We love when clients come up with crafty gift ideas! Mark Simmons is a talented local designer whose work has been influenced by his time abroad. After doing a Master’s in sustainable design in Sweden and then spending some time working in Berlin, he moved to Canada to start Lumbürr Co – a lifestyle brand of handcrafted wooden products built for a day out in nature. The brand combines the natural woodsy aesthetics of Canadiana with a hint of Swedishness. Recently, he created a fun self-directed project where he redesigned a Scrabble board game with a nautical theme – perfect for a weekend at the cottage.
Originally the nautical board game was meant to be a one-off for a family member, but after a photography studio in Brooklyn saw some images of it online, Mark was asked to make 100 custom sets as a holiday present for their clients. As a result, Mark changed the theme from nautical to photography, and also redesign the game board to suit the laser cutting manufacturing process through little alterations such as making custom tile holders. For this second version, Mark also added a bit of colour to the designs. To make that happen we printed the colours directly onto the wood using digital colour printing. After the CMYK colour was done we laser cut the wood, Mark put the finished packaging and handmade details together.
The cool part was how easily production was scaled– whether he was making 1 or 100 sets the process stayed the same. Also in terms of aesthetic, laser cutting was a great way of making a custom project that balanced the DIY made-by-hand look with the quick turnaround time of mass production. The clients got a very novel gift with costs that were comparable to less interesting corporate gifts. The kits were such a hit that Mark told us he will be making even more redesigned games this year. To see more of Mark’s unique projects check out his awesome design portfolio.
Images Via: Mark Simmons