Having started his custom shoe design business during high school in 2008, Jacob Blaise Ferrato soon gained exposure in the massive underground sneaker community when he started posting pictures of his hand-painted Nikes in online forums. Today, the now 25-year-old custom sneaker designer demands upwards of $2,000 per custom pair of sneakers – both custom variations of existing sneakers or completely new designs from scratch – that can take up to 4 months to create in his Cleveland, Ohio workshop. In this video shared last week, Ferrato gives a very generous behind the scenes at what goes into making a pair of custom sneakers that are far from anything you’d find…

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. Each Monday, we’ll 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. Be sure to check in each Monday morning for a new crop of freshly sprouted words curated straight from the source of your favorite…

When it comes to fascinating alternative use cases for manufacturing processes, waterjet cutting has had no shortage of applications, yet New Zealand-based designer Mark Wilson might have just come up with the best use case yet. In the waterjet manufacturing process, the high-pressure water stream can lose its pressure and precision soon after entering a material – particularly thick and dense material like steel. Using precise calculations and a mockup in SOLIDWORKS, Wilson exploited this defect to forge a blade from two intersecting waterjet cuts made at varying feed rates. The resulting Kanagawa Blade – named after the famous Great Wave Off Kanagawa woodblock print by the Japanese ukiyo-e artist Hokusai…

Don your favorite bathrobe, cream that coffee and get comfortable with this week’s SolidSmack Weekend Reader. The Weekend Reader features a handful of the most interesting articles featured on the ‘Smack over the past week ranging from tips and tricks to inspirational designs, processes, and more. So lay back, relax and take a load off while reading the top ten stories on SolidSmack this past week. Oh and uh…don’t forget to shed some much-needed sunlight on your face, too. This Complete Raspberry Pi 3 Starter Kit is the Best Way to Get Started with Raspberry Pi “To call the Raspberry Pi a runaway success is a wild understatement, but that…

He was a kind old soul, trudging to and fro. Where there wasn’t a path, he would spend days making one with his wooden spoon, large feet and a whistle you had only to hear once to remember forever. With the grass and branches he did something strange though. Bundled them up and set ablaze to reveal the knotty spines of these links. Pablo Carpio – Madrid-based concept artist and designer that creates astounding landscape and ships, Star Wars visuals and more. Why You Should Create Art Everyday – Will Terry tells it like it is with advice on creating art everyday while showing you how he sketches one of…

Unless you’ve been churning out legendary solos, filling stadiums, and selling millions of records since the 1970s, the likelihood of having your own signature guitar model is pretty slim. Launching this week, the new Fender Mod Shop is changing all that and will now let anybody design and customize their own signature guitar model from a wide variety of options and combinations for different looks and playing styles. Launching with four classic Fender models including the Telecaster, Stratocaster, Precision Bass and Jazz Bass, the platform features a curated set of design options including body color, pickups, pickguard material, fingerboard, hardware color and style, bridge and orientation. Once the design is…