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Tech NewsDesignThis Clever Newspaper Ad Hides a 3D Kitchen in the Classifieds
As far as newspaper ads go, the classifieds are an especially boring section of tiny text and identically spaced columns. But it doesn’t always have to be so! This ingenious little ad for Corona’s kitchens by Colombia-based designer Felipe Salazar plays with the geometry of classified ads. An entire kitchen, complete with gas hood and … Continued
By Sarah Zhang -
Tech NewsDesign
Philippe Starck’s Open Source Furniture Lets You Try Your Hand at Design
In somewhat of a departure for the lofty French designer, Philipe Starck’s new range of furniture is produced in collaboration with a company called TOG—which prides itself on making all of its designs open source. In total, TOG is launching 21 families of products—from bar tables to stackable chairs—designed by some big names: among them … Continued
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Tech NewsDesign
10 Distinctive American Libraries That Give Books A Good Home
Hey, let’s all take a quick minute right now to acknowledge those brilliant beacons of books—free books, for goodness sake!—that dot towns across the country. The Public Library, a new hardback by photographer Robert Dawson, offers a poignant look at the incredible architectural range of these community hubs. Flipping through shows just how many incarnations … Continued
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Tech NewsDesign
This Typeface Makes You a More Alert Driver By Distracting You Less
Despite the grim PSAs and massive fines, plenty of us still end up reading our in-dash displays on the road, whether to navigate or change the song. Today, the type design giant Monotype unveiled a typeface designed to help you read faster and more accurately while driving. How? With a few design tweaks. The typeface … Continued
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Tech NewsDesignThese Scarves Are Woven Music, Made With Patterns From Organ Punchcards
Did you know that the same kind of punched cards control both the jaunty tunes of old timey organs and the warp and weft of a certain kind of textile loom? Glithero, aka British designer Tim Simpson and Dutch designer Sarah van Gameren, bridged the gap for a cool a medium mash-up—and managed to weave … Continued
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Tech NewsDesign
5 Buildings Designed To Make Cancer Treatment a Little More Bearable
We know that buildings can make us sick, and that they can also make us healthier. But can architecture make a difference in how we experience illness? What about cancer? That’s a more complicated question. At an exhibition at the New York School of Interior Design this month, we get a glimpse of an usual … Continued
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Tech NewsDesign
These Awesome Area Rugs Bring Stargazing to Your Living Room
Weekends are for dreaming of interior design. This weekend, I’m gazing with covetous awe at Schönstaub‘s nebula area rugs. The three rug designs are photographs taken by the Hubble Space Telescope of nebulas in the small and large Magellanic Clouds. NGC 346 is in the Small Magellanic Cloud. Hubble’s press officer was clearly having fun … Continued
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Tech NewsDesign
The Continuing Adventures of Major Matt Mason
Major Matt Mason was a Mattel toy inspired by the incredibly cartoonish space suit designed by Allyn B. “Happ” Hazard. Major Mason was the must-have toy for space-loving geeks of a certain age, and he’s come out of storage for a photo shoot. Major Mason decked out in an early space suit design, returning a … Continued
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Tech NewsDesign
A Weekend Of Dark Beer With The World’s Greatest Stout Glass
It’s just not fair: every single grape varietal and wine style, including some that no one has ever even heard of (Kalterer See Auslese, anyone?), has its own specially designed glass. Even Coca-Cola now has one. But, for beer, your standard mouth-delivery vehicle is the same, whether you’re drinking the wateriest Bud Lite or a … Continued
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Tech NewsDesign
This Sink-In-A-Box Tucks Away To Keep Your Bathroom Tidy
You know the old saying: the sink is the heart of the bathroom. But all too often that sink looks nasty, covered in toothpaste, and draped with a half-used container of floss. Here’s a sink that can cleverly hide everything away when you’re not spitting your mouthwash into it. Hidden is a concept designed by … Continued
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Tech NewsDesign
These Hand-Forged Kitchen Knives Are Works of Rural Art
The world is not lacking for inexpensive kitchen knife sets—they’ve long been a staple of late-night infomercials and homeware bargain bins alike—but top-quality cutlery is much harder to come by. These blades from Chelsea Miller Knives offer a rare mix of artful simplicity and rugged sturdiness equally at home in New York City or rural … Continued
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Tech NewsDesign
Stylish Sunglasses Made From Salvaged Shattered Louisville Sluggers
Nothing makes a fashion accessory more interesting than a backstory, and Shwood’s new limited edition line of sunglasses have a fascinating pedigree. They’re all made from ash wood salvaged from actual Louisville Slugger baseball bats shattered during games played around the world. Shwood even goes the extra mile with the sunglasses, accenting them with a … Continued
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Tech NewsDesignWatch a Chunk of Lava Stone Get Grafted Onto a Carbon Fiber Bench
The making-of video for Peugeot Design Lab‘s latest project contains no words—it doesn’t need any, since it shows every step of the process: From blasting a huge chunk of volcanic stone from its resting place to crafting a piece of carbon fiber to perfectly fit the rock’s jagged profile. The resulting bench looks like like … Continued
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Tech NewsDesignThe Untold History of Where Barcodes Come From
When George Laurer goes to the grocery store, he doesn’t tell the check-out people that he invented the barcode, but his wife used to point it out. “My husband here’s the one who invented that barcode,” she’d occasionally say. And the check-out people would look at him like, “you mean there was a time when … Continued
Roman Mars - 99% Invisible -
Tech NewsDesign
This Table Is Made From the Wood of 50,000-Year Old Trees
Roughly 50,000 years ago, a series of horrible storms wracked northern New Zealand, burying stands of ancient Kauri trees in peat and mud—where they waited, for many, many millennia, to be rediscovered. As conference tables, apparently. The rediscovery of the trees was a paleontological breakthrough, and it’s now helping climate scientists study how the Earth … Continued
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Tech NewsDesignThe Marshmallow Moon-Suit
Allyn B. “Happ” Hazard just looks so dang happy in his space suit, that it seems a shame JPL claims no responsibility for it. NASA never developed his design, but toy manufacturer Mattel knew it was too cute for words. Hap was a Senior Development Engineer in the Missile Engineering Section at JPL, but he … Continued
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Tech NewsDesign
These Beautiful Jugs Are Designed to Look Like Your Heart
These jugs may look like a smart piece of modern design—because they are—but they’re also modelled on the most important muscle of all: the beating heart in your chest. Called Corazón Coraza—literally, Heart Shell—they’re a stylized and yet surprisingly accurate version of the human blood pump. The designer, Christian Vivanco, collaborated with Mexican ceramics manufacturer … Continued
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Tech NewsDesign
Join the Debate: 3D Printed Guns or Government Regulation?
Here’s the question: in a world where the design of a 3D printed gun is freely available on the internet, can we—or should we–regulate open source design? Or are limits impossible in a world of anonymous file sharing? Does any attempt at control go against the whole spirit of open source, decentralized innovation? “We cannot … Continued