You'll recognize this type of flat-brimmed "campaign" hat from modern-day drill sergeants and State Troopers, or Boy Scout leaders of yore: But you've probably never seen the storage object used to keep that brim perfectly flat:Colloquially called a hat press, it was designed to … | Continue reading
Here's a fun and visually interesting take on the stackable stool. Called Viille, it's by Finnish furniture designer Ari Kanerva. "The stool is stackable and consists of only two parts, it's made of molded wood with a turned solid wood leg."The images above are obviously renderin … | Continue reading
Volkswagen has announced their iconic "magic bus" will be reintroduced to America, albeit with some 21st-century updates.The ID Buzz (it's officially stylized "ID. Buzz" but I'm not putting that stupid period in there) is electric and will be offered in RWD or AWD variants. It al … | Continue reading
Absolut has announced they're rolling out paper-based bottles for their vodka. Tesco, a UK supermarket chain, will sell the 500ml bottles in the Manchester area for a three-month trial this summer. Absolut says the molded bottles are "100% bio-based" and "made from 57% paper with … | Continue reading
Here's what we looked at this week:LEGO maestro Warren Elsmore's "Brick City," an exhibition of international iconic urban architecture rendered in bricks, opens at the National Building Museum this week.Will plastic be premium? After providing the winning design for Milan Design … | Continue reading
Some observant, frustrated designer at Verhaert Digital Innovation, a Belgian software developer, has purposely created the world's worst UI designs. These have been combined and presented as a game, User Inyerface, which asks you to fill out a simple form in the shortest amount … | Continue reading
This object is called an egg skelter, which I'd never heard of before moving to this farm.We have a lot of laying hens and we use the skelter every day.Obviously, when cooking you draw eggs from the bottom. It's a simple way to keep track of eggs by date, ensuring we're not eatin … | Continue reading
This wonderful SYT chair was designed and built by Theda Vollert, as an Industrial Design student at Germany's BURG (a/k/a the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle). Vollert fabricated the chair using steel tube, Danish cord and recycled leather.ID students, tak … | Continue reading
This Baobab Lamp, named for a tree species with a chunky trunk, is by Japanese brand New Craft House.Looking at it closely, it's obvious that the lamp is 3D-printed.However, less obvious is that it's printed in one shot, on a single-filament FDM 3D printer. The two-tone scheme is … | Continue reading
I used to listen to a podcast with a funny segment called "Who the F buys this S" that talked about ridiculous items you can purchase. I thought of that after seeing this:That's Sqoop, a $45 coffee scoop made out of cast iron and walnut. It was designed "to hold 10 grams of coffe … | Continue reading
The intelligent, time-tested design of a hammer provides a long handle both to increase reach and to multiply the user's power through rotational force. The handle also helps to mitigate some of the impact shock.If you remove all of those advantages, then you get the Hammer Fist. … | Continue reading
This is a highly specific use case: This Ellipse insulated "lunch pot" is for those who are bringing a meal with them, and want to keep part of it hot, or cold, alongside ingredients kept at a different temperature, to be eaten together.It's by Dutch brand Mepal, which is somethi … | Continue reading
Where do you put the clothes you've worn that day that aren't dirty enough to go in the hamper, nor clean enough to go back in the drawer? I'm guessing people are content to throw them on a chair or treadmill. Antique clothes valets were designed for this purpose, but their aesth … | Continue reading
Here's a good example of outside-of-the-box design thinking, from British company Pro4UK.Conventional jar openers are designed to increase grip and leverage, forcing reluctant lids open with brute strength.Pro4UK reckons this is the wrong way to solve the problem. "The reason why … | Continue reading
From a design perspective, it's fun to see categories of object where no single form factor has emerged as dominant. An example: Automatic pot stirrers. Although the pioneering Stir Chef was invented way back in the '80s……there's apparently still no consensus by competing manufac … | Continue reading
Belgium-based Designregio Kortrijk is an organization that promotes design and innovation. Their goal is to harness design—industrial design, interior, fashion, graphic—to create economic and social value within the Kortrijk region. To do that, they serve as a connector and stimu … | Continue reading
In space-tight Japan, the dead are cremated. But while urns take up less space than a coffin, even urn-sized graveyard plots are expensive, and a tombstone will set you back about ¥1 million (USD $7K-plus). Thus a company called Balloon Kobo invented a convenient, low-cost and po … | Continue reading
As Volvo can attest, Sweden is known for safety-promoting design. Something else the country is known for, but less discussed, is darkness; being that far north, some regions barely get a few hours of daylight during winter. Hence the existence of Bookman Urban Visibility."Bookma … | Continue reading
LEGO lovers, particularly you parents whose kids will shortly be out of school: This week the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. launches Brick City, an exhibition of international streetscape creations by LEGO maestro Warren Elsmore."The National Building Museum's miss … | Continue reading
Glass is premium, plastic isn't. Yet it appears that in future upscale beverages like sparkling wine and perhaps champagne will come in plastic bottles.Having won Milan Design Week's 2023 Best Packaging contest, SIPA Packaging's design for a PET sparkling wine bottle will reporte … | Continue reading
Here's what we looked at this week:Hand Tool Rescue uncovered a 110-year-old patent for a fractal chair. To find out if it was comfortable, he actually built one, sat in it, and assessed the design. Artist/quantum physicist Julian Voss-Andreae's stunning sheet metal sculptures e … | Continue reading
In 1940, Italian architect Franco Albini designed and built this Veliero bookcase. It wasn't intended for production; Albini made it as a one-off for his home in Milan. "Veliero" is Italian for "sailing," if you're wondering where the inspiration for the rigging came from.The cle … | Continue reading
These beautiful, minimalist glass storage jars are by Danish industrial designer Søren Refsgaard.Called Store-It jars, they feature a subtle nod to the past: "They all have a terracotta-coloured silicone ring, as an homage to traditional preserving jars."These are in production b … | Continue reading
Sightful's Spacetop is a laptop with no screen, instead offering a massive virtual display via glasses.Samsung Display, however, which is obviously in the business of making screens, is sticking to their physical display guns and developing technological innovations to make them … | Continue reading
Dyson is a wildly successful company that, in my opinion, does not "get" design. By the company's own definition of design, they'd say otherwise: Their products have a strong visual identity, feature cutting-edge technological innovations, offer high performance and have an aesth … | Continue reading
Festool's TSV 60 K is a circular saw designed with a second blade. Ahead of the main blade is a small diamond scoring blade, ensuring tearout-free cuts.Additionally, the tool is equipped with a KickbackStop feature: Should the blade start to back out of the cut and raise the plat … | Continue reading
When looking through ID student work I rarely see structural package designs, but today's the day. Anders Flem, an Industrial Design student at the University of Cincinnati, designed this eye-catching Air Scents perfume bottle. The assignment was not only to create a unique bottl … | Continue reading
Gravity Sketch is the 3D tool that helps design teams turn great ideas into great products. Intuitive creation in VR lets designers go beyond the bounds of 2D sketching to explore ideas at 1:1 scale in a virtual studio. Others can join from headsets or their screen to collaborate … | Continue reading
This unusual Exxo chair, and the screws used to hold it together, are made from stainless steel.It's by Swedish furniture designer David Ericsson. It makes me think of SUNRIU Design Studio's Tai series of furniture, not because of any stylistic similarity, but because I think the … | Continue reading
As humanoid general-purpose robots are now all the rage, Reuters reports that a new startup, Figure, has also gotten into the game with $70 million in funding.FigureEarlier we asked who's got the better-looking humanoid robot, Tesla or Sanctuary:Tesla Optimus, left. Sanctuary AI … | Continue reading
I despise inconvenient packaging, and always wish the CEO who stands to profit the most from it, would be locked in a room and forced to open his company's own packaging for several hours a day. That being said, I'm a little torn on the news below because I don't think making jun … | Continue reading
You could be forgiven for thinking this BMW Design rendering is of a powerboat interior.But no, it's the inside of this wild child: That's their recently-unveiled Concept Touring Coupé, a two-seater shooting brake. For the translation into sheet metal, they puffed up the proporti … | Continue reading
Most bike pedals are textured to grip the underside of shoes. That makes it unpleasant when a pedal accidentally slams into your shins. Physicist and inventor Bill Lee, who has been commuting by bike for over 30 years, grew tired of having banged-up shins; in his thinking, there' … | Continue reading
Wearing a regular bicycle helmet on an electric bike is sort of like wearing an antique leather helmet in the NFL; the game has changed.Helmet design is catching up, at least in Europe. Prompted by the increased speeds that electric bikes can hit, the safety-minded Dutch introduc … | Continue reading
How fun would it be, if you did some quick CAD drawings just to figure out proportions, and then your boss says "Okay stop modeling, we need to go to production now!" That's kind of what the Munro MK1, an electric truck from Scotland, makes me think of. EV designers often put an … | Continue reading
When a custom vehicle manufacturer is called "Apocalypse," and this is their logo……you instantly understand who they're designing their 4x4 Super Truck for.The necessary leap of faith is that in an end-of-the-world scenario, you'll somehow have steady access to enough refined gas … | Continue reading
A Core77 reader-submitted case study —A Cold January Day in 2017: The team at DesignThink was asked to visit Dorel Juvenile Group USA to review a "Special Project". The development team at Dorel JG wasted no time introducing us to their latest infant car seat (ICS) project. They … | Continue reading
To boost residential recycling rates, Paris had to re-think their collection system. For years Parisian apartment buildings were stocked with their own yellow recycling bins—if there was space. But even buildings that could stuff a bin in the lobby often overflowed before they co … | Continue reading
A Core77 reader-submitted project – Black women have a maternal mortality rate of 37.3 deaths per 100,000 live births compared to 14.9 for white women and 11.8 for hispanic women. Spora Health is a radically inclusive primary care provider tackling this issue with their Momma's K … | Continue reading
A Core77 reader-submitted project — Yamaha introduces The Gripper, a unique hand grip concept with five separate parts for each finger, similar to saxophone keys, enhancing grip strength and finger control, offering a new user experience. View the full project here | Continue reading
A Core77 reader-submitted project – Work, Screen, Relax: The innovative concept of the LUNA Lounger combines functions that are usually difficult to combine; at the same time it creates new possibilities for working and relaxing.sit and workCredit: LinakstorageCredit: Linakmagnet … | Continue reading
This Post series of lamps was designed by Earnest Studio, a/k/a Rachel Griffin, an American expat designer based in Rotterdam."A series of lamps based on a single, independent, LED light source, which can be attached (alone or in multiples) to one of four cylindrical steel armatu … | Continue reading
With the exception of Pokemon GO, Augmented Reality has always seemed like an "in the near future" kinda thing. But a startup called Sightful is "committed to moving AR beyond the hype and to create solutions that are immediately valuable and intuitive." To that end, they've insi … | Continue reading
Julian Voss-Andreae is a sculptor and quantum physicist (!) based in Portland, Oregon. His incredible sheet metal sculptures exploit the material in a visually clever way that recalls lenticular images:"Gungunhana""Rancho LB""Annabelle" Still images don't convey the effect as pow … | Continue reading
One incredible thing about the internet is there are people who can satisfy your curiosity for you. Canadian content creator Hand Tool Rescue is the guy who restored this antique fractal vise a few years ago:He subsequently discovered this 110-year-old patent for a chair with a f … | Continue reading
Here's what we looked at this week:This colorway for the Nike Air Huarache Premium had to be inspired by this Egyptian Goose, no?The world's 199 countries have agreed on standardized passport designs, with just four colors available. Here's the informal significance of the passpo … | Continue reading
Here's a chair design with a curious detail. And these forms may mean nothing to Americans, but ought draw nostalgia for Europeans: The Col Chair, by Barcelona-based industrial designer Francesc Rifé, is a reinterpretation of the school chairs he grew up with in the '80s and '90s … | Continue reading
This week Tesla unveiled this new footage of their Optimus, "a general purpose, bi-pedal, autonomous humanoid robot capable of performing unsafe, repetitive or boring tasks." Startlingly, at the Tesla shareholders meeting Elon Musk stated that "the majority of Tesla's long-term v … | Continue reading