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In the 90s, Dyson transformed the way we clean our homes by launching the most powerful vacuum cleaner the world had ever seenone that used a cyclone, rather than suction, to extract dust. Three decades later, Dyson has incorporated this same technology into almost every kind of vacuum you could imagine, from robots to heavy-duty mops. Today, Dyson adds a new vacuum to its portfolio: One focused specifically on cars. Priced at $280, it’s three or four times more expensive than similar handheld vacuums by brands like Shark or Bissell, but it’s one of the most affordable products within Dyson’s range. The vacuum comes with three tools designed specifically for cleaning car seats and mats: one for crevices, one with a brush to lift dirt, and one that has a wider nozzle. [Photo: Dyson] Dyson, which generated $8.8 billion in revenue in 2023, is now pouring a lot of capital into research and development. In 2017, it launched a private university in the U.K. called the Dyson Institute of Engineering and Technology. Students can earn a bachelor of engineering degree, while working at Dyson for three days a week, receiving a salary, and having all their tuition fees paid. Tim Hare, a design and development engineer, graduated from the Dyson Institute and moved to Malaysia, where the company has headquarters, and specializes in floor care. He worked on this particular vacuum and explained the challenges around creating a car-specific tool. Our motors are so powerful, you cannot charge them in your car, he says. So, they need to have enough battery life to last a trip. In the end, Hare and his team managed to create a vacuum that lasts 50 minutes, which is long enough to clean a mid-sized car several times before it needs to be charged. But it also generates very powerful suction with a motor that spins at up to 110,000 revolutions per minute (rpm). The company says this makes it the most powerful of any handheld vacuum on the market. (Other handheld Dyson vacuum motors spin at 105,000 rpm, and have a battery life of half the time.) [Photo: Dyson] Hare also says that ergonomics were a consideration. The team focused on making this device lightweight; it’s just a few pounds depending on which attachments you use. The motor and the battery are placed close to the handle to make it easy to balance and manipulate. But like with other Dyson productsincluding its hairdryersengineers have been focused on miniaturizing components of the motor to make it as light as possible. We’re try to balance all these competing priorities, he says. We want to create a very powerful motor that is lightweight and can last a long time on a single battery charge. Creating highly specific vacuum cleaners is part of Dyson’s broader strategy. Rather than creating one-size-fits-all tools, it wants to create devices tailored to families with pets, those who need heavy-duty cleaning in big houses, and now, those who are looking specifically for a cleaning tool for their car. We now have this technology platform around our vacuums, Hare says. We can use it to customize it to different products that better suit specific needs.
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E-Commerce
Dried paint was becoming a problem for Billie Asmus. An entrepreneur who was running a small furniture refinishing company from her basement studio, she kept having to toss out paint trays that were caked with dried paint. I looked over at my garbage can and it was just filled with plastic paint dry liners. And I was like, oh my gosh, there seriously has to be a better way. Something that’s more sustainable, something with a lid, something that’s reusable, she says. It was 2021. She searched in all the typical places online for a product that could cut down her modest business’s immodest waste stream. Nothing showed up, she says. That sent me down this huge rabbit hole of seeing if anything was even out there, or how I could make something like this exist. Billie Asmus [Photo: Repaint Studios] And that’s how Asmus created a silicone-based paint tray system that is endlessly reusable, capable of keeping paint fresh for weeks, and cleanable by simply peeling off pain after it’s dried. The Repaint Tray is a clever reinvention of a utilitarian tool. It could be the last paint tray some painters ever need to buy. The idea for the tray was spurred by a speed bump Asmus hit while renovating her home. She was painting over an unfortunate orange color scheme in the bathroom and trying to get the new shade as close to the shower’s edge as possible. Her clean paint job was foiled by a line of silicone caulking. Paint would not adhere to it no matter how much you tried, she says.The experience stuck in her mind, and jumped out when she was looking at just how many paint trays she was going through in her furniture refinishing work. Silicone, she figured, could be the basis for a better, reusable tray. With $50 worth of medical grade silicone and some foam board she bought at a dollar store, she made her first mockup. The concept worked, and she saw the inkling of a business. [Photo: Repaint Studios] Asmus then enrolled in an entrepreneurship course, and spent a year interviewing DIYers, manufacturers, and business people to better understand the market. She also refined her prototype to a familiar metal paint tray, a bright green silicone liner that fits snugly inside it, and a matching lid that creates and airtight seal over the top. By January 2023, she had enough momentum and a solid enough design to approach manufacturers. That fall she had a preproduction model in hand that is capable of being used with water-, acrylic, and latex-based paints, but not oil-based paints or varnishes. [Photo: Repaint Studios] That was enough to get her accepted into a product pitch competition run by the home improvement chain Lowe’s. Her reusable paint tray concept won the competition’s paint category, and she got her first official order from the national retailer. We launched February 1 of 2024, and I ordered the minimum amount of trays I could possibly get, which was 5,000 units, she says. I ended up selling out within four months. A year later, more that 10,000 Repaint Trays have been sold, including in more than 400 Lowe’s stores, as well as through Asmus’s website. DIYers are the main market for the tray system, but Asmus says a fair number of commercial painters are also using it. Their experience reusing the tray over and over again has been validating, she says. It may also be opening a door for her business to expand. The biggest thing I hear from them that they want something bigger, she says. We are already working on developing new products.
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E-Commerce
The Doomsday Clock is perhaps the most sobering graphic symbol ever created: a quarter of a clock with four big dots to mark the countdown to midnight, an euphemism for the end of world You might think that the significance of a clock that counts down the moments until humanitys annihilation cant be understated, yet its physical form has always been lightweight compared to its intent. For 78 years, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists have presented a new tic-tock of doom in a press conference, informing the public of the latest doom countdown based on the events of the past year. Each year, they accompanied the news with a physical representation of the clock that is not much of a clock at all. Rather, it’s a flimsy panel with paper hands and dots stuck to it. The occasion needed a much stronger visual, one that would attract the attention of photo editors everywhere. That happened last week, when a new clock appeared one tic closer to apocalypse: It is 89 seconds to midnight. [Image: courtesy Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists] The physical clock that they were using was basically like a whiteboard, says Juan Noguera, Assistant Professor of Industrial Design at the Rochester Institute of Technology. They would unveil it by pulling this black cloth and it was just a wobbly setup, with stuff almost falling off it. Together with Tom Weiss, Associate Department Head at the Rhode Island School of Design and founder of Altimeter Design Group, Noguera redesigned the physical clock in 2024. It came at the request of Rachel Bronson, then the President and CEO of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Bronson wanted something more iconic; something that would capture the gravity of the clock’s message. The physical clock had to be as powerful as the symbol it represents; it need to command the attention of photographers and journalists who could echo the message of this timepiece of doom. The bulletins June 1947 cover page [Image: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists] Tic-toc to apocalypse American artist Martyl Suzanne Langsdorf conceived of the very first Doomsday Clock back in 1947. It followed the aesthetic of public clocks of that era. It featured a minimalistic large face with smaller dots and a white minute hand that was much thinner than the black hour hand, which was anchored at 12. That design served as a stark reminder of nuclear danger for nearly 80 years, becoming a universally recognized symbol of existential threat. The clock’s hand has moved closer to and further from midnight over the years, reflecting the changing global landscape of nuclear risk and climate change. As things got really grim during the worst years of the Cold War, the clock design went from showing only the second half hour of a face to showing just the quarter, Noguera says. It never went back past the 45 minute mark again. The 2017 iteration [Image: Pentagram] In 2017, design studio Pentagram updated the Doomsday Clock’s graphic symbol, modernizing its look while maintaining its iconic essence. I believe [Pentagram] hastily produced a physical version of it that had been used by the bulletin in events since then, Noguera says. The Pentagram symbol was strong then and now, however, and it served as the foundation for Noguera and Weiss’s design of the physical clock from the very beginning of the process. Noguera and Weiss started with traditional sketches, which were then brought to life using a generative AI tool called Vizcom that lets designers add color, texture, and lighting to their sketches. The front of the physical clock is a flat surface that features the graphic symbol designed by Pentagram. Under it, Noguera and Weis introduced two lines of text that spell out the time in English. According to Noguera, this element turned out to be a big success, as most of the photographers focused on it during the presentation. The typography on the clock face uses the Bulletin’s specific Helvetica subvariant, ensuring consistency with their brand identity. On the back of the clock theres the logo of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set over a gently curved surface that gets thinner towards the top. Their design also included a pedestal. At the beginning they played with the idea of making the entire thing a large monolith but ultimately decided to separate the two pieces. Leaving the face as its own object meant Bulletin could more easily bring the two parts around the world to different events. It also allowed for a unique aesthetic. We wanted that dichotomy of the handmade traditional and the 3D printed object, Noguera says. A deliberate juxtaposition of modern technology and traditional craftsmanship. [Image: courtesy Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists] A star is born Once they locked this design, they created CAD models for manufacturing. The clock was 3D printed in a single piece that’s 33 inches tall. Embedded within the clock face are close to 100 magnets that hold the hands and the interchangeable numbers and text, which allows the date and text to be easily updated. This clock rests on a handcrafted wooden pedestal. The pedestal for the clock itself is completely handmade, intentionally, very traditionally, Noguera says. The legs of the pedestal were hand-turned, and the walls were steam-bent. The entire piece is an imposing 6.5 feet tall. The new Doomsday Clock made its debut at the Bulletin’s 2025 press conference on January 28, where it was the star. Its striking design and prominent display ensured that the clock’s message was front and center in media coverage, Noguera told me with satisfaction: Instead of seeing some people talking on the photos like every other year before, now you see the clock featured in every single shot.
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E-Commerce
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