During an Australian vacation, I had a chance to stop by the Cookie Composites shop with a friend that’s an active skydiver so that he could pick up a new lens for his skydive helmet/camera rig.
Seeing this small company that operates on a global scale up close and personal really gave me an appreciation for their hands on approach and handmade quality. Each piece is made with precision and care, and they were happy to show us around even though we showed up at their door essentially unannounced.
In 2006, Cookie Composites decided to reshape their brand, and hired a team of media and advertisement specialists to develop the brand’s new values. During that time, Ricardo Sa Freire was brought on to develop a range of new helmets that would translate those new values into a signature shape for their new products, and he shared that process online.
The ROK helmet is what came out of that process, and it’s a helmet designed for swoop canopy divers and base jumpers, with air intakes in both sides that are used to measure the speed through the sound of the wind.
Since the process behind the end result is no less impressive than what they created, it’s a fantastic read that gives you a glimpse into the world and work of a real designer as he creates a product that is designed to look good, save lives, and function in some of the most extreme environments imaginable.
If you like the idea of papercraft, but don’t have the skills necessary to pull off some of the more advancedprojects, then check out Eric Wiryanta (aka Thunder Panda)’s collection of papercraft toys.
Each of the cute little figures is easy to make, but the results are still rather impressive, so you’ll have an army of pugs, robots and space wanderers adorning your desk before you know it.
John Taylor’s Corpus Clock, aka the Chronophage, or ‘time eater’, is an impressive looking beast of a clock that was made as a tribute to eighteenth-century clockmaker John Harrison’s grasshopper escapement, a low-friction mechanism for converting pendulum motion into rotational motion.
Despite it’s massive size (over 1.5 meters in diameter) the Corpus Clock’s inner workings are all mechanically controlled, including the world’s largest grasshopper escapement that adorns the top. Electricity does power an electric motor, which winds the clock, and blue LEDs which light up the hours, minutes, and seconds, but the blinking eye, moving mouth, swinging hands and everything else you see is all old-school mechanical.
Another interesting element of the clock is that it’s only accurate once every five minutes. The rest of the time, the pendulum can stop, the lights can lag, and then everything can race to catch up, symbolizing life’s “irregularity”. Despite this irregularity though, the clock is expected to stay accurate for the next 200 years or more.
At a cost of over one million pounds, this solid 24-karat gold clock definitely wasn’t cheap, and it took over five years for the two hundred people involved in the making of the clock to get everything put together, but if you’re going to design the world’s strangest clock, no one ever said it was going to be easy.
FEIST is a terrific looking indie (and Mac exclusive) game by Florian Faller and Adrian Stutz.
You can download a beta copy HERE, and view the trailer below, and though not much more is known about the game, what they’ve got so far looks impressive.
EepyBird, the two man team that brought you the Diet Coke and Mentos Experiment, is back in the lab, and this time they’ve teamed up with ABC’s Samurai Girl to bring you The Extreme Sticky Note Experiments:
Though it’s not as surprising as the Diet Coke and Mentos video, it’s definitely impressive/beautiful, makes you look at Sticky Notes in a whole new light.
Those looking for a custom way to ride down the street should definitely check out corbusBOARDS.
Handcrafted and one-of-a-kind, the corbusBOARDS are made of aluminum, and are designed to be “fully functional, impressive to ride art objects”.
From the maker:
Knowing that the classic wood structure was limited I turned to aluminum streamlining the design until I came up with sleek silhouettes at around the same weight of traditional long-boards — and just as ride-able. These custom boards are a completely original cross between a long-board and a short-board for a smooth cruising ride that is also focused on independent vision and comfort. These are not trick boards, but they are tricked.
If you liked the San Francisco toothpick tour, then check out this hand cranked machine made entirely out of wood and glue (no nails or screws).
The video takes you step by step through each one of the functions, and it’s impressive to think that you can build something like this with a lot of time and determination.
Niko Bellic is a pretty realistic character in Grand Theft Auto IV to begin with, so Pixeloo’s latest untoon isn’t quite as impressive as the last few, but regardless, he’s got more skill in his little pinky than I have in the entire Photoshop part of my brain, so check out his latest work and prepare to be amazed once again.
Daily Monster is Stefan G. Bucher’s quest to draw one monster per day for 200 days.
Each monster starts out as an inkblot, and then Stefan adds to that blot until it starts to take on a character of its own. Then, users can submit a back-story for the monster, and Stefan picks some of the best and publishes them on his blog.
Each monster features the accompanying video where you can watch Stefan work his magic, and it’s impressive to watch each one take shape.
On May 2, Stefan drew the final monster in the series, so check out his site for a look at each one of the 200 monsters.
John Taylor’s Corpus Clock, aka the Chronophage, or ‘time eater’, is an impressive looking beast of a clock that was made as a tribute to eighteenth-century clockmaker John Harrison’s grasshopper escapement, a low-friction mechanism for converting pendulum motion into rotational motion.
