Apple’s not been especially forthcoming over the years UNDERSTATEMENT but recently the company has been opening up. Case in point: Journalist Steven Levy went inside Apple’s HQ to see where the company prototypes hardware, including an acoustical lab for tuning the audible feedback from your fingers.
Pope Francis is hip to social media and cares about the environment. His new cool Popemobile is a convertible Hyundai. But the throne that the poor pope has to sit in while he’s in Manhattan is freaking design blasphemy. It’s so ugly, it’s ungodly. How in heaven’s name did we get into this mess?
Faucets already seem a bit like magic — you turn them on and the water flows right out. But these faucet designs add a bit more pizazz to conventional plumbing technology, letting us better control the flow and temperature of water.
Did you ever wonder about the methods and madness behind single-serving packets of soy sauce? Neither did we, until this fascinating feature, which takes a close look at their history; their contribution to making soy sauce America's third most popular condiment; and at packaging innovations so carefully considered…
Come in and enjoy every single angle of the Alpine Vision, a stunning car made to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the legendary French sport roadster. I love each and every one of its three versions.
The design world hyperventilated when it was announced that Marc Newson would be going to work with his best bud Jony Ive at Apple. But that doesn't mean all of his work will be done inside the spaceship, and now Newson has revealed another project: Redesigning one of the most iconic firearms in history.
Odds are good you know industrial designer Yves Behar's work, even if you don't know his name. Behar's studo, fuseproject, has designed fitness trackers, wireless speakers, smart locks, and vibrators. His latest project won't be used by everyone—but that doesn't mean we won't benefit from it.
Call of Duty fans are well-familiar with the slick look and feel of the Xbox One, but the console and controller are getting a custom look for the debut of Advanced Warfare. But can the exo-suited experience of blowing shit up in a near future war-zone really translate to a console?
Even though most of us never even notice it, Apple has a fantastic history of sound design, from the ping of the text message to the decades-old powering up noise. That legacy runs through Apple's new era of product design too, right down to the sound of the new Apple Watch clicking open.
We live in a world of vehicles and machinery made up of a million different moving parts and hyper-specialized tech guts. Using nothing more than a modified moped motor, Gaspard Tiné-Berès and Tristan Kopp of Re-Do Studio imagined a future where a single modular Engine Block can be used to power everything from a…
Each year the People's Design Award honors a groundbreaking design that improves daily lives. Last year's winner, the Pack H20 Water Backpack, was a more efficient way for people to carry drinking water long distances. This year's nominees were just announced, and they include mushroom bricks, smart lighting, and…
Every year, Dyson asks industrial designers, product designers, and engineers to submit their smart solution to a problem—any problem. It's an awesomely broad request, and it usually results in some pretty fascinating projects. Leading up to this year's Dyson Award, we took a look at just a tiny fraction of the…
Loose-leaf tea is a good investment, but not if you're going to cram it into a ball and hope it gets fully immersed in hot water. Far better are teapots that let your tea roam free, allowing the leaves to be properly steeped and achieve their full flavor potential. This new teapot by Joey Roth does that beautifully.
What were the best products designed this year? The IDSA, or Industrial Designers Society of America, has announced its International Design Excellence Awards, naming 176 winners across 23 categories. We picked a few of the most interesting and innovative winners, from a surgery-performing robot to a lightweight bike…
Buying a good surfboard is such an investment that you should also be able to hang it on your wall as art. Not a problem with these boards designed by Ammunition—the firm launched by Robert Brunner, ex-Apple industrial designer and the founding designer of Beats—in collaboration with Jason Tilley, a surfboard builder…
Everything made by man has been designed in some way. You've got your big ticket, big name stuff, and then there are the countless items—the utilitarian, the unsung, the so-mundane-you-wouldn't-give-them-a-second-thought—that haven't always received the same creative fanfare. One man has been collecting and…
Every ounce counts when you're hoisting several hundred tons of steel into the air and flying it across an ocean. So does every second flight attendants spend waiting on the people inside. Those ounces and seconds add up—and that's why Virgin Atlantic spent $168 million on a transformative redesign of its meal trays.
When Apple bought Beats earlier this week, it also got two high-profile new employees. Dr. Dre is going to work for Apple. So is music mogul Jimmy Iovine. But there's one surprise: Robert Brunner, the industrial designer behind Beats, is not coming along for the ride. Maybe because he worked at Apple 25 years ago.
Husband and wife Charles and Ray Eames collaborated as equal partners in a 50-year career that spanned the worlds of graphics, furniture, exhibitions, and architecture. A new exhibition highlights Ray's contributions to one of the most famous design partnerships in history.
Gravity is a pen and pad that allows to sketch in 3D space using augmented reality. The cool patent-pending system hardware and software system has gone through several working prototypes and now they are looking to start manufacturing. Check out the video—it's pretty cool.
