Yanko Design - Form Beyond Function

Zing, named appropriately because it aims at bringing some zing into your life, is the kind of thing you plug in once and forget about, while it works its magic on a daily level, making your life better at every step. You’d probably wonder how much better a night light could make your life, and that’s a completely valid question to ask, but the Zing is much more than the night light it says it is. It’s pretty much a companion that bears a torch (literally and figuratively) whenever and wherever you need it.

Built with 18 RGB LEDs, the Zing can be any light you want it to be. You choose from a million hues (and even gradients!) to set a light that matches your decor. The Zing, designed to be plugged and never touched again, works via an app, and even automatically, sensing your presence and switching on when it thinks it’s needed. Its algorithms constantly work in the background to make itself smarter and more intuitive. An array of Zings around the house can intuitively light up and guide you to places like the bathroom at night. Its path prediction refines itself with time, lighting up your path to the bathroom when you need, or even to the kitchen for a midnight fridge raid. While mist smart lights only light up when you trigger their motion sensor, Zing lights up well in advance, in order to guide you, rather than just shine light on where you are.

But the Zing isn’t just a night light. It’s way too smart for that. Zing’s magnum opus, its masterpiece, is its ability to identify not just humans, but objects around the house. Most electronic objects emit LBE (Low Bluetooth Energy), and Zing picks them up, being able to identify between phones, tablets, fitness trackers, remotes, and pretty much any other object you put a Bluetooth tracker on (keys for example). It pairs with Amazon’s Echo, allowing you to ask Alexa where items are in your house. Alexa answers with rather stunning precision, after triangulating the device’s location, using Zing’s proprietary technology.

While Zing has the ability to detect gadgets like your phone, it works as an extension of it too, alerting you when you get notifications or calls. Imagine this, you’re in your sofa, watching Netflix, but your phone’s in your bedroom charging. The Zing can instantly flash custom light signals to tell you when you’re getting a call, or a text, or a tweet, or even when your Uber arrives.

Designed to be plugged in, and never plugged out again, the Zing is small yet vastly powerful. Its small size is just perfect, incorporating enough LEDs to illuminate your spaces, but not being large enough to block other power outlets or switches on your switchboard. It works seamlessly over WiFi, being compatible with iOS, Alexa, and Google Assistant, allowing you to communicate with it in a way that seems more natural than a couple of clumsy buttons and controls. Because it’s not just a smart-light. It’s a companion that guides you!

Designer: Daniel Wang

BUY NOW: $36.00 $50.00

Packed with connectivity options (Bluetooth 4.2 and WiFi), Zing can act as a visual indicator for incoming calls and other smartphone events.

Individually, each Zing is an awesome, full-color, plug-in night light with smartphone control and light effects, including automatic blue light reduction to help you sleep better.

When used together as a system, multiple Zing lights learn and automatically illuminate your path without the need for manual configuration. Conversely, Zing can notify you of unusual and suspicious motion activities via push notifications on your phone.

With our optional (free) Zing Locator service, Zing can track & locate most other Bluetooth devices in your home with room-level accuracy.

BUY NOW: $36.00 $50.00

We might as well christen this week ‘Titanium Week’. We spoke not long ago about Feastform’s ultra resilient titanium utensils that would only need replacing if they got lost (that’s how long they’d last), and now of Quiet Carry’s Bandit titanium key organizer with a concealed knife. It’s small, functional, and practically indestructible.

With a case made from Grade 5 Titanium (the best quality out there), and an AUS8 stainless steel blade that’s slim, sharp and sturdy, all at the same time, the Bandit measures just 1.8 inches when closed. The casing conceals a 1.2inch blade and fits into any key-chain, occupying a minimal footprint, going unnoticed at most times… until the time you desperately need a cutting tool. Once you’re done cutting away at whatever it is that needed cutting, fold it and lock it back into its anti-ageing, anti-corrosive, anti-destruction titanium casing.

Designer: Quiet Carry

BUY NOW

BUY NOW

With the rising trend of automated restaurants where people literally have to interact with no one, comes the need to have technology and design back that scenario. Enter the Bellder, a tablet that takes care of everything for you from ordering, to notifying, to acting as a payment gateway. Each patron entering the restaurant gets handed a Bellder. Its design is sleek enough to seem appealing but bulky enough to not get stolen, or break (with rough usage). The Bellder acts as a menu card, allowing users to order food visually, looking at the dishes rather than just reading names. Once the order is placed, use the Bellder itself to pay for your meal by swiping or inserting your card inside it. I assume future iterations will include NFC payments that are on a high rise. Post payment, the Bellder acts as a notification unit, alerting you when your food’s ready so you can collect it from the kiosk. You exchange the Bellder for your food, having completed the restaurant experience without having to summon (and wait for) a waiter, or even dealing with waiters in bad moods! You’ll never get overcharged, because you see exactly what you’re paying for and bills will never get mixed up!

Designers: Dain Kim, Taejung Kim, Seyeom An, Myungi baek & JaeSuk Kwon.