Author Archives: JC Torres

These Perforated Marble Blocks Create Shifting Light Patterns

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Stone decor tends to be heavy, polished, and a little intimidating, the kind of thing you place once and never move. Light changes in a room all day, from sharp morning angles to warm late-afternoon spreads, but most stone decor doesn’t respond to any of it. The idea that a piece of stone could feel different at different times of day doesn’t come up often in furniture or object design.

Denys Sokolov’s ZEROS collection, manufactured by MUZ STONE, a Ukrainian company known for stone processing and creative design, starts from a different premise. “Zeros are forms shaped by absence,” the collection states, and the openings across each marble block soften the weight of the object, letting light, air, and shadow become part of its design. “In their simplicity, they reveal that even the smallest void can transform the whole,” which is a surprisingly accurate description of what these pieces do in a room.

Designer: Denys Sokolov

The perforations aren’t decorative in the usual sense. Repeated voids give the object its rhythm and character, and they shape not only the form itself but also the shadows around it. Standing at a slight angle, the grid of holes reads as a pattern of overlapping light and dark ovals. Move a little and the composition shifts. Repetition creates a rhythm that is both structured and organic, which is a difficult balance to strike in stone, a material that usually communicates permanence and rigidity more than fluidity.

These pieces play with the tension between mass and lightness, solidity and transparency. The marble is real and heavy, but the voids introduce a visual porousness that makes the whole thing feel less like a block and more like a porous, breathable presence. Even the smallest opening shifts how the eye reads the overall weight, which is the point the collection keeps returning to.

When lit from within, the openings create distinct light patterns in the surrounding space, and the effect changes depending on the angle, distance, and intensity of the light source. That turns any of the pieces into a quiet ambient light source, not a bright lamp, but a patterned glow that makes nearby walls and surfaces feel textured without adding visual clutter or another device to the room.

The pieces can hold a single stem or branch through one of the openings, making them functional as minimal vases when you want them to be. They also work on their own without needing anything inside, and different sizes can be clustered together so the grid-like rhythm becomes more architectural, a small group of perforated blocks that feel more like a landscape than a collection of objects sitting near each other.

ZEROS doesn’t try to fix a problem or optimize a category. These forms engage with their surroundings, responding to changes in light, movement, and perspective, and they’re not static, each moment revealing a new composition. Carving emptiness into marble is a quiet way to make a heavy material feel surprisingly alive, which is harder to do than it sounds and more satisfying to live with than most stone decor that just sits there looking expensive.

The post These Perforated Marble Blocks Create Shifting Light Patterns first appeared on Yanko Design.

Peak Design’s Phone Straps Have a Built-In Swivel to Stop Twisting

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Most phone straps are fine until they twist, tangle, or feel like they’ll snap the first time you grab your phone in a hurry. The market has always split between fashion-first and function-first, rarely landing both at once. The phone has become the center of daily carry, but the strap category still feels like an afterthought that nobody took seriously enough to do properly.

Peak Design’s Mobile Straps are quick-adjusting, low-profile, comfy, and durable, built around the new Micro Anchor connection system. The line treats the phone strap like camera gear rather than a decorative loop of fabric, designing for how straps actually behave when you’re moving and constantly reaching for your phone. Micro Anchor handles the attach-and-remove part intuitively, with a built-in swivel to prevent the twisting that makes most straps annoying within a week.

Designer: Peak Design

The Mobile Crossbody Multi-Strap is the carry hub option for days when pockets aren’t enough. A custom-machined, anodized aluminum carabiner locks shut and holds up to three Micro Anchors, so your phone can share the strap with keys, a wallet, or a small point-and-shoot camera. The basket-woven nylon and poly rope balances strength, padding, and stretch, so the whole setup sits comfortably across a shoulder without digging in.

The Mobile Crossbody Strap is the cleaner, lower-profile option for days when you just want your phone secure and accessible without extra hardware clinking around. Two connection points keep the phone stable and prevent it from spinning mid-stride, which is the main reason most lanyards feel unsatisfying in practice. It converts to single-point carry when you want a more minimal setup, making it flexible enough to shift between carrying preferences without swapping straps.

Mobile Cuff is the smallest piece in the family, and the one you’d barely notice until you actually need it. The rope cinches onto your wrist if the phone slips, and an aluminum stopper lets you set a minimum loop length so it doesn’t flop around. Shooting photos one-handed, walking with a coffee, or loading groceries are moments where a wrist loop quietly becomes the difference between relaxed and anxious.

The materials throughout feel like deliberate choices. Glass-reinforced nylon hardware handles quick length adjustments one-handed, the rope holds up to daily use, and the connectors are designed to be reconfigured without fuss. These are the details that separate straps you trust from straps you eventually stuff in a drawer.

Compatibility is handled via built-in strap connection points on Peak Design cases and Apple iPhone cases (17 and onwards), with a universal adapter included for third-party cases. That means you don’t have to commit to a new case to use any of them, which removes the usual barrier that comes with upgrading your phone carry setup.

The post Peak Design’s Phone Straps Have a Built-In Swivel to Stop Twisting first appeared on Yanko Design.

These Magnetic LED Blocks Snap Together Like LEGO Lighting

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Most lighting is still sold as fixed objects: a floor lamp for the living room, a task lamp for the desk, a strip for the TV, each designed for one spot and one job. That clashes with the way people actually live now, moving desks, rearranging rooms, switching from work to play in the same corner, while the lamps stay stubbornly tied to a single idea of the space.

LumiBlocks V1 is a magnetic RGBCW block lamp that treats light as something you build and rebuild. Instead of one rigid bar or panel, it is made from individual light blocks that snap together magnetically, power up as soon as they connect, and can be added or removed to match the length and shape your current setup needs, whether that is a short strip behind a monitor or a longer run along a wall.

Designer: Peter Wu (Decktok)

Click Here to Buy Now: $79 $149 (47% off). Hurry, only 9/27 left! Raised over $53,000.

Each block can rotate a full 360 degrees, so you aren’t locked into the direction the base is pointing. You can twist segments to throw light onto a keyboard, bounce it off a wall for a softer wash, or angle a few blocks down for a reading nook while others point up for ambient glow. The magnets handle alignment and power, which turns rearranging into a quick, almost fidget-like action rather than a wiring project.

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The blocks emit RGBCW LEDs that can handle both full color and practical white light. With ten blocks, you get up to 1,500 lumens, enough to light a small room, and you can tune the white from a warm 2,700 K to a crisp 6,500 K. That means the same strip can be a focused work light during the day, a neutral wash for video calls, and a low, saturated accent at night.

Control layers on top of the physical system. Simple buttons when you’re standing next to it, an app when you’re on the sofa, and voice control through Alexa or Google Home when your hands are busy. The app lets you treat each block as its own pixel, adjusting brightness and color per segment, or you can lean on the 49 built-in scenes and music-reactive modes when you just want the room to feel different with a tap.

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LumiBlocks V1 is not locked to one mounting style. With the right kit, the same blocks can sit on a desk as a low ambient bar, hang on a wall as a linear sconce, or drop from the ceiling as a pendant. Because the system runs on low-voltage DC and talks over Bluetooth and 2.4GHz Wi-Fi, you’re mostly thinking about where you want light, not where the original lamp designer assumed you would put it.

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This shifts the way you think about buying lights. Instead of collecting separate fixtures for every corner, you start with a set of blocks that can follow you from apartment to apartment, desk to desk, and phase to phase. The magnetic joints, 360-degree rotation, RGBCW output, and per-block control turn LumiBlocks V1 into a kind of lighting toolkit, one that can keep up as your spaces and routines keep changing.

Modularity is not new, but LumiBlocks V1 executes it well, making the blocks easy to snap and rotate, the app intuitive enough to actually use, and the mounting options flexible enough that the same kit can cover a bedroom, office, and gaming corner without needing three separate purchases. For people who rearrange often or who want their lighting to feel as adaptable as their furniture, a system that you can literally pull apart and rebuild feels more honest than another fixed lamp pretending to be smart.

Click Here to Buy Now: $79 $149 (47% off). Hurry, only 9/27 left! Raised over $53,000.

The post These Magnetic LED Blocks Snap Together Like LEGO Lighting first appeared on Yanko Design.

This Wi-Fi Router Looks Like an Incense Burner and Scents Your Room

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Most home routers live behind books or plants, blinking away in corners, only noticed when the connection drops. There’s so much quiet faith placed in that invisible box every time we ask it for directions, answers, or late-night comfort while scrolling. If we already treat Wi-Fi like a kind of everyday oracle, maybe the hardware could look and behave more like an object we actually care about instead of just tolerating it.

innrou is a Wi-Fi router concept that resembles an incense burner and incorporates fragrance. It’s designed to go beyond spec sheets and become a small storytelling object, imagining the future form of electronic products. The name and form hint at traditional incense rituals, but the function is pure 21st century, keeping your devices online while quietly scenting the room with swappable essential-oil sticks.

Designer: Yuan Chen

The designer’s starting point is a neat cultural parallel. In traditional Chinese society, people would ask gods for guidance and answers, often by lighting incense at a burner. Today, many of us scroll the internet for the same things, from practical fixes to something closer to spiritual reassurance. innrou deliberately combines those two behaviors, using a router as the carrier for a story about how we now seek help.

The essential oil system reinterprets incense as modern fragrance sticks. You replace a spent stick by sliding in a new one, the same simple vertical gesture used at a temple. That motion deepens the narrative and adds a bit of playfulness, turning maintenance into a small ritual instead of an annoying chore, while the router quietly keeps doing its job underneath without asking for attention.

innrou is a small, rounded block that can sit openly on a desk, bedside table, or shelf without screaming “network gear.” The antennas are hidden, the front shows only a few status dots and a subtle logo, and the body comes in soft colors that match interiors. Instead of being something you hide, it becomes part of the atmosphere, both visually and through scent, which is a surprisingly big shift for a product category that usually defaults to black plastic.

Under the incense metaphor, this is still a proper router. There’s a row of Ethernet ports at the back, a power connection, and internal antennas doing the heavy lifting. The essential oil sticks are designed as replaceable cartridges with their own packaging, so the ecosystem feels thought through. It isn’t about chasing the highest throughput number but about making the necessary hardware less of an eyesore and maybe a bit nicer to live with.

A concept like innrou suggests that if a router can borrow the form and gestures of an incense burner, other invisible boxes could also become objects we actually want in the room, not just tolerate. Blending connectivity with scent and story reframes a forgettable device as a small daily ritual, which feels oddly appropriate when you already treat it like a modern oracle that knows where everything is and when everyone is awake.

The post This Wi-Fi Router Looks Like an Incense Burner and Scents Your Room first appeared on Yanko Design.

These Coffee Tables Have Up to 9 Clocks Showing Different Time Zones

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Coffee tables quietly witness mornings, late-night emails, and weekend calls with people in other cities. Time passes on screens and clocks on walls, but the table itself usually pretends it has nothing to do with any of it. It just holds mugs and magazines while the hours slip by unnoticed. There’s something interesting about furniture that builds time into its structure instead of ignoring it completely.

Michael Jantzen’s Timetables are a series of functional art furniture pieces designed to “celebrate the passage of time.” Four are coffee tables, and one is an end table, all made of wood, metal, and glass, with battery-powered clocks that you can access to change batteries and set the time. They’re meant to be used, not just looked at, even as they behave like small time sculptures.

Designer: Michael Jantzen

The cylindrical coffee table called Local Time has a single large clock embedded at its center under a glass top. It celebrates the local time of wherever it sits, turning the table into a kind of domestic sundial. Every mug, book, or laptop you set down hovers over that one reference point, a quiet reminder that this particular moment is anchored to this particular place.

Two pieces stretch awareness across a country. Four Times is a circular coffee table that carries four clocks, each set to Pacific, Mountain, Central, and Eastern time. Timeline takes the same four zones and arranges them in a long rectangle, like a horizontal strip of the US Both tables make sense in homes or studios that constantly juggle calls and deadlines across those zones.

The square end table called Clock Tower has a disc top and a central rectangular column that holds four clocks, one on each face, again set to the four U.S. time zones. It behaves like a miniature city clock tower pulled into the living room. Walk around it, and you see different times, a small physical reminder that even within one country, the day is staggered in four slices.

International Time is where the series goes global. A larger central clock is surrounded by eight smaller ones, all supported by a cone-shaped column. The center shows local time, while each smaller clock is set to a different major city around the world and labeled accordingly. Sit at this table, and you’re always aware that somewhere else it’s morning, or late at night, or already tomorrow.

Timetables shift clocks from wall-mounted afterthoughts into part of the surfaces you actually use. The restrained white forms, black clock faces, and clear glass tops keep the pieces calm enough for daily life, while the multiple time references quietly expand your sense of where you are in the day. It’s furniture that does what tables do, but also keeps you gently tuned to a wider, ticking world.

The post These Coffee Tables Have Up to 9 Clocks Showing Different Time Zones first appeared on Yanko Design.

This Owl-Shaped Controller Splits Into Two Pieces for Relaxed Gaming

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Late-night gaming sessions have a familiar rhythm. Shoulders creep up, wrists lock around a rigid gamepad, and the clock slides past midnight while you chase one more match or level. Gamers are stereotypically seen as night owls, but the controllers they use are still built like daytime office tools, fixed in shape and posture, demanding that your hands adapt to them instead of the other way around.

HELIX is a biomorphic controller concept that borrows its overall stance from an owl, symmetrical, balanced, and ready to move. It’s designed to come apart and fit back together easily, working as a single controller or as two separate pieces. The flexible shape is meant to follow how players actually sit and shift during long sessions instead of forcing one rigid grip that starts to ache after the third hour.

Designer: Radhika Shirode

In its unified form, both halves are joined by a small central bridge. The layout is familiar, analog sticks, face buttons, and directional controls where you expect them, but the wing-like grips curve down and out instead of forming a flat bar. That biomorphic curve lets your hands rest in a more natural position, which matters when you’re chasing one more match at two in the morning and don’t want to wake up with sore thumbs.

When HELIX comes apart, each half becomes its own lightweight controller, complete with stick, buttons, and triggers. You can lean back, drop your arms to your sides, or rest them on the sofa back, each hand holding a separate piece. That freedom to spread out reduces tension in shoulders and wrists, which is when night-owl sessions stop feeling like work and start feeling comfortable again.

The split design also makes it easier to share. Two people on a couch can each take a half for simpler games or asymmetric roles, without digging for a second controller. Passing one wing across the room feels more casual than handing over a full gamepad, and the shape encourages interaction instead of everyone hunching over their own device in separate corners of the room.

The focus on balance and lightness means each half is shaped to feel stable on its own, not like a broken piece of a larger object. The designer explored many silhouettes before landing on this owl-inspired form, where the grips echo wings, and the center reads like a small body. It’s a softer, more organic take on a category that often leans into sharp, aggressive lines and tactical branding.

The post This Owl-Shaped Controller Splits Into Two Pieces for Relaxed Gaming first appeared on Yanko Design.

Twist This Minimalist Side Table’s Handle, and It Becomes the Lamp

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Side tables and lamps behave awkwardly in small apartments. The drink and book migrate from sofa to armchair throughout the day, but the lamp never seems to be where you need it, and the cable gets dragged across the floor. Most furniture still assumes a fixed layout, even though habits are much more fluid, especially in spaces where the same corner has to function as office, living room, and dining area by Thursday.

Grab & Glow is a portable side table with a clever twist. Its legs pass through the tabletop and continue upward to form a single handle. That handle is the thing you instinctively reach for when you want to move it, so the table, light, and whatever is on top travel together instead of you juggling a tray in one hand and a lamp in the other while trying not to trip over the cord.

Designer: Liam de la Bedoyere

The handle is also the light source. You loosen a small bolt at the edge, rotate the handle, and a hidden light flicks on at the curved end. The same tube that makes the table easy to carry becomes an arm that throws a pool of light onto the surface below, so the gesture of settling in somewhere new and turning on the lamp is literally the same motion, one twist.

The tabletop is a powder-coated metal disc with a slight lip that keeps books and glasses from sliding when you move it. The finish is built for everyday use, resistant to scratches and rings, so it can live next to a sofa, bed, or reading chair without feeling precious or needing coasters. The circular footprint keeps it compact, which matters when you’re threading it between furniture or tucking it under a desk.

Integrated cable management means the power cord runs neatly down one leg, held by discreet clips, and can be wrapped when you need to tidy up. A small cut-out on the tabletop rim lets the plug or a charging cable pass through without getting pinched, so you can route power to the lamp or a laptop without a tangle, even as the table moves around the room throughout the week.

A day with Grab & Glow might start with it acting as a coffee perch in the morning, a laptop stand by the sofa in the afternoon, and then a reading light by the bed at night. The height and handle make it easy to lift without bending much, and the light always ends up exactly where your book or keyboard is because it’s attached to the same object you’re already carrying from room to room.

Grab & Glow treats a side table less like a static piece of furniture and more like a personal tool you carry around the house. By letting the legs pierce the tabletop to become a handle and lamp, and by quietly solving the cable problem, it shows how a single structural idea can make flexible living feel less improvised and more designed, one grab at a time.

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This Modular Console Changes Layout With Magnetic Snap-In Controls

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Modern creative desks are covered in controllers. A Stream Deck for macros, a MIDI controller for faders, a tablet for drawing, maybe a separate panel for color grading. Each tool is great at one thing but locks its layout in place, so switching from streaming to editing to design means mentally remapping controls or physically swapping gear, sometimes both when you’re already behind schedule.

Airttack One is a concept that imagines a single, modular slab that can become any of those controllers in seconds. Described as a “modular revolution,” it’s a minimalist device with a magnetic base that accepts different hardware modules, LCD screens, knobs, joysticks, and button clusters. You rebuild the surface for the task instead of living with a one-size-fits-all grid that only makes sense for one app.

Designer: Alberto Cristino, Mateus Otto (Prosper Visuals)

The base is a grid of circular sockets with power and data contacts. You snap in modules in whatever arrangement makes sense. A streaming session might use a central screen for scenes and chat, surrounded by buttons for triggers and a fader strip for audio. A video edit later that night swaps those for jog wheels, scrub knobs, and dedicated cut keys, each magnetically locked into place without tools or software reassignments.

The software side runs on a 1500-nit touchscreen that stays readable under studio lights. An iOS-inspired interface shows a grid of apps, and a third-party store extends what the hardware can do, from streaming overlays to DAW controllers to brush panels. Each app can push its own layout to the modules, so the same physical knobs and screens behave differently in Resolve, Ableton, or Blender without manual mapping.

Dual cameras with a LiDAR sensor hint at depth-aware capture, AR previews, or motion-tracked controls. The concept also references radio and network tools, which in creative terms could mean wireless camera management, multi-device streaming, or interactive installations. The hardware isn’t locked to one discipline. It’s a blank, magnetic canvas for whatever combination of inputs your project needs.

Airttack lives on a desk as a control surface during the day, then drops into a bag with different modules for an on-site shoot or live event. The industrial design stays low-profile and discreet, with metallic textures and magnetic connectors hidden under a clean grid, so it reads as a serious tool even when the layout is playful, full of knobs and joysticks for a VJ set or game stream.

Airttack One imagines hardware catching up to the way creative software already works: modular, layered, and context-aware. Instead of buying a new controller every time your workflow evolves, you rearrange the same base, load a different app set, and keep going. Whether or not this exact device ships, the idea of a shape-shifting creative console that molds itself to your projects feels overdue when most of us already juggle three controllers that could have been one.

The post This Modular Console Changes Layout With Magnetic Snap-In Controls first appeared on Yanko Design.

Stern Built a Pokémon Pinball Machine Where Ramps Catch Pikachu

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Pokémon and pinball both taught a certain generation about progression: one through turn-based battles on a handheld, the other through flashing inserts and modes on a noisy table. Licensed pinball can feel lazy when it just slaps art on a generic layout. Stern’s Pokémon machine tries to do something harder, turning the actual structure of a Pokémon adventure into mechanical play instead of just plastering Pikachu on the backglass and calling it done.

Stern Pinball’s Pokémon pinball machine is a full-size, modern table built around a colorful playfield with ramps, targets, and toys, including a big Poké Ball, an animatronic Pikachu, and Team Rocket’s Meowth-shaped balloon. An LCD screen handles animations and story beats. The promise is simple: catch and train Pokémon, take on Gym Battles, and thwart Team Rocket with flippers and a silver ball instead of button presses.

Designer: Stern Pinball

Each game starts by dropping you into a random biome, forest, water, mountain, or desert. Shots in that zone correspond to discovering, catching, and training Pokémon partners, so hitting the right ramps feels like walking through tall grass or surfing a route, just with more noise and steel. Clearing tasks in a biome is how you move the story forward, not just how you chase a score.

Team Rocket shows up as trouble. Certain sequences trigger a Team Rocket encounter, where you protect Pokémon during a frantic multiball, keeping multiple balls in play while the table tries to steal your partners. Once you’ve done enough in a biome, you unlock a Gym Battle against a rival party, a more focused mode that feels like a boss fight mapped onto drop targets and ramps.

Clearing all the biomes’ Gym Battles opens the door to the Pokémon Arena, a final stage that pulls everything together. There’s even a path to face Giovanni, Team Rocket’s boss, reserved for players who can keep control long enough to see deep into the ruleset. That layered structure gives casual players something to do immediately and gives pinball regulars a long arc to chase over many sessions.

Stern is offering Pro, Premium, and Limited Edition versions, all sharing the same core rules but scaling up mechanical and cosmetic detail. The Pro is the workhorse you’re likely to see in arcades and bowling alleys, while Premium and Limited Edition add more elaborate toys, lighting, and trim for home buyers and collectors who want the full treatment in a dedicated game room.

This machine sits between generations: kids who know Pokémon first and adults who know pinball first. By using biomes, catches, Gyms, and Team Rocket as the spine of the rules, Stern has built a table that feels like a physical remix of a familiar journey rather than a billboard with flippers tacked on. It’s a branded pinball experience that respects both the game and the license, offering something that can earn its keep in a lineup instead of trading on nostalgia until everyone gets bored.

The post Stern Built a Pokémon Pinball Machine Where Ramps Catch Pikachu first appeared on Yanko Design.

TEAC’s Turquoise Bluetooth Turntable Is a One-Time Color Drop

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Turntables have crept back into living rooms as much for how they look as for how they sound. The usual palette is black boxes, silver arms, maybe a walnut plinth if you’re lucky. A record player sits in the open on a sideboard or media console, so it has to pull double duty as a hi-fi component and visual anchor, something you notice even when it isn’t spinning.

TEAC’s Special Edition Turquoise Blue TN-400BTX is a manual belt-drive Bluetooth turntable that takes the existing TN-400BT-X platform and wraps it in a glossy turquoise lacquer. It’s a limited-run finish on a high-density MDF plinth, meant to be a one-time color drop rather than a permanent SKU, which immediately nudges it into “object you choose on purpose” territory instead of just another black box.

Designer: TEAC

This deck in a bright apartment would catch light under a clear dust cover while a record spins. The turquoise plinth pushes it away from anonymous gear into something closer to a mid-century accent piece, the kind of thing you notice even when it isn’t playing. It’s still a serious turntable, just one that isn’t afraid to look a little joyful when most vinyl gear pretends color is beneath it.

Under the paint sits the same proven hardware. The TN-400BTX uses a three-speed belt-drive with a die-cast aluminum platter and a low-resistance spindle riding in a brass bearing for stable rotation. An S-shaped static-balanced aluminum tonearm with adjustable counterweight and anti-skate carries a pre-installed Audio-Technica AT95E MM cartridge, so you can drop the needle straight out of the box and upgrade later if you want.

The built-in phono EQ amplifier uses an NJM8080 op-amp to boost the tiny signal from the stylus without a lot of distortion. That means you can plug the deck straight into a line-level input on an amp or powered speakers, or switch to phono out and use an external stage if you’re picky. Gold-plated RCA jacks and a ground terminal round out the wired side without getting fussy.

The wireless trick is simple but useful. A Bluetooth 5.2 transmitter with SBC, aptX, and aptX Adaptive lets you send your records to Bluetooth headphones or speakers with better quality and lower latency than basic SBC. Pairing is handled with a single button and LED, so you can go from spinning a record through a traditional system to a late-night headphone session without moving the turntable.

This special edition doesn’t touch the mechanics or electronics; it just dresses them in a color that feels more like a mood than a spec. The turquoise lacquer, aluminum hardware, and clear cover turn a competent analog-plus-Bluetooth deck into something you might build a room around. A limited-run splash of color on solid hardware is worth considering when most turntables hide in black, and you actually want to look at the thing while it works.

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