Hidden Diamond Ring
Design: Tobias Wong and Phillipp Mohr
Client: The Diamond Project
Date: 2007
Add comment July 11th, 2010
Search Results for ‘tobias’
Bulletproof Quilted Duvet
Design: Tobias Wong (quilted by Peggy Konkol of Harbor Lights Quilting, Canada)
Client: Prototype
Date: 2004
Constructed with ballistic nylon (similar to a bullet proof vest), this nighttime companion will keep you safe from intruders (but not from your dreams!).
-Todd Falkowsky
Add comment March 24th, 2010
Coke Spoon #1 Pendant
Design: Tobias Wong and Ken Courtney (Ju$t Another Rich Kid)
Client: Citizen Citizen
Date: 2005
1 comment January 22nd, 2010
The Impostor Lecture
Design: Tobias Wong and Rama Chorpash
Client: Core77
Date: 2008
For his now infamous appearance at Core77′s Offsite event, Design, Wit, and the Creative Act, Tobias Wong sent an impostor (Rama Chorpash) in his place and sat in the audience to enjoy the show. To their credit, Wong and Chorpash rehearsed extensively, ensuring that both the lecture and Q&A were accurate and true to the spirit of Tobi’s practice. Treating the whole event as a legitimate project, the pair never broke character even during the subsequent post-event cocktail party.
Thoroughly in keeping with Wong’s irreverent design style and the shows theme of wit in design, this performance was the best of both worlds – offering viewers an informative, well composed lecture and an original work by the artist they’d come to see.
You can watch the whole lecture here – http://rsrce.ca/n/1z – then see the real thing at Harboufront Centre’s Innovators + Ideas lectures, Saturday, January 23 from 1-4pm. We’ve been assured that Tobias himself will deliver the lecture, but his collaboration with fellow lecturer Cynthia Hathaway promises a few surprises.
-Michael Erdmann
Add comment January 22nd, 2010
Fluid Functions Lille
Design: Cynthia Hathaway
Client: Droog Design and Carrefour Supermarkets
Manufacture: open source
Date: 2004
Working in collaboration with Droog Design and Carrefour Supermarkets of Lille France, Cynthia Hathaway created a series of quirky product designs utilizing only materials found on the supermarket’s shelves. In store displays provided recipes for each design, encouraging shoppers to pick up a few extra things and produce their own version at home. Shown here are Frans Hals Doilies, a fancy paper collar “for those who need to look formal but casual at the same time” and the Carrefour Body Hook “for items that you use constantly”.
From her work with Droog, Kessels Kramer and Motherbrand, to her many workshop/performance based exhibitions, Hathaway is a prolific collaborator. To see more of this work and hear from the designer herself, don’t miss her Innovators + Ideas lecture (along with Tobias Wong) at Harboufront Centre, Saturday, January 23 from 1-4pm
-Michael Erdmann
Add comment January 21st, 2010
UnPAPER
Design: Tobias Wong
Client: PAPER
Date: 2009
Rather than design an object to be disposed of, Wong decided to not make anything. Or, rather, to create a conceptual piece by “unmaking” something—a strategy that likewise reduces waste. Using a magazine as his medium, Wong collaborated with PAPER to “edit out” a 10-page section and make it available only online. Converting those pages from print to digital format (viewable at papermag.com) saved roughly 13 trees, decreasing PAPER’s footprint for the month. If every magazine followed this example, entire forests could be spared each issue.
1 comment November 10th, 2009
Coke Spoon #1 and #2
Design: Tobias Wong and Ken Courtney (Ju$t Another Rich Kid)
Client: Citizen Citizen
Date: 2005
These are everyday objects. We have all undoubtedly used them at some point, and the experience was banal enough that we probably left it at that. In this work, the designers have shown us a journey, a trip that exposes how the objects all around us have other lives and transformations. These simple things, have been repurposed in a most unusual way, and have done this transformation twice (that we know of).
The first shift was from their original intention of a pen cap and coffee stirrer. They went along the path of invention, eventually ending up as club and drug paraphernalia. A destination arrived at by complete design accident. Both objects had the right size and surface for a proper hit of cocaine, and became understood in a new way, by new users. This was an unintended purpose and evolution from the common to extraordinary that the original design had not embraced. A new culture had created a new need and was adapting existing tools to fit it. In the example of McDonald’s spoon, the “original plastic coffee stirrer was taken out of production when the fast food conglomerate discovered it was being used for drug purposes in the 1980’s. McDonald’s became uncomfortable with the affiliation when the coffee stirrers were constantly being used as Exhibit A’s in drug cases”.
The second shift, formally, of these objects was to become fetish and their original functions and interpretations removed completely, like Coke Spoon #1, which cannot even fit back onto the Bic pen. These new objects speak to indulgent luxury gone astray, golden objects of excess and whose purpose is shallow and bottomless.
Coke Spoon #1 and #2 serve a deep service for us, marking how humans are still capable of invention, and as registers of the journey that common objects embrace as they drift through our cultures. We are given the pleasure of the revealing, and the seeing of the hidden or magical lives that objects often possess. This work is all about the human imagination.
-Todd Falkowsky
2 comments May 13th, 2009
Boxcutter
Design: Tobias Wong
Client:
Date: 2001
This was the product design that blew Wong’s career wide open. Released after the September 11th attack, the statement was deep and painful to accept. The work also had a secondary theme that was relevant, designers and artists were crossing and blurring the lines between the silos, with work from Tobias Wong breaking new ground and new ways of seeing.
-Todd Falkowsky
Add comment October 30th, 2008
Citizen:citizen iPhone
Design: Tobias Wong
Client/Manufacturer: Citizen:citizen/Apple
Date: 2007
Well, if your iPhone is not exclusive enough, or precious enough, here is a hyper limited edition model (sold for $2000 a piece, edition of 50) that should help you correct this problem. Along with Wong’s and Citizen:citizen’s name on the lower edge, you will get a series of curated artworks for the screen, videos, and selected music, and as a bonus Citizen:citizen’s personal address book (with contacts like boutique design stores and cool shops). This all black model predated Apple’s launch of the black iPhone 3G in mid-2008.
-Todd Falkowsky
3 comments October 6th, 2008
Pipe Screen
Design: Tim E. Dubitsky, edited by Tobias Wong
Manufacturer: Part of the HauteGREEN exhibit
Date: 2008
How cheeky and what a trip! Perfect timing for the recent decriminalization in BC.
Dubitsky converts parts of the ultra-famous Garland lamp shade by Tord Boontje, and transforms them into screens for a creative series of dope smoking pipes. This action seriously pulls design down from the ivory tower, and literally places it into the hands of regular folks. But the actual message and signal is mixed and foggy. In the stripping of a recent design classic, the repurposing of its parts will be lost on most people, who will not recognize the objects actual source.
In the end, the irony of this product, a designers design, is that it will be an inside joke, that only the most design savvy and elite will understand and laugh at.
-Todd Falkowsky
Add comment October 3rd, 2008
Gold Pills
Desing: Tobias Wong, co -designed with Ju$t Another Rich Kid.
Client: Broken Off
Date: 2005
Wong is a master at social commentary and his design work routinely sparks dialogue and critique. Keeping with the spark, or better sparkle theme, these 24k gold leaf capsules are designed to add a little razzle dazzle to your poop. When eaten, they will literally indulge your ‘inner’ self and increase your self-worth, creating value where only waste existed. We heard rumours of Wong’s retirement from the design world, I hope that this is all part of the Wong PR machine. Long live Tobias Wong and his art/design interventions.
-Todd Falkowsky
Add comment June 28th, 2008
Wedding Ring
Design: Tobias Wong
Manufacturer: Tiffany
Date: 2006
Wong makes engagement rings that can kill you. The razor-sharp diamond point is set into the ring so it cannot get knocked out when you smash someone’s face in, and the edges of the ring are really soft so it won’t cut into your skin during the pounding. It’s romantic because it means, “Will you marry me?” but it also means that I can’t always be there to protect yo. So if some jerk won’t stop bothering you, puncture him with this. The diamond sharp edge will also cut skin down to the bone (with a minimum 1 karat stone – but the larger the better) or it may simply be used to tag hard surfaces, like cars and windows for S.O.S. messages or that last will and estimate when pen or paper aren’t conveniently around.
- James Tung
10 comments June 2nd, 2007
Unauthorised Burberry Buttons
Design: Tobias Wong
Client: Self Manufacture
Date: 1999
Tobias handed out hundreds of these pirate Burberry plaid pins at events around NYC. “A year later, in spring 2000, Burberry themselves caught sight of this ‘street trend’ and adapted them into their advertising campaign. The buttons were visible in fashion magazines, billboards, and catalogs – a knock-off of a knock-off”.
-Todd Falkowsky
1 comment May 9th, 2007
Ballistic Rose
Design: Tobias Wong
Manufacture: Self Manufacture, Toronto, ON
Date: 2006
This fashion accessory pulls fashion up from its shallow tradition and establishes a new high water mark. This rose is made from the same textiles as a bulletproof jacket (ballistic nylon) and is to worn over your heart to protect it in dangerous times. A designed object that genuinely protect the user in both a physical and spiritual sense.
-Todd Falkowsky
2 comments April 9th, 2007