2008
Typical design projects are about producing a product. But what if your challenge is a process, that you cannot find a solution to?
Chris McDonald, head chef and owner of Cava Restaurant and XOCOCAVA in Toronto, had to identify his delicious chocolate truffles with 2 letters. His idea was to brand them with a heat stamp. figforty designed a quick change stamp system to use customized letter pairs identifying the chocolates. This was a 1 off product that solved a process problem practically and effectively. And now we know which chocolates we are eating, which is important when flavors range from Cedar, to Chorizo sausage.
This Lo-fi design was made from a simple starting block. A curling iron. Who knew that curling irons had many different sizes and up to 40 temperature settings! The reasoning behind using a curling iron was that it delivered controllable heat and had a build in clamp that could serve as the holder and quick release for the stamps. From there we went back and forth with Chris on format and ergonomics. Brian Wilson of Craftwright machined up the pieces and Sarmas engraving cut the letter profiles.