The post we did on French company Estesia's special riding mowers is doing bonkers traffic. I guess a lot of people are looking for a machine that can cut wet grass.Reader and industrial designer Niklas Ytterström, who hails from Sweden, wrote in to let us know there's another co … | Continue reading
This Monthly Measure, by London-based industrial designer Sebastian Bergne, is for those who want a tactile calendar (and have the desk space to spare). It'll also do double-duty in a pinch: "Monthly Measure is both a perpetual calendar and ruler. The star is positioned on the se … | Continue reading
After moving from city to farm, I learned that fueling chainsaws is not straightforward. Two-stroke engines require gasoline mixed with oil at a 50:1 ratio. This presents a UX problem.Corporations are happy to solve this problem for you. You can buy pre-mixed fuel……but it's absur … | Continue reading
What began as the annual meeting for the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA)® is now the top global event for industrial designers, business leaders, and creatives worldwide—and it's back in-person. The International Design Conference (IDC)® 2022 will bring designers a … | Continue reading
Lambro cargo e-bikes, produced by Italian e-mobility company RePower, are "real design objects" with "a sturdy and functional structure with unmistakable lines," the company says.Designed by industrial design consultancy Makio Hasuike & Co., the Lambro features a rotomolded body … | Continue reading
I've got a Bose SoundLink Mini portable Bluetooth speaker that I use in multiple ways, with multiple "partners." In my shop I pair it with my phone to listen to podcasts. While doing dishes, I pair it to an iPad placed behind the sink to watch TV. At the dining table, my wife and … | Continue reading
So you're an architect or environments designer, and your client absolutely needs a massive sliding glass door that weighs over 2,000 pounds. I'm talking like, this kind of massive: For this exact situation, Italian hardware manufacturer Secco produces a Zero-G Passive Magnetic L … | Continue reading
FDM 3D printers must contend with the trade-off between throughput and resolution. High resolution prints require a finer nozzle, through which less material can travel, increasing print times. Increase the nozzle size and you get faster prints, while sacrificing resolution. Neit … | Continue reading
Lots of things that I print out—UPS shipping labels, diagrams from PDF manuals, shopping lists with part numbers, archived crossword puzzles—don't require using an entire 8.5x11 sheet of paper. But that's the only size my printer takes, so I generate a fair bit of waste.Industria … | Continue reading
This Piú modular lamp is by Maximilian Helmut Ewert, an industrial designer based in Munich. Ewert arrived at the form by experimenting with the most basic form of the object:"By flattening one side of the classic conical shape of a lampshade, a functional surface was created tha … | Continue reading
A 2017 research project at Sweden's Linköping University (think Scandinavian MIT) sought to identify where electric mobility could make the largest impact. Students Filip Gardler, Mikael Gånge and Filip Lövström settled on Kenya, the fastest-growing nation in sub-Saharan Africa, … | Continue reading
Like CAD programs, audio synthesizers have complicated interfaces that can be daunting to the uninitiated.Software engineer and musician Elias Jarzombek explains the UI-based problem with audio synthesizers:"Synthesizers generate timbre electronically, meaning the control is not … | Continue reading
This summer Ulster County, New York held a contest to design an "I Voted" sticker. They received six submissions from area teens:Here are the voting results:14-year-old Hudson Rowan, with 93% of the vote, was the clear winner."It's got crazy bulging eyes, mangled looking hair, lo … | Continue reading
Australia-based packaging firm Caps & Closures has developed ThermoShield, which are customizable color-shifting caps. "Thermochromic materials change their colour with temperature change," the company writes. "This technology promises to play a massive part in any packaging wher … | Continue reading
Sarah Dezember and Wenhan Zhang, architecture and design students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, designed this space-saving "Twins Table." It won the Grand Prize for Formica's 2022 FORM Student Innovation Competition."Those living in big cities often have smaller … | Continue reading
Back in my ambulance days, most of the time we would arrive on scene and the injured party was able to communicate with us. That's the ideal situation. The worst was when we arrived to find an unconscious person lying on the ground or floor. When the extent of their injuries is n … | Continue reading
This post is presented by the K-Show, the world's No.1 trade fair for the plastics and rubber industry. Visionary developments and groundbreaking innovations will again lead the industry into new dimensions at K 2022 in Düsseldorf, Germany. The K Show comes around every three yea … | Continue reading
Systainers are the modular storage cases produced by Tanos and used by Festool, Makita, Triton and other tool manufacturers. The cases feature two little recessed panels on the front, indicated with the arrows below:You can slide some cardstock or a piece of paper into those rece … | Continue reading
As this city boy quickly learned, you can't cut grass when it's wet. Blowing it out the side of the mower deck produces wet clumps that can damage your lawn, and attempting to collect it in a bagger is impossible; wet grass immediately begins clogging a bagging chute. With multip … | Continue reading
An easy way to save electricity is to hang-dry your clothes. I use folding racks I got at Ikea. The only hassle is that I occasionally need to move them before the clothes have fully dried; sometimes they're on the back porch and it starts to rain, other times I have them inside … | Continue reading
BioLite will be releasing two cleanly designed, simple-to-use rechargeable power stations called the BaseCharge line. Available in 600 Wh and 1,500 Wh capacities, the lithium-ion units can be charged by plugging them into the wall, a vehicle or BioLite's forthcoming SolarPanel 10 … | Continue reading
We last looked at designer Toni Grilo's work in "Get Your Insane Objet D'Art Furniture Fix Here." (If you haven't seen that link yet, I highly recommend checking it out.) I've just learned Grilo's also designed a complete line of furniture in cork—he's the creative director for a … | Continue reading
This dual-burner 2cook, by Seoul-based ID consultancy Happ Studios, is sleek and easy on the eyes."2cook is a multi-cooker for a cooking beginner. In a minimal and simple style, when the pot is stacked as one over the main body, the handle lines give a sense of unity."I can't tel … | Continue reading
#vanlife is about fitting domestic furniture and appliances into a van, providing a home on the road. An Australian nonprofit called Orange Sky has turned this model on its side, fitting unexpected equipment into vans to provide services to those who don't have a home.In 2014 Nic … | Continue reading
"What if when we were invited to someone's house," asks Arquimaña, "we had to bring our own chair?" The Spain-based architecture/design firm used that thought as the inspiration for their Ika, a simple folding chair designed to be toted. Manufacturing it requires "the two worlds … | Continue reading
I've been toying with the idea of installing a laundry chute (really just a hole in the floor of a closet), and just spotted this crazy system called Laundry Jet. The idea is neat, but even if I had the money, I'd never dream of having one of these installed.The idea is that you … | Continue reading
Hailing from Lithuania, Kristijonas and Paulius are two motorheads with a laser cutter. The duo run Petrol Vibes, a company that laser-cuts silhouettes of iconic cars out of 2mm steel, then powder coats them and provides mounting hardware that has them stand off of the wall by 1. … | Continue reading
"The relative symmetry of a key's shape makes its orientation difficult to discern at first glance," writes Nendo, explaining the design of their L-Door Key. "When the bow becomes L-shaped, however, the principle of leverage enables the user to turn the key effortlessly, like a h … | Continue reading
Kyushu University is one of Japan's leading research-oriented schools. I was looking at this shot of their facilities and was struck by these chairs:They're so strange-looking and functional, I don't think I've ever seen anything like them. They're part of furniture manufacturer … | Continue reading
A few years ago we ran the story of Inakadate, a village in Japan that developed rice paddy art (known as tanbo) in order to draw tourists. Click here to see some epic shots.When the village first started doing this in the '90s, they didn't really have the perspective thing figur … | Continue reading
Estonian startup Woola claims a staggering 90% of European sheep wool goes to waste. They're talking about "The type of wool that is so coarse that it cannot be used to produce yarn for the textile industry and is therefore in most cases burned or buried," they write. But "Despit … | Continue reading
The Ocean Cleanup is gathering floating garbage, and Clean Up the Lake is collected submerged garbage. An organization called 4ocean also gathers waterborne trash, and is now using a robot to clean the beaches adjoining the water.The remote-controlled BeBot Beach Cleaning Robot, … | Continue reading
After an exciting reveal of the 2022 Core77 Design Awards winners in a live virtual ceremony on June 28th, Core77 announced the kickoff of our Community Choice prize competition honoring the most popular project of the year chosen by our readers. We've been collecting all of your … | Continue reading
This striking-looking Flip Flap Chair, by Ito Design Switzerland, was designed with origami as the inspiration. The rigid panels and elastic hinges connecting them have been co-molded.And yes, it can recline.Here's some prototyping shots: The chair is in production by office furn … | Continue reading
This is the Plyke, an aluminum bicycle bell created by Estonian student Mihkel Annus and photojournalist Martin Pedaja. It sounds like this:The duo says that bike bells typically contain unseen plastic parts, and they claim (without attribution) that "100,000kg of plastic end up … | Continue reading
Mini has released images of their new Aceman concept, a well-proportioned EV with a shockingly garish interior. As has now become standard for many car brands, the reveal comes with plenty of shots from the design studio:Crazy roof rack aside, I think the exterior proportions and … | Continue reading
Recently I'm seeing something interesting from automotive suppliers: Messaging that boasts about offering "design freedom." REE, the EV platform manufacturer behind (or underneath) the Proxima cargo van, says their P7 deck offers "unlimited design freedom." Now supplier Magna is … | Continue reading
"It's almost so stupid it's ridiculous," package designer Rudy Youell of P2 Packaging told Detroit Free Press, describing his invention. "But it's saving so much money it's amazing."Youell's absurdly simple innovation has saved auto companies tens of millions of dollars. To expla … | Continue reading
I don't watch much TV news, but once in a while I'll turn Bloomberg on—and always find it incredible how much information the talking head, in this case Jonathan Ferro, is surrounded by:How can you possibly take that much information in, while listening to the presenter? You can' … | Continue reading
Clemson University offers both undergrad and graduate degrees in Packaging Science. For those of you designers interested to learn more about packaging, but who don't want to go back to school, I've just learned that Clemson has licensed their curriculum out to The Packaging Scho … | Continue reading
It's hard to believe that something this ugly……resides within something this attractive:That's the Vala Recliner, a chair that manages to not look like a recliner, artfully. (Others have attempted this feat and had mixed results.) It was designed for DWR by NYC-based industrial d … | Continue reading
Traditional timber framing chisels, like this one (below center) by Barr Tools, feature a metal hoop around the top of the handle:This is to prevent the handle from splitting as you pound the butt end of it with a mallet while forming a mortise. (The slick, the tool at top, is us … | Continue reading
Whether listening to your favorite song, enjoying the sounds of nature on a nice day, or having a conversation with a loved one, hearing plays a pivotal role in our daily lives. Those of us with healthy hearing may unintentionally take it for granted, but for those with some leve … | Continue reading
Need to transport your bike, but can't have a roof rack on your car? No problem. The Electric Inverted Sucker Bike Rack, by Chinese manufacturer Fovno, allows you to flip your bike upside down, then attach it to the roof of your vehicle via suction cups.The system comes with four … | Continue reading
A company called BrightLine Bags has a compelling offering: Gear bags that consist of modular sections that zipper together, allowing you to configure the bag as you like.Center sections are offered in sizes ranging from 2 inches deep to 11 inches deep. You can attach as many of … | Continue reading
It's been a couple years since EV platform manufacturer REE unveiled what we called "minimum viable car:" Essentially four wheels and a floor. Each wheel module contains its own motor, steering, suspension and brakes, and the floor stores the battery array. The company's plan is … | Continue reading
Industrial designer and professor Chris Ebbert is a funny guy. Responding to the question "Do you sometimes like to be involved in arguments?" he wrote "I never argue. This probably caused me to eventually fail at being German." (Ebbert now resides in Sweden.)Ebbert has the coole … | Continue reading
In this entertaining snippet, stop motion artist Omozoc shows us what it would be like if you could work wood with your hands. Literally, as in the only tools are your fingers:The 70-second presentation was shot practically. "CG is not used. This video is made up of 791 [unedited … | Continue reading