OVERVIEW
The Precision Mobile is a modular kinetic sculpture, made of solid brass and stainless steel. This piece is purposefully designed for high-lofted residential ceilings, hotels, restaurants, and creative agencies. It brings gentle movement and life to the spaces we live, work, and play.
PACKAGING
Our unique packaging is a system that allows any consumer to easily install and assemble our pre-balanced mobile. We decided early on to use a tube instead of a standard box to condense the sculpture as much as possible and make it virtually indestructible for shipping. This forced us to be more creative and experimental in our design approach – leading to a packaging delivery system that is not only more unified with the product as a whole, but is a piece of sculpture in itself.
We earnestly refer to this design as the “tube inside a tube inside a tube”.
We started by having 55″ double-walled custom cardboard tubes manufactured by Yazoo Mills in Pennsylvania. With a desire to hint at what was inside this tube to the consumer, we landed on having the illustrated outer design and typography be very clean and simple as well as an exact representation of the sculptural components inside. This outer wrap was hand screen printed with a 5ft custom screen and then glue-mounted to the tube.
We try to incorporate simple interaction into all our packaging design, first and foremost to simplify any necessary assembly, but also to form a playful connection with the consumer.
You start the unboxing by pulling off the main paper zipper, taking the tube’s lid off and revealing the arrowhead wing tips inside. These are positioned radially within a custom cardboard assembly that we refer to as the crown – this design decision was for spacial efficiency but also to create this wonderful sculptural element at first sight.
From there, you pull the entire assembly out of the tube with the nylon cord located in the center of the crown assembly. As the sculpture is pulled out, a smaller secondary tube is located underneath the wing tips, in the center of the radially positioned steel arms. This tube has a paper zipper as well, establishing concord and a familiarity with the exterior tube interaction.
Once the second paper zipper has been removed, the smallest tube slides out to reveal the component tray along with an illustrated instructional manual. The hanging wires, allen wrenches, and ceiling mount are displayed here simply and elegantly. From here, the consumer can easily assemble the mobile and hang it within their space.
With each of these carefully thought out details, we have created a piece of packaging that is protective, considerate, and memorable.
Art Director/Designer: Matthew Tait, Audrey Elkus
Photography: Aaron Jones
Printer: Ocelot Print Shop – Detroit, MI
Manufacturer: Paper tubes: Yazoo Mills – New Oxford, PA, Interior structure manufacturing, assembly, and finishing: TAIT Design Co. – Detroit, MI
Designed by TAIT Design Co.
Country: United States
