Lacking a bench vise, this craftsman built this simple jig for holding panels on edge. Here's a closer look at it:Something similar exists commercially. This Big Horn adjustable door holder is used by carpenters to support unmounted doors while they cut the mortises for hinges, … | Continue reading
This NXTABL Coffee Table, made by a faceless company in Hong Kong, is actually a 43" touchscreen monitor that runs Android. It tilts up on a hinge for a more natural viewing angle.The pitch video is pretty bad, but if you're curious:It does seem it would be convenient for storing … | Continue reading
Remember Toppan's magic translating window developed for Japanese train stations?South Korea's ITRI (Industrial Technology Research Institute) has developed something similar with their AR Interactive Vehicle Display, initially aimed at tour bus operators:"The AR Interactive Vehi … | Continue reading
In 2022, startup Shift Robotics successfully Kickstarted Moonwalkers, a sort of moving walkway that you wear on your feet.Over a year later, the company has designed a more robust model for the commercial sector. Aimed at warehouse workers, Moonwalkers X 'increase warehouse produ … | Continue reading
"I don't know exactly when the earliest wooden lathes were invented," writes Joel Moskowitz, de facto woodworking historian and founder of Tools for Working Wood. "I do know there are turned things from ancient Egypt, and earlier.""The most primitive form of lathe, a bow lathe, i … | Continue reading
"In the heart of Amsterdam's financial district, [bank] ABN Amro has constructed a new building," writes Studio RAP, the architectural design firm hired to fit out the space. "The addition to their existing headquarters is called the Circular Pavilion.""The circular construction … | Continue reading
LG's CineBeam Qube is a starkly modernist projector due to debut at next week's CES.The photos do a poor job of conveying scale. It's one of the smallest on the market, the company says, measuring just 135mm (5.3") tall and deep, and 80mm (3.1") wide.Despite its tiny size, it can … | Continue reading
This is an almost hauntingly beautiful piece of audiophile equipment that plays to its parent company's strengths. The DukeBox, by LG Labs, is a vacuum tube amplifier and speaker, with the tubes visible behind glass. The glass, however, is actually a transparent OLED screen.The s … | Continue reading
Remedial design object: Clicks is an iPhone case featuring a physical keyboard.Created by London-based Clicks Technology, it offers 36 keys that not only make it easier to type, but also free up screen space that would otherwise be taken up by the virtual keyboard. Furthermore, t … | Continue reading
Here's what we looked at this week:Designs of quick-release tool mounts for firefighters, by Performance Advantage Company. Slide-out and swing-out tool boards make for a space-efficient tool storage system for firefighters.Chinese company Smilelife makes these Magnetic Holdi … | Continue reading
City dwellers never have enough storage space, and cookware manufacturer All Clad wanted a line that would address this. They turned to NYC-based industrial design consultancy Curve ID. As Curve explains:"All Clad's 'Essentials' product range targets cooking lovers with limited s … | Continue reading
This is an impressive project, and a testament to how accessible the prototyping process has become to laypeople. Despite having no background in industrial design nor CAD proficiency, this Canadian YouTuber managed to design and build a working prototype of a flying umbrella tha … | Continue reading
Well, this is a damning indictment of our society. In a relatively short stretch of time, we've gone from wearing cameras to record cool action-sports stunts, to wearing cameras for security purposes. The PhoneCam, by Dutch product design and development company SlimDesign, is bi … | Continue reading
Today we're happy to announce the kickoff for our 13th year celebrating design excellence! The 2024 Core77 Design Awards are officially open for entry.Each year the Core77 Design Awards celebrates the richness of the design profession and its practitioners. We present 23 distinct … | Continue reading
This attractive jewelry storage container has a high "I want to touch it" factor. It was designed in the 1970s by Italian ceramic designer Robert Grigato, and produced by manufacturer Ceramica Rovigo.I'm unable to find any information on Grigato, but he also designed this whimsic … | Continue reading
After more than a quarter century of collaborating, Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec have ended their creative partnership. The brothers recently moved out of their shared Parisian studio, each opting to set up shop individually.Image: Alexandre Tabaste As for why they're splitting up, … | Continue reading
This Stargazer watch is by some faceless company called Benleydesign. The form is unlike any we've ever seen; if you told me it was designed for metalworkers and meant to protect the face, while the case was meant to get banged up, I'd believe it.The company says the zinc alloy c … | Continue reading
Objects favored by the EDC crowd tend to be monomaterial. But this Adapt iPhone 14 Pro Max case incorporates both aluminum and Ultem, the high-strength plastic we last saw in CountyComm's products.Designed and manufactured by EDC purveyor Dango Products, the Adapt's CNC-milled al … | Continue reading
The Design Intelligence Award Committee announced the winners of the 2023 DIA competition December 15th in China. Hosted by the China Academy of Art and the Economy and Information Technology Department of Zhejiang in collaboration with the Co-organizers, the China Industrial Des … | Continue reading
Years ago I had the pleasure of interviewing furniture designer/builder Jory Brigham. I got to see one of his pieces in person, a buffet. Brigham revealed that for the cabinet doors, instead of using off-the-shelf hinges he'd come up with a system of using ball bearings, one up t … | Continue reading
A Florida woman has filed a lawsuit against candy giant Hershey's, alleging that the package designs are misleading. One of the offending packages is this Halloween-themed one, for Reese's Peanut Butter Pumpkins:Turns out the actual candy is missing the facial features:According … | Continue reading
The TC2, an EV roadster, looks like a toy version of the classic Porsche 356. Manufactured in batches by Dutch startup Carice, the bare-bones car weighs just 590kg (1,300 lbs) and is meant to appeal to the driving purist."If you just take away unnecessary things for long enough, … | Continue reading
Flyboards use water pressure to hoist riders aloft in a controlled way.Image: Natashabelarus, CC BY-SA 4.0 Beyond recreation, what else could this principle be useful for? Reasoning that fire hoses already have tremendous amounts of water pressure on tap, researchers at Japan's A … | Continue reading
If you've ever wondered what the inside of a heated steering wheel looks like:That was shot by Redditor MrFastFox666, and the car is his 2014 Cadillac ELR, a plug-in hybrid sedan. First off, I had no idea that the heating elements got up to 38.5° C / 101° F. Secondly, I do wonder … | Continue reading
These are funny, but at the same time, strike me as something you'd make your children wear as punishment. Chinese company Smilelife makes these Magnetic Holding Hands Socks.Between the eyeballs and the magnets in the "hands," yeah, you cannot put these in the washing machine; th … | Continue reading
Fire engines are built with a lot of storage space, which individual departments fit out to their needs. To maximize space efficiency and ease-of-access, Performance Advantage Company, an upstate-New-York-based manufacturer of tool mounting solutions, offers slide-out and swing-o … | Continue reading
Tool designers focus on the performance and ergonomics of the tool. They rarely consider where the tool "lives" when it's not in use. Thus an entire sub-economy of tool holder manufacturers exist, providing the brackets, straps, holsters and specialty hooks where users dock their … | Continue reading
Our future will be populated by objects and solutions designed by the current generation of Industrial Design students. We're happy to report that a number of them are killing it. Here are the best ID student projects we spotted this year.The Kai entryway bench by Damian Byland, … | Continue reading
Traditionally speaking, industrial designers need industrial clients. But the skillset conferred by ID experience overlaps well with what design entrepreneurs need to do their own thing. Here are some examples of the industrial design entrepreneurs and pioneers we spotted in 2023 … | Continue reading
Between robots and AI, everyone's trying to predict the future these days. But looking backwards in time provides us with a wealth of useful, practical information. How did our forebears solve problems with little or minimal technology? What did mass-produced physical forms look … | Continue reading
Our product landscape is cluttered with millions of existing objects whose forms we take for granted. A subset of designers and inventors have the ability to see how they can be upgraded, improved or outright replaced. Here are some examples we spotted this year.Lots of folks car … | Continue reading
Sometimes designers need to go beyond reimagining existing objects, and invent an entirely new way of doing things. Here are some of the most outside-the-box design solutions we came across this year.Design engineer Monty Ravenscroft invented the Hidealoo, an incredible space-sav … | Continue reading
Industrial design operates around limitations, and that's part of what makes design so engaging. But occasionally we see designers, inventors and/or corporations unfettered by budget or restraint. Here are the most extreme pieces of design we've witnessed this year.Porsche Design … | Continue reading
It's always been a rich-nations problem—having so much crap that you need to buy more crap to keep the initial crap organized. That's the world we live in, and it's what our economy is based on. Here's what designers have done within that system in 2023.Italian company Foppapedre … | Continue reading
Harnessing light in a reliable, functional and attractive way was one of humankind's major 20th-century achievements. Here in the 21st century, designers continue to push the second and third categories. Here's the best of what we saw this year.Atelier de Troupe's Kyoto series co … | Continue reading
Our early Industrial Design training of course involved tools, keeping it a top category on this blog. Here's the best of what we saw in the tool world in 2023.This cardboard box resizing tool, by Japanese manufacturer Nissin Boeki, is cleverly designed. These deck anchor pegs pr … | Continue reading
The Core77 Design Awards has always integrated student and professional entries in each category, with the idea that student work should not be marginalized into a single collection, but rather viewed alongside the professional work in any particular category. At this point, with … | Continue reading
Everyone's gotta eat, and with more of us cooking at home these days, the kitchen sector remains a crowded product design landscape. Here are some of the standout objects we saw this year.Egg skelters are a good example of FIFO (First-In, First-Out) design, employed by both the r … | Continue reading
This year the post-pandemic auto industry, as well as a rash of start-ups, hit us with this slew of new vehicle concepts and features.Audi's Activesphere is a luxury sports car concept with a hidden pickup truck bed. Lancia's stunning Pu+Ra HPE concept car blends '70s, '80s and ' … | Continue reading
If successfully crowdfunded product campaigns are a measure of our collective taste, well, we're clearly all over the place. Here's a sampling of the good, bad, and/or weird stuff that was Kickstarted and IndieGogo'ed in 2023.This Light-Up Chess Set, whose pieces use wireless ind … | Continue reading
This year we've seen plenty of new, standout furniture designs (and occasionally some strange ones) pushing the industry forward. But we also find it edifying to look at how furniture problems were solved in the past. Here are the best vintage and antique furniture designs we cov … | Continue reading
Over at SVA's MFA in Products of Design, department chair (and Core77 partner) Allan Chochinov breaks down the contemporary meanings of the job title "Product Designer"—tracing its roots from physical product design to digital product design to a kind of integrative product desig … | Continue reading
These are the oddball pieces we spotted this year, some of them strange or unusual enough that they needed their own category, apart from this year's standout designs.This Grasp outdoor chair, designed by Yuka Sugihara, incorporates a beanbag for both structure and seat. SUNRIU D … | Continue reading
2023 has been a great year for furniture design. Here are some of the standouts:Furniture designer Line Depping's Maple Stool has an innovative tilting mechanism. SUNRIU Design Studio's elegant Tai series of furniture is designed to be made from sheet metal scraps.The Arch, by Fr … | Continue reading
As many readers may know, we're big fans of bikes and bike culture here at Core77, so we do what we can to celebrate bike projects and bike builders. Below are some of our favorite projects from the past year, for all you like-minded riders. Whether you're hauling cargo or trying … | Continue reading
Core77 reader and industrial designer Pascal Grangier sends in this conceptual product whose design finds inspiration in the principals of mindfulness. Grangier writes: "The Headspace Companion is a unique design concept for a meditation device that aims to guide users into a med … | Continue reading
Here's what we looked at this week:This modular Consolidated Number Stamp, by Japanese stationery company Shachihata, is for journalers who want to make their own little calendars.The Defender 250, by Dolas Bike, is an e-bike with three wheels in-line.A look at the design feature … | Continue reading
When I was a kid, I saw a creative neighbor give his sons a low-cost toy. He used a can opener to cut the bottom off of an empty tin can, and they threw it to each other like a football. If you threw it in a spiral, it would soar through the air for an impressive distance. I don' … | Continue reading