Hasta La Ideas

Sure, our food supply has been poisoned by large corporations, and we’re hooked on sugary drinks that make us sick. Can design help? Maybe—or we can just stay in our lane and design more stuff for you to buy! Shiny shiny! Here are the food, drink and kitchen-related designs that jumped out at us in 2024.

Möbino, by Metaform Architects, is a beautiful espresso cup made by combining digital fabrication with handwork.

When bad UX is the point: This no-handle coffee mug, by British design collective Ma3t, was designed for rock climbers.

NASA’s zero-gravity drinking cup was prototyped in space.

A fine example of form follows function: These stange glasses for Kölsch beer.

A vice-friendly design classic: Joe Colombo’s Smoke Glasses.

Another industrial design classic is Spanish industrial designer Rafael Marquina’s no-drip oil cruet.

Italian industrial designer Corrado Dotti designed these elegant, double-walled Cilindro oil cruets, which appear to float.

This stunning, minimalist glass bottle is by RISD grad Peter Ivy.

Old-school package design: Japanese bamboo spice vessels.

These Vök serving trays, by industrial designer Dögg Guðmundsdóttir, were inspired by the Icelandic environment.

An eye-catching design detail: The knurled Buster + Punch handles on this Staub cookware.

Cloche, by industrial designer Guillaume Bloget, is a low-tech, designey food smoker.

Also low-tech and involving flame is this Bola Grill Master, a design for a barbecue grill with height-adjustable cooking surfaces.

The Tibetus Technical Bridge-Console, by Italian brand Snaidero, is an overhead rail system for kitchen islands.

If you’re obsessive about your toast, perhaps Mitsubishi Electric’s sealed, insulated $270-$500 single-slice toaster is for you.

There are a lot of surprisingly innovative design features in this 1963 GE refrigerator.

From Japan, this Mirable Kitchen is faucet can clean dirty dishes without soap, using micro-bubbles.

From China, Boelon’s hi-tech “luxury” kitchen sink has some crazy features.

In the UK, Costa Coffee has rolled out an autonomous, small-footprint 24-hour coffee shop in kiosk form.

Back in America, SeaWorld has been selling burgers where the cheese comes in syringes. (Next step is we inject it directly into our bodies.)

A collaboration between Serve Robotics and Wing Aviation combines robots with drones for food delivery.

UK Supermarket chain Tesco’s laser-etched avocados save on packaging waste.

Always wanted to disaster prep, don’t know where to start? Costco sells these 150-serving emergency meal buckets.

Lastly, Unnecessary Design Studio has created this object to harvest burrito waste for taco fillings.