Headphones will do the trick when you’re streaming tunes for your ears only, but some tracks are just too good not to share. Ballo is a playful new design by the studio Bernhard | Burkard for OYO that looks like a mini-karaoke mic but functions like a quality speaker.

“For us the important point is the sphere as the shape of the device,” Thomas Burkard tells Co.Design. “A ball–let’s say a baseball–lays around most of the time in a nonspecific place: maybe on the floor or on a desk. Someone picks it up, holds it in his hand, puts it back.”

This speakers look simple, chic and easy to use for when you want to share your latest song obsession with everyone on the go. Get yours at the LFW Shop.

The Sweet Pot by Jeong Kim is an innovative plant pot design where the bottom basin acts as a growth patch for extra grass. Essentially the design takes care of excessive watering and drainage at the same time. More like the extra water acts like a feed for the grass patch at the bottom, hence no drains required.

The Flexita is a simple kitchen tool that makes food grating a whole lot easier. It transforms from two to three dimensions and is efficient to clean and store. It simply flattens when not in use and molds into a handy grip when needed. Crafted from harmonic steel, the metal that has a ‘memory’ and returns to its original flat shape after bending.

The handles and thin edge trim are made with polyethylene injected in a silicon mould, and these parts are recyclable. The steel is incredibly thin, at just 0.2 millimetres. The use of harmonic steel makes it possible to save 50% of the materials used for typical graters. The ease of washing the flat shape can also lead to water savings of up to 80% in comparison to typical graters. The minimal weight of the grater and its flat shape allows for efficient transportation.

Flexita is a 2012 red dot award: design concept winning entry.

Invisible Creature designed this beau­ti­ful set of archi­tec­tural nest­ing blocks for Toth Construction as a hol­i­day gift for their clients. The blocks are con­tained within a laser-etched wooden box and each set also includes hand­made let­ter­pressed cards as an accom­pa­ni­ment.

A pen case that blossoms like a flower into the shape of a heart. With beautiful contrast stitching and an elastic band to keep everything in its proper place, hold up to three of your favorite pens in this clever leather case.

Furniture creations aren’t typically the most creative pieces that get put into a home, but there are designers out there who are putting together furniture with a purpose. Aga Brzostek from Poland is proud to announce her Autumn/Winter chair that is a fashion based seat for the home.

Instead of having to drape your favorite blanket, this chair has one already built in. It’s ideal for the colder climate winters, and it’s removable cover allows for the user to remove and wash themselves as well as re-orient for the best blanket coverage. Each seat has a corner pocket for the necessities– books, small electronics, remotes, etc.

In an age when data is our most abundant resource, wearable technology offers new opportunities to interact with the urban landscape. frogs across the globe created eight concepts exploring the potential of wearable technology to create a more resilient and responsive urban experience by transforming the raw data of our daily lives.

Tree Voice collects data from a series of sensors—dectecting elements like motion, temperature, noise, and pollution—to display an augmented tree that “speaks” through light and iconic images. The interactive display provides anyone the opportunity to engage with the tree and receive updates on their local environment. Cloud connectivity feeds this data into a companion dashboard, aggregating data from neighborhoods and cities while also providing an overview of trees over time.

The online dashboard is a companion interface to the one found on the trees themselves. While you can interact with the tree to get local environment data, the dashboard is a way to get information about different neighborhoods as well as look at data over time. The dashboard allows people from around the city to view aggregated information about the environment from different trees. We imagine that people would be able to use this information to make decisions as basic as where to go workout in the evening or as substantial as where to buy a house. Eventually, we imagine the data could be used to give trees a voice in local government and be used for planning future cities that are data rich and environmentally intelligent.

Check out more design from FrogDesign Wearable Technology contest here. 

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.