Yanko Design - Form Beyond Function

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With almost a decade since its inception in 2009, Kickstarter is beginning to complete a full circle, and in turn letting campaigners take their small fledgling ventures and turn them into large companies and brands. Pebble, Oculus, Bragi, these are just some garage projects that turned into Silicon Valley success stories and household names in just a span of a few years. We’ve charted the success of Dango too, that has gone from making really admirable money clips and multi-tools to making some of the most desirable EDC (every day carry) known to man.

Dango’s tryst with EDC started off with the Loop Hook that went on to set the footprint for the Dapper and the Tactical Wallets, two wallets that embodied the alpha-spirit in the concrete jungle. Their latest invention builds on the idea, and adds the one crucial element to the EDC that converts it from a survival kit to a creation kit. The Dango P01 Pioneer Bifold Wallet adds a specially designed pen to the wallet, along with a notepad to your everyday carry, making it a carrying case for commerce, contraptions, as well as creativity.

At the heart of the Pioneer Bifold Wallet still lies the MT02 multi-tool (available separately), which influenced a lot of the design details surrounding Dango’s past wallets. The Pioneer lives up to that standard and some more, with its signature silicone band holding the bifold Italian Leather wallet together. Within the wallet lies space for cards as well as banknotes. The wallet also integrates the pen into the wallet’s hinge, giving it its structure. The custom pen, machined from 6061 space-grade aluminum fits a Schmidt pressurized ink refill, and comes with silicone ring grips for a comfortable writing experience and slots on the back for a woven lanyard. The pen slides right into the wallet, complemented by a notebook that fits into the footprint of the wallet itself. Made with supple Italian Leather, the Pioneer features RFID Blocking, protecting your cards from being used unless you want them to. Paired with the MT02 multi-tool, Dango’s Pioneer becomes a supreme concoction of functionality, fashion, creative-fervor, and everything in between. It holds everything from your currency, tactical multi-tools, to your ideas… and looks absolutely stylish while doing all of it. What more could a man want!?

Designers: Thuan Tran & Charlie Carroll

Click here to Buy Now: $49.00 $79.00

Click here to Buy Now: $49.00 $79.00

There is nothing more frustrating than stepping out of the shower in a hotel and attempting to dry your hair with their hairdryer, which has the same effect as having someone blow on your hair for an hour. However, bringing your own hairdryer takes up too much space in your bag. It’s this reason alone that Seongkyeong Son and Sungwoo Park set out to develop something that was not only space saving but challenged the conventional hairdryer grip too. Through this, Pebble was born. Pebble’s design is precisely what you’d expect from its name – smooth curves and a soft design aesthetic, complimenting the shape of the hand. The concept of merging the handle with the device is very interesting – giving the user complete control over the product, enabling them to use it in whichever form they find most comfortable.

Designers: Seongkyeong Son & Sungwoo Park

Half the weight of cast iron, but with the ability to cook and season your food the same way. AUS-ION™ (or low carbon mild steel) is the new ‘in’ material that chefs in Australia are swearing by. Rather than having a mold that molten iron is poured into, AUS-ION™ utensils are made by forming a steel sheet into which everything from the pan to the handles are accommodated. Each utensil as a result is absolutely seamless and in one piece. No ugly rivets also mean that the resultant utensil is much stronger than its steel counterparts.

Coming from Australia, indeed the continent of Masterchefs, is SOLIDteknics, a company devoted to making beautiful, innovative, effective, and resilient utensils for your cooks. With pans and skillets that the country’s top cooks swear by, SOLIDteknics is pushing the use of Aus-Ion, a new wonder-material that cooks the way cast iron does, adding its rustic flavor to dishes, but just weighs half the weight, comes with a natural non-stick surface, and a seamless, sheet-formed design that adds a degree of sleekness to your kitchenware.

The show-stealers of the SOLIDteknics collection are the Bigga Skillet, and the Deep Pot (the Aussie names give it a nice touch, no?). Designed to be used anywhere and everywhere, the skillets and pots can be put on stovetops and even inside ovens. AUS-ION™ has no heat-limit as such, and can be used anywhere where food can be prepared (gas, oven, even induction). Its single-piece design comes with a certain degree of engineering that I can’t stop marveling. The handle, essentially a sheet, is bent into a U shape to give it strength, while vents are cut out right near the pan, so that heat from the base of the skillet or pot doesn’t travel all the way to the handle, making it easy to work with. What’s more, the design comes with a symmetry that enables the Deepa Pot to be used as a lid against itself, making it a pretty ingenious piece of kitchenware.

Made 100% in Australia using proprietary techniques and the AUS-ION™ supermaterial, all of SOLIDteknics utensils come with a never-heard-before multi-century warranty! You can choose from their range of 9 kitchen utensils that are guaranteed to pass the fire test for years if not centuries to come!

Designer: Mark J. Henry

Click here to Buy Now: $80.00 for the Deep Pot & $155.00 for the Bigga Skillet

Click here to Buy Now: $80.00 for the Deep Pot & $155.00 for the Bigga Skillet

The oldest known lemon squeezer patents came around in July 1860, so it comes as no surprise that it has become a tough product to innovate around. This hasn’t stopped Quentin de Coster from developing a novel, and highly functional revamp of the juicer in the form of Citrange. De Coster’s juicer is a double-sided hand juicer that fits atop a glass. The design is fun, functional and shows great creativity of a simplified device. The playful revolve situated half way down the juicer, separates the two sizes of juicing tips and protects the user from getting their hands sticky and covered in juice – additionally acting as a channel for the juice to flow down into the glass. The compact nature of this design makes it a dream for storage, while simultaneously being spacious enough to enable a smooth cleaning process after use.

Designer: Quentin de Coster for Royal VKB

When you find yourself running through the airport, late for a flight, like I often am, you do not want your luggage to get caught in any cracks, or do that wobble it does when you’re moving at high speeds. Well if you are like me, or simply want a suitcase that moves as stress-free as you do, you’re in luck. Mojtaba Hosseini has designed the Spherical Wheel Luggage, addressing the problems of performance and durability with existing luggage construction. Spherical Wheel Luggage is more stable, more spacious and supports more weight and pressure than other luggage out on the market. Why should you take my word for it right? Well, Hosseini has picked up quite a few awards, and continues to make strides every day with this great product.

This elegant design isn’t just gorgeous to look at; it glides gorgeously too with its shock-absorbing and anti-vibration mechanisms that are incorporated into the wheels, allowing for smooth motion even on cobblestone ground. And to make these guys any cooler (yes they do get even cooler), the Spherical Wheel Luggage has a piezoelectric generator that generates electricity via induced vibration on cobblestones. This energy is transferred to a power bank located in the luggage which can be removed and used to power your devices on the go. So that last minute rush to the flight desk might just give you a few minutes of extra smartphone juice!

The Spherical Wheel Luggage concept is a winner of the Red Dot as well as the A’ Design Award for the year 2017.

Designer: Mojtaba Hosseini

If you’ve got an Amazon Echo Dot lying around the house you know exactly how good it is as an AI butler but how lackluster it is in the music department. Back in the day when the Echo retailed for $150, and the Dot for just a mere $50, the guys at Ninety7 decided to one-up the Dot with a supersuit of its own. In comes the Vaux, a one-of-a-kind accessory for the Amazon Dot (Gen 2). Designed to retain what it does best and add to it some serious audio chops, the Vaux was made to fit an Echo Dot (Gen 2) exactly into it. What the Vaux is, is a wireless speaker unit made specifically for the Dot. With a small cavity on the top to nestle the Dot into, the Vaux aims at giving the Dot the one very thing it lacks, and allowing it to become an Amazon Echo… think of it as the Mushroom from Super Mario!

The Vaux retains every bit of the Dot’s features and allows it to perform as a pretty good speaker too. Just connect the power supply and audio jack into it and the tiny Dot becomes a large, powerful AI Speaker system that you can not only talk to, but also play music out of. Plus, with a battery of its own, the Vaux is just as wireless as the Echo it tries to be! (Plus at the same price as the Dot itself, it saves you some cash while giving you the full Echo experience!)

If you don’t have an Echo Dot, you can buy both together right here!

Designer: Ninety7

BUY NOW

BUY NOW (Echo + Vaux)

As I walked into the Hangar Exhibition Space at the Amman Design Week, I noticed a crowd right near one of the spaces at the entrance. People had their phones out, and were filming this person gracefully painting with her body movements. The FLUX, as Andrei the creator likes to call it, captures your movement, and essentially your spirit.

Architect turned maverick coder and kickass installation maker, Andrei spent six months learning how to make his installation in code. Then all it took was a Microsoft Kinect, a projector, and a blank screen to weave sheer magic. When you stand in front of FLUX, nothing happens… until you begin moving. The Kinect captures the moving parts of your body, assigning particles to it that get translated into streaks of light and color in real time. People spent endless hours in front of FLUX, trying to trick it, to see what movement resulted in what visual. The FLUX aside from making you a part of the creative process, also gets you to move with a certain free spirit (much like dancing like no one’s watching). I’d trade in my morning jog for an hour in front of the FLUX any day!

Designer: Andrei Visuals