The New York Times has been stepping up its beer coverage this week, with a hilarious piece on a pair of identical twin brewmasters who hate each other’s guts and an equally amazing design critique of beer labels by storied graphic designer Milton Glaser.
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Philips today announced that it is adding yet more products to its popular Hue line of wireless-controlled LED lamps. Three new products were introduced, including a less expensive white-only bulb, a wireless switch, and a line of 3D-printed lighting fixtures.
The Hue Lux works just like other Hue LED bulbs, but it only outputs pure white light. This allows you to add more remote-controlled bulbs to your network in rooms that just don’t need mood lighting. Philips hasn’t mentioned what color temperature the bulb will output, but I’m assuming it will be pleasing to the eye based on Philips’ other LED bulb products.
The Lux bulb is also $20 cheaper than the standard Hue bulb, selling for $39.95(USD). A starter kit will also be available with two Hue Lux bulbs and a Hue Bridge for $99.95. The Hue Lux will ship sometime “after Summer 2014.”
The Hue Tap is perfect for those times that you don’t have your smartphone readily available, or if you want family or guests to be able to control the lights. The small switch can be wall mounted, and lets you turn lights on and off, and can store preset scenes from the Hue app as well.
While you can currently approximate similar functionality by purchasing a LivingColors lamp and reprogramming its remote like I’ve done, it’s nice that Philips is finally addressing this need with a dedicated product. Incredibly, the Tap’s switch requires no batteries, it gets all the power it needs from the kinetic energy captured from your finger taps. Hue Tap will also be available later this year for $59.95.
Perhaps the most interesting addition to the line-up are the new 3D-printed luminaires. These dramatic lighting fixtures were created in collaboration with the design teams of WertelOberfell and Strand+Hvass, and they are in a word – stunning. The lamps offer the full wireless control found in Hue bulbs, casting colorful shadows through their complex geometric structures.
Unfortunately, the 3D-printed luminaires are extremely expensive, with the pendants going for €2,999 (~$4113 USD) and the table lamps going for €2,499 (~$3427 USD). Philips will be taking pre-orders for the lamps starting on March 31.
Everyday objects like keys and forks and spoons and brooms and umbrellas and so forth are always designed with usability in mind. You use them everyday so they better be easy to use, right? But what if you re-designed them to make them annoying and uncomfortable to use? They’d still technically be useful objects but they’d also be hilariously terrible to actually use.
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I don’t often have emotional reactions to shelving units, but cripes—these pics from Design is a State of Mind, a new exhibition at London’s Serpentine Sackler Gallery, are just about perfect. Storage systems are often stuck in the shadow of the stuff they’re displaying, but, here, a handful of perfect specimens get the spotlight they deserve.
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There are many different screw head types. Like those screw heads on game consoles that are designed to keep you out. Those should have grump faces to represent them, whereas Yuma Kano’s design is all about fun.
Screw is a collaborative project between him and Komura Seisakusho, a screw factory in Japan. The idea is that his screws are “a product that can bring joy.” If you were taking something apart and didn’t expect to see a screw like this, I imagine it would make you smile.
Of course you need a smiley face screwdriver to screw them in and unscrew them. Who says tools can’t be fun and functional?
For Evan Blum, it started as a hobby when he was young. His father, an architect specializing in reuse, exposed him to the world of architectural antiques—and it wasn’t long before Evan’s own collection had outgrown the space he lived in. Today, 41 years later, it’s how he makes his living.
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It might be hard to believe, but these colorful illustrations of 3D pencil cases are just an optical illusion. They’re all actually real flat pencil cases that use bold lines and strategic angles to seem like they’re 3D from the right angle. Don’t believe us? Here’s a shot of the purple one from another angle.
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Churches tend to ebb and flow with generations: Chapels close after neighborhoods are redeveloped, cathedrals are abandoned after religious upheaval. So, what then? In more than a few cases, they’ve been turned into bookstores and libraries.
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We get it. Our love of drinking water from disposable plastic bottles is a problem, enough of a problem that San Francisco actually wants to ban them
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This one goes out to all the city cyclists who have pulled up to the bottom of a steep-ass hill with three words echoing through their head: Oh. Hell. No. The Norwegian city of Trondheim built a special bike-lift that gives folks with wheels a free ride, no pedaling required.
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