Problem Solving
The front of this device had been redesigned by the industrial design team at Karten Design, however the layout for the back remained disorganized, and tooling had already been produced. I created some guidelines within these constraints to increase the ease of use and reduce the visual clutter. These guidelines outlined things like uniformity of metal grain and consistency of fastener finishes. The labels and colouring system allowed for single colour label printing to avoid cost restrictions.
The engineers at the client company were resistive to the original laser cut perforated panel, and instead asked for an option that used a CNC controlled singular punch. I performed a large exploration on this with the goal of maintaining design intent with the new process. To accomplish this, I wrote a program in C to generate point clouds driven by various mathematical functions. These point clouds, in turn, drove the placement of the individual hex perforations.
Faced with my first move into an apartment, the inability to afford proper furniture, and the possibility of another move in the near future, I designed and built this coffee table. Inspired by a Philip Van Leeuwen design, it requires no fasteners and can be quickly disassembled into a 3”x5¼“x48” bundle for easy transportation.