It's a nice idea: "Everything we create and release into the world should be Designed to Disappear™," writes materials technology company Loliware. "Waste truly is a design flaw. We believe regenerative design is the future and what we create as humans should contribute to a heal … | Continue reading
Designed by Alvar Aalto, the Paimio Sanatorium is considered one of the architect's functionalist masterpieces. Any of you ID majors who took a History of Architecture course will remember the rounded balconies and the airy interiors. And though it was designed for tuberculosis p … | Continue reading
"I just have been so bored by almost all the product designs these days," says Brooklyn-based product designer Harry Isaac (they/them), "even from companies that are praised for their good product designs.""I just want everything to be so much weirder, and more colorful, and brig … | Continue reading
In 2021, a no-details-available company called Advencher successfully Kickstarted an in-cup coffeemaking device called FinalPress. Made of stainless steel, it was essentially a miniaturized French press that uses your coffee cup as the vessel. Response was strong: Seeking just $7 … | Continue reading
This probably wasn't purposeful deception, just sloppy presentation. Basically there's 40 different "Robots Doing Stuff" videos on YouTube, showing robots performing complicated tasks like soldering:Because the company behind the videos and the robot is called Sanctuary AI, you c … | Continue reading
This surprising Curve Chair is by furniture designer Racheal Heritage.What must have been a complicated jig indeed enables Heritage's design, which impressively creates the wraparound back out of a single piece.Heritage, founder of London-based Thackeray West Studio, is demure ab … | Continue reading
NYCxDESIGN time is upon us. It's a season that always makes for an exciting time, but can also get a bit overwhelming when it comes to planning. That's why the editors at Core77 have put together a comprehensive guide to NYCxDESIGN 2023, recommending all the events we think are w … | Continue reading
Despite the Japanese name, these Kotai Tables are by Spanish industrial designer Mario Ruiz.Designed for dining or desking, they're 39.25" wide and available in spans ranging from 70.25" up to an impossibly long 102.25". To avoid deflection, the structures are made from sturdy Eu … | Continue reading
This Half Dome lamp, designed by Naoto Fukasawa, comes in two variants: Half Dome Floor and Half Dome Overhang. The designs are signature Fukasawa, in that the forms are geometric and seem simple, belying the amount of time it undoubtedly took him to get the parts to look like t … | Continue reading
OpenAI's Shap-E is an AI-driven system that can do text-to-3D-modeling. "When trained on a large dataset of paired 3D and text data, our resulting models are capable of generating complex and diverse 3D assets in a matter of seconds," write developers Heewoo Jun and Alex Nichol. … | Continue reading
Architect Michael Hilgers, he of the "pragmatic design" philosophy, designed this Sleep/Work/Meet hotel room concept for German furniture hardware company Häfele. "The idea is to transform a small space into an ergonomic office setup within seconds," he writes. I'm not sure if it … | Continue reading
To upcycle sheet metal from a decommissioned substation, Taiwan-based SUNRIU Design Studio designed this Tai Side Table. "Under the condition of not using [virgin] sheet metal, we hope to create furniture that is easy to produce, beautiful, and eco-economical," they write. "Only … | Continue reading
When the Lexus LS400 first arrived to the U.S. market, it had a unique interior design feature: A slim, central flip-down visor that covered the small gap above the rearview mirror, that little sliver where sunlight can sneak through and annoy. I'd read about it in Car & Driver ( … | Continue reading
It's impressive that the world's 199 countries have all agreed on a standardized design for the passport: A single color, and the country's name and crest written in gold metallic ink.However, not all passports are equal. The Passport Index ranks them from most powerful (United A … | Continue reading
At the University of Tokyo, researchers in the Information Somatics Lab / Prototyping & Design Laboratory have created wearable extra robot arms. Called Jizai Arms, the system consists of a back-worn device with six sockets, all of which can have an arm plugged into them; they do … | Continue reading
When Google unveiled their Starline project in 2021, which allowed people to videoconference in seeming 3D, we wrote that it resembled a prison visitation experience. The technology required a bulky booth to support all of the gear, providing a literal barrier to both the experie … | Continue reading
This is a current version of the Nike Air Huarache Premium, first designed in 1991 by Tinker Hatfield and since released in multiple colorways.This is the Egyptian Goose, an African breed that escaped from a zoo in Arkansas and has now multiplied to become an invasive species, de … | Continue reading
Combining their signature sleek design aesthetic with a focus on UX, Teenage Engineering's TP-7 Field Recorder is an audio recording device with wonderfully tactile controls that solve a lot of problems for those who record interviews. The company refers to the TP-7's UX design, … | Continue reading
Hi-tech reputation aside, Japan is a country where lots of people still use cash, and paperwork is still common. For professional clerks, bank tellers, proofreaders etc., stationery company Plus offers these elastomer Mecricco Catch page-turning aids.Ergonomic nods: "Outer ribs h … | Continue reading
Simple and sturdy, this U2 series of steel tables is by Amsterdam-based furniture and product designer Peter van der Water. They can be placed horizontally to serve as coffee tables, or oriented vertically for use as endtables. In the vertical orientation they can also be slid ov … | Continue reading
Veteran industrial designer Ton Haas, who's run his own firm since 1993, designed this KWART chair for Dutch manufacturer Circuform."The KWART is a comfortable design chair designed by Ton Haas. With its airy seat and strong construction, little material is needed to produce this … | Continue reading
This thin, minimalist, cantilevered Mira laptop/side table is by British furniture designer Mark Gabbertas.It uses an innovative manufacturing technique to achieve its structure:"The two critical objectives of achieving an ultra-thin visible profile and a rigid structure are fulf … | Continue reading
A startup called Eeva is crowdfunding their eponymous product, a no-plumbing-required combination washer-dryer. The object's shape, which seems to borrow some design cues from the similarly-named Eve robot from Pixar's "Wall-E," is apparently meant to evoke a hamper. "Eeva is act … | Continue reading
Well, this is dark. Croatia-based director/filmmaker Filip Filkovic Philatz has been messing around with Midjourney, and directed the render-bot to create this catalog of fake Ikea bomb shelter furnishings:Philatz's only explanation: "I wanted this Wes Anderson, Ikea, Scandinavia … | Continue reading
This Kaj chair is often incorrectly attributed to Swedish furniture designer Karl Malmsten. In fact it was designed by Karl's son, Vidar Malmsten, who was trained as an interior architect.Designed in 1959, the chair's two seat material options were wicker or leather. The leather … | Continue reading
Hailing from Czechia, Etsy seller Extreme EDC Shop sells this unusual eXtreme Ratchet. Billed as "The smallest ratchet EDC tool in the world" (how does one verify such a thing?), the stainless steel tool is essentially a bit holder with a hexagonal hole through it, and a ratcheti … | Continue reading
Dutch startup Nuwa has created a pen—an ink-on-paper pen—that they say can digitize your handwriting and sketches, and even make the text searchable. In other words you could scribble your notes in a regular notebook, export that to a device, and their app would convert your hand … | Continue reading
This reminds me of an ID school assignment, in a good way. Considering that screws, those ubiquitous fasteners, are rarely considered a visual selling point in product designs, industrial designer Bongkyu Song sought a way to celebrate them. The result is his Washer 001 series, w … | Continue reading
Ramy Wafi, a woodworker based in Egypt, created this innovative cabinet hinge. It allows you to flip an interior compartment out of the front of a cabinet, providing access to the larger area at the rear:Interestingly, Wafi fashioned the hinge from what he calls "plastic wood;" i … | Continue reading
This is another one of those product designs that seem they might have been crafted using whatever was lying around. This height-adjustable Stilk Side Table is by Danish furniture designer Jonas Herman Pedersen:"The development of the Stilk Side Table started with the idea of cre … | Continue reading
At first blush, this might simply look like a robust Ziploc bag:In fact it's a TerpLoc Glassless Jar, produced by Ohio-based Grove Bags, a company that specializes in packaging for cannabis. TerpLoc is the name of the proprietary film the company has developed, with an obsessive … | Continue reading
Here's what we looked at this week: If you don't have the $58.4 million that Jeff Koons' Balloon Dog (Orange) went for, you can buy tiny unauthorized knockoffs for $29.Real dealWhat you can actually affordFrom Japan, these are elastomer page-turning aids for people that deal … | Continue reading
This MC9 Uncino barstool, by Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec, achieves the best of what a minimalist and carefully-considered furniture design can do: At first it doesn't look like much, but look closely and some (literally) captivating details emerge.The overall form is unobstrusive an … | Continue reading
Chinese manufacturers have a bad rep for producing cheap, junky, disposable items for Western consumers obsessed with low cost. But here's an interesting phenomenon: The emergence of affordable Chinese components with design improvements that rescue pricey Western appliances.The … | Continue reading
Last year British engineers launched the MetMo Driver, a sleekly-modern redesign of an antique German ratcheting screwdriver. It was a wild smash on Kickstarter; they were seeking just £5,000 (USD $6,290) in pledges, but netted £1,107,288 (USD $1.4 million).The original MetMo Dri … | Continue reading
I like these objects a lot, not because I think these are strong designs (I don't), but because they remind me so much of design school. These recall things you'd see on an ID student's desk in the studio, made purely for themselves and not to fulfill an assignment, and made out … | Continue reading
Here's what we saw this week:The technique of pre-fabricating gigantic ships, invented under pressure during World War II, is still the best way to do it. Here's a time-lapse of a gigantic cruise ship being built using pre-fab techniques. My guess is that objects like this CNC-mi … | Continue reading
Mohit Bhoite is a hardware engineer whose day job is designing and building IoT products. But on the side, he constructs wonderful desktop sculptures that incorporate circuits and convey information. He's really got a knack for making tech look artistic and beautiful:Tiny Tempera … | Continue reading
Last year we looked at this Havel jig, which lets you use a cordless drill to wrap hoses: Ukrainian engineer Sergii Gordieiev, a/k/a The Q on social media, created his own wrapping contraption using bicycle parts: Here's the build and some additional applications: | Continue reading
At events where people are standing, mingling, drinking and eating, I admit it is a minor hassle to hold both a beverage and a plate of finger food. As it turns out, this "problem" has been addressed by a host of inventors, yielding a variety of form factors.The GreatPlate comes … | Continue reading
"There are more than enough well designed chairs out there," writes Dutch product designer Erik Stehmann, who has several on the market himself, "so designing another new one is not an urge I have. The My Pleasure chair, however is an upcycling concept for old chairs. (And it is … | Continue reading
If you've been following our series on transitioning from ID to UX, you've already read about what makes a good UX designer and the various career pathways available to IDers interested in UX design. Now, you may be wondering how to prepare for this transition. In this article, w … | Continue reading
These are Feng-Shui-specific tape measures. Known as Lu Ban rulers, they're named for a historical Chinese architect/builder who lived during the Zhou Dynasty (roughly 2,500 years ago). What differentiates these tapes is that dimensions thought to be auspicious by Feng Shui pract … | Continue reading
WantedDesign's Schools Workshop, initiated in 2012, will take place once again at Industry City, Brooklyn, in the beautiful Camp David co-working studio space, from May 16 to 19 during NYCxDESIGN. Participating schools include:ArtCenter College of Design (USA)CENTRO (Mexico)École … | Continue reading
Footwear brand Crocs and fashion brand Bodega have teamed up on an unusual shoe: The All-Terrain "NICT-TECH" Clog. Inspired by nictitating membranes (the translucent secondary eyelids some animals have beneath their main eyelids), Bodega's designers pictured a similarly fast-depl … | Continue reading
Imagine you're an elite soccer player, running towards a ball bouncing towards you. You sidestep a defender, intercept the ball mid-bounce, gain control of it with your feet, then spin and dribble up the pitch. How did you do that? Through instinct, experience, body control, and … | Continue reading
This line of MUECKE furniture made from carbon fiber tubes is by architect/designer Jonathan Muecke (pronounced mih-KEE).CTL - Carbon Tube LoungeCTC5 - Carbon Tube Chair 5 CTC4 - Carbon Tube Chair 4 CTB - Carbon Tube BenchMuecke is a man of few words, and says nothing about his ( … | Continue reading
Here's a gorgeous concept car with a strong identity, a clear design vision and a terrible name: The Lancia Pu+Ra HPE. (The "Pu+Ra" stands for "pure and radical," while "HPE" is "high performance electric.")The tight lines and bold, minimal surfacing combine soft and sharp in the … | Continue reading