#HTE

Photoshopping a meme is easy. But hunting through thrift stores, finding the perfect action figure to Frankenstein with another toy, designing and packaging it into a slightly off but believable product, and sneaking it onto a store shelf takes a little bit more work. Both have the potential to go viral, but memes are lost to the unforgiving sands of internet time, while the bizarre, bespoke toys can live on as a story for the next person who stumbles upon them.

Since 2015, Jeff Wysaski has been making fake signs and toys and leaving them out in the real world for people to find. Going by the name Obvious Plant, some of his recent creations range from believable bootleg dollar store finds, like Mobile Suit Garfield, to the more…

Continue reading…

#HTE

Wacom announced the launch of its Pro Pen slim today, which has 8,196 levels of pressure sensitivity, tilt recognition, and an eraser. The company says it was created in response to designers and digital artists who have requested a slimmer pen. The new pen is thinner than Wacom’s current Grip Pen, and is designed to emulate the feel of brushes and pencils.

Most of Wacom’s styluses, which come included with its tablets, are a lot thicker than standard pencils, and take some getting used to. As an alternative to the Pro Pen or Grip Pen, some artists have turned to purchasing a separate Classic Pen, which has 2,048 levels of pressure sensitivity and feels more like a regular pen. The $69.95 Classic Pen hasn’t been updated for several…

Continue reading…

#HTE

Wacom announced the launch of its Pro Pen slim today, which has 8,196 levels of pressure sensitivity, tilt recognition, and an eraser. The company says it was created in response to designers and digital artists who have requested a slimmer pen. The new pen is thinner than Wacom’s current Grip Pen, and is designed to emulate the feel of brushes and pencils.

Most of Wacom’s styluses, which come included with its tablets, are a lot thicker than standard pencils, and take some getting used to. As an alternative to the Pro Pen or Grip Pen, some artists have turned to purchasing a separate Classic Pen, which has 2,048 levels of pressure sensitivity and feels more like a regular pen. The $69.95 Classic Pen hasn’t been updated for several…

Continue reading…

#HTE

Move over, sex buttons, it turns out that the company most likely to improve couples’ relationships and save marriages is actually… Ford? The company has been known to develop conceptual prototypes that utilize its car technology in unexpected ways, like this smart crib that puts babies fast asleep by replicating car rides, or this noise-canceling dog kennel. This time, the company’s created a conveyor belt bed that takes inspiration from Ford’s lane-keeping technology to keep bed hoggers on their own side.

The bed has a pressure sensor that can tell when your partner has clearly violated your half of the bed, which is rightfully yours. Ford’s blog says the conveyor belt gently returns “selfish sleepers” to where they should be, much…

Continue reading…

#HTE

Move over, sex buttons, it turns out that the company most likely to improve couples’ relationships and save marriages is actually… Ford? The company has been known to develop conceptual prototypes that utilize its car technology in unexpected ways, like this smart crib that puts babies fast asleep by replicating car rides, or this noise-canceling dog kennel. This time, the company’s created a conveyor belt bed that takes inspiration from Ford’s lane-keeping technology to keep bed hoggers on their own side.

The bed has a pressure sensor that can tell when your partner has clearly violated your half of the bed, which is rightfully yours. Ford’s blog says the conveyor belt gently returns “selfish sleepers” to where they should be, much…

Continue reading…

#HTE

Pixelmator Pro’s latest update adds support for the iPhone’s portrait masks, which lets you do more with photos taken in Portrait Mode. Photos taken in Portrait Mode on iOS 12 or later will be imported with the depth data in a separate layer mask, so you can easily edit backgrounds or swap them out entirely.

The feature isn’t available in the iPhone version of Pixelmator or the basic Mac version of Pixelmator. Pixelmator Pro, which costs $39.99, has a few more premium features over the $4.99 iPhone app and the standard $29.99 Mac app.

Both Mac versions of Pixelmator are powerful image-editing tools that support RAW image processing and offer an affordable alternative to Photoshop CC, which starts at a $10-a-month subscription plan. The…

Continue reading…

#HTE

Pixelmator Pro’s latest update adds support for the iPhone’s portrait masks, which lets you do more with photos taken in Portrait Mode. Photos taken in Portrait Mode on iOS 12 or later will be imported with the depth data in a separate layer mask, so you can easily edit backgrounds or swap them out entirely.

The feature isn’t available in the iPhone version of Pixelmator or the basic Mac version of Pixelmator. Pixelmator Pro, which costs $39.99, has a few more premium features over the $4.99 iPhone app and the standard $29.99 Mac app.

Both Mac versions of Pixelmator are powerful image-editing tools that support RAW image processing and offer an affordable alternative to Photoshop CC, which starts at a $10-a-month subscription plan. The…

Continue reading…

#HTE

Smart displays for homes aren’t a new idea — people have tried to make them with traditional displays, ones built into mirrors, screens that use E Ink, and more. But none of them are quite like the Weather Poster, a Kickstarter project from designer Oli Woods and his company, Typified. The project looks to merge traditional art (in this case, a screen-printed poster) with modern technology to create a smart display that’s more limited in function, but far nicer-looking and less obtrusive than just hanging a screen on your wall.

As the name implies, the Weather Poster does only one thing: it shows you the upcoming weather forecast for the day. It’s not a…

Continue reading…

#HTE

Smart displays for homes aren’t a new idea — people have tried to make them with traditional displays, ones built into mirrors, screens that use E Ink, and more. But none of them are quite like the Weather Poster, a Kickstarter project from designer Oli Woods and his company, Typified. The project looks to merge traditional art (in this case, a screen-printed poster) with modern technology to create a smart display that’s more limited in function, but far nicer-looking and less obtrusive than just hanging a screen on your wall.

As the name implies, the Weather Poster does only one thing: it shows you the upcoming weather forecast for the day. It’s not a…

Continue reading…

#HTE

Can’t Unsee is a web-based game that presents two choices of iOS interface designs, and asks the user a simple question: Which one is more correct? There are three rounds that ramp up in difficulty, asking you to pick between two mock-ups presented side by side that start out with design choices that seem obviously wrong, but then escalate to images that are nearly indistinguishable. Created by UX designer Alex Kotliarskyi, it’s a game of “spot the differences,” but only one of the choices is the right one.

Of course, what makes something good is subjective, but most of the answers are based on universally accepted design traits like even spacing between text blocks and consistent capitalization. Even for non-designers like me, the…

Continue reading…