Yanko Design - Form Beyond Function

More than ever before, coding is considered to be the one thing everybody should know. Following one’s own speaking language, it’s imperative that youngsters learn a coding language too, because speaking in software, and speaking to software is extremely critical in today’s digital age.

No matter what language, the building blocks always remain the same and toy-makers have begun realizing that bringing that learning to children in a toy format can lead to major changes for the better in society. What Lego and Meccano did for our generation, STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) toys like the Cubetto are doing for today’s young generation.

Currently in its second iteration (with support and funding from Randi Zuckerberg, former Marketing Director at Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg’s sister) Cubetto comes back to teach children about coding in an innovative Montessori-approved format. The game comprises a tiny locomotive robot, a control panel, and a series of maps that the robot can navigate across. The magic lies in the control panel that the child learns to use and communicate with the robot through. The panel introduces children to concepts like command lines, loops, functions, and sequences in a playful format that develops their cognitive and problem-solving skills in a manner that makes coding easy to grasp later in life.

Aside from having secured various awards at the Cannes Lions, Red Dot Design Awards and the Junior Design Awards, Cubetto has also been featured on Kickstarter’s Gold tier, the Cubetto aims at changing toys and molding children for tomorrow. It doesn’t use screens (which is a great thing) and shapes itself as a traditional toy (having a wooden construction and color-coded elements/modules) with a modern agenda. Perfect for toddlers aged 3 and above, the Cubetto makes an ideal tinkering-toy at home and even a beautiful learning experiment in school!

Designer: Primo Toys

BUY NOW: $275.00 $369.00

Swarms Swamp – An airboat ride through a misty marshland. A world filled with exotic plants and animals. Take in the sights, and make some friends along the way.

Polar Expedition – A heart-thumping Arctic race. Slick through icy plains, past polar bears and weather stations. Travel by starlight under the Northern Lights.

Space Odyssey – A trip to the fringes of our solar system. Visit the International Space Station, Mars, and Jupiter. Wave at our pale blue dot from the depths of our galaxy.

Big City – A fast-paced ride through a bustling metropolis. Negotiate high traffic between dizzying skyscrapers, and take in the parks, markets and landmarks. Beep beep!

BUY NOW: $275.00 $369.00

Bring home a barber shop quality shave with OFFSET – the latest from Layer for London startup Follicle&Limb. This sleek, modern set consists of three parts: a badger shaving brush, case which doubles as a stand for the drying bush and a dish for the razor. Forget the myriad of male grooming accessories… this minimalistic, magnetically married combination is all you need for a handsome, smooth face! Better yet, its sculptural silhouette looks great in any bathroom or as an accessory on any vanity.

Designer: Layer

There’s almost no worse feeling than when your Fido or Fluffy gives you that heartbreaking look of abandonment as you leave for work in the morning! Now you can get rid of the owner’s guilt and prevent your furry friend from being lonely with Petcube Play! It allows you to watch, talk to and play with your pet remotely from anywhere in the world right from your smartphone.

Simply connect it to wifi, download the Petcube app, and play a game of laser talk, give him a “good boy” using two-way audio, and keep an eye on things with the 1080p video camera. Designed to be durable and safe with smooth corners, it’s even capable of taking a tumble should your pet choose to play with it!

Designer: Alex Nesin

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Joseph Joseph’s kitchen products have all my love for just being the most sensibly designed objects of food preparation ever. They take products and elevate them to completely different standards, winning hearts as well as design awards. Call me biased, but not many companies pay this much attention to the most unnoticeable areas of potential design intervention, and in a way that seems so simple and intuitive, you’ll never even need a user-manual (look at the designs we’ve covered before to see what we mean).

With the Shake-It Sieve, Joseph Joseph tries to not just help us sift through ingredients effectively, but also in a way that’s so stupidly simple, I’m angry at other companies for not thinking of this earlier! The sieve comes with a loosely fitted handle that slides up and down. What do you use it for? Why, you shake the handle back and forth, getting the sieve to move to and fro, every now and then colliding with the handle. The collision mimics the tapping action we do against sieves to get them to sift faster… except the two-handed job now becomes a one-handed job, so you can even more quickly prepare that deliciously decadent chocolate cake that Buzzfeed told you about.

Designer: Equals Design for Joseph Joseph

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Designed to be snapped on to your trekking shoes when you need every bit of traction you can get, the Yaktrax Summit looks bold, rugged, and like it can do the job. The Summit straps to any shoe (you buy it according to your shoe size), and secures itself tightly. The chains provide traction, but not as much as the 3/8” curved sawtooth stainless steel spikes that dig right into the ice or snow, making sure you’ll never lose grip. The rugged design and blue/black combo play well with the rough, snowy conditions in which the Yaktrax would be required. When not in use, the Yaktrax Summit fit beautifully into a drawstring bag that’s easy to carry them around without hurting anyone or damaging anything.

Designers: BOLTGROUP Product Innovation & Kurt Rampton.

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