When it comes to containers for foodstuffs, form only follows function to a certain extent. A piece of Tupperware isn’t designed to hold any one thing in particular–it works for whatever you can fit inside it. But as these pieces by Benjamin Hubert show us, when you design a vessel with a particular job in mind, the results can be far more beautiful (if not quite as stackable) as a plain old box.

The London-based designer created the four jars for the Danish brand Menu. All are made out of terracotta and sport black rubber lids, but each was made with a specific function in mind:

There’s a tall one with a wide mouth, designed to let chefs grab a handful of spaghetti or grissini without lifting the pot itself. There’s a shorter pot topped by a diagonal sail, intended to facilitate the dispensing of smaller pastas and grains. Another, smaller pot has a long, skinny neck, designed to allow for a more controlled pour of seeds, say, or grains. And a stout cookie jar rounds out the set. Its irregular bottom causes it to lean to one side, with the intention that it can be twisted and turned by those sitting around a table for easy access and sharing of sweets.

The pots launched at Maison & Objet in Paris last month and will be available soon through Menu’s site.

A New York based designer,Hlynur Atlason, has designed Yorky – a versatile light that inhabits a dimension between the familiar and the foreign.

While its sculptural and whimsical shape evokes memories of an animal-like creature, Yorky is a very versatile and practical light that can sit or lay on a table at different angles to illuminate varied surfaces or hang from its leash on a wall. Whether a reflector bulb, an energy saving fluorescent or a classic Edison bulb, Yorkie’s wide conical shape accommodates a variety of bulbs for different applications. “Yorky’s purpose is beholden to its’ owner: As a companion in everyday adventures, a fixture on a wall or sitting on a shelf with discipline and poise.” Made of silicone, Yorky is safe, flexible, and comes in three playful colors: white, yellow and pink.

“The paltry few bucks I spent on this magnetic knife rack, from a local restaurant supply store, was well worth it. Having my most commonly-used machine repair tools easily identified, easily accessible, and most importantly wall-mounted above the workbench that can get out-of-control cluttered with machine parts, is a vast improvement over hunting and digging.”

Chicago-based product design firm MESH (formerly known as TT Design Labs) wants to do the same for your everyday carry and/or desktop items. Their JustMount is a little round-edged magnetic box that mounts to your wall and holds whatever’s got metal in it. For your phone, there’s a little buy-in required—you’d need to pick up their TidyTilt magnetized case if you want to hang your iPhone—but for anything else that’s got metal in it, you might find the JustMount handy for keeping things off of cluttered horizontal surfaces.

When looking at the problem of bird populations shrinking in urban areas due to loss of habitat, Nethlerlands-based product designer Klaas Kuiken was struck with the idea of improving a common bird home: residential roofs. In consultation with the Vogelbescherming (the Dutch bird association) Kuiken designed a ceramic birdhouse that adheres to the ubiquitous roof tiles found throughout the country. The house contains a removable basket to aid in maintenance after mating season and is made with materials that can resist extreme cold in the winter. First designed in 2009 the birdhouses have finally gone into production and 100 are now available for sale.

Fixed-end shelving defines the boundaries for your books with no flexibility – bookends on longer shelves, however, always feel somehow additive, sometimes fall over when moved (or stationary), and may not mingle well with your collection. There had to be a middle path – and here it is.

From creators Colleen & Eric, “Your books are no longer in danger of toppling over. Over-sized wing-nut allows bookend to slide into place and be secured wherever it’s needed. Offered in Beech, Walnut and Oak. Water based stain and all natural Shellac finish. Aluminum cube and wingnut powder-coated.”  Right now it remains a prototype, but unlike many more far-fetched and high-tech concepts, this one is a very reachable reality for the designers if there is enough interest in their work. You can vote for the Shelf to get into production here.

The Almond, a router with a small touch screen that achieved significant success on Amazon thanks to a decent price point and excellent reviews, has a successor from parent company Securifi hitting Kickstarter soon. The Almond+comes with 802.11ac support, boasts a 2.8-inch touchscreen, and can be set up without even connecting to a PC. It’s the perfect router for a mobile-first generation, and the new version also builds in a smart-home hub that’s compatible with both Zigbee and Z-Wave standards.

The Almond+ includes a small and attractive case that can be wall-mounted easily. Home automation functions can be controlled either from the screen on the router itself or from companion iOS and Android apps, allowing you to connect to the router and access all your remote home management functions in the same place, even from a cellular connection. It’s a natural addition to a device that any home these days pretty much has anyway; the router is often a passive device that users install and then don’t think about again until it fails. But adding smart home features means it’ll actually contribute a lot more use value to a household.

Also it can be wall mounted or table mounted. In the wall mount position you can hide those annoying cables completely out of sight, thanks to its innovative recessed connector design. Surprisingly there isn’t a single other router that can do this today. Almond + is already pledging on Kickstarter and you can get a black one for only $99.

In the meantime you can get the Almond at the LFW Shop.

The NanoLight, a new Kickstarter-funded 12-watt LED bulb, eschews the fancy-schmancy smart capabilities that are all the rage and instead focuses on groundbreaking energy savings.

The 100-watt replacement bulb is so efficient — it produces over 1600 lumens while consuming only 12 watts — that its creators are hailing it as the “the World’s Most Efficient Light Bulb.” And as for the price point? At $45, it isn’t all that shabby either.

The first thing you’ll notice about the NanoLight is its somewhat alien geometric form that’s decidedly “a bit funky” as SmartPlanet puts it. What you’re seeing is a printed circuit board (PCB) that’s been folded into a light bulb-ish shape and mounted with electrical components. It’s not the prettiest thing but that’s obviously besides the point.

The big deal here is that the NanoLight’s developers — a San Diego-based trio composed of Gimmy Chu, Christian Yan, and Tom Rodigner — have created a heat sink-free bulb (a rarity) that serves as a 100- or 75-watt replacement (again, a rarity in the world of LEDs) while offering the benefits of standard incandescent bulbs such as instant-on capabilities and omnidirectionality that aren’t normally found in LED or CFL bulbs. The lifespan of both the 10-watt NanoLight and the signature 12-watt model is between 25 and 30 years based on usage of 3 hours per day.

The Energy Seed LED halo shaped lamp uses the little remaining bits of juice left after the battery is otherwise unusable, and illuminates itself.

The design includes slots for the public to dispose of all shapes and sizes of commonly disposed batteries and scrounges just two volts to illuminate an LED. Most garbage batteries have just under this amount at their point of expiration, so two AAs combined for instance is usually enough to get the lamp lit.

Created by Sungwoo Park and Sunhee Kim the use of the Energy Seed means“Trashed batteries can be born again as a seed to blossom light.”

At the end of the day the batteries will lose all useful charge, they will again be waste, and need to be recycled properly. The Energy Tree does squeeze some useful life out of their toxic little bodies before the bitter end however!