Get that stretch out of your system with this week’s Spotify-powered SolidSmack Radio Playlist. It’s fashioned up, ready to make you pull your shoulder blades back and knock out another week of meaningful work while you bob your head to the beat. Whether you’re in the shop milling aluminum, sketching the latest product prototypes or modeling up a 3D storm, consider these tracks as a tool for your process. This week on SolidSmack Radio we’ll fire things off with the classic “Angel” from Massive Attack before diving into atmospheric tracks from Son Lux, Radiohead, Toro y Moi, Portishead, and others before wrapping up with “Wait for Signal” from Tricky. Ready?…
Recently, I toured Europe to learn about how hardware startups grew there. Where is the Euro Silicon Valley? How are startups treated there compared to in the U.S.? How does networking, funding and team-building work over yonder? One of my stops was Warsaw, Poland. Here, I’ll share what I learned touring the FabLab powered by Orange, and interviewing the COO of Arkley, a hardware accelerator/VC. Watch for upcoming articles on other countries, including Germany, Ukraine, and Spain! Big Thanks to Hardware Massive In spite of having lived in Germany for about a year, I sadly didn’t have a ton of hardware engineering connections in Europe before now. So, when I…
The news centered around Apple design icon Jony Ive departing the Cupertino-based tech giant to form a new design studio with fellow industrial designer Marc Newson has hit the mainstream. While it makes sense for somebody to want to shift gears after nearly three decades with the same company, we now have further insight into what might have been the deciding factor for this prolific departure. According to recent reports from both Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal, Ive’s official departure isn’t as sudden as previously thought: it’s been years in the making and, among other factors, is due to CEO Tim Cook’s growing disinterest in product design as a…
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 held an exhibition showcasing several one-of-a-kind chairs made by many different architects, sculptors, artists, and designers. Aptly-titled “The Chair’, the show featured both functional chairs (meaning those that visitors can sit on) as well as conceptual chairs that studied form over function. If you’re thinking, “how fascinating could yet another exhibit on chairs be?”, then…
Mondays might not be your favorite day of the week, but the good news is that we’re all in this together ladies and gentlemen. As purveyors of prime Grade A web content, the SolidSmack crew has done some of the heavy-lifting to make sure you get your Mondays started on the right track. Welcome to The Monday List. Every Monday, we link you up with some of the most insightful, informative, and socially-relevant stories to keep tabbed, bookmarked, reading listed, pocketed, or what have you to get your week started on the right foot. Be sure to check in each week for a new crop of freshly sprouted words curated straight…
That time of the week, when you sit back and rent a new movie. Sip endless cups of java and ditch any work calls that come your way. Once you’ve settled into the routine, we reckon you give this list a glance as well. It’s all about the week that was. A strong week, Not a weak week! Jony Ive quit Apple and found love! Like real love-love. So happy for him! Over to the list of reading, other than the Jony Ive news. Making a ‘Swiss Army Knife’ Style Prosthetic Tool Close to a year ago, we saw how Big Life Fix was inventing awesome and changing lives. The idea behind…