With a shared love of merging design and technology, industrial designers, Yoo-Kyung Shin and Hanhsi Chen pondered over the ultimate question: What will happen if technology becomes invisible?

The result: these elegant, stylish and almost invisible USB sticks.

Better known as Empty Memory, these sticks come in two collections – Structure and Transparent. While Structure boasts an edgy and sleek stainless steel frame, Transparent features a lighter, ethereal block of acrylic. Each design contains a physical emptiness in its sculptural form – a metaphor for space waiting to be filled with data.

What a beautiful piece of technology!

Click here to see more.

The MegaPhone amplifier by Italian design firm en&is is a gorgeous example of old mixed with new technology.

The handmade ceramic form is designed to hold an iPhone and then with natural acoustics amplify and optimise the sound for the best output. No batteries needed! The amplifier sits on a wooden frame that allows the object to float off the table and decrease the vibration of the object.

It’s perfect for listening to music without headphones and whilst not in use is an intriguing sculptural form. Not surprising the duo who created it, Enrico Bosa and Isabella Lovero, have a history in interior and jewellery design.

http://enandis.com/

You’re on holiday, roaming in an unfamiliar but beautiful city, you’ve gone astray and you need your map. You search everywhere for it only to realise you have either misplaced it or have wrinkled and abused it so much you have thrown it away.

Well, this vexing scene could have been avoided if you had a Crumpled City Map designed by Milan based industrial designer, Emanuele Pizzolorusso. These maps are soft, light, waterproof and can be easily crumpled and thrown into its own carry pouch. These maps are now available for most major cities around the world including our very own Sydney (and soon to come Melbourne!) Along with the usual sightseeing spots, which are all listed, each map also provides a selection of 10 soul-sights selected to thrill visitors. Such a brilliant idea for those planning to travel light!

www.pizzolorusso.com/

People who own pets are all too familiar with the fascination cats have for cardboard boxes. Loyal Luxe, a french company founded by industrial designers Maud Beauchamp and Marie-Pier Guilmain have put a designer spin on this notion, creating cat cabins and teepees purely out of corrugated cardboard. Delivered flat, it comes with interchangeable ornaments that can be placed on the front of kitty's home from a moose head, dream catcher, fish, tomahawk and many more. What a great, environmentally friendly way to spoil our fluffy friends.

Visit Loyal Luxe to see video footage of the designs in action.

Earlier this year, Electrolux embarked on the "Vac from the Sea" initiative to raise awareness of the huge amount of plastic waste in our seas, and the need to recycle plastics.

Teams were sent to collect some of this pollution and then transform it into an interesting and quite attractive series of 5 vacuums, each one representing a particular body of water, namely the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans as well as the Mediterranean, Baltic and North Seas. For now, it's just these 5 that will be auctioned off to raise funds for more research into this initiative, but we can't wait to see what else will be developed for this really great and important project!