Tag Archives : design

In addition to the zippy Portégé, Toshiba’s also today announcing the Libretto W100. It’s a full Windows dual-screen “ultra-mobile PC” that’s not quite a tablet and not quite a netbook. In short: it’s one curious little gadget. The Libretto has the specs of a halfway decent ultraportable: a 1.2 GHz Pentium U5400 processor, 2GB DDR3 RAM, 62GB SSD, a USB port and a microSD slot. But that body isn’t really like anything else, unfolding to reveal two 7-inch multitouch displays. The screens can either be used together or independently meaning one [...]

At WWDC 2010 Apple has announced the winner apps of Apple Design Awards (ADA) 2010. Out of 225,000 available apps of App Store the 10 applications are selected as winners as 5 for iPad and 5 for iPhone. According to Apple: “The criteria used to evaluate apps for Apple Design Awards is technical excellence, innovation, superior technology adoption, high performance, and outstanding design.” For this year’s ADA awards Mac OS X applications were not included so the only focus was on iOS applications which was announced at the first day of WWDC 2010 and works for iPad, iPhone 4, iPhone [...]

Renault Design India recently sponsored a project by designer Ramesh Gound that focuses on urban mobility called the Plug-In. The vehicle is actually composed of two two-wheel bikes snapped together to form a unified car that sacrifices nothing in the way of sports car cool. The project came about during Gound’s studies at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, India. While Renault hasn’t committed to bringing the concept vehicle to market, we can expect to see more eco-friendly designs like this to dominate future forays into the world of concept vehicles.

Here’s a faucet that takes that Delta Touch2O electronic touch control to the next level. It’s activated with magical gestures. Spatial Interaction is a prototype design by Jasper Dekker, and all it takes is a wave of the hand to control its temperature and flow rate. This project is beyond just the design concept stage; now it’s an attractive prototype carved out of a block of that same solid surface used in high-end kitchens, Corian. Imagine a faucet like this situated behind your kitchen sink, made of material that precisely matches the countertop.

Ten years from now, flexible OLED touchscreens will be commonplace. Here’s a design concept that incorporates that technology in a most delightful way. Designer Hiromi Kiriki taps Sony for this spectacular Nextep wrist computer that does just about anything full-sized computers can do today. Notice the handy pullout keyboard, and augmenting that OLED touchscreen is a holographic projector for large-scale viewing. Sure, it’s a design concept, but just look at the gorgeous pictures,keeping in mind that all of this technology is almost ready. We so want this, but it’s probably [...]

Imagine an art museum where you could have your image captured and then automatically artistically rendered and framed on the wall for all to see. That is the amazing feat produced by interactive artist Chris O’Shea and his device titled “A Study For Mirror.” Designed in collaboration with London design firm Random International, the mirror-like mechanism uses a hidden camera to capture your image and then display a light reactive temporary screen print image on glass. Running custom software on a standard PC, despite its tech underpinnings, the effect is quite organic looking. [...]

This concept design, dubbed the Hungry Battery, is a pretty standard-looking set of batteries when they’re all charged up. But unlike normal batteries, which let you know that they’re dead by no longer working, these guys actually get thinner as they lose juice. It’s a neat idea. It would certainly be helpful to have a visual indicator of how much power is left. But the way batteries fit into devices makes this seem like it wouldn’t really work. If they need to fit in tightly when charged, would thinning down make them loose? If so, these won’t work at all. Maybe [...]

Digital SLR cameras for advanced users cling to the traditional design of pro cameras. But now designers are taking liberties with that staid tradition, and they’ve made it easier to use, angling the bottom away from the user’s face. That’ll keep those greasy nose smudges off the viewscreen. Nice. Designer Abel Verdezoto I. is picking on Sony’s Alpha DSLR in this example, but it could just have easily been one from Canon, Nikon, Olympus or any other manufacturer. There’s no reason why a digital SLR camera has to look like its film-based ancestors. Come on, camera [...]

Who doesn’t have a drawer full of a variety of batteries? If not, then you’re the poor soul who never seems to have the right battery on hand when you need it, right? The AtoD Rechargeable Battery is a design concept that attempts to solve that problem by using a single rechargeable battery core that’s surrounded by memory foam that conforms to whatever shape/size you need. Brilliant, right? Well, it might be easier to make a removable sleeve to shim up a smaller battery to fit a “D” slot than it would be to squish a D-sized piece of foam down to an AA-sized slot. [...]

This concept design for a futuristic Harley-Davidson motorcycle looks like a combo of a street bike from today and Batman’s Batcycle from The Dark Knight. And you know what? There are certainly worse places to draw inspiration from. The design itself is, like most concept designs, low on details on how this thing would actually run, but that’s OK. They have 10 years to figure it out. For now, we can just enjoy the eye candy.