Design

Take a Tour Through the Glassy Halls of Apple’s Future HQ

We’ve spent months marveling over the facade of Apple’s new headquarters. But now, thanks to these renderings from the City of Cupertino uncovered by Wired, we’re getting an idea about the spaces inside the building—and it’s hard to decide if it looks more like a futuristic office or a futuristic Apple store. The campus, as…

Hide Your Messy Nest of Cables In This Neat Wood-Paneled Can

We all have one—that corner in your living room where the modem, the router, the surge protecter and friends live. It’s a mess. You can try to hide it behind the couch, or you can cover it with unread mail. Or, you could store everything in this handsome wooden container. It’s called the CableBin. As…

Keyfleas Don’t Actually Bite While You Type

A lot of things can bother you while you’re trying to work, but what about things that you only perceive as nagging? In Keyfleas, little lights follow your fingers around a keyboard like a swarm of fleas, and can create the sensation that something is nipping at your fingers. Developed by Miles Peyton at Carnegie…

5 Retrofuturistic Designs That Helped J Mays Reshape the Automobile

Ford Motor Company announced this week that top designer J Mays is retiring. In his 33-year career and 16-year tenure at Ford, Mays ushered in the era of retrofuturistic styling that other car companies scrambled to follow. Here, we look back at five of his vehicles that steered the shape of automotive design. Audi Avus…

Most Beautiful Items: November 2 – 8, 2013

Maybe we’re entering that time of year when you never want to leave your house. That’s just fine, because there are plenty of beautiful things for you to pass your time with right here. From a cloud bridge, to perfectly looped GIFs, here are the most beautiful items of the week. You’ll want to go…

The Architectural Trickery Used to Disguise D.C. Monument Renovations

Washington D.C. is getting old. To other countries, our nation’s capital might seem like a spring chicken, but it’s actually aging rapidly—a fact proven by the scaffolding that’s draped around some of its most important monuments this year. Smithsonian Mag’s Jimmy Stamp points us in the fascinating direction of the unique art of scaffolding, which…

This Book Shows You What It’s Like to Have Dyslexia

For people with dyslexia, relating their struggle with reading to the general population can be a seemingly impossible and frustrating task. Graphic designer (and dyslexic) Sam Barclay, though, hopes to finally bridge the gap between those with reading difficulties and those without using his new book—a visual experience of what dyslexia actually entails. Currently a…

This HTC Passive Speaker Costs $8,000

If you’re looking for particularly decadent accessory for your HTC One, perhaps you’d be interested in a wonderfully elaborate gramophone-inspired passive speaker? If you’ve got $8,000 lying around, at any rate. Designed by Justin Wolter as part of HTC’s push for more creative design, it’s actually called the Gramohorn II. No electronics are involved: it…

This Pedal-less Porsche Bicycle Will Be the Talk of the Cul-de-Sac

Apparently, Volkswagen has realized that kids who ride Porsches grow up to be adults who buy and drive Porsches. It’s the same strategy that Adobe uses by selling Photoshop dirt cheap to students. But will learning to ride a two-wheeler on this luxurious Porsche balance bike give toddlers a taste for the finer things in…

This Chair Can Be Worn Like a Backpack

If you demand that your furniture is both reassuringly substantial and also portable, then you probably have a tough time navigating life. But here’s something to help: a real chair that can be worn as a backpack. The Nomadic Chair by Jorge Penades is constructed from wood, but doesn’t require any screws, nails or glue—it…

This Sausage Gun Fires Mouthwatering Ammo

There’s a very good reason why no one wants to see how sausage is made, and that’s because the process is gross. Would it change things, however, if you could wield a meat machine like a ray gun, pumping out beefy snakes like an at-home superstar butcher? Maybe! https://gizmodo.com/meat-machines-music-more-meat-5819563 This handmade prototype was part of…

The Glamour of Futurism: An Interview with Author Virginia Postrel

Futurism and glamour are inextricably linked in American history. The sleek techno-utopian futures of yesteryear—the ones filled with flying cars, jetpacks, and automatic highways—couldn’t exist without the support of this concept that’s equal parts intrigue and attraction. Virginia Postrel’s new book, The Power of Glamour: Longing and the Art of Visual Persuasion, looks at glamour…

12 Monumental Structures Made From Type

When architects and designers want to make a point, they certainly love to spell it out for us. So check out these buildings, statues, and sculptures made from letterforms, from Lettering Large: The Art and Design of Monumental Typography, a new book by Steven Heller and Mirko Ilić. While carving a sign from a slab…

Raymond Loewy, the Man Who Made the 20th Century Beautiful

You may have noticed the sepia-toned Google doodle today and clicked through to find out it’s a train designed by midcentury industrial designer Raymond Loewy, whose 120th birthday would’ve been today. Even if you don’t know Loewy, I can almost guarantee you’ve come in contact with his work—which decorates everything from the Coke Bottle to…

The First Five Smart Home Appliances From Quirky and GE’s Future-Store

What happens when a Fortune 500-ranked, 120-year-old company like GE partners with a four-year-old startup like Quirky? Today, six months after announcing a partnership, the companies launched their first co-branded products. https://gizmodo.com/ge-is-freeing-up-thousands-of-patents-to-fuel-your-imag-5994291 They’re designed to bring a little bit of gee-whiz connectivity to mundane household objects, from your egg tray to your power strip. Each…

Two Laptops Locked In An Endless Rock-Paper-Scissors Battle

Playing rock-paper-scissors with a friend or family member is actually a pretty sophisticated intellectual challenge. You might choose your move based on a personal preference or whim, but you’re probably also thinking about what your opponent is going to pick. Sometimes you can just feel your brother leaning paper, or your best friend thinking that…

1,250 LEDs Shimmer On the Surface of This Abandoned Oil Tank

The shift in season reminded me of this cool old project in cold Helsinki, where a team of designers turned an abandoned oil tank into a lovely, year-round public art project. The silo is located outside of Helsinki in Kruunuvuorenranta, a residential area across the water from the city. The neighborhood’s old harbor and terminal…

A Mountain Range of Shelves Turns This Kids’ Library Into a Playground

Learning to read is a massive adventure in itself, but discovering the library—a magical place where the stories are plentiful and the books are free—is downright mind-blowing. In an effort to match the fun between the pages, the Mexican branding studio Anagrama transformed the interior of a local heritage site into Niños Conarte, a geometric…

South African designers Warren Lewis and (the somewhat extraordinarily named) Porky Hefer have come up with Birdwatcher, a bird house in the form of a CCTV camera that will feed the local birds and help you scare burglars away. Birdwatcher “acts as a deterrent for uninvited visitors as it can be mounted outside, either on…

Watch a Designer Turn Soda Cans Into Stools on a São Paulo Street

It’s one thing to make a product using aluminum or plastic recycled at a plant. But recycling cans into chairs—on the same street they were found—is something else. That’s exactly what the resourceful designers at Studio Swine did on a recent trip to São Paulo. The London-based designers call their project Can City. It was…