Hasta La Ideas

Laptops are no longer what they used to be. Sure, the majority still come in the standard clamshell design, but even those sometimes have touchscreens or even second displays. And then there are laptops that are actually tablets in disguise, folding backward or splitting in half. These convertibles and detachables, respectively, have shifted the landscape of portable computers, opening the doors to more use cases and features. For the most part, however, they’re all still typical Windows laptops, but Lenovo might be putting an odd twist to the design with a 2-in-1 laptop whose screen transforms into an Android tablet when detached from its main body.

Designer Name: Lenovo (via “Apocalypse“)

The idea behind a 2-in-1 laptop, popularized by the likes of the Microsoft Surface Pro, is actually the reverse of a laptop. Technically, it’s more of a tablet that you can attach to a keyboard, whether that keyboard simply serves as a cover or a weighted base like a regular laptop. All the electronics are actually behind the screen, from the processors to the storage to even the battery, making the screen completely standalone.

What Lenovo might have in mind, however, is to have two different operating systems installed on the device, working independently depending on the situation. When the screen is docked on the keyboard, it will display Windows that’s running in the base. Once pulled out, however, that screen becomes a standalone tablet running Android and not Windows.

ASUS Transformer Book Duet

As odd as that might sound, it’s not exactly completely new. Back in 2014, ASUS announced what would have been the crowning glory of its Transformer Book line of 2-in-1 detachable laptops. The Transformer Book Duet could run both Android and Windows, though you have to boot into each one separately. Here, all the computing hardware is still on the display, and the keyboard is just an accessory to keep the screen anchored down. ASUS’s ambitions, however, were allegedly crushed by both Microsoft and Google who didn’t want their operating systems to be living under the same roof. That was nearly a decade ago, however, and Lenovo might be thinking it’s time to stir things up again.

What isn’t clear is whether it will be a case of a dual-boot tablet again or if Lenovo will be doing things a little differently. It’s possible to have a complete set of hardware inside the keyboard, running Windows, while the tablet has its own hardware dedicated to running Android. That makes the division of labor a little simpler and you don’t have to reboot over and over again to switch between operating systems. Unfortunately, that would also mean you can’t use Windows in tablet mode and take advantage of the stylus for creating digital art. Then again, Windows hasn’t really been great on tablets, which is why there would be interest in putting Android there in the first place.

The post Lenovo ThinkBook Plus leak shows a laptop with an Android tablet as the screen first appeared on Yanko Design.

Harnessing light in a reliable, functional and attractive way was one of humankind’s major 20th-century achievements. Here in the 21st century, designers continue to push the second and third categories. Here’s the best of what we saw this year.

Atelier de Troupe’s Kyoto series consists of sconce lights made, surprisingly, from cast aluminum.

Industrial designer Bernhard Osann’s Bird is an elegant desk lamp with no base.

These VL 56 pendant lamps, designed by functionalist architect Vilhelm Lauritzen in 1956, got a 2023 upgrade.

On the weirder side of things: The Macrozone Fan Lamp, by industrial designer Yuchao Lin, features hidden fan blades that deploy at the press of a button.

Industrial design consultancy Minoko designed this Kelvin Epos 300, a precisely adjustable film/photography light with an industrial aesthetic.

With his Dipping Light, product designer Jordi Canudas employs a unique production method for coloring the glass lampshades.

This peculiar lamp is by Japanese cosmetics company Shiseido. Our guess is it was made as a promotional item in the 1980s.

The Méduse pendant lamp, by industrial designer Lukas Bazle, features a user-transformable lampshade that changes the directionality of the light.

Architect Maxime Prananto’s Continuous Chandelier is meant to be a contradiction, incorporating an I-beam, chains, and the circular fluorescent bulbs associated with cheap kitchens.

With his B.A.R.E. Lamps, artist/designer Lucas Muñoz Muñoz shows us minimum viable product in lighting design.

This Unico series of beautiful lamp switches and dimmers is by Studio Huub Ubbens.

These minimalist bollard lights are by architect and industrial designer Christian Flindt.

The Bolita lamp, by product design studio Kaschkasch, has a surprising kinetic interface.

Spot, by industrial designer Renaud Defrancesco, is a concept design with dual user-adjustable rotating LEDs.

Naoto Fukasawa’s Half Dome series of lamps incorporate subtle haptic touches.

Dyson’s Lightcycle Morph Lamp, despite its engineering-over-design aesthetic, is still a very intelligent design with multiple applications.

Swedish company Bookman Urban Visibility has developed a variety of fun form factors for lightweight, rechargeable safety lights for pedestrians and cyclists.

Speaking of fun form factors, this 1970s-style manually adjustable Bill lamp is a concept by industrial designer Stefanie Kay.

Industrial designer Inga Sempé’s w153 Island is an improved design for a clamp lamp.

Inspired by traditional Japanese bowls, these lacquered pendant lamps are by industrial designer Keiji Takeuchi.

Outside-the-box: This Plusminus lighting system, by industrial designer Stefan Diez, is based on power-conducting webbing straps.

The indoor/outdoor Ray Lamp is stylish portable lighting, by British industrial designer Daniel Schofield.

Product designer Alexey Danilin’s Amulet Lamp combines hand-blown glass and LEDs.

The Funambulb, by Swiss design brand Superlife, is designed to be easy to hang anywhere.

The impossibly-thin Poise Lamp series, by German lighting designer Robert Dabi, are infinitely-adjustable ring-light-like lamps.

The latest design evolution of portable lighting: Neck lights with magnetic, removable flashlights.

Originally designed for ships, these Skot lamps by Louis Poulsen look great on land.

These would’ve been a smash hit in the 1980s. Govee Curtain Lights turn walls/windows into animated Lite-Brites.

In Europe, construction workers use LED strip lighting on reels to illuminate jobsites. Super bright and convenient.

And finally, the Philips Ellipse asks: Should the light bulb be a design object in its own right?

The Core77 Design Awards has always integrated student and professional entries in each category, with the idea that student work should not be marginalized into a single collection, but rather viewed alongside the professional work in any particular category. At this point, with almost all students having access to sophisticated rendering software and research tools, the projects are more ambitious than ever, and are presented at an extremely high level of fit and finish.

Below is a small set of student projects that stood out to our editors for their excellent production value, interesting subject matter, or for succeeding on several levels simultaneously, something every project should strive fore. Keep in mind this is a very small subset, as we had more than 130 student projects honored this year, and we encourage you to visit the awards site to see all the winners. And if you’re a design student reading this, now is the time to prep your best work and enter the 2024 Core77 Design Awards, which open on January 4th.

TerraLite Backpacking Stove

The Terralite Backpacking Stove, by Washington-based designer Carter Heikkila, was a runner up in the Sports & Outdoors category. The project is well researched, and considers materials and production processes throughout. The presentation is clear and clean, with an easily understood narrative describing the offering and functionality. This project and its presentation is a great model for any design student to emulate with their own work.

Hug – Therapeutic Furniture Kit

The Hug project, by Savannah College of Art and Design student Natalie Schaake, earned a notable honor in the Health & Wellness category. The chair comes as a disassembled kit, which allows the owner freedom to choose their desired color and materials for the final finishing. The act of assembling and upholstering the object will provide relief from anxiety and stress and invites the consumer to participate in the design process. The lovely photography in the entry emphasizes the clean lines of the design while the soft-touch materials used in the example feel warm and cozy. This project also succeeds on several levels, which undoubtedly caught the eye of the jury.

NakedPak – zero waste, pre-packaged meals

NakedPak series is a line of zero-waste, edible meals, wrapped in soluble bio-plastic made of agar produced from algae. The project, by Israeli designer Naama Nicotra, consists of a number of prepared foods, wrapped in edible plastic, which can simply be tossed into a pot of water and then eaten. The example above is an ice cream nugget, so no need to boil it first. This is an interesting approach to reducing single use plastic film and proposes a near-future vision of sustainability. NakedPak took home a Runner Up honor in the Packaging category.

Concealed Studio Brand Identity

It’s hard to say enough good things about this project, by Minghao Lin. It succeeds on every level – beautiful composition, outstanding photography, interesting and varied materials, flawless execution and attention to detail. It’s no wonder that this project was the winner in the Visual Communication category. Rather than reiterate everything included in the entry here, you should see the full project yourself, and then hire them for your next brand strategy project.

BoardWalk – A Multifunctional Destination

The Boardwalk project is a temporary structure, designed to function as “an informal gathering space, temporary stage, and viewing platform” as part of the 2022 Bethel Woods Art and Architecture Festival. The team of students at Cornell University used thousands of board feet of reclaimed lumber from a former ironworks and foundry building in central New York, slated for demolition. Using a combination of precision CNC cuts and reusable nylon straps, the platform can be easily assembled on site, and then disassembled and moved to a new location again and again. This is an excellent example of high and low tech, sustainability and community engagement, which is what helped it to take home a Notable honor in the Built Environment category.

If you like what you see here and want more, there are 200+ more projects to see on the Core77 Design Awards website. And if you want to join the few, the proud, the Core77 Design Award honorees, enter your best work starting on January 4, 2024.

This year the post-pandemic auto industry, as well as a rash of start-ups, hit us with this slew of new vehicle concepts and features.

Audi’s Activesphere is a luxury sports car concept with a hidden pickup truck bed.

Lancia’s stunning Pu+Ra HPE concept car blends ’70s, ’80s and ’90s design cues with the 21st century.

With the Max-Out concept, Nissan unveiled their new “Japanese Futurism” design direction.

MG’s Advanced Design Studio revealed the Maze, a gamer-based car concept.

Not a new concept, but spotted again this year, and has aged shockingly well: Marc Newson’s 021C concept for Ford, designed almost a quarter-century ago!

This year BMW unveiled both this snazzy concept touring coupé…

…as well as their shockingly-clean Vision Neue Klasse concept:

Ram Trucks showed off their Revolution concept, an EV pickup truck with a host of wild design features.

Mitsubishi joined the concept party with their rugged D:X, an off-road EV minivan.

On the weirder end of things, Shane Chen, the inventor of the original Hovertrax hoverboard, adapted the two-wheel system to his SHANE concept car.

Lincoln unveiled their redesigned Nautilus, with a stunning full-width dashboard screen.

Italian startup Aehra’s concept SUV has a pop-up full-width screen, meant to be used when the car is parked.

Ford revealed their clever two-way Pro Access Tailgate design.

Doing less with less? Polestar’s designers decided to get rid of the rear window on the Polestar 4.

Rolls-Royce’s Coachbuild division released shots of their Amethyst Droptail, a one-off coupe with what I think are perfect exterior proportions.

Ferrari’s Tailor Made 812 Competizione is meant to look like a sketch.

Ex-McLaren designer Steve Nichols un-retired to create the N1A, a beautiful ’60s-style roadster.

Yves Behar and fuseproject designed the Telo, an EV micro pickup truck.

The Lightship L1 is a striking-looking, all-electric pop-up camping trailer.

The Cruise Origin, a driverless taxi launching in Japan, was produced in collaboration between GM and Honda.

Pininfarina also designed an autonomous people mover, the Holon:

Lastly, here’s a unique way to protect your precious ride while it’s parked: The inflatable Car Capsule.

Although 2023 is practically over, that doesn’t mean brands have to stop teasing what’s to come. In fact, it’s the perfect time to dangle tempting treats, especially those that will be coming out early next year. OnePlus, for example, already revealed the OnePlus 12 earlier this December, but that’s only for the Chinese market. The rest of the world is still waiting for its turn, which will take place at the end of January 2024. Fans of the brand will also have something else to look forward to, it seems, with the OnePlus 12R also spotted over the horizon, bringing the same iconic design to what is expected to be a more affordable handset.

Designer: OnePlus (via Ishan Agarwal)

Smartphone names can be very confusing, especially over on the Android side where brands, model numbers, and variants create a sordid mess of hard-to-remember monikers. For example, it wasn’t too long ago that OnePlus started the tradition of having an “R” series alongside its main flagship, to offer a slightly watered-down smartphone with a price tag to match. That is the story with the OnePlus 12 and OnePlus 12R, but the gap between the two seems to be getting closer each year.

Based on the leaked announcement, the OnePlus 12R will have the exact same design as the OnePlus 12 that was announced this month. That means the exact same “monocle” design that the brand has used for the OnePlus 11, complete with the four black circles that are actually just three cameras. That, fortunately, also means that the OnePlus 12R has the same alert slider that has become a crowd favorite, even though it was “inspired” by the iPhone’s mute switch.

There are differences, of course, though not easy to spot. The color options, for example, are more limited and different, comprising only of Cool Blue and Iron Gray. The gray colorway is particularly interesting in that it might have a matte texture, maybe even a fabric-like cover. The latter is highly unlikely, though, given the target SRP of this product. It’s probably closer to a sandstone finish, a trick OnePlus is only too familiar with.

The biggest difference between the OnePlus 12 and OnePlus 12R will be the parts that you can’t see, like the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 which will be one generation older by early 2024. The camera array is also less impressive, with only a 50MP camera accompanied by an 8MP ultra-wide shooter and a measly 2MP macro camera. That could mean reduced prices for the OnePlus 12R, though that might not make much of a difference if it won’t be available as widely as the OnePlus 12.

The post OnePlus 12R design will come with a familiar face, budget-friendly price first appeared on Yanko Design.