By Rain Noe - May 24 New

Kiefer's DIY "Parallelgo" Clamp Design

For tricky glue-ups and unusual shapes

A Canadian craftsman named Kiefer, now retired, reports that he spends his days having "a great time in my little shop building boxes and all kinds of tools of my own invention." One such tool he came up with is this unusual benchtop clamp: "I can use this for bringing

By Rain Noe - May 24 New

Custom Battery Charging Station Design/Build

Never mind what you can do for clients--the biggest perk of having an ID background is that you can design and build cool stuff for yourself, customized to your idiosyncrasies. Here industrial designer Eric Strebel needs a charging station to fit his specific workflow. With a little sci-fi inspiration, he

By Rain Noe - May 24 New

Dressing Up Wooden Objects with Pyrography

Pyrography is the art of "drawing" on wood using a stylus with an electrically-heated tip. For those that have mastered drawing in ink and are seeking another way to make indelible marks, pyrography is a good way to add visual interest to plain surfaces. It's something like creating tattoos on

By Joel Moskowitz - May 23

Tools & Craft # 96: Plumier, Crankshaft Design, And How We Waste Time at TFWW

I got called to the back of the shop a few days ago where some of my colleagues were having a heated discussion about crankshafts. They were perusing a copy of Charles Plumier's 1701 L'Art De Tourner, Ou De Faire En Perfection Toutes Sortes d'Ouvrages Au Tour and one wag

By Steven Johnson - May 23

Steven M. Johnson's Bizarre Invention #108: New Vista Bikes

Steven M. Johnson's "Patent Depending" series of inventions range from social commentary to plain ol' bizarre, and they always give us a laugh. So we've contracted him to let us publish one every week.

By Rain Noe - May 23

The CLiP System for Carrying Small Objects and Keeping Them Organized

Lever Gear's designs add some much-needed UX improvements to the act of toting tiny things

This is one of those "not for me, but I can see how this is useful" products. The CLiP System, designed by South-Carolina-based design/engineering firm Lever Gear, was created for those who need to carry small items around--flash drives, meds, SD cards, et cetera--and compensates for the inherently poor UX

By Rain Noe - May 23

Explaining the Design of the Commemorative Trump/Kim Coin

Here are the hidden meanings and messages

We're not interested in the politics, but we're very interested in the design of this coin, so here we'll break it down.

By Emily Engle - May 22

The Resulting Products of MakerBot's NYCxDesign Challenge

1 extremely broad brief + 17 designers = 15 very diverse projects

To celebrate this year's NYCxDesign, MakerBot hand-picked 17 New York City designers and put them to the test of designing and prototyping an object to improve daily life. The 13 individual designers and 2 design duos were each given a MakerBot Replicator and a few rolls of filament to

By Michael DiTullo - May 22

Yo! C77 Sketch: How to Choose the Right Perspective

In this episode, Michael DiTullo shows us how to use perspective to portray a convincing sense of scale

Beyond having accurate perspective, choosing the right perspective angle can make or break a sketch. In this video I'l show you how you can use perspective to give a convincing sense of scale to the object you are designing. As always, if you have any questions or comments on

By Rain Noe - May 22

Raymond Loewy's Illustrative Chart Showing the Evolution of Form Factors

Cars, trains, phones, clocks, chairs, stemware, dresses, bathing suits

Raymond Loewy, the father of industrial design, once drew up this nifty chart showing how from factors evolved into the early 20th century: We know it's hard to see, so let's blow it up a bit: What I wouldn't give to see him still alive and completing the chart up

By Rain Noe - May 22

DIY Gear-Driven Plywood Panel Lift

An impressive design-build by Frank Howarth

Here's a great piece of practical prototyping. Frank Howarth is finishing his ceiling with plywood panels, meaning a lift would be handy. Why buy when you can DIY? We know Howarth as an architect and designer, and here he pulls out the mechanical engineering muscles too. Here he walks

By Rain Noe - May 21

BMW's Minimalist People Mover

Form follows funktion

This is sort of like the corporate version of looking inside someone's workshop to see what kind of nifty little jigs they've built for themselves to simplify production. Upon learning that some of their factory and logistics employees walk up to 12 kilometers a day inside their facilities, BMW's Group

By Rain Noe - May 21

Anti-Squirrel Bird Feeder Designs

Here's what works, and what doesn't

Designing an object that will accommodate one animal, but not another animal of similar size, is a tricky endeavor. A bird feeder is a good example: How do you allow your avian friends to access the seed, without greedy neighboring squirrels helping themselves? One solution might be to cover the

By Rain Noe - May 21

How Do You Capture and Move a Shark Using Plastic Boards?

Here, sharky sharky sharky

On June 30th the New York Aquarium will open "Ocean Wonders: Sharks!" This is a 57,500-square-foot, $146 million exhibit that has taken over a decade to create, as the newly-built aquarium was badly damaged by Hurricane Sandy. Now coming into the home stretch, the aquarium employees need to get the

By Emily Engle - May 18

NYCxDesign Recap Days 1-3

A few of our favorite discoveries from our first three days exploring NYCxDesign

We're three days into NYCxDesign, and our calendars couldn't be more packed! Although we haven't hit ICFF yet, we've discovered plenty of smaller wonders around the city. There's so much going on that if you haven't visited our NYCxDesign Map, we suggest you do so before you get too overwhelmed.

By Christian Ervin - May 18

The Camera, Transformed by Machine Learning

How Machine Learning is reshaping the point-and-shoot

Scroll through the hundreds of icons for "camera" on Noun Project or the 124,706 community-generated drawings of cameras on Google Quick Draw, and you'll notice they're all remarkably similar. Together, they suggest a shared cultural understanding of a camera: a classic point-and-shoot. But the cameras we encounter

By Rain Noe - May 18

Urban Design Observations: Why is This Minivan Lifted Like That?

Walking the dogs and this minivan caught my eye. It doesn't make sense. I've seen vehicles with lifted suspensions before, which is typically done to add clearance for rough terrain. But the ground effects on this minivan are mere inches off of the ground. Well, the graphics on the car

By Rain Noe - May 18

Neat Details of Elon Musk's Evolving Plan to Create Tunnel Network Beneath L.A.

Mass transit concepts, and a clever plan to create saleable construction materials on-site

Yesterday Elon Musk's Boring Company held a publicly-streamed informational session where they revealed details of their plans to create a traffic-beating tunnel network beneath Los Angeles. Whereas the plan had previously envisioned automated sleds that would whisk passenger cars through the network, it has now evolved into the idea of

By Rain Noe - May 18

Arevo Develops Carbon Fiber Manufacturing Breakthrough, Demonstrates It With a 3D-Printed Bicycle

Their process is way cheaper, way faster and can go way bigger

When I hear "3D-printed bike from Silicon Valley" I start to roll my eyes, but this company is actually onto something. Arevo is a start-up that has figured out how to simplify and re-size, rather inexpensively, the carbon fiber manufacturing process. Typically, carbon fiber is difficult and expensive to

By Emily Engle - May 17

Furniture Subscription Service Kamarq Pulls Majority of Collection Following Plagiarism Accusations

Design week drama.

New furniture subscription service Kamarq debuted their first collection yesterday morning, but it was a short lived celebration for designers Nicola Formichetti and PJ Mattan, as many design savvy New Yorkers were quick to point out the blatant similarities between their Elephant tables and Ana Kras' Slon collection with Matter

By Stuart Constantine - May 17

Yanko Design joins Coroflot Design Network

This week we're happy to welcome Yanko Design into the Coroflot Design Employment Network. Our newest partner job board launched a few days ago, servicing both the HOW and Print Magazine web sites. Since its inception in 2002, Yanko Design has been showcasing innovative and inspirational design content. Over the

By Rain Noe - May 17

An Example of the Industrial Design Process in the Consumer Product Space, Part 2

Completing the wireless phone charger prototype

This latest series of videos is the best, most in-depth look at the industrial design process from Eric Strebel yet! We get to see him making design decisions on the fly that consider how to communicate things to the user, use Photoshop to work out the CMF, explain why

By Rain Noe - May 17

Getting Every Last Drop of Product Out of a Bottle, and Other PVC Hacks

My value of what I'd later learn was called "industrial design" was formed early on. At 14 I started working in a restaurant owned by a hands-on penny pincher, and letting a single molecule of a condiment go to waste was a fire-able infraction. So we were taught to "marry"

By Rain Noe - May 17

Fun for Designers: Three Quick "Can You Draw This Without Lifting Your Pencil" Tests

I came across this "Can you draw this?" test, which asked if you could trace the following without lifting your pen off of the paper: I don't like that one because it involves folding the paper, which I think is b.s. This second one was a little more satisfying to

By Rain Noe - May 16

Urban Design Observations: Abandoned Storefront Graffiti Etiquette

On a commercially volatile strip of Lafayette Street, another store has gone out of business, probably pushed out by rising rents. I've noticed that within days of a store closing down, kids will come through at night and tag the place up, including on the glass. But right next