Apple's Patent-Pending Pizza Box

Moving on from horrible food-related design jokes, here's a food-related design win: Apple put their world-class design chops into something that isn't several hundred dollars' worth of electronics! Behold, Apple's pizza box, US Patent application #20120024859. It aspires to be the platonic ideal of pizza boxes: no assembly required, stackable, manufacturable from a variety of materials, efficiently round like a certain corporate campus, ridges to elevate the pizza above its own grease puddle, and holes for ventilation to prevent sogginess. Apple: come for the iPhones, stay for the efficiently-contained personal pizzas! (And because you're locked into their ecosystem.)
[via Engadget & Wired]

Knife + Fork = Knork

Sure, everyone loves a plastic spork when you need one, but what about the knork? I've frequently used a fork edge to cut through food, with varying success; imagine if the utensil had been designed with that in mind? As Dave Cortright explains on Cool Tools, the knork has an outside edge sharp enough for food but not so sharp as to cut your cheek, and a handle shaped for the application of lateral force. However, would it work as a disposable plastic utensil, reducing waste as the spork does? If not, it may be destined to languish as a sideshow, no matter how many stars it garners on Amazon...
[Cool Tools]

Kwik Sip: A drinking fountain in every faucet!

I kind of wish I that I lived in an alternate universe where the Kwik Sip faucet attachment was the ubiquitous norm instead of a weird, geeky outlier. Every faucet magically turns into a drinking fountain anytime you want it? Count me in.
[via Cool Tools]

Tilting pot uses gravity to ask for water.

Perhaps the toughest part of plant ownership is remembering to water the darn things. There have been some electronic devices to solve the problem, but digital technology seems out of place in the analog world of plants. The Natural Balance is a plant pot that eschews technology for old-fashioned gravity: when the reserve of water gradually seeps into the soil and becomes empty, the balance of the pot changes so that it tilts to its side. See how it looks a little crooked in the photo? That means it's thirsty. Clever, elegant, analog, and gravity-powered, it just feels right for plants.
[via Core77]

Bottle Cutter: Answer in search of questions?

The Plastic Bottle Cutter sure seems like a simple device: insert a used plastic bottle, spin, and you have some tough, possibly-colorful, possibly-soda-scented plastic ribbon. Neat! But now what to do with it? Use it as weatherproof twine? Weave some rope? Arts and crafts? It's an answer in search of questions - but I'm pretty sure there are plenty of good questions out there. It's refreshing to take this approach every once in a while instead of the other way around.
[via Core77]

The (Mythical) Worn-Once Valet

Rain Noe recently wrote at Core77 about a hypothetical piece of furniture: a place to put clothes that are somewhere between clean and dirty. Worn once or twice, but not yet ready for the laundry. Right now, these clothes have no good home - they're either put back with clean clothes, or left haphazardly out, creating a mess. The closest thing Rain's found to this mythical product is Ounce, a project by MFA design students, but I agree, that it may deserve to be its own product category. Maybe it'll catch and maybe not - but give it a chance!

Bike-Thru Fast Food Packaging

Drive-thru fast food (and yes, I believe "thru" is the correct spelling in this case) is one of countless ways that car culture is reinforced. We may want to try to back away from dependence on cars, but not at the expense of greasy shame food! Never fear; here's a concept for bike-friendly McDonald's packaging, which hooks over your handlebars and then spreads open for easy gorging. At least in this case you will have burned some of the calories beforehand!
[AdsOfTheWorld via Gizmodo]

Origami flower pot grows with its plant

Plants eventually outgrow their pots like kids outgrow their shoes - but just like the recently-covered Shoe That Grows, a clever design can allow the pot to grow with the plant. Studio Ayaskan's GROWTH does so with a clever origami-inspired design, which seems to look quite elegant at all three stages shown here - though I wonder about any awkward half-unfolded middle stages. Regardless, I'd welcome the liberation from having to re-pot plants!
[via MentalFloss - thanks for the tip, Jess!]

The Incredible Aluminum Can

It's a big accomplishment for any design to reach that level of maturity where it quietly does its job perfectly and reliably to the point where it becomes almost invisible. The aluminum beverage can has gotten there, and it's allowed us to forget all the amazing design and engineering that went into it. "Engineer Guy" Bill Hammack does a wonderful summary video, explaining among other things the genius of the modern pop top. Personally, I didn't know that it starts as a 2nd-class lever to pull out and break the can's seal (much easier than pushing into the pressurized can), then automatically changes to a 1st-class lever when that pressure is released to bend the tab out of the way. Just that little bit of engineering has prevented untold numbers of removable pop-tops from becoming sharp and dangerous litter. If you want to learn more, the video is well worth 11:38 of your time!
[via Gizmodo]

Taboo swaps buzzers for squeakers...

My wife recently purchased a new game of Taboo (for work, believe it or not), and we both discovered an interesting change: the old electronic buzzer had been replaced with a new squeezable squeaker. I applaud the change: it costs less, it's more recyclable, it doesn't need batteries, and a squeak works just as well as a buzz in letting your opponents know they just lost a point. The only thing it's worse at is pretending to be an electric razor for a chuckle. Oh well - I'll take it!

Elastic Bows: The clip-on ties of gift wrapping...

For those who are less than skilled in the art of fancy bow-tying - like myself, at least compared to my wife - these reusable elastic gift bows offer a zero-effort alternative. I would almost think that the recipient might be insulted by how little effort was spent "wrapping" the gift, if they weren't so impressed by how clever the bow is!
[via Gizmodo]

Toilet-Paper Sensor Block: Adapting to adaptations...

I've written about the frustrating false-flush tendency of automatic toilets before, but here's a new salvo in the arms race between man and machine: putting toilet paper over the sensor to prevent accidental flushes. This would seem to make sense - until you realize that we're creating a complex adaptation for a device that was designed to adapt to our inability to use a simple system in the first place. Seriously, when it gets to this point, shouldn't we just be using a manual mechanical flush handle? The usability path has come full circle, and it seems we should have stayed where we started.
[Photo from Duey Rando]

Smart fan targets humans (in a good way)...

A step toward the robot apocalypse cleverly disguised as an improved comfort device, the human-sensing oscillating fan blows air only where there's a person to enjoy it. Seriously though, this is a textbook use of smart sensing: directing resources only toward the intended use instead of brute-forcing air all around the room, improving both effectiveness and efficiency. Just make sure yours doesn't become self-aware and use its targeting system for evil!
[via Gizmodo]

Drinking Fountains Adapted to Water Bottles

We've already seen a water bottle that adapts to drinking fountains, but this one seen by Mark Hurst goes the other way around: an airport drinking fountain adapted into a water bottle refilling station. (This one's from Delta, which has impressed me recently with usable design.) It's an overdue solution, especially in airports where you can't bring your own water through security - just bring your empty reusable bottle and refill it, instead of supporting the scourge that is commercial bottled water. Refreshing in more ways than one!
[From, and photo credit to, Mark Hurst]

EcoSwitch: Consolidating Kitchen Machinery

Most kitchen appliances have at their core either a heating element or a motor, along with the supporting power supply and controls; the problem is that each appliance needs their own heating element, motor, power supply, and controls. But if these components could be made versatile and multipurpose, each "appliance" just becomes a simple attachment to a common base. That's the idea behind EcoSwitch, a design by frog (my employer) for General Electric. It's a promising design to consolidate components and eliminate wastes of space, of materials, and of money - a great way to get back some countertop real estate, save some money, and "save the planet!"

Eco Clip makes notebooks from loose paper

Product Design is an industry that makes a lot of use of notebooks, be they Moleskine, Field Notes, Rhodia, or some hipster brand nobody's heard of (because they aren't cool... yet).  But it's an industry that also cares about ecological design and cleverness, so the Eco Clip should be right at home: a simple and reusable plastic clip that turns any stack of paper into a notebook. I haven't seen any colleagues with them yet - but it probably won't be long!
[via Gizmodo]

Sneckdowns: Revealing unused road space...

A worthy addition to your design vocabulary and a word that's just fun to say, a "sneckdown" is an area of snow that remains on a road because cars rarely cross that area. It's handy for urban design because it shows, clearly and at no cost, which areas of road could be put to other use. Park(ing) Day proponents should certainly be interested in more permanent parking-spot mini-parks; opportunities could also exist for recycling receptacles, info kiosks, even tiny-scale solar or wind power plants. Rarely does real-world usage track itself so elegantly - all that remains is to put that info to good use!
[via Gizmodo, Streetsblog, BBC News; photo credit @nelszzp]

Blind Minder: Green home automation

Home thermostats usually control temperature only by turning on power-consuming furnaces or air conditioners. But there are other power-free ways to heat or cool a house: opening and closing windows, curtains, and blinds. Despite being greener and lower-cost, these methods are used less simply because they're not automated - it takes conscious effort to apply them. So, Make published a DIY project that controls mini blinds automatically based on temperature - it's simple, effective, has the potential to save money and energy. I sincerely hope that soon it'll lower the barrier even further by becoming a ready-to-install home product!
[Make via Lifehacker]

Holstee Reframe upcycles Detroit houses & greeting cards...

Holstee has always impressed with its commitment to real upcycling, shown so far in their Delhi Rang wallet made from plastic bags and shirts made from post-consumer waste or reclaimed thrift shop items.  Their latest project is no exception:  the Reframe is an attractively hipster-rugged frame made from deconstructed abandoned Detroit houses, and in a double-whammy of upcycling, they suggest using it transform greeting cards into display-worthy art.  Clever and commendable as always, Holstee team!

The Never-Hungry Caterpillar: Empathy in design...

That white blob sketched into the image above is the Never-Hungry Caterpillar, a concept designed and/or written about by Marc Hassenzahl and Evgeny Morozov which calls users' attention to the power wasted by electronics in standby mode. Here's how: "The Caterpillar has three different modes: It breathes slowly in the case of 'normal' energy consumption through a device, such as a TV. If the TV is switched to stand-by, the Caterpillar starts to twist and turn awkwardly, as if in pain. This can be resolved by disconnecting the TV entirely. The metaphor of a caterpillar touches upon people's tendency to help and take care of living things."  What's innovative here is the play on guilt and empathy - this isn't a blinking light or a buzzing alarm, it's a living thing in agony! Or at least that's the trick; they're counting on a very basic, almost lizard-brain instinct to help something in pain. As we grow desensitized to various alerts and messages, this is essentially an escalation in the arms race for our attention. Shrewd, manipulative... and possibly, effective!