William Boujon and Julien Benayoun are the principals of Bold, the Paris-based design studio behind the F. Light. Intended as a triple-duty object, the F. Light is a wall light, a task light or even a wireless flashlight, depending on what it's mounted (or not mounted) to.

Capitalism says that competition will yield the best results for consumers. I like that concept and can get behind it, even at the expense of my own country, the U.S., since playing that game well is what made the U.S. successful to begin with. If a developing nation like China can manufacture goods superior to American goods at a cheaper price, the market should reward them. What bothers me is when an organization can succeed by making shoddy goods at a cheaper price and still be rewarded.

Pictured up top are three spoked balance wheels that fit on vintage and antique Singer sewing machines. One was made in America circa 1900. Another was made in America circa 1920. The third is a replica manufactured in China in the 2000s.

All three are made from cast iron and intended to be heavy, as they serve a flywheel purpose and need to be weighty enough to store momentum. All three are made the same way: They're sand cast in a foundry, and a hole is subsequently machined into the center, as the wheels are intended to fit onto a spindle on the rear of a sewing machine.

A thin, leather (or these days, rubber) belt is then placed into a groove on the inner surface of the handwheel. The belt is driven by a foot-powered treadle and the handwheel rotates, driving the shaft.

A cursory examination of the Chinese replica features several glaring flaws.

One of the odd things you derive pleasure from as an industrial designer is knowing how various things are made. You see an ornate table leg and you picture the lathe; you choose one metal product over another at the hardware store because you can see the stamping quality is better; you touch a plastic housing and find yourself instinctively looking for the parting line.

Every once in a while you run across an object that makes you shudder, because you have just a vague idea of how it was made and you suspect it was a royal pain in the ass. That was what I felt when I first saw Texas-based Johnny the woodworker's checkered boxes, pictured here. I almost felt irritated when I saw them, because they instantly reminded me of those times when you were waiting to use the table saw in the ID shop at school, and you saw the complicated thing the person in front of you was working on and realized you were going to be waiting for a while.

Solid Edge is a MCAD package that has been serving the engineering community since 1996 and has been offering levels of functionality that are in many ways equal to its main competitors Solidworks and Inventor. Three years ago Solid Edge introduced a different paradigm into the parametric modeling world called Synchronous Technology (ST) that adds a level of functionality that bridges the world of parametric and direct editing (history-free modeling) at the same time. In it's forth iteration, ST has been finely tuned in regards to offering a balance between these two sides of modeling that makes the software something you'd actually like to use everyday.

Siemens, the company that now owns Solid Edge, has decided to partner up with Local Motors [Ed Note: Jay Rogers, CEO and Founder of Local Motors is our Transportation Jury Captain for the 2012 Core77 Design Awards!] and is now offering several different monthly subscription-based versions of their software. Local Motors is an open source community which brings together industrial designers, engineers, fabricators, and 3D CAD models to help generate content for collaborative automotive parts, "to lead the next generation of crowd-powered automotive manufacturing, design, and technology in order to enable the creation of game changing vehicles." With this new approach Solid Edge is now offering their software for a fee ranging from $19-$299 per month.

What's the catch? you ask. This just seems too good to be true. How can they offer this kind of deal?

Though not as relentlessly rectilinear as Joey Ruiter's wicked Moto Undone motorcycle, designer Eric Vaughn's Boxx scooter is an innovative transportation design with a similarly unconventional shape. Portland- based Vaughn, who has until now stuck with leaking a slow trickle of press images, finally debuted the Boxx to the public at this week's Portland International Auto Show.

What makes the Boxx so unique is how an often overlooked element of the vehicle—its initial distribution to consumers—has directly informed its physical design. At 40 inches in length, the Boxx's easily-boxed shape can be shipped directly to purchasers via UPS, though its 120-pound weight may vex the man in the brown suit. Also, all of the Boxx's electronic components are stored in an internal device called the Cube (we're guessing it's that break-line-defined area immediately aft of the handlebars), which can be easily popped out of the scooter and shipped for servicing.

Only two weeks left in the regular entry period for the 2012 IDSA IDEA Awards. Since 1980, the IDSA has been honoring design excellence through their international awards program. This year, the program includes categories that encompass products, ecodesign, interaction design, packaging, strategy, research and concepts. Get your work in front of leaders within the field of design including Core77 friends Tad Toulis, Lance Hussey, Mike Kruzeniski, Jan Chipchase and more. For our Brazilian readers, register for the IDEA/Brasil Awards here!

Check out some of our favs from 2011—bronze, silver and gold—for inspiration or head over to the IDEA2012 website for more details and to enter! The deadline for regular submissions is February 10th, 2012 (with late registration continuing till February 17th, 2012.)

Global company Proto Labs, which bills itself as "the world's fastest provider of CNC machined parts and injection moulded parts," runs an award program called "Cool Idea!" whereby they award promising design concepts with credits to use their services. Introduced last year in the United States, "Cool Idea!" is being expanded into Europe this year, in keeping with the company's global facilities.

We've profiled some of the recipients of the Cool Idea! awards over the past year including Whirlwind Wheelchair's RoughRider and Professor James McLurkin's R-One Robot kit.

We're here to help make cool ideas come to life, in the form of smart, enjoyable, problem-solving, life-improving and of course, brilliantly successful products. There are a lot of competitions for products that are already in production and on the market. The Cool Idea! Award comes in much further upstream, at the design and development stage, when innovators are too often stymied by lack of resources to turn their ideas into real products.

If you're wondering about specifically what you can design, the competition is pretty open-ended in terms of content: "We look for anything that would make life a little better, easier, safer, healthier, less frustrating, more fun—if it's cool and it involves parts that Proto Labs can make, it's fair game," writes the company. And while they haven't specified what the individual awards breakdown will be, or even how many finalists they intend to select, they've reported the total credit awarded will add up to $250,000.

Applications are accepted on a rolling basis and reviewed monthly, up until the final deadline at the end of this calendar year. And while winning a "Cool Idea!" award is no guarantee of future success--one of last year's winners was the non-Kickstarted Quickaddy we posted about earlier--as far as we can tell there's no application fee, so you've got no reason not to try. Check out the Rules & Regulations here.

Architect-turned-interaction-designer Nitipak "Dot" Samsen first caught our attention a couple years ago, when he'd just completed his MA in Design Interactions at the Royal College of Art. For the 2009 thesis show, he exhibited series of coin flippers, a diverting exercise in iteration and probability if nothing else.

For his latest project, he's shifted his attention from the element of chance to a sort of economic determinism, exploring the hypothetical evolution of currency in the near future.

The short film TRAIL$, produced as part of Samsen's award-winning project "The Money Trailer," is an all-too-timely tale of capitalism in the digital age:

The second UK Designers Accord Town Hall was held on January 19 at The Design Council offices in London. The event was organised and facilitated by Engage by Design, with sponsorship from The Design Council Challenges Team. People from different industries and ages came together to explore the theme of Social Innovation and what we can do to insure its success. Following an introduction from Zoe Olivia John of Engage by Design and Marianne Guldbrandsen, Head of Design Strategies for the Design Council Challenges Team, six speakers delivered fantastic and thought-provoking presentations:

1: Tools & Skills - The Kaleidoscope Project - Engage by Design
Engage by Design kicked off the presentations with the short film 'Tools & Skills' from 'The Kaleidoscope Project,' which focuses on using four key values (Balance, Culture, Meaning, and Innovation) to frame the question: "What tools and skills do we need to build a better future?" This was a fantastic way to stimulate the attendees and get the creative juices flowing. Watch all the videos in the series on the Engage by Design website.

Tools & Skills, The Kaleidoscope Project from Engage by Design on Vimeo.

2. Fiona Bennie - Forum for the Future
"How can we enable people to share in a low carbon economy?"
"How can designers make sharing cars appealing?"
"How can low income families save energy?"
"How can looking into the future help designers?"
The prices of everything from food to cotton are rising. As humans and consumers, we need to truly evaluate how we will spend our money. Forum for the Future believes it is all about changing demographics—carbon reduction targets of 50% by 2025 will force people to realize there must be a big change in what we eat, how we travel, and many other things that can easily pass without thought.

Check out this great link from the presentation: Wikihouse bringing affordable housing to the masses in an accessible way.

3. Mike Smart - Challenges Team, The Design Council
"It's all about being smart with what you can get your hands on, creating 'low-fi' solutions to social problems."
The Challenge Team's Mike Smart showed us how this is already being done in concrete and non-traditional ways:

• Jamie Oliver is not only a celebrity chef, but also someone who picks issues and creates campaigns to make change in an accessible way. He makes things visual and tangible, importantly starting on a small scale.


• Untergunther is another example - they are a group "with a mission", breaking into abandoned public monuments in order to restore them.

Check out how the Challenges Team is continuing this work with their current projects: The Amazings and Casserole.

UI Designer
Spotify
New York, New York

Spotify is looking for exceptional designers to make the Spotify of tomorrow beautiful, usable and inventive. Working from our brand new New York office, the UI Designer will be part of a small and rapidly growing team. His or her responsibilities will range from ideation and mocking up new UI features to creating well balanced layouts and stunning new icons.

» view

The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.

We are so hungry after perusing the Design in the Wild entries from the EAT category! Incredible readers from around the world submitted beautifully designed everyday objects that help them prep, cook, eat and drink. Whether it was your kitchen's 1985 General Electric Stove or a seat at your favorite cafe, we were delighted to be a guest at your dining table in this round's EAT submissions. Today we're opening up submissions for our second theme, PLAY, and announcing the jury and popular pick theme winners—theme winners receive their choice of Braun products and are qualified to move forward into the final round of voting for the grand prize of a notebook computer and tablet!

Don't miss out on your chance to win a notebook computer, tablet and/or your choice of Braun products! Enter our next round of Design in the Wild competition, PLAY, today!

We can turn nearly anything into a game, but design can significantly improve the experience. Is table tennis better inside on a wooden table, or outdoors on a concrete one? Which apps are you drawn to over and over, and what board games have passed the test of time? What are the brilliant tools you use to paint, to crochet, to solder, or to hack with?

Without further ado...

JURY WINNER
Cutlery
Felix Stark, Germany

Cutlery of the armed forces of Germany. The fork functions like a spring to fix everything in the carrying case which is also a can opener. I am not a fan of collecting military items, but the cutlery works really great. I always showing it to my students as example of great functional design.

POPULAR WINNER
Citrus Squeezer
Taylor Welden, United States

We didn't have these when I grew up in the Northeast. When I moved to the South, Texas specifically, there is much more citrus (limes are 12/$1) and the need to extract the juice from citrus increases dramatically. Margaritas are an every day type of drink here, not something fancy for Saturdays. Lime and lemon juice are used in all types of cuisine, especially as an element Mexican dishes. That being said, when I moved here, I knew exactly what this item did the first time I saw it. I purchased mine for $3 or $4 almost 10 years ago, it still looks and performs as new. Heavy duty aluminum parts, nice colorful thick coating, no plastic parts anywhere, no branding anywhere. A simple tool, easily overlooked. It squeezes every last drop out of the citrus, quickly, easily, efficiently. No mess and no acid in the eyes either. Squeeze, juice pours out, open it up, the citrus half pops out to be easily discarded. Perfect. Genius.

I read an article about a summer camp where one of the activities was showing the kids a bunch of old pieces of technology, and having them play around with them. The astonished author reported that most of the kids could not figure out how to dial a number on a rotary phone; they'd place their finger in the hole for "0" and drag the dial to the number they wanted to "activate," then release the dial.

This video here is similarly funny: Writer and blogger John Scalzi shows his 13-year-old daughter a vinyl LP, something she has never seen (or apparently heard of) before:

Terschelling, Netherlands-based Bart de Graaff has got good hands and an imagination to match, as evidenced by the copious renderings in his book. With expressive work spanning graphics, transportation, and conceptual design of the sort you'd find in a sci-fi movie, de Graaff could be mistaken for a grizzled vet of the design field. Which makes his personal statement all the more surprising:

At last year's Interior Design Show in Toronto, Ikea pulled the sheets off of their bold country kitchen look, an aesthetic departure from the blonde-wood kitchens with which their showrooms had become associated. The kitchen won the show's Gold Booth Award and our entry on it quickly caught Facebook fire.

At this year's IDS, the design pendulum has swung the other way: Ikea's display kitchen features a distinctly sleek and modern look, one reportedly inspired by "the classic fashion combination of a black dress and pearls." In sharp contrast to last year's kitchen, where pots, pans, and kitchen storage objects were all made visible, this year's kitchen design renders most objects invisible, tucking them away behind glossy surfaces. In a second nod to the fashion world the backsplash tiles are meant to evoke patent leather quilted handbags and the island has received special focus.

Ikea has just introduced two LED pendant lamps, both so new that at press time they were not yet posted to Ikea's website. We were excited to get an early look at their VASTER (first shot above), made from steel and acrylic, and their KLOR (second shot above), made from nickel-plated steel and polycarbonate, as well as hear the design stories behind them. (Note that both stories have apparently been translated from Swedish--or it's Ikea policy to drop the article and refer to objects as if they're people.)

VASTER, interestingly enough, started with a design failure:

While the last entry saw me complaining about an example of shoddy Chinese manufacturing, now we'll look at an example of Chinese manufacturing might. In this six-minute video currently making the blog rounds, we see an astonishing feat of design, engineering and execution: The 30-story T30 Hotel constructed in Hunan Province, taking just 15 days to erect.

Applications are now open for the Summer Workshop of the new MFA Products of Design program. Held at the beautiful Domaine de Boisbuchet in Southwestern France, this year's workshop will run for 10 days, inviting participants to immerse themselves in the evolving field of product design.

The Products of Design Summer Program in France offers hands-on, collaborative experience and instruction in rapid sketching, materials investigation, prototyping, iteration, narrative creation and environmental stewardship. In addition to work completed during the days, participants will enjoy opportunities to sight see, socialize with designers from around the world, and attend lectures in the evenings.

The program invites applicants from various backgrounds: design professionals, students (in at least senior standing at an art & design college), or graduate students in any field. Faculty will be MFA Products of Design chair Allan Chochinov and faculty Emilie Baltz.

All info is at the site: http://productsofdesign.sva.edu/curriculum/summer/

Products of Design Summer Program in France
June 17-27, 2012
Domaine de Boisbuchet, Southwestern France
Tuition: $2,500 (includes room & board)
Applications due: February 10, 2012

We first picked up on graphic designer Malika Favre's remarkably expressive vector artwork last year and she's pleased to present her latest project, the cover illustration for the forthcoming Penguin Deluxe edition of the Kama Sutra.

Favre gladly shared some insight into the brief and process:

I was approached last summer by Paul Buckley at Penguin US about designing the cover of a new Deluxe edition of the Kama Sutra for Penguin.

This book is part of the Graphic Classics series: Basically every classic they re-edit is paired up with an artist that pretty much has free range to design the cover. The whole concept of this specific range is to make each classic a collectable item and to push the boundaries of book cover design.

The book itself is the original text written by Vatsyayana (no pictures inside the book) so the challenge was to make the cover sexy, modern and daring without being vulgar or over the top. I decided to create a very bold and playful alphabet that would run across both flaps and front and back cover spelling KAMA SUTRA.

Once folded, the words become hidden and the big letters themselves turn into acrobatic positions.

As with our previous post on Favre, it gets semi-NSFW after the jump... in extremely good taste, of course.

At least once a year Reinier de Jong designs a new piece that catches our eye, and for 2012 he's graced us with the REK coffee table, related to his expandable bookcase design of the same name.

The Rotterdam-based designer has incorporated the perfect-fit sliding panels of that bookcase into a smaller package, creating an adjustable piece of furniture that grows or shrinks with your needs.

Before stadium seating, the design thinking behind staggered seats in theaters was to provide line of sight. Better to view the stage partially obscured by two people's shoulders than stare squarely at the back of someone's head.

Photovoltaic arrays on solar farms have a similar problem, in that they must be placed in such a way that each panel does not block the sun's line of sight from its neighbors: