Tiffany has a great post on the state of the art in diy shoes from scrap tires, including a link to this pattern for cutting sandals from a slab of reused rubber (above) and this link to purchase up-cycled Cambodian tire sandals from the Old Ho Rubber Sandal Company: To replace your Old Ho’s straps […]
Author Archives: leo
glow pills
At the crossroads of Ambient and Persuasive interfaces, Glowcaps is a new product from ex-CEO of Ambient Devices David Roses’s new startup, Vitality. In this video he shows how the system is installed: it consists of pill bottle caps that glow red to remind you to take what’s inside, and blue when you’ve complied. These […]
Posted in marketing, soft/glowing
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light noodles
Charlie Davidson’s Hasta la Pasta is part of the redesign (tagline: for designers who don’t want to make landfill) Lighten Up collection of lamps that have vastly reduced environmental impact. Making products out of food – like these spoons and these espresso cups – guarantees that they compost well and affords alternative uses – especially […]
Posted in furniture, futurecraft, lighting, materials, open objects, product design, soft/glowing
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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 […]
Posted in environment, fabrication, 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 […]
Posted in fabrication, free & open, furniture, open objects, product design, supply chain
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light pipes
The tangible representation of light as material makes it fun – and intuitive – to add it and to take it away. We saw an adult version of modular light blocks at this year’s Salone Satellite; now a children’s bedside lamp by beingblease that allows the child to configure colorful magnetic tubes that bend and […]
Posted in children, lighting, product design, tangible
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material extinction
Earth’s Natural Wealth: an Audit explores the depletion of exotic materials necessary for manufacturing high-tech products through a series of intense infographics. The lesson is that some of our most desirable elements (Indium for LCD screens, Gallium for lasers and LEDs) are set to become completely extinct with ten or twenty years with no substitute […]
Posted in environment, fabrication, materials, supply chain, upcycling, visualization
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binary weather report
Last year Ambient released an umbrella with a handle that glows if you should take it with you – a lot of electronics for a disposable water defender (especially when you consider the resources required to make a single computer chip). A much more elegant solution: umbrellatoday.com, the same simple suggestion without all the complicated […]
Posted in product design, visualization
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