. The release is planned for March 2020—just in time for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics—and the product will initially be available only in Japan, so the rest of us will likely be waiting even past next year's summer.

LumiSource is looking for a self-motivated, intern candidate willing to jump in and assist on multiple projects at once. You will contribute to all stages of development, from initial concept ideation & sketching through 3D modeling & prototyping. The position will also expose the candidate to the business side of design, so flexibility in your work routine will be the key to the applicant’s success.

See the full job details or check out all design jobs at Coroflot.

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:

Craighton Berman's latest Kickstarter is for the second edition of his No Commercial Value zine, a collection of satirical design-fiction sketches. Last time it took him six months to finish the zine after the campaign closed so this time around he's structuring things a bit differently. Every day of the campaign he draws one drawing and uploads the progress as a new version of his campaign video. After the full 24 days, he'll either have a 24-page zine or, if he falls behind, will cancel the project and refund backers. Here's to hoping he sees this great project through!

Designed by an ex-Jaguar Land Rover engineer, the FLIT-16 was created with city commuters in mind. The stylish e-bike weighs 30 pounds, features a cool mechanism that allows it to fold easily and roll while folded, and can last about 30 miles on a single charge.

This Customer Experience Deck guides you through a straightforward, nine-step process to help you and your team identify ways of becoming more customer-centric.

Tired of holding screws in your mouth when you run out of hands? The Quipt Tray Clamp can be attached to both horizontal and vertical supports and will keep all your tools easily accessible while you work.

Founded by two father/son pairs, Luke's Toy Factory manufactures delightfully old-timey toys made from a highly durable wood-plastic composite which incorporates sawdust reclaimed from U.S. furniture manufacturers. Young kids probably won't care about that, but they'll be excited by the bright colors and stacking parts that can be assembled over and over again.

Do you need help designing, developing, patenting, manufacturing, and/or selling YOUR product idea? MAKO Design + Invent is a one-stop-shop specifically for inventors / startups / small businesses. Click HERE for a free confidential product consultation.

I've been a hater of plastic for years. Part of that is guilt, because as an industrial designer I spent over a decade working on short-lived plastic objects. After seeing images of plastic-choked sea creatures on the news, I glumly realized that some of the stuff floating in the Pacific Garbage Patch features radii and fillets that I created on my work computer. I may not have killed any aquatic life myself, but my fingerprints were on the gun.

Living in the city, I tried to avoid plastic as much as possible by opting for things made of wood or metal. But once I moved to a farm, I found plastic unavoidable.

Why? Because plastic is super useful, I'd say indispensable, on a farm. I've learned that plastic isn't the enemy--single-use plastic is the enemy. Plastic designed for daily use and durability is a godsend. It doesn't rust. It can be scrubbed clean. It's translucent, in liquid-storing applications where you need to see how much is left. Designed properly, it's both strong and tough.

Most importantly of all, plastic is a lot easier to work with than metal in some applications, like the most recent one in which plastic was my savior.

My wife and I live on a bird farm. We have roughly 200 free-range birds.

These are my two dogs, the main problem in this entry:

They're Shibas, a breed that's misregarded as cute and harmless because of internet memes; in fact they're natural-born killers, one of the breeds genetically the closest to wolves. Given the chance, they will attack and eat small animals. I watched Betsy pin a bird down with her front paws, then use her teeth to pull the poor thing's head off, like she was trying to stretch out a sock.

For that reason I keep the dogs enclosed within a massive dog run composed of 300 linear feet of five-foot-tall welded wire fence, supported by concrete-anchored pressure-treated 4x4s dug below the frost line. The raw materials alone cost about a thousand bucks.

Chickens cannot fit through the welded wire of the fence, which exponentially increases their lifespan.

However, here is a guinea fowl chick recently born on our farm.

They're tiny. And unfortunately, I recently learned, they have no problem squeezing right through the 2"x3" welded wire fence holes to the dog run.

Recently just one guinea fowl hatched 17 chicks, and I had a real problem keeping the little maniacs out of the dog run. This was during that week where it was 110 degrees. I needed to patch all 300 feet of the fence, and fast, because spending long stretches in that heat doesn't go well with my constitution.

The obvious answer would be chicken wire, as its tiny hexagonal apertures are too small for chicks to get through.

Have you ever worked with chicken wire? It's an incredible pain in the ass. It arrives in tightly-wound rolls and has the memory of an elephant, stubbornly refusing straightening. The exposed wire edges are razor-sharp, and trying to manipulate the material into place is like fighting a gang of needle-wielding octopuses. It comes wrapped in fine metal wire, which most farmers save and use to weave sections together one hexagon at a time, an incredibly time-consuming process.

Plastic to the rescue.

This is extruded poultry fencing:

Same idea as chicken wire, but it's plastic. A 25-foot-long, 3-feet-tall roll can be cut in half, with the ease of cutting paper with scissors, and now you've got 50 feet. It's pliable, reasonably obedient, and the exposed edges aren't sharp enough to cut you.

Six rolls of this were enough to cover my entire dog run, in a fraction of the time it would have taken me to do with metal, and without the frustration and irritating micro-injuries.

I affixed it to the existing fence using yet more plastic, roughly 800 zip ties in total. Again, this took a fraction of the time that it takes to cut and wind metal wire, then use pliers to tuck the sharp ends away.

You might be wondering why I left the zip ties long. I'll get to that in another entry.

At this point, I don't think I've saved more birds' lives using plastic than I've helped kill sea creatures by designing with it, but at least now I am moving in the right direction.

This interview is part of a series featuring the presenters participating in this year's Core77 Conference, "The Third Wave", a one-day event that will explore the future of the design industry and the role designers will play in it.

Liz Jackson perceives the world differently than many other designers. This outlook is in one part thanks to Jackson's seemingly innate tendency to push back on outdated norms, in another part due to the ingenuity forced out of her after she woke up one day to find she was living with a neuromuscular condition. In fact, Jackson regularly gives credit to disabled people throughout history as "the original lifehackers". With this knowledge, it would make sense that the disabled community must mesh quite seamlessly with the design world... right? Well, Jackson and many other disability activists say, not quite. Jackson formed her organization The Disabled List to rectify this, not only to get more disabled voices in on the design conversation, but also to illuminate what the design community lacks without their input. At the Disabled List, Jackson and her team work to partner design studios with disabled designers who can help steer any project in the right direction and ensure disabled ingenuity is comprehensively applied to a design from the get-go.

We recently sat down with Jackson to learn more about how she entered the world of design and how she wants to spread the wisdom of the disabled community to improve the practice of design overall.

Core77: In your AIGA talk, you said you started your career in TV production. I was first off curious how you decided to go down that path and then what led you to going into design?

Liz: I grew up in Ohio. I watched a lot of TV, and I knew that Matt Lauer and [Yeardley Smith], the voice of Lisa Simpson, went to Ohio University, so I was like, "I'm going to go there." I studied TV production and I was no different than I am now. I almost failed out multiple times, but I remember this is sort of the embodiment of my entire college career. There was always this way in which I was pushing back. Before I graduated, I got an internship at the Ellen DeGeneres show. At the time, it was a brand new show.

So, I went and it was just an exciting place to work. It was early on at the show, so it was a deeply moving time for everybody who was involved because, Telepictures and everybody involved with Telepictures didn't know if audiences were going to accept Ellen; it was still at that point. So, when ratings would come in, everybody was just so blown away and couldn't believe it. There were oftentimes tears of joy [for] that newfound success. So, I was there early on and then I came back.

Four days after I graduated, I just decided I wanted to keep doing it. I moved back out to LA and eventually got a job there. I was there for a handful of seasons. Then I met my ex, followed her out to New York. Decided while working at Ellen that, daytime talk was going be my thing. So, I was like, "Okay, well I'm gonna do more of that." And for all the reasons that I succeeded at Ellen, I just totally failed at Martha [Stewart]. It was just awful and dramatic. And so, I decided I didn't want to work in TV anymore.

So I took a job at a startup called Airbnb. I think I might've been one of the first 50 employees, it was super early on. And then, I woke up sick one day and was pushed out onto disability and that's how this all started.

So how did that lead you to thinking about design?

When I got out of the hospital I needed eyeglasses and a cane. And for me the question was, why do I have so much choice with my eyeglasses when I don't with my cane? When I actually got home [from the hospital] and googled canes, I saw that there was no choice. I lost my shit. It was painful, and that was my first realization that, oftentimes disability means an inability to choose your own identity. Your identity is sort of chosen for you.

Then suddenly in my email one day, these canes showed up. There was a purple one, an orange one and a turquoise one. I just looked at the color purple, and I was just like, "That's it." I thought there was something sort of neutral about it. So, I got my cane, and a whole series of things happened. One was that I got on the subway one day and I went to sit down. I saw this woman looking me up and down. At that point, I thought she was going to ask me what was wrong, but instead she asked me where I got my cane.

"Oftentimes disability means an inability to choose your own identity. Your identity is sort of chosen for you."

So I had my new purple cane, and I had gone into the J.Crew in Columbus Circle. In there was just this table of eyeglasses. That was the first time it really struck me—why doesn't J.Crew have a cane? It was especially striking to me because I realized, glasses are a two part process. You either wear the glasses without a prescription or you have to buy them at J.Crew and take them to your optometrist. It's a total pain in the ass. Why are they the thing?

So I hauled ass home and wrote J.Crew customer service. I was like, "Will you sell a cane?" They wrote back and said, "No." And then, that weekend I was watching The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo movies. That was when I realized I wanted a badass superhero alter ego. So, I created a blog called The Girl with the Purple Cane. And what I used it for initially was to harass J.Crew. I created this campaign called, "Yes J.Crew Cane". Through this process I had begun to start to build out an argument, find my way into the disability community and really start to learn about disability.

I later happened to meet this other person [when I attended the Nantucket Project], his name is [former RISD interim provost] Pradeep Sharma, and this was the moment that design [came into focus] for me. He was on stage making a series of assumptions. I start writing down everything that I think he got wrong. I was like, "you can't assume this. You can't assume this," right?

So, I chased him down afterwards and I said, "You're wrong." He was like, "Tell me." I literally pulled a notebook and told him. He was like, "You're right. What do you know about design?" and I said, "Nothing." So he's like, "Why don't you start coming up? Stay with me and my family on weekends and we'll start to kinda cobble together some design education."

Tell me about your organization The Disabled List and the Critical Axis project.

The Disabled List is a disability-led design organization. We engage in disability as a creative practice. So, usually in design when people consider disability, typically the goal is to smooth things out or to fix a thing. But for me, it's really about honoring the friction of disability. Really thinking about what sort of creative opportunity disability has to bring to design. And really about actually incorporating design into disability.

And Critical Axis is a project where we're actively putting a critical lens on what's lacking in design, marketing, branding and all these creative fields. So, what happens in [these fields] is if there's any sort of disability material, whether it's a product or campaign, it usually feels pretty good and people get caught up in their good feelings and it gets pushed through and it wins awards. It makes the paper.

Disability tropes as charted on Critical Axis

And what I wanted to do was take the tropes that we had studied within disability studies and the awards that these ads are being given, smash them together and see what happens. And, it's just been horrifying. There are these things that I didn't expect to bump into. One of the big ones is where companies will announce something, get the PR boost, and either the thing never happens or it stays up for a few months and then it just goes away. I didn't realize how much this happens.

"Usually in design when people consider disability, typically the goal is to smooth things out or to fix a thing. But for me, it's really about honoring the friction of disability. Really thinking about what sort of creative opportunity disability has to bring to design."

It's an overwhelming amount of examples. And again, I think it's because when people endeavor in this space, they get caught up in their good intentions and they don't realize the amount of work it takes. That there's maintenance. I think that's the thing that's lacking, is maintenance.

So it's about not only helping people be aware of these tropes and calling them out, but also keeping people accountable for what they've said they were going to do.

Yes. But the thing that I really struggle with is, this work is just so incredibly painful. It's horrible because, what do I have? I have smiling faces approaching me telling me about this good thing they did, and then I burst their bubble, right? Every time. So, I think there is this element with Critical Axis where I hope that because it exists out in the world, if people will just use it as a resource, maybe I won't have to do the work and it is able to do the work for me and my peers. 

I imagine there are tons of disabled designers out there, but for whatever reason there's low visibility around the work that they're doing. Why is that?

So, when I started the WITH fellowship, somebody at SCAD reached out to me. And they said, "Do you want our disability numbers?" I was like, "Sure." These numbers come from one specific place, which is that these are not students who identify as disabled, these are students that requested accommodations. So, these numbers don't fully encompass the actual population of students that are disabled, but it's already a high number. There is something I know, which is this: on average, any college population is about 11% disabled.

So, I'm actually in the process of talking to all the different New York design schools, because I think that these numbers across the board might be this high everywhere. I wrote this piece in the Times about it—disabled people were the original life hackers, we spend our lives cultivating intuitive creativity because we're forced to navigate a world that's not built for our bodies, right? I think that creativity continuity that we spend our lives building, it leads us to enter design fields.

You have to think about it this way though—say you know that disabled people are entering creative fields at education at a much higher rate. And then, just imagine to yourself what happens year after year. How these students probably graduate or drop out because they're not getting their needs met. And then, imagine what happens post graduation. When's the last time you worked with a disabled person? When's the last time you saw a disabled person in design? Where are these people? They disappear after graduation. I don't know the amount that's graduated, this is literally all I have to go on so far. But this is what I struggle with.

There was a woman I talked to yesterday where she's creating this course about designing for disability. I'm like, "Why are you designing for disability when 20, 30, 40% of your students are probably disabled?" So, there's the disabled student who clearly is not doing so hot, even though they're entering these fields at exponentially high rates. And then on the other side of this, you have the design student who has taken an interest in disability but doesn't have any resources or critical cultivated knowledge to pull from.

I realized if you start to incorporate disability studies curriculum into design school, what happens is you create a way for both of these students to engage in this space, but also in the process find each other. I fundamentally believe if you get these students working together in college, when they graduate, they're going to start their professional career actually seeing disabled people as their peers rather than recipients.

When you're talking about disabled studies, in your opinion what is the right way of implementing this in design programs?

I could list off the people that I think are top tier disability studies practitioners in design right now—you have Ashley Shew at Virginia Tech. You have Aimi Hamraie at Vanderbilt. You have Bess Williamson Stiles at SAIC. Elizabeth Guffey at SUNY Purchase. You have these people who are doing the work and honestly, what I really want is for design schools to work collaboratively with these people who have already been doing it. And start to realize that the expertise and the know-how already exists, it's just about applying it and making it accessible to whatever design school it is that you're working in.

And the interest is there. I was approached by one New York City school, to teach a course on it, on Disability Studies and Design in the fall. I'm actually talking fairly comprehensively with another design school here in New York, about building a Disability Studies Minor.

When these design schools are looking to do this, a question I encounter a lot is, who is the right disabled person to work with? For me what it comes down to is, is this person a disability studies practitioner? Have they actually worked with the literature? If a person can articulate that, then I think that is a person I would trust.

Do you think the designer's "problem solving" mentality can contribute to misguided solutions and the fact that disabled people are not included in the discussion?

I think for us at Disabled List, we actually think the problem is the defining of the problem. The actual problem-solution scenario is literally the problem, right? It's like the problem becomes the problem.

"I think that some of what we're teaching these younger designers is outdated. I think we need to kind of look for new models, ones that actually amplify people who are traditionally perceived as recipients. I think young designers are really looking for that."

So, for us, in terms of our disability led design methodology, what Alex [Haagaard, Director of Communications at The Disabled List] has really come up with, is instead of defining a problem, how do you articulate a desire? And, how do you work from a framework of instead of defending the problem, what if the process is the problem and then just kind of going from there?

This happens so often with design students is where I'll go on a stage and I'll rambunctiously talk about my perspective. And, I didn't realize early on that, in my doing that, I'm actually providing them with a sense of relief. Because I think, especially millennials as they start to enter design professions, they don't feel good in the role of "savior". It doesn't feel authentic to them. They are very conscious of all of the ways in which that can increase biases and create new stigmas.

So, I do think that some of what we're teaching these younger designers is outdated. I think we need to look for new models, ones that actually amplify people who are traditionally perceived as recipients. I think young designers are really looking for that. There's just, nothing has been created in that area yet.

From your experience, what is the secret sauce to getting to people to let their guard down and actually listen? Because, that's a hard thing, especially now, to get people to do.

Humor. I've also found, if I can acknowledge my mistakes ... I could look back at the things that I was thinking early on, I presume they're not different than what any designer right now would be thinking, right? It's sort of that working through the process. I told a story [in my AIGA talk] about, I encountered these flowers in a trash can, I thought they were thrown away, but it was actually public art.

So, I think there is this way in which, if I can be self-deprecating about it, then I think it makes it easier for designers to take themselves a little less seriously. I think that within that scope of being neutral and being empathetic, I think we're also talking about being serious. So, just finding humor in it, I think is probably the easiest thing.

What would your advice be to anyone who wants to take an idea and not just turn it into an academic fascination, but actually into action?

I'm going to reframe it a little bit—when a designer decides that they're going to work with a disabled person or they're going to design for a disabled person, they come in and the only interaction they have with the disabled person is simply around the solution the designer wants to create. What if instead you just began to find your way into a community and really start to understand the community without any sort of preconceived notions of what could be created, how you could benefit? But really, just simply out of a desire to understand.

So, I think for me, even before we can frame a different future, I think we need to understand the people who would be a part of it. And then, go from there.

Okay, my last question was, what can design publications like ours do better?

Say you're a writer that doesn't have a budget or isn't making a lot of income right now. I would say, make friends with a disabled person that you can turn to, to ask just simple questions to. And, offer writers support in return and advocate internally whenever you can. If you're a company, I would have a disabled editor on call at all times. I wish that every publication had a disabled editor. I understand it's a tough thing to do given the state of media right now, there's just no money anywhere. But, just building those relationships and having that person on call. We know before we even read the article, we know from the picture, we know from the headline, we know from the first read. And, when I say we know, I think anybody else at whatever publication it is, couldn't even begin to consider the scope of all that we know.

And, I think this is the other thing too is, is writers really enjoy it. I think it'd be great if a publication supported relationships between disabled editors and writers, or hired disabled writers. Because we're fascinating to work with. We upend assumptions, we are really creative with language. And, I don't really ever think you're ever going to get the thing that's expected, so it keeps it fresh.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Hear Liz Jackson and other design industry leaders speak at this years Core77 Conference, "The Third Wave"! Tickets are available now.

Wildhorn creates products that make it easy for people to create shared outdoor experiences. We are part of the next generation of direct to consumer brands. Conveniently located just south of Salt Lake City, just minutes away from world famous skiing, mountain biking and hiking trails in the beautiful Wasatch Mountains.

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"Sure, from the front it looks like a cross between a high-heeled shoe and a headless, objectified woman. But I designed it so that from the other side, it looks like a frog. Or a toad. I don't know, I always get those two mixed up."

"I call it a Chaise Longue-Tall-Wide with Integrated Reading Lights and Floating Shelf Desk. It's not meant to relate to anything else in the room, like other furniture or walls, but would ideally exist in a space of white infinity. I know you don't see any power cords; that's because the white things you lie on are actually battery cells."

"I wanted to design a difficult-to-ship bathroom sink that features a long, thin, pointy shelf that you can't actually place anything on."

"I don't mean to derail this meeting, Sandra, but I'll ask you again: Please address me as 'Ball Turret Gunner' rather than 'Brian from Accounting.'"

"If there's one thing I hate about coasters, it's that they can only hold one glass at a time, they're too easy to stack and put away, and there's little chance you'll accidentally knock a drink off of one. Plus, pointy steel and glass always go well together."

"I'm trying to start a new, hot trend: Under-bed lighting. Changing the bulb is kind of a pain in the ass, but I think it's worth the trade-off of having illuminated carpet."

"We want our little girl to grow up to be a princess. With our son, we're aiming for contractor."

"I mean sure, it gets a little grey and filmy after it rains, but you can just build hemispherical scaffolding both inside and outside of it, spend a couple of days scrubbing, then just disassemble the scaffolds and put them away and it's good as new."

"Since the base is nearly as long as the tabletop, this doesn't actually save much space, but when you're not using the table, you'll enjoy the convenience of having a bookshelf you can't place anything on right in the middle of the room."

"I always carry extra batteries with me to keep my LED Middle Finger Car Message charged. Even though road rage shootings are a thing, I'm sure that if I cut someone off and turn this Fuck You light on, the other motorist will accept his loss gracefully and leave me alone."

The latest project from Mexico City-based designer José de la O is an interesting proposition at the intersection of neuroscience and design. Envisioning a future where anyone could customize or design common household objects, de la O created an experiment that let participants alter the form of a vase using only their thoughts.

The experiment "toys with the idea that in the near future, sophisticated digital interfaces could empower people who don't need technical skills to design," as the Design Academy Eindhoven explains on his website. "Learning a specific craft, a 3D software, or even sketching, could no longer be necessary to design and produce every-day life objects."

The starting form

One variation

De la O worked with designers Diana Delgado and Andrea de la Peña on the project and partnered with Mirai Innovation Lab to use one of their devices, called Aura, for the experiment. Aura is a headset covered in sensors that monitor different signals and electrical activity in the brain. Participants were asked to sit in a quiet room where they were shown a computer-generated model of a very generic vase. "The dullness of the object would motivate a user to modify it," de la O said.

All participants were selected with no experience in product design. They were asked to concentrate on specific modifications they would make to certain aspects of the vase's form—changing its height or diameter, for example. From there, the data from Aura was somehow translated to modify the form of the starting vase. Once the participant/designer was satisfied with the result, the piece could be 3D-printed.

"This also questions the future role of a designer, who today might be seen as a gatekeeper for what would and what would not be produced and used, as Design follows specific commercial agendas and imposed aesthetics," de la O says. "Are designers becoming obsolete? Or would they evolve into becoming the ones designing these mind-reading design platforms?"

There's a lot to unpack here, beginning with: Do we want to encourage the production of skill-less design objects in the first place? (Granted, the vase in this experiment is a pretty harmless example.) Could this technology be applied to aid designers who don't have use of their limbs? Sound off in the comments below!

We are looking for an Associate Graphic Designer that is both extremely organized and creatively savvy to help join our Design team in the Communications department of our San Francisco HQ office. The position will support the team’s broader role in coordinating and driving many key visual communications for the

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