Joseph Joseph Kitchenware (1)

Joseph Joseph specializes in contemporary kitchenware with a design slant.  Their products are both aesthetic and and functional, utilizing elegant design to accomplish incredible results. 

All of their products at their site are worth mentioning.  Here are twelve of their products, split into three posts:

1. Nest - Practical, Space-saving Kitchenware

The Nest™ range comprises of mixing bowls, measuring spoons, a sieve, and a strainer. The individual elements of each set stack together, occupying the absolute minimum amount of storage space. 

2. QuickSnap - Ice Tray

QuickSnap™ fills with water just like a conventional ice tray. When ice is needed, simply twist the tray to loosen the cubes and then push each switch on the reverse, in the direction of the arrow, to release one ice cube at a time – effectively snapping each out of its individual compartment.

3.  Fold Flat - Collapsible Grater

This grater folds completely flat for easy storage when not in use, locking into place.  Gripping the grater when open prevents it from collapsing. 

4. Chop2Pot - Folding Chopping Board
Locked in the flat position, Chop2Pot™ provides a durable, knife-friendly cutting surface. But when the handle is squeezed, the sides of the board fold up, forming a chute down which diced and chopped food can be neatly guided. The Chop2Pot uses polypropylene 'living' hinges to achieve its transformation.

Source: Joseph Joseph

Wall Art Chair

The Wall Art Chair by Dror Benshetrit converts from an art installation to a functional piece of furniture.  

While the chair looks like it has stability issues, the product is great for a small apartment or bachelor pad that needs a few extra seats for impromptu guests.

Source: via Yankodesign

Bent Ruler

This Bent Ruler by Tomoya Yoshida is made of a flexible plastic that requires finger pressure on top to keep it flat on the paper.

At first glance, a bent ruler is terribly unintuitive; however, it actually solves several problems that plague conventional rulers:

1. In drawing straight lines, pressure needs to be applied to the ruler to prevent slipping.  The bent design actually forces the user to apply this pressure, reducing the chance of sideways motion.

2. The ruler springs back up after usage, making it easier to pick up from the page.

3. The ruler's edge does not lie in contact with the paper after using, preventing smudging. 

Of course, several criticisms can be launched against it as well.  First, it's more difficult to use it for measuring real objects (screen sizes or table lengths, for instance).  Storage may also become a problem.  While it can be compressed flat for storage, the tension might make it snap easier.  

Despite the shortcomings, though, it's still an excellent design.

Source: Via Yankodesign

World Time Clock

This world time clock designed by Charlotte van der Waals is a very simple and equally smart design to show the 24 different time zones around the world on one clock. The clock is barrel-shaped with 12 sides, each side having two cities written on it that are 12 hours apart. The clock face tells you the current time in whatever city is written on top as the clock is rolled over.

There's no minute hand, however, since every rotation of the clock would move the minute hand five minutes forward or backward every time.  If someone could create a simple solution to this, now THAT would be excellent design.

source: via Slipperybrick

Green Box for Pizza

The Green Box is a pizza box design that aims to minimize waste and storage space. An otherwise normal-looking pizza box transforms into serving plates for four AND a container for leftover pizza.

As can be seen below, the design can be implemented with little cost, only adding additional scores and perforations to the pizza box:

When folded, the box looks like a normal pizza container:

When opened, though, it can be broken apart.  The top cover can be used as four plates.  The bottom cover, with minor modifications, can be converted into a box that can store leftovers.

A video of the entire process can be seen below:

Source: Green Box

Elevator Deselect

Mistakes in pressing or buttons waste time and are aggravating to endure.  Elevator buttons should work on a 'toggle' basis, where pressing the button twice deselects the floor. 

This design has been implemented in various countries, but I see no reason why it shouldn't be made a standard protocol in all elevators.

What other electronics benefit from a deselect option?

Source: Whynot Idea Exchange

Matroshka Small Space Solution

Inspired by the Russian dolls of the same name, the Matroshka is a compact living concept aiming to maximize quality of life and storage space.  Its furniture is multifunctional, nesting within each other in many different ways.

The Matroshka at its most compact form, maximizing floor space:

The area under the red/orange pillows and the area underneath the purple pillow can be independently pulled or retracted under the working area.  Pulling the right side yields the assembly below.

The left side houses a table with four stools:

This table can be pulled out and placed in the middle of the couch to be used as a coffee table.

The table's height can also be adjusted.  Combining this with the stools can create a functional dining area for four.  Take note of the steps at the left side, which again double as storage space.

This picture shows another configuration, created by pulling both sides of the "couch" to its maximum length.  I have no idea where the seat on the right side of the picture came from.

And finally, an extra rolled-up cushion can transform the couch into a single-person bed. (or two really skinny, silent sleepers)

The bed cushion, pillows, and most of the living room items can be stored in the seats, which double as storage boxes:

The "nested doll" concept permeates every part of the design.  Most, if not all of the furniture is hollow, and even the working area shelf/divider exhibits a honeycomb structure:

While the place looks like it's be terribly hard to clean, the design looks feasible, cost-effective and comfortable enough to pitch to small-space condominium construction.

Source: Matroshka

USB Rechargeable Battery

USBcell is a rechargeable battery that plugs in to any standard USB port.  With over 15 billion Alkaline batteries made and thrown away each year, USBCELL offers a eco-friendly alternative as can be re-used hundreds of times without the need for an additional charger or cable.

While a good idea in theory, there are still limitations, as can be gathered by the product's Amazon page:

1. Costs much more than a regular battery

2. Tendency to separate

3. Long charging time

4. Possibility of overcharging or burning out the computer's motherboard

but these seem to be problems that can be solved with product development.

Source: USBcell

V Lock

Keys are notoriously difficult to align to locks, especially at night.  The V Lock by Junjie Zhang solves this problem by creating a large groove on top of the lock, "funneling" the key to the hole easily.

Aside from being a remarkably intuitive design, it's actually cheaper than a regular lock due to less material being used. 

Source: Yanko Design

Piggyback Plugs

A piggyback plug is a plug that also serves as a socket, as shown below:

With only a slight increase in manufacturing costs, the piggyback plug allows multiple appliances to be plugged in without the need for an extension cord.  This design has been out in Europe and Australia for many years, but has not been put into widespread use.

Source: Drumalarm

Self-prescripting Eyeglasses for $1

More than 153 million people around the world with poor or no eyesight either don't have access to or can't afford vision correction, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Ninety percent live in low- or middle-income countries, WHO reports, where optometrists are harder to come by and individually crafted lenses cost too much for many.

A British physicist, Josh Silver, wants to solve that problem. He has his sights set on the lofty goal of distributing one billion pairs of glasses, at $1 a pair, by 2020.

The glasses are round plastic frames with lenses made of clear sacs of silicon oil, sandwiched between two clear plastic circles.

As a wearer adjusts the dials he or she can control how much liquid is loaded into each sac (thereby custom forming each membrane's curvature); this fine-tunes the glasses to an individual's prescription. After the world comes into focus, the sacs are sealed off permanently with a small valve, and the adjusting mechanisms are removed.

Here is a video of Josh demonstrating his invention in a TED talk, via YouTube:

Source: Scientific American

Resealable Soda Can

From Johan Debroyers, a concept for a resealable soda can, that only requires an additional investment of a circular sheet of metal:

Source: Youtube

Zero Angle Digital Camera

The most sensitive parts of cameras are the lens and LCD at the back. The Zero Angle Digital camera concept protects both of these parts by literally flipping inside-out.

Source: Yanko Design

Greywater recycling

Current designs of toilets use fresh water for flushing.  Sink Positive is a retrofit sink that can be placed on top of any toilet.  It allows greywater to be used to flush the toilet, maximizing water usage.

This design has been implemented in Japanese homes, as can be seen below:

The mechanism is simple and requires no additional pumps or mechanical materials.  As the diagram shows below shows, the fresh water used to refill the reservoir simply passes through the faucet first before being added to the tank.  The runoff after washing is then used to refill the bowl.

Advantages:
1. Large amounts of water savings
2. Space-saving; a separate sink is not necessary.
3. Toilet leaks are easy to spot. Whereas for conventional toilets, water refilling is done internally, here, any noticeable sink dripping means a leak.

Disadvantages:
1. For the uneducated, it looks like you're using the dirty water from the bowl to wash your hands. 
2. The toilet bowl impedes access to the sink, requiring the user to stoop to use it.
3. The flush button needs to be pressed every time anyone wants his or her hand washed.

The last two issues are easily fixed with a different design, but it will remove the elegance of a marketable retrofit toilet cover.

Source: Sink Positive

Angular Yogurt Spoon

When eating yogurt, there's a lot of wasted product at the very end that normal utensils can't reach:

In response, Nojae Park has designed a spoon with an angular tip to solve this problem, as shown below.

While it's a good idea in theory, the question of whether it's worth creating a new facility just to produce these new spoons is debatable- considering that this spoon is quite useless for most other round-bottomed jars and bowls.  Shouldn't the solution be simply for yogurt manufacturers to increase the radius of their cup bottoms?

Source:Nojae Park

Double-sided Slippers

Double-Sides Slippers, created by Zhang Xun and Li Cheng, are designed to enable the user to wear the slippers from both directions, avoiding the hassle of rearranging the slippers in the event that they're upside-down.

The material must be soft enough to accommodate the user's foot without springing, but resilient enough to return to its original form after removing it.  The only problem is that the right and left slippers are not interchangeable; if one goes into all the trouble of creating these, wouldn't it be a simple extension to make the slippers vertically symmetrical as well?

Source: Red dot

BOX4BLOX LEGO Organizer

BOX4BLOX is a filtering and storage system for LEGO (TM) and other similar brick toys.  It works by simply sorting the bricks through a series of trays with different sized grids, which means the blocks end up in a tray with similar sized blocks.

There are three filtering trays and one bottom tray.  Bricks can be easily found from the individual trays, especially those hard-to-find little bits and pieces that end up at the bottom.

A video of the mechanism can be seen below:

Source: BOX4BLOX

Soap Bank

The ‘Soap bank’ by Wooteik Lim helps save small pieces of soap to avoid waste. This product is made of a rubber material which can be attached to the bathroom wall. The soap shelf has a small hole in the middle for disposal of soap stubs too small to be used.  These stubs fall below to the net of ‘Soap bank’, which collect the small pieces and allows for better foaming. 

 Source: Cooldesignideas

Stackable Gallon Bottle

A simple modification - an indentation at the bottom of a 5-gallon bottle allows it to be stacked.  While consuming more plastic per bottle (due to the increased surface area needed), the space-saving implications should outweigh the added cost.

While only a maximum of two or three jugs can be stacked when filled with water, the stack of empty bottles can go arbitrarily high.

Source: Yujin Kim, via Yanko Design

Restless Chopsticks

These chopsticks by Mikiya Kobayashi are cleverly designed so the user does not need a separate chopstick rest. Placing them so the indented portion faces upwards prevents the tip from being in contact with the table. The restless chopsticks come neatly packaged in pairs and are available in black, green, red, white or yellow.

Source: Emmohome

Brush and Rinse

This toothbrush concept from Scott Amron can redirect water from a faucet to the user's lips for easy rinsing. This toothbrush has a slight indentation behind the head that redirects water in a stream to the user's mouth, removing the need for rinsing cups or using one's hands to get water for rinsing.

There are two incarnations of the design, though I prefer the one above rather than the second one, if only because of the greater risk of contamination with the tube-type brush.  The best thing about this design is that it adds no cost for manufacturing.

The video of the toothbrush in action can be seen below:

Source: Amron Experimental

KEWB Multifunctional Furniture

The Design of KEWB Multifunctional furniture allows it, with only a few simple moves, to change into many different forms, including, but not limited to the ones shown below.

1. Compact Mode - Packing the entire KEWB furniture into the smallest space possible.

2. Chair and table - With three different recliner positions.

3. Recliner and table - Again with three different recliner positions.

4. Bed + Side table

5. TV Shelf + side table + pouffe / cushions

5. Layered shelf + pouffe / cushions

Furthermore, having multiple copies of KEWB allows the user more combinations of furniture, such as double beds.

Source: KEWB