Yanko Design - Form Beyond Function

If you’re not into plain old potted plants, there are plenty of alternative ways to exercise your green thumb! One ultra-cool example is this modern planter that makes it possible to create and manage your own micro-geothermal mini mountain.

It’s called the Smart Mountain and it utilizes a few neat tricks to keep your plants in perfect conditions. First, it monitors the soil with smart sensors that provide real-time feedback to the user via an app on their smartphone. It will automatically regulate the water content of the soil and distribute a fine mist with an integrated vibration/fan system. If you’re running out of water, it will collect H20 from the air with a cooling condensation process. To help plants receive the appropriate amount of sunlight, it detects the position of the sun and automatically rotates to ensure even and adequate coverage.

Designer: Xu Zhang

Here’s my story. I learnt to play the guitar for about 6 years. I was 10 when I got my first ever guitar, and honest to god, it was massive for me. I struggled for a year and a half just adjusting to the guitar’s size, my fingers barely making it across the weirdly long fret-board. Passion fueled me to conquer the instrument, but the wrong kind of guitar for a beginner meant I wasted a lot of time overcoming the barriers of an advanced instrument. The same logic applied when I learnt how to ride a bicycle, but it’s much easier to find a small bicycle for kids than it is to find a small guitar for young musicians-in-making.

The Loog Guitar is already a kickstarter success story, having given children the ability to learn real guitar techniques (unlike Guitar Hero that just teaches you to push buttons), albeit on a smaller scale. Sized like a ukulele but with the sound of a real guitar, the Loog Mini and the Loog Pro are brilliant instruments for not just kids, but adults too. Designed to ergonomically size down a regular guitar, these instruments come with Maple Wood fretboards, a cut-away shape making it easier to hit the higher notes, beautiful candy colors, and the electric guitar comes equipped with a single-coil pickup that gives it a great sound! There’s even a clear Lucite version of the Loog Pro Electric that looks like pure rock heaven.

The Loog guitar is designed around a 3-string layout (one less than a ukulele). The strings however come with standard guitar tuning, making it simple to learn music principles and transition to a regular guitar when the time is right. The Loog even comes with its own mini-ecosystem of flash cards to make the learning process easy, and an app that teaches you how to play the latest and most popular songs. Besides, isn’t it just lovely to see a kid pick up a musical instrument with passion, rather than have them spend hours aimlessly in front of a smartphone screen?

Designer: Joaquín Uribe

The new Loog app for iOS and Android has video lessons, a tuner and a songbook so you can learn to play guitar by playing Beatles, Stones, Taylor Swift, Bruno Mars and more. Guiding you through the learning process is this friendly monster, whom you can customize to be a bit pop, rocker, mod, or whatever you like.

The Loog app rewards you as you learn: play a couple chords, and you will unlock Let it Be, by The Beatles. Play a couple more chords, and you will unlock another song. You can even record yourself playing and post those videos online. Both the Loog Pro and the Loog Mini give you full access to these tools.

Also new is that we now include a deck of flashcards with chord diagrams with every Loog. This is a simple but quite effective way of learning how to form chords on your Loog, or any guitar.

Gone are the days when sharing music was not only an audible but physical experience. These day, apps have replaced mixtapes and CDs you made for your friends and loved ones. Speakerfy, designed to be used in tandem with Spotify, can be paired between users to stream the same music. For instance, if you and a few buddies end up at the same place, you can link you devices together via magnetic connection and instantly play the same music, cycle between playlists, and collaborate on setting the vibe!

Designer: Savin Dimov

It has been 4 years since Lytro debuted its camera and we feel that NOW’s the correct time to be talking about it. 4 years ago, this camera came to the surface as the world’s first camera that could click a picture first, and then focus on the subject later. Still sounds like a dream, but the technique of Light Field Photography enabled the camera to capture the entire scene in focus and would then allow you to blur the background, or foreground AFTER clicking the picture.

The reason this is so relevant today is that photography is more integral to our daily lives NOW more than ever. We’re constantly clicking selfies and images, generating more than 4 billion photographs per day (we were at 1.8 billion in 2014). So much so, that phone companies have begun upping the ante on the cameras, with flagship phones having dual lens cameras to create a sense of depth.

However it’s important to remember that Lytro does that with just one lens, and allows you to focus on objects after having composed and clicked your picture. This is what we have now, but I imagine the future holds Light Field Cameras in smartphones. Imagine only having to focus on composing the photograph, rather than tapping on your screen to focus on subjects! With the Lytro, you have full control!

Designer: Lytro

This modern-world concept SUV is titled the Khoji and is designed for India in 2035. The car is envisioned to be a fully-electric adventure SUV, and to dominate the massive variety of terrains found in the country.

The Khoji (translating to Wanderer/Explorer) like all of Mahindra’s UVs has a fully electric drive train. The SUV design ditches doors for a rather unique approach where the entire exterior lifts off the chassis to allow a driver to sit within. It even features a rather unique hexagonal smart-glass tiling on the front and sides that turns transparent when the car is being operated, and opaque when the car has been switched off, shielding the car’s insides from heat and direct sunlight when being operated in places like deserts, because no one enjoys sitting inside a scorching car!

Designer: Smit Shah

From afar they may look like massive satellites on these buildings, but they’re actually designed for a completely different reason. This primary school building designed for Iran and its rather dry climate, has a double roof. The lower flat one acts as a ceiling for the classroom, and the concave container on top has a two-fold function.

It harvests rainwater, providing the school with a water supply in a country known for its relatively arid climate. What it also does is exploit terracotta’s ability to cool the environment. These earthen discs collect water, channeling them into into reservoirs hidden between the building’s double walls, simultaneously cooling the insides of the classrooms; providing free water and natural air conditioning with every rainfall. The large terracotta discs also help cut direct sunlight from hitting the roof of the building, cooling the interiors even further. BM Design Studio estimates its Concave Roof system could help the school collect up to 28 cubic meters of rainwater, while also reducing electricity costs because of the natural cooling system. That’s one way to make your school cool!

Designer: BM Design Studios