From now on, you will get hand-numbered Cremacaffè stands!
Those who didn’t, and wish to get their own one, just drop us an email. You will receive a signed card with your products serial number – if you are among our Customers, you know how keen we are on cards and keeping in touch! It was upon suggestion of Renato, our client and designer friend, that we started looking into hand-numbering our pieces, as a way to involve more in the process our Customers receiving their Cremacaffè stands at home.
Renato got himself a KOLIBRI laptop & tablet stand as a Christmas self-gift. In handing it to him (for once, face to face, as we live in the same city) I was explaining how we keep on changing little details of the same design, each time we come up with a way of improving the product. Those are really small changes, nothing you could detect just by looking at a picture. But if we believe the product will be more fun to use that way, we go ahead and make the changes. This process originates few different series for every product. At the same time, there is so much craftsmanship in every product, that we thought the Client should partake of it, by knowing exactly which piece is being sent to him (in the picture: a KOSMO double tabletop stand series II, number of model shipped 0046, N for natural finish), hand written by the designer herself as a note to the Customer.
This is also a way to acknowledge how Customers get such an active role in the process. When Renato unwrapped his KOLIBRI, we were sitting at a bar with friends, and all of them started playing with the three pieces which KOLIBRI is made of. We do hand out simple instructions with every product, but I guess trying to figure it out yourself is much more fun! From my limited experience (as we sell most of our pieces online), people are totally unpredictable in pulling a wild new design off the three pieces they get. It is like a an introductory playing session which you are given for free, and as a surprise.
Eventually, Renato folded KOLIBRI in his jacket’s breast pocket, and left. The day after, my friend sent me a note, saying he had been using his new stand for the whole day at work and got to appreciate it really much (“KOLIBRI is fantastic!”). I am really fond of his work as a designer, hence I was very happy about this comment and had to put it here.
I love this playing aspect of our work, and how the stands design works with the Customer’s body, and gets fully appreciated with time. Hence, after a good talk with our friend, artist and curator Fabio Romano, we decided to go for hand-numbering of our designs. Hand-numbering has been used in many fields, from art, to spice boxes; on the other end, objects or processes where the receiver gets an active role through instructions have also been explored extensively, from art to mass production – think of Yoko Ono’ s art-by-instructions, or Ikea.
It is like sharing a recipe: there is an element of chance. Good news is, putting a Cremacaffè stand together is always going to work, and there are no screws needed.
Related articles:
• Improved Stands Antiskid System
• Heavy Hitters, we’ve got your back!