PRODUCT DESIGN PORTFOLIO
Hello! As a designer I’m especially interested in making products that are closer to the human heart. Wether it be hardcore industrial - or poetic conceptual design, I always try to infuse a human quality into my work. During my years in different design schools, I have developed a strong skillset, especially in CAD-modelling and physical prototyping, which I often use to complement each other and drive my formgiving process forward.
I believe good design is always the result of successful teamwork. In my process I like to involve and engage as many people as possible, even if it’s been individual school projects. I believe that the power of design comes from a collective effort where combinations of individual skills and mindsets create new mindblowing blends. Sincerely, Christoffer Ohlander
About me Born 1986, raised and living in Stockholm. Besides my interest in design, I climb and bicycle a lot. Generally I like to enjoy the pulse of this city together with a big group of friends.
Education 2014-2015 Man and Well Being, Design Academy Eindhoven (exchange student)
2012-2015 Industrial Design, Konstfack
2011-2012 - Product Design, Linnaeus University
2010-2011 - Threedimensional Form - Woodworking, Nyckelviksskolan 2009-2010 - Colour, Form and Craftsmanship, Nyckelviksskolan 2008-2009 - Art History, 23,5hp, Stockholm University
2007-2008 - The art schools’ evening course in drawing and painting, Folkuniversitetet 2007 - Architectural course, Stockholms Fria Arkitekturskola 2006 - English 30hp, Stockholm University
Work
(Design Related) 2012-2015 - Student Representative, Board of educational development at Konstfack Industrial Design. 2014 - Prototype Maker, Clas Vallin Arkitekter. Project employment.
2012 - Architectural Modeller, AM Modeller. Project employment. 2007-2008 - Architectural Modeller, ART Teknik. Full time job.
Awards 2014 IF Design Talents - Hansgrohe Price
2015 Design students selected by FORMEX
2015 Ulla-Fröberg-Cramér stipend fund for exceptional degree works
Software Skillset Rhinoceros 3D
Adobe Indesign, Illustrator, Photoshop
Keyshot
Contact
christoffer.o.ohlander@gmail.com
+46737329531 Olshammarsgatan 54, 124 76 Bandhagen, Stockholm, Sweden
WINNER OF
HOUDINI B AT H T U B - WA S H B A S I N - S H O W E R
HOUDINI A low-tech bathroom product dealing with changes in the increasingly confined urban environment: Houdini provides an uncomplicated way to get the experience of a fully equipped bathroom where space is lacking. Using the bathroom should be a joyful and relaxing experience, even if you are really crammed in. Houdini is all about the experience - the cleanliness of white enamel, the tactile feeling and delightful wooden smell of cedar, always having your toiletries close at hand. Houdini is also about trying to reduce water and material consumption. The use of only one water source for three bathroom functions could possibly reduce plumbing and piping when building new homes. Also the proportions of both the bathtub and wash basin are small, to reduce the amount of water used. It is practical, while not reducing the pleasurable experience. The moments we get to spend alone and shut off from the world are a crucial part of our well-being in the fast-paced reality we live in today. Knowing this, Houdini provides the user with the true relaxation and stress-relief that experiencing water can be!
PR O J E CT T H EME - Individual project - Experience design - Compact living - Activating senses
KE Y SK ILLS - Sketching - CAD - Clay modelling - Rendering
DESIGN PROCESS IDEATION
My initial ideas revolve around bathing in small bathrooms, as Swedish building legislation is looking towards allowing smaller bathrooms. The idea of combining a bathtub with a sink and shower comes out as the strongest and becomes the main theme throughout the project.
TWO CONCEPTS
After making a rough size calculation for a seat-bathtub, I start sketching on two concepts - one with a removable silicone or rubber top and one with a small sink hanging over the bathtub on a rail. I have no real idea about what the form should express at this stage, so I decide to explore this in making models.
I give the rubber concept a quite industrial expression, while the idea of the bathtub as a sitting creature gets in my head while trying to develop the second concept. I feel that the latter expression comes out as the most unique and fun idea, it has a kindness to it that could make the bathtub really loveable.
DESIGN PROCESS FIRST SUGGESTION
Going into CAD, I decide to try and adapt the idea of a lid to the creature-bathtub. At this time I feel that it would be the most practical solution. Somewhere around here I get lost in the technicalities of CADModelling, and the result is that the top part don’t at all have the kind feeling of the bathtub.
SIMPLIFYING
The expression of the lid and the bathtub don’t work that well with each other. I decide to make a new top part, and go back to look at my initial sketches. I reapply the idea of a small sink, and the simplicity of just lifting the whole
CEDAR WOOD
CONTAINERS FOR TOILETRIES
thing off when bathing or showering. I also find cedar to be a good waterresistant material that will contribute to the experience of using the bathtub by both its tactility and its very unique strong wooden smell.
VIGOR F U R N I T U R E
R O L L A T O R
VIGOR The rollator has evolved into a very practical object, but along the way something essential was overlooked. A rollator is deeply intertwined in a persons life, sometimes for decades, and still all models look like brutally functional aid-products. Vigor - the wooden rollator - is a crossover between furniture and aid. I have created an object that is hopefully seen not as a necessary evil, but as something to empower a person, both in a practical and emotional way. I have built a working prototype to understand its potential functions, creating knowledge for a second version that could be constructed in the industry. Vigor is collapsible, has a pullout drawer and the top can switch between a seat and a tray. It also weighs less than a standard rollator. I believe a rollator should be an extention of lifequality and mobility to be used with pride. Vigor is a statement that challenges our perceptions of living life as a retired person.
PR O J E CT T H EME - Individual project - Empowering the elderly - Aid products - Furniture
KE Y SK ILLS - Woodworking/construction - Prototyping
DESIGN PROCESS IDEATION
A mapping of rollators shows a common theme, where it has evolved into an object that signals functionality and durability. I look for inspiration in the furniture field with the hopes of creating something more close to home, combined with the highly evolved functionality of todays rollators.
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ROUGH SKETCHING
Rough sketching of outlines, thinking already of construction in wood and possibilities for joinery/collapsibility.
DESIGN PROCESS PROTOTYPING
Exploring possible layouts for wood construction. Trying out different handles and baskets. Measurements based on regular rollator models, since I figure a lot of research has been done in this area.
Visualising extendable handles and visible wood joinery with focus on how to make the rollator look stable to the user. Also a possibility to collapse it and use it as a wall-hanged container for belongings.
REFINING
Taking the best parts from the 4 prior models to develop the final proposal. Handles get a focus on stability, the basket has become a pull-out drawer and the general layout makes it possible to collapse. Also the seat can be flipped to become a tray.
RAINBOWRD OSB COLOURING TECHNIQUE With Erika EmerĂŠn and:
Selected by Ilse Crawford (Guest of Honor) to exhibit with her in:
RAINBOWRD I could never imagine that applying beeswax to a chipboard would lead me to a collaboration with one of the world’s largest OSB-manufacturers, but that’s indeed what happened. The result of this project are possibilities for industrially producing a colour inlay OSB. The method raises the value of this cheap construction material, and makes it easier to clean, thereby it becomes more suitable for interiors and products. I have collaborated with Nordbord in Genk, Belgium, and worked together with them in their factory, discovering how the industrial production of such a material could take place. This is an ongoing project where me and Erika Emerén are trying to apply this material to both products and interiors.
PR O J E CT T H EME - Wood surfaces - Industrial processes - Colour - Materiality
KE Y SK ILLS - Experimenting - Composition
DESIGN PROCESS
COLOUR
ANTI-SLIP
FIRE RESISTANCE
HYGIENE
HUMIDITY
ACOUSTICS
IDEATION
Making 36 wood surface samples on different themes.
COLOUR INLAY
COLOUR WOOD CHIPS
COLOURED OSB TWO POSSIBILITIES
I chose to move forward with possibilities to create multi-colour OSB-boards in industrial processes. At this point, Erika EmerĂŠn and me started sharing ideas and decided that I would present our ideas to the OSB producer Nordbord.
DESIGN PROCESS Production
Nordbord kindly offered me to develop the project in their factory. In the process, a colour paste is raked onto the boards, filling up the cavities.
INDUSTRIAL SANDING LINE
The coloured boards were put through a high-speed industrial sanding line that is rarely used by the factory. The boards could be finished to an eggshell sheen in these sanding belts. The resulting material can be dyed to get a two-colour board.
Bachelor’s Thesis
GARGLE SINGER NEO-ANIMISTIC COFFEE MAKER
Design students selected by
GARGLE SINGER My bachelor’s thesis revolves around the theme neo-animism - how we increasingly percieve advanced interactive technology as “living” or “having a will of its own”. The coffeemaker “Gargle Singer” uses new smell sensors to tell us if our coffee is ecological or not, trying to affect our choice by playing with our emotions. Coffee is one of the world’s most pesticide sprayed crops. Drinking non-ecological coffee isn’t dangerous for the consumer, but for the farmers it’s another story. Gargle Singer senses pesticide traces with a nano sensor and coughs violently if the coffee is non-ecological. Our reaction to coughing is instinctive and defensive, as mechanisms for avoiding contagion are activated. If, however, the coffee is ecological, the coffee maker purrs contently. Since coffee-drinking is (at least in Sweden) a social event, the person making the coffee is scrutinised in front the other coffee-drinkers. This will create feelings of shame or pride, which might further affect the choice of coffee. This machine shows potential design in the upcoming age of “the internet of things”. As we connect our products to the internet, and give them the ability to sense us and adapt, we are in fact making them into a type of primitive life-forms. This will mean new opportunities for designers to create relations between humans and machines. With my bachelor’s thesis, I show how this can make interactions between us and our creations more understandable.
PR O J E CT T H EME - Bachelors thesis - New sensor technology - Emotional design - Changing ecologically harmful behaviour
KE Y SK ILLS - Research - CAD - Model-building
*Neo-Animism : The perception of life or intention in new technological objects
DESIGN PROCESS RESEARCH
Based on written sources about the sense of life (animism) in objects, I set out to investigate user relations to products. It becomes clear that there is a cultural consensus as to which products feel alive formwise, and that mobile or high-tech objects tend to be seen as having a personality.
ASESSING “ALIVENESS” IN PRODUCTS: USER SURVEY
MEETING EXPERTS: A PSYCHOLOGIST AND A DESIGN RESEARCHER
DETERMINING WHICH PRODUCTS USERS GIVE NAMES: WEB SURVEY - Have you ever named an object, and if - what’s the story behind the name? “Thomas, it was a TomTom GPS and the name grew with me making wrong turns. Damnit Thomas! felt more natural than damnit tomtom.” “My parents robot vacuum-cleaner was named Rutger, because that was the name of the brand. Now they talk in terms like - Now Rutger’s awake! - and - Rutger’s in the way again” “The shared house I live in at the moment calls the dishwasher Fatima. Dunno why it got that name but it’s used in jokes: “don’t worry about it, Fatima will do the dishes”
IDEATION & ROUGH SKETCHING
To handle the complex subject of using percieved life in products as a design tool, I take help from classmates to perform a brainstorm with themes based on my research. One of the ideas that come up is to work with trying to change environmentally hasardous behaviour. Further on, I start to analyse coffee-
drinking and the situations connected to it. I find my context in problems regarding non-ecological coffee. The idea becomes to affect the choice of coffee by means of a coffee maker that gives sound feedback that tells if the coffee is ecological or not. I start sketching different types of drip-coffee makers.
DESIGN PROCESS SEMIOTIC EXPLORATION
I have my concept set, but what will it look like? After developing a general form in the shape of a humanoid body, I start to investigate the transferring of water from one form to another. It becomes very important to work out this transferral so that it doesn’t associate to bodily fluids.
FINAL PROPOSAL
I refine all the form elements and also work a lot with the in-between spaces. I place the nano-sensor in a protective glass casing. The visual language for this coffee-maker is playful, but also gives credibility to the technical process taking place, by having similarities to lab equipment.
Bachelor’s Thesis
S TA R G A Z E R N E O - A N I M I S T I C
R O U T E R
Design students selected by
S TA R G A Z E R The second part of my bachelor’s thesis shows how the sense of life in future products can make us understand the complex world we have created. The router “Stargazer� helps us understand the invisible parallell world of wi-fi signals and transferrals of data, by showing its intensity via a light interface. The shape of this router is inspired by that of a pet, something many of us hold dear. I have made a user survey to determine what grade of abstraction is suitable to make it credible both as a hightech object, and as something the users would want to be alive. This way, I have created a method to better understand emotional value in products that have potential to feel alive. The gestalt of this router is meant to build a positive relation to the user, but also to challenge the industrial design norms that decide what hightech should look like.I believe there is room for a kinder futurism, that will fulfill emotional needs to a greater extent.
PR O J E CT T H EME - Bachelors thesis - The internet of things - Emotional design - New visual language for high-tech
KE Y SK ILLS - User surveys - Prototyping - Model-building
DESIGN PROCESS IDEATION
I’m making a router that feels alive, so what does a signal “organ” look like? I start to investigate different types of antennae in nature. Thinking about the evolution of our products, I find a metaphor in how fishes evolved into reptiles. This becomes my first theme.
SHAPES & MATERIALS
Combining clay and 3D-printing, I set out to explore possible shapes for the router. The common theme is some sort of protective shell with an inside that encompasses a light interface. This interface will show the intensity of data traffic.
I start to explore ceramics as a possibility to get structured surfaces that enhance tactility and the feeling of aliveness. However I don’t get the positive emotional responses I want from my users, and decide to find another shape.
DESIGN PROCESS VERSION 2 & USER SURVEY
I look to something more close to home, and become inspired by our pets. It is important to me that this object will be accepted as both something high-tech and as something living,
without being seen as a toy. Therefore I create a user survey to determine from a scale of abstraction what they signal to the users.
THE WINNER
One shape stands out to the users, signalling both high-tech and creates a positive emotional response. This becomes the outline of the router. I start to explore light interfaces and build one from silicone and fiber-optics.
B AT H T U B - WA S H B A S I N - S H O W E R
O T H E R PROJECTS (Overview)
POUR D I G I TA L LY C R A F T E D TA B L E S With Agnes Ersson & Jenny Kj채ll
MEADOW S O U N D
A B S O R B E N T
With Agnes Ersson & Jenny Kj채ll
BLUBBY L A U N D R Y
S T O R A G E
ELIXIR H E A LTH S O UP BUSI NESS CONCEP T With Han Kusters, Yi-Wen Huang, Onno Adriaanse and Kim Hou for
CONTACT christoffer.o.ohlander@gmail.com +46737329531 Olshammarsgatan 54 124 76 Bandhagen Sweden