Yanko Design - Form Beyond Function

The Notebook Calibrated for Creativity

Posted: 25 Sep 2017 06:43 AM PDT

No matter how digital we become, a creative always comes back to his/her traditional notebook to capture ideas. There’s something very pleasing about taking a pen and pencil and capturing your mind and its ideas in a journal. Plus they say you’re much more capable of remembering things you’ve written down, rather than snapping pictures of, or recording them.

The Approach Notebook was created specifically to be the creative’s perfect notebook (yes the concept exists). Ideally sized, with just the correct type of paper, the Approach Notebook was actually designed with a brief in mind. To be a hybrid solution that takes the good bits from both real notebooks and note-taking apps.

The Lite variant of the Approach was designed for the digitally inclined creative. Realizing that every creative always tends to go back to paper and pen to capture notes and ideas while working on a digital device, the Lite’s soft-bound design is easy to carry, and even lays flat on a desk when opened, giving you the freedom to sketch freely using both pages as a single canvas (without the book-spine interrupting you). The pages on the Lite are easy to tear off too, allowing you to discard older/unneeded notes, or take out high-priority notes and place them on a board, etc.

The Lite’s much more seasoned hard-bound counterpart, the Professional, comes with a wonderful faux-leather cover and a Moleskine-esque band that holds the book together. The Professional was designed for its namesake, the professional creative who thoroughly relies on notebooks to capture ideas, thoughts, and take notes. While the Lite was made for swift and effective note-taking, the Professional was designed for more meticulous use. With more pages than the Lite, and five different types of layouts (from blank, to ruled, grid, and calendar styles), the Professional suits all needs.

However, the Approach’s pièce de résistance is its holistic approach to note-taking. Along with the Professional comes a series of add-ons that completely elevate the note-taking experience, bringing into it features that one often sees in note apps. Sticky notes come made in the same international paper as the notebooks themselves, allowing one to add/replace pieces of text, or even extend the page to create extra writing space. Along with the sticky notes even come highlighter notes that allow you to add removable highlights to one’s texts without having to search for or use a highlighter pen. Users can even mark tabs or create separations in their notes using faux-leather index stickers, made from the same leather used in the cover. These stickers are detachable and reusable, allowing you to create and modify indexes. Lastly, the notebooks come with a set of multiple bookmark ribbons that can be fastened at the back and inserted into important pages, allowing you to bookmark more than one page without having to resort to methods like dog-earing pages.

Unlike most notebooks that just bind papers together, the Approach does a serious analysis of its target audience. With the Lite, it creates a perfect tool for the swift doodler, who needs scraps of paper to rapidly jot down schematics and ideas… and with the Professional, it creates perhaps the most perfect blend of traditional and virtual note-taking features, combined into a durable stitch-bound, leather-covered book that any creative would impulse-buy first, and genuinely fall in love with later!

Designer: Approach

Click here to Buy Now: $22.00 for the Lite Notebook FULL Kit

Lite Notebook below

Professional Notebook below

Click here to Buy Now: $22.00 for the Lite Notebook FULL Kit

Photocatalytic Oxidization: big words that mean better air!

Posted: 25 Sep 2017 05:00 AM PDT

You’d think being inside your car would protect you from car exhaust, allergens and pollution outside, right?! Think again. The truth is, interior air quality (ESPECIALLY that inside your car) can be as much as 15 times more worse than outside! Even worse, this can be as much as 40 times worse at a red light. To combat in-car air pollution, the LUX purification system that utilizes cutting-edge PCO (Photocatalytic Oxidization) technology to remove pollutants, allergens and free radicals from the air.

The PCO module is made up of 3 main components, a UVC bulb, DC axial fan and a catalytic mesh. The catalytic mesh is coated with titanium dioxide (TiO2). The UVC bulb activates the catalyst on the mesh (TiO2). This causes it to release free radicals, which attach themselves to the pollutants and break them down into their simplest form, carbon dioxide and water, but at such microscopic levels that they simply evaporate into the air. The outcome of this process is that pollutants within the air are removed, leaving a healthier and cleaner air environment!

The second component is the removable air monitor which allows the user to review the air quality around them while they’re on foot. After being attached to a bag or other item the user regularly carries, the device can pair with the user’s smartphone using Bluetooth. The information gathered by the air monitor is then relayed to a dedicated app which monitors exposure and alerts the user when travelling through high areas of pollution. The device uses crowdsourced data resulting in the users becoming a cities pollution mapping tool. This means someone could review the pollution levels across the entire city at one time. The app can also use the crowdsourced data to review the fastest route to work and if the route will expose the user to high levels of pollution, it will offer an alternative route with lower pollution exposure levels.

With multiple devices working regionally, it also allows governments and officials to review data to see where consistent high areas of pollution are and may help them to make informed choices about reducing pollution levels within cities.

Designer: Blake Parkinson

Cultivation in the City

Posted: 25 Sep 2017 02:00 AM PDT

Being an urban dweller doesn’t mean you have to miss out on fresh veggies. Modern gardens like this one mean you can practice your green thumb AND have a well-rounded diet all from the city center.

Equipped with 16 individual growing pods, you can harvest a diverse selection of your favorite veggies and herbs. Better yet, the units are stackable so you can save space yet double and triple your output! Neatly tucked under the lid is a full-spectrum fluorescent light that replicates the natural solar spectrum. Start with seedlings and end up with dinner!

Designer: Davorin Mesarič

Sharpest (Design) Tool in the Box

Posted: 24 Sep 2017 11:14 PM PDT

Looking for something to sharpen up your desk? CORE have just the answer for you. With time being everything, nobody wants to mess around with manual sharpening anymore. Not to mention that moment when you over sharpen your pencil and it snaps upon any force on the page. Or how about when you pull your pencil out, only to find the head decided to hide in the sharpener? These days are dead and gone.

CORE has designed a pencil sharpener which delivers the correct level of sharpness dependent on the user’s needs. The CORE sharpener has a ribbed dial towards the bottom of the device, which is used to determine the sharpness – similar to that of a coffee grinder.

Containing the motor in the base of the sharpener, this product has a bottom heavy feel which gives a measure of confidence in the quality and stability of the sharpener. Assisting this, are the thoughtful four rubber feet located on the base of the product. The contrast of materials throughout the CORE are what make the simple pencil sharpener a visual oasis for the office desk. The only detail of aluminium is the bezel (where the pencil is inserted) which becomes the standout detail. The vertical alignment, unlike many other sharpeners, reduces the desk space needed to store the pencil sharpener.

The tinted glass, housing the pencil sharpener, and cutter assembly adds a very sleek feel to the overall design. This not only allows the user to see the beauty of the function itself, but allows the light to play off the cutter assembly and add another dimension similar to the bezel located on the top.

Designer: CORE Design Studio