Tangible Letters are letters that fold into different forms to deliver additional meaning and value. It is an idea that recognizes the qualities of the slow movement and intends to re-shift purposes to create new meanings. This idea incorporates many aspects of the slow movement like enhancing the experience, taking time to enjoy and resisting fast-culture.

The slow movement was born from the slow food movement, which was a cultural shift that sought to resist fast food and preserve cultural cuisine. This was a response to the shift to fast culture, where our desires for instant gratification take precedence and leads to unnecessary consumerism and waste. The slow movement entices people to step back and enjoy the quality of life instead of attempting to do as much as possible in order to live it to the fullest.

Postage mail has been nearly replaced by the ease and speed of Emails. Letters however, have a unique “hand-crafted” feel that enhances its value to both the sender and the recipient. Both parties are imbued with a strong sense of appreciation for one another from this. This would be where we explore possible ideas to expand on the quality of the experience.

Upon receiving the mail, the recipient can fold the letter like origami, giving it new form and meaning. The shape can then be “recognized” by a computer which in turn obtains additional content from the sender, be it a video or some photos.

In our prototype, we embedded resistors of varying resistance onto the paper. And thus each paper would have a unique resistor. When the resistor comes into contact with the contact plates of the reader, the we are able to identify which letter it is and load the appropriate content.

This was the final project for IAT230: Design for Digital Environments. Working in teams, our task was to refresh an icon of modern design by Enzo Mari.

Mari defined his work as an “elaborated or constructed in a way that corresponds entirely to the purpose or function“. The Timor Calendar, a perpetual desk calendar would be a statement to that. Mari brought together beautiful form and solid function together in this piece, creating something so sustainable that the calendar has been in production since 1967. Time is endless. Our task was to come up with something as comparable.

Problem Statement
In addition to the efficiency and accuracy of ubiquitous electronic calendars, the calendar we intended to design should provide elegant simplicity and joy-of-use to users with its unique style which reflects both the users’ social status and personal aesthetic value.

The first revision intended to introduce affordances into the product while continuing to keep the virtues of Mari’s concepts for modern design. Here, the user will still enjoy the experience of manually flipping dates, while the enlarged base serves as a paper tray to hold documents. I also added extra spacing below the dates as a way to let users stick notes for all those important reminders. Out of the three revisions for the first phase of the project, we were told to move on with this.

Mari drew inspiration for the Timor Calendar’s form from railway traffic signals when he was a kid. I figured that this would be a solid next step for this project, to look for something that will inspire the form of our revised calendar. We found inspiration in the slow and fragile snail and decided that it would be the perfect metaphor to lead our design.

Use of the golden ratio helps refine the ’snail’ inspired form. The snail would be a rough representation of where we stand against time, slow in the race against time. And thus the calendar intends to remind users that we must use this precious commodity to the best of our abilities.

A rendering of the our revised Timor calendar, notice how we kept the paper tray and used the ‘head’ of the snail as a letter holder. We figured that if it’s going to take up some space on someone’s desk, it must be quite useful. And with its overly simplified form, we were able to quickly deploy a “paper” prototype…

SECRETSERVICE is a field agent who protects both the user and the drink. He was designed in response to an invitation to participate in the PaperJoes project, which aimed to sell coffee and let its customers choose their own packaging. The project was originally inspired by the designer toys produced by KidRobot, StrangeCo and the like and finally drew from many of the cute paper models found online.

I had previously helped develop the idea and template for Derek who ran the project. Starting with a milk carton concept and working our way towards a more flexible cup, or square-cup. The end result was a paper model that was relatively easy to skin, cut, and put together.

Inspiration for my character, or Paper Joe, came from many sources. I started with the idea to represent highly skilled knowledge workers to represent what we will become, and wanted to inject a feel of professionalism into my character. And then I added Horatio from CSI: Miami into the mix, resulting in SECRETSERVICE. Surprisingly, he was the quickest to sell out during the event, probably because he was a no-nonsense choice.