Yanko Design - Form Beyond Function

Got a burly beard that needs taming? A fro that needs fixing? A mustache that needs managing?! Introducing, the Go Comb. It’s the last one you’ll need because it’s no larger than a credit card and fits in your wallet or pocketbook, is super-durable and built to last, and features a cool variety of different finishes and designs to match your personal aesthetic. Some styles actually double as a mirror or even a bottle opener depending on your personal steez!

Designer: Heather Burkman

Even as much as standing straight or walking can exercise muscles because they immediately get to work to keep you in balance. This is referred to as a passive workout, because there’s no conscious effort put in to keep your muscles active. This comes from our brain’s inherent need to stay upright and not fall over.

The Strongboard is a balancing board that tips the scales by making it a little more difficult to stand upright. The board contains a base and a balancing platform with 4 strategically placed springs that make balancing on it a challenge. Your muscles work even more to keep you from falling over, and therefore get the exercise they need! The Strongboard can be used to boost your core strength, flexibility, and even isolate and work out individual parts of your body to buff or tone them! You can even head to Strongboard’s YouTube page to see how to use the board to get a better body, or boost your skills as a sportsperson. A perfectly healthy workout without the effort of one!

Designer: StrongBoard

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Designed for use in zero gravity situations, Leica Space aims to produce out-of-this-world photography! This modern action cam is equipped with a three-axis motorized gimbal system that allows users to take pictures of a subject in a gravity-free space or spacecraft, or autonomously using a laser tracking system that follows subjects as they float around! It is composed of a specialized mount that can be fixed on a structure or space suit in a spacecraft, a handle module that allows it to be carried, as well as a screen module specially adapted for space.

Designer: Joongu Kim, Kyuho Song, Juan Lee

Leave it to a lifeguard to perfect professional swimmers’ training methods! All that time on the stand paid off for designer Pratik Bendale who created the Hydra resistance trainer after observing a few problems with his college team’s techniques.

Unlike awkward parachutes and bulky weights, Hydra utilizes an innovative pulley system connected to a resistance machine on land. Athletes only have to attach the standard waste harness and set their desired resistance. Designed to be set on the edge of the pull, users will find that it’s easy to access even from the water. While swimming, it frees the user of cumbersome equipment so they can focus on technique while giving their muscles much needed resistance.

Designer: Pratik Bendale

Just hours ago, at Lenovo’s Transform event in NY, we got a glimpse of probably the most outlandish concept design from the tech giant, almost giving us a sense of deja-vu as we’ve seen design students propose concepts like this all the time (and get dismissed rather aggressively by naysayers), but never has it seemed so exciting because Lenovo claims they intend on launching this one-of-a-kind laptop at the end of the year.

Taking its Yoga range a little too seriously, Lenovo announced the anniversary edition of the Thinkpad, a truly offbeat, futuristic laptop that folds open and closed, not via a hinge, but using a technology that gives the laptop a property to be truly flexible. It may seem unbelievable but Lenovo’s rather invested in this technology and they did debut a working model of the bendable phone in October last year. The initial portrayal of the concept immediately shows off the bending body that one-ups Microsoft’s Surface Book by even getting the screen (almost squarish, rather than the accepted 16:9 ratio) to bend. The laptop does away with the trackpad and comes with a pencil/stylus that allows you to use the device like a notebook. The way it bends too almost gives it the appearance of a folio, maybe going so far as to encourage you to carry and use it like one. (Slip a couple of A4 sheets in, who knows really?)
This laptop may be unbreakable too, much like the bending phone revealed last year!

It’s great to see companies follow this trend of outlandish-concept, something we’ve seen students and independent designers do time and again. It’s important to create something that a human dismisses as impossible and not-going-to-happen, because what people deem as unrealistic often transform into stepping stones for what we see becoming achievable in the future. Lenovo plans to debut the laptop design sometime around October, but for now all we have is this announcement. Do check out the Lenovo Transform keynote above… the laptop announcement falls at the 2:20:30 mark!

Designer: Lenovo

“Defying expectation, hard becomes soft”. The Stix bench uses 121 spring-loaded wooden members as a part of its hard-yet-soft upper surface. Upon seating, working on a crude substitution of what a cushioned surface would do, the members slide downwards, taking the contour of your backside, providing a naturally comfortable seating even though the wood is designed to look hard and sturdy. Get off the Stix bench and the wooden members float back to their original position again, completing the illusion. Aside from the wooden playful upper surface, the rest of the bench comes in brass plated steel that’s designed to patina, giving the stool an old world finish that plays a wonderful contrast to the playful upper surface!

It’s nice to see designers try to achieve things that go against the expectations of the materials they use. Earlier this month we saw something similar in the Flex Chair and the Stone Foam Chair from 2015 that pulled the hard/soft illusion off with sheer brilliance, and we can’t help but be excited to see what other designers do with this design direction!

Designer: STAY