So you’ve built an amazing new robot or crafted a pop culture homage with Perler beads. Awesome work, but what good is building cool stuff if you can’t get Reddit riled up or make an Etsy sale?
We’re sure this designer, who uses the handle “Vanadium,” isn’t the first to notice how much the Houses in George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones series — the books and the show — resemble teams. There are age-old rivalries, free agents, even trades. And of course, each house has their color and mascot, from the Lannisters’ red lions to the grey wolves of Winterfell’s Stark house.
So let’s say you’re big into Star Wars — like, really big into Star Wars — and you’ve amassed a vast collection of toys and figures. You could leave all that stuff in a box in the hope of maintaining its resale value. Or, you could make art with it. Teacher David Eger chose art.
Ever wonder what Steve Jobs would have done if he’d gotten into experimental physics? When CERN scientists announced that they’d probably found the Higgs boson, they got more than their fair share of smack talk from the design community for presenting their discovery in Comic Sans. Even the font’s creator, Vincent Connare, wasn’t impressed.
The hugely popular tabletop game Warhammer 40K is set in the far future and played with 28mm miniature figures. In preparation for Comic-Con, a few fanboys decided to supersize these little Space Marines and built 7-foot-tall, wearable replicas of their armor. Want to make your own? Go for it! It only takes 352 “terribly complicated” steps.
I can’t believe this thing still exists. It’s a tracing of my childhood teddy bear, Jingle—so named for a defunct bell in his right ear. It’s the earliest independently made piece of artwork that I have any record of, and I actually remember creating it. I was 5, and I was doing something I’d do again and again in my life as a maker: breaking rules.
Ever wonder what you’d look like as paperweight? Now you can find out. A new app called OmNomNom (say it out loud, it’s the sound of a chomping jaw) designed by a member of the MakerBot community Thingiverse just made it way easy to transform any image—photo, jpeg, whatever—into a 3-D print, no CAD expertise required.
Back in elementary school, paper planes were a distraction. They were the class clown’s preferred weapon and the bane of teachers everywhere. But some creators took their school-time shenanigans to the pro level, becoming aeronautical engineers, origami artists, world champions, and record setters. From the biggest to the trickiest to the most intricately designed, here are 10 of the most impressive paper planes on the planet.
Electronic music composer Jeff Bryant never imagined that learning to knit would be part of his graduate coursework at California Institute of the Arts. But when his interface design instructor challenged him to build a non-boring MIDI controller device last fall, Bryant found an unlikely musical ally: red yarn. By weaving conductive thread into the yarn, Bryant found that he could manipulate the fiber to control a musical instrument—a decidedly non-boring outcome.
Anyone who has ever walked through an urban center and seen preteens careening off railings and steps can attest to the fact that skateboarding is an occupation marked by creativity. When a city wants to build a park to contain its resident skaters, it turns to California Skateparks, one of the best skate park designers in the world.
It took English lighting designer Bruce Munro a while to come around to the art world, but when he did, he did it in a big way. Munro’s first solo show, Light: Installations by Bruce Munro, covers 23 acres of Longwood Gardens, just outside of Philadelphia. The show, which opened this month and runs through September, comprises 12 installations and a set of sculptures that use a whopping 235 miles of fiber-optic cable.
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.
forum before function
