This umbrella-shaped folding chair is the most brilliantly creative furniture design I’ve seen this year!

An umbrella-shaped chair. The idea itself sounds absolutely outrageous until you realize how incredibly clever it is. Think about it… would you rather be carrying an umbrella with you wherever you go, or have those godawful wearable chair-legs strapped to your torso like Gabe from Silicon Valley? The answer is obviously the umbrella, given how ubiquitous it is. It’s compact, and more importantly, is socially acceptable. So when designer Yanagisawa Sera was looking for a way to reinvent the folding chair, hiding it inside an umbrella sounded like a perfect idea!

What’s brilliant about the Hide And Seek chair is its sheer absurdity… along with the fact that it actually works! Sera went straight from the drawing board to the metal workshop to test his idea out and from the looks of it, the umbrella-shaped chair works – at least on a prototype level! The frame of the umbrella was fabricated from stainless steel rods, and is designed to fold right into the umbrella shape when closed. A stretched fabric mounted on the frame helps distribute the weight when you sit, allowing the chair to actually take the weight of an adult human. It does look a tad fragile if I’m being candid, but that’s something that can easily be fixed by using materials like titanium or even carbon fiber. The best part about the entire product is that it folds right back into the shape of a standard umbrella, which means you can place it in backpacks, handbags, or even carry it to the grocery store or a concert… blending right into the crowd right before you open the Hide And Seek and take a seat on the world’s only umbrella-shaped chair! That should definitely grab a few eyeballs!

In fact, under certain circumstances, you could use the Hide And Seek as an umbrella too! Although considering its framework (which is designed to easily take somewhere around 160 lbs of weight) is much more robust than the kind found on most umbrellas, the Hide And Seek would be much heavier than your average umbrella, making it difficult to carry for longer periods of time. Nevertheless, the level of creativity and ingenuity the Hide And Seek demonstrates is truly marvelous… especially given the fact that the outrageously brilliant idea is even backed by a working prototype! Yanagisawa Sera, I hope you’ve filed your patents on this, because it may easily be the most brilliantly creative product design I’ve seen this year!

Designer: Yanagisawa Sera

This minimalist umbrella purifies and stores rainwater in its shaft!

Rainwater is usually safe to drink directly unless it has caught some contaminants on its way down. However, you don’t want to take that chance, do you? Well luckily for us, BMSTU design student Volkan Ugurel has come up with an innovative idea of integrating a filtration system right into the shaft of an umbrella. This way you can drink or store purified rainwater on the go.

Volkan’s umbrella design has a three-level filtration system, first of which is a metal mesh on the top to block coarse particles. Inside the top part of the shaft is a replaceable unit that contains a carbon filter and a membrane filter, which can remove all the organic chemicals as well as nasty tastes and odors from the rainwater. When the filtration process is over, the drinkable water gets filled up in a 220-ml glass bottle attached at the bottom of the shaft, with ridges for easy which easily comes off when you turn it. You can also mount any plastic bottle with a standard thread to the bottom if you’re really thirsty or if it’s raining really heavily. Maybe even fill up a few bottles for later use.

The overall design features a sleek shaft and translucent canopy with nine spokes, and hence the name ‘Nonagon Umbrella’. It was inspired by the music album ‘Nonagon Infinity’, a record that’s designed to be played as an infinite loop since the end of one song is the beginning of the next one, signifying the never-ending life cycle of water as it moves from one place to another!

Designer: Volkan Uğurel

A small design detail on this umbrella makes it more paw-some than the others!

Designer He Yue observed that some people close their umbrellas and use it as a walking stick after it stops raining. He added a small detail on the stick that made the ‘Footprint’ umbrella instantly loveable. It’s not a revolutionary redesign but just taking into account human behavior and emotion to make you connect with daily objects some more. The rubber umbrella tip in the form of paws leaves a trail of pet footprints when used as a walking stick. The designer sees this as a poetic expression of “companionship” between items and people through design.

Designer: He Yue

This wearable umbrella is designed to keep you and your belongings dry in rains!

The rains bring with it a feeling of comfort – there is nothing quite as relaxing as curling up with a book and hot cuppa with the rain gently pattering on your window. That is unless you’re stuck out in the rain, wetting everything from your head to your toes and the contents of your bag along with it! To save us from the pain of being caught in the unprecedented rain, Anna Cserba designed the After You umbrella.

The After You umbrella is a multipurpose product designed to save you from the rains and to help you carry stuff when the skies are clear! Anna, a student at Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, Budapest, created this design as a part of her design course. The aim of the course is to completely redesign an everyday object – an umbrella in this case. The After You revolutionizes the humble umbrella in quite a few ways – first is by making the design hands-free! One of the most tedious things about carrying the umbrella is the juggling act of holding onto your umbrella with one hand with the tons of stuff we carry in our hands. By wearing the product over your shoulders like a backpack, After You leaves your hands free to answer back to that text or browse your phone. The next thing we love about this design is the foldable design – the five layers made from rigid polycarbonate layers fold and unfold to form a cocoon that keeps you protected. When not in need, the After You umbrella can be carried around with ease – either on your back or on the side where it doubles up as a bag to hold your shopping!

Wearing it almost like a bag, the After You umbrella keeps you and your bag safe and dry. Comfortable, lightweight, and is extremely resistant to mechanical impacts, the After You acts almost like a wearable shield, meeting our futuristic, multi-purposing needs while keeping us safe on a rainy day and in the sunshine!

Designer: Anna Cserba

The Baobab Brolly is the Volvo of umbrellas

When you think of a Volvo, you think of a car that tows the fine line between being aesthetic but also having a reputation for being robust and reliable. The Baobab Brolly too shares that same image. With a steel-nickel frame, and a high-density fabric clad, the entirely handmade Baobab Brolly was designed to do two things. Look good and last long… And it was designed to not do one thing. Get lost or stolen.

The Baobab Brolly comes with its own GPS tracker, built right into the handle. The tracker lets you know exactly where you’ve left your umbrella, via an app on your phone, informing you if it’s lying under a table at your local cafe, or if left it at the office. Quite unlike indoor GPS enabled tracking devices, unless you turn it off, there is always a connection between app and the umbrella. The connection can last till 15 steps (=1,125 cm / 37 Feet ), however when that connection is broken for a minute, the app on the phone alerts you about the broken connection. This how you can prevent the loss of your umbrella. Through bbb.B app you can only track down the last place where there was a connection.

The GPS tracker comes with a battery life of over three years. Couple that with the Baobab Brolly’s sturdy frame and you’ve got yourself a stylish umbrella that lasts 6 times longer than your conventional easy-to-break and easy-to-lose umbrella… And if you ever get bored of your umbrella in those 6+ years, the Baobab Brolly features a swappable design, allowing you to detach your handle and attach it to a Brolly umbrella of a different color!

Designer: Stefan Lee

Click Here to Buy Now: $123 $184 (32.89% off). Hurry, only 5/15 left!

Baobab Brolly – Customizable Umbrella with Loss Prevention System

British handcrafted umbrellas featuring loss prevention system (GPS tracker built right into the handle) & based on a modular system (letting you swap just the part you’re not happy with, as opposed to having to discard the whole Brolly), it’s a sustainable solution for the world where everything else is smart.

It’s sustainable and customizable. Brolly can be disassembled down to handle, canopy and tip. It not only offers you the option to personalize your Brolly experience but also improves the umbrella’s natural lifespan.

Know where your umbrella is all the time. They have embedded loss alert smart technology into the handle which is connected to an app on your smartphone.

15 steps. The smart handle features loss prevention system which will go off when the distance between your mobile and your Brolly is greater than 15 steps. It will also let you locate your brolly on the map, thanks to the Beacon tracking system.

Built To Be Strong

Based on British craftsmen’s know-how Brolly applies the original umbrella-making technology (developed and tested for over 150 years) and enhances it with nickel frame and strengthened iron ribs to ensure you are prepared for the worst weather.

Windproof frame study.

Solid and resilient steel nickel frame.

Wind tunnel test.

20m/s(44.74mph)

Open Up to Color

Urban Classic Grey, Urban Classic Apricot, Urban Classic Deep Green, Urban Classic Black.

Did you know 85% of us tend to use black umbrellas? bbb.B offers your broad range of colors that will make a rainy pavement your personal runway.

High-Quality Materials and Handmade

From the start of the production to the final ironing, all of their umbrellas are 90% handmade by trained craftsmen.

Brolly offers more advanced waterproofing than other umbrellas in the market due to its fabric. The fabric is made of 75 strands of polyester tied together in a single thread. It has more than 30% higher density compared to other umbrellas available on the market, with the same 75T fabric.

Did you know that you can use Brolly for sun protection too? The effect may differ between the colors but you can expect UV blocking of anything between 90% (Urban Classic Black) to 60% (Urban Classic Light Gray).

Click Here to Buy Now: $123 $184 (32.89% off). Hurry, only 5/15 left!

Dark-alley defense: Tech tools to keep you safe

"One of the best gadgets you can have is a doorstop." Douglas White has been in the personal security business for nearly 30 years. He started training in martial arts 24 years ago, and he's been a bail enforcement agent -- a bounty hunter -- for 13...

This umbrella’s smart patch ensures mess-free folding in 5 seconds!

Surreal, but nice (quoting Notting Hill here) or not so nice, as the case may be – most umbrellas don’t fold in evenly and you have to spend a good few minutes trying to tuck them neatly into your bag, as you step out of the rain and into your car or building. The struggle is real and the frustration of a dripping wet contraption can be unnerving.

Addressing this issue is the TAGIT Umbrella that folds neatly and snaps shut in a jiffy. Five seconds, to be precise. The result is a happy you, quickly folds and shuts your umbrella as you step into your dry space and out of the rains.

It’s not magic but the handy work of Smart-Patch technology and Teflon EcoElite. The Smart-Patch technology allows the umbrella to fold at the pleats and snap shut quickly thanks to the magnetic buckle. The Teflon EcoElite coating on the fabric of the umbrella, ensures that the water slides off quickly.

Designer: Alex Li

Click Here To Buy Now: $54 $87 (40% off). Hurry, less than 24 hours left! Raised over $150,000.

TAGIT™ Umbrella

After use for storm or sun, TAGIT’s patent pending “TAGS” technology allows you to fold the umbrella and secure it in just a few seconds. The TAGIT umbrella would always be as tidy and perfect as the first time you open it.

Closer Into the Smart-Patch Tech

When collapsing the umbrella, the Smart-Patch will guide the umbrella to fold into a preset position.

By altering the parameters of the production equipment, the thickness and hardness of each patch can be different. Thus, the thickness and hardness of the whole patch is fully controllable and precisely in accordance with the values they set.

The significance of Smart-Patch technology lies in being able to control the reaction of each part of the umbrella when folded. With each specific design of the patch’s form, having the creases in different directions allow the contraction and expansion of the patch to be controlled with relative freedom. They can even specify the folding reaction sequence across the umbrella.

Magnetic Buckling System

They believe TAGIT’s magnetic buckling system is the best closing mechanism on the market, securing the umbrella to be clean, smooth, and hassle free.

Umbrella Fabric

Teflon EcoElite™ is the first renewably-sourced, non-fluorinated fabric treatment for durable water-repellency and is manufactured with 60% renewably-sourced raw materials. It overcomes the disadvantage that traditional Teflon may harm the environment.

TAGIT only requires two shakes and the raindrops are gone. You can simply put it in your bag or take it into the car without any hazitation.

Below: More Details

Click Here To Buy Now: $54 $87 (40% off). Hurry, less than 24 hours left! Raised over $150,000.

This crown for your umbrella collects all the water when you stand it upside-down

With a shape that looks like a splash of water and a yellow color that almost gives it the appearance of a mini-crown, the Supporting Umbrella solves two rather annoying problems with the umbrella experience. A. Stability, and B. Water dripping on the floor.

The Supporting Umbrella retrofits onto most umbrella designs with the spoke at the end. It gives your umbrella a cute crown when open in the rain, and when you’re done, lets you stand the umbrella vertically on its tip. When placed vertically upside down, the Supporting Umbrella attachment uses a small concavity to collect all the water that drips off your umbrella, so that you’re not left with a pool of water on the floor every time you try to dry your umbrella out. Rather neat, isn’t it?

The Supporting Umbrella is a winner of the A’ Design Award for the year 2019.

Designer: Li Purui

Pennywise IT Raining Blood Umbrella Doesn’t Float

Sometimes it rains cats and dogs, and you need an umbrella to avoid getting wet. Your umbrella doesn’t have to be boring and black. It can have creepy clowns and blood splatter on it.

The IT: Raining Blood Pennywise liquid reactive umbrella is up for pre-order on Merchoid. It starts out all white with black line art of Pennywise from the recent IT movie. When rain hits it, a delightful red blood spatter appears.

Pennywise also gets red lips, nose, and slash marks on his face. The umbrella is $22.99 and can be preordered now with delivery starting this June.

The Immortal Umbrella

myu_repairable_umbrella_layout

The undependability of umbrellas is such that we’ve come to view them as temporary fixtures in our lives. Instead of merely accepting this notion, designer Liad David has designed the “immortal” MYU umbrella that can be repaired and reused for a lifetime.

Without sacrificing style, it features a simplistic construction that can be fixed by the user. A modular selection of rods, screws, and fabric sections are readily available and, with a little instruction, can be swapped out easily in minutes. This makes it a fun DIY project users can continue to enjoy and connect with. Better yet, you can hand it down as an heirloom for years to come.

Designer: Liad David

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