3D-Printed "Jointed Jewelry" Hints at Medical Applications of the Technology. 3D printing is easily the biggest design futurism meme of 2010.
Successful Pay-What-You-Can Model Proves Humanity Can Be Awesome. Zero Waste, Packaging-Free Grocery Store to Rock in Texas. Nature doesn't litter, people do.
In the US that trash amounts to 1.4 billion pounds per day. And 40% of that is packaging. Recently, Greenpeace tried to provoke the global community portraying Barbie as a serial killer because of her addiction to cheap packaging. I personally think that villainizing Barbie, who is nothing more than a toy, totally fails to get across the idea of personal responsibility and the impact of human activity. This Awesome Urn Will Turn You into a Tree After You Die.
Biomimicry in Action. Over the past few years, designers have made significant strides on the prosthetics front, blending modernist aesthetics with state-of-the art functionality.
At the same time, biomimicry – design and engineering innovation inspired by nature's systems and organisms – has been a rapidly growing area of R&D interest. Soil Lamp: Grow Your Own Light. How about a lamp that provides you with free and environmentally friendly energy.. forever!
SolSource: Sustainable Collaborative Design for and by Himalayan Nomadic Communities. One Earth Designs aims to ignite innovation across the socio-environmental spectrum among Himalayan agricultural and nomadic communities, working directly with local stakeholders to ensure each invention is of real practical value to the community.
From portable solar stoves that keep indoor air clean to high-tech textiles that distribute heat evenly and seal it in for long cold hauls, the products OED churns out embody the organization's four core principles: Addressing immediate needs, building capacity for innovation through education, providing an incubator for technical and financial support, and co-designing hand-in-hand with the local community. SolSource was co-designed by rural Himalayan communities and embodies the future of community-centric, locally-grounded collaborative design – a true pinnacle of community empowerment through creative ownership of both process and product. DanKam: iPhone App Corrects Colorblindness. For the past year, security researcher Dan Kaminsky has had an interesting secret side project that has nothing to do with his day job: He's been working on correcting color blindness.
This week, he revealed DanKam – an augmented reality app for iPhone and Android that uses unique, configurable color filters to make to make the colors and differences between colors in images and videos readable to colorblind people. (An excellent complement to the Chrometic browser for the colorblind we featured some time ago.) The $2.99 app is based on the classic Ishihara test plates (pictured above) and the concept of "colorspaces" familiar to graphic designers: RGB (Red, Green, Blue – used for digital images), CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black – used in print publishing), and YUV (Black vs.
White, Orange vs. Blue, and Red vs. Haptic Braille: A Portable, Mouse-Like Braille Reader. We've previously looked at several examples of Braille-centric design for the blind.
Haptic Braille is an ingenious concept by Korean designer Baek Kil Hyun – a portable Braille translator and scanner. The mouse-like device is equipped with an optical character recognition (OCR) system and text-to-Braille conversion software that allow it to scan any printed surface, recognize the text characters, and translate them into tactile Braille on the surface of the device. The device is made of biodegradable plastic and could offer additional carbon savings by eventually replacing the printing of Braille materials. The project won the Design Concept category at this year's prestigious Red Dot Awards. via PSFK. Every Person's Right to a Clean Toilet. It may be a bit weird to use the word 'elegant' to describe something with the name “Peepoo” but that’s exactly what it is – an absolutely brilliant and elegant solution to one of the greatest global problems – clean sanitation. 2.6 billion people worldwide lack access to toilets – one of the leading causes of child mortality in the world.
Yet, access to sanitation is one of the most neglected of the UN Millenium goals. This Calendar Will Allow You to Literally Burn Away the Past. Have you had days that you would just like to erase out of existence?
Or maybe burn away, collect the ashes and let the wind carry them as far away from you as possible? Crumpled Maps! How Come No One Has Come Up With Them Before? A few days ago a friend of mine showed up carrying a city map of Amsterdam in the form of one of the simplest and smartest product redesigns I’ve seen.
It was beautiful, light, and indestructible (by map standards), which meant you can just crumple it and put it away in less than two seconds. The Eyeglasses That Could Make The World Look Different. There are so many global problems that we can’t even see. Like the fact that 670 million people lack access to vision correction and around 100 million children don’t have access to basic eyecare. Thankfully, there are people and organizations who not only see but also act to get these problems solved. Josh Silver is the inventor of the first self-adjustable glasses and the founder and director of Center for Vision in the Developing World (CDVW). Through his Child ViSion initiative he hopes to develop and distribute self-adjustable glasses for children aged 12-18 in the developing world and help 1 billion people see clearly by 2020. Self-refraction and self-adjustable glasses are an innovative new method of providing low-cost glasses. Is That a Light Bulb in Your Pocket?
Yes, it is a Pocket Light, and you could actually keep it not only in your pocket but in your wallet as well, next to.. other useful items handy for engaging in romantic activities. The concept was originally created by Ryan Harc who was inspired by the blissful moments with his beloved and decided that in unexpected situations even a little lamp can be moving. Of course, the little lamp can be used in not-so-romantic unexpected situations too. Pocket Light looks like a card almost the size of a credit card. When it is folded up it provides mellow light, thanks to a cell at its back providing power. The Noun Project: A Global Database of Visual Literacy Symbols. Visual literacy is an essential necessity of modern life. But some of the most widely recognized symbols of visual language are wrapped in a surprising amount of historical and contextual obscurity. This is where The Noun Project comes in -- a wonderful effort to collect, catalog and contextualize the world's visual language.
The site offers an ever-growing range of diverse symbols available for free under a CreativeCommons license. Sola Road: Dutch Town to Cover Cycling Path with Solar Panels. Remember Scott Bursaw's ingenious solar roadways prototype? Now, the small town of Krommenie in Northern Holland is planning to pilot a similar concept on cycling paths. Developed by Dutch innovation consultancy TNO, Sola Road consists of concrete panels with embedded thick crystalline silicon solar cells, covered by a toughened glass surface. Peep Wireless: Peer-to-Peer Mesh Networks for Developing World Cell Phone Users. Warning Signs: Clothing That Detects Carbon Monoxide. A Plate That Tells You if Your Food is Safe. Let The Deserts Power The World. Did you know that within six hours the world's deserts receive more energy than humankind consumes within a year? How awesome would it be to be able to tap into all that potential, clean energy? The DESERTEC foundation – a European non-profit organization - hopes to do exactly that.
ZeroTouch: The Invisible Touch Screen. A project, two years in the making, was revealed this week at the Computer Human Interaction conference in B.C. The device created by students from Texas A&M University is called ZeroTouch and looks like an empty picture frame. Post Some Chocolate, Make Someone Happy. Forget Good vs. Evil: Manage Your Talent to Create Added Value. Breathing Walls For Your Well-Being. It’s not easy for most urban dwellers to get their daily dose of nature moving from one concrete box to another.
Habitat Horticulture tries to solve this problem by painting walls with plants. The company designs living walls that optimize everyday space, transform it aesthetically, and in addition improve its inhabitants' physical and mental well-being. Even though vertical gardens are nothing new, it turns out that not all living walls are created equal. Unlike vines, for example, which create damage to the exterior surfaces on the walls, plants in the living walls are rooted directly into a medium attached to the wall. Interior Design Spacehacking: Chair Made of 8,000 Chopsticks Unfolds Into Sofa. Spring Wood: Dutch Designer Invents Flexible Wood. The foremost quality that makes wood wood, both as a material and as a metaphor, is its inflexible rigidity.
Dutch designer Carolien Laro, however, has challenged this age-old conception with Spring Wood – a series of furniture made of solid wood yet with flexible seating surfaces. Vibro-Wind: Turbine-Free Wind Power. Jelloware: Biodegradable, Vegan, Edible Cups. Word Lens: Real-Time Translation via Augmented Reality. Element S(urvival): A Coat-and-Sleeping-Bag-in-One for the Homeless. Celebration of Creativity for Creativity’s Sake: The Happy Machine. Ecobricks: How Sand and Bacteria Could Save 800 Million Tons of CO2 Annually.
Harvesting the Fog: Would You Like a Glass of Mist? Mozilla's Privacy Icons: A Visual Language for Data Rights. DOSTI: Empowering Afghan Women via Soccer Balls. USPS Commemorates the (Male) Pioneers of Industrial Design. Concrete Canvas: This is How You Pitch a Building. Spread Some Random Happiness. Something Good, Something Fun, Something Smart: Three Interesting Designs. Crowdsourcing Iceland's New Constitution. Community-Sourcing Solutions: By the City/For the City. Breakdance as a Tool for Social Change. PeaceBOMB: "Buying Back" the Vietnam War. You Don't Need A Toothbrush. Baking for Good: A Little Sugar Goes a Long Way. Design for Education: 7 Innovations for the Developing World Classroom. TerraCycle Turns Waste into Useful Eco-Products, Donates to Charity.
.wwf: The Tree-Saving File Format. Access to the Web is a Human Right: How to Make It Happen. If You Liked the 'Bios Urn,' You'll Love 'The Spirit Tree'