Freitag is well known for their messenger bags up-cycled from the tarps used to cover trucks in Europe. They have a very clever web-based design application that allows you to custom-design a bag from the tarps they have in stock, even accounting for the pieces that have already been claimed by other customers. It’s a […]
Category Archives: fabrication
computer aided re-design
Also posted in environment, futurecraft, marketing, materials, product design, supply chain, visualization
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improvised devices
While visiting the spectacular Alexander Calder: the Paris Years at the Whitney last weekend I came across a book on his ‘devised objects,’ namely the household devices that he improvised with the same whimsy of his wire-and-found-object sculptures. Just as he was capable of making kinetic toys and figural sculpture from bare wire and trinkets […]
Also posted in art, futurecraft, product design, upcycling
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paper cloth
Mio pointed me to a Japanese site that sells cloth and clothing made from a combination of cloth and rice paper. There is a lot of talk about design for durability, but even better is the conscientious reuse of temporary materials. This solution looks like it might make an adequate vegetarian substitute for leather, it […]
Also posted in fashion, futurecraft, materials, soft/glowing
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craft cam
At distancelab last week I saw Elena Corchero’s Handmade, a wearable camera for capturing the work you do with your hands. This is a simple, wearable solution to the problem of documenting manual tasks for a variety of new media, including DIY sites such as instructables for which the process of documenting a task can […]
Also posted in futurecraft, marketing, soft/glowing, supply chain, surveillance, traceability
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the wooden age
Given all the recent hype about wooden electronics, I would like to bring up some of the gorgeous examples from the George Eastman House collection, which is available on their website and partly on Flickr. Some jewels of the collection include the earliest cameras and videocameras, including this original Lumiere Brothers video camera (called Cinematographe) […]
Also posted in materials, product design
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slice of the pod pie
Andy Lippman pointed me to the work of the Personal Computing Industry Center at UC Irvine and specifically to some papers that analyze the global economic impact of the computer industry. In “Who Captures Value in a Global Innovation System? The case of Apple’s iPod (pdf)” the authors analyze how the profit from a single […]
Also posted in product design, retail, supply chain, traceability
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chip chop shops
Hiroshi pointed me to this BusinessWeek investigation on microchip counterfeiting, which explains how electronic waste recycling is profitable: used circuit boards are baked over coal fires to loosen precious microchips. These are rinsed in the local river and sorted according to manufacturer. The chips can be re-sold as is, or their markings can be sanded […]
Also posted in environment, materials, supply chain, traceability, upcycling
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design it yourself
Enzo Mari‘s 1974 Autoprogettazioni (Design and build-it-yourself projects) are simple schemes for tables and chairs that can be made from scrap wood in a variety of proportions and configurations. You can follow the designs or even buy complete kits, but you don’t have to: just looking at these images allows the designs to be freely […]
Also posted in free & open, furniture, open objects, product design, supply chain
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