The TomTom letterbox is inspired by the Australian suburban landscape.
Sometimes objects gladden the heart and make you want them. That’s how you feel when you look at the range of products from Sydney design studio DesignByThem. The playful Posy vase immediately brings a smile to your lips; the LooseChange chair simply whispers “take me home.”
“One of the things that’s important to us is that the products are very functional and they’re not too serious – they have a bit of fun and character to them,” says DesignByThem co-founder Nicholas Karlovasitis. “Minimal, functional and fun would be the three words we’d use to describe it,” agrees co-founder Sarah Gibson.
And it seems that Sarah and Nick agree on most things. Life and business partners, they first met while studying industrial design at the University of Technology, Sydney. In 2006 they opened DesignByThem to act as a platform for their individual work and their collaborations with like-minded designers. “The first few years we have been designing our products and building up a range. It’s only recently that we’ve taken on other designers,” explains Sarah. “We have a couple of products on the way and the TomTom letterbox that we released last year was the first collaboration with another designer named Tommy Cehak.”
Another pillar of the DesignByThem philosophy is ecodesign. “We just treat it like safety,” says Nick. “Safety is always a consideration in a product and sustainability should be too. That’s how we approach the design process.”
The Butter Stool is created from one hundred percent recycled content.
For instance, the designers had a specific recycled material in mind when they began work on their most sought after product, the Butter Stool. “We saw that there was a multitude of stools out there that are recyclable but not made from recycled material in the first place,” says Sarah. “It’s not that hard to create something that’s recyclable, you just create something out of plastic and it’s recyclable. We wanted something more.”
The result is an innovative low stool that’s “created from 100 percent post-consumer recycled content, derived almost entirely from recycled milk containers.” The stool comes flat-packed (for low-impact shipping and storage) as a single piece of material, and once assembled its live hinges and reinforcements mean it is strong, durable, stackable and of course more than a little playful.
Finding inspiration at every turn and a growing league of supporters, DesignByThem is set to make more and more people smile with its designs. “If good design serves a function, and you’re happy with it, then life is easier,” says Nick. “And more enjoyable,” concludes Sarah with a laugh.
