Here’s what we looked at this week: The Ulefone 33 Pro is a 2×4-sized rugged smartphone. Yamazaki Home’s magnetic tape dispenser can hold two sizes at once. These Horl Scissors have an unusual feature designed …
Industrial Design Case Study: An Experimental “Café Classroom”
Your average classroom space hasn’t changed much in the past 100 years: They’re a factory-like row of desks facing an instructor writing on a large rectangle. London-based ID firm Pearson Lloyd wondered: With all of …
An End to Reading Glasses? FDA Approves Vision-Improving Eyedrops
One of the many annoyances of aging is presbyopia. As you get older, your eye’s lens loses elasticity, making it more difficult to focus light on the retina for near tasks. Reading bottle labels (or …
Umbra’s User-Configured Solis Adjustable Standing Shelf System
This Solis Adjustable Standing Shelf system was designed by Sergey Dedin, an industrial designer based in Belarus. Consisting of relatively few components, the simple design provides something users have responded positively to: Adjustability. Shelves can …
Piet Hein Eek’s Kitchens Made from Repurposed Materials
At first blush, this appears to be a standard modern kitchen build: But pan out, and you’ll see it’s been made with a ton of repurposed old windows and drawers. It was done by Piet …
ASCII Art, But Done with Manual Typewriters!
Born in 1921, Paul Smith was an American with severe spastic cerebral palsy. His condition made it impossible for him to draw with a pencil or paint with a brush; however, Smith discovered that by …
The LifeStraw Escape: A Portable, High-Capacity Pressurized Water Purifier
This new LifeStraw Escape is a portable high-flow water purifier that can hold 5.25 gallons. It’s a heckuva lot larger than LifeStraw’s signature product and, uniquely, offers pressurization. Competing models are gravity-fed, meaning you have …
Coop Sleep Goods’ Adjustable Pillows
If you have a stitch ripper and a sewing machine, any pillow is technically adjustable. But California-based Coop Sleep Goods makes pillows that are adjustable by design. The pillow consists of a washable outer layer …
This Mesmerizing Hypnoloid, a Kinetic Desktop Sculpture
This Hypnoloid object is sort of the opposite of a spinning top. Whereas a top contacts the surface it’s balancing on only at its point, the Hypnoloid contacts the surface with every square millimeter of …
Plus Minus Zero’s Braun-y Wireless TV Speaker
This looks like a Braun product from an alternate universe, but it was actually designed by Japanese ID firm Propellor Design. Designed for the elderly and hard of hearing, it’s a wireless TV speaker for …