Tag Archives: K-Design Award

This cat kennel doubles as a cat tower and storage area with enough room for two indoor litter boxes!

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For the most part, cats know how to take care of themselves. The only thing they can’t do is buy cat litter and tin cans filled with wet salmon puree or chicken. All they need is a tiny home to call their own and they’ll be set. Luckily enough, designers at PaiPai Pets created a sort of tiny home for cats to play inside of and where their humans can stow away the litter box.

PaiPai Pets’ double basin cat kennel is a cat tower and console storage cabinet in one. Looking at the kennel head-on, two wide doors border a narrower middle door, which opens up to the kennel’s storage unit and jungle-gym interior. On the left and right sides of the kennel, there’s enough space to fit two large litter boxes, which are always accessible through the middle door’s open porthole.

Behind the kennel’s center cabinet, storage shelves can be found where cat owners can stow away smaller items like cans of wet cat food and litter scoopers. Painted in bright white, with natural wood accents along the perimeter, the kennel can remain discreet even in busier home spaces like the living room or den. Along the sides of the kennel, smaller portholes allow for plenty of airflow as well as a fun way for you to play whack-a-mole with your cat.

One of the main reasons people stay away from adopting kittens and cats is due to the smell of cat litter and the hassle that comes with taking care of that– if only cats could take care of their business and its smell too. PaiPai Pets’ double basin cat kennel provides a way for you and your cat to have your tuna and eat it too. With enough space to house two litter boxes and all the feline accessories you might need, PaiPai Pets takes care of the dirty business that we wish our cat could.

Designer: PaiPai Pets

PaiPai Pets’ double basin cat kennel has enough room to git two full-size litter boxes.

When closed, PaiPai Pets’ cat kennel is as nondescript as any other console storage unit.

The middle door opens up to a shelved compartment area for smaller accessories like litter scoopers and cans of food.

While the double basin cat kennel features areas for two litter boxes, there’s also room for a play area in the middle.

The side panels of PaiPai Pets’ cat kennel feature circular portholes that allow airflow and an additional play area for cats.

This award-winning filmmaking toolkit is designed specifically for Young content creators!

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When it comes to kids and content creation, everyone seems to have an opinion. One side says that keeping children from technology would mean keeping them from learning the very tools that will inspire the future. While the other side urges children to stay away from smartphones and tablets because they keep kids from learning the fundamentals of childhood. Kid’o, a children-specific filmmaking toolkit, brings some compromise to that two-sided argument. Kid’o is a simple product design that provides today’s younger generations the chance to experiment with film and content creation without the added complexity that accompanies multi-functional cameras and online communities.

Receiving the 2020 Grand Prize award from K-Design, Kid’o affirms children’s dreams of filmmaking by providing the tools necessary in order to bring them to fruition all while prioritizing childhood’s playfulness. Based on the vibrancy of crayons, the final product is a colorful, detachable physical lens and smartphone holder. Using an app, children can pair a Kid’o lens and monitor using their parent’s or their own phone, so that the lens’s frame appears on the smartphone’s screen. By merging the product with the app, children have the chance to continue developing today’s ever-changing technological language on an interface that maintains the integrity of childhood. Features such as ‘Another Me’ and ‘Twin Me’ are similar to some of TikTok’s features and, as simple video effects, can easily transform any video clip. Once a video is created and tailored by a kid filmmaker, they have the option of sharing it with friends on the Kid’o app or other social media platforms, such as Instagram or YouTube.

Kid’o embraces simplicity in its user-friendliness and portability – kids can bring the lens and smartphone holder anywhere. The product also pays homage to a less techy and more present childhood by moving in time with the growing technology of today, while cultivating the creativity that instills within every child a desire to create. Kid’o takes children and their interests seriously by designing a space and product that inspires creative experimentations and responsible self-expression. This filmmaking tool kit designed specifically for children is not only a compromise but a distinct recognition of the changeability and cultivation of childhood.

Designers: Hanseul Kim, Junwon Ko, and Yeonjun Song

This folding screwdriver focuses on making the classic tool more portable and usable

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The ‘More Uses’ screwdriver approaches simple problems with simple solutions. It’s multipurpose, foldable, and can mount the screw-bits in two separate ways to give you either a traditional experience or a high-torque one. Designed by the students of the Beijing Institute of Technology, the More Uses takes the traditional screwdriver and upgrades its performance and portability.

The driver comes in a metal capsule-shaped container. Open the container and you’ve got two parts on the inside. The base of the stem, and the magnetic screw-bits (in flat-head and Phillips-head variants). The base comes out, and can get attached one of two ways, creating either a linear screwdriver for regular applications, or a T-shaped screwdriver for tighter screws that need more force to remove or insert. When you’re done, the parts fit back inside the slick metal capsule which can easily be placed in your drawers (occupying a fraction of the space of a lengthy screwdriver) or even in your pocket, without worrying about the driver’s sharp tip hurting you or tearing your clothes!

The More Uses Screwdriver is a winner of the K-Design Award for the year 2020.

Designers: Qiu Qi, Yu Hong, Jin Hao, Ma Lyuting, Li Zhengkai

This lamp’s collapsible design also controls its brightness

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The Z-Lamp’s collapsible feature isn’t just to make it portable enough to carry around with you. That ridged silicone shade does allow you to expand or contract the lamp’s overall design, but in turn, it helps control the lamp’s overall brightness too.

Derived from ‘zhé’, the Chinese word for ‘fold’, the Z-Lamp comes with a collapsible silicone clad that sits over its LED-base. The clad’s ridged design allows it to expand and contract, allowing the lamp to grow bigger or smaller. Expand the entire silicone cover and it acts as a large diffuser, scattering more light in all directions… compact it and the diffuser’s size reduces, dimming the LED’s intensity. Simple, smart, and engaging!

The Z-Lamp is a winner of the K-Design Award for the year 2020

Designers: Ren Peng & Ye Jitong

Hourglass-shaped table lamp helps you keep track of time using ambient-light!

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There’s something very intuitive and interactive about the way the Time Machine Table Lamp is designed. Made to look like an hourglass, the lamp features a freely rotating shade with a central pivot and LEDs on both ends. Switch the lamp on and the LEDs on the upper half of the hourglass illuminate. Over time, the upper half of the hourglass dims down and the lower half begins illuminating, almost as if light particles are passing through the central channel, like grains of sand would.

The Time Machine Table Lamp was designed to help provide an ambient bedside aura of soft light, while allowing you to intuitively gauge time as it passes by. It takes around 60 minutes for the light to transfer from one half of the hourglass to the other, and a simple flip helps reset the entire procedure. It’s a fun-yet-useful way of timing your nightly activities before going to bed… perhaps reading a bedtime story, or sharing stories about your day before hitting the sack. Besides, with its warm, comforting glow and unique interaction, it’s the kind of lamp your eyes AND hands will fall in love with!

The Time Machine Table Lamp is a winner of the K-Design Award for the year 2020.

Designers: Chu Dongdong, Liu Bei, Ren Peng, Lin Rulong & Weng Hang

This Zen Garden-inspired DJ console might seriously put you in a ‘trance’

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There’s something incredibly calming about the Whiteout. Designed to be a DJ console that offers incredible amounts of control to the person behind it, Whiteout features a base with multiple grooves and a series of knobs you can place on them. The knobs work both as rotary-controls as well as sliders, while the base itself lights up with a minimalist interface. A pair of grooved circles on the base act as the turntables, while touch-sensitive controls on the top let you play, pause, loop, transition, solo and mute tracks. Overall, the kit offers a meaningful redesign to the DJ console, which is sometimes an overwhelmingly complicated collage of lights. Whiteout calms you down and keeps you focused as you send out ‘chill vibes’ to your audience. This might just be the most perfect controller for the international music festival ‘Sensation White’!

Whiteout is a winner of the K-Design Award for the year 2019.

Designers: Su Hyun Bang & Byoung Hoon Woo

This futuristic kitchen appliance uses plasma-jets to purify your fruits and veggies

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Sitting on your kitchen table much like an Echo or a Google Home would, the Fruit WashingMachine is a rather unique way of cleaning your fruits and vegetables before eating or preparing them. The slick, pink device uses tap-water to cleanse your fruit without any extra additive (like a food-grade soap or cleanser). The appliance, rather, uses an innovative technology that goes by the name ‘water hydroxyl food purification’. Now I’m no expert, but a simple look at some articles online shows that the technology involves pulsing voltage to ionize a gas at atmospheric pressure, helping in releasing hydroxyl radicals that help purify the water as well as the fruits and veggies inside it. In short, the Fruit WashingMachine uses a plasma jet to create a string of reactions that purify water in literally a split second, without affecting the water’s temperature or composition. In fact, the plasma jets are so safe, you can literally touch them with your hands.

The revolutionary technology helps release radicals like hydroxyl that help instantly cleanse your fruits and vegetables without using purifiers, minerals, filters, or disinfectants. In fact, the technology was originally studied by researchers at the University of Alabama as a way of instantly purifying water. It’s nearly 2020 and the kitchens of the future literally will be using plasma-jets to clean their fruits and veggies… Exciting!

The Fruit WashingMachine is a winner of the K-Design Award for the year 2019.

Designer: Hangzhou Enjoywater Technology Co.,Ltd

One chair, two chair, double-sided blue chair…

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The unique appeal of the Turning Chair by Insu Kim is that it’s a comfortable lounger as well as a bar-stool. This creative take on seating relies on a form that can be flipped 90° to completely change its function! When in orientation A, the Turning Chair is a comfortable low-lying lounger with a reclining backrest, perfect for your living room… but thanks to its angular rear legs, the chair can be flipped backwards to turn it into a high-seated bar-stool that fits rather suitably in your kitchen. Plus, get this… the chair’s form is stackable too! What a space-saving shape-shifting seater!

The Turning Chair is a winner of the K-Design Award for the year 2019.

Designer: Insu Kim

A Compact Bin to Tidy up the Workspace!

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Even if you aren’t a massive lover of using pencils, you are sure to know about the annoying pencil shavings and tiny pieces of left-over rubber that annoying cling onto the desk and litter the workspace. Well, there is now a solution to this problem, and it comes in the form of Clamp Basket.

Clamp Basket does pretty much exactly what it says on the tin; it’s a small container that attaches to the side of the desk and allows the user to collect the rubber residue that is strewn across the work surface. A compact brush is neatly integrated into the top of the bin to ensure that every last bit of rubber is disposed of! Also featured on the top of the device is a pencil sharpener, which directly takes care of those annoying pencil shavings!

Its simplistic design and monotone color scheme ensure that it will not disrupt the aesthetic of the workspace!

The Clamp Basket is a Winner of the K-Design Award for the year 2018.

Designers: Seungwan Kang & Seonhee Shin

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Modernizing the Extension Cord!

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Cables are a nuisance that we have to put up with in everyday life, and extension cords just add to the issue; due to the sockets fixed orientation, they can cause damage to a cable that needs to go in the opposite direction, this can lead to it breaking over time. It’s this issue that designers So Young Kim & Sung Ick Jo identified, and their solution came in the form of Ball-tab.

A socket is housed within each of the four balls, these sit neatly in the tray and are held securely in place using magnets. Power is transferred to them using wireless charging, and it’s this that allows the socket to rotate in almost any direction, reliving the cables of the strain that would otherwise be put on them!

A warm glow, emitted by LEDs, indicates when the socket is in use, and to eliminate dust build up the balls can be turned upside down when they are not needed! A quirky yet ingenious solution!

The Ball-tab is a Winner of the K-Design Award for the year 2018.

Designers: So Young Kim & Sung Ick Jo

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