Tag Archives: Red Dot Concept 2021

2-in-1 Spin Cycle and Rowing Machine lets you easily switch between both forms of Workouts

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Aptly titled the ‘Spin&Row’, this award-winning gym-machine concept lets you work your cardio and legs while cycling, and your arms and core while rowing. Designed to offer people the best of both worlds, the Spin&Row was created during the pandemic, when exercising at home was practically the only feasible option available to people. Moreover, its X-shaped folding design lets it easily occupy less floor space when shut, making it perfect for homes and apartments.

Designer: Zhang Chaoyi

“SPIN&ROW combines two popular types of home fitness equipment: a rowing machine and a spinning bike”, says Zhang Chaoyi, designer of the Spin&Row and student at Hunan University. “It enables the user to switch between fitness modes by adjusting the angle of the X structure, which can also be folded when not in use. As a result, it fulfills multiple fitness functions in a small space.”

The Spin&Row’s clever design gives it the best of all worlds. For starters, it comes with a scissor-style mechanism that allows it to open wide into a low-seated rowing machine, or in an X-shaped stationary bicycle, or closed shut, occupying practically the same amount of floor space as a doormat. It’s designed to be operated by a single person and doesn’t really need any instructor or supervision. The Spin&Row’s frame guides you through setup, allowing you to snap it in any of the three positions, and an adjustable cycle seat lets you tailor the experience to your ergonomics.

The Spin&Row is a winner of the Red Dot Design Concept Award for the year 2021.

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Absolutely genius toilet design with a lid-activated flush only flushes when you’ve shut the lid

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Did you know that you’re supposed to close the lid each time you flush a toilet?! The lid isn’t there for aesthetic reasons, it’s there to make sure germs and bacteria don’t fly around into the air as particulate matter when you hit the flush. THAT’S what the lid is for! Well, I think I can speak on behalf of a lot of us but I was today-years-old when I got to know that… and sure, it sounds like a weirdly complicated procedure, but this award-winning toilet design makes the entire process easier. Dubbed ‘CLOSE THE LID’, this toilet’s clear lid IS its flush. The lid is directly connected to the toilet’s flushing system, activating it only when you shut the lid. The lid helps contain the water spray, preventing a ‘blowback’ of sorts, while its clear design lets you know if you.ve flushed successfully.

Designer: Yang Haojing

“The toilet lid employs a bicycle flywheel-like structure at the shaft to ensure that the flush is triggered when the lid is closed at a 45-degree angle—and only during the process of closing the lid, rather than continuously after the lid is closed”, says designer Yang Haojing. The cover of the lid is transparent, allowing you to check if the ‘payload has been delivered’ after a single flush. If you DO need to flush again, there’s a flush switch located on the lid too, letting you activate the flush again without lifting and closing the lid.

The CLOSE THE LID is a winner of the Red Dot Design Concept Award for the year 2021.

The Red Dot Awards: Design Concept is now accepting entries for its 2023 edition. Click here to participate or visit the Red Dot Awards website to learn more. Early Submission Phase ends on January 18th, 2023.

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This vlogger’s camera comes with DSLR-like features packed into a self-recording-friendly format

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Take a look at any professional camera and its design has a certain logic to it. Especially if you look at the heavier DSLRs, they’re made to be ergonomic and held a certain way. You can’t hold a DSLR with your left hand, the grip’s made in a way that only promotes right-handed usage. Similarly, not all cameras come with screens that pivot 180° to face forwards. In short, a DSLR or Mirrorless camera is made to record other subjects, not yourself. In comes the VoCam concept to change that.

A winner of the Red Dot Design Concept Award, VoCam explores a vlogger-specific camera style that enables self-recording among other recording styles. The three key areas where the camera truly shines is A. in its orientation-agnostic form that can be held in portrait and landscape formats for the recording style and social media outlet of your choosing, B. the adjustable screen that faces all the way forward so you can record yourself as effortlessly as you would on a smartphone, and C. the grip on the side that opens up into a pop-out handle/grip for carrying your camera while walking and recording. The camera is also pretty much designed to be an expert kit right out of the box. It doesn’t need extra lenses or additional accessories like tripods. Sure, you can upgrade your camera with USB storage, gimbals, etc., but the VoCam is designed to be as capable as possible with minimal upgrading required!

Designer: Fan Chenchen

The VoCam’s design comes from China-based designer Fan Chenchen, with inspirations that clearly feel like a hat-tip to Polaroid’s fun, young-demographic-friendly style. It features an f1.8 lens on the front that seems to be the exact same one found on the Sony RX100, and if we’re going by that reference, the VoCam also probably has a massive 20.2MP 1-inch CMOS sensor underneath, allowing for high amounts of light capture that is perfect for shooting in all kinds of light.

What’s really remarkable about the VoCam is that it isn’t just a camera. It’s a full-fledged recording station that has the best of all worlds. The lens, like I mentioned earlier, is top-notch, but the camera also comes with a 180° adjustable screen that lets you record others as well as yourself. There’s a rather large pop-out flashlight on one side of the camera that can be made to face any which way, and on the other side, right underneath the detachable grip is an adjustable boom mic of sorts, giving you the ability to record videos with stellar audio to match.

To keep the purists happy, however, the VoCam has a tripod mount located on its side (visible through the hollow part of the flashlight). It also has an SD card slot and a USB-C port to keep the camera charged.

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Absolutely ingenious flat-pack travel kettle comes with bellow-inspired expanding design

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A winner of the Red Dot Design Concept Award last year, the ‘Folding Kettle for Travel’ demonstrates how a simple eureka moment can help create a product so clever, it’ll have you wondering why nobody ever thought of it before. The Folding Kettle comes with a flat-pack design that opens up rather cleverly, expanding its volume while creating a kettle that’s stable enough to stand vertically on any surface. “Due to its unique storage structure, the capacity of this travel-friendly folding kettle after unfolding is approximately 1.2 litres”, says C60 Design’s team lead Chu Wenbao. “It has three main characteristics: simple operation, easy storage, and a minimal aesthetic.” The kettle’s travel-friendly design borrows a lot from a travel iron. It’s compact when you need it to be, and functional when opened. It also has a detachable cable that allows you to connect it to a power outlet to heat water wherever you are.

Designer: C60Design

The Folding Kettle for Travel is made from a combination of flame-resistant plastic, 304 stainless steel, and food-grade silicone (for the bellow). When folded, it occupies 1/3rd of the space of a regular kettle, becoming about as slim as a Memobottle so it fits easily into most travel cases. When you need to heat up some water, just plug the kettle in and switch it on using the button right above the handle. The bottle switches off automatically when the water is heated, and a lockable spout on the front lets you easily pour out said water to brew a nice cup of tea or coffee!

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Siemens Pendulum Seat swings out of the way when trains need more standing room

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Trains are designed to sit commuters comfortably, or at least in theory. In many cases, however, it might be more efficient to have everyone just stand, and this concept makes it possible for the same train to do both.

As the world tries to return to normal, mass transportation services are once again becoming crowded. In many countries, trains of all kinds are seen as the most efficient way to move the biggest number of people, but their designs are mostly stuck in the past when it comes to seating accommodations. In trying to accommodate both sitting and standing passengers, trains actually fail at serving both at the best of their capacity. That is unless they try to implement Siemen’s idea.

Designer: Siemens

Image Courtesy of Red Dot

Despite its name, the Pendulum Seat doesn’t swing back and forth freely or loosely. It is, instead, more like the pendulum of a metronome that can be locked at fixed positions. A single seat is actually made up of two seats whose backrests can either fold up or swivel down to form an atypical sitting position.

The idea here is to have the same train change its sitting or standing capacity at any given time. If there aren’t that many passengers onboard, like during off-peak hours, the Pendulum Seat can be used as a conventional seat with ample legroom for commuters. During rush hours, however, the backrests can go completely vertical to provide more room for people to stand.

All of these can be controlled by the train driver to adjust the configuration with the push of a button. There is even a configuration where backrests can alternate their positions, creating an odd seating arrangement. In its vertically folded form, the backrests can even be used as support for standing passengers to lean against.

The idea is definitely novel and interesting, which is why Siemens bagged a few awards for its design. That said, the design itself might not look that comfortable, especially as a chair where you will be parking your bum on what is practically a padded cylinder. This design seems to be more focused on getting as many people around as possible rather than on providing comfort during the travel time. Then again, there is probably nothing more uncomfortable than having to fight for space on a crowded train made more cramped by unyielding seats.

Images Courtesy of iF Design

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This bizarre face mask concept proposes using an air-curtain instead of a physical filter… and it just might work

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Using air to cut off potentially virally infected air sounds a lot like fire fighting fire, but there just might be some truth to it all. Air curtains are undoubtedly effective at creating an invisible barrier that keeps cold air inside an air-conditioned room from mixing with the hot air outside a room. When correctly installed, an air curtain actually saves energy in the long run by providing an essentially open entrance that allows people to pass through but prevents outside air from mixing with inside air (and potentially putting a higher load on your ACs), and it essentially even prevents mosquitoes from passing through too. So if an air curtain can create a very effective air barrier with large spaces, why can’t that technology be scaled down to work on your face too?

What this conceptual face mask proposes isn’t too far-fetched, honestly. Scientists are actually researching the viability of using air curtains to effectively ‘deactivate’ the coronavirus. If successful, maybe that face mask you’re currently wearing goes the way of the dinosaurs, as everyone essentially begins wearing fans on their foreheads that push filtered air towards your face, and keep bad air out.

In this research paper, physicists Alexander S. Sakharov and Konstantin Zhukov even propose a similar head-worn air curtain that essentially cuts off external air flow for the wearer without the discomfort of a fabric or N95 mask pressed against their faces. At least for the aerosol-based transmission of the coronavirus, an air curtain can be reasonably effective at pushing away particles (both from outside as well as from the wearer) to prevent proximal viral transmission… all while still allowing the wearer to breathe air comfortably.

The Airable is, at least on paper, a rather slim AR-headset-shaped device with air vents on the forehead facing downwards, and a clear plastic visor to prevent the gust of wind from blowing directly in your eyes. One could easily imagine that the Airable has a built-in filter of its own, which ensures that the air curtain only blows pure air (another research paper debates the use of ionized air to kill viruses instantly). Sounds pretty great on paper, and I definitely hope a team of designers and engineers are building or prototyping such a device. Unless the folks at Dyson could come up with a solution, my only concern is the overwhelming noise most air curtains currently make.

Airable is a winner of the Red Dot Design Concept Award for the year 2021.

Designers: Kim Seulgee, Ko Sungchan, Lee Wonho, Park Hyein

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Portable spirometer lets you track lung activity + strength, for people recovering from breathing issues

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Designed to help measure lung activity and strength while on the go, the Airpen is a small handheld pocketable spirometer that tracks how hard you can inhale/exhale. Working pretty much the way a breathalyzer does, the Airpen uses a small module with a fan inside it, which rotates when you breathe in or out. The device calculates the fan’s RPM to basically gauge how strong your lungs are. Working alongside a smartphone app that collects and creates a dashboard of your lung activity data, the Airpen hopes to help rehabilitate people with reduced lung function.

It’s a successor to the Incentive Spirometer, a relatively large device that’s used to help rehabilitate lungs after illness or surgery, keeping them flexible and free of fluid. The Airpen simply condenses it into a small device that can fit into your pocket, effectively allowing people to perform lung activity tests wherever they may be.

The Airpen is a winner of the Red Dot Design Concept Award for the year 2021.

Designers: Mitul Lad, Pietro Russomanno & Stefania Pizzichi.

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This saucer-shaped light fixture hangs by electric wires like a yo-yo to look as if it’s floating midair!

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Light in Tight is a line of saucer-shaped light fixtures that hang from electric wires just like a yo-yo, designed by Seungheon Baek and Jinhyeong Kwon.

Our interior spaces can be transformed with the right lighting. Through the years, the iterations of desk lamps and standing light fixtures to come from designers have truly been endless. Considering the necessity of light in interior spaces, light fixtures will remain relevant in the design world for decades to come. Inspired by the fastening potential of taut telephone pole wires, Seungheon Baek and Jinhyeong Kwon developed Light in Tight, an innovative light fixture design that gives the illusion that it’s floating in midair.

Struck by an image of the moon stationed brightly behind tangles of telephone wires, Baek and Kwon found both practicality and aesthetics for their lighting design. Light in Tight is comprised of three components: an electric wire power supply, three different types of lights, and a clamp-in screw mechanism. Holding the fixture’s glass coverings together, the clamp-in screw fastens the light bulb’s container and provides a point of tension for the electric wires to be pulled taut.

The power supply electric wire loops over the hyperbolic shaped light fixture, kind of like a yo-yo, to keep it in place while the wire ends find respective hanging points. Light in Tight can be configured midair in numerous positions, transforming the height, direction, and movement of the lighting as it changes.

The most amount of luminosity coming from Light in Tight is emitted towards the floor, while our periphery sightlines remain dim. Moving from the light fixture’s brightest section, the translucent covering grows in opacity towards the top. Shaped like a saucer, Light in Tight has a unique look that would complement modern interiors nicely, while remaining familiar enough to feel classic in any room.

Designers: Seungheon Baek and Jinhyeong Kwon

The light fixtures hang from electric wires that loop over the hyperbolic shape of the light bulb’s outfittings.

Light in Tight comes with a small spotlight fixture that hangs the same way as the line’s larger light fixtures. 

From its base, the lightbulb container is translucent, lighting the ground below, then opacifies near the top.

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This gas-powered toaster, oven and stove will be your favorite companion in the kitchen and outdoor!

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A combination of a toaster, oven and stove is in itself a multifunctional appliance you cannot do without in the kitchen. The downside of any traditional option is its dependence on electricity. Though, non-electric toaster and oven combos have struck their brilliance with the outdoorsy, the gas-powered Cook Nook presents an added advantage with a stove.

There is so much one can do with the non-electric toaster, stove and oven combo. It can be used for making toasts, roasting chicken, baking cake and even preparing a meal when electricity isn’t a luxury. So, when stepping into the wilderness, a portable and lightweight gas-operated toaster, oven, stove is the icing on the cake since it opens up possibilities for a great treat for a large family or friends gathering with the choice of pizzas, cookies, and other delicious.

With the combo appliance like the Cook Nook fueled by gas, you can save time and money while in the kitchen, in the backyard, or when hiking or camping in the outdoors. Such an appliance that does not require electricity is useful in everyday life and even in case of an emergency. In addition to cooking a fresh meal or a quick snack, this can even be used to bring frozen food to life. For its convenience and portability, the Cook Nook toaster, oven and stove will be a welcome product in the lives of the outdoorsy as it will solve the problem of finding an electric outlet for its needs.

In the kitchen, this multifunctional appliance will only occupy a small space and when it’s set for travel, it will pack up neatly and fit easily in the boot of your car. Interestingly, this yellow appliance comes with a CD player-style slide-out tray for toasts and baking and has a nice sturdy stove on the top. The stove has a sizable burner with pan support. The gas canister is placed on the right side with a compartment to hold an extra cartridge. The control knobs seem nice and easy to rotate, while the pan support can be removed and a lid can be applied on top to cover the unit when not in use.

The Cook Nook may not have the prowess to compete with the traditional options on the market, which are larger and more powerful in operation, but it surely makes for a decent option when portability and accessibility are on the mind!

Designers: Ishikawa Shinji, Huang Yingwen, Xie Xinyi, Zhou Shan

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Ex-Aston Martin engineer designed a sleek ‘packable’ cycling helmet that flips inward to become 50% slimmer

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It’s almost hilarious, but the two leading reasons for people not wearing helmets are the fact that it ruins their hair, and that it’s too bulky to carry or store anywhere. While there isn’t really an immediate solution to the former (apart from going bald), an ex-Aston Martin engineer devised a clever way to solve the latter problem. Meet the Flip-Clip Go, a Red Dot Award-winning ‘packable’ helmet that folds down to occupy 50% of its original volume, making it easier to carry with you when not in use.

The helmet’s patented design features a flippable top that turns its dome-shaped form into a frisbee that’s easier to stash in bags, carry under one’s arms, or place inside the cargo space in scooters. Measuring 81mm in thickness when closed, the Flip-Clip Go’s bulkiness gets reduced by 50%, making it much more convenient than traditional bulky helmets that can be cumbersome to carry around.

The helmet’s highlight is its Flip-Clip™ Technology, which allows it to alter its volume by flipping and folding inwards. This nifty little feature turns the bulbous helmet into an 81mm disc that’s about as bulky as a novel or a dictionary. Cutting the original helmet’s mass by up to 50%, the folded helmet can easily be stashed away, so you don’t need to rely on archaic techniques like locking your helmet to your bike.

The helmet was conceptualized by Josh Cohen, Dom Cotton, and Will Wood, friends and bicycle enthusiasts alike (and co-founders of Newlane). The light bulb moment came when Josh used a hire bike in Central London. Feeling a sense of vulnerability without the helmet, he spoke to Dom, who immediately hopped on board and was soon followed by Will, an ex-engineer at Aston Martin who helped conceive the helmet’s design, its details, and finalize its material choices to create a helmet that was effective, lightweight, sustainable, and yet affordable.

The Flip-Clip Go helmet comes made entirely from recycled plastics, salvaged from oceans and landfills, before being treated, processed, cleaned, and re-molded. It comes with a relatively bare-basics design, featuring an airy construction that relies on honeycomb structures, and is supported by a protective inner layer of expanded polystyrene (EPS). Manufactured in partnership with Cameron-Price in the UK, each helmet helps recycle as many as 20 plastic bottles worth of plastic, and Newlane hopes to be entirely carbon-free by 2030.

The Flip-Clip Go helmet is a winner of the Red Dot Design Concept Award for the year 2021.

Designer: Newlane

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