Hand-inspired products

When you think about it, the human body is like the best designed "product" there is.  It is incredible what the body can do.  Hands are particularly amazing, especially to me as an artist and designer.  Every one on the planet is unique, yet perfectly suited for each person's use.  Hands can crush and caress, create and destroy.  They can hold and maneuver the brush that created the Mona Lisa, they can carve a block of raw material into a famous sculpture, they can design and build amazing architecture and create the tools needed to do what they cannot do themselves.  So, it's no wonder that hands have inspired so many products out there now.  Here are a few that I've always thought were clever, showcasing the many talents of "the hand!"

Book end  hands:

Coat hook hand:

Hand shaped hand soap :

Hand shaped vase or candle holders:

Hand shaped bowl:

Cool Concepts from Lufdesign

Check out these "leaf ties" by Lufdesign.  The leaf tie is designed to be used in the same way your average cable tie is used, however, in the end it transforms your ugly snarl of cables into twisted vine.


Their website has some more beautiful photography of the product in use.


Such a cool, simple way to blend something so utilitarian with something beautiful and organic, and the proceeds go to benefit causes for ecology.

In addition to painting things neutral, with a house on the market, I'm also finding myself sweeping even more than I already do.  So, this fun product design idea caught my eye. I totally agree with the Core 77 blogger's skepticism of the chunky lip picking up anything other than uniformly crumpled pieces of clean, white paper.  But, the idea behind something that can double as a dustpan and a trash can via a simple 90 degree rotation is pretty neat. The only problem I see here though, besides the chunky lip, is if you already have garbage in the can and then want to sweep up some more, tipping it over would spill things back on the floor. It's pretty obvious (to my Photoshop user's eye anyway) that these are 3D computer models dropped into real background photos, so I'm guessing it hasn't been tested in the real world.  But, like I said, the concept behind it is very cool, and that's what "conceptual design" is for!   (via Core77)