Yanko Design - Form Beyond Function

It’s effectively been a year since Apple killed the headphone jack… and this year something big is on its way. No it isn’t the iPhone 8. It’s the iPhone 7 headphone hack! Yes, I say hack, because serial tinkerer, Scotty Allen literally hacked his iPhone 7 to fit in a functioning headphone jack! Here’s how…

Remember how initial teardowns of the iPhone 7 revealed that the area where the headphone jack would usually sit was not occupied by a speaker, but in fact lay empty because Apple executives said that the gap was a “barometric vent” that helped the iPhone’s altimeter work with precision? Well, Scotty decided to make a trade-off by filling that gap with a headphone jack. He first figured out how the circuitry would work, by connecting a headphone port component to the lightning port of the phone. While this worked in practice, it had one major flaw. The solution would mean the lightning port would stop charging the phone (because of a circuitry overlap). Scotty then decided to use Apple’s Lightning to Aux adapter and craft himself a circuit switcher out of a flexible PCB, and voila! After more than 15 weeks of constant fiddling with the iPhone’s electronics, he managed to make a solution that worked. Oh yes, he also had a neat little hole CNC machined into the side of the phone for the headphone jack to slide through. The end result would allow the jack to work perfectly, and the lightning port to charge the phone too… but not together. While that seems like a small caveat, it goes to show that Apple’s ways aren’t always the best for the consumers, and given the opportunity to fix or hack one’s electronics, there will always be someone who puts a consumer’s needs above the strategies of a technological super-company.

The process of putting a headphone jack onto the iPhone 7 is by no measure an easy one. The video shows how many times Scotty had to try (and fail) to get his solution to work. It involved a lot of broken hardware. However, he decided to publish all the necessary files on github. Although be warned… the price of innovation doesn’t come cheap (in other words, try this on a spare phone please). You can check out Scotty’s Strange Parts website to read about his endeavor.

Video Credits: Scotty Allen

This design, called Synth, looks more sculpture than speaker and that’s precisely its appeal. Until we get our hands on one we really can’t remark on the audio quality, and what’s under the hood is still under wraps. What we do know is that it’s battery powered, includes a standard audio jack plug and can connect wirelessly to your smartphone or laptop via Bluetooth. It​s body is made of high quality ABS with a high gloss surface finish, stainless steel mesh for durability and microinjected silicone for comfort. It also sports a built-in mic for taking calls and issuing voice commands, a single top-mounted power button, and color-changing LED accent lighting that can be controlled directly from the Synth app!

Designer: Intpiece Design Studio

While you’re busy learning to make your own almond milk and pistachio milk and whatnot (thanks Buzzfeed), why not make yourself some homemade butter too?

Kilner’s Butter Churner keeps things old school but contains the entire churning process into a rather convenient mason jar with a hand-cranked, gear-operated paddle that takes milk of your choice and with ten minutes of productive fidget spinning (okay, churning!) splits it into creamy butter and buttermilk. The buttermilk makes for amazing pancakes, while the butter itself is completely home-made with zero preservatives. What’s more, you can add different flavors to it. Probably some mashed garlic or paprika? Tastyyy!

Designer: Kilner

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UPDATE: less than 24 hours left on their campaign!

As most watches strive to innovate and position themselves as new and unique, they all usually follow the same template. Stainless Steel body, curved Sapphire glass, and a few rare elements/jewels. Aggregate Watches stepped in to break the mold by creating a watch that looks like no other. With a bezel and dial made from actual concrete, the Masonic watch is probably the most beautiful and unforgettable watch I’ve seen in a while, as it pays tribute to the Freemasons, one of early society’s first architects, as well as the Brutalist architecture movement of the 50s and 60s, that sought to celebrate concrete as not just a structural material but also as an innately aesthetic material. Brutalism came from the term béton brut, French for raw concrete.

Concrete is extremely challenging to work with. It isn’t recommended in cases where you would require intricate detailing and low tolerances, making it extremely challenging to incorporate into watches, given how everything is based on machined components and intricate assemblies. Concrete has a tendency to chip, form bubbles, and have an inconsistent surface finish. However Aggregate used these very properties to their advantage, developing new technologies to make precise concrete components, and showcase their imperfections as design details. In fact, their proprietary blend of concrete is said to be more durable than most.

Featuring a concrete dial and bezel (a first of its kind), the Masonic watches come in four styles with two concrete finishes. The Gravel, Navy, and Oat Brown feature a classic concrete finish, with air bubbles and an inconsistent greying that give the watches a certain maturity, while also ensuring no two watches are identical. A Charcoal variant features a blackened concrete dial and bezel, blending in beautifully with the black casing and strap, creating something seamless yet unique.

All watches come with a machined stainless steel casing on which rests a ring-shaped concrete bezel. Inside this ring lies the protective Sapphire crystal glass, which gives a grand display of the concrete dial underneath. The watches pair themselves with straps made from top grain leather, with gray, brown, navy blue, and black tans that complement the concrete wonderfully. The stainless steel is given a brushed finish too, so that more emphasis falls on the concrete rather than on a polished steel surface. All watches come with a Japanese Miyota 203A Quartz movement, and even with their concrete construction, weigh just 0.2 pounds (90.72 grams).

A beautiful marriage between rough and elegant, state-of-the-art and unconventional, and being both resilient and gorgeous, the Masonic watches will easily be one of the most alluring and unique timepieces you’ll ever wear!

Designers: Jonathan Thai & Mike Yim of Aggregate Watches

BUY NOW: $189.00 $249.00

BUY NOW: $189.00 $249.00

Ken Okuyama, father of the Ferrari Enzo and Maserati Quattroporte, has just unveiled his latest work – a retro-futuristic supercar with Lambo-blood! A follow-up to the Kode 57, it’s called the Kode 0 and it’s reminiscent of classic 1970s supercar designs such as the Lancia Stratos Zero, Lamborghini Countach, and Ferrari Moduro. Its stealthy styling and Lamborghini Aventador heart (include the same 6.5-liter V12 engine) are anything but retro, however.

With carbon fiber bodywork, the Kode 0 weighs in at only 3417 pounds – 600 pounds lighter than the Aventador. With 690 horsepower and 507 pound-feet of torque, the Kode 0 can hit 60 miles per hour in a mind-numbing 2.9 seconds.

The razor-sharp, wedge-shaped exterior leads the viewers eye from the low, sharp nose with integrated brake cooling ducts, up through the narrow vertically-mounted, multi-layered LED headlights to the A-pillar. At the roofline, the sharp edge dips sharply to pass through the C-pillar and huge engine bay cooling ducts before climaxing at the upslanting rear end. Employing a distinct short rear overhang with high-mounted tail lights and a kicked up rear deck, the design’s distinct wedge-shape is completed. For a final touch, the center rear is fit with a triangular-shaped, quadruple exhaust pipe combination that hints at the Kode series DNA.

Designer: Ken Okuyama

Fender, arguably the world’s most famous guitar and amplifier manufacturing brand, whose guitars have been the preferred weapons of choice for legends like Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, John Mayer, Mark Knopfler, and Nile Rodgers, decided to venture into a new market with their series of Bluetooth Speakers (a first for the brand). Just like Marshall decided to foray into the speaker and headphone market, Fender decided to bring their decades of expertise in speaker and amplifier-making to the portable audio world.

I’ve been a long standing admirer of Fender’s guitars, and the prospect of owning a bluetooth speaker by them absolutely excites me! The Fender Newport, classic and chic, comes with a triple driver system comprising two woofers and one tweeter, and a 3.5mm input at the back. The speaker is styled as an amplifier too, with a metal grill on the front and knobs/controls (for controlling the volume, bass, and treble) on the top with the classic analog style toggle switch (for on/off) found on most amplifiers and guitars even today. A must have for any true-blue music fanatic!

Designer: Fender

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This one-piece aluminum laptop stand has a two-fold purpose. It serves as a barrier between your heated laptop base and your lap (or your desk), and its unique slatted design helps it act like a massive heatsink, pulling the heat from your laptop and distributing it across the multiple aluminum ‘fins’ at the base, and then dissipating it into the air. The fins/slats help increase the surface area so the heat gets lost at a faster rate, allowing the laptop stand to effectively cool the laptop without having to be plugged in. They even go as far as helping with wire-separation/segregation. Plus, its machined aluminum design goes together rather well with laptops having an aluminum body (case in point being the Macbook, obviously).

Designer: Bryan Wong