FireBoard Labs is looking for an experienced industrial designer to help create our next generation of products. Our flagship product, the FireBoard Cloud Connected Thermometer provides remote wireless temperature monitoring control and has experienced strong sales since its debut in 2016. FireBoard is regarded as a premium and high quality brand and we are looking to couple that reputation with excellent industrial design in our upcoming product lineup. As we continue to innovate new products

For seven decades, generations of anglers have trusted Skeeter for their best fishing memories. Our production process uses advanced manufacturing techniques and materials, many of which were first used in aerospace applications. Skeeter’s X-Treme and EX-Cell composite construction ensure a smooth, dry and safe trip to your favorite fishing hole. Skeeter’s goal, to build boats that are engineered like no other, permeates everything we do—from our design and manufacturing methods to the courtesy we extend each time you walk into a dealership. The Industrial Designer conceptualizes and defines all aspects of form, function, aesthetics, and end user interface, while meeting defined criteria for product features, cost, manufacturability, and project schedules. Creates and maintains engineering and assembly drawings.

In late October, in celebration of making it 10 years in the business, UK-based service design agency Snook are bringing together voices from across a breadth of sectors and disciplines to host 'DOTIfest'—a day-long 'Festival of New Design Ideas' (cynics might call it a conference, but it does look a lot less stuffy) in east-central London.

The event comes off the back of their successful bi-monthly 'Design on the Inside' (or DOTI) event series, in which the organisers sought to create a safe space to share and discuss the reality of how design works in organisations, behind the 'hero' success stories that make the design blogs.

Keynotes, performances, panel discussions, workshops and something called 'fireside chats' will explore everything from the future of local government, through design activism to people-centred business—all under the umbrella of the festivals unapologetically audacious theme question: 'How do we design a world where everyone can thrive?'

The 'fest' takes place on 31 October from 09:00 – 17:30 at The Oval Space in London's Bethnal Green. Tickets are still available and ranging from very reasonable £125 – £200 (including food), with discounts for student and charity workers, as well as 10% of tickets set aside to be allocated free of charge for those who would otherwise feel unable to attend.

My favorite images of Isamu Noguchi are the photographs where he's smiling. I have this conception of him as a constant tinkerer – rocks, tools, rods, brushes – and curious, insatiably childlike through adolescence, adulthood, and old age. I envision his collaborative partnerships in architecture, set and landscape design as larger-scale versions of his tinkering; I envision them as playmate-ships, as geniuses in a room and over a table combatting design problems foe-by-foe, manifesting artistic solutions that both speak and respond to those who experience them, and that exude the energy of play.

But Noguchi cannot be divorced from hardship, either – another aspect that, maybe present in the innate, forlorn nature of an adult's smile, is also present in his work. As a Japanese-American whose lifetime spanned both World Wars, he bore and exercised responsibility to a developing cultural heritage of displacement and oppression in the U.S.

Noguchi mastered the channeling of these hardships through the prism of playful, experimental construction. This is what he left us with: a respect of the manipulated natural form through materials-based sleights of hand, spatial-philosophical prompts for curiosity, an oeuvre that gestures us to wonder.

Via Noguchi.org

Via DWR.com

Isamu Noguchi was born in 1904 in Los Angeles, California, to Léonie Gilmour, an American educator and journalist, and poet Yone Noguchi, who had left his relationship with Gilmour to return to Japan. Gilmour and Noguchi joined Yone in Tokyo a few years later, though the relationship to him did not last very long. Gilmour was her son's primary parent through his childhood, which was spent moving around Japan, and was perpetually facilitating his nascent creative inclinations.

At 13, Noguchi returned to the United States for boarding school, after which he held a brief apprenticeship with artist Gutzon Borglum (most famous for sculpting Mount Rushmore), who was in fact discouraging of Noguchi's idea of becoming a professional artist.

Via Noguchi.org

Landing in New York City from there, it's as a young adult that Noguchi began a formal education in the arts, taking classes at the Leonardo da Vinci Art School. Concomitant with his new studies, and after a stint pursuing medicine at Columbia University, he established his own studio practice just south of Union Square. He began gaining commissions and further immersing himself in sculpture, mask-making, and the arts, and in 1927 secured a Guggenheim Fellowship that funded his travels to Paris. There, he was introduced to sculpture artist Constantin Brâncu?i, whose work he'd found inspiring after once seeing it exhibited. He landed a job as an assistant in Brâncu?i's studio, which would be an incredibly formative experience for Noguchi. Continuing his education both formally and through proximity to Brâncu?i's practice, Noguchi spent his time in Paris socializing with other American artists of the interwar zeitgeist, the likes of Alexander Calder and Morris Kantor. He began working out of his own studio in the city, experimenting with more ethereal abstractions in wood, metal, and stone, and soon also moved into drawing.

After two years in Paris, Noguchi returned to New York, where his portrait sculptures became popular among the cultural cognoscenti; after an initial social encounter, he was famously inspired to create one of these busts for visionary polymath Buckminster Fuller in an apropos futuristic, chrome-plated bronze. Through the end of the 1920s, the pace of Noguchi's career as an artist accelerated: he opened two solo shows in New York City, and continued to lean into his lifelong penchant for travel, visiting and studying ink brush painting and ceramics in China and Japan, respectively.

Left: Sculpture portrait of Buckminster Fuller (1929), photograph by F. S. Lincol Right: Ruth Parks (1929), via Noguchi.org

The next decade was a snapshot of ongoing momentum for Noguchi's career and practice. In 1931, The Whitney Museum of American Art acquired one of his portrait sculptures, marking his first acquisition by a major institution (Ruth Parks, 1929). While continuing to sculpt, he also witnessed an expanded portfolio of theater commissions and larger-scale projects. In 1934, he developed a model for Play Mountain, pitching the playground design to the infamous Robert Moses, at the time the New York City Parks Commissioner. Crotchety Moses rejected the proposal, which went unrealized, but which signposted the first of other playscape designs to come.

Set design for Martha Graham's Frontier (1935) via Noguchi.org

Set for Graham's Herodiade (1944) via Noguchi.org

During this period Noguchi began working with dancer-choreographer Martha Graham, for whom he designed his first theater set and with whom he became a long-running collaborator. He traveled to Mexico, too, expanding his prominent Rolodex of artist companions to include Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Upon returning to the States, Noguchi excitedly had the opportunity to shift into the realm of mass consumer product design, producing a baby monitor for Zenith Plastics company.

"Radio Nurse" Baby Monitor by Isamu Noguchi (1937), held in the collections of The Victoria and Albert Museum, London

With the onset of World War II, Noguchi began actively reckoning with the mistreatment of Japanese and Japanese-American peoples on U.S. soil. In 1942, he voluntarily admitted himself into a War Relocation Center, where Japanese internees were being detained (and which existed on stolen tribal property) in Arizona. There, he committed himself to transforming the wartime Japanese-American psyche and experience through art and urban design, absorbing an activist spirit that would engage his artistic practice into the future. He found it difficult, however, to forge relationship with the detainees, and was unable to implement any of his improvement projects, whose designs included a baseball field and cemetery; he returned to New York after six months ("The Life of Isamu Noguchi," Masayo Duus, 2004).

Upon re-establishing a studio in Manhattan, Noguchi continued product designing, landing a partnership with Herman Miller, which began producing a highly successful Noguchi coffee table that is still in production today. Throughout the 1940s, he also worked on more large-scale and commercial commissions – for the likes of the Rockefeller Center and Detroit's American Stove Company Building – as well as more high-profile theater projects on set and costume design for Graham and other prolific theater artists.

Portrait of the Piedmont Park Playscape in Atlanta, Georgia (1976). Via HermanMiller.com

In 1949, Noguchi secured his second fellowship allowing him to travel extensively, this time landing him in Japan. There, he met and began collaborating with fellow designer Isamu Kenmochi. Over the next decade, inspired by his revived connection to Japan and its makers, Noguchi continued producing commercial commissions, theater, fine arts and ceramics, lighting (developing his first Akari lanterns during this time), and architectural projects with architects Kenzo Tange (bridge railings for Peace Park, Hiroshima, and other unrealized projects) and Louis Kahn (an unrealized Riverside Park Playground, NYC). His acclaim grew, as well, particularly in the form of more gallery shows and another acquisition, this time by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Kourus, 1944-45).

Kourus, 1944-45. Via metmuseum.org

Toward the end of the 1950s, Noguchi began a collaboration with Austrian architect and industrial designer Marcel Breuer on a commission for the gardens of UNESCO's headquarters in Paris. He frequented Japan for the project, sourcing stones for the garden, which was ultimately completed in 1959. Soon after, Noguchi moved to and set up shop in Long Island City, Queens, which at the time was rich with vendors, metalworkers, and stone suppliers whose resources were critical for Noguchi's practice.

Throughout the next two decades, Noguchi's first major retrospective opened at The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (1968); he returned to Tokyo to complete a minimal, punctuative fountain design at the Japanese Supreme Court (1974); realized his first and only playground, a colorful, brutalist construction at a public park in Atlanta, Georgia (1978); and, among other large-scale commissions throughout the 1970s, designed and installed a permanent sculpture at Storm King Art Center, New York, which responds to the outdoorscape's topographical character (Momo Taro, 1978).

Noguchi's iconic Red Cube in downtown Manhattan, NYC (1968)

Noguchi inside a part of his Momo Taro sculpture at Storm King (Helaine Messer, 1985)

In 1980, Noguchi began planning his eponymous Garden Museum, which eventually opened to the public in 1985 adjacent to his studio in Queens. Soon after, in 1986, Noguchi represented the United States at the Venice Biennale, received the Kyoto Prize for lifetime achievements in the arts, and, the next year, was presented with the National Medal of Arts from Ronald Reagan. In December of 1988, two days shy of the new year, Isamu Noguchi passed away at the age of 84.

One of the gallery spaces at The Noguchi Museum, via NYC Go

The legacy of the artist exists in his impactful, large scale public works, in his iconically identifiable biomorphic sculpture, in his landscape architecture and the permanent vestiges of his many design collaborations; it exists in The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, dedicated to preserving and championing Noguchi's ethos and artistic practice as creative tissues connecting the West and East, allowing us to share in his achievements of contemplative pursuit.

Evocative of the expanse of his oeuvre, The Noguchi Museum holds onto the glimpses of child-mindedness that Noguchi imbued into his work throughout his lifetime. In Search of Contoured Playground is currently on display, a direct manifestation of this proclivity. The focal point work, an unrealized model for Contoured Playground (1941), evolved from Noguchi's earlier proposal to Robert Moses. In part halted by the onset of WWII, the model represents one of the most important aspects of Noguchi's practice: design does most justice to its environments when it negotiates with them, when it responds to its topography, geometries, and natural elements.

We can envision a smiling Noguchi, in pursuit of closer and closer relationship to the spaces he was creating from and for, guiding us through the curves of this theoretical microcosm. In Search of Contoured Playground is on view through February 2, 2020.

Via Noguchi.org

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.

Paola Antonelli has always thought ahead of the curve when it comes to movements in design, as demonstrated by her long line of achievements. Since joining the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1994 as Senior Curator of Architecture & Design, Antonelli has organized a string of unforgettable—and at times controversial—exhibitions that have served as both awe-inspiring design surveys and calls to action. Examples include exhibitions such as Design and the Elastic Mind, which helped expose design as synonymous with science and technology on a mainstream level in 2008, and Design and Violence, a 2015 show that presciently demonstrated the darker side of design and the power it can wield in instigating acts of violence and war.

Her latest exhibition in partnership with the Triennale di Milano, Broken Nature, comes at another urgent moment where the topic of climate change is all-consuming. The exhibit weaves both speculative projects and products on the market that signify how designers can more thoughtfully and actively tackle climate change now and in the future. As written in the Broken Nature press release:

"It is not enough anymore for designers to be politically and chemically correct. "Organic," "green," "environmental," and "sustainable" are buzzwords that have been applied in earnest to design—including food and fashion—over the last two decades, as have the terms "ethical" and "aware." Yet, despite these noble intentions toward humans, animals, plants, and places, we are still—as individuals and communities—tracking a course of destruction through overconsumption and disregard for countless forms of life, including our own. Designers can change flashy trends into more meaningful strategies imbued with agency by encouraging new behaviors using objects."

We spoke recently with Antonelli to learn more about how the idea for Broken Nature began, and the role she sees designers playing in future.

How did the idea for the Broken Nature exhibition originally come about?

Like most contemporary design exhibitions, ideas really come from life, from everything that's going on around us. So in that particular case, the first idea for Broken Nature happened in 2013 . At that time it was an exhibition I proposed to MoMA, and somehow it didn't feel like a show yet. Maybe because the urgency was not there. So I just waited and waited and then in 2017, I was contacted by the Triennale and that's when I proposed it to them. I said, if I [opt to do it] at the Triennale this is what I would like to work on. And they of course accepted because at that point, not only was it urgent but also we're talking about a dedicated architecture and design exhibition.

So really, that's how it happened. It just stems from life because that's what design is.

I'm interested in knowing more about how you conduct research for your exhibitions, maybe using Broken Nature as an example.

The process might seem a little chaotic, but there's always a lot of method to the madness; it really is about gathering, gathering, gathering. I use—I don't know how many, certainly too many—pin boarding instruments. I send myself emails, I bookmark, I use Pinboard, I start Google docs. I just start with a kind of flurry of research and activity and I also include colleagues.

I don't remember early on who helped me with the research for the initial proposal, but for Broken Nature I had three wonderful colleagues work with me: Ala Tannir, Laura Naeran and Erica Petrillo. So you start gathering all these different ideas and you already have a sense of how you want to organize the exhibition, but then the research is like a feedback loop, right? So the research informed the criteria. So in the end you get to a pretty good selection, and then the ultimate selections and, finally, the idea of how you're going to install the exhibition.

It's almost like sculpting at the beginning. It's gathering and sculpting, then refining. So I don't think it's a very different process from what you might use to write an essay—I always have a feeling that many of these processes are very similar.

The entrance of Broken Nature includes an installation designed by Accurat (photo: Triennale Milano)

I read a bit about your thought process behind how you designed the exhibition. I know there was a lot of focus on the idea of the civilian, the citizen being engaged and so I was curious how that affected how you designed the symposiums and the exhibition, but also your take on what the role of the citizen is in enacting change in sustainability?

The role of the citizen is paramount. If we believe that governments represents citizens, therefore citizens are the ones who set the policies and that set direction. I know that it's a little bit of a dreamer's utopian position, this day and age with so many authoritarian regimes that have almost nothing to do with citizens per se. But I do believe that citizens can do a lot with pressure and also to jumpstart really long lasting and deep revolutions.

For this reason, even though I believe in legislation, I believe in organizations; still I want this exhibition to be about citizens. And one of the biggest reasons for happiness is the kids who were doing Friday for the Future—like what they are going to do here in the US on Friday [September 20]—there were several Fridays for the Future in Europe, and they would gather at the Triennale [in Milan]. That makes me super happy because that shows that the exhibition had become part of the fabric of civic discourse, which is what really my ambition was.

So I believe also that children can convince parents to change behavior. I believe that employees are the ones that force corporations to enact environmentally responsible practices. So I just wanted to focus on that. I don't do exhibitions for organizations, that's not the means of communication. So I do them for visitors and for citizens.

Do you think that provocation should be a crucial feature of many design innovations today?

Not necessarily. As neutral you need to do the right thing for the right purposes and at the right time, right? Provocations for the sake of provocation sometimes gets really a little nauseating, right? And instead, if you use them at the right time and in the right dosage, it can be very powerful.

Dunne & Raby's "Foragers" speculative project at Broken Nature (photo: Core77)

So there are some speculative designers, critical designers that I think are really masters at this. For instance, of course Dunne and Raby, of course Revital Cohen and Tuur Van Balen. But they were the first and second generation. I feel that so much critical design lately has become relying too much in provocation and kind of abusing it.

So it really depends, as anything, it's how you use it. Provocation is a tool.

So a big conversation in design today I think is about the cross collaboration that happens [across industries] and the progress in science, technology and design this creates. So I'm curious, given the fact that there are so many different voices involved in the design process now, what do you see specifically as a designers role in the future and especially in relation to environmental factors?

Right. There are many different types of designers, you know very well. So there are designers that labor all by themselves in their atelier and produce beautiful objects of craftsmanship. Then there are the designers that instead are in charge of a team that actually are the ones that become the element of synthesis for the team.

In 2008, I did an exhibition that was called Design and the Elastic Mind where I came up with this idea that I use a lot: that designers are enzymes, they are the ones that make innovation, whether it's scientific or technological into life. So that's how I always think about it, whether they're working on a product or on an interface or on an exhibition design, designers are the ones who make sure that there's a synthesis happening and the synthesis that can be communicated to other human beings.

So if they are exhibition designers they make sure that the idea of a curator is tangible and is understandable by other people. If they are product designers, they in the simplest of cases become an interface between the engineering department and the public.

So it really depends, but I believe the designers are naturally extroverted professionals. Not that they are individually extroverted, maybe not, they might be shy or mostly introverts. But their role is to become catalysts, enzymes and to put the pieces together, they're very good at that. Their role in the future continues to be that and I hope that this exquisite characteristic they have will be used and exploited in areas that are not necessarily the usual one. I hope that they will be included in political discussions, I hope that they will be almost like philosophers who are society-wise people that are consulted whenever there's a big decision to make.

And when I talk about this, I don't talk about design thinking, I'm talking about designers who do design and not kind of steps of the design thinking process.

So my last question is, since you joined MoMA in 1994, what would you say has changed the most about the collective design ethos for the better and what behaviors or mindsets in designers do you believe most need to change?

Well what changed a lot since then is that we expanded the idea of what design is amongst ourselves and in the outside world. So we were already collecting interfaces. People might not know that Cara McCarty who's now at the Cooper Hewitt was here at MoMA before and in the early 90s or late 80s, she did a great exposition about diagrams of microchips. So that was already like a sense of interfaces, but we acquired much more design that was really made possible by the digital revolution, which was not there before. It's only in the mid 90s that the internet started really having an impact on the way we lived, so also on design.

So MoMA started acquiring symbols [for their design collection], we started acquiring typefaces, which we were not acquiring before, bio design, critical design.

We expanded beyond the classical categories, the traditional categories of designing of furniture or posters. We made it much more fluid and more embedded in the world. At the same time, we also continued some categories that were done at the very beginning of the collection, like in the early 30s.

So the idea of "humble masterpieces". Humble masterpieces is a term that I coined in 2004, but in a way that's something that MoMA has been doing since the beginning, to collect these objects that are such masterpieces that they become parts of our lives and we hardly notice them. Or, another set of objects that we keep on collecting is Machine Art and that was the 1934 exhibition. It's beautiful to see how the openness of the collection is a tradition that we continue when we open new areas of collecting.

What I think most needs to change is design education. I think that right now one of the biggest issues is that design education is too expensive, therefore when designers come out of school, they feel the need to find a job that pays the rent and that pays back the debt. And by doing so they have no time to work on the ideals that they have developed naturally because of the area of study that they chose. They don't have time to reflect on whether we have to go beyond the Apple era. They try to get a job either at Apple or Google or anywhere that's going to pay them a salary, right?

Instead, they might benefit from just one or two years trying to think of what design is in the world today, right? So that to me is the thing that needs to change. The designers themselves I think are doing good, they are receptive and I think it's a very good moment for design, but I don't think that conditions exist for designers to be the best that they can be.

Only two weeks left before the big day! Hear Paola Antonelli and other design industry leaders speak at this years Core77 Conference, "The Third Wave", Friday October 4! Tickets are available now.

Sebastian Brajkovic has made a practice out of distorting classical French furniture. The results are often surreal, forms that bear the mark of time passing and seem to be unraveling almost before our eyes. A few years after his celebrated Lathe series, the Eindhoven grad recently debuted new work at David Gill Gallery as part of an exhibition titled The Occidental Artisan.

The show is comprised mainly of benches and chairs, a focus that allowed Brajkovic to explore the intertwining of seat and sitter, which he thinks of as "two bodies interacting."

"I see the chair as a human shape that holds us," he explained in a press statement. "I look at a bench and ask, how does it move, where does it turn or twist at the waist?"

His interest in anthropomorphism combines with mathematical thinking to create pieces such as the Mobius Strip-like Lemniscate chair, pictured above. "I like taking mathematical thoughts and doing something elegant with them," he says.

There's also a greater personal element with this show, which explores how the designer's eastern and western cultures (his mother is Dutch-Indonesian and his father is Croatian-Italian) meld through his work. For example, the elaborate embroideries on some of the pieces were inspired by Brajkovic's studies with a master calligrapher.

In terms of process, this work departs a bit from the designer's use of digital technologies in the past. He creates a faintly oxidized patina on the bronze structures and upholsters the pieces himself, then they're stuffed with horsehair and sent to couturiers who complete the embroidery.

The show also includes three chandeliers made by Brajkovic in Murano and exemplifying his first foray into glass and a collection of works on paper that offer more insight into his creative practice.

The Occidental Artisan will be on view at David Gill Gallery through October 17, 2019.

Tactile is a high-touch design studio where the creative, technical, and strategic come together. We design meaningful physical and digital experiences for everyday moments and the one of a kind. We are made up of industrial designers, interaction designers, graphic designers, and engineers who create sought-after products and experiences through research and strategy. We’re looking for a senior-level Industrial Designer to join us in our new Boston office. You will have the opportunity to collaborate with cross-disciplinary teams from idea to conception with design at its core. We work on a wide spectrum of exciting and challenging projects that allow our designers to gain new experiences, learn and advance their craft.

This the first product of Boaz ISI Ltd. - a modular, durable, low-cost, professional electric guitar. It was designed and developed for many years by Master-Luthier Boaz Elkayam and senior industrial designer Gilad Ben Tzur. After endless research and experimentation and several prototypes, this guitar is finally the center of a kickstarter campaign running until Sep. 28.

In one guitar the player gets several different pickup modules that may be exchanged in seconds. One may also switch the guitar body in seconds, and with minimal effort adjust the action/intonation/string position or replace the whole bridge. One may also change the tuning machine heads, and will be able to add several more accessories that are soon to be announced. This design is actually a platform that may create a whole product eco-system, producing different parts and accessories that may change the way the guitar looks, feels, and functions.

Boaz Elkayam

Master Luthier Boaz Elkayam - the Boaz ONE Lead Creator

Adjustable Bridge

Boaz ONE Adjustable Bridge

Pre-tuned Bridge

Boaz ONE Pre-tuned Bridge; Bridge Replacement

Pickups

Boaz ONE Three Pickup Cassettes. The pickups are specially designed by Kent Armstrong

Boaz ONE Guitar

The Boaz ONE Guitar with Full Body

Retractable Stand

The Boaz ONE Guitar with Retractable Stand Body

Bodies Variety

Boaz ONE Several Possible Bodies

On Stage

Boaz ONE on stage

Pickup Switching

Inserting a Pickup Cassette to Boaz ONE

Kent Armstrong Humbucker

Boaz One - Two Kent Armstrong specially designed Boaz Hot Humbucker pickups

Designing safer streets and practicing more mindful driving are the most important factors in preventing cycling accidents, but innovations in helmet design—especially helmets that people actually want to wear—are still a big deal. When the marshmallowy, inflatable Hövding helmet came out on the European market in 2016, many would have called it implausible. The company claimed the head-airbag was up to eight times safer than conventional helmets, but with a steep $600 price tag, there was reason to be skeptical.

Three years and a whole lot of testing later, Hövding has just released its third-generation helmet, Hövding 3. The idea behind it is that a cyclist wears it around their neck unobtrusively like a collar. Internal sensors respond to motions that suggest an impending accident and the airbag inflates around the head and secures the neck.

The new generation will set you back $310 and is designed to be smarter and easier to use. It features adjustable sizing, a longer battery life that lasts up to 15 hours, and a new app that can call your emergency contact as soon as an accident takes place. The app serves another important function, in that it uses your phone's GPS to gather data about where the accident took place. Collectively, this GPS data may pave the way for safer streets in the future by providing a clear map of accident-prone areas and key insights into how cycling infrastructure should be developed.

Safety tests were carried out at Stanford University. Although this video is from 2016 and may be a bit outdated, it'll give you a sense of their process.

"For the development of Hövding 3, we collected more data than ever on cycle movements and accidents for the algorithm," the company said in a press statement. "This included staging more than 3,000 accidents with stuntmen and collecting data on over 2,000 hours of standard cycling. When Hövding has been activated, it registers movements 200 times a second. In an accident, the airbag is inflated in 0.1 seconds to enclose the head and hold the cyclist's neck in place."

In the years since it launched, Hövding has been used by around 185,000 cyclists and over 4,000 have reported being successfully protected in an accident by the airbag.

"Cycling may be the answer to many of the challenges relating to the environment, congestion in cities, and health, and we want to take cyclist protection to the next level. We know that safety means more than just reactive protection. We need to be proactive to improve accident statistics," Hövding CEO Fredrik Carling said.

There are some clear drawbacks to factor in, like the fact that it can only deploy once and then you'd have to buy a new one. But the research looks promising and it raises important questions about the links between wearability and safety. What do you all think? Yea or nay?

Paper, plastic bottles, and cans have fairly straightforward recycling processes. But materials designed to be durable, like clay, don't have such a clear road to reinvention. A small ceramics studio in Liverpool's Granby neighborhood is setting fire to that notion.

The Turner award-winning team at Granby Workshop has developed what they believe to be the first 100 percent recycled line of ceramic plateware, made with discarded refractory bricks, laboratory test tubes, tiles, wastewater, and precise chemical analyses to check the recipe. They're raising money for the production of Granbyware on Kickstarter now.

The Granbyware line is made from sludge, silt, chipped tile, and other materials that would typically go to waste.

Neighborhood activism turns heads

Granby, a small neighborhood in central Liverpool, has been the site of infamous decline and remarkable bounce-back. After a housing-market crash turned the area into a wasteland, frustrated residents created a community land trust and demanded new development approaches: "We [have] stopped waiting for top-down regeneration and started doing it for ourselves and by ourselves," their proposal explained. They caught the attention of a social investor who loaned the group half a million pounds; additional support soon followed.

This was how they came to hire the architecture firm Assemble to remodel 10 houses and create a winter garden as a revitalization effort. The inspiring story and exceptional work earned the firm the Turner Prize in 2015, won spots in the V&A museum and the Crafts Council's permanent collections, and sparked the creation of a permanent studio to churn out ceramics for new local projects and a burgeoning global fan base.

Setting the table for Granby

Despite the international attention, Granby, as a neighborhood, and Granby Workshop, as a business, are frequently misunderstood, says Sumuyya Khader, one of the workshop's original local freelancers, who now runs operations full-time.

She notices outsiders tend to see the story with a tinge of a savior complex. "The media has one view on how the city is"—stuck in decline, struggling—"but to us, Granby is thriving." Assemble didn't just swoop in to fix it up; they wouldn't be there at all if not for the local organizers who hired them. "Granby has always been community-based. It's always been a mixture of people, and people doing things for themselves."

Sumuyya Khader in the workshop

Accordingly, as the team has scaled production and become a truly functional international business, the team has made an effort to connect with their community, offering plate-making workshops and locals-only discounts on their luxury ceramics.

The Granby locals on the workshop's staff (and, Khader is quick to point out, Assemble's Lewis Jones, who moved there for the job) understand their neighbors' perspectives—and budgets. They offer seconds—firings with some minor imperfections—at the nearby market, selling bowls for half the price or big boxes of tiles for less than they'd ever offer online. "It's just recognizing that what we're doing is super unique and the price point doesn't really match the area, or Liverpool in general, to be honest. We always want to ask, 'When are we doing things for people in this area? How are we going to manage it? What does it mean?'"

Reusing the salt of the Earth

Granby's self-awareness extends beyond local budgeting considerations. As the climate crisis escalates, Khader and the team are thinking about the workshop's role in preserving the environment and setting new standards in their craft.

"We've always been incredibly conscious of how sustainable we are, and we work in an industry which has slowly been on the decline, especially in the UK," Khader says. "We know for a fact that we can't compete with the Ikeas, which means that no matter what we make, it has to be sustainable, it has to stand the test of time."

Their newest line, Granbyware, thinks even bigger, turning to exclusively recycled materials, from broken tiles to commercial ceramic runoff sludge. Carefully monitoring the chemical balance of the end result, they're able to make the mixture into durable, beautiful plateware that's more affordable than previous offerings.

Granbyware plates and bowls in action.

"We're excited because, looking around, we've not yet found anyone who has a 100 percent waste material tableware range," Khader says. "For us, the challenge is always pushing the limits of what a process is and experimenting with materials and putting a bit of a twist on [it] to say, 'You can look at things in a different way.'

"Coming from waste streams doesn't have to mean it's ugly or nonfunctional," she adds. "You might not know the difference from first glance, but a lot of work has gone into the testing of the recipe itself."

Some of the materials that go into making Granbyware.

A lot of work is going into sharing the story of this rare recipe, too. "It's important that people know that it's made from waste material and it's more ecological and sustainable," Khader says. "Eventually, everything is going to have to move that way. We're going to have to use less raw materials. It's happening. So why not be on the cusp of that happening and prove that it can happen from a small-scale manufacturer in Liverpool?"

Granbyware is live on Kickstarter through October 16, 2019.

Civic, a new effort being incubated at TED, aims to help build a healthy information commons where people can reliably find factual information and participate in democratic discourse. We’ll design, prototype, and develop a range of experimental technologies, working with TED communities, media organizations, academic researchers, and users around the globe. The Lead Interaction and Community Designer will play a foundational role getting Civic off the ground, performing a hybrid function. With half their time, they will lead interaction design, working to define user journeys and produce high-quality visual specifications and production assets. With the other half of their time they will lead community design, using design thinking to define the norms and rhythms of global crowdsourcing participants by engaging with participants, organizing small events, designing swag, and beyond. Over time this role is likely to evolve into a more traditional Interaction Design focus.

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:

Chef and avid outdoorsman Adam Glick partnered with Messermeister to develop a full range of portable, professional-grade cooking tools. The collection has everything you'd need to whip up a meal on your next adventure, including the only full-size, folding chef's knife currently on the market, a fillet knife, a peeler, a multi-functional eating utensil, and a compact cutting board. Everything is housed in a handy carrying case and backers get to choose between maple wood or rustic burlap for the handles.

If you want to pare down your kitchen tools, this smart cutting board comes with a built-in scale, timer, a knife sharpener, and a built-in disinfecting UVC light that kills most germs within one minute.

These easy-to-use Trill sensors provide a simple way to incorporate touch interfaces into your next project.

Cute Little Fuckers is one of the first sex toys to get Kickstarter's stamp of approval in a long time, and that's largely because of their social impact mission. Designed to be gender inclusive and encourage a "light-hearted, affirmative" approach to sex, each toy is made of medical-grade silicone and features five vibration speeds. "This is activist work in an adorable package," the campaign says.

Korin's latest anti-theft bags are made out of even more resistant fabrics, include a charging system, and TSA locks, among other features.

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Henry Ford popularized automobiles with a breakthrough in performance and price, but this wasn't a sustainable advantage. Styling and design were rapidly established as essential weapons in the ensuing battle for auto sales. Every decade since his industry has written another chapter in the history book of societal trends and fashion, as well as technology.

Bicycle development has been very different. The bicycle has retained its essential form since the safety bicycle displaced the penny-farthing well over a century ago. The design language hasn't changed and has become ubiquitous. Certainly this suggests an enduring quality, but I suspect it also reveals a pecking order. The bicycle is always the bridesmaid and never the bride.

The Koru Bicycle project is my response to this reflection on vehicle history. I'm fascinated with cars and automotive design, but every day I prefer to ride a bicycle rather than drive a car. I wanted to explore the arena of bicycle design, but adopting a pattern of thinking that's more usually associated with automotive design. Ultimately I wanted to explore if there was a common ground between my interests in both of them.

Terrazign is a product design consultancy with expertise in textile integration. What we do is hard to describe because it varies everyday, and with every client. Our studio is our sketchbook, and we have a shop full of toys that you will learn to use. Our specialty is anything and everything that touches textile-based product design. But we like not to limit ourselves. If you’re curious and driven (to the point of perfection) we’ll teach you everything we know about textiles and the methods we use for patterning and shaping fabric.

This totally reminds me of when it's the night before the crit, and you accidentally run a circular saw across the front of your project, and you have to run with it to make it look like it's part of the design.

"This fixture puts light exactly where you need it. As long as you're hanging it over a table and examining EKG diagrams, line graphs, drawings of mountain ranges, you name it."

"Part of the fun is trying to figure out which way everything opens."

This looks like something you design because a competitor keeps knocking your work off, and you want to see how far they're willing to go.

This looks like it was fabricated by someone who could not read an orthographic drawing.

"This charming and useful table seats four. Each end user gets a small corner off of which they can eat a single cracker."

At the risk of going too Inside Baseball: You guys remember back in the day when we had to use Silicon Graphics workstations? This was probably part of a coffee table at SGI headquarters before they shut down.

"I wanted the functionality of a wall sconce, but with the added intrusion of legs and a power cable."

"This is version 1.0, and yes, there have been some accidents; a couple of broken toes and the untimely death of a pet. But version 2.0 will come with chocks."

"I designed this sink for the next John Wick movie, where Keanu Reeves will use it to kill several enemies in a gory bathroom fight scene."

Yukai Engineering is a Japanese company that makes a range of "communication robots", machines designed to connect individuals to others, or to their own emotions. Qoobo is a headless, cat-like robotic pillow that responds to simple touches, specifically created to soothe and comfort the owner. The rechargeable pet reacts only to touch, and provides only the simple feedback of wagging its tail. Kind of like a Tamagotchi, but brought into physical form.

In their research they studied the stress levels of 38 subjects, and determined that the subjects exhibited reduced stress "when you have Qoobo" compared to "when you don't have Qoobo." I can imagine a daily commute while being in a state of "having Qoobo" could help reduce road rage incidents, but sadly Qoobo is not recommended for use in cars.

Their product line includes Coconatch, a social robot, and Bocco, a communications robot, and the brilliant Necomimi, a headband with cat ears on it that move through brain waves. And if you want to work on building your own robotic environment they have a variety of development kits available also.

Swedish designer Love Hultén is back with another retro-modern take, this time paying tribute to none other than design pioneer Dieter Rams and his "Less-is-more" approach.

Above: SK-4 Record player, Dieter Rams, Braun, 1956. Below: ?T3 Pocket radio, Dieter Rams, Braun, 1958

Rams joined Braun in 1955 and served as chief design officer from 1961 to 1995. In addition to developing many memorable consumer products, he also wrote his "Ten principles for good design" during that time. "Good design is as little as possible," he wrote. "Less, but better, because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with non-essentials. Back to purity, back to simplicity."

Hultén's revisited his own R-Kaid-R gaming console, paring back the design based on Rams' principles and adding little touches of Rams' SK-4 record player and T3 pocket radio. The result is a perfectly retro gaming console that nods to the past but is modern in its capabilities. Users can store over 10,000 emulated games and the portable unit provides over 10 hours of gaming per charge.

Check out the R-Kaid-R SK-4 in action:

What we want: Creativity (this is product development) Brainstorming/Conceptualizing (think outside the box) Specification Documentation (it has to be done) Sketching/Rendering (white boards used frequently) Researching (Google isn’t the only resource) Proof of Concept/Prototyping (doesn’t have to be pretty) Packaging (guru) Analyzing - updating current product or adding to, you must know your numbers What you need: Bachelor’s Degree in Design (but of course) Ability to multitask (able to wear many hats and change them frequently) Mad Adobe CS skills (will make your life easier) 0 - 5 years of related experience Able to hold their own in a diverse group of people (enough said) Enjoy using SolidWorks (it’s a way of life) Able to convey ideas quickly (see white boards above) Understanding of time management (yes we do want it yesterday) A passion for Fitness and Martial Arts would be a plus! (it is who we are)

The days of easily disrupting markets with iterations of existing technology are waning. Creating value through planned obsolescence and optimized supply chains is no longer interesting or acceptable to a marketplace with high expectations of performance, functionality and quality. Moving beyond our current commercial and financial understanding of ‘innovation’ will require transformative ideas and approaching challenges with an experimental mind frame, compelling insights and a focus on the human element. What future do you want, and how can you prepare for the next wave to hit the world of design? What practices need to be lifted up, and which ones should be left in the dust?

We live in precarious times and scarcity of food is, at this point, an undeniable projection. While seeing a slow decline in your favorite produce may be hard to imagine, it's also important to envision how a life without them might be designed. Designer Meydan Levy of Bazalel Academy of Art and Design's conceptual project "Neo Fruit", the 2019 Core77 Design Awards winning student project in the Speculative Design category, focuses on one of the most anciently depicted foods that has served as a symbol of abundance throughout history— fruit.

Neo Fruits were designed by Levy to be produced with 4D printers using cellulose, an organic material that can easily be structurally manipulated. The dry structure, or "the peel", is enriched with phytochemicals. The internal makeup of the fruit is filled with micro-tubes, which mineral and vitamin-enriched liquids are then injected into to simulate the real material insides of fruit.

This liquid injection creates a dynamic life-like object that both indicates shelf life and averts the previously freaky, dystopian supplemental foods into a more traditional, consumable package. The romanticism around fruit often indicated by timing— eating when at its peak ripeness— is kept intact.

"Fruit provoke emotions and desires, have a perfect packaging…[and use color] to indicate which minerals they contain," notes Levy. Neo fruit utilizes the experience of consuming through interactive packaging that still maintains the main themes of the fruit itself, allowing users to reap the benefits of nutrition supplements enjoyably. The color given to the inside nutritional supplements is designed to recall fruit in its original form, and remind the user both familiar indications of nutritional value and ripeness.

Levy's idea was bred from the fact that while the world population is growing, the rising demand for food and consequences of modern agricultural and industrial processes means we've arrived at a time where a paradigm shift is urgent. Neo Fruits is a collection of artificially designed fruits that intend to fill the gap our history to food has created both sensuously and economically.

The experiential act of eating the fruit bridges nature, human, and the symbolism we've been drawn to throughout history. "The idea is not to critique," says Meydan, "but to present an aspiration, a vision, derived of curiosity and thought."

Check out Neo Fruits project in full on our Core77 Design Awards site of 2019 honorees