Journal

From amazing new bricks to designs that help people walk again, here’s what changed the world in 3-D printing in 2015.

This year, Fast Company gave 3-D Printing it’s own category in the Innovation By Design Awards, to recognize all the ferment in the industry. The finalists and winner below all use 3-D printing to rethink major categories, from the way our buildings are constructed to the way movies are made. Congratulations to everyone, and a big thank you to our judges: Andrew Dent, vice president of materials research at Material ConneXion; Bre Pettis, cofounder of MakerBot and founder of Bold Machines; and Bradford Shellhammer, founder and CEO of Bazar. And finally, a sincere thank you to everyone who entered and supported Fast Company‘s commitment to elevating the design profession.

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Once upon a time, design was considered unimportant among most top business leaders, a secondary realm prowled by precious egotists and aesthetes.

At best, design was an afterthought, like slapping a coat of paint on an already-built house or adding a cool tail fin to a finished product.

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From making flights tolerable to modernizing the museum, here are 2015’s best examples of experience design.

Good design goes beyond the simple act of imbuing a product with visual beauty or perfect functionality. It’s also about making someone feel satisfaction, excitement, or comfort while interacting with it. That’s where experience design comes in, and this year’s finalists and winner exemplify this facet by updating the museum visit for the 21st century, making your flight less miserable, or making it easier to navigate through complicated spaces. Congratulations to all, and many thanks to our judges: Dan Gardner, cofounder of Code and Theory; Mauro Porcini, SVP and chief design officer of PepsiCo; and Kevin Young, SVP of product experience at Continuum. And finally, a sincere thank you to everyone who entered and supported Fast Company‘s commitment to elevating the design profession.

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Five years ago, everybody was excited about the idea of using tech to borrow things like power drills. In practice, though, not so much.

“How many of you own a power drill?” Rachel Botsman, the author of the book The Rise Of Collaborative Consumption, asked the audience at TedxSydney in 2010. Predictably, nearly everyone raised his or her hand. “That power drill will be used around 12 to 15 minutes in its entire lifetime,” Botsman continued with mock exasperation. “It’s kind of ridiculous, isn’t it? Because what you need is the hole, not the drill.”

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Data breaches at ATMs are at a 20-year high. Here’s what you can do to protect yourself—and your money.

We’ve heard the warnings for years now to avoid sketchy ATMs, yet folks continue to withdraw from hacked ATMs and later watch helplessly as money drains from their accounts.

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A (former) Silicon Valley entrepreneur and mother explodes some of the myths about “having it all” by combing through old email and IMs.

When news of Hillary Clinton’s email trouble broke, I felt queasy, but not with worry over national security or doubts about the woman who might end up running our country. No, my instant concern was much more visceral and self-centered: What if that had happened to me while I was running a company?

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A startup in Europe wants to make it easy for anyone to become the owner of their own rental cycle fleet.

Like cars, bikes usually sit around for most of the day. But they haven’t been easy to make part of the sharing economy. The money someone can make from renting out a bicycle—compared to, say, a spare room on Airbnb—may not seem worth the trouble it takes.

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The Integrated Space Plan, a 100-year plan to take mankind out of the solar system, has been updated for the 21st century, and it’s gorgeous.

When it comes to vintage chart porn, there’s nothing quite like the Rockwell Integrated Space Plan. Now, New York-based design firm 212box, in cooperation with the original ISP’s designer and a team of space enthusiasts, have given the ISP a much needed overhaul as the result of a successful Kickstarter.

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Want to try a new T-shirt design? Grab the clone stamp tool, and don’t take off anything.

“But how will it look on me?” It’s the age-old question of clothing shopping, and a new, seemingly magical mirror not only answers that question—it lets you redesign what you’re wearing along the way.

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“Getting benched” is a good thing for designer Peter Otto Vosding.

Thanks to the wonders of modular design, you can create furniture that morphs with your specific needs. (Case in point: this customizable cat tower.) For his graduate project, German designer Peter Otto Vosding applied the principals of modular design to a chair that riffs on the position one assumes while seated.

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