Time for another round of apps that cover the spectrum of your beloved mobile device, be it iPhone, Android or Windows! The Weekly App Smack is the best of new or updated design and productivity apps (and maybe a couple of fun ones, too) for the busy design or engineering professional and this week we have a list sure to make you more efficient. Do you have an app suggestion that has made your life easier or changed up your workflow? Let us know in the comments below or send it into tips@www.solidsmack.com. Hit it! Quik – Video Editor by GoPro “Quik is the fastest, easiest way to create awesome videos…

Whether you prefer to cook your steaks over an outdoor fire or in the kitchen, few materials offer excellent heat retention properties and a better experience than cast iron cookware. With its near-perfect design, the age-old cast iron skillet has changed very little over the past two-thousand years and continues to be handed down through families as an heirloom ripe for storytelling. As self-proclaimed “cast iron specialists”, the team of chefs and engineers at Portland, Oregon-based FINEX have taken everything that’s great about the classic cast iron skillet and updated it with better usability features including a polished cook surface, thicker castings, an octagonal shape for easier pouring and an…

Going back to the introduction of desktop publishing tools that allowed everyday Joes and Josephines to “design” and print documents with relative ease, the perceived value of professional design services has continued to decline as skills and processes that previously required years of training continue to be simplified and automated for nonprofessional users. Perhaps no single piece of hardware has had as much of an impact as the smartphone, which opened up the opportunity for apps and algorithms to make editing photos, videos, documents and even some 3D files a breeze anywhere in the world. As a result, this has affected how some people perceive paying for professional services. But…

With a deep fascination of what they call the “common territories between architecture and music”, designers Marcelo Ertorteguy and Sara Valente of NYC design studio Stereotank operate somewhere at the intersection of architecture, art and sound. Although the team is used to working at a large-scale, they’ve recently turned their attention to creating hybrid objects and instruments made from repurposed materials and pre-fab systems – such as the Lap Skate Guitar. Built out of a blank wood skateboard deck, a 1/4″ input jack, an electric guitar bridge, one guitar pickup, one volume knob, one lock nut and six tuning pegs, the Lap Skate Guitar is certainly a unique take on the…

This week’s Spotify-powered SolidSmack Radio Playlist knocks you in the pop sockets with head-boppin’ groove tuneage to help propel you through the work week in style. Whether you find yourself inking markers until they’re dry, grinding material through a bandsaw or working that 3D geometry all day, consider these tracks as a tool for your process. This week we’ll start things off with some all-new Radiohead before working our way through everything from (also new) James Blake, Brian Eno, Lack of Afro, LCD Soundsystem, Phantogram and others before wrapping up with one last new Radiohead track, “Daydreaming”. Have suggestions? As always, let us know what you listen to, what you…

First invented by German physicist and astronomer Christoph Scheiner in 1603, the pantograph was used for centuries to copy and scale diagrams and text leading up to the introduction of more modern solutions used today. More recently, Brooklyn-based designer Ian Stell utilized the functional mechanism to create a collection of tables and chairs that can expand or contract based on an intended application – both for small and large spaces. Crafted from various shades of dyed maple and white oak, the seating portion of the designer’s Pantograph system is capable of expanding from 33 inches to an impressive 104 inches without losing structural support – while the table can expand…