Kancept Concept

November 12, 2006 8:29 AM

Kancept. A series of conceptual renderings of potential consumer products. All amateur as far as I can tell. No PepsiBlue.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy (21 comments total)

Very cool. I am impressed by the effort that people put into rendering their designs. Things like the locking knife rack would sell to the paranoid-parent market, and the hardwood USB drive is sweet and solves the problem of losing the damn cap (or having the flimsy idiot string break).
posted by Rumple at 8:58 AM on November 12, 2006

I agree, some of these are brilliant. I want a transparent toaster!
posted by bkudria at 9:11 AM on November 12, 2006

Apparently these designers are not copy writers:

The Skimmer is a jet-ski like plane that flies closely over the water. It is fun and exiting.

While stuff like the Dream Car or the Jet Bike are "exiting" to look at, it would be the small ticket items that would actually sell. I would buy a transparent toaster if I was in the market for a toaster.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 9:36 AM on November 12, 2006

I would so buy the transparent toaster. The booklight is pretty cool too.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 9:37 AM on November 12, 2006

When I was in school, I used to love going to the third-year industrial design studio poster sessions. That's when they've learned just enough to be dangerous, but haven't had the creativity ground out of them yet. Nice find.
posted by xthlc at 9:52 AM on November 12, 2006

So far I LOVE the transparent toaster and skimmer.
posted by chime at 9:55 AM on November 12, 2006

Stop looking at the crumbs in my toaster!
posted by furtive at 10:01 AM on November 12, 2006

I'll "fifth" the transparent toaster. Cool. I was also intrigued by the dustpan-dustbin.
posted by ClaudiaCenter at 10:10 AM on November 12, 2006

I like the Origami cell phone idea, but I'm quite certain it would break off rather easily.
posted by Holy foxy moxie batman! at 10:13 AM on November 12, 2006

i also like transparent toaster but since these are amateur efforts there is nothing to suggest how it might work (economically, reasonably, for someone to purchase?).
posted by gorgor_balabala at 10:48 AM on November 12, 2006

Not to critique the aesthetics, but it'd be nice if design students could, as part of their curriculum, be given enough basic grounding in physics and engineering to understand that, for example, if you want to make a transparent toaster, it still requires heating elements which will be opaque and rather visible. In fact, they might even look kinda cool when they're glowing.

Good design shouldn't just mean something looks pretty - it still needs to, you know, actually work.
posted by kcds at 10:49 AM on November 12, 2006 [1 favorite]

kcds: that's for the engineers to figure out. After all, we have transparent lcds... now if we can just ramp up the current without cooking the crystal connects...
posted by creeptick at 11:38 AM on November 12, 2006

gorgor_balabala and kcds: if you read through the comments for the transparent toaster, you'll see that the designer responds to similar critiques. for instance, he explains that the heating element is the glass (it's double paned, with an air barrier so the outer surface doesn't get hot) and expresses curiosity in similar concepts being tested and prototyped by large corporations.

anyway, the community that seems to've sprung up around the designs and design critique looks pretty interesting. (compared to MeFi though, there's lots of trolls and not everyone reads up on the comments 'conversation'.)
posted by carsonb at 11:38 AM on November 12, 2006

It's like Half-bakery with pictures :)
posted by chime at 11:54 AM on November 12, 2006

Be warned: Is it just me, or does this website attempt to make a Skype call, launch telnet, send an email, and other assorted nastiness? If there's more, I don't know b/c I killed the browser. Shame really, because the first page of plasma with built in PC looked cool.

I'm guessing it's some sort of script that loads via one of the comments. (Which reminds me, I need to make sure Firefox 2.0 "noscript" was one of the extensions I added after upgrading.)
posted by edverb at 12:17 PM on November 12, 2006

edverb: Yep, someone probably injected a shitload of exploits.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 12:20 PM on November 12, 2006

Sorry, edverb--didn't do any of that to me.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 12:25 PM on November 12, 2006

Update: Yep...comments allow scripts. I see a username in the comments loading in an IFrame, pointing to a site which is loading nasties. I'm seeing blocked scripts in the comments and gifs which are most definitely NSFW.

An example is about twenty comments down here (and I won't hotlink it, lest someone click it accidentally): http://www.kancept.com/kancepts/show_top/Portable_LED_Projector--265?rank=3 BUT BE WARNED -- WEAR PROTECTION BEFORE LOADING THAT LINK!

I'm off to start a MeTa.
posted by edverb at 12:26 PM on November 12, 2006

Yeah, someone's posted a comment containing an iframe that opens a webpage that's full of JavaScript and Flash movies. That's some rock solid comment handling there.
posted by chrismear at 12:27 PM on November 12, 2006

edverb,

That site put my copy of Firefox 2.0 into an infinite recursive loop of errors, such that I had to force-quit it. Dodgy indeed.
posted by sindark at 12:32 PM on November 12, 2006

MeTa.
posted by edverb at 12:35 PM on November 12, 2006