Industrial design is the foundation of our society. I know that this sound hilarious and before getting mad at me, let’s take a deeper look at it. Why is this particular branch of design so important? Well, starting with the oldest times when we discovered how to make fire, humans tried to make their life comfortable by creating various tools. I will be a little bit of topic but I think that those ancient tools are the first example of minimalist design. Now let’s return to our topic; as they started to create more and more tools, especially for activities such as agriculture, they became interested on how to refine the tools in order to be efficient. This, in my opinion is the first sign of industrial design.

As our society evolved, we are constantly in the pursuit of creating new objects or fine tuning older ones in order to fit our needs. Sure thing, the difference between now and then is that today, industrial design is mostly observed in optimization and “beautification”; we are no longer obliged by the nature to create life-depending tools.

Industrial design is a field that I love because I’m curious to see the imagination of some very talented artists at play. Thankfully, many extremely innovative objects that we take today for granted are the result of industrial design. One of the most common one is your smartphone, and the iPhone in particular.

In this article you can see a collection of 20 absolutely superb examples of industrial design which I’m sure that you will love.

A watch for the blind – Eone Timepieces

Federal Triangle Subway station – Washington DC

Carbon Fiber Bathtub

Alien Abduction Lamp

The Sound Burger: A Beautifully Simple Portable Record Player

A chiropractor’s outdoor gas lamp

Elizabeth Perez’ design for Fahrenheit 451 book cover

KINODAI charging stand

Electronic Luggage Tag

A Handblown Dual Beer Glass That Lets You Enjoy Two Ales At Once. Matthew Cummings

Concave bookcase. Simon Pengelly

BellowChair – children’s chair made by Shrestha Kedia

Garden and house – Tokyo. Ryue Nishizawa

Megaphone and Megaphonemini

Honey Packaging

Minimal iPhone dock that sits on Apple iMac stand

USB humidifier that sits on top of a water bottle by Umbra

Spiral stairs of the Vatican Museums, designed by Giuseppe Momo in 1932

Boa Wine Decanter

Sensory Deprivation Chamber