Design

RIP Donald Wexler: The Midcentury Architect Who Made Palm Springs Cool

The city of Palm Springs, California, wasn’t always known for its sleek, spare residential design. During the 1950s and 60s, architect Donald Wexler designed a particular style of building for the growing town that became known as Palm Springs Modernism—a look that’s become synonymous with the desert region and that’s seeing a resurgence today. Wexler,…

Bubble Wrap’s New Design Is Unpoppable And It’s All Our Fault

Our ruthless new era of super-efficient global shipping has made it irrelevant. The new product is called—hold your boos until the end, please—iBubble Wrap. It’s a version of an unpoppable wrap that’s been around for a few years, but as an interesting story by the Wall Street Journal’s Loretta Chao explains today, now it’s being…

How NYC’s Underground Park Is Piping in Real, Live Sunshine

We’re living in an age of extremely ambitious urban technology. Floating pools that filter dirty river water. Artificial eco-habitats. And even green parks that sit under cities, nourished by actual sunlight literally piped down from above. At least, that’s the idea. The Lowline, an underground park in New York City, was first proposed in 2011—a…

This Simple Video Celebration of Everyday Color Will Brighten Your Day

The world around you is a rainbow, if only you stop and notice it. This video is a charming celebration of color in our everyday lives—and a bewilderingly pleasant way to spend two minutes. [Vimeo] Image by laffy4k under Creative Commons license.

SlapSee Sunglasses Are Like a 90s Slap Bracelet For Your Face

Remember those slap wrap bracelets that were banned back in the 90s? They’re back and slowly regaining the public’s trust with a handful of slightly more useful products, including a pair of folding sunglasses that can securely wrap around bike handlebars or, of course, your wrist. The actual lenses on the SlapSee sunglasses don’t roll…

You’ll Spend Hours Transforming This Expanding Cabinet Just For Fun

Shelves are like mini museums in your home, putting all your possessions on display. But if you prefer a little flair with added privacy, the Cubrick Cabinet keeps everything hidden until a rotating mechanism reveals all of your personal artifacts. Available in configurations with 12, 16, or 20 cubes, the Cubrick doesn’t take up any…

This Brilliant Touch System Lets the Visually Impaired See Colors

Color is a vital part of communication, and for the 285 million visually impaired people in the world, that presents a challenge. But a Portuguese designer has invented a Braille-like language that could help those very people “see” colors by touching raised shapes affixed to objects. It’s called the Feelipa Color Code, developed by product…

Oslo Builds World’s First Bee Highway

Bees are essential for food production, but around the world, populations have been declining for years. Norway’s latest bid to back its fuzzy insectoid friends? The world’s very first bee highway, naturally. “We are constantly reshaping our environment to meet our needs, forgetting that other species also live in it,” Agnes Lyche Melvaer, head of…

In the Future, Autonomous Coffee Shops Might Rule the Road

Self-driving cars are just beginning to creep onto our highways. But in the future, autonomous vehicles may dominate the roads, freeing up their human passengers to engage in all sorts of other activities. For instance, you might want to spend your morning commute pouring through your emails whilst a barista prepares your pumpkin spice latte.…

How the Rainbow Pride Flag Lost Its Pink and Turquoise Stripes

As people all over the US and the world celebrate the Supreme Court’s landmark decision legalizing same-sex marriage, it seems like the whole internet is painted rainbow. There’s actually an interesting story behind the pride flag’s current colors. Most pride flags consist of six colors: Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. Yesterday in a…

North Korea’s New Airport Has a Chocolate Fountain and a Dark History

Kim Jong-un showed off North Korea’s modern international airport this week, which includes a rich cornucopia of duty-free goods, “espresso-based drinks,” and other luxuries. But the story behind the airport’s design is unmistakably tyrannical. The old airport was a symbol of 1950s and 60s-era Communism. It was done up in an imposing neoclassical style, and…

Genius Flat Edge Scissors Guarantee a Perfectly Straight Cut

There hasn’t been much innovation in scissors since Crayola started making safer versions for kids. That’s why Tamás Fekete’s Vector scissors are so exciting. They feature a unique flat edge design that allows you to cut perfectly straight lines with the help of the edge of a table. You don’t need a ruler, a guide,…

Would You Buy This Retro ThinkPad Stuffed With Modern Tech?

What goes around comes around, especially when it comes to design aesthetics. Now Lenovo design VP David Hill gas dreamed up a new concept: an old-school ThinkPad stuffed with ultra-modern guts. Would you buy one? In a blog post on the Lenovo website, Hill explains how his idle daydream about a modern remake of the…

This Preschool Turns Into a Huge Puddle Playground When It Rains

Kids need to play—it’s simply how they learn. More and more, scientists who study early childhood development say that preschools and kindergartens are focusing on academics when they should be letting kids simply play. Not at this preschool in Japan. At Dai-Ichi preschool—located in Kumamoto, at the southern end of Japan—play is the main item…

The lung-on-a-chip honored by the Design Museum in London this yearisn’t a one-off design, but a versatile method that can be applied to lots of human tissues. To wit: the National Institutes of Health just developed a placenta-on-a-chip, combining fetal and maternal cells to study how they interact. Contact the author at [email protected].

RIP Designer of the Pink Flamingo, Plastic Symbol of American Life

Cheap? Definitely. Garish? Perhaps. But also pure, unqualified Americana. The plastic pink flamingo has graced the grass of hundreds of thousands of residences throughout the years and become a fixture in neighborhoods throughout the US. The designer of the iconic lawn ornament has died at age 79. Unsurprisingly, Donald Featherstone (YES HIS REAL NAME) led…

It Feels Like These CGI Skin Designers Are Just Trying To Scare Us Now

Hey, how did you sleep last night? Well I hope you enjoyed it because tonight you’re going to be wracked with fevered nightmares about a computer animator with an uncanny obsession with reanimating human skin. By now, you’ve probably seen how 3D scanning can record a remarkably realistic dimensional portrait of a face. It’s cool…

Will the Confederate Flag Ever Truly Go Away?

Before he shot nine black Americans at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, 21-year-old Dylann Roof posed for photos holding a symbol of racial hatred. The same symbol that’s worn on t-shirts, wrapped around beer coozies, intertwined with American pop culture. Even if the flag is removed from South Carolina’s capitol, as leaders called for…

How the Star Wars Logo Got Confused With Nazi Typography

The history of the Star Wars logo has long been controversial for its purported connection to fascist or even Nazi typography. After all, the Star Wars saga is an apparent analogy for World War II, where the Empire is the Third Reich and Darth Vader represents Adolf Hitler. So it wouldn’t be a surprise if…

Free Trials Were Just Reset on All the Adobe Apps You’ll Never Pay For

There comes a time when you go to launch Photoshop and realize that your trial period expired the day before. Instant dread. Well, today is a fabulous day, as Adobe has reset the clock for free trials on all of its Creative Cloud apps. Adobe does this every so often, usually after a major release…