I New Idea Homepage

Inventions, designs, creative ideas and products.

Biomimetic Pushpins

20120229017

Inspired by cat’s retractable claws, designer Toshi Fukaya has thought of the idea of the Biomimetic Pushpins, which would not only successfully keep your fingers from sudden hurt when you reach into a box full of them, but still performs as well as ordinary pins: a smooth silicon capsule encases the pin, while it will compresses under pressure as you stick the pin into the wall. Really clever!

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Lineær Clock

20120229010

No more mechanical or digital clocks, designer Audun Ask Blaker now brings us with the Lineær Clock, the time of which is displayed on a rotating scroll. The concept is extremely simple, featuring no extra decorations except for the digits. But how is the time read or displayed? That’s a problem left for you to solve.

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AIRE Mask Concept

20120229003

The best and most efficient way to create portable charger is obviously to make use of human bodies: except for utilizing body heat or human movements, designers have recently experimented to use wind energy from the user’s breath into electricity via small wind turbines, and the final design is named as “AIRE Mask”. The AIRE can be used in any solutions, and considered especially ideal to recharge small electronic devices like your cellphones or music players.

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“Paszcza” Armchair

20120228021

You’re the most special one! For people who would like to behave in distinctive ways, Poland-based design studio WAMHOUSE has recently created the armchair “Paszcza”. It is a cushioned seat featuring tongue shape, with circle-shaped frame wiring around.

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Mag_net_ic Earrings

20120228006

While picking up after small pieces left over from her jewelry making, designer Akiko Oue came up with the idea to create these “Mag_net_ic Earrings”. It is composed of a magnet and several decorative pieces, which therefore allow people to assemble their unique earrings by picking up different small pieces of steel or arrange them in different ways.

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Matterhorn Glass

20120228001

Matterhorn, a 14,690 foot mountain in the Pennine Alps now becomes part of the transparent glass finished by South Korean studio “Tale Design”. The Matterhorn Mountain in the glass, though not as mighty as the real one, seems still attractive due to its elegant pattern and pure color. When filled with Scotch or Bourbon, the glass will show you more details about the Matterhorn then.

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What’s this?

20120223010

What’s this, in your opinion? The answer wouldn’t come to you if you stare at it too closely this time, so we suggest you view it again from a longer distance…

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Inflatable Bathtub

201222403

Creativity comes from life but also serves your life: designer Su Pin Chia simply makes part of a bathtub inflatable, and then successfully helps the elderly or leg-impaired people to use bathtub in a much more convenient way.

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Innovative Assembling Furniture

20120223005

Forget the bothersome problem that your apartment is too small, because you can still enjoy a convenient and colorful life with the creative assembling furniture. Put forward by Robert van Embricqs, the table and chair each features some unique structure in the center, which allows them to stay flat when not in use or keep steady enough to hold you or your items.

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Privacy Pop

20120221001

Friends are important, but sometimes privacy is more important, that’s why we may need a “Privacy Pop”. It’s a portable household gadget that can stand around your bed to create a private space. Specially designed to fit over beds in dorms and kids’ rooms, the “Privacy Pop” is now available at $199.95.

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Basement Finished by Remote-controlled Toys

20120220001

A Canadian farmer named Joe has built a basement that costs him almost 7 years…That’s really a long time, but why? The answer lies in the fact that the basement was finished using merely R/C tractors and trucks. You see, these toy vehicles are so mini-sized that they surely would take some time…

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Corvette Z06 Bed

20120220006

Cars here, cars there, cars are all in your bedrooms. The series focuses on “cars”, including car-shaped beds, tables, cabinets, storage boxes and so on. Each piece is delicately designed and produced, but the most eye-catching one is still the bed modeled on the Chevrolet Corvette Z06.

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3D Ribs Dress

20120223001

Available from BlackMilk, the stylish shirt comes with a 3D skeletal print, which resembles the skeleton of human’s. Along with the shirt, there’s even a set of requisite glasses, with which you’ll find the shirt in front of you become more vivid, as a result.

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Una Cebu Car Crafted from Natural Materials

20120216001

Who knows what the best way to help people realize the potential beauty and utility local natural resources in Filipino is? Nobody. But designer Clayton Tugonon thought that a car crafted from natural and recycled materials would possibly work and therefore he completed this unique car and showed it at Fame Exhibit in Manila. The car’s dashboard is fashioned from a blend of sea shells, and its spiraling exterior is crafted from the stalks of coconut flowers.

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Portrait Finished with Coffee Stains

20120219009

“Nothing is impossible”, please forgive me quoting that famous but already commonly-used slogan here, because I really couldn’t think of other sentences or words to show my surprise and excitement about Malaysian artist Hong Yi’s exceptional portrait of China’s musician Jay Chou, which was finished using coffee stains. The portrait was completed in just 12 hours, on the Valentine’s Day in China, but its innovative concept is much more amazing even than some artworks finished in several days or several months!

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Paper PP Alloy

20120218001

Paper PP Alloy, developed by the PEGA Design and Engineering, is strong, durable and eco-friendly material that is an ideal alternative to plastics and metals. It is a mixture of 50% paper and 50% polypropylene, seeming the same as regular paper but features a good durability and flexibility, which makes it even suitable to produce consumer electronics.

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Tank made from 5016 Egg Cartons

20120218007

Simply planning to raise some money for charity, Sculptor Stuart Murdoch has created a tank with 5,016 egg cartons!! That’s an interesting thing indeed, and it has cost the sculpture 512 hours, 26 liters of glue, 10,100 nails, 15 liters of paint, 80 square meters of steel and 5,013 staples… So heavy a task!

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Infinite Cycle of Soap

20120218004

Love soap but hate waste, designers now bring us with this Infinite Cycle of Soap that allow you to put every single little bar into their grooved indent and use them again.

The “Eye of American” is large enough to live in.

20120217001

Photographer Dennis Manarchy has a dream, and that’s to go around the United States and capture those Vanishing Cultures before they disappear, using his 35 feet long, 12 feet tall and 8 feet wide camera. The huge camera has come with a cool name “Eye of America”, which is made of “veneers of recycled wood, leatherette, and detailed with brass fittings.” Its interior is so spacious that people even can walk in and live in it if they want! Quite notably, the camera can produce pictures all with remarkable details, even when you print the images two stories tall!

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Lensbaby’s new Edge 80 Optic

20120217010

Lensbaby’s new Edge 80 Optic is a smart gadget that can turn most of their lenses into tilt-controlled versions, so as to offer everybody a chance to try the tilt-shift photography without costing them too much. It’s compatible with the Composer Pro, Composer, Muse, Scout and Control Freak, with a 12-blade internal aperture and the range of the aperture is from f/2.8 through f/22.

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Singing Pillow

20120215001

Built with a moisture sensor that detects your tears and a speaker inside, the Sleepy Weepy Pillow will automatically play a song to comfort you when it “notices” that you’re sad. But since the pillow works merely based on detecting your tear, those who drool in their sleep or have over-active sweat glands will receive more comfort songs from it.

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Tagg Pet Tracker

20120216003

Dogs, cats, all your pets are active and naughty, hence you need to keep an eye on them almost all the time. But since you cannot spare your time with them frequently, it’s really a good idea to let the Tagg Pet Tracker target at them instead. It’s designed for dogs and cats over 10 lbs, featuring an outstanding ability to withstand all the running, digging, jumping and swimming your pets may encounter. Whenever your pet runs away, the gadget then sends a message to you and shows exactly where he is on the map.

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Scalado Remover

20120216015

Developed by imaging technology innovators Scalado, the “Remover” is a smartphone app that automatically highlights and removes unwanted objects from your captured photos. It’s faster and better than Photoshop, while still ensuring a clean and clear picture that merely displays your wanted objects or people.

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Heartbeat Password

20120214022

Researchers from the National Chung Hsing University in Taichung, Taiwan have claimed that people might soon be able to unlock their hard drives by using their heartbeats as password. The technology sounds quite encouraging, as that means you’ll no longer need to remember your password while still keep your data safe.

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Car Stove

20120216021

A car installed with a wood-burning stove inside?? That sounds really crazy, but that’s innovative as well, indeed. Designed to fight against the cold weather in Swiss, Pascal Prokop has built a stove in his 1990 Volvo 240 station wagon and even got an operating permit from the Swiss technical inspection authority.

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Blind Passangers

20120215008

Well, the brand is obviously not the only or best way to attract others, because these “Blind Passangers” cars shades can successfully bring people’s attention to you with much fewer costs. Appearing in front of the black background, the figures include Smonetta Vespucci, Vermeer’s girl with the pearl earring and so on.

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Mechanical Music Box

20120216023

“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you”, the classic “Happy Birthday” is now played by this mechanical music box that comes with three blank paper strips, a hole puncher, an instruction manual, and a pre-punched “Happy Birthday” song strip. Because it’s completely different from other regular music boxes, it’s supposed to be “one of the best ways to celebrate a birthday”.

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Lunch Book, Lunch Dishes

20120215003

Sometimes the designers’ ideas are so fantastic but also simple that we really couldn’t stop asking: why nobody has thought of those before? No doubt those best ideas include this “Lunch Book” designed for Expo Milan 2015. It’s a recipe book made of paper dishes, which not only show a recipe but can serve as real dishes during the exhibition too.

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GoPad for iPad

20120215014

You cannot bear a while without your iPad? Then let this GoPad help you. It’s a smart accessory designed especially for iPad, which allows you to use the iPad even on the go. The device is portable, stable, and comfortable to use, while only costs you $89.

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Sensory Substitution Device that Enables the Blind to See

20120215011

The movie Star Trek: The Next Generation must have impressed many people for its imaginative device that enabled the Enterprise’s Chief Engineer Geordi La Forge (who used to be blind) to see again. More surprising and exciting than that in the movie, however, is the news that scientists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have come up with a similar device called “Sensory Substitution Device”, which can help visually-impaired people to identify objects in real life.

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“Record me” Home Recorder

20120215012

During these days with a cellphone or laptops, we humans are no longer relying on the traditional ways to leave messages, but it’s still nice to get this “Record me” home recorder designed by Luc van Hoeckel. It’s a simple and practical concept that allows you to leave messages with sound, your own voice. That means any messages you leave to others are more personal, all with your own styles, so it must be more interesting to either leave a message or checking a message.

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Telescope Ring

20120215015

Guess what this is: it’s a ring, it’s a telescope, and it’s a magnifying glass too. The answer is: Telescope Ring (you must have thought of that)! It’s made of lightweight aluminum with an aged bronze finish, making it both stylish and multifunctional. Whenever you need some aid, slide the top and done!

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Durable Sock Shoes

20120214001

Socks are no more worn inside shoes, but instead they’re to take the place of shoes. The Swiss Barefoot socks look just the same as ordinary socks, however they’re hefty enough to protect your feet from pains and dangers as shoes do. The socks get their toughness from a blend of 8% Spandex, 10% cotton, 32% polyester and 50% Kevlar. Besides, they’re laminated with naps of PVC to gain their feature of cut-resistant.

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Lego Church

20120214024

In Enschede, Netherlands, the local citizens are used to gathering every year to celebrate their good days. For last year’s Grenswerk Festival in Enschede, Dutch design firm LOOS.FM built a 20 meter tall church-shaped temporary pavilion using Legioblocks. The Legioblocks’ bright colors proves to have made the structure instantly recognizable, and their honeycomb formation also leaves open spaces in the walls for light to go through.

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Nanoshells trap Light for More Efficient Solar Panels

20120214023

Nanoshell, a hollowed-out sphere of silicon, is an innovative solution put forward by scientists at Stanford to improve the efficiency and durability of solar panels. The nanoshells are produced with balls of crystalline material, which are firstly dipped in silicon and then hollowed with hydrofluoric acid to create a path for light to enter. Their experiment results demonstrate that the shells can successfully trap the light, not only allowing more of light to be absorbed, but reducing the effect of non-optimal angles on energy production.

Sleeping Band that Fights Wrinkles

20120214034

Love of beauty is common to all females and they really couldn’t miss any chance to gain a beautiful skin. Thus a Japanese company has produced these Oyasumi Goodnight Stretchers that can effectively combat unsightly wrinkles on your brow or between the eyebrows.

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Extending Camper Vans

20120213009

Redesigned from a modern Volkswagen T5 Transporter van by a UK company, the Doubleback camper van is both appearance-attractive and function-impressive. Simply by pressing a button, you will then see the Doubleback extend to offer an extra room that adds six and a half feet of living space inside. The interior of the extended pod is equipped with a large bed too, which can fold down to provide space for other activities.

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High-efficiency Commercial Juicer

20120213003

Obviously this juicer is not designed for everybody, as it comes with so surprisingly high a price of up to $9,900! That’s not for kidding, sir, as the juicer is actually classified as a “restaurant juicer”, which is capable of extracting up to 84 oz. of fresh fruit every minute. Oranges, grapefruit, or pomegranates, many fruits can be placed within the chute, where the internal rotating flywheels will press them onto a stainless steel micro serrated blade which then bisects the fruit.

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Psychedelic Trash Bin

20120213004

“Cleanliness creates beauty”, with that as a slogan and belief, Mumbai-based designers Nishant Jethi and Aalap Deasi have collaborated a psychedelic public trash bin that displays colorful kaleidoscope patterns as rewards to people who have properly disposed their waste.

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New Data Storage Technology using Ultra-short Heat Pulses

20120213001

Commonly an external magnetic field is required if we want to store data on a magnetic medium. But an international team led by the University of York in the UK has pointed out that by using ultra-short heat pulses to take the place of magnetic fields, they can greatly improve the efficiency of data-storage process, the speed of which finally reaches terabytes of information per second.

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