Author Archives: Ida Torres

When Paper Does the Heavy Lifting: Sunology’s Storey Packaging

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Most of us don’t give packaging a second thought. It arrives, we tear it open, and it goes straight into the recycling bin or, less nobly, the bin under the sink we keep telling ourselves we’ll sort through on a weekend. But every once in a while, a piece of packaging stops you mid-unbox and makes you think: someone really cared about this.

The Storey Battery by French solar tech company Sunology is a compact home energy storage unit, the kind that quietly stores power from your solar panels or the grid and releases it back when you need it most. It can run household appliances through an outage, reduce your electricity costs, and help you step a little further away from grid dependency. Plug-and-play clean energy, designed for the person who cares about both good design and their electricity bill. Swedish industrial design firm Propeller Design handled both the product and its packaging, and if you’ve seen the Storey itself, you already know this is a studio that doesn’t phone things in. The battery has soft, clean forms and an aluminum housing that belongs in a living room, not buried in a utility closet. It also won the BIG SEE Grand Prix 2026 Design Award, which feels entirely deserved.

Designer: Propeller Design

But the packaging is what I want to talk about, because the packaging is quietly extraordinary. The Storey weighs 30.5 kilograms. That’s serious weight for anything to withstand during shipping and freight, and for decades the default answer to that kind of engineering challenge has been foam, plastic, more foam, and maybe some more plastic just to be safe. Propeller went a completely different direction. The entire solution is fiber-based. No plastic. Not even a little bit.

They built the structure around strong honeycomb board, paperboard corner reinforcements, and paper straps. If you’ve ever seen honeycomb board in cross-section, you’ll know it’s deceptively capable. The cellular geometry distributes weight in a way that makes it genuinely strong, the kind of structural work that plastic foam has been quietly getting credit for all this time. The paper straps wrap around the battery unit like a considered branding detail rather than an afterthought, and one of them comes tagged with a small kraft card that reads “Reuse me!” alongside a clean line illustration of a cable. It’s a small gesture, but it signals the right values without making a speech about it.

I think what Propeller understood here, and what a lot of packaging designers still miss, is that sustainable materials don’t have to mean a downgraded experience. There’s a quiet assumption embedded in a lot of eco-friendly packaging that you’re trading aesthetics for ethics, that paper means compromise. This design challenges that directly. The unboxing feels deliberate and considered. The honeycomb cradles the Storey like it was made for it, because it was. The yellow straps against the pale, soft form of the battery are almost gift-like in appearance. It’s the kind of opening experience that justifies being filmed, which, in 2026, is not a small thing to say about any piece of industrial packaging.

The industry conversation around plastic-free packaging has been going strong for years, but execution still tends to lag behind intention. Companies announce pledges and deliver on them for products where plastic-free engineering is relatively manageable. Designing out plastic on a 30.5-kilogram product that needs to survive freight conditions across a global supply chain is an entirely different engineering problem, and Propeller actually solved it rather than simply worked around it.

The Storey battery is built for a future where home energy storage becomes a normal part of domestic life. It follows that its packaging should feel like it belongs in that same forward-thinking vision. Paper strong enough to carry 30 kilograms of clean energy technology is not a small design win. It’s a proof of concept, and one that the rest of the industry probably needs to study closely.

The post When Paper Does the Heavy Lifting: Sunology’s Storey Packaging first appeared on Yanko Design.

The Plywood Chair That Becomes a Castle in 2 Moves

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Plywood chairs are everywhere. You’ve seen them stacked in cafes, pulled up to dining tables, photographed on every other design account you follow. They’re functional, they’re affordable, and they’re largely forgettable. So when Irish furniture designer James Murphy sat down to create one for his university final project, the logical thing would have been to make something clean and well-proportioned and move on. Instead, he made a chair that unfolds into a castle, and now I can’t stop thinking about it.

The Casul chair is a children’s seat that, in just two moves, transforms into an abstract plywood castle with battlements, shelves, and enough narrative potential to fuel an entire afternoon. In its closed form, it has the neat, compact profile of a small throne. Flip the seat panels open, fold the legs out to the sides, and suddenly you have something that looks like a doll’s house crossed with a medieval fort. The panels that held the seat become shelves. The window cutouts in the backrest align with the fortifications. The whole thing opens up the way good architecture does: logically, inevitably, like it couldn’t have been designed any other way.

Designer: James Murphy

Murphy’s path to this project is worth noting. He began as a furniture designer, then did a work placement at Lego during university and came back with a new obsession. “Designing products for children is just really fun and rewarding,” he said. His final-year brief became a mission to marry both interests, and also to address something a lot of parents quietly worry about: how to pull kids away from screens without making it feel like a punishment.

The design references he leaned on are genuinely interesting. He looked back at post-war transformable children’s furniture, particularly Hans Brockhage’s Schaukelwagen from the 1950s, a rocking chair that flips into a toy car. That piece had a real ingenuity to it, born from an era when materials were scarce and cleverness was a necessity. Murphy borrowed the spirit of it but updated the logic entirely. The castle setting was a deliberate choice: gender-neutral enough for any child, open-ended enough for any game.

The engineering behind it is more nuanced than it looks. The jigsaw joints cut into the wooden seat panel interlock to keep the chair stable during use, but release easily to form the castle’s outer walls. Specialized friction hinges hold the opened panels at whatever angle the child wants, while also preventing fingers from getting caught. Triangular buttresses at the back keep the whole structure from tipping, and the combined weight of the piece means younger kids can’t accidentally knock it over. Murphy tested a remarkable number of hinge types to get the movement right. “I didn’t even know there were that many types of hinges,” he admitted, which tells you more about the obsessive detail of the process than any portfolio description could.

Two versions exist. One is finished in chalkboard paint, so children can redecorate the castle walls as often as they like. The other hides foam swords under the seat and cushions that convert into shields, the kind of detail that makes you realize this was genuinely designed with play behavior in mind, not just aesthetics. Both discoveries came partly from play-testing with real children. A girl who kept wanting to draw all over the clean plywood prototype was the reason the chalkboard version exists. The same test sessions turned the castle into a unicorn cafe, a besieged fort, and Bowser’s Castle from Super Mario, which is probably the most useful design feedback any furniture designer has ever received.

The Casul chair has since won one of the top prizes at London’s New Designers showcase, and it deserves the recognition. Good children’s design is harder than it looks, because the standards are unforgiving. Kids don’t pretend to like things. If a toy doesn’t hold their attention, it’s on the floor in ten minutes. The fact that Murphy’s chair passed that test, across multiple children and multiple imaginary worlds, tells you everything about how well he understood the brief.

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adidas Hyperboost Euphoria: The Foam That Outgrew the Track

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Performance sneakers have a habit of making promises they can’t quite keep outside of the gym. They arrive looking like they were engineered on a space station, and the moment you wear them to brunch, you realize the rocker sole is pushing you forward like you’re perpetually late for a sprint. adidas knows this tension well, which is probably why the Hyperboost Euphoria exists.

The Euphoria is the lifestyle sibling of the Hyperboost Edge, the performance running shoe adidas dropped in March. Where the Edge was built for the track, the Euphoria is built for the life you actually live, the one that involves a lot of walking, standing, sitting in cafés, and occasionally jogging for a bus. adidas pulled the same Hyperboost cushioning technology, the pebbled supercritical foam that made the Edge genuinely exciting, and reworked everything else around it. The midsole is carved out to save weight. The stance is wider. The heel extends out. The rocker is intentionally dialed back so the shoe doesn’t feel like it’s trying to propel you somewhere you didn’t ask to go. The result is a platform that is stable and grounded in a way that actually makes sense for daily wear.

Designer: adidas

The upper is where things get interesting from a pure design standpoint. A large TPU net structure wraps the sidewalls, giving the silhouette a kind of exoskeleton quality that reads as technical without being loud about it. The semi-transparent nylon material plays against the structured cage nicely, hinting at the construction underneath. adidas also swapped out the mountain logo on the tongue for the Trefoil, a small but deliberate move that signals exactly what this shoe is: an Originals product, not a performance one. It is the kind of detail that only obsessives notice, and yet it matters.

There is an argument to be made that adidas is exceptionally good at this particular move, taking foam technology born in performance and migrating it into lifestyle. The Boost lineage did it. The 4D midsole has done it. The Hyperboost is following that same arc, and it makes sense commercially and creatively. If you develop something genuinely good, you eventually want it to live in more places.

The Euphoria has also already been spotted off the pitch on Jude Bellingham, Lionel Messi, and Pedri during the FIFA World Cup. That kind of high-profile visibility is not accidental, and it reinforces the positioning. adidas is clearly not treating this as a minor side release.

Colorway-wise, the launch lineup covers blue, black, and white, an all-black option, white and black, and a red that carries the same energy as the more expressive iterations. Bold but not chaotic, which tracks with the overall aesthetic of the shoe.

What I keep thinking about is how the sneaker market has recalibrated around comfort in a way that would have seemed overcorrected a decade ago. The chunky foam wave came, peaked, and landed somewhere permanent. Consumers who once wanted flat, minimal silhouettes are now completely comfortable in a stacked platform, and brands like adidas have gotten very good at making that stack feel intentional rather than excessive. The Hyperboost Euphoria does not feel like a compromise between performance and lifestyle. It feels like a shoe that was designed for exactly where it ended up.

Ilka Liebmann, VP of Design Footwear at adidas Originals, described it best: the shoe was created for those who embrace a sport-inspired lifestyle, people who prioritize spontaneity, comfort, and energy, and let movement lead them. That framing is a little aspirational by nature, but it is also accurate to the product. The Euphoria wears confidently. It does not demand context. You could pair it with technical trousers or track pants or denim and the shoe holds its own across all three.

adidas has made a genuinely considered thing here, and it lands at a moment when the performance-to-lifestyle pipeline feels more refined than ever.

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LEGO Just Built the X-Files Set Every ’90s Fan Always Wanted

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During the mid-’90s to the early 2000s, all my friends knew that you couldn’t disturb me on Thursday nights because I was glued to my television set, watching The X-Files. I was so absorbed in the series’ mythology, the strange cases of the week, and all things alien during those years, even though I lived in a country where those monsters didn’t really exist (we had our own monsters, of course). Thinking about that era brings a certain sense of nostalgia and a longing for those kinds of TV series in this age of streaming.

If you’re of that certain generation, then this newest LEGO build birthed from the Ideas factory would make you absolutely delirious. For those unfamiliar, LEGO Ideas is a fan-first initiative where enthusiasts submit concepts that, once they gain enough votes and approval, become officially produced sets, and The X-Files Set #21369 is one that clearly earned its place. This almost 1,500-piece set lets you relive those days when we went on vicarious adventures with the unconventional FBI Agent Fox Mulder and the smart but skeptical Dr. Dana Scully, and all the aliens and monsters they encountered along the way.

Designer: LEGO

This set, which is obviously meant for grown-ups given its scale and subject matter, features three distinct scenes. You have a detailed replica of Mulder’s iconic basement office, a forest clearing scene straight out of one of their paranormal investigations, and a hovering UFO to complete the eerie atmosphere of the build. You can display the office and the forest separately, or put all of them together as one grand set. And if you act quickly, purchasing the set between August 1–10, 2026 will also net you a bonus Scully’s Lab set, a recreation of the classroom lab at the FBI National Academy, complete with a Scully minifigure in her lab coat and scrubs.

The set includes eight minifigures that will be instantly familiar to faithful viewers of The X-Files. Aside from Mulder and Scully, of course, you have their beleaguered boss Assistant Director Walter Skinner, the infamous Cigarette-Smoking Man, the mysterious informant Mr. X, villainous henchman Alex Krycek, one of their classic monsters-of-the-week The Flukeman, and a grey alien. There are also several Easter eggs and authentic details packed into the build, including the “I Want to Believe” poster, a “The Truth Is Out There” tile, pencils stuck in the ceiling and sunflower seeds (two of Mulder’s most iconic habits), and an X-Files dossier.

What makes this set even more special is its origin story. The X-Files (21369) was chosen as the winner of LEGO’s “Build Your Nostalgia – 90s Throwback!” fan design challenge, meaning this build began as a dream submitted by a devoted fan before making its way to store shelves. It’s a love letter from one generation of fans to another, and that passion clearly shows in every carefully crafted detail. Even Gillian Anderson herself got in on the fun, starring in a cinematic mini-film reveal where she essentially steps into Scully’s shoes one more time, uncovering the LEGO set brick by brick.

Just thinking about building such a set brings me back to the days when I would eagerly devour everything I could about The X-Files universe, the fan sites, the collectibles, the episode guides dog-eared from obsessive rereading. This LEGO Ideas build would definitely appeal to big nerds (and I mean that lovingly) and anyone who appreciates the insane attention to detail given to this trip down nostalgia lane. At $199.99, it’s an investment, but for a set of this caliber, packed with character, memory, and the kind of Easter eggs only true fans will catch, it feels absolutely worth every cent. Whether you’re building it solo on a quiet weekend or proudly displaying it on a shelf, The X-Files LEGO set is a beautiful reminder that the best stories never really leave us. The truth is out there, and apparently, so are the bricks.

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Pittsburgh Just Built the Most Beautiful Pickleball Courts in America

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The floor is the canvas. That’s the premise behind Geometry of Play, Sharmistha Ray’s new public art installation at Arts Landing in downtown Pittsburgh, and it might just be the most quietly radical thing to happen to both art and sport this year.

Ray, an artist, writer, and educator born in Kolkata and raised in Kuwait before settling in the United States, has always worked in the language of vibrant geometric abstraction. Their paintings draw from South Asian visual traditions, including kaleidoscopic mandalas and architectural ornamentation, filtered through a lens of queerness, migration, and belonging. It’s rich, layered work. So when the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust commissioned Ray to create a mural across three pickleball courts for their inaugural public art program at Arts Landing, the choice wasn’t arbitrary. They needed someone who understood that abstraction isn’t just decoration. It’s meaning.

Designer: Sharmistha Ray

Geometry of Play is made up of large-scale murals painted directly onto the playing surfaces of three 22-by-40-foot pickleball courts, making them the first artist-designed pickleball courts in the entire country. Interlocking circles, triangles, and grids move across the pavement in bold, saturated color. Up close, it reads like a painting you’d frame and hang in a gallery. From a drone view, it’s something closer to architecture, or maybe a quilt, or a mandala. All of those things at once.

What strikes me about this project is how well it understands its context. Pickleball is famously communal. It’s not a solitary sport of stoic concentration. It’s loud and social and a little chaotic, and the people who love it tend to love it deeply. Ray’s work doesn’t ignore that energy; it amplifies it. The mural creates a constantly shifting visual and physical experience as players move across the court. The geometry doesn’t sit still. It responds to motion, to foot traffic, to the unpredictable choreography of the game itself.

That’s a pretty smart relationship between art and function, and I’ll be honest: I think it puts a lot of conventional public art to shame. So much public art, especially the kind installed on flat, horizontal surfaces, tends to feel like an afterthought. A logo. A pattern that exists to fill space without challenging it. Geometry of Play actually does the opposite. It treats the court not as a site that needs decorating but as a site that can carry meaning, even while a game is being played on top of it.

Ray is also a founding member of Hilma’s Ghost, a feminist artist collective, and currently teaches at Carnegie Mellon University. That connection to Pittsburgh runs deeper than a single commission, and you can feel it in the work. This isn’t a project that was parachuted in from another city. Geometry of Play is part of a larger program featuring 23 works by 10 artists, all commissioned for Arts Landing. It’s part of something being built slowly, intentionally, in one place.

The installation debuted during Picklesburgh, Pittsburgh’s beloved annual festival, in July 2026. But the courts aren’t going anywhere. They remain open for public use, which means people will be playing pickleball on top of a painting for years. I find that genuinely exciting. Art in a museum demands a certain mode of attention: quiet, reverential, scheduled. Art on a pickleball court demands nothing. It just shows up where life already is.

Ray has said that they treat abstraction as “a spatial and cultural gesture of joy, inclusion, and shared encounters across identities, generations, and modes of seeing.” That framing matters. Geometry of Play isn’t trying to be monumental. It’s trying to be present, in the middle of things, where people are actually gathering and moving and having fun. We talk a lot about making art more accessible. Most of the time, that conversation stays theoretical. Sharmistha Ray just painted it onto the ground and said: here. Come play.

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This $13,130 Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra Has Messi in 24K Gold

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The World Cup is officially over and some people are still having a well-documented hangover from the 39-day football tournament. While Argentina failed to win their fourth star, the GOAT Lionel Messi did manage to break several records in the 2026 edition after winning the 2022 crown. What makes this all the more memorable is that it is probably the 39-year-old’s swan song from representing his country after a tumultuous and memorable stint for the national team.

If you want to have something to keep your memories of Messi in an Argentina jersey alive and you have $13k lying around, this special edition Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra from Caviar is something for you. Aside from the exquisite design that comes with the phone, the device was listed and shown on the Caviar website nearly a week before Samsung officially unveiled their new device, so that means some of the features were “accidentally” leaked through the images on the product page.

Designer: Caviar

Leaks aside, if you’re a true football and Messi fan, you probably wouldn’t notice that, as you’ll be focused on how beautiful the luxury custom phone looks. Messi’s likeness in an Argentina jersey is handcrafted onto the phone using the intricate, centuries-old technique of cloisonné enamel, rendered in the traditional blue-and-white colors of the Albiceleste. Elements like the frame, key contours, Messi’s iconic number 10 jersey, national symbols, and framing details are highlighted with 24k gold.

To make it even more official looking, you get official badges like the FIFA badge for Argentina’s 2022 World Cup-winning run, the Adidas logo, and the official national crest. It also comes with custom packaging, as it is encased in a royal blue custom box with 24-karat gold plating and a signature Caviar Key. Of course, with all these details, you can’t expect this to be cheap. The $13,130 price tag is 5x the expected price tag of the yet-to-be-officially-announced Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra. And even if you have $13k to spend, there will only be 19 pieces available, so you’ll have to be early to shell out that money.

What’s particularly impressive is that Caviar didn’t just slap Messi’s face on a phone and call it a day. The luxury atelier has built a reputation for transforming high-end devices into genuine works of art, and this piece is no exception. The cloisonné enamel technique used here is the same method found in fine jewelry and ancient decorative arts. It involves painstakingly separating colored enamels using thin metal wires before firing them at high temperatures. The result is a vivid, jewel-like finish that no digital print or laser engraving could ever replicate. Holding this phone feels less like holding a gadget and more like cradling a piece of history in the palm of your hand.

That sense of history is exactly what makes this edition so compelling. Messi’s journey with the Argentine national team has been nothing short of a rollercoaster, from heartbreaking World Cup final losses to the ultimate redemption in Qatar in 2022. Watching him grace the global stage one final time in 2026 was an emotional farewell that millions felt deeply. This phone captures that entire arc: the number 10, the Albiceleste colors, the World Cup crest, all immortalized in gold and enamel.

For collectors, the rarity factor alone is enough to justify the price. Only 19 units will ever be made, which means this phone will likely appreciate in value over time. Think of it less as buying a smartphone and more as acquiring a limited-edition sculpture that also happens to fold in half. And with storage options ranging from 256GB up to 1TB, the Samsung Z Fold 8 Ultra underneath the artistry is still a powerhouse device worth using, if you can bring yourself to take it out of the box.

Whether you’re a die-hard Messi fan, a tech enthusiast with a taste for the extraordinary, or a collector hunting for the next great statement piece, the Caviar Lionel Messi Samsung Z-Fold8 Ultra checks every box. It is, quite literally, 24-karat iconic.

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SAM Might Be the Most Human Thing Samsung Has Finally Built

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Most conversations about aging and technology eventually circle back to the same frustrating gap: the tools we build for older people rarely feel like they were designed with older people in mind. They’re functional, clinical, and often carry the visual language of a hospital supply catalog. SAM, a concept robotic mobility aid designed by David Webber for Samsung, feels like a direct response to that problem, and it’s the kind of design thinking I genuinely want more of.

At first glance, SAM looks like it belongs on a near-future film set. The rounded, cloud-white body, the articulating arms, the small expressive face-like display on top. But spend a little more time with it and the aesthetics start to make sense in a very deliberate way. Webber didn’t want SAM to read as medical equipment. He wanted it to feel like a companion, something you’d actually invite into your home and not hide in a corner when company comes over.

Designer: David Webber for Samsung

What SAM does differently from most mobility aids is where the real story lives. A standard walker or rollator solves one problem: moving from point A to point B. SAM looks at the fuller picture of what daily independence actually requires. Picking up a dropped object from the floor. Carrying groceries from the door to the kitchen. Helping someone rise from a chair safely. These are the small, invisible tasks that quietly determine whether an older adult can continue living alone or not, and they are almost entirely absent from the current conversation around mobility technology.

The concept is built around the idea of physical AI, the notion that artificial intelligence should operate in the physical world in a way that supports human capability rather than overriding it. SAM doesn’t take over. It doesn’t assume. The user stays in control, and the technology fills in the gaps, which is a harder design problem than it sounds. Building something that assists without patronizing, that helps without making a person feel like they’ve surrendered something, requires a kind of empathy that most tech doesn’t bother with.

I’ll be direct: the design of SAM is one of the more thoughtful things I’ve seen come out of a Samsung concept in a while. The color options, soft greys and muted sage greens, feel intentional. They’re domestic. They say “living room” rather than “rehab facility,” and that distinction matters enormously for user dignity and adoption. Nobody wants to use a tool that announces their limitations to every visitor who walks through the door. SAM seems to understand that.

The arms and end-effectors are worth a close look too. The gripper design is specific enough to handle real objects but rounded and soft-looking enough not to feel threatening. The integrated display sits at a natural eye level when someone stands and grips the handles, showing simple information like time, a to-do list, and device status. It’s thoughtful UX layered into an already thoughtful form.

Is SAM a product you can buy right now? No. It’s a concept, a vision piece, and it should be taken as one. But the best concept designs do something important: they shift where the conversation is pointed. Right now, too much of the assistive tech space is focused on reactive solutions, devices that help after a fall, after a diagnosis, after independence has already started to erode. SAM is proposing something more proactive. It’s asking what support looks like before the crisis, and that’s a question the industry desperately needs to sit with.

What I hope designers, healthcare companies, and tech brands take from SAM is not the specific form but the underlying philosophy. That independence isn’t just about mobility. That dignity is a design requirement, not a bonus feature. That the people who need the most thoughtful design often receive the least considered version of it. If SAM pushes even one conversation in that direction, David Webber has done something genuinely worth paying attention to.

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Tesla Dropped a $225 Kids Bike That’s Already Worth $8,000

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When Tesla drops something new, the internet tends to spiral. Sometimes that’s deserved, sometimes it’s a little much. But I’ll say this: the Tesla Balance Bike for Kids landed last week and the reaction makes complete sense to me, even if the bike itself is a little absurd.

Let’s set the scene. On July 16, Tesla quietly added a balance bike to its official shop, priced at $225. It’s designed for children between two and five years old, features a lightweight magnesium frame, five adjustable seat heights, and the Tesla wordmark stamped on the side with the signature “T” logo on the front. No pedals. No motor. No battery. Just a very sleek, very branded piece of equipment for a toddler to scoot around on. It was sold out within days, and eBay listings are already floating around for as much as $8,265. Yes. Eight thousand dollars. For a children’s balance bike.

Designer: Tesla

I want to be clear that the bike itself is not a bad product. A magnesium frame is genuinely impressive at this price point and for this type of product. Magnesium is lighter than both aluminum and steel while still being structurally solid, which actually matters a lot when a two-year-old is trying to figure out how gravity works. Balance bikes work because children push themselves forward with their feet and learn to steer and stabilize before ever touching a pedal. Weight is the enemy of that process. A lighter frame means less frustration and a faster learning curve, so using magnesium here is not just a styling choice; it is a practical one.

The five adjustable seat heights are another smart detail. The bike is supposed to grow with the child across those early years rather than becoming obsolete the moment your kid hits a growth spurt. At $225, you’d expect it to last at least a few seasons, and the design accommodates that.

But here’s where I start to have mixed feelings. The design language is unmistakably Tesla. Clean, minimal, slightly futuristic, and built around the brand as much as the product itself. That’s fine for adults who’ve chosen to invest in the Tesla ecosystem. For a toddler, the “T” logo on the front doesn’t mean much yet. So who is this bike really for? I’d argue it’s mostly for the parents. It’s a lifestyle object dressed up as a children’s product, which isn’t necessarily wrong, but it’s worth naming. That’s also the reason it sold out so fast and why resellers are already treating it like a limited sneaker drop. The product value isn’t just in the magnesium frame or the adjustable seat. It’s in the logo. And a lot of people clearly want that. That’s not a criticism. Brand value is real, even when it takes the shape of a toddler’s first bike.

For $225, the bike lands at a premium relative to average balance bikes on the market, which typically run anywhere from $50 to $150. You’re paying a significant markup for the branding, and I don’t think Tesla is hiding that. The product doesn’t pretend to be competing with generic options. It knows its buyer. That kind of confidence is either admirable or a little audacious depending on where you’re standing. If you’re a Tesla owner, or even just a Tesla fan, this bike makes total sense as a purchase. The design is clean, the materials are quality, and it’s the kind of thing that photographs beautifully next to a Model Y in the driveway. That’s part of the pitch, whether or not it’s stated outright.

For everyone else, I’d say the bike is a perfectly fine product at a price you’re paying partly for aesthetics and partly for the story of handing your two-year-old something built by the same brand as their parent’s car. Is that worth $225 to you? That’s a personal call. Shipping is expected to begin in late August. If you missed the initial drop, you’ll either have to wait for a restock or politely decline to spend eight thousand dollars on eBay.

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After 14 Years, LEGO’s SpongeBob Is Back and Fully Grown Up

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The last time LEGO released a SpongeBob set, most of the people who grew up watching the show were still in school. That was 2012. A lot has changed since then, and apparently, so has LEGO’s understanding of who actually wants to spend an afternoon building Bikini Bottom.

The LEGO Icons SpongeBob SquarePants: Bikini Bottom (set 11386) opened for pre-order on July 14, 2026, with a September 1 release date, and it is emphatically not a kids’ set. The matte black box, the 18+ label, 1,794 pieces, a $219.99 price tag. LEGO is speaking directly to the adults who spent their Saturday mornings watching SpongeBob annoy Squidward and never really stopped finding it funny. I think that’s a genuinely interesting creative bet.

Designer: LEGO

The set is a cross-section display of Conch Street, the fictional neighborhood that anchored most of the show’s iconic early episodes. SpongeBob’s pineapple house comes with a living room and bedroom. Squidward’s Easter Island head has a living room, bedroom, bathroom, and a rooftop lounge (very Squidward). Patrick’s rock has a detailed interior, which is almost funnier than any deliberate joke in the set, because Patrick’s house was famously nothing but sand and a TV. Rounding things out is a Jellyfish Fields scene. The whole display measures about 21 inches wide and under 10 inches tall, which means it can sit on a shelf without completely taking over a room.

The character lineup does not disappoint. SpongeBob, Patrick, Squidward, Gary the Snail, and DoodleBob are all accounted for, along with props like Squidward’s clarinet and music stand, the boatmobile, and a portrait of Gary. For anyone who has seen those early seasons more times than they’d like to admit, these details feel less like features on a spec sheet and more like inside jokes rendered in brick.

Now, the price. $219.99 for 1,794 pieces works out to roughly 12.3 cents per piece, which sits on the higher end even within the LEGO Icons range. That number is dominating most of the early conversation around this set, and it’s a fair point to raise. LEGO has been leaning hard into the adult collector market over the past several years, and that shift has come with a noticeable climb in price across the board. Whether Bikini Bottom is worth $220 depends entirely on how much weight you put on nostalgia, and that’s a question only you can answer.

One additional note worth flagging for collectors: the set uses stickers for some of its graphic details rather than fully printed parts. At this price point, that tends to be the kind of decision that bothers dedicated fans significantly more than casual builders. It’s worth knowing before you pre-order.

What the set gets right is tonal accuracy. LEGO had to make real decisions about how to translate SpongeBob’s deliberately absurd, almost surrealist visual language into physical bricks, and from what’s visible, they leaned in rather than softening anything. The pineapple looks like the pineapple. Patrick’s rock looks like Patrick’s rock. The set doesn’t try to reframe SpongeBob as something more sophisticated or collector-worthy than it is, and that commitment to staying true to the source material is probably the most important thing it does right.

The LEGO Icons line has spent the last few years building out a library of sets designed to function as display objects with personal significance. The Simpsons. The Botanical Collection. Hogwarts. SpongeBob belongs in that conversation in a way that might have seemed unlikely a decade ago but makes complete sense now. The show premiered in 1999, meaning its core audience is solidly in their 30s and actively spending money on things that connect them back to the culture they grew up with. That’s not nostalgia bait. That’s just an audience that has always been there.

Pre-orders are open now, exclusively at LEGO.com. The set ships September 1, 2026.

The post After 14 Years, LEGO’s SpongeBob Is Back and Fully Grown Up first appeared on Yanko Design.

Kodak Just Made a $35 Film Camera That Replaces Disposables

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There has been a proliferation of various kinds of cameras in the market, driven by a growing demand for nostalgic and analog devices. While some of them look analog, they’re just retro-styled gadgets that still capture digital pictures. But there’s also a market segment producing actual film cameras, with varying levels of complexity and expertise required to operate them.

For those looking for a simple point-and-shoot film camera, the Kodak EC35 is a reusable 35mm film camera that lets you explore analog photography effortlessly. It bridges the gap between the carefree convenience of a disposable camera and the longevity of a proper reusable one. Think of it as the spiritual successor to the once-popular single-use camera, but this one is built to last and designed to grow with you.

Designer: Kodak

While there’s room for analog cameras that let you play around with various settings, lenses, and focus options, there are times when you just want a film camera that’s simple enough to point and shoot. The Kodak EC35 is one such camera that removes the usual complexities of film photography and lets you load, shoot, rewind, and enjoy the process without any hassle. Whether you’re a complete newcomer to film or simply someone who wants a grab-and-go option for everyday adventures, the EC35 fits the bill perfectly.

True to its beginner-friendly promise, the EC35 is a fully focus-free camera equipped with a 25mm, 2-element optical-grade acrylic lens fixed at an f/10 aperture, which means there’s no adjusting, no guessing, and no fussing over focus. The shutter speed is set at a fixed 1/100s, keeping things consistent and reliable every time you press the shutter. A built-in electronic flash handles low-light moments, powered by a single AA alkaline battery. Film transport is handled manually through a satisfying wind and rewind mechanism, a small ritual that serves as a reminder that there’s something special to look forward to at the end of each roll. A simple optical viewfinder sits above the lens, keeping the entire interface clean and intuitive.

Measuring just 119mm wide, 65mm tall, and 41.5mm deep, and tipping the scales at only 102 grams, it’s genuinely light enough to slip into your pocket or tuck into the tiniest of bags, no camera bag required. It also features the iconic slide cover to protect the lens, a nod to beloved retro camera designs that delivers a satisfying, tactile feel and adds a distinctly vintage appeal. In a world dominated by digital photography, there’s something undeniably charming about carrying a film camera that looks, feels, and shoots the part. It’s the kind of camera that fits seamlessly into your everyday routine rather than demanding a special occasion.

The Kodak EC35 comes in seven different colorways, specifically Midnight Black, Vanilla White, Butter Yellow, Lavender, Powder Blue, Blush Pink, and Avocado Green. Whether you lean toward bold and moody or soft and dreamy, there’s a shade for every personality. The wide color range also makes it a surprisingly thoughtful gift for anyone who is curious about film photography but doesn’t quite know where to start.

The Kodak EC35 shoots on 35mm film with a 25mm, f/10, 2-element optical-grade acrylic lens and a fixed shutter speed of 1/100s. It is fully focus-free and comes with a built-in electronic flash, a manual wind and rewind film transport system, and a simple optical viewfinder. The camera runs on a single AA alkaline battery and weighs just 102g (3.6 oz), with dimensions of 119(W) x 65(H) x 41.5(D) mm. It is available in 7 colorways and is priced at $35.

Available on its own or as a bundle that includes a camera strap and a 24-frame roll of Kodak Ultramax 400 film, the EC35 is one of the most accessible entry points into analog photography today. Note that a battery is not included, but at just $35 for the camera itself, that’s a small price to pay for a device that makes real film photography available to virtually anyone. For beginners, collectors, and anyone who simply loves the look and feel of a film camera, the Kodak EC35 makes a compelling and wallet-friendly case for going analog.

The post Kodak Just Made a $35 Film Camera That Replaces Disposables first appeared on Yanko Design.