If you are looking for reasons to justify your need to fidget and acquire more things to play with, then the Spin Bottle Opener is the right toy for you. Designed to resemble the classic spin top, which we all have grown-up to and loved – this metal beauty notches up the appeal by being an efficient bottle opener. I love the way Nicholas Baker integrates a groove to accommodate the bottle-opener niche. Milled out of aluminum, Spin is built to last and to amuse you endlessly, every time you spin it!
“I’d been wanting to design a bottle opener for about 3 years at this point. I’d come up with previous designs, but found them to be extraneous and they didn’t seem to push the idea of a bottle opener. While exploring bottle opener ideas in VR, I thought it would be interesting to constrain my design by using the revolve tool. This gradually led me to create a spun form and add a handle. The resulting form resembled the classic spinning top toy. It felt like a perfect juxtaposition of functional object and a playful fidget toy,” Nicholas Baker tells YD.
Every week (although the timing isn’t particularly fixed), I see a chair sketch on my Instagram feed, and after having seen and liked dozens of them, my mind can almost instantly recognize @nickpbaker’s style and brand of creativity anywhere.
Given the hashtag of #nickschairsketches, Baker uploads unusual conceptual chair designs almost every week. The chairs showcase inventiveness that one rarely sees in furniture design, as concepts take inspiration from quite literally anywhere. Scroll down to see a few of our favorites.
Highly appropriate, given the season we’re in, this chair takes direct inspiration from Santa’s sled, and isn’t ashamed of it too! In fact, it ditches the chair legs for sled-skis too! Don’t go pushing this chair downhill though!
A result of Weekly Design Challenge’s 99th design brief (Plant Pot), Nick combined the two challenges to make a full-scale terracotta seat with planters integrated into its sides, so you can smell the roses as you sit outdoors!
Made of six pieces of wood and a felt cushion, this concept chair turns into a lounger when you pull the cushion outwards (almost like a cabinet drawer). Pull it further and you’ve got yourself an extra Ottoman stool to sit on, as one chair magically transforms into two!
Guaranteed to bring the child out in you, this chair literally has some bounce. Part trampoline, part seat, this concept keeps you active while you’re seated, although your productivity may take a slight hit as you bounce up and down in childlike glee through the day!
This chair’s build is what makes it interesting. Multiple pieces of felt are stacked together, giving the 2D sheets a 3D mass. After a point, the sheets become longer, and bam! You’ve got yourself a backrest. The sheets of felt are held together by brass rivets at the bottom.
This visually delightful chair may have one of the most simple constructions yet. A transparent sheet of acrylic is thermoformed into the shape of the seat, while a routing machine carves notches into two pieces of wood that allow the acrylic sheet to fit in. Voila! Instant chair!
The beauty of this chair is in its DIY assembly. Two cushions and four pieces of wood are flat-packed and shipped to your home. Putting them together is as simple as plugging the wood pieces in, resting the cushion on top of the X, and gluing or nailing the backrest in place.
This chair comes with the additional option of cocooning yourself into your own private little space. The chair comes with a draping of felt around the back and sides. Keep the draping open for regular seating, or lift the drapes up and button them together and you’ve got a completely enclosed (and even sound-absorbing) enclosure that lets you work or relax in peace.
A single bent piece of pipe forms this seat’s structure while a leather sheet gives you a hammock-like seating area. Sit regularly or sideways, this chair is comfortable, and adds a touch of simplicity to its surroundings.
Literally a definition of bilateral symmetry, this chair comes in two identical halves, fastened together at the center. Made out of bent sheet-steel (cheap, reliable, and long-lasting), the two modules can be mixed and matched to give you color combinations that suit your space well. The colors are brought about by simply powder-coating the steel, preventing it from rusting and giving it a nice, glossy color finish. Finally, the two mirrored pieces are riveted together at the base, giving you a chair that’s unusual but comfortable! __ Click Here to check out the rest in the Nicholas Baker’s Chair Sketch Challenge series
Every week (although the timing isn’t particularly fixed), I see a chair sketch on my Instagram feed, and after having seen and liked dozens of them, my mind can almost instantly recognize @nickpbaker’s style and brand of creativity anywhere.
Given the hashtag of #nickschairsketches, Baker uploads unusual conceptual chair designs almost every week. The chairs showcase inventiveness that one rarely sees in furniture design, as concepts take inspiration from quite literally anywhere. Scroll down to see a few of our favorites.
Both a regular sofa and a rocking sofa, this chair can be flipped 180° depending on which feature you want. The reversible sofa can be sat on both ways, and the handles come with a flat side that gives you a stable sofa when you need, and a rocking sofa when you’re in the mood for some fun!
A different kind of DIY chair, this one requires some concrete and a hard-hat. The chair comes as a mold that also transforms into a backrest as the mold cavity allows you to craft the seating area of the chair. Ingenious!
A simple chair made out of a single material, this concept showcases minimalism along with creativity. The bent tubing forms the legs as well as a wide seating area and backrest. You’d probably need a cushion though.
There’s something just wonderful about how the elastic strap adds punctuation to the chair’s design, giving it definition as well as its form. Without the strap, the chair’s almost like a hammock that you can’t really sit on. Introduce the strap and you’ve got a detail that catches eyes and derrières!
Inspired by the Bellow, this chair’s cushion effect comes from its unusual design! The roto-molded chair is sturdy, but its accordion- construction gives it a little flexibility as you sit down on it. The seat and backrest flex in their own directions, giving you a seating that’s hard yet soft!
This chair reminds me a lot of the Red Dot Chair we wrote about earlier. It, however, comes with a cushion that gives you a clear indication of where to seat yourself! The elastic fabric also flexes to accommodate the shape of your body so you’re comfortable no matter what!
Inspired by the Anicorn and NASA collaboration over the limited edition watch commemorating NASA’s 60th anniversary, this chair is Nick’s hat-tip to NASA on their 60th birthday. It comes with an aluminum frame and a Tyvek cushion, both materials that are used in the aeronautical industry, and bent-sheet-metal legs that give you a feeling of weightlessness!
Taking a page from the Elastic Band chair from earlier in this series, this chair uses four parts. Two cushions and two bands that come together to form a soft chair with fabric-band armrests.
Another elastic-oriented concept, this chair comes with a hard wooden base and a soft quilt-like cushion secured around it using elastic straps. The quilt can easily be taken off and washed periodically, and you can even get your own quilt-cushions custom-made and draped over the chair!
This chair is made of two identical powder-coated sheet metal pieces that ship together stacked/nested within each other to save space. Assembling them involves simply sliding one piece into another to lock them into a chair formation. Nifty, eh?? You can practically ship dozens of units together by simply stacking the parts within each other to save up on space during shipping!
Every week (although the timing isn’t particularly fixed), I see a chair sketch on my Instagram feed, and after having seen and liked dozens of them, my mind can almost instantly recognize @nickpbaker’s style and brand of creativity anywhere.
Given the hashtag of #nickschairsketches, Baker uploads unusual conceptual chair designs almost every week. The chairs showcase inventiveness that one rarely sees in furniture design, as concepts take inspiration from quite literally anywhere. Scroll down to see a few of our favorites.
I dub this chair the inside-out chair because of the way it’s built. With a hard, molded plywood outside, and a removable plush felt cushion inside, the chair can be used both as a hard seating device or a soft seating device, or even a lounging device by combining the two. Clever, isn’t it?!
Building on the idea of converting chairs into loungers, this design actually comes with a slatted construction and a hinge that allows the lounging module to fold right into the chair. Fold it in and you have a nice, sturdy chair. Fold it out and you’ve got a chair with a nifty leg-rest!
Here’s a third way of going about it. Stackability! The chair comes with the leg-rest right under it. Lift the chair up and flip the leg-rest over and you’ve got a chair that’s slightly shorter, but has a nice comfortable place to keep your outstretched legs… or maybe use the leg-rest as an ottoman stool or side-table.
I’d imagine a villain from a Pixar movie having this chair with piranhas inside it. Probably not the kind of chair you’d see in Peta’s headquarters, this one is actually an aquarium you can sit on. Made from thick glass, the aquarium is shaped like a chair and can actually accommodate a human on it, although I doubt if the fish would like that view.
However, if you’re going to combine chair and water, this is absolutely the way to do it. This chair/pool hybrid is perfect for people of all ages. Just fill the water in and beat the heat! Hey Nick, how about building a bottle-holder into this one.
Two likely materials and one unlikely material come together to make this chair. First, you’ve got a bent-metal base/framework, on which lies, secondly, the cushion that covers not just the seating area but the backrest too, and then right at the end, you’ve got rubber-bands that hold the cushion to the base! Quite unconventional, if you ask me…
Another metal+cushion combination that has my heart. This concept actually creates an enclosure for the beanbag, giving it a more defined structure than being a lumpy blob of leather on the floor. The beanbag sits in the metal framework, and can easily accommodate one human. Who knows, sitting on this sort of beanbag may actually be more comfortable!
Perfect for the person who wants to sit but gently swing too, this chair concept comes with a steel framework from which it hangs. Nothing too unoriginal here, but I actually love the form on this one, and the use, or rather overuse, of arcs and curved lines.
This concept challenges the very idea of packaging. Most products come packed in styrofoam to protect them from damage, but what if your product IS the styrofoam? Designed around a cuboidal form (because of shipping boxes) this chair comes with its own side-table. Made entirely from styrofoam (polystyrene), the chair practically weighs nothing, but can easily take the weight of one, or even two humans on it. And don’t worry if some of the styrofoam chips off a bit. It only adds to the chair’s unusual charm!
This concept is made from a singular form of marble, sliced into four pieces (quite like bread). The largest bit becomes the seating area, while the remaining three pieces become the two legs and the backrest. Aside from the scooped detail, this design doesn’t require much effort or time to put together, since it literally involves slicing and assembly (with no glue or fasteners involved either). The choice of marble gives the chair its premium appeal, and I’d love to see a variant made in granite!
Every week (although the timing isn’t particularly fixed), I see a chair sketch on my Instagram feed, and after having seen and liked dozens of them, my mind can almost instantly recognize @nickpbaker’s style and brand of creativity anywhere.
Given the hashtag of #nickschairsketches, Baker uploads unusual conceptual chair designs almost every week. The chairs showcase inventiveness that one rarely sees in furniture design, as concepts take inspiration from quite literally anywhere. Scroll down to see a few of our favorites.
Taking inspiration from the laptop and its sleeve, this chair comes with the wooden backrest docked inside it. Use it as an ottoman stool, or pull the backrest out and dock it vertically to create proper seating!
This pronged attachment literally turns a bale of hay into a rustic seating device! The prongs prod right into the hay, giving you a backrest you can angle-adjust to your liking by simply adjusting the penetration angle.
Turning greenhouse into seating, this conceptual chair isn’t a terrarium, but rather is a chair-arium! (I laughed)
Quite similar to the previous concept, this chair is a surreal representation of seating. Preserving a seating device within glass makes this chair quite metaphorical, poetic, and worthy of being an art installation (that you can rest your bum against).
Titled the Strap Chair, this design gained a lot of popularity because of its unusual construction that a lot of people believed wasn’t possible or feasible. The appeal mixed with negative feedback led to Nick actually building a prototype that not only worked, but could take the weight of a person with relative ease.
Bringing an element of fun into furniture, this chair is quite literally a ball-pool with a backrest. Straying away from tradition completely, this concept shares a bit with a beanbag, but ultimately stands on its own in terms of creativity and innovative thinking.
This chair could have just as easily been made out of sheet metal (and it sounds like a more practical choice of material), but it employs fluorescent acrylic sheet instead, that’s cut into the shape of a cross, before being heat-bent into the form of a funky, translucent chair with a backrest.
Taking clear inspiration from Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate, the chair is a sort of homage to the rounded, chrome-plated art installation. It even features a reflection of the Chicago skyline. Apt!
The Ch”air max” Cushion chair quite unusually combines inflatable furniture with wooden construction. The inflatable cushion props itself up on oak wood legs that conveniently fit inside dedicated slots made for them. I’d love to see a functional prorotype of this one.
Unusual form, as a result of an unusual material choice as well as unusual manufacturing process, this terracotta chair is perhaps the most innovative of the lot! The terracotta is extruded in the capsule shape, before being pressed, and bent into the shape of the chair. Baking it gives it its earthy brown color, as well as hardening it. The terracotta remains cool in the summers, making it a nice chair for the outdoors during the day!
3D printing may have reached every household, but there’s still time for it to take off as a design tool. Designers use printers today to validate concepts that will be mass produced using other, more traditional methods of manufacturing, but using the 3D printer as a basis to create designs is rare, and with Makerbot spearheading the movement, well worth the effort. To celebrate this year’s NYCxDesign, MakerBot hand-picked 17 New York City designers and put them to the test of designing and prototyping an object to improve daily life. Armed with a Makerbot Replicator and a few rolls of filament, the designers were given 5 weeks to create products that solve problems, showcase creativity, and champion the process of 3D printing. The results were put on display at Makerbot’s headquarters in Brooklyn and here are a few that stood out.
1. The Flyer Birdhouse by Nicholas Baker (above) is a simple yet contemporary birdhouse that can easily be fastened to utility poles via screws, nails, or zip-ties. Its design resembles traditional birdhouses, while transitioning into a curved surface that allows it to be fastened against the curved surface of a utility pole. Easy to install, the Flyer Birdhouse not only gives birds a place to stay, it also brightens up the neighborhood with its quirky yet alluring aesthetic!
2. The MUJI pen holder by James Connors turns penstand into pen-rack, hanging your pens on display, letting you easily pick one and begin writing right away. The cap can be docked on the side of the pen’s attachment, while the loop isn’t just for hanging, it’s perfect for looping around your finger and fidget-spinning too!
3. The Cup With a Hole Through It by Kyle Laidlaw is a great example of a product that champions 3D printing. The design can’t be produced using any traditional molding method other than 3D printing. The simple cup comes with a hole/channel running through it, allowing you to segregate the cup space into two halves, while the channel itself can be used to stash an item too. Perfect for the kitchen or bathroom, the cup also features a clever texture optimized for 3D printing that hides printing defects defects and is easy to clean and grip while wet!
4. The oVo Clip-on Wheels by Juhi Solanki features a clip and rotating wheels that make mounting and wheeling of printed foam-core boards easy. The clip and wheels are both made from PLA, a biodegradable thermoplastic capable of high tension, allowing the clip to flex and accommodate boards of varying thickness. The rotating wheels are designed in a single piece and have rotating parts that are created using print-in-place mechanics.
5. The 3DBK Wall Organizer by Will Haude is a universal hold-it-all storage system that lets you stash, place, hang, your belongings, as well as decorate your area with a touch of greenery. It features an easily installable cleat, an acoustic amplifier for your phone, slots to hold carabiners, and is modular to support hooks or trays.
6. The Super Hooks Adapter and Socket by Lizz Hill transforms your boring looking metal hooks into something more imaginative. The hooks are load-bearing, and are designed to look mythical/mystical and add a dash of wonder and excitement to an otherwise boring looking wall.
7.The BLADESNAP by Yuval Philipson gives a common blade a fresh avatar by not just giving it a handle that’s ergonomic and comfortable to hold, it also elevates the blade by integrating a simple blade-guard, and borrowing a spring from a pen to create a retracting mechanism for the blade, making an ordinary product easier to use and safer too.
8. The Dustpan & Brush Reimagined by Logan Good and Alyssa Burris is a rather inventive product that uses 3D printing’s intricacies as a design detail. The dustpan and brush plug into one another perfectly, but what’s incredible is the fact that the bristles on the brush are actually created through 3D printing too, and are integrated into the brush in a way that makes the entire brush a single-part product!
9. The Portable Photobooth by Deren Guler is a neat little mount that lets you click perfect overhead shots, making it a cheap yet great addition to your smartphone photography arsenal for your social media page. It mounts to your phone’s popsocket (if you have the accessory mounted to the back) to secure your phone in place and click images without your phone toppling over.
10. The Trouble Light by Dan Grossman models itself around a regular incandescent bulb and socket, turning rudimentary lighting fixture into a pretty neat torch that also doubles up as a night-light. The torch comes with a handle that fits perfectly into your grip, while the grill around the bulb can be used as a stand to mount the torch on the conical base, while the other end has the wire coming out of it that goes into a plug-point.
11. The Primitive Keychains by JungSoo Park and Adam Wrigley is printed around magnets, allowing your keychain to easily attach to metal surfaces around your house, eliminating the need to have a key-bowl or a key-rack. These tiny yet capable designs fit within your pocket quite comfortably, and stick to your fridge or metal doors just as easily too.
12. The Great American Clip Hanger (GACH) by Rama Chorpash combines several hangers together to turn them into one thicker superhanger that’s ideal for holding the shape of (and the weight of) blazers and jackets. The GACH works well with heavy jeans and strap dresses too, while giving a renewed life to cheap hangers that usually find their way into landfills.
If you follow us on Instagram, you’ll have come across the work of our guest contributer, Nick Baker. A designer with a unique, creative bend and a need to solve problems with clever products, Nick’s work usually inspires the reaction “whoa, why didn’t I think of that!”. Committed to uploading all his creations and explorations on his Instagram page (his Gravity Sketch design-sessions are sheer joy to watch), Nick one day uploaded the sketch below, of a chair made from unlikely materials. The image garnered a great amount of attention for its creativity, but also created somewhat of a controversy, as followers doubted its practicality (the chair uses no screws, no glue, no joineries, just woven straps)… so much so that it became very evident that the only way forward was to build a prototype and test it out in real.
The Strap Chair was created as a prototype to validate an idea, and its process is one worth watching. Designers often spend more time conceptualizing and less time looking at those concepts objectively, or more importantly, testing them. The Strap chair, whether its the sketch or the final prototype, looks absurdly beautiful… a combination of rustic and robust, and looks perfect for the outdoors, especially since it’s made from things you’d find outdoors… but most importantly, it looks like a product that went successfully from concept to prototype! When you ideate, always validate!
Easily the most fail-proof pet toys ever, the JW Dog Toys are GUARANTEED to get your pet’s attention and keep it entertained. How, you ask? The hollow design of the toys isn’t just an aesthetic decision (although it’s quite a cute aesthetic)… The design enables you to slide treats into it, making sure your dog stays occupied trying to get the treat out, and as a result, doesn’t gnaw at your furniture or rip your favorite pillow to shreds. Made up of two materials, the toys are bouncy, thanks to the silicone, and chewy, courtesy the nylon. They come in three variants, allowing you to choose between a leg-piece, a t-bone steak, and a peanut, all of which are sure to delight your furry friend to no end! (And probably save you some indoor damage too)
The inherent simplicity and playful nature of the Notch table set is what makes it such a pleasure to own! Designed in Ceramic, Wood, and Cork, these delightful containers hold all your tabletop needs from milk and sugar, to salt and pepper.
Taking inspiration from the aesthetic minimalism of Scandinavian Design, the Notch collection uses white and black containers with wooden/cork lids that not only stand out visually, but also add functionality to an otherwise adorable, almost toyish looking tabletop set. Breakfast just became more fun!
