Those pursuing #vanlife need comfortable sleeping surfaces; the lifestyle is untenable if you can't get a good night's sleep. However, weight must be minimized for the sake of gas mileage, so a real mattress isn't advisable. What to do?German manufacturer Froli has devised a way … | Continue reading
We've covered the story of John Economaki before. To refresh your memory, he was a professional woodworker who became allergic to sawdust, ending his career. He then transitioned into designing what you might call "extreme precision tools," and his Bridge City Toolworks has been … | Continue reading
There's a thrilling scene in one of the Captain America movies where a heavily-armored SUV driven by Nick Fury comes under attack. The vehicle withstands an incredible amount of damage.There's a terrifying scene from last year, where a failed heist in South Africa yielded real-li … | Continue reading
South Korean ID consultancy Unichest designed this Rollable Display concept for Samsung:Completed in December of 2019, the concept was either derailed by COVID or otherwise deemed unfit for production. There is something intriguing about the concept. The form is handsome and rati … | Continue reading
UPDATE: We've hit a few logistical bumps in the road, and as a result we need to postpone the 2022 Core77 Design Awards Virtual Ceremony until next Tuesday, June 28th at 4 PM EDT.Since the awards ceremony will be everyone's first opportunity to hear about 2022 awards winners, thi … | Continue reading
Impossibly slender, this Gravitas line of outdoor furniture was designed by Düsseldorf-based Konture Studio. The pieces are low-maintenance and intended for either domestic or outdoor café use. "Thanks to the galvanizing and powdered coating, the ensemble of table and stools or b … | Continue reading
Industrial designer Craighton Berman has had 15 projects successfully Kickstarted, and even taught a university course on crowdfunding. Now he's distilled that knowledge into Crowdfunding for Designers, a 'zine "about designing and independently launching small-batch products, wi … | Continue reading
Your average tissue box offers no visual clue as to when it's nearly depleted. Admittedly that's not the biggest UX problem in the world, but it didn't escape the attention of designer Takashi Yasuda, whose Kyo Design Office created this Tissue Weight object, a two-piece design m … | Continue reading
Last winter the zipper slider failed on my heavily-used farm jacket. I ordered a replacement from Wawak, got the size wrong, ordered a second one, couldn't figure out how to get it on, then finally my wife pushed me out of the way and replaced it, prising the zipper stop off and … | Continue reading
I think most industrial designers would enjoy a challenge like this: To redesign a well-established object by using an entirely different construction to reduce the parts count. For their Magic Ride pedelec, Munich-based manufacturer Mocci's designers ditched the conventional tub … | Continue reading
Nerf has never had a mascot—you could argue they don't need one—but someone in Marketing over there decided it was time. So this month they're debuting Murph, an apparently non-binary character made entirely of Nerf darts:"We are thrilled to introduce Murph to fans, a mascot that … | Continue reading
As usual, the future has arrived looking a lot different than what we'd envisioned. Flying cars were promised, but as it turns out, the most workable personal flying device is a carbon-fiber bathtub mounted in a tubular aluminum frame with four arms each supporting two counter-ro … | Continue reading
Proof that you can't buy good taste: The Huayra Codalunga is a limited-edition hypercar of which just five will be made, at a starting price of €7 million (USD $7.35 million). For starters, the exterior looks like someone tried to create a series of expensive-to-fabricate surface … | Continue reading
Sign up for our event June 22nd at 4 PM EST to be one of the first to hear who is taking home trophies in this year's awardsView the full content here | Continue reading
Bored out of his gourd, during the pandemic Dean Peterson started a TikTok where he earnestly reviewed public bathroom sinks. An example: It's strangely compelling, no? Other's thought so too. Peterson, a then-unemployed NYC filmmaker, continued populating the channel, and Sink … | Continue reading
To supply uninterrupted power to a disaster zone, you need to ship both a big-ass generator, and a tanker full of fuel to feed the thing. It would be easier if you could ship some magical version of the first thing that didn't require the second thing.That's essentially what Sesa … | Continue reading
Love Hultén's latest creation, the Doodlestation, is a very strange electronic musicmaking contraption with visual feedback. The freethinking designer has combined a Sequential OB-6 synthesizer, a Moog DFAM synthesizer, a theremin and other electronic tools with a custom-made MID … | Continue reading
Pen manufacturer Aechy makes these unusual dual-tipped pens. One end is a conventional fine-tip rollerball, but the other end is essentially a rolling stamp that lays down a pattern. (I guess this is for folks who don't have the time to draw dotted lines, or for whom inconsistent … | Continue reading
Reddit poster vaguenonetheless provided no details of this boot-cleaning contraption, but it's safe to say this is an industrial facility, not something a guy rigged up between his garden and the back door:Being obsessed with boot-cleaning contraptions, I poked around on the inte … | Continue reading
Dutch designer MIRL "celebrates what surrounds us and reflects this in playful design concepts," reads her bio. "Driven by interaction, she rethinks the relation we have with our daily living environment and translates these ideas into products."Her +2Degrees series is an inventi … | Continue reading
The DiskDrive, by British startup Skarper, is a 6.6-pound object that snaps onto your bike, then powers it electrically by driving the rear brake rotor. Pop it off to recharge it (or prevent it from being stolen).Using the system does require you to swap out your existing rotor, … | Continue reading
Hay is re-releasing Swiss industrial designer Bruno Rey's handsome Rey Chair, which first went into production in 1971. (Originally called the 3300, the chair took on its designer's name as it grew in popularity.) Stool, barstool and table variants round out the Rey Collection. T … | Continue reading
Tokyo-based designer Nobuaki Sato created these Riffle LED lamps, in both desktop and floor-standing configurations, made of walnut veneer: What's crazy is that this is apparently the hinge:There's a stop-motion clip of it in the third frame of this Instagram post: Assuming this … | Continue reading
The Streek Active Cargo Trike is a compact cargo e-bike specifically designed for the Japanese market. For reasons of both storage and navigation, European- and American-sized cargo bikes aren't a good fit, literally, for the space-tight country. In contrast, Streek is just 1.9m … | Continue reading
European furniture brand Riluc offers, well, insane objet d'art furniture primarily out of steel; if you're a production designer on a Bond film tasked with creating the antagonist's lair, this here is one-stop shopping. The bulk of the pieces are designed by company founder and … | Continue reading
This is either a bizarre coincidence, or one of these designers has inspired the other. In February we looked at New Sources, a project by German designer Matthias Gschwendtner, whereby he digitally scans tree offcuts produced by the lumber industry, then uses computational desig … | Continue reading
A newcomer to the Core77 Discussion Boards asked the impossibly broad question: "What is the difference between designers?"By way of response, member Fluffy Data whipped up the following graphics:"On a spectrum:""Over time:" I wrote FD to ask about the graphics, and s/he explaine … | Continue reading
The amusing car-meme Instagrammer Calvin MotorSport has assembled a couple of silly-but-satisfying video compilations of quirky car features. The first: Deploying their headlight washers.0:00 Ferrari California / 0:11 BMW M3 / 0:16 BMW 5 Series / 0:26 Mercedes-Benz E-Class / 0:40 … | Continue reading
Here's an example of organic development of a tool, the type of thing that could only be designed by a person who encounters daily the problems it's meant to solve. Florida-based inventor Tim Viens is a boating enthusiast who initially used an ordinary adjustable wrench to remove … | Continue reading
Mark your calendars—we're getting ready to announce all our 2022 Core77 Design Awards winners next week! Core77 is excited to share the names and details of the winning projects in a LIVE awards ceremony, which will be participants' very first opportunity to hear who is going hom … | Continue reading
Designing an automotive seat requires a good understanding of manufacturability, specifically sewing. Whatever swoopy shapes and protruding bolsters you draw must contend with the reality of cut-and-sew construction, which limits the radii of design details, as the fabric either … | Continue reading
French company Plaxtil has used their technology to recycle used face masks into school supplies. Millions of discarded masks have been collected, sanitized, broken back down into plastic and molded into protractors, rulers and triangles for geometry classes.The company used to b … | Continue reading
Tokyo-based designer Ryota Akiyama, who specializes in "researching the nature of materials," came up with this Airbay, an experimental and non-obvious design for a chair:Constructed from a 1.2mm aluminum sheet and a 0.05mm PVC balloon, "Neither material in this form can perform … | Continue reading
Yet another reason you should be reading the Core77 Discussion Boards. Longtime member iab is donating some design and design-related books to whomever wants them, for just the cost of postage. "As you get old, you downsize," iab writes. "So for the cost of shipping with media ma … | Continue reading
I've often criticized the "modern" designs of cars that have lots of zig-zags and slashes across the bodywork. To me they feel like the designers are trying to do something "different" in the surfacing without regard for how those random, ill-advised character lines interact with … | Continue reading
If you're a Jeep lover who's into car-based camping, your main option for sleeping is a rooftop tent. But "Our founders were frustrated with the obvious shortcomings of rooftop tents," writes a company called Oryx Platform. "The expense, the high center of gravity, the fact that … | Continue reading
A Japanese engineer and dad who goes by "Ianius" on Twitter has an unusual hobby: Adding robotic spider legs to household objects. " I want to live in a convenient and enjoyable house full of furniture and home appliances that move and help people," he said in an interview with H … | Continue reading
These specialty "five-knuckle" hinges are for applications where you need 270 degrees of swing. For instance, if you had a cabinet with two doors and nothing to either side of the cabinet, these hinges would allow you to open the doors and swing them until they rested against the … | Continue reading
Ikea has collaborated with electronic music artists Swedish House Mafia to release a line of minimalist and music-themed objects. The OBEGRÄNSAD collection, to be released this fall, consists of a desk, a chair and a turntable.The desk features dual stands to place speakers at ea … | Continue reading
The Rose Chair, by furniture designer Chris Martin, was created to push the limits of bent plywood. Four pieces seemingly bent to their extremes fit together to create the chair, which doesn't use any screws or metal fasteners."The four geometric sculptured forms that fit harmoni … | Continue reading
I'd never heard of these before, but in Europe they apparently use "fly curtains" as an alternative to screen doors. These are essentially just beaded curtains, or occasionally patterned strips of plastic, with the strands placed very close together; flies perceive it as a surfac … | Continue reading
When making a bed, I think tucking the sheets in is dumb. But somehow it's become the standard for hotels. Before getting into bed in a hotel room, I always walk around the bed to untuck the sheets.If you're a sheet-tucker-inner, you know it's a pain to do just once. I can't imag … | Continue reading
Commissioned to design the interior of a restaurant on a tight budget, French industrial designer Franck Magné worked with a local metal fabricating shop to develop these Zero chairs."I imagined tables and chairs that could be manufactured locally while meeting the budgetary cons … | Continue reading
If you know how to cook a good meal, a startup called Nala Robotics has an interesting proposition for you: "Teach" your recipe(s) to one of their AI- and machine-learning-equipped cooking robots, then use it to open your own ghost kitchen where the robot does all the work. The c … | Continue reading
Imagine if you, me and a dozen other people were standing in a room staring at the same screen—but the screen showed something different to each of us, simultaneously.A California-based tech company called Misapplied Sciences has made this possible. They've developed a "parallel … | Continue reading
It's not clear if this event happened as a result of a hack, but industrial facility cybersecurity specialist J.D. Christopher posted this harrowing video of a disaster at an aluminum extrusion facility in Spain: Extrusion rigs like this use hydraulics to push the billets through … | Continue reading
In the temporary-seat furniture category, we saw the stacking Sitzbock Pommel Horse, then Steelcase's nesting Flex Perch stool.Sitzbock Pommel Horse, Steelcase Flex Perch The latest addition to this genre is the Perigallo, designed by Domínguez, García & Ibáñez and manufactured b … | Continue reading
Rick Smith didn't invent the taser—that credit goes to NASA researcher Jack Cover—but Smith did start the company, TASER International, to commercially produce the nonlethal weapon in 1993. Smith was motivated to start the company after losing two friends to gun violence. His fri … | Continue reading