Hubless wheels sit at the upper echelon of any concept vehicle. Whether a vehicle is sufficiently futuristic is determined by two things… their tires being airless, and their tires being hubless. It’s safe to say that by that standard, the IMNU clock is pretty futuristic, because unlike most clocks that have hands pivoted at their center, the IMNU comes with no such detail. Its uniquely appealing design features hands that float in mid-air, revolving around an invisible epicenter.
Step closer and look at it from the side and the illusion unveils itself. The hands actually pivot at the back, wrapping themselves around the edge and over to the front to create a U-shape that allows them to rotate the way they do, and create the illusion of clock hands floating in mid-air.
That future-friendly detail doesn’t take away from the fact that the IMNU still fits beautifully in homes with contemporary decor. Its marbled clock face and thin sheet-metal hands give it a minimal appearance, while its hubless design still manages to make it pretty big on character… allowing it to be a clock that’s presence you take for granted at first, but can’t stop admiring once you actually notice it.
Anyone who has played a musical instrument has thought about combining it with another one at least once to get a creative kick out of “what would that sound like? and what would that look like?” and Designer Mohamad Montazeri started with just that. He was inspired to create the Drumstring by merging a percussion and a string instrument to create a completely unique sound and experience. Also, this is exactly what Captain America would be playing if he was in a band…and the band can also be called Agents of the S.H.I.E.L.D, a name that is totally based on the instrument and nothing else!
The shape of the award-winning Drumstring is inspired by a shield-like sign in areas where sound waves are being broadcasted. Apart from the completely new sound, this musical instrument gives us a chance to learn something like never before, see how it fits into songs, how the appearance makes us feel, what is the best way to hold it – it is an experience we can formulate from scratch. Musically speaking, the scales for drums are in D3, A3, B♭3, C4, D4, E4, F4, A4 system, and the string note scales are in the E-A-D-G-B-E system.
The user uses both hands to interact with the Drumstring, it is light in weight (5 lbs/2.4 kg) and has a strap that can be fastened over the shoulders and waist. The ergonomic build of the instrument is produced with gas nitridation which is used to harden the steel and the set is made of two nylon and four steel strings. Montazeri wanted to create an instrument that sparks the beginning of a new behavior from the world while keeping it modern, pure and emotional in its aesthetics and purpose. The Drumstring has also been awarded the European Product Design Award 2019 (Bronze) and the A’ Design Award and Competition 2017-18 (Silver).
Crafted from aluminum, as opposed to the wood or plastic construction, the Edge Dominos from Fore Road explore a unique, hollow design that’s lightweight, easy to use, and that results in absolutely no waste. The dominos are designed with an empty center as the edge forms the design of each individual block. All the blocks are identical, with white laser-engraved markings on them to indicate the numbers. The blocks are individually cut from an aluminum extrusion (resulting in no waste or need to machine each block), before being de-burred and anodized.
The Edge Dominos are a winner of the A’ Design Award for the year 2017.
In keeping with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s description of architecture as frozen music, this post is quite literally a playlist of the best architectural designs from 2018.
A part of A’ Design Award and Competition‘s winner list, these buildings are awarded for the uniqueness of the project, social impacts, environment friendliness, energy utilization, and other project-specific criteria. Ranging from conceptual designs to residential units, to spas, offices, museums, and retail spaces, the A’ Design Award covers architecture in its entirety, aside from a wide roster of other design categories. Not only does winning an A’ Design Award look great on an architect’s resume, it also brings a lot of repute and focus to the work, uplifting the value of both the designer and the design!
Architecture remains one of the most popular categories at the A’ Design Awards, receiving entries by the thousands each year. Here are a few favorites that captivated our souls this year!
If you’re an architect looking to participate in the A’ Design Awards 2019, click here to register. Hurry! The regular deadline ends on 30th September!
Lè Architecture by Aedas The design for Taipei Lè Architecture draws inspiration from the shape of the river pebbles. The unique source of inspiration translates into a form factor that’s definitely eye-catching and adds an organic, iconic symbol to Taipei’s skyline!
Jewel by Wanda Commercial Planning & Research Ins If the Lè Architecture was inspired by the soft forms of pebbles, the Jewel took inspiration from the diametrically opposite crystalline forms. The building employs sophisticated facade technologies to ensure shading from sun and shelter from the wind, delivering a five-star green star building, that is both visually dramatic and sustainable.
China World Trade Center Phase 3C Retail by Andrew Bromberg The retail area of the China World Trade Center was made to do two things. Provide a space for retail therapy, and be a place so visually attracting and memorable, you’d be motivated to go there and spend as much time as possible. I guess it checks both boxes!
Symbiotic Towers by Zayad Motlib Designed for the arid climate of Dubai, the Symbiotic Towers rely on their unusual shape and the integration of greenery to create an environment that is both shaded from the harsh sun as well as capable of generating natural coolness, therefore relying less on artificial air-conditioning. The three towers host a lush, greenery-filled shopping plaza at the base, with office spaces, residential spaces, and hotels on the top.
Arachne by Lei Yu The Arachne isn’t a building as much as it is a facade, and what’s interesting about it is the fact that it’s entirely 3D printed. Created to uplift and redefine an ordinary looking building, the interwoven lattice structure was draped on the building’s front, creating a dynamic facade that’s great to look at and instantly memorable. It looks even better when lit up!
Church in Hardangervidda by Aryan Ron and Arman Ron Showing that religion must clearly evolve with time and space, the church in Hardangervidda boasts of an aesthetic that is highly contemporary, rather than the archaic gothic construction we see being used in churches and cathedrals. It still sticks to the tradition of having the steeple and the cross at the top, but does so in a way that’s much more modern, hoping to be more relevant to the younger generations.
Zeytinburnu Sales Office by Arkiteam Architecture Company Located on the coast, and inspired by waves, the Zeytinburnu Sales Office comes with a design that looks like a wave caving in on itself. Looking quite like Hadid’s Heydar Aliyev Center, the Zeytinburnu building boasts of a similar, curved style that’s oh-so-memorable, and creates a building that looks different from every angle!
Winspear Concert Hall by Andrew Bromberg Built as an extension to the existing Francis Winspear Centre for Music, the extension houses a concert hall, an additional studio and several educational spaces that are intended for a variety of user groups to provide appropriately sized and acoustically treated venues for community engagement and educational activities. The way the extension is designed goes particularly well with the rest of the hall, adding an ornamental element to it that especially comes alive in the winter as it looks like the building is covered in sleet and snow!
Solar Egg Public Sauna by Futurniture and Bigert & Bergström A symbol of youth, nourishment, and vitalization, the egg was perhaps the most perfect form for the Solar Egg Public Sauna. With stainless golden mirror sheeting on the outside, and a faceted form, the sauna mirrors the serene landscape around it, but looks as golden as the sun does (a fitting metaphor, because it’s so hot on the inside). The inside has a wooden construction with a heart-shaped sauna stove at the center, radiating heat, and making for a fitting design detail for something that looks like an egg on the outside!
Impressed? Inspired? Go ahead and grab a spot for your own designs at the A’ Design Award and Competition! Click here to Register Now! Hurry! The regular deadline ends on 30th September!
Congratulations! You’ve received the mail saying that your project has won the award you applied for! Let’s spend a few minutes celebrating the fact that your work has been chosen by a grand jury as worthy of praise. It’s an achievement, not just for your work, but for you too. Now that you’ve finished having that internal moment of celebration, what do you do next? Let’s plan the next steps forward, shall we?
WEAR THE AWARD LIKE A BADGE
You’ve won an award. Don’t be afraid to show it! Make sure you highlight that project in your portfolio, and make a note at either the beginning or the end of the project that it secured a prize. Oh, and don’t forget to list the award in your CV/Résumé too, and make sure you convey the news on your social platforms too! Do whatever you can to show the world you’ve won an award, and the world will definitely notice!
SHOWCASE SHOWCASE SHOWCASE
Award programs will also showcase your project on their own website in their winner’s gallery, and most websites allow the winner to make a profile on them. Make sure you link your profile back to your personal website, so people who view your awarded work can also view the project in detail (and even the design process) on your website along with your other works. Awards like the A’ Design Award and Competition offer a whole variety of perks not just for winners but for participants too. Winning an award puts you on display on their website as well as puts you in their yearbook plus their business network, getting your work out to as many people as possible. Make sure these people have a website they can go to, to view your work.
Publications also tend to gravitate towards awards because that’s the one-stop destination for great content. Prepare a press kit and send your work to your favorite publications, thus developing an international fan-base and an online brand for yourself. If the award is an international one, chances are that the awards program has a media partnership with design blogs and magazines. The A’ Design Award actively reaches out to multiple websites with winning designs as a part of their winner PR Campaign. Being published online means having a permanently present article on your work online. It’s perfectly healthy to google yourself every now and then to see where you’ve been published. These people will gravitate to your website and portfolio too.
DREAM IT, DO IT
If your project is a personal one or conceptual design, an award is validation that it works, or it’s appreciated. Consider pitching it! A lot of projects from the A’ Design Award went on to become rather successful products and even led some pretty remarkable crowdfunding campaigns. If winning an award is step 1, leveraging that validation to launch your product should definitely be step 2! Having your work rewarded and then published online not only boosts your confidence, but also gets your work noticed by potential investors. Do the leg-work and have a pitch ready when you do meet people who are interested. Award functions like the A’ Design Award also tend to hold international galas for their winners, which is a perfect place to meet like-minded people who could turn into collaborators and even business-oriented people who could likely turn into investors.
If your winning product isn’t conceptual, winning an A’ Design Award also opens up avenues for selling your products on platforms like Salone Del Designer, DesignMegaStore, and BuySellDesign. Either way, an award is proof that your product is worth existing and uplifting the lives of consumers, so go ahead and put in some work and let that award-winning product work for you.
EAT, SLEEP, WIN, REPEAT
The only thing better than one award is multiple awards. Most awards have different jury panels, different audiences, and different perks. Applying for different awards not only help validate your work further, they also mean more people are seeing your work, increasing your chances of being taken more seriously in the international circuit. Different awards also offer different perks. Some legacy awards offer trophies or certificates, but also give you immense amounts of credibility, while others offer cash prizes. The idea is being able to pick an award that benefits you with perks that not only help your product grow to its full potential but help you as a designer flourish too. The A’ Design Award has multiple perks that benefit the design as well as the designer. You aren’t just entitled to the trophy, certificate, and international gala, but your design receives a Good Design Mark, and you as a designer receive a Proof of Creation document that helps you establish ownership of your work. You also end up contributing to your country’s ranking on the World Design Ranking roster that gets updated every year! So make sure you review the perks that a particular design award gives you before applying for them… and when you do win the award, make sure you follow the aforementioned steps so that you extract every bit of benefit from the experience. All the best!
This unique air purifier is Air Touch, and it uses a subtle yet impactful method of indicating to the user that it is time for the filter to be replaced.
Over time it is only normal for the air purifying process to turn the filter grey as pollutants and absorbed matter begin to build up. Air Touch utilizes this change in color to create a demonstrative scene of a beautiful landscape slowing fading away due to the increasingly dusky sky. This is a striking representation of the environment that’s right outside the user’s window, and reminds them of the fresh, clean air that the product is creating.
The minimal, monotone scene that is printed onto the filter is encapsulated within an elegant and simplistic surround in order to ensure that the user’s attention is drawn straight to the quality of the filter.
The Air Touch is a winner of the A’ Design Award for the year 2018.
For an automotive enthusiast, anything even remotely car related deserves a place in their home, and this table certainly earns its right to become the centerpiece! Based around an original 20-inch forged aluminum rim from the pinnacle of the automotive world, Ferrari, the Velocita table stylishly captures the speed and drama of the iconic brand.
A thin sheet of advanced tempered glass, that allows the wheel to be viewed from all angles, rests upon the beautiful and elegantly shaped wooden frame, where its elongated form artistically portrays the speed and power that the Italian supercars are renowned for. To balance out this wonderfully crafted piece of furniture, a brake disc sits on an additional platform, which adds to the visual interest of the product!
It’s certainly THE item of furniture for any car enthusiast or Ferrari Fanatic!
The Velocita is a winner of the A’ Design Award for the year 2018.
Inspiration for a design can come from anywhere and it’s what both launches and drives the project, but what I find most interesting is the narrative that it creates! Sometimes inspiration comes from the most unlikely of sources, which is the case for this design where it was found during the repairs that were needed after the 2009 L’Aquila earthquake, more specifically, the mechanism that stabilized the damaged buildings.
Using this mechanism, the appropriately named Xtension Light can extend from 1500mm to 3000mm, and thanks to its spherical latch points, it is able to be securely fastened in any household room and onto any surface. Its extensive dimensions and bold design enables this light to really become a part of the room’s architecture as opposed to an item of furniture!
Extension also has a party trick! As the LEDs are programmable, it can become a signal light for occupied washrooms or indicate directions of intended travel, making it ideal for use in both a commercial and domestic environment!
The Extension is a winner of the A’ Design Award for the year 2018.
Every year, the June 29th marks the World Industrial Design Day, a day we celebrate to commemorate the work done in the field of Industrial Design and also a day that we set a universal agenda for the year moving forward. This year’s agenda being “Design’s Impact on Good Health and Well-Being” we’re doing our part to highlight and showcase 10 designs that fit well into that agenda of uplifting humanity’s standard of living, or being a creative breakthrough in the medical field, or just designs that get one to think and foster a healthy mentality on several issues.
These designs are all winners of A’ Design Awards over the years, catering to the various categories within the awards program and competition. Unlike most design competitions, the A’ Design Award and Competition (and we’ve said this before) isn’t about the certificate and trophy. It stands for pushing designs beyond their concept and rendering stages to harness its full potential. The A’ Design Award And Competition sets itself to be the one place where good design regardless of discipline is rewarded, highlighted, and showcased not only to the world, but helped taken forward. With a massive international interdisciplinary judging panel, the A’ Design Award covers all categories of design from Architecture to Electronics, from Medical and Safety Equipment, to Jewelry, and from Furniture to Social Design. Winners across these categories not only receive their award in the form of a trophy and certificate, they’re also entitled to a PR Campaign, Publication across multiple online design platforms, a Proof Of Creation Certificate, and even the option to sell those designs, allowing your work to actually cross over the realm of the concept and be used and appreciated by users and moreover, change lives.
Which is why if you have a life-changing idea, register it for the A’ Design Awards this year! Registrations for the award are now open, and are free for all our readers. Register and upload your design today for a free evaluation and watch as your design project goes on to influence minds and change lives!
YD Handpicks for World Industrial Design Day: 10 Award Winning Designs that Positively Impact Health and Well-Being
01. Textura Braille Smartphone by Isa Verde
The Textura Smartphone comes with a dynamic surface on top that translates text into braille. Much more simple and intuitive to use than a regular smartphone with an audio-aid, the Textura helps the visually impaired to use a phone in a way that comes naturally to them. The slim and sleek phone comes with controls on the side (because you’re perpetually touching the screen), and even has an audio jack built in for when you want to use earphones!
02. DuoSkin by Cindy Hsin-Liu Kao Dab ECG Holter Patch by Adam Miklosi
DuoSkin presents the future of body-art that just doesn’t serve the purpose of art, but involves an element of interaction design too. The thin metal foil laid out on the skin has the ability to conduct electricity or even act as a sensor, becoming one of the first fashion-oriented biotech products, not just serving a medical purpose, but even going as far as becoming interfaces for the products we use. Imagine being able to type out messages on your skin, or unlock your door with a pattern drawn on your fore-arm, or initiating a 911 emergency call using a secret button placed against your skin. The possibilities are literally endless!
03. Art4leg 3D Printed Prosthetic by Tomas Vacek
The Art4Leg remains a personal favorite just because it makes prosthetics look less like badly designed plasticky versions of human limbs and more like pieces of art that a disabled person wouldn’t mind showing off rather than concealing. 3D printed from top to bottom, the leg comes with beautiful organic patterns and a hollow design that not only is capable of taking vertical stress of standing and walking but also is capable of dispelling any weird looks people may give you. If anything, they’re going to look at it with awe!
04. Dab ECG Holter Patch by Adam Miklosi
A winner from last year’s competition, the Dab ECG holter patch sits on your chest, constantly monitoring and recording your heart activity, while truly being as invisible and distraction-free as any good medical wearable must be. Sitting on the skin via a gel patch, the Dab is reusable, unlike most disposable ECGs and charges separately in its own wireless charging dock. A perfect embodiment of Rams’s design advice that good design should be as little design as possible.
05. Meditation Seat by Gao Fenglin
Gao Fenglin’s Meditation Seat encourages you to sit cross legged, making your body and mind healthy. The seat comes with an unusual design that naturally gets you to sit with your legs crossed in a meditative pose, allowing your posture to be corrected, spine kept straight, and making sure you’re physiologically as well as psychologically healthy.
06. Lw-01 by YeQuan Liu
Designed to make sure you never forget or misplace your medicine, the Lw-01 integrates your pill bottle into the cap of your regular water bottle. Whenever you take your bottle out to have a sip, you’re reminded to follow your medical routine, and the fact that your pills are attached to your bottle allows you to take your medication without having to look for a glass of water!
07. Tentative Post Disaster Tent by Dr. Hakan Gürsu
Inspired after earthquakes in Turky, by the need to have a shelter that can be rapidly deployed and set up, Hakan developed the Tentative Post Disaster Tent. Designed to comfortably house two adults, or even a small family of 3-4, the tent comes in a collapsible flat-pack design that makes for easy transportation. In fact, a single semi can carry north of 24 of these units. The tent comes with collapsible furniture all stored inside it and can be assembled (by means of a metal exo-structure) in a matter of minutes.
08. Espire Full Face Gas Mask by Carlos Schreib
The Espire Full Face Gas Mask is exactly what safety masks should look like. Not only does it purify the air going into your nose and mouth, it even guards your eyes from smoke, dust, and harmful chemicals. What’s more, it rather cleverly creates a barrier between the breathing zone and the viewing zone so you don’t have to worry about your visor fogging up with your breath!
09. Brave Jet Syringe by Ilmo Ahn, Jisu Kim & Juyeon Baek & SeonwooPyo
Dispelling any fear around injections, the Brave Jet Syringe gamifies the vaccination process, turning the syringe jet into a plane, allowing kids to look at it as not a pointy, fearful, medical product, but a good-guy fighter jet that kills diseases!
10. SPH Smart Prosthetic Hand by Young Jo In
The SPH, or Smart Prosthetic Hand is just practical from top to bottom. A mechanized prosthetic hand lets you go about your day to day tasks, while a smartphone is literally integrated into the back of your palm, letting you own and use a smartphone without worrying about having to occupy one hand holding one, forget/lose one, or accidentally drop one. Besides, it literally puts the power of the entire internet in your hands!
Regardless of our age or profession, it’s highly likely that we spend an unhealthy amount of our day sat down. In fact, studies have shown that a person now spends more than ten hours a day on their backside! Needless to say, this can gradually lead to health risks.
This unique piece of furniture is WEE! and it certainly looks like a rather fun method of introducing a bit of movement into our lives! It beautifully merges together both a working desk and a playful swing to create an item of furniture that allows the user to stay both productive and active during their busy day!
Its designers identified that the user may not always want to be swinging backwards and forwards, so when the seat is not in use it seamlessly integrates into the desk to become part of the work surface! Its simplistic and formal aesthetics is dramatically contrasted by its hidden feature that brings an element of nostalgia and playfulness into the workplace!
The Wee! is a winner of the A’ Design Award for the year 2018.
