Design

I recently put together a new sound system for my living room. With a couple of chunky bookshelf speakers on tall stands, it hardly blends into the vintage expedition decor of the space. I should have held out for a Transparent Speaker.

The Transparent Speaker is a Kickstarter project that looks a bit like a cross between a sound system and a fish tank. It puts all the audio components you need in a glass case. This helps it blend into its surroundings, like an audio system version of a chameleon. … Read more

Your car's tires are, simply put, the most important bit of equipment on your car; they are literally where the rubber meets the road, and keeping them in their best condition is paramount in maintaining your vehicle's performance and safety. Tires are a consumable part that eventually wears out, but it can be difficult to tell how worn a tire is simply by looking at it. Designers Gao Fenglin and Zhou Buyi hope that their Discolor Tyre concept can help with that.

The Discolor Tyre is a conceptual tire design that looks like your average black rubber tire, but features a layer of bright-orange rubber that is molded and embedded within.

When the tire has worn down to the legal minimum level (after about 20,000 km or 12,400 miles) that orange rubber is exposed and can be easily seen from curbside by the driver. When you see orange, then it's time to replace the tire. It sounds simple, yet effective.… Read more

Apple fanatics may find themselves foaming at the mouth over some retro conceptual Mac computer photos featured in Hartmut Esslinger's book Design Forward: Creative Strategies for Sustainable Change.

The opus, released today in limited quantities, explores Esslinger's journey as a German designer who worked with the likes of Sony, Louis Vuitton, and others before moving on to Apple in 1982. Apple hired Esslinger (and his company Frog Design) to transform the successful yet scattered startup into a brand with a globally recognizable design mantra. … Read more

Even a stoic sci-fi bad guy like Darth Vader, with his menacing helmet, can be reborn into a fancy, smile-inducing art piece.

Indiana-based artist Gabriel Dishaw created an unusual twist on Darth Vader with an upcycled mask, which features a smorgasbord of old junk attached and integrated into the Sith Lord's helmet. The parts include various keys, circuit boards, and other appendages sourced from ancient adding machines, typewriters, and computers. Any of you out there with some extra holiday cash can pick up the one-of-a-kind Darth Vader junk art mask on Etsy for a crisp $800. … Read more

Steve Jobs' yacht, a floating goddess of a dinghy dubbed the Venus, was freed from impound in the Netherlands in time for Christmas. It's a typical feel-good holiday story, except that it involves a dispute over an extravagant boat and millions of dollars between the estate of an American icon and a renowned French designer.

Apparently when superstars of their respective industries get together to collaborate on hundred million dollar projects like the Venus, they don't necessarily sign very explicit contracts.… Read more

What are you willing to sacrifice to make your iPhone really stand out from the crowd? How about the use of its camera? OK. How about your dignity, too? Great, I have just the case for you. It's the Lobster Mobile Telephone Case from Noddy Boffin.

Way back in 1938, Salvador Dali created a piece known as the "lobster telephone." It involves a lobster attached to the handset of a rotary-dial phone. Flash-forward to 2012 and Australian designer Elliot Gorham channels the ghost of Dali into an accessory for modern smartphones. … Read more

Who needs an Xbox when you can just put on a sweatshirt and thrash your arms about? That's the idea behind Woven, a wearable gaming platform by two Dutch designers.

Christiaan Ribbens and Patrick Kersten, recent graduates of the Utrecht School of the Arts, embedded a sweater and pair of jeans with a small Bluetooth module, speakers, motion sensors, shake motors, a three-color LED screen, and other gizmos to create their concept gaming platform. A trio of LilyPad Arduino microcontrollers process the data and operate the LEDs (and are, incidentally, washable). … Read more

Bike riding is already a more environmentally conscious pursuit than driving around in a car, but you can really take it to the green extreme with a bike made from 100-percent-recycled aluminum. ReCycle is working at raising funds on Kickstarter to put its first full run of bikes into production.

There are some nice design tweaks that make the ReCycle bikes stand out. The usual seat tube support is gone. Two of the models have belts rather than chains. The eco-friendly aspects go beyond the use of recycled aluminum. The bikes also have saddles and grips made from cork. … Read more

Amazon has been granted a patent for protecting gadgets from accidents by using tiny airbags and even jets of air.

The patent application made waves immediately after it was published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office last August. Amazon filed for it in February 2010 and was granted it today, Engadget notes.

At its core, the patent details a system that uses your gadget's built-in gyroscope, accelerometers, camera, and other onboard sensors to figure out if the device has gone airborne. If so, a system can keep the device from getting too badly damaged by changing its … Read more