Tag Archives: pets

This 3D-Printed Saddle Is Designed Around the Horse, Not Adjusted to It

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A saddle is one of the most intimate pieces of equipment in equestrian sport. It sits at the exact point where two athletes meet, translating weight, movement, balance, and intention between horse and rider. Yet for something so central to that relationship, saddle fitting has remained surprisingly dependent on traditional measuring methods, adjustment, and compromise. Catalyst asks what happens when that process becomes precise enough to design around the individual horse from the beginning.

Designed by Hallie Eskey, Catalyst is a custom-fit, 3D-printed jumping saddle developed specifically for the demands of show jumping. The sport subjects both horse and rider to repeated impact as they accelerate, take off, land, and immediately reorganize their balance for the next obstacle. In that environment, the saddle has to do far more than simply provide a seat. Poor fit can create pressure, discomfort, and injury for the horse while interfering with the subtle communication between horse and rider. Catalyst approaches the saddle as performance equipment shaped by anatomy rather than a standardized object that the body must adapt to.

Designer: Hallie Eskey

The process begins with LiDAR 3D scanning. Instead of relying solely on manual measurements of the horse’s back, the horse is digitally captured and brought into CAD software. That information becomes the basis for a parametric lattice structure modeled specifically around the horse’s curves. The result is a level of customization that would be difficult to achieve through conventional hand measuring alone.

That lattice is also Catalyst’s most recognizable visual feature. Rather than hiding its internal structure beneath layers of material, the saddle leaves its carbon fiber geometry exposed. It gives the object an almost architectural quality. The pattern is not there simply to make Catalyst look futuristic. Carbon fiber allows the structure to remain lightweight while providing shock absorption, addressing two qualities that become especially important when horse and rider are repeatedly experiencing the force of landing.

There is something compelling about seeing a product associated with centuries of tradition adopt a visual language that feels closer to computational design, performance footwear, or aerospace engineering. Yet Catalyst does not attempt to erase the craft associated with saddle making. Leather remains part of the object, and traditional leather craft was incorporated into the development of the project. The result sits somewhere between artisan practice and digital fabrication, allowing each to solve the problems it handles best.

The same thinking extends into the way Catalyst is assembled. The saddle is designed around a reduced number of components, with rivets used in place of synthetic adhesives. This makes the construction easier to disassemble, repair, and replace in parts rather than treating the saddle as a permanently bonded object. It is a quieter approach to sustainability than simply changing materials. Instead, longevity is designed into the architecture of the product itself.

That consideration is particularly relevant for highly specialized sporting equipment. Performance products tend to sit in an uncomfortable space between durability and technological progression. They need to withstand demanding use, yet improvements in materials and manufacturing continually push them forward. Designing components that can be separated and replaced gives Catalyst a way to accommodate both realities.

The final saddle grew out of a 20-week development process that included research with equestrian professionals, saddle teardowns, detailed sketching, two full-scale prototypes, iterative CAD modeling, and parametric development in Grasshopper. Those stages matter because Catalyst could easily have become an exercise in applying an impressive manufacturing technology to a familiar object. Instead, the technology follows the actual constraints of the sport and the anatomy of the animal.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Catalyst is that its innovation begins with fit rather than form. The striking lattice and contemporary silhouette are consequences of rethinking how a saddle can be made, adjusted, repaired, and individualized. 3D scanning allows the horse to become the starting geometry. 3D printing allows that geometry to become physical. Carbon fiber responds to weight and impact. Riveted construction considers what happens when the product eventually needs attention.

Catalyst suggests a different future for equestrian equipment, one where customization does not depend entirely on adjustment after manufacturing. Instead, the individual horse can inform the object before it is made. For a sport built around communication between two bodies, designing the equipment around those bodies feels less like a technological spectacle and more like a logical next step.

The post This 3D-Printed Saddle Is Designed Around the Horse, Not Adjusted to It first appeared on Yanko Design.

Bloom Built a Cat Tower Around the Cat You Haven’t Got Yet

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A kitten might be happy with a hideaway, but give it a few months and that same nook starts looking cramped. Add another cat, and a single perch becomes contested territory. Bloom takes that problem literally, building a cat tower from separate cylindrical modules that can be arranged as its occupants grow. It starts small instead of demanding space for a feline family.

Most cat towers arrive as a collection of platforms, posts, and houses, whether your cat needs all of them or not. Their bulk can make a living room feel as if it has been furnished around the pet. Bloom swaps that predetermined silhouette for a cluster of open tubes, each one a place to curl up, climb through, or watch the room.

Designers: Joonseo Choi, Taewoon Kang

Those cylinders come in several diameters, so arranging them feels closer to stacking play objects than assembling pet furniture. A smaller cat can settle into a tighter opening, while a larger one has room to stretch out in a wider tube. The circles also give Bloom its character: soft, repeating forms that can take different shapes instead of committing your room to one tower.

Of course, loose tubes wouldn’t make much of a cat tower once the occupants started leaping about. Bloom uses orange straps to hold the modules together, with hook-and-loop fastening that makes them easier to attach and detach. The straps add a punch of color to the pale cylinders, but their important job is letting you change the arrangement without committing to a rebuild.

You might begin with two tubes near the sofa, then add another when your kitten starts climbing above everybody’s heads. If a second cat joins the household, a wider cluster could give each animal somewhere to pause without fighting over the same opening. The exact layout can follow the cats, rather than asking them to adapt to whatever configuration came in a box.

The holes along the sides serve another purpose beyond giving the straps somewhere to attach. Slide a toy toward one, and a cat tucked inside has something to investigate, while you get a way to join the game without reaching into the tube. It’s a detail, but it turns the enclosed space into somewhere for interaction rather than just another hiding place.

There are still questions a concept can’t answer. A tall arrangement would need to stay steady under a cat’s weight, especially if one launches itself at an upper opening. Bloom doesn’t specify load limits or explain how every possible configuration would be supported, so that flexibility shouldn’t be mistaken for unlimited stacking. For now, its flexibility remains an intriguing, unproven design proposition.

Still, Bloom understands something about cats that a fixed tower often misses: the creature you bring home won’t always be small, and it might not always be alone. Its tubes can be rearranged as that story changes, while its openings leave room for curiosity. The furniture doesn’t need to grow overnight; it can take shape alongside the animals that claim it.

The post Bloom Built a Cat Tower Around the Cat You Haven’t Got Yet first appeared on Yanko Design.

The 5 Home Upgrades Every Pet Parent Actually Uses (Not Just Buys)

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Pet furniture & products have operated under a different standard than everything else in the home for too long. The scratchy beige tower. The plastic bowl by the radiator. The mat that looks like an afterthought. That gap between what owners expect from their own furniture and what they accept for their pets is closing, and the designs collected here are evidence of that shift. These are objects that take the animal’s life seriously without surrendering the room.

This is not a list for owners who want to spoil their pets. It is a list for owners who want their home to feel coherent, and who understand that coherence includes the animal living in it. A vacuum that maps your dog’s favourite spots. A bowl that keeps a fast eater honest. A table built around the fact that the cat is going to be there anyway. Five upgrades, and one shared premise.

1. Chunky Cat Tree

Cat trees solve a specific problem and fail at everything else. They anchor the room in exactly the wrong way, and most owners spend years working around them rather than with them. Gustaf Westman’s Chunky Cat Tree asks whether the category has to operate this way at all. The Swedish designer, known for his Chunky collection of ceramics, glassware, and home objects, has applied that same rounded vocabulary to a cat climbing structure. The result is a piece you place rather than hide.

The form carries all of Westman’s signatures: stacked volumes, inflated proportions, a material presence that reads as warm and deliberate. Made to order in Sweden, the tree is upholstered in wool across five colourways: red, yellow, purple, blue, and cobalt blue. Westman has said he designed it after years of seeing ugly cat trees and deciding the category deserved better. The comment captures the larger idea behind the object. Everything can be designed better, including the things we have come to accept as visually unpleasant.

What we like:

  • Treats cat furniture as a design category worth the same formal attention as any other home object
  • Wool upholstery and sculptural proportions earn placement in the room rather than tolerance of it

What we dislike:

  • Made to order in Sweden means lead times and pricing that will not suit everyone who falls for the visual
  • No confirmed US retail availability or price at time of writing

2. Narwal Flow 2 White

Robot vacuums and pet homes have always had a complicated relationship. Hair wraps around the brush, filters clog faster than the maintenance schedule allows, and the machine ends up parked in the corner half the time. The Narwal Flow 2 White addresses that at the hardware level before asking for any trust. A certified detangling system eliminates hair tangling. A 31,000 Pa motor handles the volume that stops most competitors mid-session. Pet Mode maps your animal’s active zones and adjusts cleaning paths accordingly.

The white colourway matters more than it sounds. Most robot vacuums read as appliances, objects you notice when working and ignore otherwise. The Flow 2 White sits closer to quiet luxury, a thing you leave in the room rather than hiding beneath furniture. Find My Pet uses the onboard camera to locate your animal from your phone on demand. A FlowWash mopping system heats water to 140 degrees for a result that goes well beyond what surface-level mop attachments typically deliver at any price.

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What we like:

  • Pet Mode and the certified detangling system treat pet ownership as a design constraint rather than a marketing hook
  • Find My Pet and AI Floor Tag add genuine daily utility beyond the core cleaning function

What we dislike:

  • At $1,099.99 launch price, the commitment is significant for a category with a historically patchy reliability record

3. Sloddy

Slow feeders solve the problem once. Most dogs need about a week to learn the maze, and then mealtime returns to its previous five-second format. Designer Kyung-seo Yoo built Sloddy around that specific failure mode. The bowl ships with multiple interchangeable puzzle inserts at increasing difficulty levels, and you rotate them as the dog adapts. The challenge stays real. The eating pace stays controlled. It is a straightforward idea that the rest of the category never thought to try.

An adjustable MDF wood stand raises or lowers the bowl to match shoulder height, addressing a posture and digestion concern that most pet owners encounter long after they needed the fix. Every component disassembles fully for cleaning, with no corners that trap food beyond reach. The peachy-orange palette and warm wood base sit somewhere between kitchen object and design piece, and the recyclable cardboard packaging doubles as a storage shelf for the spare inserts once the box is opened.

What we like:

  • The modular difficulty system is the first meaningful update to the slow feeder format in years
  • Full disassembly for cleaning eliminates the trapped-food problem that makes most slow feeders a short-term purchase

What we dislike

  • The modular system only works if the owner actively manages the insert rotation — it requires consistent owner effort, and most households will default to leaving the same insert in indefinitely
  • The MDF wood stand, while visually warm, is vulnerable to water damage and splashing at feeding time, which is a daily reality with most dogs

 4. Pet Paws

Paws are how the outdoors follows your dog into every room. Mud, grit, bacteria, and allergens come in with every return from outside, and a doormat or a towel handles it partially at best. This portable mat was designed to close that gap by combining three functions- cleaning, drying, and disinfecting- in a single object that sits where the problem actually begins. The all-in-one approach trades the multi-step routine by the door for something that takes seconds and requires nothing else.

The portability is part of the logic. A fixed solution only works at one entry point; a mat you can move adapts to wherever the animal actually comes in, which is rarely the same door every day. For households where paw hygiene connects directly to allergy management or general cleanliness standards, shortening the threshold routine without eliminating it offers something most door products never attempt: cleaning, drying, and treating in the same step, without a trip to the sink.

What we like:

  • Three-in-one functionality handles the most repetitive daily pet hygiene task without multiple products
  • Portable format adapts to wherever the animal actually enters, not just the main door

What we dislike:

  • The disinfecting function almost certainly requires a cleaning solution or refill, adding an ongoing cost and supply dependency that the headline promise of a single portable mat quietly glosses over
  • Dogs that resist paw handling or unfamiliar textures underfoot will need consistent training before the mat becomes a reliable part of the routine rather than something they walk around

5. Dinos Cat WFH Table

Anyone who works from home with a cat recognizes the pattern. The animal locates the warmest, most centrally placed surface in the room and treats it as its own. The desk. The keyboard. The notebook. Japanese furniture company Dinos designed a table that accepts this behavior as a given and builds around it rather than against it. A center cavity in the tabletop creates a through-hole, and a hidden perching shelf beneath gives the cat a settled spot at the same level as everything happening above.

The logic is quiet and functional. Rather than competing with the animal for desk space, the table distributes the surface so both uses fit without interrupting each other. The cat sits close enough to its owner to settle down, without walking across the keyboard to get there. For anyone who has rearranged a work setup around a cat’s habits anyway, this just makes the accommodation honest, building it into the object rather than improvising it daily with a cardboard box and a folded blanket.

What we like:

  • Treats the cat as a design parameter from the start rather than an inconvenience to be managed around
  • The hidden perching shelf reduces desk negotiation without requiring any behavioral change from the animal

What we dislike

  • The center cavity is sized and designed specifically for cats, making it a non-starter for dog owners and narrowing the audience of this roundup in a way worth flagging before recommending
  • The table assumes the cat will use the designated perch, and cats are reliably indifferent to designated anything, meaning the design works best for animals already inclined to settle rather than roam

Good Design Has No Exceptions

Pet ownership has changed faster than the objects designed around it. The animals have moved into bedrooms, onto sofas, into daily routines in ways the existing product categories have not kept pace with. What this list represents is a small group of designers who noticed that gap and decided to close it, not by producing novelties, but by applying real design thinking to objects that have been overlooked or tolerated for too long.

None of these are impulse purchases or quick fixes. They are considered responses to specific problems, and that distinction matters. A cat tree that earns its spot. A vacuum that accounts for hair before it becomes a problem. A bowl that stays challenging. A mat that completes the threshold routine in one step. A table that accepts the cat before it ever arrives. That is what good design looks like when it reaches the right problems.

The post The 5 Home Upgrades Every Pet Parent Actually Uses (Not Just Buys) first appeared on Yanko Design.

The Cat Scratcher That Looks Like Real Furniture

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Pet furniture has always occupied that slightly awkward middle ground between function and forgettable. You buy it because you have to, shove it in a corner, and try not to look directly at it when guests come over. Most cat scratchers, in particular, exist in a category of design that can be charitably described as “utilitarian beige nightmare.” They do what they need to do and nothing more. Pet JoJo, a brand clearly done with that arrangement, has built something worth actually looking at.

The Cloud Lounge Cat Scratcher is the centerpiece of their lineup, and it reads less like pet equipment and more like a sculptural furniture piece that wandered in from a boutique home goods store. The silhouette is an undulating, asymmetrical wave form, wide and low to the ground, with soft bouclé fabric trim running along its edges in either a warm brown or a quiet beige. The scratching surface is corrugated cardboard, densely layered and reversible, which means it lasts significantly longer than a flat panel scratcher ever could. The whole thing has the visual weight of something that belongs on a design blog, not crammed beside the litter box.

Designer: Pet JoJo

What the designers at Pet JoJo got right, and credit where it is due, is that they studied how cats actually behave. The form of the Cloud Lounge isn’t just aesthetic for its own sake. The shifting angles invite cats into multiple positions, from a full stretch across the top to a tucked curl inside the lower curve. It functions simultaneously as a scratcher, a lounge bed, and a resting perch. Cats are notoriously opinionated about their furniture, and the fact that reviews consistently point to pets actually using the piece daily is the only endorsement that really matters.

The Cheese Cat Scratcher, also part of Pet JoJo’s current collection, takes an entirely different approach and somehow pulls it off just as well. It is shaped exactly like a wedge of cartoon cheese, right down to the circular cutout holes. On paper, that sounds like a novelty item. In practice, it is clever. Those holes create a tunnel and peek-through spaces that cats apparently adore, and the exterior is wrapped in the same soft fabric as the Cloud Lounge, offering textured surfaces on multiple sides. The three angled scratching faces, set at different degrees, mean a cat can choose how it wants to scratch rather than being restricted to one flat plane. It sits cheerfully on a hardwood floor looking like something from a design-forward children’s room, and that is very much a compliment.

I appreciate that Pet JoJo isn’t trying to be subtle about aesthetics. The brand’s photography, clean and editorial, with cats posed in well-furnished real homes, makes it obvious that the intended buyer cares about how their space looks. The Pebble Pet Bowls, also part of their line, are smooth ceramic pieces in soft, considered colors that would blend into a well-styled kitchen without complaint. That kind of cohesion across a product range signals intentionality. This isn’t a company slapping a design veneer on a cheap product. The Cloud Lounge is built from premium corrugated cardboard bonded with corn starch glue, non-toxic, durable, and made to last one to two years or more under regular use.

The broader question, the one that makes Pet JoJo’s existence feel culturally interesting, is why it took this long. Pet ownership has been climbing steadily for years, and spending on pet products has followed. But design-forward options for cat furniture specifically have lagged well behind what we expect from, say, a throw pillow or a side table. The assumption seemed to be that cat owners would accept anything as long as it kept the furniture safe from claws. Pet JoJo is quietly making the case that accepting “anything” was never actually the only option.

The Cloud Lounge retails at $78.99. That is not nothing, but for a piece that holds up, looks genuinely good in a living room, and, more importantly, actually gets used by the cat it was made for, the math works out.

The post The Cat Scratcher That Looks Like Real Furniture first appeared on Yanko Design.

The 5 Best Pet-Friendly Designs of July 2026

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Pet design has spent years stuck in a holding pattern, functional at best, forgettable at worst. The objects built around our animals have rarely been held to the same standard as everything else in a considered home. That’s beginning to change. A new generation of designers is approaching pet products the same way they approach anything else, asking harder questions about form, material, and what the thing is actually trying to do.

What unites these five is a refusal of the usual trade-off. You shouldn’t have to choose between a home that looks intentional and a home that works for your animal. The best pet products start from that premise and find solutions that serve both sides with the same formal intelligence you’d expect from any well-considered object. When a product stops being something you manage around, it becomes something you’re genuinely glad to have.

1. Chunky Cat Tree

Gustaf Westman has spent his career making objects that stop you mid-room. The Swedish designer’s signature vocabulary, rounded forms, chalky pastels, and a cheerful materiality that makes things feel considered without feeling serious, translates to cat furniture with surprising ease. His pieces don’t ask to be hidden. They ask to be placed. A climbing structure in the Westman language becomes something you actually want in your living room, which is a genuinely rare thing to say about anything designed for a cat.

For cat owners who have spent years tolerating carpet-covered towers tucked behind sofas, this is the product that changes the terms. You stop hiding the furniture and start displaying it, and that shift benefits the cat as much as the room. A well-placed, structurally interesting object is exactly what a cat will engage with rather than ignore. The benefit for you is a home where the animal’s things no longer undercut everything else you’ve worked to make look good.

What we like

  • Westman’s palette and rounded forms integrate into a styled interior rather than competing with it
  • Treats cat furniture as a genuine design object worthy of deliberate placement

What we dislike

  • The distinctive aesthetic is specific enough that it won’t suit every interior equally
  • Pricing and availability may limit access for most cat owners

2. Gaenim Cap

There is a specific kind of design satisfaction reserved for solutions so obvious you wonder why they took this long. A bottle cap that converts any standard water bottle into a pet drinking vessel is exactly that. Thread it onto a bottle you’re already carrying, tilt, and a small reservoir fills for your dog or cat to drink from. At $9, the price becomes part of the argument. This earns its place not through complexity but through the sheer clarity of the idea.

What makes it interesting from a design perspective is what it doesn’t do. It doesn’t add bulk, require charging, or introduce a new object into your bag. It simply replaces the cap on something you’re already carrying. For anyone who walks their dog, hikes, or travels with animals, this is the kind of thinking that makes a product genuinely useful rather than just thoughtfully packaged. The solution is in the reduction, and that’s exactly how it should be.

What we like

  • Replaces an existing object rather than adding a new one to your kit
  • The $9 price makes it genuinely accessible without compromising the design logic

What we dislike

  • Works best with standard bottle threads; compatibility may vary across certain brands
  • The bottle determines the reservoir size, so larger dogs may need multiple refills on longer walks

3. GlocalMe Pet Phone

The conceptual leap here is significant. Rather than building pet monitoring features into a companion app or a smartwatch extension, this device treats pet care as a dedicated platform in its own right. A smartphone-like form factor designed exclusively around tracking, monitoring, and caring for your animal brings a level of focus that tacked-on app features cannot match. Health metrics, location, behavioral patterns: it consolidates what would otherwise be scattered across multiple apps into a single, considered object.

The design argument is also about the owner’s relationship with the device itself. When your animal’s care lives in its own dedicated interface rather than competing with your notifications and social feed, the interaction changes. You’re not checking on your pet between emails. You’re engaging with something purpose-built, which makes the monitoring feel intentional rather than incidental. For a generation of pet owners who treat their animals as dependents, that distinction is exactly the kind of thinking that earns product loyalty.

What we like

  • Consolidates pet health tracking, location, and care into a single dedicated device
  • The purpose-built interface makes monitoring feel intentional rather than an afterthought

What we dislike

  • A dedicated device means another screen to charge and update alongside your existing tech
  • Works best for single-pet households; multi-pet scenarios add layers of complexity

4. Sloddy

The standard dog bowl is one of the least examined objects in the home, a container that does one thing without much thought about whether that one thing could be done better. This bowl challenges that premise by introducing cognitive engagement into the feeding ritual. Your dog has to work for the food, navigating a surface designed to slow eating and stimulate problem-solving. In doing so, it addresses bloat, anxiety, and boredom simultaneously, three things most feeding bowls pretend don’t exist.

What distinguishes this from the broader category of puzzle feeders is the formal attention paid to the object itself. The bowl reads as a considered piece of kitchenware, not a brightly colored plastic insert you’d move before guests arrived. That balance between function and form is what elevates it. The dog gets the mental engagement it needs. You get something worth leaving on the kitchen floor without it making the space feel like a pet supply store.

What we like

  • Addresses slow feeding and mental stimulation without resorting to toy-like aesthetics
  • Considered enough in its design language to leave out on the kitchen floor between meals

What we dislike

  • The puzzle surface may frustrate smaller breeds or dogs with flat faces
  • Cleaning the channels takes noticeably more effort than a standard bowl

5. PawStairs

Pet stairs are a product most owners know they need and spend years avoiding because the available options are genuinely difficult to look at. This modular version in wood finishes solves the aesthetic problem without sacrificing the functional argument. The stairs configure to different heights depending on the furniture they’re serving, so a single product adapts to the sofa or the bed. The wood finish does the visual heavy lifting, making it read as furniture rather than a concession to the animal.

There is also a welfare argument embedded in the design. Older dogs and cats with joint problems need assistance reaching elevated furniture, but the typical foam-and-fabric ramp is something you’d move to a cupboard before guests arrived. A product that stays out because it belongs there is one that actually gets used consistently, and that’s the only way it helps. The modularity matters too: as the animal ages and its needs shift, the configuration can grow with them.

What we like

  • The modular system adapts to different furniture heights rather than locking you into one configuration
  • Wood finishes integrate with real interior design rather than working against it

What we dislike

  • Modularity means multiple components to store when not in use
  • Wood surfaces may require added grip strips for older pets with limited mobility

Good Design Doesn’t Stop at the Pet Aisle

The design of pet products has operated with low expectations for too long. These five make the case that the category is capable of the same rigor applied to any other consumer object. When a designer gives genuine attention to a scratching post, a bottle cap, or a feeding bowl, the result isn’t just more attractive. It’s more useful, more consistently used, and genuinely better for the animal. That equation holds regardless of the category.

What’s encouraging is the range. These are not luxury objects for a niche market of design obsessives with cats. A $9 bottle cap sits in the same list as a piece by one of Sweden’s most recognizable designers because both were made with the same underlying intention: to solve a real problem without making the room worse in the process. More of that thinking, across more of the category, is exactly what pet products have been waiting for.

The post The 5 Best Pet-Friendly Designs of July 2026 first appeared on Yanko Design.

This GPS dog tracker uses Starlink satellites to work anywhere cell service doesn’t

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Satellite connectivity used to be reserved for phones, off-grid communicators, and specialized outdoor gear. Now it is showing up in far smaller devices, and Fi Ultra pushes that trend into pet care. The tracker taps into the Starlink satellite network to keep dogs locatable in places where cell towers never reach, a capability that would have sounded unrealistic in a consumer pet product only a few years ago. Hikers, hunters, and rural dog owners have spent years accepting blind spots in their tracking apps as a fact of life. Fi Ultra treats that blind spot as a problem worth solving with real infrastructure instead of a bigger antenna.

Fi built its business on GPS trackers that relayed location through LTE, a system that worked well until a dog wandered beyond cellular range. Fi Ultra closes that gap by adding satellite as a fallback layer, switching automatically between Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, LTE, and satellite depending on what is available. Priced at $199, with an additional $189 a year for satellite access, it signals how quickly satellite technology is trickling down into everyday consumer products. This is the same T-Satellite infrastructure conversation phone carriers have been having for the last two years, except here it is stitched into a dog collar instead of a flagship handset.

Designer: Fi

Satellite transmission is power hungry by nature, since the tracker has to punch a signal far enough to reach orbit rather than the nearest cell tower. Fi’s answer is a connection hierarchy that always defaults to the cheapest option available, quietly downgrading from satellite to LTE to Wi-Fi to Bluetooth the moment a lower power option exists. It is the same logic your phone uses when it prefers Wi-Fi over cellular data, just applied to a device with a fraction of the battery capacity. The result is a tracker that only reaches for its most expensive connection when nothing else will do the job.

An Apple AirTag runs for a year on its coin cell battery, and Fi’s own Fi 3+ lasts up to three months, but Fi Ultra is rated for only several days between charges. That is a steep drop, and it says something about how much energy satellite radios actually demand compared to the low power Bluetooth chips inside most trackers. Fi is betting that owners in genuinely remote areas will accept more frequent charging in exchange for a tracker that never goes dark, which is a reasonable bet for search and rescue dogs, hunting companions, and anyone hiking well outside cell coverage. It is a much harder sell for a dog that mostly patrols a suburban backyard.

Fi Ultra also carries over Fi Callback, a feature that lets owners send sound and vibration cues through the smartphone app to recall a dog from a distance, alongside standard support for both collar and harness mounting. None of that is revolutionary on its own. What makes Fi Ultra worth watching is the precedent it sets. Satellite hardware has spent years shrinking from ships and expedition gear down to phones, and now down to a dog collar. The next logical step is livestock tags, wildlife collars, and eventually anything small enough to wear that still needs to be found. Fi just got there first.

The post This GPS dog tracker uses Starlink satellites to work anywhere cell service doesn’t first appeared on Yanko Design.

The Smartest $9 Pet Accessory Is Just a Bottle Cap

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The best design ideas tend to be the ones that make you stop and think, “why hasn’t anyone done this before?” Gaenim’s silicone bottle cap water dispenser for dogs is that kind of idea. It’s not flashy. It doesn’t connect to an app. It doesn’t have a rechargeable battery or a minimalist unboxing experience. It’s just a small silicone piece that snaps onto a standard water bottle and folds out into a bowl for your dog to drink from. And yet, it’s the kind of thing that, once you’ve seen it, you can’t believe wasn’t a standard item in every pet owner’s bag already.

The premise is almost embarrassingly simple. You screw the silicone cap onto any regular water bottle in place of the original lid. When your dog needs a drink, you tip the bottle and the silicone portion unfurls into a shallow drinking tray. Your dog drinks, you tip the bottle back, the excess drains back in, and off you go. Korean e-tailer Gaenim designed it for hikers with dogs, but it’s equally useful on a city walk, a road trip, or a park visit. Basically, any time you’re out with your dog and a water bottle, this thing earns its place.

Designer Name: Gaenim

What makes it genuinely smart isn’t the mechanism itself. It’s the materials thinking behind it. Silicone is flexible enough to fold flat and snap back into shape, durable enough to survive being tossed in a bag, and food-safe enough that you don’t have to think twice about what’s touching your dog’s water. It also cleans easily. You’re not carrying around a rigid plastic contraption or a separate collapsible bowl that inevitably ends up with mildew in the seams by week three. The Gaenim cap sidesteps all of that because it’s essentially one single piece of material doing all the work.

Pet accessories have long had a habit of being either over-engineered or underwhelming. You’ve seen the products: complicated dispensers with buttons and reservoirs, squeezable bottles that require a very specific squeeze-to-pour ratio, or collapsible bowls that never actually fold up small enough to be genuinely portable. They all solve the same problem, but they do it by adding more stuff. The Gaenim cap goes the other direction entirely. It’s a replacement lid. That’s the whole thing. It adds almost no bulk to what you’re already carrying, and it requires no learning curve whatsoever.

That said, it’s fair to acknowledge a small design puzzle that a few people have already noticed. When the cap is screwed on and you’re mid-hike, the surface that your dog licks is facing outward. It’s not a dealbreaker, and depending on how you carry your bottle, it may never be an issue. But it’s the kind of thing a second-generation design might address, maybe with a cap-over-cap configuration or a simple protective cover. The bones of the idea are solid enough that a refinement or two wouldn’t hurt.

It’s also worth pointing out that this isn’t trying to replace a purpose-built dog water bottle. If you’re doing long, high-exertion hikes in summer heat with a large dog, a dedicated bottle with a proper bowl attachment is still probably the smarter choice. What the Gaenim cap offers instead is frictionless everyday utility. It’s the thing you grab because you didn’t plan to walk as far as you did, or because your usual dog bottle is still drying on the dish rack.

Pet design has quietly become one of the more interesting spaces to watch right now. Dog owners are thoughtful consumers, and they’re done tolerating clunky, ugly, or needlessly complicated products. The fact that a Korean brand produced something this stripped-back and practical, and that it’s now getting attention from the design community, suggests the rest of the category should probably take notes. A small piece of silicone. A water bottle you already own. A dog that stays hydrated. Sometimes the math really is that simple.

The post The Smartest $9 Pet Accessory Is Just a Bottle Cap first appeared on Yanko Design.

Gustaf Westman Gives Cat Furniture a Playful Upgrade

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Cat trees are rarely the most beautiful objects in a home. They are often tall, scratchy, beige, awkwardly shaped, and treated as something to be tolerated rather than celebrated. Swedish designer Gustaf Westman seems to have taken that as a challenge. With his new Chunky Cat Tree, he reimagines the everyday pet accessory as a sculptural, design-forward piece of furniture that belongs as much to the living room as it does to the cat.

Known for his soft, rounded, almost cartoon-like forms, Westman has built a recognizable visual language around bold proportions and playful silhouettes. His Chunky collection already includes cups, glasses, vases, a stool, a flower pot, and even a coffee maker. Now, with the Chunky Cat Tree, that same design universe has expanded into the world of pet furniture.

Designer: Gustaf Westman

The piece is informed by Westman’s Blob Sofa, which launched in 2023. Like the sofa, the cat tree uses stacked, rounded volumes and a confident colour palette to create something that feels friendly, soft, and slightly surreal. Instead of hiding pet furniture in a corner, Westman’s version asks to be seen. It functions as a perch for cats, but also as a statement object for humans.

The design features a tripod base, with three rounded legs supporting platforms placed at different heights. These levels allow cats to climb, rest, observe, and occupy the structure from multiple angles. The three rounded feet can also serve as resting spots, making the piece usable by more than one cat at a time. It is practical, but it does not look purely practical. That is where the charm lies.

Westman’s approach feels especially relevant in a moment when homes are becoming more carefully curated, but also more emotionally expressive. People no longer want furniture that only performs a function; they want objects that reflect personality, taste, humour, and lifestyle. The Chunky Cat Tree fits into this shift beautifully. It treats cats not as an afterthought in the domestic space, but as active participants in it.

The designer has said that after seeing so many ugly cat trees, he felt it would be fun to design something within that category. His comment reveals the larger idea behind the project: everything can be designed better, even the things we usually accept as visually unpleasant. By giving equal attention to form and function, Westman creates a product that serves both cats and their owners.

Made to order in Sweden, the Chunky Cat Tree can be upholstered in wool in red, yellow, purple, blue, or cobalt blue. These colour options continue Westman’s love for punchy primary and secondary shades, while the wool finish gives the object a softer, more furniture-like presence.

Since founding his studio in 2020, Westman has become known for custom furniture, ceramics, glassware, and playful made-to-order objects. His work often uses materials such as wood, metal, ceramic, and glass, but visually ties them together through rounded shapes, glossy finishes, and a childlike sense of wonder.

The Chunky Cat Tree is more than a luxury accessory for pets. It is a reminder that design can enter unexpected categories and make them feel fresh. By turning a typically clunky household object into a sculptural centrepiece, Gustaf Westman proves that even a cat tree can have personality, humour, and a place in contemporary design.

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From Foldable Pilates to Shoe Robots: InnoX GCS 2026’s Best Startups

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The consumer tech market has a crowding problem, mostly driven by products that try to do too much for too many people. The most interesting hardware lately has been doing the opposite, building around one specific inconvenience that hasn’t been properly addressed yet. Shenzhen has always had a knack for this, and InnoX Academy has been quietly developing the next generation of builders who make those products happen.

Founded in 2021 by Professor Li Zexiang of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen InnoX Academy is a structured ecosystem that develops engineers and entrepreneurs into product builders. At the Global Connect Show 2026, it gave the world a look at its latest batch of startups, from home fitness and pet care to ambient design objects, each taking a more considered approach to a specific problem.

Pilates reformers have always been the kind of equipment you’d only find in a dedicated studio, too large and bulky for most apartments to accommodate. Pavo Fitness, started by a team of architects, industrial designers, and professional Pilates instructors, saw that as a solvable problem. The Pavo Reformer is their answer: a compact, foldable machine designed to bring studio-quality resistance training into a regular home.

Designer: PAVO

Once a session is done, it packs away without being disassembled or moved to a corner, so it doesn’t have to become a permanent fixture in your living space. The onboard smart system keeps tabs on workouts, which matters more in a home setting where there’s no instructor watching your form. It adds a layer of accountability that a conventional reformer simply can’t offer.

Multi-pet households have a feeding dynamic that most smart feeders don’t actually address. A timed dispenser works for one pet, but when multiple cats have different dietary needs, scheduling meals is only part of the problem; the harder challenge is making sure each cat only gets its own food. That’s what PETPA was built to solve, by a team that previously worked on hardware at DJI, Narwal, and RoboMaster.

Designer: PETPA

The PETPA Multi-pet Feeder uses individual pet recognition to identify each cat and control access to their food, particularly useful in homes where one cat needs to lose weight or follow a prescription diet while the others don’t. It launched at CES 2025 and earned a CES Innovation Award in the Pet Tech and Animal Welfare category, recognizing a product solving a problem most smart feeders still overlook.

Sneaker care has evolved into its own dedicated ritual for collectors and sports enthusiasts who’d rather not take chances with a stiff brush and soapy water. The typical cleaning routine still carries the risk of fading colors, weakening materials, or warping the structure of more delicate footwear. Brolan’s ClearX is a compact home machine that moves through cleaning, low-temperature drying, and sterilization all in one automated cycle.

Designer: Brolan

Founded in 2025 by a team drawing from Nanyang Technological University, Harbin Institute of Technology, and Tsinghua University, Brolan designed ClearX specifically to clean without the harshness of manual scrubbing. The idea is to get footwear thoroughly clean without putting materials at risk, which matters most for anyone who owns suede, knit, or premium leather shoes that even a careful hand-wash can easily ruin.

Not everything in the InnoX lineup is about automation or performance tracking. REAZENABLE takes a different direction with the REAZE Sandstone Series, a collection that sits somewhere between smart lighting and decorative object, aimed at people who’d rather their home feel calmer than more connected. The brand’s philosophy, technology empowering nature and light reshaping emotion, gives a clear sense of where its priorities are.

Designer: REANZENABLE

The collection includes the Halo light and three aroma vessels, all made from sand-based materials and shaped with ribbed surfaces that recall an uneven lunar landscape. The technical structure is deliberately concealed within those soft architectural forms, so nothing on the shelf reads as a gadget. Atmospheric light, mineral textures, and scent work together into something that feels more like a ritual object than a piece of hardware.

Several other InnoX startups addressed more personal routines. Rootique brought the DUO, a scalp atomizing applicator using patented DuoTrace and IntelliMist technology for precise serum delivery in about 15 seconds, already validated through an Indiegogo campaign that found backers across 52 countries. OCJOY presented the OCJOY Air, a home micro-air oral cleaning system that brings a water-air-powder cleaning method from dental offices to your own countertop.

Direct Drive Tech D1

The lineup stretched into less expected territory, too. Blucalm’s StrikeDeck delivers AI-assisted game audio through a desktop controller, while ORULINK’s Watcher-Robot is an open-source desktop AI companion built for everyday interaction. CHEERLUCK brought a sausage vending robot for campuses and public spaces, and both Y-H2O and ANAVI presented electric watercraft, a hydrofoiling vessel, and a smart personal watercraft, each designed to cut the noise and emissions of traditional marine engines.

EcoFlow

Narwal

What gives the InnoX lineup credibility beyond the show floor is the academy’s broader history. Brands like Narwal, SwitchBot, DJI, EcoFlow, AgileX, and LiberLive are all part of InnoX’s wider ecosystem, a track record that makes it worth paying attention when the academy’s latest batch of incubated products steps out in front of an international audience for the first time.

LiberLive

DJI

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adidas Just Made the Best World Cup Drop for Your Dog

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adidas dropped a pet jersey collection for the FIFA World Cup 2026 and I genuinely cannot decide if it’s brilliant or completely unhinged. Maybe both. That tension is precisely what makes it worth paying attention to.

The collection features scaled-down versions of the official home kits for four national federations: Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, and Japan. Each jersey is made with interlock fabric, finished with heat-transferred federation crests and the adidas logo, and sized to fit pets of varying builds. On paper, it reads like a novelty item, the kind of thing that gets a cute Instagram moment and then disappears. But the more I think about it, the more I suspect adidas is operating on a level most people aren’t fully registering yet.

Designer: adidas

This isn’t the brand’s first move into pet fashion. They released a pet tracksuit collection in late 2025 and followed it up with Lunar New Year designs in early 2026. The World Cup drop is the third chapter, and it’s by far the most culturally loaded. Attaching pet merchandise to the biggest sporting event on the planet isn’t a gimmick. It’s a calculated bet on where consumer culture is right now. People don’t just watch the World Cup. They host parties, coordinate outfits, wear matching kits with their kids, and increasingly treat their pets as full participants in the whole ritual. adidas saw that behavioral shift and decided to meet the moment rather than wait for someone else to.

The design fidelity is where I think they actually earned some genuine respect here. These aren’t generic jerseys with a crest slapped on. The Argentina kit carries the iconic Albiceleste stripes. The Mexico jersey features the Piedra del Sol, the same Aztec sun stone print embedded in the human version. The Colombia and Japan kits follow the same logic: faithfully reproduce the visual DNA of the official tournament kits, just at a smaller scale. That level of attention to detail signals that adidas isn’t treating the pet market as an afterthought. They’re treating it as a legitimate extension of the product line, and that’s a meaningful distinction.

Whether that’s the right move commercially is a separate conversation. The pet economy has been growing steadily for years, and premium pet accessories have become a real, serious category. But there’s also a risk of diluting what a World Cup kit means. A national team jersey carries history, identity, and a specific kind of weight. Putting it on your Corgi is either a celebration of that connection or a softening of it, depending on how you feel about football culture to begin with. I lean toward the former, mostly because fandom has always been about emotional inclusion rather than gatekeeping.

What adidas is really selling here is a shared experience. The visual of a fan and their dog in matching kits is immediately legible as a moment of joy, and that’s not nothing. The FIFA World Cup 2026 runs from June 11 to July 19 across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, which means there’s an entire summer of viewing parties and matchday gatherings where this collection becomes exactly the kind of organic conversation starter that no marketing budget can easily manufacture. You don’t need a big campaign when your product photographs that naturally.

The collection became available on May 1st across North America, Latin America, and selected markets in Asia including Japan, China, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Indonesia, through adidas stores, retail partners, and online. The timing gives fans about six weeks to get their pets game-ready before the opening match. That’s enough runway to make it feel intentional rather than rushed. Is it the most important design release of 2026? Obviously not. But it’s a genuinely smart piece of brand work that understands its cultural moment, respects its source material, and executes with more craft than the premise suggests it deserves. Sometimes that’s enough. Sometimes that’s actually the point.

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