Tag Archives: Yang Dong Wook

This EV charging solution uses a network of charging drones to charge your car anytime, anywhere!

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Every day we move closer to a more sustainable future, and the automobile industry is quickly gaining traction. However, more and more electric vehicles are on the road each day, and drivers feel the heat with the lack of available charging stations. With so many EVs on the road and so few charging stations, many EV drivers admit to feeling anxious during road trips, having to worry about their car dying of charge at any moment. A group of Seoul-based designers hopes to relieve some of that stress with their new EV charging solution called Nebo, a network of charging drones that bring the electric juice directly to EVs.

To ensure their EVs remain charged when traveling, drivers often have to adjust their routes to incorporate charging stops along the way. Cutting out the extra travel time those routes take up, Nebo users can request charging drones to fly to their EV and power up their vehicles on the road. Then, drivers can plug in their destination from a dashboard display, and Nebo will find the quickest route and create a charging schedule for the trip, ensuring that EVs are fully charged. Each charging drone contains electromagnetic and ultrasonic sensors to locate and latch onto the roofs of electric vehicles.

Once securely stationed atop the EV, charging coils transmit power between Nebo and the electric vehicle. The drones would also feature bladeless wings, allowing for a compact build that can slide into itself during use. An accompanying app would also allow users to request Nebo on the go. This would come in handy when your EV is parked, and you want to get some extra charge before taking the car out for a drive.

Since EVs are hitting the roads more than ever before, the need for charging stations is growing. However, considering the lack of charging stations, those who drive electric vehicles have to worry too much about how they will get a charge. To help quell the anxiety felt by drivers of electric vehicles, Nebo brings the charge to drivers using a network of charging drones anytime, anywhere.

Designers: Junpyo Hong, Jayoung Koo, Yang Dong Wook, & Dongjae Koo

Sleek by design and discreet in appearance, Nebo is a charging drone that brings power to EVs on the road.

Electromagnetic and ultrasonic sensors help Nebo locate and latch onto EVs.

An intricate build reveals the vision sensors, charging coils, and bladeless wing system that gives Nebo such a slim body.

When latched onto the EV, Nebo’s wings slide into its body to give it a more compact structure.

























A dashboard display allows users to log trips into Nebo’s GPS technology that creates a charging schedule for each trip.

Vision sensors allow Nebo to track your EV.

An accompanying app allows users to request charging drones on the go.

Nebo charges your EV while you’re driving, cutting out the extra time it takes to find charging stations.

Once your EV is fully charged, Nebo takes off and flies back to its own charging station.

The team of designers created a life-size paper model of Nebo.

How Michelangelo’s Statue of David helped inspire one of the most beautiful, home-friendly speaker designs ever

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Torso Speaker inspired by Michelangelo Statue of David

The fact that fabric is now considered an industrial design material can be directly attributed to Google. When the company first designed smart speakers for homes, it deliberately looked to interior decor for inspiration. In came soft forms, fabric clads, leather trims, and home-friendly color palettes. Google’s smart home products played a pivotal role in reinventing how home appliances are designed to fit into their domestic surroundings rather than look like gadgets, and it’s something the Torso Speaker embraces so incredibly well with its statuesque design that draws inspiration from marble sculptures from the Greco-Roman times. The speaker’s bust-shape is a rather literal interpretation of turning gadgets into home-friendly decor, but there’s something immensely poetic about how it draws a balance between the two! By drawing from the beauty and perfection of marble sculptures, the speaker echoes those very attributes too – elegance, beauty, perfection.

Torso Speaker inspired by Michelangelo Statue of David

What the Torso does is quite literally show us that we’re in a Renaissance period of smart home-appliance design. Speakers are being made to blend into surroundings, with them sometimes looking like lamps, furniture, or even as IKEA’s demonstrated, photo-frames. Designer Yang Dong Wook created the Torso speaker in the image of Michelangelo’s bust of David, bringing its nuanced classical qualities into product design. Created as a part of Samsung’s Design Membership Program, the Torso speaker explores the relationship between interiors and gadgets (sort of the same way Samsung’s Serif TV did). The speaker looks remarkably like an abstract bust you’d proudly place on your mantelpiece, displaying for all your guests to see. It adopts the same shapes, contours, and tilts as the Bust of David, with the slanted shoulders and the slightly angled head, resulting in an incredibly expressive form.

Torso Speaker inspired by Michelangelo Statue of David

Torso Speaker inspired by Michelangelo Statue of David

The speaker’s built to scale and serves a highly elevated decorative purpose in its surroundings. Its neck acts as a vessel, allowing you to use the speaker as a vase or a place to hang your ornaments, and that gray finish gives it a pristine marble-like appearance too.

Torso Speaker inspired by Michelangelo Statue of David

Torso Speaker inspired by Michelangelo Statue of David

While the upper part of the Torso serves as a vase-like container, its collar area comes outfitted with the speakers, sitting under a fabric clad. The speakers fire forwards (because of how the Torso has a very definite front profile), while passive radiator channels in the bottom create a reverberating bass.

Torso Speaker inspired by Michelangelo Statue of David

Torso Speaker inspired by Michelangelo Statue of David

The controls for the speaker are located on the shoulder of the bust. A power button on the left lets you switch the Torso on or off, and a Bluetooth button on the right lets you connect a device. The shoulder-bridge sports a touch-sensitive volume slider, so increasing or decreasing the volume becomes an incredibly interactive, almost sensual experience, as you drag your fingertip down the Torso’s shoulder. Talk about a product having sex appeal!!

Torso Speaker inspired by Michelangelo Statue of David

Torso Speaker inspired by Michelangelo Statue of David

The Torso speaker does a few things pretty adeptly. For designers and companies, it shows how inspiration can be found practically anywhere. For a consumer, it unlocks an absolutely new category of products that redefine tech and home decor completely, combining the timeless beauty of Greco-Roman sculptures with a contemporary, functional product… but most importantly, for the vast design movement, it shows how a design can have a timeless quality to it, by borrowing from something that’s truly iconic, classical, and evergreen in its allure!

Designer: Yang Dong Wook

Torso Speaker inspired by Michelangelo Statue of David

This detachable steam vacuum cleaner + mop was designed to be displayed in your living room!

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As a homeowner, my pet peeves include stray cables, gadgets collecting dust when lying on the floor are things kept out of their place. We are constantly looking for things that keep our home squawky clean, and decorative items that go with the décor theme. In most scenarios, the appliances and cleaning tools are kept tucked away from the line of sight as they don’t look as appealing. Won’t it be great if there is an appliance that cleans your home and when not in use it doubles as a decorative object that goes with any interior setting without seeming out of place? Product designer Yang Dong Wook from Seoul, Korea has thought of an appliance called Vase that, while being functional, retains its visual aesthetic value, so that you don’t have to hide it away and would rather want people to take notice of it.

Essentially a steam vacuum to keep all the apparent and hidden corners of your house ultra-clean, the appliance also doubles as a vase to keep with your indoor plants or simply as a decorative in the corner of your bedroom. The water can be filled from the top vase section and the easy one-handed operation in three intensity modes lends this cool appliance a practical approach to deep cleaning tasks. The brush attachment can be hooked onto clean surfaces or hard to reach corners. Once you are done with the cleaning tasks, just place it on the tripod-like wireless charging station and the Vase gets ready for the next cleaning routine. The bottom section of the appliance also functions as a wet mop to clean the floor with the utmost ease. In fact, it has wet mop refills that can be changed once the cleaning tasks are dealt with.

The most intriguing bit of the design is the vase-like water filling opening for steam cleaning tasks. It’s like you’re filling a water vessel and that satisfying sound is simply dope. All-in-all the design is multifunctional and an object that you’ll want to show-off rather than hiding in the closet or the garage.

Designer: Yang Dong Wook

This detachable speaker and headset duo combine for an intense audio experience!

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I love settling in with my headphones and my beloved music playlist. It’s the perfect end to a tediously hectic day. So I’m always on the lookout for new and improved audio products to enhance my end of the day music sessions, and I think I might have chanced upon the most innovative one yet! Product designer Yang Dong Wook understands that you need different audio devices for different situations. Want some alone time? Plug your headphones in! Want to have a rocking party? Blare out some contemporary hits from your speakers! However what if one product met with all your needs irrespective of the context and situation?

Well here’s where Wook’s ‘Pats Speaker’ swoops in. Pats is quite simply a speaker and headset combined in one. Created to make your life simpler and to un-cramp your already cramped up desk, Pats features a cylindrical speaker that serves as the main body. The headset carefully meets the speaker at both its ends, merging to form one wholesome structure that looks a little like a handbag! You place the headphones on the speaker, as you would place them over your own ears. Melding in perfectly with the ends of the speaker, the headset plus speaker duo sit upon a metallic tray. However this is no ordinary tray, the tray also functions as a charging pad, charging both the speaker and the headphones simultaneously.

Five little LED circles in the middle of the headset, right at the center of its arc, keep you updated about the battery life of Pats. You can also connect Pats to your smartphone using an accompanying app. The app helps you connect with either the speaker or the headphone or both, and allows you to control them with ease. Wook’s Pats Speaker combines all your audio needs into one. No more scrounging around for your headphones and speaker when you could find them both in one product! Space-saving, convenient, and multifunctional, Pats is surely the future of audio products, and the only way I’m interested in listening to my music!

Designer: Yang Dong Wook