Here's what we looked at this week: Tortoise Gear's super-easy-to-install add-on clip for Swiss Army Knives. Better UX for farmers and off-roaders: The Tuff Jug Ripper Cap solves a tricky fueling situation. Industrial designer Eduardo Blanco's Cartesian pencil holders. Industrial designer Hsinhung Chou's simple, versatile, "Handy" mobile furniture piece. A Bauhausian take on the coat rack , by ind

Once upon a time, if the soles of your shoes wore out, a cobbler could attach fresh soles. Nowadays, once your sneaker soles wear out, you junk them. Tires are the same. It's insane that we have to throw out a tire because that tiny percentage of material around the perimeter has worn down, but that's the established convention. Even worse, tires are a major source of microplastic pollution. When

Remember that "egg drop" ID school project? For the uninitiated, the students design a vessel to hold a single egg. The vessel is then dropped off the roof of a building, and the egg is meant to survive the fall. Red Bull's Flugtag (German for "flight day") event is a much more exciting version of the egg drop. In this international competition, teams design and build an engine-free flying craft.

This Wedge Coffee Dripper Set combines low-tech coffeemaking with traditional Japanese metalwork. Made by Totetsu Ironworks, the components feature a baked-on Japanese lacquer finish. The height adjustment uses a simple wedge mechanism. The cone is stainless steel, and everything else is iron. These run $120 (not counting import duties, taxes and shipping).

Every spiral-bound notebook or sketchbook I've ever seen had the bindings on either the long or short edges. But Japanese stationery brand Inkaren produces these Diagonal Ring Notebooks , which use a lot less material for the binding: The design was "born from breaking free from the unconscious limitations of how the rings should be attached," the company says. "The diagonal rings don't get in the

BMW has unveiled their new eighth-generation 3 Series , featuring their Neue Klasse design language. The exteriors evoke the calm, clean design language of the Neue Klasse concept car from a few years ago, so no surprises there. But the cockpit is quite the radical departure from conventional ones. As Tesla and Volvo have done, the designers have jettisoned the central instrument cluster. Vital da

British ID consultancy Tangerine and Buzz, an Australian manufacturer of airline products, have collaborated on several concepts to make long flights more comfortable . "We wanted to proactively rethink the Premium Economy experience and explore what could emerge from collaborating with creative minds from a parallel sector," explains Sam Blank, Buzz's Director of Innovation and Product Strategy.

In the early 1950s, Chicago-based industrial design firm Painter, Teague and Petertil won an interesting commission: Design the world's first portable transistor radio. Texas Instruments had worked out the miniaturization, then partnered with electronics brand Regency to create a consumer product. All they needed was an ID firm to give their technology a consumer-friendly form. The design team got

Ever since the Anglepoise lamp's introduction in 1933 , desk lamps typically cantilevered the light source outwards from the base. Roughly four decades later, Ettore Sottsass threw this convention out with his irreverent Valigia desk lamp. There is no counterweighted base, just four legs that support the lamp head as if it's a tabletop. The form demands commitment, sitting directly above whatever

Reading a book is very different from studying a textbook. With the former, you flip through pages at whatever pace you read. With the latter, you leave the textbook open to a particular page while you take notes, transcribe, or re-read text in order for it to sink in. For this latter situation, Japanese stationery company Kokuyo detected a problem. In 2022, the company sought feedback from junior

This wonderful, Bauhausian Bazar coat rack is by German industrial designer Steffen Kehrle. By transforming the tree into a wire cylinder, Kehrle provides hanging space on the outside, while the interior becomes usable storage space thanks to circular shelves. The shelves can be placed wherever there's a hoop; it's up to the user. My only gripe is that I wish it came with more hooks that the user

This Handy furniture piece is by Taiwanese industrial designer Hsinhung Chou . It's such a simple and useful form factor that I'm surprised I haven't seen it before; I think it'd be useful for everything from gardening to picknicking to household chores and handyman jobs. When I'm outdoors on my property, for instance, I often wish I had a way to carry tools that also offered a table-height surfac

There's something pleasingly M.C.-Escher-esque about this Ciclo desk organizer. Spanish industrial designer Eduardo Blanco explains its origin: I needed a pencil holder and I wanted it to have a sculptural look. Something that is always visible on a desk cannot be banal. I also wanted it to give me more options for classification and order among my tools than a normal pencil holder. The result is

When you think of the classic Swiss Army Knife, you likely envision the common 91mm version. That's the size that became the standard in the 1950s. As ubiquitous as this line is, the strange thing is that Victorinox never updated them with clips, which became popular with other folding knives starting in the 1980s. So if you've got a 91mm SAK, you either fish for it in a pocket, or attach a lanyar

Putting gasoline into most vehicles is easy—at the pump. The nozzle goes into the filler neck, you pull the trigger. Take away the pump, and it gets considerably trickier. Dirt bikes, tractors and construction equipment must be filled with gasoline or diesel in the field, from portable containers, and the filler necks are often in highly inconvenient location. The filler necks on tractors, for ins