When it comes to the expansive community of product designers focused on 3D printing as their medium of choice, few have offered more in the way of pushing the boundaries of what’s possible than Emerging Objects. Between printing a Utah Tea Set out of actual tea to creating a 3D printed house that you’d actually want to live in, the two-person studio does what few others in the 3D printing space do: they explore compelling ideas and they do it well. More recently, studio founders Ronald Rael, a professor of architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, and Virginia San Fratello, an assistant professor at San José State University in…

As anybody who has worked freelance knows, getting actual client work done is only half the battle; the other half is spent doing boring but necessary office administration tasks including account management, expenses and of course, time tracking. Thankfully, a number of Cloud-based solutions have helped streamline these tasks to put more actual work time into our pockets – but what if documenting these menial business management tasks could somehow be “fun”? The ZEIº from new hardware startup Timeular just might be the solution. Inspired by their own frustrations with time tracking software and management tools, the product designers and engineers behind the ZEIº developed the customizable wireless polyhedron so…

Despite the growing number of options for connected note taking and options for sharing analog documents in the Cloud, most team interactions still rely heavily on the mother of all note taking surfaces: the whiteboard. Although modern smartphone apps are capable of digitizing a meeting’s whiteboard notes in a single snap and uploading them to a specific shared folder in the cloud, the process is a bit clunky and doesn’t always deliver desirable results. Ultimately, what would a “smart” whiteboard experience look like? Probably a lot like what Kaptivo is offering. Kaptivo is a new whiteboard accessory that can transform any existing whiteboard surface into a real-time online collaboration and…

With so many cool things coming out each week, it can be hard to wade through all the rock-awesomeness. With ‘Cool Tools’, we’ve done the hard work for you. This week we saw a new collection of luggage made from 100% recycled aluminum that’s sure to satisfy the most seasoned of travelers, the release of a new Bluetooth speaker from Beoplay, an ingenious new app that lives in the iOS notification center, how to make your own Moleskine-style notebook and more… Ready? Let’s go! This week we look at: DESIGN The Bank Collection – FPM Luggage “A new luggage collection from designer Marc Sadler made from 100% recycled aluminum.” Beoplay…

It’s critical to make your company distinct, especially in the world of 3D design and digital fabrication. Manufacturers often boast about the capabilities and features of their 3D printers, such as printing with more than one material, fabricating at lightning speed or having a high resolution. While those claims are often true, few compares to ZMorph’s new offering. The 3D printing company’s new 2.0SX printer is the Swiss Army Knife of 3D printers and can not only print – but also CNC mill, laser cut and even engrave using any number of materials. While the 2.0SX carries many drool-worthy features, one of the most amazing is the magnetic interchangeable print…

Despite more recent efforts to clean up plastic waste in our oceans, a recent prediction by the World Economic Forum forecasted that the total weight of plastics will be larger than the total weight of fish – specifically due to the overall rise of global consumption. But what if at least some of those numbers could be offset by sourcing biodegradable replacement materials from the very place that they’re likely to end up? As the winner of this year’s Lexus Design Award 2016, three Japanese designers explored how agar sourced from marine algae can be used as an environmentally friendly alternative to plastic for packaging materials – or what they…