We’ve featured Michael Grab’s work in the Friday Smackdown before, but we wanted to take a closer look at his process and share more of his work. At the very least, his work is inspirational. At most, it could provide ideas about how you approach your own design problem. Michael is a balance artist –…

If you’re a skateboarder like myself, you know how awesome it feels to fly down a hill. But you know what stinks? Going up that hill. With no momentum or pedal of any sort, skateboarders have little choice but to awkwardly push themselves up or (ugh) walk. In an attempt to remedy the propulsion problem…

Your carpal tunnel is about to have a sad face and you’re about to toss your mouse… set it aside at least. “NO! TOSS IT!” Ok, ok, throw that punk out the nearest window. Why? Wacom just dropped a discount bomb, launching its Spring Sale event, on Intuos and Cintiq tablets along with other deals…

We’ve not seen enough Tesla Model S mods. But that’s about to change. Determined to make the smallest Tesla car ever, Austin Blake of YouTube channel austiwawa took a child’s Tesla Model S Radio Flyer and fitted it with a go-kart engine to make what he calls the “Teskart”: After taking the mini Model S…

Even though humankind has gone pale and pasty from excessive indoor living, they somehow still find joy in eating outdoors. Trees rustling, birds chirping, congealed hame and cheese on whole grain wheat, Ahhhhhh. It’s one of life’s great mysteries; there’s something about nature that makes eating more satisfying. Of course, you’d be remiss to go…

SolidSmack readers are a rowdy, capable bunch, professionals in their field and able to take on just about any project. If any of these projects have called for a square hole, you’ve done your fair share of measuring twice and cutting once… then trimming a bit. But what if you could make that square cut…

You may know them for their cars, but Rolls-Royce is currently looking to the sky instead of just the roads. ACCEL – their new electric plane project which stands for “accelerating the electrification of flight” is a single seat, electricity-powered airplane that aims to reach a top speed of 300 mph. https://vimeo.com/307303886 Made in collaboration…

Here’s something you’ve never seen before: a barcode scanner being used as a musical instrument: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOfpQt4KFCc Part of the Electronicos Fantasticos project which aims to reuse old consumer electronics by turning them into instruments, this “Barcoderess” may look like normal prison attire but is in fact a piece of clothing covered in a number of…

Do you remember being told off for burning ants and leaves with a magnifying glass when you were a kid? If so, congrats; your parents made sure you wouldn’t go blind from staring at focused sunlight for too long. Taking a page out of this timeless childhood pastime, artist and filmmaker Michael Papadakis of Sunscribes…

What do you do after creating the most popular construction system on the planet? You create another system just in case anyone already has all 16414 sets released over the last 70 years. LEGO announced their new much-anticipated, thought-to-be canceled product, LEGO DOTS, this week. If you thought they exhausted the plastic-snapping possibilities, you’ll be…

Now those are two words I thought I’d never see together – Sleek + Chicken Tractor. But that’s just one attribute of the Chicken Caravan, a chicken tractor design created by Designers on Holiday’s Tom Gottelier and Bobby Petersen. It’s a simple mobile coop design created for The Ecology Center – a non-profit organization dedicated…

Though they can be quite useful with their cordless design, Airpods can sometimes look as appealing as a cotton bud sticking out of your ear on a public train. Eager to give them a bit more class, jeweller and designer Pablo Cimadevila took a normal pair of Airpods and gave them an 18-karat gold treatment:…

When you think of a blender, what usually comes to mind is a cylindrical machine capable of grinding, juicing, or mulching down food into elderly-friendly portions. The second thought which comes to mind is the noise; as almost all blenders operate with as much subtlety as an inconsiderate construction worker. Eager to distance kitchen appliances…

If you’ve ever looked at a bike and thought “Man, I wish this thing had a bunch of freakin’ legs instead of wheels”, then you’re probably just as awesome as the people behind YouTube channel The Q. Taking inspiration from Dutch designer Theo Jansen’s Strandbeests (kinetic sculptures which move with the wind), this bicycle’s rear…

Our favorite celebrity maker, design shaker is at it again. Since ‘The Big Life Fix’, Jude Pullen has been up to all sorts of shenanigans on his site and Instructables, including the prep of his super-human, inventive, problem-solving capabilities for a new show on UK’s Channel 4 – David Jason’s Great British Inventions. Here’s a…

How many soap bottles do you throw out each year? Yeah, enough for the eco-terrorist elite and Leonardo DiCaprio to make you feel guilty for a few seconds while you mock their hypocrisy. All the while, despite our best efforts to rid ourselves of evil plastics, we still produce tons of waste which takes ages…

While most of us reuse old newspaper to wrap breakables, hold fish and chips, or create paper-mache sculptures of our pets, Atsushi Adachi has a much more creative use for them. A Japanese visual artist, Adachi takes old newspapers and uses them to create replicas of machines FROM THE PAST. If you’ve ever been to…

While there’s nothing quite as bad as stepping on a stray LEGO block, a close second is having to sort out the mess of bricks once you (or your kids) are done using them. It’s bad enough finding all of the little buggers, but when you’re a LEGO aficionado who plans on using specific parts…

Most craftsmen think of CNC machining as a means to an end, but for the filmmaker and digital artist Dom Riccobene, it’s the best way to make miniature landscapes of both real-world and fictional locales. We’ve already seen his AR map of Game of Thrones’ Westeros, but this time around, he’s gone back to the…

While the best (and easiest) ways to keep memories are through writings, photos, and videos, they aren’t quite as creative as what woodworker and filmmaker Frank Howarth has come up with. Taking an ordinary wooden sphere, he engraves a terrain map of Newberry Crater —located in Central Oregon’s Deschutes Forest — onto the wood before encasing…

Need a design taken from A to B or maybe A to Q? Going from A to B might take one skill set and from B to C, another. Do you know what Q through B looks like? Stuff that brain matter back in your ears and take a breath. Let’s review the ABCs of…

As the old adage goes, “You either go big or go home.”; and in the case of the University of Maine’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center, they DEFINITELY went big. Using their ginormous in-house 3D printer which has a printing space of 22 by 100 feet and 10 feet high, they were able to print…

While a large house can definitely benefit from having a ton of furniture in it, too much furniture can make a small apartment or condo unit look cramped and unsightly. Seoul-based designer HyukJoon Choi has found a nice middle ground by creating a collection of furniture which both is and isn’t there. Dubbed the “invisible”…

YouTuber BLACKHAND is a master at constructing DIY projects that allow us to experience tantalizing chain reactions. His burning matchstick pieces are wildly popular enjoying views in the millions! But just when we may have been tempted to dubb him Mr. Combustable and were itching to burn something else, he’s done gone and changed up…

Despite being one of the most iconic plastic toys of all time, the first LEGO toys were, in fact, crafted from wood. The company, founded by master carpenter Ole Kirk Kristiansen in 1932, initially crafted the toys out of wood but switched over to plastic when wood supplies became scarce in the aftermath of WWII.…

For the serious LEGO junkies out there, the LEGO IDEAS community is a one-stop shop for all things plastic brick. From message boards to activity ideas, the platform—which is officially hosted by LEGO—encourages members to share their creations and compete for prizes with build competitions. It’s also where master builders can upload proposals for new…

Another day, another radical chair design. Instead of coming up with yet another ordinary chair, designer Peter Otto Vosding collaborated with cabinet maker Dirk Vosding to make a chair with as little materials as possible. The resulting piece of furniture is simply called the “Mµ” (pronounced “mm”). The chair is made from ash wood and…

Nailguns are like man’s own gift to himself. With the pull of a trigger, you can drive a number of metal nails into whatever you want connected together. In a perfect world, all nailguns would be easy to carry and store, but sadly majority either use lithium-ion batteries or are fitted with a heavy air…

After their first Kickstarter campaign proved a success, the young designers at orangered life have taken their 30° Ruler (cleverly taglined “One Ruler to Rule Them All”) and brought it to a whole new level: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZOyd3PxuZU The 30° Ruler 2.0 is still very much like its predecessor. Instead of a flat ruler, this one is angled at…

Washing machines, blenders, stoves; just about every household appliance is associated with some form of electrical power. But what would household appliances look like if you removed the power cord and need for energy standards altogether? Created by German designer Manuel Immler, Pino is an electricity-free, multi-tool kitchen appliance that can be fitted with several standard kitchen…

Before Spotify, MP3 sound files, and CDs, people listened to music through cassette tapes. These little blocks of plastic with rolls of film in them played tunes when played through a cassette player, and no cassette player was more famous than the Sony Walkman. First introduced 40 years ago in July of 1979, Sony’s portable…

Over the past couple of years, China has had a major boom in the bike-sharing industry. By renting bicycles out to the public for a fee, companies earn money from cyclists who use the same docking system. Now this is all well and good if there are a handful of competitors in the market, but…

After seeing a faceted sculpture design made from folded paper one day, welder Andrei Kazantsev decided to try his hand at making his own sculptures using the material he works best with: folded steel. His most recent project lifesized faceted Pitbull, and he was generous enough to share the entire build process that goes into…

After 10 years of designing sports products, industrial designer Eelco Siebring has opted for quite the career change. No longer designing sporting equipment, he now works as the lead designer and 2D layout artist for Undone, the upcoming, and quite unique, animated series on Amazon Prime centering around a girl named Alma as she interacts…

Kids today may never learn to appreciate how far technology has come in such a short time. They’ll never know the struggles of rewinding VHS tapes before returning them to Blockbuster, and video games can now be downloaded straight to their mobile phones instead of taking a trip to the video arcade for every quick…

You may have built the London Tower Bridge using LEGOS three times over, but having a structure made of solid bricks just doesn’t have the same *oomph* as a real bridge with cables keeping their towers from collapsing on each other. The Mola Structural Kit 3 is the third incarnation of Mola’s modular systems which…

The Olympics may be where the world’s best athletes showcase their skills, but it’s also a chance for hosting countries to show off the best of their culture and hopes of what the world could become. Next year’s Summer Olympics in Tokyo is no different. In preparation for the event, many of Japan’s residents partook…

It’s quite surprising how many people don’t know the Heimlich maneuver. Rather than taking five minutes to look up a simple tutorial on YouTube, most folks would rather live in ignorance until one of their friends or family starts choking on a piece of food or worse… something which isn’t food. By then, it’s usually…

You can’t enter a coffee shop nowadays without at least seeing one iPhone on a single person. First released in June 2007, Apple’s iconic phone has become one of the leading smartphone lines around the world. Goes without saying, right? But what if the iPhone was released earlier than 2007? What if, say, it came…

When the newest Mac Pro was announced by Apple in June, people were ecstatic. Not because of the computer’s maximum CPU capacity of 28 cores/56 threads and 2933MHz memory, but because the hardware was a return to Apple’s tower design after years of a thermally limited, although quite compact, ‘trash can’ style design. Featuring a…

If you’ve ever wondered how a semi-automatic pistol works without having to get anywhere within firing distance of one… then you’re in luck. 3D generalist and motion designer Matt Rittman has taken the liberty of animating a totally safe, digital recreation of the iconic Glock 19. https://youtu.be/V2RDitgCaD0 After doing a fair bit of research to…

Hold onto your Swedish meatballs and lingonberry jam—the marketing team at IKEA is at it again. And no, they didn’t create self-assembling furniture…yet. If you’re a fan of the GRÖNLID, the LIDHULT, or the SÖDERHAMN sofas, designing your next setup can now be done sans CAD via your trusty laptop keyboard. Yes—the same keyboard you…

You are a great designer. You have innate gifts with 3D and spatial relations and are a creative, original thinker. You have studied and mastered mechanical principles and fundamentals. Through industry experience, you’ve learned about manufacturing processes, rules of thumb and tools and tricks of the trade. You are an interesting “T-shaped” person pulling from…

Ah, the simple chair. It has one straightforward function: to seat the human rear. And while the invention has been around for centuries, artisans from just about every time period and culture have put their own spin on what has become a fundamental icon of industrial design. More recently, New York gallery The Future Perfect…

One of the hardest things to make when sketching a blueprint, model, or drawing is the circle. How is it possible after years of doodles in school, practice in college, and use in work that drawing a flawless circular is so difficult? Outside the few who may be able to nail all 360 degrees, the…

A majority of youngins’ these days don’t realize just how high the cost of living can be as you get older. Medicine, healthcare, transportation, and canes for hitting those disrespectful youngins – these are a few of the things you start screaming about as you age. These items are not cheap, and some are downright…

As production companies get more creative with materials in an effort to reduce and reuse waste, more thought is being put into how materials can be used. The New Raw has research labs which allow city denizens to craft recycled furniture, skateboards are being turned into kitchen knives, and now… we have portable speakers made…

Swedish furniture company Ikea has been on a problem-solving roll lately. After working on 3D printed gaming chairs for sensitive rears and the more recent ThisAbles project which features accessible furniture for the disabled, the company now has its sights set on helping those lacking personal space in small urban dwellings. ROGNAN is an upcoming…

After showcasing the new Air Force 720 and unveiling a limited-time workshop where customers can… err, customize their shoes, Nike is back at it with another innovation to their timeless shoe: https://www.instagram.com/p/Bxh2u3XATwm/ On the surface, these Nike Air Force 1s are as easily dirtied as any other pair of white shoes. But shine a blacklight…

For those who aren’t in the know, handheld gaming is somewhat of a dying industry. “You lie!” No, no. It’s true, Mr. Gameboi. Since that smartphone in yo’ pocket is game capable, there isn’t much of a demand/use for another slab o’ plastic to play games. I guesssssss there’s the Nintendo Switch, but it can…