“We asked them one day whether he would like to be the best man and she the maid of honor, and they said, ‘Okay,’” Wilder said. “And then the four of us took off to Nevada, where you can get married for two dollars in three minutes.”

Soon after, Wilder commissioned the Eames to build them a house similar to Charles and Ray’s own home. Plans were later abandoned, however, when Young objected to the upkeep of washing all that glass. Still, they remained close friends. Charles even produced a montage sequence for Wilder’s 1957 film, The Spirit of St. Louis. In fact, it was during the shooting of Spirit that Wilder unknowingly made his first contribution to the Eames legacy. He used temporary benches made from plywood beams and sawhorses for quick naps throughout the day. After shooting ended, he asked the Eames if they could make him something similar, albeit more comfortable, for his office.

“A man of my reputation simply can’t afford to have something that looks like a casting couch in his office,” Wilder said. “It’s too obvious a symbol of lechery.” Charles and Ray designed an 18″ wide leather and aluminum bench, large enough to sleep on but narrow enough to prevent long snoozes. Wilder would sleep with his arms crossed; As he sank into deeper sleep his arms would fall to his sides, gently and naturally waking him up. And it wasn’t lecherous at all, unless, Wilder quipped “you had a girlfriend shaped like a Giacometti, [then] it would be ideal.”

The Eames’ and Wilder gave each other gifts—often times furniture—for sixteen years before Charles and Ray sent him the infamous rosewood and leather lounge chair and ottoman in 1968. The Eames had no intention of making more until they were approached by Herman Miller. “You design for someone in particular,” Charles said, “and then you find out that other people have more in common with the object of your affection than you realized.” A note to any furniture designers reading this: like Billy Wilder, I too love chairs. I like to sit in them, read in them and nap in them, and, luckily for you, I’m currently accepting prototypes as gifts.

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After a day of firing guns at the SHOT Show’s “Media Day at the Range,” one invention sticks out in my mind: the Slide Fire.

The result of good ol’ American ingenuity, the Slide Fire was conceived by Jeremiah Cottle as a legal way to increase the speed of fire for semi-automatic rifles. Fully automatic weapons have been heavily controlled in the US since gangsters’ use of Tommy guns in the late 1920′s, but many models like the M-16 or AK-47 can be owned in semi-automatic form.

When one pulls the trigger of a semi-automatic’s trigger, it shoots a single bullet (as opposed to a fully automatic weapon where bullets are fired continually until the trigger is released or the bullets run out). Cottle’s invention is a more sophisticated form of a technique called ‘bump firing’ that enables automatic-like firing speed. Bump firing typically means inserting a thumb through the trigger guard, hooking it on a belt loop and then pulling the firearm forward to engage the trigger. The recoil from each shot disengages the trigger but the forward pull of the left hand ensures fast, automatic-like fire. Shooting from the hip in this way is highly inaccurate and (let’s be honest) steeped in machismo recklessness.

Replace a rifle’s stock with a Slide Fire and one can get the same shot speed as bump firing but with all the control of shooting from the shoulder. The stock features a finger rest for the index finger to extend through the trigger guard and a stock butt with half an inch of give. When the trigger finger is properly placed, the left hand pulls the gun forward so that the trigger is engaged. The gun is able to recoil that half inch of give so the trigger resets with the next loaded round before the forward pull from the left hand causes it to fire once again. It is a simple and elegant solution which, Cottle estimates, can enable someone with an AK-47 to shoot between 400 and 800 rounds per minute.

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“Co-Creation Community” Local Motors continues their fostering of geography-specific vehicle designs with their DRIVEN design competition, which begins today. The Design of Relevant and Innovative Vehicles for Energy Needs competition is the result of a collaboration with fuel giant Shell’s GameChanger branch, which provides funding for alternative energy projects.

Five cities have been chosen as the context for the competition’s designs: Amsterdam, Bangalore, Basra, Houston and São Paolo. Hit the jump to see the promo video and the “unique challenges for the future of mobility” presented by each city.

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Today is the day! We are excited to announce the launch of our second annual Core77 Design Awards! We are officially open for entry and we want to see your most original and impactful design projects from 2011.

It’s great to be back as we further our celebration of excellence, enterprise and intent. Last year, we launched a unique program that addressed many of the challenges of the typical design award paradigm. Our second year builds upon the successes of our inaugural year and we’re excited to bring you our our line-up for year two. The same values persist—leveraging online scale, increasing transparency and decreasing plane fuel—but we’ve refined the recipe to make the awards program more inclusive and celebratory.

Along with a brand new jury, we have some exciting plans for this season:

• Progressive Categories: Celebrating 17 categories of design endeavor from beloved standards to several newer fields, adding 2 new categories to the stable: Writing & Commentary and Food Design.
• Dedicated Student Fields: We have always honored student work and the awards offers student entry fields for 15 of our 17 categories.
• Distributed International Juries: We’ve assigned a Jury Captain (or Co-Captains) to each category, giving each the opportunity to select their own team members from their home city. Check out the line-up below.
• Entrant Video Testimonials: With the ability to submit short, low-tech video testimonials as part of their entry, we give entrants the opportunity to tell their story directly to the jury and share what jpegs and text cannot: their intent and passion.
• Live Jury Announcements: Through our 1-week live results period, our juries will reveal their choices and we’ll broadcast these through the awards site so you’ll get to hear first-hand who they picked and why.
• An Awesome Trophy: All Winners will receive our amazing Core77 Design Awards trophy, which celebrates design as a team sport.

Here’s our full list of entry categories: Consumer Products, Equipment, Soft Goods, Furniture & Lighting, Interiors & Exhibitions, Visual Communication, Packaging, Interaction, Service, Transportation, Social Impact, Educational Initiatives, Strategy & Research, Writing & Commentary (NEW), Speculative, DIY and Food Design (NEW).

But our categories aren’t the only thing to write home about. We have a new global line-up of 20 Jury Captains (with one more to be confirmed). Not only are they true experts in their fields, but they represent 13 cities across 8 countries. Stay tuned as our jury captains announce their full jury teams.

Consumer Products
Jury Captain: Nicolas Roope
Founder and Owner of HULGER / PLUMEN
Founder and Owner of Poke
Judging Location: London, United Kingdom

Equipment
Jury Captain: Renke He
Dean and Professor at School of Design at Hunan University
Judging Location: Changsha, Hunan Province, China

Soft Goods
Jury Captain: Michael DiTullo
Creative Director at frog design
Judging Location: San Francisco, CA, USA

Furniture & Lighting
Jury Captain: Zoë Ryan
Chair and Curator of Architecture and Design at the Art Institute of Chicago
Judging Location: Chicago, IL, USA

Interiors & Exhibitions
Jury Captain coming soon.

Visual Communication
Jury Co-Captains: Min and Sulki Choi
Co-Directors of Sulki and Min
Professors at U. of Seoul / Kaywon School of Art & Design
Judging Location: Seoul, Korea

Packaging
Jury Captain: Laurent Hainaut
Co-Founder and Partner of Raison Pure Design Group
Founder, President and CEO of Raison Pure NYC
Judging Location: Paris, France

Interaction
Jury Co-Captain: Matt Webb, Jack Schulze and Matt Jones
Principals of BERG
Judging Location: London, United Kingdom

Service
Jury Captain: Panthea Lee
Co-Founder and Principal of Reboot
Judging Location: New York, NY, USA

Transportation
Jury Captain: Jay Rogers
President, CEO and Co-Founder of Local Motors, Inc.
Judging Location: Chandler, Arizona, USA

Social Impact
Jury Captain: Tasos Calantzis
CEO of Terrestrial
Judging Location: Pretoria, South Africa

Educational Initiatives
Jury Captain: Mariana Amatullo
Founder of Designmatters at Art Center College of Design
Judging Location: Pasadena, CA, USA

Strategy & Research
Jury Captain: Lorraine Justice
Dean of College of Imaging Arts and Sciences at Rochester Institute of Technology
Judging Location: Rochester, NY, USA

Writing & Commentary
Jury Captain: Alice Twemlow
Chair of MFA in Design Criticism at School of Visual Arts
Judging Location: New York, NY, USA

Speculative
Jury Captain: Bruce Sterling
Author of “Beyond the Beyond” at Wired
Judging Location: TBD

DIY
Jury Captain: Becky Stern
Founder of Sternlab
Judging Location: Brooklyn, NY, USA

Food Design
Jury Captain: Marc Brétillot
Food Designer
Judging Location: Paris, France

All results will be posted in our 2012 Awards Gallery and Winners, Runners-up and Notable entries will receive recognition in the Core77 blog, as well as a spot in our awards print publication. To see who won last year, check out the 2011 Winners Gallery and also see the range of video testimonials that were submitted.

Register early and we’ll send you the limited-edition 2012 call-for-entries poster/wall calendar. If you enter by our Earlybird deadline of March 13, you’ll also save 20% on your entry fee.

Visit the Core77 2012 Design Awards website to register today.

To stay up to date with the program and developments, join our Facebook page and Twitter. And get cracking with those entries to be part of the most inclusive and celebratory design awards program of the digital age.

Core77 2012 Design Awards
Identity and Poster Design: Studio Lin
Website Design: Studio Mercury
Trophy Design: Rich Brilliant Willing
Awards Video Direction: Virtual Beauty

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Creative Director
Blurb
San Francisco, California

Blurb, a creative publishing and marketing platform, is looking for a Creative Director to serve as an idea generator, a strategic partner for internal clients, a leader and a touchstone to help assure creative excellence at Blurb. The ideal candidate is passionate about the future of digital media and ready to build out a global brand. This is a senior-level role with significant responsibility, creativity, leadership, and business sense required. Working cross-functionally and in partnership with external agencies, the Creative Director is responsible for the vision, quality, and consistency of all creative.

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The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.

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Poster for the mic brand Shure.

via Mike Mc Quade

A map of Chicago designed and illustrated for Herb Lester Associates.

via Mike Mc Quade

Lovely vintage appliances.

via Justin Mezzell

Colors, stylization and textures, it’s all perfect in Matthew’s work.

via Matthew Lyons

Drive less – Bike more. Powerful message lovely illustrated.

via Fixage