Co.Design

Enter the 2019 Innovation by Design Awards!

The legendary bike designed by Jean Prouvé in 1941 is being reproduced

And this time, it’s got a powerful motor that offers a speed assist to riders.

Why every ski trail map looks the same

Artist James Niehues has hand-painted nearly 200 ski maps in his 30-year career.

This Ikea kitchen is incubating the robots of the future

At Nvidia’s new robot lab in Seattle, UW professor Dieter Fox is betting that a run-of-the-mill Ikea kitchen is the perfect test bed for his next-gen robots.

The secret history of Cleatus, Fox Sports’s bizarre football robot

If Cleatus the robot seems like a mascot designed by a 7-year-old, it’s because he is. And you can see him at the NFC Championship game this Sunday.

This $350 mini-smartphone helped cure my digital distraction

But after a week of testing the tiny Palm, I’m not sure owning a second smartphone is worth the trouble–at least in its current form.

This AI generates images of food just by reading the recipe

It nails down pastas, rices, and soups, but makes hamburgers look like “hamberders.”

Cult bedsheet startup Parachute is getting into the mattress game

The brand is launching an organic, eco-friendly mattress, reflecting an emerging consolidation of the market.

An early glimpse at the computer of the future

With help from Map Project Office and Universal Design Studio, IBM’s Q System One is designed for the future of computing. And it’s mighty pretty.

“Brand purpose” is a lie

From Gillette to Starbucks to Johnson & Johnson, companies love to extol the virtues of their brand, without actually living up to them. Here is what today’s companies could learn from the Quakers, writes Paddle Consulting’s Brian Millar.

Border walls are big business–and not just in Trump’s America

The companies that specialize in dividing the world are thriving.

Slack’s new logo ditches the beloved plaid hashtag

“It’s a new brand coming into maturity now. If they were ever going to change . . . it was the now-or-never moment,” says designer Michael Bierut.

This clever lamp uses surgeon’s tech to eliminate annoying shadows

Balmuda’s $540 The Light doesn’t create shadows or glare.

This typeface contains a terrifying warning about climate catastrophe

It’s called Coastline, and it reveals how the world’s coastlines will look when all the ice has melted.

IoT security is so bad, many companies can’t tell when they’re hacked

And only 14% believe that IoT security is an ethical responsibility.

See an eerie ghost town of castles, created by Turkey’s recession

Empty houses are a familiar sight in countries where economic recession has kneecapped booming real estate development. But few look as Gothic as these.

Report: Retailers have zero clue what shoppers really want

We now go to stores because we want to dip our toes back into the real world, not the virtual one. So stop throwing your robots, smart mirrors, and VR headsets at us.

Inside the $3 billion race to kill plastic

These startups are capitalizing on consumer anxiety about climate change to market reusable straws, food wrap, and storage bags. Can they compete with plastic industry giants?

Ikea to release a hackable bed that could last a lifetime

The Delaktig line of hackable furniture, developed with British design star Tom Dixon, is growing in a big way.