Back in May of this year, the MoMA Design Store in New York City announced that they would be selling a curated collection of successfully-funded Kickstarter projects as a part of the NYCxDesign festivities that occurred over the month. Needless to say, the experiment was a success and proved to be a fine example of…
With products such as GoldieBlocks, LEGO Mindstorms and Arduino making waves in the toy industry and media, it’s easy to forget some of the more simple products that provide the basic foundation for making things…such as construction sets. Aiming to fill this overlooked niche is Ingocraft, a new 3D printing-focused company that offers both a…
Consisting of over 15,000 square meters of world-class automobile manufacturing equipment, the Ferrari factory in Maranello, Italy is one of the most iconic and visited automobile manufacturing facilities in the world. Having been the location for the famous Ferrari factory since the early 1940s, Enzo Ferrari chose the Northern Italy spot due to complications having…
Having been the designer of the world’s first laptop computer and co-founding one of the world’s leading design firms, IDEO, Bill Moggridge’s life is as colorful as they come for those in the field of designing human experiences. After having earned an industrial design degree in 1965 from the Central School of Art and Design…
After a series of unfortunate events including criticisms of his design decisions and problems with manufacturers in their complicated supply chain leading up to their largest new product release category in years, the notoriously public-shy Jony Ive has been opening up more to various media outlets as of late. What makes these recent interviews interesting…
If you were one of the lucky few who was a kid back when the original Star Wars films were released (sadly, I wasn’t), chances are the official ‘Star Wars’ toys were a huge part of your childhood. While the original toys are primarily in the hands of eccentric collectors these days (and selling for…
As the remote and always-mobile worker becomes more commonplace, it can be easy to forget just how many tools we are actually carrying around in our backpacks or pockets…be it in widget, browser, or application form. But just how much have we been able to squeeze into our little machines? How have we evolved into…
Last week we gave you a heads up about a new short film from creative firm Bassett & Partners that explores what the meaning of a design brief is from the point of view of a variety of creative visionaries. This morning, the informative short film went live and is totally worth 26 minutes of…
After much speculation and internet chatter, it has been confirmed by Apple that “yes”, their phones do bend. While they have said that only nine cases have been reported, there’s no saying exactly what Apple’s definition of ‘reported’ is nor why the phones are actually bending. Apple opened up their ‘iPhone Torture Lab’ to various…
When it comes to executing design projects exceptionally, communication between the client and the design team is always key. In most cases the design brief is where the conversation starts and depending on what the end goal is, can mean the difference between future collaborations or a disastrous stumble across the finish line…if it even…
As the market for 3D printing grows exponentially each year, so does the demand for those who are professionally-trained in developing three-dimensional objects outside of iPad apps and cookie cutter mesh-mixers. The number of job ads alone that require additive manufacturing and 3D printing skills has increased 1,834% in the last four years and over…
If you were asked to present a sketch for a new product design concept in the next ten minutes, there’s a good chance you would probably reach for a pen and paper versus your tablet or computer peripheral device. Why? While there has never been a better time to sketch and work digitally , the…
When it first launched, few people could have ever expected the Coolest Cooler to be as successful as it has been…it would have been impressive just to hit the $100,000 mark for a product whose sole purpose is to keep beverages cold at a picnic. Currently sitting at just above the $10 million funding level,…
Founded in 1912, BERTONE has had a colorful history creating some of the most sought-after and futuristic car designs throughout the past century. The reputable Italian firm started out as a carriage manufacturing business and later turned into a styling studio that was commissioned by some of the most reputable car manufacturers in the world…
In case you’ve been living under a rock, you’re probably familiar with the popular Ice Bucket Challenge that originated from 29 year old Peter Frates, a former captain of the Boston College baseball team who was diagnosed with ALS in 2012 (this according to a Facebook data science team). Since its first appearance on various…
Inspired by a strange desire to create and design a collection of products for ‘all the wrong reasons’, product designer Katerina Kamprani has essentially created a collection of almost usable yet absolutely-not-usable product designs that bring to mind the popular Most Useless Machine Ever. Perhaps the ongoing collection is a purpose-related inside joke related to…
We’ve all seen various images and video clips of robots on product assembly lines ranging from cars to pocket tools. While robots have helped automate the manufacturing process, few details exist about where the future is likely heading apart from whatever sci-fi theories that are floating around. While nobody wants to see somebody lose their…
Documenting an industrial design process can be a challenging task when your primary focus is on getting the actual product design out of the door and into the hands of your client or manufacturer in time. Whether the documentation is for a student portfolio or for a world-class design firm, the combination of research data,…
As anybody with an interest in Apple’s top-secret design offices knows, few details ever emerge behind the ‘Minimaluminiumalism’ approach to some of the most game-changing product designs of all time. Sure, Apple’s Jony Ive has expressed how much appreciation he has for Dieter Rams and even opened up on how much Dieter Rams influenced him…
Lately we’ve been seeing quite the interest from the general public when it comes to ‘what’s inside’ the many artifacts that make up our day-to-day lives. Perhaps the best examples of this trend are the recent videos of objects being ‘shaved away’ one millimeter at time. While there are a few of them floating around…
‘Minimaluminiumalism’ isn’t an actual word (yet?)…but if we were to hear a word like it there’s a strong possibility that it would come from none other than everybody’s favorite ‘minimal/aluminum-loving’ industrial designer Jony Ive. The iconic Apple designer has seen his fair share of criticisms and parodies over the years but let’s be honest here…there…
Deciding what to hang on the wall is never an easy choice. Unless you’re an art collector and rotate pieces often, finding that ‘perfect’ photograph or painting can take months if you are finicky about details. If somewhere along the way you’ve been looking for that final touch to make your home office or workshop…
Inspired by the desire to buy a quality, well-designed luxury watch but frustrated by the current state of the bloated luxury watch industry, Leonard & Church founder Jeff Leung set out to establish a new watch company that cuts out the unnecessary middlemen including wholesalers, importers and retailers. This ‘eliminate the supply chain’ business model…
In the video age, getting behind the design thinking and production process of many great thinkers has never been easier, and online file transfer service WeTransfer has added even more great videos to this movement with the launch of their Creative Class video series. Aimed at illustrating how some of the most influential people in…
Yesterday we shared filmmaker Keith Skretch’s Waves of Grain video on our all-new SolidSmack Daily Smack Reading list. In Waves of Grain, Skretch shaves away blocks of wood layer-by-layer to reveal a sort of reverse-growth cycle of various grain patterns and imperfections. But what would happen if you did the same time-lapse process with other…
We’re pretty sure that if you were to open up your nearest dictionary and open it up to the word ‘Insanity’, Colin Furze’s name would be somewhere in there. The plumber, stuntman, inventor, and filmmaker from Stamford, Lincolnshire, England is known for his wild and downright impressive inventions ranging from ‘The World’s Fastest Pram’ (complete…
What happens in the top-secret design lab at Apple’s Cupertino HQ has been a topic of interest for years now. Regardless if you use and appreciate Apple products or are a devoted Dell or Samsung user, it’s hard not to appreciate the contributions to industrial design that Jony Ive and team have cooked up in…
Since its launch in 2006 in San Mateo, California, the Bay Area Maker Faire has been the premiere event for makers, DIYers, hackers, and anybody with an interest in making things real. With everything from soldering clinics to a 3D printing village, it’s hard to leave the event feeling uninspired to get that wacky side…
Last week SolidSmack reported that in celebration of NYCxDesign happening this month in New York City, the MoMA Design Store would be selling a collection of successfully-funded Kickstarter product designs that are among the “most impressive, new and innovative we have been finding lately”, according to MoMA’s Director of Merchandising Emmanuel Platt. We stopped by…
We are not here to debate the legality surrounding the possession of guns, but to merely ponder on how things can get out of hand when you don’t take the time to learn about laws in your country and to recognize how 3D printing is making manufacturing possible. First, if ownership of guns is illegal…
Marketing and 3D printing have been going hand-in-hand quite nicely in recent memory (and why not?). Whether using additive manufacturing as a self-promotional tool or as a way to make custom Oreo cookies, it serves as a good reminder just how custom we can get with manufacturing these days. The innovative indie rock band Broken…
It comes with little surprise that with the rise of Kickstarter videos and ‘launch campaigns’ there is a growing trend in creating ‘start-up parodies’. Perhaps the most well-known is HBO’s Silicon Valley tv show in which the main character navigates the weird and wild terrain of the California start-up scene. Similar to the essence of…
Having been criticized about their contribution to e-waste in the past, Apple has been working tirelessly to reverse their image and set themselves more in line with what is the environmental equivalent of their design ethos. Released by Apple in honor of Earth Day today, ‘Better’ aims to show Apple’s commitment to putting the Cradle…
In case you haven’t seen it, Silicon Valley is in it’s third week over on HBO and is definitely worth a watch…if only because Office Space is on at least one of your top ten movie lists. If HBO isn’t your thing however (note the first episode is free on YouTube)–and you still want to…
Explaining how design affects our daily lives is no easy task…especially when it involves trying to simplify it in terms that a young population can grasp. Between the complexities of city planning to the reasons why houses and products are built a specific way, there is a lot of info to sort of ‘sum up’…
We’ve seen our fair share of April Fools’ Day product design spoofs over the past few years that have actually been somewhat believable…if it wasn’t for the fact that the press release came out on April 1st. Yesterday was no exception and between products like the Sphero SelfieBot and the falconry-inspired ‘Twitter Helmet’, those in…
Like a well-orchestrated production, the pages that have come and gone for various Kickstarter campaigns regularly tell us a story of organization and order without delivering even a glimpse of the chaos that’s happening backstage. With the announcement that he burned all copies of his Kickstarted book due to poor fulfilment planning, Sad Pictures for…
From DIY PVC Marshmallow Shooters to LEGO Mindstorm Kits, young makers who have a passion for making things have quite the gamut of options these days. Despite the lack of wood shop and other ‘hands-on’ classes in school that their parents and grandparents might have taken back in the day, the amount of options for…
Consider it a lesson in what could happen if you design faulty devices and the disastrous outcomes that they could bring. Inspired by the humorous Ian Frazier-written Coyote v. Acme lawsuit that was featured in the New Yorker back in 1990, Daniel Weil of design studio Pentagram has reimagined the designs for five gadgets that…
It does not take a market analyst to realize that the explosion in mobile device sales within the past decade has made it relatively uncommon to leave home without at least one device featuring a touchscreen. While the innovation itself allows our gadgets to be great, the anti-ergonomic technology behind it is pretty far from…
It could be argued that there are two different kinds of people in this world: those who can draw accurately on an Etch A Sketch and those who end up with what looks like a ball of hair coughed up by their neighbor’s cat. Okay, perhaps not…but regardless, the Etch A Sketch is as iconic…
As the market for artisanal goods keeps expanding in a world of disposable IKEA and H&M ‘goods’, so too does the desire for people to hear the stories behind these expertly-crafted artifacts. Murray Carter is another one of those makers who has spent his life perfecting the craft of bladesmithing…a unique craft that demands both…
Laugh all you want, but sharpening pencils is a serious business…just ask Artisanal Pencil Sharpener David Rees. As the number one #2 pencil sharpener in the world, David makes thousands of dollars a year through his pencil sharpening business and even has a book on the topic—appropriately titled ‘How to Sharpen Pencils’. In this humorous…
Yesterday, SolidSmack posted on the Electric Loog Guitar—a sort of build-a-guitar kit that encourages customization. While build-a-kits have been in existence for decades, there seems to be a resurgence in interest for both adults and kids alike. After raising over $160,000 on Kickstarter with 29 days left to go in their 30-day campaign, the Kano…
Can you even imagine what you get when you have three young girls and Brett Doar (of OK Go fame) spending two weeks with a crew creating a Rube Goldberg machine made completely out of toys, putting it to music with a rewrite of the Beastie Boys’ Girls? Only the most awesome video in the…
Master woodworker and community leader Eric Hollenbeck presents a rare breed in today’s technology-obsessed world. While 3D printers, laser cutters, and CAD software have re-defined what it means to ‘make something’, Hollenbeck’s most-modern tool in his impressive arsenal was built in 1948. In this mesmerizing Maker profile from director Ben Proudfoot of Breakwater Studios, we…
This past Friday, 40 of the world’s top experts in digital and interactive art, data visualization, software art, 3D printing, augmented reality, and other digital art and design applications converged on the stage at The New School in NYC’s Greenwich Village for LISA 2013 (Leaders in Software and Art) to discuss their projects, where these…
Live design competitions have been one of the best ways for new (and existing) designers to showcase their chops and get great exposure without having to pull out their portfolios. Additionally, watching a mouse arrow dive through command menus and toolbars can be one of the best ways of re-imagining a software program or getting…
Repurposing existing industrial products into a static sculpture is a beast to tackle in itself, but what about creating kinetic sculptures that actually…play decent music…and have a social message behind them? Artist Pedro Reyes has done just that with his collection of eight new instruments created from repurposed firearms. Built in collaboration with several musicians…
To coincide with the Design Museum’s The Future is Here exhibition—a showcase displaying some of the most pioneering pieces of the new industrial revolution—the Museum caught up with iconic industrial designer Ron Arad to discuss his thoughts on 3D printing…and why he thinks it’s being abused now more than ever.