Weekend Watch: Design and Making with Guido Vrola

This week I had the pleasure of watching the YouTube channel of Guido Vrola. Guido is an Italian industrial designer and maker who confidently covers both of these domains in his videos.

In the 20 videos that he’s produced over the past two years, Guido has covered design and sketching basics, prototype-making, woodworking projects, shop machine restoration, and knife and tool making. He doesn’t really see what he does as teaching-tutorials so much as showing his process, his work, in hopes of inspiring fellow makers and designers.

Guido describing what he does:

I am an industrial designer, a maker, an illustrator, and a photographer. I like to make prototypes, unique pieces, equipment. and other stuff. I make almost everything with my hands. I will never be a master at what I do, because I do too many different things to be really good at any one of them., but I hope, anyway, to inspire others with my videos…

Here are a few of his videos to give you an idea of what he’s covered so far:

Guido writes: “In this video, I try to explain, in simple words, the Golden Ratio, but above all, I try to show, with some examples, how common it is in nature, and why it is so important to use it in industrial design and visual composition.”

In probably the most impressive project on his channel (and the most popular), Guido builds a very clever little 2-in-1 router table and drill press table. He makes smart use of a 3D printer to fabricate the knobs and guides for the table.

In this video, Guido restores a glorious Olivetti T6 sensitive drill press from the 1950s. Unfortunately, he didn’t document the actual restoration process, but rather some before, during, and after footage.

While at his home in the country, Guido gets an itch to make and decides to create a pair of Kiridashi (traditional Japanese carving knives) using the tools and materials he has on hand, including some K720 tool steel and a homemade coffee can forge.