Redesign

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SEPTEMBER 2012 POPULARMECHANICS.COM

IGNITION Letters, Complains, Events ...................................................................................................................

TECH WATCH News, Trends, Breakthroughs .............................................................................................................

UPGRADE Gear, Tools, Gadgets .............................................................................................................................

AUTO INTEL Test Drives, Car Tech, Hot Rides ....................................................................................................

COLUMNS

(Man With a Plan) How to master social media .................................

(Don’t Ask Glenn) The perils of paying by phone ........................

(Chase the Dragon Lady) Pontiac GTO vs U-2 plane ..........

FEATURES

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(Big) .........................................................................................................................................................

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(Backyard Genius 2012) .................................................................................

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(The Fifty Percent Solution) ........................................................

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Marvels of 21st-century engineering: a 1776-foot skyscraper, a spaceport, a 1.5-mile floating concrete bridge, and more.

BY DAVIN COBURN

Our annual tribute to the best in DIY creativity - including a Nerf gun Tesla cannon. BY DAVIN COBURN

Can the Delta Wing’s radical design prove that motosort innovation involvesmore than larger engines and lighter chassis? BY STEVEN SMITH

DIY (Home) ....................................................................................................................................................

How to build a prefab mansonry fire pit (easier than you think) and carve half-log benches to go with it - in one day.

Early adopter Our launcher takes the joy of tossing water balloons tow a whole new level.

Don’t be an idiot So, this guy steps on a rake...

(Adventure) ...............................................................................................................................

Five tips to put more fish on the end of your line (Tech) ....................................................................................................................................................

All you need to know about oldering, the stepping stone to DIY electronics.

Digital Clinic A new way to share media: WiFi Direct (Science) ........................................................................................................................................

A video game for future virologists tests flu vaccine.

(Auto) ....................................................................................................................................................

Whre some see wreckage, we see beauty and bargains. How to scour your local junkyard.

Car Clinic Repair a finicky sunroof.

<< This cover is the creation of illustrator Vladimir Shelest. who was inspired by the dramativ perspectives found on iconic PM covers from the ‘30s and ‘40s.

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TECH WATCH

Inventions Rechargeable batteries run the device for up to half an hour

Wall Hugger

By Michael Belfiore The Air Force Research Lab funded a contest to find a device that could enable special operations teams to scale walls without using grappling hooks.

The winners, Utah State University students, created a system with hand pads that stick to the wall through battery-powered suction. “During a demo, climbers were able to scale a 40-foothigh building in about 45 seconds,” says engineering professor Steve Hansen.

Each footrest can support the climber’s weight when the opposite hand pad is moved

THE WINNER THE CHALLENGE Get climbers over a 90-foot sheer concrete face without using grapples or ropes.

The Personnel Vacuum Assisted Climber, which uses suction to adhere 300 pounds to a wall.

NEXT STEP Make the system quieter and lighter than the 45-pound prototype.

Twin electric motors generate 3.5 pounds per squere inch of sucking power

PHOTO BY A ONE PHOTOGRAPHER

NEWS IN BRIEF End of Needles

By Alex Hutchinson Don’t like needles? Take heart: scientists have developed a way to inject drugs directly through skin by blasting them in a narrow, powerful jet of fluid.

Engineers at MIT have created an injector that uses a strong magnetic field to propel fluid through an opening the size of a mosquito’s proboscis. The key advance is that doctors can adjust the electric current that creates the field to produce exactly the force

needed to inject drugs to different depths in different parts of the body.

The researchers are currently investigating a way to use the method with powdered drugs, which are more useful during vaccination drives in developing nations because powders don’t need to be refrigerated.

Smart Asphalt

By A.H. Cracked, rutted roads pocked with potholes are dangerous to drive on and expensive to repair. Civil engineers at Michigan Technological University have a solution:

add a small dose – between 2 and 4 percent by weight – of nanoclay to the asphalt binder.

Initial tests show that the clay helps increase asphalt viscosity by more than 40 percent, making it less likely to deform in hot weather or heavy traffic conditions.

The researchers are also testing other potential asphalt additives such as nanosilica and are experimenting with higher percentages of nanoclay to see if that helps to prevent rutting and cracking.

SEPTEMBER 2012 POPULARMECHANICS.COM

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SEPTEMBER 2012 POPULARMECHANICS.COM

FEATURE

One World Trade Center New boulding is going to be 1776 feet tall, and it is very possible for it to be named as the tallest in the Western Hemisphere

Mississippi River Bridge Project

The Poplar Street Bridge connecting downtown St Louis to south western Illinois has done yeoman work since 1967, acting as a conduit across the Mississippi River for three interstate highways (I-55, I-64 and I-70) – one of only two bridges in the country to carry that many major highways.

Roughly $4 billion 104-storey building will have 71 flors of offices and an observation deck more than 1265 feet off ground

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The mix at 1 WTC is 60% aggregate, 31% and 9% water (plus a heckuva lotta rebar). It’s rated to 14,000 psi.

The new St.Louis I-70 bridge uses a mix that’s 78% aggregate, 16% cement and 6% water.

It’s rated to 6000 psi.

From the top of the house, as construction workers at One World Trade Centre call it, the view on a clear day extends deep into neighbouring Connecticut and New Jersey, and out into the Atlantic Ocean.

It’s just days after the building surpassed the 381 m-high roofline of the Empire State Building, and there is a debate swirling between the lead architect, David Childs, and the Port Authority

of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site, about the design of the antenna mast, which may or may not qualify One World Trade as the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere at 1776 feet when complete.

The ironworkers here are focused on floor 96, installing tempered steel bars as thick as tree limbs to form the tower’s reinforced concrete core, the “building within a building”, according to Port Authority director

g of WTC construction Steve Plate.

“The core walls aren’t sheetrock like the original towers; they’re more than 6 feet of concrete in places.

We’re rewriting the book on security for office towers.”

One hundred floors below, crowds gather near the young oak trees and twin waterfalls of the 9/11 Memorial.

CONTINUED ON P38

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Drivers face 90 minutes of rushhour traffic daily. Now, the Mississippi River Bridge project aims to alleviate the congestion. The crown jewel of the plan, which includes some 38 different construction projects to reroute the I-70 highway, is a unique 2800-footlong cable-stayed bridge upriver of the PSB. The span features two 400-foot-tall A-shaped towers (right) through which 1000 miles of 0.6-inchcable will run to support four lanes.

The driving surface will consist of a steel framework supporting 450 concrete panels. Vompleted in 2014, the 1500-foot-long main span will make it the third-longest bridge in the US.

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Big

James Webb Space Telescope cables

tower

roadway foundation

THE CHEMISTRY OF CONCRETE All concrete is made from the same three ingredients: water, aggregate and portland cement but it’s not all created equal. Every structure requires a custom mix to balance the needs of workability, cost and strength. Getting the recipe right is key.

Thanks to collaboration from more than 17 countries, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will be a formidable successor to the 22-year-old Hubble.

The JWST will be the most powerful space telescope ever built, designed to peer back almost to the Big Bang.

It will allow astronomers to track the evolution of galaxies, observe star formation and measure the chemical make-up of planets beyond the solar system.

Looking back in time presents engineering challenges.

With a 21.3-foot-diameter

primary mirror – nearly three times that of Hubble’s – and a polymerfilm sunshield the size of a tennis court, the $8.8 billion JWST will be packed into an Ariane 5 ECA rocket in 2018 and will unfurl in space en route to its orbit almost 1 million miles from Earth.

“The solar array and high-gain antenna deploy first, then the mirror sections unfold, like leaves on a drop-leaf table,” says Paul Geithner, Webb’s deputy project manager.

“This is as complicated a space deployment as Nasa has ever done.”

Original Cover

Roman Kolgushev Redesigning the Popular Mechanics Magazine Initially there were two reasons for me to redesign the Popular Mechanics magazine. First, I felt that in many cases pages were to much cluttered with content, there were many elements and many colors which distracted, at least me personally, from the content â&#x20AC;&#x201C; both visual and textual.

Though PopMech does great illustrations and infographics, I didn't like the way they got lost in the overall clutter.

Second reason was my interest in technology and science. I thought that redesigning of something that appeals to me personally will be a good idea, since I will take this project more personally.

And I did take it closer than other designs. Before I started redesigning or even making sketches, I decided to perform a research into the magazine's history. In particular I found out that Popular Mechanics was slowly transitioning from one design style and approaches to another. Google Books, hopefully, has almost all magazine issues, published since 1905, which is just three years from the time, the magazine was actually established. So even simply looking through magazine covers helped me see when major design changes occurred and in what way. For example, name of the magazine on the cover stayed the same for decades and slight changes to it began to occur only during the 60s.

You can almost feel how publisher carefully experimented with different layouts, making small steps towards changes. First they changed positioning, then started experimenting with color scheme and finally, got to change the font used for the magazine name.

It took such things as font width years to establish firmly. The way headline was positioned, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s background and even font width was sometimes different from issue to issue, which can be clearly seen in the decade between 1962 to 1972. In 1972, finally, and in an unexpected rather rapid manner, magazine name changed to look almost the way, it looks today.

Another shifts I noticed took place in 1995, when font color changed from orange to red and from red... back to orange in 2001. Since late 90-s and up to 2005 design did not change much, and only through 2005 the way many elements were placed, how and where they were presented, did change.

Now Popular Mechanics experiments with positioning their logo and with overall design quite often. From being very strict they came to being very flexible in the matter of design. Though, I believe, it can easily be explained by the usage of modern technologies, that allow artists and designers to experiment.

I told all this history to explain two main decisions I made for my redesign. First decision was to try to bring back part of the charm the magazine had in mid 20 century and to mix it with modern approaches and design techniques. I believe that more or less I managed to do that on the cover.

Cover is a separate story – here I got lucky! The original artwork for the issue I decided to redesign was made by a Hong Kong based Russian designer and artist Vladimir Shelest. On his personal website he featured the PM cover artwork with another six or so other variants for that cover he sent to Popular Mechanics desk. There was one illustration in particular that I loved from the very moment I saw it, though they all were rather good. This, I thought, was a perfect option for me – I wanted to feature the original artwork, exclusively made for the magazine, but could not use one placed on the cover of the original. I contacted Vladimir and he was kind to provide me with a normal resolution artwork I was interested in.

After I got it, I understood straight away that I need to have the original magazine logo, only slightly changed, and that I will try to make Vladimir's artwork look like hand-drawn covers of the 50s and 60s.

Most of the current look of the cover originated during the design process. I played with different effects and layouts. I chose two main fonts both for the cover and for the overall design – “CPMono” and “Caviar Dreams”, since one looks more old-stylish, and the other one reminds me strongly of fonts, in which computer programming code is often displayed, which gives it a tint of modern-technology-like look.

I do not think that my design is much better, though I think that blurbs are easier to read and to navigate through the cover overall. I think it is different, and at least some decisions I made are worth consideration for the real Popular Mechanics design.

I will be more brief on the contents page. Originally it was placed on two pages, it was very small, suppressed and hidden under heavy colors and large photos. To me personally that was not convenient at all, especially when I realized that it took me a really long time to figure out what sections magazine ran and what stories it featured.

Thus I decided to simplify reader's experience and left whole page for the contents. I made it very plain, simple and straightforward (which is another reference to the retro-like design). I added color circles to show colors for magazine sections, by making them different size I showed how much emphasis in the magazine each section got. Circles – because these are the elements I use on all other pages, which helps me to bring unity to my design.

Department page. I like that it is less complicated and cluttered. Though, I guess, it is too simple as for a technology-driven magazine. But here I am torn apart between my struggle to simplicity and white space and desire to somehow emphasize the hi-tech look and feel of the magazine. So here I will gladly take any suggestions.

Artwork out of type – very challenging. Though I cannot say that I struggled with this spread.

Slowly, I came up with all the ideas – using huge word “big”, which is the name of the section, as a part of the artwork in my design. I think the most important achievement of such a play with letters is that by becoming a part of the art and layout they organically interact with other elements, they come alive and are perceived by an eye and by mind as a unified part of the page.

To be frank I didn't even expect to experience that effect and those emotions when I first made sketches for the spread.

I think the biggest challenge is to make it work, make if help to unify all the information on the page, make it more fun for reader to view. I hope I succeeded. Personally I feel like I did, at least mostly.

To be honest, looking at the spreads Popular Mechanics had in it's original design made me doubt in the idea to redesign this magazine in the first place. I loved the way they made an opening of the “big” section of the features department. It was the case when simplicity, which I love, meant success.

So the best thing I could do is try to turn my thoughts away from the original design as much as possible and concentrate on the font challenge. This helped me not to get overwhelmed by such problems as how can I subsidize artwork for the space telescope story or what do I do with small and smart illustrations at the concrete fact boxes.

I hope it is noticeable, but just in case it isn't: the 1 World Trade Center story is put in columns in such a way, so they would resemble skyscrapers (letter “i” on the right of them ideally supports the effect). The bottom “g” is filled with stars, since the story at it is about a new space telescope.

The bridge story on the left (apart from letter “b” sitting on an actual bridge) illustration is made out of two capital “A” letters and some other geometrical elements.

Personally I like the way my spread looks like. At least personally for me it is deferentially s shift to a better proficiency in design. And though I am not planning on becoming a magazine designer, I am sure the knowledge I acquired in this class will help me a lot. It was fun, that's for sure!