The Best Way to Address Product Design Failure

We live in an age of shitty product design and no customer support. Stuff breaks because it's poorly made, and then you have no recourse but to throw it into the trash, because it's unrepairable. If you try to get someone on the line, it's endless sub-menus before you finally get a live person overseas, who struggles with the language and has not been empowered by their bosses to actually solve your problem.

Here, however, we have a product design failure that was handled masterfully.

I think Peak Design, which designs and makes travel gear, is a great company....

Royal Mail introduces solar-powered postboxes

Royal Mail has given Britain's recognisable red pillar postbox the "biggest redesign in its 175-year history", integrating solar panels to power digitally activated drawers for larger parcels.

The 3,500 new designs, billed as "the postboxes of the future", will be rolled out across the UK within the coming months.

Solar panels are fitted to the roof of each postbox and oriented due south for optimal sun exposure.

The energy generated by the photovoltaics powers a barcode scanner, used to open an integrated drawer that can accommodate parcels as big as a shoebox. Each postbox...

Design Impact Scholarship Offered for MBA Equivalent for Designers

Business executives seeking to level up can enroll in an MBA program, but there's no equivalent for industrial designers. Future London Academy, a UK-based executive education organization, aims to change that. They're offering an Executive Programme for Design Leaders, as well as a Design Impact Scholarship to cover the £45,000 (USD $60,627) tuition.

Janet Echelman’s Suspended Nets Radiate Across 25 Years in ‘Radical Softness’

For two and a half decades and across five continents, Janet Echelman (previously) has established spaces for gathering, although her approach emerges from an unusual angle. The artist is known for suspending enormous nets from ceilings and outdoor structures, which often cast colorful shadows or glowing light onto their surroundings. Swaying with gusts of wind, the architectural installations invite viewers to pause and meditate on interconnectedness.

Now, the artist’s works are collected in a monograph titled Radical Softness: The Responsive Art of Janet Echelman. Published by Princeton Architectural Press and edited by Gloria Sutton, the tome chronicles Echelman’s evolution while situating...

Charlie: A Revolutionary Induction Range with a Built-In Battery

In America, the phrase "Now we're cooking with gas" was slang for "Now we're really operating efficiently."

It originated as a marketing slogan in the 1930s, created by the American Gas Association to push newfangled gas-fired ranges and ovens. And back then, gas stoves were indeed a step up from its predecessor: The wood-fired stove.

Times have changed. We now know that "cooking with gas" could be likened to "playing with fire," in terms of our health. "You wouldn't stand over the tailpipe of a car breathing in the exhaust from that car. And yet...

Living Beauty Retail Shop / Odami

© John Alunan architects: OdamiLocation: Toronto, CanadaProject Year: 2025Photographs: John AlunanArea: 2500.0 ft2

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Peter Besley shelters Brisbane home with walls of perforated brickwork

Perforated screens of reclaimed terracotta brick and metal mesh for climbing plants wrap the volumes of this home in Australia, designed by local architect Peter Besley.

Named Birdwood, the home on a sloping site at the base of Mount Coot-tha in Brisbane was designed for a multi-generational family that wanted a dwelling where they could age in place.

The uneven nature of the site led to Besley dividing the home into separate volumes that were each created to have a unique feel – from a series of more insular bedrooms to a bright, double-height living area and library beneath a ziggurat-shaped skylight.

Four of the best dumbphones for a digital detox

The most desirable phones are no longer only the ones with the most advanced features. Here, contributing editor Rima Sabina Aouf reviews four of the best contemporary dumbphones with deliberately pared-back functionality.

A dumbphone – sometimes called a feature phone or brick phone – has a basic set of features and minimal internet connection. The idea is by doing less, it frees you to do more – more focusing on your work, more being present with your family and friends, more looking up when you're out in the world.

After a few years hovering in the background of mobile phone design, dumbphones...

Can we quit our air-con addiction?

As the world gets hotter demand for cooling systems is increasing, but energy-hungry air conditioning risks making the situation worse. Starr Charles explores whether more efficient solutions are possible.

With global temperatures rising, the world's air-conditioning (AC) addiction is intensifying.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that roughly two billion AC units are already in operation around the world, but that by 2050 two-thirds of the world's households are likely to own a unit.

It has warned that this widening usage could see global energy demand for cooling triple in that time.

The global banking system is also predicting a dramatic increase in the...

Mireia and Toni's House / Vora Arquitectura

© Adrià Goula architects: Vora ArquitecturaLocation: Badalona, SpainProject Year: 2023Photographs: Adrià GoulaArea: 165.0 m2

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