Raspberry Pi is an ultra-cheap, bare-bones Linux computer. Greg Holloway is an aficionado of 4x4s and RC cars. Together they’re going to make an unmanned solar-powered motorboat that will traverse the Atlantic.
Walt Disney never wanted his park to be completed. “It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world,” he said. Today the heirs to Disney’s legacy continue to push the limits of what is possible, redesigning the whole theme park experience from roller coasters to ice cream to tchotchkes. In 2012, this is the state of the imagination.
SketchUp lets you plot out everything from a closet reorganization to a new home addition. But instead of picking up the program, you’ve been spending your time puzzling over some half-formed treehouse plans. Don’t worry. We brought Matthew McKee, an interior designer with San Francisco bike companies like Mission Workshop, Specialized’s Globe Bicycles and Bicycle Coffee, in for a pep talk.
Guy Cramer was annoyed by the cost of Canada’s newest military uniform redesign. He’d been interested in camo since the ‘80s, when he wore it as a professional paint baller. He decided he could do better, so Cramer invested in a $100 design program, spent an hour retooling the pattern and posted the critique online.
Researchers at the University of Tokyo have developed a robot that cheats at rock-paper-scissors by detecting the gesture you’re about to throw. It’s the automated equivalent of your jerk friend hesitating a moment before committing to their move — except that it happens at superhuman speed.
Alongside collections of everyday objects like light-switch covers and felt bags, Rachel Gant’s SF Design Week offerings earlier this month were decidedly in-season. She was showing a series of bags that convert into picnic blankets, and in the store’s window, she put a giant spinning top on display.
Now that summer is upon us, you’ll be seeing the kiddos around more often. What’s up your sleeve to keep ‘em busy and happy during the dog days of summer? Jan Halvarson of the design blog Poppytalk is a master of rounding up crafty and fun projects for all ages. Her site is a veritable bazaar of beautiful and fun things to do for the whole family. I asked Jan to share with us a handful of her favorite DIY projects for children in the summer months.
Gearing up for Comic-Con fatigue? Sure, a swift drink will temporarily take the edge off, but events taking place in a bar around the corner will offer even greater relief. Better than convention center craziness is Trickster, a DIY “creator convention” taking place at the Wine Steals / Proper restaurant and pub down the street.
Slobbering aliens, mutant zombies, and heroic space marines have helped raise over $1.2 million on Kickstarter—and climbing. The 30mm-tall customizable figurines, or minis, are parts in two boardgame projects that the company Cool Mini Or Not (CMON) recently floated out over the funding platform.
Mike Leavitt makes counterfeit kicks. Each one is a loving copy of one of the most iconic brands in the business. He’s got Air Jordans and Adidas and Chucks and Vans. But unlike most replicas, he actually charges more for the copy than for you’d shell out for the original. Oh, and don’t even think about wearing them in the rain. These styling sneakers are made out of cardboard.
What happens when product designer Philippe Starck needs 1,500 books — all with white spines — to fill out the shelves in a posh new Miami hotel? He calls on Thatcher Wine (that’s a name, not a varietal) to curate the collection.
Now Wine isn’t a book designer, but he does design with books. It started as a hunt for special volumes at thrift stores and estate sales to resell on eBay. But his efforts soon expanded into an entire outfit. Wine’s Boulder-based company, Juniper Books, cleverly fills out shelves using both custom covers created for classic works as well as a curated selection of existing editions.
We’re suckers for clever and elegant construction, so when London-based designer Sam Weller created a shelving system that relies solely on tension and friction instead of screws and nails, we took notice. It’s called Holdfast.
Broadway scenic designer Kacie Hultgren’s Queens apartment and workspace takes shape-like layers in an archaeological dig showcasing the evolution of behind-the-scenes stage craft. Place of honor goes to the MakerBot 3-D printer, which churns out tiny pieces of plastic furniture for set models that visualize stage productions on a miniature scale.
Plants are the best. They’re pretty, they clean the air, they’re good listeners, and they don’t eat your furniture. On the downside, they need regular care, and they’re lousy communicators. Designers Huy Bui, Carlos J. Gomez de Llarena, and Jon Schramm have created a system to make your relationship with them easier. Their system, called Plant-In City, proposes to house your greenery in elegant structures that wrap them in a field of sensors to help you monitor their health.
David Shrigley has an art show opening in just over 24 hours. It will be the exclusive stateside display of his installation Brain Activity, and at 11:30 am on the day before opening he is still having paintbrushes delivered and putting the finishing touches on his work. “I think in a way the hardest thing as an artist is to find a starting point. Once you’ve kind of got a starting point the work sort of makes itself. Or at least I think it does anyway.”
Measure twice, cut once, the old saying goes. But if you’re in a hurry, designer Pål Rodenius saves you the tape and the time with these pre-measured patterns for plywood furniture.
Be still my beating heart! Andrew O’Malley’s pulsing heart lamp looks alive with two Arduino-controlled settings: soft beating and cardiographic wave.
DIY has exploded in the last decade in large part due to new and cheaper tools. But materials help, too. While the Arduino platform and Sparkfun make it possible to rig up awesome electronic contraptions, advances in chemistry and materials science have also given designers a new palette of possibilities. Here are some materials that will make your next DIY project shinier, bouncier, bigger—or just generally more badass.
When brothers Beau and Nick Trincia put their PaletteCase, a wool felt and leather iPad case, up on Kickstarter in April of last year, they were optimistic. Beau works at IDEO as an experience designer and project lead, and his younger brother Nick works as a designer and prototyper at Peerless, a lighting company in Berkeley, California. They had, as they say, been making things together since they were in diapers. Sure, there were a lot of similar projects up on Kickstarter, but the brothers had an exceptional skill set and a good idea: An attractive iPad case that’s easier to grip due to a hand-sized hole in the back.
First things first. Before worrying about food storage or access to clean water during a major disaster, you need to make sure you get through the first wave safely. But never fear: When the next big tsunami hits, a water-ready modular bunker called the STATIM pod aims to float you above the flooding.
Americans spend a fortune on health care, about $2.5 trillion each year. This covers everything from surgical tools to weight loss plans, But despite all the money spent, the aesthetics of these products are on life support.
Science fiction robots tend to come from one of two production lines: helpful protocol droids like C-3PO or cyborg Terminators hell-bent on destroying humanity. Few sci-fi storytellers imagined a future where robots would be programmed to master the art of interior decorating. Fortunately for the design-challenged, present-day roboticists have.
Meet HSM-Modal. This modular and customizable milling machine can expand into a 41-foot-wide, 14-foot-tall, and 495-foot-long giant. In other words, it’s not a tool you put in your garage; it’s a tool that will build it.
Apple’s announcement that iOS 6′s new maps app will turn over transit routing duties to 3rd parties has prompted a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth. Commenters fear that by relying on 3rd parties, Apple is taking a step backwards for transit riders. Andy Baio helpfully stepped in to dispell some of the myths surrounding iOS 6′s transit API, and opened up some exciting possibilities in the process.
If the dot-com boom a decade ago was about putting the world on the Internet, the twenty-teens are about bringing the Internet to the world. With cheaper sensors and 3-D printing, more and more people have access to tools that bridge the digital/physical divide. Of course, the new instruments are responsible for lots of serious innovation, but there’s some fun to be had, too. The era of mass customization means that we can export even our avatars from the pixilated screen to our plywood desk. Here’s a collection of those toys ready for tweaking.
Last Friday, XOXO, an art and technology conference scheduled to take place in Portland, Oregon, in September, became the highest-funded project of its type in Kickstarter history. Over the course of the campaign, organizers raised a whopping $175,000. XOXO’s 400 available tickets — procured by funding the project at the $400 level — sold out in only 50 hours. With speakers like Makerbot’s Bre Pettis, the web comic creator R. Stevens, Star Wars Uncut co-creator Jamie Wilkinson, and the founders of tech-savvy creative communities like Etsy, Metafilter, and Kickstarter—all that fall in the realm of what the conference founders call “disruptive creativity” — it’s no wonder. The organizers pulled together a host of makers working at that sweet spot where art and technology meet and then invited the public to join in.
Inspired by the first days of summer vacation, and Wes Anderson’s twee tribute to scouting in Moonrise Kingdom, we bring you this roundup of scout gear on Etsy.
Amazing things happen when designers are given a set of constraints. To celebrate makers everywhere, high-octane sponsor Red Bull is running an online contest in which contenders face off against the ultimate constraint: time. The event, called Red Bull Creation, is a 72-hour competition that will run in late July.
The nine nesting cell phones in Kyle Bean’s Mobile Evolution are a new take on an old toy, by a young artist interpreting an evolving industry. From 1984 to about 2010, as mobile phones gradually took over the world, leaps in cellular technology allowed phones to shrink, while processing power exploded. Bean, a British artist, was interested in the phenomenon, and started collecting old phones from a local junk shop. Placing them beside each other, he drew an unusual parallel — to him they looked like the old Russian nesting dolls, or Matryoshka dolls, that have been resurging in new variations.
So, your Kickstarter project went viral and raised a cool six figures. There’s a mob of eager funders already checking their watches, demanding to know when you’ll ship. Pull it off and you’ll be a design star. Fail and you’re in for a highly public facepalm. You were only planning on making a couple dozen units, you say? The closest you’ve gotten to manufacturing in Asia is ordering take out? Whoops….
forum before function
