Design Showcase

British design, branding, and architecture firm SSH has given a number of McDonald’s London locations a contemporary facelift in an effort to redefine the brand and keep McDonald’s hip in the ever growing sea of trendier, healthier eateries throughout the world and London alike. The upgrade includes an all-new image that will undoubtedly leave the restaurant’s wide variety of patrons unsure that they’re really at a McDonald’s.
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Sometimes, the greatest things in the world of design are those that may not ever exist. The Solar Tree, for example, is stunning. Dubbed “Photon Synthese” (French for Photosynthesis), the concept integrates an expandable structure of plugs and miniature solar panels to construct a tree that provides enough power for virtually any consumer device that fits in your pocket.
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Swedish energy design company Home Energy recently announced a new prototype that could potentially change the way the world looks at wind in the years to come. Using a unique, proprietary design, the Energy Ball utilizes the Venturi Effect in combination with a design that allows air to flow inside of the device itself, as opposed to simply going through it, to improve the look, efficiency, and simplicity of a tool that will be instrumental in the world’s shift to more sustainable and renewable forms of energy.
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Cowon’s new S9 Curve Personal Media Player brings just about everything you could ever want or need to the palm of your hand - with the exception of a phone, that is. By design, it’s actually a great new take on the iPhone’s now virtually ambiguous touchscreen design. Its curves, lines, lights, and features put it in touch with many of the things that have made the world fall so deeply in love with Apple’s pride and joy. Still, the comparison between the Curve and the iPhone ends at first glance; a glance, after all, is the only thread that ties the two together.
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Philips is a company that isn’t traditionally thought of as an organization that is built around design. Its products, while high-quality, aren’t usually the sort of devices that one would expect to see from Bang & Olufsen. Its new Holedar Earphones concept, however, could be on its way to changing the way the world looks at Philips forever.
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Before you rush out to Whole Foods to grab a bottle of the surprisingly well-designed Peared, you should probably know that it doesn’t actually exist - yet. Peared is an experiment in packaging-design pioneered by a designer by the name of Conor Hagan. Its slick bottles come in two different sizes - each with their own, intuitive emphasis on design.
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Trendy frozen yogurt shops are nothing new. In fact, there are already more than half a dozen different concepts revolving around the silky world of frozen yogurt - each of which has a story to tell. Yagööt, oddly enough, has been around for quite some time now; by quite some time, I’m thinking of something like a little more than thirty years.
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I spent the night browsing through entries and winners in 2008’s IDEA competition in search of a few green ideas from some of the brightest minds of our time. Here’s a look at three ideas that could change the way we look at the three R’s that have been engrained in our brains (and yet, so rarely used) since elementary school.
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The spork has long been an item to be laughed at. Think for a second; how many people do you know that have kitchen drawers full of sporks? Light My Fire’s significantly more stylish take on the double-headed eating utensil, however, could be just what it takes to get at least one spork into kitchen drawers around the world.
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Wine has always been a more sophisticated take on alcohol than its liquor and beer-based counterparts; perhaps that’s why it’s been so resistant to the convenience of the can - long a staple of the beer and soft drink world - in favor of the cumbersome, heavy, and expensive bottle that wine drinkers worldwide have grown to love so dearly. Thanks to the work of two Swedish designers, however, the world of wine could one day make the leap to a smaller, cheaper, and more convenient form that’s just as good for its users as it is for the environment.
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