Hasta La Ideas

The Fourth of July is coming up, that much-beloved holiday widely celebrated in Brit—oh, wait a sec, my mistake—widely celebrated in the United States. In celebration, Helix Design has created an American flag mosaic made of industrial design sketches.

The ‘Designed in America’ flag was created by Helix to represent design creativity through the American flag,” explains Helix owner Joe Schappler, who founded the company in 1990. “Made up of product design ideations, Helix is artistically promoting the concept that creativity, innovation, ingenuity and design is embodied in America’s product development excellence and expertise.”

…”The Designed in America flag promotes the creative thinking of Americans to conceive of exceptional products for the world,” Schappler adds. “Alongside ‘Made in America,’ we don’t just highlight where a product is assembled, but celebrate the thinking that created the product itself. Designed in America keeps jobs at home and promotes the United States of America as the world leader in ingenuity.”

Helix is located in Manchester. You know, our Manchester, the one in New Hampshire. That one was first, right?

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It’s that time of year again: Today the IDSA announced the winners of the 2012 International Design Excellence Awards, the “Oscars of Design” that celebrates the best industrial design work from around the globe, categorized into a multitude of categories. While you can head on over to their page to see the full list, we sifted through the Gold Winners to pick the ones we thought would be of most interest to the Core77 readership.

This’ll be a long entry, so set your project to render, grab a cup of coffee and dive in.

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It has now come to my attention that the same guys working on sensor-equipped robots, who are clearly hellbent on our destruction, are now developing them so that they can consistently defeat human beings in competitions. The geniuses over at U. of Tokyo’s Ishikawa Oku Lab have developed a dishonorable robot hand that uses its lightning-quick vision to cheat at Rock-Paper-Scissors:

Nice going, guys. When are you gonna get around to teaching them how to box and fire handguns?

“The purpose of this study,” write the researchers, “is to develop a janken (rock-paper-scissors) robot system with 100% winning rate as one example of human-machine cooperation systems.”

Uh, that is not cooperation.

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It’s no GoPro, and it’s badly in need of stability control, but earlier this week Pivothead released some new footage shot by their Durango video recording eyewear. Have a look:

The tiny right-between-the-eyes sensor can capture stills at 8MP and shoot 1080p HD video, with options for both 30 and 60 frames per second. Files are transferred to your computer wirelessly, obviating the need for cables, and there’s even an onboard microphone tucked into the side.

I don’t think that GoPro, as the incumbent wearable camera company, has anything to worry about; Pivothead’s test video above started to make me seasick almost instantly. But competition is always good for product design, and it will be nice if GoPro counters with their own sleeker form factor. If these two companies keep at it, in the future photographers and cinematographers will be able to walk around with all of their gear perched on the front of their faces.

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Photos courtesy of Greer Garner

We’ve seen plenty of decent portable speakers over the years—as one of many iDevice peripherals that designers continue to revisit, “Zooka” speaker bar for iPad and fuseproject’s Jambox (a Core77 2011 Design Awards notable) come to mind—as well as a resurgence in vintage speaker restoration (an offshoot of the maker movement, perhaps): Joe Dobson and Devin Ward are just two recent examples. Designer Greer Garner has combined vintage aesthetics with handheld convenience (and digital fabrication to boot) in “Sway,” a portable speaker with interchangeable hardware.

Sway is designed so the user can customise parts to reflect their own personal style. The speaker grills have changeable designs, along with a silk layer that adds a splash of colour and protects the electronics. Being able to influence the look of the music player helps build a stronger attachment to the device and encourages people to think of electronics as something to be treasured.

All of the external components of “Sway” are 3D-printed: the enclosure is made of nylon, spraypainted in navy, while the buttons and knobs are made of copper-coated resin and electroplated in gold. A strip of silk conceals the 28mm speaker cones while allowing sound to pass without muffling or distortion. The device is USB rechargeable via the 3.5mm audio jack.

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