A terrible business to have gotten into in the late '90s: Manufacturing newspaper boxes. But a great business to be in now, is collecting, refurbishing and repurposing them. Now that digital media is nearly finished eviscerating its dead-tree victims, the market is awash in newsp … | Continue reading
Greek eyewear brand Enlite makes these Supernatural eyeglasses and sunglasses out of wood: Specifically, they're made from multiple layers of Cherry veneer, with a polymer finish applied for durability. To produce the frames, Enlite turned to Athens-based CNC fabrication firm Kk … | Continue reading
Someone over at Karv Design, a Thailand-based CNC fabricator of plywood objets d'esign, loves the famous "Great Wave off Kanagawa" woodblock print. So much so that they translated Hokusai's work into, of all things, a desk organizer:And if you're wondering what this bit, which do … | Continue reading
Sustainability will be the dominant trend driver in 2023. We have heard this before, and it is true, but what does this really mean? What are the practical, specific examples of how and why sustainability will drive trends into 2023 and beyond? Great design has the ability to con … | Continue reading
Based outside of Milan, Atim is a manufacturer of innovative aluminum "furnishing solutions," in the company's words. In practice that means drawer slides, hinges and guides that do unexpected things. As an example, Atim hardware allows surfaces to deploy from, or disappear back … | Continue reading
There's been much talk lately about ChatGPT and its uncanny ability to mimic human prose. Burning questions inevitably start to gnaw away at us as we learn more: will we need eventually need human writers at all? Have we created something destined to replace us? That's why it's r … | Continue reading
Because woks are domed on the bottom, they don't jive well with a flat stovetop. For that reason, there exist wok-specific induction stoves, both standalone and drop-in, where the heating element is concave:The problem is that if you cook with both woks and conventional flat-bott … | Continue reading
Industrial designers Bryce Gibson and Kurt MacLaurin invented the Mule, an all-terrain wagon that can be pulled by hand, towed by a bicycle or mounted in the hitch receiver of a car.While it was initially designed for their own families to use while camping, beachgoing, cycling, … | Continue reading
Imagine having a face-to-face conversation with someone who will not, or cannot, make eye contact with you. Trust, a sense of connection and the certainty that you're even being listened to are vastly diminished. Yet we've all grown used to Zoom calls where no one is making eye c … | Continue reading
If you're in the market for a bulletproof vehicle, I'd think you'd want it to look low-key. But Rezvani Motors, a California-based manufacturer of such vehicles, begs to differ. The company contracted ex-Lamborghini transportation designer Samir Sadikhov to design their Rezvani T … | Continue reading
Rail is a clever design for a modular table system. It's based on trestle legs that can slide along the length of the table's underside, thanks to rails and grooves.This means that you can slide a pair of legs out to the edge of the tabletop, and connect either a short extension … | Continue reading
Flour, sugar, coffee, and in some countries cereals are often sold in paper bags. The paper is more sustainable than plastic, but the bags provide a bit of a UX hassle for dispensing and are often decanted altogether into an additional vessel. This Twixit Seal & Pour invention, f … | Continue reading
Architect Shinichiro Ogata has plenty of modern-day commissions, mostly high-end interiors. But "at some point, I became strongly attracted to the things that were created with the wisdom and technology that had been cultivated over a long period of time," he writes. "I want to c … | Continue reading
Rachele Didero has an unusual skillset: Multiple degrees in Fashion Design from schools in three different countries, and a Ph.D. in Textiles, Machine Learning and Privacy from the Politecnico di Milano in her native Italy. The peculiar combination--fashion design skills, textile … | Continue reading
A designer's role is usually that of a problem solver. Once you start thinking this way, you soon start to discover all sorts of problems in need of solutions. Recognizing the need for a missing product or experience can be easy when you start thinking "why is there not a _______ … | Continue reading
The Swedhook is a small, portable hook that doesn't look like much, and might be easy to dismiss as silly:However, look closer and you'll see it has a ton of practical applications, both inside and outside your house as well as on-the-go:The video sells it:Sadly, this Swedish inv … | Continue reading
For wirelessly charging an iPhone, Apple Watch and Airpods, most of the options on the market are some variant of this form factor:The designers at accessories brand Anker, however, have pushed themselves into thinking outside of the box (paradoxically, by making a box) with thei … | Continue reading
With the exception of us energy-hog Americans, much of the world dries their laundry electricity-free, on a rack.You might assume that after the clothes are dry, everyone folds them up and puts them away. But Lukas Bazle and Lukas Stotz, while studying Industrial Design at German … | Continue reading
Barcelona-based product designer Jordi Canudas came up with a unique way to color a glass lampshade: "Dipping the globes in paint [and] drying each coating before applying a new one to create a layered color lampshade," he writes. "[The] manufacturing process begins by dipping th … | Continue reading
Industrial designer Christian Neumeier designed Bender, these highly unusual wall hooks:"Bender transforms every wall into a wardrobe. The wall hooks made of powder-coated steel can be arranged as you wish, so that a beautiful, individual and at the same time useful wall picture … | Continue reading
Design professor Claudio Larcher, director of the catch-all Design Department at Milan's New Academy of Fine Arts, designed Heatty, this unusual marble space heater:Judging by the cord, it's electric. For a design professor, you'd think he'd have a better description:"An object o … | Continue reading
This bizarre napping-on-the-go accessory is a pillow with a telescoping aluminum rod inside of it.Called NapEazy, the extendable pillow promises proper support for your head in places that'd ordinarily be difficult to nap in: The water-resistant and hypoallergenic pillow is fille … | Continue reading
Here's a roundup of what we covered this week (a truncated one, due to the holiday):Japanese overdesign makes for a great exterior trash can, as evinced by these three design features that demonstrate sweating the UX details.Startup Brelyon makes this bizarre, immersive curved mo … | Continue reading
In my opinion, part of the genius of 3M's Post-Its are their limitations: With just 3"-square of real estate, you can only jot down so much on one sheet, forcing you to be concise.However, Japanese stationery company Yamato sees a market for determine-your-own-length sticky notes … | Continue reading
A pair of Danish craftsmen have used their design/build skills to improve the lives of those with disabilities. Their mission has spread to Japan.We tend to be picky about the objects we use to get around every day, whether those are cars, bicycles, footwear. For those with perma … | Continue reading
To this New Yorker, moving to Japan was shocking for that country's lack of fire escapes. Instead, in keeping with Japan's love of visual order and overall lack of space, hidden fire escape contraptions are installed on balconies (almost all apartments have them; electricity is t … | Continue reading
I'm not 100% sold on the aesthetics (I'm 90% of the way there), but I find this Lightcycle Morph lamp by Dyson to be a very intelligent design.Although it resembles a task lamp, it is far more flexible, offering four lighting configurations: Task......"feature"......indirect..... … | Continue reading
"Parat is a series of mobile table frames in various sizes," write industrial designers Birkan Gülöz and Jonas Nussbaum, who form the Cologne-based design firm JBNG. "In comparison to other more complex multipart systems, the Parat table system focuses on essential needs and easy … | Continue reading
Here's how we see: Inside our retinas are millions of photoreceptor cells—rods and cones. The rods give us peripheral vision, whereas the cones detect colors. The cones come in three flavors: One to detect reds, another to detect yellow-greens, and a third to detect blues. These … | Continue reading
"Pushing the limits of locomotion, sensing, and athleticism" is how Boston Dynamics describes their latest iteration of their Atlas robot. Lightweight 3D-printed parts, a custom battery, a compact hydraulic power unit and 28 joints have upgraded it into a freakish parkour machine … | Continue reading
Housewares company Joybos makes a food storage container with a "time recording design," in their words.When uncovering forgotten and rediscovered leftovers, a simple sniff test will suffice for most of us. But for those who demand more precision (or who've lost their sense of sm … | Continue reading
Most bottles don't change shape when their contents are evacuated. That means that whether you're outgoing or incoming from an overnight trip, your travel bottles take up the same amount of space in your bag.This is fine for most, but travel gear company Matador offers FlatPak To … | Continue reading
This measuring cup, by Bavarian brand Robert Auer, has had more design thought put into it than meets the eye. The most obvious deviation from a standard design are the diagonal gradations; these are for applications when you've mixed a batch of something that needs to be doled o … | Continue reading
McLaren's designers have turned their attention from wheels to kicks. The hypercar company has partnered with footwear and apparel brand Athletic Propulsion Labs to produce the APL McLaren HySpeed, a pricey $450 pair of sneakers with performance claims that sound like an awful lo … | Continue reading
You could be forgiven for thinking that the company name Muurikka is a play on "America," but in fact this manufacturer, and the name, is Finnish. Muurikka's stock-in-trade is outdoor cooking gear, and their signature product is a essentially a barbecue grill with no grill.Instea … | Continue reading
Whether you're a graduating student who has earned a degree in Industrial Design looking to step into the workforce or a practicing Industrial Designer thinking of a career change, chances are one of your classmates or coworkers has moved into UX Design over the last few years. Y … | Continue reading
A farming implement has been redesigned to assist EMTs working in close quarters.A karambit is a traditional curved knife from Southeast Asia, originally developed for farming and planting tasks. It is held in the manner of a hammer, but with the blade curving forwards from the b … | Continue reading
I wonder if an aesthetically redesigned version of this would make sense in a domestic setting. Bavaria-based Auer Packaging makes these large, wheeled collapsible storage boxes for industrial facilities:The HDPE containers, which measure 80 x 60 x 93cm (31.4" x 23.6" x 36.6") ca … | Continue reading
A startup called Brelyon has developed an unusual monitor meant to deliver the immersive experience of wearing VR goggles—just without the goggles. Their Ultra Reality Display is a 30"-wide hooded object that sits on your desk, and looking into it tricks your eyes into seeing "a … | Continue reading
The new year presents one with a moment for self-reflection and assessment — a chance to un-pack and examine all the various roles we play. If it happens that your professional role is a creative one, and, upon examination, you are in need of some inspiration and motivation in it … | Continue reading
Here's this week's roundup:CarsRam Trucks' New Revolution Concept EV boasts some wild design features. Not all are truck-specific.BMW has expanded their color-changing-car technology with their i Vision Dee Concept. Baskin-Robbins has 31 flavors, this car can do 32 colors.For a c … | Continue reading
These wheeled garbage cans by Risu Co. feature Japanese overdesign on full display. It makes me smile.One, the cans are molded with integrated connection points on the sides, so you can link up two cans, in keeping with the country's orderliness: Two, they actually come with a re … | Continue reading
"The Bolita at first glance doesn't look like what it is," says Studio Kaschkasch, the product design duo of Florian Kallus and Sebastian Schneider, based in Cologne, Germany. "You don't understand the play of movement of this lamp, you only see a nice glass object." However, tou … | Continue reading
What do 3D-printed concrete homes, floating solar panels, and race cars have in common? A team of designers and engineers working hard behind the scenes to make them each a reality. In this article, we cover how each of these projects and more came to life with the help of the le … | Continue reading
Measuring boxes, casework and structures from corner-to-corner to check for square is standard practice for builders. But for times when only the interior corner is accessible, this Tape Tip gizmo by Lee Valley lets you get in there (and adds precisely 1" to the overall measureme … | Continue reading
The old Kia logo was pretty legible:Image: Mark Bishop on Unsplash Alas, the new Kia logo (redesigned in 2021), not so much:Image: Mark Chan on Unsplash Image: Mark Chan on Unsplash This graphic design disaster means that "Despite being aesthetically pleasing, our survey has foun … | Continue reading
When you think of Pininfarina, you likely picture a shape like this:And certainly not this:But yes, the legendary styling company has turned their designers onto this square, slow (top speed 37 mph) form factor for client Benteler Group, a German automotive engineering and techno … | Continue reading
Copenhagen-based industrial designer Mario Martinez created this Una table, which features a top made of cast aluminum. It's a shame the underside will never be seen (aside from assembly; the unit arrives flatpacked). The functional ribbing is as beautiful as the top is minimal." … | Continue reading