In 1816, German inventor Karl Drais developed this Laufmaschine, or "running machine."A simple wooden frame supported two in-line wheels. The front wheel could be steered, albeit awkwardly. The rider's crotch was protected from the frame by a padded strip. In front of the rider, … | Continue reading
Farrell Calabrese leads the 2024 jury for The Core77 Design Awards in the Sustainability category. This category features any designed product, service, or system tackling issues around sustainability in a thoughtful, research-backed manner through strategies ranging from materia … | Continue reading
As we've seen before, the Japanese are obsessive about their toast. Which explains the existence of this product: The TO-ST1-T, Mitsubishi Electric's pricey single-slice toaster reportedly manufactured with the build quality of a high-end audio device. The design is insulated and … | Continue reading
The Escalator Slide is an amusing piece of public art by Lithuanian artist/designer Julijonas Urbonas. Image: Simonas Linkevicius Image: Simonas Linkevicius Image: Simonas Linkevicius Image: Simonas Linkevicius "Corporate austerity meets playground pleasures. The business-suit-fr … | Continue reading
Here's what we looked at this week:Remedial design: A quick DIY fix for slippery glass bottles and vessels.The Super Bowl is to have unspecified anti-drone countermeasures in place. (Probably not these.)Hell in a handbasket: Burgers where the cheese comes in syringes.Digital crea … | Continue reading
Industrial design doesn't always mean corporate clients. Every once in a while, an ID firm fields gigs from individuals. As product design & development consultancy The Metcalfe Group writes:A serial entrepreneur came to us with the desire to create an innovative new recreational … | Continue reading
This Bended Table and Bended Stool are by Dutch furniture designer Jair Straschnow. Both are made from 2mm steel sheets that are both galvanized and powder-coated for outdoor use."Bending the steel plates at a 45-degree angle creates a clever and strong construction where all con … | Continue reading
This 19th- or early-20th-century multitool, posted on the Tools subReddit, is by British cutler Underwood.Image: special_evan Underwood, a London-based family concern, was in business from 1820 to 1925. While that postdates the Industrial Revolution, this object appears to have b … | Continue reading
Ten years ago, Belgian businessman Koen Meukens was renovating an old mansion in Antwerp. This required a lot of sanding, and Meukens found that while conventional sanders could tackle flat surfaces easily, corners and curved parts of handrails gave him particular trouble. He sta … | Continue reading
DTER, short for "design & territory," is a French company that mates industrial waste with designers. They learn what materials manufacturers get rid of, then commission designers to turn that waste into something useful.One of DTER's pairings yielded this SAI 39 bench, by French … | Continue reading
An Australian company called Cool Tech Zone is crowdfunding the Tangara, a portable music player with more than a passing resemblance to the original iPod. Unlike Apple's device, the Tangara is designed to be easy to fix: It's "100% open hardware running open-source software, wh … | Continue reading
Laëtitia Dupé is the French industrial designer who co-founded tiny house company Baluchon; we last looked at her outside-the-box design thinking here, where she made the decision to place the front door in the bathroom. Her new Hellebore model, custom designed for a couple in Fr … | Continue reading
Engineer Omid Sadeghpour has designed and built an on-vehicle charging system for his Tesla Model Y. Now, whenever he parks it in a sunny lot, he can deploy the panels; and rather than merely baking the interior of the car, he's generating juice. "I can reliably get 20 miles to 6 … | Continue reading
These fun Pop taps, by Italy's Zazzeri brand, were designed by architect and Bauhaus fan Fabrizio Batoni."The project springs from a desire to create a tap that returns to the clean, simple, archetypical shapes of early design: POP is a meeting of a straight line and a curve. Tra … | Continue reading
A good example of making something more useful by removing material: This beautiful Freely door handle is by Milan-based industrial designer Giulio Iacchetti."Freely is a handle but also the idea of a new gesture. Freely frees us from the burden of having clumsy hands and not kno … | Continue reading
Martini & Dall'Agnol is an industrial design studio based in Milan. They designed this Stack chair to ship in two pieces, the legs and the seat. Being made of polypropylene, the user just snaps the two parts together via the molded-in connections; there are no fasteners. "Easy to … | Continue reading
These designey 1938 faucets and handles are by Italian faucet manufacturer Mamoli. The inspiration for them came from the company's own back catalog:"Sometimes the best ideas come from looking backwards," the company writes. "It was while leafing through an old company catalog th … | Continue reading
The Vilcek Foundation was established in 2000, with the purpose of celebrating immigrant contributions to the arts and sciences in the United States. In 2024, the foundation awards the Vilcek Foundation Prizes in Design to foreign-born designers living and working in the United S … | Continue reading
At 50 I discovered my true passion, industrial design. I have no formal training, no experience, don’t know CAD or any of the design software required to be a professional but I am absolutely smitten with the hard goods design process, and outcomes of it. I’ve been a digital prod … | Continue reading
Here's an overhead shot, taken by police helicopter, of a car lot where a criminal suspect has fled. No person is visible.The chopper's camera is infrared-equipped and switches to thermal. Still no suspect in sight, though we can see a dog. Incredibly, within seconds the camera o … | Continue reading
Earlier we looked at the OBH (On Board Helmet), a lockable bike system designed by an engineer. It required a rather bulky mount.In contrast, industrial designer Masaru Kiyota has produced a smarter design. This Oshel bike helmet concept, done in collaboration with fellow industr … | Continue reading
This Pull Drill project, done by Stephanie Lewis while studying Industrial Design at Georgia Tech, demonstrates both outside-of-the-box thinking and the importance of conducting thorough research. Oftentimes, as Lewis learned, interviews with subjects may not yield any valuable i … | Continue reading
"Digital creative" Kyle Branchesi, a former MIT researcher who plays with both photography and AI in his spare time, created this stark series of images of the UK:"Amidst a political landscape where the 'war on motorists' is wielded as a populist tool, this series captures a futu … | Continue reading
Lindsey Maxwell is the Jury Captain for the 2024 Core77 Design Awards Transportation category. This category features vehicles, systems, or modes of transportation used to get people or objects from one place to another, for private, public, commercial, or industrial purposes. Li … | Continue reading
This has apparently been a thing for years, but has recently kicked up a social media storm. SeaWorld has been selling burgers that come with a plastic syringe filled with cheese.Yes, everyone has made the point that a theme park relying on aquatic life might be more sensitive to … | Continue reading
Couple years ago we showed you the sniper's nests that police set up at each year's Super Bowl.Well, the game has changed a bit. At this Sunday's contest at Allegiant Stadium, sniper's nests will undoubtedly be set up, but there's an additional potential threat that is also being … | Continue reading
I get my olive oil from Walmart. Their Great Value brand is affordable but the packaging sucks: The bottle is plastic, and the non-removable spout dumps product uncontrollably.Preferring to use glass and wanting better control, I'd decanted the olive oil into a whiskey bottle and … | Continue reading
Speaking of ancient battle helmets, Christie's recently auctioned this one off for $1.2 million. That's a Roman helmet made of iron, brass and copper, fabricated sometime around 125 to 175 A.D.Fantastic condition aside, the helmet is missing two important parts: The cheek-guards … | Continue reading
This helmet was designed in 1915 by Latvian inventor and British citizen John Leopold Brodie:Image: National Army Museum Made of steel, it was designed for mass production; the Brodie helmet, as it came to be called, was cut from a sheet in one piece, then pressed into shape. It … | Continue reading
When startup Purcell set out to create a new, packaging-reducing dispensing system for grocery stores, they turned to design and engineering consultancy 219 Design.Purcell is bringing disruptive innovation to the grocery aisle. 219 Design and Purcell have teamed up to design a su … | Continue reading
Here's what we looked at this week:Human factors design considerations for laundry baskets. Seoul's hubless ferris wheel gets a dual-ring redesign. There's a bunch of surprisingly innovative design features in this 1963 GE refrigerator.Looped, by industrial designer Lieyah Da … | Continue reading
Staalmeester is a fourth-generation Dutch family business that makes specialty paintbrushes. Their offerings are unusual, to say the least. This Round Brush 6121 was designed to paint narrow items like window frames, edges and profiles. The round bristle arrangement holds more p … | Continue reading
Prior to the invention of the washing machine, rural residents of Eastern Europe developed a way to wash bulky wool items like blankets, rugs and carpets. Water would be diverted from a nearby source into a roughly-made conical tub that was intentionally not made watertight. Imag … | Continue reading
During my backpacking days, like many others I carried a bungie cord to use as a mini clothesline. It worked okay, and lacking a certain amount of imagination, I couldn't have envisioned an improvement.Little did I know a superior travel clothesline had been designed decades ago. … | Continue reading
On the one hand this looks incredible, on the other, the set-up seems like a hassle. This Ditto system projects sewing patterns directly onto your fabric, saving you the steps of having to cut, pin and trace paper patterns.As for the hassle part, you've got to set the projector u … | Continue reading
The able-bodied among us take putting our shoes on for granted. But for those with mobility issues, the act would be difficult to impossible without the use of a shoehorn.The design of shoehorns hasn't changed since they were invented. And as you can see from the images, it's all … | Continue reading
The BullseyeBore, that laser gizmo we told you about last week, which helps you drill holes straight, has gone live on Kickstarter. Within a couple days it blew past its $20,000 target, reaching $170,000-plus at press time with 28 days left to pledge. Now that the campaign's live … | Continue reading
Pininfarina has designed this eTH (Electric Transformer House), a mobile home that expands on three sides. The vehicle is to be produced by AC Future, a startup that calls themselves "a leading innovator in developing futuristic living solutions." The magic trick of this vehicle— … | Continue reading
Honda is launching a new "O (zero) Series" of electric vehicles in 2026. Their Saloon concept car, revealed at this month's CES, is meant to indicate the new series' design direction: "We have gone back to basics and formulated the Honda 0 Series with a design for the new era," s … | Continue reading
This is the strangest invention story I've ever heard.In May 1930, a young couple from Carmel, California vanished during their honeymoon. William H. Albee, a 23-year-old geologist and his 20-year-old bride Ruth, had decided to hike from Vancouver, Canada, to Fairbanks, Alaska on … | Continue reading
Now more than ever the combination of material innovations, advances in hardware, and AI are allowing designers to bring ideas to life in surprising ways and in unexpected places. The cost of advanced computing power continues to decline, allowing designers and engineers to deplo … | Continue reading
This Knot chair is by French industrial design consultancy Studio Désormeaux/Carrette (a/k/a designers Nathanaël Désormeaux and Damien Carrette)."The skeleton of the chair is made up of two curved aluminum tubes that support each other. Nested one inside the other, the hangers be … | Continue reading
Surge EV, a startup from India, has designed a unique transforming EV for the Indian market. Called the S32, in its combined form it resembles the auto rickshaws common in that part of the world:However, the fascia can be popped open, and the driver can then remove the thing they … | Continue reading
For lovers of classic Braun designs, Phaidon has published Braun: Designed to Keep, which they say is the company's "most definitive monograph to date." "Since 1921, Braun has been shaping the way we live through timeless designs that are simple, useful, beautiful, and designed t … | Continue reading
"Looped is a line of furniture that explores the playful possibilities of pool noodles," writes industrial designer Lieyah Dagan. She collaborated with furniture designer Spenser Atlas on the project."Both children and adults embrace the pool noodle as a tool with endless indoor- … | Continue reading
Who knew refrigerators were so fancy in the 1960s? This is a General Electric 'fridge, reportedly from 1963. It's got metal shelves that pivot outwards for access……that are easily height-adjustable……and apparently plenty strong:Additionally, there's a deep Lazy Susan on the botto … | Continue reading
A laundry basket should be something you buy once. It should be durable, easy to use and inoffensive to look at. Here's mine, a family hand-me-down from the 1980s made by Rubbermaid. It has stood the test of time and survived two teething puppies. But while physically intact, it … | Continue reading
Last year the Seoul Metropolitan Government announced their plans to build the Seoul Ring, a hubless ferris wheel. It was supposed to look like this:It's now received a rather strange design update, and been re-christened the Seoul Twin Eye, which will stand 220m (722') tall: As … | Continue reading