In general, a good camping backpack should be lightweight, rugged, and fit properly—while luggage should be spacious, easily portable, and able to withstand the rigors of baggage handlers. A new design from Atlas Sabbatical combines the two in the form of Atlas- a backpack that transforms for different phases of a trip. Atlas Sabbatical designed…

The concept of remodeling a home constantly never dies out. From writing on your bedroom walls as a kid to choosing which fixtures to hang in your house as an adult, the appearance of your dwelling can tell visitors just how creative (or boring) you are as a person. Still, it can be quite costly.…

Young whippersnappers may not know this, but before cell phones could do everything from SMS messaging to your taxes, we had other pieces of hardware to do these tasks separately. Walkmans played music through cassette tapes, accountants did your taxes, and yes, even calculators had their own blocky, hefty designs. Lofree’s Digit Calculator pays homage…

Electronics these days are a dime a dozen. With large companies like Apple and Microsoft duking it out for consumers’ attention, smaller brands need to find creative ways to present themselves to stand out from your run-of-the-mill Beats By Dre. Mapuguaquén (which translates to ‘sound of the earth’ in South American Mapuche) isn’t the easiest…

Unless you’re some kind of overzealous morning person, no relationship has had a worse breakup than someone who is separated from his bed. Even though more and more folks are working from home, most still have to get their sorry butts out of bed to get the job done. Bedchill might change that. This isn’t…

Kids these days might not have a taste for them, but back in the day, superheroes didn’t rule the movie world; superspies did. And no one was more famous than British secret agent James Bond. Created by writer Ian Flemming, the fictional spy has 24 films and countless novels spanning decades; inspiring both kids and…

For many of us, math wasn’t exactly our strongest subject back in school; just as you’re beginning to grasp the concept of numbers, along come letters, symbols, and shapes to boggle your mind further. Suffice to say, we were lucky enough to pass the subject; but for the current and future generations, understanding 3D concepts…

Contrary to popular belief, there is much more to a bicycle than simply pushing your legs to make the wheels go round. Take for example the bike’s drivetrain, which transfers all your leg power to the drive wheels. While there are a ton of variations, most drivetrains consist of a front wheel, chain, and rear…

From his tribute to the Commodore PET 2001 to a visual synthesizer for building fractal patterns, Swedish designer Love Hultén is a master at combining age-old wood crafting techniques with modern(ish) tech. Inspired by his passions for both traditional craftsmanship and modern technology, the Gothenburg-based designer is capable of commanding thousands of dollars for each…

Lots of toys allow kids to get creative and build their own designs. If you can count the number of times LEGO blocks have furthered a young ones’ learning capabilities, you have way too many fingers on your hands. But what if your kids (or you) want to build something a bit bigger, more practical,…

Zippable is a novel approach to make most any stuffable, huggable 3D fabric-based shape you can think of. As the name suggests, a zipper is used as the closure system. But what’s really cool about Zippables is the super long spiraling zippers. The spiraling motion as the zipper is closed, magically transforms a twisty, curvy…

During his previous cellphone charger project, designer Eric Strebel had the misfortune of having a piece of metal get stuck in his eye. And since injury is something anyone working on a project should be ready for, Strebel has decided to put his skills to work and create a dusk mask with integrated eye protection.…

While designers and engineers may associate developing products with blood sweat and tears, Oki Sato, founder of acclaimed Japanese design firm Nendo, found a way to celebrate the design process in the form of a simple and sweet children’s book—with a cup as its main character. Not Just a Cup tells the story of a…

Oh, if your food could talk. “You can’t mix those foods and expect to live.” “I will produce a mold that will make you wretch five ways from Sunday.” “The omelette lump and I were three weeks old when you ate us–relocate to the bathroom asap.” Perhaps food that actually speaks (after you’ve eaten it?) isn’t the…

As modern video games continue to break out of their mold and become a new medium for immersive storytelling, so too does the need for more accessible—and considered—hardware designs for a growing population of gamers. While we’ve seen a number of brilliant one-off solutions from hardware modders including Ben Heck, whose various one-handed PS4 and…

No, I didn’t make a mistake with the product’s spelling. Created by the father-son design team at Onehundred, Brdis are foldable bird feeders designed specifically for birds. So while humans have Ikea furniture to decipher and build, birds have Brdis (except humans have to make these for them as well). Crafted from .025” (6mm) foldable…

You may take it for granted nowadays, but the simplified nature of current metro maps can be attributed to a single person: Henry Charles Beck. In a recent piece by Eugen Esanu for UX Planet, he talks about how Beck – an engineering draftsman – worked on creating the London Underground Tube Map in the…

Last year, we took a quick peek at the Bollinger Motors B1 – a humongous off-road vehicle powered exclusively by electricity. Big, blocky, and just as transformable as any Transformer, this puppy was made to adjust to almost any outdoor need you can imagine. Now thanks to Bollinger Motors, we finally get to take a…

The gig economy is great. You can hail a cheap cab home with Uber, get McDonald’s delivered with Postmates, beer with Drizly, sit back and watch someone from Task Rabbit assemble your Amazon delivered furniture while your hair is cut with Priv. The positive of the gig economy is that everything can be outsourced, however,…

America is a litigious country.  Without any subjective opinion, many of our founding fathers were lawyers and many of the rights and benefits that we enjoy today are the result of court cases.  In terms of intellectual property, it can be a double-edged sword. While intellectual property and the protection that it affords to companies…

With over 14 million vinyl LPs sold in the United States alone in 2017, it’s no wonder that some artists and hardware manufacturers are putting their lossy MP3 files on the backburner to take a closer look at physical media—including cassette tapes— all over again. But for some extreme audiophiles, nothing beats going straight to…

While the marketplace is flooded with design books of all shapes and sizes, it’s only every so often that a ‘Holy Grail” industrial design book pops up. The ambitious Industrial Design in the Modern Age—out this month from Rizzoli—is one of them. Told through more than 4,000 selected industrial design objects from the Kravis Design…

They may look like sacks of latex over an overpaid actor, but superhero masks are the real star of any superhero movie. They hide any facial blemishes and scars, plus they’re what kids recognize on the front of all the movie merchandise. And yet, making these voice-muffling head covers isn’t as easy as it seems.…

Although many of industrial designer Eric Strebel’s take on prototyping projects are of his methods, he isn’t above sticking to the book every once in a while. In his newest video, he shows how he works with a design brief for a wireless charger. The brief comes with a couple of specifics: it must be…

It happens to the best of us: one minute you’re getting outside the car or house, the next you find yourself locked out with no option other than to break back in. While there isn’t a surefire solution to your ailing memory, you can at least start the habit of keeping your keys in places…

Before fidget cubes and fidget spinners were even a thing, man’s best cure for anxiety was the ordinary pen. Ever present in school and work, these cheap writing materials could be spun, flicked, clicked, and in some cases even chewed on to get rid of pent-up energy. Designer Shin Feng has the same fidgeting problem;…

Don’t get me wrong; while the tried-and-true Swiss Army Knife is great for opening UPS packages or the occasional toothpick, it doesn’t scream “heavy duty” in times when you might need it for anything beyond that. When faced with an outdoor scenario, chances are the little knife might break under the stress of cutting a…

Before automobile technology even reached the point where two cup holders in a single car was an ovation inducing breakthrough, the automotive design process involved a constant back-and-forth of 2D sketches–it still does for many manufacturers. Then there is the strict adherence needed for that unfortunately inconvenient internal structure. Most of the time, these “hard…

Although humans have been throwing disc-shaped objects for centuries, it wasn’t until the 1930s when a couple was offered 25 cents for a cake pan they were throwing back and forth did the idea for the modern frisbee start to take shape. Today, the flexible polypropylene plastic disc is one of the most accessible and…

Pi Day may already be behind us (March 14th), but there are plenty of other ways to celebrate the mathematical constant over the rest of the year. The Pi Bike is a fixed gear bicycle from the minds of Martijn Koomen and Tadas Maksimovas in collaboration with ideas company WE ARE Pi. Inspired by a pi…

Even as more players eschew traditional board games in favor of smartphone app alternatives, there is still a significant population of diehard board game lovers who live for the real thing. Massdrop community designer Cassidy Williams is one such person; taking her love of Scrabble’s letter-engraved tiles into the world of computer keyboards. Waking up…

You ever wonder how craftsmen make those hoity-toity nature tables with tiny bodies of water flowing through them? Turns’ out, there’s no water involved. As former NFL lineman turned furniture maker, John Malecki, shows, all you need is some glass, some metal, and a good slab o’ wood. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ-hiw1CqyA How to Make a River Table…

As far as desk toys go, just about everybody has a method of keeping their hands busy while waiting for that next great idea to strike. And for designers and engineers who appreciate precision machined metal, the Vortecon definitely deserves a spot in your desktop. Concieved of by-product designer Kristoph Krisjans, the Vortecon is a…

The folks at Paperwallet sure like keeping their wallets simple. Made from Tyvek (the material you find in a lot of packaging envelopes), these money holders are as thin as an anorexic paper yak, yet are able to hold a fat stack of bills and cards. Not only that, but they give upcoming artists a…

If you’re someone who has the energy to exercise after sitting at a desk for 12 hours… well, of course you should. If you don’t wear your exercise clothes at work, you probably tote around your work bag along with an exercise bag. Shoes, clothes, soap, rubber ducky– the essentials. One person dared to imagine eliminating one…

The last we heard from SolidSmack favorite Love Hultèn, the Swedish designer had just announced a retro-inspired portable wood arcade cabinet containing 100 classic 2-player arcade games back in the Fall of 2017. Hultèn, who seamlessly blends traditional wood craftsmanship with modern technology, is already at it again with yet another take on the retro…

Some love the therapeutic nature of it; others entirely loathe it. Either way, one thing is for sure: vacuuming is vital to keeping your space clean. But from an ergonomics standpoint, many vacuum designs leave plenty to be desired. One subtle—yet common—ache caused by vacuuming is wrist ache, which comes from twisting your hand in…

Unlike moving bikes, which give you a sense of freedom, adventure, and occasionally, dread, stationary bikes just…well, stand there. And while stationary bikes are useful for squeezing in some cardio when the weather is particularly nasty outside, their outdoor riding emulation leaves much to be desired. The Wattbike Atom is still a stationary vehicle, but…

As someone who exercises daily, I know the hardest part of any workout is actually deciding to work out. People make a lot of reasons not to exercise, but one of the biggest excuses is they simply don’t have time to go to a gym. The xChain isn’t a portable gym (though that sounds like…

At first glance, you might think this weird-looking sphere is either a fancy lamp or an oversized paperweight. While it could, theoretically, hold a massive stack of paper, this sculptural piece contains something a bit more useful: powerful and secure Wi-Fi. Unlike more conventional Wi-Fi router designs, most of which are uninspiring boxes with bug-like…

Homemade weapons have come a long way since the traditional slingshot. Since nearly everyone, their dog, and old aunt Emma now has access to a 3D printer and the internet, more designs for must-have office battle weaponry are poppin’ up like inflamed nostrils. Case in point: this devilishly deceptive mini-crossbow. Created by Etsy user Edwards for…

Taking a break from creating cast parts and mold boxes , designer Eric Strebel cracked his paper coloring knuckles to bring you a sketch render color paper challenge which has him sketching a design concept on… you guessed it, COLORED PAPER. The design in question is a modern approach to a Tucker truck from the…

It goes without saying in any professional setting, but to look the part, it pays to play the part. In other words, you wouldn’t expect an engineer to show up at a design review with a plastic children’s pencil case. At least, this is what the folks over at Onehundred believe (we kinda do, to).…

Not much has changed with the wheel since it got us moving millennia ago. It’s design in the simplest form: a rotating donut which adapts to do everything from power machinery to provide exercise for your kid’s overweight hamster. Seeing as the invention has survived years without a lot of improvement, designer Andrea Mocellin has…

From face-scanning smartphones to always-listening voice interfaces, we’ve come a long way since using dials and knobs to control the world around us. As a natural side effect, we’ve also created a much larger arena to play with interface design. The Pour Reception radio from interaction designer Tore Knudsen is one such project that aims…

Developed in collaboration with the Aluminum Company of America in 1944 by Wilton C. Dinges, the Emeco 1006 Navy Chair is one of the most iconic chairs in the history of industrial design. Initially designed for the Navy submarines during WWII as a chair that could withstand the rigors of life at sea—including a torpedo…

Always one for ingenuity, Eric Strebel puts his industrial design expertise to good use even with the simplest of tasks. This time, he’s been commissioned to produce 120 cast parts from a single solid master part. Seeing how costly it is to make solid parts, Strebel decides to take matters into his own hands and…

The LighterSaber, as its name implies, is a lighter which looks like those wonderful laser swords from that one movie, whatsit? Ah yes…. Star Wars. Instead of spending years in Jedi training, running around Dagoba with small greet creature attached to your back, Iqbal Ameer and Singapore-based Expedio Design are bringing you the next best thing in…

The rotary tool (Dremel) is the ubiquitous hand tool for low skill prototyping. The magic wand of the prototyping world. And by that, I mean it can make sparks, dust, and smoke. The real magic is how all those theatrics can produce such a small cut (and leave such a razor-sharp edge). It is time…

If there is one thing kids really want to do, it’s to drive a car just like mom and dad. Inversely, if there’s one thing a lot of grown-ups wish they could do now, it’s to return to the simplicity of childhood and play in a cardboard box. The full-scale cardboard Karoq SUV by British…