Notes Design

Many Core77 regulars are probably familiar with Ponoko, the New Zealand-based mini-manufacturing community that takes user-submitted designs and laser-cuts them into products for sale in its online shop. The shop is several hundred items deep at this point--largely jewelry, though some desktop and flat-pack furniture is in there too--but one item in particular has been drawing attention lately. It's a coaster, laser cut from frosted acrylic to look like a jumbled bunch of serif text. It's a beautiful object, like many of its compatriots in the Ponokoshop, but is especially remarkable because of its designer, an 18-year-old graphic design student named Alan Chao, who took it from initial concept to first sale in a mere 24 days.

If you follow the link to the coasters themselves, though, you'll notice that they are emphatically Not For Sale. This is because they've since been bought by illustration and typography seller Veer, who will begin selling them next month, presumably in their Merch section, in the company of some other very hip designery shwag.

Alan's story is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, it's an unusually direct line between concept and product, and a prime example of the kind of technologically-enabled democratic design that Ponoko has been all about since day one.