Design your own hat with an on-line design tool and choose your own knitting granny on Goldenhook. This concept is not (really) about design-your-own or about Mass Customization. It’s much more about the story behind the products – and probably even more important – about the story behind the knitting grannies.

Is personal fabrication from now on more about getting things made by the person we like and not so much about getting the things made exactly like we want them? Both sides are important I think. The functionality of physical goods could be perfect, if a machine produces all the things exactly like we need them. But at the same time it could be a boring world. Without carrying stories or personality, things aren’t really interesting for human beings.

Share on Facebook

In this post I take a closer look on Lighting based on LED (Light Emitting Diods).

As a starter watch the following funny video featuring “LED Light Bulb Evangelist” Hank Green (EcoGeek)almost getting crazy for his energy saving bulbs… thanks to betterandgreen for the video tip!

.

.

Not bad, isn’t it? LEDs will definitely have a bright future (and will brighten our future)…

Besides the energy saving potential LEDs also brighten lighting design and art.

A tiny collection:

Canopy Forest by LE DEUN LUMINAIRES

.

π888 by LE DEUN LUMINAIRES

.

.

Ingo Maurer LED cocepts (via MoCo Loco):

LED Wallpaper by Ingo Maurer

.

Magic Carpet by Ingo Maurer

.

.

Throwies, urban art phenomenon:

.

.our first LED based Earth Clear lampshade prototype

Share on Facebook

There is a lot of buzz around industrial 3d printing machines and its desktop/home equivalents (e.g. Fab@Home, RepRap). Prices are dropping, more and more people discover digital fabrication as a fascinating way to turn own ideas into reality.

Combing through webpages I recently stumbled uppon some instructions to build a DIY CNC Milling Machine. CNC Milling is the technology we use to create our wooden Earth Bowls.

::

DIY CNC Milling Machine

..

Another DIY CNC Milling Machine

::

:A CNC robot milling a face::

.

.Are you up for your own machine?

Your own DIY CNC Machine – Instruction

even more instructions

via hacknmod.com and instructables.com

Share on Facebook

Today we really like to thank all customers who participated in our survey!

We hoped for a response rate of 10 %.

But more than 30 % of you spent your
precious time and answered our questions.
Wow!

.

Some of the most important results of the survey:

1. you guys are brilliant

2. your mouse AND your keyboard form a perfect team to express your opinion

3. you confirmed that we are on the right way
(even if we are not always doing all things right)

We already work hard on your requests, hints and ideas. A lot of them will be fulfilled and implemented on our new website which we launch at the end of the month…

.

By then you will also know if you are the winner of an Earth Bowl

Earth-Stripe Bowl

Share on Facebook

Core77′s Greener Gadgets Designer Competition (voting ends Feb. 20th) goes into its last round. So I thought it’s time to pick out some of my favorites:

Save our Polar Bear for the creative approach to
create awareness for global warming:

d

ubicycle Public Bicycle Service System because I like cycling
a similar system already works pretty good in Vienna.

..

Blight for its inventive usage of ordinary blinds to produce electricity

Share on Facebook

Two days ago Austria’s national broadcast corporation ORF visited us for the third time (see last time’s clip) in our atelier/office. This time they came to make some shots for the Fluid Forms’ designer portrait which will be broadcast in 3 weeks.

It was a bit surprising that they visited us on Monday and not (as thought) on Tuesday…

So we had to stop the tests with the prototype of our new “alternative filing system” which we had installed in the office for a while and tidy up quickly:

::

:

Impressions from the shooting:

Hannes describing how Fluid Forms works, Stephen following attentively

:

Is it really Obi Wan Kenobi landing on the Earth Bowl?

Share on Facebook

This weekend (Feb. 7-8) we will be at the barcamp Klagenfurt (University of Klagenfurt) which is the first one for Stephen as well as for me. (a premiere, a premiere…clapping… )

We are already curious about what to learn there…

We also hope to meet a lot of nosy people in the session (New approaches for product design in a Web 2.0 environment) we proposed!

More info to be found on the official barcamp Austria page and on Georg Holzer’s Blog

I am looking forward to get back to the university I studied at.

Would be great to see a lot of you guys there!

Share on Facebook

The way I got started with creative coding was by experimenting with the pixel as a material. Going down to the level of the pixel was made easy in Processing requiring only one line of code to set the colour of a pixel.

set(10,10,color(255, 100, 0));

This simplicity helped us on the way to the creative coding movement we are seeing now. Starting with a complex idea and trying to code it is a difficult was to learn programming. I would advise anyone looking to getting into creative code to start experimenting with the properties of pixels.

Below you can see the result of drawing lines without antialiasing.

Get to know the material.

Share on Facebook