Rooting around in a bag for small objects gets irritating fast. This handsome Tech Pouch, by Peak Design, solves that UX problem: The sides are designed to open like a clamshell, allowing you to clearly see the contents in the compartments within.

The bag proved to be a hit with consumers. Even still, after some customers opined that the bag was too big, Peak Design listened and subsequently designed a smaller version.

It’s a great design—and pirates have taken notice. The Tech Pouch is currently being knocked off by an overseas company on Kickstarter. Buyer beware.

I’ve drooled over Makita’s battery-powered wheelbarrows, which would make yardwork and homesteading far easier. But they run about $5,000, and they’re Japanese-market only.

Another Japanese company, CuboRex, designed this E-Cat. It’s a retrofittable electric wheel that can be added to any wheelbarrow. However, it costs $1,261.

The latest competitor in this category is the eBarrow Kit, designed by American engineer Dr. Ivan Vesely.

It’s easy to retrofit, by design; the brackets can be lined up with the existing mounting holes on standard one-wheel wheelbarrows commonly sold in the U.S.

After bolting it on, you run the wire back to one of the handles, attaching the thumb throttle with an included strap. Dr. Vesely reckons installation can be done in four minutes.

The installation does indeed look easy:

Dr. Vesely held a successful Kickstarter for the eBarrow Kit, where they sold for $350. Alas, now the campaign’s over and these are up to their market price: $500. Which just about matches a similar object designed for baby strollers, the $495 Easy-Way.

One concern with buying such a pricey add-on is longevity: How long will this thing last for? If Dr. Vesely’s other work is any indication, hopefully a long time: Though his first degree was in Electrical Engineering, Dr. Vesely has a PhD in Biophysics, and invented/developed a successful exchangeable heart valve.

LEGO is a beloved pastime for people of all ages. In recent times it has transcended from a basic building toy to a tool for artistic creativity and expression. These iconic bricks are used by LEGO builders all over the world to create fascinating figures and structures. They serve as an exciting platform for creativity and imaginative play. LEGO enthusiasts have been creating intricate and fascinating masterpieces – ranging from cute cottages to pop culture-inspired structures.

We have curated a collection of ten impressive LEGO creations, each one is a testament to exceptional design and meticulous craftsmanship. These unique builds are visually interesting, while also boasting the limitless potential of LEGO as a creative tool. Whether you are a devoted LEGO aficionado or a newbie exploring the vibrant LEGO universe, you will discover something extraordinary and inspiring in this collection of LEGO builds.

1. LEGO Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird

This LEGO model of the SR-71 captures the original aircraft’s spirit perfectly. The model is meticulously crafted and adopts the SR-71’s sleek and elongated form. It features a sharply defined nose and sweeping wings. The model also includes functional flaps, retractable landing gear, and a fully actualized cockpit. Each piece was created to honor the original’s impressive design.

The SR-71 model was created by an aerospace engineering student by the name of ‘Buds 234’, and it showcases technical appreciation and a meticulous eye for detail. This MOC goes beyond a typical LEGO build, creating an image that is captivating and yet true to the original SR-71. The complete model is supported by a base with a plaque detailing the SR-71’s key specifications.

2. LEGO Cataclaws

Called Cataclaws, this new icon by LEGO was launched right in time for the holidays! It is designed to become a “CAT-alyst” for play. The furry creature was born from the minds of children, to remind the young and the old that there is no limit to how creatively we can use our LEGO bricks. Cataclaws is a tuxedo cat wearing a red and white beanie that will push people to play around the holidays, encouraging them to get into the holiday mood.

The LEGO feline was introduced in a short film, where he goes on an adventure around the city to turn boring situations into playful and fun ones. You’ll see 20 products and builds in the video, and there are also a few mini Cataclaws builds in the video if you’re in the mood to play Spot the Cataclaws!

3. LEGO Rolex Submariner

The world of Rolex has just met the world of LEGO in this stylish and contemporary build – the LEGO Rolex Submariner. It is a sophisticated art model created for a more refined and picky audience. The Submariner’s “super’ case was transformed into a lovely LEGO form, creating an eye-catching piece, that makes for some wonderful home decor.

It is blessed with a signed brevet crown, which perfectly represents the iconic component of the Submariner, shining a light on its luxurious heritage. A functional and fully operating rotating bezel mimics the functionality and utility of the original Submariner watch.

4. LEGO The Marvel X-Men: The X-Mansion set

The Marvel X-Men: The X-Manion set includes iconic characters from the X-Men 97 animated series including Professor X, Jean Grey’s new avatar, Iceman, Bishop, Gambit, Magneto, Storm, Wolverine, Cyclops, and Rogue. The set comprises of a modular two-floor building with six individual sections that can be removed with ease.

Many LEGO building sets are open from the back, but this one is closed from all sides. The interiors are completely furnished, and they include the Cerebro, Jean Grey’s lab, and also the Danger Room! The building is guarded by a huge Sentinel robot, offering some powerful protection, if your other LEGO action figures decide to stage an attack.

5. LEGO Coachella Pyramid

Daft Punk’s 2006 Coachella set achieved iconic status, and it is still remembered even 2 decades later. The Coachella Pyramid is an important part of music history, and Robotrock built a LEGO set to do full justice to it. They developed a 2000-brick recreation of that moment. The set includes two artists standing on a colorful pyramid-shaped stage. Lights have been integrated inside the pyramid, and they are glowing as the duo performs music.

The two artists are dressed in robot-shaped clothing, and they are perched on the platform, working on their electronic console, creating, remixing, and performing their music. “This project began in 2020 as a fun father-son collaboration, growing into something epic as we found ourselves needing a creative escape during lockdown,” says Robotrock. “Both huge Daft Punk fans, this build is a fusion of 2 passions. I spent my teenage years listening to Homework on my Walkman, while my son’s 1st favorite baby song was Get Lucky. It felt only natural to blend our love for Daft Punk’s music with our love for LEGO. My then 8-year-old son started with a prototype built from the bricks we had at home, and I expanded on it digitally.”

6. LEGO Harry Potter Advent Calendar

The holiday season is brewing up, and they are a magical time. But this season, LEGO is making it even more special with a Harry Potter Advent Calendar. This calendar makes it extra magical, as it counts down the days till Christmas from the 1st of December. It offers a creative and amusing twist on a classic and age-old tradition. This one has something special up its sleeve!

Advent calendars make the Christmas countdown extra special by providing a new treat each day. But instead of offering the typical chocolates or tiny trinkets, this set delivers a daily building adventure that perfectly captures the beauty and charm of the Wizarding World, gifting you a lovely surprise behind every door.

7. LEGO ‘The Eras of Taylor Swift’

We finally have a LEGO set for all the Swifties in the house! Celebrate your love for Taylor and LEGO with this 1,410-piece display model that beautifully replicates the iconic poster from the Taylor Swift Eras tour. It captures Taylor’s first ten albums – ranging from her debut album “Taylor Swift” to “Midnights”.

What makes this build even more exciting is, that if you remove each of the ten album panels, you can access a Taylor Swift minifigure, and an accessory inspired by that particular era. The various Taylor minifigures include Taylor in her iconic teal dress and guitar for her debut album, and Taylor wearing an outfit inspired by the “You Belong With Me” music video.

8. LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar

LEGO has been making Star Wars-themed sets for almost 25 years. And with the holiday season around the corner, they’ve created something that all LEGO + Star Wars lovers will definitely want to have! This Official 2024 Advent Calendar features a Star Wars theme, and it is truly selling like hotcakes, with almost 60,000 units already sold.

The set is interactive and buildable, created for both kids and adults. It is equipped with new Star Wars minifigures and vehicles that can be assembled each day, leading up to Christmas day! It is a 368-piece LEGO set and it includes miniature versions of the Holiday Princess Lia, Mandalorian Gauntlet, Jabba’s Sail Barge, Emperor’s Shuttle, Praetorian Guard, Super Battle Droid, and many more.

9. LEGO Turing Machine

The Turing Machine was technically the theoretical predecessor to the computer that helped the Allied powers win World War II. A Turing Machine is essentially any machine that is able to process algorithms, and a LEGO genius recently managed to build the first operational Turing Machine made entirely from LEGO bricks.

This LEGO build isn’t simply a decorative or sculptural model, but an actual device that can compute algorithms. And what’s even better is that it does so without electricity! The model is quite tangible, built on the idea that a machine can compute any algorithm as long as the right instructions are given. The setup includes a physical tape and a moveable “head” that reads, writes, and moves across the tape.

10. LEGO Linguini & Remi

Pixar’s Ratatouille movie featured the iconic duo Linguini and Remy. And they’ve finally been captured in the super adorable BrickHeadz style. The cute LEGO set features the two characters – Linguini is holding his chef’s hat, while Remy is standing beside him. Both of them look as if they’re about to cook up something tasty!

The LEGO set perfectly captures and reflects their heartwarming bond and rather quirky and dynamic bond. LEGO builder Altstuff created the set with the intention of building a physical representation of Linguini and Remi’s unusual and endearing bond.

The post 10 Best LEGO Creations Of October 2024 first appeared on Yanko Design.

I live in a city that has a steadily growing motorcycle population. We also get a lot of rainy seasons and storms visit our country on a regular basis. The combination of rain and driving a motorcycle is a pretty dangerous one. While there are water repellent sprays available but it won’t work when you’re driving at slower and regular speeds.

Designer: Boscard group

Bikerguard was invented by two Slovenian engineers and is something you can attack to motorcycle helmet visors to make sure you still have visibility even if it’s raining hard. It’s basically a detachable and remote-controlled wiper blade that will wipe off the rain water that can obstruct the view of the riders. It has a brushless motor that will reduce the need for manual wiping of your visor.

The bikerguard unit has a rugged and IPX-6 waterproof design and when fully charged, you get 5 to 15 hours of continuous use. You screw the mounting base through the top of your visor on first use but after that you can just attach and re-attach the wiper when you need it. The remote wireless controller can be attached to any motorcycle handlebar so you can easily turn the wiper on and off.

While of course you can just use the normal sprays and coatings that is readily available for most motorcycle riders, using “good old physics” or wipers are still the best way to go about riding in the rain. It costs around $330 and is available on the Bikerguard website.

The post Attach this wiper to your motorcycle viper to have a safer ride in the rain first appeared on Yanko Design.

How to design a seven-building estate on a private island, but make it homey    

The atmosphere surrounding Cape Stout nearly paints itself. Azure waters, warm breezes, an amphitheater that doubles as a half-basketball court, which sits steps from a private beach with easy access to a 42-foot, two-story explorer boat.    

As the newest property on Moskito Island, a 132-acre private island owned by Richard Branson (located a stone’s throw southwest of his own Necker Island) in the British Virgin Islands, Cape Stout is “not your typical place.” That’s according to Wellesley, MA-based Andra Birkerts, an interior designer tasked with creating a cohesiveness across seven buildings, seven bedrooms, a “beach barn,” crow’s nest, dining terrace, library and great room, gym and more—all spread across three acres. 

Birkerts, who holds a bachelor’s degree in fine arts and an MFA in painting, described the five-year build and design as project as centering three words: togetherness, enthusiasm and color. After a night spent dining in the great room, floating in the pool and cheers-ing in all three of the property’s bars, we chatted via video with Birkerts to understand the many personalities of Cape Stout. 

This estate is many things—playful, grand, sprawling, moody—how did you come to conceptualize Cape Stout and then execute that?       

There were a lot of people and information throughout the five years it took to make this project happen. The client, I’ve done four other of their houses, has a large family. There are four kids, all grown, and I think the impetus for the whole place was to create a space where the family could congregate. Then it expanded into being a space appropriate for a lot of different functions and activities. Then it became about each space being interesting and not just fizzing out because the view from everywhere on the property is so spectacular. It was a chance to use color, tile, furnishings that made the inside as visually interesting as the outside. 

One of the throughlines of the property is your use of tile. It’s everywhere. Why? 

I counted 104 tiles used throughout the property. From the hand-painted terracotta Tabarka Studio Palio diamond tiles for the kitchen backsplash to the Popham Design Scarabs in the Beach Barn bathroom to the traditional Venetian tiles by Veneziantica that are unique to each of the stairs emerging from the cliffside, given the sun, the salt air, the hurricanes you can use tile on any surface and make it interesting but it’ll also last. I love that you can work with it, a little of it or a lot of it, and it has an effect. 

Let’s talk about that building, the Beach Barn. It’s a two-level room that can sleep up to 10 with two queen and three double beds. 

It was a mutually agreed upon space for young people who would hang out there and sleep there, or they’d have a game night that allowed them to have a bit of independence. The privacy levels are minimal, it’s very casual. There are curtains separating the beds and it was tricky to make sure each bed had a window and some space for personal effects. There are occasions when you just want to have more than one person in a bed. The building can hold the whole spectrum of a family. I think it’s fairly unusual. But it’s still high design. The living area downstairs features a B&B Italia Camaleonda Mario Bellini, for example. 

And you modeled that bathroom after a locker room. That’s quite cheeky, no? 

There are multiple shower stations in one large bathroom downstairs in the Beach Barn. I thought it would make sense to riff on a locker room; each of the shower rooms has different colors and tiles in order to not feel too institutional, but we felt like using primary colors would unite them.

There are a few secret destinations throughout the property that seem purpose built for younger kids, like the crow’s nest, a net suspended above the great room. How did you go about ensuring the interior design didn’t feel kitschy despite these moments?

Activating a space, where the enthusiasm piece comes in, means that you have to activate it. In the case of the crow’s nest, it was about getting in some comfortable pillows. Although I haven’t seen how it’s used, there’s another space with the same nets directly over the pool in between the kitchen and the living room. You have to be pretty nimble to get into these nets. It’s not the place for the crowd that gets dressed up for a cocktail party but again it is an interesting way to allow for two very different age groups to kind of participate with each other.

That’s a great segue to the pool. It runs underneath the great room and forms a kind of lowercase t, intersecting the property. How did you factor that architectural design into your interior design?

The owner originally said that she wanted to wake up in the morning—she’s a big swimmer—and swim to the front of the house. That was an early fantasy or wish that seemed like something that was on her mind for a long time, the ability to swim from bed to breakfast. After that, it really was an architectural issue to figure out. But then it gets into some interesting references to things like Venice, where you can kind of swim to locations around the property instead of walking there. So, again, taking the elements into consideration—like pool water maybe inside the house—and choosing fabrics wisely. It was indoor/outdoor but really taken interactively. 

One of the principals we had was to keep the exterior furniture more unified using a similar manufacturer. Whereas the interior has much more specific singular pieces. If we had a bunch of different outdoor sofas it would get chaotic, so we unified the exterior and then made the interior more specific.

The estate has a lot of little houses. It feels more like a village than a singular estate. How do you emphasize togetherness, one of your key words, when everything is so separate?  

We did not want it to feel like a hotel, with the same everything everywhere. Yes, there are unifying factors throughout the property like the exterior furniture, and a lot of the materials were reoccurring like bathroom hardware or whatever the paving was or landscape, but once you get in the door it’s less hospitality vibe, more residential approach. That’s where I excel. There’s a charm there, the fact that they all belong together but they have different characteristics. It’s a special place.