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The Tokyo College of Cycle Design that we looked at earlier, holds an annual award competition. The 2025 Grand Prize winner was student Masaichi Yamada, who designed and welded this crazy-looking ride together:This is a "minivelo road bike"—a compact road bicycle—characterized by a tubular steel space-frame structure in which slender chromoly tubes are assembled into a three-dimensional form, creating an exterior silhouette that shifts depending on the viewing angle.

In 1877, Englishman John Richard Dedicoat invented the world's first bicycle bell. For about a century and a half, cyclists could use their thumb to activate the chime, warning pedestrians.However, companies like Apple, Bose, Sony and others have defeated the bicycle bell with two small objects: Active noise-canceling earbuds. Now that cities are filled with people walking around with their ears plugged by ANC, annoyed cyclists worldwide have found their bells neutered, to everyone's peril.Czech car manufacturer Škoda Auto recently learned of this problem while studying road safety. Having started out as a bicycle company, they thus decided to develop a new type of bicycle bell.

In a display of technological might, China's Guangdong EHang Egret Media Technology Co. recently put on the world's largest drone show. The company programmed 22,600 drones to participate, and only 20 of them failed to take off; that's a staggering 99.9% success rate.

Norway is a country that has become fabulously wealthy through oil. The 6.3mm-thick steel tubing used by that industry has here been turned to another purpose: Public seating. Industrial designer Jens‑Egil Nysæther and architectural designer Line Mari Sørra run Lije Studio, a design firm in Oslo. They designed this friendly-looking outdoor seating system called Venture. Sections of curved and straight steel pipes, the same ones used by the oil industry, are joined and topped with curved wooden saddles.

These aluminum Norm Brackets are by Switzerland-based industrial designer Silvio Rebholz. The idea is to create furniture, while letting nature do most of the work. Parts of trees considered undesirable by the lumber industry are gainfully employed. Norm Brackets allow the use of [unprocessed] wood branches. The hole matrix offers a variety of fixation options to accommodate wood irregularities. Wood is a highly industrialized material today, almost like a non-organic substance. In the manufactur

As vintage hunters know, it can be difficult to find components of the Braun Atelier system, designed by Dieter Rams in 1979, in the wild. It's rarer still to locate a complete stack of all the components and the pedestal, but that's what reseller De Mauricio has gotten their hands on. "Braun audio system designed by Dieter Rams. The complete set includes the following P1, T1, C1, CD2/3, A1 and the pedestal. All items are in good working condition. This system is a vintage item so please expect some normal signs of cosmetic wear. No speakers are included. Made in Germany."

This Heir gadget, by tech startup Ganance, is a little tracking disc that slips onto the back of an analog watch. View the full content here

When we think of Midcentury Modern furniture, the emphasis is typically on Scandinavian designers. But this Weekend Chair, by French industrial designer Pierre Gautier Delaye, deserves a nod.Designed in 1956, the chair was made of ash with straw upholstery. Delaye collaborated with cabinetmaker Lucien Vergnères to get it into production; it was presented as good-looking, affordably-priced furniture for young families.

What would you do, as an industrial designer, if your client asked you to optimize a tool—and you couldn't? That was the challenge faced by ID firm Goodwin Hartshorn, when client Joseph Joseph asked them to redesign the kitchen peeler. "We learnt a valuable lesson when developing our Multi-Peel (and Multi-Slice) for Joseph Joseph," the firm writes.

We've got a thing for chair bucks, because lots of industrial designers use them, but they're rarely seen. Today we've spotted another, this one by Paris-based industrial designer Timothée Mion. Mion uses his to dial in the heights and angles of the contact points, then physically "sketches in" hypothetical supports. Adjustable chair-fitting rig. Designing the tools to design the chair. A process that moves beyond the screen, testing ideas physically. Angles, proportions, and dime