There will always be some allure to the elementary school Egg Drop, but unfortunately, your iPad makes a bad test subject. Unlike Android tablets, which are built to withstand the pounding of frustrated users, the iPad doesn't have much in the way of self-defense -- its glass screen and heft make it perpetually vulnerable to gravity and the human seat.
We've said it before, and we'll say it again: Herman Miller, the Zeeland, Michigan, furniture giant, is brilliant at promoting itself. The company's latest campaign, POV, is proof positive. It's a microsite that uses hip California architects -- and the hip California houses they designed -- to flog sofas and armchairs. In short, it manages to wrap mundane objects in the seductive packaging of California cool.
![Six Beautiful, Brilliant Furniture Designs From Ligne Roset [Slideshow]](/multisite_files/codesign/imagecache/642x368/article_feature/Grillage-2.jpg "Six Beautiful, Brilliant Furniture Designs From Ligne Roset [Slideshow]")
French furniture manufacturer Ligne Roset showcased an inventive line of sofas, chairs, and desks at WantedDesign, part of New York Design Week, on Friday. The company has long been a proving ground for the leading lights of French design, and this year's collection is no exception.
![Matt Pyke Shows Off His Stunning Techno-Art In Paris Funhouse [Videos]](/multisite_files/codesign/imagecache/642x368/article_feature/final_LGL_poster_rgb.jpg "Matt Pyke Shows Off His Stunning Techno-Art In Paris Funhouse [Videos]")
Artists love to portray technology as the villain, as a force for evil that makes short work of our humanity. (Call it the Hal Effect.) Matt Pyke isn't one of them. The artist -- who, it should be noted, works out of a log cabin in Sheffield, England -- is an unabashed techno-optimist.
With a home office, I never have to worry if the temperature, lighting, or power situation isn't to my liking: I just set it up exactly how I want it. But if you work in an old federal office building run by the U.S. General Services Administration, you kind of just have to put up with what you get.
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Which school nabbed a top prize at this year's International Contemporary Furniture Fair? No, not RISD or Pratt but rather the School at Columbia and its team of eighth-graders, who took it upon themselves to reinvent their classroom -- a space that has evolved little since the dawn of the Industrial Age.
The resulting products are nothing short of inspiring.
Today you might say that all roads lead to China. The country's a manufacturing powerhouse, producing everything from agricultural fertilizers to iPhones. (Its economy recently overtook Japan as the No. 2 slot after the U.S.) And now it's positioning itself as one of the largest exporters of " animation" The Chinese government is pouring buckets of greenbacks into gaining the upper hand in cartoons, where it has traditionally lagged behind the West.
Social media -- "friends," "likes," status updates, check-ins -- forces us to live in a perpetual present tense with no long-term memory. Tweets that get pushed down too far into the past get lost; god knows what happens to Facebook status updates. But if these digital scintillae are ever going to become a real basis for forming emotional memories, we need to be able to "fix" them somehow.
It's the ultimate Kickstarter success story. Unable to secure a manufacturer, the Chicago-based designer Scott Wilson placed his TikTok and LunaTik wristbands -- which convert the Nano into a watch -- on the funding site. Within a month, he raised nearly $1 million from 13,500 backers -- a Kickstarter record. All of a sudden, retailers came calling, including the most prestigious of all: Apple, which is rolling out the wristbands in North American stores this week.
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