Raph, his projects, design & the Red Dot

Raphaël is the second member of the founders trio, and our lead designer. Meaning that the counter you have on your wall, in your local business, at home... he's the one behind the design. Such a smart idea can't come from basic minds, and Raph is our very personal artist.

Aside from his work among us, he takes some spare time to work on more personal projects. These projets are important to keep the design streak outside from the work he does for Smiirl (the website's new version design, the design of upcoming products, etc.). And one of his personal projects is the very reason I'm writing this article!

The project genesis appears at the end of his former school diploma at l'ENCI - Les Ateliers, which he proceeds to continue working on with the collaboration of Marion Pinaffo. L'ENCI - Les Ateliers usually encourages its students to apply to different contests with their own projects, and among these contests the Red Dot is simply the most prestigious award an industrial designer can receive. The projects are then distributed among categories (Raph's was in the "education" category). After that, a selection is made for the projects to enter the "best of the best" category. And that's from this selection process that Raph comes back home with the Red Dot in his pocket. If you want a nice and simple comparison, the Red Dot is the equivalent of an academy award for best leading actor, or getting the MVP title at the end of the playoffs. The biggest decoration for an industrial designer. And our homeboy Raph got it 😉

The project he won the Red Dot with is called  "Papier Machine", a workbook gathering a series of electronic games built with paper as the main raw materiel. The idea is to show children, through paper games, the magic behind electronic objects of our era. (All the games designed by Raph & Marion are detailed on the Red Dot webiste). A playful way to make children discover the electronic principles, with the big bet to re design the electronic at the matter scale, and with the help of paper and conductor ink. That's a bingo!

In the same idea, Raph has several personal projects, wether they're completed or on the go, which take him a lot of his spare time. Among these, one of his most completed :  Noisy Jelly. The idea is, with a chemist kit lookalike, to make our own musical jellies. F*ck yeah you read it well, musical jellies! Each mix of substances will create a different sound from the other ones, multiplying the possibilities. And if you wanna test this concept, you can go to the "Musée des arts décoratifs et de design de Bordeaux", the Noisy Jellies will there be tested from December 1st of 2016 till January 31st of 2017!

This article is kind of a launchpad one to a subject we will treat more and more in the future, being the design through Raph's projects or simply stuff we like in the design world. So don't hesitate to contact us if you find a project worth talking about, we could write an article about it with Raph's collab'!

Thanks for reading this article about the hidden life of our designer (he's kind of like batman you know), we hope it enabled you to learn a bit more about design and his own projects!

I'm out 😉