Yanko Design - Form Beyond Function

UPDATE: Less than 12 hours left, grab yours now!

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

When you can’t choose between a drone and a plane, get both! The Parrot’s Swing drone is a pretty nifty piece of design and engineering. It looks like an unsuspecting quadcopter with four black polystyrene wings, but these wings help it turn into a plane, getting it to fly at speeds much higher than conventional drones. It does so by tilting over and thus becoming like a plane with front-facing propellers, as opposed to the vertical propellers of a quad-copter.

Flying the Swing is indeed an adrenaline rush because it tips over, transforming into a supersonic jet of sorts, allowing it to fly at pretty marvelous speeds. When you slow down, it immediately retakes its vertical position and becomes a drone again! The Swing comes with its own Flypad, a joypad that allows you to mount your phone on it. With the Parrot app, you can control the Swing while also seeing data like flight time and battery levels. To make operating the Swing even more of a dream, it comes with an auto-takeoff and auto-landing feature, taking the complexity out of the drone’s operation so you can truly enjoy flying this quadcopter/jet hybrid in the sky!

Designer: Parrot

BUY NOW

BUY NOW

It’s been an inspiring couple of weeks for Virtual Reality with the release of the Google Daydream headset, the Oculus Go headset, and recently the very durable ANMLY Model A headset. While there have been some dramatic changes made with headsets since its inception, there hasn’t been nearly half as many with VR controllers. That’s where Andrey Dalakishvili & Mikhail Oleynikov come in, the creators of Finch Hands – the digital controller that combines the convenience of the glove and functionality of the gamepad. Finch is suitable for hands of all sizes and shapes and can’t be dropped, which detracts from the experience using other digital controllers.

Designing Finch Hands, Dalakishvili and Oleynikov looked at this project from a human-centered approach, acknowledging the difficulties with each prototype throughout the process – this lead to Finch Hands being ambidextrous, unobtrusive, a breeze to use and of course, fitting like a glove. Finch Hands also comes with two armbands which are used to calibrate a more accurate sense of movement. This digital controller is a handy addition to the exciting future of VR.

Designers: Andrey Dalakishvili & Mikhail Oleynikov

As the time counts down to this year’s Tokyo Motor Show, we get more and more teasers of what’s to come – one of those teasers is the beautiful Mazda Kai Concept. With some similarities to the RX-Vision Concept (released at the 2015 Tokyo Motor Show), the Kai is edgy, sleek and a large amount of personality. What stands out for me the most here is the genuinely gorgeous aesthetic of the side panels. The surface pulls in after the front wheel arch and is dragged back out to house the rear wheels – the way this plays with the lighting is never going to stop putting a smile on my face. An honorable mention is the dazzling roof on the Mazda Kai. The windshield curves at the top, to continue down the roof, splitting in the center giving way to an aerodynamic body sculpture which once again adds to the clean and sharp look of the Kai. Having to wait until the Tokyo Motor Show, we’re going to have to hold out until then, but this hatchback motor is certainly raising a lot of eyebrows in interest to see more.

Designer: Mazda

I think the best way to measure how good a design is, is to see how many lives it can truly enhance. The Press Fit by Sahar Madanat was developed initially as a surface to aid people suffering from Parkinson’s Disease, but when she debuted it at the Amman Design Week 2017, she was approached by a sailor who wanted to use the same product on ships too, to prevent items from moving about or products from falling off surfaces as the ship rocked backwards and forwards. Press Fit suddenly saw itself ‘fitting’ into various scenarios.

Developed as a better and more space efficient version of the Red Dot Award winning Pushpin Tray, the Press Fit is a modular surface comprising multiple hexagonal members. These members come with a basic spring action and move down when a weight is placed on them. What you get is an intelligent grid that forms the shape of any product you place on it, effectively holding products that are placed on it. The Press Fit provides a surface that prevents products from sliding or tipping over even if tilted as much as 30 degrees. Seeing its applications in trays for the disabled/elderly/children (or even in the hospitality industry), packaging for products, or even smart surfaces to be used in cars, planes, and even ships. There are so many problems the Press Fit could solve!

Designer: Sahar Madanat Design Studio

I could use a product like the Cieplik. I’m one of those people whose hands go instantly ice-cold in the winters, and then I’m holding them up against my cheeks, or sitting on them to keep them warm. Just one tea-light candle away from toasty-warm hands, the Cieplik uses a base-plate and a rather alluring ceramic cover that rests on top. Relying on ceramic’s heat dissipating properties, the Cieplik uses just one simple tea-light candle on the inside to create a heat chamber inside itself. The heat then gently dissipates into the environment, not only working as a natural heater, but even encouraging you to warm your hands around this earthen fireplace! Its rippled design not only makes for a great design detail, it also helps increase the surface area so that the heat-loss around the top is higher.

Designer: Katarzyna Giedroyć