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Highlights include lessons from Stanford’s d.School and IDEO. Better for high school.

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Imagine a world where digital learning platforms help adult learners succeed through college completion; where a network of schools offers international-quality education, affordable tuition, and serves hundreds of thousands of children in economically disadvantaged countries; where we engage parents in understanding national trends and topics in education; where a comprehensive learning environment seamlessly connects the classroom with the opportunities of the digital world for young students; and where system-level solutions help more students gain access to college.
Educators across the world have been using design thinking to create such a world.
Design thinking consists of four key elements: Defining the Problem, Creating and Considering Multiple Options, Refining Selected Directions, and Executing the Best Plan of Action.

An early example of design thinking would have been Edison's invention of the light bulb. This invention carried with it a "human-centered design ethos," meaning Edison was able to envision how people would want to use what he made, and then engineered toward that insight. He created an entirely new marketplace for his product, not just a single device modeled after preceding devices of similar use.

In education, design thinking empowers students to realize that they can create their own futures by borrowing frameworks from other areas, which allows them to design their own participation and experiences. For example, game designer Katie Salen has talked about her students experiencing video game design and implementing those principles into the classroom; she said her students interact within a framework that allows them to take on social challenges as designers.

A good game designer thinks about the same things that a good teacher thinks about, Salen says. When you begin to see how games work, you can begin to see how a classroom might work more effectively. The framework of how video games work can also be used to design class participation.

In essence, design thinking prescribes a collaborative, solution-oriented approach rather than an individualistic, problem-oriented approach.

Current projects range in scope and scale, addressing problems in the classroom and across entire districts. We're seeing school leaders engage faculty to develop a shared philosophy on teaching and learning; district administration using design to reimagine tools they create to help teachers be successful; community volunteer groups engage in a process to help redesign schools that are less successful within their state system; and more.

"Each of these stories alone is not the answer to whole-scale education reform," says Sandy Speicher, who leads the education practice at the design firm IDEO, "but if you multiply these activities by three million teachers across [the United States], and magnify that by the organizations that are creating new, human-centered tools and services to support our students, it can add up to a big impact on the system."

Teachers find design thinking to be an engaging pedagogical approach, because in order to create new solutions, you cannot help but learn about people and their interests, about business or math or science or engineering.

Plus, while students are learning the specific knowledge set required to develop a relevant and buildable solution, they're also developing highly valuable skills such as empathy, the ability to collaborate, to deal with ambiguity, and, of course, to create. Design thinking offers a way to reshape the curriculum around experiences that engage students, and to shift physical classrooms based on feedback from students.

Below are 45 design thinking resources you can use to lead this movement in your own classroom:

1. The Art of Innovation, by Tom Kelley. A good starting point if you're new to modern design thinking.

2. Change by Design, Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO, as well as his TED Talk on the subject.

3. Design Thinking for Educators, from IDEO, is similar in form and content to the Bootcamp Bootleg (see below), but offers language and activities specific to K-12 educators.

4. IDEO: Design Thinking For Educators toolkit.

5. HCD [Human-Centered Design] Connect, also from IDEO. This resource was designed for NGOs and social enterprises that work with impoverished communities but includes methods relevant to education as well. The free kit walks users through the human-centered design process and supports them in activities such as building listening skills, running workshops, and implementing ideas.

6. IDEO's Design Thinking for Educators website (includes a PDF toolkit for teachers).

7. dt4e blog from Riverdale Country School & IDEO.

8. Lucy Kimbell's comprehensive academic overview of design thinking's history. A fellow at the Saad School of Business, Oxford University, Kimbell has archived many of her publications on her website.

9. d.school virtual crash course, Stanford's first stab at delivering the d.school experience at a distance.

10. The Bootcamp Bootleg, the d.school's compilation of materials used in the Design Thinking Bootcamp class.

11. The d.school's wallet project. This takes 1 hour to run, and the d.school even provides a facilitator's guide.

12. The d.school's k12 wiki. These projects are mostly geared towards k12 teachers, but many would absolutely be appropriate for adults.

13. Design Thinking Mix Tapes: The Design Thinking Mix Tapes are a resource from the Stanford d.school to help with the application of design thinking to real-life challenges. There are three PDFs that lead you through the different phases of the process. Each PDF will guide you through half a day of design thinking work.

14. "Taking Design Thinking to School" (PDF), project report from Stanford.

15. Make Space, by Scott Doorley and Scott Witthoft. This is the d.school's first book. If you've ever seen pictures of the d.school and wanted to know how you can make those whiteboards, where you can get those chairs, or just what you should be thinking about as you build out your offices, pick up a copy of this book.

16. The Third Teacher. Like Make Space, this is a practical manual, but it's less focused on interior setup and more on educational spaces in general.

17. Rapid Viz, by Kurt Hanks and Larry Belliston. Here's how to draw, fast and loose. Expressing your ideas visually is closely allied with rapid prototyping.

18. 100 Things Every Designer Should Know About People, by Susan Weinschenk. This book compiles those psychology and behavior tidbits you've heard and written down because they seem like they might be relevant for some design, somewhere. Flip through it at a decision time in a project and let behavioral science and neuroscience guide you in the right direction.

19. Storyviz.com corresponds to the popular d.school class Storytelling and Visual Communication.

20. The kerning game is a quick and simple way to help you notice letter shapes. Try it out even if you have no idea what kerning is.

21. Typography for Lawyers is a guide to elegant, readable, classy document design. Follow these guidelines and your handouts won't make designers cringe.

22. Edutopia's Design Thinking Video Playlist, part of its Five Minute Film Festival series

23. Teacher Resources on Design Thinking at Henry Ford Learning Institute

24. Professional Development from dLab, the Laboratory on Design Thinking in Education, at University of Kentucky's College of Education.

25. Project H Design, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving education from within.

26. ISKME's Action Collabs, a series of design thinking workshops sponsored by the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education.

27. "Teaching Kids Design Thinking, So They Can Solve The World's Biggest Problems," by Trung Le, Fast Company Design

28. "Teaching and Learning through Design Thinking," by Justin Reich, Education Week blogs

29. Students For a Democratic Society: Student Power for Accessible Education Organizing Guide

30. End The Race: The Homework Pledge Toolkit

31. IDEA: What's Happening at Your School? A Snapshot Evaluation

32. SoundOut: Meaningful Student Involvement Guide to Students as Partners in School Change

33. IDEA: Bringing Democratic Education to Your Classroom and School (Lesson Plan)

34. IDEA: Introducing Democratic Education (Lesson Plan)

35. IDEA: Education Library

36. American Friends Service Committee: It's My Life! A Guide to Alternatives After High School

37. Buck Institute for Education: PBL DO-IT-YOURSELF - Guidance, Tools and Tips for Your Projects

38. Design Thinking For Educators: context / profession / practice / mindset

39. Creative Workshop: 80 Challenges to Sharpen Your Design Skills, plus 10 bonus challenges

40. KnowledgeWorks and American Architectural Foundation: Report From the National Summit on School Design: A Resource For Educators and Designers

41. Collective Action Toolkit: Collective Action Toolkit from frog design is a package of resources and activities that enable groups to organize, build trust, and collaboratively create solutions for problems impacting their community.

42. Target Design K-12 Teacher Resource Packet: Developed by the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, this PDF contains several resources on how to integrate design thinking connections into the K-12 classroom. It accompanies the free K-12 design workshops that the Cooper-Hewitt offers to all New York City schools.

43. Etale.org's 27 books to cultivate design thinking for educators. See the full list here.

44. OER Commons Design Thinking for 11th Graders

45. REDlab's Research in Education &Design: REDlab was founded in 2009 to study the impact of design thinking in education. It grew from the Taking Design Thinking to Schools Project, which was funded by Stanford's K-12 Initiative. It sparked a partnership between the Stanford School of Education and the d.school. The goal was to partner with local schools to explore the feasibility of design thinking as a new way to teach and learn.

"Most of us have deeply embedded ideas about what's'right' for education," says Speicher. "But when you look at the world of education through the lens of design, you start to see that there isn't one right answer, there are many."

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45 Design Thinking Resources for Educators - InformED

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Imagine a world where digital learning platforms help adult learners succeed through college completion; where a network of schools offers international-quality education, affordable tuition, and serves hundreds of thousands of children in economically disadvantaged countries; where we engage parents in understanding national trends and topics in education; where a comprehensive learning environment seamlessly connects the...

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Mark MacKay has a side project that is a series of games that teach graphic design skills. The games are listed below:

Pen Tool Tutorials – Bezier Game – How to use the pen tool for drawing shapes. Effective and simple, this series of tutorial game challenges  players to think about shapes in increasingly complex ways, breaking them down into their constituent segmented parts.

Pen Tool for Letter Shapes – Shape Type – Fix distorted fonts by adjusting the bezier curves of the letters. Teaches working with outlined fonts.

Typography Kerning – Kern Me – learn how to balance visual weight of the letters in a word

Color Matching and Color Theory

Building Vector images with Shapes – Boolean Game (uses Union, Subtract, Intersect and Difference)

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Tools

Method Draw is a vector editor for the web, you can use it online.
It is open source and you can find it on GitHub.

Writing

Method of Action is the creative endeavor of Mark MacKay

I register my creative process and my spiritual/existential way of being in a daily work log, which some people find interesting. On a temporary basis, I'm currently writing in Spanish.

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Method Draw is a vector editor for the web, you can use it online. It is open source and you can find it on GitHub. Method of Action is the creative endeavor of Mark MacKay I register my creative process and my spiritual/existential way of being in a daily work log, which some people find interesting.

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Coding exercises for C#, C++, Java, Javascript, PHP, Python, Ruby and Swift.

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Edabit // Learn to Code with 10,000+ Interactive Challenges

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Our bite-sized challenges are a shortcut through the maze of learning to code. Gain XP, unlock achievements and level up. Get really good at coding, really fast.

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Tutorials and lessons for coding, 3D printing, design and game development.

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Tech Rocket - Online Code and Game Design Courses

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Learn code, programming and video game design online. Coding and design courses for kids and teens that will teach them how to code, design video games and use Photoshop. All online at Tech Rocket.

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A series of lessons for middle school students that focuses on structural engineering.

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Shapes That Make Structures Strong | PBS LearningMedia

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Students explore the various shapes engineers choose to make structures strong -- in particular, triangles, arches, and domes.

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Not sure which Google Fonts work together? This tool can help.

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How this post came to be

I have to be honest - I love the concept of Google fonts, but I find the execution to always be somewhat... lacking. I don't know. When compared to classics like Futura, Bodoni, Garamond - even Helvetica - they just fall short, and I rarely, if ever, end up using them.

Can you relate?

Again, I love the concept of Google font pairings: the fast download of cool fonts (and even cute fonts) from their high-speed library is great, and has brought far more unique, web friendly fonts and font pairs to the internet than ever before. They sort of broke us out of the standard web fonts and web safe fonts we were all chained down to a few years back of Arial and Verdana and even the Times New Roman font (remember those days? Can you believe they were just a few short years ago?).

But because of that feeling of something "lacking" - I've stayed away from Google fonts. Until now.

A while ago, my partner and co-founder of Reliable, David Tendrich, challenged me to do something about it.

"Make Google fonts work," he said.

And so that's how this post was born.

I wanted to create the best font pairings Google has to offer that even high-end agency designers would be tempted to use. I wanted to assemble Google font pairs that even I would have trouble turning down.

So I combed through Google's vast library and tested hundreds of font combinations, from their most famous and top fonts like the Roboto font, Railway font, Montserrat font, Lato font, Oswald font, Lobster font, and more, to more obscure, funky ones you may have never even seen before this post.

The wonderful Rijks collection

It was also about this time that I came across the Rijks Museum's online art collection. In short, it's a beautiful collection of both classical and modern art that is 100% royalty free and available for any use you'd like. (Can you say "aaaamazing?")

I took my favorite pieces from the Rijks collection and combined them with my Google font pairings to create a truly beautiful display of Google fonts that really work. We've also organized them by filters to help you find a font to fit that project you're working on right now. You'll find dozens of font pairings you can re-use time and time again for different clients and projects.

But that's not all!

I undertook one more challenge in this project: To express these font pairings through profound, time-tested quotes on design from world-renowned designers of all styles. So we have beauty in art, functionality in fonts, and wisdom in quotes.

If you too have had trouble finding great Google fonts and combinations, this might win you over to the Google Fonts Team like it won me over. Or maybe not! The beauty of design is that, at the end of the day, our own preferences and styles are what truly matter.

One last thing:

To help you find font pairings, we organized them in two ways: Style (Serif, Sans Serif, Both), and Mood (Any, Modern, Striking, Eccentric, Classic, Minimal, Neutral, Warm).

Here's a brief explanation of each of these moods:

Modern: Feels like it was made for the 21st century, and wouldn't make sense in any other period. Typically clean, more on the minimal side, and great for projects that require a more polished feel.

Striking: Impact. Boldness. Weight. These font pairs reach out and grab you and pull you into their message.

Eccentric: Quirky. Odd. Different. These fonts communicate uniqueness in various ways. Great for personal blogs, companies in a crowded marketplace that need to be set apart, and more.

Classic: These font combinations feel like they could have existed for generations. They're reminiscent of classic, time-tested and weathered fonts that last. Great for projects that need to project confidence, reliability, style.

Minimal: These minimal font pairings say so much, with a whisper. They almost try to blend into the background and get out of the way to help you more purely take in the message. Clean. Concise. Polished.

Neutral: Some brands are like the friendly local baker who greets everyone with a smile. Others are more professional, cerebral. These neutral fonts are more on the cerebral side - conveying professionalism and cleanliness above all else. Think Helvetica, but for Google fonts.

Warm: For brands who are the "friendly local baker," these fonts are for you. They convey heart, creativity, openness. They say, "Come talk to me, let's be friends." Great for brands that have that personal touch.

So there you have it!

Beautiful fonts and combinations from Google you can use to fuel your personal and client projects. They're completely web safe fonts, and due to their vast use worldwide, I think it's safe to say Google fonts are the new standard web fonts.

(By the way, we've made this entire collection of Google font pairings into a downloadable PDF that you can easily reference at any time. You should see a small yellow tab at the bottom of your screen - click that to download the post now!)

I hope displaying them on top of various colors, with various beautiful works of art behind them, helped you envision how they might work in your projects. That was one of my biggest goals in creating this post.

An important lesson

That's actually a lesson that was greatly reinforced in me throughout this Google font quest - that how fonts are used are just as important, if not more so, than the fonts themselves.

I think often Google fonts are strewn across designs that are lacking the fundamentals of good design. They're the cool, hip thing to use - and as a result, so many people us them. But design is a spectrum ranging from bad to great, and as bell curves go, few designs are truly great.

By simple math, most designs using Google fonts need improvement. Perhaps that's where my initial bias against Google fonts came from. Design is something I take so seriously, and am so passionate about, that when I see bad or lazy design, it hurts. From seeing so much sub-par design riddled with Google fonts, I associated Google fonts with sub-par design.

A new perspective

But undertaking this challenge to create this collection forced me to see Google fonts from a new perspective. Namely, it forced me to throw away my previous conceptions and see them anew. When I did, I simply viewed them like I would anything else in a design - as an asset to be used and manipulated to achieve an end-goal.

When I had no choice but to make them work, I viewed them as something that actually "could" work. And that's where the creativity and magic began.

That leads me to another important lesson I became re-acquainted with in this process - that when we think something won't work, it won't work. And when we truly think it can, we really can make it work.

Strategies for choosing font pairs

I also wanted to talk about some of the strategies behind these Google font combinations to help you create even more of your own. Because while I have 50 here, I'm certain there are dozens more waiting to be made.

If you'll notice, there's a pattern to nearly every pair: The headline is very bold and impactful, and then the body font is very light and airy. This contrast creates a nice tension and context for the fonts. It makes it very interesting as you scroll. Our eyes and brains desire constant change and flux and small contrasts like this deliver.

Another reason the body fonts are very light and airy is that they have to be palatable and legible to the eye over the course of a long piece of text. If I throw a bold, impactful font at you for more than 10 or so words - your eye will go crazy. It's like talking on the phone with someone who only screams.

When you go from a louder headline font to a body font, there's almost a feeling of relief. The headline was a nice, momentary burst of excitement - but then the eye is relieved to handle something easier and less demanding.

Serif & Sans

In addition, still in line with that concept of contrast, I often paired a serif headline with a sans serif body, or vise versa. Again, this just emphasizes contrast and keeps things interesting.

It also takes things a step further and shifts the feel. Serif fonts tend to feel more grounded, conservative and calm. Sans serif fonts tend to feel more modern, daring, progressive. By paring the two together, you get a great balance that's interesting to the mind and the eye.

Work with what you (don't) love

Finally, in line with the attitude shift I mentioned above, in going from "Google fonts don't work" to "Let's make them work" - I purposefully chose some fonts I simply thought I'd never like or want to use in any context. If I looked at a font and felt like it was a "heck no" - I felt compelled to give it a try.

This is so important for the creative process. Often, without even realizing it, we confine ourselves to our creative comfort zones, which slowly shrink over time. But when we step outside and try something we thought we'd never like - we often have our biggest breakthroughs.

Thanks so much for viewing this collection.

I hope it's as useful and enjoyable for you as it was fulfilling for me to create.
I'd love to hear your thoughts, suggestions for other Google font pairs, questions, and more.
Leave a comment below and let's discuss!

Warmly,

Lou Levit Co-Founder, Reliable PSD

What is Reliable PSD?

Have you ever found yourself in need of someone to convert PSD to HTML? We'd love to help! Reliable PSD is a coding company created by creatives, for creatives. We help hundreds of agencies each year by bringing their designs to life through code. We've been able to give our customers memorable, positive experiences and a sense of camaraderie they hadn't experienced before with a PSD to HTML development partner. Many of our clients become our friends. Our high-precision coders and testers will fill your project with beautiful code that works exactly how it ought to. No more long lists of changes that take months to resolve. Reach out to us and start the convo today.

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The Ultimate Collection of Google Font Pairings (Displayed Beautifully with Classic Art)

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I have to be honest - I love the concept of Google fonts, but I find the execution to always be somewhat... lacking. I don't know. When compared to classics like Futura, Bodoni, Garamond - even Helvetica - they just fall short, and I rarely, if ever, end up using them.

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YouTuber 2cool4school shows walks us through the problem, the idea, the prototype, and the final product.

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This Sled Works on Grass - The Summer Sled

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A typographic dating game that helps you learn how to pair typefaces.

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Use what you have!

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Every gear-head wants to know what you have under the hood.

Every gamer asks about RAM and frame rates.

Every podcaster craves a fancy microphone.

But really, it's not the size of your price tag, it's what you do with it that matters. In fact, if you don't follow the tips outlined in this article, even a microphone stolen from the gods themselves won't save your podcast from sounding like it was recorded on a rusty banged-up hand-me-down. "But certainly this wealth-saving advice will cost me something?" you ask. Why no, Mr. or Ms. Rhetorical Device, this advice is also free! But if you WANT to pay me for it, we'll figure something out later. To the listicle!

1. Blanket Forts

That primordial instinct buried deep within our lizard brains to pile up couch cushions and drape a blanket over them is actually a natural defence mechanism against bad audio recording. Unfortunately, as we grow up, many of us start to fight these urges seeing them as infantile and unprofessional. If you cannot get access to a professional recording studio, I encourage every podcaster to revert to their child-self.

Let me explain with science. Big and hard is bad. Small and soft is good. Whenever you speak toward your mic, some of the sound misses, bounces off one of the walls in the room, and then goes into your mic a second time a fraction of a second later. This will make an echo effect on the recording that will make it sound to your audience like you recorded on site in Atlantis or perhaps you are a spooky ghost. Both Atlantians and ghosts have reputations for producing terrible podcasts and you don't want to get roped in with them.

Two ways to fight this effect are 1) to record in a smaller space (reducing the time difference between speech and echo) or 2) to have walls that are soft and irregularly shaped (breaking up the sound waves of the echo). A blanket fort is a small space with soft irregularly shaped walls that you make with things you already have lying around your home.

I've used this trick for years. I hang blankets with binder clips from the ceiling fan over my dining room table. I have fit up to 6 people under there during some recording sessions. For comedy podcasts or ones recorded with close friends it can help set a silly tone and sense of intimacy between the performers. This also isn't just my own silly idea. Recording under a blanket is a common trick used by voice-over professionals and audio journalists when they can't get into a recording studio because they are on-the-road or in a rush.

Downsides:
- It will make you look unprofessional to prestigious guests who won't believe your pleas of "industry standard". If you get an interview with a celebrity, maybe splurge on the studio rental.
- It can get hot under there. Consider the season and climate before making six of your friends breathe each other's hot air for hours or they might leave the tent not your friends anymore. Also, COVID.

2. Give Everyone Their Own Channel

I don't know your exact technical setup. I'm all the way over here, being on the Internet. You're all the way over there, living a real life with practical considerations. But if you can find a way, do it. Having every speaker recorded on their own audio channel will give you so much more control when editing.

You can adjust audio levels to match between the quiet-talkers who instinctively lean back and the loud-speakers who excitedly lean in. You can delete the sound of someone hitting the mic or clearing their throat in a really phlegm-filled way. In a narrative story, you can add effects on one actor's voice so they sound more like a demon, ghost or robot. In discussion podcasts, your noise reduction will work better leading to a crisper sound.

Even if you don't have enough for everyone, more channels are still better than just one. If you have fewer channels than speakers, try getting performers who tend to speak at the same volume on the same track. Put anyone with a habit for erratically oscillating between shouting and whispering on their own track.

Downsides:
- This might require more equipment or more expensive equipment to pull off. Sometimes soundboards with many input channels still only output one or two. Be careful to check when buying equipment.
3. Record Locally
Yes, podcast recording is just like supporting small businesses and buying produce. I know you can't always get all the speakers physically in the same room, but if you are recording with someone over an internet call, and if that speaker has the equipment and know-how, consider having them record it on their end and sending you the audio after instead of only recording the call. This can help you avoid that internet "worble" where, just for a second, they sound like a robot reaching climax. Just don't forget to clap. To sync the different audio tracks. Not for the robot. Okay, him too. It's very hard for robots to achieve arousal, you know.

Downsides:
-You do have to trust the person on the other end to record it right. Maybe still record the internet call as a back-up.

4. Cover Up Naked Mics

Plenty of people peak popping preposterous packs of percussive P's. You don't have to. Put something-anything-between your pouty lips and your mics. Best case is a pop shield (cost <$20), still good is a foam mic cover (cost <$10), still better than nothing is a literal sock (you already own a drawer full). Covering up will be easier than rewriting all your scripts without using any P's.

Downsides:
-If using the sock method, remember to wash socks.

There you have it. Everyone will think you're an audiophile, but you never shilled out any money to Big Microphone. Use these tips to get the best you can out of the modest microphones you already have. Because if you have something important enough to say, it's important enough that people should hear it clearly.

Written by Maddox Campbell. Listen to his podcast Break A Wish to hear these tips in action!

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4 Ways To Sound Like You Have Expensive Podcast Mics Without Buying Expensive Podcast Mics

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Every gear-head wants to know what you have under the hood. Every gamer asks about RAM and frame rates. Every podcaster craves a fancy microphone. But really, it's not the size of your price tag, it's what you do with it that matters.

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Welcome To California's Year-Round, Statewide Computer Science (CS) Professional Learning Program Seasons of CS is a research-backed professional learning model for K-12 educators, paraprofessionals, administrators, and counselors who are interested in bringing computer science to their students.

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johnofsteel's comment from discussion "Probably the dumbest question... Producer Vs Mixer"

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124 votes, 23 comments. Can anyone explain the chain of events to me...because I've been told conflicting things... Let's say Rick Rubin produces a ...

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The 'Mixing Secrets' Free Multitrack Download Library

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Below is a list of multitrack projects which can be freely downloaded for mixing practice purposes. All these projects are presented as ZIP archives containing uncompressed WAV files (24-bit or 16-bit resolution and 44.1kHz sample rate). For maximum mixdown flexibility, the contributors have made every effort to provide audio 'raw', in other words without additional effects or processing (beyond treatments printed during tracking/editing).

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Frequently at Gear Patrol, we implore readers to invest in quality boots. We wax poetic about how a great pair will age: how it will develop a unique patina, how it will form to the wearer's foot, how it can be resoled countless times. We talk about it like it's a serious investment, not as a rhetorical exercise, because it actually is. Most quality boots cost hundreds of dollars and are designed to last for years.

When many brands or retailers describe expensive boots, they often rely on manufacturing processes as marketing terms. This is Goodyear welted, therefore, it is a quality product. Though construction processes undeniably have an effect on the quality of a boot, one method is not necessarily better than another. They have different purposes and features, resulting in boots appropriate for different situations. A problem arises when we stop equating a manufacturing term with its process and start equating it a value: good or bad. When this happens, a term can be wielded as a marketing force, confusing process with virtue.

So to clear some of the haze enveloping rhetoric and process, we decided to explore a few typical types of boot construction. Often, it's difficult to picture how a boot is actually put together, where the stitches go and what you're actually standing on. So we sourced prime examples of each type - Cemented, Blake/McKay, True Moccasin, Goodyear Welt and Stitchdown - from some of the top brands in the industry and asked Brooklyn furniture maker Asa Pingree to cut them in half. (Swipe through to the end of each slider below to watch him at work.)

Looking at their cross sections, we're able to clearly see what components go into a pair of boots and how they are all connected. We can see why some construction styles take more time than others (and therefore cost more) and how some styles use more materials. Most importantly, in understanding how the upper, insole, midsole and outsole relate to each other, we can begin to see the values inherent in each construction method and how those might be relevant to our own lives.

Terms to Know

Insole: The interior surface of the boot that comes in contact with the sole of your foot.
Last: The wood or plastic form used to create the shape of a boot.
Midsole: A structural layer of the boot that sits between the outsole and the insole.
Outsole: Sometimes just called the sole, this is the bottom surface of the boot that comes in contact with the ground.
Upper: The combination of parts of the boot's top, including quarters (which wrap around the heel), vamp, tongue and saddle.
Vamp: A part of the upper that covers the instep of the foot and can extend over the toe in certain styles.
Welt: A narrow strip of leather on the exterior of the shoes that secures the midsole to the upper.

Cemented Construction

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io

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We Cut 5 Great Boots in Half to See What Makes a Quality Pair

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Frequently at Gear Patrol, we implore readers to invest in quality boots. We wax poetic about how a great pair will age: how it will develop a unique patina, how it will form to the wearer's foot, how it can be resoled countless times.

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A Comprehensive Guide To Product Design — Smashing Magazine

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The most important thing to remember when designing products is that design is for people. To design great products, you must deliver the right features, with the right user experience for the right people. Thus, define your target audience, then research their problems, and, finally, focus on building a product that solves those problems! In this article, Nick Babich takes a closer look at how to define an optimal product vision, strategy, and design process.

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TED-Ed Innovation Projects are designed by educators, for educators, with the support and guidance of the TED-Ed Innovative Educator program. You are welcome to duplicate or modify this project to meet your school needs!

In this TED-Ed Innovation Project, educational technologist Jimmy Juliano shares his instructions for how to make a DIY recording booth:

1. Find a dedicated interview space. It doesn't take much to DIY this at your school. I converted my office into a combination of lounge and walled-off sound station, but any private space will do the trick - heck, it could be a large closet in a classroom. Keep it simple and intimate.

2. Add a table and a couple of chairs. I bought an IKEA table and repurposed a few chairs from my library. I also added a lamp, room dividers and art. The lounge is a comfortable and relaxing space for interview participants to learn about the process and gather their thoughts. The sound station is a private space for the audio recording to occur. Again, that's all optional. All you really need is a small, quiet place to record audio.

3. Determine your goals. Are the audio files meant just for the interview participants, or do you want to put clips online? If you're putting clips online, you'll need a website and audio hosting. Depending on how you host audio files online, you may have to pay some web fees. I share all of the complete, raw interview files with interview participants through Google Drive, but I also cut out snippets to share with the world. For that, I use a free Weebly account and a paid SoundCloud account. (I upgraded to a paid SoundCloud account to obtain additional features, primarily to disable comments - I didn't want to deal with any potential problems). All the hosting and sharing online can definitely be done for free with Google tools - I just loved the look and feel of embedded SoundCloud clips.

4. Decide what sound equipment to buy. I'm not an AV guy by nature, so I didn't know exactly what to purchase. Happily, StoryCorps has a guide for replicating their process at a library, so I took their DIY manual and ran with it. A couple of cheap, USB mics plugged into a computer will work for recording just fine. If you're looking for more optimum sound quality to capture that professional feel, you can purchase a digital recorder, SD card, and a couple high-quality, tabletop microphones for under $150.

5. Test, test, test! Make sure all of your equipment works. If it doesn't, figure out why.

6. Name your recording studio. Once you've got the studio set up, give it a name! Here's ours: mixtape1285.

7. Set up a registration process to schedule interview times. I tried a few different methods before landing upon Google Calendar Appointment Slots. It's worked marvelously.

8. Ask a few student pairs to record interviews. Find your "go-to students" so that you can start building momentum and test the process. A StoryCorps interview may be a bit of an abstract concept, so ask participants who you know will enjoy the experience, and start from there. Here are some great interview questions to choose from.

9. Spread the word in school. Promote the studio as a resource for history class projects, connect with StoryCorps, send out emails, talk to your best teacher friends, run interview "theme" weeks, try it out in your TED-Ed Club - anything at all to inspire students to hop into the studio and share their stories.

10. Share what you learn. Here are 3 specific things I've learned since opening the studio doors: Number one: the students love the space. There's always a "wow" moment when they enter the studio. The lighting, room dividers, and audio setup really create a professional, yet intimate feel. Number two: the interviews always go longer than students anticipate. On average, students talk for about 20-25 minutes, and they are always shocked when I tell them it was that long. Many tell me that it feels like 10 minutes. Number three: every interview has featured some sort of a revelation. Interview pairs have been friends going into the experience, but there is always that moment where something new is learned about the other person. It's powerful and touching.

Success can measured in many ways: the number of students who use the recording studio, the number of teachers who incorporate the interview model into their classrooms, and - of course - student and educator testimonials. So far, all of the direct feedback I've received has been positive. Here are some quotes from students and educators:

"One day students can look back on their interviews and conversations and remember a moment in time when they were in high school. I wish I had that." - Joe De Rosa, Social Studies instructor and TEDxLFHS organizer

"I would definitely recommend it. It made me very nostalgic, and I really enjoyed reliving some great memories." - student

"I really liked the feel of being in somewhat of a real recording studio." - student

One of my biggest hopes is that this project builds empathy and fosters an environment where all of our stories matter. If you have questions about how to make this project work for your school, please reach out on Twitter to TED-Ed and me!
To learn more about the TED-Ed Innovative Educators program, click here.

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Make a DIY StoryCorps interview recording studio at your school

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In this TED-Ed Innovation Project, educational technologist Jimmy Juliano shares his instructions for how to make a DIY recording booth: 1. Find a dedicated interview space. It doesn't take much to DIY this at your school.

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Modular sleeping pods provide temporary accommodation for homeless people

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Watch and share Davinci GIFs and Bridge GIFs on Gfycat

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Yakhchal in Yazd Province

By 400 BC, Persian engineers had mastered the technique of storing ice in the middle of summer in the desert. The ice was brought in during the winters from nearby mountains in bulk amounts, and stored in a Yakhchal, or ice-pit. These ancient refrigerators were used primarily to store ice for use in the summer, as well as for food storage, in the hot, dry desert climate of Iran. The ice was also used to chill treats for royalty during hot summer days and to make faloodeh, the traditional Persian frozen dessert.

Aboveground, the structure is comprised of a large mud brick dome, often rising as tall as 60 feet tall. Below are large underground spaces, up to 5000m³, with a deep storage space. The space often had access to a , or wind catchand often contained a system of windcatchers that could easily bring temperatures inside the space down to frigid levels in summer days.

NimVar Yakhchal

Image Credit

Image Credit

Image Credit

The Yakhchal have thick mud brick walls that are up to two meters thick at the base, made out of a special mortar called s?rooj, composed of sand, clay, egg whites, lime, goat hair, and ash in specific proportions, and which was resistant to heat transfer. This mixture was thought to be completely water impenetrable.

Meraji Yakhchal

The massive insulation and the continuous cooling waters that spiral down its side keep the ice stored there in winter frozen throughout the summer. These ice houses used in desert towns from antiquity have a trench at the bottom to catch what water does melt from the ice and allow it to refreeze during the cold desert nights. The ice is broken up and moved to caverns deep in the ground. As more water runs into the trench the process is repeated.

The twin ice-pits on Sirjan, Kerman Province, are surrounded by high walls and were constructed 108 years ago with mud-brick, the ice-pits are surrounded by high walls.

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Yakhchal in Yazd Province By 400 BC, Persian engineers had mastered the technique of storing ice in the middle of summer in the desert. The ice was brought in during the winters from nearby mountains in bulk amounts, and stored in a Yakhchal, or ice-pit.

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Designer Adam Fisher-Cox walks us through his design iteration process as he re-imagines how to better communicate which subway trains are arriving next at the station.

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Can we do better than barely trying?

Over the course of 2017, the MTA, overlord of New York's transit system, took on the big and much-needed project of installing countdown clocks on all of its train lines, in every station. While they were an upgrade from nothing, the clocks showed very little consideration for the specific ways trains and customers of the NYC subway operate.

I've been building a personal list of complaints with the MTA's train countdown clocks for a while, but seeing this tweet was what tipped me over the edge to actually putting pen to paper on a better solution:

For those not from the area or who haven't noticed this issue, what he's talking about is the second row on this display. It cycles through the next six trains to arrive, showing you their estimated arrival time and destination.

This is a (lazy, obvious) solution that works for stations where more than two types of trains pass through, but this particular station is served only by the 7, in two directions. The sign should always be displaying the next train to Manhattan and the next train to Queens.

In its current form, you may have to wait as much as 30 seconds to see the next train in your direction if it isn't in the number one spot.

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Designing effective countdown clocks for the MTA

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Over the course of 2017, the MTA, overlord of New York's transit system, took on the big and much-needed project of installing countdown clocks on all of its train lines, in every station. While they were an upgrade from nothing, the clocks showed very little consideration for the specific ways trains and customers of the NYC subway operate.

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Do you ever heard some terms related to typography and felt lost? I bet all of us felt the same at the beginning. So we built below visual glossary to guide you through this language. Understanding this definitions will help you whether you're an artist or typography enthusiast to pick the right font for your design or your article.

Today we will go through some definitions and some basics of the typography including the anatomy of letters and the spacing of type and positioning.

Also make sure to check the different types of typography is this post. Typography: The Different Types of Fonts, When to Use Them, and How!

Typefaces vs. Fonts: Difference?

A lot of people use the terms "typeface" and "font" to refer to the same topic which is totally wrong. Both of this terms are completely different but they are some how linked to each other.

A typeface is the characters and symbols that appears as letters and numbers on our screen or paper which build the words and sentences we want to write. However a font is the complete character set with a particular size and style. Fonts can be called at the computer files that contains the letters, numbers and symbols in certain size and style.

The Foundation: Positioning & Spacing

Baseline: The imaginary line on which most of the letters and characters sit on.

Cap Line: The imaginary line that defines the upper boundary of capital letters and a few lowercase letters' ascenders. So it is the highest point that any letter, number of character can reach at the same size from the same font family.

X-height

The x-height is the measurement of all lowercase letters height of the same size of the same typeface. It's called x-height because the letter x is what determine this height or measurement of each typeface.

Cap Height

The cap height is a measurement of all capital letters height of the same size in the same typeface. We can get the accurate measure of the cap height in flat bottomed characters such as the letter E.

The Anatomy of Letters

Leg

The part of a letter that extends downwards. It will be attached to the letter at one end and free at the other end.

Arm

The part of the letter than extends upwards and it might be curved or straight. It's attached at one end and free at the other end as well.

Ear

The tiny stroke that extends outwards from a lowercase letter "g" in some typefaces.

Shoulder

The curved stroke which directed downwards at the right of the lowercase letters m, n & h.

Spine

The main curved stroke in the middle of the letter S.

Tail

The decorative curved part of the upper case of letters Q, R & K. It also known as descenders. It can be also called on the tails in the lower case of letters g, j, p, q, & y.

Ascenders

It's called on the vertical stroke that extends upwards over the x-height.

Descenders

it's called on the vertical stroke that extends downwards below the x-height.

Stem

It's the main vertical stroke on the upright of any character. Some letters has no vertical strokes such as the upper case of A and V, so the first diagonal stoke can be considered as the stem.

Stroke

it is that main vertical diagonal line in a letter.

Bar

the horizontal stroke in some letters such as A, H, e and f.

Serif

It's the small flourish at the end of strokes in each letter. It's also the main difference between the serifs and sans serifs typefaces. It also come in different shapes such as hairline, square or slab. It can can be rounded or perpendicular.

Terminal

it's the end of the stroke of the letter which doesn't have a serif.

Bowl

The main curve that create the enclosed space of letters D, B, O, d & b.

Counter

it is the enclosed space which created by the bowls in letters like o, b, d, and a.

Link

It is the stroke connecting the bowl and loop in lowercase letter g.

Swash

it's a fancy decorative to the serif or the terminal in any upper case letter. It can be used at the beginning of a sentence and It can also be used at the end of the letters. You can fine a lot of swashes of all kinds at calligraphy and it can be at the beginning or at the end or even at the middle.

Spur

A spur is a tiny projection that hardly pop off the main stroke on many uppercase letter G's
Resources:
http://www.canva.com

http:// visme.co

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Typography: The Anatomy of a Letter - Osman Assem | Digital Art Monster

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Do you ever heard some terms related to typography and felt lost? I bet all of us felt the same at the beginning. So we built below visual glossary to guide you through this language. Understanding this definitions will help you whether you're an artist or typography enthusiast to pick the right font for your design or your article.

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That's a happy looking family. Why should they get to be happy?

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The way this plywood is able to bend after being cut just right

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I couldn't really find much literature on what kind of adhesive to use or how to ensure that the curve would remain rigid after a glue up. I reckon it's because this is more of a technique used for structural purposes and those pieces are secured by more than just glue.

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An instrument made to create horror sounds

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An instrument made to create horror sounds

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Player Two enters the game http://imgur.com/nhHNuFs

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These collaborative spaces support different stages of the Design Thinking process and different situations in which Design Thinking is used.

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AI-powered visual workspace for team collaboration | Mural

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Boost team collaboration and innovation with Mural, the AI-powered visual workspace. Plan, strategize, and execute projects seamlessly on one intuitive tool.

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Sharpen for STEM — STEM Challenge Generator

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Over 190,000 STEM lesson prompts to supercharge your classroom.

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Aiden Hammond's Design Technology Website

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Aiden Hammond's Design Technology Website

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Aiden teaches MYP and DP design at Branksome Hall Asia. This site is an incredible resource for teachers and students alike.

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Design and Inquiry is the content portal for DP and MYP Design Technology students at Branksome Hall Asia. It is maintained by Aidan Hammond, Head of Design Technology at Branksome Hall Asia.

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Design and Inquiry is the content portal for DP and MYP Design Technology students at Branksome Hall Asia. It is maintained by Aidan Hammond, Head of Design Technology at Branksome Hall Asia.

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Craftsy is your online resource for all creative makers, where you can find everything you need - from basic instruction to advanced techniques.

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We can't stress how essential it's to learn the fundamentals of design. The internet has made it easy for us to share information and learn new skills. Today, we've put together a list of free graphic design theory lessons for you.

We often see only the result of a design process and not much of the behind-the-scenes work. We often wonder about the 'why' and 'how' of the process. These 60 excellent graphic design theory lessons will help you understand the process a bit better.

Short on Time?

It's no surprise designers usually work on tight deadlines. If you are looking for a solid resource with professional and high-quality items, be sure to check out Envato Elements, a subscription-based marketplace with unlimited downloads. There are thousands of creative assets, with new ones added every day.

Typography

If you're a visual learner who prefers videos, then you need to check out the Envato Tuts+ YouTube channel for amazing content like this:

Grid-Based Design

Color Theory

Design Theory

UI & Usability

Best Online Graphic Design Courses (Free)

Learn about the fundamentals of graphic design by watching these top graphic design free courses from the Envato Tuts+ YouTube channel:

The principles of design are a set of rules that can help you create visually pleasing work. Learn everything about it in this graphic design video course.

In this free graphic design course, we'll dive into the basic elements of design that can help you improve your content creation skills and communicate successfully.

In this graphic design video course, you'll learn the key principles of composition and some techniques you can apply across any visual work. You'll also get tips on creating great compositions.

The only constant in the design world is the changing trends. Take a look back in time to explore era-defining design trends in this online graphic design course for free.

In this graphic design video course, you'll learn the basics of the color wheel, how to combine colors that look good together by creating a color palette, how and when to use RGB and CMYK, and how to use color theory for branding.

Design has its own language, and understanding key design terms will help you communicate your ideas clearly. This graphic design lesson features a rundown of 65 design terms you should know.

Typography is an essential area of graphic design. Do you know the difference between a typeface and a font? Tracking and kerning? Learn everything you need to know in this ultimate free graphic design course.

Free Adobe Creative Cloud Courses

Ever wanted to learn how to use the most popular design software? It's never too late to start! Check out these complete Adobe Creative Cloud courses especially crafted for beginners:

This Adobe Photoshop course takes you from beginner to pro in 23 lessons exploring all the essential Photoshop tools and techniques. Learn how to use Photoshop layer styles, how to change color levels, how to retouch and manipulate images, and much more.

Learn how to use this powerful software in this free Adobe Illustrator course. Start by mastering the Illustrator basics, and then learn to create effects, patterns, and more.

This Adobe InDesign course will teach you everything you need to get started using this software. So, if you've never opened InDesign before, or you've opened it and struggled, join this course and learn the easy way to make beautiful design work in Adobe InDesign.

Explore Graphic Design Articles, Resources, and More!

Understanding design principles and the essential tools you can work with is important. Sometimes we want to run before we walk, and that can open you up to mistakes. Learning the basic graphic design lessons is important, not only to apply to projects but to also communicate and educate clients. We hope these free graphic design articles are as useful for you as they are for us!

If you liked this compilation of graphic design online courses and graphic design tutorials, you may also like these:

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60 Totally Free Lessons in Graphic Design Theory | Envato Tuts+

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Looking to expand your knowledge? Check out this round-up of top lessons on graphic design theory and free graphic design courses online!

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GameStorming brought us the Empathy Map, among other wonders. Lots of activities and collaborative exercises in Design Thinking and beyond!

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Gamestorming – A toolkit for innovators, rule-breakers and changemakers

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Online simultaneous multitrack recording system. Paid upgrades output multitrack files for editing.

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Starter

Our no-cost option is great for hobbyists and new podcasters

No time limits on sessions or recording

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The full features, including recording everyone in a separate track

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Available for 5 or more Cleanfeed Pro licenses

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Get started without external mixers, mix-minuses and other technical know-how. The minimum requirements are just a browser and a microphone; Cleanfeed handles the rest.

Multiple parties

Realtime live audio between everyone in the same session. You can choose how to record them, too; even on separate tracks.

Connect to anyone

Only one party needs a Cleanfeed account; just send a web link. Anyone can connect from Mac, Windows, Linux or Android.

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Collaborate globally with complete freedom.

Musicians, DJs, voiceover, ADR, audio drama and more. Share and review in realtime, with Cleanfeed.

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The online studio for live audio and recording

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Start with paper.
Featured Tutorials

Tweets by PaperMech

PaperMech is based on a collaboration across Concord Consortium & Georgia Tech & CU Boulder.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. IIS-1735836. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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Start with paper. Tweets by PaperMech PaperMech is based on a collaboration across Concord Consortium & Georgia Tech & CU Boulder. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. IIS-1735836.

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3D printed marble game platform with game "cartridges"

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3D model description

You can put different Game Cards in the MARBLE BOY to play different marble games. It's inspired by handheld videogame consoles, there you put a cartridges into the console to play games.

Some games have holes, into which a marble can fall down and then roll back to bottom area of the Marble Boy where you can pick the marble up again.

The Marble Boy has also a pocket where you can store the marbles. It has a lit that you can slide open.

There are already 5 different games included:

1. MARBOMAN :
This game is inspired by Pacman. You put 3 marbles in 3 different location of the maze. 1 marble is the player, Marboman. The other 2 marbles are the enemies. Now you have to tilt the Marble Boy around until Marboman was in every spot of the maze at least once without touching the enemies.

2. CHEESERUN :
In this game you have to tilt the Marble Boy around until the marble rolls from the start at the top left to the goal at the bottom left, without falling down the holes. If you fall down a hole you have to start again.

3. PACHINKO :
This game is inspired by Pachinko-Games. Put the marble on bottom right on the ramp. Tilt the Marble Boy away from you to built up speed. Then the marble reaches the top tilt the Marble Boy back down. Hope the marble lands in a pocket and not in the hole at the bottom.

4. PLAYGROUND :
This games has no rules, just have fun rolling around.

5. PYRAMID :
Put 1-5 marbles on the top of the pyramide and tilt the Marble Boy away from you in order to get all the marbles to the top. Then tilt the Marble Boy back to you so all marbles roll down.
Its more likely the marbles end up in the middle. With enough tries you should get a Gauss-Bell(Normal distribution)

Feel free to come up with your own rules and have fun.

You can also make your own games! For that I uploadet an extra 3D-Model on my Profile named "Marble Boy Game-kid" ( https://cults3d.com/en/3d-model/game/marble-boy-game-kid) with a Step by Step Guide that describes how to make your own simple games like MARBOMAN and CHEESERUN.

When you make a game make sure that it fits in the game slot of the Marble Boy and please upload it on Cults with the Tag "MARBLE_BOY". That way every one can enjoy it.

3D printing settings

I use a Anet A8.
I used PLA, layer height of 0,15 and an infill of 10%.

Sadly, you can´t print the marbles, they dont roll as good as balls out of metall. I found the 5mm balls I use on Amazone for a low price.

Tags

Creator

Collection associated with this 3D model

Would you like to support Cults?

You like Cults and you want to help us continue the adventure independently? Please note that we are a small team of 3 people, therefore it is very simple to support us to maintain the activity and create future developments. Here are 4 solutions accessible to all:

ADVERTISING: Disable your AdBlock banner blocker and click on our banner ads.

AFFILIATION: Make your purchases online by clicking on our affiliate links here Amazon, Gearbest or Aliexpress.

DONATE: If you want, you can make a donation via PayPal here.

WORD OF MOUTH: Invite your friends to come, discover the platform and the magnificent 3D files shared by the community!

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You can put different Game Cards in the MARBLE BOY to play different marble games. It's inspired by handheld videogame consoles, there you put a cartridges into the console to play games. Some games have holes, into which a marble can fall down and then roll back to bottom area of the Marble Boy where you can pick the marble up again.

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In this month's design tutorial, we continue to explore the principles of graphic design. I have introduced you to the theories of hierarchy, emphasis, contrast and balance. This month, we explore repetition. Let's get started.

What is Repetition?

Repetition is simply the process of repeating elements throughout a design, or several pieces of design collateral to give a unified look. You can think of it as adding consistency to a design.

How to apply Repetition

Typefaces and fonts. Don't go using many different fonts throughout a layout-use a maximum of three. A good habit to get into is to use typeface with a large family, or other words, ones that give you lot of different typestyles such as light, medium, bold, heavy etc.

Patterns, lines and colours. Limit the different number of patterns, line weights/styles and colours used within a design and repeat throughout. For example, if you use several lines in a layout, keep the weight and style consistent.

Images and Graphics. Try and keep the style of images and graphics the same. For example, use photos shot by the one photographer to help with consistency. Or, if you have applied a certain filter to an image, apply it to all of them.

Grid system. A grid system can help develop consistency across a design with several pages, such as a book or magazine.

Mixed collateral. If designing a number of items for the one event or business, they should all share a common look. For example, if designing a business card, letterhead and brochure for the one company, you should share design elements between each.

Examples of Repetition

The best way to see how to to successfully use repetition is to review some real world examples.

Travel Bureau MAGIC VOYAGE

This is a great example of how colour, typeface, shape and graphic style can be used to create repetition across singular and multiple pieces of design.

VIOLETAV

Line has been used to add repetition in this example. It is then repeated across all the design pieces to tie them together.

Red Fleece Editorial Newspaper

In this editorial design, the consistent use of line weight and style, typeface, white space and grid usage has added repetition throughout the entire layout.

Final Words

And that wraps up this month's design article on repetition. I hope you enjoyed reading it.
Check out the other posts in this series:

The Principles of Graphic Design: How to Use Proximity Effectively
The Principles of Graphic Design: How to Use Balance Effectively
The Principles of Graphic Design: How to use Contrast Effectively
The Principles of Graphic Design: How to use Hierarchy and Emphasis Effectively
Other articles you may enjoy:
The Ultimate Guide to Typeface vs Font: When to Use Each Term.

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The Principles of Graphic Design: How to Use Repetition Effectively

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In this month's design tutorial, we continue to explore the principles of graphic design. I have introduced you to the theories of hierarchy, emphasis, contrast and balance. This month, we explore repetition. Let's get started. Repetition is simply the process of repeating elements throughout a design, or several pieces of design collateral to give a unified look.

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In this month's design tutorial, we continue to explore the principles of graphic design. I have introduced you to the theories of hierarchy, emphasis, contrast, balance and repetition. This month we explore proximity. Let's get started.

What is Proximity

The principle of proximity is simply the process of ensuring related design elements are placed together. Any unrelated items, should be spaced apart. Close proximity indicates that items are connected or have a relationship to each other and become one visual unit which helps to organise or give structure to a layout.

White Space is Good

A very typical mistake beginner designer make is to scatter elements all over the page to ensure any gaps are filled. This often results in poor proximity as related items are not grouped - individual elements are usually spaced apart which makes it hard for the reader to determine relationships and connections of information. Don't be scared to group related items together and then use large areas of space to add organisation and structure to the layout. Check out my earlier article on space for some ideas.

Examples

Probably the best way to get your head around using the principle of proximity is to review how it has been used in everyday designs. Let's take a look.

Hype Type Studio

This is a very simple example which highlights great use of proximity and white space. Take note how the studio name (Hype Type Studio) and it's descriptive text (Graphic Design + Art Direction) are grouped together. This makes perfect sense as these three lines all have a connection to each other - the name of the business and what the business does.

Now look at the second paragraph - this contains all the contact information about the business. Again, this is great use of proximity as this information is all related.

Finally, see how much white space is used in this layout? Works well, doesn't it? Don't be afraid of white space!

Galleri Tema

This is a great example of using the principle of proximity with both type and graphics. The type is well organised using relationships such as the name of the movie (A Clockwork Orange) and the director (Stanley Kubrick). In addition to this, take note how most of the graphical elements are grouped together and positioned on the same side of the layout.

Pure Magazine

In this magazine example, I wanted to showcase how images should be grouped together when working on a page layout. Many beginner designers will spread the images throughout the text; however, this only interrupts the flow of reading. Again, use the principle of proximity to group and separate both images and text.

Final Words

And that wraps up this month's design tutorial regarding the principle of proximity.
Check out the other posts in this series:
The Principles of Graphic Design: How to Use Repetition Effectively
The Principles of Graphic Design: How to Use Balance Effectively
The Principles of Graphic Design: How to use Contrast Effectively
The Principles of Graphic Design: How to use Hierarchy and Emphasis Effectively
Other articles you may enjoy:
The Ultimate Guide to Typeface vs Font: When to Use Each Term.

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The Principles of Graphic Design: How to Use Proximity Effectively

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In this month's design tutorial, we continue to explore the principles of graphic design. I have introduced you to the theories of hierarchy, emphasis, contrast, balance and repetition. This month we explore proximity. Let's get started. The principle of proximity is simply the process of ensuring related design elements are placed together.

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In this month's design tutorial we continue to explore the principles of graphic design. Last month I introduced you to the theories of hierarchy and emphasis and this month we explore contrast, which goes hand-in-hand with these theories. Contrast is often a principle that is easily forgotten; however, as you will see, if used effectively it can play an integral part of any successful design.

What is Contrast

The simple concept behind contrast is to ensure that every element within a design does not look the same. In essence you should have a number of elements that look vastly different to the others within a design.

For example, if you had a page that contained ten squares of which each were evenly spaced apart, and all the same size and colour, there would be no contrast. However, replacing one of the squares with a circle would instantly add contrast and in addition make a focal point.

Contrast can refer to colour, shape, texture, size and typeface and is necessary to ensure a design does not look boring or one dimensional.

Ways to Achieve Contrast

Ensure that all the shapes on the page are not the same kind. Images, graphics and paragraphs all create shapes, so consider using varying forms, not just squares and rectangles.

When choosing typefaces and if using more than one kind ensure that they vary significantly. For example, don't choose two Sans-Serf fonts. Instead choose a Sans-Serif and a Serif or a Sans-Serif and a Script.

The sizing of elements is important. Something small sat next to something big will create contrast.

When selecting colours, relationships such as complement, split complement and triad will generate the most contrast.

Adding varying textures to a design can add contrast.

Examples

Below are some examples of how contrast has been applied to every day design.

The Informal Anymade Cafe

Black on white or vis-versa creates the most contrast when referring to colour. Shape is also used well in this design to create contrast. The shape of the circular coaster is in contrast to the rectangular form of the text and graphic.

Lados No.29

In this example, both colour and shape have been used to create contrast. The dark blue and black on yellow is a high contrast palette. Also, the circular shape behind the model's head is in contrast to the magazine shape and the other rectangular forms on the page.

F L E U R

This example showcases how texture can be used to create contrast. The boxes, lines and typeface are very clean and linear which contrasts to the organic nature of the illustrations.

Enchantment Under the Sea Dance

While the colour palette is very high contrast, it's the typeface selection I wish to highlight in this example. Notice how the word 'enchantment' uses a vastly different styled typeface compared to the others on the page? As a result, this important word is not 'lost' within the design.

Where to Learn More

If you are looking to learn more about design I can highly recommend the book Graphic Design: The New Basics by Ellen Lupton.

Final Words

And that wraps up this month's design article on contrast. I hope you enjoyed.
Check out the other posts in this series:
The Principles of Graphic Design: How to Use Proximity Effectively
The Principles of Graphic Design: How to Use Repetition Effectively
The Principles of Graphic Design: How to Use Balance Effectively
The Principles of Graphic Design: How to use Hierarchy and Emphasis Effectively

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The Principles of Graphic Design: How to use Contrast Effectively | Edgee

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In this month's design tutorial we continue to explore the principles of graphic design. Last month I introduced you to the theories of hierarchy and emphasis and this month we explore contrast, which goes hand-in-hand with these theories.

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This website is for sale! coolers.co is your first and best source for all of the information you're looking for. From general topics to more of what you would expect to find here, coolers.co has it all. We hope you find what you are searching for!

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UI Design for Apple iOS - find the mistakes!

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A game where you need to pick the design that is most correct. Test your attention to details!

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Did you know that Tinkercad has a range of keyboard shortcut keys to help with efficiency and problematic tasks? In today's blog, we'll be going over our 5 favourite shortcuts to help you take your Tinkercad game to the next level! Check them out below:

1. Drop ('D')

If you have an object selected and you press 'D' on your keyboard, it will drop the object to your current workplane. This is obviously useful when you want to place objects on the ground plane, but it can also come in handy when aligning multiple pieces together. Take a look at the below example, which is a tactile tangram model. The workflow involves assembling the tangram pieces together to form a swan shape. Placing the workplane on the edge of one piece enabled us to 'drop' another piece onto it, ensuring the faces touched each other.

2. Duplicate and Repeat ('Ctrl+D')

Tinkercad's 'Duplicate and Repeat' shortcut is much more than a copy and paste tool. It remembers your previous action! Therefore when you utilise it, it will paste selected objects but also perform your previous action on them. To use the tool, select your desired object and press 'Ctrl+D' (or the duplicate icon). With the tool still active, you should then perform your action. This might be moving the copied objects a certain distance away from the original and you can also rotate it how you wish. Then simply press 'Ctrl+D' again and a new duplicate will appear with the same action performed! Take a look at the below example, where we used 'Duplicate and Repeat' to copy pebble shapes with the exact same spacing to create a ribbed pen shell.

3. Lock Editing ('Ctrl+L')

Do you ever have multiple objects in your design and find it tedious to reposition some of them, whilst keeping others in place? By selecting an object and pressing 'Ctrl+L', you can lock it in place! This means you can continue to edit or move other objects without the locked one being affected. Take a look at the below example of a classroom layout. We wanted to move the furniture only so we locked the walls and floor, making it much easier to select the furniture in a single selection box.

4. Transparency ('T')

The transparency shortcut can come in handy when your design has internal features that can't be seen due to a solid face being in the way. To use the transparency tool, simply select and object and press 'T' on your keyboard. Take a look at the below example, which is a bottle that is made hollow by combining an outer body with an inner hole. The transparency tool allows us to see through the bottle and check the wall thickness from various angles!

5. Uniform Scale ('Shift+Top Handle')

When resizing objects, you can hold down 'Shift' and drag the white corner handles to scale objects uniformly. But what if you want to scale an object uniformly, whilst keeping it's centre point on the workplane in position? If you hold down 'Shift' whilst dragging the top handle (rather than the corner handles), your object's centre point on the workplane will remain in the exact same position! Take a look at the below example, where we are using a cylinder hole to cut into a shell to make a candle holder. Our cylinder was too small but we wanted to keep it's centre in position so we used the uniform scale shortcut (with the top handle) to scale it up.

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We hope you found these #tinkertips helpful and if you'd like to learn even more about Tinkercad in the classroom, you can get started with a free trial to PrintLab Classroom here.

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Did you know that Tinkercad has a range of keyboard shortcut keys to help with efficiency and problematic tasks? In today's blog, we'll be going over our 5 favourite shortcuts to help you take your Tinkercad game to the next level!

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Whenever you learn a new subject or skill, at some point you need to pick up the particular language that goes with that domain. And the only way to really feel comfortable with this language is to practice using it. It's exactly the same when learning programming.

In our latest research seminar, we focused on how we educators and our students can talk about programming. The seminar presentation was given by our Chief Learning Officer, Dr Sue Sentance. She shared the work she and her collaborators have done to develop a research-based approach to teaching programming called PRIMM, and to work with teachers to investigate the effects of PRIMM on students.

As well as providing a structure for programming lessons, Sue's research on PRIMM helps us think about ways in which learners can investigate programs, start to understand how they work, and then gradually develop the language to talk about them themselves.

Productive talk for education

Sue began by taking us through the rich history of educational research into language and dialogue. This work has been heavily developed in science and mathematics education, as well as language and literacy.

In particular the work of Neil Mercer and colleagues has shown that students need guidance to develop and practice using language to reason, and that developing high-quality language improves understanding. The role of the teacher in this language development is vital.

Sue's work draws on these insights to consider how language can be used to develop understanding in programming.

Why is programming challenging for beginners?

Sue identified shortcomings of some teaching approaches that are common in the computing classroom but may not be suitable for all beginners.

'Copy code' activities for learners take a long time, lead to dreaded syntax errors, and don't necessarily build more understanding.

When teachers model the process of writing a program, this can be very helpful, but for beginners there may still be a huge jump from being able to follow the modeling to being able to write a program from scratch themselves.

PRIMM was designed by Sue and her collaborators as a language-first approach where students begin not by writing code, but by reading it.

What is PRIMM?

PRIMM stands for 'Predict, Run, Investigate, Modify, Make'. In this approach, rather than copying code or writing programs from scratch, beginners instead start by focussing on reading working code.

In the Predict stage, the teacher provides learners with example code to read, discuss, and make output predictions about. Next, they run the code to see how the output compares to what they predicted. In the Investigate stage, the teacher sets activities for the learners to trace, annotate, explain, and talk about the code line by line, in order to help them understand what it does in detail.

In the seminar, Sue took us through a mini example of the stages of PRIMM where we predicted the output of Python Turtle code. You can follow along on the recording of the seminar to get the experience of what it feels like to work through this approach.

The impact of PRIMM on learning

The PRIMM approach is informed by research, and it is also the subject of research by Sue and her collaborators. They've conducted two studies to measure the effectiveness of PRIMM: an initial pilot, and a larger mixed-methods study with 13 teachers and 493 students with a control group.

The larger study used a pre and post test, and found that the group who experienced a PRIMM approach performed better on the tests than the control group. The researchers also collected a wealth of qualitative feedback from teachers. The feedback suggested that the approach can help students to develop a language to express their understanding of programming, and that there was much more productive peer conversation in the PRIMM lessons (sometimes this meant less talk, but at a more advanced level).

The PRIMM structure also gave some teachers a greater capacity to talk about the process of teaching programming. It facilitated the discussion of teaching ideas and learning approaches for the teachers, as well as developing language approaches that students used to learn programming concepts.

The research results suggest that learners taught using PRIMM appear to be developing the language skills to talk coherently about their programming. The effectiveness of PRIMM is also evidenced by the number of teachers who have taken up the approach, building in their own activities and in some cases remixing the PRIMM terminology to develop their own take on a language-first approach to teaching programming.

Future research will investigate in detail how PRIMM encourages productive talk in the classroom, and will link the approach to other work on semantic waves. (For more on semantic waves in computing education, see this seminar by Jane Waite and this symposium talk by Paul Curzon.)

Resources for educators who want to try PRIMM

If you would like to try out PRIMM with your learners, use our free support materials:

Join our next seminar

If you missed the seminar, you can find the presentation slides alongside the recording of Sue's talk on our seminars page.

In our next seminar on Tuesday 1 December at 17:00-18:30 GMT / 12:00-13:30 ET / 9:00-10:30 PT / 18:00-19:30 CEST. Dr David Weintrop from the University of Maryland will be presenting on the role of block-based programming in computer science education. To join, simply sign up with your name and email address.

Once you've signed up, we'll email you the seminar meeting link and instructions for joining. If you attended this past seminar, the link remains the same.

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PRIMM: encouraging talk in programming lessons - Raspberry Pi

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Whenever you learn a new subject or skill, at some point you need to pick up the particular language that goes with that domain. And the only way to really feel comfortable with this language is to practice using it. It's exactly the same when learning programming.

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https://dschool-old.stanford.edu/groups/k12/wiki/51de2/Design_Thinking_Principles_Process_and_Methods.html

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From IDEO, resources to learn about and practice HCD

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Design Kit is IDEO.org's platform to learn human-centered design, a creative approach to solving the world's most difficult problems.

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For our needs there are three types of cardboard that matter the most: corrugated fiberboard, paperboard, and mat board.

Corrugated fiberboard is excellent for project construction because it is easy to cut, bend, fold, and drill, yet has quite a high strength to weight ratio. This strength is due to the stable arches inherent in the fluted corrugated inner wall.

Here are some primary types you'll encounter:

Single face board

Single wall double face board, a.k.a. '3 ply'

Double wall board with AB flute, a.k.a. '5 ply'

Just like a piece of wood, corrugated fiberboard has a "grain" to it. This is due to the orientation of the corrugation layer. The fiberboard is much more resistant to bending against the grain and easier to bend with the grain.

Thicknesses

There are a number of different thicknesses of corrugated fiberboard made. The most common are designated by the fluting letters 'A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E', and 'F'. The most common, used in most typical shipping boxes, is 'A' flute, which is 3/16" (4.8mm) thick.

The thin cardboard in the Nintendo Labo kits, for example, is E-flute which is 1/16" (1.6mm) thick.

Paperboard doesn't have the strength of corrugated fiberboard, but it is much easier to bend and fold, which makes it ideal for forming small "papercraft" boxes.

Paperboard is also used to make tubes, such as those found in wrapping paper, paper towel, and toilet paper rolls.

Mat board is the material used in picture frame matting. It is a multi-ply, coated fiberboard with at least one smooth side. Great for cardboard circuits, as explained in this blog post by Bunnie.

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A fundamental guide for creating things with corrugated fiberboard and paperboard, scavenged from cardboard shipping boxes, tubes, and other packaging. You'll learn to cut, crease, score, bend, and fold cardboard to meet your design goals. We'll cover gluing, taping, and mechanically fastening cardboard edges, faces, and joints for building an array of essential designs.

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Building with eco-friendly materials has become increasingly popular but one surprising development is the creation of cardboard structures. Designers have put the sturdy material to use in building permanent shelters in an effort to use recycled materials. This list is composed of examples of sustainable architecture that incorporate cardboard.

Retailers have taken advantage of cardboard's sustainable image to build eco-friendly stores. Spaces like recyclable bookstores and cardboard retail shops appeal to the eco-conscious consumer in a fun and creative way. By showing how sustainable they are, retailers are able to effortlessly increase sales while saving the environment.

Other designers have leveraged the tough material to help those in need. Structures like homeless cocoon shelters and simple pop-up shelters help those in need of a temporary shelter in a cheap and eco-friendly manner.

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Building with eco-friendly materials has become increasingly popular but one surprising development is the creation of cardboard structures. Designers have put the sturdy material to use in building permanent shelters in an effort to use recycled materials. This list is composed of examples of sustainable architecture that incorporate cardboard.

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With a length of 6′-6″ (2m) "Dingo" is our shortest boat weighing only 28lb (13kg). Easy to car top, easy to take to the water and back, easy to launch from the mothership without breaking your back. With a beam of 4′ (1.20m) the boat is stable enough to stand up in. It moves swiftly across the water and is very maneuverable. All parts of the boat fit on two sheets of ¼″ (6mm) exterior grade plywood. Nesting of all components is shown to minimize waste. Stitch and glue construction with 3" (75mm) fiberglass tape in epoxy along the seams inside and out. A small outboard not more than 1.5HP or an electric motor can be mounted on the transom. In that case the addition of emergency floatation underneath the bench is recommended. A bench for a passenger can be added in the stern or even better a full length transom to transom longitudinal seat can be installed. It will allow for better distribution of crew weight in order to keep the boat properly trimmed. If the boat is going to be used by two people then a second pair of oarlock sockets will need to be installed further forward. Maximum crew plus gear weight should not exceed 400lb (180kg). "Dingo" is a very suitable boat for fishermen, birdwatchers, nature photographers or as a tender of a bigger boat. It can be built for less than $300 CAD (2020). Here is the bill of materials:

Exterior grade plywood 4x8′ (1220x2440mm), 1/4″(6mm) thick - 2 sheets;
Fiberglass tape 3″ (75 mm) wide by 6 oz. (200 gr/sq.m) - 25 yards (23 m);
Epoxy resin - 1/2 gallon (2L) plus hardener;
Others - bread flour, chip brushes, rollers, fairing compound or filler, paint, sandpaper;

Plans package consists of 3 pages of drawings (metric or imperial) and 28 pages of instructions with a lot of photos. After payment is processed you will receive an e-mail with two PDF attachments - drawing and work instruction. Plans in imperial units are set up to print on letter size paper at the convenience of your home printer. Metric plans are set up to print on A4 size paper.

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With a length of 6′-6″ (2m) "Dingo" is our shortest boat weighing only 28lb (13kg). Easy to car top, easy to take to the water and back, easy to launch from the mothership without breaking your back. With a beam of 4′ (1.20m) the boat is stable enough to stand up in.

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PLYBOAT offers small boat plans for amateur boat builders. All boats are designed to be built from plywood using the popular stitch and glue method. No special tools or skills required. If you can use a saw and drill you can build a boat. Our boat plans come with detailed and illustrated work instructions. Most of the boats in the Builders Gallery were built by first time boat builders.

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PLYBOAT offers small boat plans for amateur boat builders. All boats are designed to be built from plywood using the popular stitch and glue method. No special tools or skills required. If you can use a saw and drill you can build a boat. Our boat plans come with detailed and illustrated work instructions.

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The Rowing Dory is provided as a free sample boat plan with all required components fully lofted and only requires printing at 100% or full size.

Each part is labelled and a parts list is included to aid in location and identification. There is also a 3D model, Dory Assembly.easm which can be very useful in recognising the individual parts and how they fit, you will though need to install a free copy of Edrawings for either PC or Mac.

The link below will allow you to download a zip file, compressed, and save it to your PC. Once unzipped you can open and view the individual plan files using Adobe reader.
CLICK TO DOWNLOAD FREE SAMPLE PLAN
Below are 3 screen images showing the full size PDF plans, a general layout plan and the 3D model included with each plan set.

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Free Sample Plan - Classic Wooden Boat Plans

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Classic wooden boat plans is a collection of established wooden boat designs ranging from the early 1900's to about 1970. Some of our own designs are Banshee, Custom Barrelback 19 and the Deep V inspired by the Donzi Sweet 16, Bantam.

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Cardboard interiors, architecture, installations and design | Dezeen

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Stories about cardboard architecture and design projects, including interiors, installations, furniture and modular buildings using the recyclable material.

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"I was disappointed in my profession," says architect Shigeru Ban in today's talk, which he gave at TEDxTokyo in May. As far as he's concerned, architecture has lost its way. Shigeru Ban: Emergency shelters made from paper"We are working for privileged people, for rich people, for government and developers. They have money and power, and those are invisible, so they hire us to visualize their power and money by making monuments of architecture." Ban, instead, has committed himself to creating buildings that can truly be useful - whether or not they're permanent fixtures on a horizon.

Ban first began experimenting with constructing buildings from paper tubes in 1986, and he's continued to test new ideas of form and material ever since. For Ban, good architecture must answer questions of utility and sustainability even as it delights with aesthetics. Somewhat surprisingly, given the apparently transient nature of so many of his chosen materials, his buildings have proven long-lasting.

Here, take a look at a gallery of images he put together exclusively for the TED Blog.

"Like snowflakes, no two pieces of wood can be the same anywhere on earth," says architect Michael Green in today's lyrical TED talk, "Why we should build wooden skyscrapers," in which he lays out his thesis for designing and engineering the world's tallest buildings from one of its oldest materials. "Mother Nature has fingerprints in

One of the things we're interested in exploring here at TED is ... what happens after a talk? Most often, a speaker is telling us a story without an ending - a tale that's just beginning rather than coming to an end. That's certainly the case with TED2013 speaker Alastair Parvin, whose project, Wikihouse, is really just

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Buildings made from cardboard tubes: A gallery of Shigeru Ban architecture

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"I was disappointed in my profession," says architect Shigeru Ban in today's talk, which he gave at TEDxTokyo in May. As far as he's concerned, architecture has lost its way. Shigeru Ban: Emergency shelters made from paper"We are working for privileged people, for rich people, for government and developers.

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Houses built out of cardboard don't exactly scream luxury. The concept seems suited to playhouses at best, and homeless shelter at worst. But inspired by a crate of tomatoes, Dutch creator collective Fiction Factory decided there didn't have to be anything ugly or flimsy about a cardboard house. Their cardboard Wikkelhouses aren't just gorgeous-with proper care, the designers claim they can last 100 years.

Can a cardboard house really survive for over a century? After all, the dream of permanent cardboard architecture is nearly as old.

In the 1940s, Buckminster Fuller experimented with the idea of using corrugated cardboard instead of traditional materials. He was attracted to cardboard because it was low cost, environmentally sustainable, and recyclable. Fuller even ended up prototyping a house in 1944, using cardboard as a primary or secondary construction material, but ultimately shelved his vision-because it was so vulnerable to fire and water. Following his lead, some other architects also experimented with corrugated cardboard for the next decade, but ultimately, other alternative materials such as laminated plastic and Formica won out.

It wasn't until the Japanese architect Shigeru Ban started experimenting with the material in 1986 that cardboard architecture became a thing again. Like Fuller, Ban was attracted to the material for its cost, strength, and environmental sustainability. By 1994, Ban perfected a technique of using simple cardboard tubes and plastic tarps to create waterproof emergency shelters for Rwandan refugees, which he then continued to explore in dwellings in Turkey and India. Eventually, Ban became so good at his so-called paper architecture that he was able to erect more permanent structures, such as a paper schoolhouse in China, a cardboard concert hall in Italy, and even the Cardboard Cathedral in New Zealand, which is specced to survive for at least 50 years-and maybe longer.

The Wikkelhouse is more Ban than Fuller. It's a modular house that can be placed nearly anywhere. It's incredibly light compared to a traditional house; while even a light house might normally weigh 40 tons, the Wikkelhouse only weighs around 1,000 pounds per module, which can be pieced together to build larger and larger homes. It doesn't need a traditional foundation, and can be placed nearly anywhere-though it needs two concrete slabs and a few wooden beams to stay in place, guaranteeing that only hurricane-blast winds could actually pick it up.

The name Wikkelhouse comes from the Dutch verb wikkelen, meaning "to wrap." That's a reference to the process that makes the Wikkelhouse's cardboard walls sturdy. Each wall is made of 24 layers of standard corrugated cardboard, which is glued together and then wrapped up in a special foil to keep rain from turning the Wikkelhouse into a soggy mess while allowing trapped moisture to radiate outward.

"Wooden buildings last for decades when well conditioned. It's the same for ancient books. It's all about proper conservation."

What makes cardboard such a suitable house-building material isn't necessarily its strength, though. It's flexibility. Because cardboard is uniquely flexible, each Wikkelhouse can essentially be made from a single piece of cardboard, wrapped around a house-shaped mold. Not only does this increase the strength of the structure by minimizing the potential points of failure (there are no screws, nails, or joints in the Wikkelhouse to wear out) but it allows the structure to flex under stress while otherwise keeping its shape. The whole process was inspired by a company called Rene Snel, which invented a similar method of molding cardboard crates for fruits and vegetables, with each layer of cardboard increasing the box's overall strength.

But what about this claim that the Wikkelhouse can last 100 years? Anyone who has ever seen a cardboard box turn to mush in the rain would be rightly skeptical of such an assertion. Asked how a cardboard house can last 100 years, Monique Wijnands of the Fiction Factory tells me that it all has to do with proper care and conditioning. Cardboard, after all, is just another form of wood, and "wooden buildings last for decades when well conditioned," she says. "It's the same for ancient books. It's all about proper conservation."

So maybe the Wikkelhouse can last 100 years. As Shigeru Ban once said, "I believe that the material doesn't need to be strong to be used to build a strong structure. The strength of the structure has nothing to do with strength of the material." It's all about the design and the process. The reasons to embrace cardboard as a construction material-cost, strength, and environmental sustainability-are just as valid now as they were in Buckminster Fuller's day. It's just that new laminates and processes are finally making long-lasting paper architecture plausible.

With a three-room Wikkelhouse costing a little more than $28,000, it seems that cardboard architecture is poised to become just as much of a trend as cardboard furniture.

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Has Cardboard Architecture's Moment Finally Arrived?

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Houses built out of cardboard don't exactly scream luxury. The concept seems suited to playhouses at best, and homeless shelter at worst. But inspired by a crate of tomatoes, Dutch creator collective Fiction Factory decided there didn't have to be anything ugly or flimsy about a cardboard house.

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"Atmosphere" is a spheric armchair entirely made in double wave pasteboard. It can bear over 300 Kgs weight. It is made up of 30 pieces tied together. The parts that compose the chair are exclusively fixed by dap-joints and folds, no use of glues, screws or other elements that usually are useful to the assembly. The armchair is available in light brown colour, but we can arrange all your need.

dimensions: 113 cms x 113 cms x 90 cms weight: 10 Kgs

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"Atmosphere" is a spheric armchair entirely made in double wave pasteboard. It can bear over 300 Kgs weight. It is made up of 30 pieces tied together. The parts that compose the chair are exclusively fixed by dap-joints and folds, no use of glues, screws or other elements that usually are useful to the assembly.

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Inhabitat - Green Design, Innovation, Architecture, Green Building

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Green design & innovation for a better world

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Kubedesign. Once pioneers, today established reality that creates productions ecological corrugated to meet the needs of companies, architects, interior decorators.

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Can I sleep in a Wikkelhouse?

Absolutely. We have developed several Wikkelhouses that are now in use as holiday home. Visit the Wikkelaway section on this website and book whatever destination you fancy.

How much does a Wikkelhouse cost?

Since Wikkelhouse is a modular concept the price is based on the configuration of segments needed. You can purchase a Wikkelhouse starting from EUR 40.000,- excl. VAT (based on 3 segments and excluding transport and placement). However, most houses are sold in between EUR 50.000,- and 85.000,- excl. VAT, transport and placement. For more detailed info, send a request through the contact form, you'll receive a price list.

Can I cook a good meal in my Wikkelhouse? Take a shower? Go to the bathroom?

Yes, yes and yes. Simply add a smart 'Home'-segment to your Wikkelhouse design. This segment holds all domestic installations and offers you a kitchen, shower and bathroom.

What is the size of a Wikkelhouse?

You can make your Wikkelhouse as big as you want, but one segment is 5 m2 (length: 4,5 meters / width: 1,2 meters / height: 3,5 meters).

Is Wikkelhouse available worldwide?

Not yet! We deliver Wikkelhouses in the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Scandinavia, and Chile. We plan to keep it this way in the foreseeable future. But keep following us, you never know what might happen...

How long do I have to wait for my Wikkelhouse?

We are incredibly grateful for the big interest in Wikkelhouse. At this moment we can deliver your Wikkelhouse approximately 8 months after your order. However sometimes you are in luck and we might just have two on stock!

How can I participate in Wikkelhouse?

Well, you can't, really. We handle all sales, marketing and business activities from our Amsterdam HQ. This way, we can pour our heart and soul into every aspect of our business and make sure we deliver exactly what we have in mind. However, we love to collaborate with holiday parks, developers and other changemakers with great ideas. Just drop us a line and we'll get in touch.

Would you like to buy a Wikkelhouse or do you have questions, suggestions, needs or ideas?

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Absolutely. We have developed several Wikkelhouses that are now in use as holiday home. Visit the Wikkelaway section on this website and book whatever destination you fancy. Since Wikkelhouse is a modular concept the price is based on the configuration of segments needed. You can purchase a Wikkelhouse starting from EUR 40.000,- excl.

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Floating City is a cardboard sculpture built of recycled cardboard by Nina Lindgren. It was shown at Liljevalchs Vårsalong 2015, in Copenhagen at Trailerpark Festival and at ArtRebels Gallery. The sculpture has lights that switches on and off in the tiny windows.

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종이가구 페이퍼팝, 부담없이 사용하고 자유로운 제로 웨이스트 일상을 만듭니다.

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Fast Company gives some back story on how the ubiquitous OXO Good Grip product line started with a vegetable peeler. Accessible Design is Universal Design.

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Build, test, and deploy directly from the browser

Collaborate in real-time with Multiplayer

Harness the power of Replit's AI to boost your productivity

Join a community of 20 million builders

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Run code live in your browser. Write and run code in 50+ languages online with Replit, a powerful IDE, compiler, & interpreter.

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5 back to school projects for laser cutter (CNET)

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5 back to school projects for laser cutter (CNET)

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Headphone stand, coffee pod sleeve holder, battery dispenser, google maps coasters, custom LED lights

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Buying new off-the-shelf gadgets is fun, but there's something special about using tech to make your own cool stuff. That's maker culture and the DIY movement in a nutshell, and the wide variety of new stuff-making tools out there is simply inspiring.

I've been testing and reviewing 3D printers for the past few years, and when something breaks or is missing a part, my first instinct now is to see if I can just 3D print a replacement. This applies to everything, from tape dispenser spools to the knob on my KitchenAid mixer.

Read more: Best 3D printers for 2021

But the next step, after you've gotten comfortable with 3D printing, is to move up to a laser cutter. These devices can usually either etch or cut wood, plastic or even metal. They also work much faster than 3D printers, cutting a project in minutes that might take hours to print.

If you're looking for a back-to-school project for yourself or with the kids, embrace your inner maker and try some of these medium-to-advanced projects, made not on a 3D printer, but on a cloud-based laser cutter. For this collection, I used a Glowforge, but I'm currently also setting up a new Snapmaker, which promises 3D printing as well as laser etching and cutting.

For each project below, I've included a link to the .svg files you'll need to make it, including several of my original designs.

Headphone stand

I've tried a few 3D-printed headphone stands, but they take forever to print and work better as hooks you attach to existing surfaces. This wood version is easy to build, sturdy and looks chic. Get the .svg file here.

Nespresso sleeve holder

This project was designed from scratch because I could not find anything remotely close to what I wanted for my coffee pod sleeves. I designed it to fit three Nespresso sleeves and sit unobtrusively in a cabinet, although it would work on a countertop as well. If I were using it in a more visible location, I'd stain and polyurethane the wood for a cleaner look. Get my custom .svg files here.

Custom LED lights

Laser cutters like the Glowforge can also cut and etch lucite. I designed my own version of the simple LED light-up signs seen in tourist shops. Once you have a template that fits in the LED light base, available on Amazon for a few bucks each, you can add any design and etch it in, like a Millennium Falcon or the custom CNET light I designed. Get my .svg file for it here.

AA battery dispenser

This is perhaps the single most useful thing I've ever made. A couple of years ago I made a few 3D printed versions of this, but the laser cut one is both faster to make and more attractive. It's similar to another popular maker project, a tabletop game dice tower. Get the .svg file here.

Google Maps coasters

There are many tutorials online about how to grab a chunk of Google Maps data and turn it into a laser-etchable image. I used this one. It uses an online app called Snazzymaps, which has a handy set of image optimization tools to turn any Google map data into laser-ready art. After that, it was a simple matter of creating a hex-shaped template (you can make it a circle, square or whatever you like) and adding the image. If you want a slice of Brooklyn to rest your drink on, get my custom .svg file here.

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5 great back-to-school maker projects for your laser cutter

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Go one step beyond 3D printing with these DIY life hacks made on a Glowforge.

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Laser Cutting & Engraving City Maps (Instructables)

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Laser Cutting & Engraving City Maps (Instructables)

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Introduction: Laser Cutting & Engraving City Maps

Learn how to create and prepare city map artwork in Adobe Illustrator for use in laser cutting and engraving.

Laser engraved or cut city maps are easy to create and will quickly become a great new addition to your popular laser engraved and cut products. Create your own local city maps and laser engrave them on cutting boards, marble tiles, and small tables, or create laser cut versions using paper, wood, and acrylic or hang them as wall art - the possibilities and combinations of materials are endless!

Step 29:

In the Image Trace Panel change the following settings:

1. Change Preset to Black and White Logo (this will change to Custom when you start editing the other settings)

2. Set Threshold to 150

3. Click on Advanced to open the Advanced options

4. Set Paths to 100%

5. Set Corners to 100%

6. Set Noise to 1 px

7. And turn on Ignore White

Step 36:

Now we'll create a frame for the city text. Select the Rectangle tool and draw a rectangle starting from the inside lower corner of the frame created around the city map. Then move the top of the text frame rectangle to overlap with the bottom of the map frame. This rectangle will become the frame for the city text.

(Note: It may help to turn on Smart Guides with Snap to Point set to on for this step to make aligning the rectangles easier.)

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Laser Cutting & Engraving City Maps: Learn how to create and prepare city map artwork in Adobe Illustrator for use in laser cutting and engraving. Laser engraved or cut city maps are easy to create and will quickly become a great new addition to your popular laser engraved and cut prod...

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How to get your laser cutting paper without burning 

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How to get your laser cutting paper without burning 

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A commonly asked question I hear is "Can you laser cut paper without burning it?" With a little bit of preparation and the correct settings, it is possible to get your laser cutting paper without any burn marks. Resulting in a great, clean, scorch-free laser cut on most types of paper and even cardboard stock.

So, how do you get your laser cutting paper without burning it? Get the basics right by making sure your mirrors and lens are clean and correctly focussed. Use the shortest focal length lens you have (1.5~2.5″) and use as much air assist as you can without disturbing the paper. Power should be low 10~17% and speed around 20~30mm/s depending on the laser used.

These settings will result in your laser cutting paper scorch free. You will need to do some additional testing to get the optimum results for your particular laser machine. I've put together some tips to make the job easier for all of you card makers out there.

Here's What We Will Cover:

1. Here's What We Will Cover:

2. Laser Cutting Paper for a Wedding Invite

3. Optimizing The Laser Cutting Paper Settings

4. What Can Be Achieved By Using A Laser To Cut Paper?

5. Conclusion On Getting Your Laser Cutting Paper Without Burning

6. How Do You Laser Cut Corrugated Cardboard?

Laser Cutting Paper for a Wedding Invite

Optimizing The Laser Cutting Paper Settings

Everyone's laser machine is different, there will be differences in power output at different levels even between the same models. So it is best you do some preparation and testing to determine the best results for your own particular machine.

Getting the correct focus distance:

This is easily the most important factor in attaining a clean laser cut with paper. An error of as little as 1mm can make a huge difference in your results, this becomes more acute when using a shorter focal length lens. Consider building yourself a focus ramp to accurately determine the correct focal position for each lens you use.

Levelling the work bed:

If your work bed is not level, then your focus will be out across the job, which can result in areas where the cut thickness (kerf) is thicker or even areas where the laser has failed to fully cut through. This becomes more important the larger the sheet size used.

Housekeeping:

Ensure your mirrors and lens are clean before starting the testing. While mirrors will need checking on a weekly basis, you should check and clean your lens each time you use the machine.

Flat material:

Unfortunately paper and card have a tendency to curl or bow, so it is necessary to make sure that you keep the material perfectly flat during cutting. If you are cutting on a honeycomb bed, you can use magnets to hold the paper in place. If you are doing high volume production runs, it may be worth building a pin table or jig to hold the paper in place.

I generally use a pin table and place 9mm diameter neodymium magnets on the corner pins to hold the paper in position.

Please note that if you are cutting on a honeycomb bed, there is a significant risk of laser flashback marking the rear of the paper. In many cases, this may not be important as the finished product may only be viewed from the top surface. It's not easy to use stand-offs on flexible materials such as paper, so your best solution is to place the paper onto a sacrificial sheet of card.

Air Assist:

It is desirable to have your air assist set high in order to cool the cutting zone, but it shouldn't be too high as it will blow fragments of paper back onto the surface, potentially affecting the cutting in different areas.

Fume extraction:

Good fume extraction will stop debris from falling back onto the surface of the paper. Ideally, you should have a flow of air across the surface of the paper taking away the smoke as soon as it is generated. It is worthwhile masking off unused areas of the work bed to maximise this airflow.

Power and speed settings:

Typically jobs involving laser cutting paper tend to be on small sheet sizes and have intricate sections. Trying to run at high speed and high power may work for large regular shapes as the laser has a chance to accelerate up to the specified speed. However, when you are looking at intricate work where the laser head is changing direction constantly, you will never attain the specified speed due to the acceleration limits on the machine. This results in too much laser energy being used on the material and why you get the burning.

Mixing Settings According to Application

I typically have two settings for when I'm cutting paper:

Low speed / low power for intricate work
Speed: 30mm/s | Power Max/Min: 11.5%/10% (approx. 9W)

High Speed / Higher Power for the outer border or large regular objects
Speed: 150mm/s | Power Max/Min: 18%/15% (approx. 18W)

Your testing will be to determine suitable high speed / high power settings and will involve cutting out squares to determine the power settings to achieve the fastest cut possible without there being any risk of burning. I would suggest you limit the squares to 20mm (0.8″) in size as any larger could give skewed results as the head may never reach the speed in an actual job.

Once you have a suitable high speed / high power setting it is worth checking the time taken to cut the test square and then repeating the job at a slightly slower speed. If the time taken is the same at the slower speed, it shows that the laser does not actually reach the specified speed during the job. Decrease the speed in steps to find the point where the job starts getting slower to cut. This is important because if you run a job with a run longer than 20mm you run the risk of the laser not cutting all the way through.

You can then start your trials for the low speed / low power settings at 50% of the higher settings and test using a 7.5mm (0.3″) square.

Unfortunately, it's not possible to give you exact settings as it totally depends on the peculiarities of your laser machine.

Save the settings in your software package if this is available, otherwise set up a reference folder to store all your results for easy referral.

Prepare the laser artwork:

When setting up a job that has a combination of intricate work and long runs, you need to group all the intricate objects under the low settings and the long runs under the high settings. Just ensure the border is the last thing cut.

Frequency settings:

There are two main technologies for CO2 laser cutting machines, the glass DC CO2 laser tube and the RF "Metal" CO2 tube.

Glass DC Co2 Laser tube: When cutting paper you want to be running the laser tube in its pre-ionisation stage, typically found between 9~17% power, although this does vary across tubes. It is characterised by a "hissing" noise during the cutting process.

RF Metal CO2 tube: In this type of tube it is possible to vary the frequency and settings of 500~1200Hz are suggested for cutting paper.

What Can Be Achieved By Using A Laser To Cut Paper?

Check out this great Christmas Card by my good friend Russ Sadler to see the detail that can be obtained by laser cutting paper.

Conclusion On Getting Your Laser Cutting Paper Without Burning

So that's my advice on how to laser cut paper without burning. There are a number of key areas that will need to be covered, some of which are specific to your laser machine, but none of them are particularly difficult. Once sorted, you will have your own repeatable settings for cutting paper with your laser without having any burn marks.

How Do You Laser Cut Corrugated Cardboard?

So, how do you laser cut corrugated cardboard? You may think that cutting corrugated card is very similar to cutting paper or single layer cardboard and you just need more power because it is thicker. Consider the construction of corrugated cardboard. Two, three or even four flat layers or liners, each separated and joined by a wavy or corrugated layer called the fluting. The fluting traps smoke between the layers when laser cut, dispersing the laser beam and resulting in lower beam penetration into the cardboard. The usual reaction is to either increase the power or decrease the speed, but all this results in is a burned edge and if you are not careful, the product catching fire.

I Use "Dot Mode" as my preferred solution, rather than straightforward cutting. Dot Mode can have different names across different software platforms, but it is essentially pulsing the laser instead of having a continuous power output from the laser tube. Pulsing the laser means that you can use a high power to punch through the corrugated cardboard but not applying it long enough to affect the surrounding material.

You need to adjust four parameters; speed, dot time, dot length and dot interval. Settings will again vary depending on your particular laser, but a good starting point is:

You are aiming to get your 20mm (0.8″) test square to fall out with little or no charring on the edges. Be careful during your trials as it is easy to accidentally catch fire to the cardboard.

What Next?

Did you enjoy this post? Why not check out some of our other posts:

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Last updated April 25, 2024

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How To Get Your Laser Cutting Paper Without Burning

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If you are struggling to get your laser cutting paper without burning, you need to check out these great tips to achieve perfect results!

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Icograms: Isometric maps and models (Education version)

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Icograms: Isometric maps and models (Education version)

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Overview of Icograms Designer: Palette, Working Area, Properties, Export.

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How to Draw Exploded Views lesson (7-11 yo)

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How to Draw Exploded Views lesson (7-11 yo)

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This is one of a set of resources developed to support the teaching of the primary national curriculum. They are designed to support the delivery of key topics within design and technology and maths. This resource focusses on creating a section drawing of a product.

Different types of drawing are used to communicate different types of information. Section drawings are a type of 2D drawing that show the parts or features inside a product. In effect, a section drawing shows the view as if the product has been cut in half - most typically this is along the longer dimension of the product, such as its length. Section drawings are used to show what the inside of a product looks like and how the parts of a product fit together.

Producing a section drawing develops drawing skills, whilst simultaneously allowing concepts such as dimensions, proportion and scale to be introduced in a practical context.
Activity info, teachers' notes and curriculum links
In this activity learners will produce a section drawing of a safety helmet worn by cyclists, working in proportion and ideally to scale.

This could be used as a one-off activity or linked to other D&T activities, such as product analysis or exploded drawing (especially when using the extension activity, creating a section drawing of a pen). It could also be used in conjunction with the IET Faraday Primary Poster - Section Views.

The activity sheet includes teachers' notes, useful web links, and links (where appropriate) to the national curriculum in each of the four devolved nations; England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
Download for free below!
All activity sheets and supporting resources are free to download, and all the documents are fully editable, so you can tailor them to your students' and your schools' needs.

Please do share your highlights with us @IETeducation.

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In this activity learners will produce a section drawing of a safety helmet worn by cyclists, working in proportion and ideally to scale.

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How to draw a plan view in maths| KS2 maths activity

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In this home or KS2 school maths activity, children will learn how to produce a perfect plan view drawing of their classroom. Free lesson plan & presentation.

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A mechanism is a device that changes movement in some way. Linkages are a type of mechanism. There are different types of linkage, each of which change movement in different ways. Can your students make a simple linkage from a piece of card?

This is a fun STEM activity and a great way for KS2 to learn all about simple linkages. This resource could be used as a stand-alone activity or as an introduction to a design and make project, such as a greetings card with moving parts, a moving poster or display or a 'grabber' to pick things up.

Activity: Investigating simple linkages

In this activity pupils will make models of three simple linkages from card.

It can be advantageous to use a hole punch to create the holes where needed as this reduces the risk of tearing. Alternatively, the holes could be made by pushing through the card with a sharp pencil, into a piece of modelling clay.

If tearing does occur, this can be addressed by using sticky tape on the rear of the part or background.

For a moving pivot, the fastener goes through the two moving card parts and is opened up; for a fixed pivot, the fastener goes through a moving part and the background is opened up.

Guides can be attached using sticky tape at each end. Whilst glue could be used, in practice this may not provide a sufficiently strong joint.

As an extension activity students could produce a composite linkage that changes a single input motion into different types of output motion. Alternatively, students could create a moving model of an animal.

The presentation can be downloaded below and includes detailed images for the making tasks plus additional support information for the teacher, such as examples of linkages made by pupils.
Tools/resources required

Copies of the linkages handout, printed on card, 1 per pupil (plus spares)

Scissors

Sticky tape

Glue sticks

Optional:

Hole punches (ideally single hole punches)

Pre-made models of each linkage, for demonstration

The engineering context

A mechanism is a group of parts that allow or change movement in some way. In practice almost all products that contain moving parts - ranging from scissors to pop-up books to car engines - include some form of mechanism.

Suggested learning outcomes

By the end of this activity students will be able to identify the parts of a linkage, they will know how simple linkages change the direction of motion and they will be able to cut and assemble simple linkages using card and scissors.

Download the free Investigating simple linkages activity sheet below!

All activity sheets, worksheets and supporting resources are free to download, and all the documents are fully editable, so you can tailor them to your students' and your schools' needs.

The activity sheet includes teacher notes, guidance, useful web links, and links (where appropriate) to the national curriculum in each of the four devolved UK nations; England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

Please share your classroom learning highlights with us @IETeducation.

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Investigate simple linkages using card models with this fun and free STEM activity for KS2

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Cabaret Mechanical Theatre - Mechanical is our middle name

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Summary

Overview

Your students have probably walked or ridden over a bridge at some point in their lives. In this engineering activity they will design and make bridges out of folded pieces of paper, and test how much weight they can hold with pennies. How does the shape of a bridge affect its strength? Let your students explore and find out with this lesson!

This lesson can be expanded to a second lesson looking at how the material a bridge is made out of can change its strength; see second lesson for details.

Learning Objectives

Explain how a bridge's shape can make it stronger.

Perform tests to compare different bridge designs and determine which one can support more weight.

NGSS Alignment

This lesson helps students prepare for these Next Generation Science Standards Performance Expectations:

K-2-ETS1-2. Develop a simple sketch, drawing, or physical model to illustrate how the shape of an object helps it function as needed to solve a given problem.

K-2-ETS1-3. Analyze data from tests of two objects designed to solve the same problem to compare the strengths and weaknesses of how each performs.

This lesson focuses on these aspects of NGSS Three Dimensional Learning:

Science & Engineering Practices

Disciplinary Core Ideas

Crosscutting Concepts

Science & Engineering Practices

Planning and Carrying out Investigations. Make observations (firsthand or from media) and/or measurements to collect data that can be used to make comparisons.

Using Mathematical and Computational Thinking. Use quantitative data to compare two alternative solutions to a problem.

Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions. Generate and/or compare multiple solutions to a problem.

Disciplinary Core Ideas

ETS1.C: Optimizing the Design Solution. Because there is always more than one possible solution to a problem, it is useful to compare and test designs.

Crosscutting Concepts

Structure and Function. The shape and stability of structures of natural and designed objects are related to their function(s).

Materials

For each group of students:

Sheets of printer or construction paper (10)

Stacks of books, or small boxes (2)

Pennies (about 30, more may be required for stronger designs)

Tape

Ruler

Background Information for Teachers

This section contains a quick review for teachers of the science and concepts covered in this lesson.

Explore Our Science Videos

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Paper Bridge Design Challenge | Lesson Plan

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Your students have probably walked or ridden over a bridge at some point in their lives. In this engineering activity they will design and make bridges out of folded pieces of paper, and test how much weight they can hold with pennies. How does the shape of a bridge affect its strength?