A Mindful Aroma-Diffusing Desk Toy to Find Calm in the Chaos

In the bustling modern world, finding tranquility and mindfulness amidst the daily grind can often seem like an elusive goal. However, with ovOlio, a revolutionary fusion of design and mindfulness, this aspiration becomes tangible. More than just a desk accessory, ovOlio emerges as a portal to a realm of serenity and creativity, enhancing workspaces in ways previously unimagined.

Designer: Lorina Balan

At its core, ovOlio stands as an embodiment of meticulous design and holistic intention. It pioneers a new category of desk toys by seamlessly integrating the timeless allure of natural materials with the potency of personalized relaxation.

The most visually fascinating part of ovOlio is the partial magnetic levitation of the wooden block at its center with just a small base for support. This captivating feature not only adds an element of wonder but also serves a purpose. The wooden block can be elegantly opened up, inviting you to place a few drops of your favorite essential oil inside. As you close the block and set ovOlio in motion, the magnetic levitation maintains its position while the delicate aroma begins to fill the air.

With a gentle spin, the diffuser springs to life, offering an elegant means to disperse your chosen essential oil into the air. The result is an immersive experience that transforms your immediate surroundings into a haven of tranquility. The subtle yet profound diffusion of aroma envelops your workspace, creating an ambiance that fosters heightened concentration and relieves stress. Each spin becomes a ritual, a moment of mindfulness interwoven seamlessly into the fabric of your workday.

Crafted from natural wood, ovOlio embodies a delicate equilibrium between aesthetics and purpose. The wooden body exudes an aura of timelessness, serving as a symbol of growth and transformation. The intricate design pays homage to the interplay of nature’s elements, echoing the very essence of balance and harmony. By integrating ergonomic principles, ovOlio ensures a comfortable presence in any workspace, thereby bridging the gap between the demands of modernity and our innate connection to the natural world.

ovOlio extends an invitation – a call to embrace the subtle yet profound nuances of self-care and connection to nature. Its presence on your desk serves as a gentle reminder to pause, to breathe, and to find solace amidst the chaos. In this intricate structure, beauty converges with purpose, design aligns with intention, and technology marries mindfulness.

As ovOlio spins and diffuses, it reframes the very nature of workspaces, ushering in an era where productivity coexists harmoniously with tranquility. This desk accessory evolves into a conduit for mindfulness and creativity, echoing a truth that’s often forgotten: amidst the whirlwind of tasks, the journey within oneself is just as essential.

The post A Mindful Aroma-Diffusing Desk Toy to Find Calm in the Chaos first appeared on Yanko Design.

Japanese Cypress wood diffuser is an electricity-free, natural way to diffuse essential oils

If you’re one of those who love using essential oils, you probably also have different diffusers at home or you’re always on the lookout for a new one. It’s important to keep your house or room smelling like your favorite scent or to have that oil combination handy for your migraine so having a good diffuser is always crucial (well, aside from your actual oils of course. Most of the ones in the market are electrical or battery-powered but if you’re looking for a more “natural” kind of diffuser, this may be something that will interest you.

Designer: vörda

The Japanese Cypress vās wood diffuser doesn’t need any electricity, power, or batteries to diffuse your favorite essential oils. All you need is to put a few drops and wait for it to do its natural “magic”. The design is inspired by the Latin word for a vessel which is vās, normally used to hold flowers. The vās itself is handcrafted from the Japanese hinoki cypress tree, giving you not just a natural oil diffuser but also a decorative object to match your wooden theme if you have one.

The wood diffuser is able to hold the aromas and diffuse them for around 6 hours but after 8 hours, the smell will begin to fade. The large one can diffuse in a room that’s around 100 square feet while the smaller one can diffuse in an 80 square feet area. The hollow cavity where you place the essential oil bottle can fit 10ml containers. You need to add 4-6 drops of the pure essential oil on top and the wood diffuser will be able to absorb them instantaneously.

Since this is a wooden diffuser, there are a few disclaimers. It will be able to diffuse better if you use 100% pure essential oils as the other low-quality and diluted ones will not be as therapeutic or aromatic and may even cause some damage to the wood. If you’ll be using a different scent for your next diffusing, wait 72 hours so the previous scent will completely dissipate. All in all, this is a very appealing kind of diffuser that is also portable and travel-friendly for those times when you need to diffuse outside of your house.

The post Japanese Cypress wood diffuser is an electricity-free, natural way to diffuse essential oils first appeared on Yanko Design.

These sustainable Mushroom lamps are actually grown into their funnel shapes, instead of being mass produced

With its oddly rustic design aesthetic, Sebastian Cox’s Mycelium pendant lamps aren’t made… they’re grown.

Mycelium, or the vegetative part of a mushroom, has found itself in the limelight for being a cheap, sustainable, and vegan alternative to suede and leather. If treated correctly, it looks and feels just like leather, offering a cruelty-free and biodegradable alternative that doesn’t have as much of a carbon footprint either. Teaming up with researcher Ninela Ivanova, British designer Sebastian Cox’s “Mycelium + Timber” examines the viability of mycelium as a potential material in commercial furniture design. The mycelium fibers are bound to scrap strips of willow wood, which provides the base and fodder for the fungus to grow. The result is the absolute antithesis of mass production. Designed in part by nature, each lamp is unique, has its own aesthetic, and is beautiful in its imperfections.

The lamps take anywhere between 4-12 weeks to ‘grow’. The scrap willow wood is first sourced from Cox’s own woodland, and cut into fine strips before being woven into shape and placed inside a mold. The mold is then filled with a fungus called fomes fomentarius, which was cultivated using more scrap strips of wood. Inside the mold, the mycelium and wood fuse together, creating a unique type of composite material. “In our workshop, we don’t use composite wood materials because I’ve never been quite satisfied with the binding agent holding the wood together,” Cox said in an interview with Dezeen. “As a result, I’ve always had a kind of fantasy interest in ‘reinventing’ a type of MDF and finding new ways to bind wood fibers into either sheets or mounded forms, ideally without glue.” The resulting lamp is removed from the mold when it’s fully grown and is supplied with 2.5m of oatmeal round fabric braided cable. The entire Mycelium lamp is sustainably produced and entirely compostable.

“It’s not just about the fungus, it’s about the marriage of the two materials,” adds Ninela Ivanova, a researcher who collaborated with Cox over this project. “These two materials have a natural relationship in the woodland, so let’s see how we can exploit that.” The duo plan to continue their collaboration and are working on releasing a full collection of mycelium and wood composite products in the near future.

Designer: Sebastian Cox with Ninela Ivanova

This natural eco-friendly deodorant will safely biodegrade with its packaging in 10 weeks

Every aspect of the Wellow deodorant was designed with a cradle-to-grave mindset. Whether it’s the ingredients inside the container, the container itself, or even the information printed on the container with ink… the guys behind the Wellow realize that a product shouldn’t just make its users happy, it should make the planet happy too. Meet Wellow, a solid deodorant made from hand-poured natural ingredients (with zero sulfates, parabens, toxins, or unwanted chemicals), encased in a paper tube made from 95% recycled paper, glued with water-soluble adhesives, and printed with plant-based ink. The fact that it’s a solid deodorant means it also uses 80% less water than liquid deodorants, and lasts much longer too.

Striking a balance between traditional and modern, between self-hygiene and planet-hygiene, the Wellow deodorant bases itself on an au-naturel recipe that uses only nature-based ingredients like shea-butter, coconut oil, beeswax, arrowroot powder, and 6 other environmentally safe ingredients in its deodorant-base. The sticks are safe enough for your skin, providing 24-hours of odor-busting protection, and are safe enough for the soil too (you can quite literally compost the entire Willow in 10 weeks). Willow’s scents include Activate Charcoal, Coconut + Vanilla, Bergamot + Citrus, along with a scent-free option for people with sensitive skin or noses. The entire deo-stick comes packaged in an all-paper tube, made from 95% FSC-certified recycled paper, and lasts through 3 full months of daily use before running out. When it does, feel free to just throw the tube into a compost pit or even in your backyard. Nature will absorb the ingredients and break down the packaging into dirt in just under 70 days.

Designer: Wellow

These modern sneakers are made from 98% plant-based materials

Corn, rubber, eucalyptus, and cork. These are the unlikely materials that come together to make the Kengos Lace-Up – a chic, clean, modern-looking sneaker that’s designed to safely biodegrade after you’re done with it.

The Lace-Up makes a very ambitious claim of being 98% natural and plant-based, making it environment-friendly and vegan-friendly too. Its aesthetic is guided by the materials used in it, resulting in a sneaker that looks distinctly unique. On top, you’ve got an upper made from Amaize, a corn-based fabric that’s hardy-yet-breathable. The upper body is lined on the inside with eucalyptus fabric, allowing the sneakers to regulate temperature, absorb sweat, and cool you down in the heat. The Lace-Up’s midsole comes made out of cork, which molds to the shape of one’s foot almost like a foam insert… and the outsole comes crafted from Kengos’ patent-pending Pure-Flex rubber, which is durable as a work-boot, but biodegrades nearly 35-times as fast.

Kengos is currently beta-testing their shoes, allowing a small group of people to purchase them and wear them for a period of 30 days. After a month, Kengos takes your feedback using a questionnaire and a small interview with its founders, and sends you a second pair of shoes for free when the Lace-Up line officially launches in November. When you buy a pair of shoes, not only do you become a part of Kengos’ effort to truly build something driven by real customer feedback, you also support a company with a goal of making products that are sustainable, environmentally friendly, and least impact the earth.

Designer: Dave Costello (Kengos)

This entire cleaning spray fits into a single water-soluble tablet to help cut plastic consumption

Here’s some food for thought. That bottle of shampoo, disinfectant, liquid soap, or detergent is essentially 80-90% water. Extract all that water and reduce the product down to simply its dry ingredients and they hardly occupy any volume or weight. The fact that you’re literally paying for 9 ounces of water every time you buy a 10 oz bottle of cleaning liquid isn’t just an economical issue, it’s an ecological one too. Shipping a bottle with 90% water is a waste of cargo space and fuel, as well as a waste of that large plastic bottle which eventually gets thrown into the garbage when the liquid runs out.

1N9 helps cut all that down by condensing your bottle of cleaning liquid into a single compacted pill of dry-ingredients. Pop the pill into a regular plastic spray bottle filled with water and the pill disintegrates, turning the water into cleaning liquid… when the liquid runs out, just pop another pill in and repeat the process. You save up on money (because a pill of dry-ingredients doesn’t cost as much, and you end up reusing the same spray bottle instead of buying a fresh bottle every time! Plus, 1N9’s cleaning pills are made from 100% natural ingredients, making them safe for you as well as for the environment! Double win!

Designer: Supublic for 1N9 Modern Cleaner

A backpack made from completely natural, eco-friendly materials? Yes please!

You wouldn’t expect landfills and oceans to be teeming with discarded backpacks, and they aren’t single-use either, but what do you do with a damaged backpack? Let me guess… you seldom stitch it yourself or get it fixed. If a bag breaks, it gets discarded for a newer, better bag, and Aishwarya Nair believes that the best way to battle that mindset isn’t to change it, but to feed it with something sustainable.

This is the Sustainable Backpack, and it’s made entirely from sustainable materials that Nair developed over the years with Studio Tjeerd Veenhoven, which she also used in her design for an eco-friendly, disposable travel kit. The Sustainable Backpack’s rustic, natural construction shouldn’t be entirely shocking, believes Aishwarya, after all, we’ve had wicker baskets and jute bags for centuries now, and while the modern-day backpack hasn’t quite seen the use of these materials, they’re virtually designed for creating containers and vessels for carrying items.

At the very center of the Sustainable Backpack is its thin bamboo framework, which gives it the shape and the stability it needs, upon which lies a jute fabric clad. The bag’s decorative element comes from its triangular-cut patterned flap made from palm-tree-bark. The tree bark’s grains run horizontally, while the triangular pattern gives it a visual dynamism while also allowing the bag’s flap to bend like fabric, albeit quite interestingly. The bag’s straps come made from treated banana bark, chosen for their flexibility, ability to hold weight, and their ultimate softness, which allows the wearer to carry the bag with ease. Speaking of carrying bags with ease, the Sustainable Backpack uses a breathable rubberized coir lining on the inside to give the bag’s fabric its softness and natural breathability. Designed to prevent any sweat-stains on your back caused from wearing the bag for too long, the coir lining is lightweight and comfortable, comparable almost to the PU foam or neoprene pads used in bags. To structure it well, as well as maintain breathability, Nair chose to cover the coir layer with a woven cane framework, which also lends an interesting patterned element on the back to match the one in front.

Ultimately, the goal of the Sustainable Backpack was to provide an all-natural alternative to bags made with woven Nylon or other polymer-based fabrics. Aside from being a completely biodegradable product, the Sustainable Backpack’s big advantage is also its ability to be produced on a low carbon footprint, not creating any hazardous chemicals or emissions during production, manufacturing, and assembly.

Designer: Aishwarya Nair for Studio Tjeerd Veenhoven