I New Idea Homepage

Any good idea about towel racks? To redesign their shapes, coat them with unique colors or endow them with new functions? Of course the last one is our option, so why not have a look at this Breeze Rack, a 2011 red dot design concept winner? It’s a multifunctional towel rack, serving as a hair drier, a bathroom ventilator and a sterilizer except for hanging towels. In other words, almost everything you would need to use in a bathroom can be found in the Breeze Rack, isn’t that great?!

[Read the rest of this entry...]

Handycan is a concept design comes with grooves that make it easy to grip. The clever design will reduce the volume that cans take up in recycling trucks too, saving both space and money. But does that also mean the can may break open more easily if it is applied with high pressure? Arman Emami gives us no answer to that question.

[Read the rest of this entry...]

“To push or to pull?” Almost every time I need to open a door, I ask myself that question. Not because I’m not clever enough, but in fact it is all because the door handles are not clever enough, since they cannot show us the directions clearly. But forget that, as here comes a clever one, “Arrow” door handle that makes “pull” or “push” directions visible to us. Just follow its “arrow”, and you’ll never pull or push a knob in a wrong way.

[Read the rest of this entry...]

Somebody cares quite much about the environment, so they are trying hard to avoid using too many bowls or bags in order to save water and other resources; others, like me, are just too lazy to do the housework so we try to use as few bowls as we can too. Yaps, we may have different motives, but we’re all forwarding in the same direction and we all need the “Twist” by Nick Burrows. It’s transformable, capable of shifting between a bag, a microwave oven proof container and an ordinary bowl. Just twist to change it, and then you can do something beneficial to both you and the environment.

[Read the rest of this entry...]

Rest on a bench and play seesaw. The “Swingers” chair, an awesome piece of furniture designed for two people, allows people to move and play while they’re taking a break. By doing that, the designer aims to make people smile more and get closer to each other as much as possible. So will that really work? We believe it would. Still, if you meet such a bench one day, we hope you could sit down and play it with the others.

[Read the rest of this entry...]

Interesting spaghetti measuring tool from Stefán Pétur Sólveigarson, offers four different sizes, a “kid” for kids, a “lady” for the females, a “man” for the males and a “horse” for a whole family (four people). So which is your choice? Honestly I can eat a “horse” for one meal…

[Read the rest of this entry...]

What will the next-generation fluorescent lights be like? “D’Light” from H_Design can offer us a possible answer. Made of heat resistant tempered silicone material and LEDs, the D’Light is expandable and durable, saves both your efforts to install the light tube and your money spent on electricity bills. It can fit into different sizes of lights too, and all you need to do is to hook it to one end and expand the length to the other side. Easy and practical as that!

[Read the rest of this entry...]

Apparently the 2011 Red Dot Design Concept has brought us with many innovative designs, except for those we’ve introduced before, the Adjustable Radiation Flashlight is another one we’d like to show you. It could shift between concentrated spot-light and wide flood-light modes, based on its flexible plastic plate which contains about 40 individual lights. Hence even though it is designed as one light, the gadget is actually something serving as several different types of lights.

[Read the rest of this entry...]

Because of higher and higher social pressure pushing us forward to survive, we humans are actually suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder, one symptom of which is to ask ourselves repeatedly whether or not we’ve turned off the electricity or locked off the door… Stop that, as our life can become easier, if with the help of Off- Door Handle. It’s a 2011 Red Dot Design Concept winner, allowing users to switch off gas supply and electricity by rotating the dial and flipping it back to activate them. So how do you like the concept?

[Read the rest of this entry...]

At Design Miami 2011, Denmark-based BIG Architects and Kollision + Schmidhuber & Partner have collaborated to show us something quite futuristic, and that’s actually a city paved with a digital interactive surface for mobility. The new urban design aims to liberate streets from existing pedestrian and vehicular boundaries, so as to improve flexibility in public spaces. During the Design Miami 2011, what we saw was only a very small part of the future urban, which is a 185 square meter LED installation with 3D cameras to track the movements of passer-by. The data was processed, after which colorful patterns would appear on the LED screen, along with an arrow that indicates the right way of the vehicle.

[Read the rest of this entry...]

No doubt the nature is always offering good inspirations to designers, and Donghee Suh’s new earphone is just inspired by the suction cups on an octopus’ tentacles. Its two earbuds are each fitted with a silicon flap, which will retract to stick onto your iPods or iPhones to help you wrap up the earphone cord in a neater way.

[Read the rest of this entry...]

Time to make a change, within 12 to 24 months Tech Company Senseg will release “Feelscreens” to take the place of “touchscreens”. But currently shown to us is still a prototype tablet, which allows the users to feel like they’re touching something textured as they touch the flat screen. The tech is mainly based on an electrostatic-field-based system that makes different parts of the screen to produce varying degrees of friction, so that anything displayed on the screen may send a real touching feel to users.

[Read the rest of this entry...]

As a 2011 red dot design concept winner, the Tooth Guardian offers us a good and convenient way to take care of our teeth conditions, by integrating a camera and UV system in the toothbrush. So when you’re cleaning your teeth, photographs of them will then be displayed at the same time, allowing us to get closer observation of them for daily check.

[Read the rest of this entry...]

Why does Alireza Alavi build the conceptual burner with a same shape of mosquito coils? I’ve no idea of the possible reason but actually the device concerns nothing to mosquito coils. Its real feature lies in the double knobs, a gas control knob for adjusting the flame size and a burner control knob for adjusting the spiral burner size.  With that unique design, you can get a better control of the fire during cooking and thus to save fuel at the same time.

[Read the rest of this entry...]

A good design should be something considering the human’s real needs and trying to accomplish a simple but practical function, just like this Angle Measuring Cup by Umut Demirel. The device contains not only ordinary volume makings but also diagonal lines that indicate quantities during pouring. With the Angle’s help, you can then pour out the required measure in an easier way.

[Read the rest of this entry...]