A company called Repurposed Materials bills themselves as "America's largest industrial thrift store.""Anything that is obsolete to its primary industry," they write, "is of interest to us." The company buys up surplus inventory and difficult-to-recycle items, then re-sells them; … | Continue reading
Here's what we looked at this week:The cardboard Humanitaria Bed, by industrial designer Juan Sanz, is stronger than a metal camp bed at a fraction of the cost. It's for disaster relief NGOs.ID student Iris Yao's Space Station Dining Table is a gigantic improvement over the actua … | Continue reading
Most paint sprayers are designed with the reservoir located in front of the handle. This provides an obvious ergonomic problem. Enter industrial design consultancy Bluemap:"Campbell Hausfeld, a leader in hardware and power painting tools manufacturer, wanted to establish a unique … | Continue reading
Here's a good example of re-thinking the design of a small, humble object.Pushpins work well enough, they aren't in need of a design overhaul. But Italian industrial designer Fabio Verdelli brings a little bit of squishy joy to their use with his Jellyfish design: Verdelli is a v … | Continue reading
This design for hospitable street furniture is by Ellen Hallstrom, done while studying at Sweden's Lund School of Industrial Design."Driftwood: A double-sided bench that can be turned into an enclosed shelter overnight.""Many public benches are designed to drive homeless people a … | Continue reading
This Mingle bench is by Shizuka Saito, a Geneva-based interior architect."MINGLE is developed as an extensible element, which adapts to its environment and to different situations. It retains its function as a single stool and can also be transformed into a bench for three people … | Continue reading
"After having trouble welding sheets of aluminum together," writes Danish industrial designer Jonas Trampedach, "I found a riveting technique suitable for making 90 degree connections between separate sheets." This allowed him to create the Rivet Chair: Things get wild around the … | Continue reading
"The best nap duration is 15 to 20 minutes," reckons Japanese startup GiraffeNap. "Anything longer than 30 minutes will cause you to fall into a deep sleep, making it hard to wake up, and will interfere with getting a good night's sleep later."To that end, the company's eponymous … | Continue reading
The Kivik Art Centre in Sweden has a rather unusual café:Image: Bengt Oberger, CC BY 3.0Image: Gerry Johansson Image: Gerry Johansson That's a Venturo House, a prefabricated home designed in 1971 by the pioneering Finnish architect Matti Suuronen. Suuronen intended it to be a mas … | Continue reading
Form follows function, for the most part, with these unusual objects:They're called deck anchor pegs. You stick it between deck boards, give it a quarter turn, and it stays in place thanks to the spring.They're for tying down pool covers, tarps, canopies, et cetera. Clever little … | Continue reading
This unusual Wheeled Brute Container, by Rubbermaid's Commercial division, adds handtruck functionality to the incumbent garbage can form factor.The wheeled garbage bins that populate American driveways offer similar functionality……but Rubbermaid's designers have placed the handl … | Continue reading
This cheeky Light Block Chair is by Danish architect and industrial designer Christian Flindt.The chairs aren't in production, and were made for an exhibition. They're made of an architectural material I'd never heard of before: Something called HIMACS, which manufacturer LX Haus … | Continue reading
In 1955, Functionalist architect Vilhelm Lauritzen was commissioned to design the Folkets Hus (People's House), the headquarters for the Danish Labor Movement in Copenhagen. As with Alvar Aalto's design of the Paimio Sanatorium, the commission was a gesamtkunstwerk (loosely trans … | Continue reading
Back from a Covid hiatus, SVA's MFA in Products of Design program has announced this year's Open House Design Challenge questions. The challenge is for people interested in learning about the program and attending their Open House and Info Session in New York City on November 29t … | Continue reading
This over-the-top-designey pencil sharpener is by London-based brand Beyond Object."Funno is a pencil sharpener machined from a solid block of metal and hand-polished with a mirror finish in various colours.""The new Matte Black version comes with a unique rough matte finish remi … | Continue reading
This portable Ray Lamp is by British industrial designer Daniel Schofield."Inspired by my grandads time working as a miner in the north of England, and taking reference from the lamps they used," Schofield writes. "The name is an abbreviation of his name - Raymond, as well as bei … | Continue reading
"Design should be like buttons on a shirt," said Danish industrial designer and architect Knud Holscher. "With character to catch your attention, but no more so than you can use it without thinking about it."Something that 92-year-old Holscher and his wife Henny regularly use, in … | Continue reading
Danish furniture designer Dan Svarth designed this Wire Chair in 1972. Svarth reportedly bent plumbing pipes to make the prototype, which worked well enough. But "the only problem back then," writes manufacturer A. Petersen, "was that the wire was not stable enough for long-term … | Continue reading
Looks like the deconstructed keyboard trend has spread to other peripherals. This deconstructed Lofree Touch PBT Wireless Mouse lets you swap out the keycaps:As the product name suggests, the keycaps are made of PBT (polybutylene terephthalate), a thermoplastic often used for ele … | Continue reading
These unusual Labrico objects hail from Japan. They slide onto the end of a piece of dimensional lumber, cut slightly shorter than your room, and you then screw an upside-down leveler up until it reaches the ceiling. It then holds the impromptu post in place, while a cap on the b … | Continue reading
This is the Galley Table where astronauts eat meals at the International Space Station:"The Galley Table at the International Space Station: a trade-off between biological and engineering constraints" Zero gravity…and what looks like zero design. Enter Industrial Design student I … | Continue reading
When industrial designers find untapped niches where their expertise is needed, dramatic impacts can be made.For Barcelona-based industrial designer Juan Sanz, the untapped niche was disaster relief beds. Sanz learned that NGOs worldwide primarily use one of two designs: The Camp … | Continue reading
Industrial design consultancy Swerve designed this Qi Alarm Clock for client Atomi."The Qi alarm provides a clean and simple solution to the longstanding and complex interfaces found on less progressive alarm clocks [which have] multiple buttons and sliders controlling the time a … | Continue reading
Here's what we looked at this week:This "Rotating Kitchen" for wheelchair users is by Dutch industrial designer Ruud-Jan Kokke.Synthetic rubber mixed with ferrite powder, extruded into a C-shaped profile, yields easy-change magnetic label holders.ID students looking for a thesis: … | Continue reading
Autonomous driving doesn't yet mean autonomous operation, especially when it comes to delivery. At the same time, AV for delivery is only viable when it's cost-efficient enough to make and operate. In order to achieve that, design effort is needed not only on the end customer exp … | Continue reading
If anyone has an inexhaustible imagination, it's the makers of EDC stuff."Ever needed to take an accurate measurement round a bend? Whether you're in design, carpentry, fashion, architecture, or sewing, the Crichton Coin is a compact and reliable brass measuring tool that allows … | Continue reading
LG reckons customers are turned off by the thought of having to empty their vacuum cleaners. Thus their designers have created a tower-like dock for their CordZero stick vac. When you dock the vacuum, it not only charges, but a secondary vacuum inside the tower empties the stick … | Continue reading
This small LED flashlight by Uco only puts out 100 lumens, but it earns its keep in another way: Flip open the butt end, and there's a dual-arc plasma lighter inside.The flashlight only has one button. It switches from activating the flashlight to the lighter once you flip the bu … | Continue reading
This pendant lamp could be mistaken for a 1970s design classic, but in fact it just came out this year. It's called Lacquer, and it's by Milan-based industrial designer Keiji Takeuchi."The shape of the lampshade owes its presence to Japanese lacquer bowls. I started this project … | Continue reading
Don't you hate it when you see an object, of unknown function, that you instantly want; then you find out what it's for and have no use for it.Any guesses as to what this thing is?So it's a designey incense burner."This solid brass incense burner designed by Sebastian Herkner and … | Continue reading
By now, most physical traces of the pandemic have disappeared from our environment; gone are the ubiquitous Plexiglas shields, the discarded masks littering gutters. But as an Industrial Design student at Germany's Basel Academy of Art and Design, at the height of the lockdown, D … | Continue reading
Tokujin Yoshioka's long-standing interest in visual transparency intersects with his well-known torch for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games in his latest project, a set of glass pieces for the Japan Games Saga 2024.Video from Yoshioka's InstagramThe clear glass torch and cauldron are … | Continue reading
We are terrible, as a society, of predicting the future. As far back as the '80s we knew robot cops were coming, but we thought they'd look like this:However, here's the police robot the NYPD is actually (and literally) rolling out next month:Who would've guessed it would have th … | Continue reading
Content creator Omozoc, who specializes in stop motion animation, was hired by Casio to make a G-Shock 40th Anniversary commemorative video. Omozoc's video depicts the fanciful creation of a unique package design to house a G-Shock:"This is a video made by splicing unprocessed an … | Continue reading
This beggars belief.Adidas' new $500 ADIZERO Adios Pro Evo 1, designed for marathon runners, is billed as the company's "lightest ever innovation-packed racing shoe." Just 521 pairs of the limited-edition kicks will be made. They've gotten the weight down to just 138g (4.9 oz) us … | Continue reading
A company called CountyComm designs and manufactures specialty equipment for government agencies, the aerospace industry and Silicon Valley clients. They then sell their overstock to the general public, and their random library of wares perfectly intersects with the EDC market. I … | Continue reading
This Roterende Keuken, or "rotating kitchen," is by Dutch industrial designer Ruud-Jan Kokke. Designed for the disabled, the idea is that the wheelchair-bound user can access different utilities while remaining in one position."A round swiveling countertop. You press the button a … | Continue reading
This BetaLock carabiner, by outdoor goods company Matador, can be locked with a TSA-compliant key.It weighs just 55g (1.94 oz) and has small deadbolt.Being made of aluminum, it won't stand up to a bolt cutter, but it's lighter than carrying a padlock around and is simply meant to … | Continue reading
These Izo wireless keyboards and number pads have a deconstructed aesthetic. Chunky keycaps sit atop exposed mechanical switches (if you have a shedding keyboard cat, this one's not for you), and manufacturer Azio says the laser-etched keycaps will never fade, no matter how heavy … | Continue reading
This Flügge cookware set is by Simon Morgenstern and Robert Baumgart, done as Industrial Design students at the Germany's Bauhaus University Weimar. While a typical kitchen set-up might require this much storage space…Morgenstern and Baumgart's design takes up less room:"Flügge i … | Continue reading
I'm so used to seeing well-designed and -manufactured objects coming from the Netherlands, that this one kind of shocked me. Maybe I just can't get past the sloppy welds or the eye-watering price (€684, USD $730), but this Waste Trolley for civic workers seems woefully underdesig … | Continue reading
Ahead of yesterday's Japanese Grand Prix, Red Bull staged a friendly competition, part of their (Un)Serious Race Series. Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez, of Red Bull Racing, squared off against Yuki Tsunoda and Liam Lawson, of Scuderia AlphaTauri. (Red Bull owns both teams.) Howe … | Continue reading
Design for logistics: These C-channel magnetic label holders let workers quickly swap labels for rotating stock stored on metal shelving. They're available in a wide variety of sizes, and come with transparent protective plastic inserts that slide over the paper.The material is t … | Continue reading
Here's what we looked at this week:Timothy Wilmots' self-designed Multi-Function Tool Cart is a superior, and earlier, design than Systainer/Festool's MW 1000.This wonderful cow puzzle is a simple, yet complicated toy design. Japanese manufacturer Yamanaka Kumiki Works has been m … | Continue reading
Hosted at Detroit's Newlab, the 21st Middlecott Sketchbattle had 20 designers compete in three 30-minute rounds. This edition's theme was "Flying Muscle Cars." Photo credit: Image: Design CorePhoto credit: Image: Design CorePhoto credit: Image: Design CorePhoto credit: Im … | Continue reading
Detroit is known for both transportation design and techno music. Twice a year, these things collide at the Middlecott Sketchbattle, a party with pumping music held in a cavernous space; but instead of a dance floor, the centerpiece of the room is a long table covered in paper an … | Continue reading
Rattan furniture with a modern look: This Machiya Bench and Stool are by Japanese industrial designer Jin Kuramoto."Rattan is extremely flexible," writes manufacturer Sika-Design, "and when it gets steamed it can be formed by hand, using old traditional manufacturing techniques a … | Continue reading
So speaking of portable screens evolving, a company called Mobile Pixels has designed this crazy thing:That's the Duex Float, a 15.6" touchscreen that attaches to the back of your laptop, then serves as a second monitor. The hinge arrangement, which allows the screen to fold with … | Continue reading