Dyson Hot Fan Heater

Dyson Hot Fan Heater:
We weren't quite sure about Dyson products at first. They're at least three times more expensive than any of their alternatives and utilize a science that, to us, seems more like black magic than anything [...]

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Dichotomy Chair by Lury Furniture

Dichotomy Chair by Lury Furniture:

Modern meets traditional in the Dichotomy Chair by Jean-Damien Lury who leads newly-formed Lury Furniture. Lury makes beautiful, high quality, unique and functional pieces of furniture that encompasses creative vision, ideas and individuality.

Core77 Photo Gallery: How Cork is Made

Core77 Photo Gallery: How Cork is Made:

Brooklyn-based designer and educator Daniel Michalik specializes in working with cork. Obsessed with finding new ways to shape the material, he spent a week traveling around Portugal to document how cork is made from the independent harvesting farms in Alentejo, to the factories of the countries largest cork manufacture Amorim where all the scrap material is used as biomass fuel to power the plants.

300,000 tons of cork is produced globally every year and 52.5% of this comes from Portugal. Harvesting a crop can only happen once every nine years. It's critical to peel the bark off carefully as damaging the new layer underneath will destroy the trees value, highly skilled workers use a special axe called the Machada and can strip a tree in about 10 minutes.

Checkout our gallery to see how wine bottle cork stoppers are made (representing about 60% of all cork based production), sheet material for flooring, and the molding of dark cork insulation blocks. And stay tuned for Daniels in depth look at cork manufacturing on the blog in the next few next weeks.

» View Gallery: How Cork is Made

Daniel Michalik pictured in his Bushwick studio demonstrating a technique he uses to create 3D forms from layers of sheet cork material.

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Herman Miller Honored for Sustainable Performance

Herman Miller Honored for Sustainable Performance: Herman Miller has once again been recognized as a leader in corporate sustainability by The Dow Jones Sustainability World Index (DJSI World). This marks the eighth consecutive year Herman Miller has been placed on the DJSI World.


DJSI World is an international stock portfolio that evaluates the annual performance of the world's largest 2500 companies using economic, environmental, and social criteria, known as the "triple bottom line" of sustainability.

The Danish Design Center Shop Showcases the Best in Eco-Friendly Scandinavian Design

The Danish Design Center Shop Showcases the Best in Eco-Friendly Scandinavian Design:

'Felt & Gravity' furniture collection by London...

'Felt & Gravity' furniture collection by London...:



'Felt & Gravity' furniture collection by London based designer Amy Hunting.

(Want more? See NOTCOT.org and NOTCOT.com)

Hertz Launches Electric Bicycle Rental Scheme In London

Hertz Launches Electric Bicycle Rental Scheme In London:

When you’re in an unfamiliar city, renting a car is always useful for getting around – but what if you’re more environmentally conscious? Never fear, for car rental company Hertz has begun renting out electric bicycles at their Marble Arch branch. The company now boasts a fleet of twelve Ultra Motor e-bikes for both tourists and residents. The company’s initiative is sure to make London mayor (and avid cyclist) Boris Johnson very happy. Johnson recently said he aims to turn London into the electric vehicle capital of Europe, and the Hertz plan will certainly help his green efforts.

Core77 Design Directory: Redesigned

Core77 Design Directory: Redesigned:

Announcing the newly redesigned Core77 Design Directory—Where Business Finds Design

In 2003 Core77 partnered with Businessweek and launched DesignDirectory.com—a searchable directory listing professional design services firms across a wide array of fields. The Design Directory quickly became host to thousands of listings for firms who want the best of both worlds: effective branding and positioning in the design world, and unprecedented exposure to the business world, and a destination for those needing design services and inspiration. Building on Design Directory's initial success, we spent the early part of this year completely redesigning and rebuilding the website and features, and are proud to announce the new & improved Core77 Design Directory v2!

New features include:

• Improved Search & Results—the new search bar focuses on broad but highly relevant search criteria to get firms in front of visitors faster, then easily filters or switch settings. Results are larger and image-based to showcase work.



• Better Browsing—new projects and logos of our Premium members are featured on the homepage, plus clickable popular specialties and locations.



• Projects Showcase Firms' Work—with larger images, more details, and supporting documents like case studies and white papers, projects are a one-stop destination about a firm's work.



• Custom URLs, Better SEO & Analytics—easily find firms via their customize URLs, and Premium listings can integrate their Google Analytics accounts for increased tracking.



• Monthly Billing—no more annual contracts, upgrade and downgrade at any time.

All of this on top of the existing:

• Great Exposure for Firms—visits are up nearly 20% over last year, and we'll be expanding Design Directory's presence Core77.com by featuring our firms' projects. Additionally our strategic partnership with Bloomberg Businessweek drives traffic to the site.



• Searchable Profiles—featuring projects and easy-to-find company contact info, plus highly optimized for both Design Directory and Internet search engines. They even include Twitter feeds!



• Multiple Plans—to fit a firm's needs. At $85/mo Premium listings fall higher in the search results and are featured prominently on the Design Directory & Core77 homepages. Basic listings are free. And for firms that want even more exposure, we have a PremiumPlus add-on package.



• Apply to Join—to ensure the quality of the listings so visitors find accurate, up-to-date information about firms, the Design Directory uses an application method for membership.

We're very excited with the new Design Directory look and features! Find a firm, list your firm, and send us your feedback—we can't wait to find out what you think!

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Wacom Goes Bigger, Better and High-Def with the Cintiq 24HD

Wacom Goes Bigger, Better and High-Def with the Cintiq 24HD:

This morning Wacom announced their new Cintiq 24HD, their largest combination monitor/tablet yet. As the name implies, it boasts a 24-inch screen with HD definition, providing a killer 1920x1200 display. And the screen's wide bezel provides a good resting place for your non-drawing hand, keeping it within easy reach of the customizable ExpressKeys and Touch Rings that veteran Cintiq users will recognize.

The part of the 24HD we're most excited about is a new physical design feature which incorporates solid industrial design thinking to solve an ergonomic issue: How can we get this massive tablet into multiple working positions that we favor? The answer comes in the form of a well-thought-out base and adjustable supporting arms that move and lock the tablet into a variety of positions. Designers, architects and animators will love the drafting-table position enabled by the base, independent of your plain ol' flat desk.

Don Varga, Wacom's Director of Professional Products, swung by Core77's office to give us a demo. (After the demo we've spliced in the 24HD's promo video, and frequent Core77 readers may note something of interest there.)

Pretty cool, no? And what you can't see in the video is the solid, weighty feel the base has to it, which means once you set it up, it remains solidly in place, independent of whatever pressure you exert upon the tablet. Whatever ID team worked on the base took their time to really think it out. Alas, Wacom policy prevents them from mentioning the firm by name, but if the anonymous designers are reading this, job well done!

(Speaking of designers, did you recognize those renderings in the demo?)

The Cintiq 24HD is expected to begin shipping next month and will retail for $2,499.

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Interview: The Founders of TOKEN

Interview: The Founders of TOKEN:

We’ve got yet another awesome new company to talk about that’s recently joined us at 2Modern, and that’s the brilliant designs coming out of Brooklyn-based TOKEN. Founded by designers Will Kavesh and Emrys Berkower, the furniture they create is certainly lovely and attractive, but they do more than just build furniture that looks nice. Though, we’d be lying if we said these designs are darn fine looking.

To Will and Emrys, it’s about making furniture that is functional, comfortable, isn’t ironic for irony’s sake, is honest and true and modern because of the engineering and design, not because it looks “cool.” They take a very academic approach to how they tackle design problems and are clearly two very thoughtful, intelligent guys. It’s not all seriousness, though; they add in plenty of details that are fun and whimsical, meaning that though this is smartly designed furniture, it can be enjoyed by everyone. Listen or read on to hear more about how they come up with designs, how they work together and what it is about their furniture designs that makes them so awesome:

Check out TOKEN on 2Modern. (We’ll have a transcript up in a few…some technical difficulties had us running late with this interview so we wanted to put it up as soon as we can! Stay tuned for some words if you’d rather read it!)

2Modern: We are speaking with Will Kavesh and Emrys Berkower, the lead designers of TOKEN, a furniture design company out of Brooklyn, New York. Thanks for talking with me!

Will and Emrys: Hi there.

2Modern: How do you guys describe what it is that you guys do? Will let’s start with you.

Will: I would describe TOKEN as a combination of an industrial design studio and an artist’s studio practice.

Emrys: You know under one roof we try to combine sort of an academic practice and an industrial engineering practice, which I don’t think is a new mixture but it’s something we’re trying to uphold. We think in some ways it’s not forgotten, but not as prevalent.

2Modern: Well what about your individual backgrounds? Where do you guys come from? Do you have similar ones or different ones? How do they complement how do they contrast?

Will: We met in line at freshmen registration at Alfred University in 1992. We spent four years in the same school working pretty closely, so I think at the end of that experience we both, Emerys and myself, had a good idea of each other’s sensibilities. We both went out and worked, sort of took different paths until about 2005, when we started working together again in New York.

2Modern: Do you guys work on individual pieces together? Do you guys have your own pieces that just seem to work together as a line? How do the custom pieces work? How do you guys divvy the work up?

Will: Individual work starts with individuals. And we kind of take on say a chair. That chair gets 70% there, and that usually takes on some sort of physical form. And then we go through a very rigorous design selection process, where we slug it out where we have something that really represents what TOKEN is, that embodies our kind of goals that involve its formal characteristics. The use of materials is very important to us and needs to communicate a certain honesty about what the thing is.

Emrys: What it does and how it’s built and how those things interact with one another and that sort of visual coherence that the structure and the physical engineering all have and how they all work together.

Will: I think that no matter what the context is in the future, I would have a very hard time engaging injection molded plastics as a material to work with. Granted, there are sort of responsible versions of injection molded plastics, but it also kind of comes down to the vernacular of that medium and I don’t know if I’m on that page. I’m not on that page.

Emrys: I was just gonna say to go back, there is a rigorous editing process that things go through from the designs that start in Will’s head and his computer and proportionately and visually we just sort of duke it out until we edit it right for everyone. It’s an interesting process because as much as two people can get along and have the same vision we obviously have two different sets of tastes and sensibilities and so I think it’s a really challenging and rewarding process, honestly, to work with someone doing it. It takes a good deal of engineering and a good deal of pie-in-the-sky maybe this is not possible and trying to figure out what is through the engineering process.

2Modern: So is there a style and aesthetic you guys kind of adhere to now? Is there anything that you guys discard because it doesn’t fit that TOKEN aesthetic?

Emrys: Coherence with how something looks and how something works is very important to us. Of how functional a joint may be. Or how a connection between a piece of wood, a piece of steel and a fastener. We make a really big issue about how something is put together, we sort of champion it. We don’t try to hide it; we try to show it off. And I think we understand what we’re doing enough to really push how it looks and make it simple and beautiful and play with proportions. No—a half inch material is too thick there. And Will says ‘it’s not gonna work in 3/8ths’ and I say ‘really, because it’s too big.’ And he says ‘ugh’ and I say ‘so take off 100 grams instead’ and he’ll say ‘alright’ so he takes it off and it’s still too big. And I fight him until he’s right and we’ve come in between 3/8th and ½ inch, and that’s why it looks the way it does.

Will: There’s a standard sort of accepted look of modernist proportions. It’s very different from what’s actually functional, surprisingly so. If you find a chair and it looks proportionally beautiful, and then you put a body in it, and the body is very uncomfortable, usually, because the back is too low, or the seat is too narrow, but proportionally it just looks right. So the battle to make it functional is where it really gets interesting. You want to sort of hold to these sort of specifics about form and proportion and simplicity but sometimes it’s just made difficult by making something that is comfortable.

Emrys: And Will really seems to like to push how far a material can go before a material doesn’t go anymore. Like our barstool has a seemingly very spindly set of legs that how could it actually hold something up? You know we worked really hard at finding what dimensions the material could be to achieve that. In our copy we talk a little bit about the structural mystery that happens with what we’re trying to convey with people.

Will: Both of us have art backgrounds, so making sculpture is all about inspiring that reaction in the viewer, right? And, in my opinion I think industrial design should be the same thing but sometimes it’s not.

Emrys: Yeah and I think to really answer your question, and again, maybe I’m just repeating myself, but it looks the way it does because of these kinds of considerations that we’re making. It’s not by accident. And I think that that’s really, really indicative of a sort of practice that I don’t want to say doesn’t exist but isn’t so much about being cool and hip. Isn’t so much about how it’s put together but how cool or how kind of ironic it might be. Our irony isn’t in some sort of post modern sort of way, it’s a real honest use of the word modern, which I think is a very way way over-used word.

Will:Part of contemporary art is a post studio art practice. Honestly it makes me puke a little bit. I really really don’t understand it. I feel like what we do in the studio really works to bring studio practice as it existed in contemporary art prior to post studio movement to industrial design. So it’s really about rigorous practice.

Emrys: And I’m also looking around and I’m looking at a chair of ours and Will and I aren’t always so academic and so serious. And I think also seen in our pieces—we try to add a little sophisticated whimsy, again without being ironic or kind of being like cheap. It’s about putting in a little bit of color where it’s right. Where it fits. Where it’s tasteful. A little tiny structural detail that we paint gold or blue is a way of saying this isn’t totally serious. You can live with this or put this in your kid’s room. It is a business and we do have to make money. But at the end of the day, neither Will nor myself want to put a product out there that we can’t really talk to you or a client or showroom about without passion. I would not be able to sleep at night if I put something out I didn’t like.

When old fashioned furnitures meet design, a...

When old fashioned furnitures meet design, a...:



When old fashioned furnitures meet design, a work by the polish designer Lukasz Wysoczynski

(Want more? See NOTCOT.org and NOTCOT.com)

The Melting Chair by Philipp Aduat ~...

The Melting Chair by Philipp Aduat ~...:



The Melting Chair by Philipp Aduat ~ beautifully sculptural, and so very terminator like with its liquid metal looking form.

(Want more? See NOTCOT.org and NOTCOT.com)

I Draw Cars Sketchbook & Reference Guide

I Draw Cars Sketchbook & Reference Guide:

There is this moment that all designers experience, this I must draw moment particular to those who make things for a living. In addition to experiencing it myself at least weekly, I saw it a lot when I first started interning at design firms. You know the deal, you're sitting at a conference table or desk, talking, and then all of a sudden the designer's head starts swiveling while s/he looks for the nearest writing utensil and paperlike surface. They grab whatever's on hand—pen, pencil, lipstick, doesn't matter—and start banging out a sketch on paper, paper towel, back of a takeout menu, doesn't matter.

"Doesn't matter" being the operative words, as designers can and do draw on anything, giving us the trope of the brilliant napkin sketch. So I'm always a little skeptical when I see sketchbooks dedicated to a particular type of drawing, since all we really need is blank paper. But perhaps the I DRAW CARS Sketchbook & Reference Guide, above, is different by virtue of the "Reference Guide" part? It aims to increase its utility to automotive designers by...

...pairing commonly used industry reference materials with a ubiquitous and iconic moleskine sketchbook form. Contents include global automotive brands, global design schools, global auto show dates and locations, reference materials in both print and web format, commonly used proportions and packages, and 100+ pages of templates to practice with.

Useful, or gimmick? Please let us know your thoughts in the comments.

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