Dive into the world of designing for a fantasy world. George R. R. Martin's Game of Thrones series has been turned into an Emmy winning HBO television show. Ned Stark, one of the story's driving characters warns that, "Winter is coming."

In the book and TV series, there are epic battles with glorious knights in shining armor and creatures from deep inside the fantasy world. A significant part of their persona is their armory. For this month's 1-Hour Design Challenge, we invite participants to design a suit of armor or weapon suitable for the world of G.R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones. Keeping with the context of the book, each weapon or piece of armor must have a theme. For example, Sandor Clegane, known in the book as "The Hound," has a helm in the shape of a dog (see image above). Check out full details for this month's 1-Hour Design Challenge here.

Doors Close: Monday, October 31, 2011

Steve Jobs, 1955-2011

The world lost a hero and a visionary on Wednesday with the passing of Steve Jobs. His philosophy and work have fundamentally transformed the way we live our lives. Jobs was a champion of design and in his life time he inspired multiple generations of designers. His work and legacy will undoubtedly inspire countless generations to come.

As tributes continue to pour in, we thought we'd create our own homage to Jobs by asking you to submit a tribute sketch honoring his life and work. Send in scanned sketches to mail [at] core77.com with "Remembering Steve" in the subject line by next Wednesday. We'll share a selection on the site with the community. Or if you'd prefer to share in a different way, head to the discussion board.

Photography by Ray Hu & Stephen Li for Core77

The second biennial Oregon Manifest has come and gone, but the spirit of the competition to build the ultimate utility bike lives on in our photo gallery from that whirlwind weekend in Portland. In addition to the high-profile creative collaborations—IDEO × Rock Lobster's "Faraday," Fuseproject × SyCip's "LOCAL," and Ziba × Signal's "Fremont"—30 teams from across the country put not only their bike-building prowess but also their creativity to the test. Standard offerings included a variety of dynamo-powered lights and custom stowage solutions throughout, while the far end of the spectrum saw innovations from a retractable kickstand and fenders (Student winner U. of Oregon) to Ziba's flip-down sidecar.

Nevertheless, the culmination of the competition was as much an occasion for looking back as it was for looking forward to the future of the utility bike. We've said it before, but congratulations to everyone who participated in the Oregon Manifest 2011—who knows what you'll come up with in two years?

» View Gallery; see full coverage here.

Egor Chupryna's transportation renderings caught my eye a few weeks ago, shortly after he posted them to his portfolio, but it didn't occur to me to investigate any further, thinking that the images were just sleek eye candy and nothing more. However, with all of this Mag-Lev talk in the past week, I thought to revisit Chupryna's work, clicking through to the demo video to discover that "Moving Platforms" was a speculative transportation project by none other than London's Priestmangoode, where Chupryna works as a Visualizer.

The concept, brilliantly brought to life by Chupryna, is quite clever, if still highly speculative for its infrastructural prerequisites (or lack thereof): local transportation systems travel on loops that are partially parallel to commuter or high-speed transit lines, such that the trains can connect, airlock-style, for transfers without stopping (though I imagine they'd have to slow down quite a bit to line up properly). This does away with what Paul Priestman deems the 18th-century baggage of the train station, streamlining transit both within conurbations and between them.

Runners-up One & Co. in action. All images courtesy of Smart Design

Dodgeball. Played by the best sportsmen (and women) on the battlefields of middleschool P.E. classes around the world. Luckily, designers seem to know their way around a dodgeball field as evidenced by the Bay Area Design Dodgeball Tournament hosted by 2010 champions, Smart Design.

Original Design Dodgeball Tournament Invite from 2005

In 2005 Smart Design challenged local Bay Area design firms to a dodgeball tournament. We were fairly new in town, so we wanted to meet our new community. We sent our intern around to each firm with a box, a note, and an OXO peeler. Their instructions were to walk into each design firm without talking, slam the box down in the middle of the studio, stab the note to the box with the peeler and walk straight out. Inside the box was a dodgeball. A Bay Area design institution was born...

Last week, the 7th annual Tournament went down with 18 area firms competing for the grand prize of an incredible trophy and bragging rights for the year. Check out the pics from the event below and congrats to all the participants!

2011 Bay Area Design Dodgeball Tournament Results

Champions: frog Design
Runners-Up: One & Co

frog is a first time Design Dodgeball Tournament winner and will host the 2012 tournament.

Best Uniform: Incase

"It's better to look good than to feel good, dahling!" This award goes to the team that has a 'uniform' (loosely defined as anything worn consistently by all team members) that demonstrates the most creative, innovative, and cohesive design. Bay Area Design Dodgeball is about expressing design spirit, so this award will reward the team that puts in the effort.

Best Team Spirit: Sequence

"Rah, Rah, Sis Boom Bah! We're designers and we'll kick your Aahhss!" Er, something like that. This award will go to the team with the bestest, most positive, most super-duper awesome spirit during the tournament. This means excellent sportsmanship, not taking yourselves too seriously, finding joy in the confusion, and spreading good cheer to everyone around.

You are invited on Wednesday, October 26th for the first Designers Accord Town Hall meeting in Cleveland!

Please join SmartShape Design, CIA, IDSA, Northeast Ohio Chapter, and AIGA Cleveland Chapter at the Cleveland Institute of Art for an invigorating discussion on how design can take the lead in creating positive environmental and social impact in the local community and beyond.

Cleveland Designers Accord Town Hall: Logistics

Wednesday, October 26th 2011, 6-9 pm
Cleveland Institute of Art
Joseph McCullough Center (Factory Building)
Room 401
11610 Euclid Avenue
Cleveland, OH 44106

A very fun and at times—sorry, but it has to be said—rather gross performance was part of Vienna Design Week: Sonja Stummerer, Martin Hablesreiter and Tom Hanslmaier of the Viennese architecture and design practice Honey & Bunny were preparing and serving food using the tools and machinery of industrial craftsman.

Located in a workshop, the objective of the evening performance was to prepare a full meal and its accoutrements—including plates, cutlery and drinking glasses—all from scratch. Honey & Bunny's process involved fresh vegetables, a block of spam, cheese analogues and dough made from water and flour. The tools in use were blow torches, a make shift oven (combining a metal tube with a heat gun), a metal lathe, a table drill and a band saw.

The table setting was completely recreated during the performance. Starting with ceramic plates and metal cutlery, the setup looked very different when the meal was ready to be served.

If you back one film on Kickstarter this year, make it Stefan Sagmeister & documentary filmmaker Hillman Curtis's Happy Film, in which the self-described "New York-based graphic designer known for his rock n roll collaborations and typography" explores three means of achieving the titular subject: meditation, cognitive therapy and pharmaceuticals.

The documentary will test these various methods during three × 3-month experiment periods. The production team will work closely with a group of health professionals to properly assess Sagmeister's well-being. Our health partners will monitor Stefan prior to the experiments, as well as participate in occasional check-ups during the course of our 9-month study.

Sex Typographical set pieces, drugs and rock 'n' roll: sounds like our kind of documentary.

According to the description on Kickstarter, the team has shot about 40% of the film, including Sagmeister's three-month pilgrimage to Bali for "an intensive meditation period," as well as fMRI visits and psychological metrics for benchmarks. He's now on phase two, three months of cognitive behavioral therapy, which will be followed by another season of antidepressants and possibly illicit substances as well. "These experiment phases will be heavily documented and will contain extensive medical supervision, leading to some new costs for our team."

As of press time, they've already raised over 90% of the $50,000 they're seeking on Kickstarter and there's still eight days to go, so rest assured Sagmeister will be popping pills in time for the high holidays. While a $10 pledge will get you a digital download come February 2012, it might be worth $40 more to receive a call from Stefan himself, "out-of-the-blue," to cheer you up. (Once you're in the $500+ range, you can take your pick of a joyride or a sausagefest; a half-day branding workshop comes in at $5,000.)

Here's an innovative use of a CNC laser cutter: Spanish supercreative Ishac Bertran precision sliced segments out of vinyl records, essentially cut-and-pasting music samples for analog playback. He's posted the entire procedure on his blog, along with notes on how he first experimented with a hot wire cutter and even a utility knife before settling on the laser:

I made many tests to find the right laser power in order to get the cleanest cut possible. The best setting was to let the laser go through *almost* through the vinyl, and then crack manually the last thin layer. If the laser goes all the way through, it melts too much material and leaves a gap. If the laser doesn't go enough deep, it's pretty much impossible to take the piece out without creating an undesired crack.

Even if the laser is well calibrated, it always cuts creating a cone-shape cut. Using the first option the crack doesn't take out any material or creates burrs on the bottom surface, so that surface is the one I used for playing the record afterwards. The top one always have a gap where the stylus would go in.

Check out the results:

Design for America (DfA) has been busy these last few months, whether leading workshops at universities across the nation and at ABWBD, winning design awards, being featured on the cover of Fast Company magazine, and, of course, a articles feature right here on Core77. In short, Design for America is launching a design revolution all across America, inspiring young designers to take ownership of social problems in their communities and working to solve them with innovative solutions.

During this past week, all eight of Design for America's flagship studios have gone live. These studios are hosted at: Barnard/Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Northwestern, RISD/Brown, Stanford, UCLA, and UO Eugene. Student leaders from each studio attended a Summer Leadership Studio at DfA Headquarters at Northwestern, which included a surprise visit from Massive Change author (and Core77 Design Award winner) Bruce Mau.

Workshop at the Dartmouth studio launch

Under the title of Waste Not, Want It, the London Bloomberg offices commission different UK designers every year to transform their office waste into design installations. Raw-Edges design studio, Shay Alkalay and Yael Mer, repurposed an avalanche of used computer monitors, each filled with animation hand-drawn by designer and illustratorOscar Narud to create a cascade from a series of museum vitrines. This intriguing installation about "designing life," entitled Unnatural Selection, draws inspiration from the collection at the Natural History Museum in London where it was installed for London Design Festival. Check out our exclusive video to see the installation in action.

Industrial Designer
DEWALT Power Tools
Towson, Maryland

DEWALT is looking for creative and motivated industrial designers with up to four years of professional experience to become a part of the global team that creates innovative products for the world's leading professional power tool brand. The designer's responsibilities will include sketching, 3D modeling, photorealistic rendering, job-site research, and ergonomic evaluation/development. He or she can expect global travel opportunities and the experience of working in a fun-loving, tight knit team of creative people.

» view

The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.

I often place what I consider to be good design into one of two categories: 1) So brilliant and complex that I wonder how they ever conceived of it, and 2) So simple that I wonder why no one had thought of it before. These two tables designed by One & Co. fall into the latter category.

Produced by Council, a furniture company whose somewhat paradoxical solution for promoting modern American design is to assemble "a melting pot of pieces by designers from around the world," the Periodic table (above) and the 47 table (below) both consist of wood coated in silver.

Global warming is as hot a topic as ever these days, but the availability of fresh water—"needed for drinking, industry and sanitation"—is just as pressing a concern. Jovoto, Duke University's Center for Energy Development and the Global Environment (EDGE) and Treehugger, hope to tackle "one of the most overlooked environmental issues of the 21st century—water efficiency in buildings" with H2Overhaul.

Water is often wasted because it is under-priced. But think for a moment about what happens to something when it becomes scarce. Basic human needs will continue to drive demand for water and ultimately drive up the cost for access.

Because water is such a vital resource, all buildings—schools, hospitals, warehouses, apartment complexes—should include water efficiency as a goal. Buildings use 13% of the total water consumed in the United States each day. This challenge will bring together the most innovative ideas to reduce/reuse water among new and existing facilities worldwide. When it comes to reducing water waste at a local level, the scale is so large that if you move the needle in a positive direction, the impact is huge.

The eight-week challenge launches today, October 10, 2011, soliciting the best ideas to "explore how new and existing buildings/facilities can use less water, reuse the water they currently use, and capture water to use on-site." Designers are invited to approach this problem from three distinct angles: landscaping around building sites, innovative wastewater technologies and water use reduction.

The total prize money is a $20,000 endowment award. Learn more here.

Publishing house Simon & Schuster has announced they'll be bumping up the release of the Steve Jobs biography yet again, this time to October 24th. Originally scheduled for release in 2012, the book was then re-slated for release in November 2011 prior to the most recent date change.

The highly-anticipated biography—the first book on Jobs authorized by Jobs himself—promises to provide a rare and candid look inside the Apple founder's world, both through his eyes and others'.

Although Jobs cooperated with this book, he asked for no control over what was written nor even the right to read it before it was published. He put nothing off-limits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. And Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against. His friends, foes, and colleagues provide an unvarnished view of the passions, perfectionism, obsessions, artistry, devilry, and compulsion for control that shaped his approach to business and the innovative products that resulted.

Driven by demons, Jobs could drive those around him to fury and despair. But his personality and products were interrelated, just as Apple's hardware and software tended to be, as if part of an integrated system. His tale is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership and values.

In putting the book together, author Walter Isaacson, the former Managing Editor of Time, reportedly conducted over 40 interviews with Jobs in addition to interviewing over 100 of Jobs' friends, family, colleagues and competitors. The book is already a best-seller via Amazon pre-order and, unsurprisingly, currently at number one on the iTunes books bestseller list.

During Vienna Design Week, kidsroomZOOM inhabited a 200 square meter apartment in the centre of Vienna, featuring furnishings by 25 selected international designers. The show was a snapshot of contemporary design for children—uniting art, product presentation, events and workshops in a fun and hands-on way. The presentation was done in an easily identifiable context of a domestic living space—very far from a white gallery with "please don't touch" signs.

Featured in the pictures above is the Punch'n'Cuddle—"emotional furniture", created for punching and cuddling as the name suggests—and the Kidsonroof cardboard castle.

The modular den structure TukLuk is made of foam triangles with magnetic connections.

The show was very well perceived by kids and kidults. A fun yet stylish ground for playful anarchy, with lots of different furniture and toys to be tested. Following the slogan How old r u?, the participating designers and curators put themselves on the level of the youngest ones, scrutinizing the positioning, importance and approach to furniture and everyday objects for children.

I'll never get tired of seeing tables designed to seamlessly change their length. Here's a quick roundup of five tables that flip open, extend and transform from basic to boastful.

First, the basic, tried-and-true Flip Top Dining Table:

BoConcept's Occa 383028 with the sweet, hideaway center leaves concept that many of these types of tables now boast:

I'll never get tired of seeing tables designed to seamlessly change their length. Here's a quick roundup of five tables that flip open, extend and transform from basic to boastful.

First, the basic, tried-and-true Flip Top Dining Table:

BoConcept's Occa 383028 with the sweet, hideaway center leaves concept that many of these types of tables now boast:

User Experience Designer
Microsoft
Redmond, Washington

The Microsoft Hardware (MSH) team is seeking a senior designer with a broad set of skills. The ideal candidate can deliver high quality visual design, scalable information architectures, and useful, usable, and desirable interaction models. In particular, Microsoft looks to round out our design team with a designer with experience in delivering compelling customer facing printed and digital experiences.

» view

The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.

Pixel Roller project from RCA graduates

This is the postscript of the 6-part series from Ziba's Industrial Design Director, Paul Backett, on rethinking design education. Read the Introduction to the series, Teach Less, Integrate More here

Bringing Industrial Design education in line with the needs of the profession will require raising standards across the globe. The majority of graduating students I've seen are ill-prepared for real world design practice and the responsibility for this lapse falls heavily on teachers and course administrators.

It's not enough to just put good designers in front of a classroom. The best schools create a culture of rigor and excellence that outlives the tenure of any one instructor. An established culture lets students know what's expected of them and pushes them to push each other beyond simply adequate to exceptional. Too many programs are missing that.

Yet here at Ziba, we still manage to find good graduates to hire. There are courses that get it half right and a handful that reliably produce designers that studios fight over. Perhaps the best way to improve design education is not to point out what's wrong but to highlight what's right.

What follows is a list of schools that I really respect. It's by no means exhaustive, but among the portfolios I've reviewed, classrooms I've visited and online work I've seen over the years, these are the courses I'd pick as examples for the global design education community to learn from.

Northumbria University - Newcastle, UK
The fraction of working British designers who studied at Northumbria is incredibly high (though I'm not among them). Apple's Jony Ive is the most famous, but it's a rare UK studio that doesn't have at least one graduate from this institution in the northeast of England.

What sets Northumbria apart is its rigor, in both research and technical execution. Students produce dense, thoughtful multipage documents that explain their target user, context and project goals in depth. These are followed up with beautifully realized designs that leave no detail to chance. Nobody graduates from Northumbria without an impeccable portfolio and flawless final presentation models that immerse the viewer in the product story.

Royal College of Art - London, UK
Some of the most inspiring and creative people I've ever met, graduates of the RCA have a unique capacity for thoughtful viewpoints that can be 180 degrees removed from everyone else in the room.

The RCA is renowned for pushing its students to tear down the design process and build it back from the ground up, so every project is a reinvention. And unlike many ID schools, it expects most students to produce fully working prototypes by course's end. I vividly remember seeing the "Magic Pixel Roller" in action at a student show a few years back and being truly astonished.

Umea Institute of Design - Umea, Sweden
A tiny ID-focused school seven hours north of Stockholm, Umea produces graduates with a great blend of artistry and technical skills, who manage to win at least one IDEA award nearly every year.