NatGeo photographer David Doubilet's "Two Worlds: Above and Below the Sea" | Continue reading
Remember the gesture drawing exercises we did as design students? Korean artist Lee Sangsoo creates his pieces in that manner, except his "lines" are 3D: Lee's process shots are fascinating. He creates these pieces by cutting and welding sheet metal: | Continue reading
A lot of designers create furniture that's clad in veneers. Dutch industrial designer Job van den Berg, however, has created this O-Series of furniture that's entirely made out of veneers. "Job van den Berg stretches material properties to new territories. He uses only wood venee … | Continue reading
This month Foxconn announced they've been working on electric cars, to be launched by their new automotive brand, Foxtron. They also pulled the sheets off of their Model E, designed by none other than Pininfarina. Watch the presentation by Pininfarina CCO Kevin Rice, and tell me: … | Continue reading
Including an image of Prince that no one thought to take a good photo of | Continue reading
For Maker Faire Kyoto 2021, a group known as Team MakeJam (which includes Takamitsu Ikoma) created this automatic webcam/ring light. At least that's what I think it is. Note that it reacts to you. I can think of no more terrifying way to start a Zoom call than, you | Continue reading
As someone who hates most bedside lamp designs, I'd love to have reading lights like this in the bedroom: That's the Ledtube Mini, designed by Daniel Lopez for Marset. It's got a larger sibling, the original Ledtube: | Continue reading
Takamitsu Ikoma's Tatamel Bike can easily be stored under a desk or in a closet | Continue reading
On Barcelona's Entença Street there are three schools, but no bike lanes. This has led to a phenomenon where, for safety's sake, parents have organized a sort of mass bike ride to the school each Friday morning. Five kids on bikes are a lot easier to see than just one; | Continue reading
Packaging Should be Considered a Holistic Part of the Product "People talk about the engine or features of this car vs. that car. And then you see the car, and if it's not sexy, it doesn't matter. When people talk about somebody they're attracted to, they talk about the whole | Continue reading
Some behind-the-scenes footage and details as we prepare to ship the awards to the winners | Continue reading
Do you know why bathroom stall walls don't go all the way to the floor? It's so the janitor can quickly mop out each stall, without needing to get down and scrub out the corners that would be created if the walls met the floor. Custodian-based design extends to | Continue reading
Whichever art director Honda hired for their "The Origin of Determination" image film took more than a little inspiration from "Mad Max." If the world for that movie were rated-G, and populated only by Honda vehicles, this is pretty much what it would look like. I'm digging that … | Continue reading
Years ago at design school, for one lesson a pair of professional furniture designers showed us the simple buck they made to work out seat and seatback angles: It was two large metal wire grids, facing each other like the wings of a TIE fighter. They would slide thick dowels | Continue reading
Finnish manufacturer Tomra makes "reverse vending machines" to accept can and bottle deposits for recycling. These types of machines typically accept one vessel at a time, with an internal scanner classifying each one as it comes down the chute. Even in eco-conscious Scandinavia, … | Continue reading
The Society of Plastics Engineers' Central Europe division holds a semi-annual SPE Automotive Awards program, seeking "outstanding developments of plastic parts for vehicle construction." This year's winner in the Grand Innovation category is one that's not likely to win any desi … | Continue reading
Hagerty Media covered a tiny car I've not seen before, at least in this modded state. The Fiat Jolly, which was based on a Fiat 500/600 circa 60 years ago, was modified by Ghia to look like this: 1959 Fiat Jolly Bonhams 1959 Fiat Jolly Bonhams 1959 Fiat | Continue reading
If you're buying a small amount of nails at a hardware store in the U.S., they come in paperboard boxes; in Europe, apparently they're sold in plastic packaging. Thus Anna Lena Idel and Thomas Kucyk, both product design students at Germany's Muenster School of Design, created thi … | Continue reading
It's bold, it's ambitious, and Shabazz Stuart is making it happen | Continue reading
Luno is a smart company that sells air mattresses custom-fitted to over 1,800 different models. The self-inflating mattresses turn the back of your station wagon, hatchback or SUV into a comfortable, flat sleeping surface, bringing car camping to the next level. Since we last loo … | Continue reading
How 3 companies are moving from sustainable theory to practice | Continue reading
Needs three hands to operate, but the concept is good | Continue reading
Though he's not an automotive designer, product designer Joris de Groot has been exploring the materials and manufacturing techniques used with car interiors. He began investigating Colback, a family of non-woven material used as the unseen backing for carpeted interiors; if you … | Continue reading
Hacking bicycles is a common theme of YouTube channel The Q; he's the guy behind the Icycle, that ice-riding bicycle with sawmill blades for wheels. In this video, he DIYs a pair of airless bicycle tires using PVC pipe, lots of fasteners and plenty of patience. | Continue reading
This almost seems like an ID student project, but it's actually in production: The Lönneberga Stacking Bed, by German furniture brand Richard Lampert. It's a sofa that turns into two twin beds, using the simplest design possible. In addition to the simplicity | Continue reading
Welsh furniture designer Rowena Edwards' Kin Bench is a handsome piece of furniture with a whimsical inspiration: "The Kin Bench fits nicely within a hallway and has a sliding seat feature for you to decide how close you want to be to your seating partner. This was | Continue reading
A German startup called Personomic hopes to revolutionize bicycle grips. With standard offerings "you often have to deal with numbness, tingling or pain that can really ruin the cycling experience," they write. "Until now, bicycle grips have only been offered in standard sizes, d … | Continue reading
Other Today Studio is a collective of 45 designers and makers. For their recent One Sheet project, they set out to use digital fabrication to create useful items from single sheets of material, whether plywood, cardboard, acrylic, et cetera, with a mandate of leaving minimal to n … | Continue reading
Fun project: Look through Ikea catalogs from each decade, starting in the 1950s. Pick your favorite furniture pieces, then render up a living room that incorporates them. A company called Household Quotes (which is something like a UK-based Angi's List) did just that, hiring Neom … | Continue reading
I'd never seen or heard of these until today: Those are elastic "chair bands" sold by Amazon retailer Ozio, and they're intended for schoolkids with ADHD, ADD, autism, and/or SPD (Sensory Processing Disorder). Essentially, the child can freely fidget with the bands with their fee … | Continue reading
I stumbled across this gallery on Facebook featuring graphic breakdowns of famous logos: While there's no page numbers, these do look suspiciously like pages of a book. If anyone knows that it is, please let us know so | Continue reading
Reverse engineering DIY product designs to figure out the best approach to getting something made | Continue reading
The Cyrcle Phone is a smartphone, but despite the name it's not shaped like a circle. Nor is it shaped like a rectangle. For a reason I cannot fathom, it's shaped like an ellipse. "A Non-Rectangular Phone For Non-Rectangular People," reads the catchphrase on the | Continue reading
When someone discovered the glovebox in their car made a weird noise, and posted a video of it on YouTube with a clever title, it went viral: South African musician The Kiffness looped the track, brought some instruments into his car and composed the following: | Continue reading
The last time we looked at a cruise ship lifeboat, it was the massive fiberglass CRV55 used by Royal Caribbean. Passengers climb directly aboard from the deck, and the craft is then lowered to the water by winches. Viking Cruises, however, has a different approach to lifeboat dep … | Continue reading
Episode 3 airs Wednesday Oct 13, and DiResta will review 5 products | Continue reading
Jesco von Puttkamer runs what he calls "Germany's smallest car factory." From his studio in Ober-Ingelheim, the sheet metal artist attempts to capture the essence of certain iconic European cars in two dimensions, but not by drawing: The desk toys feature a spring mechanism, | Continue reading
The LaserCube is a powerful, portable wireless laser designed for artistic applications. Popular use cases are something like a cross between installation art and temporary digital vandalism: (Note: NSFW language, you may want to turn your speakers off.) Someone, however, had the … | Continue reading
Is there anything worse than an expensive thing that's shoddily made? Below, professional car detailer Jessica Tran of JT Mobile Detailing goes over the horrendous fit-and-finish of a Tesla. It's difficult to imagine any other car manufacturer getting away with this stuff: | Continue reading
At design school, one of my ID professors told us this story about reducing tooling costs: He was called in to redesign a plastic pet carrier for a client who didn't have an enormous budget. The carrier consisted of a tall top half and a shorter, tray-like bottom half that | Continue reading
In northern Bosnia, a 72-year-old man built a rotating house--to quell his wife's dissatisfaction with the views. "I've got tired of her complaints and frequent refurbishing of our family house," Vojin Kusic told Reuters, "and I said: I'll build you a rotating house so you can sp … | Continue reading
Sand was recently added as a finalist for entry into the National Toy Hall of Fame. As with many children, the material was a go-to toy for Thomas Mackisack, who combined it with another element for his childhood play. "I would spend hours trying to create intricate tunnels, abso … | Continue reading
With their original Surface Duo smartphone, Microsoft's industrial design team asked a great question: Do folding screens have to be contiguous? Their answer was no, and the device seemed promising, but was plagued by buggy software. Now they're looking to correct those flaws wit … | Continue reading
Can products also be their own packaging? Yarden Tzarfati from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design explores the relationship and boundaries between packaging and the product itself, joining them together into a single whole, based on the concepts of sustainability and nomadism. Th … | Continue reading
How exactly they go together is a bit of a mystery | Continue reading