Once in a while, there comes a Kickstarter project that becomes your ‘a-ha moment’ and inspires you. The HMM RULE/ONE is one such project that is so obvious and yet so distinct. The perfect marriage of everyday stationery implements that are essential! Targeted mainly at the design fraternity and folks that still rely on the good old paper and pen for illustrating their ideas and thoughts, the HMM RULE/ONE is innovative and includes a pen, ruler and stylus for Touchscreen Devices.
Between the recent developments in creating 3D printed houses, replicas of T-Rex museum displays and even carbon fiber race car parts, the limits of additive manufacturing are being pushed daily. In the past, 3D printers were commonly used for creating prototypes and one-offs in the product development process. Today however, everybody from middle school students to artists such as Joshua Harker are able to manifest their ideas into physical forms and new visual languages with more ease than ever. In this newly-released book from reputable publisher Gestalten, ‘Printing Things‘ is perhaps one of the most visually-appealing and comprehensive sources for everything additive manufacturing.
While using a stylus and a tablet for sketching is still a cumbersome experience for a lot of designers (particularly in the fine-point tip department), it is still very doable with enough practice…and in some cases, with some spare paper nearby. We’ve seen two-in-one hybrids that pair a stylus tip with a pen in the past, but the more traditionally-styled mechanical pencil/stylus hybrid 800+ from German writing instrument company r0tring just might be one of the best we’ve seen for designers and engineers so far.
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 Silicon Valley, this new parody from husband and wife filmmakers Mark and Angela Walley takes a stab at the hype-heavy prosumer camera market with their own ‘impossible camera design‘ that is definitely worth three minutes of your time today.
At the recent Milan Design Week, the very innovative company IVANKA constructed a temporary installation that showcased their creative genius of turning rainwater into high-quality, pure drinking water. The rainwater was filtered through a distinctive bio-concrete system, making it one of the smartest and efficient way of purifying rain. What makes this project important is that it opens up the possibility of providing drinking water in areas where there is dearth of safe potable water.