Core77

This In-Flight Cocooning Blanket

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British ID consultancy Tangerine and Buzz, an Australian manufacturer of airline products, have collaborated on several concepts to make long flights more comfortable. "We wanted to proactively rethink the Premium Economy experience and explore what could emerge from collaborating with creative minds from a parallel sector," explains Sam Blank, Buzz's Director of Innovation and Product Strategy.

What emerged are textile-based products that hope to enable in-flight shuteye, without the luxury of a fold-flat seat:

Sensory Shut-out Eye Mask with Integrated Earbuds

A padded eye mask with sound-reducing earbuds built into the straps for easy access. The buds can also be removed and used independently.

Adjustable Flat-Roll Neck Pillow

A low-volume, ergonomic pillow that can be shaped into multiple supportive forms for better alignment than traditional U-shaped pillows.

The one that really captured my attention:

Cocooning Blanket

A shaped blanket with cloud-inspired pinsonic detailing that wraps naturally around the body for enhanced rest.

As someone who's house is always freezing in winter, I desperately want one of these for my home. That thing looks super warm and comfortable!

An Industrial Design Classic: Richard Sapper's Telefunken Match

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In the early 1950s, Chicago-based industrial design firm Painter, Teague and Petertil won an interesting commission: Design the world's first portable transistor radio. Texas Instruments had worked out the miniaturization, then partnered with electronics brand Regency to create a consumer product. All they needed was an ID firm to give their technology a consumer-friendly form.

The design team got to work, and the Regency TR-1 hit the market in 1954.

This was a game-changing device, a predecessor to the Walkman or the iPod. Up until then, families owned a single radio that they'd gather around, like it was a hearth. But now a teenager could take this tiny radio into their room and listen to whatever stations they wanted, or take their music on the go.

Regency sold at least 150,000 of these, and competitors wanted in. Raytheon released their 8TP in 1955. It was sleeker in appearance, but considerably larger than the TR-1.

In 1957, a Japanese upstart called Sony released their TR-63.

In 1960, Zenith released their Royal 50 model.

While each of these objects has their own aesthetic, they all clearly belong in the same class. It took an ultra-talented industrial designer, Richard Sapper, to produce a true design classic. Here's his Telefunken Match, which came out in 1962:

The preceding models look like plastic toys. Sapper's leather-and-aluminum form looks like a well-crafted precision object.

You can find surviving examples of all of these on secondhand sites. Which one would you rather own?

Ettore Sottsass's Convention-Bucking Valigia Desk Lamp

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Ever since the Anglepoise lamp's introduction in 1933, desk lamps typically cantilevered the light source outwards from the base.

Roughly four decades later, Ettore Sottsass threw this convention out with his irreverent Valigia desk lamp.

There is no counterweighted base, just four legs that support the lamp head as if it's a tabletop. The form demands commitment, sitting directly above whatever you're reading.

Sottsass added a handle at the top, envisioning this as an object you'd carry from place to place. ("Valigia" is Italian for "suitcase.")

It's worth noting that Sottsass designed this in 1977, foreshadowing the Memphis movement by a few years. Here in the 2020s, original manufacturer Stilnovo has brought it back onto the market. But I think they missed a trick: While they've changed the lighting to LED, they failed to add a rechargeable battery as the power source. Had they done that and removed the cord, the design would've been closer to what Sottsass would've wanted.

User Feedback Yields a Useful Study Object Made of Brass

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Reading a book is very different from studying a textbook. With the former, you flip through pages at whatever pace you read. With the latter, you leave the textbook open to a particular page while you take notes, transcribe, or re-read text in order for it to sink in.

For this latter situation, Japanese stationery company Kokuyo detected a problem. In 2022, the company sought feedback from junior high and high school students on what their study-time paint points were. The students noted that holding a textbook open with one hand while trying to write with the other was a hassle. Some used spring-loaded clips made for the purpose, but these made turning the pages a hassle.

Others compensated by using a bunchin, a traditional calligraphy scroll weight that's essentially a piece of bar stock, square in cross section. But the flat bunchin didn't hold the books open well, as the flat shape only contacted the curved surface of the open pages in two places.

Kokuyo then devised this object, made out of brass. The designers arrived at the precise curvature after measuring several dozen representative books.

Hedging their bets, the company only produced a small batch of 300 units. They sold out immediately.

Concept proven, Kokuyo then put the objects—called "book-hugging paperweights"—into production in early 2024. The brass units hit the market first, followed by lower-cost steel versions in black and grey. The same year they won a stationery award.

Demand emerged for an even larger model, for thicker art books and coffee table books, and that model hit the market last month.

It's fair to say Kokuyo wouldn't have thought of this product without that crucial feedback-seeking initiative.

A Bauhausian Take on the Coat Rack

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This wonderful, Bauhausian Bazar coat rack is by German industrial designer Steffen Kehrle.

By transforming the tree into a wire cylinder, Kehrle provides hanging space on the outside, while the interior becomes usable storage space thanks to circular shelves.

The shelves can be placed wherever there's a hoop; it's up to the user.

My only gripe is that I wish it came with more hooks that the user could place. If I owned one of these, I'd probably DIY some up.

Made of powder-coated steel wire, the Bazar is in production by German furniture brand Richard Lampert.

A Simple, Versatile, "Handy" Mobile Furniture Piece

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This Handy furniture piece is by Taiwanese industrial designer Hsinhung Chou.

It's such a simple and useful form factor that I'm surprised I haven't seen it before; I think it'd be useful for everything from gardening to picknicking to household chores and handyman jobs. When I'm outdoors on my property, for instance, I often wish I had a way to carry tools that also offered a table-height surface to work on whatever component I'm repairing.

Chou developed the design in reaction to living with an urban balcony, where he had a desire for useful furniture within limited room. "Objects never exist alone in a space," Chou says. "The form of furniture is, in essence, a response to a particular way of living."

Thus far it's just a concept, though Chou says he's open to finding a production partner.

Industrial Designer Eduardo Blanco's Cartesian Pencil Holders

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There's something pleasingly M.C.-Escher-esque about this Ciclo desk organizer.

Spanish industrial designer Eduardo Blanco explains its origin:

I needed a pencil holder and I wanted it to have a sculptural look. Something that is always visible on a desk cannot be banal. I also wanted it to give me more options for classification and order among my tools than a normal pencil holder.

The result is this: three cylinders repeated around the same axis, stacked and joined one on top of the other. A geometrically quite perfect shape that allows you to organize your desk in an original way, breaking the monotony of classic pencil holders.

Blanco 3D-printed the prototypes with the intent of eventually going with injection molding. However, he's also worked up these versions through Open Design Editions, a sort of design incubator run by Barcelona-based design firm Lagranja:

Am I crazy, or is that glazed ceramic? Whatever they are, I think the pieces look great with the chunkier wall thickness.

A Super-Easy-to-Install Add-On Clip for Swiss Army Knives

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When you think of the classic Swiss Army Knife, you likely envision the common 91mm version. That's the size that became the standard in the 1950s. As ubiquitous as this line is, the strange thing is that Victorinox never updated them with clips, which became popular with other folding knives starting in the 1980s. So if you've got a 91mm SAK, you either fish for it in a pocket, or attach a lanyard to its key ring.

Now Tortoise Gear, a licensed accessory maker for Victorinox, is rectifying the omission.

Their Lamprey91 is an add-on clip that you can install without disassembling the knife.

The clip slides into the thin seam between the handle and internal metal liner, than seats around one of the knife's concealed rivets. Here inventor and Tortoise Gear founder Eric McCormick demonstrates how to install it:

That's an impressive piece of remedial design!

The Lamprey91 has been successfully Kickstarted, with 23 days left to pledge at press time. They run $25 and are expected to ship in February.

The Tuff Jug Ripper Cap Solves a Tricky Fueling Situation

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Putting gasoline into most vehicles is easy—at the pump. The nozzle goes into the filler neck, you pull the trigger.

Take away the pump, and it gets considerably trickier. Dirt bikes, tractors and construction equipment must be filled with gasoline or diesel in the field, from portable containers, and the filler necks are often in highly inconvenient location. The filler necks on tractors, for instance, are often in the center of the hood:

To fill it, you need to lug a five-gallon gas can up onto the operator's platform, then lean forward and hold the can out in front of you to pour. Five gallons of diesel is heavy and takes a lot of time to pour it. It's easy, as your arms tire, to spill fuel all over the place.

One solution is to raise the tractor's loader arms so that they're parallel with the ground, then lay a 2x4 across them on which to rest the gas can.

Another solution, which many tractor owners invest in, is to buy a battery-powered pump that allows you to leave the gas can on the ground and run the fuel up through a tube.

However, that's a lot of trouble to go to, just to fuel the vehicle. So Tuff Jug, an Idaho-based gas can manufacturer, designed a better solution for their titular gas can. The company's Ripper Cap was designed for fast, easy fueling.

The Ripper Cap features a spring-loaded nozzle. All you do is invert the can, set the nozzle into the filler neck, and press downwards. This depresses the nozzle, which starts the fuel flow. The nozzle also has a built-in auto-stop feature. Here's how it works:

It's easier than manually holding a gas can, and doesn't require the battery-charging that a pump needs. It's also faster than both methods: With a pump, you can generally transfer about 2.5 gallons per minute. But the Ripper Cap has an internal vent tube that allows for fast flow; five gallons of fuel can be evacuated in just 42 seconds. Great design.

Core77 Weekly Roundup (9-28-26 to 10-2-26)

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Here's what we looked at this week:

Titan Straps: Fast, tough tie-down straps, originally invented for a bikerafting trip.

A utility trailer that folds up for storage. It's like a humble, useful Autobot.

Saudi Arabia is making…EVs?!?

The Emerson Wave: How Navy SEAL design input accidentally created a new knife-drawing mechanism.

Meta's new, radically thinner, more lightweight VR glasses.

Daniel Rozin's "mirror" made out of motorized penguins.

The unusual joinery in Abuse Studio's 1000L furniture.

Strutt's Chief Designer covers the development of their jerry-can-inspired powered wheelchair battery.

"A design wonderland:" The X-D-E-P-O-T, a repository of good design.

UTV decks: How to transport a UTV without a trailer.

Hell in a Handbasket: An add-on reading screen for your phone so you don't have to develop willpower.

These ignition button covers for cars will surely fill the hole in your life.

In an industrial space, a freestanding bedroom structure as home-within-a-home.

Translucent leather wallets.

Translucent Leather Wallets

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Here's an unusual wallet by South Korean leathermaker Eriist:

You've seen the spring-steel closure on coin purses before. That's not the notable bit. The translucent material of the wallet isn't plastic, liked you'd suspect; it's actually made out of sheepskin. (In the 2000s, tanners figured out how to create thin, translucent leather—from both bovine and ovine leather—pioneered in part by industrial designer and artist Sruli Recht.)

Eriist says the wallet above is in the pipeline, but at press time hadn't announced a release date nor a price. In the meantime, if a translucent leather wallet is your thing, Atelier Skn offers one.

In an Industrial Space, a Freestanding Bedroom Structure as Home-Within-a-Home

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Spanish architects Mireia Luzárraga and Alejandro Muiño, a/k/a TAKK, have made their family home in a former industrial space in Barcelona. At 400 square meters (4,306 square feet), the space is huge, which brought challenges: "It became clear that it would be impossible to climate control the entire space without incurring significant economic and ecological costs," the designers say. They've addressed this in part by designing their daughter's bedroom as a freestanding structure with its own insulation—and they built it out of leftover parts from other projects:

CMU blocks, wood, drywall, recycled insulation and wool are all incorporated. So too are what appear to be cabinet jacks.

Two sleeping spaces are provided, a breezier one up top for warmer months, and an enclosed space below for warmer months.

The entire structure is up on wheels and can be moved around within the larger space. And having left all of the fasteners exposed, the structure can be disassembled and its components reused when their daughter eventually outgrows it.

These Ignition Button Covers for Cars Will Surely Fill the Hole in Your Life

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Occasionally in order to detect a disease, doctors must look for the presence of the antibodies our systems produce in response to the disease.

That reminds me of this category of objects. In this case, the disease is that we live in an increasingly unsatisfying digital world, when people were born to use tools and manipulate physical objects. The antibodies in this case are these:

What is that, you ask? It's a flip cover for the ignition button on your car.

You install it, and now you have to flip the cover up in order to start your car. Why? Because, according to one manufacturer:

Another gives you two reasons why you need this:

Re: That caption on the left, this is why copy editors are important. Re: That image on the right—whose car is this, Wolverine's?

Here's a particularly brilliant design, where you can still push the button without having to lift the cover since there's a hole in it. And what a great application for carbon fiber.

Some are sold with branding that lets you co-opt a comic book character's logo to reinforce your political identity.

Or just co-opt a comic book character's logo.

Assume that that actually was the Batmobile—you can see Alfred rolling his eyes after being asked to install this.

Hell in a Handbasket: An Add-On Reading Screen for Your Phone So You Don't Have to Develop Willpower

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As a product category, the smartphone is singularly bizarre: You buy it for its convenience, then buy secondary devices that prevent you from using it. As if you, the user, have no willpower. The Brick and Unpluq tags on the market will block certain apps, since you cannot be trusted to not access them; Yondr bags are used by venues that cannot trust you to turn your phone off.

Well, here's yet another piece of plastic and circuits you can buy, to avoid having to develop willpower. The Picco, by Chinese manufacturer Boox, is a separate e-reader screen that attaches to the back of your phone.

It then allows you to read e-books, which you could simply do by using the regular screen on your phone. Oh wait a second, no you can't, because of the whole willpower thing. So yes, spend $100 on this additional object that you'll also have to keep charged.

Can you think of any other product category that has spawned a secondary category of objects designed to prevent you from accessing the original thing? The only thing I can think of are those flip-up button and switch covers, or maybe those breathalyzer ignition interlocks.

UTV Decks: How to Transport a UTV Without a Trailer

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UTVs, or Utility Terrain Vehicles, are popular in rural America. Also called side-by-sides, they're essentially ATVs that can seat two or four people, and some 420,000 were sold in America last year. Farmers, ranchers, rural property owners, and hunters use them. So do individuals and families going on trail-riding vacations.

The hunters and trail rider market segments face a challenge, which is that you have to transport the UTV to site. That requires a flatbed trailer. Hooking one of those up means you cannot tow a camping trailer, which for some is a family vacation must-have.

Idaho-based Toyup Industries introduced a solution: The Cabover UTV Deck. This is a steel deck that sits in a pickup truck's bed and is secured by connecting turnbuckles to the factory tie-down points; there's no drilling required.

Then you attach the two wheel ramps, and you can drive your UTV right up onto your truck:

The ramps then stow on top of the rack, but under the UTV. You still have the entirety of the bed available for storage. And, of course, you can then hook up a camper:

It's not clear if Toyup Industries invented the idea; they only say they were "the first company in the USA to introduce" it, which seems to imply it was created elsewhere. Whatever the case, the design has been around for 20 years or so, and other companies like Tow Smart Trailers, RampTek and TruckBoss produce similar offerings.