Floppy Coasters
Drink coasters in the shape of 3” floppy disks. The design is inspired by the many unused floppy-disk organizers that litter thrift shops and landfills as an exercise of: 1) reusing obsolete media organizers, and 2) upcycling a common office object to be used as stylish home decor.
YEAR: 2021
ROLE: Rapid Prototyper, Industrial Designer
STATE: Finished Product
COLLABORATORS:
Independent Project
MEDIA:
Strategy
The floppy coaster design plays on the standardized size of a 3” floppy disk. This allows the coasters to be stored in a variety of pre-existing floppy disk organizers without any modification.
The final piece works within the markets of retro-inspired design and sustainability focused design. It must be noted that scrap acrylic is used for the coasters.
On a personal note, I have a fascination with the uniqueness of form found in mundane products (such as floppy disk organizers).
Photo: A sampling of different floppy organizer designs.
Photo: The color selection used for the floppy coasters was a reference to the Red, Green, and Blue colors found on the delta-gun shadow mask used by color Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) computer monitors.
Gif: Instead of using ink, the labels are laser etched onto the packaging. This reduces the number of manufacturing processes and improves production efficiency. Reclaimed cardboard is used to reduce the environmental impact of the product.
Final Design
The end result provided a fun approach to reusing obsolete-media organizers. This product became one of the more popular items on my online store, Millennium Bug Studio. Coasters that were sold with their own, unique floppy disk organizers sold the fastest.
While this product is still in production, I would like to return to this design concept and experiment with different, more sustainable, materials to make the coasters out of.
