Hasta La Ideas

Exploring the principles and visions that drive this prolific design firm

Despite winning over 290 design awards and filing over 1,000 patents, Whipsaw—a highly acclaimed strategy, industrial design, digital design and engineering consulting firm—doesn’t aspire to be the most celebrated or prosperous company. For Whipsaw, success lies in designing solutions, meaningful experiences and, most of all, a better world. Since its conception in 1999, these ideals have shown through their widespread work, including home-gym machine Tonal, medical product Medostic and swanky home robot Bizzy. At the helm of the company is the equally prolific CEO and founder Dan Harden, who has not only amassed another 300 design awards himself, but who also leads the firm with an innovative and altruistic design philosophy.

This philosophy drove him long before he founded Whipsaw, before he led Frog Design as Vice President, worked with Steve Jobs or George Nelson or sketched with other notable design pioneers. “I always had this dream,” Harden tells us. “I had this very altruistic, lofty vision about what design could do, and a very naive sense when you’re very young, but you can’t lose your passion or your real enthusiasm for what what design can do to influence the world and make the world a better place.”

With this ethos as the backbone of his work and company, Harden often considers the intersections and intricacies within a single design. He says, “I like to merge technology, psychology and even art. I’m really intrigued by the nexus points of things and experiences and life. That’s really interesting stuff—when you can take technology and give it that kind of personality or artistic field.”

Tonal is a prime example of these considerations. Sleek and compact, it is a smart training device that uses an engine and AI to create weighted exercises and eschew bulky discs and barbells. Thanks to its WiFi connected flat screen display, it integrates more seamlessly into homes while also incorporating the technological ingenuity to recreate and optimize resistance-led workouts without the obtrusive look of traditional home gyms.

In many ways, the product encapsulates and is informed by the brand’s diverse work in various industries. As Harden explains, “I think it was inevitable that we were going to be working on something as breakthrough as Tonal, because we’ve done so many consumer electronics, a lot of medical products. And if you think about fitness, again, it’s these elements coming together. It also required smart engineering, and a lot of designers don’t think like an engineer.” But Harden, in the vein of architect and engineer Buckminster Fuller, embraces the dynamic between the two. As such, Tonal’s design goes above and beyond what’s typical for gym equipment and makes extremely complex engineering very easy to use (and affordable to produce).

“We, as designers, have to be a lot more clever and even act more as an usher, where we allow the product and the technology to gently enter into your lifestyle,” describes the designer. “We’ve all had enough harshness of experiences of how technology has a rather rude presence in one’s life.”

“Really good design, when you’re first exposed to it, becomes ambient to the overall experience”

For Harden, good design disappears. “The great disappearance act of design,” as he calls it, “is not that design is going away. It’s just that really good design, when you’re first exposed to it, becomes ambient to the overall experience. It should have this double-sided quality about it; it should sort of disappear and then as you extract yourself from the actual experience, it reappears and says, ‘Look, it’s a beautiful element in your life.’” A well designed task chair is one such example, as it enables getting lost in work and getting things done (which detracts from thinking about the structure of the chair).

Recently, Whipsaw released the Skrolla Lounge Chair, which Harden also designed. Featuring a unique wooden curve and economical form, the comfortable chair is constructed from only six wood parts, including the seat and arm rest (which is comprised of a single scroll) and the back rest (which is crafted from 13 layers of plywood veneer). In addition to its unique shape, which beautifully reveals the elements and materials used in its creation, its manufacturing process is completely novel.

“To get that shape,” the founder tells us, “I had this idea of layering sheets of veneer with epoxy and then putting it inside a vacuum bag and pulling it around a form. The form sets in about 50 minutes and then it pops right off.” Once off, holes can be drilled into the seat to secure the legs, the backs of which are wider to carry the weight of the chair.

Already working on a completely different chair, Harden’s desire to design feels almost insatiable, and Whipsaw’s growing list of over 800 product designs clearly attests to this. Each of their new projects seem to do more than build out an already luminary oeuvre; rather, they reveal the underpinnings behind what makes design worthy. In hinting at his upcoming work, Harden tells us, “I like design that looks as if it should have always existed and all you did as a designer was be like an archaeologist. Because design is about discovering truths, and I’ll keep digging, digging, digging and digging.”

Hero image courtesy of Whipsaw

Whenever we try to make something, there will always be materials that are cut off, left unused, and ultimately thrown away. Whether it’s paper, wood, plastic, textile, or even metal, these wasted materials end up hurting the environment sooner or later, whether directly or indirectly. There is now a more conscientious effort among manufacturers and designers to pay attention to such wasted resources, either by reducing their number or reusing them for some other purpose. The former requires smarter and more ingenious designs that utilize every inch of a material, which can sometimes be more difficult than it sounds. Fortunately, recycling and upcycling cut-offs can actually be easier, especially if you can combine them into interesting shapes that serve as the foundations of beautiful furniture and lighting fixtures such as these hanging lamps.

Designers: Anthony Frank Keeler, Sarah Coleman, Wisse Trooster

We saw Stackabl earlier this year as one of those efforts to upcycle factor off-cut felt. More than just a specific collection of chairs and couches, however, it was actually a tool that lets you design your own seat using stacked layers of material. Given their textile origins, seating furniture seems to be the most immediate application for this tool, but now you can also use the configurator to design comfy-looking lamps to hang from your ceilings.

Stackabl is like a DIY tool for designing your own pendant lamp. It lets customers dictate different parameters like the length of the lamp, the diameter of the “discs” of felt, and even where the actual lights will be located along the stack of material. Of course, you can also mix and match different colors, creating a composition that is as harmonious or as discordant as you like. You don’t even have to be limited to a single disc size since you can shrink or grow the circles anywhere along the length of the lamp.

The result is a modular pendant lamp that is both striking and sustainable. It’s almost too easy to compare it with a tower of pancakes if not for the more earthy tones that the material has. Since no two configurations are identical (unless you intend them to be so), each Stackabl pendant lamp is immediately unique and personal. The lamps also convey feelings of warmth and fuzziness because of the woven felt as well as the diffused light. It makes for a perfect mood-setter for areas that need to feel cozy and comfortable.

It’s not just the upcycled felt that’s environment-friendly, even though it’s the main focus of the Stackabl system. The aluminum used to hold things together is also upcycled, and the LEDs that provide illumination are considered to be more power-efficient than conventional bulbs. It’s not a completely green product, with the use of acrylic covers to diffuse the light and adhesives to keep things together, but it still takes an important step toward sustainability by giving leftover materials a new home.

The post These fuzzy pendant lights are made from stacked felt cut-offs first appeared on Yanko Design.

I’m waving my Apple Card at the screen but I can’t seem to get it to take my money.

Meet the Apple iCar, a conceptual automobile from the mind of Ukraine-based Echo Studio. Created as an entry for the Motion Design Contest, the concept explores what it would be like for Apple to launch a high-end electric supercar that stands out even against other EV stalwarts like Tesla and Polestar.

Designer: Echo Studio

We’ve seen a lot of Apple Car concepts over the past couple of years, but nothing quite like this one right here. While other cars were mainly focused on creating automobiles that ‘looked’ like a part of Apple’s product family, the iCar is just a phenomenally designed automobile that happens to have the Apple logo on it. There aren’t any MacBook references, cheesegrater grilles, iPhone notches, or lightning ports. It’s just a great-looking car. Perhaps the “best car Apple has ever made”.

The vehicle has a rather luxurious supercar-inspired appeal to it. I see a little bit of the Audi R8 and the lesser-known Lamborghini Asterion in the iCar. The vehicle has an aggressive, speedy silhouette, a rounded back, and some beautifully designed headlights and taillights. There’s obviously an Apple logo on the front, but each wheel sports some drop-dead gorgeous rims with Apple logos on them too.

A little Porsche, a little Audi, and definitely a little Lamborghini in the way this rear form was sculpted.

Do the rims cost extra? Probably!

For Echo Studio, the Apple iCar was just a part of their broader vision for the Apple experience. Below, the studio even designed the entire car-browsing/shopping experience for the iPhone, allowing you to see it in VR, choose paint colors, and even pick the wheels of your choice.

The post Apple supercar concept with a distinct Audi and Lamborghini-inspired design is the EV we absolutely need first appeared on Yanko Design.

“The single biggest challenge is the screen itself”, says Kevin Beck, Senior Story Technologist at Lenovo (although I’m not entirely sure what that title means). Beck’s statement is rather revealing, as it’s a complete affirmation of the fact that a folding laptop/tablet is a MUCH better idea than a folding phone. Phones are used/opened hundreds of times each day, compounding to thousands of times in just two weeks alone. Laptops/tablets, on the other hand, are ‘opened’ much less often, which translates to a dramatic decrease in the stress taken by a folding display. Moreover, laptops and tablets can usually afford to be thicker than phones, which gives you a lot of leeway to build a better hinge that can withstand friction, and constant folding, and is therefore built to last for years.

Meet the ThinkPad X1 Fold from Lenovo, a laptop-tablet hybrid that celebrates its foldability. In a world where MacBooks don’t look like books, we’ve got ourselves a ThinkPad that opens like one! Now in its second iteration, the ‘next gen’ Thinkpad X1 Fold sports a slimmer design with thinner bezels and a much larger screen with a 16-inch diagonal (as compared to the 13.3-inch one on the previous ThinkPad X1 Fold from 2020). The tablet folds right down the center, sort of like a book, giving you a slim device that’s easy to carry and versatile enough to be used in a variety of formats. You can use it as a tablet in conjunction with a stylus, or fold it in an L-shaped format and use it as you would a laptop… albeit with a touchscreen keyboard underneath your fingertips. If you want a more analog experience, there’s a mechanical keyboard attachment too that wirelessly connects to your X1 Fold, and a stand that you can prop your device onto, turning it into sort of a desktop-style experience.

Designer: Lenovo

On paper, the ThinkPad X1 Fold boasts some rather commendable specs. It sports a 12th Gen Intel Core i7 processor on the inside, with the ability to go up to 32GB LPDDR5 memory and 1TB storage. The 16.3-inch OLED display has a 4:3 resolution when completely open, bringing it to 3:2 when folded in half (that’s 15:10, which is just about comparable to the 16:9 aspect ratio found on regular laptops). The X1 Fold can be used solo or configured with an optional magnetic-attach pen utilizing Wacom protocol for a true tablet-esque experience. For laptop-lovers who need a tactile keyboard, the ThinkPad X1 Fold offers an optional full-size backlit ThinkPad keyboard, with TrackPoint and
large haptic touchpad.

The beauty of the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold lies in its versatility. The company touts that the device can be used in 5 different modes – the clamshell laptop mode, landscape ‘desktop’ mode with the keyboard, portrait desktop mode with the keyboard (a unique template that Lenovo claims really excited early users), book mode, and finally tablet mode with either the touchscreen input or the stylus. “Productivity, collaboration, content consumption, reading, writing, editing, and so on are all a breeze in whichever mode one feels most comfortable with”, Lenovo says. “The modes are managed by an intuitive Mode Switcher interface”

The hybrid folding tablet comes with a camera array that’s placed on the shorter edge of the bezel (sort of like on the iPad). This means it faces you when you’re using it in laptop mode. Multiple microphones placed along the sides of the bezel help with orientation and spatial awareness, allowing the X1 Fold to be used in a variety of ways.

The one largest drawback with a 16-inch folding tablet is the battery life, given that it’s powering such a massive display. The ThinkPad X1 Fold comes with a 48Wh battery on the inside that is intelligently managed by the tablet’s chip to optimize performance based on usage. When left idle, the X1 Fold’s display automatically dims to save battery, and when you walk away from the device, the screen automatically shuts off, saving power. It even auto-wakes when you return, so you can pick up right where you left off.

With all those impressive specs and abilities, the ThinkPad X1 Fold won’t come cheap. It begins shipping in November with a starting price of $2499. Higher specs will cost you more, and the keyboard, stand, and stylus are sold as optional accessories.

The price, however high it may be, is a factor of exactly how impressive and innovative this little gizmo is. Folding displays aren’t quite mainstream yet, and folding laptop/tablets are practically inexistent as a category barring a few models. The ThinkPad X1 Fold hopes to pave the way to a future where such devices are much more commonplace, resulting in a robust supply chain and eventually… eventually, a lower price tag!

The post The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold is proof that a foldable tablet/laptop is a better idea than a foldable phone first appeared on Yanko Design.

If you are on the lookout for a compact gaming keyboard with unique features, then Roccat has got your wish granted. The German computer accessories manufacturer has released the first small gaming keyboard in the Vulcan series with some features that have never been seen on a keyboard before.

The small size of the Vulcan II Mini brings big innovation to the fore that people who are creative, perform editing or professional gamers are going to find ultra-resourceful. The robust accessory is definitely going to set a new precedence for the compact gaming keyboard market.

Designer: ROCCAT

Click Here to Buy Now!

The demand for compact TKL (Tenkeyless) keyboards sans the numeric keypad is high – for example the likes of Logitech G915 TKL or Razer V2 TKL boards. Smaller keyboards in the 65 or 60 percent class are also gaining popularity like the Cooler Master SK622, K70 Pro Mini Wireless Razer Blackwidow V3 Mini or the Huntsman Mini. The Roccat Vulcan II Mini in the 65 percent form factor retains the arrow keys and weighs just 500 grams.

On top of everything else gamers cherish, the keyboard has the first ever Dual LED Smart Key technology. This brings 30 multi-function Smart Keys having Dual LEDs to keep a tab on the active status of secondary functions. This way, users can program a secondary function layer on the mini keyboard to retain the functionality of a standard-sized keyboard.

The Vulcan II Mini also gets the brand’s new TITAN II Optical Switches which is an evolution of the optical switch. That means the keyboard gets the light speed actuation and 100 million keystroke durability rating. It will also make the accessory compatible with third-party keycaps, so you can pair it with you old gaming keyboard’s keycaps too.

The mini keyboard is crafted out of anodized aluminum, thereby making it very durable. That 1.8 m long USB-C to USB-A 2.0 cable is detachable too. The keyboard can store up to 5 profiles with custom RGB lighting and button assignments which is great for geeks. Roccat Vulcan II Mini is available for pre-order at a price tag of $149.99 in two color options – Ash Black or Arctic White. The look can be further customized by adding third-party cross-mount keycaps or colorful USB-C cables. The mini keyboard is all set to launch on September 29, 2022, and it’s going to ship worldwide after that time.

The post Roccat Vulcan II Mini gaming keyboard gets world’s first dual LED smart keys first appeared on Yanko Design.