By Core Jr - Dec 21

Beyond Industrial Design: Apply to SVA's MFA in Products of Design

Check out this pan-disciplinary design program in NYC

February 1st is the deadline to apply to be a part of the Class of 2019 at SVA's MFA in Products of Design program. It's centered on "the sweet spot between design thinking and design making," but its courses go far outside traditional ID education.

By Rain Noe - Dec 15

Sloyd Education Still Offered by Craft School in Boston

The North Bennet Street School teaches hand skills to develop character and intellectual capacity

In Boston's North End is a massive 65,000-square-foot facility known as the North Bennet Street School. Originally founded in 1879, today they offer programs in Bookbinding, Cabinet and Furniture Making, Carpentry, Jewelry Making and Repair, Locksmithing and Security Technology, Piano Technology, Preservation Carpentry and Violin Making and Repair. Anyone 18

By Rain Noe - Dec 09

Sloyd Education Theory: Making Things With Your Hands Makes You Smarter

The link between manual skill and cognitive development

I love learning, and I hate school. Sitting in a classroom while a teacher drones on is my idea of torture. It's unnatural and it's boring. But if there's a physical problem to solve—let's say I'm making something in the shop, and it keeps breaking, and I have to find

By Molly Millette - Nov 14

RISD's 2016 ID Triennial Demonstrates What's Behind an Industrial Design Education 

A look inside the 2016 Industrial Design Triennial, "We Start from Making"

Once every three years, each department at Rhode Island School of Design is permitted three weeks to display the products of its curriculum in the school's historic Woods-Gerry Gallery. Last week marked the opening of RISD's 2016 Industrial Design Triennial show. The show was publicized by the distribution of

By Rain Noe - Nov 02

SCAD's Ambitious Multidisciplinary Student Collaboration Yields VR Film

Students from 14 different programs created something greater than the sum of its parts

When I was in design school, we ID students had little interaction with the other departments. Few of us ever visited the Architecture department, where the students all reportedly behaved like Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now. But it might've been nice to have some creative crossover. SCAD is a design

By Bruce and Stephanie Tharp - Nov 02

SVA's Parallel Times Exhibition

Product designs that create consequences

This past spring the Parallel Times exhibition featured the talented MFA students in the School of the Visual Arts' Products of Design program. Led by faculty member Sinclair Smith, the results of their Product Futuring class were on display as part of the 2016 NYCxDesign Global Design Celebration.

By Molly Millette - Oct 28

Combining Public Policy and Design through STEAM: RISD + Maharam Fellowship

From robot development to paddle board design to illustrating community biolab protocols, check out how three 2016 Maharam Fellows spent their summers

Commonly thought of as exclusive to legislative work and developing written laws, public policy is an often unnamed aspect of design thinking. Public policy must be responsive, investigate practices and be solution oriented. But what does it have to do with STEAM? STEAM is the product of incorporating arts and

By Core Jr - Oct 19

Sponsored Post: Towards A More Inclusive Model for Digital Product Design

Introducing the new Communication Design MPS program at Parsons

Digital product design is a rapidly growing field that engages unique individuals with skillsets that unite traditional communication design principles with user experience capability and digital software skills. In an increasingly tech-driven world, more skilled digital product designers will be needed to create authentic and innovative digital touchpoints. Because digital

By Rain Noe - Oct 17

There's a Growing Need for Yacht Designers. Go to Milan and Get Training

Politecnico di Milano is offering a "Specializing Master" degree in Yacht Design

For you designers looking to change up your career, here's a subset of ID that's off the beaten path: Yacht design. Apparently there's "strong demand for [designers trained] in the pleasure craft segment," according to the Politecnico di Milano Design School, and they aim to bridge the gap with their

By Molly Millette - Oct 11

The Brilliance Behind Creating Useless Things

Meet Simone Giertz: The "Queen of Shitty Robots"

After missing her train and showing up fashionably late, Youtube sensation and self proclaimed robotics comedian Simone Giertz recently spoke to students at Brown University about the importance of building useless things. Held by Brown's Humanity Centered Robotics Initiative, Simone's lecture spoke in a humorous way to the initiative's goal

By Kat Bauman - Oct 10

Harvard's Collection of Glass Flowers 

Scientific models still stunning in the age of Google Images

It's been a bit of an ugly news cycle this week. Let's look at some gorgeous works of craft and science, shall we? If you don't frequent Boston museums or Ivy League special collections you might not have heard of the Harvard Glass Flowers, but you should. Harvard University's

By Core Jr - Oct 05

SVA Products of Design Launches "Open House Design Challenge"

Innovative Idea helps cover airfare to visit Products of Design

The MFA in Products of Design program at SVA has launched a unique idea in anticipation of their annual Open House and Info Session, coming up next month on Friday, November 11th. This year they're introducing an “Open House Design Challenge”—a chance to help people interested in attending the event,

By Rain Noe - Oct 04

Cambridge's Inclusive Design Toolkit

These allow designers to experience handicaps firsthand while testing their own products

Design researcher Dr. Sam Waller points out an interesting conundrum: Most designers have good vision. Or at least, access to corrective measures that enable good vision. Because you can't earn a living manipulating CAD drawings if you can't see them in the first place. What this means is that most

By Ray Hu - Oct 03

Tord Boontje's Futuristic Funhouse of Electro Craft at London Design Festival 2016

There was nary an Arduino in sight at Electro Craft, a dense London Design Festival exhibition in the heart of Shoreditch Design Triangle. A showcase of design at various points where arts and crafts meet technology, the jam-packed show gives a first impression of overstimulation, with nearly 30 projects —

By Ray Hu - Sep 28

Central Saint Martins Presents Brain Waves at London Design Festival 2016

A cerebral yet accessible exhibition concludes a trilogy of graduation shows

With an acronym that sounds like a college radio station or killer Scrabble word, the new King's Cross Creative Quarter launched during London Design Festival 2016. Spearheaded by designjunction, which now calls the KXCQ home, at least one tenant has already settled in nicely. Central Saint Martins moved into the

By Core Jr - Sep 22

How Quantum Physics Might Help Us Design More Elegant and Scalable Solutions 

Jamer Hunt is helping us define the next phase of design practice

As the founding director of Parsons' Transdisciplinary Design program, Jamer Hunt has been championing the possibilities of a systems-based, postindustrial design approach to social innovation and service design for over a decade. Using New York City as an academic laboratory, students work to, "define the next phase of design practice

By Molly Millette - Sep 16

Micro, Meso, Macro: Exploring the Scale and Presence of Design through Physical Objects and Social Systems

Interrogate outdated solutions and re-examine design in the context of an interdisciplinary world at the 2016 Better World by Design Conference

It may slip our minds from time to time, but the overall objective of design should be to create a better world. Driven by the desire to approach problem solving holistically, eight years ago engineers from Brown University and designers from Rhode Island School of Design formed a partnership and

By Allan Chochinov - Sep 14

Towards a Contemporary Design of Assisted Suicide

Designer Natsuki Hayashi talks to Core77's Allan Chochinov

For her Masters Thesis at the SVA MFA Products of Design program in New York City, Natsuki Hayashi undertook a year-long pursuit to investigate how design could respond and contribute to the increasing legalization of assisted suicide in the United States. In the conversation below, she talks to Allan Chochinov,

By David Frane - Sep 01

This Ingenious Drill Accessory Will Save Lives and Limbs

The Arbutus Drill Cover was developed by students for medical workers in poor countries and disaster areas

My friend Ted recently broke an ankle and as part of the fix had pins installed in the bone. He wasn't awake to see it, but I'm sure the orthopedic surgeon used the kind of fancy pants surgical drill that costs upwards of $20,000 and must undergo a lengthy sterilization

By Core Jr - Aug 30

Find the Right Font for Your Design Presentation

If all else fails: Helvetica

I think most designers would argue that design isn't about the big picture as much as it is zeroing into the tiniest of details—they are what sets apart a generic IKEA chair from an Eames classic. On that note, designers make sure with almost everything they do that the details

By LinYee Yuan - Aug 22

Future Gazing and Co-Creation at the 2016 IDSA International Conference

Could Industrial Design "Make Things Happen" in Detroit?

The 2016 International IDSA Conference was hosted in Detroit last week with a focus on the theme of "Making Things Happen." Detroit, with it's wrought morality tale of decline from the richest city in the United States in the 1950's and '60s to it's recent designation as the country's poorest

By Rain Noe - Aug 17

Harvard Publishes Massive, Free Bauhaus Archive Online!

Did you know Marcel Breuer once designed dorm furniture?!?

When the Nazis took power in the 1930s, Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius wisely, and daringly, escaped to America. Gropius, along with protégé Marcel Breuer, landed teaching gigs at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Harvard subsequently amassed, with Gropius' help, a massive collection of "more than 30,000 [Bauhaus-related] objects, from