Hasta La Ideas

We love it when readers share recent design work with us, and relish the opportunity to, in turn, share exposure via our site and social channels with them. Below is a round-up of 2022’s reader design projects, starting with the most popular ones followed by two of the most controversial. Click through to read the full story, or comments, behind each and if you are a designer, be sure to submit your project for publication in 2023!

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An M1 Mac Mini to go, please.

Scott Yu-Jan makes a Mac Mini portable via a custom 3D printed case which utilizes an iPad mini as monitor. As they say it allows everyone’s “favorite daily driver” to hit the road…

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MUAC-Scrape: Measuring for Malnutrition

Harvard University’s Master in Design Engineering Program redesigned the MUAC -tape (Middle Upper Arm Circumference) – a severe malnutrition diagnosis tool. Their solution improves upon the original in a variety of ways including a built-in marking tip on the tool…

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Forest – primary school desk partitions to help students with attention struggles

Shion Ito visited a classroom of students and prototyped tools to assist with student focus. His solution is a spatial division system which permits students to layer screening elements and individually adjust the privacy of their desk. Core77 readers were enthusiastic about his design, “Forest” …

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Newtons – a hand crafted sculpture using magnets to create tension

StudioYO designed these magnetic wooden pebbles that connect together, creating dynamic sculptures or serving as a toy to occupy ones hands with. They worked with the Shizuoka turnery, operating since 1864 to produce the objects…

NEWTONS_desktop from studioYO on Vimeo.

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Designed to be Inconspicuous – Universal Kitchen Aid

Desiree Riny, Brendan Lim and Steph Porrino participated as “Team Access” in the Tikkun Olam Makers: Melbourne make-athon where the goal is “to create and build products that improve the lives of people with a disability.” They developed a prototype of a heavy magnetic base which keeps mixing bowls in place without using one’s hand…

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Useless Object Series

Joseph Kim produced this object series that invites user “input” via a simple vocabulary of material, color and form. It employs the aluminum 80/20 T-slot system and was developed in Carnegie Mellon’s Advanced Open Sculpture course…

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Andrew Roberts brings AI to life with polyjet 3D printing

Andrew Roberts’ speculative thesis, Uncanny Bastards, “proposes a marriage between artificial intelligence tools and multi-material 3D printing to create compelling designs and artefacts for film.” The results are… Uncanny…

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Now for the Controversy! Which, we may as well let you know now, is actually very mild by the standards of the internet. As much as we love receiving the work of our readers, we equally appreciate when they contribute design critique … it’s a healthy circle …

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ChaTaT Bench – Conversational Loveseat

Furbershaworks designed a bench intended to facilitate conversation between two parties with its sculptural form aligning participants for a not-quite face-to-face talk. Commenters were divided on both concept and realization …

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Disco Compacto 3d printed chair

Disco Compacto successfully kickstarted not only its chair — an intriguing design that integrates “technical simplicity and visual complexity” — but also a fair amount of discussion amongst Core77 readers …

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Thanks to all who submitted and commented on Reader Projects this year! Submit your own project here.