core77.com

To secure cargo, shippers can use bracing and straps. Those require connection points, and take time to install. A far faster method is to use what are called dunnage bags. These come in different sizes and are essentially giant balloons, placed between objects and filled on-the-spot with compressed air.

Last year we spied a teaser video from industrial designer Michael Mahle. As a student at Bauhaus University, Mahle had developed an all-wooden system of connectors for flatpack furniture. No metal, and no glue are required.Now Mahle's company, nurholz, is up-and-running in Germany. Here's a better look at his novel connection system:

We think of 21st-century objects as being hi-tech. But here's a low-tech one that's growing in popularity, thanks to the rise of identity theft: Privacy stamps. Invented in the 2000s, they use ink cartridges to roll gobbledygook over printed text, obscuring it. In an age of paper shredders, privacy stamps might be seen as extraneous objects. But they have several advantages. One, they can be used to obscure text on objects that you can't easily throw into a shredder.

It was two years ago that we first heard about Base Case, a startup that claimed to have wedged two 24" monitors into a rolling carry-on form factor. Back then it was just teaser images. But now the product's come to market, targeting traveling creatives and spreadsheet crunchers.

I'm really impressed with Brooklyn-based Craighill's focus on what I'll call pure industrial design. The firm has an uncanny ability to lock in on the actual user experience, including offline considerations, while confidently jettisoning the traditional ways those problems have been clumsily solved. They're not afraid to develop entirely new forms that solve problems in new ways, and their products meet a high visual style standard to boot.A great case in point is their Metrolog Ruler, designed as a tableside replacement of the beam caliper, while providing standard ruler functionality. (It doesn't have the reach of the beam caliper's jaws—you won't be taking the diameter of a thick dowel or rod, for instance—but it does mean you don't have a small, sharp tomahawk on your desk.)

This Flossr object, by Swedish industrial design firm SNRGY Studios, is a metal floss tool that's refillable. The idea is that rather than buying floss in plastic dispensers, or those one-off picks, you buy bare spools. (Within the sustainable-goods ecosystem, companies now exist that sell floss refills with paper cores.) There is a bit o

Nikolas Weinstein Studios' sculptures are immediately recognizable. Often composed of thousands of glass tubes, they are defined by fluidity and inspired by the architectural spaces they inhabit. That vision recently earned them a Guinness Book of World Records title for Mangrove, the world's largest glass tube installation. Soaring eight stories throughout the Solaire Resort atrium in Manila, Philippines, the sculpture weighs more than 13 metric tons and contains more than 16,000 individual glass tubes, all cut and woven by hand.The eight-story Mangrove glass tube installation in the

This startling ceramic object is actually a drip coffeemaker. With a glossy, tactile appeal, it speaks of low tech and high craft at the same time. It's also pretty form-follows-function: If the thick ceramic cylinders are the predetermined source material, you pretty much can't imagine this being shaped any other way.

Located at 72nd Street and Central Park West, the Dakota is the oldest luxury apartment building in New York City. The German Renaissance structure, which dates to the 1880s, was designed for a time when the wealthy had servants. They lived in the undesirable parts of the gables, up six or more flights of stairs.Image: Ajay Suresh, CC BY 2.0 In the 1960s, artist and furniture designer Ward Bennett purchased several of these maid's rooms, and renovated it into his own duplex apartment and studio.

The Kadoma City Library, outside of Osaka, Japan, was designed with a café-like vibe. The library's concept is "enjoying reading with coffee."Because beverages and books don't always go together, furniture designer Tatsuki Kokubo designed these for the space, minimizing the chance of accidents: