What are the design that will effluent people's lives in 2020? They may be good ideas for New Year gifts.
Each year, TIME highlights the inventions that are making the world better, smarter, and even more interesting, and the 2020 list solicits nominations from editors around the world, through an online application process, and evaluates each candidate on key factors such as originality, inventiveness, effectiveness, and think about what’s possible.
In the end, TIME selected 100 breakthrough inventions, including a smarter honeycomb, a greener toothpaste, and technology that could catalyze the COVID-19 vaccine, which is changing the way we live, work, play, and think.
This article is about THE BEST INVENTIONS OF 2020 - Design
1. High-End Lights for Less, Ammunition x Gantri 3D Printed Lights
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Lustworthy high-end lighting is often out of reach for the typical consumer. Leading design shop Ammunition and designer- lighting company Gantri have teamed up to change that, with a line of stunning table, floor and wall- mounted lights that cost as little as $150. They keep the price tag low, thanks to 3-D printing, which has long been used for mock-ups and prototyping but is rarely utilized for manufacturing high-end design objects. Victoria Slaker, vice president of industrial design at Ammunition, says the lights appeal to design-savvy customers interested in unique- looking objects. “They’re a little bit of a statement in that sense; they’re not purely functional.”
—Sanya Mansoor
2. A More Convenient Cup, Cuzen Matcha
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There’s a beautiful—if time-intensive—method of preparing traditional matcha, which involves whisking sieved ground tea with hot water using a heated whisk in a small bowl. Cuzen Matcha ($369) gives tea drinkers the high-art tea experience via a high-tech automated system. A grooved ceramic plate grinds premium tea leaves, dispenses them into a carafe and uses a magnetic mixer to create optimum foamy matcha. Sip it cold or at room temperature, add milk over ice for a matcha latte, or pour in hot water for a “matcha Americano.” Founder Eijiro Tsukada wants to help people drink matcha with the same ease that they drink coffee, and offers a similarly convenient replacement for plastic bottled matcha. Cuzen Matcha works with a tea farm in Japan’s Kagoshima prefecture to buy leaves that are only partially crushed—not ground—which makes for a smoother and fresher cuppa.
—Marjorie Korn
3. A Greener Running Shoe, Allbirds Tree Dasher
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Running shoes are incredibly wasteful, relying heavily on oil-based synthetics like plastic. The Allbirds Tree Dasher is made almost entirely from natural materials, with a carbon footprint estimated at almost a third lower than that of the average sneaker. But using eucalyptus, merino wool, castor-bean oil and sugarcane isn’t just about “stuffing nature into a performance shoe and hoping that it doesn’t degrade the performance,” says Jad Finck, Allbirds’ vice president of innovation and sustainability. Instead, these materials actually boost performance: the eucalyptus fibers are cooling, the wool regulates temperature, and the sugarcane midsole provides performance cushioning. And while the Tree Dasher is not meant for marathons, the shoes— priced at $125—are well suited for a weekend jog or a morning dash to the grocery store.
—Sanya Mansoor
It is worth mentioning that we also introduced allbirds on imageekhub before, and interested friends can click here to read.
