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design

Below are the most recent charts on oobject that deal primarily with design

Quite often a company will release a limited edition item to mark a product’s anniversary that is actually worse than the original. We trawled the web to find examples of well designed anniversary gadgets, including our favorite, the 300lb limited edition espresso machine that was used by the Pope. Vote on your favorite.

14 anniversary edition products. more...

Resqtec make instruments that prise open cars after a crash or find people in the rubble of buildings after an earthquake. What’s amazing about this equipment, however, is quite how beautifully designed it is.

6 resqtec emergency devices. more...

Nothing limits the design of interfaces like the QUERTY keyboard, however, that doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t try.<p /><p />Our personal favorite here is the Ergodex panel which can be configured to mimic the cockpit controls of many aircraft, including an F16.

21 futuristic interfaces. more...

Here is a collection of lamps, lights and chandeliers made from everything from car parts, umbrellas, bicycles, tableware, old globes, tape measures and speaker parts.<p /><p />Hopefully this will whet your creative appetite.<p />

19 great diy lighting ideas. more...

Our favorite lights based purely upon aesthetics. Vote for your favorites.

13 best lighting designs. more...

What passes for interactive clothing often consists of a button to control your iPod from your sleeve.<p /><p />Here is a roundup of some more interesting interactive clothing ideas, including a jacket whose fur stands on end like a scared cat, a bikini whose breast pads inflate as a life saver and a jacket with a digital organism that grows as you wear it. These are alongside some more serious ideas such as a medical monitoring clothing and a robotic jacket to aid the paralyzed. Some are fairly well known, but others are hopefully new to you.

22 best interactive clothes. more...

Diving helmets are beautiful objects. Here are our favorites from modern versions with amazing visors for undersea welding, to incredible Steampunk style ones that look more other worldly than something from Jules Verne.

18 diving helmets. more...

Cheap hi-fis sometimes come with lots of flashing lights and buttons, sound terrible and are difficult to use. Expensive ones often to come with not much more than an on/off switch and volume control, and sound great.<p /><p />One of things that happens in a mature market is that people go for quality rather than quantity - what this means in technology is less features and better design. Apple is the first technology company to go mainstream with a minimalist, mature-market design ethos, but there are others. Here are our current favorite (non-Apple) minimalist gadgets. This is a chart that we will be continually updating, over time. Vote for your favorites:

21 non Apple minimalist gadgets. more...

Acrylic cases, cut aways and even solid glass mechanisms, allow for transparent enclosures where you can see the intricate workings of a machine.<p /><p />This tradition of ’skeleton’ cases comes from watch making, but there are versions of everything from Nikon cameras to cars that show off their innards. In putting together this collection we were trying to imagine if you could have a fully glass house (several have been designed, none built) where every item in it was as translucent as possible. Vote for your faves and recommend any we can add.

25 naked gadgets. more...

As people blow each other to pieces, daily, on the planet below, the silently floating Hubble telescope seems to represent everything great about humankind. Here are our other favorite telescopes.<p /><p />Update: Have been in continuous operation since 1963, the Arecibo project is in danger of closing due to cuts in funding. Jonathan, who is a researcher working at the Arecibo dish has posted a link in the comments to its website where you can donate or voice your support. http://www.arecibo-observatory.org

16 most wonderful telescopes. more...

The ability to print incredibly complex custom objects on demand through the use of computer-aided rapid prototyping techniques will transform product design.<p /><p />Here are some of the most amazing current examples of digital fabrication through techniques such as stereolithography, selective laser sintering, 3D printing and fused deposition modeling. Vote for your favorite.

20 3d printed products. more...

If you want to re-model your home in the style of an Apple store, here are links to the suppliers of the actual items they use.<p /><p />The designs of the Apple stores may not be particularly original in terms of architecture, however they break new boundaries in retail design with an attention to detail that is normally only found in major public buildings. The principal inspirations for Apple’s interiors range from Norman Foster’s Mediatheque in Nimes, with its central glass staircase and I.M. Pei’s entrance to the Louvre which is the inspiration for the fifth avenue store. Although the cube itself (particularly when it was shrouded in black) is more like the Kaab at Mecca, proving that Apple is a religion after all.<p /><p />Many of the fittings they use, such as Erco lighting are used by people like Pei and Foster (where I used to work) and the exterior panels are made by the same firm that provided the panels for San Francisco’s greatest modern building - the De Young Museum.

25 items to build an apple store. more...

RIP Google Phone, long live concept phones. A roundup of the best cellphone concepts and prototypes. Vote for your fave.

22 best concept cellphones. more...

A gallery of incredible streamline design. No other period in product design is more important to American history than the Streamlined period. Here are our favorite gadgets and vehicles from the Sky Captain World of Tomorrow.<p /><p />Ironically the streamlined shape is less aerodynamic than it looks. It came from the high speed steam trains designed by people like Raymond Loewy or cars by Norman Bel Geddes (the father of the actress who played Miss Ellie in Dallas) and still exists in kitchen and bar-ware and the 40s style Airstream trailers which escorted the Astronauts off the Space Shuttle today and still look futuristic.

24 Sky Captain gadgets & vehicles. more...

Although Apple has recently released a beautifully designed keyboard which hints at what an Apple mini laptop may look like, it is the combination of tactile feedback and screen based keyboards which promises to make significant developments in keyboards in the near future. Here is our list of our favorite keyboards, vote for your faves.

22 best keyboards. more...

Considering that super thin, flexible, touch-screens and large capacity solid-state storage are just around the corner we expected to find many more examples of interesting concept designs for laptops. Here are the best that we found, however this is one case where we think the realized products will outstrip the concept designs.<p />

17 best concept laptops. more...

Fingerprint scanners are a dime a dozen these days. But how about devices which can literally grant access by the way you walk, the way you talk, the way you type or write, bite or grip. Here is a chart of state of the art biometric applications, including futuristic devices like portable Game Boys which are ominously called HIIDE (handheld interagency identity detection).

18 futuristic biometric devices. more...

From 3 megawatt offshore monsters to zero energy windmill skyscrapers, kite flown turbines and giant seabed anchored super-turbines, held aloft by blimps. Here is our list of the most futuristic and quixotic designs for wind turbines. By far the most beautiful way to harness energy. <p />

16 beautiful wind turbines. more...

Atomic clocks are accurate to within one second since the period in time when humans and apes diverged. <p /><p />These clocks are literally what makes modern civilization tick, but few people ever see one. Their accuracy is necessary to overcome potential errors caused by relativistic effects in GPS satellites, for example. <p /><p />Here is a gallery of some of the more interesting atomic clocks. Vote for your faves.

12 amazing atomic clocks. more...

This is the real business end of $100 oil. An object that allowed Howard Hughes to become the richest man in the world by inheriting the patent. <p /><p />They are the world’s most highly engineered pieces of metal. Steel, tungsten carbide or increasingly Polycrystalline Diamond Compact (PDC) toothed drill bits that, in their tri-cone, rotating head form, look like the monster spice eating Sandworms from Dune. Vote for your faves.

13 ferocious oil drill bits. more...

Tensegrity structures are visually stunning and their combination with computer enhanced structures is creating renewed interest for architectural applications.<p /><p />Buckminster Fuller coined the term tensegrity when he saw sculptures by Kenneth Snelson and realized that rigid component geodesics were a special case of perfectly balanced compression and tension. Tensegrity refers to structures where compression members (rods) are only connected to each other by tension members (cables). The end result is that the structures appear to float in air.<p /><p />Despite the fact that tensegrity structures are fantastically efficient, few have been built since they tend to have a single point of failure and need adjustment. Recently however, schemes which combine the intelligence of computing and tensegrity structures have lead to proposals of very large scale structures including sky scrapers.<p /><p />Here are our favorite tensegrity links from around the web. Vote for yours

13 wonderful tensegrity structures. more...

Although folding bicycles have seen somewhat of a renaissance, there has not been as much innovation compared to mountain bikes, because the market is smaller. <p /><p />This is a shame since although there are some great products such as Bromptons or the Birdy, there is, in our opinion, no ideal foldup. <p /><p />An ideal foldup would be one that folds so small and is so light, that you could take it in a backpack, just in case, like carrying an umbrella in case it rains. <p /><p />A couple of the concept designs here come close - vote for your fave.

10 concept folding bikes. more...

iCandy - the best Apple concept mockups. Despite the huge number of 3d rendered mockups of Apple products on the web, few even come close to genuine Apple design. The exceptions seem to be Isamu Sanada and Yann Le Coroller, who between them account for the majority of well executed 3rd party concepts. Here are our favorites, and why we chose them. Vote for yours.

15 best apple concept mockups. more...

A bunch of swimming pools have been doing the rounds on blogs lately. Here is the Oobject alternative list of cool pools. Including pools over fake pools, pools hanging off the edge of buildings, 1000 year old pools and spectacular underground pools. Vote for your faves.

13 really cool pools. more...

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