How awesome would it be if electrical pylons looked like this?
Sure there’s a little more steel involved, but it’s a damn sight easier on the eyes than what we’ve got going now.
Here’s a decidedly niche electronic product with heavily retro looks: Yamaha’s THR, “a cross between a hi-fi stereo player and a guitar amp.” Intended as an amp for the home guitarist, the THR can also be used as a portable speaker for your iDevice or similar.
What we most dig about it is something that would’ve run us afoul of our design professors back in school: The design belongs to that retro class of objects that, independent of function, were all painted with the same broad design brush. In other words, if you transported this back in time to a home in the ’60s, it wouldn’t have looked out of place at all, but one person would guess it was a portable heater while another would assume it was a transistor radio.
The video below explains the features of, and thinking behind, the THR. (Non-music lovers may find the guitar demo parts get a bit long; for those of you who actually play guitar and are interested in the THR’s aural properties, there’s a series of videos more targeted towards you here.)
They say necessity is the mother of invention. I don’t know who the father is, but I’m pretty sure he’s Vietnamese. Of all the countries I’ve traveled through, Vietnam was where I saw the “Work with what you got” ethos most thoroughly embraced, from kids to adults.
The street children on the block where I was staying in Hanoi had no toys, but they’d scrounged up a badminton shuttlecock from somewhere. They had no rackets, so they invented a tennis-like game where they kicked it back and forth. For a net they used a moped. In Hue I stopped at a cafe that had plenty of bottled beer but no bottle openers. They passed around a piece of wood that had a single screw driven into it at a precise angle and depth so that it worked perfectly as a bottle opener. In Saigon I encountered some guys trying to get a motorbike working. They had a piston that was too small for the engine block’s cylinder. They made up the difference by cutting up a Pepsi can and using the thin metal as a cylindrical shim.
That trip was in the ’90s and I have no photographs of these things, but here it is 2012 and I’ve got access to a video to prove my thesis of Vietnamese hacktastic supremacy:
The snazzy-looking Skyline Lab kitchen is designed specifically for the wheelchair-bound, providing a high level of functionality without sacrificing style. Produced by Italian manufacturer Snaidero, the kitchen features tons of thoughtful design touches that place everything within reach for the chef who cannot stand, tiptoe, or crouch to dig through the back of a low cabinet.
There are no cabinets at all beneath the sweeping counter, allowing a wheelchair user to belly right up to the surface; the shallow sink basin leaves plenty of room for legs. A garbage can on wheels and a roll-out shelf unit can be maneuvered in and out of the way.
The circular shelves provide Lazy-Susan-like storage, allowing whatever’s in the back to be quickly brought to the front. They are purposely left unenclosed so the user can see where everything is.
Dror Benshetrit brings his quirky brand of innovation to a product area that sorely needs it: luggage. The new Dror for Tumi line, which has “TransForm Follows Function” as its tagline, consists of eight different pieces that cover every travel need you could possibly have. But as the tagline suggests, it’s not the diversity of the line that’s most impressive: It’s the diversity within the bags themselves, which transform into different sizes and configurations. Check it out (the backpack in particular looks pretty awesome):
Quick spot-check to see how up on your production methods you guys are: How was this Ohlala watering can (don’t hit the link yet), designed by Barcelona-based CrousCalogero Design Studio, manufactured?
Hints: Yes, the object is completely hollow, as you’d expect for a watering can; it’s an older production method (not RP); it’s made from plastic, we’re guessing polypropylene; and yes, the object is all one piece.
Hit the jump for the answer.
Like bicycle lights, clotheshangers are a perennial (or per-semester-al, perhaps) favorite project for young and emerging designers: it’s an everyday object that demands user-informed solutions yet one that is also limited by functional constraints such that existing hangers leave just enough room for improvement.
Where Jaineel Shah’s “Pinch” and Rob Bye’s “Stretchless” are designed to bypass the collar-stretching process of hanging t-shirts, Joey Zelédon’s “Coat Check Chair” recast hangers as a building material, as did Labyrinth Studio’s “Hang-Over” shelf. Barcelona-based Italian designer Stefania Nicolosi‘s “Benvenuto” is perhaps closest in spirit to this last design, incorporating an inverted (or reverted, perhaps) hook into the hanger design.
The result is a double-sided clotheshanger, which at once has an entirely intuitive purpose and invites some kind of ‘Barrel-of-monkeys’ rainy-day activity. The lower hook, of course, is intended for one’s accessory of choice, be it a bag, scarf or hat.
Where José Hurtado’s “Twist” bicycle concept was ‘centered’ on its mirror-image symmetry, “Benvenuto” can be rotationally symmetrical (as in the image above) or a mirror image depending on the way the hook is rotated. Any other instances of ‘ambigrammatic‘ design objects come to mind?
We love what can happen when a disruptive technology is introduced to a creative generation of people, and we still feel we haven’t seen all the possibilities engendered by miniaturized cameras. But we’re getting closer. Two years ago we wrote about pioneer Eric Austin’s RC-helicopter-mounted cameras, predicting he’d become a rich man; since then he’s shot for Nike, ABC, Dreamworks, Discovery, and other networks. Last year we showed you some amazing footage shot by an anonymous Polish citizen’s similar RoboKopter rig. And this year, a German enthusiast operating under the handle “Crazy Horst” is making the blog rounds for his incredible GoPro-camera-plus-RC-plane, rather than helicopter, footage.
We’re not sure if flying an RC plane is easier or more difficult than flying an RC helicopter, but the footage is certainly different. Because the plane is always moving forward the cinematography has an intrinsic flow to it, not to mention the capability of attaining higher altitudes. Here’s one of Crazy Horst’s demo reels:
Editorial Addendum: Congratulations to OMGPOP, recently purchased by Zynga!
Until they come out with a gaming app specifically for industrial designers, OMGPOP’s Draw Something (both free and paid versions available, cross-platform) is as close as you’re going to get. It focuses on an area every ID’er should be up on—sketching—and it’s intensely addictive, as well as good practice.
For those of you who somehow haven’t heard of it, the game is basically discrete bouts of one-on-one Pictionary on your cell phone or iDevice, with your opponents being anyone you choose to link to. Unsurprisingly, I’m having the most fun playing with friends who graduated from art school: An industrial designer in New Jersey, a graphic designer in Singapore, an illustrator in San Francisco, and an art director in Brooklyn, among others.
Sketching takes many forms and this game can accommodate them all, depending on how you want to play it. At it’s most base level, sketching is trying to quickly communicate a concept with the bare minimum amount of lines:
Geometry fans will be excited: A triangle is about to do battle with a square. Yves Behar has designed the new PayPal Here device, a triangular, swipe-accepting dongle that plugs into your iPhone. It’s stiff competition for the Square, the incumbent credit-card-swiping phone plug-in that doesn’t have PayPal’s monstrous infrastructure behind it.
While the device looks a bit strange—that part on the front that moves, presumably to uncover the swipe channel, looks like it’s going to fall off, no?—the demo of how it works seems pretty smooth:
As a merchant I probably would not want you to put your disgusting fingers all over my smartphone, but this does seem a much more elegant way to perform a transaction than having to sign a slip of paper. Bic and the companies that make receipt paper and receipt printers ought to start looking into alternate forms of revenue.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
