By Gearhungry

If your job, hobbies or extreme clumsiness make big, bulky protective iPhone cases a must, you've got to check out LunaTik's TAKTIK. MNML's Scott Wilson, the immensely successful creator of the TikTok + Lunatik and the Touch Pen, is now on his third Kickstarter project, with current pledges tripling the original $150k funding goal with a week and a half to go. Can't say we're all that surprised.

The TAKTIK's bold, faceted shape is a loose adaptation of Wilson's 2004 (before Kickstarter was a glimmer in Yancey's eye) speculative design project for WIRED Magazine. Enlisted to conceptualize "device singularity in 2014," Wilson and two colleagues dreamt up the Nike EyeD, a wearable gadget that kept tabs on one's fitness parameters and spoke wirelessly to other devices, which was essentially a fusion of things nonexistent at the time: the FuelBand + large-screen smartphone. (And lest his collaborators go uncredited, Joe Kosinski went on to direct 2010's Tron Legacy and Stefan Andrén was the design director for Nike+ at launch.)

While that original concept was largely unrestricted by current technical and material limitations—i.e. component size, weight and thickness—Wilson has astutely translated the design language into an outboard case to complement the technological prowess of the wizards in Cupertino. Insofar as good design rarely lives up to functionality, Wilson and his team at MNML have once again achieved their distinctive aesthetic with TAKTIK, which is loaded up on both.

The omnipresent phone-killer—a.k.a. water—won't pose much of a threat either (at least not in small to moderate quantities): Gore hydrophobic membranes shield the speakers and mic; a protector seals the 30-pin port; a Panerai-inspired, machined aluminium gasket covers the headphone port; and six vapor-deposition coated steel bolts seal the case together. Oh, and cough up 25 more bones to add an extra layer of protection in the form of a Gorilla Glass lens on top of your iPhone's, um, Gorilla Glass screen.

The beauty of TAKTIK, though, is the fusion of this impressive list of features with 1) aesthetics (who are you kidding, your Defender never looked this good) and 2) virtually undisturbed functionality. Let's elaborate slightly on the latter: there's flap access to the charging and headphone ports, the camera and flash are unobstructed and the silence switch—reminiscent of a push-through gun safety—is actually even simpler to flip than that of a stock iPhone. An optional bike mount rounds out the upgrade list.

Visit TAKTIK's Kickstarter page to read more and to pledge.