Core77

A Corkboard for Your Monitor

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This might appeal to those who place sticky notes on their monitor's bezel. Called Contour, it's by Budapest-based industrial designer Adam Miklosi.

It's designed to attach to an iMac, and sits about 20mm behind the plane of the screen.

Is it better than sticky notes? The only advantage I see is that you don't have to orient your note according to that line of adhesive.

For his part, Miklosi writes that the added visual barrier around your screen "[creates] a subtle buffer that helps reduce both visual and acoustic distractions. By screening out movement, conversations, and background activity, it helps users stay focused without isolating them from their surroundings." I think that's kind of a stretch, but then it's been a long time since I worked in a crowded office.

Miklosi's producing Contour via Corkway, a B2B manufacturer of cork objects. They partner with designers as project-based fabricators or development partners, and you can learn more about them here.

Objet D'esign: An Add-On Alcove

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This unusual object is by Norwegian industrial designer Daniel Rybakken. Straddling the boundary between furniture and décor, it's a sort of add-on alcove, fittingly called Niche.

Niche is a shelf referencing the architectural element. The faceted walls and roof transforms the object into something that feels almost like an alcove or a nest (the original meaning of the word niche, from Latin nidus 'nest'). Items placed inside become elevated and highlighted, as if put on a pedestal.

Constructed in powder-coated steel and available in two sizes. Wall-hung or free-standing.

(All images and sketches by Studio Daniel Rybakken. No AI, no renderings. Shot on the 5DsR with the TS-E 90mm / EF 180mm macro)

The object launched yesterday at Copenhagen's 3 Days of Design. It's going into production by Swedish homeware brand Eldvarm.

A Circular Multi-Tool?

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This Geo object, invented by a faceless, anonymous and unnamed company, is a circular multi-tool.

Obviously inspired by a fidget spinner, it features a rotating dial with five tool edges and a lanyard attachment point arrayed around it. You rotate it to expose the desired feature.

The form factor is strange for a tool, and doesn't appear to offer any ergonomic advantage—just novelty, which is what the EDC market craves.

Worn, it looks pretty dorky.

Again, there's no word on who designed this, where it's made, when it's coming out or how much it costs; at this point the object's website is little more than an e-mail harvesting operation. We assume a Kickstarter is on the way--and that this thing will sell like hotcakes.

The Mesmerizing Action of These Experimental Candles

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In the 1960s, Danish industrial designer Jens Quistgaard created these beautiful candleholders for Dansk:

He also designed special candles for them that were "slim, elegant and designed not to drip or bend," explains modern-day Danish designer Thomas D. Westergaard.

"The candleholders can still be found at flea markets all over the world," Westergaard says, but "finding candles for these holders is almost impossible."

Seeking to create his own, Westergaard dove into the world of candlemaking. After much experimentation, he figured out how to recreate the special candles.

Bitten by the candlemaking bug, he continued experimenting, and pushing further:

And further:

Westergaard's videos of his experimental candles became popular on social media. He's now in the process of launching a company, Ceremoni Studio, to commercialize them.

An E-Bike Designed Specifically for Families Hauling Kids

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Child seats for bikes are nothing new. But this Go Plus, an e-bike from Danish manufacturer MATE, was designed from the ground-up specifically for a parent to haul a child.

The lowered frame and extended wheelbase drop the bike's center of gravity, providing stable handling that the company reckons is safer than typical kid-hauling bike set-ups.

You can of course remove the child seat, and use the bike for hauling other things.

The bike features a 250W motor driving the rear wheel. It can hit a top speed of 25km/h (15.5 mph), and offers a range around 80km (50 miles).

The Go Plus is distributed in Scandinavia, Europe, Japan and Australia. It starts around €1,800 (USD $2,083).

A Vertical Coat Rack with a Nifty Assembly Method

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Wall-mounted coat racks should be horizontal, for the sake of UX. But tight European apartments often don't have the space. Industrial designers Oskar Lillo and Juliette Guéganton thus designed this Vertical coat rack, which sacrifices some UX in order to deal with space constraints:

The assembly method is quite nifty:

The piece was created for design exhibition platform Objects May Vary, which invited several designers to explore the typology of the coat rack. The attendant exhibition takes place this week at Copenhagen's 3 Days of Design.

An Overproduced Day Display by an Industrial Designer's "Stupid Engineering" Project

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This amusingly overproduced Day Display is by New-Zealand-based Stupid Engineering.

"Made of precision milled and bent 2mm aluminium, the Day Display is a Stupid solution to a stupid problem."

"Wall mounted and in-keeping with Stupid Engineering's brutalist approach to function and aesthetic, the Day Display is the right amount of simple not dumb."

Explains Ben, the industrial designer behind it: "Stupid Engineering started as a personal project during some downtime at my work. Setting myself the challenge of creating aesthetically pleasing, easily manufacturable objects that achieve a goal or function in the simplest/silliest/stupidest way possible."

A Steel and Brass Monument to Vinyl Records

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This X Deck is a dedicated DJ console made of stainless steel and brass. Though it looks like a piece of 1970s Italian Modernism, it was actually designed present-day by NYC-Paris-based design studio Slash Objects.

"I wanted to imagine a glamorous minimal DJ table dedicated to vinyl," explains Slash founder/designer Arielle Assouline-Lichten. "The record artwork reflects in the table, the DJ has space to play, everything is in its place. Inspired as well by Gabriella Crespi's mixed metal pieces from the '70s."

The piece is on display at Slash's SoHo showroom, and can be made to order.

The UX Design Flaw of Philips' Dual-Sided Monitor

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Philips has released a dual-sided 24" monitor, intended for business or hospitality environments. The company says the arrangement offers "unmatched convenience" and allows for "seamless collaboration." The idea is that it can be used to share information during face-to-face meetings.

However, I think the concept is inherently flawed, from an ergonomic perspective. The entire point of a face-to-face meeting is, well, to see the other person's face. And when we look at screens, they're ideally perpendicular to our field of vision. In order to view this screen head-on, then, it would be placed at the face level of the interactees, blocking each other from view.

Obviously you would not do this; thus the screen would either be placed below face level, as at a counter, or off to the side, as at an across-the-desk meeting. And both participants then have an askew view of the screen, which I'd imagine would get annoying quickly.

For face-to-face meetings where information needs to be displayed on a screen, Toppan's VoiceBiz Universal Communication Display is a better design.

The Monza Minimalist Shelf Bracket

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It's pleasing to see a veteran industrial designer practicing the art of reduction. This Monza shelf bracket, by British ID'er Michael Marriott, uses the barest amount of material possible to fulfill its mission:

The packaging, too, is quite minimal.

It's in production by Marriott's Wood Metal Plastic brand. Made of stainless steel, each unit can hold 20kg (44 lbs).

On the product's web page, Marriott writes: "If you're local I can cut shelves too??"

Industrial Designer Fengfan Yang's Table Re-Think with +Halle

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It takes guts for a designer to re-imagine something as basic as a table. But Stuttgart-based industrial designer Fengfan Yang has done just that, in collaboration with Danish furniture brand +Halle.

"Hang On" is an unconventional table system for public spaces, designed to rethink and simplify the architecture of a table while offering customizable add-ons.

In today's fast-paced society, public furniture must address challenges like accommodating large crowds, catering to diverse needs, and maintaining spatial flow. "Hang On" meets these demands in public spaces such as restaurants, canteens, outdoor venues, festivals, markets, shopping centers, airports, and more.

It rethinks and challenges the architecture of table by reducing the table's components to essential elements provided as add-ons, it allows businesses and users to customize setups with a simple hanging action. The design saves space, facilitates cleanliness, and ensures quick assembly and disassembly. Its extruded profile construction also makes it cost-efficient and sustainable.

Incredibly, just last year Yang was an ID student at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart; this year he's signed a production deal with +Halle, and is also a 2026 German Design Award Newcomer nominee.

Audi Unveils Secret Supercar, New Design Direction

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Since taking over as Chief Creative Officer of Audi, automotive designer Massimo Frascella has made his goal clear: "Making our brand truly distinctive once again," he explains. "We want to shape a brand capable of inspiring desire and creating cultural impact."

Frascella—who has put in shifts at Bertone, Ford, Kia and Jaguar Land Rover, where he was formerly Design Director—says that the Audi TT made a strong impression on him. "In 1998, when the first Audi TT arrived at a dealership in Turin, I took a day off work to just look at the car in peace. I was there for hours, looking at the car from every angle, touching every surface. The staff probably thought I was crazy. But for me, the TT was more than just a car. It was a message: you don't need to shout to be heard. You don't need excess to make a statement. You just need clarity. And, more importantly, the courage to follow it."

Two years into the job, Frascella has now revealed his stamp on the brand. While most brands signal new design directions by unveiling a concept car, Frascella and Audi have skipped a step and brought a bold new design vision directly into production. This month they unveiled the Nuvolari, a supercar with a techno-futuristic look.

The move caught the automotive press off-guard; Audi managed to keep the development process leak-free and completely secret.

"Radical simplicity is at the heart of our approach," Frascella says. "We achieve clarity by reducing everything to the essential. We live in a world that is often shrill, fast-paced, and overloaded. Almost everything is overdone. The danger of losing your way is greater than ever. Our responsibility is to be better and do what really matters. And the outcome always has to be an emotion."

"Audi is an inexplicable harmony of technicality and emotion, where rational and irrational coexist."

The Nuvolari represents Audi's new design direction, which Frascella calls "The Radical Next."

The vehicle, which is clad in carbon-fiber composite body panels, is actually a hybrid. A 4-liter twin turbo V8 and three electric motors work together to produce nearly 1,000 horsepower. Just 499 units will be made, and they'll cost over $650,000.

Core77 Weekly Roundup (6-1-26 to 6-5-26)

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Here's what we looked at this week:

From Japan, a sexy matte black sledge.

The Japanese matte black tool trend came from the L.A. car scene.

Nifty hardware: These quick-release pins.

W.steps' Adjustable Safety Feet for ladders.

"Form Follows Fabrication:" This elegant metal handrail by Steel & Form.

An inventive design for a drill bit sharpening jig.

Encore RV's clever design for a pop-up bathroom for camping trailers.

Manfredini's hi-tech shoe lasts. (Unsurprisingly, consumers don't know what they are.)

Good UX: Fernweh Woodworking's brilliant movable-leg design for tables.

A folding chair that absolutely doesn't look like a folding chair.

French industrial designer invents durable, four-season outdoor inflatable furniture.

A lovely interior detail: KinkFab's adjustable solid brass ventilation screens.

Knipex's innovatively-shaped Slim Knips precision cutting pliers.

The RevivaBlade: An angle-grinder-based multitool blade resharpener.

The RevivaBlade: An Angle-Grinder-Based Multitool Blade Resharpener

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Multitool blades are expensive, and tradespeople can extend their lives by resharpening them. We've looked at Jim Dimond's Tiger's Teeth invention, designed for the task, as well as the SharpTool, a drill-based solution from the Netherlands.

Now there's another player on the market: UK-based RevivaBlade, who makes this Pro Sharpening Disc that fits in 4.5" angle grinders.

The Disc runs $92.

French Industrial Designer Invents Durable, Four-Season Outdoor Inflatable Furniture

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French industrial designer Johannes Faure-Brac knows furniture; he grew up in his father's woodworking shop in the French Alps, building traditional furniture. But after gaining two degrees in ID and working in the furniture industry, he found its practices wasteful. "It had become inefficient to produce, store, transport [furniture]," he writes. "A cumbersome, expensive, energy-intensive system.

"Ever more volume, containers, logistics costs, and wasted energy. To compensate, the industry has cut back on materials and sacrificed quality, comfort, and design. Ultimately, users pay the price for this logic, which impoverishes the object, its use, and the experience [of it]."

Faure-Brac spent six years researching and developing an alternative type of furniture. "The goal was not to lighten the furniture at all costs, but to rethink its structure," he explains. "The solution came from an aeronautical technology developed by the American military, then adopted by the French military for naval applications.

"[I designed furniture that could be] inflated rather than assembled, using technical materials: High pressure, low weight, little material, maximum resistance."

Faure-Brac's company, Airmaan, uses an undisclosed durable and easy-to-clean inflatable material with a reinforced structure. Full-size chairs and sofas are light enough to carry one-handed, yet sturdy enough to support an adult's weight. And the furniture is designed to be used outdoors, at any time of year.

"Compact, lightweight, exceptionally durable and designed for year-round use, Airmaan gives you all the options, and your living room becomes the whole world."

Airmaan's M Sofa was successfully Kickstarted earlier this year, to the tune of $316,748. It's currently in pre-production, and Faure-Brac expects to start shipping next month. They're also taking pre-orders for a companion N Club Chair piece. They retail for $355 and $296, respectively; additional padding for the pieces is available for $118 and $78, respectively.

Though their crowdfunding campaign is no longer live, the pitch video gives you a good look at the furniture, and what it can withstand: