Tag Archives: Fashion

Ultrahuman Ring PRO’s 15-Day Battery Removes the Main Reason to Quit

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Most wearables make a generous promise: that daily wear will eventually help you understand your body better. In practice, though, many end up on a nightstand by Tuesday because the battery died or the data was too much to decode. The market for health wearables has grown quickly, but the friction hasn’t cleared as fast as the feature lists have gotten longer.

Smart rings have been one answer to that problem. They’re smaller, quieter, and don’t ask for your attention the way a smartwatch does. Ultrahuman’s Ring PRO is the company’s third-generation take on that idea, and it comes with a compact Mini Charger built around the same philosophy. Together, they’re designed to make health tracking feel like something running in the background rather than a habit you have to maintain.

Designer: Ultrahuman Healthcare Ltd.

Click Here to Buy Now: $399 $530 ($131 off). Hurry, only 1737/2005 left! Raised over $447,000.

A big part of that comes down to battery life. The Ring PRO offers up to 15 days on a single charge, roughly three to four times what most competing smart rings manage. That means fewer interruptions during long trips, consistent overnight tracking without data gaps, and no anxiety about a dead ring. The pocket-sized Mini Charger handles the rest, plugging in via Type-C and fitting easily into any bag. Utilizing the new UltraSnap Charging Technology, the Ring PRO magnetically clicks into place, removing the stress of trying to aim for perfect alignment. The charger also generates less heat while in use, thanks to an energy-efficient mechanism.

The ring sports a unibody titanium build, using the same fighter jet-grade material that has defined the Ultrahuman Ring from the beginning, keeping it lightweight yet durable enough for continuous wear. It’s water-resistant to 100m, so showers, swims, and more demanding water activities don’t require taking it off. It comes in sizes 5 to 14 and in four finishes: Bionic Gold, Aster Black, Space Silver, and Raw Titanium.

What sets Ring PRO apart, though, is a layer of real-time biointelligence called Jade AI. Rather than presenting raw data on a dashboard for you to decode, Jade reads across ring biometrics, blood biomarkers, and environmental data, then tells you what it all means for your health. It offers both quick answers for everyday use and a deeper research mode for tracking longer patterns and trends.

The core tracking covers the health signals most people care about: sleep stages, resting heart rate, HRV, body temperature, and daily movement. The Sleep Index and Dynamic Recovery don’t just score your rest or readiness; they aim to interpret those signals and adjust guidance as your body changes. The Stress Rhythm feature adds another layer by analyzing how your heart responds throughout the day against your circadian backdrop. Finally, Ultra Age can track how improving your lifestyle positively impacts your aging trajectory, giving you a competitive edge against time.

Beyond the basics, Ring PRO includes a library of more targeted health tools called PowerPlugs, precision micro-tools designed for highly personalized health insights. The Caffeine Window, for example, maps the best times for coffee against your recovery data and shifts your daily cutoff based on how well you slept. The Circadian Alignment tool tracks your body’s internal rhythm and flags when light, movement, or rest will have the most impact on energy and sleep quality.

The ring also adapts to different life stages rather than assuming everyone shares the same baseline. There are also dedicated modes for shift workers, new parents, and people with irregular schedules, where the scoring accounts for unconventional sleep timing and focuses on quality rather than rigid duration rules.

Women’s health is an extra strong focus for the Ultrahuman Ring PRO, and it goes beyond just covering cycle tracking, ovulation prediction, and logging symptoms. Cycle Flags, for example, offer insights that let women take a more proactive approach rather than just waiting for things to happen. With over 90% accuracy for ovulation confirmation, OvuSense Technology helps you understand your body better, whether you’re trying to conceive or navigating an irregular cycle.

Health tracking only works if you wear the device consistently enough for the data to build into something meaningful. Ring PRO’s combination of up to 250 days of on-ring storage, a dual-core processor with on-chip machine learning for speed, efficiency, and reliability, and a build designed for 24-hour wear makes a fairly pointed argument that the biggest obstacle between most people and better health data has always been friction, not features.

Click Here to Buy Now: $399 $530 ($131 off). Hurry, only 1737/2005 left! Raised over $447,000.

The post Ultrahuman Ring PRO’s 15-Day Battery Removes the Main Reason to Quit first appeared on Yanko Design.

Ultrahuman Ring PRO’s 15-Day Battery Removes the Main Reason to Quit

Posted on by

Most wearables make a generous promise: that daily wear will eventually help you understand your body better. In practice, though, many end up on a nightstand by Tuesday because the battery died or the data was too much to decode. The market for health wearables has grown quickly, but the friction hasn’t cleared as fast as the feature lists have gotten longer.

Smart rings have been one answer to that problem. They’re smaller, quieter, and don’t ask for your attention the way a smartwatch does. Ultrahuman’s Ring PRO is the company’s third-generation take on that idea, and it comes with a compact Mini Charger built around the same philosophy. Together, they’re designed to make health tracking feel like something running in the background rather than a habit you have to maintain.

Designer: Ultrahuman Healthcare Ltd.

Click Here to Buy Now: $399 $530 ($131 off). Hurry, only 1737/2005 left! Raised over $447,000.

A big part of that comes down to battery life. The Ring PRO offers up to 15 days on a single charge, roughly three to four times what most competing smart rings manage. That means fewer interruptions during long trips, consistent overnight tracking without data gaps, and no anxiety about a dead ring. The pocket-sized Mini Charger handles the rest, plugging in via Type-C and fitting easily into any bag. Utilizing the new UltraSnap Charging Technology, the Ring PRO magnetically clicks into place, removing the stress of trying to aim for perfect alignment. The charger also generates less heat while in use, thanks to an energy-efficient mechanism.

The ring sports a unibody titanium build, using the same fighter jet-grade material that has defined the Ultrahuman Ring from the beginning, keeping it lightweight yet durable enough for continuous wear. It’s water-resistant to 100m, so showers, swims, and more demanding water activities don’t require taking it off. It comes in sizes 5 to 14 and in four finishes: Bionic Gold, Aster Black, Space Silver, and Raw Titanium.

What sets Ring PRO apart, though, is a layer of real-time biointelligence called Jade AI. Rather than presenting raw data on a dashboard for you to decode, Jade reads across ring biometrics, blood biomarkers, and environmental data, then tells you what it all means for your health. It offers both quick answers for everyday use and a deeper research mode for tracking longer patterns and trends.

The core tracking covers the health signals most people care about: sleep stages, resting heart rate, HRV, body temperature, and daily movement. The Sleep Index and Dynamic Recovery don’t just score your rest or readiness; they aim to interpret those signals and adjust guidance as your body changes. The Stress Rhythm feature adds another layer by analyzing how your heart responds throughout the day against your circadian backdrop. Finally, Ultra Age can track how improving your lifestyle positively impacts your aging trajectory, giving you a competitive edge against time.

Beyond the basics, Ring PRO includes a library of more targeted health tools called PowerPlugs, precision micro-tools designed for highly personalized health insights. The Caffeine Window, for example, maps the best times for coffee against your recovery data and shifts your daily cutoff based on how well you slept. The Circadian Alignment tool tracks your body’s internal rhythm and flags when light, movement, or rest will have the most impact on energy and sleep quality.

The ring also adapts to different life stages rather than assuming everyone shares the same baseline. There are also dedicated modes for shift workers, new parents, and people with irregular schedules, where the scoring accounts for unconventional sleep timing and focuses on quality rather than rigid duration rules.

Women’s health is an extra strong focus for the Ultrahuman Ring PRO, and it goes beyond just covering cycle tracking, ovulation prediction, and logging symptoms. Cycle Flags, for example, offer insights that let women take a more proactive approach rather than just waiting for things to happen. With over 90% accuracy for ovulation confirmation, OvuSense Technology helps you understand your body better, whether you’re trying to conceive or navigating an irregular cycle.

Health tracking only works if you wear the device consistently enough for the data to build into something meaningful. Ring PRO’s combination of up to 250 days of on-ring storage, a dual-core processor with on-chip machine learning for speed, efficiency, and reliability, and a build designed for 24-hour wear makes a fairly pointed argument that the biggest obstacle between most people and better health data has always been friction, not features.

Click Here to Buy Now: $399 $530 ($131 off). Hurry, only 1737/2005 left! Raised over $447,000.

The post Ultrahuman Ring PRO’s 15-Day Battery Removes the Main Reason to Quit first appeared on Yanko Design.

No Vision Pro 2 Before 2028. Apple’s Focusing On Smart-Glasses Instead, says Gurman

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Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses sold over 7 million units in 2025, a number that would have seemed improbable two years earlier when the category barely existed outside enterprise pilots and conference demos. Google confirmed its own entry at I/O 2026, with Gemini-powered frames and eyewear partnerships with Warby Parker and Gentle Monster already in place. The market Apple is entering has already been legitimized by its competitors, which is an unusual position for a company that typically defines the categories it enters. All of that makes the N50, Apple’s first smart glasses, feel like a response to a race that started without it. The honest version of that story includes the fact that Apple’s engineers were busy building something else entirely.

The N50 is the product that absorbed the engineering resources originally aimed at a Vision Pro sequel. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman confirmed in May that no headset successor is in active development, and that the Vision Air, a cheaper model codenamed N100, was canceled last year to redirect talent toward smart glasses. Apple restructured the Vision Products Group, splitting engineers across hardware and software divisions, with many redeployed to the glasses program, to Siri, and to camera-equipped AirPods. The glasses carry cameras, microphones, speakers, and Apple Intelligence inside a conventional eyeglass frame with no display, no pass-through video, and no external battery, functioning as an iPhone accessory in the same way AirPods or Apple Watch do. A late 2026 reveal and 2027 commercial launch is the expected window, with analyst Ming-Chi Kuo projecting 3 to 5 million units shipped in the first year.

Designer: Oleh Koval

Four frame styles are in testing, two rectangular and two oval, built in premium acetate with colorways including black, ocean blue, and light brown (the images shown here are just a concept mocked up by designer Oleh Koval back in 2018). Apple initially experimented with embedding electronics into established eyewear brand frames, similar to Meta’s EssilorLuxottica arrangement for the Ray-Ban lineup, before moving toward designing its own frames in multiple sizes. Meta’s partnership gave the smart glasses category immediate cultural legitimacy because Wayfarers were already objects people wanted on their faces before any chip was inside them. Apple is betting its own design language in premium acetate can carry the same weight without borrowed heritage. Whether that holds against consumers who have already spent two years wearing Ray-Ban Metas is the sharpest design question the N50 faces at launch.

Two cameras are planned inside the frame: a high-resolution sensor for photos and video, and a second dedicated to computer vision tasks, helping the device read its environment and measure spatial relationships between objects. The N401, a custom chip derived from Apple Watch silicon, handles the compute with a design emphasis on ultra-low power draw, targeting a total frame weight below 50 grams. That weight target is the industrial design achievement the whole product depends on. A sub-50 gram device sits within the weight range of premium optical frames, which means the person wearing it makes a fashion decision first and a technology decision second. That ordering is exactly what the smart glasses category has needed to move beyond enthusiast territory into genuine everyday carry.

The M5 Vision Pro that arrived in October 2025 reads now as a holding action rather than a product commitment. The chip swap kept the SKU alive but left the device’s foundational problems untouched: 650 grams of front-heavy glass and aluminum, a mandatory external battery, and a $3,499 entry point that stranded it between developer hardware and enterprise curiosity. The Vision Air was supposed to address the weight and price simultaneously, and its cancellation signals that those two problems couldn’t be reconciled inside an enclosed headset on any timeline Apple found workable. A Vision Pro sequel won’t arrive before 2028, meaning it enters a market the N50 will have already spent a year conditioning. That sequencing is either very deliberate or very revealing, and I’d argue it’s both.

Pricing estimates cluster between $299 and $499, placing the N50 directly against the Meta Ray-Ban Gen 2. Privacy is a genuine competitive lever here: nearly 47% of potential smart glasses buyers cite data concerns, and neither Meta nor Google carries credible on-device processing as a core value proposition. Apple’s Apple Intelligence architecture, built around local compute rather than cloud offload, gives the company a story neither competitor can cleanly replicate. A second-generation model with an in-lens display is reportedly expected as early as 2028, which is also the window when enclosed headset technology might finally be miniaturized enough to make a Vision Pro sequel viable. The N50, by that reading, is the product Apple had to build before it could build the one it always imagined.

The post No Vision Pro 2 Before 2028. Apple’s Focusing On Smart-Glasses Instead, says Gurman first appeared on Yanko Design.

Zara and PlayStation Just Made Gaming Fashion Actually Cool

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Gaming and fashion have been flirting with each other for years, and most of the time, the results are predictable. Graphic tees with pixelated prints, oversized hoodies branded with controller icons, the kind of stuff you see at gaming conventions and immediately forget. So when Zara dropped a PlayStation capsule collection, my expectations were calibrated accordingly. Then I actually looked at it, and I had to reconsider.

For 2026, Zara released six PlayStation-branded pieces that sit somewhere between fan merch and something you’d genuinely pick up because it looks good. The lineup includes a wallet, high-top sneakers, a belt bag, and three distinct crossbody bags. Not a graphic tee in sight. As someone who’s watched the gaming-meets-fashion space produce some genuinely cringe-worthy results over the years, the restraint here is worth noting.

Designer: Zara

The star piece, at least from a conversation standpoint, is the PlayStation 30th Anniversary crossbody bag. It’s shaped like a PS controller, which sounds like it should be embarrassing, and yet it isn’t. The gray colorway keeps it from tipping into costume territory. It measures roughly 8.3 by 4.7 inches, just big enough to be functional, and comes with an adjustable and removable strap. The materials are standard Zara fare: polyamide outer shell, silicone accents, polyester lining. It retails for $32.90, which is the kind of price that makes impulse buying very easy to justify.

The PlayStation wallet follows a similar design language: a “PS” emblem against a black exterior, with a blue interior lined with card sleeves and pockets. PlayStation’s iconic triangle, circle, cross, and square symbols show up throughout the collection, and Zara was smart enough to let them do the heavy lifting without overdecorating everything else. Less is more is an obvious design principle, but it’s one that gaming merchandise consistently ignores. Zara mostly doesn’t.

The high-top sneakers in black are probably the piece I’d personally reach for. They have a lace-up closure, a back pull tab, and a rubber sole with an air chamber detail, nothing revolutionary in terms of construction, but the PlayStation branding is subtle enough that they read as a regular pair of fashion sneakers to anyone who isn’t paying close attention. That’s actually the point. The best pop-culture-inspired fashion pieces are the ones that don’t require you to announce what they’re referencing. They just exist in your wardrobe and let people figure it out.

It’s worth stepping back and understanding why this collection exists at all. PlayStation turned 30 in December 2024, and Sony spent much of the following year leaning into that milestone through partnerships with brands across fashion, design, and lifestyle. Zara, the Spanish fast-fashion giant, was one of the licensees granted the rights to design and sell PlayStation-themed products. The 30th anniversary bag generated real buzz on social media when it first appeared, with people on Threads and Instagram noting it was the kind of gaming merchandise they’d actually carry to a convention, or to brunch.

The broader context matters too. Sony is reportedly developing a new console and possibly a handheld, with speculation swirling about whether it’s going to be a hybrid device or two separate products. The PlayStation brand is being kept warm and visible across multiple categories while hardware fans wait for the next announcement. Fashion partnerships are part of that strategy, and they work best when the design side doesn’t get lazy.

Whether you’re a PlayStation fan or simply someone who appreciates a well-executed brand collaboration, the Zara capsule is worth a look. It doesn’t try too hard, and that’s its greatest asset. Gaming culture has spent decades trying to earn a seat at the fashion table. Collections like this one suggest the seat is finally being offered, not because gaming has changed, but because the rest of the world has caught up to how seriously people take it. The controller-shaped bag is genuinely fun. The sneakers are wearable. And the wallet might just be the most understated piece of PlayStation merchandise anyone has ever made.

The post Zara and PlayStation Just Made Gaming Fashion Actually Cool first appeared on Yanko Design.

Zara and PlayStation Just Made Gaming Fashion Actually Cool

Posted on by

Gaming and fashion have been flirting with each other for years, and most of the time, the results are predictable. Graphic tees with pixelated prints, oversized hoodies branded with controller icons, the kind of stuff you see at gaming conventions and immediately forget. So when Zara dropped a PlayStation capsule collection, my expectations were calibrated accordingly. Then I actually looked at it, and I had to reconsider.

For 2026, Zara released six PlayStation-branded pieces that sit somewhere between fan merch and something you’d genuinely pick up because it looks good. The lineup includes a wallet, high-top sneakers, a belt bag, and three distinct crossbody bags. Not a graphic tee in sight. As someone who’s watched the gaming-meets-fashion space produce some genuinely cringe-worthy results over the years, the restraint here is worth noting.

Designer: Zara

The star piece, at least from a conversation standpoint, is the PlayStation 30th Anniversary crossbody bag. It’s shaped like a PS controller, which sounds like it should be embarrassing, and yet it isn’t. The gray colorway keeps it from tipping into costume territory. It measures roughly 8.3 by 4.7 inches, just big enough to be functional, and comes with an adjustable and removable strap. The materials are standard Zara fare: polyamide outer shell, silicone accents, polyester lining. It retails for $32.90, which is the kind of price that makes impulse buying very easy to justify.

The PlayStation wallet follows a similar design language: a “PS” emblem against a black exterior, with a blue interior lined with card sleeves and pockets. PlayStation’s iconic triangle, circle, cross, and square symbols show up throughout the collection, and Zara was smart enough to let them do the heavy lifting without overdecorating everything else. Less is more is an obvious design principle, but it’s one that gaming merchandise consistently ignores. Zara mostly doesn’t.

The high-top sneakers in black are probably the piece I’d personally reach for. They have a lace-up closure, a back pull tab, and a rubber sole with an air chamber detail, nothing revolutionary in terms of construction, but the PlayStation branding is subtle enough that they read as a regular pair of fashion sneakers to anyone who isn’t paying close attention. That’s actually the point. The best pop-culture-inspired fashion pieces are the ones that don’t require you to announce what they’re referencing. They just exist in your wardrobe and let people figure it out.

It’s worth stepping back and understanding why this collection exists at all. PlayStation turned 30 in December 2024, and Sony spent much of the following year leaning into that milestone through partnerships with brands across fashion, design, and lifestyle. Zara, the Spanish fast-fashion giant, was one of the licensees granted the rights to design and sell PlayStation-themed products. The 30th anniversary bag generated real buzz on social media when it first appeared, with people on Threads and Instagram noting it was the kind of gaming merchandise they’d actually carry to a convention, or to brunch.

The broader context matters too. Sony is reportedly developing a new console and possibly a handheld, with speculation swirling about whether it’s going to be a hybrid device or two separate products. The PlayStation brand is being kept warm and visible across multiple categories while hardware fans wait for the next announcement. Fashion partnerships are part of that strategy, and they work best when the design side doesn’t get lazy.

Whether you’re a PlayStation fan or simply someone who appreciates a well-executed brand collaboration, the Zara capsule is worth a look. It doesn’t try too hard, and that’s its greatest asset. Gaming culture has spent decades trying to earn a seat at the fashion table. Collections like this one suggest the seat is finally being offered, not because gaming has changed, but because the rest of the world has caught up to how seriously people take it. The controller-shaped bag is genuinely fun. The sneakers are wearable. And the wallet might just be the most understated piece of PlayStation merchandise anyone has ever made.

The post Zara and PlayStation Just Made Gaming Fashion Actually Cool first appeared on Yanko Design.

McDonald’s-inspired Nike Book 2 bring Arizona Desert colors to your next everyday basketball sneaker

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Signature sneakers rarely manage to feel personal anymore. Most arrive overloaded with athlete branding and colorways engineered more for resale culture than everyday wear. Devin Booker’s Nike Book 2 collaboration with McDonald’s takes a surprisingly different route. Instead of leaning into fries-and-burgers nostalgia, the sneaker pulls inspiration from one of Arizona’s oddest landmarks — the turquoise-arched McDonald’s in Sedona — and turns it into a basketball shoe that feels more rooted in place than corporate crossover hype.

At first glance, the Nike Book 2 “Sedona” barely resembles a McDonald’s collaboration at all. The sneaker trades loud fast-food colors for sandy beige uppers, dusty earth tones, and soft turquoise accents inspired by the famous Sedona McDonald’s location, which swapped its golden arches for turquoise ones to better blend with the city’s iconic red rock surroundings. It’s the kind of hyper-specific regional detail that could have easily become gimmicky, but Booker’s growing signature line has consistently worked best when it stays connected to Arizona culture rather than chasing trends.

Designer: Nike x McDonald’s

The design itself continues the Book series’ understated approach to basketball footwear. Where many modern performance sneakers rely on exaggerated shapes and futuristic layering, the Book 2 keeps things clean and wearable. The low-cut silhouette looks closer to a lifestyle sneaker than a traditional on-court model, borrowing cues from retro Nike runners and skate shoes while still packing modern basketball tech underneath. Nike equips the sneaker with a forefoot Air Zoom unit, Cushlon 3.0 cushioning, and a lightweight molded upper designed around Booker’s preference for responsive movement and minimal bulk.

That balance between performance and casual wearability is what gives the Book line its identity. Booker has never approached his signature shoes like loud statement pieces; they feel more like sneakers designed by someone who genuinely cares how they look off the court. The “Sedona” colorway pushes that idea even further. The cracked leather details, aged textures, and muted desert palette make the sneaker feel intentionally lived-in, almost like something discovered on a road trip through Arizona rather than a highly manufactured sports collaboration.

McDonald’s also seems aware that the appeal here extends beyond basketball fans. Instead of limiting the partnership to standard product placement, the company built a broader campaign around Booker’s connection to the Southwest. Promotional visuals lean heavily into desert imagery, road-trip aesthetics, and surreal humor, including a campaign video featuring Booker wandering through Sedona alongside a silent Ronald McDonald appearance that somehow feels strange and perfectly on-brand at the same time.

The collaboration also arrives with a Friends & Family sweepstakes through the McDonald’s app, giving select customers access to an exclusive variation of the sneaker with the purchase of specialty beverages. A dedicated pop-up event tied to the release is also expected ahead of launch, reinforcing how brands increasingly treat sneaker drops more like cultural events than product launches. The McDonald’s x Nike Book 2 “Sedona” sneaker is scheduled to release on June 2 through Nike SNKRS and select retailers for $155.

The post McDonald’s-inspired Nike Book 2 bring Arizona Desert colors to your next everyday basketball sneaker first appeared on Yanko Design.

McDonald’s-inspired Nike Book 2 bring Arizona Desert colors to your next everyday basketball sneaker

Posted on by

Signature sneakers rarely manage to feel personal anymore. Most arrive overloaded with athlete branding and colorways engineered more for resale culture than everyday wear. Devin Booker’s Nike Book 2 collaboration with McDonald’s takes a surprisingly different route. Instead of leaning into fries-and-burgers nostalgia, the sneaker pulls inspiration from one of Arizona’s oddest landmarks — the turquoise-arched McDonald’s in Sedona — and turns it into a basketball shoe that feels more rooted in place than corporate crossover hype.

At first glance, the Nike Book 2 “Sedona” barely resembles a McDonald’s collaboration at all. The sneaker trades loud fast-food colors for sandy beige uppers, dusty earth tones, and soft turquoise accents inspired by the famous Sedona McDonald’s location, which swapped its golden arches for turquoise ones to better blend with the city’s iconic red rock surroundings. It’s the kind of hyper-specific regional detail that could have easily become gimmicky, but Booker’s growing signature line has consistently worked best when it stays connected to Arizona culture rather than chasing trends.

Designer: Nike x McDonald’s

The design itself continues the Book series’ understated approach to basketball footwear. Where many modern performance sneakers rely on exaggerated shapes and futuristic layering, the Book 2 keeps things clean and wearable. The low-cut silhouette looks closer to a lifestyle sneaker than a traditional on-court model, borrowing cues from retro Nike runners and skate shoes while still packing modern basketball tech underneath. Nike equips the sneaker with a forefoot Air Zoom unit, Cushlon 3.0 cushioning, and a lightweight molded upper designed around Booker’s preference for responsive movement and minimal bulk.

That balance between performance and casual wearability is what gives the Book line its identity. Booker has never approached his signature shoes like loud statement pieces; they feel more like sneakers designed by someone who genuinely cares how they look off the court. The “Sedona” colorway pushes that idea even further. The cracked leather details, aged textures, and muted desert palette make the sneaker feel intentionally lived-in, almost like something discovered on a road trip through Arizona rather than a highly manufactured sports collaboration.

McDonald’s also seems aware that the appeal here extends beyond basketball fans. Instead of limiting the partnership to standard product placement, the company built a broader campaign around Booker’s connection to the Southwest. Promotional visuals lean heavily into desert imagery, road-trip aesthetics, and surreal humor, including a campaign video featuring Booker wandering through Sedona alongside a silent Ronald McDonald appearance that somehow feels strange and perfectly on-brand at the same time.

The collaboration also arrives with a Friends & Family sweepstakes through the McDonald’s app, giving select customers access to an exclusive variation of the sneaker with the purchase of specialty beverages. A dedicated pop-up event tied to the release is also expected ahead of launch, reinforcing how brands increasingly treat sneaker drops more like cultural events than product launches. The McDonald’s x Nike Book 2 “Sedona” sneaker is scheduled to release on June 2 through Nike SNKRS and select retailers for $155.

The post McDonald’s-inspired Nike Book 2 bring Arizona Desert colors to your next everyday basketball sneaker first appeared on Yanko Design.

Nike Just Turned Air Into a Fabric, and It Actually Works

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There are moments in design when a product looks so strange that you can’t stop staring at it, and then you find out how it works and it suddenly makes perfect sense. That’s exactly what happened when trail runner Caleb Olson crossed the finish line at the 2025 Western States Endurance Run in the second fastest time in the race’s history. People clapped. Then they immediately started asking: what is he wearing?

The shirt is the Nike ACG Radical AirFlow, and calling it a “shirt” feels generous. It looks more like a sweater that had an encounter with a drill press. Cone-shaped holes punctuate the fabric in deliberate patterns, creating what Nike calls airducts. They’re not just decorative (though they definitely are that, too). They’re functional in a very specific, physics-driven way. The design harnesses the Bernoulli principle and the Venturi effect, two concepts most of us haven’t thought about since a physics class we may or may not have paid attention to. The short version: as air moves through a narrowed opening, it speeds up and pressure drops. Nike essentially engineered that phenomenon into a fabric layer sitting on your body while you run.

Designer: Nike

The result, according to Nike’s own testing, is a top that absorbs and retains 50% less sweat than DriFit, the brand’s long-trusted performance fabric. It’s also 25% less resistant to the evaporation of sweat. For those of us not running ultramarathons in the California mountains, those numbers might sound abstract, but the principle holds whether you’re hiking a trail in August or doing anything remotely active in heat. The body cools itself through sweat, and anything that helps that process happen faster is worth paying attention to.

What makes this interesting beyond the performance specs is how it got here. The Radical AirFlow came out of Nike’s All Conditions Gear line, a sub-brand with a very specific purpose: designing for the outdoors, not the gym. ACG lives by the motto “Designed, Tested, and Made on Planet Earth,” which sounds like a marketing line until you realize the top was debuted mid-race at one of trail running’s most grueling events. The testing wasn’t a controlled brand activation. It was a competitive ultra-marathon.

The design itself doesn’t pretend to be subtle. It’s a cropped silhouette, worn long-sleeved, with large cutouts under the arms and at the elbows for mobility. The airducts are visible and intentional. It reads more like a prototype from a materials science lab than a rack piece at your local athletic retailer. And I think that’s the point. Nike ACG has always occupied that niche space between gear and fashion, performance and provocation. The Radical AirFlow leans all the way into that tension.

It also went viral in a way that athletic apparel rarely does, because the response was split. Some people immediately understood it. Others were convinced it was a joke. Trail runner Drew Holmen, an ACG athlete who tested the garment, said it plainly: “When I first saw the product, it was like nothing I had ever seen before.” That reaction, repeated by thousands of people online, is actually a good sign in design. If no one’s confused, nothing is new.

The broader conversation Radical AirFlow opens up is one about where performance apparel is headed. For a long time, innovation in this space meant better synthetic blends, tighter weaves, smarter seam placement. The Radical AirFlow goes in the opposite direction. It removes material entirely, then structures the absence of it. The holes aren’t a compromise or a cost-cutting measure. They’re the technology.

Whether you’d actually wear it outside of a race context is a fair question, and a cap version built on the same technology is already on the way, which might make the concept more accessible. But the full racing top is a genuine design statement, one that prioritizes function in a way that can’t be hidden. You can see it working. That kind of transparency, in design, is rarer than it should be.

The post Nike Just Turned Air Into a Fabric, and It Actually Works first appeared on Yanko Design.

RIMOWA’s 2026 Prize Went to a Bracelet That Speaks Sign Language

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The RIMOWA Design Prize doesn’t always produce furniture, and that’s precisely why I pay attention to it every year. The luggage brand’s annual student design competition has a way of surfacing ideas that sit at the uncomfortable, exciting edge of what design can actually do for people, and the 2026 winner is probably the best example of that yet.

Samuel Nagel and Paul Feiler, two students from Hochschule für Gestaltung Schwäbisch Gmünd, took home the fourth edition of the prize with NURA: a bracelet that uses EMG (electromyography) sensors to capture muscle signals in the forearm and translate sign language into audible speech in real time. It works the other way around too, converting spoken language into visible text for deaf users. The whole thing sits on your wrist, shaped by the silhouette of a manta ray, and it looks less like a medical device and more like the kind of accessory you’d spot on someone at a gallery opening.

Designers: Samuel Nagel and Paul Feiler

That last detail is actually the point, and I think it’s worth dwelling on. Assistive technology has a long and unfortunate history of making the people who need it feel conspicuous. Hearing aids, for decades, were designed to be invisible precisely because visibility carried stigma. The unspoken message was that needing help was something to hide. NURA takes a completely different position. It’s designed to be seen, worn with pride, styled rather than concealed. The gesture feels radical even though, rationally, it shouldn’t have to be.

The technology behind it is genuinely clever. EMG sensors are nothing new as a concept, but applying them to sign language translation in a form this compact and wearable is a meaningful design leap. The bracelet reads the electrical signals produced by muscle contractions in the forearm as the wearer signs, processes them, and produces speech output. The reverse channel picks up spoken language and renders it as text. Two-way, seamless, real-time. For anyone who has ever watched a deaf person navigate a conversation without an interpreter present, or felt the awkward pause that comes from communication breaking down mid-exchange, the implications of that are enormous.

I keep thinking about how many interactions become effortless with something like this on your wrist. Ordering at a counter. Talking to a doctor. A spontaneous conversation with a stranger on the street. These are moments that require logistics for deaf users in a way most hearing people never have to consider, and NURA collapses that distance without asking anyone to compromise.

The manta ray inspiration is a quiet masterstroke, too. It gives the object a reference point that feels alive and organic rather than mechanical or clinical. The form has been rendered in clean, sculptural white, with the kind of restraint you’d expect from a German design school sensibility. It doesn’t scream technology. It just sits there looking elegant, doing something extraordinary underneath.

Will NURA make it into production? That’s the question that always hovers over student prize winners, and it’s an honest one. The gap between a beautifully executed concept and a market-ready product is wide, and the challenges of real-world EMG accuracy across different body types and signing styles are not trivial. But I don’t think that’s entirely the point. The RIMOWA Prize exists, among other things, to expand the imagination of what design is for, to signal to the industry what problems are worth solving and what solving them beautifully might look like.

On that count, Nagel and Feiler have done something genuinely important. They’ve argued, through the language of form, that accessibility and desirability don’t have to be in opposition. That a wearable designed for a deaf person can be something a hearing person might be jealous of. That the most human design isn’t the kind that fixes a flaw and hides it, but the kind that celebrates capability and brings people closer together. The bracelet is beautiful. The idea behind it is even more so.

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Vollebak’s New Sonic Jacket Fires 180 Speakers Into Your Body

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If you’ve ever stood too close to a speaker at a concert and felt the bass move through your chest, you already understand the basic premise of Vollebak’s latest creation, even if just barely. The Sonic Jacket doesn’t pump sound into a room. It pumps it directly into you.

Vollebak, the experimental clothing brand founded in 2015 by twin brothers Nick and Steve Tidball, has built a jacket lined with 180 inward-facing speakers. Each one is 32mm in diameter and 10mm deep, laser-cut into the fabric across the body, arms, and hood. The speakers fire frequencies ranging from 4 Hz to 20,000 Hz straight into the wearer’s body. Not at your ears. Through your skin, your bones, your tissue. The brand’s own description puts it plainly: “You don’t listen to this jacket. You feel it.”

Designer: Vollebak

I’ll be honest. My first instinct was skepticism. Frequency therapy and sound healing have a way of sitting at the awkward intersection of legitimate science and wellness marketing, and it can be hard to tell which side of that line you’re on at any given moment. But the more I dug into what Vollebak actually built here, the harder it became to dismiss.

The jacket was engineered by FBFX, a London-based special effects studio with 30 years behind them and credits that include Gladiator, Dune, The Martian, and Project Hail Mary. These are people who build functional spacesuits worn by real actors in demanding production environments. They brought that same precision to the problem of turning a jacket into a distributed speaker system. The wiring is intentionally left visible, all yellow and exposed, because FBFX co-founder Grant Pearmain’s position is straightforward: it looks like a science experiment because that’s exactly what it is.

Control is handled through a unit fitted with an MP3 player preloaded with 10 frequencies, a physical dial for fine-tuning, and a Micro SD card slot that can hold up to 1,000 personalized frequencies. A Bluetooth app is in development. For lower frequencies, where speakers risk overheating, the jacket works around the problem by playing two slightly different tones simultaneously. The body registers the gap between them rather than the tones themselves, and that gap is where the lowest frequencies live.

Nick Tidball’s language around the whole project is part visionary, part slightly unhinged, which is exactly what makes Vollebak so compelling as a brand to follow. He talks about the earth resonating at a frequency, about his cat’s purr, about the fact that we are not solid beings but collections of particles with space between them where sound can travel. “Maybe you’ll orgasm. Maybe you’ll shit yourself. Maybe you’ll find God,” the brand writes on its site. Bold copy, sure. But it’s genuinely hard to argue that sound and frequency don’t do something to us. Every religious tradition figured that out thousands of years ago, from drumming around fires to chanting in stone chambers.

The Sonic Jacket is currently a prototype, tested on only a handful of people. Tidball himself did a 30-minute session and described the initial effects as “kind of astonishing.” That’s a small sample size and a subjective account, so I’d take the results with appropriate caution. But the ambition here isn’t really in question.

What Vollebak is doing, jacket by jacket, is expanding the definition of what clothing is for. They’ve done it with graphene that behaves like a radiator, with near-indestructible Dyneema, and with a jacket made from 250,000 pieces of laser-cut American walnut. The Sonic Jacket feels like the most speculative thing they’ve attempted so far, and that’s saying something. It’s not a wellness gadget in a tech form factor. It’s a wearable environment designed to shift your nervous system.

Whether the science catches up to the ambition remains to be seen. But that’s always been part of Vollebak’s proposition. They make things that probably shouldn’t exist yet, and then figure out if they should. The Sonic Jacket is the most interesting thing I’ve seen come out of the wearable tech space in a long time, and I’m not even sure it counts as wearable tech. It might just be the future of how we think about clothing altogether.

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