designswarm thoughts

Since I’m involved with way too much technology, leading activities for tinker.it! in London, and helping out Tom with thinking about the future internet of things, I suppose it’s only normal I’m also spending time on technology-light projects as well.

I worked on to&fro(muji) with Dave last August and we submitted the idea to the Muji Award 02. The second edition of this international conference, the theme this year was “re”. Re-do, re-use, re-think etc…

We focused on reviving a lost art of letter writing. Taking the idea of RE-spond, RE-use and RE-think, we wanted to inject this activity with some of the components of it’s more modern counterpart: email.

The reversible envelope allows you to write the name of the sender and receiver once. As you write your letter on the perforated letter-paper provided, you can choose to tear the leftovers after you’re done (leaving no space for a reply if it’s a “dear john” kind of letter ) or not. Put your letter in and fold up the envelope and make sure your “to” will match the adress you’ve written down. Put a stamp on the right hand corner and send it.

The person who receives it gets to open the envelope and reply with the space you’ve left, deciding whether to keep your letter or not. He/she simply reverses the envelope (as the adress turns from “from” to “to”) includes her reply and sends it along.

Check out the Flickr set for this project.

Enjoy!