Yanko Design - Form Beyond Function

With the gigantic increase in customers going online to order their medication and proscription drugs, it forced companies such as CVS against the ropes in order to hit back. The only method that CVS had of keeping a hold of customer loyalty was the prescription service itself – around a third of repeat prescriptions never get refilled, of the ones that do, about one third are forgotten after the first couple refills. Luckily for CVS, they were approached by Deborah Adler. Adler, after seeing her grandmother accidentally take her grandfather’s medication, took it upon herself to design a system that could be color coded for patients – both the prescription schedules and the pill bottles themselves. Immediately picked up by Target and the MoMA, Adler’s design was later awarded a Design of the Decade by the Industrial Designers Society of America.

How did CVS get involved? Adler took her work to CVS, saying “I felt they had the commitment and the will to see about such a large change.” It’s only five years on that the first piece of that system is being rolled out – a single sheet that patients get, showing exactly how all their medicines should be taken. By next year, the redesigned pill labels will hit the market. Adler’s prescription charts and pill bottles are only the beginning of an entirely new service redesign.

Designer: Deborah Adler

What if a niche builder of old school gentleman’s conveyances turned modern luxury goods manufacturer made a passenger drone?! This far out question is the inspiration for the Bentley Skylounge – a class-defining mobility concept for the Brit brand. With Skylounge, Bentley customers can enjoy the privilege of traveling wherever they want, whenever they want. Through vertical takeoff and landing, the craft takes passengers door to door without any additional infrastructure.

The interior is as lux as you’d expect with a large lounge area and seats that transform into a bed position for full relaxation. The pilot seat in the front is lowered in order to guarantee a full panoramic view for the passengers while glass elements in the floor provide additional transparency to the giant panoramic greenhouse.

The exterior silhouette results from familiar fragments typical of Bentley lines and curves. The centered roof line extends front to back as s stylish element as well as a functional stabilizer. It also continues into the inside of the cabin as an ambient light, connecting exterior and interior.

Designer: David Wunderlich

The Japanese have this ritual called Shinrin-yoku, or Forest Bathing. With people being so attached to technology and urban life, there’s a very apparent lack of natural connect, and that tends to have its own set of adverse effects. The Japanese immerse themselves for certain periods of time in greenery, allowing their body to naturally detox, as they let the forest and its aura cleanse them both mentally and physically.

It’s no secret that no matter who you are or where you come from, looking at nature, for example a large pasture or forest, instantly calms you down. Even if you’re not in the pasture or forest, nature has its way of lowering stress, blood pressure, and even blood sugar (plus much more). It is with that sense of direction and purpose that the Botanist Watch was created, featuring actual pieces of plant and moss suspended in resin, giving your watch a one-of-a-kind appearance as elements of flora create a beautiful halo around a minimalist, unisex timepiece.

As a result of its construction, not only is the concept of preserving nature in a watch unique… but each and every single timepiece is unique too. Made by hand, each watch features real plants or moss, trapped in resin. Watch bodies are hand-crafted, with actual pieces of nature, making no two watches the exact same. Celebrating nature and individuality at the same time, the watch bodies come in 6 styles for you to choose from, featuring 5 varieties of flowers and a sixth reindeer moss variant. Inside this annular eclipse of nature and time lies the dial that comes with a minimal, radial brushed metal design comprising hour and minute hands, and a seconds sub-dial on the bottom. On the inside sits the Japanese Citizen Miyota 1L45 Quartz movement. The watches come with leather straps (vegan faux-leather is available too) featuring simple and natural hues that complement the natural bend of the watch, although we’d recommend going for white-strap-white-dial or a black-strap-black-dial combo to help highlight the ring of flora that makes the watch look so very remarkable.

Made by Analog, a company known to dabble with unusual materials in their watches (wood, ceramic, and marble to name a few), the Botanist ups the ante by capturing and showcasing nature as not just a material, but as a thing of aesthetics and therapeutic beauty into a natural yet unnaturally beautiful timepiece. Plus, throw a Sir David Attenborough-esque voice into the video and things couldn’t be more perfect!

Designers: Lorenzo Buffa & Analog Watch Co.

Click here to Buy Now: $79.00 $160.00

Click here to Buy Now: $79.00 $160.00

It’s amazing how many rice cookers concepts come our way. It just goes to show that even seemingly simple products can be innately frustrating for those who use them. The major gripes for regular rice cookers are the delicate measuring process and time it takes to prepare.

This designed, called KOOC, conveniently stores your dry rice in a large vessel located at the rear. When you need to make rice, simply press a button and it will automatically dispense the correct rice/water amount and begin to cook. Better yet, it will keep rice warm for a period of time, but then begin to refrigerate if left unattended so it’s preserved until you need it!

Designer: Wankeun Oh

I LOVE technology. I absolutely do. Ever since I was a child… But I know better than to put all my eggs in one basket. Phones have a great camera, but I know where to draw the line. I won’t take professional photographs with it. I have a mirrorless camera for that. Phones are great for texting, but I’d never type out these articles on them. My trusty laptop is my true workstation. Similarly, with mobile payments becoming the new thing, I’d love to be able to tap my phone and make payments, but I’m going nowhere without my wallet. There’s just an elegant simplicity and an aspect of culture to having a leather or fabric product that stores cash, cards, and a bunch of notes/receipts.

So instead of integrating payment solutions into your phone, why not fuse the two in a more literal way? Distil Union’s Wally Junior is a wallet that literally sticks to the back of your phone. Using a special adhesive that glues the wallet to your phone or phone-case’s backside, the Wally Junior can hold banknotes, credit cards, or even visiting cards, giving you versatility in its compact frame. Plus with the signature pull-tab, the wallet allows you to access your cards/notes with both speed and style. No more bulging one-inch-thick wallets. Store what you can on your phone, and for everything else, there’s the Wally Junior!

Designer: Distil Union

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BUY NOW

Walking through a gallery can be exhausting on the feet – constantly walking, constantly watching. We’ve all been there when finding a bench can feel like an oasis but let’s be real, it’s lonely just sitting there on your own with people walking by. Not with TILT. TILT slopes like an unbalanced teeter-totter when a single user perches on it – in other words, it doesn’t work unless you sit with someone else — and that’s exactly the point.

Newly launched San Francisco industrial design firm Level Design just created TILT, a stunning, modern seesaw-meets-bench experience where equilibrium is only achieved when sitting with another. Inspired by a recent IDSA and AIGA gallery competition, the crew at Level Design developed this gorgeous bench – comprised of 400 pounds of gradient-layered cement that’s molded into a fulcrum and balanced on a point. The competition itself sought messages of togetherness and hope (in the wake of our political climate) and TILT does just that.

From a visual standpoint, its almost a gallery piece in itself, stealing the glance of every passer-by – the layering and polished concrete surface, with it’s rounded corners and harsh top edge makes this piece really appeasing. From a deeper understanding, TILT brings the element of togetherness and hope it set out to achieve – creating relationships and developing conversation around action. The message it sends out is beautifully simple a job well done by the Level Design team.

Designer: Level Design

Yes, that’s right, you’re seeing a BlackBerry phone that doesn’t have a keyboard. Who thought we would ever see the day. With the advances being made on all sides from Samsung and iPhone, it seems like the only move forward for a smartphone is to ditch all its features that make it unique and distinguishable. Albeit there are distinguishers, like the finger scanner on the back of the Google Pixel, the conflicting bezel on the top of the iPhone X or the edge-to-edge curved screen on the Samsung S8 – the new BlackBerry Motion removed the keyboard that used to make the BlackBerry so unique. If you’re looking for that keyboard you’ll have to get your hands on the KEYone, effectively the same phone but with the addition of a keyboard. And I know we’ve seen a keyboard-less BlackBerry before in the form of Aurora, but that was only available in Indonesia, making this the only keyboard free model they have for wider markets. Could this be the beginning of a shift towards keyboard-less for BlackBerry? I hope not.

Designer: BlackBerry