With all the undoubted merits of modern office equipment, there are significant drawbacks. Printers can be called one of the worst irritants: they are noisy, vibrating and generally take up too much space. And while all electronics have a general trend toward smaller footprint, it seems that printers are avoiding this trend.

Korean designer Yang Jae Wook presented a new conpect for the printer he called “Circle”. The concept offers an alternative solution to make printers more elegant using current technology. When you first look at this device, nothing tells you it’s a printer – it looks more like a humidifier or even a kettle. Nevertheless, the machine resolves at least one problem of modern printing devices: it is compact and very appealing.

Paper is loaded from the upper end Circle, and to open the tray, you need to pop open the semiring-shaped lid. The paper loading slot is very thin, so at a time you can insert two or three pages maximum. A sheet of paper passes around the perimeter of the device and pops out of a skewed pocket, which replaces the printer output tray. This is an interesting solution, but at the level of the concept it’s difficult to say whether the project addresses the two remaining problems of modern printers: noise and vibration.