Author Archives: Sarang Sheth

No Wood, No Ash, No Smoke: This Modular Propane Torch Turns Any Outdoor Space Into a Gathering Spot

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Camping gear has a habit of living in the garage for 51 weeks a year. Camp Torch, built by three friends in Boise, Idaho, took a different route: it was made for camp, then wandered onto the founders’ porch and never left. It is a modular propane torch with a flame up to four feet tall that packs down into a bag. Because there is no wood, ash, or smoke, your patio smells like a patio on Monday. One knob dials the flame from a low glow to a full blaze.

I like a product that picks one job and does it properly, and this one’s job is giving a gathering a center. Founders Prince, Jimmi, and Boyd strapped the first rough prototype to a raft and went through six prototypes before landing on this one. Some of the nights they most wanted a fire were the nights a wood fire wasn’t allowed, which is why it runs on propane, with a controllable flame and a shutoff valve. To refine it, they brought in engineers who had worked on products like Jetboil. Stack the poles and you get a 6 ft 4 in Beacon. Drop to the tripod and you get a low Campfire that pulls everyone into a circle. It runs on a standard 20 lb propane tank, so there is no proprietary fuel to hunt down.

Designer: Camp Torch

Click Here to Buy Now: $499 $599 ($100 off). Hurry, only a few left! Raised over $530,000.

A single knob controls a four-foot flame

The flame is the whole point, so it gets the simplest control possible: a knob on the side of the burner head. Turn it low for a small dinner or crank it up when the group grows and the stories get louder. At full flame the light reaches about 60 feet in every direction, enough to cook and wander around after dark without a headlamp. One tank gives about 9 hours on high and more than 20 on low. That covers a full weekend of evenings, and I suspect you’ll be the one who wants to stay up for the last one.

Height is the modular part. The poles stack into four configurations: Campfire on the bare tripod, one pole, two poles, and the full 6 ft 4 in Beacon. Campfire mode sits low and central so the warmth lands right where the circle is, while Beacon goes tall to light up the whole site. Base Camp takes it further, with three torches running off a single tank through a splitter. Put one by the table, one near the chairs, and one where everyone keeps ending up. Back home, that height adjustment earns its keep again. Drop it to Campfire beside the chairs for a quiet evening on the porch, or raise it to Beacon and let it light the whole patio when friends come over. You don’t need a trip on the calendar to pull it out, which makes the price easier to justify: the same torch rides along on the weekend and gets used again the night after you unpack.

Steel, brass, and legs borrowed from precision machinery

The base is a three-foot tripod whose legs end in Hirth-joint tips, the interlocking serrated geometry you usually find in precision machinery. Each leg micro-adjusts, so the torch can sit level on a lumpy campsite or a lawn, and the tips drive into the ground when you want it locked down. Every knob and fitting is steel, aluminum, or brass, and the structure has zero plastic. The quick-connect that joins the poles sets your height without tools and takes future accessories the same way. The entire design is patent pending. I’m a sucker for a joint that does real engineering work, and a serrated leg on a camp torch made me smile.

An anti-tip shutoff cuts the gas the moment the torch tips. Camp Torch was designed with stability in mind, and the flame control is fully manual. Rain has nothing to soak and no coals to drown, while wind moves the flame around the way it moves any fire. A precision controlled flame, no embers, and an instant valve shutoff are why it’s often allowed where a wood fire isn’t, including under many Stage 1 and Stage 2 restrictions. Stricter restrictions and full closures ban propane too, so check with your local fire authority before every trip.

Packing, setup, and what comes in the box

The whole system breaks down into the included 11 x 22 inch bag at about 18 lb, so it slides in behind a seat next to the cooler. Setup takes under a minute and needs no tools: level the tripod, stack the poles and connect the head and fuel line, then attach your propane tank, light it through the port, and adjust the flame. The box also holds silicone heat-resistant covers, a quick-connect regulator and hose, and handling gloves. Heat shields, patio and deck bases, and cooking accessories are in development.

Camp Torch ships to the US only, with delivery estimated for February 2027. One torch is $499 and a two-torch set is $899 at launch pricing, ahead of a planned full retail price of $599 per torch. Each torch includes the carry bag, propane hose and regulator, heat-resistant covers, and gloves, while Base Camp is the three-pack. Returns are accepted for 30 days after delivery for a full refund, with return shipping covered, and Camp Torch is backed for life: if something fails in normal use, they fix it free, usually shipping the part before you send anything back. After all that, the garage is the one place this torch won’t be spending its winters.

Click Here to Buy Now: $499 $599 ($100 off). Hurry, only a few left! Raised over $530,000.

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The Lamborghini Miura Fountain Pen has a pop-up headlight built right into the cap

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Pop-up headlights were the original fidget toy, and anyone who grew up with a Miata in the family knows it. You’d flick them up and down in the driveway for no reason at all, purely because it felt like the car was blinking at you. Montegrappa clearly gets the appeal. Its new Automobili Lamborghini Miura pen, made to celebrate the Miura’s 60th anniversary, puts a working miniature headlight on the end of the cap. Press a button and the little rock crystal lamp tilts up out of its pocket, mimicking the car’s famous lights. I give it about four seconds before you stop writing and start obsessing and fidgeting over the mini headlight detail.

The headlight gets top billing, but Montegrappa threaded the Miura through the whole pen. The cap’s rounded nose reads like the car’s front fender, with the lamp sunk into a sloped recess the way it sits on the real thing. A black ribbed clip echoes the Miura’s slats, the stacked end cap recalls its louvered engine cover, and the barrel comes in Giallo Fly, Verde Miura, or Black. Montegrappa, Italy’s oldest pen maker, is building 60 of each color as both a fountain pen and a rollerball, for 360 pieces total. The fountain pen costs €8,250 (roughly $9,280), which is a lot for a pen and a bargain for a Miura.

Designer: Montegrappa x Automobili Lamborghini

How the rock crystal headlight pops up on the cap

Rock crystal is natural clear quartz, rating about 7 on the Mohs hardness scale, which is why it was cut into watch crystals and lenses centuries before synthetic sapphire showed up. Montegrappa sets a domed piece of it on an engraved base that recreates the texture of the Miura’s original lamp, so you see a faceted reflector pattern through the stone. A tactile push-button mechanism tilts the lamp up out of its dark-rimmed housing, the same way the car’s headlights rise from the fender. With the cap on, the lamp sits at the very top of the pen like a finial. It won’t light up your notebook, sadly, though at this price I’d have happily accepted a tiny LED.

Gandini gave the Miura’s headlamps metal eyelids framed by black slatted “eyelashes,” and that face became the car’s signature when it debuted at the 1966 Geneva Motor Show. The SV dropped the eyelashes in the early ’70s, and Miura fans have been arguing about that call ever since. Montegrappa’s cap may have smuggled them back in. To my eye, the ribbed black clip sitting right behind the lamp plays the same visual role the eyelashes did on the fender. The press shots seal the deal by parking the cap beside a yellow Miura with its lashes intact, and the resemblance is uncanny.

An 18K ruthenium nib, an ebonite feed, and serious desk heft

Uncap the fountain pen and you get an 18K gold nib with ruthenium plating, a platinum-group metal that gives it a dark gunmetal tone matching the black clip and end cap. The Lamborghini shield is engraved right on the nib face. Underneath sits an ebonite feed, the vulcanized hard rubber that fountain pen nerds love for its smooth, consistent ink flow. Nib options run from Extra Fine to Broad, plus a 1.1mm Stub if you like your handwriting with a little calligraphic swagger. Filling is a straightforward cartridge or converter setup, with two cartridges and a converter included in the box.

The pen measures 6.34 inches (161mm) long and 0.79 inches (20mm) across, and the fountain pen weighs 3.07 ounces (87 grams). That’s a little lighter than two AirPods Pro cases, which puts it firmly in desk-carry territory. The rollerball is a touch heavier at 3.25 ounces (92 grams) and keeps the same body, cap, and headlight, swapping the nib for a black conical tip. Both arrive in a lacquered wood and genuine leather case inspired by the Miura’s seats and interior. Considering how cramped the real car’s cabin is, this might be the roomiest Miura interior ever made.

From the 60° start switch to the Miura’s pop-up headlight

Montegrappa and Lamborghini first teamed up in 2023 for the carmaker’s own 60th anniversary, producing the Automobili Lamborghini 60° collection. Those pens had a hexagonal billet aluminum body and a red alloy flip switch on the base, modeled on the guard over Lamborghini’s start button. They took 24 months to develop and sold in the US for $6,495 as a fountain pen and $5,495 as a rollerball. The Miura edition goes softer and rounder, trading hexagonal edges for glossy curves that suit a 1960s car. Line the two up and a pattern emerges, with Montegrappa taking a car’s most theatrical physical gesture and turning it into the pen’s party trick.

Lamborghini has spent years mining the Miura, from the Aventador Ultimae Roadster that saluted the one-off 1968 Miura Roadster to this year’s 99-unit Revuelto Miura 60° Homage. Montegrappa’s pen is the most attainable entry in that club, and easily the most playful. My one wish is a variant with a proper ring of tiny slatted eyelashes around the lamp, for the P400 purists who want the full face. Pre-orders are open on Montegrappa’s site now, with deliveries starting in mid-November, and official US pricing should land somewhere near that euro conversion. Just keep the fidgeting to a minimum during your next board meeting.

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The hardest part of moving from UX to hardware is committing

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A lamp takes shape through its proportions, materials, and relationship with light. A voice interface has to make sense without giving someone a screen to navigate. A drone brings physical hardware, software, and operating conditions into the same design problem. Episode 25 of Design Mindset, Yanko Design’s podcast powered by KeyShot, connects these seemingly distant territories through a conversation with designer Anshuman Kumar. Hosted by Radhika Seth, the podcast premieres every week, exploring the thinking behind creative work and the decisions that shape a designer’s practice. This episode asks a particularly useful question: what carries over when a designer moves into a field they haven’t worked in before?

Kumar has plenty of experience with that transition. His career spans sports equipment at Decathlon, lifestyle products, six years at Samsung working across areas including voice intelligence, IoT, and generative AI, and a subsequent move into UAV design at ideaForge. Alongside that professional work, he teaches and develops personal explorations such as the nature-inspired Bloom Lamp. The range makes for an engaging interview, but the conversation goes deeper than a tour through different industries. Kumar explains how earlier experiences inform later decisions, why some ideas still need the slowness of drawing, and what changes when a design can no longer be revised through a software update. Together, those observations offer a grounded account of working across disciplines.

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A Career Built Through Iteration, Not Reinvention

“Every move I made was an iteration, not a reset. The domain changed, the question I was asking never did.” Kumar’s description of his career offers a useful way to understand its variety. Moving between physical products, intelligent services, and drones required new knowledge, but it didn’t make his existing experience irrelevant. Understanding a person’s needs, framing a problem, and working through uncertain possibilities remained useful across those transitions. The unfamiliar parts demanded learning rather than a wholesale replacement of his professional identity. Seen that way, a varied career becomes cumulative: each role adds another set of questions, constraints, and methods that can influence the next assignment, even when the eventual output looks entirely different.

That perspective also shapes his advice to students. Kumar recalls early encounters with electronics and science as opportunities for playful exploration, with his later education at NIFT providing a more systematic foundation. He worries about the pressure to adopt a narrowly defined professional label before those foundations have had time to develop. UX, textile design, motion design, and other specializations describe meaningful differences, but they can also become boundaries too early. His suggestion is to establish the roots before concentrating on the branches. For someone considering a change of direction, the implication is practical: examine which abilities already transfer to the new field before assuming that a different job title requires starting again from nothing.

The Bloom Lamp Translates Natural Observations Into Form

Kumar’s Bloom Lamp brings that way of connecting ideas into a physical object. Its starting points were a mushroom canopy and the spiraling movement of a small flower falling from a branch. One observation suggested a silhouette; the other introduced movement and a relationship with the surrounding air. Bringing them together required more than selecting an organic-looking outline. Kumar describes developing the lamp through multiple iterations and experiments with 3D printing, giving the concept a physical testing ground beyond visualization. “It was not just sitting as a good render,” he says. In the interview, Bloom emerges as a personal design exploration, with its interest lying in the translation from an observed natural behavior to a form that could be made.

The conversation also examines how consciously those natural references enter his work. Kumar describes room for both intuition and a deliberate framework, depending on the assignment. A commercial brief may require a closely defined direction, while a personal project can begin with an observation whose relevance becomes clearer through exploration. Intuition still needs examination, however. An appealing form has to be revisited to determine whether it communicates the intended idea and whether its proportions hold together. That qualification gives the discussion substance. Nature supplies a starting point and a vocabulary, but the designer still has to make decisions, test relationships, and recognize when an attractive reference hasn’t yet become a convincing object.

Knowing When to Move From Paper to Pixels

For Kumar, an idea that hasn’t acquired a clear direction often belongs on paper first. Drawing gives him room to discover what he is trying to make before a digital tool asks for more explicit decisions. “That slow process is very important for me to set a defined direction.” The value lies partly in the coordination between hand, eye, and thought, with each drawing helping him gain confidence in the emerging idea. Slowness has a purpose here, but it isn’t an invitation to sketch indefinitely. He also cautions against making hundreds of drawings without becoming more certain. The useful skill is recognizing when paper has answered its questions and another medium needs to take over.

Rendering enters that process as another way to investigate a design, rather than simply produce its final presentation. Discussing KeyShot, Kumar describes a working relationship between sketching, CAD, visualization, and physical prototypes that moves back and forth as questions arise. A CAD model can establish geometry while leaving the appearance of materials, textures, and surrounding surfaces unresolved. Rendering helps him examine those relationships and return to the model with a clearer intention. Physical iterations remain part of the exchange, answering questions an image cannot settle on its own. The process is less about completing a fixed sequence of stages than selecting the medium that makes the next uncertainty easier to examine and discuss.

Learning to Design Beyond the Screen

Kumar is candid about feeling scared when he joined Samsung and entered its voice intelligence group. The opportunity followed a national competition, but the assignment involved a field he hadn’t specifically trained to enter. Voice removed a familiar organizing surface: there was no screen on which to lay out every choice or explain the next step visually. Inputs could be ambiguous, and interactions had to work through a less explicit exchange. He credits mentors with helping him understand that layer and describes systems thinking as important to the transition. Eventually, a self-directed mobility project brought voice and vision intelligence together around driver assistance, progressing through Samsung’s C-Lab program, although he keeps the solution’s details confidential.

His later move to ideaForge brought those interests back into a distinctly physical setting. Kumar already enjoyed flying drones, and UAV systems offered an opportunity to connect that enthusiasm with his experience developing services around emerging technologies. Safety and security applications also contributed to the appeal. Leaving Samsung prompted disbelief from people around him, and he acknowledges the reach available within a large technology company. Still, the new role offered a combination of interests worth pursuing. The interview doesn’t unpack a particular drone or provide a technical case study of its development. Instead, it reveals the reasoning behind the move: Kumar recognized a field where several existing capabilities could become useful together, while leaving him plenty to learn.

Hardware Makes Commitment Harder to Reverse

One of the episode’s most practical exchanges begins with a hypothetical experienced fintech UX designer who wants to create physical objects for the home. Asked what that designer would need to unlearn, Kumar focuses on the expectation that a released experience can be corrected through a later update. Changing hardware may require another development cycle, a revised version, and substantial investment. Its physical form also establishes possibilities and constraints for the services that follow. This changes the timing and weight of design decisions. Experience in UX still matters, particularly in understanding people and interactions, but the new medium demands patience and a different relationship with commitment. Some choices become expensive to revisit much earlier than a software-focused designer might expect.

The same awareness of constraints shapes Kumar’s answer about creating delight. “At the same time, designers are not sitting in ivory tower, right?” An intended experience has to survive contact with technical capabilities, collaborators, and the dependencies between different parts of a system. A relatively simple personal object may be developed independently through digital manufacturing; a complex product requires many people to make compatible decisions. Kumar argues for keeping the overall experience in view while working through those realities, rather than treating either the original idea or an early limitation as untouchable. Across lamps, intelligent services, and drones, that becomes the recurring responsibility: learn what the medium allows, recognize what deserves another attempt, and understand which decisions the next stage will have to live with.

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This 3D-printed film camera can manipulate perspective for perfect skyscraper shots

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Point your phone at a tall building and snap a photo, then look at it. The whole thing is leaning back like it’s trying to dodge a punch, and that effect has a name: converging verticals. Architecture photographers have spent about a century fighting it with view cameras and shift lenses, which tend to be heavy, pricey, or both. Lachlan Fysh, a Melbourne designer with a serious building habit, decided to fight it with a 3D printer, a CNC machine, and a wooden dowel. The result is the FTC-1, a 6×7 film camera that just took Gold for Cameras at the 2025 International Design Awards.

The FTC-1 shoots 120 film on Mamiya RB67 backs and borrows lenses from the large format world, whose oversized image circles leave plenty of room to move. Turn a knob and the lens rises up to 30mm (1.2 inches), keeping the camera perfectly level while the frame slides up to catch the top of the tower. A second mechanism handles 15mm (0.6 inches) of sideways shift, and the back spins between portrait and landscape on magnetic detents. The whole package weighs 2.4 pounds (1.1 kg) and sells for $1,200 AUD, roughly $850. The Swiss cameras that pull off the same trick start in the thousands before you’ve even bought a lens.

Designer: Lachlan Fysh (Fysh Technical)

Metal Only Where It Counts

Fysh’s first prototype was printed entirely in plastic, and it worked surprisingly well until he put it on a tripod. The body would sway for a beat after every adjustment before settling down, which is a dealbreaker on a camera you focus by squinting at ground glass. Over coffee in Japan, Oscar Oweson of Panomicron, who builds his own indie cameras, nudged him toward aluminum. Fysh brought in CNC-machined aluminum plates for the core and tripod base, where stiffness actually matters. Everything that just needs to hold its shape stayed printed, keeping the body light enough for a guy who still shoots from a bicycle.

Machining the FTC-1’s big hollow lens cones from solid metal would leave a mountain of aluminum shavings on the floor, which Fysh disliked on environmental grounds. Printing them uses a fraction of the material and still delivers all the stiffness they need. Because he runs FDM printers at home, he can print a cone to order for whatever lens you own, and reprint one fast if you pick the wrong size. The ring-shaped brackets holding the handle would be a nightmare to mill, so those are 3D printed metal, now titanium for a little weight saving. Even the ground glass is acrylic, which stays flat, survives being dropped, and keeps the price down.

A 3D Printer Part in Disguise

The rise mechanism runs on a TR8 lead screw, the same 8mm threaded rod that drives the vertical axis on loads of desktop 3D printers. Fysh started with smaller TR4 and TR5 screws to save weight, but they forced a choice between slow adjustment and reliable locking. A lead screw only holds its position on its own when its lead stays under roughly 60% of its diameter, so a speedy 4mm lead needed the chunkier 8mm rod. Now the lens moves quickly and stays exactly where you leave it, with no separate locking knob. Earlier prototypes used rack and pinion gears, and Fysh admits he kept forgetting to tighten those.

The brass part with the spring is an anti-backlash nut, and it’s the reason the rise feels so immediate. It’s essentially a nut split in two, with a spring pushing the halves against opposite sides of the thread so there’s zero slop when you change direction. Because TR8 hardware is everywhere in the 3D printing world, these nuts come off the shelf instead of being custom machined, which keeps costs sane. One Reddit commenter called the whole setup overkill, and Fysh is pretty confident it isn’t. I’m with Fysh here, since a buttery, slop-free rise is exactly what you want when nudging a frame by a millimeter on a windy rooftop.

Tilt, Locked In

Most technical cameras offer tilt, which angles the plane of focus (the Scheimpflug principle) so a landscape can stay sharp from the rock at your feet to the mountains on the horizon. Fysh left it out of the body on purpose. He worried that with a tilt mechanism built in, he’d never be totally sure it was sitting at zero, which is where he wants it about 95% of the time. His fix is a set of lens cones with a fixed tilt angle baked in, calculated for each focal length using a Scheimpflug visualizer he built himself. Swapping cones takes about a minute in the field, and the angle can never drift.

The FTC-1 sells for $1,200 AUD (roughly $850) on the Fysh Technical site, with fixed tilt cones at $50 AUD each. Alpa’s 12 STC body alone costs CHF 4,300, north of $5,000, for similar rise and shift. Fysh builds each camera around a full-time job, so stock arrives in small batches, and a 6×17 panoramic sibling called the FTC-W is already in development on the same cone system. IDA’s global jury judges concepts and finished products alike, which makes this Gold sweeter, since you can actually buy the thing. Turns out the cure for converging verticals was a bike trip, a shed full of printers, and a guy stubborn enough to do the math.

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Lego’s 5,682-brick Venice set has canals, a clocktower, and a tiny piano that actually plays

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Venice sits on roughly 118 small islands stitched together with bridges, which makes it the one city where a flat LEGO base feels almost historically accurate. Throw in canals, gondolas, and a skyline of domes and bell towers, and you have a place that practically begs to be built out of plastic. LEGO clearly noticed. In 2025 it sent adult builders to Liguria with the LEGO Ideas Italian Riviera, a 3,251-piece fishing village that began as a fan design by Alex Sahli. Now the Italian road trip lands in Venice with the LEGO Icons Venetian Neighborhood (11388), and the travel budget has grown to match.

Designed in house by LEGO’s own team, it packs 5,682 pieces and costs $549.99, with Insiders buying from November 1 and everyone else from November 4. That buys a luxury villa, a glassblowing workshop, a clock tower with a knob-driven astrological calendar, an arched bridge, and a gondola with two gondoliers. Seventeen minifigures wander around, including two in full Carnival costume. Add pigeons, a street piano that plays real notes, and a bonus boat for early buyers, and the shelf starts to sweat. Venice has never been cheap either, so the price tag stays in character.

Designer: LEGO Design Team

Canals made of studs, towers made of legend

The canals are built mostly from trans-blue elements with the studs left showing, so the water ripples instead of sitting flat like a glass tabletop. An arched bridge crosses it, and the gondola and its two gondoliers are sized to slip right underneath. Pale bricks and domed roofs set the skyline, with a green-capped tower standing tallest. Brick Fanatics’ main nitpick is that the set could use more water and more gondolas. I second that, since a Venice with one gondola is a lonely Venice.

The three buildings are a luxury villa, a glassblowing workshop with translucent orange and yellow panels, and a clock tower whose knob drives an astrological calendar. That tower recalls St Mark’s Clocktower, unveiled in 1499, where legend says the doge blinded the clockmaker so he could never build a rival. The real story is tamer, since the two mechanics were made caretakers and moved in with their families. Roofs and floors lift away to show the interiors, and the diorama separates into sections you can rearrange. It stands over 18 inches high, about 25 wide, and 12 deep (48 by 63 by 31 centimeters), so measure your shelf first.

The piano that actually plays

My favorite detail, though, is the street piano, a tiny black 3D-printed element that plays real notes when you twist the flower vase on top. That is a sentence I never expected to write about a minifigure prop. It does four jobs at once: instrument for the musician minifigures, tiny mechanism, manufacturing milestone, and wink at the street pianos that pop up in public squares. The vase works as the crank, which keeps the scene looking natural. Venice gets a soundtrack, and your living room gets a tiny busker.

LEGO has molded bricks since the late 1940s, and the piano is only the second 3D-printed element in a widely available set. The first was the tiny blue train in 10361 Holiday Express Train, released in October 2025, with spinning wheels and a puffing chimney. Before that, the list was a drafting arm, a toy duck for minifigs, and a pogo stick, all handed out or sold in tiny numbers. LEGO has not said how the piano was printed, though selective laser sintering is the likely suspect, same as the train. LEGO’s additive team wants this tech to feel ordinary, and a music-playing piano is a funny way to continue.

17 minifigs, one bonus boat, and the bill

The cast of 17 includes gondoliers, musicians, tourists, a glassblower, and two Carnival revelers dressed as the moon and the sun. Their costumes lean on clever part use, including an upside-down video game controller and a DREAMZzz headpiece. A flock of pigeons crowds the plaza too, because no Venetian square is complete without birds judging your lunch. It is classic LEGO, giving the crowd personality instead of filling the canals with identical tourists. Nobody on this waterfront is checking email, which is the whole fantasy.

At $549.99, the set works out to roughly 9.7 cents per piece, which lands between the $499.99 Tropical Aquarium and the $649.99 Minas Tirith. Insiders get first crack on November 1, and the general release on November 4 runs through LEGO.com and LEGO Stores. Early buyers also get the 322-piece Venetian Water Taxi (40898) as a gift while stocks last. It adds a dock, a captain, a tourist, and two more pigeons, because the birds clearly have a union. My only request is a second gondola, so the taxi has someone to race.

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Tesla’s New Roadster Can Fly. Its CEO’s Reputation Cannot.

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Nine years. It took Elon nine years to remember he was supposed to ship a Roadster. Announced in 2017, the second-generation car came with bold promises. Promises Elon made and conveniently forgot, like the crewed Mars mission he targeted for 2024, or the coast-to-coast self-driving demo he promised by the end of 2017. He’s a genius at moving the goalpost, and he has the attention span of a toddler. In those nine years, he moved Tesla HQ to Texas, launched a Roadster into outer space, bought Twitter, bankrolled a presidential campaign to the tune of $200 million, fronted DOGE, and folded xAI into SpaceX, whose IPO made him the world’s first trillionaire. Somehow, delivering the second Roadster never made the list.

On Thursday, he remembered the Roadster still had reservations sitting for nearly a decade. So he did what he always does: razzle-dazzle, fanfare, and a stunt big enough to bury nine years of broken timelines. The car Tesla showed on October 15 differs from the 2017 pitch, though not in ways worth cheering. Range drops from 620 miles to over 300, and seats drop from four to two at most. The 0-60 is better, with Tesla claiming under 1.6 seconds on the base car, under 0.9 on Thrust, and under 0.59 on Rocket, but the last two trims aren’t approved for road use. Impressive on paper, but just like the 2017 Roadster, all this is only on paper.

The flying trim has no reserve button and no road approval

Tesla is selling the Roadster in three trims, and the one that flies is the one you can’t reserve. The Rocket trim seats one, runs ten cold-gas thrusters fed by 600 liters (roughly 158 gallons) of compressed air, and carries an invite only label where the reserve button should be. The $250,000 Thrust trim adds rear thrusters for sub-one-second launches (sort of like afterburners on a jet), meanwhile the $50,000 Performance trim reservation gets no thrusters. Tesla says none of the thruster packs are approved for road use, and no human was driving during the Waco demo. There’s still no price, battery size, or powertrain info for any trim. My bet is that Rocket ends up a mod a handful of invitees get 5-6 years after the base car.

Design school drills one question into you early: who is this for? A feature Tesla itself says isn’t approved for road use, offered to people who can’t even reserve it, answers with a shrug. Tesla credits the SR-71 and F-35, though the wedge owes a visible debt to the Lotus Esprit from The Spy Who Loved Me, which Musk owns and put on display. Every usable void in the car is packed with carbon fiber overwrapped pressure vessels, the same type behind multiple SpaceX rocket explosions. Musk has said safety is not the main goal, which at least explains the packaging. It’s like ordering a sofa and receiving a trampoline show: great theater, and still no price.

Nine years of slipped dates and a spec sheet that shrank

Tesla revealed this Roadster as a surprise at the end of the 2017 Semi event and promised deliveries within a few years. Buyers put down $50,000 deposits, and some paid $250,000 for one of 1,000 Founders Series cars. Musk then delayed the car in 2020, 2021, 2023, and 2024, while Tesla fought through Model 3 production hell and moved on to the Model Y and Cybertruck. Last year he promised a reveal by the end of 2025, then pushed it to April 1, 2026, saying an April Fools’ event would give him some deniability. Planning your own launch around deniability is a bold strategy. Severe weather bumped the October 1 date, and the real show finally happened October 15.

The 2017 pitch listed 620 miles of range, a top speed above 250 mph, four seats, and a $200,000 base price. Today’s version quotes over 300 miles of range (Tesla’s figure, with no test cycle named), over 230 mph, two seats at most, and no price at all. The deposit is still $50,000, so anyone holding a 2017 reservation has been lending Tesla that money interest free since before the Model Y existed. In fairness, the base car now beats the 1.9-second 0-60 promised in 2017, and the stunt car clearly works. Marques Brownlee, one of the customers vocal about the delays, summed up the mood by asking whether the whole thing was a prank.

Elon’s graveyard of dead promises

In 2016, Tesla told buyers every car it built had the hardware for full self-driving, and it later sold the package for up to $15,000. In April 2019, Musk promised over a million robotaxis on the road by 2020. He has since admitted that the HW3 computer in millions of those cars can’t deliver unsupervised driving. A California judge ruled the name itself misleading. The DMV gave Tesla 60 days to fix its marketing or face a 30-day sales suspension. Tesla now sells it as Full Self-Driving (Supervised), which is a lot of parentheses for a promise that began without any.

Musk targeted a crewed Mars mission for 2024, then floated an uncrewed 50-50 shot at late 2026, and in February SpaceX shifted its focus to the Moon. He said Mars would now take 20 years or more. On Optimus, he promised 1,000 or more robots working at Tesla in 2025, then said in January 2026 they were still R&D units doing no useful work. Robotaxis are the bright spot, since they now run without safety drivers in a few cities. That’s still a long way from the half of the country he promised. Each broken promise gets swapped for a bigger one, which is a handy way to keep the old ones from getting audited.

Why a flying car won’t change Elon’s true legacy

Back in December 2024 before DOGE officially existed, Musk and Trump attacked a bipartisan spending deal as bloated, and Republican leaders dropped it, resulting in the gutting of funding for pediatric cancer research. The casualties included an extension for the NIH’s Gabriella Miller Kids First program, named for a 10-year-old who died of a brain tumor. Nancy Goodman, who lost her own child to cancer at 10, asked how anyone cuts cancer research in the name of efficiency. The Senate passed a pared-back version two days later, but the Give Kids a Chance Act took until February 2026 to become law. Once DOGE got going, NIH announced a 15% overhead cap that Fred Hutch said would erase about $125 million a year for its cancer center.

USDA canceled about $660 million for Local Food for Schools and $420 million for a companion food bank program, just as the administration and DOGE said they were slashing waste. One school district lost $100,000 it had planned to spend on local beef and produce for student meals. The Waco crowd cheered a car leaping over a Cybertruck, and I sat there in admiration too. A good design improves someone’s life, and a stunt car with no price, no road approval, and a 2028 date hasn’t improved anyone’s yet. The Roadster can fly. Its CEO’s reputation stays on the ground, parked next to the cancer bill and the school food money.

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This 2,680-piece LEGO AKAI tape deck is my kind of analog nostalgia

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Owning a reel-to-reel deck in the 1970s meant owning a piece of furniture you could not move alone. The Akai PRO-1000 came in two boxes, with published specs putting the drive unit at about 62 pounds and the amplifier at about 22. That is roughly 85 pounds of hi-fi, which explains why one UK dealer listing recommends collecting in person or booking a pallet. People bought these anyway, because a machine with two huge spinning reels announced to every guest that you took music seriously. Nobody ever put a reel-to-reel in a closet. Now there is a version you could carry to the couch without calling a friend, made of 2,680 LEGO parts.

That version is the AKAI PRO 1000 Open Reel-to-Reel Tape Deck, a LEGO Ideas project from Zo Lee that has already picked up a Staff Pick badge. The original was a semi-professional machine from the late 1970s that sold mainly in the US, Canada, and Japan, with a 1977 US price of $1,995. Its two boxes were joined by three cables, so owners could park them side by side or stack them, and the LEGO version takes the stacked route. At about 17 inches tall, 11 wide, and 6.3 deep (43 x 29 x 16 cm), it is a compact take on an original roughly 19 inches across. Finally, a hi-fi flex that does not need a pallet.

Designer: Zo Lee

Here is the party trick: the thing moves. A motor turns the reels, the VU meters swing along with them, and the big knobs rotate under your fingers. A removable grid on top lifts off to hold a LEGO battery, so the deck can sit anywhere on the shelf without hunting for a wall outlet. The reels were the first thing every guest stared at on the real machine, so making them the star of the show is exactly right. Powering it up is its own small concert, minus the music.

Zo Lee describes the build as extremely difficult, and the list of headaches reads like a boss fight. The odd quarter-distance spacing between tiles, the big reels with all those cutout windows, and an internal frame that has to hold the outer casing each took plenty of brainstorming. Getting that same frame to drive the reels and meters took lots more attempts, per the creator. The payoff shows in the renders: gray reels with dark red cutouts, black knobs with colored pointers, tiny transport labels like CUE, PAUSE, and REC, and a tape counter parked on 977. From a few feet away, the front panel reads like actual hardware, which is the whole point of a shrunken replica.

My favorite detail, though, is the pair of VU meters, which Zo Lee says swing in sync with the reels, but asymmetrically. I am guessing the same motor drives both, which would mean the needles twitch like they are reacting to a song instead of marching in lockstep. That one choice fakes live audio, hides a mechanism behind two amber faces, and probably saves the builder a second motor. It also slots the deck into a neat lineage of LEGO Ideas audio gear, next to Tomasso Builds’ Technics SL-1200 MK2 turntable and Headlight Bricks’ Sony Walkman. Reel-to-reel is the format that came before the Walkman’s cassette, and it has the most dramatic moving parts of the lot.

The deck currently sits at 527 supporters on LEGO Ideas, with the next milestone at 1K and 396 days left to get there. Ideas works like this: fans submit builds, supporters pile up, and LEGO reviews the ones that reach the threshold. The Staff Pick badge is a nice head start, but the votes have to come from people like you, so head to the LEGO Ideas page and give it your vote. Every supporter helps push this toward an actual box. Get it there and you can finally own a reel-to-reel deck without recruiting three friends and a hand truck.

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Toyota’s ‘Wheel-less’ Wheelchair wins the 2026 Red Dot Concept Luminary Award

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Somewhere around age eight, I decided the coolest vehicles in the universe all had legs. The AT-ATs in The Empire Strikes Back, the mechs in every anime I wasn’t supposed to be watching, all of them walked where cars couldn’t. Toyota apparently had the same childhood, because its four-legged ‘walk me’ chair just won the 2026 Red Dot: Luminary, the highest honor at the Red Dot Award: Design Concept. The difference is that Toyota pointed its walking machine at something useful, helping people with limited mobility get up stairs and over curbs. Meanwhile, the Empire is still building walkers purely for invading ice planets.

Designed by Misako Kawata under team lead Takashi Nishimura, walk me trades the wheelchair’s wheels for four robotic legs that step up stairs, shuffle sideways in tight spaces, and lift the seat to eye level with standing pedestrians. Toyota skipped the menacing chrome and went soft instead, wrapping the joints in 3D-knitted fabric and a felt-like body with bright chartreuse legs. The result looks like a friendly piece of furniture that happens to climb things. It debuted at last year’s Japan Mobility Show as a concept, and Toyota has announced no price or release date. Mobility for All is the company’s stated mission here, and for once the slogan comes with legs.

Designer: Toyota Motor Corporation

Four Legs are far superior than Four Wheels

Stairs create psychological barriers long before they create physical ones, and Toyota’s own design brief says as much. A wheel looks at a staircase and gives up, so the rider plans the whole day around avoiding them. Walk me swaps the wheels for four robotic legs, which lets one machine link indoor floors, outdoor paths, cars, and public transit. It climbs steps, slides sideways through tight spaces, and generally refuses to treat architecture as a personal insult. Anyone who has ever hunted for the one accessible entrance around the back of a building will understand the appeal.

Four legs can crouch for boarding and stand tall to put the rider at eye level with pedestrians, which fixes a problem wheelchairs have carried forever. Anyone who has spent a whole conversation craning upward at a taller friend knows the strain. Wheelchair users deal with that angle daily, and a chair that rises to meet the conversation changes the dynamic. Toyota says the same leg movement also makes getting on and off the chair easier. It’s a small social fix tucked inside a big mechanical one, and I’d argue it’s the most human detail in the whole design.

A polite Japanese gesture, wrapped in 3D-knitted fabric

Toyota built the posture around omotenashi, the Japanese spirit of hospitality, so the chair’s stance resembles a polite bow that welcomes its rider. A 3D-knitted fabric covers the mechanical joints, while the warm, felt-like body gives it a friendly, furniture-like silhouette. In the images, the gray hip housing and seat shell read like a premium lounge chair, and the ribbed chartreuse legs add a pop of color that says friendly rather than clinical. I never expected to call a robot cozy, but here we are. Nobody has ever been intimidated by a sweater, and that is very clearly the strategy.

Toyota started as a loom maker under Sakichi Toyoda, so wrapping a robot in knitted fabric reads as a family tradition. Its own Japan Mobility Show booth traced the company’s robotics roots back to the Toyoda Automatic Loom Type G. A century on, textile know-how and robotics meet in a chartreuse-legged chair that bows at strangers. Beneath the fabric sits a topologically optimized internal frame that keeps the structure strong and light while staying completely hidden. Toyota wants you to see an armchair with ambition, and the skeleton is nobody’s business but the robot’s.

Ten months, AI gait control, and a very promising future

Toyota took walk me from idea to working prototype in just 10 months, which is wild for a machine that has to balance a human being on four legs. AI gait control and low-waste metal additive manufacturing made that pace possible, compressing years of R&D into weeks, according to Toyota. The company calls the chair its North Star for human-centered technology. That technology is meant to deliver dignity, hope, and independence alongside plain old movement. Red Dot’s concept award honors prototypes and ideas rather than shipping products, so the Luminary measures vision more than store-shelf readiness.

Hyundai’s Elevate walking car put wheels at the end of long robotic legs, and Kawasaki’s CORLEO robot horse offers a rideable quadruped for off-road thrills. Those machines chase rescue missions and rugged trails. Walk me points similar legwork at a living room staircase, which is arguably the more relatable terrain. Among this year’s Red Dot: Best of the Best winners, it’s the one the jury crowned with the top prize. It remains a concept with no price, release date, or production plans, but a robot that bows, climbs, and wears a knitted sweater has me convinced that the future of mobility might finally have good manners.

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This coin-sized titanium tape measure handles straight lines, curves, and looks like jet-engine stock

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Grade 5 titanium (Ti-6Al-4V) is the alloy of jet engine compressor blades, surgical implants, and aerospace fasteners. It has a tensile strength of nearly 1000 MPa and weighs about half as much as stainless steel. COMANDI-Corres decided to use it for a tape measure. Bold move, honestly. But the logic tracks: if something is going to live permanently in your coin pocket, the material really can’t be the thing that fails first. And there’s something deeply satisfying about carrying a piece of aerospace hardware in your jeans while you’re measuring whether a new couch fits through your front door.

The RolTine 2.0 is that piece of hardware, coin-sized at 46mm wide and 18mm thick, machined from solid Grade 5 titanium by COMANDI-Corres out of Kowloon. Inside, a 150cm retractable flexible tape measure automatically retracts after use, offering convenient, hands-free measuring whenever you need it. On the surface, a precision rolling wheel with micro-ball bearings features a fixed 150mm circumference, allowing you to measure continuously along curves, irregular contours, and complex surfaces where rigid rulers fall short.  That bearing assembly is also where the fidget magic lives; spin it between your fingers and it hums with a satisfying smoothness that’s genuinely hard to put down. CNC-engraved markings go straight into the metal, an N52 neodymium magnet docks it to steel surfaces, and optional tritium vials in six colors keep it glowing in the dark.

Designer: COMANDI-Corres

Click Here to Buy Now: $75 $130 (42% off). Hurry, only 25/300 left! Raised over $115,000.

COMANDI eliminated the manual retraction button for version 2.0, replacing it with an internal spring mechanism and tuned damping that snaps the tape back smooth and hands-free. In the original RolTine, retracting required a manual button press. Version 2.0 eliminates the button entirely, engineering an internal spring-loaded mechanism that snaps back smooth and hands-free. The spring is calibrated specifically to avoid the violent, finger-catching snapback of a standard steel contractor tape, which sounds minor until one of those things whips across your knuckle. The tape packs a full 150cm (60 inches) into an ultra-compact body, easily covering all your daily measurement needs. It’s laser-etched with metric on one side and imperial on the other, so you switch seamlessly between measurement systems with a simple flip. Zero math required.

Side A of the chassis is a precision rolling ruler with a fixed 150mm circumference wheel, upgraded from the spring-detent of V1.0 to high-precision miniature rolling bearings that eliminate friction and gritty drag, allowing the wheel to glide across any surface like ice. Roll it along a contour, count your full rotations, add the partial dial reading, and you have an exact measurement of a curved surface that would otherwise require a sewing tape and a lot of hopeful optimism. Woodworkers, architects, model makers, and fashion designers are the obvious audience, but anyone who has tried to measure a cylindrical object with a rigid ruler will get it immediately. The formula stays intuitive: total length equals full rotations multiplied by the base circumference, plus the partial dial reading. The rolling dial comes metric by default, with an imperial version available as a $1 add-on.

The micro-ball bearing assembly that enables smooth curve rolling also makes RolTine 2.0 one of the most satisfying objects to spin between your fingers. Tuned with high-precision miniature ball bearings, the core spins effortlessly with a faint, crisp mechanical hum. The outer edge is CNC-machined with deeply engraved aggressive micro-knurling that provides maximum mechanical traction, ensuring a rock-solid, zero-slip grip even when working with oily hands or wearing gloves. When COMANDI first put the original RolTine into people’s hands, something unexpected happened. They didn’t just use it to measure; they kept reaching for it. The smooth pull. The controlled retraction. The satisfying mechanical motion. People found themselves pulling it out, letting it retract, and doing it again simply because it felt good.

Precision 5-axis CNC cutouts shed unnecessary chassis weight while exposing the mechanical core beneath, and the open-frame architecture prevents debris buildup while catching ambient light as it spins, delivering raw, uncompromised industrial aesthetics. As you pull the tape, the inner liner spins in perfect sync with the internal spindle, and light refracts through the hollow frame, creating a mesmerizing fluid light effect. COMANDI built this skeleton architecture to be functional first, but the visual result reads more like a mechanical watch movement than a tape measure. The inner liner comes in Glacial Blue or Electric Yellow, anodized to perfection, adding a vivid contrast to the raw Grade 5 Titanium shell.

The N52 neodymium magnet embedded on Side B is a detail I appreciate more the longer I think about it. Embedded with an industrial-grade N52 Neodymium Magnet, RolTine 2.0 delivers a crisp, tactile snap and powerful holding force, locking firmly onto any ferrous surface and staying rock-solid without sliding, even under heavy workshop vibrations. Toolboxes, machinery, cabinet walls, car chassis, PC cases: it holds across all of them. Unlike conventional tape measures with printed or painted scales that rub off over time, all skeletonized cutouts and measurement scales are CNC-machined directly into the titanium chassis, with markings integrated into the metal itself, guaranteeing lifetime readability. Optional tritium vials, self-powered by continuous tritium decay with zero batteries and 24/7 perpetual glow for 10-plus years, or luminous vials that absorb ambient light for a brilliant night glow, are both available in six colors.

RolTine 2.0 sits at approximately $69 for a single unit, discounted heavily from its $130 MSRP. The rolling dial comes metric by default, with an imperial upgrade available for a single dollar if you prefer inches throughout. Tritium and luminous vials are optional add-ons, self-installable into the pre-machined chassis slots. RolTine 2.0 ships globally starting February 2027, and once the campaign is over, the tape measure will be available on the comandi.us website for its $130 MSRP.

Click Here to Buy Now: $75 $130 (42% off). Hurry, only 25/300 left! Raised over $115,000.

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Rollable laptops, painless tattoos, and a flying car: Red Dot’s 2026 Best of the Best has range

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Every October I do the same thing. I open Red Dot’s concept winners, grab a snack, and brace myself to fall in love with something that doesn’t exist yet. It works every time, and this year was no exception. The Red Dot Award: Design Concept has been celebrating unbuilt ideas since 2005, which makes it the closest thing design has to a crystal ball. Sometimes the ball shows you a gadget you’ll want next year, and sometimes it shows you something wonderfully ridiculous.

Best of the Best is the tier just below the Luminary, the award’s top prize, which has its own article. So everything below earned a standing ovation from a very picky jury. I’ve rounded up the winners that stuck with me, along with some opinions nobody asked for. Think of it as the pre-game and the post-game rolled into one. Settle in, because the lineup is a lot.

MobED Urban Hopper and MobED Golf by Hyundai Motor Company and Hyundai Genesis Global Design

Hyundai’s MobED began as a flat, four-wheeled robot platform with a clever self-leveling trick, built to haul cargo and follow people around. These two concepts put a rider on that idea instead. Hyundai Genesis Global Design, the in-house team, shaped them around what Red Dot calls a compact robotic mobility platform with multi-directional driving and modular applications. In the lead image, a slim upright column carries a handlebar and a glowing round headlight, perched on four chunky wheels like a very polite scooter. It looks friendlier than most robots I’ve met, which is a low bar, but a cute one.

The Urban Hopper handles city trips, while MobED Golf takes the same base onto the fairway, and the thumbnails show it carrying a golf bag. A soccer ball rolls through another frame, so Hyundai clearly wants this thing at play as well as at work. Modular applications are how one chassis stretches across all of that. Hyundai says the pair also picked up a nomination for the Luminary, the competition’s top prize. The real MobED is already pitched at business customers, and I’d happily see a rideable cousin parked outside my apartment.

Tangibook by Mao Chengjie, Zhao Chenyang, and the TRIZID and Ningbo University Team

Only a small fraction of printed books ever get a Braille edition, which leaves blind readers waiting on someone else to decide what they can read. Tangibook skips the waiting. It’s a portable, refreshable Braille reader that turns printed text into real-time tactile output, so a visually impaired user can pick up a book and read it independently, accurately, and privately. TRIZID Industrial Design in Ningbo built it with Ningbo University, and seven designers are credited on the project. In the main image, an upright post stands behind the display while a book lies open in the background.

The slab carries rows of Braille cells under both hands, with a dial and a few buttons on the right. Reading looks closer to running your fingers down a page than poking at a gadget. The thumbnails show it propped on a folding stand and tucked under an arm like a slim clutch, which suits something meant to leave the house. Refreshable Braille displays often cost thousands of dollars and usually depend on a phone or computer for their content. Tangibook goes straight to the paper, which cuts out the middleman and the waiting list, and I love a design whose best feature is letting you read whatever you want, whenever you want.

Aridge A868 by JuanMa Lopez, Wang Tan, and the Aridge Design Team

Flying cars have been “five years away” for about seventy years, so I’m trained to roll my eyes at them. Then Xpeng’s Aridge unit shows up with the A868, a six-seat hybrid-electric tilt-rotor, and I’m only rolling one eye. Red Dot describes it as a full tilt-rotor flying car built for efficient regional air mobility, mixing vertical takeoff, long range, and comfort for premium travel. Aridge, the flying car unit Xpeng rebranded from Aeroht, led the design with JuanMa Lopez and Wang Tan, plus a dozen more designers. Fourteen names on the credit list suggests nobody got to design the rotors alone.

In the top-down render, the A868 shows a white fuselage with a black belly, ARIDGE lettered across the wings, and six rotor pods spread over a forested coastline. Aridge claims a range above 500 km (310 miles) and a top speed over 360 km/h (224 mph), thanks to a hybrid-electric powertrain. Joby’s S4 seats five, so the extra seat here is a flex. Xpeng says the prototype has entered test flights, which puts it ahead of most renders in this lineup. Flying cars still run on promises, but a six-seater that actually leaves the ground wins back some of my eye-roll.

Norton Manx R by Simon Skinner and Norton Motorcycles

Superbikes have spent two decades growing winglets, stickers, and creases until they look like fighter jets that lost a bet. Norton went the other way with the Manx R, a wingless, decal-free V4 superbike from the British marque, now owned by India’s TVS Motor Company. Head of Design Simon Skinner led the project, with Gerry McGovern, known for his Jaguar Land Rover work, advising as Norton’s chief creative advisor. Red Dot calls it a modern, reductive take on the superbike, free from racing regulations and built around the road rider. That freedom shows in the silver-white bodywork, which sweeps nose to tail without a single decorative line shouting for attention.

Underneath sits an all-new 1,200cc V4 making roughly 200 horsepower, backed by semi-active suspension, Brembo brakes, and an 8-inch TFT touchscreen. Fixings stay hidden while the mechanical bits stay on show, so the machinery does the decorating. The slatted tail with its glowing taillight looks more like a luxury coupe than a motorcycle, which fits the McGovern influence. It also took Bronze at this year’s IDEA Awards, the first combustion-engined production sports motorcycle to do so. Most superbikes want you to love the spec sheet, and this one wants you to look first, which suits a very old brand starting over.

MaxArt by the Lenovo Design Team

Lenovo has a habit of turning concept laptops into real ones, and its vertical rollable is the proof. The ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable used a pair of motors to stretch a 14-inch screen up to 16.7 inches, and it launched from $3,499. MaxArt is the sequel, billed by Red Dot as Lenovo’s second-generation rollable laptop, led by designer Yang Peiyin with a nine-person design team. The brief pairs AI-powered productivity with expandable display technology and a transparent design that shows off the engineering. In the renders, the screen climbs out of the base like a periscope and leaves a tall, portrait-shaped canvas behind.

The closed laptop is the sneaky part, since its lid hints at a bright strip of screen showing the time. Open it up and you still get a ThinkPad-style keyboard with the red TrackPoint nub intact, which tells me Lenovo knows which details its fans would riot over. Anyone who has ever wished for just a few more lines of code or one more document window will see the appeal right away. The first generation proved the idea could survive a production line, so a second pass is a fair bet to sharpen it. MaxArt is still a concept, but it already has a shipping older sibling to vouch for it.

CX Microdot Tattoo Applicator by Ferdinand Kohle, Shaoyu Wang, Hemal Dias, and CipherX

Tattoo machines have buzzed the same way for over a century, and the sound alone keeps plenty of people out of the chair. Ferdinand Kohle, who has a needle phobia himself, founded London startup CipherX to fix that. The CX Microdot Tattoo Applicator is the handheld tool behind it, designed under Kohle with Shaoyu Wang and Hemal Dias. Red Dot says it enables precise, pain-free application while making tattoo creation more accessible, safe, and inclusive. Instead of a needle gun, a single-use patch of dissolving microneedles carries the pigment, and the applicator presses it into the skin.

In the photo, the applicator is a matte black grip shaped a bit like a flashlight, pressed against an upper arm while the other hand steadies it. Dutch microneedle specialist uPATCH built the internals, and CipherX shaped the exterior and the overall experience, so it looks calm rather than clinical. The patch stays on for about 15 minutes, then peels away, leaving a permanent tattoo behind. CipherX says the tiny needles don’t reach as deep as a traditional tattoo needle, which is why it doesn’t hurt. For now it’s a London affair, with trained staff applying small designs, so American needle-phobes are waiting on an expansion.

Smart Insulin Kit by James Melia and BLOND

Just before this, a tattoo applicator promises to take the sting out of needles, and the Smart Insulin Kit goes after the daily routine around them. People who take insulin often repeat that routine several times a day, usually with gear that looks like it escaped from a clinic. BLOND, the London studio founded by James Melia, set out to make something calmer. Red Dot calls it a connected insulin management system, pairing a smart pen, a multifunctional storage case, and an AI-enabled app to simplify dosing, treatment administration, and diabetes care. It’s still a concept, so nothing here is on a shelf yet.

Smart pens already exist, with the InPen launching in the US in 2017 to log doses and send reminders, but many still look like medical gadgets with an app bolted on. BLOND, ranked the top design consultancy in Europe and the Americas by Red Dot, treats pen, case, and app as one family. The render shows a brushed metal pen with a slim dose display next to a pale case holding four small tips, all in matching soft gray. The thumbnails add a charging tray and a hand pressing the pen to skin. It reads like a fountain pen set, which is a lovely way to carry a daily routine into public.

Ice Cream Cone-Shaped Yarn Packaging by Li Xingguo, Ding Zhiyong, and ShenZhen YUTO Packaging

Somewhere in a craft aisle, a row of yarn skeins has been handed waffle cones and told to look delicious. ShenZhen YUTO Packaging, led by Li Xingguo and Ding Zhiyong, turned ordinary balls of yarn into scoops of lemon, blueberry, and strawberry, and honestly, I want a double. Red Dot says the design pairs playful aesthetics with practical function, thanks to one-sheet forming construction that gives you tangle-free dispensing, secure storage, and sustainable packaging in one integrated design. Yarn’s biggest crime is turning into a bird’s nest the moment you look away, and this cone politely refuses to let that happen.

Each cone wears a waffle diamond pattern, and a little paper band arches over the scoop like a handle, with lettering running along it. The kraft brown with pastel yarn is the exact color pairing of a summer afternoon, minus the sticky fingers. Everything folds from a single sheet, which is a very tidy way to be eco-friendly. The thumbnails show the cones lying down with bright stitch markers spilling out, so the cone keeps doing its job long after the yarn is gone. Soft serve for knitters has no calories and no brain freeze, and I’m already picking a flavor.

Bloomy by Qiu Qi and the Dalian Minzu University and Beijing City University Team (Peter Zec Prize Winner)

The Red Dot: Peter Zec Prize honors designers under 30, and this year it went to a camping stove shaped like a flower. Bloomy comes from a student team at Dalian Minzu University and Beijing City University, led by Qiu Qi with faculty advisor Kong Hao. Red Dot describes a portable stove inspired by a blooming flower, with a modular design that shifts between compact storage and stable cooking configurations. In the lead image, four black petals splay from a central stem topped with a knurled knob, like a flower that learned to hold a pot. I did not expect to call a camp stove pretty.

Camp stoves live with a permanent trade-off, because packing small wants everything folded and stable cooking wants everything sprawled. Bloomy settles it with petals that fold in until the whole thing becomes a smooth capsule, then open out into a wide, steady base. A woven cord wraps the stem for texture, and the matte black finish gives it the look of a gadget a gear nerd would keep on a desk. The Peter Zec Prize is the Luminary’s counterpart for young designers, which makes Bloomy the top Next Gen concept of the year. Next time my ramen goes wrong outdoors, I’ll blame the chef instead of the flower.

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