Yanko Design

Ten Way To Get Your Fix – Coffee Machines & Kettles

Radhika Seth — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:58:32 +0000

As the winter sets in, more of us are going to be downing the liquid gold, just to keep out the chills. Coffee! A warm mug to curl your hands around, just as you watch the first snowflakes hit the ground. Here are Ten ways to get your fix; machines, coffee sets and kettles. I like mine instant coffee with milk and strong; how about you?

10) Birch-wood Coffee Set by Andrea Branzi

Kicking off this countdown is an elegant silver and birch-wood coffee set designed by Andrea Branzi. Made from silver dipped in acid to get the rustic look, the set is quite a collector’s item.

9) Muji Non-directional Coffee Maker by Kazushige Miyake

I don’t get what a “Non-directional Coffee Maker” is, but I’m willing to hear your opinion on it.

8 ) Kahva by Lina Fischer

Technically Kavha is the Kashmiri way of preparing tea, with saffron and cardamom; so it quite surprises me that a coffee maker has been christened thus. Any ways the Kahva is a beautiful way to brew your coffee.

7) The Barista by Patrik Pettersson

Perfect solution for multiple coffee addicts in an office, this machine dispenses many cups of coffee at one go.

6) Coffee Maker by Tom Metcalfe

This one’s for the serious brewers who go to any lengths for their cuppa java! I love the video in this post, do re-visit and check it out.

5) Cocoon by Jan König

Made of twin-spherical bowls, in the Cacoon, the water is heated via induction in the outer sphere and a pump in the handhold transports the warm water to the filter and finally the ready coffee drips into the inner sphere. The resulting cavity (where the water was before) between the both spheres, now serves as a natural insulator and keeps the coffee warm.

4) Nespresso by Jeremy Myrier

A service tray that doubles up as coffee warmers! I can pictures us warming our hands over it!

3) Enjoy It While Flying by Balazs Millete & Telekes Tamas

Enjoy It While Flying is a concept brewer of Nespresso that is to be enjoyed abord your private aircraft, as you jetset from one glam destination to another. Strictly for those with the moola; Plebs please endure the airline trash you get.

2) Pearl by Andreas Diefenbach

This Ceramic Coffee machine is refined with a gilded touch, and is quite an exquisite creation.

1) Untitled by Brice Genre Hanika Perez

Thanks to its thermo-sensitivity, artistic patterns appear on the surface of this coffee machine when hot water runs through it. Almost like have an art piece hanging up on the wall.

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Entire Vanity In A Strip

Radhika Seth — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:59:56 +0000

On a recent trip out of town, I crammed into my suitcase this vanity bag containing soap, facewash, lotions, perfume, gels etc. In short a mini replica of my personal hygiene collection. Then again Murphy’s Law kicked in and the bottles of lotion and shampoo just burst open, soiling all my clothes! Wish I could have carried this “Wash One” pills instead. Tablets of hair, face, body wash and even toothpaste! Brilliant!

Designer: Se Jun Lee

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YouRail Design Contest – Visions of modern transportation by Bombardier

Radhika Seth — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:30:23 +0000

Is publishing your contents on online design communities or hosting your own portfolio site enough for creative satisfaction? Don’t you want evaluation or recognition for your efforts? Much like how a post is done on YD, where we hear scores of you either trashing or praising a design, forcing the designers to re-think his strategy or go-ahead with his convictions. The Bombardier YouRail Design Contest by HYVE gives you instant feedback, allowing you to re-think your contribution or simply refining it.

The contest is really simple, you only need to register, get inspired and submit your design ideas. The contest is about the creation of new and innovative interior designs for trains. Questions like how a modern train interior should look like and what kind of innovative features should be integrated need to be solved. It is irrelevant if participants have great experience in interior design or not, the contest is addressed to professionals, students, hobby designers and everyone who is interested into the topic. The designs can be submitted drawn freehand or computer generated, by using the configuration tool or just by explaining the interior idea. Participants may either design a seat upholstery with the configuration tool or freely create an interior design to the following three topics:

The Leisure Passenger
The Business Traveler
The Everyday Passenger

Like I mentioned to participate you need to simply join the community and submit your own vision for interior design in trains. Or you can create your own seat cover with the 3D – configuration tool. Anyway, you can discuss and evaluate the designs of the community and win great prizes: The members with the three best freely created designs amongst all three topics win cash prizes up to 2.000 Euros. The members with the three best configured designs also win cash prizes up to 600 Euros. Plus: The members with the 4th to the 10th best freely created designs win netbooks. Hurrah!

The winning design will be built as a prototype and will be exposed on the InnoTrans 2010 in Berlin which is the leading trade fair in transportation. Besides, the designer of that winning design will be invited by Bombardier to visit the InnoTrans 2010. In addition, the most active member as well as the best freely created and configured designs according to the community evaluation are rewarded with a netbook, too. Finally, one idea will also win a netbook (and a signature book about Bombardier) by the “president’s pick” where the jury select the most unconventional idea.

The jury has an impressive line-up with high-level management and design experts – get to know them here.

What is really impressive is that like our YD community, there is instant feedback and reaction to your designs by the community members. So participating in this contest really makes sense. You get evaluated not only by your contemporaries, but also by an elite panel of judges. Which other design competition can boast of this killer combo?

To know more on the contest details hit here.

The whole contest phase is being charged by the HYVE Innovation Community GmbH. HYVE is a German innovation agency dealing with customer integration into the product innovation process. Feel free to get all important information about HYVE on their website, or contact them directly.

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Quatuor the Kitchen Annihilator!

Chris Burns — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:01:59 +0000

What’s that? You want more organization in your kitchen? Well contrary to the title of this post, that’s what “Quatuor” is here to do! You’re in a hurry to create that perfect cake? Not to worry! Quatuor has your flour in a perfect proportion! Not only can in dispense both solid and liquid ingredients, it’s also got mystical magic charms cast on it!

You can use the heck out of this at dinner time, lunch time, or party time! * Be creative, sensitive, and accurate with just such a device as this. The activation controls are still up in the air, perhaps a voice-activated sort of thing? Could get messy.

*NEVER for use at breakfast time.**

**Just kidding. Definitely suitable for cereal.

Designer: Arthur Senant

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Media Centers: Not Just for Nerds

Chris Burns — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:01:01 +0000

Let me tell you what a media center is, first of all: it’s a computer. It’s a computer from which you have a bunch of cords and plugs and bluetooths and everything running into and out of so you can, from that one machine, run your whole media experience in your home. What have we got here? “Mod Systems’ GreenPlay” system from Samuel Hoang with Teague – a media center without all the keyboards and mice!

A) Mod System’s GreenPlay software engages your main system with your “set top boxes” and storage units throughout the house for easy management. Music, movies, tv shoes, and photos. It’s connected to Mod Systems online library from whens mass amounts of media can be purchased or rented.

B) The online library of Mod Systems is a fully interactive customer and administrator user interface designed just for the GreenPlay system.

Digital content galore!

C) The GreenPlay Set Top Boxes connect to high definition televisions and other networked devices (such as speakers, your PC control station, etc.) Designed at the same time as a digital interface and a physical object, this is made to fit into the home in more ways than one.

The full integrated experience is what this is all about.

Designer: Samuel Hoang with Teague

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Rugged Lamps Now Refined

Radhika Seth — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:00:11 +0000

It’s quite funny actually when you think about it; products that you use in extreme conditions, when refined and gilded, suddenly become prized possessions and artifacts. For example the oil lanterns that the electricity-deprived population uses, becomes an iconic possession for the fortunate one. We don’t really care much about the construction lamp found in the garage, but if Form Us With Love decides to glam it up and give us the “Work Lamp”; WE WANT IT!

Available in Gold and Chrome plated versions and refined with a dimmer incorporated to the design; this “Blue Collar” lamp is rightly called the one lamp that rules it all!

Designers: Form Us With Love [ Buy it Here ]

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Dell Adamo XPS, World’s Thinnest Laptop Reviewed

Long Tran — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:00:49 +0000

At a scant 9.99mm, the Dell Adamo XPS really is the world’s thinnest notebook – truly design like no other. I’ve been trying to keep my tongue in check when Dell invited me to grab a first hand look at their new baby. It doesn’t look real. It’s almost too thin, yet underneath that metal exterior and diamond cut logo is hardware powerful enough to run Windows 7 without skipping a beat. Hit the jump for my review.

As I said before it’s almost too thin. If it weren’t for the softly bezeled edges the Adamo XPS might also be the world’s sharpest notebook. Weighing only 3.2lbs with the 20WHr battery installed is quite impressive but my favorite feature is the capacitive latching device. Por que? There’s no button or indentation to lift open the Adamo XPS. Just swipe your finger across a touch sensitive bezel and the lid magically magnetically unlocks.

The design is quite interesting. In lieu of the usual perpendicular form most notebooks take, the Adamo XPS opens up to an angle. The keyboard is raised for better ergonomics and all that space underneath facilitates cooling. The screen is slightly recessed because the entire keyboard plane folds into the display. When you look at the Adamo’s profile, what you’re really looking at is the screen housing.

I’m avoiding the phrase “wafer thin” because that implies flimsiness. The Adamo XPS is far from it. It’s incredibly sturdy and any give comes from the carefully seamed joints, alas the Adamo is not a unibody design. The keyboard looks almost like polished stone but it’s actually metal. How novel and appropriately chic! On the left edge is single USB and display port. The opposite side has another USB port, an audio jack and power connector.

All the exterior sex appeal doesn’t mean diddly if it chugs during everyday use (cough – MacBook Air). I’m not a PC user so this was also my first experience with Windows 7. Upon start-up I was greeted with a facial recognition option. I didn’t try it because I was in no mood to see my mug in the incredibly bright 13.4″ HD (720p) screen. Once in, Windows 7 looked like a supremely clean version of Vista. All the nonsensical gadgets were gone and the taskbar now had a companion ala Mac OS X dock. I don’t want to make this a Windows review so lets just say I browsed, interneted and emailed without pause. The Adamo XPS is fast.

Dell has been on a roll lately releasing computers that step outside the proverbial grey box. The Adamo XPS looks like a winner in most areas but since we’re a design site, lets get picky. The corners are a little bit too rounded. The trackpad is too small. The speakers are too quiet. The bezel around the display is too noticeable. You’ve got the grey aluminum on the exterior and the black hugging the display. This double whammy makes the screen feel smaller. It would also have bee nice to move the Dell logo off the display area down into the keyboard because it’s way too distracting where it is. What Dell deserves snaps for is the beautiful, crisp screen. The keyboard is a dream to type on and that capacitive latch is like concept finally making it to reality. It’s unnecessary but design is only half about function – the other is emotion and that latch immediately introduces the idea of a computer far more advance if not a little cooler than anything else out there.

Specs:

13.4″ HD WLED (720P) display
Intel Core 2 Duo 1.4GHz
Integrated Intel graphics
4GB DDR3-800MHz RAM
Thin Micro SSD 128GB
Integrated webcam with security face recognition
Full size keyboard with touchpad gestures
Built-in 802.11n and Bluetooth 2.1
2x USB 2.0, audio, DisplayPort
20WHr li-ion battery
Windows 7 Premium 64-bit OS
3.2lbs

Optional attachments:

VGA, HDMI i/o
External optical DVD+/-RW, Blu-ray Disc

Designer: Dell

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Different Window AC

Radhika Seth — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:30:52 +0000

The concept of Blinds doubling up as Solar Powered Window Air Conditioner is not new, but there is something that makes Briz tad different. Briz uses water as a coolant; water runs through both tubes beneath the bottom part of the blinds emitting dry mist. As water evaporates, it absorbs the heat thus naturally cooling the atmosphere. BTW Solar Power and other concept gimmicks still prevail.

Designers: Nari Kim & Pullip Lim

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Want $1,000? TatSkinz Contest!

Long Tran — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:26:10 +0000

You could win a $1,000 University scholarship or a 13″ MacBook and all you have to do is a design a TatSkinz for the iPhone. You have until November 30th so get your designing neurons together because I want to see something amazing. I’m one of the judges so impress me and you might win! Open to all (18+), international contest.

Deadline: November 30, 2009 (Official rules and entry details)

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Stumped By A Tree

Radhika Seth — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:01:23 +0000

The idea behind the Tree & Root Lamp is to make us aware of the fact that we are cutting down way too many trees. So how does Kitae Pak translate this into motion? When positioned inverted in the pot, the lamp signifies a dead root, with the tree cut-off. Upright the lamp and it illuminates the room, depicting the true virtues of a tree and its importance in our lives. Besides the poetic garble, I simply think it’s an elegant design that can find pride in many homes.

Designer: Kitae Pak

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