In the 1930s, you could order Cadillacs with custom body styles produced by the coachmaker Fleetwood. They had a brochure with drawings of these body styles, and you could order one by number.

In the 1980s Fran Roxas, a famous craftsman and automobile restorer from Chicago, came across one of these brochures from 1934. Roxas found that two of the styles, numbered 5802 and 5859, had never been ordered, and thus had never been built. Numbers 5802 and 5859 existed only as renderings and blueprints done by a then-Cadillac-designer named John Hampshire.

Roxas, together with buddy and former GM designer Dave Holls, decided to build the cars. From the 1934 drawings.

Roxas and Hall linked up with Strother MacMinn, a design professor at Art Center at the time. MacMinn had also worked in GM's Art & Color department starting way back in 1936, and his design knowledge of the era would come in handy. According to an article in Hemmings,

MacMinn and Holls were able to produce sweeps (essentially French curve templates) and factory chassis blueprints, and created line drawings for the [5859] Sport Phaeton. Fran used a 1937 Sixteen chassis, with its hydraulic brakes, as the foundation of the Sport Phaeton.

As per Hampshire's sketch, the two cars share identical front-end lines, although different bumpers give them remarkably disparate looks.

Fran says the biggest challenge for MacMinn was in designing the rumbleseat in the [5802] roadster, which has both a flush-fitting steel tonneau and a passenger-side door--and it wasn't so easy to fabricate, either. Fran either modified or fabricated all of the exterior sheetmetal (both donor cars had running boards, so the fenders are shaped to work without them). The only original panel in either car is the rear floorpan.

"They're not rebodied cars; they're built from the actual renderings," Fran stated.

After passing through a collector's hands in the '90s, both cars recently went up for auction, fetching roughly a million dollars apiece. Anyone lucky enough to live near Carmel, California, can see the cars in person this August 16th to 19th at the Concours d'Elegance.

I'm sure that, like me, the vast majority of our readers grew up playing with LEGOs without a second thought about the origin of the beloved building toy. It so happens that 2012 marks the 80th anniversary of the Danish company, and they've produced an animated history of the company, which hit the web over the weekend.

The LEGO Group can look back onto an impressive success story: in 1932 Ole Kirk Christiansen founded a production company for wooden toys in the Danish city of Billund. His central idea was, "Only the best is good enough." The motto stayed, but other than that, a lot changed. The company has moved from the originally small workshop back in 1932, to become the third largest producer of play materials in the world. It is currently represented in more than 130 countries with approx. 10,000 employees. The name "LEGO" comes from the two Danish words "leg" and "godt," which translates to "play well"...

The triumph of the LEGO Group started almost fifteen years after the foundation of the company, when Ole Kirk Christiansen discovered that plastic was the ideal material for toy production. At the end of the 1940s, the first bricks hit the market, which resemble the modern classic of today. In 1958 Christiansen perfected the LEGO brick with the familiar knobs-and-tubes-connecting-system, which is what the now 3120 different LEGO elements are still based on. LEGO bricks can be combined in an endless variety of combinations in continuously new ways. For six bricks of the same color with 2×4 studs alone, there are 915 million combination possibilities. The imagination has therefore no boundaries.

The 17-minute short, narrated by founder Ole Kirk Kristiansen's grandson Kjeld, is dense with LEGO's backstory, yet easy to watch as the animated Christiansen family perseveres through trials and tribulations over the years to build a successful company (IDers might also be interested to see the accurately depicted mid-century machinery).

More LEGO:
» Nicolas Lespour's Mechanical Engineering Explorations... in LEGO
» Behind the Bricks: Making Lego TV Ads
» LEGO Greenhouse by Sebastian Bergne
» LEGO Store NYC - First Look

As Art Director and Photographer for Citroën, Laurent Nivalle certainly knows a thing or two about shooting cars. Just over a month ago, the French photographer was lucky enough to attend the Le Mans Classic, now entering its 10th year.

Le Mans Classic is born in 2002 from what can be considered an adventurous idea! Retracing, over a weekend, half a century of the 24 Hours of Le Mans history, life-size, such as a gigantic living fresco, was quite a challenge! Not many believed in the feasibility of such an enormous project...

But when one fulfils the dreams of millions of enthusiasts, that of going back in time to relive the legend, rediscover emblematic figures and their legendary cars; and if the initiators are the Automobile Club de l'Ouest, founder and organiser of the 24 Hours of Le Mans and Peter Auto founder and promoter of many classic events; the initiative seems less hazardous...

Nivalle was among the 100,000+ auto enthusiasts who braved the downpour to witness some 450 vintage racecars on the track, as well as 8,000 classics in the public exhibition.

The denser cities become the more pressing the issue of mobility is, and it's one that designers are particularly well-suited to address. We've seen some really innovative mobility design solutions this year—everything from mass transit concepts to a mobile kitchen product—but we didn't anticipate that the next big mobile idea would come from the hospitality industry, yet that's precisely the market the Austrian architecture and design office, WG3, is targeting with Hypercubus, a mobile hotel room.

Hypercubus is a small, modular dwelling ideally suited for short term stays (i.e. vacations). However, because each unit can be equipped with a kitchen, bathroom, sleeping and living area, WG3 is using the units to spearhead a new concept in tourism. It doesn't have a catchy name yet, but it's something along the lines of a single unit apartment with on demand maid and concierge services.

The units can be transported with relative ease. Once one is assembled in a factory, it's strapped to the bed of a truck (Hypercubus is designed to comply with highway regulations) and shipped to a location, where it's anchored to a concrete base. A staircase is added for access and voila - it's ready to move in. Okay, it's slightly more complicated that that. WG3 is still working out the kinks to make the units self-sufficient, but if Winnebago can do it, it shouldn't be a problem.

The unit designs are modular and highly customizable. Each Hypercubus is essentially a blank slate for hoteliers to design according to their needs and aesthetics. The one pictured here, located in Styria, Austria, has some serious W Hotel-esque lighting aspirations. Another bonus for hoteliers is the ability to keep as many Hypercubuses (or is it Hypercubi?) as the tourist season demands. When it's summer, ship in a few extra and when wintertime rolls around you can send a few back. Moreover, the project has the potential to give travelers access to exceptionally livable accommodations in areas they might otherwise have to pitch a tent in or drive to from a hotel located miles away. So far the Styria location is the only place to stay in a Hypercubus, but we look forward to seeing more of these ship out around the world.

Senior Designers, Branded Packaging
Design Bridge
Amsterdam, Netherlands

Design Bridge, a leading international branding agency with a superb client base, is looking for highly talented Senior Designers, who want to join their award-winning multi-disciplinary studio in Amsterdam. The ideal candidate will have worked on a range of international FMCG packaging projects, with brand packaging being your forte, from start to finish you will have developed an excellent understanding of what is required to delivery world class work.

» view
The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.

We were so impressed with the three stories' worth of work—set in a repurposed school, no less—at Paradise that simply couldn't cover all of the excellent work that the RCA presented at the Salone this year... which is why we were glad to come across ceramist Larisa Daiga's "Interactive Modular Set" on the new Coroflot:

This modular tableware set provides pieces for the user to reach their potential for full self-expression and imagination, prompting the individual to create their ideal world for eating or entertaining. Made of an earthenware clay body, the outside surface is sprayed with a coloured ceramic slip that provides a smooth matte finish. This also allows the individual to write or draw on the outside of the dish with chalk, each piece providing a blank canvas of creativity and customisation. It is up to the individual to decide what they want to create. Then erase, reconfigure, and start again.

Simple yet undeniably beautiful; eyecatching and entirely functional. I'm not sure whether smudged chalkdust would be an issue but it's nice to have the option, and it's a charmingly anachronistic alternative to the ever-ubiquitous touchscreen.

If music piracy is a distinct cause of modern guilt, bizarro-pop purveyor Beck Hansen's latest effort is being hailed as a veritable sea change in an industry that's had one foot in the grave since the not-so-distant Napster days. Where his 2006 effort was merely dubbed The Information, he's actually releasing the 'information' this time around: McSweeney's recently announced that they'll be publishing BECK HANSEN'S SONG READER in December.

In the wake of Modern Guilt and The Information, Beck's latest album comes in an almost-forgotten form—twenty songs existing only as individual pieces of sheet music, never before released or recorded. Complete with full-color, heyday-of-home-play-inspired art for each song and a lavishly produced hardcover carrying case (and, when necessary, ukelele notation), Song Reader is an experiment in what an album can be at the end of 2012—an alternative that enlists the listener in the tone of every track, and that's as visually absorbing as a dozen gatefold LPs put together. The songs here are as unfailingly exciting as you'd expect from their author, but if you want to hear "Do We? We Do," or "Don't Act Like Your Heart Isn't Hard," bringing them to life depends on you.

The reference to 1960s conceptual art notwithstanding—galleries seem increasingly eager to exhibit fine artists' typewritten declarations of intent, signed and dated—Song Reader represents an attempt to short circuit the music industry, a musical analogue of open source hardware and software. Beck has written an album's worth of songs but stopped short of recording it, opting to distribute the music as a publication, record label be damned. And if the subtext—that the value of music lies in the songs themselves—the product is designed to be an equally thoughtful complement to its instructive contents:

BECK HANSEN'S SONG READER features original art from Marcel Dzama (who created the imagery for Beck's acclaimed Guero), Leanne Shapton, Josh Cochran, Jessica Hische, and many more, as well as an introduction by Jody Rosen (Slate, The New York Times) and a foreword by Beck. The package measures 9.5” × 12.5” with 108 pages comprising 20 individual full-color song booklets—18 featuring original lyrics, and 2 instrumentals—with covers from more than a dozen different artists.

Not to rain on the parade, but I'm skeptical... even as a longtime fan (I threw down for the deluxe version of Guero, among other Beck albums). I fetishize beautifully-made objects, print or otherwise, as the next guy, but my first instinct is that the format presents a barrier to many an autodidactic musician. As a self-taught guitarist, I can read tabs or pick up songs by ear if need be, but I'd struggle to read sheet music for guitar—even with some eight years of piano lessons under my belt. Not that it will matter in the long run: best case, it's a perfect opportunity for a hobbyist to learn how to read music; worst case, a friendly netizen will transcribe a .txt guitar tab. I'm not sure if this somehow underscores the open source metaphor: learn to code yourself or you'll be parroting bits of copied code with no clue as to how to tweak it.

More broadly speaking, the new compositions are essentially being released as standards or unattributed folk tunes, unembellished templates for fans to fill in. Thus, Beck has inverted an Internet Age epiphenomenon of YouTube covers by inviting all comers... though Gotye has arguably beaten him to the punch. (Interestingly, another breed of crowdsourced wisdom has deemed Song Reader to be Beck's 12th studio album, and I tend to agree.)

Over the next few weeks we will be highlighting award-winning projects and ideas from this year's Core77 Design Awards 2012! For full details on the project, jury commenting and more information about the awards program, go to Core77DesignAwards.com

• Project RE_
• Designer: Samuel Bernier
• Category: DIY
• Award: Runner-Up

This experiment of Project RE_ explores 3D-printing as a DIY tool for upcycling. Customized lids are created using low cost 3D-printing. They are then clipped or screwed onto standard jars, tin cans and bottles to create new and personal objects.

How did you learn that you had been recognized by the jury?
I was at work, designing urban furniture when I realized what day it was. I got on CORE77 at the very moment where Becky Stern started talking. She is quite famous in the DIY world. After the first notables projects were mentioned I became really stressed. When my name got mentioned, I was extremely happy, but couldn't show it... I was suppose to work.

What's the latest news or development with your project?
The existing designs are often updated by me or by users and more products are on their way. The Instructables page of Project RE_ reached 30,000 visits. Also, a collection of 3D-printed lamp shades is to be published in the next months. We're pushing low cost 3D-printing to its limits.

What is one quick anecdote about your project?
It took me more time to choose the color I would use for the project than it took me to design the products. There is a long explanation for the orange... and it is not to match the Core77 award website.

What was an "a-ha" moment from this project?
It was time for me to choose a subject for my graduation project and I couldn't decide between Upcycling, DIY and 3D-printing. I also wanted to build a brand that would be open source and follow simple aesthetic principles. Once I realized I could do all that at once, the project grew by itself.

The so-called "Invisible Bike Helmet" has been blowing up on the web thanks to a new-ish video about designers Anna Haupt and Terese Alstin, directed by Fredrik Gertten. It's something of a slow build as the two relate their story for the first 2:30 of the three-minute film, but it's well worth watching in full. For those of you who don't know how the Hövding works, we won't ruin the reveal:

Some seven years in the making, we first got wind of the remarkable, visually-compelling concept back in 2010. To say that it's a 10 million dollar idea (the amount that Haupt and Alstin have raised) is an understatement. However, at 3,998 kr (just under $600), we hope that the price will eventually drop to motivate widespread adoption. Find out more at Hovding.com.

Amen to that

Invisible helmet-tip to booooooom

Once or twice a year we see redesigns of hand tools, like Craftsman's recent announcement of pliers updated with LEDs. Less common are attempted redesigns of fasteners, which we haven't seen since GRK's "W-Cut" no-pilot-hole-needed screws from 2008. But now Kenji Hasegawa, who runs Japanese automotive parts supply company Lock'n Bolt Corporation, has developed something surprising: A bolt that needs no nut.

Hasegawa's Lock'n Bolt-F is designed specifically for industrial and commercial applications where constant vibration can eventually loosen typical nut-and-bolt configurations. The design is pretty ingenious: The bolt has two slits on the inside end, in which a conical metal slug is placed. As you screw the bolt in and the slug makes contact with the bottom of the hole, the bolt's ends begin to separate, essentially jamming the entire thing in place.

The reason something like this can only succeed in industrial/commercial applications (as opposed to something a DIY'er might try to do) is that, as far as we can tell, the design requires the bolt's length be precisely calibrated to the depth of the hole in order for the head to meet flush with the surface. As for joining sheet goods, where the nut would ordinarily be exposed under the surface, I wonder if the slug could be tapped with a hammer to lock up the works. Sadly I cannot read Japanese, so if any Nihonjin can provide any insights, please let us know in the comments.

What's in the box?

The cube is perhaps the most perfect polyhedron, second only to the sphere as possibly the most perfect form known to man: in the past few days alone, we've seen new ways to make them and new ways to inhabit them. Similarly, I've noticed that a handful of recent Kickstarter projects—specifically, iPhone accessories for a target market at the ever-growing intersection of smartphone-toting urban professional and space-saving citydweller—have adopted the highly symmetrical form factor.

It should comes as no surprise that the "1Q" Bluetooth speaker by Vers Audio (a.k.a. David Laituri) has been hyped to the effect that they've raised nearly 20 times their $10,000 funding goal with less than a day to go. It takes the shape of a 3” wooden cube that acts as a miniature speaker cabinet to produce "warm, surprisingly natural sound" via a Bluetooth or wired source. They can be paired for true stereo capability, and the 10-hour charge comes via USB (of course).

I'm curious to actually hear it myself, but I can see the appeal: it's a perfectly understated portable speaker that would be useful in any social setting. Backers can pre-order a standard bamboo or walnut 1Q for roughly 20% off the $119 MSRP (the KS limited-edition in red beech is slightly more expensive), and Laituri & co. have promised earbuds for $180+ backers as an additional incentive in the final push to cross the $20K mark in these last 20-odd hours.

If the name '1Q' is a subtle reference to the cube, an eponymous iPhone dock might be considered as an equally subtle homage to the iconic flagship store, a transparent 100%-polycarbonate desktop dock that's roughly the size of a teacup. Unfortunately, KC Lee's "Cube" fell short of didn't make the cut, garnering two-thirds of the $70,000 funding goal by the deadline earlier this week.

Savvy smartphone users know the old trick of placing the device in a cup or bowl to amplify the unsatisfactory speakers of handheld electronics, a physical limitation of an object that fits comfortably in one's pocket. The "Cube," then, is a refinement of the makeshift vessel, with a compartment in the base to accommodate the charging cable.

I absolutely hate my plastic sawhorses, but for my DIY needs and space-tight apartment living, the ability to fold flat is more important than a high weight capacity. If only I'd heard of this here product first, I could've had it both ways.

Mike Taron is an Arizona-based carpenter who grew frustrated at not being able to buy something he needed: "A lightweight, compact, folding sawhorse that I could take to and from jobsites." As he explains,

At first, I assumed I would be able to find what I needed at the building supply or hardware stores. What I found was a heavy collapsible metal sawhorse, a clumsy sheet metal model, unsatisfactory sawhorse brackets, and many flimsy, plastic sawhorses. On one shopping trip a passing customer remarked, "If you're looking for a good heavy duty sawhorse, don't buy any of those." I scoured the Internet in search of suitable options and still found nothing acceptable.

Taron set out to create what he needed, and after two-and-a-half years of tinkering he perfected his HideAHorse folding sawhorse design. Each weighs only seven pounds, yet has a 1,200 pound load capacity. When folded you can easily carry two in one hand. When stored they take up very little space, less than half a cubic foot each.

Taron's got a patent pending and is selling the HideaHorse here.

Another day, another anniversary: earlier this week, we saw an excellent animated short from LEGO, on the occasion of their 80th Anniversary. "Moulton Bicycle Company - Made in England" is a video profile of the Bradford-Upon-Avon frame manufacturers, who have hit the half-century mark as of this year. As the title of the film suggests, the storied company—best known for pioneering bicycle suspensions and popularizing 'small-wheeled bicycles'—continues to produce the so-called 'space frame,' lovingly documented throughout the video, by hand in England.

But we'd be remiss not to at least gloss the history of the British company. In the interest of providing a bit of context...

From Milan via Coroflot: the "Teka" OLED lamp, a sculptural lighting object "inspired by Vienna museum displays, first microscopes and scientific instruments in brass." Industrial designer Alessandro Squatrito spent the eight months leading up to this year's Salone working for Aldo Cibic and Tommaso Corà of Italy's CibicWorkshop, the designers behind the piece and three others for the Wonderoled exhibition at the Triennale.

The 15 OLED discs—the "result of the latest advances in nanotechnology"—are arrayed on a brass chassis, set within an aquarium-like vitrine. It's like a vaguely steampunk-y version of Humans Since 1982's artier "Collection of Light" or People People's Invisible Speaker, a design object that's entirely at home in a museum setting.

We are about to reach the climax of a very big war among multi-national technology companies. The chess pieces of this war will be intellectual property (IP). In all war there is collateral damage and in the IP battles that damage is two-fold effecting consumers and smaller technology companies.

A Brief History of Software and Patents

The IP Wars have been going on ever since the United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) opened in 1802. It wasn't until almost 200 years later that it issued a very special patent to Amazon.com for a software process, "1-Click." It wasn't the first software patent, but it was the first USPTO-issued patent that was controversial within the software technology group. The patent itself covered no special technologies. No special algorithms. It was a patent of process. Further, the process itself was so ubiquitous within the software community that it didn't seem distinctly unique to Amazon.

This brought up a huge PR and process challenge for the USPTO. They quickly became swamped by attempts for similar patents from business people at large (not just technology folks). Since the 1-Click patent was issued in 1999, the technology community has been very torn. On the one hand, patents were being upheld by the courts and if you didn't play (which meant pay lawyers to make sure it was worth playing at all) with the USPTO, someone will either patent away your rights to your own work, or ignore your unregistered rights and use greater resources to overtake you. On the other hand, it was clear to many that the speed of innovation is too great for policies and laws written centuries ago to have much merit in today's society. Copyright law, in particular, has clearly outlasted its namesake "copy" due to the very nature of digital media where everything that exists can be considered a copy. There are similar issues with patents as well.

But it is also not so simple. In a world where many patents are a mix of hardware (read lengthy and expensive research & development [R&D] cycles) and software (read as short and cheaper R&D cycles) process innovation has become very complicated to understand and expensive. Combining expensive hardware claims with less expensive software claims has made it easier for large companies to protect software that probably would not have been worth the trouble of protecting alone. This has become particularly true in the last 5 years in the mobile technology world. This is why we have landed here today. Apple's iPhone is inarguably one of the most disruptive pieces of technology in its combination of hardware, software and services of the last 2 decades. Apple was very prepared, and for its part, patented a lot of the technology that made the iPhone unique.

Apple also did what many technology companies did. They used other company's patented technologies when it was clear that that company had no interest (though reserved the right) in defending their IP. A fun example of this is actually how Twitter doesn't defend its list refresh patent that Apple is now using in iOS 6. Much of technology would not function if everyone protected their patents, so there is an understanding of the "greater good" within the technology business. But one company's good is another company's opportunity for profit.

As a last bit of background, what is also important to know is that almost all previous suits by Apple, or of Apple have been settled before a trial began. This includes suits with Samsung's partner OS partner Google. Since it is difficult to peel apart what is Samsung's IP from what is purely Google's and since the suit is only with Samsung (at this point), in this article, I'm only going to refer to the IP in question as belonging to Samsung.

APPLE VS. SAMSUNG

APPLE'S COMPLAINT
Apple has sued Samsung on the claim (to keep it simple) that Samsung has purposefully (that's a big distinction in the world of patent litigation) copied valuable pieces of Apple's IP.

The types of interaction design IP cover 3 distinct types:

• iconography


• layout


• gestural interface design

With gas prices rising and the massive drought making ethanol a tough sell as a gas alternative, India's Tata Motors has hit on the perfect time to debut the Airpod, a small urban vehicle that, as its name suggests, runs on air. If you don't know much about how regular cars use fuel, natural gas or, alternatively, hydrogen is compressed in a pressurized tank, hence the 'pssf' sound when you unscrew the gas cap. Now think about air rifles. If you had the bad luck to grow up with an older brother obsessed with using you as a target (or perhaps you were that older sibling yourself), you know that the air we breathe seems harmless enough, but when compressed it packs a punch. A gun is one thing, but is it enough of a punch to power a car?

Tata thinks so. They enlisted the help of MDI, an engineering company that's been developing zero pollution engines since the early 90s. The Airpod has a 175 liter storage tank of compressed air that you refill with an external pump or with an electric motor that can 'refuel' the car while its in motion. This first model reaches a top speed of 43 mph (70 km/h), making it best suited for transporting people or small goods around city streets. One tank lasts over 125 miles (200 km) and takes only two minutes to fill up again at an average price of just one euro per fill.

The Airpod has three seats for adults plus a smaller fourth seat for a child. There's even room for luggage. It only has three wheels, two doors and no steering wheel. Instead, you drive it with a joystick. MDI has the public and service sector in mind, naming runners, messengers and artisans as its target market. The Airpod, which is currently in its second phase of testing, is just one of five models MDI is developing. They're also working on a truck, sedan, convertible and bus version. Tata and MDI expects to release the Airpod commercially in the near future for $10,000.

Check out the video after the jump...

Over the next few weeks we will be highlighting award-winning projects and ideas from this year's Core77 Design Awards 2012! For full details on the project, jury commenting and more information about the awards program, go to Core77DesignAwards.com

• Channel of Mindfulness
• Designer: Second Story Design Team; Kyle Fiano, Joshua Gallagher, Erica MacKenzie, Courtney Larsen, & Anna Christy
• Location: Tempe, Arizona
• Category: Interiors & Exhibitions
• Award: Student Runner up

This project is a freestanding organic shade and seating structure constructed to turn a campus location into an attractive destination for others.

How did you learn that you had been recognized by the jury?
I found out that we had been recognized by the jury via Twitter. The Core77 Awards account tweeted at me when I was at the studio and I was completely thrilled and surprised. I thought it was very smart that I was contacted through Twitter because it was very easy for me to instantly broadcast the news out to the rest of the team as well my other Twitter followers.

What's the latest news or development with your project?
Peritoneum has actually gone through a lot of changes in recent weeks. We moved the entire structure off of the site at the Arizona State University Tempe campus and transported it to a lot on the corner of Roosevelt Street and 2nd Avenue in downtown Phoenix Arizona. We decided to move because it was necessary for Peritoneum to continue to have an impact on the Arizona aesthetic, and by transporting it to Phoenix the structure is opened up to a wider audience base. Since we consider the structure to not only be a great design work but also a beneficial public art piece, we are working on programming to change the aesthetic of the material by collaborating with artists as well as the general public as a whole.

What is one quick anecdote about your project?
When we presented this structure to the faculty after being awarded by the jury, many within the school administration doubted our ability to pull off the construction of a project with this big of a scope. We were advised to add an architect to the team for additional guidance, but refused and ended up proving a lot of people wrong with our success.

What was an "a-ha" moment from this project?
I think the amount of work that we had to do in order to pull this off did not really hit the team until we were on the site for day one of construction. We were all pretty nervous given the limited timeframe we had to actually build the structure, but after we finally figured out the proper guideline to place to wooden slats on, things went off without any big problems.

When last we looked in on Washington-based builder Ron Paulk, he was on the verge of completing his kick-ass Mobile Woodshop. Contained inside a 1,000-cubic-foot box truck, Paulk's comprehensive design ingeniously incorporates every major power tool a contractor would need, features copious parts-and-materials storage, and is loaded up with a plethora of clever design solutions.

Since our initial coverage, Paulk's uploaded a video tour of the completed project:

Even better, Paulk has uploaded his complete Google Sketchup plans free of charge. We admire both Paulk's design ingenuity—as one example you can see in the video tour above, he wisely eschewed expensive drawer slides and found simple dados in plywood to be a superior solution—and his generosity in sharing the final design, which is the result of not only the several months he put into drawing up and constructing the project, but of his decades of experience in building things. The plans are available here, and our thanks go out to Paulk.

Audi's "Electric Life" project is part research and part promotion for the A3 e-tron, their compact car with a purely electric motor. Ten "e-pilots" were selected from within the company to receive an e-tron and live with it for a few months, providing video coverage along the way.

Yesterday they released the third episode, and we were excited to see they'd chosen an industrial designer as one of the pilots. And while we expected L.A.-based Jae Min, a 16-year auto design vet and Art Center professor, to spend most of the clip rabidly flogging the car, instead he shares calm insights on the vehicle as well as a bit of design philosophy. We're also treated to a peek at what he does at Art Center:

As any contemporary lifehacking, less-but-better urbanite knows, it's tough to reduce your everyday carry past the threshold of the holy trinity: keys, wallet, phone. The adventurous might try (and succeed) in doing without the last item, but realistically, it's tough to forgo either of the first two personal effects. Designer Anthony Hoang and engineer Nhu Truong, childhood friends from Orange County, CA (not unlike another entrepreneurial effort we've seen), hope to reduce these irreducibles down to a single essential object. The Keylet is a card-sized metal money clip with a twist: a hinged key is concealed in two of its corners (the body is roughly as thick as a key between two thin plates of stainless steel... which is more or less exactly what it is).

The credit card form factor has become a sort of gold standard for what is worthy of toting around in one's pocket, if not in the wallet itself: the Cardsharp knife and the ChargeCard (still available on Kickstarter) are a couple of our favorite examples. Yet the origami-like pocketknife and discreet USB cable are luxuries, for those of us who see fit to carry them alongside credit cards and ID—useful, no doubt, but not essential.

The Keylet is more ambitious, at once a threat to our trusty wallet and favorite keychain: it's rather more versatile than, say, a card-carrying iPhone case (so to speak), and I, for one, would prefer the flexibility of having my keys+wallet separate from my phone.

Scott Amron's "Split Ring Key" might be considered to be a precedent, though it has the opposite drawback: where the combination keyring+blank might not offer enough grip area (i.e. torque) for particularly stubborn locks, the blank+wallet might be a bit unwieldy at times (for example, the video shows the Keylet with a car key).