Tag Archives: accessory

This MagSafe compatible accessory with real clock helps curb digital addiction

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Smartphone as a tool has evolved beyond comprehension but the double-edged sword characteristic of the mobile device has turned it into a nightmare for some. When not used in moderation, or excessive indulgence in time-consuming apps takes a toll on health and productivity, the smartphone becomes a self-destructive tool.

Even if you decide to go cold turkey and completely give up smartphone addiction, the demon haunts you, and the vicious circle strikes again. The best strategy is to have that sense of realization and not try to restrict anything, but rather realize how important your time is.

Designer: Hyunsub ‍Shin and Yeji Han

Thinking along the same lines, the two budding designers have mustered up this unique MagSafe-compatible accessory to get over digital addiction. Sticking to the back of the smartphone, there’s a real clock with a single-hour hand to keep one aware of the passing time. It also doubles as a holder for all your cards, quick cash, or any other important receipt. There’s space to insert a supplied paper card that gets the embossing of the clock hand for the time you’ve not used the phone. This can be used to jot down the tasks completed during that period for a sense of accomplishment and create a journal.

The premium-looking accessory also doubles as a stand if you want to consume multimedia content. Sure, it will add bulk to your phone but if you desperately want to take your digital detox seriously, it is a good way to do it.

The post This MagSafe compatible accessory with real clock helps curb digital addiction first appeared on Yanko Design.

Wireless iPad Pro accessory for visual artists gives you total control over all your Procreate tools

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By putting the most common tools and functions right under your fingertips, the PenPad hopes to make using the iPad’s most famous sketching/painting app much easier by eliminating the hassle of navigating the Procreate interface. Instead, almost like the way a Numpad makes accessing numbers easy, the PenPad gives you access to 22 different functions that you’re most likely to use while sketching on Procreate, from increasing and decreasing brush size, accessing the color wheel, switching between brush and eraser, or just bringing up the color wheel or eyedropper tool. The fact that it’s a compact hardware accessory means you can paint with one hand while intuitively pressing buttons with the other to make your workflow tonnes faster.

Designer: PenTips

Available in Black and White variants, the PenPad connects via Bluetooth to your iPad and automatically begins working with the Procreate app right out of the box. The 22 concave buttons on the PenPad are laid out in a way that makes them easy to use, and pressing buttons allows you to actively perform tasks like see your layers, toggle the selection tool, cut, copy, paste tools, etc. The buttons work rather seamlessly, almost like a wireless keyboard would, resulting in faster workflows because your mind is focused on creating rather than navigating the UI anymore.

What PenPad really does is reduce the time it takes for your eyes to wander and your hand to follow it around Procreate’s UI. More than 90% of the Procreate screen is the drawing canvas, which means the other elements (the buttons, menus, etc.) are laid out in a way that gives the canvas the main importance. Drawing on the canvas is easy, but using other features involves shifting your focus from the canvas to locate the appropriate toolbar, drop-down menu, etc. It takes a mere second, sometimes up to 10 seconds, but all this adds up rather quickly when you’re working with large files and multiple layers. To avoid this, the PenPad just puts common functions under your fingertips. This way, your dominant hand can sketch on the screen, while your non-dominant hand rests on the PenPad, away from the touchscreen display. Once your fingers get a hang of the PenPad’s layout, it becomes even more intuitive and rapid!

The tiny wireless device comes with a format that seems rather calculator-ish. It’s relatively flat, barring a bump at the top that makes the PenPad rest on surfaces at an angle – a feature that actually helps make it more ergonomic. The accessory is still rather flat, and slides right into your backpack, tablet/laptop sleeve when you’re not using it.

The PenPad works seamlessly with iPads running iPadOS 14.4 and above, although there are a few shortcomings. For starters, it doesn’t work with any other sketching app – so you’re really limited to Procreate. It doesn’t work with Android tablets either, given that Procreate isn’t available for the OS. The buttons aren’t reprogrammable either, so you can’t quite map them to work on other software for the iPad or even the laptop. It’s strictly bound to one app for one device category. Another user also pointed out that the PenPad lacks the three most popular actions performed while digital sketching – pan, rotate, and zoom. To be able to perform them, you need to take your hand off the PenPad and pinch, tap, swipe on the iPad’s touchscreen.

That doesn’t take away from the fact that the PenPad still DOES speed up your workflow. It’s quite a must-have for most digital artists who use the software for work (or even for recreation). The PenPad comes with a 100 mAh battery built-in that gives it a 5-day battery life, but unfortunately, it charges via MicroUSB (unlike the USB-C charging on the iPad Pro), so you’ll sadly need to carry an extra cable with you wherever you go.

The post Wireless iPad Pro accessory for visual artists gives you total control over all your Procreate tools first appeared on Yanko Design.

With precise temperature settings, this portable neck warmer is here to keep you warm this winter

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005G is a neckwarmer designed by Xiaoming for cold winter mornings when hitting the snooze button is all too tempting.

As the seasons change, our bodily needs do too. With winter quickly approaching, the cold, dry air has us shopping for winter accessories like weighted blankets, moisturizers, and steam inhalers. Despite having the heater turned all the way up to stave off the cold, an extra blanket or pair of fuzzy socks always brings just the right amount of coziness. Industrial designer Xiaoming is bringing coziness to this winter season with 005G, a neck warmer that drapes around your shoulders just like a warm towel.

When we first wake up on chilly winter mornings, the last thing we want to do is leave our warm bed sheets and comforters. If only everyone could have heated floors and in-house towel warmers. While we wait for our heated tiles and hot towels to get here, consider 005G the winter accessory that’ll keep us cozy in the meantime.

Shaped like a pair of over-ear headphones, 005G slips around your neck and emanates warmth from its plush, velvet covering to the skin of your neck. With an adjustable temperature dial, users can change the amount of heat they’d like to come from 005G. For cold winter mornings, when hitting the snooze feels more tempting than ever, 005G is there to get us out of bed.

While 005G is primarily designed to keep us cozy and warm in the cold, it’s the perfect accessory for neck pain as well. There’s nothing worse than waking up in the morning with a stiff neck, especially because there’s nothing you can do about it other than wind your neck back and crack it. To keep comfortable while dealing with neck issues like stiff muscles, 005G provides enough warmth to keep us from thinking about the pain.

Designer: Xiaoming

The post With precise temperature settings, this portable neck warmer is here to keep you warm this winter first appeared on Yanko Design.

An incredibly cute cup warmer that heats your drink and charges your smartphone is the new winter essential

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Power banks have become a must-have accessory for their portability and convenience to juice up your mobile device on the go. Now taking a leaf out of that book, a designer has visioned a desktop appliance, which is functionally a cool mug warmer (to keep the beverage inside at a drinkable temperature) and comes with a USB slot to charge your phone or a smartwatch like a power bank!

There is nothing that meets the pleasure of a steaming hot coffee or tea while working. You get an extra kick to stay productive for a few more hours. However, there are times when you tend to forget and that hot beverage is left to become a cold brew sitting on the table. This is where a cup warmer like the one conceptualized by designer Dadaism J comes into the equation. The functionality of this cup warmer is to keep your compatible cup heated from the bottom to ensure the beverage inside remains at a particular temperature. This ensures you don’t have to sip on cold brew when your mug should have had a piping hot beverage. When I came across this cup warmer, I did a little search and found that this domain is not saturated at the moment, not many recognizable brand names have entered the category, meaning there is time and requirement for innovation and this cup warmer with charging functionality does deserve to see the light of day.

This I believe for a fact because the mug warmers currently available on the market come with an induction plate to place your mug. It aims to maintain a specific temperature of the beverage for you. Dadaism’s design just betters on the idea with the inclusion of a USB port on the front, which can be used to charge a mobile device simultaneously. There is also a small digital display on this colorful mug charger – it’s designed in three lovely colors – that shows you the temperature at which your beverage is being heated. Presumably, the cup warmer with a charging function also has an adjustable timer and auto shut off, which is common in the cup warmers already on the market.

While this cup warmer is primarily designed for your workstation, it has to connect to an electric socket for power. Given the niche functionality, this could also be useful in the outdoors to heat your mug of water or coffee at a camp per se, and when required also juice up your phone so you can remain connected even when you’re in areas off the grid. For this, the cup warmer will need to be battery-powered or even solar-powered; hope Dadaism would consider my suggestion for the prototype!

Designer: Dadaism J

The post An incredibly cute cup warmer that heats your drink and charges your smartphone is the new winter essential first appeared on Yanko Design.

stay goodbye to cluttered pen stands, table clocks and sticky notes – this ultimate desk organizer has it all!

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2ORDE is designed to create an environment that gives a sense of uniformity to the work desk and, owing to its multiple-use approach, makes finding office supplies convenient.

Keeping the home-office desk organized is like forcing a round peg through a square hole. There are endless desk organizers you can find on the market for your help, but most of them are about aesthetics than function; and if you go for functional options, you end up compromising on the aesthetics. Striking a uniform balance between the two, and delivering on multiple forms than just one, a group of designers has come up with 2ORDE, the ultimate desk organizer you won’t look beyond!

Since the pandemic, the home office workstation has become the place where we spend most of our time. In such a scenario, when you want to get something done and you don’t find the right supplies, you’re bound to go berserk. To save you the day and help you organize the desk and store out-of-order articles creatively, 2ORDE arrives in form of a stable notice board with its own set of supplies.

After a host of barnstorming sessions, mockups, and feedbacks – the designers Junseo Oh, Eojin Roh and Minjeong Kim arrived at a magnetic board in matte finish. Perfectly stable on its broad base, the 2ORDE is more than just the board. It is provided with a set of colorful sticky notes. These fasten magnetically to a section of the board, leaving the other part for you to detail your to-do with chalk and then paste a functional clock on it to glace at what schedule fits your time.

Even more interesting is the fact that these sticky notes are erasable; designers claim no matter the pen you use, you can rub it and move on without a speck of doubt. The provided pen holder also clings onto the magnetic board and lets you have your pen collection right in focus.

This intuitive wooden pen holder solves cleanup woes on messy art days and is designed to last a lifetime!

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Painting gets messy, especially when you have kids. Without regard for the new floor carpet or optic white-stained china cabinet, the whole room is their canvas when kids paint. Then there’s the dreaded clean-up of all the scattered colored pencils and paintbrushes. Setting out to create a tidy solution for those memorable, but messy paint-filled afternoons, Architect Mum, a child care accessory design studio, developed the Creative Cube, a multifunctional pen holder that can last a lifetime.

Creative Cube was inspired by Architect Mum founder Caro’s own daughter. Caro describes, “After she had painted, it was a hassle for her to tidy up the pens, too…when she was painting with water, it also happened quite often that the water glass tipped over in the creative process. I knew we needed a pen holder that would solve our problems, but I didn’t want a plastic red ladybug in our home.” Averting the tempting lure of weird, anthropomorphic plastic home accessories, Caro gave Creative Cube a wooden construction to exude a minimalist warmth and a timeless, neutral design so the product can be carried down for generations. Eighteen pen slots and a single paintbrush holder fill out the sides of Creative Cube with an additional chamber to place paint water cups stationed on the top of Creative Cube.

Manufactured in southern Germany, Creative Cube is constructed from sycamore wood and coated in linoleum for added protection. Developed to be a lifetime product, Creative Cube is doubly covered with natural linseed oil to stand the test of time and remain resistant against any potential water damage. Since wood is a natural product, Caro suggests keeping your Creative Cube out of direct sunlight to avoid any yellowing or grain fluctuations.

Designer: Architect Mum

Nine pen slots fill out each side of Creative Cube, with additional chambers for a paintbrush and water cup.

Kids can clean up their workstations with ease following paint activities and water coloring.

With an intuitive design, kids can pull their favorite colored pens from Creative Cube and put them right back when they’re done.

With wide slots, Creative Cube can hold multiple slim pencils in one holder.

This minimal analog watch revises traditional time-telling by using dashes!

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Personally,  I prefer wearing an analog watch — ironically, I type this while wearing a Fitbit gifted to me last year. I understand the useful features that smartwatches offer, such as text alerts, setting a camera timer, sending emails, tracking health stats, etc. However, I don’t need those extra features — I just want to know what time it is.

The “another interpretation of watch” design presents a unique time-telling mechanism. How do you read the face? The watch’s “minute hand” is represented by a series of box-like icons that inch their way around the screen. The “hour hand” is represented by a slightly wider, the shorter block located closer to the center. Does this visual make it easier to tell time … not exactly. But, that’s not the purpose. The purpose of this design is to present a unique, abstract visual. Another attention to detail is the rotating gear that is located in a non-traditional center of the dial – yup, in the center instead of the traditional side placement that helps you retain that smooth circular silhouette this watch boasts of.

I’m personally charmed by this design. It reminds me of the Time Off! watch, an equally simple product that I covered previously on Yanko. Both of these watches have a simple black band and minimal functionality. It would be easy to forget I was wearing one of these two watches – but that seems to be the intent of their design. I prefer analog watches because they are low-maintenance; they don’t need to be recharged or synced to a companion app. They simply blend into your wrist until you need them.

Designer: Sergey Butskoy

Sergey Butskoy watch

Apple may sell iPhone 11 and 11 Pro Smart Battery Cases

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If you recently purchased an iPhone 11 or iPhone 11 Pro, you may want to hold off buying a case for your new smartphone. Apple may have a Smart Battery Case for its iPhone 11 lineup in the works. 9to5Mac found a photo of the unannounced accessory (s...

Razer case keeps your iPhone cool during intense gaming sessions

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Razer is jumping into the crowded world of iPhone cases, but with (what else?) a decidedly gaming-oriented twist. The company's newly introduced Arctech and Arctech Slim rely on a custom-developed Thermaprene material and perforations to transfer he...