Full Nelson
A fun read at Metropolis on the ‘good old days’ at Nelson & Company.
Irving Harper tells a story about developing his iconic Marshmallow sofa:
How did the Marshmallow sofa come about? One weekend, I thought about doing an upholstery unit, and wondered, Is there any way to do a sofa out of reproducible parts that could be done as if fitted out to a frame? I cooked up this model out of a checkers set, and I stuck the checkers disks on a metal frame, and it looked good to me. So I drew it up, brought it in, and that was the birth of it.
Harper’s story is testimony to the power of mocking up an idea. So when you or your team are in an idea-generating mode, go for it. Make ideas visible. Try things out. You never know where the exploration might lead…
Prototyping a body-mounted interface device using coat hanger, rubber bands, and Logitech mouse