Most Buzzed Designs of May 2018

Below you’ll find the most popular designs we’ve tracked over the last 30 days – an overview of designs you shouldn’t have missed in May 2018.

Janky is a foxy little character, and a canvas for sixteen of the world’s most famous artists and designers. Paul and Huck reached out to big names like Pete Fowler, Junko Mizuno, Dalek, and many more, to create limited edition artist-designed toys. The Janky comes in over 24 designs, ranging from pop culture, to manga/comic art, to borderline psychedelic illustrations.

The way Caswell’s Morphing Karambit knife opens and closes is a thing of sheer beauty. It uses a parallel motion linkage, as opposed to a single-point swivel.

Read what Phil Saunders has to say about how he goes about designing Tony Stark’s incredible superhero suits, and how each design is perceived from the PoV of a concept artist, with the need to create drama, as well as an industrial designer, with the need to make products following a certain visual language, and the honing of an approach that makes them transcend the conceptual realm and look realistic and achievable.

Unlike the more popular iPhone, the MacBook has silently gotten thinner and more powerful, while overall looking the same, and designer Ludovico Campana thinks that the laptop desperately needs a redesign. His reference point? The iPhone X.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2125055134/earth-an-immersive-learning-experience-of-our-worl

EARTH is the first-ever augmented reality-enabled globe that lets you see our planet’s changes across history. Just open the app and point your phone’s camera at the model for a deeply immersive learning experience.

This retro-futuristic phone concept marries the iconic form of the classic telephone with a minimalistic, modern form and material combination.

This desk features an abundance of unique and innovative features (built-in magnetic board, 4 USB ports and a wireless charger) that tie in beautifully with the Scandinavian design style allowing for a ‘cleaner’ environment.

Made with a flowy aesthetic that one would usually see in carbon fiber frames, the Stadtfuchs bike is, in fact, all stainless steel. Relying on an assembly of precision casted joints, the Stadtfuchs achieves an aesthetic that’s quite groundbreaking for a commuter bike and ever compensates rough underground.

Antonio Paglia sure seems to think the Tesla Helicopter is well on its way. Built in a time where Tesla’s batteries will be able to power large manned airborne vehicles, the Tesla Helicopter carries the company’s DNA, both physically and spiritually.

Committed to their motto of making the world’s most theft-resistant bags, the Bobby Urban comes with a concealed zipper, further made safer by a steel reinforced combination lock. The bag comes with a roll-top design that not only hides the zipper, it also allows you to control the bag’s inner capacity by determining how much you roll the top.

Scribit is a robot that allows users to draw on walls, whiteboards, pieces of glass, or plastered drywall. Suspending itself from the uppermost corners, the Scribit can pretty accurately track coordinates (like a delta 3D printer, but without the Z axis) and create artworks on massive walls using the CMYK markers within its design.

Based on the assumption that your first fridge comes home when you move out as a singleton, and your requirements increase when you marry and then expand your family with kids in time, this fridge makes clever use of being modular by allowing you to add components like water purifier, oven etc. making it a holistic solution in the kitchen.

Designed to be an intuitive, functional, and user-friendly device, the Hoverboard 2.0 can switch between being a regular hoverboard and a Segway, thanks to its telescopic handle system that occupies an incredibly small footprint when folded down.

The blank screen of a conventional television that isn’t in use can become a bit of an eye-sore in the room. But with the help of transparent display panels, this might not be a problem for too much longer.

A series of slanted cuts, spaced apart to provide a balance between flexibility and rigidity without breaking apart, are placed in the arm of this titanium carabiner.

Bunk is a battery pack that magnetically secures to the rear of the phone and charges it using the phone’s inbuilt wireless charging capabilities. This method of charging allows the battery-pack to be removed when it isn’t needed, and its compact size combined with the absence of annoying charging cables makes it convenient to carry around.

Designed to be much more than your run-of-the-mill shelving unit, GATE uses moveable wooden bars that are placed on a metal rod to create a striking and dynamic structure.

Until we get a fully transparent display, the Orbit smartphone will have to do! It expands on the trend of bezel-less design with a feature that makes it almost seem transparent – a camera that remains on and constantly reflects the environment behind it.

Usually charging cables are an afterthought, but this USB charging and data transfer cable is quite cleverly designed, turning into a stand-of-sorts for your smartphone, propping it up as it charges it.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1342894759/rotio-compass-the-most-intuitive-design-tool

Redesigned to look nothing like a traditional compass, but be just as intuitive (if not more), the Rotio needs no explaining and can easily be figured out from the second you set your eyes on it.

The FITT cube isn’t just about fitness, it’s also about fitting into your active lifestyle and your small home, because within its ridiculously small boxy footprint, it fits an entire gym, complete with everything you need to be your fittest self. Designed with a layout that cleverly allows you to do as many as 100 exercises, if not more, the FITT cube is perfect for high-intensity power workouts, or strengthening your core, or just regular cardio.

The Reverse clock is aptly named for its literal form reversal in which what would otherwise be the floating pieces in a traditional design become the primary components. In short, it’s the hands that carry this design! The hand facing inward rotates inside the outer ring to indicate the hour. The little hand facing outward stands alone and rotates to indicate the minutes.

Literally the size of a quarter, the Dab is an unobtrusive Holter ECG/EKG that rests comfortably on your chest, constantly reading your heart’s movements. Designed to be minimal, non-invasive, and simple, the Dab tries to bridge the gap between medical appliances and wearables.

This incredibly sleek pen takes minimal design to a new level; in a feat of engineering the body of the Mark One is completely seamless, this is emphasized by the absence of logos and excess ornamentation. The black and white color options come from the use of Cerakote, an extremely durable ceramic polymer coating, this allows the pen to take any of the daily abuse that may come its way!

Not only limited to grandparents, the Honda MODULAR concept explores how urban dwellers of all ages might travel in the year 2030. The transforming design consists of a single-passenger cockpit and two wheels fit with a gyroscopic system for balancing. It’s also equipped with futuristic audio and AI controls that eliminate the need for a full instrument cluster and control panel.

While a power tool’s primary goal is functionality, there isn’t a reason as to why it can’t be a little more pleasant to look at! The Salley Power Tools have high contrasting colors that make up the body are then softened by the natural, untouched finish of the cork, which has been used on the handles to offer comfort.

The Addition Bag was created to address the glaring lack of design intervention in the handbag industry. Made with style as well as actual features, the bag explores modularity as a means to reduce clutter and uplift the handbag’s personality. The Addition comprises two bags that can be used independently, or together as one super-bag.

Relying on a system that uses positive and negative shapes (think: jigsaw puzzle, or key and keyhole), Linx allows you to simply slide the keyring in and out of its holder by matching shapes, and sliding the keyring in or out in a manner that’s just extremely soothing to look at!

The Moto Zen reduces the abundance of features on a smartphone down to just the two most important functions, communication and photography. Each side of the device is devoted to one of the two functions, allowing for a very simple and intuitive experience for the user.