Laptop Stand
Story
The Desk Organizer set was the second entry in my Home Office collection. Developed in collaboration with rising talent Youie Cho, it was an attempt to articulate a simpler, more refined design vision. The products would do what they were spec’d to do - with flair, but without fuss.
In contrast to more maximalist projects, such as my gravity flower pot, the emphasis would no longer be on pushing the outer limit of 3D printing technology.
Pushing the envelope: a tensegrity structure composed of a single interconnected piece of plastic
Subtler gestures would reign supreme. Some surfaces (note the underside of the chalice and the topside of the tower) would have a soft, fuzzy effect, akin to a napped fabric.
Fuzz effect
Other surfaces would forefront the printed layer lines, nearly a millimeter thick apiece, akin to a tiny coil pot.
Layer lines should be celebrated, not hidden
These minute effects, ironically enough, presented the biggest challenge of the collection. Homing in on a pleasant fuzz took dozens of prototypes involving a delicate interplay between CAD geometry and slicer settings. Achieving thick layers required me to rebuild my printer’s extruder to force through more filament, plus figure out a new approach to slicing.
The final challenge was aesthetic: develop a coherent style, a consistent geometric vocabulary. This meant walls that are multiples of 4 mm thick, fillets in the shape of aerofoils, silhouettes arising from extruded rectangles and intersecting arcs, and various other ‘nouns’ and ‘verbs’.
So. Could these products have been produced using a traditional manufacturing method? Absolutely. Would this imbue each piece with a personality arising from the hand of the artist? Absolutely not.