Core77 Podcast

Our guests today are the two co-founders of Studio Neat, Dan Provost and Tom Gerhardt. Their design for an iPhone camera mount, called Glif, was the very first product design project to launch on Kickstarter way back in 2010. Since then they have launched two other projects, Cosmonaut, a wide grip iPad stylus, and Simple Bracket, an easy to use iPhone app for filling out March Madness tournament brackets. Now they're back with a new project called the Neat Ice Kit (video below), which is designed to help you easily make clear ice for cocktails at home. If there is a theme to their work it's this: smart, simple, and successful.

We talk about their approach to running a Kickstarter campaign, how they pick projects to work on, our favorite cocktails, the new iPhone 5C, and vintage software.

Our guest today is Martin Kastner, the founder and principal designer at Crucial Detail in Chicago. One of his major clients also happens to be one of the world's top restaurants: Alinea. If it sounds funny to hear that a restaurant regularly works with a designer, well: The food they create at Alinea is so inventive and so unique that they literally had to design tools just so people could consume it. If you haven't seen this work before, you owe it to yourself to look at Crucial Detail's website before you get too deep into today's episode. Check it out at crucialdetail.com. Seriously. You're gonna want to see this.

Last year, Martin Kickstarted one of the objects he designed for Alinea's cocktail bar, Aviary. It's a drink infusion vessel called Porthole, which absolutely smashed through his goal of $28,500 to raise nearly three-quarters of a million dollars. We talk about that too.

If that wasn't enough, Martin has one of the most improbable designer origin stories I have ever heard of. Don't worry, I'm not going to ruin that for you.

There’s a certain quality to Joey Roth’s work. It could be the honest use of materials, or the quirky essentialness of his form language, or maybe it’s clean functionality of his products. From his Ceramic Speaker System, to his poster series, to his self watering planter, maybe all you need to say is this: Joey Roth’s work is really good.

This week's guest on Afterschool is Robert Brunner, the founder of Ammunition in San Francisco. We go deep on the creation of the Beats by Dre line of which Ammunition has helped develop along with Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre. We also talk about setting up Ammunition.

Host Don Lehman chats with IDSA International Conference Chair Paul Hatch about the event in Chicago, which starts today.

Core77 is pleased to present Afterschool with Don Lehman. Our very first guests are Theo Richardson, Alex Williams and Charles Brill of Brooklyn furniture and lighting design studio Rich Brilliant Willing