Yanko Design - Latest Posts

Posted: 28 Aug 2008 02:58 AM CDT

Imagine being blind for a minute, and you have to go to the store to pick up a few things. You have everything in your basket ready to be checked out and since you have no cash in your pocket, you whip out the old trustworthy debit card. However, since debit/credit card machines have pretty much gone all digital, you will have to trust the clerk to help you with entering your private information. Yeah, pretty scary huh? Kyle Lechtenberg, an Industrial Design grad from Auburn University - WAR EAGLE! - placed himself in the shoes of the visually impaired and has created the Visual Assistance Card. The card lays on top of the debit/credit card reader and through the use of Braille imprinted on the card, the user is able to keep their personal information private thus increasing their independence while shopping in any store. The Visual Assistance Card is light weight and can be easily stored out of the way until future use. Definitely designed for usability - a must in today’s world.

Designer: Kyle Lechtenberg

Kyle Lechtenberg

Funky Pants

Posted: 28 Aug 2008 02:20 AM CDT

How about some custom made pants in your choice of color and wood, with some nice chrome legs, or chrome balls – casters my friends? Pants by Melia Design UK, creators of the orgasm table, is a funky, retro, underwear shaped coffee table sure to bring out the oohs and ahhs from anyone who sees it. Pants comes in with 14 coats of high quality 2-pack polyurethane lacquer finish, which is sanded down then buffed and polished to produce a glassy sheen. The Pants come in 3 sizes – standard, large and extra large.

Designer: Melia Design UK

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Design Not Just Products; Design Behavior!

Posted: 27 Aug 2008 04:28 PM CDT

The Experience Recorder: here lies not only the possibility of near-perfect microblogging, but also a new meaning to the journalistic ideal of Total Coverage. The experience recorder fits on the hand and records not only photos, but sounds, movement, video, and temperature. Here you can experience the whole objective reality of a person’s experience! And, most important, it comes in a totally hot Fresh Prince color scheme!

The Experience Recorder’s designer Valeria Fuso chooses to don this product with the quote “Non si progettano prodotti, bensi comportamenti”, as spoken by the man called Godfather of Italian Design, Achille Castiglioni.*

*This quote translates roughly into “Design not just products; design behavior.” For those who love Industrial Design, please investigate Achille Castiglion; if you already know who he is, well done!

This Experience Recorder has a movement sensor, audio recorder, still-image camera, video camera, thermometer, and wireless computer connection. The Experience Recorder can record on auto mode, deciding on its own which information to collect, or on manual mode. While in manual mode, the user must activate the Experience Recorder through sensors in the fingers of the glove. For instance, if the user of the Experience Recorder is in manual mode and wishes to record video, they make their fingers into an O shape, and look through the newly formed finger-viewfinder to see what will be recorded (see pictures below to see what I mean).

I cannot help but fear such a Small Brother of a device, but the thought of “experiencing” events and places I might never get to experience otherwise- well, that’s awesome.

Designer: Valeria Fuso

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Yanko Design - Latest Posts

The ButtonFly Zipper

Posted: 27 Aug 2008 04:24 AM CDT

Irony since I asked our resident industrial designer Shane Crozier to help me redesign a zipper and lookie here, someone’s already done it. Tho I’m not sure how feasible this is, the ButtonFly is interesting nonetheless. Giant interlocking button flaps create a seal similar to that of a zipper. Doesn’t seem as efficient as a zipper but it offers something new in terms of creating uniquely designed garments and accessories.

Designer: Stavskiy Mihail Vladimirovich

Stavskiy Mihail Vladimirovich

The Genesis of Henosis

Posted: 27 Aug 2008 04:20 AM CDT

The Henosis is a concept vehicle designed to connect human to machine in a personal way. The vehicle comes with a bevy of technological doo-dads to analyze the environment, driver’s mood, expression, and biometric readings to provide the most comfortable and safe driving experience.

Using that ethos as the driving figure behind design, Alexei Mikhailov created a vehicle that pushes the limits of form and design creating a new body language. It doesn’t look like anything else on the road. The hydrogen fuel cell stacks are located in the rear with additional battery and superconductors up front. Steering takes a page out of gaming by placing almost all controls at your fingertips. All those hours fragging on Xbox live are finally going to bear fruit. The vehicle was obviously designed for the next generation of kids growing up - the ones born after the internet. This may seem like a far fetched and unlikely scenario for us now but hey, our children’s children will think of our cars the same way we think of the first horse drawn carriages.

Designer: Alexei Mikhailov

Alexei Mikhailov

Pour Me a Glass of Light

Posted: 27 Aug 2008 04:02 AM CDT

(de)light is a project that reinterprets the concept of light as we know it. What does it mean when you can pour illuminated liquid from archetypical components like a lightbulb? When something so intangible becomes tactile and easily transferrable. The project challenges fundamental design paradigms about how we use lighting, how it’s displayed, and how it’s controlled. Imagine what our world would look like.

Designer: Cristina Ferraz Rigo

Texts from the designer:

My first lamp explores the greatest metaphorical potential of my project by presenting liquid light in its most pure state: as a liquid contained in a bottle that can be manipulated as liquids normally are. Along with this bottle, I have created a set of two glasses that represent a lamp and a bulb – see pictures on the right. By pouring the liquid light into the glasses, the object meaning is given to the light – two new lamps have been created. However, the liquid remaining in the bottle reminds you of its intangible essence – there is no need of a lamp in order to have light. Light remains unattached to an object and able to be placed in any imagined context. I have used the quotidian gesture of pouring as a way to attach, or detach, light to its archetypes.

For the other lamp, I worked with the pervasive idea of the lamp. I worked with proportions and shape in order to create a perfectly recognizable archetype of a lamp. Alongside this process, I implemented the idea of liquid light by using the archetype of liquid, a tap. Therefore, I created a lamp that looks typical when first seen, but creates a hint of curiosity and delight when a closer look is given and the tap on it is noticed. The user starts then to imagine how the lamp would work, and ends up discovering that the lamp switches on – gives light – when the liquid light starts to fill it. In order to switch it off, the tap has to be open and the liquid released.

Cristina Ferraz Rigo

Smoke and Mirrors and Light Bulbs

Posted: 27 Aug 2008 12:45 AM CDT

Why buy, arrange, and construct an array of 60+ fluorescent light bulbs when you can strap together three of them and let good ‘ole reflections do the rest? Resting on the floor, the pyramidal shape contains three fluorescent bulbs that, aided by mirrors, project light onto your favorite piece of designer furniture. As an aside, if you happen to close off the shape with a fourth mirror you apparently create free perpetual energy.

As a rare example of gadget gratification this lamp appears to be in production and can be found on Axolight’s website.

Designer: Dodo Arslan

Dodo Arslan

The Rainbow Connection

Posted: 26 Aug 2008 09:10 PM CDT

I'm not talking about the song Kermit sings, but about the colorful design by Christian Flindt – Parts of a Rainbow. These modular stackable chairs were not created to just stack on top of each other, but were designed to stack sideways. By stacking them sideways, the chairs can then be used as a colorful bench. Parts of a Rainbow are certain to be the most admired and talked about item at your next friendly gathering. Made from acrylic plastic, Parts of a Rainbow chairs won the Design Prize 2005 at Copenhagen.

Designer: Christian Flindt

Christian Flindt

Prepare Your Nachos, Footballs, and Beer Bellies for MANVAN!

Posted: 26 Aug 2008 02:23 PM CDT

When I think of a van, I think of something a family owns: a “Soccer Mom” van, or one of those “full of crap” vans that a hectic multi-child family owns. The “Man”, as the Manvan defines it, is not one who would put up with foolish children delivering or cross-country-to-grandmother’s-house treks with family, no! The Manvan tends to to football loving man, the man who wants to watch hugescreen television in an empty parking-lot man, the strange future man!

The Manvan is fully customizable, easily accessable at the Manvan website, where you can choose from a full array of Manvan accessories and colors. As the designer, Aimee LoDuca puts it: “Manvan revolutionizes the traditional “soccer mom mini-van” and transforms it into the ultimate getaway for man, customizing its features to suite any lifestyle. Influenced by the Nissan NV200, the vans extendable back allows for the most outrageous amenities, as well as indoor and outdoor use.”

For you readers: I’ve just received my custom Manvan from Ms. LoDuca, so I will be taking a leave of absence so that I might play Diablo 3, which isn’t out yet, on the secret Chinese internet Manvan satellite in the forests of Montana, where I can be at peace.*

*Just kidding; Manvan does not yet exist, but I would not object to playing video games in the forest.

UPDATE: As you can see by the second photo photo from the bottom of this post, the Manvan is basically an alternate version of the very real Nissan NV200. Stay keen!
Thanks S.C. for the should-have-been-obvious tip!

Designer: Aimee LoDuca