Remember sitting in the living room when you were little, an old record playing in the background, mom cooking meat pies and the smell of lead solder in the air as your father fried the circuits of your RC car under a shiny pile of metal? If you could, you would have turned the scene…

You know that saying? One man’s washing machine drum is another man’s retro-modern firepit? Yeah, that one. Turns out it’s not just some socio-economic statement to make you feel guilty about tossing that washer in a gully. With $10 and an angle grinder, Sarah and Joe at House and Fig used their home improving pursuits…

EvD Media’s Adam O’Hern has been keeping our cadjunkie members busy with his latest SolidWorks tutorial series centered around developing a product from scratch with consideration to working within teams of engineers, graphic designers, and of course, industrial designers. What better way to start the first month of the new year than with some fresh…

It sits there…staring across the room, waiting for something, anything from you. As the dust gathers within the crevices of it’s numerical keypad, it silently weeps CMYK tears that splash off it’s matte ABS plastic cheeks. When you leave the office, it stares at your monitor with misty cartridges as it remembers a day when…

Having been open for a month, Keen Footwear’s Keen Garage in Portland, OR has seen nothing but glowing reviews from business leaders, architects, designers, environmentalists, and customers. Featuring everything from reclaimed barn doors to repurposed oil barrels upcycled into [comfy!] chairs, the retail environment is the penultimate museum of inspiration for repurposing…with purpose.

Releasing later this year, renowned interaction design guru Dan Saffer’s latest book Microinteractions is bound to spark some new thinking patterns for physical and digital good designers…and we have your passport to the pre-release excerpt here.

Advertised as ‘Miniature Mountain Majesties’ on their Shapeways site, TinyMtn probably couldn’t describe their product any better even if they were offered a contract with NASA to 3D print mars as the prize. By using USGS (United States Geological Survey) public data, the creators have produced a striking 3D print library that begs the question…why…

Introduced in 1985, the original NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) became nearly as desirable as a Farrah Fawcett poster for every teenage boy on planet earth. Over the following few years, the NES revolutionized the video game industry—selling over 60 million units (!!!) and brought Mario, Zelda, and of course, Duck Hunt to living rooms everywhere.…

London’s Design Museum is a marvel of inspiration for designers, engineers, architects, digital media artists, and pretty much anybody else. The awesome factor can maybe be compared to having a perfectly toasted giant marshmallow with a cup of spiced drinking chocolate on a blustery winter day next to a fireplace. For 22 years the museum…

In a new challenge from GrabCAD, your dream(s) of designing a steering wheel for a supersonic car are about to come true. We covered the 1,000 mph speed of the Bloodhond SSC back in 2008, so it’s nice to see where the Bloodhound team has taken the project, that Cisco has become their main networking…

Perhaps you were dazzled by the enchanting tote-and-row spectacle of the Oru folding Kayak. So much so, that you’ve been on a quest to collect, study and ascertain the benefits of small, folding watercraft. Enter Foldboat. Foldboat is a seamless, hard shell, folding boat fabricated from a single sheet of HDPE plastic and when people…

Industrial designer John Ford grew up with a professional woodworker by his side starting at the age of 7. A few decades later he’s still in the shop executing exceptionally-crafted furniture and other product designs. One of those designs just got funded on Kickstarter—and you should go check it out.

While you were enjoying your tuna fish sandwich at lunch, Panasonic unveiled one of their latest products at their keynote at CES in Las Vegas today–a freakin’ 3D printed TV.

Vancouver-based EatART is an art research center that borders heavily on make space. They have a lot of cool projects, including the famous eight-legged, ridable robot, Mondo Spider–had to be inspiration for Artisan’s Asylum Hexapod–but the latest project has been a 50-foot electromechanical snake called Titanoboa that met a Kickstarter funding goal, stopped off at…

Trying to record and mix sound, especially when you’re simultaneously attempting to squeeze cats and slap your lower back in burst of rhythmic flare, can be both daunting and painful. There’s a lot of high priced equipment that makes it easier–one of my favorite being a BOSS VE-20 Vocal Processor–but if you prefer the more…

Hark! 2013 is upon us! In many ways, the previous year seemed a turning point for where we’re going while simultaneously lacking any sort of drastic, earth-shattering changes. However, there’s plenty of fat, tech-laden fodder on which to speculate for 2013 and that’s exactly what we’re going to dish out for you folks. In recent…

Blake Maloof is a game designer at Toys for Bob, which recently released the incredibly popular game called Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure. In this exclusive interview for Make Magazine, Blake discusses rapid prototyping, humble roots, and the innovative process of developing this wildly popular franchise with Robert Leyland, the technical engineer behind the Skylanders hardware, and…

While most of us may have picked up a ‘101 things to (fill in the blank) before you die’ book at some point or another, none of those books have had the charismatic charm of an ‘Experience Passport’. Designed by Communication Designer Alex Egner, the Passport offers the design undergrad students at the University of…

You know the right lighting just makes the most cold, damp murder-scene of a space a warm, inviting nest of shadows and highlights. Thing is, most shapes wrapping the bulbs are just as cold and unstylish as the bloody room corners they’re illuminating. Not so with the handmade Faceture Light Shade from the fab mind…

When asked to take part in the Designer Challenge in a recent issue of Computer Arts Projects centered around a new spin on the business card, designer Mikey Burton opted to omit the card altogether–creating a traveling ‘letterpress’ instead.

Powered by a Raspberry Pi with a capacitive touch sensor and audio amplifier in a wooden enclosure, the BeetBox is a wonderkind amongst the potato-powered clocks and other vegetable-powered electronics available today. Through using the capacitive touch sensor, users are able to play drum beats through touching actual beets.

As digital and physical worlds become one, humans and technology are becoming “super organisms” responsible for entirely new languages, behaviors, and ways of interacting with not only devices, but eachother. “Connecting”, the 18 minute documentary from Basset and Partners, explores the future of Interaction Design and User Experience with interviews featuring some of the most…

For centuries, Bonsai has been a celebrated art form in Japanese culture involving meditative manicuring, long-term cultivation and shaping of one or more small trees growing in a container. While the art is still widely in practice, the general art form hasn’t changed much—until now.

The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive (WEEE) aims to reduce the amount of electrical and electronic equipment being produced and to encourages reducing, reusing, and recycling in the UK. Ultimately, this is forcing manufacturers to collect and recycle electronic equipment at end-of life more than ever before. Designer Ed Boaden explores the middle ground…

While it probably should have been at least ‘considered’ by the Kickstarter devs awhile ago, the recently released Kickstarter Status Board is a free Google Chrome App that makes tracking social media, funds raised, and other details on a campaign easier to track.

Aiming to solve the problem of kayak transport for city dwellers, architect and product designer Anton Willis and his talented team of branding and mechanical engineer strategists have successfully launched their solution of a foldable kayak that easily carries over the shoulder…making a quick jaunt in the river ridiculously easier than ever before.

In this brand spankin’ new mini-series we’ll be interviewing kickass individuals who lined up their targets successfully to launch their Kickstarter projects. In this first edition of the series, we’ll talk with Patrick Triato, Design Lead at Portland, Oregon-based Carbon Audio. Carbon Audio launched their Zooka Soundbar on Kickstarter and have since placed their product…

What happens when you harness the sculpting powers of ZBrush and produce 300 wood models on a pantograph? Designer Ben Godi gives us the inside look on how he created his latest masterpiece.

For some, the discomfort of sitting for long periods of time can turn them off from a pleasant picnic at the park. Designer Jeriël Bobbe has solved this problem of awkward picnic-sitting discomfort and we have his beautiful documented process from ideation to fabrication right here.

Starting as a thesis project at Parsons in NYC, Evan Roth collaborated with four NYC based graffiti writers (HELL, AVONE, JESUS SAVES, and KATSU) to further understand the motion of graffiti. Eight years later, Roth is capturing that data and producing it in 3D printed, chrome-plated ABS bliss.

What does it take to launch a successful crowdfunded project? We talked with Jamie Siminoff (also the founder of the new crowdfunding site Christie Street) about his latest project, the Doorbot and what process he went through to launch his campaign.

Imagine an interactive air screen that puts an image/video/CAD model into the air. Now imagine that image stays totally penetrable for physical objects and is powered by a multi-touch optical system that is controlled by your gestures, sans gloves, controllers, and gadgets. Now stop imagining…its real and it’s here.

Unveiled recently at the National RV Trade Show in Louisville, Kentucky, the Airstream Land Yacht concept aims to bring high design to those state park road trip adventures. While the silver bullet exterior is fairly identical to the classic design with a few upgrades, the interior has been radically redesigned through a partnership between two…

James George and Jonathan Minard aren’t your average documentary filmmakers. Currently fellows at the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University (try saying that with a mouth full of peanut butter), the two have used their media arts backgrounds to create a stunning interactive documentary that asks: “What does it feel like to…

The user experience considerations with pitcher-based water filtration systems over the years has been an interesting phenomenon to watch. From reusable vinyl stickers indicating the filter change-out cycle, to electronic timers embedded in the handles, filtered water has seen some impressive technological advances. With the success of subscription-based business models such as Dollar Shave Club…

Amazing new campaign out on Kickstarter – a lens attachment to give you, the iPhone user, the ability to scan an object and turn it into an OBJ, DXF or STL. So yes you can share your very best ‘ducklips’ over Facebook with an extra dimension of sheer silliness. The PhoneScope3D is placed over the…

It seems as though the discussion of first-class cabin designs for aerospace is overly-saturated with concepts blending between too conceptual and alien-like or too sci-fi and cold. Design studio Priestmangoode started with the best part of any home: the living room, and translated those comfortable UX elements into a cabin in the sky…sofa included.

Hailing from the always-colorful and texture-rich Brazil, young architect and designer Humberto da Mata’s inspiration is rooted in the exploration of everyday materials and building layers with excessive texture, leaving the user with a visually and texturally rich experience…but could his ‘textural’ vision extend into recreating ‘vision’ experiences for those with impairments?

The cold industrial look that is achieved when concrete is used has been getting more popularity lately as more designers are turning to the material for their final material directions. Now it’s ended up on Kickstarter in the form of a pen design. What other nontraditional uses has it been used for?

Shashinkan is Japanese for ‘photobooth’, and Japanese creative agency PARTY has created the ultimate in Shashinkans with the Omote 3D. The project will allow customers to buy models of themselves (at parties, presumably) in three sizes: small (10cm high), medium (15cm) and large (20cm). Prices start at a fairly steep $250, but depending on how…

If you’re looking to inspire the Kid Maker(s) in your life, we’ve done the maker-appropriate gift giving research for you. Everything in our Gift Guide for Kid Makers is bound to have the junior designer or engineer in your life destined for greatness. Lifesavers storybooks are so yesterday.

The Season of Giving is in full swing–and there’s still time to get your shopping or wish list done. Perhaps you have no idea what to get your design buddies, or even ask for yourself? For those who are lost in the world of gift giving and want some inspiration for the perfect gift, refer…

Ever wonder what 750 Engineers do to break up the monotony of designing the world’s most successful and innovative line of fans, vacuum cleaners and hand dryers? Battling each other in a design challenge is one way. You may remember the article we had about Jude Pullen and Cardboard Modelling. He works for Dyson and…

Speaking of laser cut toy creations, this Bandit gun Kickstarter project campaign just popped in our inbox. The Bandit gun is not only a rubberband gun–That would be lame and unnecessary with the skills you already have. This gun is a shotgun, with the deluxe ‘Sheriff’ version supporting three firing modes and, if ordered now,…

Yes, it’s a helicopter controlled by your brain. Something I never thought possible in my lifetime, let alone commercialized, but there you have it. The Puzzlebox Orbit is a toy chopper, the sort you fought for at Target on Black Friday. And had you avoided the hangry crowds you could have supported the Orbit on Kickstarter.…

Shapeways designer Kimotion has come up with an ingenious way to market himself during the holidays: post modern snowflake tree ornament designs resembling the likes of Psy, Superheroes, Stormtroopers, and a lucky Ninja Turtle.

Inspired by the Dutch Modernist painter Piet Mondrain, East London Designer Hugo Passos gives an updated spin on the “old artisanal way” by avoiding machinery in his Modernist product designs.

If you’ve ever sold a company for a billion point five dollars, there’s a strong liklihood you’ll use that money to buy a 20,000 sq ft Bel Air estate, pursue your childhood interest or both. There’s also a liklihood you’re Elon Musk. Wired’s Chris Anderson beat us to an interview with Elon Musk, where he…

Released yesterday on Kickstarter, the sleek ORA Sound System is a case that surrounds your iPad with 8 deafening speakers and solves one of the only compromises with the iPad: sound quality. In addition to the recently Kickstarted Zooka and Sound Cover iPad speaker systems, why the sudden popularity and what are the differences?

Love patterns? Working them into your design? How about blanketing algorithm-driven, parametric geometry across the screen or printing it out for use as a light shade that both baffles and amazes the mind? If you’ve ever wondered how some people model those amazing patterned designs or intricate, randomized detail of a 3D printed structure, look…