It's so cheating!

The idea behind a Zen garden is that combing all of that sand into intricate patterns improves the practitioner's concentration. It's not easy to do—and that's the point. So Simon Hallam's Zen Table contraptions on Kickstarter, which automatically draw pre-programmed patterns via what appears to be a magnetic ball and some type of CNC mechanism, would probably be considered an abomination in the Zen Buddhism world.

Yet I have to concede that the machines, which come in both small and large sizes, are cool as heck:

Turning this:

Into this:

Cleveland suffers from what I'm calling Detroit Syndrome. The population of the onetime million-resident city has shrunk to just 396,000 as manufacturing jobs have disappeared, meaning it's filled with dilapidated and abandoned buildings.

Those buildings—whether houses, churches, or retail spaces—are constructed out of wood, which means tearing them down can provide a veritable forest's worth of raw material. That's where an organization called Reclaimed Cleveland comes in. As they explain,

Most of the homes slated for demolition in Cleveland are nearly 100 years old (some even older) and were built with old growth lumber that is dense and beautiful. Reclaimed Cleveland is leading an effort to salvage lumber from local structures and give it a new life as well designed home furnishings and accessories. We are also working with a local non-profit, Towards Employment, to train ex-offenders in home salvage and give them skills and a new start in the construction trades.

Like Carousel USA, Turntable Works is another California-based manufacturer of large-scale turntables. But the latter firm has got a product I could not have envisioned: A portable, folding motorized turntable called the Pack-Man, which comes in diameters ranging from eight to fourteen feet.

Here's a sign you've seen too many building projects go wrong: At the six-second mark of the demo video, when the whole mechanism starts to tilt, I instinctively jerked my hands out towards the screen as if I could help the guy by grabbing it. But apparently it's designed or allowed, however inelegantly, to do that.

Didn't think it would fit a full-size car, did you? I like how they jump-cut the footage during loading, as I'm sure there was some finagling required to avoid driving off of the platform. But in any case the Pack-Man is an impressive feat of design and engineering, allowing one person to set the thing up in just five minutes.

[photos via wood and metal]

That there is the perfect object. It's completely functional, it's the latest evolution from a history of progressively better objects that have been around since man's earliest days, and it's freaking beautiful. It's the two-pound Velvicut Premium Hudson Bay Axe, and it's made using that perfect blend of high-tech machines and an experienced craftsman's handwork.

While I'm suspicious of outdoor tools that are pretty--when you're working outdoors, hardcore functionality is everything and aesthetics don't mean a damn thing--this one is made by Council Tool, lending it some instant cred. The North-Carolina-based manufacturer has been producing quality tools since 1886, and I dig that the company president who narrates the making-of video has the same name as the company.

In the vid you see a 90-year-old eye-punching machine, the brutal, no-margin-for-error drop forging process in action, and you learn something cool about Council's ideology: They retain and retrain. Even as they upgraded their tooling, they kept the guys who used to do the rough grinding by hand and trained them to program the machine that took the task over, rather than letting the machine replace them altogether. "There's no substitute for experience here," says Council.

It's no secret that we're fans of London's Black+Blum: year in, year out, the design duo always seems to have something new up their collective sleeve. The recent NYIGF was no exception, as it was occasion for the official unveiling of three new designs.

First up, the "Eau Good" water bottle is a clever take on a water bottle with a natural filter.

The bottle uses a filter system with binchotan active charcoal, which has been used in Japan as a water purifier since the 17th century. It reduces chlorine, balances the pH and adds minerals to the water. Most importantly, it makes tap water taste clean and delicious.

The design of the eau good combines the vintage feel of the cork stopper with the unique clear, blow-molded bottle and the utilitarian aspect of the centuries-old filtering system.

The filter takes roughly 6–8 hours to work its magic and after its six-month lifetime, the charcoal can be used as an odor absorber for refrigerators.

The "Lunch Pot" (center) is a new offering in their line of tupperware containers: a pair of pots that neatly snap together, a handy solution for those of us who often bring multi-part meals for lunch. The watertight, BPA-free, microwave- and dishwasher-safe pots also feature an unique threadless enclosure for added convenience. Meanwhile, the strap remains secure even when the "Lunch Pot" is inverted or otherwise subject to the abuse of transit.

"The best interaction design doesn't just make things easier to use, it opens up new spaces for play and collaboration to enhance our relationship with the world and each other," explained jurist Robert Fabricant, VP of Creative at frog. Kicking off the announcements for this year's inaugural IxDA Interaction Awards, San Francisco-based agency Stimulant won Best in Show AND the People's Choice Award for Loop Loop, an innovative music sequencer app that encourages kids and adults to create improvised musical compositions using their Sifteo cubes to stitch and layer a set of samples and beats.

Stimulant LoopLoop for Sifteo from Stimulant on Vimeo.

From a pool of over 300 entries representing 33 countries, 26 projects were awarded honors in the categories of Best in Show, Best Concept, Best Student, People's Choice, and Best in Category for Optimizing, Connecting, Disrupting, Expressing, Engaging and Empowering.

Best Concept went to Out of the Box by London-based Vitamins, and the award for Best Student was given to Ishac Bertran from Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design for his project Pas-à-Pas.

Out of the box from Vitamins on Vimeo.

Pas A Pas from Ishac Bertran on Vimeo.

Congratulations to all of this year's winners and click the jump for full list of 2012 Interaction Awards Winners!

By Edward Betts (Own work.) via Wikimedia Commons

If I could convince you of one thing, it would be this: Crowdfunding is not Nyan Cat. Nyan Cat will be the answer to a Trivial Pursuit question in 10 years or so. If it's lucky. Crowdfunding is radically changing the way things are made.

That's why it bugs me when I see the inevitable Internet eye-rolling starting to take place. "Oh great, another Kickstarter project." Look past the avalanche of Apple related accessories. Lower your designer snark rays for just a moment. Just because something is trending on the Twitter, doesn't make it bad.

Crowdfunding is the most important thing to happen to industrial designers and people who are interested in making things since, oh I dunno, CAD? Outsourcing? 3D printing? User-centered research? I know that's pretty big talk for something that's only been in the design community consciousness for a year or two, but think what crowdfunding means for a solitary designer or a small team of people who have a *really great* idea and the know-how to get it made, but no money.

Think of all of the times you have been in meetings with people who make decisions that designers are generally not allowed to make. Think of bringing your hacked up prototype to a bank and explaining to the loan officer that "Yes, even though this is made out of blue foam, the actual thing will be made from molded plastic." Think of building up enough courage to go it alone, and then staring at the ceiling at night worrying if you are committing your family to eating ramen for the next couple of years while you chase your crazy dream. Think of having investors tell you they love everything about your idea, except 80% of it. And the color.

Now think of side-stepping all of that. You refine your idea on your own. You talk to manufacturers and see what it would take to get it made. You work out the budget. You shoot a video marketing the idea and explaining what you need to get it done.

You launch it.

Maybe it doesn't get funded. But at least then you can say that you tried and failed on your own terms, without going tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt. At the very least, you have an interesting portfolio piece to talk about and maybe if you're feeling frisky, you refine it further and try launching it again.

But what if it does work? You get funding. You get confirmation that your idea is good and should exist. Holy crap.

Herein lies the revolutionary aspect of crowdfunding: Product designers can finally tap into the Internet money pipe. For years we have had to sit on the sidelines while nascent web companies attract investors or bootstrap it themselves. It's not because we're lazier than Mark Zuckerberg. It's because the cost of entry into shipping atoms is dramatically higher (both in time and money, but especially money) than it is to ship electrons.

To start Facebook you need the skills, a laptop, a server, and a few months of late nights. (This is a dramatic oversimplification. Sorry Zuck and every software/internet developer ever.) To start a company that gets something manufactured, you need all of that plus a ton of cash. Prototyping, tooling and fulfillment are tremendously resource intensive. Have you ever wondered why VCs tend to back web startups, but for the most part leave hardware startups alone? Money. Crowdfunding lowers the money barrier.

Ok great, so some dude can get the money he needs to make an iPhone case that mounts to his forehead. Hey, what did I tell you about the snark rays? Let's think bigger picture here. What are the long-term implications of designers having a lower barrier for funding their pet projects?

All photos by Petr Krejci

Seeing as he cut his teeth with the likes of Max Lamb, Studio Gilthero, Martino Gamper and Julia Lohmann, it comes as no surprise that designer Phil Cuttance is well-versed in materials and processes. "FACETURE" is a series of household objects that take a vaguely crystalline appearance based on a unique fabrication process. Each vase, lamp and side table looks is made by casting a water-based resin in a handmade mold:

First the mould of the object is hand-made by scoring and cutting a sheet of 0.5mm plastic sheet. This sheet is then folded, cut and taped into the overall shape of the product that is to be cast. The mould's final shape, and strength, is dictated by which triangular facets I pop in and out. I do this each time I ready the mould for the next object, meaning that no two castings are the same. I then mix a water-based casting resin that is cast in the mould where it sets solid.

The resin is poured into the hollow mould and rolled around to coat and encase the sides, controlled by me on the casting jig on the machine. The material soon sets creating a hollow solid object. Then another, different coloured measure of resin is poured into the same mould, and swirled around inside, over the first. When it has set, the mould is removed to reveal the solid set cast piece.

The results look something like stalagmites from a virtual cave, though Cuttance notes that their origin is neither geological nor digital: "The casting appears with sharp accurate lines and a digital quality to its aesthetic, a visual 'surprise' considering the 'lo-fi,' hand-made process from which it came."

But the real gem is the bespoke machine with which Cuttance creates "FACETURE":

This isn't the first time we've talked about Corque on Core77, and since the Portugese design brand keeps coming up with one good idea after another, it won't be the last either. Corque was born in 2009 after its founding partners finished a three-year research and development program that explored the sustainability of using cork as a material for more than just wine bottles. What they learned in a nutshell? Cork is a renewable resource; It grows on trees, or rather, it is trees. But because it regrows only every nine years, harvesting it is a delicate process, one that requires highly skilled workers. [Ed Note: For more on cork harvesting and manufacturing, check out Daniel Michalik's series on the material!] Most of the world's cork comes from Portugal, 52.5%, to be exact, making it an ideal material for a Portugese design team like Corque to utilize. And it doesn't hurt that it makes for furniture so beautiful furniture it crosses the line between art and object.

Menstruation Machine by Hiromi Ozaki

Interaction design and designing interactions... are they the same concept? Anthony Dunne, partner at Dunne and Raby and professor at Royal College of Arts in London, gave a keynote at Interaction12 that began this discussion for the attendees. In Dunne's talk titled "What if...Crafting Design Speculation," he asks designers to use imagination to think about what kind of futures we want—opening up the problem space. What if "we shift from how the world is to designing for how the world could be?" What if...we designed for alternate realities or fictional scenarios?

Dunne shared student projects to give the attendees an idea of these possibilities. One of the projects he discussed was "Menstruation Machine" by Hiromi Ozaki. He introduced this project by explaining that Ozaki didn't design for an alternate reality, instead she chose to design for three fictional personas. Two personas that she designed for were Sushiborg Yukari and Crowbot Jenny, and she assigned each with their own stylistic clothing, environment and accessories. In addition to creating and designing for these personas, Ozaki created video content of these personas interacting in their environment with the objects that were designed for them.

Crowbot Jenny, by Hiromi Ozaki

Sushiborg Yukari, by Hiromi Ozaki

Industrial Design Intern
Continuum
West Newton, Massachusetts

Continuum, the leading design and innovation consultancy in the world, is currently looking for industrial design interns for April–June 2012 for their Boston studio. The intern will have the opportunity to learn from some of the industry's top experts in industrial design, design strategy and brand experience.

They are accepting submissions through March 15, 2012.

» view

The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.

By Hannes Grobe (Own work) via Wikimedia Commons

Is crowdfunding right for your project?

From my introductory essay, you can already get the sense that I'm pro-crowdfunding. But let's be honest with ourselves, in an ideal world where everyone has access to easy, no-strings attached money, no one would look for outside funding. Just like seeking out loans or investors, there are pros and cons to crowdfunding your project. Here are the two big questions you should ask yourself prior to committing.

1) Do I have the time to make this commitment?

If you are funded, do you have the flexibility in your schedule, or at the very least, the willingness to forgo sleep for the several months it will take to get your project done in a timely matter? Once you get funded, you are on the hook to produce. Your Backers aren't just backing your idea, they're backing you—financially and emotionally. There really is a bond that Backers feel towards the projects they support and they want nothing but success for you and your idea. Real delays and setbacks can be tolerated, but you harm that trust by stopping because you get too busy or lose interest. Moreover, you risk not only damaging your reputation, but you give your Backers a reason to think twice before supporting other crowdfunding projects.

I suppose the real question to ask yourself is, "Do I believe in this idea so strongly that I am compelled to see it through, no matter what?" If the answer is yes, then...

2) Do I want to develop this publicly?

Developing something out in the open for people who have already pre-ordered your idea is THE major difference between a traditional product development process and one done through Crowdfunding. It's not for everyone or every project.

Let's start by thinking about the process of how things get made. Take this fairly typical, over-simplified development process timeline. Many design consultancies have some of variation of this on their websites, minus the dollar signs.

Click for larger image.

A chart like this looks fairly innocuous until you start thinking of the pain points in the process. I have highlighted those in red. For designers, the easy stuff is in the blue region. You have an idea, then you do some sketches and a 3D rendering. But any fool can have an idea and 3D rendering. At some point you pass the rubicon of moving from a concept to proving that your concept works. It's that process of turning nothing into something that's the real trick. If we're truly honest with ourselves...

Finally, a convenient, realistic and affordable way for the average consumer to utilize solar power: Nokero's C110 Battery Charger, which runs 14 bucks (battery included) and works with any rechargeable AA, not just the company's own. "Simply insert a rechargeable AA battery into the back of the C110 and set it out in the sun," the company explains. "In a matter of hours, your battery will be charged."

Nokero, which is short for "No Kerosene," also produces the super-economical N100 and C77 2011 Design Awards 20 Notable N200 Solar Lights, meant to replace the kerosene lamps used in developing nations. Their research indicates that a child using a kerosene lamp to study by is exposed to fumes commensurate with a two-pack-a-day smoker. The $15 N100 and $20 N200 run completely clean, using solar power to juice up the same AA battery found in their C110 charger, and they're dead-simple to use: Hang them in sunlight, then turn them on when it gets dark.

Nokero was founded in 2010 by inventor Steve Katsaros "to develop safe, affordable and environmentally-friendly technology that eliminates the need for harmful and polluting fuels used around the world." Check out more of their stuff here.

How many times have you been all set to buy the latest Apple gadget only to be told by a friend to wait—an updated version is scheduled to come out soon and any day now the phone in your pocket will just be one generation closer to obsolescence, your top-of-the-line iPad sadly out of date? Maybe I'm just airing my personal grievances here, but for those reminiscing about a simpler time, there's an oasis of traditional, time-honored craftsmanship in a Charleston, SC jail built over two hundred years ago, back before Steve Jobs was even a glimmer in his great-great-great-great grandfather's eye.

It's The American College of Building Arts, the only school in the United States to combine a four-year liberal arts education with specialized training in pre-Industrial trades—and the only school to boast 100% job placement. Granted, the average class size is less than twenty, but I expect that to increase with the ever-growing resurgence of the hand-made.

Students can major in Architectural Stone, Carpentry, Forged Architectural Ironwork, Plaster Working, Preservation Masonry or Timber Framing. They receive hands-on training within the school itself, which ACBA's president, General Colby M. Broadwater III (how's that for distinguished?) calls a "living laboratory." The campus was originally a jail built in 1802 with the help of Robert Mills, whom many consider the first all-American trained architect, and who later went on to design the Washington Monument. The building doesn't look like it's been updated in a while, but it acts as a canvas, providing students with an immediate source through which to practice what they learn—right on the classroom walls.

In an effort to distinguish their micro 4/3rds or "mirrorless" camera from the competition, Pentax turned to Marc Newson. The aesthetic look of his design for the K-01 has been drawing some fire in photography circles; for unobtrusive street shooting, for instance, the white or yellow body colors are probably not a wise choice, though we should point out that those are two of three options (with basic black rounding out the choices).

In the video below, Newson himself explains what he was going for:

In America's recent Florida primary, one candidate was lambasted by another for discussing plans to build a base on the moon—to an audience coming from a state with a nearly 10% unemployment rate, back here on Earth. The moon is not really what's on people's minds these days. Which raises the question, how relevant is NASA?

The space agency is in fact working on something more of us can relate to, and that's commercial aircraft. The NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate's Environmentally Responsible Aviation Project has tasked three companies with designing concepts for greener planes:

Teams from The Boeing Company in Huntington Beach, Calif., Lockheed Martin in Palmdale, Calif., and Northrop Grumman in El Segundo, Calif., have spent the last year studying how to meet NASA goals to develop technology that would allow future aircraft to burn 50 percent less fuel than aircraft that entered service in 1998 (the baseline for the study), with 50 percent fewer harmful emissions; and to shrink the size of geographic areas affected by objectionable airport noise by 83 percent.

"The real challenge is we want to accomplish all these things simultaneously," said ERA project manager Fay Collier. "It's never been done before. We looked at some very difficult metrics and tried to push all those metrics down at the same time."

While the delta-shaped "flying wing" configurations of Boeing and Northrop Grumman look similar to concepts we've seen before, Lockheed Martin's "box wing" design, below, is the one that really caught our eye.

Born and raised in France, visual artist Patrick Martinez is currently based in New York City who works in just about every medium, from video to drawing to sound. His latest project might be described as sculptural, though its more properly considered as product design as opposed to fine art. Martinez created "Linx" because he "wanted a construction game that was cheap, flexible and light"; he ultimately arrived at small, X-shaped connectors for plastic straws.

They parts come in fence-like flat sheets that snap apart as in plastic model kits, which (if all goes according to plan) will be produced out of recycled or bio plastic right here in the United States.

Several weeks in the making, Art Hack Day took place just over a week ago and was by all accounts a sure sign that the digital counterculture is alive and well in 2012. From from January 26–28, Brooklyn's 319 Scholes—an exhibition space in the no-man's-zone between Williamsburg and Bushwick—hosted the 48-hour hack-a-thon, which started on Thursday night. By the time I had a chance to stop by on Saturday afternoon, it was all hands on deck as organizers Lindsay Howard, Marko Manriquez and Igal Nassima were rallying the troops in anticipation of that evening's one-night-only exhibition of the pieces, projects and collaborations by all variety of tech-savvy creative type.

Incidentally, I ended up reporting on NYIGF just a couple days later, and it was essentially an antithetical experience. From the product-driven premise to the oppressive interior of the cavernous convention center—not to mention the alternately aggressive or disinterested attendants lurking amid labyrinthine booths, hawking their latest injection-molded doodads—suffice it to say that materialism was on display throughout the tradeshow, in stark contrast to the ingenuity and imagination that characterized Art Hack Day...

Former Core77 intern Marko Manriquez was on lasercutter duty, contributing signage (above) among other precision-cut objects for his fellow art hackers. His new-ish plaything also allowed him to explore his interest in "Ecology without Nature," a.k.a. moss graffiti:

Made using laser cut stencils and a "moss milk shake" blend of moss, beer, water and water retention gel. Moss Graffiti serves dual functions to beautify urban spaces and as camouflage for tiny sensors (C02 & VOC) embedded for monitoring air quality and vehicle exhaust for upload to IoT sites such as Pachube. As eco-graffiti or green graffiti, moss replaces spray paint or other toxic chemicals and reactivates liminal, junk space where moss "paint" grows on its own as a hybrid form of guerrilla gardening.

David Stolarsky's "SwimBrowser," for which he won the 2011 OpenNI Developers Challenge, was nothing short of brilliant. Although the GeorgiaTech Masters student (in Computer Science, of course) created the kinesthetic UI nearly a year ago, it was definitely one of the more impressive pieces on display:

He also had a brand new work to show for the occasion:

While I can't imagine ever installing one of these, London-based ID firm Slam's ThreeStyle door is weird enough that I had to give it a look, hoping to find some compelling reasoning behind it. Something like a pet door for children of differing ages, the ThreeStyle is a door-within-a-door-within-a-door, adding three sets of hinges, three latches and three handles where one used to do.

The copy doesn't shed any real light on the object's purpose:

ThreeStyle is primarily an expression of contemporary design, exploring and pushing what can be done with the humble door. However, there's know [sic] denying that it's of interest to the little people in our lives. Through Threestyle we can give the younger people in the world a greater connection with their environment during their growth through childhood.

Do any of you see an application that I'm missing? Or is this a case of "Just because you can, doesn't mean...."

Barcelona-based Labyrinth Studio has a couple interesting products available for sale, including this wall-mounted coat rack—a clotheshanger, of sorts—that consists of seven readymade hangers mounted, upside-down, to a wooden frame.

It's a counterpart (if not quite a perfect complement) to Joey Zelédon's instant-classic "Coat Check" chair. Of course, each design points to a different re-purposing of the same inspiration: Zelédon's concept turns the bottom of the hanger into a seating surface as the metal frame doubles as a storage system for hangers. The "Hang-Over," on the other hand, exploits the hook, retaining similar functionality to the original object.