Yanko Design - Form Beyond Function

There are two types of watch people. The ones who believe in wearing an immaculate, precious, hand-crafted piece of art on their wrist… and there are those who want all of technology’s achievements strapped to their hand. There are two types of watch people… but there needn’t be.

Swiss on the front, smart on the back, the Smart Buckle by Gooseberry attaches itself to literally any watch. Designed to help you preserve your precious timepiece while adding a world of functionality to it, the Smart Buckle replaces your watch’s original buckle, and in turn adds a fitness and sleep tracker to it, giving you literally the best of all worlds.

The Smart Buckle looks innocuously like any regular buckle, and that’s what’s so great about it. It doesn’t impose its style on your haute horlogerie, but rather blends into its style. In fact its minimal design works great with everything from precious timepieces to even sleek, minimally designed watches. Made to fit and match more than 500 of the world’s most reputed watch brands, the buckle and strap fit the watch you own, making them tech-savvy. The buckle comes built with sensors that track movement/steps, and even measure sleep. Data is sent over to your smartphone, and the buckle integrates with Apple Health and Android Fit to sync your health readings to the cloud.

The buckle itself is made out of stainless steel with a brushed finish. It’s scratch-proof and sweat-resistant, with a rating of IP57 (which means it can withstand regular water splashes and dust). It provides a week of run-time on a single 60min charge, that happens through Gooseberry’s own magnetic charging dock, and you can monitor all your readings on the Smart Buckle app for both Android and iOS.

The Smart Buckle means not choosing between style and technology anymore. Millions of people own and are incredibly passionate about intricately crafted art-timepieces, and smart-wearables don’t even compare in terms of what a proper timepiece stands for, and therefore can’t truly replace Swiss or Japanese precision, handwork, and art. The buckle is a brilliant lateral solution that changes nothing for a watch-lover. In fact it makes the most sense because the buckle sits flat against the front of your wrist, below the palm, gathering readings with accuracy that outperforms most fitness trackers. The Smart Buckle comes available in Chrome and Gun Metal finishes and one can even opt for the buckle with a silicone or leather band, depending on your style requirement. It enables you to wear that favorite watch you bought with your first salary, or that heirloom your grandfather passed down to you, while also giving you all tha capabilities of a state-of-the-art health and fitnesstracker. Like I said… There are two types of watch people in this world; and the Smart Buckle is for both!

Designers: Alexei Levene & Shripal Gandhi of Gooseberry

BUY NOW: $39.00 $99.00

BUY NOW: $39.00 $99.00

Perfect for spur-of-the-moment adventures, the Kodiak Canvas Swag Tent is compact camping you can count on! An evolution of the traditional bedroll, this single person, portable sleep system rolls up to the size of a backpack to go just about anywhere. However, at 6 feet 8 inches long and nearly 3 feet wide, it provides a sizable sleeping space, even for big guys.

Made of water-wicking cotton canvas, it’s completely weatherproof. Built-in layers of mesh keep bugs out and provide plenty of ventilation so you can sleep under the stars or cozy up by enclosing the entire canvas. Use it on the ground, in the bed of a pickup, or with a cot to stay clear of the ground. When it’s time to go, the Swag packs up in no time! Just disassembled the supports, stow them in the convenient compartment, and roll it up so you’re ready for the next camping spot!

Designer: Kodiak Design

BUY NOW

BUY NOW

The Hoi watch might just seem like a funky timepiece with an aesthetic twist, but its seemingly odd placement of the face and its bizarre strap are actually beneficial to the user! The side placement of the dial and the curve in the strap are much more ergonomic than traditional watch straps and faces. That extra room makes it easy on the wrist to bend in a natural motion without obstruction from a bulky watch face. Made of non-allergenic rubber and elastic, it’s material composition also keeps things comfy… and since you wear it all day, you might as well be!

Designer: Cristian Minto

The Kinto Cafepress is for those coffee-addicts who don’t like the idea of having to wait for their mug. It cuts out the coffee machine, aka the middleman, and allows you to brew your brew right in the mug itself!

Just pour coffee grounds in (or even tea leaves for that matter) and top it off with the hot water. Let the brew rest for a minute and then insert the filter that sits flush against the handle when inserted. The filter acts like a press, compressing your grounds/leaves to the bottom of the cup, leaving just the aromatic flavorful liquid on the top for you to sip, directly from the mug you brewed your drink in. It literally doesn’t get any fresher than this!

Designer: Kinto

BUY NOW

BUY NOW

I probably wouldn’t… but this phone’s not for me. Coming from RED Digital Cinema, the company that makes most of Hollywood’s high-end cameras, the Android smartphone doesn’t want to be called a smartphone, but rather a Holographic Media Machine. It comes with a screen that is capable of delivering glass-less 3D visuals. 3D screens could be big, HTC tried and failed, but with VR being the next big thing, who knows. All we have right now is this singular render, a code-name Hydrogen, and a price tag of $1,195 *coughs*.

Let’s have a look at the image we’ve got… That camera bump on the top clearly means business, and coming from RED, maybe it’ll rival any pocketable camera you currently own. I’m not a fan of the grips on the side of the phones because A. not everyone holds the phone the same way, and B. it solves an apparent ergonomics problem but instantly creates an aesthetic problem. I’m also having second thoughts about that charging port. It looks nothing like anything I’ve ever seen… which leads me to think that it may be proprietary. Above that, on the back of the phone, are a series of magnetic connector plates, possibly for an attachment like a flashlight (which the phone…sorry…holographic media machine doesn’t have built into it).

At a staggering price of over a grand for the Hydrogen smartphone ($1,595 for the titanium version), clearly this phone has a rather fixed purpose and therefore a fixed target audience (probably VERY serious videographers, or just plain rich people). Which makes me wonder… is the title of this article as rhetorical as you thought?

Designer: RED Digital Cinema

Is it possible that the automobile can go from being a symbol of stature/class to being just a means of conveyance? A lot of companies and designers are predicting that one day cars will be shared by people, and co-owned, instead of belonging to just one person or family.

If that’s true, cars will have to be designed differently, with an aesthetic that balances between looking utilitarian as well as classy. The Vision City Concept Car by Guilherme Kataoka is designed to make travel a different experience to commuters who will now ride to places instead of drive to them. The autonomous vehicle boasts of a more homely interior, allowing the car to be an extension of their homes. Seats are laid out to face each other, enabling conversation between passengers.

Designed to be a shared autonomous car, the exterior gets a makeover too, with the windscreen (both front and rear) being ditched and more focus being given to the side windows. The front headlights become more indicative than functional, allowing people to know a car is approaching, rather than being high powered beams of light to illuminate the road for the driver. It’ll be interesting to see whether these concepts do translate into reality in the coming future. We know that BMW’s Mini Next Vision 100 has a similar prediction of the future too. Can you think of more examples?

Designer: Guilherme Kataoka