Design Crush Nike Vapor Laser Talon: Football’s First 3-D Printed Shoes The name almost sounds made up--the Nike Vapor Laser Talon--like it was spit out by some Spike TV show title generator. But the Nike Vapor Laser Talons aren’t just real, they can claim a world’s first, as they’re the first football cleats to be equipped with a 3-D printed sole. Weighing a mere 5.6 ounces, the shoes were designed to enhance a player’s “zero step,” to increase the speed of off-the-line launch, which feeds into a player’s maximum momentum. Apparently, the sole’s mix of weight and geometry wasn’t producible by Nike’s normal manufacturing processes. So instead, the company turned to Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) technology, using lasers to melt materials into shape. Given that a laser has a fairly flexible path, the side effect of this process is that design iterations could be tested “within hours instead of months.” But of course, the most compelling possibility of such a new process is customization. See more here. [Hat tip: designboom]
100 Best Photoshop Tutorials of All Time that Yield Professional Results |... - StumbleUpon Photoshop tutorials are one of the most popular subjects on the web, as the digital art community continues to grow and new designers bring their unique skills. However, quality Photoshop tutorials that teach you a useful effect, have a quality finished result and are well explained are harder to find, and with the large number of tutorial sites available, it can be hard to sort the quality from the mundane. In this massive roundup, we’ve collected the top 100 best Photoshop tutorials that have ever been created, that yield professional results, teach you a useful effect, are well explained, and will have you designing like a pro in no time. If you liked this post, check out our other design tutorial roundups: Design a Traditional Liquefied Car Create Dynamic Distortion Effects Create a Spectacular Grass Text Effect in Photoshop The Making of Mystic Awesome Milk Typography Effect in Photoshop Create an Incredible Avatar-Inspired Matte Painting of Pandora Urban Type Art – London Text Effect
7 | Dyson’s Latest Coup: A $1,500 Sink Faucet That Dries Hands, Too It took 125 engineers three years and 3,300 prototypes to develop Dyson’s latest innovation, a hand dryer called the Airblade Tap that seeks to “reinvent the way we wash our hands.” The company unveiled the stainless-steel Tap alongside two other hand dryers: an update to their successful Airblade and a sleeker, smaller model called the Blade V. At first glance, the Tap might seem like it’s trying to do too many things at once. But as James Dyson explained at a press event last night, the combination was based on a behavioral insight about restrooms. “Washing and drying your hands tends not to be a very pleasant experience,” he said. Along with the Tap, Dyson showed off the Blade V, a sleeker dryer that’s 60% thinner than the somewhat cartoonish first-gen Airblade. Hand dryers might not seem crucial to some product designers, but for Dyson, they present a fascinating engineering challenge that pits airspeed against decibels.
100 (Really) Creative Business Cards | Webdesigner Depot - StumbleUpon Whichever business you’re in, and especially for anyone in the field of design, such as web designers, a business card can be as important as your website identity. A business card creates a physical connection and bond between you or your business and your customers. Just like in a website, business cards can become great interactive elements, but with the added ability to have real textures, different materials and shapes. In this article, we’ll take a look at 100 truly outstanding business card designs which show that there are truly no limits to the design of a business card. Which ones are your favorites? How important is a business card for you?
3 | Students Design An AR Device To One-Up Google Glass The strange thing about Google Glass is and isn’t its lame design. Google has produced something that, however clumsily, genuinely attempts to alter the body’s sensory perception. But the product doesn’t fully realize its potential. Google Glass augments reality much the same way your phone or tablet already does, that is, it does little to actually amplify your senses. To do so would require moving beyond just another wearable technology--the latest in a long lineage of them--and pursuing a more "extreme" approach. Eidos, a different kind of augmented reality (AR) device, claims to do just that. Eidos differs from Google Glass in one fundamental way: The device lets users tune into specific perceptions, be they sounds or images, and scale their magnitude to the exclusion of rival stimuli. The two prototypes that the team presented in February at the Royal College of Art’s Work In Progress were the result of months of intense work.
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MIT's New Self-Assembly Lab Is Building A Paradigm Shift To 4-D Manufacturing Sitting on a table in Skylar Tibbits’s lab, at MIT’s new Center for International Design, is a 200-gallon-fish tank--it's large enough to hold one of Damien Hirst’s pickled sharks. If Tibbits’s experiment goes according to plan, within the next few weeks, it will be the scene of a sort of fractal monster movie. A 50-foot-long strand of coded mystery material will be dumped into the water-filled tank, and transform--without benefit of human hands!--into a sweet little 8-inch square Hilbert curve. How long will it take? “It will probably depend on how hot the water is, or if I add a little salt,” jokes Tibbits, the 28-year-old wunderkind architect-designer-computer scientist behind what may be the next wave in manufacturing: 4-D printing. The concept of self-assembly isn’t new: It has been used at nanoscale for years. On the wall is a large aluminum and polyethylene structure called a Voltadom, bent into curves that mimic a vaulted ceiling. But Tibbits is no ordinary grunt.