The Illinois-based office supplies manufacturer Metal Specialties Manufacturing Company first released a line of “Presto” products in 1939. Originally the line only included pocket and desk-sized staplers, but the firm would eventually create a wider range of products such as this electric eraser. This relatively simple and nondescript device allowed the user to store the...

Over the next two weeks on the Cooper-Hewitt Design Blog, students from an interdisciplinary graduate-level course on the Triennial taught by the Triennial curatorial team blog their impressions and inspirations of the current exhibition,‘Why Design Now?’.     Sometimes the most modest designs become the architype. The Anglepoise lamp, designed by George Carwardine in 1932,...

The magazine Make, featured in Design Life Now, bills itself as a “mook,” a hybrid between a book and a magazine. The smallish paperback size recalls Popular Mechanics from the 1950s. The publishers of Make are using the same format concept for their new magazine Craft:. Why the book format? Nostalgia aside, these bookish little...