I'm not sure if automotive design is evolving, or just getting weirder for the sake of being weird. While engineers are busy trying to develop autonomous systems, car designers mostly seem preoccupied with developing loud forms that will cut through the signal noise of our attent … | Continue reading
This year we saw plenty of bicycle and bike-accessory news, from crazy concepts to practical modifications. Our favorites are the ones that are both crazy and practical, like the Cercle Bicycle, a thesis project by Industrial Design student Berhard Sobotta. Probably not as practi … | Continue reading
This year lots of beautiful, designey structures by starchitects made the news. You can find those on other blogs. We're much more interested in the weird and unusual homes, buildings and neighborhoods we came across this year. In California and Arizona, there are neighborhoods w … | Continue reading
If you rent a car from Enterprise, you'll find this thing in the glovebox: That little template is a Damage Evaluator Tool. Enterprise suggests that upon receiving your rental, you "Walk around the car looking for safety issues and damage. If you see any damage to the vehicle you … | Continue reading
Brussels-based industrial designer Theo Luvisotto worked out several prototypes and mechanisms… …before he came up with the final design of his Flip-Flap Chair: "FLIP-FLAP is a children's chair with a backrest which can be flipped down to form a | Continue reading
After earning her B.A. in Industrial Design from Iran's University of Tehran, Mina Kasirifar immigrated to the U.S. to pursue a Masters degree in I.D. at San Francisco State University. For one of her final student projects, undertaken during the pandemic, Kasirifar tackled a tim … | Continue reading
Here's Arne Jacobsen's iconic Egg Chair. I would like to call Jacobsen's design "inimitable," but in this day and age, that doesn't mean anything. Here's the Classic V2 Massage Chair with Ottoman by manufacturer Nouhaus: To me, it looks a little too close for comfort to Jacobsen' … | Continue reading
Lisbon-based furniture designer Danilo Olim created these plywood Module 77 pieces: The idea is that you plug the pieces into one to form a configuration that suits you: I understand the appeal of the hexagon to geometry lovers, but I don't think they're | Continue reading
Here's a nifty prototype for a pen whose cap you'll never lose: That's by industrial designer and professor Tomas Kral. In addition to teaching ID at Switzerland's ECAL (Ecole Cantonale d'Art de Lausanne) for the past 15 years, Kral runs his own product design studio. Looking thr … | Continue reading
Mark your calendars—our 2022 design awards Early Bird period begins Thursday, January 6th! | Continue reading
Skyn Arise is a prescription medication for treating erectile dysfunction. The promotional packaging, created by product designer Jean-Baptiste Fastrez, is shaped like a pill capsule. Because the bottom is weighted, the packaging has a Weeble-like ability. The design "speaks for … | Continue reading
Most cars are designed for occupants who are connected to each other: Families, couples or friends driving around together. But ridesharing vehicles, whereby the driver and passengers are not intimately connected, do not have the need for an egalitarian space whereby both parties … | Continue reading
This week Hyundai unveiled their Mobile Eccentric Droid (MobED), a small, rectangular battery platform with a wheel at each corner. Each wheel has three motors, allowing each to independently turn, steer, move up or down, or move laterally (to change the droid's overall wheelbase … | Continue reading
And why washing machine filters might be a good idea | Continue reading
"Strong insects might come out and thin insects might get squeezed" | Continue reading
For those who take daily medications, there are myriad plastic dispensing systems for pills. Here's an alternative proposal created by industrial designer Fumie Shibata for Japan's Takeo Paper Co.: I like Shibata's concept much better, from a UX perspective. I'm curious to see | Continue reading
Plus, the winner of this year's Ultimate Gift Guide is announced! | Continue reading
From robot pets to lamps made from orange peels, these are the projects that caught our attention in 2021. | Continue reading
Furniture designer Mikko Halonen's Palipeli line can also grow in height | Continue reading
In this absurd (and oddly satisfying) supercut, gamer and hobbyist reloader Kommander Karl reloads a series of domestic objects in the style of first-person shooter videogames. It sounds silly to say, but I suppose if there's a "lesson" in here for product designers, it's that lo … | Continue reading
A Japanese initiative to pair industrial designers with specialty manufacturers yields fruit | Continue reading
This would be of no use to you cityfolk, but well useful out here in the country. Dutch designer Floris Schoonderbeek's Raintap is a rain barrel that attaches to a drainpipe to collect roof runoff, as most rain barrels do. But it has the additional features of a sink in | Continue reading
Product designer Gen Suzuki teams up with a family-run wire company | Continue reading
SDS or Smart Distancing Systems, by Dutch artists Jólan van der Wiel & Nick Verstand, is their creative and hi-tech way to provide social distancing guidelines in public spaces. "By intelligently using visually attractive shapes, social distancing can now be more enjoyable, more … | Continue reading
Plus Corporation's Air Karu clip shows an intense focus on the details | Continue reading
Danish furniture designer Jakob Jørgensen's Hanger is a wall rack that comes in two sizes. Each is made from two pieces of oak, an unseen stainless steel back panel, a shelf and some very precisely turned dowels. The dowels slide into the channel | Continue reading
While most automakers are making noise about going full electric a.s.a.p., Toyota's more measured approach considers that it may not be easy for the entire world to transition out of ICE vehicles so swiftly. They may be right. Even so, earlier this year Toyota President Akio Toyo … | Continue reading
The Stichting NDSM-werf Foundation is the name of an organization that promotes "the unique status of the shipyard (Amsterdam's NDSM wharf) as a place of permanent temporality and creative experimentation: the indispensable cultural sanctuary for and from the city," they write. E … | Continue reading
"Simple, fast and versatile" is how Ascento Robotics describes their two-wheeled Ascento Pro robot. In the sizzle reel, it certainly seems to live up to the hype, and then some: Sure, it's got two less wheels than Swiss Mile's 'bot, but it looks every bit as capable. The | Continue reading
Oppo, a Chinese smartphone manufacturer, has designed a wearable heads-up display called Air Glass. Unlike Google Glass, the system comes in two parts. The first part is an eyeglass frame that doesn't have any lenses; it's basically a scaffold that sits on your face. The second p … | Continue reading
Fine jewelry are supposed to be heirloom objects, passed down from generation to generation. In contrast, tech objects like smartphones, smart watches and laptops are things that begin going obsolete almost immediately, and become unusable in a matter of years, as operating syste … | Continue reading
How can you prevent tampering while getting rid of plastic windows? | Continue reading
Permanent Camping 2 is the name of Casey Brown Architecture's second tiny house of this style. Composed of two timber-framed and copper-clad towers, the structures are "Designed to provide the essential requirements for shelter, a bed, a porch or deck, a fire place and a bathroom … | Continue reading
Makes your bike more visible at night, convenient for group travel | Continue reading
In 1997 Sony designed a very strange Walkman model, the YP-ES22, made from injection-molded translucent ABS. Image: Museum of Design in Plastic Instead of having a hinged cassette door, as every model did, instead the YP-ES22 was made in two pieces: Image: Museum of Design in Pla … | Continue reading
Korean professor Cho Yul has studied "experimental works [involving] reflection, refraction and shadow for about 30 years." Around four years ago he designed a cup lined with reflective strips and a saucer containing some very deliberate marks, which yields this effect: Together … | Continue reading
Lately we've seen a lot of two-wheelers with very techie aesthetics: Icoma BMW iVision AMBY BMW Concept CE 02 XION CyberX e-bike The latest in this line-up is perhaps the designey-est yet: This TD-MP1 Moppe Apparatus, by Swedish designer Torkel Doehmers. | Continue reading
Between horror movies and fetish flicks, full face masks get a bad rap in popular culture, so there's no way to design one without it being creepy. But this one, intended for extreme cold weather, at least has some useful features: Openable flaps for your mouth and nose, allowing … | Continue reading
As we saw here, Japan has a wide variety of designs for agricultural carts. Similarly, Japanese wheelbarrow designs are manifold and can vary greatly from the incumbent design. As one example, this unusual-to-us "Arida" wheelbarrow, named for an agricultural area in Japan, is des … | Continue reading
If your DIY-minded kid wants to make a globe, doing it the traditional way would be impossible. However, they could certainly assemble a faceted globe made of laser-cut parts. That's what a company called MicroNovelty is offering with their Wooblock, a globe and decorative base t … | Continue reading
With no established form factor in this sector, designers are free to experiment | Continue reading
While the manufacturer of this 19th-century item is unknown, the product's name is stamped right into the brass: "The Sure Defender." Image: iCollector Probably made in America, it's essentially a multitool of death, offering a small dagger, brass knuckles, and a single-shot pist … | Continue reading
Each day truckloads of empty bottles, takeout containers, and discarded plastic packaging from around New York's five boroughs arrive at Sims Municipal Recycling in Brooklyn, located on a pier at the entrance to the Gowanus Canal. The facility processes over 2,000 tons of metal, … | Continue reading
The conversation takes place Tuesday, December 14th at 5 PM EST | Continue reading
The conversation takes place Tuesday, December 14th at 5 PM EST | Continue reading
We all know that running shoes ought have reflective markings on them, for safely running at night. Nike's designers have gone with an atypical reflective material for their Women's Air Force 1 kicks in Triple Black and Triple White: Swarovski® retroreflective crystals. | Continue reading
London-based designer Philippe Malouin created these nylon turntables, which are essentially furniture-sized ball bearings, under commission for the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara: "The tables are made of one hundred percent nylon," Malouin writes. "A simple circular gr … | Continue reading
You could argue there isn't much design to these, but I find Wiha's line of insulated wrenches simply beautiful as objects. Sized for imperial or metric, they've got open-end wrenches in both stubby and regular lengths, the former for working on underground lines: Ratchet wrenche … | Continue reading