Hasta La Ideas

Electric scooters or e-scooters are no longer oddities on roads these days. They offer efficient, economical, and environment-friendlier ways to get from point A to point B, especially if you’re traveling by your lonesome self. Most e-scooters nowadays tend to look a lot like each other, almost as if they’ve already exhausted all the design possibilities for this personal mobility device. There are a few outliers, of course, but most e-scooters tend to just focus on improving this or that technical feature that improves the e-scooter’s efficiency. Power and beauty don’t have to be mutually exclusive, though, and this electric scooter brings a refreshing new design that takes inspiration not just from the looks of a skateboard but also from the feel of riding on one.

Designer: Ryan Daughtridge

Click Here to Buy Now: $499 $1000 (50% off). Hurry, only 8 left!

The basic design of an e-scooter is pretty much standard by now, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t any wiggle room to offer a refreshing take like this bold newcomer. In opposition to the large and bulky e-scooters that litter the market, the Skate-X is espousing minimalism to create not only a pleasing visual aesthetic but also a lean form that helps keep the vehicle light. For example, it uses a simple yet effective three-pole frame to securely hold the skateboard deck instead of the typical hefty platforms you’d find on other electric scooters.

Yes, there is a genuine, seven-ply skateboard deck that brings a unique character to this e-scooter. The extra-wide and concave-shaped platform not only offers a better foothold but also creates a look and feel that you won’t find on any other e-scooter. Given how smooth and swift you’ll be riding on the Skate-X, you might even begin to think you’re actually riding a skateboard instead.

25% Grade Climbing – Cruise up hills up to 25° steep with a powerful 500W motor.

All Terrain – Extra large 9” tires (10” air-filled tires for Pro) give a cushy smooth ride on hard terrain.

That skateboard soul is thanks to the e-scooter’s astounding 500W motor that makes short work of steep inclines up to 25 degrees. 9-inch tires (or 10-inch air-filled wheels for the Pro model) lets your roll on the road or off-road with ease. The 360Wh battery lets the Skate-X reach that sweet 20-mile range, taking the experience beyond skateboards and regular e-scooters. And with a top speed of 22mph, you’ll be breezing through streets and roads in comfort and style.

Quick Fold & Carry – Patented push-button folding system for quick subway rides.

You might argue that, aside from the skateboard deck, some of these features can be found in a few premium e-scooters. The keyword here, however, is “premium,” which often carries a price tag to match. That means that it’s a luxury that only a few people will be able to afford, a far cry from how the skateboard brought swift and fun riding to the masses. Fortunately, the Skate-X isn’t your typical premium e-scooter in that regard, either.

For only $499 (or $799 for a Pro model) during this Super Early Bird period, you can get a dashing e-scooter that lets you swiftly dash on roads and hills without breaking a sweat, all while looking cool. With the Skate-X, you can experience the power of a premium e-scooter in a striking design for under $1,000, an affordable luxury that everyone can enjoy.

Click Here to Buy Now: $499 $1000 (50% off). Hurry, only 8 left!

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While the landscape for smartphones, tablets, and laptops gets increasingly competitive with legacy and new brands all fighting for eyeballs, Huawei’s always focused on its own trajectory towards innovation and cutting-edge tech. There’s a lot Huawei can offer beyond the everyday smartphone or laptop, with the company foraying comfortably into smart home audio and now even smart glasses. The tech giant announced the HUAWEI Eyewear, a hybrid pair of stylish spectacles that house some impressive tech underneath. No, these aren’t AR glasses, but are rather audio devices disguised as eyewear. Pop them on and you don’t need earbuds, or that’s at least what Huawei wants you to believe. We managed to get our hands on a pair to test them out. Chances are you won’t be able to buy them anytime soon if you’re in the USA, Canada, or the EU (they’re slated to be available in China, Japan, and Malaysia)… but it’s important to look at it as a milestone of what’s capable in the tech world, and also as a proof of concept for a new idea – the idea being, “Can spectacles replace AirPods? And should they?”

The Eyewear comes with a contact-point charging cable that plugs into the base of the stems

In theory, this means it’s somewhat possible (although not advisable) to charge these while you’re wearing them

First Impressions

If there’s one thing I give major props to Huawei for, it’s the fact that they take design incredibly seriously. I don’t think I’ve come across a single Huawei product that’s had a boring, lackluster design. Their MateBook X Pro was easily one of the most spectacular MacBook competitors on the market, the Sound X saw Huawei partner with Devialet to create a magical speaker that looked as powerful as it sounded, and perhaps my personal favorite, the P50 Pocket really pushed the boundaries of what a luxury foldable phone could look like. Similarly, the HUAWEI Eyewear look incredibly stylish – but more importantly, they look like stylish glasses, not stylish tech wearables. Huawei’s been incredibly careful in ensuring that its spectacles are slim, lightweight, and fashionable. One could argue that the spectacles feel a little TOO lightweight, although that might sound a little pedantic. The temple stems house “ultra-thin 128 mm² large amplitude speakers” that beam-form the audio right into your ear when you’re wearing the spectacles. You don’t need earpieces, and these aren’t bone-conducting spectacles either. The audio drivers are designed to channel the audio waves right to your ear (somewhat similar to the ones found on VR headsets), giving you a bespoke listening experience while you have the glasses on. It’s a clever idea but it begs the question – why?

The Idea

Quite a few questions come to mind with this device. For starters, why does such a device even need to exist? Will the average Joe and Jane ditch their TWS earbuds for it… and more importantly, will people actually go through the hassle of getting their prescription lenses fitted into this ‘audio eyewear’? The answers I personally have don’t give much clarity either. The eyewear are tech accessories, designed to support your existing gadgets, be it the phone, laptop, or tablet. The eyewear itself doesn’t rely on any OS or cooperation from a third-party company that may be restricted from working with Huawei. It’s an easy win for the tech conglomerate, and shows their ability to innovate beyond your ‘run of the mill’ products. Audio eyewear is a niche not many companies have explored. Bose tried making something similar and abandoned the project almost immediately. Aftershokz and Zungle have created audio glasses in the past too, but they rely on bone conduction – an audio technology I personally detest and wouldn’t consider a replacement for traditional in-ear audio devices. Facebook went as far as partnering with Ray-Ban to create glasses with cameras built into them, although I don’t remember anyone being excited or optimistic about those. In fact, it’s been over a year and Facebook (sorry, Meta) has been suspiciously quiet on sales and whether the product’s been a commercial success. My gut feeling is that it hasn’t. Here’s what my thoughts are with the HUAWEI Eyewear (and they’re solely my personal opinions) – people like glasses the way they are. They’re a hybrid fashion/medical device (given that they correct vision), so there’s a reticence when it comes to injecting consumer tech into them. My specs sit on my face nearly 17-18 hours a day, so having speakers that close to my ear for those prolonged periods of time just feels like something I wouldn’t want. Besides, the fact that I’d have to take my specs off to charge my earphones seems incredibly counterintuitive because I’m practically blind without my specs. Am I the HUAWEI Eyewear’s intended audience, though? Probably not. So let’s just put a pin in that and take a gander at how they work and how they sound.

A comparison between the temple stems on a regular pair of acetate glasses and the HUAWEI Eyewear

The Device

The HUAWEI Eyewear, objectively, are incredibly stylish spectacles with an open acoustic design that delivers audio straight to your ear without blocking them – this means you can listen to music and calls while still hearing the world around you. It’s impressive on paper, but not as impressive as the fact that the eyewear look deceptively like regular eyewear. They come in a variety of styles and formats, from wayfarers to aviators to rectangular and round frames in full-rimmed and half-rimmed varieties. The tech fits in the spectacles’ stems, which are, impressively enough, not too thick and don’t add too much weight to the frames either. While wearing them, they didn’t feel too heavy, and more importantly, they stayed in place without slipping off. The spectacles grip the face pretty well, thanks to the arc-shaped stems and the elastic hinges that flex comfortably as you wear them. The HUAWEI Eyewear comes with an all-day battery, supports connections with multiple devices (up to 2 devices simultaneously), and just like your TWS earbuds, comes with touch input on the side that lets you tap, slide, press, and pinch to control playback and answer/reject calls. Huawei touts the Eyewear’s Reverse Sound Field Acoustic System which allegedly provides a private listening experience, and a hydrodynamic wind-proof microphone design that reduces noise during calls… so we decided to put the Eyewear to the test to see how good it was.

The Audio

Ultimately, the true value of Huawei’s audio-glasses comes from exactly how good (or bad) the audio is… and the verdict isn’t particularly rosy. Here’s where things work in favor of the glasses – the audio isn’t bad. It doesn’t really compare to having actual AirPods in your ears, obviously… but then again, what it attempts is completely different from your average earphones. The sound is clear and distinct, but lacks detail, especially in the lower frequencies. I tried wearing a hoodie to see if it affected the audio and surprisingly, it enhanced my listening experience. The hoodie contained the sound waves, amplifying them and making my audio louder and more discernible. However, the claim that the HUAWEI Eyewear provides a private listening experience falls a little flat on its face. There’s a significant amount of audio leakage, and anyone sitting/standing within 3 feet from you will most likely be able to hear what you’re hearing. It almost seems like ‘open ear design’ and ‘private listening experience’ don’t ever go hand in hand, because even bone-conducting earphones have the same problem. A hoodie might help prevent excess sound leakage, but that seems like a rather odd way to enforce privacy, in my opinion.

The Eyewear comes along with a solf microfiber-lined fabric case that makes it easy to carry around

The User Experience

My overall impression of the UX can be boiled down to two simple words – needs work. Just like any first-iteration product ever made, whether it’s the first MotoRAZR, the first Pixel Watch, or even the first Nothing phone, I have a principle that I often encourage everyone to live by – The first iteration will always have a few flaws. If you want to avoid early adopters’ remorse, buy the second iteration. Design is an iterative process, and you can only solve problems after you identify them. The job of the first product, in a lot of ways, is to help identify those problems. Users express their concerns, and it’s only after they do that companies can build a second, better, more user-friendly product. To that end, it seems like HUAWEI’s Eyewear (given that it’s the company’s first independently-made smart glasses) needs a little fine-tuning. As far as its tech goes, it works rather well. The Bluetooth connection feels incredibly seamless and works up to 20 feet comfortably. The battery life is good, although I don’t know what the battery’s overall lifespan will be. The audio quality is acceptable, but the low-end frequencies need work, and the wind-canceling on the microphone needs a little reconsideration too. The lack of private listening honestly feels like a given at this point, and I don’t see it as something that’s realistically achievable, although I’m probably the harsh skeptic here. There are, however, a few rather glaring concerns I have. For starters, the glasses boast swappable front halves, but this seems easier said than done. At the risk of breaking the hardware, I decided not to apply too much pressure to decouple the front from the temple stems. The second problem I have is with the temple stems themselves. There’s no physical/visual/tactile demarcation that tells you where the touch-sensitive area on the temple stems lies. I found myself struggling to find the right place to tap, swipe, pinch to input my gestures, and it feels like something that will require a long, arduous learning process. A simple matte patch on the glossy plastic temple stems could have easily solved this problem. Finally, and perhaps my biggest concern yet, is the fact that this product brings planned obsolescence to eyewear. When I buy a new pair of spectacles, I wear them for nothing less than 5 years… although my gut tells me the battery on these temple stems don’t have a lifespan that long. This effectively means I have to replace my temple stems every 2-3 years to retain my spectacles – a feature that I personally don’t see myself doing. If it’s any consolation, I don’t really consider myself being the target audience for this eyewear anyway, because Huawei’s website doesn’t indicate whether I can get prescription lenses fitted into these spectacles. For other people who just like the idea of having spectacles/sunglasses with audio devices built into them, I’d say it’s worth a shot. It’s priced at roughly $240 too (converted from its Malaysian price), which places it somewhere in the mid-range tier. Don’t expect it to blow your mind, but if you’re open to pleasant surprises, the HUAWEI Eyewear will certainly deliver.

The post HUAWEI Eyewear Review: AirPods for your eyes?? first appeared on Yanko Design.

Most people have plenty of reading materials scattered around the house, whether they’re actual books or collections of magazines. No one reads all of these at the same time, of course, and some might have favorites among the ones they’ve already read. Keeping books organized is relatively easy if you have the right storage options for them, like shelves and even side tables. Keeping track of your current book or favorite magazines, however, might be a bit trickier. You can have one place to store books and another to enthrone your special stuff, but that means keeping two pieces of furniture. To simplify things while making your room look a bit more interesting, this rather cute design gives the sideboard a literal twist that gives the furniture a personality not that different from a friendly pet.

Designer: Deniz Aktay

Although originally intended to store tableware and other culinary items, sideboards have become multipurpose furniture that serves as a dedicated space for anything you need to keep. Traditional designs are really no different from cabinets with drawers and doors, but there is definitely more than one way to make these room accessories, especially if they serve as accents to make a space look more interesting. After all, if a piece of furniture is going to stand at the side and occupy a lot of space, it might as well make your room look appealing.

The Dachshund trades the multipurpose compartments of a typical sideboard for a single, open area. Although it’s certainly possible to put anything in this space, it is designed particularly to hold a row of books or magazines. In essence, it’s like a single for reading materials expressed as a low sideboard. That alone wouldn’t really be enough to catch anyone’s attention, but the sideboard’s body twists upward on one end to add a bit of flavor and functionality.

This twisted end has a somewhat shallow box that can be used to hold a few items. The most natural thing to put inside it would be the book or magazine you’re currently reading, making it easy to access without having to pull it out from a pile. Alternatively, you can also enshrine your favorite or most beautiful book, setting it apart for everyone to see. Of course, you can also just put decorative items to complement whatever decor or theme you might have going in the room.

The Dachshund sideboard puts a simple twist on a standard design to create a memorable sight and a new experience. The furniture’s form is akin to a pet, like the canine namesake, that wags its tail or, more appropriately, brings you your newspaper or, in this case, your book. The smooth curve of that part is also something that’s difficult to pull off with wood, making this unusual piece of furniture a fun yet elegant addition to your interior.

The post This quirky sideboard is like a loyal pet that brings your favorite book forward first appeared on Yanko Design.

American fashion label Thom Browne has opened its first retail location in San Francisco, designed by ASA Studio Albanese to feature dramatic marble against white slatted blinds.

The flagship store is situated at 432 Jackson Street in the historic Yeon Building, which dates back to 1855, in the heart of the city’s luxury shopping district.

Its interior is the latest collaboration between Thom Browne‘s eponymous founder and architect Flavio Albanese of Italy-based ASA Studio Albanese, who has designed over a dozen stores for the brand since 2017.

Like its counterparts around the world, the 1,250-square-foot (116-square-metre) space is outfitted to look like a Mad Men-era workplace.

This is achieved by pairing highly decorative marble surfaces with strips of white slatted blinds and tube lighting.

“Behind Thom Browne’s signature slat blind-covered windows is a minimalist mid-century style office with rows of fluorescent tube lighting, polished with white Calcutta and Carrara marble floors, and banker grey Bardiglio and Carrara marble walls,” said the Thom Browne team.

Among the furniture pieces curated to embellish the theme are a glass-topped desk placed in the centre of the room at one end and chairs that form a small seating area at the other.

“Thom continues to outfit this space with mid-century furniture by American and French designers — including seating and lamps by Jacques Adnet, a desk by TH Robsjohn-Gibbings, office chairs by Knoll, benches by McCobb, coffee tables by Mathieu Mategot, and display etagere’s by Maison Jansen,” the team said.

The largely desaturated colour palette – reflective of the brand’s clothing – is interrupted by brass accessories and details on the furniture, as well as a few camel-toned garments.

A black band wraps around the rooms at floor level, separating the grey marble on the walls from the lighter toned stone underfoot.

Clothes are presented on metal rails mounted on wheels, while bags, shoes, eyewear and fragrances are displayed on minimalist freestanding shelves.

The fitting rooms are hidden behind doors covered in the same material as the walls so that they blend in seamlessly when closed.

Thom Browne founded his label in 2001 with five suits in a small by-appointment shop in New York City’s West Village, and eventually expanded to include ready-to-wear and accessories lines for both men and women.

Browne’s Autumn Winter 2022 collection was an ode to toys and featured sculptural tailoring, presented at New York Fashion Week in front of an audience of 500 teddy bears.

The photography is courtesy of Thom Browne.

The post ASA Studio Albanese references mid-century offices for Thom Browne store in San Francisco appeared first on Dezeen.

Jaunty pop, infectious indie, joyfully chaotic rap and more

Sobs: Air Guitar

From Air Guitar, the second album by Singapore-based rock band Sobs, the delightfully infectious lead single and titular track is drenched in influences from ’90s power-pop and ’80s new wave. Within, the trio (Celine Autumn, Jared Lim and Raphael Ong) tells a bittersweet tale through a euphoric melody and dramatic pop chord progressions.

Tanukichan: Make Believe

Tanukichan—the music project from Bay Area singer-songwriter Hannah van Loon—returns with their first new offering since the 2018 debut album, Sundays. “Make Believe” is a shoegaze-leaning ode to not believing in anything, and it opens with crisp drums before erupting into fuzzy production and van Loon’s dreamy vocals. The track is made with frequent collaborator Toro y Moi (aka Chaz Bear) and is accompanied by a hazy and distorted music video.

Hemlocke Springs: girlfriend

23-year-old, North Carolina-based artist Hemlocke Springs shares her second single, the buoyant and charming “girlfriend.” Gliding on playful vocals, ’80s influences and jaunty pop production, the unique track dreams of a love not yet experienced and solidifies Springs as an artist forging her own path.

Brockhampton: Big Pussy

LA-based Brockhampton announced their indefinite hiatus earlier this year, but have returned with the joyfully chaotic “Big Pussy.” Beginning with a snippet that sounds like the Germs, it swiftly runs rampant with jazz samples before shapeshifting into a rap banger and then morphs again with a chill, funk-inflected beat that’s reminiscent of ’90s progressive hip-hop, briefly borrowing from a Smoothe Da Hustler track. It features vocals from group leader Kevin Abstract, was produced by Bearface and Nick Velez, and will appear on the upcoming album The Family.

Andrew Bird feat. Phoebe Bridgers: I felt a Funeral, in my Brain

Sublime singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Andrew Bird sets a macabre Emily Dickinson poem to music with contributions from Phoebe Bridgers. The duet, “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,” was originally developed for Bird’s 2022 album, Inside Problems, but was withheld. Its recent debut came complete with pensive black-and-white music video.

Listen Up is published every Sunday and rounds up the new music we found throughout the week. Hear the year so far on our Spotify channel. Hero image of Andrew Bird courtesy of David Black