Author Archives: Sarang Sheth

Love Hultén Built a Pink Floyd Prism Guitar You Can Actually Play

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The equilateral triangle is one of the most psychologically loaded forms in Western visual culture. It appears on currency, on occult diagrams, on the cover of the best-selling rock album of all time, and now, with precise white planes and amber jewel controls, on the body of a custom synthesizer guitar made by Swedish instrument designer Love Hultén. The Magicos-2, unveiled in late 2025, carries that shape with full awareness of its freight. Hultén has built Darth Vader synths, bonsai MIDI sculptures, NES-inspired keyboards, and a circular Game Boy for clients over the years, and we have covered the lot of them here at YD. Each one takes a form that feels conceptually wrong for an instrument and makes it feel inevitable. This one takes the prism from The Dark Side of the Moon and turns it into something you can actually play.

Commissioned by a private client and described by Hultén himself as a “triangular oddity born from deranged imagination and psychedelic fandom,” the Magicos-2 is a double-necked instrument housing a 1010music Tangerine module on one arm and a Lemondrop on the other. The detachable base unit, a trapezoidal slab that sits below the main body and separates cleanly for transport, contains the effects chain: Walrus Audio Lore for reverse reverb and ethereal drones, Collision Devices TARs for fuzz and distortion. A rose quartz crystal pyramid sits at the center of that base, lit from within. Hultén calls it the crystalline emitter, and at this point, questioning the nomenclature feels beside the point.

Designer: Love Hultén

Alexis Mardas, better known as Magic Alex, was the Beatles’ in-house electronics wizard during the Apple Corps years, a man who promised John Lennon wallpaper that played music, a force field for the house, and an amplifier that would go to a million. Almost none of it worked. What he left behind was the irresistible idea of a device that operates somewhere between real technology and pure mythology, an object whose presence in a room changes the room’s frequency before it ever produces a sound. Hultén name-drops Mardas directly in the Magicos-2’s description, and the invocation lands. This instrument carries that same energy: technically rigorous, visually hallucinatory, and spiritually somewhere between a laboratory prototype and a sacred relic.

The Tangerine and Lemondrop, both 1010music modules, sit one per neck, each a dense and malleable synthesis engine with its own voice and parameter set. Having two discrete sound sources mounted symmetrically on the triangular body means the player can run parallel sonic worlds simultaneously, layering Mellotron-style string leads against drones, or pushing both into the Lore’s reverse reverb to create the kind of sustained wash that makes people stop and stare at the ceiling. The fretboard grids running along each white arm read visually as pure geometry, equal parts instrument neck and architectural elevation drawing. Two necks, two engines, one triangular chassis: the form follows the function with a directness that most instrument designers would kill for.

Walrus Audio’s Lore pedal handles the reverse delay and ethereal glow, celebrated among ambient and drone players for its ability to turn almost any input into a sustained, backward-breathing atmosphere. Collision Devices’ TARs sits alongside it, adding the fuzz and harmonic density that filters the whole signal into what Hultén memorably describes as a carpet of sonic moss. The base connects to the triangular body via a clean physical joint visible as a horizontal seam in the silhouette, detaching entirely for transport or for reconfiguring the signal chain. That modularity reinforces the instrument’s identity as a system rather than a single object, which matters practically when you are carrying something shaped like a pyramid to a gig.

The nine amber teardrop controls embedded in the triangular face, warm brown and orange against the flat white surface, are the one moment of color in the whole instrument, and they carry the weight of that responsibility well. They read like something between a control panel and a constellation. The crystal pyramid in the base glows softly beneath them. The chakras, per Hultén, are aligned. I believe him.

The post Love Hultén Built a Pink Floyd Prism Guitar You Can Actually Play first appeared on Yanko Design.

37-Inch Tires, Body-On-Frame, No Touchscreen: Hyundai’s Boulder Concept Should Make Jeep Nervous

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The midsize truck and off-road SUV segment is the most brand-loyal territory in the American automotive market. Bronco buyers bleed blue oval. Wrangler owners have a hand wave. Fourth-generation 4Runner devotees treat the truck’s stubborn resistance to modernity as a feature. Breaking into that world requires something that goes beyond competitive specs, because specs are table stakes and loyalty is emotional. Hyundai has spent forty years earning American trust one rational purchase at a time, and with the Boulder Concept, the brand is making its first bet on something less rational: the idea that a Korean automaker can build an object with genuine off-road soul.

The Boulder debuted as a surprise at the 2026 New York International Auto Show, carrying Hyundai’s first fully-boxed ladder-frame platform and a confirmed production midsize pickup by 2030 as its subtext. The design language is “Art of Steel,” a philosophy connecting the Southern California design team’s decisions directly to the material science of Hyundai’s own steel division. The concept wears 37-inch mud-terrain tires, coach-style rear doors, dual safari windows, and a double-hinged tailgate across a Liquid Titanium body that looks less like a design study and more like a declaration of intent.

Designer: Hyundai Design North America

From the front, the Boulder looks like it was designed by someone who spent more time on trails than in trend reports. The headlights are stacked in two rectangular modules, recessed deep into the bodywork so the surrounding steel reads as structure first and styling second. That bronze-toned horizontal slat grille sits between them like the face of something that has already decided it doesn’t need your approval. The hood carries a pronounced power dome, and the roof-mounted light bar integrates into the low-profile rack with steel webbing between the rails rather than getting bolted on as an afterthought. Design chief SangYup Lee described the approach as one that “celebrates the gaps,” treating the deliberate negative space between panels as a feature that exposes the construction logic rather than disguising it beneath flowing bodywork. Every recess, every shadow line, every recessed lamp housing is doing exactly that.

The side profile is where the Boulder’s proportions really land. The roofline is ruler-flat, the greenhouse is upright and nearly square, and the body sides are almost completely clean of character lines. Hyundai is generating all the visual mass through wheel arch geometry alone, with those flared cutouts punching hard against the otherwise minimal sheetmetal. Brad Arnold, Head of Hyundai Design North America, framed the whole project around restraint: “It’s a tool for getting to that sunset, to have that experience, not for distracting you from that moment.” That philosophy reads clearly in the silhouette. The short-wheelbase four-door proportion feels closer to a Defender 90 than anything in Hyundai’s current lineup, which is either a coincidence or the most confident piece of product positioning the brand has ever attempted.

Inside, Hyundai eliminated the conventional instrument cluster and center touchscreen entirely, replacing them with a pillar-to-pillar head-up display integrated across the base of the windshield, complemented by smaller dashboard-mounted screens and a modular “Bring Your Own Device” rail system for customizable digital interfaces. Physical knobs and grab bars handle the high-frequency controls, fold-out tray tables serve field lunches and laptop sessions equally, and a software-driven off-road guidance system acts as what Hyundai calls a digital spotter riding shotgun. The cabin avoids the trap of over-digitization without tipping into retro nostalgia theater. That balance is harder to strike than it looks.

The body-on-frame platform is engineered to accept pure electric, internal combustion, and hybrid configurations, giving Hyundai maximum flexibility to match market conditions when production begins. Industry signals point toward an extended-range electric setup pairing electric drive with a gasoline generator, a configuration that Scout Motors and Ram are both pursuing for similar reasons: EV torque on the rocks, combustion range in the backcountry. No horsepower figures, no confirmed engine lineup, no price. Hyundai is keeping the powertrain conversation deliberately vague, and given that production is four years out, that restraint is as strategic as it is honest.

The Boulder arrives backed by an $18.4 billion US manufacturing commitment, with the production truck confirmed to be designed and built in America. That context matters for a brand entering a segment where provenance and identity carry weight that no press release can manufacture. The Wrangler’s tribal loyalty was built over decades and through genuine capability. Hyundai knows the Boulder has to earn that the same way, one trail at a time. If the production truck keeps even half of this concept’s architectural confidence and design clarity, that process has a very credible starting point.

The post 37-Inch Tires, Body-On-Frame, No Touchscreen: Hyundai’s Boulder Concept Should Make Jeep Nervous first appeared on Yanko Design.

This 5-in-1 EDC Flashlight Packs a 1300-Lumen Beam, UV Light, and a Green Laser For Under $20

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If the Swiss Army knife became a flashlight, it would probably chase the same goal the VEZERLEZER WK2 does: fitting a surprising number of useful functions into a compact everyday carry form. Inside its slim rectangular body is a mix of tools that covers bright white light, UV illumination, a green laser, warm side lighting, and red light for situations that call for a gentler or more visible glow.

The result is a flashlight that feels designed around variety of use rather than a single headline spec. From quick household tasks and car checks to inspection work and hands-free lighting with its magnetic tail, the WK2 spreads its strengths across several small but practical moments. It is the kind of product that aims to stay close at hand because there is always another reason to use it.

Designer: VEZERLEZER

Click Here to Buy Now: $18.99 $39.99 (53% off).

Person in a cap and dark jacket with a small rectangular device clipped to their shoulder strap, emitting a bright light at the bottom.

The front array of the WK2 houses three distinct lighting functions, each accessible independently through the dual button interface. The primary white light reaches a maximum output of 1300 lumens, enough to cover general illumination needs whether you’re navigating a dark space, searching for something in a trunk, or lighting up a work area outdoors. The 395nm UV light sits alongside it, designed for detection tasks like spotting pet stains, checking currency, verifying IDs, or inspecting surfaces that fluoresce under ultraviolet exposure. The third function is a 520nm green laser, which provides a focused pointing beam that reaches farther and with greater visibility than a red laser, making it useful for presentations, guiding attention at a distance, or marking specific areas during inspections or repairs. All three functions operate from the same front module but remain independently controlled, so switching between them happens without cycling through unwanted modes.

Archer wearing a cap with a mounted headlamp, drawing a bowstring in a dim forest light.

The side of the WK2 is where the design reveals its consideration for close range work and low profile visibility. A high CRI side light runs along the edge of the body, tuned to 4500K for a warmer, more comfortable color temperature that reduces eye strain during nearby tasks. Output is rampable, meaning users can select any brightness level between 0 and 200 lumens with a smooth transition rather than fixed steps. There is a shortcut to moonlight mode for instant access to the lowest output, which proves useful when preserving dark adaptation or working in tight spaces where even moderate brightness feels excessive. The red side light sits on the same edge and also offers rampable output, with its own dedicated shortcut to bypass the white light entirely. Red light has long been favored for preserving night vision, reducing glare in shared spaces, and offering a low signature option when discretion matters. The ability to jump straight to red without cycling through brighter modes makes the WK2 faster to operate in time-sensitive or situationally aware environments.

Close-up of a hand pressing a button on a small black device with a red LED bar outdoors on a log.

VEZERLEZER has given the WK2 a flat, rectangular profile that feels tailored to pocket carry and desk storage alike. The body is compact enough to slip into a front pocket or toss into a bag without creating bulk, yet wide enough to provide a stable grip when held. The dual button interface sits flush with the body but is surrounded by raised bezel rings, a design choice that prevents accidental activation when the light is loose in a pocket or bag. This physical safeguard reduces the need for frequent lockout, though lockout functionality is still present and accessible by clicking either button five or more times. If you lose count mid-sequence, simply clicking five more times completes the action, a small but thoughtful user experience detail. The deep carry pocket clip is positioned to keep the light low in the pocket, minimizing visible bulk while ensuring secure retention during movement or physical activity.

Black PC LED/fan controller with two arrow buttons and a vertical red LED bar inside a computer case.

USB C charging keeps the WK2 aligned with modern device ecosystems, eliminating the need for proprietary cables or disposable batteries. The charging port also supports pass-through power, meaning the flashlight can be connected to an external power source like a power bank or direct power supply to extend runtime indefinitely. This feature transforms the WK2 from a self-contained tool into something closer to a portable work light when tethered, opening up use cases that involve longer duration tasks like automotive repairs, camping setups, or extended outdoor activities where reliable illumination matters more than portability. The magnetic tail cap adds another layer of utility by turning any ferrous metal surface into a mounting point. The magnet is strong enough to hold the light horizontally or vertically, freeing both hands for tasks that require simultaneous lighting and manipulation. Whether stuck to the underside of a car hood, the frame of a tent, a toolbox, or a refrigerator door, the magnetic tail offers positioning flexibility that a handheld beam or headlamp setup cannot always match.

Close-up of a dark device with two circular green-lit buttons labeled L, emitting a green laser beam downward.

Elevator control panel with two circular floor buttons showing glowing green 'L' indicators; purple light shines from below.

In practice, the WK2 works best when thought of as a lighting toolkit rather than a single-purpose flashlight. The front beam handles distance and general coverage, the UV light serves niche but valuable inspection roles, the laser adds precision pointing, and the side lights provide soft, adaptable illumination for close tasks or signaling. The rampable output on both side lights is particularly useful because it removes the guesswork of preset modes. You can dial in exactly the amount of light a situation calls for, whether that is a faint glow for reading a map at night or a brighter wash for prepping a meal at a campsite. The anti-accidental activation bezel, combined with lockout functionality, ensures the WK2 stays dark when it should and lights up instantly when needed. The clip orientation and flat body mean it carries like a pen or a slim multitool, present but unobtrusive, ready to serve whenever lighting becomes the limiting factor in a task.

Close-up of a finger pressing a button on a small rectangular outdoor LED light resting on a mossy log in a forest.

The VEZERLEZER WK2 launches with a subscriber backer price of $17.99, 55% down from a standard retail price of $39.99. A limited flash deal offers the light at $15.99 for the first 100 units, scheduled to go live at 0700 PST on May 19th (2200 Beijing Time). Shipping is expected to begin following the campaign period, with deliveries planned for late summer 2026.

Click Here to Buy Now: $18.99 $39.99 (53% off).

The post This 5-in-1 EDC Flashlight Packs a 1300-Lumen Beam, UV Light, and a Green Laser For Under $20 first appeared on Yanko Design.

Your Pomodoro Timer Has Never Looked This Analog Cool

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The seven-segment display has been doing the same job since the 1970s, and the LED ticker has been blinking its way across trading floors and departure boards for about as long. Both are functional. Both are also relentless. A new desk object from London’s Analogue Desk makes the case that live data can be delivered through something far more considered: a mechanical gauge needle sweeping across a frosted, unmarked dial, wrapped in a clear acrylic and stainless steel housing that looks like an object from a very good design showroom.

The IDX-1 connects via 2.4GHz WiFi and pulls live data from sources like crypto markets, stock indices, weather, and air quality readings. None of it surfaces as a digit or a scrolling value. The needle tells the story: centered means flat, a sweep right means a rise, a sweep left means a fall. For fixed-scale metrics like AQI or the Crypto Fear and Greed Index, the arc maps to a 0-100 range. There is also a Pomodoro mode, turning the gauge into a physical focus timer. Compact at around 80 x 100 x 40mm and hand-assembled in London, it is the desk piece that visitors consistently ask about.

Designer: Analogue Desk Co.

The material choices are deliberate. Cast layered acrylic forms the body, with 304-grade stainless steel across the corner hardware and screws, giving the object a physical credibility that goes beyond what most desk gadgets aim for. LEDs embedded within push light through the entire transparent enclosure, illuminating the face while also diffusing color outward across whatever surface the unit rests on. The range of lighting modes covers a lot of tonal ground: a cool clinical white, vivid cyan, warm amber-orange that pools on the desk like a sunset, and a magenta-pink that shifts the whole object firmly into ambient sculpture territory. Being a boutique product, each hand-assembled unit carries a slightly unique character. An integrated Night Mode dials the intensity down on a schedule, so the glow fits the environment rather than fighting it.

Plug in the USB-C cable (included), join the IDX-1’s temporary WiFi portal from a phone, and configure the data source and lighting preference through a browser. Three steps, no app, no account, no code. Analogue Desk also provides a developer guide alongside the open platform the hardware is built on, leaving room for custom data sources and modified behavior without any gatekeeping.

Reddit’s r/IndustrialDesign settled on “a perfectly wonderful illuminating informational kinetic sculpture” as a descriptor, which manages to be simultaneously accurate and slightly unwieldy. That response makes sense when you look at the product: a desk object that quietly absorbs live data from the internet and expresses it through the sweep of a needle, glowing with shifting color, and built from materials that reward a closer look. The concept sits squarely in the calm tech tradition, where information lives at the periphery of attention rather than demanding the centre of it. The IDX-1 lands in a gap that the seven-segment display and the LED ticker left wide open.

The post Your Pomodoro Timer Has Never Looked This Analog Cool first appeared on Yanko Design.

90,300 Empty Offices Are Becoming Apartments Across the US. “Adaptive Reuse” Just Hit Critical Mass.

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Across America, downtown office towers sit half lit and half leased, their elevators still running, their HVAC systems still humming, their floorplates waiting for people who are never fully coming back. At the same time, rents keep climbing, vacancy stays tight in the places people actually want to live, and homelessness pushes further into public view in city after city. The contradiction is so stark it barely needs interpretation. The office building has too much space and hardly any occupants. Millions of prospective homeowners, however, have no permanent place to call their residence.

More than 90,300 apartments are now planned through office-to-residential conversions across the U.S., marking a dramatic expansion of adaptive reuse at the exact moment cities need housing most. For years, adaptive reuse lived in architecture circles as a smart, sustainable idea. If you’ve ever seen an old warehouse repurposed into a club, a factory into an office space, or a tiny rural church into a quaint home, that’s adaptive reuse – the ability to take a structure and adapt your needs around it without demolition and rebuilding. Now it is entering the market at national scale, and forcing cities, developers, and designers to answer a blunt question. When housing demand is urgent and office demand has collapsed, how long can empty office buildings maintain the status quo instead of transforming into meaningful housing?

From Virtue to Volume

RentCafe’s March 2026 report confirmed what a lot of people in real estate and architecture had been watching build for years: 90,300 U.S. apartments are currently mid-conversion from former office buildings. That figure is up 28% year over year from 70,600 units in early 2025, and it is nearly four times the total recorded in 2022. New York City alone has 16,358 units in the pipeline. Washington, D.C. follows with 8,479. Chicago has 4,360. Los Angeles, 4,340. Dallas, 3,966. Denver, 2,991. Philadelphia, 2,697. Atlanta, 2,642. Cleveland, 1,771. Cincinnati, 1,770. Three cities, Philadelphia, Denver, and St. Louis, more than doubled their pipelines in a single year, recording year-over-year jumps of 119%, 114%, and 110% respectively. Office conversions now account for 47% of all 193,900 future adaptive reuse projects nationwide, up from 42% the year before. The pipeline is approaching 100,000 units and shows no sign of slowing.

The real-estate press has covered this exhaustively, and fairly, as a finance story. Vacancy rates hovering near 20%, physical occupancy in office buildings sitting around 50-55%, loan maturities forcing owners to act. The incentives are real. New York City offers tax exemptions of up to 90% for converted buildings that designate at least 25% of units as affordable housing. Los Angeles passed its Citywide Adaptive Reuse Ordinance in February 2026, rewriting zoning rules to make the process significantly less painful. The policy environment is, for the first time, actually moving in the same direction as the market.

But here is the thing almost nobody is writing about: this is, at its core, a design problem. A brutal, fascinating, genuinely unsolved design problem. And the 90,300 number only looks tidy from the outside.

The Floorplate Doesn’t Care About Your Floor Plan

Image Credits: Gensler

Walk into a typical Class B office building from the 1980s or 1990s, and you are standing on a floorplate that might run 25,000 to 40,000 square feet. The structural core, housing elevators, stairwells, and mechanical shafts, sits somewhere in the middle. Windows ring the perimeter. Everything between the core and the glass is open, column-interrupted, and completely indifferent to the concept of a bedroom.

Residential building codes in most U.S. cities require natural light and ventilation in every habitable room. That is a reasonable ask for a building designed around people sleeping in it. It is an architectural puzzle when your building was designed around people sitting at desks under recessed lighting for eight hours and going home.

The further you get from the perimeter windows, the darker and more unusable the space becomes for residential purposes. Architects working on these conversions are solving this in a few different ways. Some carve light wells through the floorplate, essentially punching holes through multiple stories to bring daylight deep into the plan. Others reorganize the unit layout so that bedrooms and living spaces claim the window line, while kitchens, bathrooms, corridors, and storage absorb the windowless interior. Some projects rezone that dead center space entirely, turning it into shared amenity areas, lobbies, or co-working zones that don’t require natural light by code.

None of these solutions are clean. All of them require an architect to fundamentally rethink what a floor plan can be when the building has already decided its own geometry.

Pipes, Cores, and the Part That Really Costs Money

Office buildings run their plumbing infrastructure in centralized wet walls, concentrated near the core, because nobody on a 30,000 square foot trading floor needs a bathroom in the southeast corner. Apartments, by contrast, need kitchens and bathrooms distributed across every unit, which means new drain lines, new vent stacks, and new penetrations through concrete slabs that were poured without any of that in mind. On a large building, this is closer to surgery than renovation. The structure has to accommodate changes its engineers never anticipated, and every floor compounds the cost.

This is partly why the conversion wave took so long to arrive despite the office vacancy crisis being years in the making. The economics only started making sense when office asset values dropped far enough that the acquisition cost left room for the renovation budget a real conversion actually requires.

What Kind of City Does This Build?

The embodied carbon argument for adaptive reuse is well established at this point. Demolishing a building and rebuilding it releases all the carbon locked into its existing steel, concrete, and glass, materials whose production already happened and cannot be undone. Keeping the structure and changing its use is, from a climate accounting standpoint, one of the most effective things the construction industry can do.

There is a longer-term design question buried inside the 90,300 number, though. Office buildings were placed, massed, and programmed for a specific kind of urban life: daytime population density, ground-floor lobbies designed for badge-tap arrivals, parking structures calibrated for 9-to-5 peaks. Converting them into housing changes the rhythms of the neighborhoods around them. Ground floors that were lobbies become storefronts, or stay lobbies and deaden the street. Parking structures sized for daily commuters become oversized and awkward for residents who do not own cars.

The cities that will get this right are the ones treating conversion as a neighborhood redesign project, not a building-by-building transaction. Los Angeles’s new ordinance is a start. New York’s tax incentives are a start. The design discipline this moment actually demands, though, is urban, not just architectural.

Adaptive reuse at 90,300 units is no longer a niche. It is the dominant form of new housing supply in several major American cities. The question the industry spent two decades asking, whether it works, has been answered. The question now is whether it produces cities that are genuinely good to live in, and that one is still very much open.

Data sourced from RentCafe’s 2026 office-to-apartment conversion report, based on Yardi Matrix data.

The post 90,300 Empty Offices Are Becoming Apartments Across the US. “Adaptive Reuse” Just Hit Critical Mass. first appeared on Yanko Design.

Drop-proof, under 28 grams, and finally beautiful: Benks’ new Kevlar iPhone cases put aesthetics first

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There is a reason Kevlar keeps showing up in premium phone accessories. The material brings a rare combination of low weight, tactile richness, and serious structural confidence, which makes it ideal for people who want their case to feel intentional rather than disposable. BENKS has been working that territory for a while, and the new BENKS ArmorEdge launch sharpens the formula with two color-forward editions, Savvy Red and Peri Purple, designed for the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max. Both treat the woven surface as a design element alongside its structural role. The result is a case lineup testing whether protection and personality can genuinely coexist at the same price point.

Both cases share the same core promise, slim everyday protection with MagSafe compatibility, 360-degree airbag corners, and DuPont Kevlar construction, but deliver it with very different moods. Savvy Red runs graphic and energetic while Peri Purple reads restrained and expressive, a contrast that registers as branding intentionality as much as a color choice. BENKS ArmorEdge Air Navigator then extends the family in a lighter direction, with an exposed 600D woven back, a 27g build, and a Magellan-engraved reverse that gives the case a narrative dimension uncommon in slim case design. The three together span bold color expression, understated sophistication, and material-first minimalism within a single product family. BENKS calls it confidence-forward protection, and the physical details mostly agree.

Designer: Benks

Click Here to Buy Now: Peri Purple | Savvy Red | ArmorEdge Air Navigator

Savvy Red is structured around a raised jacquard diamond weave that catches light at shifting angles, making the surface genuinely tactile rather than decorative. As a protective Kevlar case, it keeps the frame edge at a precise 1.8mm while backing that slim profile with a four-guard 360-degree airbag system built to handle the corner-first drops that standard cases consistently fail at. We covered the BENKS ArmorGrid ArmorAir last September as a Kevlar phone case for the iPhone 17 Pro that carried real bulletproof-vest-grade material confidence, and Savvy Red builds on that character while pushing further into expressive design territory. MagSafe compatibility centers on a graphic on the back, a colorway-specific detail that ties the functional ring to a distinct visual identity rather than defaulting to a generic shared element across the lineup. At $64.99, the raised diamond weave alone justifies the ask as a tactile story that polycarbonate simply cannot replicate.

BENKS ArmorEdge Peri Purple

Peri Purple carries the same engineering foundation as Savvy Red but in a softer, more regal tone that makes it a premium Kevlar case for users who want Kevlar craftsmanship without the assertive graphic energy. BENKS describes it as designed for subtle expression over loud attention, essentially a style-driven protective Kevlar case for those who prefer their personality understated rather than announced. The airbag corners and MagSafe compatibility carry through, with a different visual graphic on the backside. That decision, giving each finish its own visual badge rather than a shared hardware element, is a considered design move that ties visual identity all the way through to the functional center of the case. Each case even showcases a different delicate badge on the bottom, right above the charging port, setting them apart distinctly. Both Savvy Red and Peri Purple retail at $64.99, positioned as two parallel expressions of personality under a single engineering standard.

BENKS ArmorEdge Savvy Red

At 27g and 0.9mm at the frame edge, the BENKS ArmorEdge Air Navigator operates on a different set of priorities from its two siblings. It qualifies as a genuine BENKS ArmorEdge Kevlar case in the fullest material sense, with DuPont Kevlar fiber forming the structure, but TPU sits only at frame edges and structural stress points, leaving the entire 600D woven back exposed and fully in contact with the hand. That material-first decision makes the grip experience central to the case’s identity rather than something filtered through a polymer overlay. BENKS ties the Navigator edition to a travel and exploration theme through an anchor medallion on the front and an engraving of Magellan’s circumnavigation route on the back, paired with the Latin inscription “PRIMUS CIRCUMDEDISTI ME,” giving the MagSafe protective case a narrative depth that most slim builds forgo entirely. At $61.99, it reads as the most considered piece in the BENKS ArmorEdge family.

BENKS ArmorEdge Air Navigator

The full BENKS ArmorEdge lineup is available now at $64.99 for Savvy Red and Peri Purple and $61.99 for Air Navigator on the BENKS website.

Click Here to Buy Now: Peri Purple | Savvy Red | ArmorEdge Air Navigator

The post Drop-proof, under 28 grams, and finally beautiful: Benks’ new Kevlar iPhone cases put aesthetics first first appeared on Yanko Design.

Turkish Designer Cut 800-Year-Old Islamic Geometry Into a Stone Lamp That Casts Patterns on Your Wall

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The history of decorative stone carving and the history of electric lighting have almost never intersected in any meaningful way at the shade level. The closest attempts have been thin marble slices backlit into warm translucency, or those Himalayan pink salt lamps that colonized every wellness-adjacent bedroom in the 2010s, both of which use the stone as a passive diffuser, a material you shine through rather than one you design with. The geometric traditions of Islamic architecture, meanwhile, have lived primarily in plaster, wood, and tile, materials that reward the kind of fine, repetitive cutting those patterns demand. Ibrahim Fatih Satilmis, founder of Istanbul’s Studio Soldout, spent the latter part of 2025 testing whether travertine could bridge those two histories, and Sukun is what came out of that research.

Six Islamic geometric motifs, each sourced from a specific landmark in Konya, Kayseri, Karaman, Cordoba, Valladolid, or Granada, are waterjet-cut and CNC-refined through the travertine disc that forms the lamp’s top. A concealed rechargeable battery powers an integrated LED at 2700K, with three-step phase dimming and six to eight hours of runtime per charge. When lit, the pattern projects outward in every direction, the ceiling, the wall behind, the table surface below, turning the geometry from object into environment. Sukun just picked up a win in the A’ Design Award’s Lighting Products and Fixtures category for the 2025-2026 cycle.

Designer: Ibrahim Fatih Satilmis

Travertine is defined by geological accident, by voids and veins left behind as calcium carbonate settled over millennia, and those natural pores sit millimeters away from the machined perforations without any visual conflict. If anything, the stone’s inherent texture makes the precision of the geometry feel more earned, the way a hand-laid mosaic reads differently than a printed reproduction of the same pattern. Satilmis worked through Eric Broug’s geometric reconstruction methodology to ensure each motif was mathematically faithful to its source site before committing it to stone, which matters because these patterns are systems, not ornaments, and a slightly wrong angle compounds across repetitions into something that reads as off without the viewer quite knowing why. The main machining challenge was cutting fine perforations through travertine without chipping, while keeping the disc thick enough to remain structurally stable, a balance that required significant prototyping before the geometry held cleanly at full depth.

A cylindrical travertine base houses the electronics and doubles as a downward light diffuser, washing the table surface in soft 2700K warmth, while the carved disc floats above on a simple shoulder, elevated just enough to let light escape sideways and upward through the pattern. At 250mm wide and 300mm tall, the proportions sit comfortably between a statement object and an everyday lamp, substantial enough to anchor a bedside table or a dining sideboard without demanding the room reorganize around it. The rechargeable system charges via USB-C and runs six to eight hours per charge, which means no cord breaking the silhouette, a non-negotiable for a lamp this considered about its own appearance. Three-step phase dimming lets you dial the output down for ambient use without the flicker that plagues cheaper dimming implementations.

Switched off, Sukun reads as a serious piece of stone craft, the kind of object that holds its own in a well-edited interior without requiring explanation. Switched on, the room changes, and because travertine’s natural texture catches light unevenly, the projected shadows carry a slight warmth and irregularity that a laser-cut metal shade could never replicate. The stone absorbs and diffuses before releasing, softening the LED’s output into something that feels genuinely warm rather than merely color-temperature warm. Six pattern variants are available as separate lamps, each tied to a different historical site, giving the collection a documentary dimension that most lighting ranges never attempt.

The post Turkish Designer Cut 800-Year-Old Islamic Geometry Into a Stone Lamp That Casts Patterns on Your Wall first appeared on Yanko Design.

Anker Built a sub-$300 1080p Projector with Flippable Speakers for the Price of AirPods Pro

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Most projector makers treat audio as an afterthought. Slap a single speaker somewhere on the chassis, call it Dolby-something, and move on. Soundcore, being a company that lives and breathes audio hardware, looked at that approach and decided to do something architecturally different with its first proper budget projector, the Nebula P1i.

What came out of that thinking debuted at CES 2026 for $369, and it carries a feature Soundcore is billing as a world first: flippable speakers. Two 10W drivers are physically hinged into the projector body, fold outward, and swivel in two axes so the sound follows your seating position rather than pointing at whatever wall happens to be closest. It sounds like a gimmick until you realize how consistently every other projector in this price range gets the audio completely wrong.

Designer: Soundcore (Anker)

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The device’s standout feature is its two hinged speakers that unfold from each side, and the result gives the projector a silhouette that feels more like a small satellite than a conventional home theater device. Each driver rotates 90 degrees side to side and 200 degrees up and down, so the sound follows your vibe regardless of where the projector is physically sitting. Fold them flush and the P1i looks like any other compact projector. Deploy them and the thing suddenly has ears, which, for a Soundcore product, feels exactly right. At 8.9 x 7.2 x 8.0 inches and just five pounds, it perches on almost any surface and travels easily by the soft handle on top. That handle is a small detail that matters more than it sounds when you’re moving the unit between a bedroom, a living room, and a backyard in the same evening.

For its $369 price tag, you get a native 1080p panel outputting TÜV-certified 380 ANSI lumens, and an all-glass lens combined with a fully sealed optical engine that resists dust and the focus drift that plastic lenses develop as they heat up over time. In a dark bedroom, colors come out surprisingly accurate for an LED projector, and the sealed optics keep the image consistent across long sessions. The brightness ceiling is real, though. Step outside before sunset or flip on a lamp and the picture washes out quickly, which puts the P1i firmly in the category of a dark-room machine. That’s not a unique limitation at this price, it’s basically the cost of admission for any projector south of $500.

Anker’s Smart Instant Setup handles the initial configuration, featuring IEA 3.0, which handles autofocus, keystone correction, obstacle avoidance, and screen fit the moment you point the unit at a wall. Google TV runs the software side, bringing native Netflix certification, YouTube, Prime Video, and the rest of the streaming stack without a dongle in sight. The one gap that stings a little is the absence of a built-in battery. For outdoor use, Anker recommends pairing the P1i with its own SOLIX C300 power station, which extends runtime to roughly 3.5 hours. That’s a workable solution, but it does add cost and bulk to what is otherwise a lean, grab-and-go setup.

The P1i retails at $369, but it has already dropped to $294.99 during promotional periods. At that sale price, you’re spending the same as a pair of AirPods Pro on a 1080p smart projector with Google TV, flippable Dolby Audio speakers, and a lens assembly that will outlast most of the competition. The budget projector market is crowded with hardware that costs half as much and delivers a quarter of the experience. Soundcore priced the P1i at the exact point where the excuse to skip it runs out.

The Nebula P1i won’t unseat a dedicated home theater setup, and it won’t pretend to work in a sunlit living room. What it does is identify the one thing budget projectors have chronically failed at, build a genuinely novel audio hardware solution around it, and deliver the whole package at a price that’s hard to argue with. For a brand making its first real statement in the projector category, that’s a strong opening move.

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The post Anker Built a sub-$300 1080p Projector with Flippable Speakers for the Price of AirPods Pro first appeared on Yanko Design.

The Scout Terra Costs Under $60k and Tows 10,000 Pounds With a Solid Rear Axle

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Why does every electric truck feel like it was designed by someone who wanted to leave the truck category as quickly as possible? The Rivian R1T is an adventure vehicle. The Tesla Cybertruck is a stainless steel provocation. The Ford F-150 Lightning is a suburban driveway proposition with a frunk. Each of these vehicles is genuinely impressive in specific ways, and each of them has, in various degrees, moved away from the mechanical foundations that made the pickup truck the best-selling vehicle category in America for 47 consecutive years. That foundation is body-on-frame construction, a solid rear axle, and mechanical locking differentials, the kind of hardware that lets a working truck go places a smart suspension system simply cannot follow.

Scout Motors, the Volkswagen-backed revival of the old International Harvester Scout, showed journalists the production-intent Terra pickup on May 15 and delivered something the EV truck segment has been conspicuously missing. Body-on-frame ladder chassis. Solid rear axle. Mechanical lockers front and rear. A 5.5-foot bed with a retractable rear window and an in-bed overlanding kit. The Harvester EREV variant tucks a rear-mounted naturally aspirated VW four-cylinder just ahead of the axle, running purely as a generator against a 63 kWh battery, for a combined range north of 500 miles. The pure-electric variant manages 350. Both variants tow over 10,000 pounds, carry around 2,000 pounds of payload, and price out under $60,000, landing near $51,500 after federal and state incentives clear.

Designer: Scout Motors

Short overhangs, a boxy greenhouse, and an upright stance give the Terra a deliberately rugged silhouette that refuses the aero-optimized wedge profile every other EV truck chases. The downward-sloping C-pillar and angled cargo area window reference the original 1960s Scout’s proportions directly, and the whole thing reads like it was designed by people who actually wanted it to look like a truck, not a concept car that compromised its way into a bed. Against the Rivian R1T’s smooth, tech-forward surfacing and prominent body-colored C-pillar, the Terra feels more worksite than weekend warrior content, which is precisely the positioning Scout is betting on.

The Harvester range extender runs at a constant optimized speed as a pure generator, never driving the wheels directly, with propulsion staying fully electric throughout. Mounting the engine just ahead of the rear axle keeps the front end clean and preserves frunk space identical to the pure-EV variant. There are still open questions around how that rear weight placement affects off-road departure angles and payload capacity at the limit, and Scout hasn’t fully detailed those tradeoffs yet. What the market has already signaled is unambiguous: over 80% of Scout’s reservations are for the Harvester EREV, which tells you everything about how much range anxiety still drives purchase decisions for truck buyers who actually use their trucks.

Where Rivian’s independent rear suspension delivers a more comfortable highway ride, it compromises wheel articulation on uneven terrain compared to a proper solid axle. Scout’s approach pairs independent front suspension for on-road ride quality with a solid rear axle for trail articulation, then adds a disconnecting front sway bar and factory availability of 35-inch all-terrain tires to complete the picture. It’s a hardware spec that would send a Rivian’s air suspension into a fault state on terrain the Terra would walk through without a second thought.

Production was originally slated for 2026, slipped to 2027, and now targets 2028 for the Traveler SUV, with the Terra potentially pushed to 2030 according to recent reporting. By then, the F-150 Lightning will be a generation older, Rivian will have the more affordable R2 on sale, and Scout will be arriving into a market that has had years to harden its habits. The Terra is making exactly the right arguments about what an electric truck should be. Whether those arguments land in 2028 or 2030 matters enormously.

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Logitech’s Comfort Plus Mouse packs a Palm Cushion for WFH People Who Take Meetings While Doing Chores

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Forty-one percent of people have folded towels while on a work call. One in five have taken meetings from a makeshift setup in their child’s bedroom. Logitech’s own research surfaced these numbers, and they carry the ring of something widely felt but rarely acknowledged. The idea that work and home occupy separate territories has been quietly unraveling for years, and for a significant share of the workforce, that unraveling is now complete. The home does not have an office. The home is the office, and the laundry basket and the borrowed desk chair and the animated bedsheet on the wall behind you are all part of the same workday.

Logitech’s response to that reality is the Signature Comfort Plus lineup, announced today. The product anchoring it is the M850L mouse, and it carries one genuinely new detail: a palm cushion, the first Logitech has ever put on a mouse. It is a soft, fitted support designed for the kind of desk day that starts with a 9 AM call and ends somewhere in the evening without a clean break in between. The cushion reportedly took months of prototyping to land correctly, with the team working through texture, size, and material, spending months pivoting and exploring before arriving at something that actually worked.

Designer: Logitech

The development question the team kept returning to was deceptively simple: how soft is soft enough? At the launch briefing, Benjamin Ehrenberg walked us through the product’s development arc, including the moment colleagues first handled the prototype. The reaction, by the team’s own account, was immediate: “Wow, this is really amazing. Hey, this mouse is awesome. This mouse feels amazing.” User trials backed that up: 9 out of 10 users felt comfortable at the end of the workday, which is a genuine testament to the development of the product. Seven out of ten also felt more productive with the mouse. The cushion sits beneath the base of the palm, shaped to support the hand across scroll sessions, writing stretches, and the general low-grade physical endurance that a long desk day requires.

Beyond that central feature, the M850L carries the hardware expected from a Signature mouse: a sculpted shape that fits the hand more naturally, rubber side grips for precision and control, and a thumb support area for that extra thumb support. SmartWheel scrolling lets you move line by line or fly through pages, quiet clicks keep the noise floor low in shared spaces, and Easy Switch handles up to three connected devices across nearly any platform. Logi Options+ handles button customization. Battery life is rated at two years. Among the designers credited with shaping the product’s physical form is Irfan Kachwala, who appeared in Logitech’s promotional film for the lineup and also happens to be a senior from my design alma mater, which was just about as pleasantly surprising as seeing Logitech’s new products every cycle.

Sitting alongside the mouse in the MK880 combo is a keyboard that takes the same comfort-forward brief seriously. The dual-foam palm rest delivers 70% more palm support compared to the Logitech K650, and typing angles can be set at three positions: 0, 4, or 8 degrees. Keys are deep-cushioned, with curved typing angles built for more comfortable, sustained sessions. In a shared apartment or a kitchen-table setup, that lower noise profile makes a real practical difference.

Dedicated mic mute and video toggle keys sit on the keyboard layout, a feature Logitech first established on the Signature Slim and is clearly doubling down on across its lineup. Paired with Logi Tune, these controls can be assigned for Zoom Workplace and Microsoft Teams, while the Logi Options+ app lets users set up Smart Actions to automate common tasks. The honest commentary here is that a physical key to kill your mic should have been standard hardware during the pandemic in 2020, when video calls went from optional to mandatory overnight. That it is arriving at scale now, five-plus years later, is a small frustration softened by the fact that it is at least arriving consistently. A dedicated AI Launch Key rounds out the top row, giving instant access to tools like Copilot, Gemini, or ChatGPT, fully reassignable through Logi Options+ to whatever a user actually reaches for. AI keys are becoming a fixture on productivity keyboards, and the configurable approach is the sensible one.

The M850L mouse is priced at $49.99, and the MK880 combo lands at $99.99. Business versions, which include the Logi Bolt USB-C receiver and Logitech Sync for IT management, come in at $59.99 and $109.99 respectively. Both are available from June 2026 on logitech.com and through authorized resellers, in graphite and off-white globally, with black in select channels. Plastic parts contain between 49% and 77% post-consumer recycled material depending on color, and products ship in FSC-certified paper packaging.

The post Logitech’s Comfort Plus Mouse packs a Palm Cushion for WFH People Who Take Meetings While Doing Chores first appeared on Yanko Design.