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Tata&Friends was asked to rebrand whatever they wanted for a section of Icon Magazine. They selected to reimagine the look and feel of the European Space Agency, and the result is magnificent.

Seth Gould spent two years crafting an intricate puzzle box called Coffer.

The Coffer was made primarily through handwork at the forge and at the bench. The majority of pieces, including the bolts, levers, and staples, are made from wrought iron, a material I use primarily for its working properties (enjoyable to forge and file). Wrought iron is no longer manufactured, so each piece needed to be forged from salvaged material. The forging is done using a coal forge, hammer, anvil, and power hammer. Once the pieces are forged as close to their finished shape as possible, I move to the bench to refine the surface and shape with a file. The final touch is a bit of file embellishment.

Jesse Beecher documented Seth’s project in Forged and Filed, an expectational five-minute video with sounds from Seth’s workshop weaved into an incredible soundtrack.

You can read more about this project on Seth’s site.

Peter Merholz shares his observations:

It’s been surprisingly delightful flipping through this little bit of computer history. The pace, and deliberateness, with which the system and its interface are explained are quite impressive.

I love the diagram that shows how scrolling in a window works.

From cake in a mug for one to shucking corn, your microwave might be able to do more than you thought. You can even measure the speed of light:

With a relatively simple science experiment, you can measure the speed of light for yourself using a microwave and some chocolate. You’ll need to remove the tray from your microwave so that the chocolate doesn’t cook evenly. Put a long piece of chocolate in the now-empty microwave, and cook it until it begins to become misshapen, around 40 seconds. Then you can measure the distance between the hot spots where the chocolate began to melt and pool.

Marc Edwards:

It’s common to have to draw the same kinds of icons over and over — many different apps and websites use similar glyphs, but each instance typically needs to be tweaked for size and style, so they need to be redrawn.

Due to this repetition, I’ve always been interested in trying to work out optimal ways to create them. This is to save time, but also as a fun challenge.

If you’re a designer you’ll likely find these short animations informative. If you’re not a designer you’ll likely find them to be interesting, with a hint of magic.