Yanko Design - Form Beyond Function

Datatape isn’t just fun to say – this SSD concept makes connecting and syncing a cinch. While others tout themselves as being portable, this is truly portable without the needs for any extra cords, cables or connectors. It features a built-in, versatile connector that can seamlessly connect to an extensive range of devices including PCs, Macs, smartphones and tablets. It also sports a spring-loaded pinch grip cord winder and retractable cord that can be recoiled in the blink of an eye. In 3 colors and 3 sizes (500GB, 1TB, and 2TB), it helps you stay organized with multiples and ensure you’re storage needs are covered.

Designer: Ananthakrishnan Balasubramanian

If there’s anything better than a useful life-saving product, it’s a useful life-saving product that has the potential to be redesigned and upgraded. The world’s most useful and favorite in-car tool, the Spare Me comes back with its incredibly useful design, integrating 3 MORE life-saving features into it that make it all the more a necessity in every car. I’m of the opinion that governments should issue a mandate for making owning this compulsory for all cars!

The original Spare Me came with a tough, virtually unbreakable, Nylon and Glass Blend construction, and the new Spare Me 8-in-1 is held to the same standard. It comes with the trusty shovel-shaped design that makes for a very efficient ice scraper, snow/mud/sand/gravel shovel, and even a lever for easy tire-lifting, while the rugged back surface provides enough traction to get any vehicle out of a tough spot. The nylon + glass blend ensures that the Spare Me will never break no matter how heavy the car/truck, or how hot or cold the weather may be. It’s soft yet sturdy material even ensures it scrapes ice and frost off glass without scratching it. The Spare Me 8-in-1 even comes with the hollow handle that allows you to extend the handles of wrenches so you end up applying less force to open out nuts and bolts. The hollow handle proves incredibly useful also because this is where you stash multi-tool no.2, a flashlight that is also designed to incorporate a glass-breaker and a seatbelt-cutter.

Designed to be purchased together but stored separately, the shovel component can be kept in the boot of the car while the flashlight can be easily stashed in the glove compartment, for easy access. Made for pretty much any sticky situation where you’d like to get literally and metaphorically “un-stuck”, the Spare Me 8-in-1 can take care of any on-road or off-road emergency, helping you avoid situations that pretty much form the premise for every outdoor horror film ever!

Designer: Kevin Klier

Click here to Buy Now: $20.00 $25.00

Leverage

Shovel

Traction

Scraper

Click here to Buy Now: $20.00 $25.00

From the designers of the original Boom speaker comes the latest evolution in the Ultimate Ears lineup. Called Blast and Megablast, the additions come in two distinct sizes and now feature built-in Amazon Alexa. Their crisp, angular edges convey clarity in sound, and the thickness of the elastomer communicates the power hidden within.

Covered in an “acoustic skin” (the innovative material pioneered by the original Boom speaker) they can withstand the toughest conditions, making it possible to bring these speakers anywhere you want music – apparently, even in the bathtub! The iconic plus and minus interface remains, making them instantly recognizable members of the UE family.

Designer: NONOBJECT

The past month has seen the many, many unveilings of the world’s largest car brands, sharing with us their sights into the future. With this, we’ve been fortunate enough to see a few kick-ass two-wheelers thrown in for good measure too. One collection of kick-ass two-
wheelers that caught our eyes here in Yanko is the Transferred Vespa Design Range by Jennings Harvey-Davidson – a project poking fun at what a full-on Vespa motorcycle would look like, but they didn’t stop there, they explored a whole range of different bikes.

Those at Jennings redesigned the Vespa as six alternative styles of bikes; Vespa Chopper, Vespa Sports Bike, Vespa Touring Bike, Vespa Off-Road/Dirt Bike, Vespa Cafe Racer and even the rather hilarious Vespa Light Cycle (Tron Motorcycle)! The team at Jennings have done a great job here, keeping the subtleties that make Vespa the little Italian wonder it is but equally evoking a strong sense that these concepts could look pretty damn cool out there ripping up the streets.

Designer: Jennings Harley-Davidson

I admire the Nook chair not only for its superb style but also its story. Its contrasting shell is made of a felt material manufactured from recycled plastic bottles. This PET felt is both soft and strong as well as recycled and recyclable. At a magnified level, each is different from the next with its own unique origins and each can be customized down to the last detail. As simple as it is a statement piece, this one’s a classic in the making.

Designer: Johan van Hengel for De Vorm

The end of the year is quite special to us, because this is when new designs unleash themselves on the world. From Design Awards to Design Weeks, all of them happen around the last quarter of the year… which means this overwhelming wave of great industrial design hits us, and translates into articles like these… Just choc-a-bloc with great design.

This round-up is doubly special because it epitomizes the term “great design”. I’m talking about the Red Dot Design Concept: Best of Best. These products and concepts stood out as inspirational, innovative and well-detailed, and in a year like 2017 that’s difficult because it isn’t as easy to do new things now as it was a decade back. However, these ten designs concisely capture innovative thinking, and in a lot of ways the direction in which Industrial Design and our world is heading. Stay tuned till the end where we debut this year’s Luminary Award winning design for the first time on YD!

01. Fan+A Stick by Hamee

Simple, sophisticated, and with the perfect bit of flair, the Fan+A Stick is an external charger that connects the old-world charm of the oriental folding fan with the new-age technology of consumer-based solar charging. The stick, in its wonderfully portable avatar, opens out into a fan of solar panels that can tap into our solar system’s largest power supply and use it to charge your mobile devices!

02. KIN Wallet by KIN Studio LLP

Until cash transactions are completely done away with, we’re going to have to deal with wallets that have separate enclosures for banknotes and coins. Most transactions involve a mix of both and when a vendor hands you a bunch of notes and coins, what do you do? You first separate them, and then put the notes away neatly in their slots, and then the coins in their pouch. Seems like a headache to me. The KIN Wallet gives you one less problem to worry about. Just dump all your change into one single enclosure and the wallet does the sorting for you! When you open your wallet again, the coins are miraculously segregated and placed in a separate pouch! Alakazam!

03. Peninsula – Floating Docks by Jean-Benoit Clermont & Tara Harb

Designed to give Montreal’s coastline a bit of verve, the Peninsula are interlocking floating modules made from eco-friendly glass concrete that can easily be interlocked to create pathways, river-fronts, and floating gardens… all on water!

04. Vitreous Robot by Ron Ferencz

The Vitreous Robot takes the human expertise out of retinal surgeries, which means no matter where you are, you can get retinal surgeries done without the need of an expert surgeon (who are a rare bunch). With high demand and less skilled surgeons, Ron Ferencz gives robots the job. These robotic arms can perform highly precise and complex medical procedures with stunning ease. Remember that one video online of a robotic arm stitching a halved grape back together?!

05. Vario by Rik Oudenhoven

Designed to be the first and the last kitchen appliance you’ll need, Vario comes with an induction baseplate that’s central to the entire cooking experience. Just mount a series of utensils from grills to non-stick pans to casseroles all calibrated to fit like modules onto the baseplate and you’ve got one shape-shifting all-purpose cooking appliance! Of course, Vario comes with all the utensils you need to mount on its base, so it’s literally your entire kitchen in a single appliance.

06. Travel Kit by Choi Jaewan, Kim Kyuseok, Kim Myungnyun & Youn Heejin

Wouldn’t travel be a whole lot easier if we had something as streamlined as the Travel Kit above? Designed to be modular, and compact, and most importantly, be together, the Travel Kit bases its design on a principle a lot like the Vario. The motor and battery house themselves in one base component and a hair-dryer module, electric toothbrush module, and shaver module just simply snap on top whenever and wherever needed. No need to carry three separate appliances when you have something as unified as this! (And you won’t be forgetting any of the separate gadgets either!)

07. Bamboodia by Huang Yu-Man, Wang Yu-Chi

Rather than developing specialty materials with custom physical properties, Bamboodia relies on nature’s very own Bamboo to replace metals and polymers in prosthetics. Designed to be low on cost, and high on efficiency, the prosthetic uses bamboo sheets bent into a specially designed shape to mimic the way an ankle behaves. The name Bamboodia comes from a portmanteau of Bamboo and Cambodia, where the designers hope to begin production and help provide employment to local craftspeople.

08. P-Scooter by Husky Design

So, just how backpacks started becoming designed specifically for laptops a little over a decade ago, Husky Design is trying to usher in an age where backpacks will be able to carry your mode of transport. The P-Scooter is an electric last-mile vehicle that folds so thin, it can literally fit into most regular backpacks, making you carry your vehicle around the city when the vehicle isn’t carrying you around the city!

09. Gettou by Panasonic

Designed around an illusion of a lampshade producing light without a lamp within it, the Gettou uses a rather alluring and hypnotically designed acrylic and bamboo combination to make a lampshade that looks like an artpiece… but where is the light bulb within it?! The trick is in acrylic’s light refracting properties. The light-source hides itself at the frosted base of the lamp, and therefore all you see is the light emanating from a source you can’t really identify as the acrylic glows like magic fire, creating a beautiful illusion that you won’t want to stop looking at.

10. Halo City by Beijing Onemile Technology [Luminary Winner!]

While we imagine a world where the conceptual P-Scooter is a reality, the Halo City is actually making serious strides (can scooters make strides?) in the last-mile commute department. The electric scooter can literally be folded into a compact trolley-esque design and be wheeled around like a suitcase (at just 15.5 kilograms, it also weighs as much as one) and even placed in the boot of a car. The scooter comes with an intelligent app that shows transport related information, allows users to switch between drive modes, and even remotely operate the vehicle. With over 13 national patents, the Halo City is on its path to become China’s next go-to zero-emissions vehicle for its vast population!

I’m standing on a fine line between highly amused and highly impressed with the LG K7i. Coming from India, and a scenario where necessity is the mother of invention, the K7i’s selling point is actually the fact that it repels mosquitoes. Built with a mesh on the back that emits ultrasonic waves at frequencies above the human hearing wavelength, the phone can actually meddle with a mosquito’s navigating system and therefore deter them from flying anywhere in the vicinity.

The K7i is a pretty low-end phone priced at just $100. Designed for rural areas where mosquito counts are higher (often linking to endemics), the phone was made to appeal to the low income groups (India of late has seen a massive boom in smartphone usage with the leading telecom having the world’s largest data network and internet-using user base). The phone also makes use of another feature that seems to be typical only to countries like India. Available with a dual-sim functionality, the phone is meant to cater to users who own more than one sim card and phone number.

The K7i’s “Mosquito Away Technology” seems like a ridiculous idea at first, but one slowly begins appreciating its genius. It adds a feature that seems to be rather useful to its intended audience. The technology works marvels because people usually have their phone around them at all times (even when asleep… especially when asleep). The ultrasonic technology doesn’t use/burn any chemicals (which is much safer) and therefore doesn’t need constant replacement or refilling of repellent cartridges. It uses a device humans are attached to, and gives it a feature that if noticed, will easily propel it ahead of its competition. Wow, what’ll they think of next?!

Designer: LG India