Back in February 2018, Nike challenged innovators around the world to come up with solutions to two significantly impactful athletic footwear issues: material waste and how to improve the recycling process to create more useful resources, footwear-related or otherwise. Over 600 applications came from around the world, with five winners tasked with creating new inventions using Nike Grind – materials recovered from footwear recycling, and one winner awarded for their material recycling solution. Starting with the Nike Grind inventions, you have Stuffed – a series of furniture pieces made from fiber, rubber granulate, and cork. The materials used to make the cushions come from recycled shoes and are designed by…

When it comes to sketching and communicating your ideas well, nothing beats a good old-fashioned pencil and a keen sense of perspective. That said, adding depth to your form sketches with light and shadow is a natural next step in taking your sketches to the next level. And when it comes time to cranking ideas out fast, our favorite go-to is a fistful of 2-3 Sketching Grays from Copic that give us great contrast. These ultra-blendable, low odor, alcohol-based inks deliver rich and smooth strokes that are ideal for quickly communicating product concepts. And unlike water-based inks, which tend to pill and oversoak paper while blending, Copics mix on the…

Shadow Creator’s new Shadow VR System is the new kid on the block and they are changing up the VR experience. Namely, they are outpacing their nearest competitors by bringing to market a standalone 6DoF VR headset. These features enable Shadow Creator to lose VR users from the shackles of computers and cables. Even better they are doing it at a reasonable $503 USD price point. I perused their site to learn a little about this new VR beauty. Let’s have a look to see some of the tasty VR morsels contained in the Shadow VR.

The world is in full color, and now so is functional 3D printing with Rize’s latest introduction. Today Rize announces a significant portfolio enhancement, unveiling the full-color XRIZE desktop additive manufacturing system and expanding the materials capabilities of the Rize One 3D printer. Let’s start with what’s new with the Rize One. Since its market debut in 2016, Rize’s technology has included the capability to mark parts with some color, building on this inkjet ability over the years to present Digitally Augmented Additive Manufacturing Parts that utilize voxel-level control to securely mark 3D printed parts. Having brought Rizium One Black material to market earlier this year for another popular color…

Would you say bottle openers are useless? Some would… until they find themselves in a situation which needs one. But since most bottle openers are single purpose and slightly more useful than a rock, not too many folks carry one on their person. But, what if it had more uses? When designer David Enrico came across a bottle opener shaped like a key, he knew the answer to lugging around a heavy bottle opener wasn’t far behind. Instead of making another key-shaped bottle opener, he instead made a bottle opener which also serves as an actual key. The end result was the Homebrew Key. The design philosophy behind the Homebrew…

As much as we love discovering new and quirky product designs, there’s something about utilitarian design from the 21st century that strikes our fascination every time—particularly when it’s restored to its former glory. YouTube creator DiesInEveryFilm Customs makes a ton of knives, sheaths, and metalworks on his channel, but his most fascinating pieces are his restoration projects. In these videos, he takes old, rusted objects and brings them back to life using his knowledge of metals. In this particular video, he takes a WWII helmet and attempts to make it usable once again: As with most heavily-used metal helmets, there are a number of dents on the rim which need…