While they likely aren’t to replace a roomful of clever creatives, Triggers Cards are certainly a brilliant tool when it comes to creative problem solving. The brainchild of creative director Alejandro Masferrer to be used as as an ideation tool, Triggers are designed to help ideate and run smooth brainstorming sessions with a series of “what if” questions. The Triggers process is relatively straightforward: write down your defined problem, pick out a Triggers Card, and use the “What if” question on the card to ideate solutions. While many creatives will be quick to note that this is generally how most brainstorming sessions kickoff, it’s important to note that Trigger Cards…

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…

The tundra trails wound through the brush, dusted in the sticks of fallen trees and the fancy winter people’s sculptures of clay and ice. We had to find the blue one though, darker and slightly larger than the others, glowing with rich, sticky gum juice of these links. Alejandro Burdisio – You’ve not seen flying car ships like this. Mash-ups of the vintage and future with robot villages, cityscapes and giant battles thrown in. Zsolt Hlinka – Instagram follow of the week. He has a thing for perspective and symmetry, which is cool because I have a thing for perspective and symmetry. Chalking About – David Zinn is one of…

Need a fix of retro nostalgia mash-up? We’ve got one to make your drool tubs. Colin of Why Not Make It is to blame for your sudden craving to combine a 19080’s boombox and Super Nintendo (Chalmers). Being born in a time where the video games were simpler/better and the music players a lot bigger/doper, he took it upon himself to combine the two. The result is a battery powered machine which can play classic Nintendo games AND yo’ funky tunes. According to Kotaku, Colin took an hour every day after his day job to work on the project. After a week and roughly $250, he finally managed to get all the wiring inside the…

FoldStar provides a very unusual 3D model generation system. The New Jersey-based company’s product, by the same name, is a generative system to dynamically create 3D models of folded geometry. Here’s how it works, in their words: Doubly-Periodic Folding Tessellations are a versatile family of deployable materials that repeat a pattern in “row” and “column” directions. FoldStar Designer lets you prototype DPFTs by controlling the shape of a crease in the “row” direction, and a cross-section in the “column” direction. The Row Edge (RE) and Column Cross–Section (CCS) define your surface’s “base state”. All DPFTs fold from a flat sheet to their base states (and often beyond) without bending. These…

Before automobile technology even reached the point where two cup holders in a single car was an ovation inducing breakthrough, the automotive design process involved a constant back-and-forth of 2D sketches–it still does for many manufacturers. Then there is the strict adherence needed for that unfortunately inconvenient internal structure. Most of the time, these “hard points” – monocoque, suspension, engine/radiator position, etc – go through their own approval before progress can be made. This can take months, delaying other work and, even then, the confidence of the design translating well in 3D is lacking. Car Body Design of the Future… Now Enter the modern world of VR, where McLaren Automotive, together…