uneo, 2019
In today’s globalized world people from various origins and cultures live together. Nevertheless, we usually do not know much about the traditions and expectations of different countries. We often miss to learn from each other or get inspired by alternative views. Our society could strongly benefit from cultural diversity in numerous sectors. One of them is design. For my bachelor thesis I decided to deal with aesthetic preferences and furniture designs of different cultures and try to find out which possibilities they still offer nowadays.
Within the scope of my project, I developed a modular system that allows the design of individual stools. It includes eight leg modules and five seat modules which are inspired by seating furniture from all over the world. There are modules having Asian stools as their example, some that are based on African aesthetics or a few that make use of typical oriental shapes. Within the system all modules can be combined arbitrary through a simple screw thread. Thereby, forty different pieces are feasible. With these designs I wanted to illustrate how well completely different views might fit together and that it is possible to find surprising similarities in apparently opposite things. Consequently, the many possible stool combinations represent the harmonious interplay of different cultures in a very subtle way.
Even though the combinations look very diverse, I paid attention to an overall matching impression. I wanted to achieve an elegant look of high quality that seems very contemporary. The stools should be imaginable in modern living rooms giving the place an extraordinary touch. With the corporate identity for my brand I tried to embody similar values. I decided to use the name “uneo“ because it alludes to three aspects being essential for my project: unity, uniqueness and novelty. The corporate design approach I came up with makes use of the stools’ extraordinary shapes and is therefore very close to the actual products: I transferred the furniture’s appearance into two dimensional space and received distinctive geometrical shapes. Depending on the different media, I was able to exploit these elements in various ways, play around with them or create interesting combinations and patterns. During the process, I established the brand’s stationary, the furniture’s packaging, various advertising material and a website as well as a short animation introducing the concept.
