When people talk about augmented or mixed reality, they most likely imagine strapping bulky visors to their heads and blocking their eyes. Although that is definitely the primary way to experience an immersive fusion of the physical and the digital, mixed reality actually goes beyond living in virtual worlds or seeing apps floating in front of you. You could, for example, point your smartphone somewhere in the real world and see a glimpse of digital information through that small window. Limited as that experience might sound, it can actually open up a whole new world to discover, especially if it allows children to learn more about the world they live in, giving them access to flora and fauna that they would have never encountered in the wild.
Designer: Junwoo Lim
To a child’s eyes, the world is both magical and mysterious, and that’s just for the things they can actually see. Our planet has a lot more treasures and oddities than they could possibly imagine, but most of them are out of reach due to urban development and safety considerations. At most, kids can learn about them through books, videos, and other flat media that, while informative, lack the proper context that young minds need to truly appreciate the scale of these earthbound creatures.
Mono is a mixed reality device concept that unlocks that world and allows kids to not only learn but also enjoy discovering these nuggets of knowledge in a way that doesn’t take them away from their current environment. Using mixed reality technologies, the gadget overlays virtual creatures like insects and animals on top of real-world objects, making them look like they’re actually there on the roof or in your hand. This allows kids to see them in their proper scale, observe their natural movement, or even see them interact with each other, all while still having access to additional text information layered on top of this view.
The device comes in a design that looks like a toy magnifying glass, an object that has long been associated with exploration and discovery. Instead of a transparent lens, it has a camera on one side and a screen on the other. Theoretically, the user can put the screen close to their eye the same way they would use a real magnifying glass, though that raises questions about the safety of that method. The controls for the device are simple enough for a child to understand, including a single button for power and a slider for zooming in and out to understand the scale of the creature being observed.
The Mono concept design tries to fill in an educational need for kids to learn more about the world in a safe and engaging environment, but without weighing down their heads with headsets. It demonstrates how mixed reality can be more than just an entertainment medium or a productivity tool for adults, but something that kids can also benefit from. A magnifying glass design definitely carries that exploration vibe, though it’s questionable whether it’s an appropriate one given how kids are likely to put the screen right in front of their eyes.
If you’ve been keeping tabs on the tech industry in the past year or so, you’re bound to come across a new and probably alien breed of computers making rounds over the Internet. Whether or not you’re a gamer, it’s almost impossible not to at least see a glimpse of the likes of the hulking Steam Deck or the shapeshifting Lenovo Legion GO. These portable computers that are larger than smartphones but significantly smaller than laptops are popping up in places you least expect, and sometimes in designs you never imagined. They might sound like a passing fad, especially given how few there are from the major PC manufacturers, but these handheld gaming PCs actually play a crucial role in promoting a healthy and exciting future for an ailing PC market.
It might come as a surprise to some, but Valve’s Steam Deck is, technically speaking, not the first handheld gaming computer to launch in modern times. Even before Nintendo launched its monumental Switch console, a small manufacturer from China was already testing the waters of this very niche market. Game Pocket Devices or GPD started out with Android gaming handhelds but it took a big gamble with its first Windows product, the GPD WIN, in 2015. The clamshell design and mediocre specs of the literally pocketable computer made it feel more like a toy than an actual gaming device, but it laid the groundwork for that brand’s future foray into this nascent space.
And then the Nintendo Switch was born, rekindling the dreams of many gamers to be able to play anywhere they want and, more importantly, in any mode they desire. Unlike the Nintendo DS or the PlayStation Vita, the Switch supported multiple ways of playing thanks to its detachable Joy-Cons and docked mode, virtually combining handheld and home consoles in a single device. That said, the appeal only worked if you had Nintendo-exclusive titles you actually wanted to play, and so the desire to bring that same design and experience to other gaming platforms, particularly PCs, was born.
Although smaller manufacturers like GPD, AYANEO, and ONE Netbook, just to name a few, quickly jumped on the Nintendo Switch fever, it wouldn’t be until Valve joined the fray that people would start to take the idea of a handheld gaming PC more seriously. For gamers, especially PC gamers, the promise of being able to sit down (or stay standing up) anywhere and launch their favorite title was almost too good to be true. Truth be told, the Steam Deck’s success and popularity was almost like a miracle. The hardware was almost too mediocre, the design was large and chunky, and the Linux-based Steam OS was unfamiliar to the majority of Windows PC gamers. And yet two years later, the Steam Deck is still a household name that has many fans clamoring for a 2nd-gen upgrade.
Now we have a handful of handheld gaming PCs from different brands and different designs, with more coming in the months ahead. Their compact forms and relatively lightweight designs definitely endear them to gamers, but these users aren’t the only ones who benefit from this budding device category. In fact, the entire PC industry could stand to benefit from this wave, presuming other key players join the game long enough to make it matter.
Pushing the Boundaries
The most immediate impact that these handheld computers had on the rest of the PC industry was an increased focus on mobile processors, that is, the processors used for laptops. Of course, gaming laptops have existed for years now, but these portable yet bulky computers have always had the advantage of better and equally large cooling systems. Gaming handhelds, however, don’t have that luxury, so both silicon manufacturers and hardware designers have had to come up with ways to optimize performance while keeping thermals low. And what’s good for handhelds is naturally good for laptops that need to be slim and petite. The result: extra thin gaming laptops that almost don’t look like they’re gaming laptops.
A bit indirectly, it is also pushing competitors to further outdo each other. The Steam Deck uses a custom AMD processor which placed the chipmaker on the map, making it the preferred brand for all these gaming handhelds. It is only with the announcement of the MSI Claw A1M that Intel’s name even popped up, daring to enter a field where it has generally lagged behind without the help of graphics chips from AMD or NVIDIA. Early reviews don’t seem to favor Intel’s first attempt, but the pressure will help rouse the giant to pick up the slack and push its Arc graphics to the limits.
Whatever the brand or even the hardware, handheld gaming PCs are really challenging the status quo when it comes to balancing performance, power consumption, and heat generation. The compact form factor imposes many limitations while also focusing on the essentials. Any innovation born from this space will also help drive the development of larger computers like laptops and tablets, paving the way for slim, light, and efficient computers in the future.
Design Exploration
Handheld PCs also redefine the image of what a computer looks like. Most people can only imagine desktop towers, laptops, or even tablets, taking for granted that the term “computer” actually refers to a very wide range of devices and designs. In this particular case, it is introducing the idea of a computer that you can hold in your hand and use even without sitting down, pretty much like the pocketable computers we call “smartphones.”
But even within the handheld gaming PC market, we’re also seeing a variety of designs being explored as companies try to search for the perfect answer if one does exist. The design sported by the Steam Deck and ASUS ROG Ally is, of course, the most known, but the Switch-inspired Lenovo Legion GO and OneXPlayer X1 are also pushing the envelope of that form factor. And then there’s AYANEO’s numerous designs that are seemingly throwing everything at the wall to see which one sticks. It’s definitely an exciting time for designers to envision different ways to deliver a compact and portable computer, and hopefully, that train won’t be stopping anytime soon.
Of course, handheld gaming PCs are being made with gamers in mind, but they aren’t the only ones that can benefit from this form factor, at least not in the long run. Just like with gaming laptops, they have enough power to support almost any other computing need, from office work to system administration to even content creation. There is even a subclass of these handheld computers that are specifically designed to quickly connect to servers and other computers via ports that may seem archaic by today’s consumer standards.
Yes, you will probably need to connect some peripherals if you need to get some serious work done, but there are already people doing that anyway with their tablets and even their phones. These handheld PCs offer almost the same flexibility as laptops but with the added advantage of being able to use them in cramped spaces, including while standing up (if the design includes a more or less convenient keyboard). There’s definitely a lot of room and opportunity for innovation in this space to address more use cases beyond gaming, and handheld gaming PCs could very well be the start of a new design revolution in the PC industry.
Missed Opportunities
All that potential will be for naught if this handheld gaming PC trend fizzles out quickly. Although they’re still making a big splash, it’s not yet a stable market, much less a profitable one. PC manufacturers are also extremely cautious about jumping into the fray. It took two years after the Steam Deck before the first major PC brand jumped on board, and even then we’re still missing the likes of the Acer Predator, Dell Alienware, and Razer. Admittedly, it’s a risky business proposition and not as easy as, say, producing a smartphone, but without the presence of these big brands, the young market will die out sooner rather than later. That would definitely be a tragedy given how these handheld PCs have the potential to reinvigorate a PC market that has long been regarded to be dwindling, especially as desktops become almost as niche as these portable gaming computers.
Wireless earbuds, particularly the so-called True Wireless Stereo or TWS earbuds, have now become a common sight, in no small part thanks to Apple retiring the headphone jack and pushing the AirPods as a solution. These accessories come in different shapes and sizes, but the one common design they share is that the buds are enclosed in a container that acts as their charger as well. As any user of these tiny buds has experienced by now, both the buds and their are often exposed to dirt and grime that could become a health issue over time. Cleaning the earbuds themselves might be trivial, but when that dirt gets deep inside the case, the task becomes significantly more difficult. This concept tries to solve that problem by practically overhauling the charging case design, and it takes inspiration from the weirdest source to implement the strangest cleaning method.
Designer: Seungjae Lee
For TWS earbuds that store the buds’ stems vertically like with the Apple AirPods, the charging cases have a small and deep tunnel where dirt and bacteria can get in and fester. It’s not impossible to clean but it does take some effort, requiring you to really stop and use some tools to wipe the dirt deep inside. If only you could blow the dust and dirt away quickly when you need to, just like with many other objects you might have with you.
The Double Barrel Bluetooth Earbuds concept offers that convenience by turning the charging case into two hollow tubes with openings on both ends. The inspiration for this design was, apparently, a double-barrel shotgun, which is probably the last thing you’d expect to associate with non-violent wireless earbuds. As a visual embellishment, inserting and removing the earbuds would light up LEDs inside the barrel, as if you were shooting bullets.
For this to work, however, the buds themselves have to be straight, which would have been awkward to wear inside our ears. The concept proposes to make the tips foldable so they would take the form of typical earbuds that you can comfortably wear in your ears. And because of the double-ended opening, you can actually put in or remove the buds in either direction.
While the concept design is definitely interesting, it is based on the rather shaky premise that cleaning the earbuds case by blowing into them is actually a smart idea. Our breaths aren’t exactly clean and, more importantly, they also carry with them small saliva particles that could damage the charging contacts inside. And by keeping both ends open, the case would actually invite even more dirt and particles inside, making regular cleaning even more of a chore.
Apple has been pushing the iPads, particularly the iPad Pros, as the next wave of computing, practically replacing laptops for some of the common computing tasks, including content creation. Despite the rich variety of apps for these slates, however, there are still some software and work that can only be done on more powerful computers like Macs and MacBooks. And despite how Apple’s computers have long been loved by designers and artists, the company itself has made no tools to support these use cases, such as drawing tablets or even specialized controllers. That does leave the market wide open for manufacturers like Wacom and its drawing tables, but it also forces people to buy these products when they have a perfectly capable iPad with an Apple Pencil. That’s where Astropad’s latest product comes in, bridging the divide between Macs and iPads once again, but with a curious twist.
In a nutshell, Astropad Slate is an app that lets you remotely control a Mac using an iPad, Pro or otherwise. You can connect using Wi-Fi, a USB cable, or even Peer-to-Peer networking. Although an Apple Pencil would be nice, it isn’t exactly a requirement. With just your fingers, you can already control the Mac as if you were using a gigantic touchpad. That includes supporting gestures like pinching or two-finger scroll.
The Slate app really shines, however, when you involve an Apple Pencil, which is supported by most iPads nowadays. With this precise tool, you can not only hover over the user interface on the Mac, you can also turn handwritten scribbles into text, practically replacing the keyboard. Of course, creators, designers, and artists are more likely to utilize the app’s ability to turn the iPad into a drawing tablet, but one without a screen.
This would be similar to the older and cheaper drawing slates that some artists prefer for their distraction-free experience. It does, however, take a bit of getting used to because you won’t be looking at where your hand is going, unlike the analog pen and paper experience. That does help you focus more on what’s happening on screen and, at least for some, offers a more ergonomic position since you won’t be craning your neck downward.
For those that prefer a more “conventional” display tablet experience, Astropad does have its Studio that turns the iPad into something like a Wacom Cintiq and even has compatibility with Windows PCs. For all that power, however, Astropad Studio requires a $79.99 annual subscription, while this simpler Astropad Slate is a one-time $19.99 purchase only.
Although they look and seem like they’re made just for playing music, smart speakers are, of course, a lot more capable than simple wireless speakers. In fact, they were born to showcase the power of AI-powered smart assistants like Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple Siri, which is also why the speaker quality of the first generation of speakers left much to be desired. While controlling your devices and appliances using your voice felt almost magical, it also became quite tiring quickly, especially when you could do things faster using an app on your phone. That’s the reason why smart speakers with displays, a.k.a. smart displays, were born, and that design might finally be coming to Apple’s ecosystem, potentially bringing life back to stagnant waters.
It’s been a while since we’ve seen a new smart display coming from the major brands. The latest Amazon Echo Show last year is actually just an upgraded Echo Show 5. Google launched the 2nd-generation Nest Hub in 2021, though some might argue that the Google Pixel Tablet and its speaker dock actually fall under this category. After all, most of these smart displays do look like smart speakers with a tablet stuck on top of them.
Amazon Echo Show 10
Amazon Echo Show 10
That design might be coming to Apple’s smart home device category, thanks to clues found in the latest beta testing of tvOS 17.4. There is no direct evidence, of course, just a new device codenamed “Z314” that just happens to share some internal hardware with the iPad mini 6. The HomePod was actually discovered to already be running tvOS, which would have been weird if it didn’t eventually get some visual capabilities. Again, much of these are based on speculation, but the hints seem to be building up and pointing toward a spring 2024 reveal.
Google Nest Hub 2
Google Nest Hub 2
A HomePod with a touch screen, even just a 7-inch one as indicated by rumors, will offer a significant upgrade to people’s user experience. Although the HomePod already offers physical controls for quickly controlling music, anything else has to be done either through Siri or through a connected iPhone or iPad. The latter scenario, however, can cause additional battery drain to mobile devices, so a dedicated display will go a long way in making it more convenient to access Apple Home settings, media controls, and more. Of course, sticking a tablet on top of a HomePod isn’t the only possible design option available, as our very own Sarang Sheth explored in a piece that envisioned an aesthetic that matched Apple’s style more closely.
That said, it also isn’t certain how far Apple will go in what features it will provide on that screen. The likes of the Amazon Echo Show and Google Nest Hub offer video capabilities, though that has also been a thorny subject as far as YouTube is concerned. Apple is traditionally even more conservative in what it allows on its devices, so we can probably expect functionality limited to smart home control, FaceTime, and, of course, its own library of tunes and videos.
The number of foldable phones launching each year is slowly rising, suggesting that these former novelty items are here to stay. To manufacturers’ credit, the phones are getting more reliable and attractive, even if their prices are still prohibitive for most people. With more players in the market, it’s bound to become a somewhat livelier place, with brands putting their own spins or changing designs to match or challenge their rivals. It now seems, however, that the still niche foldable phone category is about to enter another tumultuous phase with new designs that could shake up the market and some companies throwing in the towel, leaving only a few designs to stick and stagnate.
Triple Folding Phones
The biggest and perhaps only reason for a foldable phone would be to provide a device that can be used as a regular phone when wanted but can transform into a tablet when you want more screen real estate. The current crop of foldable phones does meet those requirements, though almost barely. As tablets, they’re painfully tiny even compared to the already small iPad mini and some 7-inch slates. As phones, some designs make them awkward to use because of their narrow and tall external screens.
One possible solution would be to have a large screen that can fold in three parts, turning into a phone-sized slab, albeit probably a bit thicker than even today’s foldable phones. Samsung has, in fact, been working on such a design for years and it finally showed off a prototype two years ago. It turns out that it might even launch its first tri-fold phone slash tablet later this year.
This timeline is reportedly due to one of Samsung’s biggest rivals trying to make a move first. Huawei, who is rebuilding its empire in some markets, is rumored to be launching a foldable phone that transforms into a 10-inch tablet. Just for the title of being the “world’s first,” Samsung could be taking a big risk and making a leap of faith to get that triple foldable phone out the door quickly, even if it means repeating the mistakes of the first Galaxy Fold.
Stylus Support Inside and Out
One of the biggest draws of foldable phones is, of course, their big screens. They’re not just perfect for showing more content, but they’re also great for actually creating content. With tablets now being seen as productivity and creativity tools thanks to the iPad Pro, these foldable phones are truly powerful laptops you can fit in your pocket, at least in theory. Ironically, very few of the brands actually support such a use case with the right accessories. Even Samsung forces you to buy the S Pen Fold Edition if you want to scribble and doodle on your foldable phone like a notebook.
The newly launched mouthful that is the Honor Magic V2 RSR Porsche Design bucks the trend by actually including a stylus inside the box. Granted, the price of this limited edition would make you think it should include such an item, but you’re also paying for other luxuries at the same time. For example, you get two charging bricks instead of one. Some foldable phones other than Samsung don’t even advertise support for a stylus even if they’re capable of supporting one.
More interesting, however, is how the Honor Magic V2 RSR Porsche Design actually supports that active stylus not only on the large internal screen but also on the smaller cover screen. That one-ups even Samsung who is famed for its stylus-enabled Galaxy Note phablets, now sold under the Galaxy S Ultra brand. Honor is showing that such a set of features is possible, and it could lead to a long-overdue trend in the foldable smartphone market, presuming there’s still one in the next few years.
Design Monoculture
One of the reasons why the foldable phone market seems to have stabilized a bit is because of the number of players now in the ring. Of course, you have Samsung and Huawei leading the charge, but now you also have Xiaomi, OPPO, Vivo, Tecno, OnePlus, and Honor in the running. Unfortunately, there are whispers that two of these are bowing out of the race, and their absence could actually have an indirect though significant negative impact on foldable phones as a whole.
Those rumors claim that both OPPO and vivo are calling it quits in the foldable market. The cited reason is not exactly surprising, with both brands suffering significant losses in foldable phone sales last year and they don’t believe they can throw in more resources to recover. It’s unknown at this point whether OnePlus will also be following its cousins, though there’s a real possibility that these manufacturers will pull out sooner rather than later.
While that indeed sounds like a win for Samsung and Huawei (and Honor), it might not actually be good for the entire market in the long run. Competition often breeds innovation, with these brands pushing each other to develop new designs and features at every turn. With only two contenders, each with their own separate kingdoms, there might not be enough incentive to push the boundaries, leading to stagnation and eventual death of the market.
Of course, there’s still no confirmation that OPPO and Vivo are indeed making an exit strategy, but it does paint a picture that isn’t as rosy as these brands try to paint. Even with the popularity of clamshell-style foldables and with new models coming out year after year, actual sales might actually reveal a very different and less encouraging situation. Given the way technology is developing, foldable and rollable displays will eventually be a staple of tomorrow’s devices, but that doesn’t mean the market won’t experience a few flops first along the way.
Laptops are becoming powerful beasts that could almost match the computers sitting on top of our desks, but if there’s one thing they still can’t do is offer the same connectivity options as those towering boxes. You can only fit so many ports into a laptop without marring its slim profile, and some manufacturers have even started removing all but the small USB-C ports for the sake of aesthetics and weight. It’s a compromise imposed by current design restrictions, but it’s far from the ideal solution. If those restrictions are lifted, it might be possible to come up with a better design, like this concept for a laptop that still has a plethora of ports but can keep them out of sight when not in use.
A laptop’s purpose is primarily to offer computing power you can carry around with you and use anywhere, at least as long as it has some battery left. For most purposes, a laptop already has everything it needs to get the job done, but with the growing complexities of modern work, you will inevitably find yourself connecting some peripherals, such as an external storage drive at the very least. This is especially true for laptops that are used as “portable desktops” at work where you’d usually plug in a monitor, keyboard, mouse, and other accessories and then pull them all out when it’s time to leave.
Those connectivity ports give laptops their flexibility, but they also mar what would otherwise be a beautiful pristine design. You can minimize their effect with smaller USB-C ports, but you also make users’ lives complicated as Apple learned the hard way. A design that hides those ports while still making them available when needed is almost a pipe dream, at least if you only apply common conventions. This concept, however, thinks outside the box to come up with a solution that actually hits two birds with a single stone.
Commissioned by Fujitsu, this laptop concept employs a retracting mechanism to hide and then deploy ports inside a rectangular tube that sits underneath the laptop near its rear. It still has one USB-C port exposed for quick access, but all other connectors are still within easy reach once the inner bar slides out. That tube also functions as a riser to keep the keyboard at a more ergonomic angle.
The concept design uses a black and red motif to match Fujitsu’s official colors, but it’s not hard to imagine other designs being used as well. As interesting as the concept might be, it does also leave a few concerns unaddressed. The first would be the technical implementation of such a retractable design, especially when it comes to durability as well as the arrangement of electronics inside. More importantly, however, it also locks the laptop at a fixed angle determined by the riser tube, and unless it’s detachable, it also adds a somewhat unattractive protrusion to the laptop’s profile.
Although there were plenty of rumors and high expectations, it was still a bit of a miracle that Google came out with a foldable phone. After all, it didn’t exactly hold tablets in high regard, so a phone that transforms into one would have probably been even less within Google’s radars. Of course, that’s now history with the launch of the Pixel Fold, Google’s first and so far only foldable, which turned out to be quite popular, especially with its design. It turns out, there was a slim possibility that the Pixel Fold could have turned out very differently and looked more like Samsung’s design, at least based on a prototype that is now running over the Internet.
Designer: Google (via Mishaal Rahman)
Phone manufacturers go through numerous prototypes before settling on a final design, especially when the device is rather new or unconventional. That’s true for seasoned brands like Samsung, and even truer for the likes of Google, and a device codenamed “jumbojack” was spotted nearly four years ago as Google’s foldable prototype. Now that name has become a real device, at least based on what is allegedly that very same prototype device which happens to be a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2.
This “jumbojack” foldable doesn’t look like a custom prototype made by Google but an actual Galaxy Z Fold 2 that has been repurposed to run “stock” Android stripped of Samsung’s branding. It’s pretty much a quick and easy way for Google to test its Pixel user experience on a foldable without having to go through the trouble of assembling a prototype. That said, the final flavor of Pixel is quite different since it was designed to work on a foldable with a distinctly different form factor.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2
The prototype does raise the question of whether Google actually considered following in Samsung’s footsteps to adopt a design that was already in use for a few years by that time. That meant that it would have used a design that resulted in a narrower external display, a squarish unfolded shape, and possibly a gap at the hinge when folded. Perhaps it was for the best that it went the other way and used a design more similar to the OPPO Find N, which was wider, a little smaller, and also a bit more comfortable to hold.
Then again, the “jumbojack” prototype might have simply been used to test the software without committing to the device’s design. Unfortunately, there are now rumors that Google might actually be heading towards Samsung’s direction for the Pixel Fold 2, along with a camera design that’s sure to cause some controversy. If anything, this alleged prototype only proves that there is still plenty of room for improvement in the foldable phone design space, but recent rumors are already painting a rather bleak future in that regard.
While all furniture needs to be stable, chairs and other seating furniture need to meet two requirements. They have to be stable enough to hold the weight of the person sitting on them, but they also have to be comfortable to encourage or even tempt those people to use them. Then again, there are some seats that seem to actually discourage lounging around, adopting a design that’s purely utilitarian and sufficient for a brief rest of a few minutes. However, there are chairs that were designed with comfort in mind but fall slightly short of that goal. This stool, for example, is undoubtedly quite useful, space-efficient, and probably even sustainable, but it might have slightly missed the mark in one of its core use cases.
The stool looks simple enough at first glance, with a tall box for a base and two plain boards forming the actual seat as well as a backrest. The latter element puts this design somewhere in between a typical stool and a chair, though the narrow area and absence of arms put it more in the category of a stool. Either way, it’s clearly designed for sitting, but it also does more than that.
The base of the stool has a rack for holding reading materials, either magazines or a few books. This small detail makes the design better suited for places where such an activity is conducive, such as a library, a lobby, or a common area in offices or schools. Of course, you can also place it around your home and it won’t even take up too much space because of its tall and narrow structure.
The Chair 025 design concept, however, has one trick up its sleeve. The seat can rotate 360 degrees, allowing you to actually face any direction you prefer without having to move the chair itself. That said, you might not be able to swing around so easily because your legs will hit the corners of the “stall” or base. Instead, you will just be swiveling back and forth, which could be the goal to induce a little blood circulation even while you’re sitting, although that still runs the risk of injuring your legs if you’re not careful.
The design’s low backrest can also be a point of contention, given it doesn’t exactly provide enough support and could even lead to injury or accidents if you forget that it doesn’t completely go all the way up. For a stool that seems to encourage sitting for long periods of time to read, the potential discomfort is a little counterintuitive. The economy of design and potential for using sustainable materials, however, do make the Chair 025 concept a candidate for cramped spaces and budget-constrained owners.
Humanity has produced no small number of tools and objects over the course of history. Some have evolved to become the tools we use today, while others have almost faded into the background, remembered and illustrated only in history books. While these items of the past may no longer serve a practical purpose today, they could still serve as a stepping stone to inspire the designs of tomorrow. This collection of three everyday products, for example, takes a few pages from the form and even the function of these old objects, creating an atmosphere of wonder and curiosity, while also giving a few visual clues that connect us to our distant past.
Designers: Dami Seo, Dohui Kim, Dong Kyun Kim
Fire-lit lamps may have once been the only way that people could see in the dark of night, but these are not only impractical today, they’re also fire hazards. That said, there’s a certain romantic charm to the shapes and curves of these kerosene lamps, an emotion that the DIDIM_Stand Light tries to replicate with modern technology. The tall floor lamp imitates the style of a lamp dangling from a metal bar, but here the lamp is a battery-powered LED lamp that you can remove and use independently of the rest of the structure. The lamp’s two-piece stand and the wavy cantilever are meant to resemble a person holding such a lantern in olden times.
A bucket-drawn well is almost an iconic image in many historical or fictional settings that depict periods before an industrial age, and this old contraption has come to symbolize not only life that comes from water but also the routines of life in those ages. Today, we use clocks to mark those routines, and the DIDIM_Alarm Clock combines these two concepts into a miniature well that will hopefully make you feel less annoyed when it wakes you up in the morning. Instead of a basket, the “well” has a bell that rises from within when it’s time to sound the alarm. It isn’t a real bell, however, and has a speaker inside to do the work. Amusingly, you have to hit the bell in order to silence it.
A little bit more obscure is the DIDIM_Tray, inspired by old grinding stones that people used to prepare grains and beans for cooking. Instead of grinding things, however, turning the “pestle” handle deploys the fan-shaped trays that have compartments for your phone, your pens, and your earbuds. When you’re done using it and don’t want the circular tray to take up space, simply turn the handle in the opposite direction to transform it into a decorative for your desk or table.
These might be mundane objects you can find in anyone’s home, but giving them a bit of a flavor not only enhances their appearance but also changes the atmosphere around them. And you don’t even have to think hard of designs that will capture your visitors’ attention. By simply looking at our past and appreciating the designs that have come before us, we can already bring a unique visual and tactile experience to these everyday products, while also helping us make a connection with the past.
