Sidekicks / Let the Moment Happen

Designer: Mattheo Bandi

RCA

SIDEKICKS is a collection of fictional objects that aim to help us reduce the amount of phone usage. The objects are interventions in moments when smartphones are particularly distracting for us: a desk lamp for working, a speaker for leisure time, an alarm clock for the end of the day and a projector for watching a movie with someone. Rather than creating a new device or establishing a new behaviour to keep us away from the phone, the objects were re-designed with a particular feature: none of them has a switch on/off button; instead, they can only function whenever we physically leave our phones to them. 

More and more people everyday are willing to reduce the impact phones have on them, but it often turns out to be harder than expected. In this scenario, my goal is to reflect on the role interactive objects can play for and with us. The devices are, in fact, not only designed as tools to make us more productive or ease a process, but also as friendly companions to help us let the moment happen.

Designer Abbie: Fawcett 

University :UWE BRISTOL

Summary: AN INTUITIVE KITCHEN PRODUCT THAT TURNS WASTE FAT, OIL AND GREASE INTO NATURAL SOAP

There is currently a huge problem surrounding the disposal of cooking oils, with a lack of alternatives, many people are disposing of them by pouring them down the drain. This leads to blockages in pipes, homes flooding and the notorious fatbergs that have formed in the sewers of London. The costly measures used to prevent and remedy the damage caused by these blockages are ultimately billed to the householder. 

WOSH is an easy to use soap making machine, with intuitive features and sleek design. Aiming to prevent waste cooking fat, oil and grease from being poured down the drain by presenting the user with an incentive to up-cycle it into a desirable and useful by-product, natural soap.

It’s a quick, safe and fun way of recycling domestic waste. The design is focused on integrating into the user’s routine, the quantities required for one bar of soap can be collected within around 2-3 weeks, the soap can be made in 15 minutes and with a 4 week cure time, this total of 6-7 weeks is roughly how long it will take to use up a bar of soap. 

The waste oils are filtered to remove any food particles and turned into soap using a tailored method of traditional, natural soap making. The recipes include natural additives such as essential oils, seeds and petals, acting as a natural exfoliant and giving the soap a quality scent, lather and texture. Making natural soap whilst reducing waste has never been more simple, collect waste cooking oils, create natural soap with WOSH.

Chris Pearce

University of Brighton

BA (Hons) 3D Design + Craft

Pearce's project 'Boundaries of Control' uses a simple piece of equipment to hand blow waste plastic, celebrating the untamed and animated properties which we rarely see in everyday mass produced products. From this process, he has created a range of lighting sculptures that encourages to think about our use of plastic and the potential of what we throw away.

Sisun Lee, a Korean-American entrepreneur has created a potentially huge new product in the drinks sector. The product has already received over $8 million in backing to break the US market.

The magic ingredient is the chemical dihydromyricetin (DHM), which is extracted from the fruit of the “heotgae” or oriental raisin tree.

The reason for hangovers is when the liver struggles to break down acetaldehyde, a substance produced when digesting alcohol. Acetaldehyde amasses when the body can’t keep up with the volume or pace of consumption. A hangover remedy may help break down those acids more quickly, which is what Morning Recovery strives to do.

“We think this is a field that is very misunderstood and very understudied, and we want to close this and help people move from thinking that you just have to drink lots of water.”

Crayola and Asos have joined forces to collaborate on an inspiring beauty collaboration.

Crayola Beauty has teamed up with Asos to create is a new vegan, a cruelty-free make up line aimed at 20-somethings.

The collection uses Crayolas playful heritage. The majority of the products come in a stick formula similar to brands like Nudestix, Milk Makeup, and Nars, who all stock easy-to-use chubby pencil-inspired cosmetics.

Among the products are:

95 total shades.
24 shades of stick foundation.
five palettes (three eye, one face, and one color changing lipstick).
cheek crayons.
mascaras.
makeup brushes.

 

Sony's latest research project was exhibited at Milan 2018. Sony suggests a move away from our current phone dependency to a more poetic interaction which engage our senses.

Smart sensors gathered information from visitors’ actions to deliver a variety of awe-inspiring surprises. These included a virtual butterfly flying away as a vase was moved across the table, and a wall projection of a flower opening upon a person’s approach. 

Moving lights, changing surfaces, colourful wall projections and haptic feedback provided a glimpse of future interiors in which humans and furniture seamlessly and intuitively interact.

For a bespoke material report looking at progressive materials for your products, packaging and retail contact jon@future-filter.com

Materials are intrinsic to good design. An inspired material choice defines an object. It communicates values, provenance and even an emotion. Materials, and especially plastics have become synonymous with irresponsible design. Blue planet 2 highlighted the problems with ‘one life’, one use plastics which pollute our oceans and threaten marine life.

POLITICAL MATTER

Materials have become political, with the UK government announcing its 25-year environmental plan. The UK Prime Minister has set out the government’s strategy on plastic with plans to tax single-use plastic packaging and assist supermarkets to create plastic-free aisles.

Ekoplaza in the Netherlands is leading the way in becoming the first plastic free supermarket with one aisle completely plastic free. The company has compostable biomaterials as an alternative to plastic trays and bags.

Brands need to be aware of the changes and adapt in the coming years to offer plastic free alternatives. Brands need to look to reduce what would be considered unnecessary, to deliver the product to the consumer without sacrificing the physical experience and the perception of the brand.

AESTHETIC SHIFTS

As we assess the environmental impact of mining, shaping and discarding materials, our aesthetic perception of materials is also shifting as we re-think one-life materials, the idea of up-cycling is reaching the mainstream. Adidas has launched Adidas Parley boost made from recycled ocean plastic which has gained critical praise and demonstrated that progressive thinking can be commercially viable with the shoes proving popular with young fashionistas.

Future-Filter is the Futures + Design studio. We provide future reports and design for progressive brands. For more information on our futures and creative services contact

Jon@future-filter.com

The Bug Burger contains a patty made beetroot, parsnip, potatoes and mealworms, which are the larvae of the common darkling beetle

Ikeas research Lab, Space 10 has created a menu of five new dishes as solutions to the problem of a predicted global food shortage given the population growth over the next 10 years.

"At Space10, our research is rooted in an important principle – dishes shouldn't just be healthy or sustainable, they must be delicious too," explained Space10, which counts food designer Simon Perez and plant engineer Sebastian Dragelykke among its diverse team.

What do you want for your brand? What could your brand look like in a year or 5 years. What are the macro-trends that will shape your business. 

We can help you answer those questions: jon@future-filter.com

Brandless

Are we paying too much for brands?

One company that is looking to revolutionize our thinking about branded goods is Brandless, a San Francisco based start-up selling food and household goods.

The emphasis is more on the goods rather than the brand with the argument that consumers pay a brand tax of approximately 40% for the privilege of consuming a particular brand. Brandless’s CEO and co-founder Tina Sharkey says “we’re trying to reimagine what it means to be a brand in today’s world, a brand rooted in authenticity, transparency, and trust,” Sharkey says. “If we do this right we’re actually building a community of people who want to change the way we live, where we can focus on living more and branding less.”

https://brandless.com/about

Future personal care is an area that Schwarzkopf have been giving thought to with the launch of Professional's SalonLab showcased at CES 2018.

The SalonLab Customizer dynamically formulates and produces a customized hair care product for each client right in the salon based on the gathered data - at the simple touch of a button.

Aeroplane food has a reputation for leaving passengers feeling bloated and groggy, but all that could be set to change.

Leading food psychologist Professor Charles Spence has teamed up with the airline Monarch to create a food menu designed to settle the stomachs of flyers.

The Oxford professor, who’s worked with Heston Blumenthal and his team at The Fat Duck Research Kitchen, also claims his unique menu has mood-enhancing properties that will help to relax travellers.

The experimental ‘Monarch Mood Food’ box includes dishes such as black echinacea and liquorice ice cream followed by green tea and lavender mochi rice cakes.

The dishes themselves were developed by top chef Jozef Youssef and his team at Kitchen Theory, based on the research conducted by Professor Spence. 

MIT's Self-Assembly Lab has demonstrated its rapid liquid printing process at this year's Design Miami fair, using it to create products in front of visitors.

The scent palette

The project aims to visualise fragrance, particularly in relation to how colour and shape is used as a method of communication in the process of making customised perfume. Fragrances are invisible, so it is hard to remember when smelling a lot of fragrances at once. If there is specific colour or shape to each bottled fragrance, it will be easier to remember and it will help people arrive at a choice.

In terms of the process of making perfume, it mainly depends on numeric quantification such as ratio or formulation. Transforming the numeric information to something experienced more intuitively and emotionally is the one of the main parts of this project.

Coloni, is a Swedish based gardening house founded in 2010. In collaboration with a horticulturist, Coloni has developed an approach to a new kind of indoor gardening based on seed mixtures composed from a conceptual point of view. The mixtures consist of seeds from desert and arid Mediterranean climates and include both annual and perennial species.

Their philosophy is to make indoor gardening an engaging part of one´s everyday life; an activity to create a relationship to and to follow in its different stages of development.

Sugarcane has been used for the first time in packaging by Bulldog skincare. The green polyethylene is created by farming sugarcane on sustainable land in Brazil, thousands of miles from the Amazon rainforest. Whilst being cultivated, the sugarcane captures CO2 from the air as it grows. Sugarcane is so efficient at capturing CO2 that every kilogram of green plastic produced 3.09 kilograms of CO2 is removed from the air. Once grown the sugarcane is transformed into 'ethanol' a type of alcohol, which in turn is used to Bulldog's partner Braskem to create green plastic. Kudos Bulldog.

Celebrity fashion collaborations do not get much bigger than Rihanna and Puma in The Fenty x Puma collection for 2018. Leveraging her edginess and laconic style the collection is a blend of streetwear and extreme sports. Heavily influenced by surf and motocross sports with bright saturated pops of colours, high vis neons, sports buckles and toggles with retro-themed graphics.

Glenfiddich recently unveiled the winners of the World’s Most Experimental Bartender competition

The winners were Charles Roche and William Hetzel of east London’s Scout cocktail bar. The Duo created a fragrance based on the taste notes of the whisky to create a tantalising pre-drinking experience. The fragrance is based on the whisky’s wood, fig, caramel and leather elements. The fragrance is intended to engage consumers’ olfactory senses, simulataneously opening up what is the essence of whisky-tasting to a wider audience.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCeaxArtoEQ

KVELL have developed Waterdrops which are a selection of compressed powdered tablets of flavour and vitamins that can be added to water. The favours come in a paperfoam outer.

The ’soft tech’ aesthetic is as refreshing as the product.