Fukasawa, also known for his work with for Japanese brand MUJI, came up with a slim, slightly curved aluminium frame for his latest Infobar phone for KDDI’s design series au.
The Infobar A02’s user interface is iida 2.0, a KDDI-developed version of Android that allows users to customise their home screen with their favourite content.
Fukasawa worked with the interface designers to make the phone simple to use and understand. “The movement or manipulation is very intuitive,” he explains in the movie (below). “So people don’t need to read any kind of manual or anything – you intuitively understand.”
Like Windows Phone 8, iida is based on a scrolling screen of variously sized tiles, while the sounds were created by Japanese pop star Cornelius. The buttons on the side of the phone are designed to line up with the tiles displayed on the screen.
The phone launches next month and comes in three colour options: grey, blue and a combination of red, white and lilac inspired by Japanese koi carp.
Découverte d’Oscillate, le nom du projet de la thèse d’animation de Daniel Sierra au sein de la School of Visual Arts Computer Art MFA. Utilisant plusieurs logiciels d’animation et de modélisation, cette magnifique vidéo propose de mettre en images les variations musicales. A découvrir en images et en HD dans la suite.
A l’occasion de leur 50 ans, le constructeur Lamborghini a présenté à Sant Agata Bolognese le nouveau concept-car « Egoista » sous la forme d’un habitacle monoplace. Propulsé par 600 chevaux et son moteur V10, cette supercar se caractérise par son cockpit sur-mesure en fibre de carbone et en aluminium.
The SOLO is a unified laundry system for single folks. Besides being compact and wall mounted, the system cleans, irons, de-stains and refreshes clothes using modern technologies. For a better part it works on the water-less washing system by employing UV lights etc. I love it for its futuristic clean sweep style and ‘shirt-shower’ function!
Designer: Chanhee Han
– Yanko Design Timeless Designs – Explore wonderful concepts from around the world! Shop CKIE – We are more than just concepts. See what’s hot at the CKIE store by Yanko Design! (Solo Laundromat was originally posted on Yanko Design)
Stay safe like Nokia and suffer or be radical like Jobs and go the Apple way. You really have only two choices in the evolving world of mobile phones. If you take the latter route then something like this Evolution of Mobile – Mobile Phone seems to be a fit. Optimize functionality, modularize the phone or simply enjoy the unique interface, this expandable phone offers many new possibilities. Perhaps the age-old candybar as well!
Designers: SNU of Science & Tech
– Yanko Design Timeless Designs – Explore wonderful concepts from around the world! Shop CKIE – We are more than just concepts. See what’s hot at the CKIE store by Yanko Design! (Beyond The Candybar was originally posted on Yanko Design)
Avec ses séries photographiques « Things Come Apart & Disassembly Series », Todd McLellan nous propose de décomposer entièrement des objets sophistiqués pour en voir toutes les pièces. Une création visuellement très réussie qui sera publiée chez Thames & Hudson durant le mois de mai. Plus dans la suite.
Daniel Rozin est un artiste basé à New York qui imagine des sculptures très intéressantes. Avec sa dernière création « Angle Mirrors », l’artiste nous propose un bloc triangulaire parsemé d’indicateurs qui permet de réagir à la présence du visiteur en face. Une création visuellement très réussie est à découvrir en vidéo.
Water and electricity don’t mix, at least not where safety’s concerned. But artist Antonin Fourneau, while in residence with the French R&D and prototyping collective DigitalArti, devised a safe and spectacular way that even children could safely activate LED lights with water.
Fourneau’s proprietary hack, called “Water Light Graffiti,” is a traveling installation that will next touch down at the Grohe showroom during New York Design Week. It consists of a grid of thousands of LED bulbs that light up as soon as water hits them. “You can use a paintbrush, a water atomizer, your fingers or anything damp to sketch a brightness message or just to draw,” DigitalArti explains. “Water Light Graffiti is a wall for ephemeral messages in the urban space… A wall to communicate and share magically in the city.”
Check it out:
Water Light Graffiti will go live in New York City on May 13th, at the Grohe Live! Center at 160 Fifth Ave; RSVP required.
Following today’s news that the first 3D-printed gun has been fired, Dezeen reporter Emilie Chalcraft takes a look at how 3D-printed guns and drones are changing weaponry and warfare in this extract from Print Shift, our one-off publication about 3D printing.
There’s a dark side to additive manufacturing. It could transform warfare and put homemade guns in the hands of criminals.
Always quick to find a use for cutting-edge technology, military scientists are deploying 3D printers on the front line to produce everything from gun components to unmanned aircraft. The US Army has been taking the lead, even going so far as to develop its own 3D printer as an alternative to commercial models.
Last July, the first mobile 3D-printing lab arrived in Afghanistan, allowing soldiers to repair their equipment quickly and cheaply, rather than wait weeks for spare parts to be delivered. “We can generate replacement parts with a device small and light enough to be carried in a backpack,” says D. Shannon Berry, an operations research analyst in the US Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command.
AR-15 rifle with 3D-printed lower receiver
Soon, frontline soldiers could be printing entire weapons or even aircraft. Engineers from MITRE, a corporation that carries out research for US government agencies, recently teamed with University of Virginia students to design, print and fly a smartphone-controlled drone, at a cost of just a few thousand dollars.
“I absolutely see 3D-printed drones being the norm in the not-too-distant future,” says University of Sheffield academic Neil Hopkinson, who’s been researching additive manufacturing since the 1990s and believes the military will be one of the first sectors to benefit from the technology. “One of the beauties of additive manufacturing is its diversity of applications. Within the military, I see it being used to make everything from personalised shoe soles to parts for vehicles.”
But if it’s so easy for soldiers to print gun parts, what’s to stop civilians from doing the same? Last year, US hobbyist Michael Guslick attached a 3D-printed plastic lower receiver – the only part of a gun that actually requires a licence in the US – to an AR-15 rifle before firing off 200 test-rounds. Meanwhile libertarian activists Defense Distributed announced plans to disseminate blueprints for a homemade DIY gun. Led by Texan law student Cody Wilson, the group aims to develop a fully printable plastic firearm adapted for basic desktop 3D printers [unveiled this week] and is already sharing files for individual components through its DEFCAD web forum.
Defense Distributed plans to disseminate blueprints for DIY guns
The increased accessibility of 3D printing technology is a “double-edged sword”, says Ronen Kadushin, a pioneer of the open-design philosophy, which aims to turn industrial design into a networked community unhindered by ownership and copyright restrictions. “It’s frightening for governments now, because it means the total dissemination of arms into the community. You can print ammunition for your own army.” Kadushin predicts that amateur designers could eventually suffer the same vilification as computer hackers do today. “All you need is one person to make a 3D-printed weapon and kill somebody with it. This is a very dangerous situation.”
Neil Hopkinson is less convinced of the threat posed by hobbyists. “The costs of the equipment, and the levels of skill and expertise you’re going to need, are high,” he says. “Those sorts of things just aren’t going to be accessible to the general public.”
Looking further into the future, Liam Young, co-founder of design and research studio Tomorrow’s Thoughts Today, suggests digital piracy could be an issue for the arms industry in the same way it has been for the entertainment industry. “Black-market economies will turn the illicit arms trade into a 3D-printed supply chain,” he suggests. “And these supply chains are going to be co-opted – not by Apple or Microsoft or whoever owns the digital rights to these weapons, but by organised-crime syndicates.
“It’s going to be complicated and messy,” he continues. “And it’s going to change things fundamentally – but perhaps not in the way we’re expecting.”
Main image: An AR-15 rifle, the weapon US hobbyist Michael Guslick managed to 3D-print a key part for last year, transforming it into a fully functioning firearm
News: the world’s first 3D-printed plastic gun has been successfully fired in Texas, USA.
The handgun, named The Liberator, was assembled from separate printed components made from ABS plastic, with the exception of a metal nail used as a firing pin.
The makers of the gun, who belong to Austin-based libertarian activist group Defense Distributed, now plan to publish the blueprints for the gun on the group’s Pirate Bay-style file-sharing site Defcad.
The BBC later filmed the gun being fired by Cody Wilson, Defense Distributed’s 25-year-old leader, who said that gun control laws had become outdated in the face of new technology.
“I’m seeing a world where technology says you can pretty much have whatever you want. It’s not up to the political players any more,” he said.
The successful test firing came after a year of development by Defense Distributed, which a few months ago launched Defcad to host 3D printing blueprints for illicit items including weapons, drugs and medical equipment.
In other 3D printing news this week, US office supplies retailer Staples is to become the first major US chain to sell 3D printers, with the $1300 Cube 3D Printer arriving in its stores by the end of June.
In our earlier report on Defense Distributed, the founder of collaborative design practice Superflux, Anab Jain, suggested that democratised access to blueprints is “about making sure there is a possibility to debate these things instead of just becoming passive consumers and saying, ‘tomorrow I can order a 3D-printed gun if I want’.”
We report on the rise of 3D-printed weaponry in our recently launched print-on-demand publication Print Shift, which also looks at how the technology is being adapted to architecture, design, food, fashion and other fields.
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