Tag Archives: Lifestyle

McDonald’s New Drinks Come With a $58 Fashion Accessory

Posted on by

Fast food collaborations have a way of catching me off guard at this point. I’ve accepted that pretty much any brand can team up with pretty much any designer, and the result will land somewhere between genuinely inspired and deeply confusing. But when McDonald’s announced a partnership with New York-based designer Susan Alexandra to launch a collection of hand-beaded drink carriers, I had to stop scrolling.

The timing is intentional. McDonald’s is rolling out its first-ever lineup of Refreshers and crafted sodas starting May 6, six new drinks that range from a Mango Pineapple Refresher to a Dirty Dr Pepper, each with a personality loud enough to inspire its own aesthetic. Think freeze-dried fruit, popping boba, cold foam. The drinks are clearly built for a generation that treats a beverage order as a mood, not just a thirst solution. And Susan Alexandra, who has spent years turning beaded bags and accessories into cult objects, is exactly the right collaborator for that energy.

Designer: McDonalds x Susan Alexandra

The collection includes six hand-beaded carriers, one for each new drink. Each design pulls color and texture directly from its corresponding flavor. The Strawberry Watermelon Refresher carrier is red and pink, soft and berry-bright. The Blackberry Passion Fruit version leans into dainty white beads. The Mango Pineapple has tropical warmth written all over it. These are not subtle pieces. They are made to be seen, and that is the entire point.

Susan Alexandra’s work has always operated in that specific visual register where maximalism meets handcraft. Her bags are the kind of thing you notice from across a room, the kind of accessories that start conversations. Matching that energy to a McDonald’s cup feels odd on paper, but when you actually look at the carriers, the logic holds. The drinks are colorful, slightly chaotic, and unapologetically fun. The accessories match.

Prices range from $48 to $58 depending on the design, which I know will prompt some eye-rolling. It’s a drink carrier. For McDonald’s. But that framing also misses the point. Susan Alexandra pieces are collectibles, objects that people hold onto not because they are practical but because they carry a specific cultural moment with them. A $48 beaded carrier that references a fast food soda is not a purely functional purchase. It is a souvenir. A more interesting souvenir, I’d argue, than most things that get sold under a collab banner.

The carriers are sold exclusively on SusanAlexandra.com starting May 6, in limited quantities. Each one also comes with a $10 McDonald’s Arch Card, which is a small but genuinely clever touch. The idea is that you buy the carrier, then go get the drink it was made for. As brand strategy goes, it’s actually pretty smart. It ties the accessory back to the experience rather than letting it float into the abstract realm of limited edition merch.

What makes this collaboration land is that it doesn’t feel like a desperation move from either side. McDonald’s is genuinely expanding its beverage program in a significant way, and it needs the launch to feel like a cultural moment rather than just a menu update. Susan Alexandra brings a specific visual language and a loyal customer base that overlaps with exactly the kind of person who cares about aesthetics down to what’s in their cup holder. The match is less random than it first appears, and the choice of collaborator signals how seriously McDonald’s is taking this particular moment.

I’m not saying everyone needs a hand-beaded carrier for their Sprite Berry Blast. But I do think there’s real craft in how this collaboration was conceived. The carriers are not just branded merchandise. They are wearable interpretations of a drink, which is a genuinely strange and interesting design brief that Susan Alexandra executed with her signature commitment to color and detail. Fast food has been flirting with fashion for a while now. This is one of the better executions I’ve seen, and I’ll be curious whether any of the six designs sell out before you even finish reading this.

The post McDonald’s New Drinks Come With a $58 Fashion Accessory first appeared on Yanko Design.

Dreame’s Pet-Friendly Air Purifier Collects Fur Before It Clogs Your Filters

Posted on by

Dreame started building vacuum cleaners in 2017. They built motors that spun faster than anyone else’s, wrote algorithms that mapped rooms more efficiently than the competition, and developed bionic robotic arms that could reach where other robot vacuums couldn’t. Nine years later, they’re launching rocket cars at events in San Francisco, announcing electric SUV lineups, teasing smartphones, and showing off water purifiers alongside lawn mowers. If that trajectory feels chaotic, you’re reading it right. What holds it together is the motor technology, the same engineering philosophy that made their vacuums compelling now applied to air purification, personal care devices, and apparently vehicular propulsion systems.

The FP10 air purifier sits somewhere in the middle of this expansion spree, and it’s the first place the company has applied robot vacuum thinking to stationary air cleaning. The core concept borrows directly from their floor-cleaning playbook: a self-cleaning roller brush that actively separates debris instead of waiting for a clogged filter to choke performance. For pet owners who’ve watched traditional purifiers lose suction as fur accumulates on intake grilles, that’s a genuinely useful pivot. The question worth asking is whether Dreame’s computational approach to home appliances translates as well to air purification as it did to floor cleaning.

Designer: Dreame

The roller mechanism operates on two axes, rotating 360 degrees to strip hair and particles from incoming air before they reach the primary filter. A dual-powered system keeps both the roller and filter moving independently, compressing debris into a sealed 460ml collection bin that you empty like you would a vacuum canister. Dreame claims a 99.5 percent hair collection rate based on lab testing with two cats in a 30-square-meter chamber over seven days, which sounds optimistic until you consider that the alternative in most purifiers is zero percent because the hair never makes it past the intake grille in the first place.

What makes this approach legitimately different is the elimination of primary filter maintenance. Traditional purifiers with washable pre-filters require you to pull them out, rinse them, dry them completely, and reinstall them every few weeks if you have shedding pets. Miss a cleaning cycle and airflow degrades fast. The FP10 handles that process autonomously, triggered either by a preset schedule or in response to air quality readings. The machine runs a self-cleaning cycle, the roller dumps collected debris into the bin, and airflow stays consistent without your involvement. Dreame calls this their Filter Maintenance 4.0 era, positioning it as an evolution beyond mesh filters that need constant washing and felt filters that burn through replacement costs.

The air purification stack itself follows convention: HEPA H13 media rated for 99.97 percent filtration of particles down to 0.3 microns, backed by what Dreame calls a CataFresh odor removal system combining 2.5 times more activated carbon than their previous flagship with a metal catalyst layer that chemically decomposes odor molecules rather than just adsorbing them. The unit pushes 350 cubic meters per hour in standard configuration, operates between 32 and 62 decibels depending on mode, and includes the expected smart home integration through the Dreamehome app with Google Assistant and Alexa support.

The pet-specific features extend beyond hair collection. An optional weighing tray sits on top of the unit, tracking weight and activity patterns for multiple pets through the Dreamehome app. When a pet steps onto the tray in Pet Mode, the purifier gradually reduces airflow to avoid startling them. It’s the kind of thoughtful detail that suggests someone on the team actually lives with skittish cats.

The FP10 ships in early May. Pricing hasn’t been announced for most markets yet, but it’s positioned as a premium pet-focused purifier competing against dedicated units from brands that have been in this space far longer. What Dreame brings to the fight is proven self-cleaning technology and a willingness to treat air purifiers as active systems rather than passive filters. For households where pet hair has become the limiting factor in purifier performance, that mechanical preprocessing layer might justify the premium over simpler designs that just throw bigger HEPA filters at the problem.

The post Dreame’s Pet-Friendly Air Purifier Collects Fur Before It Clogs Your Filters first appeared on Yanko Design.

KitKat’s New Wrapper Actually Kills Your Phone Signal Completely

Posted on by

We’re already a third into 2026, and one “trend” that seems to be sticking is that this is the year when people intentionally go offline or analog to take a break from our increasingly digital lives. Hobbies like journaling, knitting, scrapbooking, baking, and board games have become a regular part of people’s personal schedules. More often than not, when we do these things, we keep our phones, or at least the internet, away. Some, though, may need more “drastic” measures just to make their phones quiet for a few hours every day.

KitKat Panama, in collaboration with creative agency Ogilvy Colombia, is taking the brand’s iconic “Take a Break” slogan to a whole new level with a special concept called Break Mode. Instead of people just eating a KitKat as a way to take a break, they turned the chocolate’s packaging into an actual Faraday cage. Basically, once you put your phone into the empty packaging, all signals (calls, 4G/5G connectivity, Bluetooth, and GPS) are entirely and effectively blocked, turning your world offline and analog, at least until you take your phone out again.

Designer: KitKat Panama

How they did it was by adding multiple layers to the special packaging. The copper layer is the primary conductive material, while the polyester layers give it structural integrity. The polypropylene outer coating provides durability and everyday usability, while the precision-engineered sealing mechanism ensures that your signals are truly blocked.

This kind of technology was once reserved for medical labs and data centers but can now be found in this iconic red KitKat package (well, at least if you’re in Panama). There’s also a sustainability angle to it, as the packaging’s materials have an approximate one-year lifespan and can eventually be separated for responsible recycling.

The ritual that KitKat envisions is quite intentional: unwrap your KitKat fingers, slide your phone into the empty packaging, and fully immerse yourself in the moment. Your digital world goes quiet, and your break truly begins. It feels almost ceremonial in the best way. Kim Waigel, Marketing Director for Nestlé in Central America, summed it up well: “Break Mode goes beyond simply saying ‘Take a Break’; it empowers individuals with the physical tool to genuinely achieve it.”

The concept was introduced at some of Panama’s most high-traffic venues, including a major technology expo, a concert event, and even a university campus, bringing the experience directly to the people who arguably need a digital detox the most.

Now, before you start planning your offline hours around a KitKat wrapper, it’s worth noting that Break Mode’s commercial viability is still under evaluation. So it isn’t something you can grab off a shelf at your nearest convenience store, at least not yet. But honestly, the fact that this concept even exists feels like a sign of the times. In an era where we’ve normalized doom-scrolling and round-the-clock connectivity, simply putting your phone away has become a radical act. And leave it to a chocolate brand to make that feel like something worth celebrating.

Whether or not Break Mode ever makes it to mass market, it’s already doing its job, sparking a conversation about what it truly means to take a break in 2026. Because sometimes, the most powerful thing you can do for yourself isn’t downloading another wellness app. It’s slipping your phone into a KitKat wrapper and letting the silence do the rest.

The post KitKat’s New Wrapper Actually Kills Your Phone Signal Completely first appeared on Yanko Design.

This Wine Cooler Scans the Label and Sets Its Own Temperature for You

Posted on by

Wine culture has never been more accessible, with good bottles showing up at rooftop dinners, backyard gatherings, and weekend trips just as often as they do at restaurant tables. What hasn’t quite kept up, though, is how we actually serve them once we’re there. Temperature is the detail that most people overlook, and it’s arguably one of the most important variables in how a wine actually tastes.

That’s the gap that Porta is designed to fill. It’s a smart, portable wine cooler that keeps a bottle at the right serving temperature without ice, without a power outlet, and without any of the fuss that usually comes with trying to manage these things outside of a dedicated wine space. It’s compact, rechargeable, and built for the kind of drinking occasions that happen well beyond the kitchen.

Designer: Metaproi

Click Here to Buy Now: $249 $599 (58% off). Hurry, only 363/500 off. Raised over $57,000.

A bottle can come from a great producer, be stored perfectly, and still taste flat if it’s poured too warm or too cold. Serve a red too warm, and the alcohol starts to overwhelm everything else. Too cold, and the aromas shut down. There’s a narrow window where the flavors actually show up the way they were intended, and that window closes faster than most people realize.

Cellars and wine fridges solve the storage part just fine. But once the bottle comes out and ends up on the dinner table, or worse, goes into an ice bucket, the situation changes pretty quickly. An ice bucket drops the temperature too far and strips the wine of the very character you chose it for. Porta addresses that moment specifically, which is where it actually matters.

The companion app is where Porta’s smarter side comes in. Pair it with your phone, point the camera at the label, and the app identifies the grape variety and sets the chiller to an appropriate temperature automatically. You can also adjust manually, log wines, add tasting notes, and build a personal wine list, making it quite useful for something that just sits quietly on your table.

There’s also a decanting timer built into the workflow, a small detail that makes a real difference. Once you open the bottle and let it breathe, Porta tracks the time and lets you know when it’s ready to pour. It removes the guesswork from a process that casual drinkers tend to skip entirely, adding a bit of structure to the ritual without making it feel like homework.

What makes Porta genuinely interesting as a design object, though, is how cordless it actually is. It runs on an internal 10,000 mAh battery good for up to eight hours of sustained cooling, and charges via USB in about three and a half hours. That makes it as useful on a terrace or a picnic blanket as it is at a formal dinner table.

The cooling itself is handled by a thermoelectric system that operates without any mechanical movement, which keeps things quiet and vibration-free. The interior circulates chilled air around the bottle while a cork-filled insulating frame holds the temperature steady, even when the ambient conditions outside change. It can bring wine down to 46°F and sustain those conditions throughout a meal without needing you to fuss over it.

Two angular wine coolers on a table, one holding a green bottle, with a glass of red wine and a blurred person in the background.

The design itself is worth noting separately. Porta comes in Champagne Gold and Matte Black, with a faceted, geometric silhouette that tends to draw attention at the table. That’s intentional. The front window keeps the label visible while the bottle chills, turning it into part of the setting rather than something to be tucked away. It’s the kind of object that actually belongs where the drinking happens.

Click Here to Buy Now: $249 $599 (58% off). Hurry, only 363/500 off. Raised over $57,000.

The post This Wine Cooler Scans the Label and Sets Its Own Temperature for You first appeared on Yanko Design.

Japan Just Redesigned the Humble Market Stall

Posted on by

Most market stalls are, at best, an afterthought. You’ve seen them: mismatched canopies, folding tables dragged out from a storage room, zip-tied banners flapping in the wind. The sellers are talented, the products are wonderful, and the setup looks like it was assembled in fifteen minutes by someone who barely slept the night before. Nobody ever thought to make the stall itself part of the experience. Until now, apparently.

Oriichi is a foldable market stall designed by N&R Foldings Japan Co., and it recently claimed a spot among the iF Design Award 2026 winners in the Product Design and Public Design category. Looking at it, the recognition makes complete sense. This isn’t just a better version of a folding table with a canopy tacked on. It’s a considered piece of urban furniture that asks a genuinely interesting question: what if the infrastructure of a pop-up market was as carefully designed as the products being sold inside it?

Designer: N&R Foldings Japan Co

The answer, at least visually, is striking. The structure is clean and architectural, built around a matte black metal frame with crossed legs that recall both origami geometry and classic market cart silhouettes. A cream canvas canopy sits on top, and a warm wood-finished surface functions as the display counter. On casters, it rolls easily, which matters enormously for vendors who have to transport, set up, and pack down multiple times a week. The whole unit folds into four distinct configurations, making it adaptable to different venues, whether that’s a wide outdoor plaza, a narrow indoor corridor, or anything in between.

The design team clearly thought about the vendor experience first. Setup time, portability, structural stability, and visual consistency were all baked into the brief. When you see Oriichi deployed across an actual market, as the photos show, the effect is immediately readable. The stalls share a visual language without being identical, which gives the market a cohesive, curated feel without turning everyone into a clone. That balance is harder to achieve than it sounds.

From a design philosophy standpoint, this feels very Japanese. The idea of making something functional also beautiful, of applying craft thinking to infrastructure rather than just objects, runs deep in Japanese design culture. N&R Foldings Japan is making a clear bet that the temporary nature of pop-up markets doesn’t mean the design has to feel temporary. Durability and reuse are built into Oriichi’s material and structural choices, which puts it squarely in the conversation about sustainable urban design without making that the centerpiece of the pitch.

The bigger idea here is worth sitting with. Pop-up markets have become one of the most relevant commercial formats of the last decade. They’re how independent designers, food vendors, artists, and makers reach customers without committing to permanent retail space. Yet the physical infrastructure supporting these markets has largely been ignored by the design world. A tent is still a tent. A folding table is still a folding table. Oriichi treats those market vendors like they deserve better, and by extension, treats the people shopping there like they deserve better too.

It also raises an interesting point about urban space. Streets and plazas look different when the things occupying them are designed with intention. A well-designed market stall doesn’t just serve its vendor. It contributes to the visual and social texture of the street, making the space feel more alive, more human, more worth lingering in. Oriichi seems to understand that a market is never just a transaction. It’s a gathering.

Whether it becomes widely adopted depends on cost, logistics, and availability, and those details aren’t yet public. But as a design statement, it lands. It’s a rare piece that makes you wonder why nobody solved this problem sooner, and then immediately grateful that someone finally did.

The post Japan Just Redesigned the Humble Market Stall first appeared on Yanko Design.

Flow meditation assistive wearables customize your zen routine in real-time for deeper immersion

Posted on by

We live in a fast-paced world where everything seems like an action movie. That can force most of us into the fight or flight mode, which is not a good physiology to be in all the time. To calm down the senses and be in a zen state of mind, meditation is the alibi. But it’s easier said than done, as the mind races through all kinds of thoughts as soon as you close your eyes, ready to be in your zen mode.

That feeling can trigger anxiety and force one to give up the practice over time. Although there are countless gadgets claiming to be the best assistive solution for your daily meditation routines, only a few are practical enough to even consider. The Flow wearable meditation devices want to solve this once and for all with a ground-up approach to identify the underlying problem and then solve it with assistive tech in real-time.

Designer: Siwoo Kim | Samsung Design Membership

This concept relies on a holistic approach of consistency by having two separate sets of assistive wearable devices. StillFlow for a comprehensive at-home routine to immerse in the meditative state, and the AirFlow, which is a pair of advanced earbuds loaded with the tech to bring you back to a state of calm, when the world out there is too much for your senses to handle.

StillFlow

The at-home meditation assistance wearable comprises a headband loaded with sensors like GSR, EEG, and PPG to keep a tab on the level of immersion. Based on the real-time data like heart rate, brainwave activity, and skin temperature, StillFlow triggers the input to make your meditation routine completely optimized. When you’re done with the meditation routine, the headband rests on the docking station for recharging and transferring the diverse data to keep improving things for you over time.

To make the relaxation completely holistic, the station supports the flow of meditation with ambient lighting synced to the heart rate. This is supported by the spatial audio that adapts in real-time to maintain the level of immersion. StillFlow is powered by Matter to smartly integrate with your other smart home devices like lights, windows, ceiling fans, and more. To put it precisely, everything works in sync to make the meditation sessions more fruitful.

AirFlow

This is an extension of the StillFlow, as the portable wearable device assists your love for meditation even in the noisiest environments. Just like a pair of earbuds (only more advanced with in-built sensors), the wearable plays spatial audio based on the physiological state of your body. There are three EEG sensors to detect the alpha and theta brainwaves from the temporal region, to make your Zen session totally optimized. The over-the-ear design of the earbuds and the supporting hook keep them in place, so you don’t have to worry about anything other than being in the flow state.

The charging case on the AirFlow doubles as a secondary hub for bio-data collection. They have another trick up their sleeves, though: there are PPG and GSR sensors built into the base, so the user can cup them in the palm for a broader level of sensing. This includes heart rate sensing and gauging the physiological tension. This unique feature is unique for earbuds and practical enough to be utilized for a deeper state of physical relaxation.

The post Flow meditation assistive wearables customize your zen routine in real-time for deeper immersion first appeared on Yanko Design.

The Leather Vessels at Milan 2026 That Feel Like They’re Breathing

Posted on by

When I first came across Talia Luvaton’s work, I genuinely paused. Not because it was unexpected to see leather used in design, but because nothing about these pieces looked like leather was supposed to look. The forms were full, curved, almost muscular, more closely related to the human body than to anything you’d find in a saddle shop or a fashion house. They looked, oddly, like they were breathing.

Luvaton is a Tel Aviv-based designer and leather craft artist, and her work is rooted in what she describes as a material-driven approach, which basically means the leather tells her where to go as much as she tells it. She works exclusively with sustainable vegetable-tanned leather, shaped by hand using wet-forming techniques and custom molds. The process involves pressure, moisture, and time, three variables that make each piece genuinely impossible to replicate exactly. That’s not a marketing claim. It’s a physical fact of the material.

Designer: Talia Luvaton

Her newest project, TRACE, makes its world debut at Milan Design Week 2026, opening April 20, and it might be the most personal thing she has made so far. It began with observational drawings of the human body. Fluid, organic shapes. Lines extracted from those drawings were then translated into three-dimensional form, the leather holding onto the gesture of the body the way a cast holds the memory of what shaped it. The pieces balance tension and softness in a way that feels almost contradictory, rigid enough to hold their form, yielding enough to feel warm.

I think that tension is entirely the point. Leather, as a material, carries its own contradictions. It’s strong but supple, ancient but endlessly contemporary. Luvaton leans into all of it, refusing to let the material play just one role. TRACE reads as sculpture, as vessel, as portrait. There’s no single correct way to categorize it, and that’s not a flaw. That’s the work.

What makes Luvaton’s practice feel particularly resonant right now is how personal the foundation of it is. Both of her parents are jewelers. Her grandfather was a shoemaker, and although she never met him, she still works with some of his original tools today. That detail gets me every time. To hold a tool that someone else held, someone whose hands shaped the same kind of material, is a profound form of continuity. The making is inherited. The language of craft passes down not just through instruction but through objects, through the weight of a tool in your hand.

This depth of lineage shows up across the broader body of work she’ll present in Milan. Alongside TRACE, visitors will see TOHA, her first vessel collection; SLICE; REBLOOM; and HEALED, a series of tattooed vessels created in collaboration with professional tattoo artists who work directly onto the leather surface using electric needles. Tattooed leather vessels. The idea feels both completely logical and completely radical, and that combination is exactly the kind of design thinking worth paying attention to.

For those of us who follow craft and design closely, Luvaton’s presence at Milan feels significant for reasons beyond the work itself. This is her first time at the event, and she’s arriving not with a polished commercial line but with a practice, a set of values, and a very specific way of understanding what a material can do. At a moment when the design conversation is increasingly dominated by AI-generated forms and rapid prototyping, there’s real weight in watching someone slow everything down, put their hands in wet leather, and wait for it to tell them something.

TRACE, as a title, does exactly what it promises. It traces movement back to its origin. It traces craft back through a family. It traces the line between the body and the object, and asks you to reconsider where one ends and the other begins. That’s the kind of design work that stays with you long after you’ve left the room.

The post The Leather Vessels at Milan 2026 That Feel Like They’re Breathing first appeared on Yanko Design.

The F1 Engineer Who Turned Time Into a Kinetic Sculpture

Posted on by

Most clocks are honest about what they are. They count. They tick. They remind you, with mild urgency, that you are late or almost late or about to be. Robert Spillner’s Luna is not a clock that measures time. It stages it. That’s a subtle but loaded distinction, and it’s exactly why this object is worth paying attention to.

Luna is a fluid wall object that translates the principle of the single-hand watch into a kinetic sculpture, making the moment between past and future perceptible. Behind the hand, a trace of turbulent patterns marks the touched past. Ahead of it stretches calm liquid: the untouched future. The present is the thin, moving line between them. It sounds poetic because it is, but it’s also technically precise, which is kind of the whole point.

Designer: Robert Spillner

Spillner trained as an engineer and initially developed components for Formula 1 cars, used by numerous teams, in a culture where speed, optimization, and victory are everything. With Luna, that paradigm is reversed. Instead of lap times, the focus is on mindful observation; instead of chasing the fastest, it is about pausing, about stillness. The pivot reads like a philosophical reversal, not just a career change, and that tension is embedded in the object itself.

At the heart of Luna is a specially developed fluid Spillner calls Zero Flow Technology. Its core consists of distilled water, additives, micro-particles, and a minimal quantity of genuine lunar dust. The exact composition remains deliberately undisclosed, part of the mystery that invites the observer to immerse themselves in the visual experience rather than merely explain it technically. I think that’s the right call. Part of what makes Luna compelling is that it resists easy explanation. You’re not supposed to look at it and think “clever fluid dynamics.” You’re supposed to feel like time has texture.

The lunar dust takes the cosmic concept to its logical conclusion. These are particles billions of years old that once fell from space to Earth, and they are now carriers of time. Each piece comes with a certificate of authenticity documenting the origin of this cosmic additive. That detail is not just a marketing flourish. It changes the nature of the object.

Aesthetically, Luna presents itself as a square wall or stand object, approximately 400 by 400 millimeters, with a black front and a cast acrylic glass pane at its centre that becomes the stage for the fluid time, framed by a solid, matte-black wooden frame. A small LCD touchscreen, 35 millimeters in diameter, merges the cosmic and digital realms. Time and display brightness can be adjusted easily. The screen is discreet enough that it doesn’t compete with the fluid for visual dominance. It supports the piece without stealing from it, and that balance isn’t easy to pull off.

Luna is handcrafted in Germany as a limited edition. The fluid mixture, developed over years in collaboration with a laboratory, requires weeks of fine-tuning for each unique piece. Every Luna carries an engraved serial number and year of manufacture, signed by the artist, and comes with a certificate for the meteorite dust. Only 99 pieces per year are planned, all made on demand. Luna defines itself clearly as an art object with a time function, not as an industrial small series. That self-awareness matters.

The question people tend to ask about objects like this is whether they’re worth it. I’d reframe the question. Luna isn’t competing with your iPhone or your smartwatch. It’s not trying to optimize anything in your day. It’s making an argument about how we relate to time, which is a thing most of us don’t think about until we’re running out of it. The fact that it’s beautiful while doing this isn’t a bonus. It’s the method. Design, when it’s working at its best, changes how you see the thing it’s describing. Luna does that with time. And for an object that started life inside Formula 1 engineering labs, that’s a remarkable distance to travel.

The post The F1 Engineer Who Turned Time Into a Kinetic Sculpture first appeared on Yanko Design.

This Minimalist Analog World Clock Is the Upgrade You Didn’t Know Your Desk Needed

Posted on by

This 12-sided clock turns global timekeeping into a calmer desk ritual

Keeping up with different time zones sounds simple until it becomes part of your everyday routine. You check your phone before a call, open another tab to confirm the hour, do a quick mental calculation, and still second-guess whether it’s too early in Tokyo or too late in New York. Not to forget the perils of push-notifications – a quick check of time leads you down a drain of doom-scrolling that you take an hour to return from! To add a layer of analog convenience in this increasingly digital setup, I present the Rolling World Clock.

Why Traditional World Clocks Never Quite Feel Right

The Rolling World Clock takes a familiar category and gives it a much smarter form. Instead of relying on screens, menus, or a row of tiny city labels, this analog desk object turns world time into a simple physical interaction. Built with 12 sides, each representing a major timezone city, it lets you roll from one location to another and instantly read the local time with a single hand. It’s a cleaner, more tactile answer to a problem that has long been solved in ways that feel unnecessarily digital.

Designer: MASAFUMI ISHIKAWA .Design

Click Here to Buy Now: $49 Hurry, only a few left!

Change time zones with a single roll.

Using The Analog Experience Feels Better

That analog quality is a big part of the appeal. There’s a growing interest in devices that help people step back from constant digital interaction, and this clock fits neatly into that trend without feeling nostalgic for nostalgia’s sake. It still solves a modern problem, especially for people working with global teams or keeping in touch with friends and family abroad, but it does so in a way that feels grounded and human. You’re not swiping, tapping, or toggling between screens. You’re just rolling the object in your hand and reading the time.

Built for modern routines, expressed through simple interactions.

The city lineup also makes it genuinely useful. The 12 sides cover major global time zones, including London, Paris, Cape Town, Moscow, Los Angeles, Karachi, Mexico City, New York, Shanghai, Tokyo, Sydney, and New Caledonia. That gives it enough range to be practical for a wide variety of work and lifestyle needs, whether you’re coordinating meetings, planning travel, or just trying not to message someone at the wrong hour.

Built for a More Intentional Desk

For the desk setup fanatics, there’s also a strong aesthetic argument here. The Rolling World Clock is available in black and white, two finishes that make it easy to integrate into a modern desk setup without fighting for attention. It has the kind of understated presence that works especially well for young professionals who want their workspace to feel differentiated without becoming visually noisy. It’s functional, yes, but it also reads as a design object, the sort of piece that quietly signals taste.

Clean lines, one hand, no distractions.

That balance of utility and personality is what makes this more than a novelty. If you work across cities, collaborate with clients in different regions, or simply like the idea of keeping global time visible without adding another glowing screen to your day, this clock makes a strong case for itself. It taps into a broader shift toward analog tools that feel slower, more deliberate, and more human, while still solving a very modern problem.

Feels as good in the hand as it looks on the desk.

Why It’s Worth Picking Up Now

At $49, the Rolling World Clock lands in a sweet spot for a desk upgrade that feels distinctive without being overcommitted. It also has the kind of giftable appeal that comes from being both useful and conversation-worthy. And with only a few left, it carries just enough urgency to make hesitation a risky move.

If your desk could use an object that feels smarter, calmer, and more intentional than another digital widget, the Rolling World Clock is worth grabbing now. It’s currently available in the Yanko Design Shop in black and white, and with limited stock remaining, this is one of those rare functional design pieces you probably shouldn’t wait on.

The post This Minimalist Analog World Clock Is the Upgrade You Didn’t Know Your Desk Needed first appeared on Yanko Design.

A Double-Sided Clock That Turns Walls into Living Moments of Time

Posted on by

Double-sided wall clocks are not new. They have existed for decades, quietly moving between public and private spaces. While many people associate them with railway stations and institutional corridors across Europe, they also made their way into homes in earlier times, often as decorative yet functional pieces in hallways or larger living spaces. Over time, however, they faded out of domestic interiors, replaced by flatter, more minimal wall clocks designed to sit quietly against a surface.

Turin-based brand Goofball is bringing this format back, but with a distinctly modern lens. Their Perch clock does not just revive an old idea; it reframes it for how we live today.

Designer: Goofball

At first glance, the concept feels familiar. A clock that extends out from the wall, visible from both sides. But in a home setting, this simple shift changes everything. Instead of being something you look at from one fixed position, the clock becomes part of how you move through a space. Whether you are walking into a room, passing through a corridor, or glancing back as you leave, time is always within sight. It feels less like an object placed on a wall and more like something integrated into the rhythm of the room.

The functional decisions are just as thoughtful. The clock runs on two AA batteries, which means there is no need for wiring or complicated installation. It hangs on a bracket and can be easily lifted off when the batteries need to be changed. It is the kind of detail that you might not notice immediately, but it makes living with the product feel effortless.

Visually, the Perch clock embraces minimalism in a way that feels warm rather than clinical. It comes in three colors, allowing it to blend into different interiors while still holding its own presence. The design is clean and restrained, making it suitable for contemporary homes, yet it carries a quiet reference to its past. There is something unmistakably reminiscent of old railway clocks, those objects that once defined shared notions of time and movement.

That sense of nostalgia is part of its charm. It brings a subtle character into a space without feeling overly decorative. It introduces depth to a wall, quite literally, and creates a small moment of curiosity. Guests notice it. People interact with it differently. It becomes a conversation piece without trying too hard.

What makes this product particularly compelling is how it challenges a default assumption. We have grown used to thinking of wall clocks as flat, one-directional objects. This design questions the norm and reminds us that even the most familiar objects can be reimagined.

The response so far reflects this shift in perspective. The first batch sold out quickly, suggesting that people are ready for products that feel both nostalgic and new at the same time. Goofball is currently preparing the second batch, expected to be available in the coming weeks.

In the end, this clock is more than just a timekeeping device. It is a small but meaningful intervention in how we experience space. It takes something we already know, brings back its forgotten domestic presence, and gives it a contemporary voice. It does not just sit on a wall. It changes how the wall and the room around it are perceived.

The post A Double-Sided Clock That Turns Walls into Living Moments of Time first appeared on Yanko Design.