by Sabine Zetteler Throughout his career, artist Darren Cullen has forced his audience to question their views of social acceptability and culpability. Citing the “Spitting Image Komic Book” as one of the most formative influences on…
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Novalia is a team of seven scientists, programmers and designers from Cambridge, England whose members love all things creative. The small technology firm wants to put their platform in the hands of musicians, artists and other…
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by Madison Kahn Howler is a new quarterly magazine aimed at the American soccer fan, entertaining both die-hards and newbies alike. Founders Mark Kirby and George Quraishi launched a Kickstarter campaign in 2012 that raised $69,000…
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While there are a plethora of water filtration containers on the market, from the popular Bobble to the elegant Nava by Kor or Eau Good, WaterBean proposes to do the same, without the bottle. On a fishing trip with his…
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“It is American mythology—Westerns are our Greek mythology,” says Joey Grossfield, director, writer and producer of “Lighting In The Hand,” an independent film currently seeking financing on Kickstarter. Taking a turn in a different direction than…
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Sous-vide, or “under vacuum,” is a cooking method whereby food is sealed in an airtight bag. The bag is then submersed in water and slow-cooked, and this vacuum system ensures the food is cooked evenly, both inside and out. As you can imagine, it requires a fair degree of precision to get it right, which in turn requires buying a pricey appliance with the requisite built-in precision.
Design to the rescue. London-based Grace Lee, who ditched a career in finance to become a chef, and Xi-Yen Tan, a manufacturing engineer by training, wondered if they could achieve sous-vide cooking with cheap, commonplace appliances. So they built a device that could precisely sense and control the temperature of a common rice cooker or slow cooker. “We hacked a prototype together and tried our first sous-vide chicken breast,” writes Lee, “and [were] mindblown at how juicy and moist it could be!”
Knowing they had a hit on their hands, Lee and Tan put together a team of industrial designers and electronic engineers, and lined up manufacturing partners, to refine the design and go into production via Kickstarter. Their resultant device, the Codlo, is something like a Nest thermostat for cooking:
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Just over two years ago, we first caught wind of a fantastic proposal (both in terms of sheer goodness and dubious feasibility) for a swimming pool in New York City’s East River. Boom-and-bust cycles notwithstanding, the value of real estate in the 23-ish square miles of Manhattan continues to rise, yet much like the City’s much-loved parks, its waterways remain accessible to all… and—unsurprisingly, given the recent heatwave—are regarded as potential spaces for recreation and development.
With the first successful Kickstarter campaign under their belts, the like-minded architecture studios of Family & Playlab have been forging ahead with + POOL, moving forward from the Test Tank phase to a full-fledged Float Lab. So too is their crowdfunding goal rather more ambitious this time around: they’re currently seeking ten times more than they were two years ago, when they handily topped the $25K threshold to get the project off the ground. The higher stakes are matched by more exclusive rewards: backers will have their names engraved on the tiles that line the decks of the + POOL when it opens in 2016.
The collaborative initiative of design studios Family and PlayLab launched the initiative to build a floating pool for everyone in the rivers of New York City in June of 2010. + POOL started with a simple goal: instead of trying to clean the entire river, what if you started by just cleaning a small piece of it? And what if you could change how New Yorkers see their rivers, just by giving them a chance to swim in it?
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For those who have nothing left to pick over at the local bookstore’s summer display, theNewerYork looks to shake things up in the mainstream literary world by hosting alternatives to the “triumvirate” of poetry, short stories…
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It’s strange that what we in developed nations think of as a recreational activites, like camping and/or grilling, mimic the real-world living conditions of those in developing nations. But that can lead to some interesting design crossovers. A good case in point is the SolSource, a solar cooking grill originally designed and tested with nomads living on the Himalayan Plateau, where there isn’t a lot of firewood, fuel-gathering is a chore, and the burning produces unhealthy smoke.
Having proven its mettle under rugged real-world conditions, the SolSource is now making its way to the rest of us via Kickstarter.
Everyday, SolSource cooks food for large Himalayan families. It withstands sand storms, wind, snow, and -40 degree temperatures. We’ve used it around the world, from grilling Kobe beef on the streets of Japan to making popcorn on the Mall in Washington, DC. Just point it towards the sun and start cooking. As long as you can see your shadow, you are good to go!
The SolSource was designed by One Earth Designs, a San-Francisco-based outfit “dedicated to bringing better energy options to people around the world.” To that end company founders Scot Frank and Catlin Powers have been working with rural communities in the Himalayas since 2007, and they formed the company last year to design clean energy technologies.
Following the relatively quick success of the SolSource, the company—which has since expanded to 18 employees covering R&D, Sales & Marketing, Business & Operations, Admin and H&R—went to Kickstarter to dig up $43,000 for tooling and a proper production line.
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They Innovate Inc. is the name of an upstart design company out of Port Hope, Canada. Focusing on the phone mounting space, their first product is the Clipless, a magnetic means of attaching your phone or tablet to any surface (including your own clothes).
Early prototypes were 3D-printed, but the team didn’t get much traction; early test runs indicated what more and more people are discovering—not everyone digs the occasionally janky results you get with 3D-printed plastic. But after switching to a CNC mill and changing materials to aluminum, user feedback went positive and the group knew they had a hit on their hands.
Here’s how Clipless works:
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This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
