-
Tech NewsDesignPeople Are Already Trying to Fix the Nintendo Switch’s Dumb Design Issues
The Switch, Nintendo’s new phablet console, was a big bet, but perhaps not a smart one. Despite being marketed as a step into the future, it launched with more hardware issues and irritating design flaws than playable titles. As such, fans who just plunked down $300 are already rolling up their sleeves to build solutions … Continued
By Avery Ellis -
Tech NewsDesign
This $30,000 Coffee Table Floats Like a Hoverboard
If it’s not made of gold, furniture recovered from the Titanic, or extraterrestrial materials salvaged from a meteor, you’ll need one heck of a gimmick to convince people to spend $30,000 on coffee table. And that’s probably why Siren Design Studios made its Teles Taxídi table float like a hoverboard. Like the hoverboard that Marty … Continued
-
Tech NewsDesign
Ikea’s Now Making Chairs the Same Way Nike Makes its Knitted Sneakers
There’s nothing quite as comfortable as wearing a sweater knit by a grandparent, right? That’s why Nike started using digital knitting machines to create its colorful Flyknit sneakers back in 2012, and why Ikea has now adopted the same technology to create a pair of chairs designed to pamper your posterior. The PS 2017 Armchair, … Continued
-
Tech NewsDesignHow Instagram Convinces Us to Eat Terrible-Tasting Food
San Francisco is a city of long lines, and on a Saturday afternoon few lines here are longer than the one in front of the Chocolate Chair in Japantown. The Chocolate Chair’s specialty is Dragon’s Breath, neon-colored balls of puffed rice cereal soaked in liquid nitrogen. When you take a bite, the nitrogen-infusion fills your … Continued
-
Tech NewsDesignGrass Printer Turns Your Overgrown Lawn Into Art
Mowing the lawn ranks among the least enjoyable chores for a homeowner. But you can appease the neighbors who won’t stop complaining about your unkempt yard with this Grassffiti machine that grooms different designs into the surface of your lawn. Created by designer Yuta Sugiura, who you might also remember as the inventor of this … Continued
-
Tech NewsDesign
Norway’s Experimental Police Uniform Is Silly and Sort of Scary
A public backlash has emerged in Norway in response to a proposed police uniform that’s been compared to outfits worn by science fiction villains and totalitarian dictators. As reported in the BBC, the grey-green “urban camouflage” outfits are designed to replace the black jumpsuits worn by armed officers and those in special units. The new … Continued
-
Tech NewsDesignThis Massive Rube Goldberg Machine Uses the Internet to Visit Five Different Cities
Thanks to the internet and being able to easily share videos of them playing out, those pointlessly complicated Rube Goldberg machines are more popular than ever. But this wonderful kinetic sculpture actually uses the internet as one of its countless mechanisms so that it’s able to play out across five different cities across the United … Continued
-
Tech NewsDesign
Flat Pack LED Chandelier Is the Easiest Way to Turn Your Home Into Your Castle
Nothing classes up a room like a massive, intricate chandelier hanging overhead. But they can be a hassle to find, hard to get home, and complicated to install without tearing a hole in your ceiling. Unless the words “some assembly required” don’t frighten you, in which case this flat-packed faux chandelier is a much easier … Continued
-
Tech NewsDesign
This Wacky World Map Just Won Japan’s Biggest Design Award
The centuries-old Mercator projection is a notoriously inaccurate world map. For one thing, Greenland isn’t the massive land mass as shown on the map. But a new map by artist and architect Hajime Narukawa offers what’s possibly the most proportional map we’ve ever seen. You can print out and fold the map, so you can … Continued
-
Tech NewsDesignWill This Manually-Powered Elevator Replace Stairs One Day?
A team of designers from the Rombaut Frieling Lab in Eindhoven, Netherlands, have created what they believe is the perfect hybrid between stairs and elevators: an unusual contraption called the Vertical Walking that lets people move between floors with minimal manual effort. Elevators only work as long as there’s electricity to power them, requiring space-wasting … Continued
-
Tech NewsDesign
Look How Easy This Clever Measuring Spoon Is to Clean
We first covered Rahul Agarwal’s Polygon measuring spoon a couple of years ago. Made from a flat piece of etched plastic, it folds into a measuring spoon of various capacities depending on how you hold it. Now the Polygon is finally becoming a reality through Kickstarter, so you can soon make your ,drawers sightly less … Continued
-
Tech NewsDesignTransforming Coffee Table Just Keeps Getting Bigger and Bigger
When you’re living in a small apartment you need furniture that does more than just sit there looking pretty. This nondescript coffee table, created by Studio Ozeta, magically raises and expands, again and again, to become a dining table capable of seating up to ten dinner guests. Watching the Ozzio Newood table transform is almost … Continued
-
Tech NewsDesign
The World’s First Clear Glass Slide Looks Like a Dream
Our perpetually-dropped smartphones have pushed glass manufacturers to create stronger and more durable materials to survive our clumsiness. But if you’re curious just how advanced glass making techniques have gotten, someone has made a 30-foot working glass slide that’s completely transparent. The Vidre-Slide, designed by engineers at Eckersley O’Callaghan working with the glassmakers at Cricursa, … Continued
-
Tech NewsDesign
Your Butt Totally Deserves This $26,000 Chair That Makes You Feel Weightless
Stop and think about how many hours you spend sitting in an office chair hunched over a computer. Don’t you think your butt deserves to be cradled in something more luxurious than whatever was on sale at Staples? The Elysium chair isn’t cheap, but it’s brilliantly engineered to make you never want to get up … Continued
-
Tech NewsDesignGuy Builds Gorgeous Sequencer Just to Test Video Game Arcade Buttons
When Mike Sannikov was designing an arcade game controller and needed to test which brand of buttons would work best, he didn’t just read some online reviews—he bought a small sampling of buttons and used them to build this gorgeous music sequencer as a test bed. Few of us have the skills to even imagine … Continued
-
Tech NewsDesign
This Is What a $3,000 Box of Colored Pencils Looks Like
Fashion mogul and designer Karl Lagerfeld has realized that the adult coloring book fad isn’t going away any time soon. But instead of cashing in with his own line of coloring books, he’s collaborated with Faber-Castell on a set of colored pencils that will set you back $2,850. Come again? The KarlBox, which is designed … Continued
-
Tech NewsDesign
Sitting on This Glowing Buddha Chair Is Probably the Most Relaxing Thing
Where’s the most relaxing place to take a load off? A comfy bed? A giant plush couch? A hammock swinging in the breeze? None of the above. If you’re really looking to wind down, what could be more relaxing than plopping down in Buddha’s lap? The only non-zen part about this five-foot-tall plastic lounger, that … Continued
-
Tech NewsDesign
Optical Illusions Magically Appear When You Fill These Soy Sauce Dishes
Tokyo-based designer Duncan Shotton takes advantage of soy sauce’s varying opaqueness to create a pair of unique sushi dishes that reveal three-dimensional optical illusions once they’re filled. As with the designer’s previous products, Shotton has created a Kickstarter campaign, with a modest funding goal of just over $6,600 (which has already been pledged) to sell … Continued
-
Tech NewsDesign
The Best and Worst Stuff in the New Ikea Catalog
In the last few years, Ikea has shrugged off its false perception of a purveyor of cheap furniture and started selling some truly stunning stuff. For 2017, the Swedish flatpack furniture maker mixes classic and modern designs. But for every good-looking piece, there’s a terrible one that some poor college student is going to get … Continued
By Darren Orf -
Tech NewsDesign
Power-up Your Walls With This Super Mario Bros. Level 1-1 Poster Set
It’s considered to be one of the most perfectly designed video game levels of all time because it introduces players to new gameplay concepts without an instruction manual. And if you have fond memories of Super Mario Bros.’ Level 1-1 (who doesn’t?) you can now immortalize it on your wall. When laid out in sequence, … Continued