Col&McArthur has built a reputation on turning historical moments into wearable artifacts, and their latest piece, the Normandie 1944, might be their most literal interpretation of that concept yet. This is a watch that contains actual sand from the Normandy beaches, a dial cut from a real WWII-era American M1 helmet, and a strap fashioned from vintage M-1928 haversack fabric. The Belgian watchmaker has always leaned into the commemorative angle hard, from lunar meteorites in their Apollo tribute to Leonardo’s mirror-world timekeeping, but the D-Day piece feels different in its directness. There’s no gimmick here, no counterclockwise movement or spaceflight package, just raw material history pressed into a 43mm case.

What strikes me immediately is how balanced the design actually is given how loaded the subject matter could be. Military watches often veer into either sterile field watch territory or overwrought tactical cosplay, but the Normandie 1944 occupies a strange middle ground. The dial is split nearly in half, one side showing the etched Operation Neptune map on aged helmet steel, the other filled with that dark Normandy sand visible through a sapphire window. It’s a bold compositional choice that could easily read as gimmicky, but the execution has enough gravitas to pull it off. The sand capsule sits at 9 o’clock, roughly where you’d expect a small seconds subdial on a traditional three-hander, which makes the asymmetry feel intentional rather than forced. The golden thread running diagonally across the dial represents the “line of fire” between sea and shore, a visual metaphor that’s surprisingly effective when you catch it in the right light.

Designer: Col&McArthur

Click Here to Buy Now: $399 $699 ($300 off). Hurry, only 7/30 left! Raised over $38,000 raised.

The use of actual M1 helmet steel for the dial feels quite unique, not just for historic accuracy, but also from a material-design perspective. Steel helmets from that era were typically made from Hadfield manganese steel, which is tough but not particularly refined by modern watchmaking standards. Col&McArthur had to work with what amounts to scrap metal with historical significance, which means variations in patina, surface texture, and color from watch to watch. Each dial will be genuinely unique, something the brand is leaning into rather than trying to standardize. The engraved map of Operation Neptune, complete with the names of Allied ships like the USS Texas, HMS Glasgow, and HMS Hawkins, adds functional detail without cluttering the composition. These aren’t random naval vessels either, they were the actual ships positioned off Omaha and Gold beaches providing fire support during the landings.

The parachute-shaped seconds hand honoring the 6th Airborne Division’s midnight jump is the kind of nerdy detail that watch enthusiasts will appreciate for its specificity. It references the historic drop that began just after midnight on June 6, 1944, when thousands of paratroopers descended behind enemy lines to secure key positions. While the watch ships with a canvas strap included, an optional Paratrooper Backpack Strap takes the aforementioned historical connection further, using fabric from actual M-1928 haversacks carried by soldiers during the war. Col&McArthur has treated and reinforced the vintage material to make it wearable for daily use, which is the right call when you’re dealing with 80-year-old canvas. The strap is available as a $149 add-on, which gives buyers the flexibility to go full historical authenticity or opt for something more contemporary like the black stainless steel bracelet or titanium Grade 5 option. I’d probably rotate between them depending on occasion, keeping the haversack strap for moments when the symbolism matters most.

The caseback engravings listing the five D-Day beaches (Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, Sword) alongside Eisenhower’s words feel appropriate rather than maudlin. Commemorative watches live or die on whether they treat their subject matter with respect or exploit it, and this leans heavily toward the former. The 80th anniversary of the end of WWII in 2025 has predictably spawned a wave of tribute pieces from various brands, but most opt for symbolic gestures like historically inspired color schemes or period-correct typography. Col&McArthur went the opposite direction by embedding literal pieces of the event into the watch itself, which is either deeply meaningful or slightly macabre depending on your perspective.

The watch comes in a Miyota automatic movement, but can easily be upgraded to an automatic Sellita SW200-1 with a 41-hour reserve, and limited to 1,944 units (just as a hat-tip to history). The 43mm case size is smart, hitting that sweet spot between vintage proportions and modern wearability. Water resistance specs rates at 10atm, which means you can literally storm the beaches wearing the watch! Was that design choice intentional? Knowing Col&McArthur, it probably was!

The real appeal of the Normandie 1944 is how it succeeds as both a historical artifact and a functional timepiece. This is a watch that invites conversation, which means wearing it becomes an opportunity to share what that dark capsule at 9 o’clock actually contains and why it matters. Col&McArthur has created something that’s undeniably unique and thoughtfully executed, walking the line between memorial and daily wearer with more confidence than most commemorative pieces manage. For collectors, veterans, or history enthusiasts looking for something that carries genuine weight beyond another reissue or homage watch, the Normandie 1944 deserves serious attention.

Click Here to Buy Now: $399 $699 ($300 off). Hurry, only 7/30 left! Raised over $38,000 raised.

The post Col&McArthur’s D-Day Tribute Watch Contains Actual Sand From Normandy’s Beaches first appeared on Yanko Design.

A BMW paddleboard was absolutely not on my 2025 bingo card, yet here we are. The German automaker, apparently tired of limiting its electrification ambitions to asphalt, has partnered with Estonian watersports company SipaBoards to launch the BMW x SipaBoards e-SUP, an electric stand-up paddleboard that costs €3,990 (about $4,650) and comes with all the premium trappings you’d expect from a brand that charges extra for heated seats. The board was just unveiled at BMW Welt in Munich alongside the new iX3, because apparently nothing says “electric vehicle future” quite like a floating recreation device with a waterjet motor.

This might seem like a bizarre tangent for a car company, but BMW has always been obsessed with what it calls “sheer driving pleasure,” and I suppose when you run out of road, you start eyeing the water. The e-SUP features a 300-watt integrated motor that uses silent waterjet technology, which SipaBoards claims is 15% more powerful than previous versions while being quieter than anything else in the category. The board ships with two 90Wh battery modules good for 3.5 hours of assisted paddling, with larger 180Wh modules coming in 2026 that will double runtime to around 7 hours. You control the motor via a paddle-mounted remote that’s styled after BMW’s Neue Klasse design language, letting you throttle up without fumbling around or losing your balance.

Designers: BMW & Sipaboards

The e-SUP self-inflates, eliminating the tedious pump ritual that makes inflatable SUPs such a pain to deploy. Once inflated, the board measures in at a touring-friendly length (looks like their 12-foot model based on the “120” marking visible in the photos), with that signature pointed nose and enough deck space for gear mounting via the modular SipaMount system. That modularity matters because it means you can retrofit accessories and future upgrades without replacing the entire board, which is exactly the kind of longevity thinking that makes expensive gear purchases easier to justify. The design itself leans heavily into geometric patterns and muted blues and greys, with angular lines that echo the faceted, almost origami-like surfaces BMW has been experimenting with on concept vehicles.

Even though it does sound absurd on paper, the e-SUP really does align with BMW’s core identity. The German marque has always marketed itself around precision engineering, driver assist technology, and a certain aspirational lifestyle appeal. An app-connected paddleboard with route planning, performance tracking, and electric assist fits that template surprisingly well. You get the same obsessive attention to user experience: intuitive controls, connectivity features, modular upgradeability, and that unmistakable premium aesthetic. The safety angle is real too. Every year, paddleboarders get swept out by currents or wind, and having an electric motor as backup could genuinely prevent rescues or worse. It’s the same philosophy behind stability control in cars, just applied to a completely different environment.

The $4,650 pricing will make purists scoff, and they have a point. You can get a solid non-electric inflatable SUP for a quarter of the cost, and serious paddlers might balk at the weight penalty of integrated motors and batteries. But BMW has never competed on value. They compete on aspiration, refinement, and that intangible sense that you’re using something designed with obsessive care. The e-SUP succeeds at projecting that, from the premium carry bag to the sleek industrial design. Whether it finds an audience beyond BMW superfans and gadget-obsessed water sports enthusiasts remains to be seen, but as a first foray into electric watercraft, it’s competent, surprisingly coherent, and way more thought-through than I expected when I first heard “BMW paddleboard.” Sometimes brand extensions are desperate cash grabs. This one actually makes a weird kind of sense.

The post The BMW Electric Paddleboard Costs $4,650 and Has More Tech Than Your First Car first appeared on Yanko Design.

Sam Barker’s first monowheel was a disaster. Built in his kitchen four years ago, it flexed, it had bolts sticking out everywhere, and he fell off it multiple times. Most people would call that a learning experience and move on to safer hobbies. Barker decided to double down and build something even more ambitious: a diwheel powered by 60 kilowatts of electric motor.

For the uninitiated, a diwheel (or dicycle, depending on who you ask) consists of two large rings with the rider sitting in a frame between them. Unlike a monowheel, which requires constant balance and gyroscopic forces to stay upright, a diwheel is naturally stable. The outer rings rotate around a stationary inner frame via roller bearings, and the whole thing steers like a tank: differential power to each wheel. It’s the kind of vehicle that makes you wonder why we ever settled on boring old bicycles, right up until you try to navigate a doorway or park the thing.

Designer: Sam Barker

Barker’s approach to the rebuild borders on industrial overkill. The steel tubing for the rings measures 5mm thick and 100mm wide, sourced from a Sheffield metalworker who reported extraordinary difficulty even cutting and rolling the material. Each completed ring weighs 60 kilograms. For context, that’s heavier than most complete electric bicycles. The builder openly admits to over-engineering: “Have I gone over the top? Yes. Am I scared it’s going to run away with all the inertia? Yes. Is it going to bend? Absolutely not.” This kind of self-awareness is refreshing because it acknowledges the fundamental problem with amateur fabrication. When your welding skills are questionable and your measurements keep coming out wrong, you compensate with materials that could probably survive a tank rolling over them.

The ring construction alone turned into a multi-day nightmare. The Sheffield shop couldn’t roll the steel into complete circles without them ending up flat on the floor, so Barker had to cut each ring in half, attempt to align them perfectly, and weld them back together. Spoiler: they didn’t align perfectly. The gaps required creative clamping solutions and what he diplomatically calls “bodge” techniques. He built the first inner frame using 3D-printed templates, only to discover catastrophic measurement errors that forced a complete rebuild. The second frame copied the corrected dimensions but somehow still ended up a different size. Wrestling 60-kilogram rings into place solo nearly got him crushed when one started tipping. The whole process reads less like precision engineering and more like an extremely dangerous puzzle where every piece weighs as much as a small person.

His original monowheel used PLA 3D-printed rollers that lasted about 10 minutes before disintegrating. The new build features nylon SLS-printed rollers designed in Fusion 360 and manufactured through an online service with a 48-hour turnaround. Each roller houses four bearings (two center, one at each end) for load distribution. The suspension system exists primarily to accommodate construction mistakes, which is perhaps the most honest engineering justification I’ve ever heard. He needed 17mm bearings, couldn’t find rod stock that would fit through them, and ended up building a makeshift lathe from 3D-printed parts and a drill. This hybrid approach captures something essential about modern maker culture: CAD software and cloud manufacturing services combined with traditional metalwork and whatever happens to be lying around the workshop.

The diwheel currently rolls acceptably within its rings, which feels like damning with faint praise until you consider the fabrication chaos that preceded it. The racing bucket seat (sourced from Facebook Marketplace, naturally) isn’t mounted yet because Barker wants to finalize battery and motor placement first. Smart move. With 60kW on tap, weight distribution matters enormously. That power figure puts this build in the same league as many motorcycles, which raises obvious questions about what happens when all that rotating mass gets up to speed. Natural stability is one thing at walking pace. Natural stability at 50 kilometers per hour with hundreds of kilograms of steel spinning around you is something else entirely. The real advantage over his failed monowheel comes down to physics: diwheels don’t rely on gyroscopic forces to stay upright, which means they’re stable even at rest. Add electric drive with independent motor control for each wheel and you get tank-style steering without the constant terror of toppling over.

The real test comes in part two when he actually rides this beast. Until then, we have documentation of every measurement error, every misaligned weld, and every moment where heavy steel nearly crushed its creator. That honesty makes this build worth following… and if you dare, imitating too.

The post DIY Diwheel uses 60kW Motorcycle Power and Tank Steering… but will it drive? first appeared on Yanko Design.

It’s a shame that the AirPods only come in white. Or that drones only come in white or black. Or that the GoPro is only ever in black. We’re surrounded by color but somehow consumer tech giants only want to play it safe. Sure, releasing colored variants of GoPros means that people will select more of one color than another, causing logistical and supply issues that can only be solved by tonnes of market and trend research efforts… but hear me out. If we have colored smartphones, we can have colored gimbals, TWS earbuds, and mics. Røde is working on the latter, with its newly announced color-edition Wireless Micro professional-grade mic.

Røde’s color-edition mics mark a pretty unique shift in consumer tech, because these mics, worn by content creators, are truly a part of their outfit at this point. Having mics that are boring and black just doesn’t make emotional sense. It’s also why a lot of creators bejewel their mics, or attach them to random objects just to make them more unique and attention-grabbing.

Designer: Røde

“These vibrant new colors mark yet another milestone in the evolution of the world’s best-in-class microphone,” says Damien Wilson, CEO of Røde. “The Wireless Micro has always been about making professional audio accessible, and now creators can showcase both their signature sound and style with the same award-winning system. A wave of color is about to wash over the world of content creation – and Røde is at the crest.”

The Wireless Micro comes in 3 new colors, adding to the existing Black and White variants. This new announcement brings more vibrant colors like Red, Orange, and Blue to the mix, giving the mic a funky appeal, sort of the way KitchenAid and Vespa would bring character to their designs through splashes of colors. Feature for feature, however, these colored variants are absolutely identical to their achromatic counterparts. They come with USB-C connectivity for the receiver, an impressive 21 hour battery life, and built-in Røde features like the patent-pending acoustic chamber design and the GainAssist feature that helps capture clearly and at a consistent volume.

Røde’s tiniest mic, this particular gadget also scored the “Best Microphone of 2025” recommendation from Rolling Stone magazine and is even available in the lightning-port variant for older iPhone users. The mics can further be controlled via Røde’s free iOS or Android app, and for people looking to hook this to their DSLRs or video cameras, Røde also makes a camera receiver that the Wireless Micro can be plugged into.

The Wireless Micro’s available on Amazon for a reduced price of $97, although listings for the colored variants haven’t hit the store yet. Given that Røde just announced these colorways yesterday, we can probably expect online retailers to carry the new colored versions shortly. That being said, this is also an invitation to other companies like DJI, Hollyland, Sennheiser, and the likes to consider turning their tech into true fashion wearables. Watches have dazzling, fashionable straps, Meta partners with fashion brands like Ray-Ban and Oakley for their smart eyewear. The least we can do is ask our action cams, wireless mics, and other vlogging equipment to not be ‘boring’.

The post Why Do Only Smartphones Come In Colors? Røde Announces Colored Wireless Mics first appeared on Yanko Design.

Xiaomi keeps lifting pages from the Apple playbook, and frankly, I’m here for it. Their latest Sound 2 Max speaker dropped last week, and it’s perhaps the clearest distillation yet of the company’s design philosophy, channeling that peak Jony Ive era when Apple was still making products that looked like they belonged in MoMA. Remember when Ive was literally mirroring Dieter Rams’ work for Braun and nobody cared because the results were so damn good? Xiaomi’s doing the same thing here, and while western companies have mostly abandoned this aesthetic for fabric-wrapped nonsense and rounded plastic blobs, Xiaomi’s carrying the minimalist torch with zero apologies.

This thing is a statement piece in an era of forgettable speakers. The die-cast aluminum unibody, the perfect symmetry of those three circular drivers, the complete lack of unnecessary bullshit – it’s all there. Put it next to Rams’ Braun LE1 from 1960 and you’d swear they were related. Even the buttons on top are practically invisible. This is what happens when you follow Rams’ “less, but better” philosophy to its logical conclusion. No stupid fabric, no quirky colors, no meaningless design flourishes. Just pure function made beautiful.

Designer: Xiaomi

Inside that gorgeous shell sits actual serious hardware. Xiaomi packed in two 4-inch 30W woofers, a 4-inch 30W midrange driver, and a 1.5-inch 10W tweeter in an MTM layout. That’s 100 watts total with a frequency response from 47Hz to 22kHz and 101dB SPL. Translation? This thing will fill your living room with sound without breaking a sweat. I’d bet good money it sounds better at 60% volume than maxed out, like most well-engineered speakers.

On the connectivity front, you get Bluetooth 5.2, dual-band Wi-Fi 6, analog RCA, and USB-C. The big miss? No AirPlay or Google Cast. What the hell, Xiaomi? It’s 2025. But I’ll forgive that sin because this speaker costs $280 while looking better than B&O gear at three times the price. You can pair two for stereo or four for surround, though that gets expensive fast.

I love that they made the front panels swappable with magnetic wood, fabric, and metal options. Smart move. These speakers live in our homes, they’re furniture as much as tech, and Xiaomi gets that. The included metal stand and ambient light bar just seal the deal.

The voice assistant and smart home stuff is there if you want it. Super XiaoAi leverages AI for natural conversations, but unless you speak Mandarin, who cares? The Xiaomi Mesh 2.0 compatibility is more useful if you’ve bought into their ecosystem.

Will this make Apple fanboys switch teams? Absolutely not. But for design nerds who miss when tech products were allowed to look like actual designed objects instead of kindergarten crafts, the Sound 2 Max is the real deal. It’s a modern speaker that respects its design heritage while delivering killer specs. Minimalism isn’t dead after all. It just moved to Shenzhen.

The post Xiaomi Channels Dieter Rams, Proves They’re Still the Apple of the East first appeared on Yanko Design.

HMD just dropped a device that feels like a glitch in the matrix of modern smartphone pricing. The Touch 4G, priced at 3,999 INR (roughly $48) and launched for the Indian audience, is what happens when someone actually listens to the massive chunk of the global population that doesn’t need or want a 6.7-inch AMOLED slab with a camera system that costs more than their monthly rent. To be fair, the Indian market is flooded with cheap smartphones from Xiaomi, Vivo, Oppo, Realme, and local brands like Micromax and Karbonn. A lot of these phones inevitably cross the $70 mark, which means budget-constrained users still flock to ‘dumb phones’ or feature phones. HMD’s $48 audacious bid hopes to upend that.

What HMD is calling a “hybrid phone” is basically a feature phone that got into a transporter accident with a smartphone, and somehow it actually works. The result is weird in the best possible way. You get a proper touchscreen experience crammed into a 3.2-inch display, which sounds laughably small until you remember that the original iPhone rocked a 3.5-inch screen and people lost their minds over it.

Designer: HMD Global

The spec sheet reads like someone played a game of “what’s the absolute minimum we can put in here and still call it useful in 2025?” The UNISOC T127 processor paired with 64MB RAM (yes, Megabytes) won’t win any benchmark wars, but here’s the thing: it doesn’t need to. This device runs a stripped-down OS that’s optimized for exactly what it does, which is make calls, send texts, handle video calls, and provide WiFi hotspot functionality. That last feature alone makes this compelling because you’re essentially getting a mobile hotspot for $48 that happens to also be a phone. The phone also packs a measly 128MB of internal storage (about 15 iPhone selfies worth), but can be upgraded to 32GB via the card slot on the side.

Here’s the kicker that separates this from actual smartphones: the Touch 4G runs on RTOS Touch, a custom lightweight real-time operating system, not Android. Everything “smart” about this phone happens through HMD’s Cloud Phone service, which hosts browser-based apps that run remotely rather than on the device itself. That explains the shockingly low 64MB of RAM and 128MB of internal storage. The Express Chat app that comes pre-installed is cross-platform compatible with Android and iOS users, meaning you’re not locked into a proprietary messaging ecosystem that only works with other Touch 4G users. This cloud-based approach is simultaneously brilliant and concerning. Brilliant because it keeps the hardware dirt cheap and the device responsive despite minimal specs. Concerning because your phone’s functionality is entirely dependent on HMD maintaining these cloud services, which means the device could become significantly less useful if the company decides to sunset the platform in three or four years.

The camera situation is predictably grim with a 0.3MP selfie camera and a 2MP rear shooter, but let’s be real about what this is for. These aren’t cameras in the Instagram sense. They’re video call enablers and emergency document scanners. The 0.3MP front camera is basically VGA quality, which is fine for WhatsApp video calls where everything’s compressed to hell anyway. The 2MP rear camera with flash at least lets you capture something when you need proof of that parking spot damage or want to snap a picture of a document. Nobody’s expecting Night Mode or computational photography here.

Battery life claims of 30 hours from a 1,950mAh cell sound ambitious until you factor in the tiny screen, low-power processor, and the fact that this thing isn’t constantly syncing seventeen different social media apps in the background. Feature phones have always dominated on battery life because they’re not doing the thousand tiny tasks that drain modern smartphones. Add in Bluetooth 5.0, GPS with Beidou support, a headphone jack (remember those?), and an IP52 rating for dust and splash resistance, and you’ve got something that actually makes sense for its target market. That IP rating matters more than people think because phones at this price point usually skip any kind of protection, meaning a single monsoon downpour can brick your device.

The real genius here is recognizing that there’s a massive market gap between dumb feature phones and entry-level Android smartphones that typically start around 7,000-8,000 INR. HMD is betting that people who need connectivity but don’t need the full smartphone experience will pay 4,000 rupees for something that bridges that divide. The WiFi hotspot feature alone could make this a second device purchase for people who want to keep their main phone’s data separate or need a backup connectivity option. The cloud phone services integration gives you access to news, weather, and an Express Chat app without needing the full Google Play Store ecosystem, which keeps things simple and arguably more secure.

What makes this launch genuinely interesting is the timing. We’re seeing a global pushback against smartphone complexity, with dumbphone sales actually ticking up in developed markets as people try to disconnect from the attention economy. But in markets like India, it’s not about digital detox aesthetics. There are still hundreds of millions of people who either can’t afford or don’t need flagship features but do need reliable connectivity in the 4G era. HMD isn’t trying to be Apple or Samsung here. They’re carving out territory that those companies abandoned years ago, and there’s something refreshing about a product that knows exactly what it is and doesn’t apologize for it. The Touch 4G won’t change the tech landscape, but it might actually change some lives, which is ultimately more important than another iterative flagship that costs twenty times as much.

The post HMD’s $48 Smartphone with 4G Is Disrupting India’s Budget Phone Market first appeared on Yanko Design.

We are absolutely drowning in pixels, yet we’ve completely forgotten how to see them. Every smartphone release is a chest-thumping contest about who can cram more megapixels onto a sensor the size of a fingernail, promising crystalline detail that mostly just ends up getting compressed into oblivion by social media algorithms anyway. It’s a race for technical perfection that has produced a landscape of beautiful, boring photos. So when something like Carlo Andreini’s Pixless camera comes along, sporting a defiant 0.03 megapixels, it feels less like a step backward and more like a necessary course correction. This camera is a beautiful, deliberate rejection of the idea that more is better, built on the simple premise that there’s a unique joy in seeing the world rendered in chunky, charming, 16-bit blocks of color.

The Pixless is not a new idea, but it is a perfect modern execution of an old one. Its spiritual ancestor is obviously the Nintendo Game Boy Camera, a quirky peripheral that let a generation of kids take grainy, 1-bit selfies. The Pixless takes that core concept of lo-fi digital imaging and brings it into the present. Instead of a clunky accessory for a handheld console, it’s a standalone, pocketable camera with a 3D-printed body, a modern USB-C port, and a microSD card slot. It’s built around an ESP32-S3 microcontroller and an OV5640 sensor, a piece of hardware perfectly capable of capturing five megapixels. The magic here is in the software, which purposefully throttles that sensor down to a mere 192 by 144 pixels to create its signature look.

Designer: Carlo Andreini

The magic of the Pixless lies in its intentionality, which is evident when you look under the hood. It runs on an ESP32-S3 microcontroller and uses an OV5640 sensor, a perfectly respectable piece of hardware that is natively capable of capturing five-megapixel images. However, the camera’s firmware deliberately throttles that sensor, forcing it to output at a minuscule 256 x 128 resolution. This is a critical distinction. The Pixless is not a cheap, low-quality camera producing bad images by accident; it is a thoughtfully designed creative tool using a capable sensor to produce a highly specific, stylized output. This software-driven downsampling is where the artistry happens, ensuring that every image is not just low-resolution, but is sculpted to fit a very particular retro-digital aesthetic that feels both nostalgic and refreshingly new.

Its most obvious spiritual ancestor is the Nintendo Game Boy Camera from 1998, a quirky peripheral that allowed a generation of kids to take grainy, 1-bit selfies and add silly stamps to them. The Pixless captures that same spirit of playful experimentation but evolves the concept for the modern era. It sheds the clunky Game Boy connection for a sleek, standalone 3D-printed body, and it shoots in color, which is a massive leap forward. It retains the core philosophy, the joy of creating images with severe limitations, but makes it more accessible and versatile. It is a modern successor that understands that the original’s charm was never about the hardware itself, but about the unique way it forced you to see the world through a pixelated lens, a feeling it masterfully recreates.

The real soul of this camera, however, is found in its selectable color palettes, and here’s where the Pixless gets cleverly modern. The camera itself has a hilariously tiny monochrome screen that shows you almost nothing useful for composition or color preview. Instead, the camera creates a Wi-Fi hotspot and serves a web interface that users access via a browser on their phone or computer. This interface allows live view, remote shutter, palette uploads, and settings adjustments. The choice not to build a dedicated app was deliberate, to ensure long-term compatibility. You can choose a palette that mimics the washed-out greens of a Game Boy screen for pure nostalgia, or switch to vibrant, high-contrast colors reminiscent of Sega Genesis graphics. This transforms photography from mere documentation into a form of digital painting, where you’re actively choosing the specific retro aesthetic that best fits your vision before you even press the shutter.

The app integration is thoughtfully designed to enhance creativity without overwhelming the experience. You get real-time preview of your shot with the selected palette applied, can review images immediately, and manage your microSD card storage, all while keeping the camera body itself refreshingly simple and distraction-free. This hybrid approach gives you the tactile satisfaction of using a dedicated camera device while providing the visual feedback and creative control that would be impossible on that tiny built-in screen. It’s a smart balance between old-school intentionality and modern convenience, letting you stay focused on composition and mood while having the tools you need to craft your pixel art vision.

The Pixless camera is a perfect example of creative constraint packaged in a beautiful little box. It proves that by stripping away the overwhelming technical options of modern cameras, you can actually unlock more creativity, not less. It is a tool that asks you to stop obsessing over sharpness and instead play with color, form, and composition in their most fundamental states. It is not trying to replace your iPhone or your mirrorless camera. Instead, it offers a completely different way of seeing, for anyone who finds as much beauty in the blocky landscapes of Super Mario World as they do in an Ansel Adams print. In a world chasing flawless representation, the Pixless offers something far more compelling: a charming, pixelated interpretation that reminds us why sometimes, less really is more.

The post Forget Megapixels, This Tiny Camera Turns Your World Into A 16-Bit Pixelated Video Game first appeared on Yanko Design.

Yanko Design’s new podcast, “Design Mindset,” is quickly making waves across the creative world. Now in its sixth episode, the show is carving out a space for conversations that go beyond the surface, tapping into the ethos, mindset, and lived experiences of the world’s leading designers. Each episode, which premieres every Friday, explores how design thinking shapes products, brands, and even the future of culture itself, offering both inspiration and insight to listeners ranging from students to seasoned professionals.

Episode 6 brings a compelling guest to the mic: Pratap Bose, Chief Design Officer at Mahindra Group and a trailblazer in Indian automotive design. Bose’s resume is formidable; he’s led design at Tata Motors, shaped Mahindra’s global aesthetic, and developed a design philosophy that melds Indian identity with global relevance. In a candid and illuminating conversation with host Radhika Seth, Bose explores how authenticity, cultural intelligence, and collaboration are transforming what it means to design for the world from India.

Designing Without Apology: Embracing a Bold Indian Identity

Pratap Bose speaks directly when he describes the crossroads faced by Indian automotive designers. “You can create Indian cars that sort of are almost an apology for being Indian or you can create cars that were proudly Indian, confidently Indian, as good or better as anything else you find in the world.” This represents more than a matter of style; it’s a mindset shift that challenges decades of design tradition. For much of its history, Indian automotive design was informed by a sense of catching up, of blending in with global trends rather than setting them. But Bose’s approach is to flip that narrative, creating vehicles that are unmistakably Indian in spirit yet world-class in quality.

What sets his philosophy apart is an insistence on substance over superficiality. Bose warns against the temptation to rely on obvious or stereotypical motifs to signal “Indianness.” He points out, “It’s not about painting something yellow, even though everyone says India is such a colorful country. In vehicles, it’s white and silver. That’s it.” The challenge lies in understanding why certain cultural elements resonate and how they can be woven seamlessly into a product’s DNA, rather than tacked on as afterthoughts. The result? Cars that exude confidence and authenticity, resonating just as deeply with global customers as with Indian ones.

The Designer’s Dilemma: Navigating Cultural Identity at Home and Abroad

Bose’s insights stem from personal experience rather than theory alone. He recounts a pivotal moment during his stint at the Mercedes-Benz advanced design center in Japan. As a designer steeped in Indian culture, working for a German brand in Asia, Bose found himself grappling with the question: Was his work “German enough?” The pressure to conform to a brand’s national identity can be immense, especially in globally recognized companies where heritage is both a strength and a creative constraint.

This anxiety, Bose explains, is a microcosm of a broader challenge faced by designers everywhere: how to honor the DNA of a brand or culture while avoiding cliché or appropriation. The temptation to “rely on stereotypes” is real, particularly when time is short and expectations are high. But Bose’s career is a testament to the power of pushing past these easy answers. By confronting these dilemmas head-on, he’s learned that the most meaningful design happens when you move beyond surface-level decisions and dig into the deeper narrative and values that define a brand or culture.

Heritage Over Hype: How Brand Provenance Shapes Authentic Design

One of the most nuanced sections of the conversation addresses the difference between brand ownership and provenance. “Jaguar Land Rover is Indian-owned, it remains a British company, and Volvo, owned by Geely, is still Scandinavian,” Bose explains. For him, Mahindra’s identity is bound up in its Indian heritage, but authenticity comes from embodying the company’s role in India’s growth and nation-building, letting those values naturally infuse every design decision.

This perspective is especially relevant in an era when multinational ownership blurs the lines of national identity. Bose is adamant that authenticity has more to do with a brand’s intrinsic values than with overt symbols or marketing campaigns. “It is more important for products to reflect the brand’s intrinsic values rather than superficially representing its country of origin,” he notes. For Mahindra, this often means letting Indian identity emerge organically, rather than forcing it; an approach that, ironically, makes the connection to home all the stronger.

Breaking the Mold: How Local Context Drives Global Innovation

India’s automotive market is famous for its unique challenges, most notably the sub-four-meter tax rule that incentivizes compact vehicles. Many see such regulations as obstacles, but for Bose, they are opportunities for innovation. “India’s unique market conditions, such as the sub-four-meter tax rule, have spurred innovation, leading to the creation of vehicle types (like sub-four-meter sedans) that are unheard of elsewhere and pose significant design challenges.” These constraints have forced designers to rethink proportions, engineering, and even the very definition of what a car can be.

This drive to solve for local realities often results in products that are better suited to India and surprisingly relevant to global markets as well. The process of working within and around these constraints becomes a crucible for creativity, pushing Indian designers to develop solutions that are both original and exportable. For Bose, this is the real magic of designing in India: “What works for India usually works in global markets, but it’s not the other way around.”

Beyond Stereotypes: Building Authenticity Through Collaboration

Bose is a vocal advocate for collaboration as a path to authenticity. He describes his partnership with South African designer Thula Sindi as a model for how cross-cultural projects should be run: by working side by side to truly understand and express the local context, rather than applying familiar patterns or motifs. “Collaborating with local designers creates authentic products, which is much more meaningful than superficially applying cultural stereotypes, such as zebra prints or misusing traditional designs like the Kolhapuri chappal,” he says. The key, he believes, is to capture the “essence” of a culture, which is often felt rather than seen.

This approach extends beyond aesthetics. Bose points out that a German car’s “solid engineering feel” or the “sense of British luxury” in a UK-made vehicle are less about explicit references and more about the deep-seated values and craft that define those cultures. By focusing on these intangibles, designers can create products that feel authentic to both local and global audiences, celebrating cultural richness while sidestepping the pitfalls of appropriation.

The New Measure of Success: Designing With Cultural Intelligence

In the automotive world, every detail is loaded with cultural meaning, from the curve of a panel to the color of the paint. Bose insists that the only way to navigate this complexity is with cultural intelligence: a deep, ongoing engagement with the communities and histories that shape the market. “How authentic are you being, versus how superficial is something in its appearance. Authenticity is what culture truly is. And if you respect that culture and want to be authentic, then I think that’s top of mind,” he says. For Bose, the question centers on what something means and how it fits into people’s lives, rather than just what it looks like.

He encourages designers, whether in automotive or any creative field, to “research the roots, understand the meaning, engage with the communities, immerse yourself there and always ask whether your work contributes to the cultural appreciation or is just an extraction.” This mindset represents good ethics and good business, driving lasting connections and global success for brands that dare to go deeper.

Tune in to Design Mindset every Friday for more conversations that challenge, provoke, and inspire, showcasing the world’s top designers as they redefine what it means to create with purpose, passion, and a deep respect for culture.

The post Cultural Neutrality is Dead: Why Pratap Bose Says Cultural Intelligence is the Future of Design first appeared on Yanko Design.

Manila has always had a complicated relationship with water. The city sprawls across a delta, floods seasonally, and yet somehow keeps expanding outward rather than dealing with its fundamental infrastructure problems. So naturally, instead of fixing the drainage systems or improving the existing urban fabric, someone decided the solution was to build artificial islands and stack them with luxury towers. Enter City of Pearl, a massive mixed-use project that just picked up a Golden A’ Design Award in Urban Planning and Urban Design back in 2018, which puts it in some genuinely elite company globally.

HPA Architects Engineers and Development Consultants designed this beast, and from what I can gather, they’re going full Dubai playbook here. Think integrated commercial zones, high-end hospitality venues, and residential towers all crammed onto reclaimed land in Manila Bay. The project aims to create what the design community loves calling a “live-work-play” environment, which usually means expensive apartments near expensive restaurants where expensive people can avoid interacting with the rest of the city. But credit where it’s due, the design execution looks genuinely thoughtful, at least on paper.

Designer: Hpa Architects Engineers and Development Consultants

The project focuses on the live-work-play integration that everyone talks about but few actually execute well. HPA’s design prioritizes walkability and 24/7 activation, which sounds obvious until you visit most mixed-use developments that turn into ghost towns after 6pm. The residential towers aren’t cordoned off from the commercial zones. Green spaces thread through the entire development instead of being relegated to sad corner plazas. The hospitality components, which include upscale hotels and dining, sit at strategic points to keep foot traffic flowing throughout the day. This creates natural collision points where residents, workers, and tourists intersect, which is exactly what makes urban environments feel alive rather than sterile.

HPA integrated pedestrian-focused infrastructure and public transit connectivity from the ground up, reducing car dependency in a region where traffic congestion rivals Los Angeles on a bad day. The green space allocation exceeds typical Manila developments by a significant margin, though exact percentages weren’t disclosed in the award documentation. These aren’t token gestures. Dense urban environments need breathing room, and the architects understood that luxury buyers in 2018 and beyond expect environmental consideration baked into the design philosophy, not bolted on as an afterthought.

Mixed-use waterfront developments are everywhere now, from Singapore’s Marina Bay to Mumbai’s reclamation projects. What separates the memorable from the forgettable is whether architects can create genuine public space, real connectivity with existing urban fabric, and buildings that age gracefully instead of looking dated in fifteen years. The A’ Design Award recognition suggests HPA understood the assignment, but awards measure potential while reality measures delivery. Manila will get the City of Pearl it builds, not the one that won the prize. The renderings look spectacular, naturally. They always do.

The post Manila gets its own Palm Jumeirah-style Artificial Islands With Luxury Housing first appeared on Yanko Design.

Apple’s been sitting on the original AirTag since April 2021, and frankly, it’s about time we saw a refresh. The first-gen tracker has been solid, sure, but four years without an update feels like an eternity in the Apple hardware cycle. Now we’re hearing credible whispers that AirTag 2 could drop this October alongside a surprisingly stacked lineup of accessories and mid-tier hardware refreshes. If the rumors hold up, we’re looking at the M5 iPad Pro, a redesigned Apple TV, and potentially a beefier HomePod mini that could actually compete with Amazon’s newly announced Echo lineup instead of sitting in isolation while the other smart speakers forge ahead.

The timing makes sense when you consider Apple’s recent pattern of holding October events for non-flagship releases. The AirTag 2 isn’t going to headline a September iPhone showcase, but bundling it with iPad Pro updates and smart home gear? That’s a coherent story about Apple’s ecosystem expansion, and it gives Tim Cook’s team a chance to own the holiday shopping narrative beyond just phones and watches.

Designer: Sarang Sheth

Let’s talk about what’s actually changing with the AirTag 2, because the upgrades sound incremental but consequential. The big one is the new Ultra Wideband chip, which supposedly pushes the precision finding range from roughly 30-40 meters up to 90 meters. That’s a 125% increase in effective range, and it fundamentally changes how useful these things are in sprawling parking lots or multi-story buildings. The current AirTag’s range works fine if you’re searching your apartment, but it starts to fall apart in larger spaces where you need that extra distance to get a directional ping. Pair that with improved Bluetooth connectivity between the tracker and your iPhone, and you’re looking at a device that should feel noticeably more reliable in real-world scenarios where walls, interference, and crowd density mess with signal strength.

A personal gripe I’ve had with the AirTag has been its ridiculous thickness. At 8mm thick, it’s now fatter than the iPad lineup and even the iPhone Air. For a tracking device, this feels sort of embarrassing considering this is the one product that benefits from slimness (as opposed to smartphones). Although this is probably wishful thinking, a slimmer AirTag 2 is also probably in the works. Will it retain the CR2032 battery or move onto something more fixed that charges wirelessly? Honestly, the CR2032 replaceable battery is a solid choice, although imagine just leaving your AirTag on a charging mat (or on a wireless power bank) and having it topped off in just mere minutes. Here’s to hoping that the AirTag does justice to the ‘Air’ in its name, with a slimmer, sleeker, more pocket-friendly design.

The anti-stalking improvements are where Apple’s clearly trying to get ahead of the bad press that’s plagued the original AirTag. We’re hearing about a tamper-resistant speaker that’s harder to disable, which addresses one of the most legitimate criticisms of the first model. Bad actors figured out pretty quickly that they could pop open an AirTag and yank the speaker, turning it into a silent tracker. Apple’s solution sounds like it involves better internal securing or possibly adhesive that makes disassembly destructive. They’re also adding a “very low” battery warning on top of the existing low battery alert, which is a small quality-of-life thing but saves you from that moment when your AirTag dies mid-trip because you ignored the first warning.

The cynic in me wonders if the AirTag 2’s improvements are enough to justify upgrading if you already own the original. Probably not, unless you’re constantly losing things in large spaces or you’re paranoid about the stalking vulnerabilities. But for anyone who skipped the first generation (or just wants to add new AirTags to their existing portfolio), this looks like the tracker to get. October can’t come soon enough.

The post AirTag 2 Could Get 90-Meter Range and a Tamper-Proof Speaker This October first appeared on Yanko Design.